OMG, I have a legacy

So like a dork, I just realized "Hey, I didn't tell the world that my email address changed from aol.com to gmail.com." AOL dumps your old mail pretty quick if you don't get to it, but in the last month or so of mail that it did archive, I found a few interesting notes.

One was from the BEA, asking rather forcefully when I was going to reactivate my gallery there. Yeah, funny thing about that: I've never run a gallery there. When I stopped being the webmaster of Inflate123's Video Vault, it moved to the BEA full-time under someone else's care. I posted very clearly about this at the time and have not revised the page since, but for a good 18 months, I still got angry emails from people wondering where their free porn went. (Hint, folks: Update your cache.)

When the site went to the BEA, I asked that my name be removed so people would not be confused or think I was still in charge. So it's a little funny that even the BEA thinks I'm in charge and just being lazy/negligent. I pointed them to the same page above and said "I think you gotta ask the webmaster, which isn't me, and in this context, never was."

I am glad to be fondly remembered for trying to bring some video perviness to the inflatable community, but the downside is people still expect me to do it, apparently. I think YouTube has trumped the Vault in the meantime anyway.

By the way, I had fun reading an old rant on the subject too. Grrr!

Hi there, Helia

You can't keep a good girl down--especially when her breasts are pumped with helium. Shortly after expressing my sadness at Helia's disappearance, she changed her mind and launched a new Yahoo group. As one of the only enormously endowed women in our community, I'm certainly glad to have her back. I'm curious to see the conversation evolve.

38HH

That's my wife. She thought she was a 44DD, but today, she went and got a proper bra fitting. The correct answer is 38HH. She's got a killer hourglass, but I guess I never knew just how awesome it was until it was properly quantified.

She said the store only had one in her size. Turns out she's too big.

I think I just won the breast lottery.

Airy Christmas

I was glad to have offered a story last year for the holidays and I was hoping to do one again this year. All I've got is the title, and honestly, I don't think I'll get further. I have a lot of real-world work to do.

But I'm so horny, dammit.

So long, Helia

Ya gotta appreciate her while she's around. Unfortunately Helia dropped a note to let her friends and fans know that she's going offline again for an unspecified time. Gotta assume the worst, that it's forever. If not, yay, we count ourselves lucky.

I'm sad but I'm not crushed. It's the natural cycle of the community. People latch onto it very intensely for a while, then need a break. Sometimes the breaks are longer than the latching. Somestimes they're forever. You can't do anything except hope they're not.

Helium shortage?!

I would not have thought it was possible, but there you have it. And what's more, we knew it was coming--that Wired story's from 2000!

I'm sure our detractors will find a way to pin this one on us. :)

On Bambi

So I gotta give it up to Bambi Blaze and her support crew. Granted, the acting is not too good, the editing is merely okay, and once we get past the inflation shot, it's basically a lot of moaning and groping...but I think they're among the best and most focused in our community. Bambi is a good sport who seems up for just about anything; she respects and responds to her fanbase; they've actually invested some coin in some custom inflation costumes and effects, and they offer not one, not two, but three websites, the last of which is free and gives some very talented artists a home. Plus, I don't hear anybody over there having temper-tantrums or posting emo comments about how unloved or unpopular or desperate for attention they are and how they may never come back to the community; they just celebrate what we're all into and provide it for others.

I bring this up because I recently said I wasn't sure if I was going to stay on as a subscriber, but I realized I'm getting more than just the movies for my money. I really want to support what they're doing for everybody, and since I know some people can't always help out financially, even though my funds are a bit lower than usual, I am setting aside enough to support the cause. And of course, I get off on seeing the lady blow up like that.

Wikipedia doesn't get it

The inflatable fetish entry in Wikipedia has been removed. The official reason is that it was not verifiable information. The resulting discussion, complete with a few "I'm just too disgusted" quips, is here.

I know Wikipedia is fighting a constant battle against bad information and vandalism, and as someone who turns to it as a resource fairly often, I definitely respect that--but when you're a fringe group, the only thing you have is new media to back you up. My website has been going for about 10 years; that's not enough (in fact, I'm super offended by one person's suggestion that everything on the Internet about inflatable fetishes was copied from Wikipedia--no, buddy, it was quite definitely the other way around). Several of us were interviewed for Deviant Desires; that's not enough ("one cranky author's book," said one detractor). Oddly, the page on fetishes for physical inflatable fetishism, such as balloons and pool toys, was deemed keepable; I think many of us wtihin this community realize that Helia Melonowski and Xydexx are working in two different realms. And despite those who say they were disgusted, there are far worse things on the Wiki, but they're more easily verifiable with, say, psychological research cited.

