Birthday Shenanigans! Also: Harlequin Romance Novels explained.

Warning: NSFW

Super long and drawn out, with sexually explicit material at the end.

Several things happened last weekend that I feel need to be written down, preserved for posterity.

1) The Wiredogs (nee The Hate), Post Paradise, and In The Whale played an amazeballs show at Road 34. I invited pretty much everyone I could because I was already a huge PP and ITW fan, and now I'm a huge Wiredogs fan as well. As it was a birthday celebration of sorts, I was happy to see so many of my friends make it out to share in the Shenaniganstravaganza. I screamed so loud for so long, I was convinced that my sore throat on Monday was just an injury from Saturday, and I was totally okay with that. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a chest cold creeping in. Fortunately I now have a death rattle to rival Bill Murray's in Zombieland.

2) Before the show at Road, a large group of my friends gathered at Jaws Sushi (conveniently located right next door to Road 34) for a dinner with old friends, new friends, old stories, new stories, and some goddamn delicious maki.

One new story and one old story in particular come to mind. My friend Fady had been planning to dine with us, but had been called in to work earlier than anticipated. On his way, tho, he made it a point to stop by and hand me a gift bag. It was neither necessary nor expected of him to actually get me something, but he felt the need to do something nice and I very much appreciate that.

Opening the tiny, pink gift bag replete with flowers and glittery butterflies, I found a very fitting birthday card. It shows a small boy of about 6 standing in the corner, obviously being punished, with a thought bubble that says "It was totally worth it." Inside is an admonition not to behave myself because it is, after all, my birthday. I don't think I could have picked a more fitting card if I'd had to.

Buried under the card was a book. A very specific kind of book. A Harlequin romance novel. More specifically, Hot In Here by Lori Foster. G'head. Click the link. Browse a few pages. I'll wait.

Now that your Amazon search history is as tainted as mine...

The whole incident reminded me of something that happened several years ago. My good friend and roommate at the time Tim was on his way to my birthday party when he realized he hadn't gotten me anything. Stopping by the local Hannaford to grab a 12 pack, he made a quick detour through the book and magazine aisle and grabbed the book with the trashiest, most "oh my god, that's horrible" cover he could find: Viking Warrior by Connie Mason.

Purely out of spite, I read the whole thing.

Not even a legit Harlequin-brand romance novel, this one is from Leisure Historical Fiction and tells the story of a viking warrior (No... really?!) whose wife and child are killed by Danish raiders. Shortly thereafter, his brother makes a gift of a beautiful Danish healer to be his bed slave. Blah blah blah, romance develops, sword fights, more raids, etc, etc, etc.

The only thing that makes this story even remotely memorable is that at one point it crystallized for me exactly why so many women are enthralled by these books. One passage in particular made me laugh out loud so long and hard that Tim had to come see just what was so damn funny.

Let me paint the picture for you: they're in her family's village. While the men-folk are all out hunting, Wulf, the titular viking warrior, who is currently being held for ransom, has helped fend off an attack by slavers who (spoilers!) are the same ones who killed his wife. He has been granted his freedom and is to be returned home on the morrow. Sensing that this may be their last chance to get in a little sexy time, he runs the idea past her. They sneak into the stillroom and things get hot and heavy. From pages 200-202:

