It was a fun and busy weekend here. Saturday evening my friends Bettie Cho and Chainguy got to shoot at a friend’s house and I had a great time. I put Bettie into an inescapable leather strap and rope tie and did a really severe gag and blindfold on her. That bitch was bound and gagged! Usually I hold new stuff in reserve since there’s older material to post waiting in the queue. But I really like this set so I’ll probably post it this Friday. Here are a couple preview shots.

Then later today, I did the monthly Bondage Workshop, presenting a few hogties and variations, and tying up my friend L. for the demo. It was a small group, only five or six people, which can be challenging, but I was feeling pretty relaxed and in the zone. Afterwards I stayed late for a presentation with author and speaker Jack Rinella, a guy who’s been into the gay leatherman scene for years and who’s written a few books on BDSM subjects and a weekly online column. He spoke on Subspace and Altered States of Consciousness and it was very interesting.

So then tomorrow I’m finally going to go in to start getting some laser hair removal treatment on my beard. Shaving is such a pain in the ass. I have a pretty heavy beard growth so whenever I’m dressing I scrape and scrape till my face is nearly raw. I finally took the plunge, got some recommendations from friends, and made the phone call. I’ll have to do a series of treatments over time, of course, but I really hope it works for me. Even just thinning the growth would be a plus.

So like I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be doing a little traveling for a week or so, just visiting family and friends, till after the 4th. Updates on the trannies site will be the same as usual, though my chances at checking email will probably be limited.

If anyone has password problems or anything with CCBill, while I’m on the road, they have a good help page here.

The excellent URNotAlone site has some really good regular columnists, including the lovely Alice Novic, author of Alice in Genderland. I’m way behind on my reading, but she has a very interesting article in two parts that she did a while back describing what she sees as the two “types” of MTF trans people. She talks about those of us who “love to be femme” but for whom it often doesn’t come naturally, and this can often include crossdressers and some late-transitioning transsexuals. On the other side, she talks about those who “act femme,” or who are naturally effeminate from the beginning and who, she suggests, often grow up to be early-transitioning transsexuals, drag queens, or effeminate gay men.

She credits Ray Blanchard with his concept of autogynephilia as one of the first to recognize this distinction. It’s an interesting idea and one that to me seems to make sense, though it could definitely be threatening to someone very much invested in the “usual” three-way breakdown: crossdressers / transsexuals / drag queens. It’s funny, but friends and I have often noticed the same thing that she points out about the local TG clubs: There always seem to be the young and fabulous transsexual girls who pull it off so effortlessly, and the rest of us crossdressers for whom it’s a lot of work and for whom it never feels completely perfected. Of course, some might disagree with the distinctions, but it’s an interesting way to look at things, and in a way could help relieve some of the internal self-judgments that so many of us have. If you haven’t read Alice’s column before, I’d highly recommend it. By the way, Alice is also a real dear in person, a total babe, and quite active in the local L.A. TG community.

I’ve really been on a tear lately writing some short stories for the trannies site. It can be very time consuming, but when the plot comes together and I get an idea that turns me on, I can get into the flow of it and sometimes the story nearly writes itself. Other times it just feels like work – but I’m not sure it has much impact on the final outcome one way or the other. I’m no brilliant writer or anything but I know what turns me on and I can usually describe it fairly well. I’m definitely a bit drawn to darker themes and ideas rather than playful bondage romps. I know when I try to do something more light and playful it tends to turn out kind of lame.

In any case, I finished a new story for Friday’s update, with Michelle Green looking very sexy in a PVC hobble skirt. I’ll be posting it later tonight. Here’s a quick preview pic.

Next week I’m going to be going to Colorado for a few days, to visit with family and friends, which is something I like to do each summer. The updates on the site will of course continue, though my answering email may be a bit worse than normal (it can be pretty bad even when I’m in town). My blogging will inevitably suffer too.

Well, I’d have to say that the Monthly Bondage Workshop this evening went really well. It was a small turnout because of the holiday weekend, six people total, but I was feeling very relaxed and in the zone and the ropes seemed to just fall into place. There was a nice couple there who said they were new to rope bondage, and I seemed to be able to show them quite a few techniques to get them started. It makes the butterflies in the stomach all worth it when everything comes together. Now what to do next month?

I saw this on the evening news – an Iraqi American artist who has created an interactive art exhibit in Chicago where he will live in a small gallery for 45 days, and with a webcam allow visitors to his website to control a paintball gun aimed at him, even allowing them to fire it. It’s a great concept, meant to convey the anxiety of living in a war zone, and apparently the site has been so busy that the server can barely keep up.