So, I suppose if we had a backlog of media interviews and whatnot, we could establish our existence. And isn't that ironic for bold new informational space of Wikipedia: The only way to prove to new media that we are real is to prostrate to old media first.

No, that's not ironic. For Wikipedia, that's actually just embarassing.

The money crunch

Yep, some shifts in my personal finances have led to my needing to cancel one of the pay sites I subscribe to. I had to say goodbye to the Latex Lair, which really does have some of the best fetish photography I've ever seen. Latex + redhead + DDs is my kind of equation. But hey, something's got to give, right? I can always come back when the money situation gets a little more comfortable.

My subscription to both of Bambi Blaze's sites are still active, for now. Content has been light and not terribly inspired lately so I'm going to have to really look hard at what I'm getting.

I know a lot of the people in our community don't have tons of money to throw around. Lots of the consumers are students. I'm glad that I've been able to enjoy the stuff this long. I don't think I got ripped off by either site and I'm not crying poor (well, I am crying "financial adjustment"), nor do I think that all content should be free or any of that nonsense. Artists and creators need to be rewarded--well, why use euphemisms? They need to be PAID. No crime in that.

Inflatable porn storage

I recently upgraded my hard drive (because I upgraded my iPod and you know how that goes--gotta have enough room on the HD for the data to live before you copy it to the portable) and carved out a nice slice of space for my inflatable fetish data in the process. It was always sharing space with something else. This time, I had enough extra meggage that I gave it its own drive--"Smut"--but was somewhat horrified to find that, after a dozen years collecting stuff online and hosting the Video Vault, I only had about 7 gigs and change. That's it? That's not even two DVDs. What the hell?

I've been fairly selective. I decided some time ago not to be a completist or an archivist; I'm generally just grabbing things that tickle my Elmo. On occasion I'll snag a photo with a good facial expression that could be used for a morph later on, but even then we're talking, what, 50K? 100K? Even the Vault clips don't take up a ton of space since so many were created with short downloads and scattered hosting in mind. A few MB here, a couple hundred K there.

I'm betting that most people's porn collections dwarf mine. But it's quality, not quantity, people!

The Tomorrow People

Wow, flashback to being a kid and watching this British TV series on Nickelodeon. Picture Doctor Who for kids--low-budget sci-fi with bad green screen technology and a lot of little telepathic kids jaunting around the universe. I remember watching one episode where a bad guy kidnapped one of the kids and, after demonstrating what a leaking airlock would do to a balloon, threw her in there as a way to make the other kid talk. The episode ended on a cliffhanger of the girl looking nervous and starting to swell.

The next day I had to be somewhere in the afternoon and I begged my mom to rush home so I could see what happened next. I couldn't tell her why, of course, but I couldn't think about anything else that day and it was vitally important that I make it home in time! We were slightly late and I missed the first few minutes of the program (This was in the days of VCRs but before TiVo, and I hadn't had the chance to set it to tape.) For years I wondered what happened. Eventually fansites for The Tomorrow People helped me identify which character, which season, and which episode--and this week, thanks to BitTorrent, I snagged the actual episodes.

Memories are better than reality, of course. The cliffhanger of her "swelling" was nothing more than her raising her arms a bit, and the resolution wasn't even that--she was sweating and, when the kid instantly said he'd tell the bad guy what he needed to know in order to save her, all she did was collapse on the floor. No inflation after all.

It took me 20 years to realize I missed nothing! :)

Careful what you ask for

I don't have a ton of time to spend in the community lately--stupid real life, I hate you--but whenever someone asks for feedback on a story, I at least read it and try to come up with something specific and constructive to say. I have offered generic and unsolicited advice to writers in the past because of my career and experience, but that's not as good as "I wrote this" followed by me saying "Okay, here's what I think about that specific thing you wrote."

Years of being on deadline have taught me one thing about copy: If it's broke, fix it. Lose the ego, lose the hurt feelings--if you've come to me and said "Here's work I've done, tell me what you think," I will tell you. You will get feedback. You may not like it. Apparently, some people are even shocked by it. Welcome to the world of Other People's Perspectives. Welcome to the world, period.

