Dirty Books

My entry last week called "I Didn't Know I Was A Pornographer" reminded me of my first paid writing job. It was for a company in Greenwich Village that published dirty novels. This was before dirty books got promoted to "pornography." I was determined to be a writer and I didn't care what I had to write.

There were four of us. The editor was a guy with colorful shirts and earrings. This was before colorful shirts and earrings made you a hip attorney. There was a very tall woman writer with severe glasses (who I was not really sure was a woman at all), and a pathetic bearded nerdy writer. Actually, counting me, there were two pathetic bearded nerdy writers.

There were two rules. First, each of us had to write a 150 page book every week. That's 30 pages a day. I can't type 30 pages a day.

Second, when some ecstasy-crazed woman screamed "Ooooooooooooh....", we were not allowed to use more than three O's. Apparently, they previously had trouble with lazy writers filling pages with "Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh's....."

I lasted exactly one day.

It just reconfirms the first rule of writing -- write about things you know.

I Didn't Know I Was A Pornographer

Two months ago I wrote a blog entry called "Interporn". It was a speculation on the issue of internet pornography.

A few days ago, I was checking to see where traffic to this blog comes from. I wanted to see which keywords are leading people here. The number one keyword is not "advertising"; it's not "contrarian"; it's not "marketing" or "business" or anything to do with the advertising or marketing industries. It's "interporn".

Almost 7% of the people who get to this blog are actually looking for pornography.

The information superhighway my ass.

Interporn

On October 15th, 2007 TAC predicted there would be a firestorm over the influence of internet pornography on children in the upcoming year.

Now, Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced that all ISPs that feed houses and schools will be required to provide a filtering system to protect children from explicit pornography and violence. Of course, Australian civil libertarians are predicting the end of the world.

This is an issue that would have traction with parents and I'm amazed that with all the self-righteous god-bothering in the presidential primary campaigns there hasn't been a candidate who has seized on it.

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TAC Predicts

Casey Stengel once said, "I never make predictions, particularly about the future." The Ad Contrarian does not have the wisdom to follow Casey's sage advice. TAC predicts:

Within the next year there will be a very disturbing report/investigation/article on the influence of internet pornography on the sexual behavior of young people.

This report will create headlines, a furor, lots of posturing among the political class, and will even be a factor in the presidential race.

There will be hearings, editorials and lots of smoke blown. And nothing will happen.

Remember, you read it here first.

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