Her petite pussy lips, his bulging trousers, and the immemorial magnificence of mystic palpable real otherness*

*All genuine quotations, verbatim


I should like to nominate newbie novelist Kerry Reichs, daughter of the more famous Kathy, for the annual Bad Sex Award offered by London's Literary Review.

Here, from Reichs' debut novel The Best Days of Someone Else's Life, is the nominated entry:

I savoured remembering the First New Kiss, knees touching on the couch at Russia House right before last call, and felt a trail of sparks shoot down my hoo-hah highway.

You have to really work on prose like that.

Yes yes, it's chick lit. But still.

ZOMG!!11!!1 Six figures!

Oh yes, it would be nice if that title referred to my income ... heh ... but ... haha .. I probably wouldn't blog about it .... HAHAHAHAHAHA oh well. Sorry, let me regain my composure for a moment here.

No, the title refers to the number of visits to this site since I first installed the stats counter (the one with the numbers at the bottom of the page, not the country-counting one in the sidebar; that's more recent) in March 2006. I didn't expect to get to six figures for another few days, but a couple of links from well-attended sites yesterday put a positively alarming spike in the visitor stats.

I gather that many bloggers obsess about numbers of visitors and comments but I've given it much less attention than I thought I would when I installed the counter, which remains the very basic freebie one that doesn't do all that much fancy stuff. If one blogged in order to make money, I suppose it would matter more -- but then, if one blogged in order to make money it would be incredibly tedious and dreary and I wouldn't do it, so.

My favourite features of the stats counter are (1) the maps that show you where visits are from, (2) the details about visitors' computers, browsers, locations, addresses and so on that help you to stalk your stalkers, and (3) the often hilarious information about what search terms have led total strangers from Chile and Uzbekistan to finish up at your blog.

I haven't done a 'search term' post for ages, but an odd fact leaps out at me every time I check them out. Apart from the usual variations on the themes of 'Pavlov' and 'Cat', the two search terms that most frequently land people here are, wait for it, octopus tentacle porn and frog cake.

The latter now has its very own Wikipedia entry, complete with cross-section. Frog Cake t-shirts are also available.

Do you have any blondes?

Right, that's done it: I will be renewing my subscription to crikey.com.au whenever it comes up and whatever it costs, and they won't hear a peep out of me except for the rustling of my money.

I mean, where else could you find out completely priceless stuff like this?

'Former tax office auditor and legal brothel industry lobbyist Chris Seage writes:

While many Sydney CBD businesses are crying fowl because of the APEC presence, some of Sydney's brothel barons are cock-a-hoop at the potential for big business during the forum. Brothels located outside of the city's declared and restricted zones, particularly in Surry Hills, have been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.

The most frequently asked questions from our economic allies are:

How many entrances are there to the brothel?
Is the brothel in a discreet location?
Do I need a booking?
Does the brothel have a stringent privacy policy?
Is there discreet parking available instead of off-street?
Can the car park spots accommodate big cars?
Can a client be taken immediately to a room?
Do you have any blondes?'


So here's a question: are the taxpayers of these visitors' countries paying for their recreational needs?

And here's another question: are any of the APEC visitors women, and if so, are any of these intriguing inquiries being made on their behalf?

I don't know, I really don't. On the rare occasions when I get to go to Sydney for work, I spend the evenings either networking over a working dinner or sitting in my hotel room frantically preparing for the meeting/conference session/writers' festival panel/whatever-it-is that I have come to Sydney for. And after that I try to get the sleep I know I'm going to need in order to function properly at whatever event I'll be taking part in the following day.

But even if I had the requisite time and stamina, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't choose to spend the evening forking out fistfuls of my own or somebody else's hard-earned for the thrill of shagging expensive strangers.

Make them laugh till their knickers fall down

Sophie Cunningham had a terrific article in The Age over the weekend about sex, love and partnership, and one of the things she talks about there is the ridiculous equation in public/popular culture of sexiness with (in particular) skinniness and/or buffness.

Now, as I'm a rather traditionally built lady myself, the Mandy Rice-Davies argument ('Well, she would say that, wouldn't she?') might be said to apply, but my thinking here is actually to do with various well-padded blokes. Who among us would deny that Robbie Coltrane is sexy? Gerard Depardieu? John Howard the-actor-not-the-politician? Well, who with any brains, anyway. Who with any heart.

It's not about the voyeuristic, one-way effect of the still photograph; it's about the vitality and humanness and connective spark of the way that people talk and move and -- most of all -- interact. Which is, after all, what sex is supposed to be about, rather than onanistic drooling over a photo of some C-list celebrity's lumpy, surgically enhanced bazoombas.

It's not all good, of course; I've just been reading a novel in which the wife of a corpulent but enthusiastic husband says that having sex with him is like having the wardrobe fall on top of her, and I'm sure many a partner of many a porker will recognise the feeling. But as Sophie correctly points out, part of the appeal of the above-named and many other well-upholstered chaps is that they're funny:

'As Hollywood actor Will Smith put it, somewhat inelegantly, in Britain's Empire magazine: "Comedy is better than muscles, better than money, better than looks. It's like if you can make a girl laugh out loud, you're in. It's almost like the pressure of the laugh makes her underwear fall off."'