Short version: Do not ask for feedback on your work if all you really want is a compliment. I give those too, sometimes at the same time as the criticism. But don't take me or anyone else with relevant experience to task for actually trying to improve your output. Don't blame me for giving you exactly what you asked for.

Art: The good and the bad/ugly

Yay, looks like another one of my favorites has a permanent home now too. CattyN seems to go through vicious mood swings and has a short fuse sometimes, but his work is always creative, pleasantly cartoony, and pretty varied when you step back and look at it as a whole. I'm glad he's got a stable place to show off his formidable talents.

CattyN's success reminds me inversely of another artist, who shall remain nameless. I rarely point out bad artists in the community because I truly feel that anybody who wants to contribute should be encouraged to do so; if their work needs improvement, they can only get better with practice, right? That's what I thought, but there's one particular artist who has officially proven me wrong.

This person is sort of CattyN's evil twin in that all the things I like about CattyN's work are the exact opposite with this person. Their work is rarely creative (there's no depth to what they draw, no approaching the subject from multiple angles the way so many other artists in our community do), unpleasantly cartoony (doesn't matter which cartoon they're borrowing characters from, all the pictures look rather crappy), and never, ever varied (characters are always drawn in the same pose).

When this person discusses their work, they quite honestly sound mentally challenged. They certainly were when they tried to have a conversation with me, which really was more of a non-constructive accusation by them about my work. I replied only by suggesting how this person could grow as an artist based on patterns and tendencies I'd noticed, and what they could try in order to shake themselves out of their established habits. They didn't/couldn't/wouldn't understand my point. Why change, why try to improve? The DeviantArt hit counter speaks for itself, right?

So we've got someone who isn't good at drawing, isn't good at writing, isn't so hot on the offering or the comprehension of constructive criticism, and might be retarded. And the only reason this personally bothers me is that I'm afraid this person is somehow going to represent the fetish to the outside world someday, and when the world one day finally finds out we exist, we will all be assumed to be mongoloids.

Unwanted relics

Visiting my wife's parents, we found an old letter I'd written her that, luckily, only she saw when cleaning. It's very detailed, downright annoyingly anal semi-blueprints for an inflatable bra and an inflatable jockstrap that I'd apparently designed and sent to her. They never got made (though the letter certainly believes they were about to be made) and I feel ridiculous seeing them again. I really wish my new apartment had a fireplace so I could dispose of this properly.

The return of Helia

Hey, cool, look who's back. Good readin'. I got really pissed off last year when I saw someone using her pen name, slightly misspelled but clearly trying to ride her coattails.

I admit I felt a bit big-brother protective because she was one of the first (if not the first) females to come forward and actually say "Yes, I have this BE fetish too." She embraced it and, naturally, got all the good and bad attention that comes with being the living embodiment of a million male fantasies. But I was fascinated just to hear her take it on all; I knew my perspective but was dying to hear what it was like on the other side of the gender fence. And she was nice enough to tell me, honestly, amusingly, friendlyly.

Just goes to show you, folks: you can meet a girl with 44G breasts and fall for her great personality.

Ford vs Chevy...but, like, inflatable

In talking with some friends, I've recently been reminded of the gap between various fringe fetishes. It's easy to lump them together, but the lines are rather clearly drawn. Most of the time it stays civil--until someone assumes that group A is the same as group B, or feels that group A should be a member of group B.

I don't necessarily disagree with these friends who reminded me of this schism. As has been documented, I was here at the beginning of inflation fetishism online; there were 12 of us with AOL, Prodigy, or CompuServe accounts. Through Usenet, I'd made contact with Buster, who had already been seeking out fellow balloon fetishists via classified ads for years, and Sievert, who'd spotted a porno tape in college featuring an inflatable corset and he wanted to know if anybody could help identify it. We were so small then that one mailing list was fine and we were all happy to have found someone, anyone, with a similar interest. But about a year later, we'd hit over 200 and the more specific interests started to show themselves. Some people were into pool toys; others more into balloons as objects; still others were into BE and not all of those people were into other body inflation. It was for the best that we split off--it wasn't an angry thing, it just became clear that the seeds we'd planted did exactly what they were supposed to do: they took root and grew!

