Sexy sheets by Damon Anthony

I’m sure you know that I know how to treat a lady.

R Kelly on the stereo, low lights and a selection of fine cheeses will get you to the sweat guaranteed. I’ve never met a woman who can resist candles, the ‘Chocolate Factory’ CD and slices of Provolone served from betwixt my buttocks.

However, even I realized my advanced game was missing something when I saw these ‘This is how I’m going to freak you’ sheets from Damon Anthony.

Damn.

They send a message of hitting-it-till-we’re-all-out-of-natural-lubrication that’s clear in any language.

File under: No one ever said that to make money selling sex you had to take your clothes off.

Photograph by Anna and Barney.

The dividing line between porn and art, if it exists at all, is very hard to define. After a long academic study of the subject I’ve decided it comes down to two things.

1. The education of the person behind the camera
2. The quality of the lighting

For example - someone who picked up a camera after studying at Harvard can automatically call their work ‘art’ regardless of how bad it looks. Conversely, if the closest you got to performing a scientific experiment was building a water-pipe, but your work looks amazing, again - you’re an artist.

If you’re poorly educated and can’t light for shit you’re a pornographer whatever you tell your friends.

I’m not thinking about these things because the voices in my head are telling me too (mother’s taking a nap right now. I love you mommy), but because I’ve been looking at the work of Anna and Barney.

Even for German’s it’s pretty hardcore. Women in Burka’s walking around Paris with their VBLT’s out (VBLT = Vertical Bacon Lettuce and Tomato). The picture at the head of this post shows a woman standing in a Burka, naked from the waist down and standing on a grave. It’s like Marylin Manson’s entry in some bizzare piss off a Muslim contest.

If you did that in the name of porn you’d get accused of racial insensitivity and then killed by angry fundamentalists. Mason, an ex-child star who now directs hardcore movies but carefully guards her identity, used to wear a Burka whenever she was photographed but stopped doing so after thinking it through.

Anna and Barney can work to different rules because they’re artists. Who makes that decision? Why is ‘arty’ porn such a cliche?

I think Anna and Barney’s work is beautiful (and less safe for work than handguns and crack). Wouldn’t it be nice if interesting sexual explicit material didn’t have to pretend that that turning people on wasn’t the reason for its existance? Do sex and thought have to be mutually exclusive activities?

What’s my name? What’s my name Turt!?

If you’re reading this you know what a blog is.

Blogs are the new hotness. They’ve gone from being a cool idea championed by un-cool people, to being a useable technology used by almost everyone. In a (tiny) nutshell a blog is any website that is designed to present it’s newest content first, automatically.

Two things make blogs more useful than traditional websites:

• Ease. Blogs allow people who have no tolerance for acronyms, coding or spending money to launch a website. Anyone capable of sending email can produce something that looks reasonable in under an hour.
• RSS. Really Simple Syndication provides a way for your visitors to keep up with what’s happening on your website without visiting it or having to give you their email address. In a world where men, women and eunuchs alike suffer the pollution of messages encouraging them to ‘Buy C1All*s now!’, any website that can function without dropping another load into the spam sewer is welcomed.

Blogs have smart marketing built in, as they force site owners to present their newest content up front and in doing so encourage regular updates. Additionally they provide high-quality stream of visitors, drawing people interested in what you have to say, or look at pictures of your junk, depending on how you choose to present yourself.

The downsides are that blogs rely even more than traditional websites on good writing. Something most adult websites ignore. I’ll write more about writing, when I have time to write more about… good writing. Damn.

Another weakness is that blogs haven’t changed the way that paid content is delivered to buyers, meaning their impact on the profits of adult content sites has thus been minimal. When this changes, and it will change soon (I’m working on it), the effect on the industry will be seismic.

There’s a lot of rubbish being said about blogs. All the talk about a future where everyone has one is nonsense. Along with technology, which is what blogs make simple, websites also require ideas and interesting content. The same exhibitionists, show-offs, loudmouths and rastapedic capitalists who already enjoy hectoring people they don’t know online, in print or via their diary, but who don’t have technical skills or money, are the one’s who are really going to benefit from the blogging boom.

