Richard to Lorelei, Jul 26, 1997 - Stuff 5 Talent Vs. Management
Current mood: busy
Category: Friends

 I'm constantly arguing with people who think that athletes and actors make too much money. From a philosophical viewpoint, I have to agree that a good teacher can have a far greater impact on a number of people's lives than the best athlete or star. At the same time, I keep wondering where the money would go if not to the stars. Would people rather see the lawyers and businessmen who financed the film or the sports team owner get all the bucks or the star who draws in the crowds? I'd rather give the money to the stars.  

 The only reason sports clubs and movie studios are paying the stars tens of millions of dollars is that they know that star is going to bring that much and more money at the box-office and ticket sales. The businessmen certainly aren't paying them out of the kindness of their dark little hearts. Occasionally, just to show their power, they'll find a way to totally ban somebody from the business, by making arrangements with other companies to not hire them (those companies also being loathe to pay star salaries), simply to show their power even if it ultimately means that they'll lose some money. As long as there's a chance that some high cost talent might seek employment elsewhere, there's little the businessmen can do other than pay what's demanded as long as they see some degree of profit in the arrangement. They don't like having to justify to their stockholders why they let a megastar go to another company that is profiting greatly by the move.

 A classic tale of marketability would be Marlon Brando being paid $5 million for a ten minute appearance in "Superman". I'll bet Christopher Reeve didn't make more than half a million for starring in the movie. In this particular instance, Brando was brought on board, not for his box-office draw because his star was already fading at the time, but because his participation in the movie made a lot of other things happen. The only thing that drew Marlon Brando to the movie was the $5M for a couple of days light work. Marlon had no creative investment in the movie and didn't even study his lines--he read them off a teleprompter attached to the camera. Signing Marlon Brando raised the industry buzz level for the movie by his personal prestige, indicating that this wasn't a simple comic book tale, brought more financing for the film, and brought in a number of other big name stars that otherwise would not appear in that kind of film.  

 Never underestimate the need for power by these businessmen. It's an alien concept to people like us. The act of having one's creative work appreciated is nearly reward enough once there's enough money to maintain a decent style of living. It's not enough for a power hungry person. That's the kind of person that, even if they had everything they could ever desire in life, it would not be enough for them as long as others have as much as they do. Their worth and self-esteem is measured by comparison to others around them. What they have is less important than what others don't have. How others perceive them is far more important than how they see themselves. That's why it's hard to find rich people and dictators that are truly happy and why, in spite of all their riches, they frequently commit unethical, criminal, and illegal acts to further amass greater wealth that they can't possibly have any need for other than to have more.

 That need for power can have some bizarre repercussions, particularly in terms of saving one's reputation where money is no object. NBC paid Jackie Gleason $3 million a year till he died to not go to another network. NBC had no use for Jackie, but couldn't take a chance that somebody else would.

 In the movie industry, any time a studio head changes, it's a guarantee that works in progress are going to die unless they're close to completion. This has nothing to do with creative changes instituted by the new studio head. It has to do with not allowing anything started by his predecessor to succeed and thereby bring into question why he was replaced. The last thing that a new studio head needs to see is a dozen blockbuster movie hits by the guy before him. In his eyes, it's better for the studio to lose tens of millions of dollars than to let works by his predecessor have a chance to profit.

 It's stupidities like the above that make me realize that I can never begrudge actors, directors, and athletes, and other creative personnel what they earn. They deserve it. Nobody goes to a movie because of the behind-the-scenes machinations that were performed to get the movie made. They go because of the stars and director, or a good review, or great commercial, or good word of mouth. Warren Littlefield's name doesn't sell any more commercials. Maybe his programming decisions will, but people don't watch TV because of who's in charge--they watch for the end products that are aired. Nobody went to see a Yankees game because of George Steinbrunner. So let's give the big bucks to the talent and creative people who toil on making the products we want to see.

 One of the things I admire most about successful creative people is that they just about all came from nowhere and got where they are by talent and luck. It's not as if they became successes through nepotism and ass-kissing. A person can get far in the business world by who they know and how far they stuff their nose up someone's butt, but those are qualities that mean little at the boxoffice. The world's greatest rumpkisser can't sell a $50 million movie by appearing in it or write a great book or produce a magnificent painting or hit a home run.

 I don't know what kind of bosses you work for now. I haven't heard any complaints slip through your messages, so it probably is okay. I don't know how much groundwork you've laid with reference to wanting to direct something a little more nonconsensual. I imagine that you've kidded about how boring the girl-on-girl stuff is, so they should at least know that you'd like to do something different.

 Maybe the best way to approach management is to make a video you want on your own, show it to them and see if they'd like to find a way to publish it. Explain honestly that this is the kind of video that you'd like to direct. You still want to work for them and publish the KISS and other lines. Occasionally, to keep your sanity, you'd like to direct a few things for yourself to keep your sanity. They won't publish it because it because it's not the kind of product they want to put out. That's when you can ask if they mind if you publish it on your own. That puts the boss in the position of either letting you sell it on your own or being a jerk and telling you that you can't. Having spent the money, it's unlikely, assuming the guy's not a complete butthead, that your boss is going to tell you to eat the loss.

 Not knowing your boss, I'm not sure if that's a successful approach. It would work with mine because he's usually a fairly reasonable guy, outside of the amount of travel he tries to force on me.

 I'm not quite sure what's going on there other than that I believe my boss sees the travel issue as a battle of wills. Somehow, I've got to convince him that this isn't an issue of who's in charge, it's an issue of how much of my life I'm willing to lose while I'm gone. I'm single. When I travel, my personal life is at a standstill. Yard work isn't getting done. Nobody's taking care of the laundry. Mail is accumulating in mailboxes (which is why most of it goes to a PO Box.) There's things I can't have, like a pet or a newspaper delivery. I'm on the road every few weeks. It's not worth having a dog if I've got to put it in a kennel upwards to 20-30 times a year. A daily paper is too much trouble to put on hold every other week. If I'm gone for a week, I've got to eat all the perishables in the house.  

 All in all, travel is a pain in the ass. It would be one thing if the travel were necessary, but most of the time, it's for show. Sometimes I think the managers get together and brag how many people from their division are on travel as if that's an indication of work. The only people that I've found who enjoy the travel are married ones. They get to hang out with the guys in bars all night and get time off from the family. Travel, for somebody who enjoys it, is light work. The people receiving the travelers are the ones doing all the work. Once travel has been officially approved, everything going on back at the office gets postponed. Couldn't do it, I was on travel.

 Anyway, I'm boring you silly with my problems. You've got to figure out an approach that will work with your boss. What you don't want to do is advertise the video on your own and the first inkling your boss has that you're doing this is from a source other than yourself. I know too many people who do things that way and it generally creates bad feelings all around. It's a behind the back method of doing things and indicates a lack of trust. It's kind of like, "You would have said no anyway, so I figured why ask? I'm going to do it anyway and you can go fuck yourself if you don't like it."

 Unless your boss is a real asshole, an honest approach to get his buy-in is the best way to go. I'm not sure what works when the boss is a jerk. If you ask and he says you can't do it and you go ahead and self-publish, it becomes a matter of you being insubordinate even if what you do on your own time should be none of his business.

 The beauty of the internet is that it does provide you an avenue for your self-published videos. I hope you can have some success selling your own stuff. 