Now, however, it's not nearly that insular. The web, Wikipedia, YouTube, bearchive, you name it--there are tons of ways to see inflatable fetish content, and I'm happy for that. But the "hey, whatever you're into is fine with me" has devolved into more of a "blueberry vs. helium vs. fat" type thing.

Is that separation for the best? Maybe. I think beggars can't be choosers, but clearly, with the explosion of the web, nobody's begging any more; it's okay to be selective. And with so much content out there, I am surprised that people assume one is the same as the other.

For the record? Weight gain, not so much. Yes, I see some nice shapes and pleasing curves out there, and I've read some stories that I liked, but I don't generally gravitate toward the feeder/feedee community, and I'm not into WG in general. Blueberry girls don't do it for me either, though again, I sometimes catch something there that sticks with me. (The original scene is still awesome.) And I certainly like seeing what the various artists are up to in each community--Pixel Prevert was a strong supporter of the blueberry girls, and man, his stuff was over the top in terms of quality and special effects. I wouldn't want to miss his stuff, no matter what the topic.

I guess I'd like to see us respect the differences without judgement. It strikes me as very much like Ford vs. Chevy--maybe it doesn't matter if you drive a Toyota, but to some people, it's how they identify themselves, and to say "American-made car" without distinguishing is, to them, offensive. I can't say I'm any different.

I'm an inflatable fetishist. Weight gain and blueberries just don't have the same effect on me. But they can have a wild effect on you, and I don't feel threatened by that. I can still celebrate it.

It's not a dress

For Christmas, my wife got me a really expensive watch. It was very cool, but it was not really something I would use. (It was a very specialized, nerdy watch.) With her permission, I returned it and used the money for something...a little different.

I had an inflatable suit once. It ripped and I sent it out for repair, at which point I never saw it again. Since then I've wanted to get a latex garment of some sort. My wife suggested latex sheets, but we both realized they would be a nightmare to clean and care for, plus they were super expensive. She does not want to get latexwear right now, but we both realized...well, if it's my fetish, why don't I do it? What could I get that would let me feel that lovely sensation of pressure and stretchiness that only latex provides, particularly around my midsection, but something that could still be worn during The Act? The answer, I was rather surprised to learn, turned out to be a dress.

Now, because I am a straight male and feel I am already sufficiently strange enough, the concept of buying and wearing a made-to-measure latex dress is something that immediately makes me want to change its name. It's...a tunic. Yes, a latex tunic. Or perhaps a very long t-shirt, because that's what I was thinking of and realized, yeah, that's what ladies call a dress.

I contacted Nimue of NimuesLatex.com after seeing her amazingly reasonable prices, wide color variety, and noting that everything was made to measure (which, when optional, is always something you should get--while cheap, off-the-shelf latexwear is usually ill-fitting and therefore not much fun). And so, four months later, this arrived:



That's a Short Tank Dress in .43/.50 weight Pearlsheen Purple (color selected in part by spouse). The custom color and weight meant the order took longer, but it's worth waiting for exactly what you want, right? And with two custom elements (color and thickness), it was still only $140. Hot damn. I was expecting a rounded neckline instead of a V but I don't really mind, and I don't think I specified.

It doesn't look like a dress, right? It kind of reminds me of the new style of NBA jerseys. And Iverson don't wear a dress.

Work with me here.

Protoblog

You kids and your computers. Imagine my horror when I recently located my old journal (which was the boy's way of saying "diary" in the early 80s) and realized, wow, I'd been blogging since before there were blogs. It's all incredibly embarassing, filled with song lyrics, self-doubt, things that happened at school, geeky outbursts that I thought were cool, girls I had crushes on and weird, melodramatic self-assessments. But it was interesting to see me dance around the inflation thing because I only spoke of it vaguely. I was always afraid of someone else finding the thing and reading it, so I never wanted to give too much away (but wow, look at all the other embarassing stuff in there...would anybody have even noticed the inflatable stuff?). There is one reference to a "fetish" and one reference to an "ultimate turn-on" and that's about all I could find. The rest was just pure growing-up-in-the-suburbs nonsense, no deep thoughts or shocking revelations.

I'm going to destroy this journal, probably by fire. It's a big reminder of the awkwardness that everybody has when they grow up, but I have the experiences; I don't think I need the document anymore. It's one of those things I never wanted to keep but never wanted to get rid of. But it's just time to move on and stop beating myself up about what a dork I have always been.

