Miscellaneous – Page 3

Freedom.

One word. A lot of meaning.

What I’ve seen over the many years I’m alive, is that freedom is precious. And unfortunately, there seem to be more and more laws that limit our freedom. All for the greater good of course, to protect us from bad things (even when it’s entirely unclear what those bad things are, or when those bad things only seem to live in the minds of an unhappy few, a.k.a. the lawmakers).

I’m not going to make this a political thing though. There are plenty of blogs and other sources that dip their toes and more in that area of life, and this is a naturist blog.

What struck me, the other day, is that some people in the textile world seem to be so ‘happy’ with limiting (or limited?) freedom that they happily will reject our rights to enjoy our version of freedom.

Here in the Netherlands and, I’m sure, in other places in the world, it’s fine to be nude in certain places. In the UK, for instance, being nude isn’t rude / illegal / officially offensive as long as the nude person is just nude, i.e. not displaying any sexual urges like masturbating in the road and things like that.

In the Netherlands we can be nude in places that aren’t close to the ‘main roads’. There’s even a specific law article dedicated to that (Article 430a for those from the Netherlands who don’t know). And yet, when I’m naked in such a place, some people have the nerve to tell me that it’s not legal to do that, or that it’s offensive, rude and whatever other words they like to throw at that.

Luckily there aren’t many, but those that have these objections are the least open to reason and debate, and they don’t even want to hear about the legality of nudity in such places.

And that is the kind of closed-mind, happy to limit other people mindset I’m referring to here.

Why do people have those tendencies? Do they feel threatened by us? Do they think our nudity is taking some privilege or right away from them?

I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve asked people that on occasion, certainly the ones that don’t ‘want’ others to be nude in safe spaces.

So far I haven’t found a satisfying answer to those questions…

The sexual content warning on TV

I’m currently enjoying a series on Netflix called “Love, Death and Robots“. It’s entirely weird at times and I love that. It fits me. (And hooray, there are new episodes in a new season!)

A few days ago I saw an episode called “Shape Shifters”. The rating for this episode:

Yes, it had some scary stuff in it (spider) and there was fighting, killing and shooting (fighting hand), but I guess the 16 year age limit (probably American, I’m not sure if this applies to the Netherlands) was because of the ‘sexual content’ warning (four feet, I guess you know it).

Now ‘Love, Death and Robots’ had a few episodes with definite sexual content, and for those I understand the warning. For ‘Shape shifters’ however, I was surprised about this warning after watching the episode.

I know the reason they put this thing there, but it is highly ‘overrated’ to label what I saw as sexual content.

Spoiler alert here, so if you don’t want to see what this is about, do not continue.

Play dick please

A few days ago I posted this tiny workout video on Vimeo. Just for fun. And yes, I know the light sucks and then some.

The next day I got one comment on the video. It was: Play dick please, posted by a person calling himself “Hector”.

In a knee-jerk reaction I trashed the comment.

An hour later I wondered if I had done the right thing. After all, I might have taken that comment as a hook to educate “Hector” that not all nude men are there to play dick please. Had I wasted an opportunity to tell “Hector” that naturism isn’t about that?

Now, days later, I’m still not sure if this was the right reaction, but more and more I’m leaning towards the notion that Hector wasn’t there to be educated. He wanted someone to play dick. At least he said please…

No post yesterday

You may have noticed there was no post on zjuzdme.org yesterday. This is not one to make up for it.

Last week Friday I had to let my cat Obsidian (Obsi) go into the big sleep. He turned out to be very ill, and in pain. Cats don’t show they’re in pain so I didn’t know. The vet found out during a check. So my mind wasn’t much on creating a blog post here.

He was 17 years old lived with me for almost 9 years.

I miss him.

That bodies thing

After seeing the umpteenth (absolutely well-meant) comment “Lovely bodies” on a picture with naked bodies, I suddenly thought: “Is naturism really about the bodies?”

When I go to a naturist beach, resort, place, something somewhere, I like to meet people. Not too many, but real people. I know people have bodies – that bit becomes apparent to everyone somewhere in life.

The more bodies I’ve seen, the more I’ve become interested in the faces over those bodies. The people behind them, inside those bodies.

Perhaps I’m weird, because naturism is about being naked, right? Actually it’s only partly about that for me. It’s about being natural. Real. About the human being that someone is, not the person someone’s “supposed to be” according to the rules and regulations of fashion and “proper conduct”. As far as I’m concerned, a lot of those rules can be shoved to a place where the sun doesn’t shine. I’m leaving it up to your imagination where that might be, but a deep, dark cave would work in this case.

Bodies are good things to have, I entirely agree. They make up a big and the visible part of who we are. They let us move around and we recognise each other because of them. Either through ‘facial recognition’ or by body shape.

Bodies often tell us about the things its wearer has been through, by way of scars and marks, but the real deal is still inside that body. I’m not just my body. There’s more to me, and I’m sure there’s more to you as well.

Be a good buddy for your body. Also be a good person. Someone that people can say “lovely person” about, instead of “lovely body”.

Longing for fairy land

Yes. I long for fairy land. Especially the area where a specific emperor lives.

Did you think of that one too?

I’d visit that emperor and convince him that this was the way to go. That everyone in his country should dress like this when it’s possible, weather-wise.

It’s a dream, I know, but I cherish it. Freedom for all, not having to cover up when you don’t want to. To be accepted the way you are, with the emperor in the lead. Literally, like in the above image.

Last evening I assembled a new desk. It’s a big, heavy thing from Ikea. Guess what I wore, doing that. Indeed. I wore the emperor’s clothes. If it’s fit for royalty, it’s fine for me as well.

