I’ve been talking to Jay Holben, the director who’s doing the documentary, Camgirls, and a person I consider a pretty decent, creative, guy and thinking about where the cam world is going. I’ve been more watching and reading than performing in recent years, but I’m still a part of the community and while no one’s asked me about “the book” recently - except Jay Holben - who wasn’t being a douche about it.

The book I’m talking about is Digital Burlesque: When the Girl Next Door Goes Global, which is/was the working title for the book I am/was/will always be sort of working on, I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Basically all I do is cram myself with tidbits of info and hope like hell one day it’ll all come into place, if only as a memoir when I’m 80.

But lately I’ve been thinking sooner than that, but no time soon. The documentary sounds interesting though, from what I’ve heard about it from both Jay and my “sources”. ;D

It’s true, I’ve been cut pretty much completely out of it, but I’d been hoping like hell about that since before we even started because I’m shy about cameras, I much prefer the other side of the lens, outside of my webcam and even then I prefer stills because I’m less goofy looking/acting. So thank god for the cutting room! I do happen to know approximately what footage had been left in and where it’s going, but it’s still in post and I signed a contract and stuff, so I’ll just say it all sounds so very interesting. I love the camworld.

It occured to me the other day that when Jennifer Ringley was on Leno or Letterman or whatever the hell I posted, I bet half the audience didn’t even have the internet. Like half the people in the studio audience OR half the people in the viewing audience, I don’t know, but I bet there were a lot of people who really didn’t understand what she was doing and what it all meant. But everyone I know, at least from back then, did. And it’s stuff like that I’m trying to convey in the book, or at least I’d like to, but I have trouble when it comes how to present it. And in what order. And how long it should be. Plus the cam world keeps changing. The focus has been on YouTube for a while but there’s been a lot of undercurrents that the mainstream media, the “world at large” hasn’t caught onto because for a while there, it appeared as though video killed the camgirl. It didn’t, but that’s a whole other chapter.

Then there was also this pesky USC 2257 law (that was recently struck down), that I was trying to follow but personally, I find US politics really fucking boring. I find Canadian politics really fucking boring. (Unless either affects me, of course.) While I saw the effects of this law and saw how it was detrimental to both legitimate businesses (Camwhores for example) and our rights and freedoms should that kind of insanity spread north of the border, I paid attention, printed everything out and stuck it in my box of “book stuff”, which is slowly becoming two boxes, badly in need of proper sorting and filing. I’ll go through that crap later, I was too busy watching YouTube and trying to keep track of this iJustine thing. And the current state of the girls I’ve mostly been watching since I decided to write a book.

Anyway, I’m gonna shut up now. I just felt like addressing the world today, so hello! I hope you are having a good Thanksgiving to all my neighbours to the south and enjoy your festivities!

Jennifer Ringley on Letterman:

Who the hell is Jennifer Ringley?

Well hello there internets, I’m glad you’re here because I have quite a bit to write about this evening.

First things first, I added a new page to this site under the “People In My World” category, god I’m so productive, I know. I don’t know how I do it either. But seriously, it can get confusing when I start writing about people so I’m trying to write a blurb or two on each person in my world for those moments when you just don’t know who the fuck I’m talking about. It’s taken me, oh, six months to do Jesse & Jen’s paragraphs, but I’m happy with them, so up they went.

In other news, Jen showed up at my house with a box tonight and inside that box was a baby rat. (Yes, another one.) We’ve decided to name her Twinkle (Twink for short) and she’s pretty damn cute. This video is of when we were introducing Twink to Zilla in the bath tub, as suggested by some friends of mine.

So far the introductions are going well, except Zilla dragged Twink from one end of the cage to the other by the scruff of the neck a few times. Twink didn’t seem to be hurt or distressed while this was happening so we just let it happen for a bit before putting them in separate cages for the night. I was thinking that since Twink is a baby, maybe Zilla was thinking of it as her baby; either that or maybe it’s just an establishing dominance thing. Despite having many rats as pets I don’t know all that much about rat behaviour, now that I think about it. I’ve only ever had single rats except for Kurt & Courtney, which I got in grade 9. The unfortunate thing was that in the case of my rats, instead of mating, Courtney really did kill Kurt. He wouldn’t leave her alone and one morning I found him inside their little house, missing a good chunk out of his throat. Ever since then, I only ever had single rats. Lovely story, huh?