6:10 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Richard to Lorelei, Jul 26, 1997 - Stuff4 Work-for-Hire
Current mood: lazy
Category: Friends

 I didn't realize that you were working solely under a work-for-hire kind of agreement with Close-Up. I used to be an avid comic book reader and was buying all the news types of comics related magazines and saw the industry get shaken up when new companies sprouted and provided writers and artists with new contracts that allowed them to profit from their works. Now, some of the most successful comics are produced by somebody other than the original two big companies, Marvel (Spider-Man, Hulk, etc.) and DC (Superman, Batman, etc.)  

 The real problem with work-for-hire is providing artists with an incentive to produce better work. Not that great work can't be done with the system because a lot of people get into the entertainment industry out of sheer love. Don't businessmen love those kinds of starry eyed workers? Those are the kind of talented kids that want to draw Superman just to put their spin on the character and barely care that they're getting paid.  

 Even the best creative talent has to get a little frustrated and burned out when one of their products gain the kind of success that Superman did and they get nothing beyond their original salary even if licensing derives hundreds of millions of dollars for the company. Superman's creators eventually got a stipend of $20,000 a year in the 70s because a few industry peers embarrassed DC enough in the media when the first move came out to throw a bone in the creator's direction. I don't know if the creators, Siegel and Schuster, are still alive. Maybe the money helped them in their bills, but it was still nowhere near the millions being made off their creation.

 Marvel is just as bad. Thirty years ago, Stan Lee (as writer/editor) and Jack Kirby (artist) created just about every successful comic that Marvel publishes today. It would be hard to say who did what today because nobody thought to take notes at the time. Neither man gets any royalties from the company for creating all those characters. Jack Kirby left Marvel in the 70s over creative disagreements and money and never saw another penny for his work even though all the characters he created/co-created are still being published and licensed left and right for toys, games, and Hollywood treatments. Stan Lee managed to stay with the company (it didn't hurt that he was related to the original owners of the publishing company) and is involved in the entertainment branch, working with licenses for movies and TV, and continues to make a decent living.

 The agreement you have with Close-Up looks like you get no additional profit whether one of your videos sells 10 copies or 10,000 copies. It's got to be a little frustrating knowing that you don't benefit much from great successes, but could lose your job if you have a lot of failures in a row. You really have no incentive to promote your products on your own time. If advertising on the net doubles the profits of your videos, you still don't earn a penny more, so why do it when there's a lot of other endeavors that demand your attention?

 The bondage industry is kind of like the comics industry was in the sixties. It's a small area selling to a small customer base that isn't going to get much respect. The creative talent has a little bit of fame within that customer base, but isn't known to the public at large. That's the kind of quiet background that favors the businessmen behind the scenes. It allows them to set the standards of employment and the talent doesn't really have a lot to say about the conditions that they have to work in. That's not going to change anytime soon because of the stigma associated with bondage. With the degree of isolation that most of the buyers have, it's not easy to become a marketable star. Models are the only ones who seem to be hired by many different companies. I've seen Ashley Rene do work for just about every company based in the LA area.

Are Bryan and Jay independents or on salary? I've seen both selling videos elsewhere outside of Close-Up. It at least gives them a little leverage in negotiations. The other companies are smaller, so I doubt that they're benefiting very greatly from the association other than to have a foot in another door.

 There's always that odd feud between creative talent and the businesses that support them. The creative talent has the skills to produce great products, but not the acumen, time, or interest to sell those products on their own, partly because that effort detracts from their time to create. Businessmen don't have the ability to create marketable products. They have to rely on the talent. Businessmen do know how to sell products. There's always going to be an uneasy alliance between the two factions.  

 Both sides have different motivations. Creative people have to express themselves to an audience. Businessmen want power and money. Creative people have to live, so they need a certain amount of money to get buy. Businessmen have to live luxuriously because it is their sole indication of success. Therein lies the rub. The talent can appreciate that businessmen need to live, but aren't real happy that businessmen are living better than then they are when the business types are making money off their creations. Therefore, the talent wants to get more money for what they're doing. Paying more money to creative staffs reduces the amount of money that businessmen can have. Giving extra money to talent also indicates a loss of power that irks businessmen. That results in conflicts.

 The problem with the bondage industry is that there are probably more people that want to produce videos than there are companies to distribute them. That provides a buyer's market for the distributors. If any particular artist gets too big for their britches, there's somebody else out there to replace them. It would take very little talent to duplicate a big-name bondage artist's style. Hire some pretty models, tie them up snugly and let them roll around the floor moaning while the camera is occasionally shifted. That's an oversimplification. They have some good lighting and a decent eye for camera angles and know how to tie a woman up snuggly. Still, it wouldn't take much to learn a few technical aspects to achieve a product comparable to what they do.

 I'm not sure whether any directors are making a big enough name for themselves that other companies are trying to woo them to their shop

5:40 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Stupid MySpace Software

I got a message that asked if my pictures were on a website. I was going to immediately delete it, but then wondered if somebody was warning me about my stuff being stolen. I tried to look at the site in IE, with all scripting turned off, and all it had was a login screen. I hit reply to the sender and asked where the images are. I then got a MySpace warning that my message didn't go through because I'm sending spam (where were they when I received the spam?), so I deleted the .com link and resent it.

Then I get a warning that my profile has been hacked and that I should change my password. To be on the safe side, I closed my browser and relogged into MySpace so that I could be sure that I was logging into MySpace. I changed my password from there. I never typed my name/password anywhere, so I don't think I really got hacked. Changing the password every now and then isn't a bad thing.

9:54 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Richard to Lorelei, Jul 26, 1997 - Stuff3 - Open Mind Media
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Friends

 About the only other avenue left for you to explore is self-publishing videos through Open Mind Media. I'm not sure why you haven't tried that. You do sell photos through the company. Personally, I prefer video to photos because I like the sound and the movement entailed by a video over a still picture. Stills don't convey rough action very well and they tend to look posed and often are to get the right shots.  

 I guess selling photos through your company seems fairly safe because it doesn't directly compete with your Close-Up work. If you wind up making videos the way you want them, it won't really be competing with the ones you do for Close-Up because they'd never want to sell them because of the subject matter. I still can't believe that you cannot show a bare breast being squeezed in an ad. The kinds of videos that you've professed that you want to do would pretty much violate any number of rules that Close-Up has.  

 As long as you produce videos for your company that clearly could never be sold through Close-Up, they shouldn't mind too greatly. You can always offer it to them first, knowing that they wouldn't want to release it. That doesn't mean the bosses won't mind. There might be some question about conflict of interest with the amount of effort you put into a personal video as opposed to a salaried video. That's a perception problem that has little to do with the reality of the situation. You might go out of your way to put out the best KISS video yet, but management might still believe that you're not doing your best by them anymore. There's bound to be some resentment of your doing something on your own, particularly if you find some success in self-publishing.  Managers don't like losing good employees. They may not want to pay you what you're worth, but that doesn't mean they'll happily let you go.

 One concern I have about pushing you into self-publishing your videos is the amount of time that it might force you to devote to the non-creative aspect of the business. You probably can't afford a staff to take care of menial tasks like accounting and mailing out product unless you're doing really bang-up business. If you become busy stuffing envelopes and entering sales info in data bases, you're not directing videos.

 One of the most difficult aspects of starting up a business is how to get products out to customers or even finding customers. At least the internet provides a means to bypass normal distribution channels to sell your products. Otherwise, I'm not sure who you have to kill to break into the distribution chain. As is, I've rarely seen any Close-Up products in video rental stores. That alone could account for better sales than Close-Up already has through their customer base. Most big cities would have a couple of adult bookstores with bondage tapes and there's got to at least be a hundred big cities that do. The advantage of being in porn video shops is that it puts the product in front of people that may not be on the mailing list.