Sex blogs are going to get more common and I expect to see a number of new adult websites appear that use a blog structure to present content that would traditionally have been hidden behind a tour in a subscription area (I’m going to talk more about this later in the week).

Blogs are easy to navigate, and, through comments, give you a much better chance of building a community of fans. Want to start a smart (sex) blog try the following:

1. Do something. Unless you’re a truly great writer people will soon tire of hearing you ramble. Don’t let your blog become the transcript of an interior monologue which drugs would make more interesting. Talk about the things you do when you’re not at your computer at least as often as the things you do while you’re at it. Unlike the characters newly successful film-geeks like to put in their painfully biographical independent movies, real geeks aren’t fun.
2. Learn to write. Even people who can’t write recognize bad writing. Remove typo’s, spell-check, buy and read ‘The Elements of Style‘ and shut up when you’ve made your point.
3. Post regularly. If you’re updating your blog less than once a week it’s not really a blog. If you’re updating it less than three times a week you could get more traffic by making at least one additional update.
4. Be responsible. Anything you write on a website could be around long after you’ve died. Watch what you say, apologies and retractions are boring and make you look stupid. With great power comes great responsibility. The evil that men do lives on and on. Be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective. I’m too sexy for Milan, New York and Japan etc.
5. Free your words. If you’re using a blog to sell a product make the blog a free product, not just a sales pitch. People won’t visit your blog to hear how great their life would be if they bought what you’re selling. Give them a reason to talk to, like and trust you, then when you try and sell them something they’re more likely to listen.

Blogs are a new way to present a website, not a marketing tool to support a site stuck in 2001. Make the best product you can, make your site/blog reflect the quality of your product as it exists today you and stop worrying about finding people to sell to - they’ll find you.

Write your own caption.

For years I’ve been telling people who’ve asked me to help with their website to pay me generously for my time. After that, I’d say ‘Make it work like the front page of a newspaper’. At this point we’d often have random conversations about black and white photographs and layout that quickly degenerated into fist-fights. I’d normally win. What I was trying to say back then, without having words for what hadn’t been invented, was build a blog.

Traditionally adult websites have tried to entice people to pay for their content using ‘tours’. Tour is a very elegant word to use for an experience akin to being wheeled through a red-light district, with your eyes wired open, while being shouted at by angry pimps.

There’s a lot of mysticism about tours and some designers have built reputations for being able to produce magical pages which enable the profitable sale of almost anything. This bullshit has made designing ugly web-pages a very lucrative business for some. In return they’ve worked hard to promote the idea among adult webmasters that the ‘right’ tour can make or break a website.

Tour designers treat Photoshop with less kindness than cops arresting a drunk guy in a NAMBLA sweatshirt, interrupting a PTA meeting by shouting "Where the kids at?". Tours are what most people think of when they imagine an adult website and, in 2005, they’re, almost universally, an ugly cliche. As they’re often produced at great expense, they tend to be used for years at a time without significant changes.

The free-side of an adult website (the part you can see without paying for a membership) has four purposes:

1. Get people’s attention
2. Preview what’s in the website.
3. Give an idea of the size and scope of the website
4. Provide an easy way to join the website

If I was launching a subscription adult website today I’d write a blog instead of building a tour. I’m not talking about blogvertising, I’m talking about replacing tours/ads with blogs entirely.

While a tour is an advertisement people endure, a blog is content that people seek out. No one reads an ad for thirty minutes, but many people will spend that much time at a good blog, and the ones who do will tell their friends.

A blog can do everything a tour’s supposed to, better than
any tour ever could. They can also do a number of things a tour can’t.

• Using RSS visitors can subscribe to a blog feed and stay informed of what’s happening at your website without giving up their privacy.
• The text in a blog naturally provides search engines with thousands or relevant phrases which drives people to your website.
• Over time, the blog will becomes a detailed, public, searchable, index of the website it’s connected to.
• Positive comments from paying members provide a constantly updated source of user testimonials. 