I think Zilla & Twink are going to end up getting along fine, they’re already grooming each other, which I’m assuming is a good sign, so on some level they’re already getting along. Still, seperate cages at night for the first little while, I think, just to be on the safe side.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was how awesome my friend Sini is. No matter how low I feel, Sini can always make me feel better with just how awesome she is. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at her YouTube account. :D

Too lazy? Click here for just one of her gems:

There just aren’t any words and that’s why I adore her. :D

Well, it’s time for bed. Happy Tuesday!

These pictures made me happy, so I thought I’d share. :)

This is Ana’s hair mixed with mine (hers is the pink/blonde), which I shaved off on March 1st:

Pic 1
Pic 2

Man, this WordPress thing sure does tend to attract a lot of spambots. Deleting spam from certain posts has almost been a full-time job lately. Any ideas on what I can do to make them stop?

My plan for this week is to fill out the pages under “The People in my World”. I realize I should be working on a layout but honestly, I can’t even think of one right now and I don’t really mind being generic for right now, so nyah.

I’ve spent most of today editing pictures and video of our big trip to Muskoka over the weekend. Once things are finished being written and uploaded, I’ll be making a big post with everything over at my Live Journal. That post won’t be dial up friendly, just a heads up.

Thursday, as I may have mentioned a time or two this month, is my birthday and as the days between now and then melt away, I’m becoming increasingly nervous about my show at Camwhores Thursday night. The show depends on certain people being here and helping me out and I’m afraid that something will come up at the last minute and make what I have planned impossible, or at least not as good as it could have been. This always happens, I get nervous like this before a show every single time I do one and it always ends up fine. This is the first time I’ve booked a solid hour of time, though, and I worry that it’ll be an hour of wasted bandwidth.

Whatever, it’ll be fine. It just will godammit!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for right now, BYE!

So, apparently my biological father’s in the audience and he’s having a hard time with “what I do” since he thinks “what I do” is porn. Well, it’s not…exactly. It IS adult though and that’s why I do it at Camwhores.com because let’s face it, I don’t want my kids stumbling on it any more than you do and the fact is, they’re not going to get to see anything of mine over there without access to an adult’s credit card. (And if they do, you’re probably a horrible parent.)

Wanna know what I do on cam? I masturbate. The only difference between me broadcasting it on a webcam and you doing it wherever and however you do it is that thousands of people watch me while I do it. I do this maybe four or five times a year (and I masturbate a hell of a lot more than that, as do most of the people reading this, possibly my father included). I make people happy, and that makes me happy.

Making people happy is what I do, mostly.

But I don’t just do it by adult means. I also do it by writing,
fiction and non-fiction, every single day of my life. Writing this site,
in my Live Journal, talking to people in IM and other places, using forums
and e-mail…I’m really really busy. The reason I stay on
Camwhores.com even though it’s become more porn-ish (it was very
different when I started there) is because I can stream live and actually
chat with the audience in real time and not be censored like you are on
YouTube. If you wanna flash your titties, you just go on ahead. Some of us
womenfolk have that weird exhibitionist streak in us, see Girls Gone Wild
or Mardis Gras for further proof.

Masturbation isn’t something I’m ashamed of, and no one will ever make me feel ashamed of it. Not when there’s 200+ women on that site, all so so different, from different cultures and different walks of life, who do the same thing (and more) and that’s just on ONE english-speaking cam portal. There’s a lot of history to this thing I call cam culture, and I love being in the thick of it, sorry. *shrug*

There’s no other place on the whole damn internet where I can do what I do there, even fully clothed. There’s also a community there if you look past the titties to see it. When I update my cam on Camwhores, almost instantly friends I’ve had online for 5 years will pop up and
we’ll have a nice chat. Some are cammers, some are viewers, and some I know more about than members of my own family. It’s fun (and very very weird, which is why I don’t do it very often anymore).

But you have kids!

So? Do your kids know what you’re doing after they go to bed? No? Neither do mine.

Obviously they see some aspects of the things I do online, but I’m not an idiot. They only see what’s age appropriate, and there are safeties in place. I’m on Camwhores.com exclusively, a site which is filtered on every computer they touch at home or at school, and most of their friends have filters in place too. So it’ll be a long while, I think, before they have a chance to stumble on that aspect of my life. Chances are I’ll tell them long before they find it on their own. The internet’s a big place after all.

Why is it called Camwhores?