 I hope you can convince your bosses to provide you time to advertise their products through the binaries newsgroups. It would be a good way to gauge how much business the newsgroups can provide if you decide to market your own videos through your company. I rather doubt that you'd have much success trying to sell your photo sets that way. When people are posting hundreds of picture files per day free on the net, it's hard to convince viewers that they can get something else if they're willing to pay. If there's not enough time in the day to download the free stuff, why go to all the hassles of sending out a check to pay for a handful of additional pictures?

 > > Newsgroups. You'll even have less time to keep up with all your correspondents. > You're quite right ~ I could see that as soon as I started looking > through everything ~ and I've pretty much banned myself from going back :)

 You know, I could just about picture you when you started looking through the newsgroups. There had to be that mix of excitement of a whole new medium with the silly knowledge that you'd have to avoid it simply to stop it from taking over your life. I remember your mentioning that you had to go cold turkey on Prodigy to get your life back.

 Is Close-Up going to do enough new things to their web site to make it worth picking up the adult check system to get it? Up to now, I haven't made much effort to keep an eye on it since nothing much has changed in months. Even then, the bulk of info was a scan of the flyers I was already getting in the mail.

 Another reason to self-publish is that "software" is more profitable than "hardware". I'm not trying to make up new terms here. That's how movie studios seem to like distinguishing their products from VCR manufacturers by referring to things generically as hardware and software. It doesn't relate too unfavorably to computers hardware and software. Hardware is a low profit item because every copy has significant costs built into it (electronic components, plastic, metal, etc.). Software has a high up front cost and a relatively negligible cost to make copies and distribute.

 The most valuable part of any company is its software library. A lot of companies forget that. Ted Turner bought MGM primarily for its film library and had the foresight to see the demand the future would have upon movie vaults because cable and VCRs were starting to become commonplace. The Japanese have been buying movie studios over the last decade for the same reason. They make all the hardware, but little of the software.

 If you ever leave Close-Up, you leave with nothing. Whether they ever do anything with your videos or let them collect dust is something you have no control over. The only saving grace is that the bulk of the work you do for them is stuff that you don't have a great personal investment in since you're into a darker type of video then you're allowed to make. From a creative standpoint, it's a shame that you have no ownership in the videos that you create. On the other hand, you're being provided with a steady job with all the amenities a regular job provides like health insurance, etc. It's a shame, still, that you have a creative body of work that your bosses had minimal input into outside of monetary, and you have no ownership.

 An odd byproduct of the general isolation of the bondage loving populace is that there are no blockbuster video titles. There's no "Gone with the Wind" or "Star Wars" famed bondage videos. Some bondage videos make more money than others, but other than your mentioning a few sales figures to me, there's no way for the average person to know which titles are best-sellers. That means there's minimal name recognition.  

 One advantage about the lack of name recognition is that the age of a video is immaterial assuming the overall production quality is about the same between old and new. Styles of dress are generally meaningless because clothing doesn't stay on long. Though, I've got to say that a few adult videos I got from the seventies with the lounge lizard wide collars and open shirts with bellbottom pants are rather ridiculous. It just goes to show that those who live on the edge of fashion awareness are the first to fall off and look the silliest in retrospect.

 There are only two things that distinguish an old video from a new one, assuming that both have the same technical standards. The customer base that's seen the flyers and videos know that something's old because they've been customers for a while. A new customer doesn't know the difference. Numbering the videos for ease of ordering stigmatizes older videos because it lends a perception that they're older and we tend to associate old with lesser quality.

 The other characteristic is that the older videos stop being pushed. New customers don't even know they exist. They don't have a pile of flyers to flip through. Older videos are placed in a limbo. Old customers, who may have retained their flyers, have already decided that they don't want to buy the video that they passed up. New customers don't even have the opportunity to know anything about the video. If they knew about it, they might buy it.

 Since the anonymity of the bondage market makes older material as desirable as new, a company's library of videos is very valuable since re-releasing the videos is almost entirely profit, assuming that their costs were previously recovered.

 Whether or not bondage will ever become more mainstream again, I don't know. Should it ever happen, the people who have large video libraries will be in a good position to exploit the market. If that should happen, you could see dozens of your older videos being released with some company profiting by those efforts while you see no additional money from those sales.

 I'd like to see you start releasing videos through Open Mind Media because I'm more likely to see products that I'd like. At the same time, I understand that there are many financial, legal, and lifestyle risks to making that kind of jump. This isn't something that I'd like to push you into. You've got to judge what's right for you. I don't know if this is something that you can do part time or if you can run small quantities of copies to minimize being stuck with tons of tapes. It would be nice to start seeing you making the types of videos that you enjoy.

9:10 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Richard to Lorelei, Jul 26, 1997 - Stuff2 - Uncle!
Current mood: busy
Category: Friends

I'm gonna cry "Uncle!" and will stop pestering you about making a rough male dominated abduction video. Actually, I prefer to consider what I've been doing as less a matter of nagging you to do that kind of video as much as providing a very aggressive desperate encouragement. I guess you don't need a lot of goading because it's something that you want to do, so it'll happen when you can assemble the right mix of talent, time, and budget. Bugging you about it probably isn't going to speed up the process.  

 This will essentially be the last time I really talk about this subject at length. A few things may pop up in the course of conversations, but this will be the end of it for a while.

 I don't know if talking about this hasn't been annoying to you. I like exploring all avenues that are available, though it's certainly very presumptuous on my part to think that I'm going to have any ideas that you haven't already considered in depth. So far, I certainly haven't come up with any brainstorms yet. At the same time, your responses are always very educational. I'm learning from your firsthand experiences. If I ever get around making my own videos, I'll be that much further ahead of the game. You've done a good job of instilling in me the need to be careful with the models and not do things that will be surprising or upsetting to them. I don't know if I ever would have been stupid enough to wrap a woman's head in duct tape, but it's clearly something that won't happen now unless I can figure out some safe way to do it.

 I've had very unrealistic ideas about how bondage videos are put together. That's funny because I've read all kinds of books and magazines on making movies and behind the scenes articles. For some silly reason, I've been applying a different set of standards for fetish videos. I was kind of looking at them as being like the modern sexual equivalent of a Mickey Rooney "Hey gang! Let's make a movie!"

 I know that's dumb. For some reason, I've thought that the whole LA bondage community knows each other and works together. All the companies are in competition for the same small number of customers, but are a close-knit group of professionals that have friendly rivalries in the products they produced. I knew models were getting paid, but figured that they'd come back on their own time to reshoot something that didn't work. I thought that there were enough people buying the videos that you'd occasionally have somebody call up and offer the use of a store or gym or some other exotic location to do a video shoot. This is all very far from the reality that you work under.

 Seeing one of your scripts was an eye opener. Everything was planned out in detail, from the sets you were going to use, the models you were hiring, when you wanted to take photos, dialog, and even every little item that needed to be used in the video, from a bottle to sub for chloroform to the clothing (in the model's sizes) that needs to be bought so it can be torn. Based on most of the videos that I've seen, it was hard to imagine that up front planning was any more specific than some scribblings on a napkin. Certainly, your plot driven scenarios are more elaborate and require a bit of preparation. Did you learn to do this kind of planning the hard way?

 While I hope that I haven't been a nuisance about pushing you to direct the kind of videos you like, it's still been an educational experience for me.

 The main reasons why I've wanted to explore you and Jon taping your personal sessions together is that it bypasses a lot of problems that exist when you try to use other performers. You can do rough action safer together, though I'm a little surprised that even then it isn't always 100% safe. Cost and time aren't as big a concern. If something doesn't work right, you can do it again when you get a chance.  

