Cruising

Are you following along as I revise my novel online?

At the diner, he unfolds the day's newspaper. This time, the girl with the dog bowl on her head is staring back at him from below the fold. She isn't wearing the dog bowl on her head -- she's smiling vacantly at some point in the distance and her hair is a different color -- but it's still her.

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I get email

Dear Susannah:

I am not sure there is such a dichotomy as you imply between "being nice" and "being an a**hole".

In the circles I used to move in (negotiating major weapons contracts for the U.S. Navy), the contracts ran to hundreds of pages--and that's incorporating most of the clauses by reference, and similarly with the specifications and such of the items to be delivered. But the reality was, your word was your bond: if you couldn't be counted on to make good, the whole system would grind to a halt as the lawyers took over (this is what happened back in the 1990s with the Navy stealth fighter/bomber, the A-12): lots of money would get wasted and we still wouldn't get a proper product.

So my sense is, you need to establish two things: first, that you're a standup guy (or gal, in your case), and that you will do whatever it takes to fulfill your commitments (this would be the "nice" part), and second, that if the other fella screws you, you will take him down by whatever means necessary (that would be the "a**hole" part).

I don't really take being a standup guy as "nice" incidentally: for me, it's all about honor, and personal and professional integrity. Dunno if that works for you.

Anyhow, always enjoy your blog! :-)

Cheers,

[Redacted]

Blooper

Pardon My Blooper, Chicago, Illinois

I'm talking to you

No one reads your blog? Here's why.

Sure, you can think of women who are controversialists, but I suspect it’s easier to be a controversialist if you are a man than if you are a woman. To be a controversialist on the internet, you have to deal with writing things that other people don’t want you to say, and you have to deal with all the criticism that gets launched at you, and, after all that, you have to do it again, and again, and again. It’s like pissing in the wind, and there’s a hurricane.

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Smart like a dominatrix

I interviewed a dominatrix named Bettie about the dumbest things about being a dominatrix. 

What’s the dumbest thing about being a dominatrix?

That I can go to jail for giving a spanking. If someone gets naked, and my client gets aroused while I’m spanking them, that’s technically prostitution. I could not know that he's turned on, I could not even be touching him, and I could go to jail. They can penalize anybody who violates the social code of having all your sexual encounters be free. Most of us don’t touch penises at all, unless we’re hurting them.

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