If you were paying me as a consultant I’d tell you this:

• If you’re running a website but don’t have a blog get one.
• If you have a blog but still run a tour, make it easy to sign-up from the blog and kill the tour.
• If you’re about to build a website start with the blog and base everything on that.

Is the demo hands on?

A few weeks ago, when only the people I shouted at while I was drunk knew what was in this blog, I asked where all the sexy podcasts were. I said there should be a huge market for what I called ‘Podnography’.

Since then a business consultant - Alex Nesbitt - has made headlines saying exactly what I did (wanker) and last week Apple released a version of iTunes that makes listening to podcasts easy.

I still think podcasting’s not as important as people are saying it is. Podcasts are just MP3’s and they’re not going to make ‘radio’ democratic. Who’d choose to listen to ‘Farm Stories with Inbred Ollie’ over the Stern Show?

However, sex isn’t well served by mainstream (Clear Channel) radio and there are a lot of people who’d make a sexy podcast but wouldn’t strip for the camera. That’s why as recording audio gets easier, increasing numbers of people are likely to make podcasts of their sexblogs, sexploits and general naughtiness.

Sexy podcasts can compete against radio in a way that amateur music and talk shows can’t. There’s a space for podnography and I continue to predict that they will boom as a new adult entertainment niche. Hear that Mr. Business Consultant? I predict it - not you fucko.

So why hasn’t it happened yet?

There are two problems. First is the whole podcasting name. Podcasting’s just posting MP3’s to your blog. Podcasting makes it sound complicated and, given that the adult world has only recently discovered blogging, podcasting’s about a year off making sense to most adult webmasters.

Secondly finding content on sexblogs is hard. There are a few blogs, Fleshbot springs to mind, which offer links to sexblogs and websites but they have to be very picky in what they present. If you have a lot of traffic you can trade it for exposure on a links list, but what if you don’t?

If you try to use search tools like Technorati you have to hope you’re searching for the right tag or keyword. Google and Yahoo aren’t entirely comprehensive, and again, you have to search for phrases you think might ‘hit’ the types of blog you want.

I’ve been thinking hard about the problem and I’m pretty sure I’ve found the answer. I’ve come up with an easy way to let a large audience know about any post, at any sexblog.

It’s entirely democratic, it’s free, it doesn’t require you to send any traffic anywhere. Small blogs will have just as much coverage as big blogs and inclusion is guaranteed. It’s anonymous and it won’t require any kind of registration. The only restriction will be my own ruthless weeding out of irrelevant spam. The more you use it the more people will find your blog.

I can start doing it next week and it all hinges on the traffic coming from TGP.com (if you don’t know why TGP.com is such a killer URL read this). If it’s popular the owners of the TGP.com domain will let me do it permanently. If not - it’s a chance to get a lot of easy traffic for 3-4 weeks until I start writing about why it didn’t work.

If you write any type of blog dealing with sex, babes, porn or whatever (just keep it legal donkey-rapists) send me an email and let me know. Make sure you include a link to your blog so I can check it out. This idea will only work for blogs I’m afraid so no regular websites please.

Next week, when I’ve worked out who’s interested in getting involved I’ll show you what I’ve come up with. It’s simple but really clever too. Prepare to have your mind mother-fucking blown man. 

Music, makes the people, cum together.

For a long time part of my job has been to come up with ideas. Normally the people asking me to come up with an idea want something that’ll work for them as a new piece of marketing. I don’t find this difficult. What’s hard is hearing why anything that’s not exactly the same as the things everyone else is already doing, is too risky to attempt.

That’s why I prefer working for myself (they’d probably say that’s what’s makes me an asshole.)

This is one of those ideas. I don’t want money (I’ll sue you later if you get too successful) All I ask is that you tell me if you use it.

I was reading about a slew of ‘big budget’ porn movies being released this summer. Big budget in the world of porn, meaning anything over $100,000 and a four day shoot. Pretty funny given that Jennifer Aniston’s hairstylist gets paid $7,000 a day (she told me) and takes a week to style a merkin.

