The most recent issue of Xero magazine is finished!! It’s done, it’s printed, it looks great, I tihnk it’s the best issue yet, and I’m very, very happy with it.

We brought it to Necronomicon, an annual science fiction convention, last weekend, where it was a hit; we sold a good number of issues.

The convention was fun, not the least because I got to make my friends lenda and Kiersten run around passing out flyers for the magazine…something about making cute chicks do what I want just really does it for me. Does that make me a bad person? 🙂

Saturday night we gave a demonstration of Symphony, the Internet-controlled sex toy…which generated a lot of interest. Lots of fun, too!

Sunday after the convention, my wife and my second girlfriend and I had sushi with a group of friends, then went to a local S&M club. THAT was a good time. I brought the girlfriend up on stage and lingered over her with a violet wand for a while; it’s always so much fin to see her wiggle and hear her yelp… Later, she returned the favor by putting me against a St. Andrew’s cross and giving me a very intense flogging while my wife watched.

It was incredible. For the second time, she made the entire world fold up flat and disappear. I was on such an endorphin rush by the time she was finished, I could barely walk. I felt like I was floating for the next half hour.

And Monday was back to work. Pity, that…

Well, let’s see. With four days left until the new issue of Xero magazine has to be out the door, and no sign yet of a printer who can do the job, and a few pages still left to write, things are coming right down to the wire…

Well, hell. I work best under pressure anyway. Right? Right?

And a client who’s having a whole nest of network troubles, because they went with a network vendor who underbid me, and those people screwed the pooch, and naturally now it’s my problem…and the fact that it looks like we’ve been done wrong by the manufacturer who was supposed to be making the plastic case for the Internet sex toy we’re trying to get finished…

Surely would be nice if someone, somewhere, would actually do the job they said they would do.

Doesn’t help that I didn’t get any sleep last night–I spent a good deal of the night having a good, but exhausting, and perhaps overdue, talk with the other girlfriend.

And stuff.

I will be very, very happy when this week is over.

Ha! I’ve climbed back on top now.

She’s been on top for about two months now, which basically means I have to do whatever she says. Like, for example, “Go get the wooden spoon so I can watch your girlfriends paddle you on the backside.”

But last night, she was feeling a bit itchy, and I was feeling a bit aggressive, and I just flipped her over and told her to submit, and…she did!

Now I get to be very, very cruel indeed. (Rubbing hands together, chortling evilly…)

Hmm. Where did I put that rope?

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the right-wing Traditional Values Coalition, urged relief agencies working in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedies to withhold assistance to surviving partners of gay people who died:

“(Relief organizations) should be first giving priority to those widows who were at home with their babies, and those widowers who lost their wives,” Sheldon said. “It should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.”

Sheldon added: “This is just another example of how the gay agenda is seeking to overturn the one man-one woman relationship from center stage in America, taking advantage of this tragedy.”

Finally have a chance to catch my breath. Almost two weeks of nonstop 11 and 12 hour days…it’s really been getting to me.

Although i suppose I shouldn’t complain. If you own teh business, it’s better to be too busy than not busy enough. Besides, the work paid for the nice, shiny new iMac I’m typing this on… Now if only I could get my router to work, so the rest of my computers could use my cable modem as well.

In any event:

What is it with women, anyway?

A couple of years ago, I had a friend who did something that kind of let me down. She was supposed to do something for me, which she didn’t do, and it ended up costing me a couple hundred dollars.

Fast forward to today. She’s dropped back into my life again, contacting me by email, and has made what appears to be a sincere, good-faith effort to get back into my good graces. She’s acknowledged that what she did was wrong, and she’s made an effort to reach out. I’m skeptical, but I’m willing to at least reciprocate her good-faith gesture, and see where it goes. This is a person I sincerely believe has a great deal of potential.

My wife is furious. Absolutely, positively, well and truly pissed off. She seems to think I should never even
consider speaking to this person again, under any circumstances.

So: What is it with women and grudges? Man, I swear, women in general often seem to behave as though everyone should be held to a perfect standard of behavior at all times, and the first time you cross then, that’s it! Nothing can ever make things right again.

I don’t think that’s realistic. i believe that as human beings we are all flawed, we’re all born of frailty and error, and that sooner or later, no matter how good a person you may be, you’re going to do something that pisses someone off. The real test of a friendship, and the real test of who you are as a person, is in how you behave after this happens.

I also believe that, all other things being equal, a person who makes a genuine good-faith effort to rectify something done wrong should be rewarded for it. It isn’t ealways easy to say syou’ve screwed up.

But then, I’m a guy, so what do I know?

…which means we can return to our normal lives. The toys can come back out, the floggers can be put back where they belong…

And my new computer arrives On Wednesday. Things are looking up!

Got the films back today for the cover of the upcoming issue of Xero. It looks something like this, though the yellow is actually metallic gold ink. Now to finish with the rest of the magazine…

My wife’s parents are coming into town today; they’ll be staying with us for about a week. We’ve spent the last week trying to “parent-proof” the house–hiding the floggers, taking the handcuffs off of the bed, tucking away all the ropes…

But there’s one place I’m not going to budge, and that’s my photography. I have several examples of my photography up on the wall. The inlaws don’t appreciate it, but it is not coming down.

Goddamnit, it’s my house! If they don’t like my art, fine, but I refuse to try to pretend that it does not exist. I will not redecorate my entire house on the fear that my tastes may offend someone’s sensibilities.

My wife thinks I’m being unreasonable. I think it’s unreasonable to reorder your life to suit someone else’s tastes.

Microsoft is not really a software company.

Microsoft is a gang, kind of like the American Mafia. They don’t shake you down for “protection money” like the Mob does, their racket is shaking you down for licensing fees. They make it so you can’t do business in the IT sector without giving them their cut. They call it “partnering,” but it really means “You don’t do no business ’round here unless Mr. G gets his cut.”

I have a close friend who owns a house that she rents out. Last weekend, one of my friend’s tenants stabbed her husband to death in his sleep; the police were called out, the tenant was hauled off to jail, it was a messy scene.

Did you know there are companies that specialize in cleaning up after violent crimes? I didn’t.

Turns out that homeowner’s insurance covers it, too.

This morning, my friend and I went to the house with an insurance adjustor. The place was a wreck; the crime-scene cleanup team had been and gone, but all the stuff belonging to the tenants was piled up in a heap in the middle of the living room.

Going through all that stuff was really creepy. There were Bibles everywhere; apparently, the woman who murdered her husband was devoutly religious, and had a collection of Bibles and gospel music that would rival the Vatican’s.

Kind of just figures, doesn’t it?