State of the nation 2016

You know when you're stuck in a rut? - When the tidal wave of fame that self-publishing a new book brings fades into the general background radiation of the Yuletide holidays.

(Christmas book-launches only seem to make sense if you have an unlimited advertising budget... Or indeed any advertising budget at all. Because people tend to spend their money on StayPlations and Microsfot Eggsboxes for their jammy-faced, unappreciative kids who'll be parents themselves by the time they're 15 - And don't give a second-hand fig about you. Because books are boring and old-fashioned and someone who gives a book for Christmas is second only to the Aunt who smells of urine and buys you socks or pants every year from the Pound-shop in the crappy relative stakes.)

But I digress... I was talking to someone today about my book.  I kept correcting her by adding a sibilant 'Ss' every time she said 'your book' - I thought it was a clever way of implying the plural, what with me actually publishing at least four books and appearing in many, many more short story collections and being the editor of a handful of books for other people... But she just looked at me funny, I think that she thought I was pretending to be a snake... Or that I had a slow leak - Both of which were technically true, So her concern was real.

But the one thing she said during our conversation that struck a chord was "I've looked at your blog and it's not been updated for ages." She didn't go as far as to say, "And you're an old, fat, man who obviously can't keep up the pace where the 21st Century in general, and social media in particular is concerned," but you could tell she was thinking it.

(Actually she wasn't, she's really nice and she has danced with Mrs. Dandy of her own free will on many separate occasions - It's best not to ask!)

That spurred me on to actually write something, hastily forgetting that I'm currently working on my ghost story for this coming Friday - It's called 'Box' by the way, the next self-published book 'The Morehouse Decoration' and Vol 2 of the Windspider Saga (or Chronicles or something) called 'Child of Space' - But anyway, here we go, one hastily thrown together blog post... Erm... 

Oh! Tell you what, We've not had a 'State of the Nation' thing for a while have we?  For those of you who can't remember the last one, it's a few facts and figures about what's happened to the blog in the past month... All these facts and figures are accurate at time of going to press...

This month has seen another one of our Soviet Invasions - You know the drill, when we get thousands (and I mean actual thousands) of pageviews from Russia, Georgia and the Ukraine etc... They bumped our all-time pageviews up to 66,365 - Which isn't bad for someone who has an over-inflated view of himself and seldom, if ever, does anything pornographic to entice views - I haven't got the thighs for it any more you see. - That two-page spread that I did for that German gay-porn magazine seems like such a long time ago now.

Anywho - Here are the ten most popular post this month... In no particular order... Feel free to play Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love' whilst you go through their titles - Feel free to keep it on whilst you're reading the posts too, but you'll need to have it on repeat and it turns into a bit of an ear-worm - Sorry about that

10 - 'Leg godt' as they say in Denmark - A deeply personal sojourn into my relationship with LEGO, detailing how it has effected my family. (And for long time fans, no, it's not the one with the mini-skirt, it's the other one)

09 - One small para-diddle for a man… - About the time I became one of the most starstruck people on the planet... And I didn't even talk to anyone who's actually that famous - Oh, and I talk about Marillion for a bit too.

08 - A shiny tuppence for everyone? - This was about popular ladies' hair-styles... But not the ones they have on their heads.

07 - Bikers can be fragile little flowers. - This is where I prove how nice a person I am by holding another man's penis for him with my own hands... Well, hand... Well, thumb and forefinger. And I looked away.

06 - Deconstruction Complete - Hey! The other LEGO post... Who'd have thunk that two posts about the same subject, written a year apart could be popular in the same month with Russians?

05 - Today is the first day of the rest of your life - This is a blatant advert for my new book, Forever Girl - You should totally read it. (The Post and the book - There are links to Amazon and everything - It really is the shiznit - Plus I'm using the profits to put my daughter through tattoo school)

04 - Women are brilliant! Literally, the sweetest thing - This is a discussion about me finding out that it's not only me that doesn't fully understand the modern, fashionable definitions of gender and its fluidity. (But it's funny too - Don't get me wrong)

03 - A discussion of pornography, do not read - Oh, I didn't realise quite how often I talk about sex and sexuality, there'd certainly something Freudian in there.  But this post sort of covers the difference between naked men and naked women (yes, I know, innies and outies, but... ) and erotica and pornography

02 - Ah'm with ye Jacky-Boy - A post about lovely, lovely Scotland and how I like to pretend I'm Scottish to fox the tourists in Scotland... I also like to wear a kilt, but that's another post all together.