When I speak to people about adult movies they normally complain that they’re crap. They’re right. The acting’s rubbish and the music (if it’s there) sounds like the ‘Demo’ button on a 1988 Casio ‘Home Organ’.

A big budget won’t fix that. Acting quality’s got nothing to do with the budget (have you seen ‘24‘? Why does every man in that show whisper every line they’re given?) and everything to do with the performers. In porn the performers in a ‘big budget’ production on Monday, are the same people who were getting down for almost-full ‘Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf‘ customer loyalty cards the Friday before. The music in big-budget porn is, at best, originally composed synth noodling - that hasn’t worked since The Equalizer.

Finally porn’s too long. You watch it until the fish escape. That’s it. At best a big-budget movie’s going to be watched in sections and, in that instance, the plot’s a hindrance not a help.

What’s the solution? Remove the acting, fix the music and keep it short.

“Sam!” you say - what about gonzo? No acting, no music!

“Don’t be a cretin” I reply, slapping you hard across the face with my leather driving gloves. “The ‘acting’ in gonzo is there in all the fake emotion and the bullshit ‘Hey, what’s a girl like you doing selling Bible’s door to door? Free dildo with every purchase you say? Come on in honey, I’ll take one…’ ‘reality’ setups.”

“So how do you fix that Sam?” You reply, rubbing your still red cheeks and wondering at the awesome power of my thickly muscled guns.

Here’s the idea.

Set up three or four video cameras in a room (more is better) each manned by a woman who knows how to focus. Then film hours of people fucking, sucking and doing that thing where you feel like you’re going to, and then you’re not, and then you do and it’s just like a wave of minty ice water breaking over you and it’s so damn good.

You’ll have to shoot a few hours to make sure it’s real. No acting, no direction, just people being sexy alone, or with someone else, or two. It’ll be hot - trust me.

Then you cut all that footage down to the good bits. You’ll lose about 90% of it if you’re lucky. Now you have a pile of primo quality scud clips (that’s a technical term obviously) without a plot or a soundtrack.

Then you contact an unsigned band (try www.iuma.com) and do a deal whereby you’ll credit their music in return for being able to use it in your production.

Most bands will say no but a few will say yes. Porn is cool (fact) and unsigned bands will do anything for an audience. It’s easy marketing and a chance for them to be associated with ‘naughty’ without closing any doors. They’ll probably ask to visit the set and try to date a performer. Porn stars and bassists go together like bassists and single digit IQ’s.

Now you have original, properly produced music with some semblance of credibility, which isn’t embarrassing to listen to and a stack of clips. Just cut the video to the audio and create something like a hardcore music video. Three to five minutes of hot sex over a decent tune. The perfect date basically.

It will give most viewers all the time they need to whitewash a sock, and provide a far more watchable, and wankable, result than some porn-bunny pretending to be a cop, posing as a hooker, trying to infiltrate a gang of lesbian nuns.

Brilliant I know. Send me any MTV style shorts you put together and I’ll tell the world about them.

The person who’s done the smartest marketing in porn in the last five years is Mary Carey. She’s come from nowhere to being a constant guest on TV and Radio by being the only performer smart enough to run for Governor against Arnie. Despite losing dramatically (Arnie’s seven I.Q. points smarter than Mary - fact) the story she became continues to be a huge smash.

Unfortunately she’s now in many ways the face of the industry.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

This very funny clip from the Daily Show is a mixed blessing. Can you think of anyone who fits the ‘dumb blonde porn whore’ stereotype better? Ironically if she came across as a little sharper she’d be far less entertaining.

When she spread her legs and farted I entered a PR nightmare I thought could never happen. Watch and learn. This is a perfect lesson in getting attention whilst creating an overwhelmingly negative impression.

This will be considered dressing down…

After spending the weekend at a bachelor party being asked ‘How do I get to date a porn star’ and then returning to an inbox filled with variations on the same question I thought I’d better provide an answer.

I speak from experience. I’ve dated the jizz-bizz holy-hottie trinity - Glamour model, Playmate and Porn Star. I don’t recommend it.

Dating a Playmate’s like driving a Ferrari Enzo. You’re constantly stared at, as soon as you stop moving you’re surrounded by a crowd of onlookers and people keep asking how ‘…a guy like you got that.’