 Of course, the downside is that you lose control as a director when you're playing the captive. Even if you're calling the shots with the script, Jon is basically in charge because you can't provide a lot of additional direction while you're bound and gagged. I was hoping to get your take on whether you prefer the best bondage action versus the best cinematic video. As a director, I know you're going to prefer technique, but I'm wondering about what you'd like most as a customer who has to choose between, for instance, a nicely made boring HOM video or an early unprofessional ZFX video that focuses on the action?

 Hopefully you can occasionally tape your rough sessions with Jon. Even if you've only got a single camera that's taking mostly long shots, you might still capture something that you like. At worst, you've lost maybe a little time setting up the camera. No money's lost. If something interesting happens, maybe you can film some pickup shots that can be thrown into the continuity.

 In my blind zeal to get videos I want, I may be overlooking more personal aspects of this. You may not enjoy taping something that is an intimate night with your boyfriend. The one thing that I tend to forget is that you probably wouldn't get any personal enjoyment out of seeing this kind of footage. As you mentioned, you're not comfortable watching yourself on video (I hate seeing myself on video too), so it's not as if you'll have fun watching these videos when they're done. If you watch any bondage tapes, they're probably with other people rather than ones that you've been in.

 At least I put my money where my mouth is with regard to your open auction for a custom made video. I have very little hope that mine will be picked since I bent the rules slightly and didn't offer anything beyond the minimum bid. I'm not sure how much I'll like the raw unedited product. I understand that editing the video is a lot of work and is probably what made your last custom video unprofitable. Still, $300 is a lot to spend and I wasn't comfortable enough to go higher. If I'm lucky enough that you choose to do my scenes, and it works out well, maybe it will lead to more if you have any desire to do it again.  

 I threw the kitchen sink in my scenes just in case the offer never occurs again. There's a lot of stuff that I'd like to see in there. Of course, anything that seems unsafe or unduly uncomfortable can be dropped. I don't want this custom video to be an unpleasant experience. Since you enjoy your bondage rough and find some forms of pain stimulating under the right circumstances, it's hard to say where to draw the line. I'd rather let you decide what you would prefer not to do and not do.

 You probably noticed that my plot gave up on good cinematics to get some good manhandling. It would be great to have another person to work the camera so that some close-ups could be filmed, but your offer was only an assistant and you for cost reasons. I may have made the assistant's role more active than you originally outlined, but didn't add any cost to the production. I'm hoping Jon can be the assistant because it's going to be really weird if you've got a gay assistant trying to figure out how to touch you in an aggressively erotic fashion.

 > I did see an agent's book of male models. A bunch of Ken dolls, posing like
> cheesecake. And could I really bring in a stranger and see what he does
> with a live woman? Not really...

 I know what you mean. The last time I gave any serious thought about doing my own video, I was considering hiring a bodyguard in case an actor got out of hand. I never went far enough to even figure out how to hire a bodyguard or how to hire an actor, so I have no idea what the scales of cost are.

 > How many guys do YOU know, personally, that you think could do > this role well and safely?

 One. That's one more than the number of girls I know that would be willing to do a video. I know you've said that you'd be doing these kinds of videos if you could. Same here. You're just a whole bunch more steps closer to being able to do it than I am. Hence, my desires that you achieve your goal to make them.  

 Based on your responses, the biggest impediments to doing the kind of video you want are time and distribution. You can't quite get what you want because you have to work within Close-Up's rules and that drastically limits what you can get away with in your videos.

 With the ease of making videos, I'm really amazed that so few people are putting out amateur bondage videos. Twenty years ago, it was unthinkable to make a home bondage movie. A home 8mm rig could only shoot about 10 minutes, usually without sound, before a new reel had to be used. Once filming was done, the film had to go to a processor for developing. A person would have to be awful gutsy to send their 8mm bondage films to a developer for processing. Making copies meant going back to the developing company. This was a time consuming and expensive process. By contrast, video is easy and inexpensive to shoot and simple to copy. It can be done entirely in the home. Today, the main difficulty is hiring performers.

 I'd be more than happy to buy a well done amateur video, but haven't seen any that fit the types of things that I want to see. I've only come across a few amateur videos on the net and they basically come across as less professional versions of stuff that's already available. I don't understand the mentality of that approach.  

 A couple of quick definitions are needed.  

 When you talk about "The Scene", is this a dedicated organization or just a generic way of talking about the bondage scene?

Strappado -- It ain't in the dictionary.

5:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Numbers - Moses Takes the Promised Land
Current mood: tired
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Numbers - Moses Takes the Promised Land

The fourth book of the Old Testament, Numbers, details Moses efforts to lead his people 600,000 footmen [011:021]) to the land of milk and honey that God promised them. No historian believes that Moses lead over a million people through the desert. The term, footmen, would have to be literally taken as being men, meaning that there was an additional quantity of women and children. Even if that term shouldn’t be taken as being exclusively men, 600,000 people still represents a ridiculously high number. That’s a decent sized city by today’s standards. The thought, that such a huge quantity of people can be moved about as a cohesive unit and fed for more than four decades through a desert, is fairly preposterous. As a rule of measure, the entire population of Egypt has been estimated as not being much more than a few million during this timeframe. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_461511156_2/ancient_egypt.html Either God is a very bad with numbers or the 600,000 figure does not represent God’s word, but man’s estimate.

Of all the books in the Old Testament, this is the one, that I’ve read so far, that reads like God is a manmade construct and not an actual higher being. All the ills that fell on the Israelis, making the journey to their new land, are blamed on their lack of faith and on their sins. With a large group of people, there will always be a sinner. It’s a safe bet, when things don’t go right, that there has been a lot of sinning and that’s why God isn’t giving them a place to live in right away. God is testing them.

If one is to believe that God is all-knowing, then it is hard to understand why God is so upset with the people he tried to save. Had God told these people that their salvation from the Egyptians would take nearly half a century to complete, maybe they would have been more tolerant of their difficult conditions. Instead, they were promised a great land to settle in and the God, that created the universe in six days, now takes decades to deliver on a promise. When they finally found a land they wanted, they had to take that land by force from people that were on it. God couldn’t just give them free and easy the land that they were promised.

God is impatient with the people complaining about their hardships, and how they’d prefer to be in Egypt to the difficulties they were being forced to endure. At one point, God wants to kill the whole lot of them until Moses talks him out of it. Was God really that impatient or was Moses, who was on the ground listening to the constant complaints, using the notion of God as leverage against the complainers? Moses can turn to the people and tell them how lucky they are to have him because God was so sick of their whining that it was all he could do to talk God out of killing the whole lot of them.

The journey was harsh on those people and they voiced their difficulties. God apparently doesn’t like complainers:
011:001 And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and
        the LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of
        the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the
        uttermost parts of the camp.

God tells Moses that he will feed the people for a month, though the passage makes it sound as if it is a begrudging effort:
011:019 Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither
        ten days, nor twenty days;
011:020 But even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils,
        and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye have despised
        the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him, saying,
        Why came we forth out of Egypt?

Then there is a passage that makes one wonder if it was a miracle from God:
011:031 And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails
        from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a
        day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on
        the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two
        cubits high upon the face of the earth.
011:032 And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and
        all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that
        gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all
        abroad for themselves round about the camp.
011:033 And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was
        chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people,
        and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.
Was this a miracle from God or the bad luck of finding a bunch of diseased birds that made everybody ill? The next line states that many people were buried because they lusted.