01 - Public Toilets are not as much fun as I first thought - There's an outward theme of deviancy isn't there? It's not intentional, these post are the ones that you guys found popular and interesting.  I've written hundreds, but theses are the ones you chose to read. This ones about me and some urine belonging to someone else... And it's on me... And I'm not proud.

So, there you are, the ten posts that you odd people found popular this month - Give them a read and see what you think. Tell your friends. You should buy some of my books too, they're cheap and you can definitely get them for Christmas- They make great presents!

Until next time kids - If I don't see you before, the Christmas Ghost story should be going up on Friday

Otherwise - Merry Christmas!

Mrs Dandy & Myself being festively debauched

Oh, By the way, it wasn't just Russia, we had hits from France, Germany, Spain, India, Kenya, Cyprus, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico as well as the UK and the US - So by reading this you're making yourself part of a planetary gestalt... Just think about that for a second - Have you got a warm glow yet?

This is not the state of the nation

I’m aware that I haven’t done a ‘State of the Dandy Nation’ post for a while. In fact, it’s been so long that there are probably people reading this who don’t even know what that means.

Every month, when this blog was new, and fresh, and throbbing, I would let you wonderful people into some of the stats from the previous month (or however long it had been since the previous time that I’d done it) – I’d include things like the top-ten all-time posts and what countries had checked the blog out more than any other, or what strange and odd things people had typed into Google to find us.

I like thinking of us as us you know… You the reader, me the purveyor of lurid scoria, the people who visit the blog purely because I very often slip a word into the Metadata that people often use when searching for pornography – It helps to foster inclusion, and it makes me giggle uncontrollably.

Did I tell you about the time when I got confused for a busty, red-headed camgirl model, for like six months or something? People were googling “IsHotMyself Dandy” (Which was the name of a site she was featured on) But were being pointed to my page, explaining about the wonderful day when I shot myself… Easy mistake to make I suppose, I’m hoping that at least some of them stayed (If you are one of those people, please leave a message in the comments… I’ll buy a red wig and post a topless photo of myself as a treat for you… Might even sign it) - I was going to post a picture of the young lady concerned... But, I couldn't really find one that was 'appropriate' - You could try the search yourself, just not a work, OK?

Anywho, nowadays, if you want to know the all-time top-ten posts, I post them on the right-hand side of the main page, so you can take a look yourself. As far as our audience goes – It’s mostly the USA, followed by Russia, the UK, then the Ukraine… With a load of European countries making up the rest of the top ten. To be honest, the only thing people have googled to find us, other than the name of the blog, are the words ‘Dzit Dit Gaii’ (Which is Navajo for ‘The Mountain that is White’) – and only goes to show that the Internet is still full of conspiracy theorists. And that they’re coming to me for answers – The poor confused lambs.

-oOo-

Anyway, I wanted to do something different this time, if you follow me on Twitter (@Chimping_Dandy) you’ll know that I occasionally post phrases, in the style of Redtop headlines that, when typed into Google – Show search results where this blog (in general, not this post in particular) is the first result. I thought that I might share a few of them with you… In the vain hope that you might find them funny, or odd, or a cry for help from a fat, bald man whose readership figures aren’t what they were when he was posting every day instead of having a lunch-break.

I’ll start with the most recent one…

• Colin Firth makes an example of lesbian weasels using cutlery – Takes you HERE
• Alvaston Nazi hunter finds pizza from 1953 – Takes you HERE
• Stickleback tin helmet brain lesion made Benedict Cumberbatch try breast feeding – Takes you HERE
• A drunk moorhen on its gap-year wears teenage student underwear – Takes you HERE
• Christmas blindness blamed on primrose cannabis vodka – Takes you HERE

You know, if you get a spare minute, maybe you'd want to try this for yourself, it'll probably waste a few minutes, it might even be fun - If you find a good one, send it in - I'll say thanks and everything... Probably

A discussion of pornography, do not read

Today's Blog might end up being a bit NSFW, if a page of text can be regarded as Not Safe For Work that is, I mean, I can understand someone sat at the desk next to you being offended by being suddenly confronted with a picture of an oiled, pneumatic, professional female model, wearing just a natural suntan and a length of knotted string appearing on your screen, but not a page of barely legible writing.