Glamour model’s are a little easier. As they don’t have sex for money they’re easier to be around and less shocking to introduce to friends and family. Less positively, they often possess bodies capable of making anything they wear slightly pornographic, which gets embarrassing at funerals.

Porn stars are the most difficult. They get approached by men who’ve seen them having sex and assume that standards of normal courtesy don’t apply. They’re often crazy. When you introduce a porn star to your father, and he takes you aside and says ‘She looks so familiar…’, you can essentially say goodbye to your erection for a week as your head fills with pictures of poppa enjoying your lady’s work.

All that aside, meeting your victim potential partner is the first step.

If you live in LA, and you go out, you’re meeting people from the adult industry all the time, even if you’re unaware of it. Give it time and you can approach an adult performer in an entirely natural way in a bar, club or library. It’s the best way but also the least certain.

If I wasn’t in the industry I’d say the easiest place to meet people, with a view to seeing them on your own time, is at a party. There are lots of BBQ’s, pool parties and events which have an almost 100% jizz bizz guestlist. Making friends with someone who works behind the scenes is a good way to get invited, the industry’s small and being a friend of a friend can win you a guest pass.

Be careful who you choose to hang with, you could easily buddy up to someone controversial and end up being blackballed from one industry clique or another. (If someone asks you to a party and mentions being blackballed, make sure you’re not being hit on by Lexington Steele.)

If making friends seems too hard you may be a sociopath. To meet others like you, and a wide range of adult performers, you can try visiting trade shows - notably InterNext in January and August and Erotica LA in July. This creates about as positive an impression as tackling a woman while she fumbles for her keys in an underground parking lot and dry humping her. Women have their guards up when they’re surrounded by tubby Trekkies with hard-ons.

LA natives have a chance to hang with performers each week at ‘Porn Star Karaoke’ which takes place at  9 p.m. each Tuesday at Sardos, 259 North Pass Avenue in Burbank, just off the 134 freeway. There’s always a good selection of people, and it’s open to the public. Take a cute and outgoing girl with you. A lot of women in the business are bisexual and they’ll notice her before they notice you. It’s an easy way to an introduction and will make you look less like a desperate fanboy loser customer.

Finally - if you’re rich you can buy an evening with a porn star at Danni.com. Their auction site regularly lists chaperoned ‘Dream Dates’ with models and performers. Be warned - they’re not all single and some of them chew with their mouth open. Dates often go for over $3,000 and some have made over $7,000 - there are some very rich and determined fans out there.

For the purpose of full disclosure I launched Danni.com’s auction site, but I don’t make a dime from it. It’s legitimate and the dates are well organized and fun (I’ve chaperoned a few myself but don’t worry - normally it’s a cute woman, not a 200 lb guy).

On the subject of full disclosure, I should also mention that, during a daring raid on their HQ late last year, I stole the Omega device from ‘The Confederation’ and gave it to my glamorous NSA handler who I only know as ‘Lady J’.

Most of the time making a good impression on someone who works in the sex industry is about being unlike all the other men they meet. These women are hit on all day, every day. They’re very aware of their status as sex objects and are inherently distrustful of men. Don’t talk about any prison time or your collection of hunting knives until you’ve formed some sort of bond.

Once you’ve met your your target here’s what to do when you’re talking, charming and dating her:

1. Be cool

Play hard to get, even if it means tea-bagging your junk in an icy drink (not hers) when she leaves to go to the restroom. She wants to date an equal not a fan. Be as nonchalant as you can without being a dick.

Whatever you do don’t show her off. She know’s she’s a prize. Don’t use her to impress your crew and don’t mention what she does in public unless she does. Introducing her as “Mary, from Massive Objects Mary dotcom,” will end your evening fast.

2. Be a gentleman

She works in places where people glance at her drivers license and then ask her to strip off (like the DMV). She will be particularly vulnerable to old-school charm. Flowers, cards and notes go a long way, as long as they’re meant sincerely. She will want to know that you like her despite of, not because of, what she does.

