Pornography? On my blog?

In an odd twist of surfing the other day, I stumbled across True Porn Clerk Stories again.

Yeah, I hear that snickering out there. An ''odd twist of surfing''? You stumbled across it? Again?

Hey, I have a point here. TPCS belongs to a whole little web genre of personal anecdotes about taboo subjects. A lot of it's really witty and provocative in the thought-provoking sense. As another example, dig what Diabolo Cody has to say about being a stripper at her blog Pussy Ranch. If more strippers danced as well as Ms. Cody writes, I'd be living a more sinful life.

Colorful occupations come with colorful anecdotes. As, oftentimes, colorless occupations do, if you know where to look. TPCS offers a little bit of both: there's some interesting commentary on porn and some interesting commentary on life in a crummy service industry job. The URL for the site was pretty heavily circulated a couple of years ago, and it's pretty heavily linked now -- hence stumbling across it again.

Like just about every bourgouis member of my generation, I've had my harrowing brushes with working service industry gigs, and TPCS captures that experience very well.

The clerk is of course automatically cooler than the customer because we are accepted by the public at large as snotty arbiters of movie taste, and also because anybody with a shit job is automatically cooler than someone with a 9-to-5. Too bad, no arguing, we're cooler. Our store is a nasal jewelry, snotty film school sort of place and we employ people coldblooded enough to work with hardcore pornography every single day of our lives (Oh, all right. Just every shift.) so there are plenty of extra bonus cool points right there. I have actually had word come back to me that people sometimes hate coming to our store because they feel their relative coolness is being rather harshly judged.

... and yeah, it talks a lot about sex and pornography and the people who rent porn ...

Mr. God came in a little later. He wouldn't be a particularly distinctive renter if it weren't for the huge button he always wears, which I think is homemade:

GOD IS.
IN FULL CONTROL

I am fascinated by the quirky punctuation and always wonder if it was intentional and, if so, what that means.

Mr. God always rents hardcore porn, and it's hard to keep myself from having a knee-jerk snotty reaction to that. If he's so pious, why is he renting Freaks, Hos and Flows? Which would be a good point on my part if it weren't so hypocritical. One of my beefs with traditional Christianity is that most sects treat sex as a dirty or sinful thing. I like the fact that say, Taoism, treats sex as not only good but sacred. Why the hell can't God be. In full control and enjoy a little porn?

Ali Davis has lots more to say, and she has another weblog, Aspiring Hollywood Phony, which you might want to check out as well.