Actually, hang on a second, thinking about that, I can't really understand. It might not be professional, it might not be what you're being paid to do, but the human body is a wonderful, beautiful thing... Well,I know mine is, I can't vouch for more than about fifteen other people's though.

I've worked in a lot of offices in my life and one thing I can say with surety is that I have seen many, many, more posters, calenders and desktop wallpapers that feature topless, oiled, zero body fat, elegantly coiffed, seductively posed, perfectly airbrushed, staring straight into the camera as if they are looking directly into your soul so that it makes you think they're in a relationship with you, MEN, than I ever have bikini clad WOMEN.

(OK, I've worked in a lot of factories and building sites where it was pretty much wall to wall boobage pictures, but that doesn't help my argument, so forget I said it, OK?)

I overheard a heated discussion between a pair of workmates once, in an office that we were upgrading. I think it was the guys birthday, and one of his mates had bought him an A2 sized poster of a Page 3 Girl, not a topless picture, she was dressed in swimwear, when a tweed clad harridan came storming across the office,

'Don't think you're putting that up in here!'

'Well, no, I was going t...'

'It's pornography, degrading to women, It's disgusting, it's against the code of conduct!'

The guy dutifully rolled up his poster and put it back in the tube, then looked at her and said, 'But what about the topless Fireman calender you have next to your desk?'

'Obviously that's different, it's just a bit of fun, you're just jealous that you don't look like that!'

OK, so she was obviously a cow, and I know that all women aren't like that, not by a long way, because I wish to remain in possession of my external sexual characteristics. Women are great... Oh yes, definately, I love me some women... Hoo yes... But, there seems to be a bit of a dichotomy where the old sexualisation is concerned, where the lines between erotica and pornography exactly are - Time for some definitions I think, via the OED:

Definition of pornography

noun



[mass noun]
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement.
　
Definition of erotica

noun



[mass noun]
erotic literature or art.
Hmm... That last one wasn't a great deal of help was it? Let's see what erotic actually means then:

Definition of erotic

adjective
relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement:
Now, it might just be me, but it doesn't sound like there's any real difference between the two terms. I guess you could argue (If you were a twunt) that Pornography is actually intended to provoke a physical, sexual response by explicit, graphic, depiction, where Erotica just 'arouses the desire' as it were. Although I think that that might just be splitting hairs.

I think that a more reasonable, and easy to understand, division for the vanilla masses would be, if it's targeted at Men, it's pornography. Because men are base animals who like looking at pictures of glistening ladyparts. However, if it's targeted at women then it's erotica, because women are beautiful, cerebral, floaty creatures full of imagination, romanticism and passion.

I don't like to bring up this example because it's lazy, but it's the elephant in the room as far as this subject is concerned. E.L. James' Fifty Shades or Grey. Described by Amazon as 'An Erotic Romance', Strangely not described as 'A BDSM porno primer for the Twilight generation' The book that did more for the average birthrate of the English speaking world than anything since Kim Basinger got herself covered in Trifle in 9 1/2 Weeks.

Shouldn't it really be regarded as porn? I mean, you can't tell me that all of it's 65,000,000 copies have been purely read by people in stable relationships who have become heated whilst considering its adult themes and shown their love for each other physically after putting an interesting Guatamalan knitted bookmark carefully in the page and letting the cat out? Surely some have been read in ten minute sections by a young secretary in the disabled toilet cubicle at work with her Primark skirt up around her waist, some by students on the 08:34 from Ongar, where only one of their hands is visible above the table and the rythmic to-ing and fro-ing of the train masks any other hand movement that's being made? And still more, curled up on the sofa, with a box of chocolates, a glass of crisp chardonnay and no underwear?

But still, whaddo I know? Maybe they've all been bought by fifty-something unfulfilled people who get a kick out of thinking how naughty they're being, who am I to judge? As long as it makes you happy, and you don't do it in the crisps and snacks aisle of Sainsburys whilst there are kiddies about, more power to your elbow...

Actually, I suppose I could have put that better... Nevermind

But if you really want to read some porn that's directed at women, get yourself some Anais Nin. It'll put hairs on your palms AND it's well written, and that makes all the difference, trust me.