There was some strife between Moses and his brother Aaron due to Moses marrying an Ethiopian woman. Aaron seemed to feel that Moses wasn’t the only privileged one because he had also spoken to God. As punishment, God gave Aaron’s wife leprosy.

Moses and his people come to the outskirts of the city of Canaan and sends spies into the city to determine whether the land is good and whether the people are strong. The spies return, but present a mixed message. They all agree that the land floweth with milk and honey. Some of the spies believe the land can be conquered while others believed that the men of Canaan are giants that cannot be beaten. The people bemoaned their predicament:
014:002 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and
        against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them,
        Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God
        we had died in this wilderness!
014:003 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall
        by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a
        prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
Joshua and Caleb tried to rally them to attack Canaan in the name of the Lord and were almost stoned to death.
Not being very tolerant of complainers, God spoke:
014:011 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people
        provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for
        all the signs which I have shewed among them?
014:012 I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them,
        and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.
Moses talked God out of killing everybody by essentially telling God that nobody will think much of him as a god if he kills all the people that he promised to save from Egypt.
014:015 Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the
        nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,
014:016 Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the
        land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in
        the wilderness.

God was still not entirely appeased and said:
014:022 Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my
        miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have
        tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my
        voice;
014:023 Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their
        fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:

Now, God is saying that he will not allow anybody, who tried his patience, to see the new land. It really sounds like revisionist writings where a reason is being given for why it took so long to find the promised land. The Israelites decide to attack Canaan and, now their cause is wrong because God forbade them from seeing the promised land and they are struck down. It would be hard to imagine that these people, who relied on God for so much of their lives, would try to take a large, well defended, city without God being on their side. It comes across as another incident where things were rewritten such that their cause was unjust after the fact. If they threw everything they had against the city and were soundly defeated, then God, by virtue of what happened, was not with them. If God was not with them, Moses had to develop an explanation why God was against their taking that city. A reason for Moses not to try to take the city again would probably be due to the losses when the first attempt was made. Even though this city appeared to be the land of milk and honey they were promised, it was too strong to be taken. If the populace had been told that this was the promised land, they would be compelled to keep trying to take that land. The best way to break that religious fervor is to invoke God to say that this is not the right place and that it will be generations before they find the land that they will be given. This approach would help get around the initial problem Moses faced with the people constantly griping about God not following through on His initial promise. It was natural to expect that promise to be delivered in a relatively short time rather than in years and decades. By now saying that God will not let them settle in the land they were promised, Moses bought time to find a suitable land that they could either settle in or take.

The spies, that reported that they could not win a battle against the city of Canaan, earned God’s wrath:
014:036 And the men, which Moses sent to search the land, who
        returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him,
        by bringing up a slander upon the land,
014:037 Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the
        land, died by the plague before the LORD.

God enforces his commandment to keep the Sabbath holy:
015:032 And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they
        found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
015:035 And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to
        death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones
        without the camp.
It is not made clear whether this man were a follower of Moses or just some unlucky soul who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two hundred and fifty princes of Israel accused Moses of taking too much power over their people. Two of them, Dathan and Abiram, accused Moses of causing them trouble:
016:013 Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land
        that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the
        wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over
        us?
016:014 Moreover thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth
        with milk and honey, or given us inheritance of fields and
        vineyards:
For questioning Moses actions, God takes action against these men and their families:
016:032 And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and
        their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and
        all their goods.
016:033 They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into
        the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished
        from among the congregation.
The people blamed Moses and Aaron for their deaths [016:041]. Considering that Moses killed 3000 of them, for worshipping an idol (before God had given him a commandment that they shouldn’t) overnight, there was some justification for the suspicion. God sided with Moses and told him:
016:045 Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume
        them as in a moment. And they fell upon their faces.
14,700 of the people died of the plague, but Moses gave Aaron incense that stayed the plague from those he was near.

Unicorns are mentioned in 023:022. There isn’t anything important in the mention, but it’s neat that unicorns existed in the Bible even though there hasn’t been any archaeological evidence for their existence.

The Israelites stayed in Shittim for a while and started worshipping the god of the Moabs. God commanded:
025:004 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the
        people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that
        the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.
This section is rather confusing because the Moabites were descended from Lot’s union with his eldest daughter [Genesis 019:037]. The Moab were mentioned earlier in Numbers [022:003] as being afraid of the Israelis crossing through their lands because they killed everybody in the village of Bashan [021:035]. In the next book, Judges, God strengthened the Moab against Israel for sins the Israelites committed [003:012]. In the book of Ruth, the title figure is a Moabitess. The Bible doesn’t make it clear when the Moab, descendents of Lot (who, with his two daughters, were favored by God to survive the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah), turned to worship a different god.

Another plague was visited on the people and killed 24,000 [025:009]. Although the Bible doesn’t mention this, it would seem that Moses, in order to follow the Lord’s word, cut off many a head and hung them on poles (or against a wall) in a fashion similar to what Vlad the Impaler (the source for Bram Stoker’s Dracula) did millennia later.

God commanded Mose goes to war against those people and slaughtered their leaders and took all the Midian women captive, their cattle, flocks, goods, and burnt their cities and castles.
031:015 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
031:016 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the
        counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the
        matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation
        of the LORD.
031:017 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill
        every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
031:018 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying
        with him, keep alive for yourselves.
If the Bible is to be taken as the word of God and the lessons as the way to live, then it is perfectly fine in war to kill women and children and rape the virgins. After all, Moses is probably the holiest figure of the Old Testament. What’s okay by Moses ought to be okay for all of us. These are the kind of passages that leave me questioning the validity of this Bible.

On an even more disturbing note are the following passages:
031:037 And the LORD’s tribute of the sheep was six hundred and
        threescore and fifteen.
031:040 And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD’s
        tribute was thirty and two persons.
This has the appearance that human sacrifices were offered to God. An animal tribute to God would be in the form of a sacrifice. It’s hard to imagine another purpose to separate 32 prisoners for God.

Moses shares in the tribute and gives a portion to his family of choice, the Levites:
031:047 Even of the children of Israel’s half, Moses took one portion
        of fifty, both of man and of beast, and gave them unto the
        Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD;
        as the LORD commanded Moses.

God finally gives his people the land he promised decades before:
033:051 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye
        are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;
033:052 Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from
        before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all
        their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high
        places:
033:053 And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell
        therein: for I have given you the land to possess it.
God determined which land each family was given. That sounds like another way for Moses to avoid arguments. The divvying up of the land was not his choice, a choice which could be argued, but the choice of God, which one could not argue.

The book of numbers is a fairly odd book of the Bible. I didn’t cover the initial portion of this Bible because it was a tedious accounting of the different families and their heads and how they were to be taxed. I’m not sure how one taxes a populace that has no jobs and is supposed to be trekking through the desert.

Throughout this Bible, God comes across as fairly pithy. God is killing the people, that he promised to deliver from Egypt, left and right because they dare question His ability to keep that promise. When the city of Moab allows the Israelis to stay in their city, God is jealous that the Moabs worship another god and has Moses slaughter them and cut of their heads to be hung for all to see. When God finally makes good his promise, it is by having his people kill the populace that lives on that land.

This Bible offers hints that Moses has set himself up as their dictator leader and takes much for himself and kills those that oppose him. Moses’ word is the word of God because he is credited for writing the first five books of the Bible. Moses thinks little of killing prisoners of war and giving the virgin girls to his soldiers as a reward. It makes one wonder, if these hints survived Moses’ pen, how many less flattering portrayals were left out.

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Richard to Lorelei, Jul 24, 1997 - Stuff1 - Jobs

Got another long message that I’ll chop up as best I can. I do tend to ramble.

