Last Modified 4/27/03
TEKKIE: 2nd Pommes Poem; UK Chatrms; PF; T's searches; Benway; T's l’il Adobe; PF UK?; TALK RADIO? Sund afternoon 4/27/03 Dear Apples--Long letter here, with several things which I think might amuse or be of particular interest to you. Maybe, except for glancing at it, you may want to save this letter for later, if your teknology permits. Or, it will be posted here on the Web at this URL for at least while yet. I realize these may be times of change for you, what with a poss. move to England coming up, & tekkie is trying to help. But lst, as the saying goes, a Lit'ry News Note: As of just now, tekkie's writ 2 thingies abt Aphroditie & beauty. First the little video Performance Art piece I mentioned drafting (tekkie described it in an email a few weeks ago). Also, this letter announces just having written a prose-poem like something whose lst line--& title I guess--is: 'Aphroditie hieratic, & using the camera-lens like a woman looking into
My 2 Aphroditie prose poems (praise poems?), are the only art writing I've done for abt 2 years.
I also wanted to write a painting (or sculpt some words?) about the pic you used during yr (next to?) last break, Fri 4/25. The 1 where astonishingly morphing, gorgeous Aphie looked like a 16 to 18 year old Swedish girl. And also I wanted to write a little something re the alluring way you looked after dressing in a more sophisticated way at close of shift on Fri. You know, wearing that elegant little collar with the little white dashes surrounding it, & the basic black slip or bra that appeared briefly in the headshot onscreen. You put it on just before Benway signed in at your chatroom. Didn't get to write it. Anyway, extraordinary images replace extraordinary images so rapidly, in your chatroom. As you may not, but probably do, already know--being the creator of those wondrous images!
A week or 2 ago, at computer in pvt in your room, you seemed to be running searches on the Web for something.
It was just a guess, but I think I knew that night what you were searching for. (You may or may not recall my asking you, after a long night's searching, if I cd. help you to find what you were looking for).
BTW, tekkie found PF for the lst time in later summer of '02. I lost the URL, & cdn't find it again for a while. In the meantime, thought I'd see how Soho--one of London's 2 strip-club areas, which I made many enjoyable tourist-type trips to some years ago--was doing these days; & whether any webcams were broadcasting out of there. That was when I first ran a search for UK chatrms. Came across Benway's site. As a WebMister, I found Benway's site interesting, and Benway interesting too--very 'Webly,' as as like to call it. Some good writing there; and it's a reasonably sophisticated site in some ways. Also checked out the cam sites he lists. Wasn't thrilled by what I saw. (Months later, t. located PF again).
Hope that something good for you came or comes from Benway's visit 4/25 at end-of-shift & I guess after hours. He appears to really know his turf, & might have useful contacts. Although I found his short stories, which have some chuckles related to cruelty to animals in them; & (2) the a certain snootyness at his site re use of his chatroom, a bit annoying. I'm sorta snooty abt. the same things Benway's snooty about, such as dopey chatroom visitors, who are also rude on top of that. Not when vistors are merely dopey (comes with the territory, I figure; & after all 'newbies,' who are all over the web these days, tend to be a bit dopey)--but when they're both dopey and rude. And besides, English snootyness, which has a long history of Snide, is I think old & tired. I like my sprightly American snootyness better, because it's radical and insurgent, & doesn't have that all that many precedents, & is forward-looking as far as some of the more twinky American thinking about equality goes.
I've just spent a couple of days looking for Brit. Isles equivalents of PF. The result: I just couldn’t find any equivalents! I kept a page of notes on the best things I found, though. With links. Tip: Watch out for Brit snootiness, Aphie. Beneath some of it I've observed things which I for 1 think are just plain cruel. Same way that some S&M ain't cute, particularly when it isn't even semi-consenting, & literally draws blood. Smackety-smack is one thing. Blunt and/or sharp instruments are another.
