Right now my goal is “by Valentine’s Day, even if I don’t sleep the whole weekend.” We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I have been meaning to keep this site more active. I shouldn’t expect you to come back to the same page for six weeks running, and I feel badly about that. On the other hand, when I started this site, I made a very simple promise to you:

2. No filler.

We will not post unless we have things to say. 1000 Gears should be interesting even if you have no idea who we actually are.

Primarily I was concerned with “What kind of X are you?” quiz-memes and similar minutiae that is only actually interesting to the person taking the test. It’s very easy to slip into a routine of posting for the sake of posting, and I like that even less than silence. So, stuck between these two urges, I have a question for you, as my readers. If I were to post, once a week, sharing a small handful of interesting bits I’ve discovered online, would you consider that to be “content” or “filler”?

We cannot even blame the economy, because sunshine is free!

This is a very large problem, in need of great consideration. I think it is too big for one small catboy to fix.

Still, that does not mean I cannot try, especially not if I can get some help from all of you. As an exercise in public health, I would like everyone to join me in a little bit of solar appreciation. The next time a day of sunshine comes to your area, please make for yourself a nice lunch. Of course this should be a lunch of healthy, nutritious food, but I think it is best to avoid “diet” food, because I would like this also to be an exercise in public happiness, and “diet” food is usually not very tasty.

Then, take this lunch outside, find a nice place to sit, and eat it. Bring your friends! Bring children if you have them, or just set a good example. Make sure that anyone you bring has made a lunch, too, or bring enough to share.

That is all, really. Take a small step in the right direction.

Always,
~Catboy

( The art is by Jandruff! )

It is the last fiery gasp of summer 2003, and it is too hot to move. I am a child of the desert, of the dry Bakersfield heat, and ninety-five degrees is almost comfortable, but humidity makes me sweat; it makes me sticky; it makes me miserable. I throw my shirt across the room. It almost hits Jen, but she catches it, laughs, and throws it back. I let it knock me over and lie in bed, over the covers. The fan on her nightstand sweeps its meager breeze up my chest, across my face, and I close my eyes.

Jen holds me tight, sinking her teeth into my shoulder, and I cry out, once.

It is the last fiery gasp of summer 2009, and I shake my head clear, staggering to my feet. I stumble to the fridge and grab the first beer I see, pressing my cheek to the cool, hard glass, a tiny escape from the heat. A hint of fresh, clear water forms on the bottle, and I suck a little bit away. That doesn’t help. I turn the bottle in my hand. It’s Newcastle Brown, like Jen drinks, and it hurts to remember.

I put the bottle back and close the door.

Some of the commenters are taking the opportunity to share their experiences growing up, and the ways porn affected their lives (good and bad alike). I’d like to share my take on it, and I’d like to hear yours as well.

I discovered hormones in the age of really easy digital pornography. I downloaded my first JPGs in early 1998 (guesstimating) and had a few hundred megabytes worth by 2000. Both of my parents worked and didn’t get back until 6 PM, so I had plenty of time to get all the afterschool porn I wanted.

For a hormonal teenage boy, this is a lot of porn. I didn’t go looking every day, but Passerby‘s “same sex couple naked, one or both penetrated, displayed on black latex covered in oil” was small fries.[1] I remember reading a few bestiality stories, trying to figure out the attraction, and I accidentally wandered into a Dolcett archive once. I didn’t like those, but I certainly looked. I got Goatse’d and didn’t like that either. People are weird. Fantasy and reality are very different things. Kids can be much better about understanding that than adults would like to give them credit for.

Like any other activity, I think porn is what you make of it. It has precious little inherent morality. Tulsa mixed fantasy and reality together, and it started affecting her sense of self-worth. I liked Anthony Brown’s posts on Alt.Sex.Stories and started writing my own, hoping that maybe one day someone would enjoy something I wrote as much as I enjoyed Wulf. Tulsa let cybersex become part of her reality. I just took it as writing practice. By the time she was seventeen, she’d lied her way into a tremendously bad situation. By the time I was seventeen, I was… well, surprisingly good at writing. Some people see those seductive black-and-white dungeon photos and get into BDSM; I got into photography. Popups took control of Cand86‘s computer and scared her away; I learned how to lock the computer down and take it back (it helps that I was and remain a technical kind of dork).

In my case, at least, I think porn was a lot better for me than soccer or basketball might have been.

Porn is like alcohol, guns, or credit cards. Their value is in what you make of them. And, like alcohol, guns, and credit, I think that it’s far better to teach people how to deal with them responsibly than simply to hide them away behind some forbidden mystique and expect that maturity later, without benefit of experience.

[1] Incidentally, even at 14, I knew that “latex covered in oil” was bad juju. Give the kids some credit. You’ll ruin your latex. Use something water- or silicone- based.

When the things we want are out of reach, we give thanks for the things we need.

Some people are struggling to have even that.

Somewhere near Milpitas and not so long ago (either 2003 or 2004), there was a boy, I think, in love with the Mustang SVT Cobra. I imagine he was a boy, at least, but she may have been a girl; nobody needs a Y-chromosome to appreciate the Cobra’s beautiful, all-American brand of power and handling. Still, it suits my sense of aesthetics to believe that this was a boy, and so this is a story about a boy and a car.

