Medical miracles

A friend recently injured his leg. I spotted the label on his anti-inflammatory meds during a visit:

"Take 1 tablet orally every 6 hours for swelling."

I damn near stole the bottle. I have some ideas that involve a redhead, some swelling, and if I play my cards right, it would take about six hours.

The artists vs. the audience: we have a verdict

Much ado about manners lately. Some artists in the community don't feel they are getting enough helpful feedback. That's a fair thing to express; after all, a true and solid community is there to support its members. And if the artists would like feedback, they should be able to get it. It's appropriate for them to step up and say "Hey, help me get better here."

Instead, they're saying, "Don't give me feedback unless it's detailed, in the following manner." A few folks have actually posted nasty rants complaining about people noting their art as among their favorites, but not expressing why that art is a favorite. For some, saying "I like this work" is a strong vote. But that's not enough for some of the artists, so they're not really asking for more detailed critiques so much as demanding it.

Hold on a fucking second.

The community is always changing; there are always people flowing in and out. I do notice that the age range seems to spike young, as people are just getting through puberty, just figuring out their sexual identities, and while they have a fair amount of free time in school.

So what we have is a bunch of young artists, and a bunch of young consumers, and neither one is mature enough to know how to express themselves in an effective manner. Better still, we've got a charge of audience immaturity that's being expressed through a tempter tantrum. Zero credibility there.

You can see the answer, can't you? It's "grow up." To everyone. Here's the truth:

Consumers, realize that the artists in your community are not vending machines set to dispense product for free. They are living, breathing, human beings with creative drive, neuroses, busy lives, writer's block, passion, and everything else both good and bad that comes with being an artist in any form. Encourage their work; give the artists your support in constructive criticism. The more detail the better. But you have to be willing to do that because it's simply the right thing to do; you will not get an extra-special personal picture of exactly what you personally prefer to see when it comes to burnishing your bishop. The artists are not your personal playthings; you have to respect their processes. And if none of what I've just said makes sense, you're too young to be looking at sexually explicit material anyway, and you should leave. The community will be here when you get back.

In short: You simply cannot demand things from your artists. It's not your place.

Artists, realize that when you put your artwork out there, the double-edged curse is that it may affect someone. You would be miserable if people did not know you existed and ignored your art; this attention is part of what drives you, whether you choose to accept that fact or not. But in seeking that reaction from outside sources, you cannot control what form that reaction takes or how deep it goes. Ask for feedback, encourage it, but don't lash out at the audience because they didn't see your art the way you intended, or they don't understand your delicate nature as a unique creative flower, or they just didn't give you something you can act upon. Hell, some of them may not even be able to verbalize what it is about your art that makes them all tingly down there; if they can't express it, they're not going to leave you a comment. Take what you can get when it comes to feedback, or you'll wind up getting nothing.

In short: You simply cannot demand things from your audience. It's not your place.

Class dismissed, kids. Now stay off my lawn.

How not to commit suicide on the internet

It's an online classic: Goodbye, cruel world, I'm logging off...for the last time!

How amazingly pathetic and embarassing, not to mention poorly written. I call melodramatic 19-year-old, too-much-Radiohead-and-Nine-Inch-Nails, nothing-better-to-do-so-let's-see-what-happens bullshit.

I've known people with terminal illnesses and constant pain that took their own lives after long struggles, both physical and emotional. I still wish they hadn't. But the one constant in those siutations is they had a) expressable, specific reasons and b) none chose to reveal those reasons with a fake farewell pity party. "I will be too dead to judge your entries?" C'mon -- with listed influences like Silent Hill and Lovecraft, that's the best you could do? And of course, there is absolutely no way for his "death" to reach us in the real world, so it's all a safe, sick joke. On you. Let's hear it for respecting the community.

This is neither an original idea nor an effective one, and I can't wait to see the insulting "social experiment" explanation when our hero comes back to his senses after realizing all he has to live for and/or "just to see if anybody cared." If you'd like, I'm betting we can all write it now. (Alternate ending: Dire-Wasp is dead, so "here's my new online nickname.")

Seeing juvenile soap-opera nonsense like this is the ultimate insult to anyone who ever did have a legitimate reason. And Dire-Wasp doesn't, so don't let yourself be emotionally manipulated by the amateur hour.

That's all the attention I'm giving this failed piece of performance art, and more than it deserves. Please press play on your MP3 players; "Hurt" by NIN should be properly cued up.

Meet TheSainte

There's a lot of inflation posted on YouTube, but much of it is male belly inflation. Rarely do you find a female fetishist, let alone one who shares video of her fetish.

Well, today's a rare day, then.

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.