I am taking back the block I gave you for Christmas

You know how when you take your car start acting up, the moment you take it into the shop, it suddenly start working perfectly? And when you want to show someone else how this frog you found on a construction site can sing and dance while wearing a top hat, the minute you open his cigar box, he does absolutely nothing and makes you look like an idiot?

I posted that I had writer's block. That fixed it.

I tend to write PG-13 stories, whether I intend to or not. Happy Holly Days is akin to a sweet coming-of-age romantic comedy, like a pneumatic John Hughes movie. It's randy, but it's chaste. It's flirty, but it doesn't show everything. Much is left to your imagination at the story's conclusion, but it's definitely a happy ending.

I don't know if that makes it particularly exciting, or exciting enough compared to the other stuff out there. I have read some tense, scary revenge inflation fantasies that really thrill me. One of those was Plowboy's "JH-12," one of the first dark stories I'd read, and one that really made me feel naughty when I enjoyed reading it. I don't know if he wrote anything else, and I've tried to contact him to no avail--he wrote that story years ago and has since abandoned that e-mail address. But when I needed a name for my mystery chemical, I couldn't shake that strong memory and decided to co-opt it as an homage.

Otherwise, the stories have nothing in common. His is a series of unapologetically vengeful vignettes that caters to several audiences at once--no matter what kind of inflation story you like, you'll find something there to make you happy and horny, and it has three different climaxes. It also has a lot of the hallmarks of my favorites: Characters who overstate the obvious (often ridiculously, melodramatically, and unrealistically), stretchy clothing like spandex or rubber, and lots of detail of the expansion.

By total contrast, my story describes the expansion lyrically, tries to keep all the emotions and reactions somewhere in the ballpark of reality, and ultimately pulls its punches when it comes to a big payoff.

So I guess what I'm saying is, go read JH-12, it's a better story!

My holiday gift to you: Writer's block!

So I thought last week, man, I haven't written a new story in well over a year. I'd like to put one together as a little holiday surprise for the community. Not that anybody is eagerly awaiting my next piece of crap, mind you, but I feel happiest when I'm releasing projects into the community instead of just maintaining a few message boards and whatnot. I can't draw, and most of Cyndi's projects remain private affairs, so other than coughing up a few bucks to commission pieces of art to share with everybody, all I've got is my writing.

So I started thinking about the various idea fragments sitting on my hard drive. I have a few paragraphs here and there that need a story built around them. I have a stray concept here, a story name or a character name over there...nothing concrete. Might as well start from scratch.

And then it all went black, when I slammed into a giant writer's block.

The reason I write so infrequently is twofold. First, I write and edit stuff all day long--I'm a writer/editor--and I always seem to be spending time in front of words, trying to make them better, one way or another. And when I do write at home, it's more likely to be on the book I'm writing instead of the dirty stories. Either way, it's work.

Second, and more importantly...I just don't have any more good ideas. Those fragments lying around are fragments for a reason. Everything that comes to mind has been done. Magic? Science? Fizzy lifting drinks? No explanation? Hardcore? Software? Clothing? I get a been-there-done-that feeling, because I can think of great stories on each topic that other people have already written, and I don't think I'd be able to do any better. I like bringing something fresh, even if the expansion sequences often use the same words.

I have considered taking one of my existing stories and doing a sequel, so as to remove that problem of coming up with an original idea. I already took that shortcut once with Cindairella so that's out. I don't really know where to take Self-Control, because it's self-contained. The whole story kind of exists because it plays on that first-thrill concept. I suppose I could do the next stage in Everything but that's a dark one and I'm kind of surprised I went there in the first place. I like Remote Possibilities and Sievert would likely grant me permission to work on a sequel, but I don't know what the next stage in that narrative would be anyway. And while I could do a second part of Liquid Helium, because it's practically gift-wrapped with the ending, I haven't really figured out where I would want that story to go either.

I don't know about other creators, but I also find I have to be ridiculously horny in order to write an inflation story. I kind of have to commit everything to the build-up and payoff--I kind of have to be there, mentally, in all those stages all the way through. And I don't think I have to explain that those exciting moments are hard to prolong for 45 minutes while you go back and edit every line for maximum impact.

So I guess what I'm saying is, happy holidays, everybody, I got you nothing. But it was the thought that counts...?