That was the weekend that was.

Off to the gym on Friday, where I continued my attempts to look less like a blancmange by early September. Sadly, this resulted in me picking up yet another injury, which is going to screw around with my training regime for the foreseeable. After being forced to stop running due to pain that can best be described as excrutiating - like nothing I’ve experienced in recent memory – the physio at the gym told me I’d developed what’s known as Shin splints , with the result that I’ve to reduce my training dramatically. Arse.

Saturday it was off to meet with a variety of gamer types to talk about plot for Gencon (coming along nicely, thanks), and also London ‘ling, which I’ve agreed to AST. Perhaps I ought to read the rules at some point…
Oh, and Greenwich game on Saturday night. It was OK, but I can’t really get into the whole gaming thing at all at the moment.

And then Sunday we went to the Costume sale at the Royal Opera House, where I foolishly bought myself a fine evil wizarding robe that I really couldn’t afford. I’m kicking myself for it now, but at the time I couldn’t help it.
And then finally, after a fairly mediocre Chinese meal, we scuttled off to see Men in Black 2, which is one of those special comedies that does without jokes. Or plot. Scooby Doo was better, and that’s damning with faint praise…

Mmmmm

If ever a job had "Cammie" written all over it, it's this one

The bumper book of bad porn

A friend of mine writes pornography for a living under the name Penny Birch .She’s very popular, and has a large fanbase, and you can buy her books off Amazon and everything.

Now, I’ve not really been a huge fan of porn ever since I was 16 –17 when I did a stylistic analysis of the letter pages of one of my gentlemen’s magazines and discovered that the likelihood was that all the letters had been written by the same person (possibly Neil Gaiman, who apparently started his writing career with Paul Raymond Publications, something he keeps very quiet about these days). However, one of the great jobs that Penny gets to do is to act as reader for the unsolicited porn that her publishers get sent. And that’s what brings me on to bad porn. Gloriously bad porn, which occasionally I get to read or hear about.
I mean, what sort of person can write the line “He seized upon her nipple like a hungry squid seizing its prey”, and find it erotic?
There is the man who sends her publishers a single sheet of handwritten porn about once every few weeks – presumably it will one day be a book, but until then they’re going to have to wait until September to find out where he put his…
Then – and this is my personal favourite – there is the man who sends them manuscripts about a single man living on his own in a run-down bedsit. He has no job, no money, he’s fat and unattractive…but he’s got a huge cock , and that’s all that it really takes to make a real man and a success. This is written as a running internal monologue, and it is, predictably, unintentionally hilarious. What makes this even worse is that the guy sending this stuff also sends the publishers threatening letters, claiming they owe him huge royalties.

I have suggested that the publishers issue the very worst of the submissions they receive in a Christmas-present-timed tome – “The Bumper Book of Bad Porn”. That way, everyone can read how he “…shoved his pork sword into her steaming gash…”, and how “…her nipples hopped to tumescence at the sight of his…”, or my personal favourite “She was wearing one of her red dresses that showed off her breasts. She had five of them…” Breasts? Or dresses?
After reading this stuff, I’m often laughing too much to care.

Oh, and if you want to read good porn, read Pennys books. Recommending them is the least I can do.