It’s a tongue-in-cheek term similar to how a fanatic for shoes is called a “Shoe whore”. Camwhores are people who are fanatical about expressing themselves, ideally live, through their webcams.

Any questions? E-mail me. (Sunny Crittenden (at) Sunny Crittenden.com)

Probably way more than I should. :|

Yesterday a box from Amazon came and inside was Sims 2 Pets and Yoshi’s Island for the Nintendo DS (Thanks Ray <3), which meant yesterday was a total write off as far as doing anything even remotely productive. I’m a little bit ashamed to admit this, but basically I did nothing from 2pm-4am but play Sims 2 Pets because despite it being a really stripped down version of the PC game, it’s strangely addictive. I haven’t touched Yoshi’s Island yet, but I’m assuming it’s as awesome as The New Super Mario Bros. is, which, until yesterday, was the only DS game I had.

Part of the reason I spent yesterday playing video games is because Blake was setting up my spiffy new (refurbished :p) external hard drive on my iBook which I’m ridiculously giddy over. My iBook only has a 20 gig hard drive, half of which is permanently full of music and Word files, which was making it difficult to edit videos. My video camera uses mini DV tapes that are an hour long and to transfer ONE of those onto my hard drive, it’s approximately 16 gigs, which is a problem when you only have 13 gigs free at any given time. So what I would do is transfer as much as I could, then spend days editing each and every clip to burn on CD and free up room, but doing it this way meant that if I was editing videos, I couldn’t really do anything else. Forget opening up Photoshop. I mean, P-shop would run just fine with a full hard drive, but there was no room to save anything, so there was no point in trying. Now with the external HD, I can transfer all of my videos onto that and edit them from there AND I can save high quality versions of video, unplug the drive and burn them to DVD on Blake’s PC. Genius.

Now, if I could get my hands on a Wacom tablet, my technological life would be perfect. Actually that’s a lie, I still need a functioning printer, but in my hierarchy of needs, that’s just below a tablet. Basically (I’ve been saying “basically” a lot, my old media teacher would shoot me for that)…basically, I want the tablet for making ‘zines and comics and I’m convinced that there’s a way to hack apart webcam software to upload a picture directly from a tablet to the ftp of my choosing (here or Live Journal), which I really want to do because it would be like drawing or writing more or less in real time. I don’t think that’s been done before and I’d like to be the first. :) But even if I can’t figure out how to do that, I still think a tablet will help me out quite a bit with the ‘zine/comic production. I’m not totally sure if I’d sell these online, but currently I have a few local places really interested in selling them for me if I ever get them off the ground.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails this week from people who wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday, which is in a week & a half. I forgot that with this new site, I don’t have a wishlist link up, so here it is. I realize that sucker’s 6 pages long now and no one wants to sort through stuff and it’s SO STUPID that you can’t view an Amazon wishlist by priority, so as far as what I’d like the most, the art-related books are what I’m obsessed with at the moment. Our local library is soooooo tiny (one day I’ll be doing a video blog from there so you guys can see it), their art section isn’t even one full shelf and I’m in dire need of some inspiration. Other than those, the thing I want the most is on page 5 and is a documentary called In the Realms of the Unreal. I used to have a copy of it on my computer than I downloaded a long time ago, but I had to delete it to make space on my hard drive for other things. There’s also a book on my wishlist all about Henry Darger that I’d really like to read because I find him, his art and his story in general completely fascinating.

Since we’re on the topic of my birthday, I’ve scheduled a members-only show over at Camwhores for March 1st at 11pm EST. This show is largely tentative because with the problems I’ve had uploading, there’s a chance that streaming won’t work either, but I figure with a streaming show, Camwhores is connecting directly to my cam and there’s no ftp involved, so it should theoretically be fine. BUT I thought I’d give a warning in case technical difficulties prevent me from doing this show. Also, I currently have 5 free trials for Camwhores to give away if anyone wants them, just e-mail me (Sunny (at) SunnyCrittenden.com) and I’ll hook you up. :) Also feel free to give show suggestions since I have no idea what I’ll be doing for the show yet.

And with that, I’m out. But before I go, here’s a video of spiders on drugs:

So obviously, this is going to be the new site. I’ve had a lot of comments and e-mails of protest and confusion about the whole thing, so if there are any questions, ask ‘em here and I’ll do my best to keep everyone in the loop. (Honestly, a lot of times I forget that I’m not the only one looking at/reading this shit) Just do me a favour & mind the mess over the coming months, it’s probably gonna get a hell of a lot worse as I fuck things up completely trying to learn a whole new system I don’t even have the first clue about.

