A Little Self-Congratulation, A Big Naked Girl

If there's one thing I've consistently done since I began writing for public consumption in 1991 with Bicycles Today, it's, um, enter into quixotic struggles with organizations and corporations for no reason other than to satisfy my insane desire to either support the underdog in a struggle or actually be the underdog in a struggle.

But the other thing I've done is to relentlessly push the boundaries of what is supposedly acceptable in special-interest publications --- fiction, criticism, meta-discussion, you name it. And this week was another example of that. TTAC's august founder, Robert Farago, limited every article published on the site to a strict eight hundred words. When he finally relaxed that rule, it was for me and me alone. (He said, with his nose in the air.) I understand that in general, the Web prefers its content brief and loaded with pictures --- but that doesn't mean that everybody wants it that way. And if only one in a thousand English-language readers on the Web differs in that preference, then that's still a million readers or more.

I started "One Racer's Perspective", my column in Bicycles Today at a robust 1500-plus words. There wasn't anything else like it in the industry, and I was certain that it would go unread. I was wrong, even if many of the readers just read it so they could violently disagree with me and write hateful letters to the paper. (Some things never change.) As Jill, my gorgeous and over-educated editor, loosened my leash, I continued to test the limits, until I was writing four-thousand-word fiction every month. And the funny thing is that people continued to read it. Even if they often misread it.

With "Avoidable Contact", the column I've written about cars since 2007, I've tried to disprove what the convention wisdom says about "car guys" and their famously short attention span. I've tried to show that if you have compelling content and ideas, people will stick with it. Not that I always have compelling content and ideas, but I'm trying. Unfortunately, the realities of the magazine business mean that I'm limited to about nine hundred words per month, but on the web, it's essentially free to provide a longer piece. The era of USENET-style bandwidth restrictions is over. One Flappy Birds download is equivalent to ten thousand text novellas. So you might as well open the throttle on it.

Alex Nunez, the online editor for R&T, took a chance on a 1,630-word piece I submitted earlier this week, and I'm pleased to say that it's paid off for both of us. In a business where people supposedly tune out after eight hundred or a thousand words, they stuck to the end in droves. Color me pleased.

To celebrate and to reward my ninety-nine-percent male reader base, I have the first-ever pornography link on these pages. Nicole is a friend of a friend who does "curvy" or "plus-size" modeling. I think. I'm not sure what the term is. She's not fat, but she's not skinny, either. Apparently she's caught some flak, mostly from women, for her appearance. You can decide for yourself by clicking here. I think she's pretty good-looking, but she's outside my personal preference zone. Tall is fine --- tall is good. Wide is less good. But there is, as they say, an ass for every seat. If you are the seat in question here, you can thank me later.