If she tells you her real name she trusts you. Don’t use it in public unless she does. Performers have to guard their identity’s and switch between persona’s for good reason. She knows the waiter recognized her when she walked in, and will show up at her house if he can use her real name to find out where she lives. Kill him now, she’ll thank you later.

Take your romantic inspiration from Lionel Richie’s ‘Three Times a Lady’, not The Analog Brothers ‘Pimp to Eat’.

3. Make her chase you

There’s nothing a woman finds more attractive than a guy they can’t get. Let her make all the moves. She will, and you’ll look cooler than all the guys chasing her.

Whenever I’ve had performers flirting with me I’ve been in situations where responding in kind would be seen as unprofessional. It could be my aftershave that makes them want me, I wear Sex Panther which is illegal in nine countries, but it was probably because I was hard to get.

4. Don’t become a suitcase pimp

Show no interest in getting into the adult industry yourself or managing her career. A lot of guys see performers as a meal ticket and if you give off that vibe she’ll run away. Even offering to help drive her to a photo-shoot, or spend all her money on your car, can set off alarm bells. 

To avoid looking like a suitcase pimp avoid sunglasses unless you’re outside and it’s sunny, wearing untucked, open-necked shirts made of shiny fabric, or being in a band that doesn’t sell enough records to keep you fully occupied.

5. Clean your whip

If you don’t have nice wheels at least keep them clean. There’s a lot of money in porn, you’re going to have to park beside a lot of nice steel. In LA people check out your steed if they can’t be bothered to talk to you but want to work out what kind of person you are. LA’s fucked.

I can’t really explain this, but every woman I’ve ever met in the adult business has liked cars. I used to drive a European classic which attracted women like a free shoes, lose weight, fuck Brad Pitt promotion at the local mall. Respect your ride.

6. Hide your stash

De-porn your apartment. Porn is work for her. If she’s into it she’ll lead the way and provide it for free. Assume she’s not and eliminate the risk of getting it wrong. Once again the less of a fan you appear the better.

She’ll see fantasizing over people she knows as akin to cheating. Pointing out that she’s had sex with the people on the DVD’s she’s bitching about, while I’m totally monogamous won’t win the argument. Nor will pointing out that claiming to be a Catholic is a bit strong Lena, given how you make your fucking money? Christ you’re a hypocrite.

7. Don’t assume

Forget what she does when you’re talking to her - even if it’s playing on a plasma screen just over her right shoulder. If you treat her like a stereotype you’ll mark yourself out as an asshole and provide evidence that you’re not listening to what she’s saying.

Let her talk and then latch onto the things she says. Don’t worry if you get it wrong to start with, listening is hard (tip - watch Oprah, they do it on there.) Practice on less attractive women and build up to one your really want to be, you know, on.

8. Be smart

This is psychology. People assume she’s stupid because she’s sexual. She hates that, and goes out of her way to appear smart. Therefore if you appear smart, you become the kind of man she thinks she should be with, even if you’re not ideal in other regards. Even if she’s not smart, she’ll be flattered that someone who appears to be is interested in what she’s thinking.

Take a breath. You might be feeling dizzy. That’s okay - I am blowing your mind.

9. Be mainstream

Porn stars often take the ‘No one outside the industry understands this’ view and resolve to date only performers after a string of failed relationships. With these people you’ve got no chance. Luckily the majority of people don’t feel this way and want to date people who are as mainstream as possible.

The most attractive partners for women in the industry are men who are more famous than they are, and guys with good, respectable jobs. Cops, doctors, teachers and other totally average occupations have a bizarre reverse glamour for people inside the jizz-bizz.

Whatever you say, don’t say you’re unemployed. It says suitcase pimp faster than a furry hat and a bass guitar riff.

10. Don’t look

One of my best friends tells his partner “I promised to be faithful, not blind” whenever she catches him looking. She laughs. It won’t work with a performer.

Women who are (brutally) judged on their looks, are very wary of men who might only want to be with them because of how they look. If you stare at every teenage Lycra-clad-Happy-Meal that walks by, you’ll give off a vibe that you’re looking for the next hot thing. She wants to know you’re into her and her alone. Especially when she stops starving herself and living in the gym.