Time and again I am so aware of how much easier it is to move around naked, to squat down and tighten a screw, to bend down and pick something up. No fabric that gets in the way, squeezes or is just plain old uncomfortable. Nothing like that. And nothing that held back the heat from my body – because putting together an Ikea desk is a warm job. The box said to do it with 2 people. This was where my split personality came in handy, by the way.

Truly, that emperor should have stuck to his naked guns and he should have made going nude an official thing.

Simply because it’s the best thing.

Being naked. It’s like reading a book.

(and the textile world doesn’t get it.)

Maybe this subject requires a tad of elaboration.

Why do you read a book?

Right. Because you want to read it. Perfect reason.

And why are you naked?

Exactly. Because you want to be naked. Again: perfect reason.

I think that completes this blog post, doesn’t it?

Not entirely, because, as usual, there is more to this than the ‘naked’ eye can see. (Interesting phrase, that naked eye.)

I am convinced that one of the major misconceptions of the textilised humans around us is that they aren’t aware of the simple fact that we want to be naked for ourselves. It’s not for showing off or any other outgoing purpose – most of the time.

In fact, let’s be honest, most of us aren’t the model that would be ‘shown off’ in the textile world. They have different measures and standards, and they hide their own nature beneath their layers of fabric.

The subject title of this post suddenly came to me. It’s such a simple truth that I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner. We eat and drink because we want to. We read because we want to. And we ‘naked’ because we want to.

There are many things that we do because we want to do them, and in general most people have the same wants, cravings and needs. Books being one of them. Put in that light, there might be a way to make the textile world understand us, provided they want to listen. Because many minds are made up, set in stone and locked behind the cast-iron doors, courtesy of their peers and leaders.

Let our fight never dwindle. Each person convinced that we’re not the loonies is a win. Each person who finally sees that wearing clothes when they’re not needed is silly, is a big win.

Let’s stay naked. It’s good. I could write a book about that…

The naturist library

The library

You may have visited the naturist library page already. It’s a big, fat list of naturist books in a lot of genres. I had a quick look for you. 12 genres. There should be something in it for everyone.

How did this start?

Basically I started this for myself as I was getting tired of running over all the book stores online to find decent naturist fiction. Most of was erotica or porn, and it was nearly impossible to find the worthy gems in there.

I knew there were books. Good books. I had read them. As the list grew, I had this idea to put them online. I was proud to see that first list of about 50 or 60 books up there on this website, and people started helping me by sending titles and references.

Reading is good for the soul. Being naked is as well. Why not combine the two?

The work

At times it takes a bit of time for a new book to ‘come online’ in the library. It’s not a fully automated process. Some is, but most of it is manual because the site is hosted on a WordPress base.

My source is a spreadsheet.

It’s a very convenient way to keep things in order, and I wrote a few sorting macros to make the exports from there more convenient. There are 2 exports, 1 sorted on Genre/Series and 1 on author.

After downloading those, I run a script and a program I wrote, that together convert those exported text-files into handy dandy HTML files. I wrote those programs because I’m too lazy to code and link and x-ref (by now) over 170 books by hand. It’s also a bit too time-consuming. 😉

With that part done, I load the 2 files into an editor (snippet here on the left, doesn’t that look cool? 😀 ) and I log into the site, where I update the HTML code for the actual sets of books on each page; the main library page sorted by Genre and the one sorted by Author. This might not sound like a lot of work (it’s ‘only’ 15 minutes) but it’s not something I want to do for each new book.

Before a new book is in there

Because that’s not all the work. When a kind soul sends me a message to tell me there’s a great naturist book out by Smarty Johnson, that’s not exactly enough to add to the library. I go online, google Smarty Johnson, run into a thousand links of use tire dealers called Smarty Johnson and finally locate 2 of them on Amazon. 1 wrote a book on selling used tires, and 1 wrote, indeed, a book on naturism and its relation to, you guessed it, used tires. Yay, that means I found the link on amazon. But the book might also be on Barnes and Noble. And Kobo. And Apple. And perhaps some obscure other place. So there I go to search as well, often without a result as most people don’t seem to know there are books sold outside Amazon. Of course then I also investigate the actual book. Is this real naturism? Is it naturism enough? There’s always this difficult fine line, so I may ask someone to have a look as well. And if then the book passes the ballot, I’ll add the book to the library sheet.

Trust me, that takes longer than 15 minutes per book. Which is fine. That keeps the quality of the books high.

That brings tweets like this to life – and that is what the library is meant to do. It’s meant to help you find books about and dealing with our lifestyle.

Reading naked in the park — Reading naked in a park

So keep reading, people. And let me know if you find a good book that belongs in the library!

Sunday Noon Nudist

I happened to run into this amazing-looking nude-figure chess set and decided to post that here.

It’s hand-made, all silver, and at the moment of creating this post it’s on sale at Tigrani. Now., before you get all giddy, the price dropped by $10,000 so you can imagine what the product costs. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!

Naked Crow International

Over at MeWe, someone suggested to have the Naked Crow books translated into German.

Naked Crow Cover - Fantasy — Naked Crow 1

Germany is a big country with lots of naturists, so there should be quite a market.

I had a look at translation services. Right, that was out of the window quite soon. Having one book professionally translated would cost between €5000 and €12000.

Making that worth the while, I’d have to sell between 8000 and 15000 copies of the translated book. (Worth the while as in breaking even.) Seeing how many copies of Naked Crow 1 have been sold in English, which is an even larger market, it’s unlikely that route will happen.

I can handle some German, so I started translating it myself. That taught me that writing a story in German is quite something else. Translating from English into German, while not being a native speaker of either language, is hard work. I plowed through almost 2 pages and asked a good German friend to see how good or bad it was.

She made 98 changes. In almost 2 pages. Naked Crow 1 is much longer than 2 pages.

Sorry, dear German readers. It’s not going to happen anytime soon.