The dealer, sadly, put too high a price on love, and the sticker on the Cobra weighed in at over $33,000, almost exactly an entire year’s wages for the average American man. This is a very old story, actually, at least as old as money and really as old as trade. Too frequently our wallets are too small to contain our hopes and dreams. I imagine him breathing deep in disappointment, but really this boy was still far from a pauper, modestly successful in his own right, and he let the dealer guide him around the lot, showing him less exotic breeds of pony. He might have seen the Mach 1, loud and brash as its name, and every dealer would have a few proud GTs, Gran Turismo cars built to run great long stretches of open American road.

Even these are expensive cars, though, and in time the dealer would have shown our boy the basic-model Mustangs. At $18,000 they were still badges of modest success, sports cars for those who refused to settle into the comfortable domesticity of Camrys and Accords. These, he could afford.

Still, he loved the Cobra, not the Mustang. Two hundred horsepower divided the two, to say nothing of the refinements in handling and trim. The Mustang is an American classic for its tunability, but the Special Vehicles Team had raised it to the level of art, and with the extra 800ccs of engine he could not hope to compete. Besides, the Cobra name brings a special, exclusive sort of cachet, and I am sure he dreamt of its effects on his circle of lady friends.

What would he do? He could tune the Mustang, of course, and even if it could not race the Cobra, he might well be able to match the Gran Turismo. That was a lot of work, though, a commitment to bury himself to the elbows in grease for months on end and pore over the tachometer’s wobbling like a scientist over his graphs, and he probably did not know how. The muscle-car gearhead is a dying breed. Perhaps he could drive a lesser car, something practical and boring, something economical that might let him save for a Cobra in five years’ time, but that was a desperate move. Like so many American boys, ours wanted his gratification now, when he was still young and full of flash.

No, none of these would be good enough. If this boy could not have his Cobra, he would make it.

Or fake it.

The whole situation reminds me more than a little bit of the Massive Resistance policy that Virginia implemented for Brown v. Board of Education, and of Prince Edward County’s extreme steps in particular.

I don’t think I need to say much more than that.

That said, we haven’t spoken in about three years. We didn’t fight, and I leave my door always open to friends; I think she just got busy and we drifted apart.

That’s a very long time, and I imagine there that there are a lot of stories for both of us to tell. What do you say to a friend after three years?

Apparently, depending on your name and your friend’s, you say something that looks like this:

Adrian Mailenna,

I’m proud to tell you that I’m being locked up…that’s right, I’m going behind barsto help Jerry’s Kids and MDA. To be released on good behavior I have to raise bail and I need your help!

All you have to do is click here to make a secure, online donation before 05/21/08. Your donation will help families living in our community and help guarantee me an early release.I can’t wait to add you to my list of contributors.

Thanks in advance for your help. Don’t hesitate to call or email me with any questions.

Together we’ll make a difference,
Christanne

P.S. I’m counting on you, click here to donate.

Maybe I’m a stiff-necked, elitist bastard (I have been called far worse), but I really appreciate a well-crafted letter, and this one leaves me just a little bit disappointed. Since we last talked, she changed her name; I almost didn’t recognize her and marked it as spam on the first pass. She was married back in June 2006, but she did not tell me this; prompted by curiosity, my GoogleFu did.

She has her reasons for the form letter, whatever they might be, so I took her up on her offer of emailing her back. I remember her fondly and I’d like to believe that she isn’t the kind of person who would ask for sponsorship from someone she doesn’t actually care to keep as a friend anymore.

Still, that was a heck of a way to say “Hello”.

Lately though, I think my favorite stories come from an adventurer named Kino. They are collected in a nice little box called, appropriately, Kino’s Journey. Kino is not a professional, though she is very good at adventuring. Like your friendly neighborhood Catboy (me), Kino is short, friendly, cheerful, and often not entirely sure where she is going (professional adventurers know where they are going, even if they are not sure how to get there exactly). She does have a map, which is helpful, and the ever-important distinctive hat. Most importantly, though, she (and her companion, a talking motorcycle named Hermes) understands that is the getting-there and not the “there” at the end that is important about adventuring.

Kino’s world is a place full of wonder, slightly super-technological and slightly magical at the same time. Most notably it is missing airplanes and CD players and things like this, even though there are holograms, clever Victorian-looking robots, and very big computers with mysterious panels of blinky lights. It is almost like a fairy tale that way, a little bit out of step with the normal flow of time. Also it is like a fairy tale because it is a compellingly moral sort of world; Kino spends an awful lot of time having to consider the necessity of her guns and the strange justice (or injustice) of the countries she wanders through (most of the time they are really closer to large walled towns).

Even though some of the countries are not very nice (some of them are just plain dangerous), Kino believes that “the world is not beautiful; therefore it is.” What she means by this is that even the unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world make the world a more beautiful place in which to live, because they make people appreciate how wonderful the rest really is.

This is a thought of which I approve very much, partly because it is a little bit like my “flakes, raisins, and almonds” theory. I do recommend that you enjoy Kino’s story for yourself.

So, please excuse the lack of posting lately, and maybe for another few days.

Thank you,
~Catboy! =^.^=