As an aside, there’s the Visual Quickstart Guide to Wordpress on my wishlist if anyone wants to help me out.

Someone asked me what’s going to happen to good ol’ LJ once this site is up & running the way I want it to be and I don’t really have an answer for that question yet. What I do know though, is that I feel gross mentioning movies or books or whatever in LJ and using my Amazon affiliates links to link to anything because it feels like I’m advertising to my friends and I think that’s wrong, so that was one reason to move away from LJ a bit. There’s also the drama involving cut tags and NSFW images, that really, I just don’t want to deal with anymore. Plus…some other stuff that’s a little more deep & neurotic that I might get into one day, but today’s just not that day. There are reasons, good reasons. :)

The “Sunnybananas” LJ will probably always exist, I mean I’ve got 5 years worth of my life archived there….I dunno. I just don’t know yet.

People have been asking me for like, a year now, what’s going to happen with Camwhores because it’s been pretty obvious that I’m not as into the site as I used to be - or at least, that’s the surface perception. The truth is that I got married, had another baby, bought our first house far far away from everything I’ve known my whole life and then…2006 was probably the worst year of my entire life. Our roof started caving in, I went crazy (like literally crazy, hospitalized, medicated & the whole works and I even did so in front of the whole fucking internet! I’m such a prostar.), I disowned damn near my entire family and then a few days before Xmas, I had to call the police on my mother which is this whole thing I promise I’ll get into publicly eventually, but not right now.

I just wanted to clear up that my activity over at Camwhores (or rather, lack thereof) has absolutely NOTHING to do with the site itself, the people who are there or any of that other crap. In fact, I’m a little bummed that I’ve been missing out on some of the changes over there and as I’ve been planning changes in my life and planning for the changes to come, Camwhores has played large in my mind. Truly, Kevin’s gonna have to drag me from that site kicking & screaming one day. This bitch ain’t goin’ nowhere. :D

Plus, some of the changes coming sound pretty goddamn interesting and I wanna be there for ‘em. :):):)

Some other questions I’ve received recently involve the cam book I’ve been “working on” for like…ever, called Digital Burlseque and the camgirls documentary myself and a bunch of other girls in the “scene” were filmed for.

So let’s start with the book…here’s what happened (well, the Reader’s Digest version, anyway):

Three or four years ago this guy named Brad King messages me on Yahoo (or MSN or AIM, I forget now) and basically I was all, “Cooooool, you’re a writer! With a real published book on Amazon & everything!” So we began talking and he tells me that I should write a book, I laugh and say “About what?” and he says “this webcam stuff”. Well, I didn’t take that seriously but then I got thinking and decided he might be right, so I started collecting and printing out articles on the subject and started throwing them in a box, knowing that eventually, this stuff wouldn’t even be on the internet anymore and if I was going to write a book on the subject, I should start squirreling away these things now.

About a year later, Brad tells me that he’s starting this small indie press that’s going to only cater to geek and internet culture, “it’s going to be to geeks what Sub-Pop was to grunge” were his exact words, and that Digital Burlesque would be the perfect book for such an endeavor, so get working on it! So I did. I conducted months and months of interviews both one on one and through forums, I wrote a proper outline as I was asked to do, I even got the first draft of the book about 3/4 finished, but then everything sort of went to shit.

First of all, I don’t know how to write a fucking book and writing books is hard, especially books that deal with dates and facts and doing things “first” and oh so many egos. I got absolutely zero support from Brad, my so-called editor and then I didn’t hear from him for months until he messages me to say that he’s taking a teaching position at some fancy schmancy new media & communications university. But of course, this means “big things” for Demon Press, right? He started telling me how this means that Demon Press could potentially become a univiersity press blah blah blah and this means good stuff blah blah. So great, I get excited again, resume working on the book and then I’m blown off for like, another year.

So while I waited for SOME KIND OF GODDAMN DIRECTION AND/OR COMMUNICATION or I dunno, HELP, I worked on another book, called Textibitionism, which I was going to just publish myself but I sent it to Brad and from what I understood of the conversation, he was going to publish it and I’d finish Digital Burlesque next.

The last message I got from Brad was 6 months ago saying that his students will be doing layout during second semester, which would be like…now. So I said, “great, lemme know if I need to do anything” and the response was “Write your damn book!” so I took it that he was talking about Digital Burlesque and not Textibitionism.