> I know we’re usually discussing work together but it’s more like, this
> dialogue is not a "chore" unlike a lot of other emailing...

I’m glad to hear that. It’s sometimes hard to tell when things are dragging on and the other person is responding more out of a feeling of duty instead of a real desire to carry on a correspondence. You strike me as the kind of sweet person who would keep writing to fans even though you know you should be doing something else out of some feeling of obligation. Occasionally, I’ve gotten a few responses that seem rushed and I’ve wondered if that point has been hit or if things have just gotten so hectic that you’re doing everything you can to simply keep up. You must be great at keeping schedules to do all that even though I sense that you’re not naturally a very orderly person as much as someone who enforces a degree of order because you know that there’s no other way to manage your life.

I’ve mostly talked "work" with you because you really are doing something that’s incredibly fascinating. What you’re doing as a living is something that you could only dream about when you were younger. To a degree, I’m kind of jealous that you can do something you enjoy. It probably isn’t always fun, but you at least get a chance once a month to direct something that you like (even if the bulk of plots are kind of boring to you). Sometimes I wonder if doing this for a living kind of takes the fun out of looking at a typical bondage video or magazine for recreation.

One of the reasons that I pursued a technical career for a living instead of the arts is that I always wondered if drawing or writing for a living would start becoming work instead of fun. I also went where the steady money was. The arts are a tough place to make a living in. I’ve always had an interest in science as a kid and a kind of natural curiosity about the world that encouraged me to seek answers to why things work, so it’s not as if pursuing an engineering degree was an unusual choice for me.  

My one great disappointment about the way technical and other courses are taught in school is that teachers tend to like to teach things that are easy to grade. In science courses, they stress equations. In history, they stress names, dates, and places. That’s because facts lend themselves to unambiguous questions on a test. When did Columbus sail to America? 1494--Wrong! Schools rarely get into concepts. To me, that’s what’s important. If you know why Columbus came to America and what impact it had on Europe’s history, then you are showing an understanding of an important event in history. If you know that it happened in the 1490s, that’s close enough to place it on a timeline. Whether it’s 1492 or 1494 doesn’t matter all that greatly. A person with a good memory can memorize every date of interest in our history and still not have the foggiest notion of how this country was birthed.

A lot of my enjoyment of the sciences went away when I graduated college. I have a hard time working with raw facts and numbers and am more comfortable at grasping concepts. What I got taught was equations and math, not science. It’s not the worst field to get into. It has offered me a steady job at a decent pay. I’ll never get rich on the job. I won’t get rich. The job is basically a paid cog in a larger machine.  

I don’t hate my job, but I also don’t love it. At times, it can be incredibly frustrating because of the number of decisions that are made for solely political reasons. Details and facts that result in a good design often take a back seat to whose ego needs to be stroked this day because it was some bigwig’s idea and it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb because orders are being followed. Occasionally, I have my days when I think I’ve accomplished something and that feels good. Most of the time, it’s just a job. It’s a paycheck that allows me to enjoy my off hours.

In a lot of ways, I don’t consider myself a technician. That’s my occupation, but I wanted to work in comics for the longest time. I enjoy writing (surprise!) and I’m a fairly decent artist. I’ve long had an interest in comics and having the two skills gave me some reason to think I could eventually do it. In spite of having some artistic flair, I’ve always had a very practical side and I couldn’t risk my life on a dream. Besides, I’d read enough behind the scenes interviews to recognize that comics, like what you do, is a business first and an entertainment form second. The one thing I hadn’t expected was the way that most of my artistic ambitions went out the door by the time I started working for a while. Jobs have a way of draining the creativity out of a person.

Do you find your day job fun? I think you like the days when you get to make videos. I’m not sure if the rest of the job is all that engaging.

I’m basically an odd mix of artist and technician. It gives me a strong mix of logic and emotions in both life and work. The artistic side helps at work because I’m often able to leap beyond logic to creative solutions that aren’t obvious to most people. I’m one of the rare technicians that can write reasonably well. Most others pen things rather dryly. One of my coworkers writes trip reports in the third tense. I try to tell him that it’s his report. He’s reporting from his perspective. Trip reports aren’t official records. Yet, he still refers to himself as the traveler. When I write one, I try to keep it conversational like this so that even material that isn’t especially interesting at least is leavened with a little style.

I’ve got to start kicking myself more to try to do some more creative work. I’m 40 and that means that life is half over. Bummer. It’d be nice to leave something behind that says I was here. While I’d like to do work in the bondage field, I don’t consider that as the mark that I want to be remembered for. I’m not sure how you feel about your work. It certainly brings entertainment to a lot of people.  

Do you ever hope to do something other than bondage videos? I’m not asking from a standpoint of denigrating what you do. You’re helping a lot of people satisfy their erotic fantasies and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you reach such a small audience that I’d almost imagine that you’d like to have your works appreciated by the greater masses. 

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Leviticus: The Laws
Current mood: scared
Category: Religion and Philosophy

The third book of the Old Testament, Leviticus, is basically a legal document describing what things are not allowed and the sacrifices that must be made to atone for sinning. It’s dreadful reading because there is no narrative to it. There are only requirements. There is great repetition when different sins require the same sacrificial ritual and the ritual is repeated time and again.

In spite of the fact that Leviticus represents God’s laws, very few of them are still relied on today. I’m not comfortable with the common explanation I’ve heard that Jesus’ death on the cross is the reason why all the Old Testament requirements do not have to be followed. I was taught that Jesus died for our sins, not to provide a religious loophole to ignore God’s earlier requirements.

I’ve looked up one specific requirement in the New Testament, that of sacrifices, to find out whether any teachings from Christ stated that sacrifices no longer had to be performed. I did a word search for "sacrifice", but the only reference against performing sacrifices came from one of the Apostles after Jesus’ death and only briefly mentioned that they aren’t necessary without referencing it as anything Jesus taught him. It’s a rather weak explanation to say that the crucifixion invalidates the requirements for sacrifices when there is no correlation to do so in Christ’s teachings. God clearly wanted sacrifices in the Old Testament. There are pages after pages detailing everything about performing sacrifices. It’s rather weak to only have a passing letter by an Apostle to justify ignoring a requirement that God set forth in such great detail. Up until I started reading the Old Testament, I just thought that sacrifices were a carryover from earlier religions that were performed out of expectation, and slowly disappeared as the new religion gained more prominence. That was why I was shocked when I read that the ritual of sacrifice was required by God and that God’s requirements amounted to what is probably well over a hundred pages of sacrificial details and requirements, across the different books in the Bible, for when sacrifices must be performed. The requirement for sacrifices doesn’t seem like the type of thing to be dismissed in a couple sentences of the New Testament.

Without doing a detailed count, I’d estimate that less than a fifth of the laws in Leviticus are religiously followed today by Christians. It makes me wonder why the New Testament relies on the Old Testament. With so little of the Old Testament being followed today, it’s hard to understand why it is considered a useful reference of the word of God. God’s proclamations must be followed in whole or they were wrong to begin with.

There are so many things in the Old Testament that are abhorrent today (and probably also at the time that it was adopted by Christianity) that I cannot understand why it wasn’t referenced as a human remembrance of the early God rather than incorporated as the absolute word of God. Call the Old Testament what it is--a book of its time with interpretations that reflect the attitudes and traditions of that long ago period of history. There are too many terrible things in the Old Testament, ascribed to God, to wholly accept this as being the same gentler, fatherly God of the New Testament. I just read a section of Samuel where God tells him to attack a city and "slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" [Samuel 015:003]. Nobody should be comfortable worshipping a god that requires killing babies.