    She clung to him sweetly, wildly, yielding her heart and soul to him, if only for this one night. Making love with Wulf might mean nothing to him but sex, but it meant a great deal more to Reyna. Their mouths were still joined as he slowly undressed her, his large hands roving over her body. Then he laid her down on the bed of furs.
   Reyna felt his loss when he left her to remove his own clothing. Her gaze roamed over him slowly, checking his body for bruises or wounds sustained in the raid. She saw a few minor cuts already healing and a large bruise on his left hip. When he knelt on the pallet, she caressed his bruised hip.
   He trembled beneath her touch. Her hand slid down his thigh. He grew hard as a rock. Her gaze moved to his erection; her fingers followed. He groaned. Her touch was pure torture. When her fingers slid up and down his sex, he jerked and cried out.
   A wildness seized them both. Her hands were everywhere on him, caressing, grasping. His mouth devoured her, laving her breasts with his tongue, suckling her nipples. He kissed his way down her body. She writhed, grasping his head. He stroked into her cleft and caressed the sensitive petals. She raised her hips to meet his touch.
   Then he lifted her legs to his shoulders and lost himself in the musky sweetness of her scent. She writhed, she cried out, arching into each flick of his tongue. Then suddenly she grasped his shoulders and pushed him away. Startled, he gazed up at her, his lips glistening with the evidence of her arousal.
   "Lie down," she whispered. "I want to taste you."
   Wulf's heart began to pound. Did she mean what he thought she meant? Eager to find out, he stretched out on the furs and waited, his breath locked in his chest. She gazed at him a long moment before her tongue flicked out, lapping up a dewy pearl at the tip of his sex. Wulf nearly jumped out of his skin.
   Reyna reared back. "Am I hurting you?"
   "Nay, do not stop."
   His words spurred her on. She grew more aggressive, taking him fully into her mouth as her questing fingers sought the sacs below and squeezed them. Somehow he found the strength to watch her. Her pale hair, spread out over his stomach and thighs made the muscles of his stomach clench. Then his thoughts shattered as she licked down the rigid length of his cock and back over the tip.
   Several heartbeats later, Wulf could take no more. "Enough!" He barely got the word out. Grasping her waist, he dragged her on top of him, spread her thighs to straddle him and thrust upward, impaling her. He watched her closely. Her eyes sparkled like emeralds, full of mysterious facets and sparks in the flickering firelight.
   Lust roiled through Wulf. He was hot, so very hot. He couldn't think beyond satisfying the painful demand of his loins. He withdrew nearly all the way. Reyna made a mew of protest. He thrust again, hard and deep. Her breasts, lush and swollen, rose and fell provocatively before his face. He caught a nipple in his mouth. Reyna was his; no other man deserved her. The thought that Ragnar might have the right to bed this majestic woman made him furious. Could he stop the match? Would he?
   Wulf thrust wildly into her hot center, and then he reached down between them to rub her sensitive nub, already erect and throbbing. She rose and fell upon him unceasingly, taking him deep, her inner muscles caressing his rigid length.
   She rode him to ecstasy. When he felt her body spasm and begin its rise to glory, he pressed his fingers hard against the tight knot of flesh between her thighs and felt her body explode beneath his touch. Her climax set off his own. They came together, their cries filling the silence around them. A long time passed before Wulf lifted her off of him. When he turned his head to look into her sweet face, her eyes were closed and she was smiling.

Now that's all well and good. Aside from the apparently gigantic clitoris and her insistence on squeezing his ball sacs (plural, and no that's not a transcription error on my part), it's pretty straight forward up to this point.

What really kicks it over the edge from simple, graphic erotica into straight-up "lonely housewife porn" is the very next line.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

And with that, I'm spent. Good night!

After the Rapture...

Post Paradise show this last Friday! Lory Theater is open, but borderline fucking impossible to actually gain access to thanks to the rest of the Student Center being under construction.

SpokesBuzz Band Swap show with the Enlightened Rogues from Asheville, NC.

Got some great shots and a lot of really crap ones. Highlighted my 'need' for a faster lens for the PEN.

All pics are as-shot JPEG, no post processing.

 This is the only picture of Chris I managed to get where he wasn't blurry. Stand still, goddammit! Also a pretty awesome glamor shot of Nick's new guitar (which sounds killer).

Amy doing what she does best.

 Nick making sweet, sweet love to the mic.

Mark making it look easy. 

 

Nick's face is... melting?

 This is what Mark looks like most of the time, actually. A little blurry around the edges.

This is, quite possibly, my favorite shot of the night. The refresh rate on the LED panel coincided perfectly with the shutter speed to make this stutter effect. Probably couldn't do it again if I tried.

OMNOMNOMnivore

What good is a fancy-schmancy new camera if you don't use it?

Behold: food porn.

Spinach and feta stuffed chicken breast, pan fried, served with Asian sauteed red onion and mushrooms, and sliced avocado. Followed by O'Dell's Levity amber.

Easily one of the best meals I've made for myself in some time, but a bit of an accident. I had the pre-stuffed chicken boob from my last trip to Sprouts and it was getting close to "use it or lose it" time. Threw it in a hot pan.

It looked kinda lonely.

Went digging through my produce drawer and settled on a chunk of red onion and a package of white mushrooms I had lying around. Chop chop chop, tossed the onions in. Softened them up some, but they were in danger of drying out by the time the chicken was cooked. In an attempt to add both moisture and flavor, I hit them with some fish sauce.

Holy fuck, did that stink.