Well, sorry honey, but I can’t finish a book in 6 months and in the 4 years I’ve been “working on” it, Brad hasn’t even managed to edit what I’ve sent him, so well…fuck you! And hey, guess what? Newsflash, I’m not dropping everything because you’ve decided you’re gonna get your shit together. I mean, I’m sorry it just doesn’t work that way. I’ve been sitting here literally starving, often struggling, worrying, stressed out, going to the goddamn Food Bank on occassion to keep my kids fed and you’re gonna dick me around KNOWING ALL OF THIS? No, I’m sorry, the book, whenever finished (and it will be one day), is not yours anymore.

To add insult to injury, a couple of weeks ago I get a comment on my MySpace from Brad saying that as difficult as I am, happy new year anyway and that maybe “someday” I’ll communicate with him again. *eyerolls* Just…fuck off. I’m probably one of the easiest people on the whole goddamn internet to get ahold of and you wanna pin bad communication on me? Dude…

So that’s the saga of “the book”, more or less. I’m still working on it, in the sense that I live cam culture and speak with people within cam culture every single day, I print and collect everything I can and one day, the book will be done, but I don’t care if it’s finished one year from now or 30 and I don’t care how many books are published on the topic in the meantime. (Well, unless they’re inaccurate…. ;))

As for the documentary, honestly your guess is as good as mine at this point. Last I heard it was still in post-production and god only knows when it’s gonna be finished. Truthfully, I hope they cut me out of it completely (and they just might). I don’t regret doing it or anything like that, I just didn’t think this “my face on a big screen” thing all the way through when I agreed to do it…it’s just….creepy….

Anyway, screw all this “shop talk”, let’s get down to WoW. :D

This is Posey, she’s a lvl 60 bad-ass tree druid who’s really looking forward to Lifebloom because it sounds as bad-ass as I know she is. :D She hasn’t done MC, she hasn’t even seen Onyxia yet, she’s a long ways off from AQ20/40 and since 3 of the best people in her guild (who, unlike just about everyone else in the guild actually knew wtf they were doing) left today, she probably won’t be doing any of the above. Regardless, I’m gonna do my best to get her to 70 anyway because I really like being a tree.

Now, notice that I didn’t mention the server she’s on. There’s a reason for that. See, when I first started playing in June, I posted on LJ that I got an account and that I’d be playing on such & a such a server because some of my real life friends had made a guild there. Being a newb, I didn’t know this was a dumb thing, I was just writing about what’s going on in my life like I always do and it never ocurred to me that random people who read my crap on the internet every day would follow me to a WoW server, but some did and it’s caused some minor issues that I’d like to keep from blowing up into major ones in the future.

My guild leader last week made it clear that she doesn’t want “people in that industry” (meaning the internet porn industry because y’know, that’s all I do and you’re ALL nothing but a bunch of degenerate pedophile perverts who are ALL going to hell in a handbasket :D) in her guild, so fuck it, this week I think I’m gonna start a new one. On Tuesday when the expansion begins, Blake & I are going to choose a brand-spankin’ new server (as I’m sure Blizzard will be adding a few) to start the lvl 1 blood elf toon that’s been in my head since we found out that, indeed, BEs would be the new race. And we’re gonna play these toons, farm some gold - hopefully with some of you - and then when we’ve got enough people in our posse to sign a charter, this new guild will begin.

And yes, it has a name and yes, a tabard’s already been designed, but those are gonna be a surprise. :D The only rule (so far) though, is that all toons in this guild have to be blood elves, with two notable exceptions:

1. Druids, since they have to be tauren.
2. Transferred 60’s. (If anyone wants to go that route…)

Oh, and if you’re a ninja-looting douchebag, under 18 years of age or an egomaniac, don’t even bother.

Obviously I’ll post more details in regards to all of this next week, but if you’re a WoW player and aren’t sure yet what to do with all this new content, there’s an option. :)

I haven’t really thought about ranks, guild rules and what kind of guild this is going to end up being, but I figure that can be played by ear for the most part and a lot of that is dependent on the group we get anyway so we’ll worry about that later. All I know is that I’m pretty flexible & just wanna have FUN godammit!

Questions? Input? E-mail me (Sunny @ SunnyCrittenden.com) or leave a comment.

And with that, I gotta go work on some other stuff…