The greatest problem that any written book, that is meant to be the word of God, is that everything has to be right. If the Old Testament is the word of God, then God is quite merciless. What is the reason for killing every man, woman, child, and animal of the city of Amalek?--God says, "I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt." Many generations after this event occurred, God suddenly now wants his people to slaughter every living thing in that city. This is either the God that is worshipped by millions today or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then the Old Testament isn’t the word of God. The portions of the New Testament that I’ve briefly read are more literate and interesting than anything I’ve read in the Old Testament. Too much of the Old Testament comes across as simplistic fables of a far gone time. It contrasts greatly against the more philosophical New Testament.

Below are a variety of quotes from Leviticus of different requirements and practices that piqued my interests.

Leviticus opens with God’s requirements for sacrifices. The animals must be without blemish.
001:005 And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: and the
        priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the
        blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the
        tabernacle of the congregation.
001:008 And the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall lay the parts, the head,
        and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which
        is upon the altar:
001:009 But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the
        priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice,
        an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.
If the offer is a bird:
001:015 And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off
        his head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof
        shall be wrung out at the side of the altar:
A meat offering has other rules:
002:001 And when any will offer a meat offering unto the LORD, his
        offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon
        it, and put frankincense thereon:
The sacrificial rituals go on in great detail.

Some of the various sins that require sacrifices include:
005:001 And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and is a
        witness
005:002 Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcass
        of an unclean beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle
005:003 Or if he touch the uncleanness of man, whatsoever uncleanness
        it be that a man shall be defiled withal
005:004 Or if a soul swear, pronouncing with his lips to do evil
006:002 If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the LORD, and lie
        unto his neighbor

Of course, the priests, Mose brother Aaron and his heirs, get to keep much of what was sacrificed. Even though the offerings were made to God, Moses relatives get to keep the hides [007:008], eat the grains, [007:009], and eat the meat offerings [007:010]. Keep in mind that Aaron was the person that made the golden bull idol that Moses’ followers worshipped while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from God. Moses was so angered by this idol worship that he slaughtered 3000 of his people that night. Aaron’s punishment was being made head priest and reaping of the bounties of the mandatory religious sacrifices to atone for all sinning.

Leviticus also contains God’s dietary proclamations:
007:023 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no
        manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat.
007:026 Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood
011:004 Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud,
        or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he
        cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto
        you.
011:008 Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye
        not touch; they are unclean to you.
011:009 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever
        hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the
        rivers, them shall ye eat.
011:010 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the
        rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living
        thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination
        unto you:
011:021 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth
        upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap
        withal upon the earth
011:029 These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things
        that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the
        tortoise after his kind
I didn’t know that a wide variety of seafood are prohibited ranging from shrimp and lobster to clams and oysters.

A good part of Leviticus is devoted to defining what is unclean and the procedures for waiting out the uncleanliness till the person is clean again.
012:002 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have
        conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be
        unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation
        for her infirmity shall she be unclean.
012:004 And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying
        three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor
        come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be
        fulfilled.
012:005 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two
        weeks
013:002 When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a
        scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like
        the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the
        priest, or unto one of his sons the priests:
013:004 If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in
        sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not
        turned white; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the
        plague seven days:
It seems somewhat unfair that a woman is considered unclean for giving birth for a longer period than a man with the plague. If a woman gives birth to a girl, she is unclean twice as long as she would be with a male child. God clearly favors men over women.

The book goes on at length with sacrifices and periods of waiting to deal with bodily discharges, leprosy, and other ill symptoms. Some of the proclamations, such as burning the clothes of somebody with the plague, actually make sense to help stop the spread of infection. Others are little more than ritualistic silliness, such as this method to cleanse a house that once had the plague:
014:051 And he shall take the cedar wood, and the hyssop, and the
        scarlet, and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the
        slain bird, and in the running water, and sprinkle the house
        seven times

Next are the ordinances which are mostly morality statutes:
018:006 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him,
        to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.
[No sex with blood relations.]
018:020 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s
        wife, to defile thyself with her.
018:021 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire
        to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I
        am the LORD.
[This is an odd one because it is saying that one must not sacrifice one’s child to the god, Molech. It begs the question whether it is okay to sacrifice one’s child to God or another god.]
018:022 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is
        abomination.
[In other words, thou shalt not be a homosexual. There is no pronouncement against lesbians. Does this mean that God also likes to watch women getting it on with other women? It’s more likely that women, as property, had no right or even any belief that they could ever do such a thing.]
018:023 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself
        therewith
019:014 Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before
        the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.
[Which would indicate that there used to be a rampant problem with people tripping the blind for entertainment.]
019:015 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not
        respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the
        mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.
[This one is very interesting because it is saying that judgments should not take into account whether a person is rich or poor and should be treated rightly without regard to wealth. Of course, one doesn’t hear much about this proclamation very often nowadays. After all, the rich deserve special consideration even if God says otherwise.]
019:018 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the
        children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as
        thyself: I am the LORD.
019:023 And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted
        all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit
        thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as
        uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
[I wonder if there is some farming rationale for this statute to not eat the fruit of trees until the fifth year after planting them.]

Leviticus then shifts to punishments:
020:009 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be
        surely put to death:
020:010 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife,
        even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife,
        the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
020:013 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both
        of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be
        put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
020:018 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and
        shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain,
        and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of
        them shall be cut off from among their people.
020:027 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a
        wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them
        with stones: their blood shall be upon them.
[If modern day magicians are considered wizards, say good night to David Copperfield.]
The Old Testament never really explains why one of the fundamental commandments states that Thou Shalt Not Kill and then provides so many requirements to kill people for their trespasses.

Then, there are rules for priests:
021:005 They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall
        they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any
        cuttings in their flesh.
021:007 They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane
021:009 And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by
        playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be
        burnt with fire.
021:014 A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these
        shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own
        people to wife.

God also establishes the death penalty for anybody blaspheming his name:
024:011 And the Israelitish woman’s son blasphemed the name of the
        Lord, and cursed. And they brought him unto Moses: (and his
        mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the
        tribe of Dan:)
024:014 Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all
        that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the
        congregation stone him.
I’m not comfortable with a god that must kill a person that curses his name. Then, God has many a time proclaimed himself a jealous god even though jealousy is often considered a sin.

Then there is the famous "eye for an eye" old style justice.
024:020 Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath
        caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

There are rules for buying slaves (and buying children for slaves) and passing on slave property to one’s children:
025:044 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have,
        shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them
        shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
025:045 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
        among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that
        are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be
        your possession.
025:046 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children
        after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be
        your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of
        Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

Should God’s rules be broken, these are amongst the punishments that will be visited upon the sinners:
026:025 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the
        quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together
        within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and
        ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
026:026 And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women
        shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you
        your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be
        satisfied.
026:027 And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk
        contrary unto me;
026:028 Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even
        I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
026:029 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your
        daughters shall ye eat.
026:030 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images,
        and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my
        soul shall abhor you.
026:031 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries
        unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet
        odours.
026:032 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies
        which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
026:033 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a
        sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your
        cities waste.

12:28 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lorelei to Richard, July 20, 1997 - Re: Male "actors" HOM & Stuff
Current mood: naughty
Category: Friends

Hi Again ~

 I know we’re usually discussing work together but it’s more like, this dialogue is not a "chore" unlike a lot of other emailing...

 > rougher abduction video with a male attacker. The disappointment would be in not being able to see your custom video, unless you’re going to offer it for sale through your husband’s company.

