Poor Mojo's Newswire

Who are all of you people? What are you doing here? Why are you yelling at me? Last thing I knew I was in here in the dark talking to Tara and Diopter and maybe Sixty, if he's still around, and now all you guys are here and you're scaring me.

So, I've been through to archives and taken out the couple of things that could have been incriminating to myself or someone else. All in all, I've been pretty cautious through the years -- I've used fake names for people who were already using fake names -- but I had to double-check. I think we're good. So welcome, new people. Nice to have you here, even the folks participating in the backlash and counter-backlash like I was Paris Hilton's new hairdo, and even the ones who think I'm not a real stripper because real strippers don't use semi-colons or whatever. It's an interesting experience so far and of course, this too will pass. For those of you who just got here, you are arriving in what may very well be the twilight of this blog. After four on-and-off years of stripping, I am actively looking for a way out, or at least an extended break. For those of you who read my recent posts and think I sound like a bitter cunt, well yeah. The past four years have not been without their difficulties and they have left their mark, for sure. Once upon a time I had a magical ability to transform other people's misery at least temporarily into happiness, and as a dancer I banked off that for a long time, but it's gone now, and there it is. I'm not at all sure what the fate of this blog will be. I'm pretty busy trying to get famous for something besides being a stripper, so not looking for a book deal or anything like that. I could really use a big bag of money, though, so if you want to send me one that would be awesome.

All Things Considered, May 27, 2008 -- A new Indiana law — due to take effect July 1 — would force any bookstore that sold even one book that could be broadly described as "sexually explicit" to pay a $250 license fee and be classified as an "adult bookstore."

"The writing courses, particularly when they have the word 'creative' in them, are the new mental hospitals. But the people are very nice."

Kureishi - whose most famous work includes The Buddha of Suburbia, My Beautiful Laundrette and The Black Album - was speaking at the Guardian Hay festival about his latest novel, Something To Tell You.

He said that he was impelled to start teaching writing by the example of his children, who have tennis lessons, piano lessons and the like. He became convinced that teaching a skill was an honourable calling: "I felt if I knew something, I should pass it on."

But he said of his students, "When I teach them, they are always better at the end - and more unhappy."

He said that creative writing courses set up false expectations among students that a literary career will inevitably follow. "The fantasy is that all the students will become successful writers - and no one will disabuse them of that.