Here’s a tip for creating that effect. Stare at her forehead and try to count the follicles on her hairline. The slowly scanning gaze this creates will look almost identical to falling in love from her perspective.

11. Be boring

If you’ve followed all the advice to this point you’ll be going to bed with her soon. Keep it simple.

Once again, she’s going to want to know you’re in bed with her - not the fantasy she projects at work. Be loving, and keep it tame - lots of kissing. Leave the gas-mask and ‘Mini Replica Vibrating Pope’ in the closet for now.

The wild stuff might never happen. Some performers like to keep what they do in their private life and at work as different as possible. Be very careful about spicing it up, she’ll lead the way when she’s ready. If she comes home to find that you’ve got a Darth Vader mask on and have lubricated the faucets you will scare her off.

Go get em tiger.

I cruise MySpace in one of these.

It’s the weekend and hardly anyone’s reading blogs. Given that I might as well let my hair down and take advantage of being able to deny anything I post today.

Yesterday someone copied my “How to Date a Porn Star in Eleven Easy Steps” to a MySpace group (see yesterdays comments for details). To see it I had to join MySpace and I’m now a member without any friends (apart from some Tom guy who’s almost certainly waiting until I’ve had a few to many before he makes a move on me). If you want to be my friend on MySpace look me up and we’ll do whatever MySpacers do. Damn, I haven’t asked anyone to be my friend since fifth grade.

(Brandon’s just called me a chump for failing to list my MySpace URL so here it is http://www.myspace.com/sugarbank. Thanks Brandon)

Finally, I was looking at my weblogs this morning, and went to check out what people are typing into search engines in order to find SugarBank. Someone wrote “what damages does big dicks to vaginas?”. That’s really more an illiterate boast than a query isn’t it?

His name is Alberto!

A few weeks after I launched SugarBank, in the late spring as I recall when new leaves strained to block the sun and blossom was everywhere, I switched my syndication feeds to Feedburner.

That same week I decided I wanted to get a dog and, two weeks ago, after visiting every pound and after-hours dog-fight in LA, I found Alberto - a beautiful twelve week old Siberian Husky.

Say hi to Alberto - SugarBank’s official mascot.

Feedburner offers bloggers like me a number of advantages. They format your feeds so that anyone can read them using a single URL, regardless of the reader you’re using or the format you prefer. Very useful in a sea of syndication acronyms that I’m too cool to understand.

They also broadcast your feeds on their bandwidth, taking the weight off your struggling servers (SugarBank lives on a rack of Commodore 64’s hooked into a 3200 baud modem).

Best of all they offer detailed reporting, enabling you to see what’s being read and what’s not. Highly useful if you want people to write posts people enjoy.

Yesterday I discovered that I’d forgotten to change 90% of the links on the site to point to the correct feeds (a silly mistake that I blame on recent changes to 2257 legislation).

Currently about half the subscribers to SugarBank aren’t pointing at the right code. It makes no difference to you but, if you re-subscribe to the right feed using the link below, I can get a better idea of what’s popular and make this blog a more interesting place to be.

Accurate statistics are really important to me so I’ve had to make a difficult decision. If you’re a subscriber who’s not using the correct Feedburner feed, I’m not giving Alberto any dinner this evening. I see no way around this - do as I ask or Alberto goes hungry.

I’m JOKING! That’s sick. I’d never deny Alberto food. What kind of guy do you think I am?

(Seriously - this isn’t a joke, if you don’t re-subscribe now I’m sticking Alberto tail first into a woodchipper.)

JOKE!

Please make sure you’re subscribing to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sugarbank

Thanks to the 66% of you who are using that feed already.

If you visit SugarBank a lot and don’t subscribe why not do it now? You’ll get each post, in it’s entirety, without having to remember to visit. You can still swing by to kick back and enjoy the generally chilled-out lovers vibe I’ve set up here of course.

(I’m not joking. Seriously. Subscribe. Now. Alberto. Woodchipper.)