From my obsessive point of view it makes me wonder about new and diabolical ways to interact with people on a webcam, especially in a bondage or self-bondage scene. (Speaking of which, I’ve been setting up a new Flash based webcam that I’ll probably try out in the next week or so. I haven’t chatted online in months but have been getting the bug again lately. So I’ll post an update when I get it ready.)

Okay, but back to the Iraqi guy. Here’s some links:

Article from CBS2 Chicago

His Crude Oils site, with links to the exhibit

Flatfile Gallery, where he’s holed up for the project.

Here’s a recent article from the XBiz site where a “noted antiporn activist,” Dr. Judith Reisman, links the Virginia Tech shootings to porn addiction. I love her concept of “Erototoxins,” which can rot the brain after even a cursory exposure to pornographic images. I gotta get me some of those.

This editorial on the Onion is so bad but really made me laugh.

Ain’t Nobody Telling Me What My Baby Allergic To

This one gave me the giggles too:

I’m Prepared To Give My Life For This Or Any Country

Those crazy folks at Google! I just noticed that you can change your language settings on Google to, among other things, Klingon, Pig Latin and Elmer Fudd.

I finally finished re-doing the look of my site and got rid of all the layout tables that were making it such a headache to make major changes to. Before, whenever I’d try to change the front picture on the homepage, the layout would start going all weird on me and I’d give up. I also added a sample thumbnail image to each gallery on the site, since all the text links were getting a bit much to wade through. It should be a bit easier now and I think it’s an improvement.

I also combined the What’s New? and the Free Preview pages, with some freebies each week from the most recent gallery. Just click on the thumbnails with the orange borders around them.

Anyway, check it out and leave me a comment if you notice any broken links or anything.

So today I was up before dawn to get ready for a shoot with sexy fetish vixen Sirena Scott. We’ve been emailing for a few weeks and were finally able to set up some time to shoot some pictures. I’d been familiar with Sirena from her work with Harmony Concepts and with Ropexpert, so it was pretty exciting to be shooting with a “real” bondage model. It’s funny, I’ve tied up a few “genetic” girls at parties and at bondage demos but haven’t actually done much work with a GG (I hate that term but you know what I mean), since I worked with Sweetties about five or six years ago (has it been that long already?)

Anyway, Sirena was a lot of fun to work with and her photographer is going to be mailing me some pictures on a disk, so I should have some previews in a few weeks. In our set, I was playing Sandra in domme mode and got to tie up Sirena and spank her for borrowing some pantyhose without asking – You know, the kind of thing that happens all the time in real life! It’s really wild to meet someone for the first time and within a half hour, I’m tying her up and feeling up her legs. A pretty cool way to spend the morning. I’m hoping we can work again before too long.

So over the weekend I finally was able to schedule a shoot with Vivian Chen, whom I’ve been dying to get in front of the camera for over a year. She’s a very busy girl so doesn’t have a lot of spare time, but things finally came together and I was able to get a hotel room out east of Los Angeles and get some nice shots of her. Here’s a little preview, and I’m planning to post some more on the Trannies In Trouble paysite for this Friday’s update.

I’ve actually been shooting so much stuff lately – with Delilah, Bettie, Sissy, and now Vivian – plus working with Mr. K. and Chainguy – that I now have a lot of pictures in reserve that I’m really looking forward to posting in 2007. It should be another busy year in bondage.

Earlier I mentioned this big shoot from last week but am just now getting around to putting up some pictures. I’ve wanted to make a bondage DVD for some time (in addition to all the video on my website), and so finally last week I rented some time at the local dungeon and brought my friends in to shoot some stuff. Shooting video is always much harder work than I anticipate but we got some nice stuff. We had Delilah, Bettie Cho and me in front of the camera, and my friends Chainguy and Kim on the lights and camera.

We did a fun tie where I tied up both Delilah and Bettie together, and then later I put Bettie into a cruel strappado and caned her ass so hard that she finally started to cry. I’m really not a big S&M person. Bondage is definitely my main interest, but making someone cry does somewhat appeal to my sadistic side. When you’re messing with someone who’s as responsive as Bettie is, it can be quite fun.

Cleaning everything up at the end of the night took quite a while and I was beat by the time I got home. I’m guessing that we got a half hour to an hour of finished video out of the evening though editing is going to take a while. I’ll post an update as I get closer to finishing this project. I’m also planning to re-digitize some of the material on the Trannies website and make a “Best Of” DVD for Trannies In Trouble.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the other night.

Delilah all cute and helpless.

With Delilah, Sandra thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Bettie Cho resting between takes.

Delilah’s awesome heels.

Now where did I put that ball-gag?