In an effort to save my olfactory abilities and go in that same flavor direction, I threw in some soy sauce. Crisis mostly averted.

Unfortunately, the chicken was still going to need more time even after the soy sauce evaporated. Threw some water in and reconstituted the essence of umami. The water (and savory goodness) also helped to steam the chicken the rest of the way to "cooked."

The avocado was just because I had one handy. Does anyone seriously need to justify eating avocado?

The PEN is mightier...

Last Friday's night of drinking at a friend's house (while watching the RiffTrax of Christopher Walken's seminal masterpiece McBain) resulted in last Saturday's trolling of digital photography blogs. Which, in turn, led to me trolling eBay last Sunday and finding a camera that I certainly didn't need, but that I really, really wanted.

Behold, my "new to me" Olympus PEN E-P3:

This sexy little beast is wearing a custom leather wrist strap and the Olympus 14-150mm f 4-5.6 lens that I've had on my E-P1 for the last couple of years.

"But if you already had an E-P1, why would you want an E-P3?" 

Several reasons.

1) Built-in flash. One of the weaknesses the Micro 4/3 cameras have fought so valiantly to overcome since their introduction in 2009 is their performance in low-light conditions. The relatively large sensor takes fantastically clear pictures any time the sun is shining, but they're kind of crap for low-light conditions, especially indoors. Or at night. Or indoors at night. So while the E-P1 is great as a "walking around" camera, it's sucks for taking pics at a barbecue or party.

Having the, as Kai from DigitalRev TV calls it, built-in "poppy-uppy-flashy" makes this an even more well-rounded, do it all camera. And that's what I wanted.

Yes, the E-P1 has a hot shoe. I could easily justify an external flash if I were planning to use the camera for specific events and would have a "standard" load out. But one of the big reasons I bought the PEN in the first place was that it's small enough to fit in my motorcycle tank bag. The giant tele lens sticking off the front isn't an issue, but an external flash doubling the height of the camera would be a deal breaker.

2) Faster auto focus. Another "shortcoming" of Micro 4/3 cameras at release was abysmally slow auto focus performance. Especially in low light conditions. (Are you seeing a pattern here...?) This was largely due to the use of Contrast-Detecting AF system. Worked fine if you had time to compose your shots and your subjects weren't going anywhere. Not so much for action photography. It was a known issue, and one many M 4/3 users learned how to work around.

Some of the lenses that were released later - my 14-150, for example - improved greatly over the original kit lenses. Still, it could have been better.

And now it is.

When it was released, Olympus claimed the E-P3 had the world's fastest auto focus. I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos of people comparing the E-P3's auto focus to all sorts of other cameras, from other M 4/3's, to other large-sensor mirrorless cameras, to DSLR's of every brand and level. Is it the "World's Fastest?" I don't know. But it's pretty damn fast.

3) Touch screen. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal, initially. I've dealt with non-touch screen cameras since I got my first digi-cam back when people still called them digi-cams. That said, having played with the touch screen on this thing, I don't think I'll ever go back.

It's got this really cool touch focus/touch shutter function, which is exactly what it sounds like. You touch the area on the screen that you want to focus on. You can go into the menus and adjust the size of the focus reticule, allowing you to focus as accurately as you could want. Alternatively, you can manual focus using the lenses' built in focus ring. It's fly by wire, so it doesn't really give you very much tactile feedback, but as soon as you turn the focus ring it automatically zooms in on wherever your focus reticule is so that you can get sharper manual focus.

"That's all well and good, but what does that mean for me, the reader?" 

Simple: I'm gonna play amateur photog and you're gonna have to deal with it. I won't claim to be anything other than a talentless hack of a lens jockey. But I have a new toy and this is my place to share the crappy pics I take with it.

For instance:

And just as sort of a demonstration of what that incredibly phallic telephoto lens is capable of, take a look at this picture.

The little dots between me and the white house in the background? These guys:

Both pictures taken from the same location (by the tennis courts at Boltz, headed over toward the 9th hole of the frisbee golf course), the first one zoomed all the way out, the second zoomed all the way in.

That's all for now. A friend just asked me for some help kicking a keg left over from his wedding reception. It's a rough life. Cheers!

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.

If you don't understand the title of this entry, you should a) leave and b) go read you some Divine Comedy.

As of the date of this entry, the only plan I have for this bog is for it to be a sort of "catch all" repository for me to share thoughts, pictures, and ideas with anyone who should happen to stumble in here (Tehlu save them).