I'm still trying to fig. out a way of keeping strangers out of the chatroom I built to maybe talk with you in sometime. I disguised the room with a pseudo-title which I hoped wd. interest almost nobody out there: 'Editing With Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0.' (Adobe 2.0 is an old program, & few people are going to want to edit pictures using it, although I like it). I've tried to build popular sites b 4, but not at T's Rm & aphi303.html, which I designed solely in case you want to chit-chat outside of PF/PQS with me & have time to--which I realize just may be dubious, since your time online may be squeezed by your perhaps not having a home computer. (In case we ever talk at leisure offline--& I hope that we will--here's a ground rule tekkie's going to try & impose on himself unless you tell him to unimpose it: That he avoid saying things outside of PF/PQS which might overlap with PF/PQS-type-talk). Anyway, re the 'Adobe' chatroom: Despite my efforts to repel visitors I was getting about a visitor a minute for a couple of days--in other words, about 1,440 visitors a day. I was simply mortified. Disabling room roaming has vastly helped. Hooray, fewer & fewer people are showing up! If you explore that room, you might want to try out its Whisper function. Click 'private' box at lower left hand corner of page.
Wish I cd. Get the Whisper function at PQS to work, even tho' I feel that whispering shd be done in any kind of chatroom with the utmost restraint. Speaking of malfunctions: remember how come I posted the edited Aphie-pix? Due to another malfunction: because my gnc.com email program sent you fuzzy graphics. Note: By 5/10, it turns out, gnc.com plans to drop its email prog. entirely. Tekkie will migrate his email, maybe to excite. com. Remember, in an emergency, O bright one, you can always talk to Tekkie's friend if you want to at, say, benedit4@aol.com. Just say, 'to tekkie' at top of email.
I guess you just saw the last week, the pix I edited abt. month ago. In the row of four, 2nd one from the right, is I think best. Useful? Useable at PF or elsewhere?
Anecdote: I spent 2 hours signed into Benway's chatroom on Fri nite--& 2 hours on Sat night--exploring some of the balance of his interesting site, & then doubling back to his snootroom. One person came in in all that time--Jodene, who said a pleasant hello & that she'd come in to catch up on some Weblogs. I sed a pleasant hello back & that was the end of it. It was the middle of the nite in England, I guess.
Among the many things distinguishing PF, aside from the sleek look of the PF site itself & all: I gather that it offers studios. IF you go to London, & IF you decide to do chatroom work, perhaps a similar set-up can be found? I still question, not having searched in a few places I can still think of, Benway's assertion that the following are the sole alternatives:
Only Two Ways
There are two ways of making money with a webcam--The hard way & the easy way.
The Hard Way: Build a website, featuring your webcam, with all the software and hosting issues involved. Go to a lot of effort dealing with credit card billing and passwords for your site. Spend a lot of time and effort promoting your site, trying to compete with all the similar sites out there, in an effort to get visitors to come to your site. The Easy Way: Simply click this banner. iFriends will provide you with free hosting, your own profile page and chatroom etc.
A Webmaster's having some kind of an affiliation or other with advertisers is of course normal (though supplying feeds or other material to advertisers is a little unusual, b/c usually it works the other way 'round!)--but the idea of incomparably sparkling You, Aphie, getting mixed in with the wilderness of blah chatgirls at I-Friends horrifies me. Like I sed in a letter a few weeks ago, I (am among those who) consider you a Star, which you are. You positively shine even among the eye-candy so attractively presented at PF & PQS I think. But it might be harder to shine among as many clouds as there are at I-F. And all those terribly tiny little pictures....
Too bad that PF doesn't, or can't, run feeds in from London. The research I've done suggests to me that they'd have very little competition there....
I've thought a whole lot about the following of late: Depending on your voice, Aphie, you might also ALSO make a terrific late-night showhost on TALK RADIO. You're so quick, & bright; & after all, Pommes is used to handling with aplomb, incoming talk....
I hope that you find some of the ideas in this letter useful to you.
XOXOXOX from Tekkie. # PS: I'm thinking of writing something on the Cremaster image of the 2 blimps lifting 1 chorus-girl on high from the anonymity of a chorus line (unless I just did). I must remember to re-peek at Velasquez. Wonder who the Danish guy you mentioned planning to look at in NYC, is. Note from my Home Front: In the most recent year of my 3 1/2 year & still ongong war with my landlord, what shd. pop up once again, but tekkie's early childhod Asthma. After those battles calm down, & after t. launches troops for several counter-attacks he's planning, t. due for a visit to the Red Cross tent. 'Asthma,' as we know, is a little-known Dutch artist whose work reflects the influence of both Mondrian & Vermeer). <:o))