 My husband’s company is FM Concepts, the foot fetish company ( http://www.foot-fetish.com ) I don’t think he’d ever carry a tape like that... but if something happens with my almost-broke Open Mind Media, maybe someday I can offer tapes through that...

 >I don’t know entirely what’s allowed at Close-Up.  I’m still a bit surprised that even an implied rape, that isn’t shown, is a taboo because more than that can be seen on TV just about any night of the week.

 The scale of a production has a huge effect on whether something is "obscene." For instance, a TV show or a movie can show a woman abducted, tied, stripped, and implied rape, and killed, and they can show all of it (including bare breasts) as long as they don’t know genitalia.

 Whereas in an X-rated movie you can’t show any of the above.

 A lot of people in the industry were pleased with Madonna doing that "Sex" book because she had the "clout" to publish some images that the adult industry wasn’t even able to do at that time.

 It has a lot to do with how the law views "prurient interest." If you shoot it with a home camera, you’re a pervert. If you shoot it with a million-dollar-budget, you’re an artiste.

 Somebody said (I clipped it out of a magazine) "the difference between art and pornography is the lighting"

 > find a man who can act roughly with the model. I have a hard time believing that you can’t find guys that can treat a girl roughly  There simply has to be some guys that you work with

 My boyfriend is understandably dedicated to the role he plays for Harmony productions and was not happy when I tried to get him into a role like that...and he’s right, if his income is coming from Harmony, then he needs to keep things sunny with them... For that matter he doesn’t seem emotionally up to roughing anyone but me :)

 My husband has no understanding of the role, or how to do it physically.

 The fetish club I’m in is made up mostly of people who will not appear on camera. There are a few who are willing...and I have cast them and tried to use them. Part of the problem is that their Scene still isn’t necessarily my Scene...it really isn’t easy to rough a woman up if you don’t know how to do it. Hell, even with Jon things sometimes go wrong, and we’ve been doing this for years :) If I’m going to walk a dummy through the scene, even with fast-cutting it’s not going to come off as rough. It’s going to come off as wooden.

 I wonder if you think I know a million people, I don’t. I did see an agent’s book of male models. A bunch of Ken dolls, posing like cheesecake. And could I really bring in a stranger and see what he does with a live woman? Not really...

 I think you keep harping on me about finding a man because it’s the main obstruction to making a good tape, so you don’t want to let the topic die. How many guys do YOU know, personally, that you think could do this role well and safely?

 > Has the lack of suitable actors been the main stumbling block to using men as the villains in your videos?

 No, actually that’s another Close-Up requirement I work under: the customer base is split about 50/50, with half preferring male doms, the other half preferring female dommes. Many of those who pref male doms still buy some fem-dom vids. So a fem-dom vid has a larger customer base. Then you weigh in that Bryan Davis and Jay Edwards are only doing male-dom (though my boss has pressured them to also do fem-dom and you’ll notice the occasional effort). Due to this gap, my boss requires that most of my tapes be girl/girl. Though it bores me on a personal level.

 >Was Barbara Behr really driven out of the business by politicians and censors?

 Law enforcement. They came and did a lean and she cleared out. That’s her version of the tale, I haven’t heard any others.  

> along the lines of "The Collector", so that there’s time for a relationship to form. I’ve meant to ask if you thought that Terrence Stamp actually loved Samantha Eggar in the movie or if you believe that the comparison to his butterfly collection was more valid, that he wanted her beauty to look at, but had no real feelings for her?

 Every time I tell somebody I want to see "the Collector" they send me scene outtakes. I’ve never gotten to watch the movie. I guess I eventually have to rent it, but Jon has warned me that I will be depressed by it (I gather it will remind me of what happened with my college partner), and I hate to spend an evening just getting depressed...

 >Some of the mean spirited stuff that I don’t care for in ZFX videos includes:
 >    - Wired for electric shock

 I like that kind of stuff

 >    - Forced fed water

 Bleah

 >    - Whipping (sorry because I know you like it)
 >    - Tied breasts (more a matter of not liking how it looks)

 Sometimes looks good, sometimes not, true 

7:34 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Richard to Lorelei, 13 Jul 1997 - Re: Good Detect Covers
Current mood: ninja
Category: Friends

It looks like you were a busy bee last night answering a pile of my messages. I had no idea that the video sales were so low. Does Close-Up intentionally keep out of the adult video store market? I don't recall ever seeing one of their videos in a store and Harmony only slightly more often. If Close-Up could get into the video stores, they'd already be selling more just to stores than they do to customers today. I'm finally starting to appreciate the problems you have with the company in releasing the kinds of videos that you and I like (I'm a little slow at times). Being in the business must be a labor of love for you because it sure isn't going to make you wealthy.

> Confidential Det March Chesty blonde Eric and I both knew the cover you were talking about without even pulling it out. I've had that one set out for a while because the face and tits match Catharine Beaumont. I want her to be the star for that one.

I'm constantly amazed about how we're occasionally on the same wavelength. What are the odds that, out of hundreds of covers in our respective collections that we'd both hit on the same image?

You've probably already got a plot that fits in with that cover, but I might as well put my two cents in.  

One of the fantasies I've had about Kathy, the voluptuous girl in my drawing in a chair with her breasts being squeezed, involves her being dumped by her boyfriend. It's an ugly affair, done in a restaurant publicly. He insults her weight, calling her a fat pig. Then he takes off, leaving her stuck with the bill. She's left in tears in an abject state.

She meets with a friend the next day and her spirit is down. She thinks that she's unattractive. Her girlfriend tells her she's nuts and suggests that she gets made up and get a sexy dress and go looking for a date.

She takes her girlfriend's advice and is flattered at a bar by all the attention that she's getting. She settles on one particular guy who suggests that they go someplace more intimate.

This guy's idea of intimate is kidnapping her and taking her home.

> Det World Feb 74 > Is this the one with the white folded stuff-gag? The top of mine is cut off so I'm missing the date.

Bingo, I think. The stuffing is held in place by a black strap. The woman's dress is torn and has a pattern of little pink dots.

> Front Page Det Sep 82 This putting-in-trunk motif is great, though I'd be tempted to go with a skirt instead of the jeans.

A skirt's better. You'll want to change the covers anyway to avoid any legal problems. The real covers are a point of reference to establish a setting and mood.

I also like a girl in tight jeans. The down side is that they're harder to rip away. You had a nice shot in jeans your Harmony page. I didn't realize that you were keeping it current because it's been months since I looked there.  

> HQ Det Dec 74 This isn't in our main folder so I'll have to do some digging to find it.

It's easy enough to email if you don't have it since I've already scanned all my detective covers. I didn't originally care for this cover because the bondage isn't all that tight. Yet, the model has a great look of helplessness and there's something exciting about the anticipation of the horrors that await her.

Since I've already given you a reason to go flipping through the detective mag covers, here's a few more I like:

Detective Cases 4/76: A blonde in a red jersey is spreadeagled between two basement pillars. I've always liked basement settings. They're the equivalent of modern dungeons. I always consider it silly when video producers feel it necessary to recreate an actual dungeon (particularly the fake painted walls and floor that HOM uses). A basement is a far more frightening setting.

Official Police Detective 7/76: A pretty short-haired brunette in a black sweater, with her jeans pulled down. This was also used inside the bondage magazine Kaptive Beauties 1/3. The picture on the detective cover was far better than the rest and there's the feeling that something bad is going to happen.

True Police Cases 10/75: A pretty hispanic woman has already been stripped to her underwear by three guys. One is squeezing her cheeks while stuffing a handkerchief in her mouth while another guy behind her ho