It’s Not Dirty – It’s Art!

From the Smut Vault Dept.: Back in the early ‘90s, I made a decent amount of money writing for porn magazines under a number of different identities. For D-Cup, I was computer columnist Dr. Barry Tetons. What’s most interesting about this 22-year old piece is how fantastically dated what once was up-to-date technology has become!

                                                                                                 

SOME VISITORS ARE OBSESSED with checking medicine cabinets in other people’s houses. You and I look for the porno stash.

Christy Canyon

So it makes sense to look for the stash when you’re wandering around an online service like Compuserve. It’s been around for years, it’s huge, and there are plenty of electronic “rooms” where dirty pictures are hiding.

Keep in mind, though, that Compuserve doesn’t promote smut. If you’re rampaging through the forums calling for big tits, you’re in for the electronic cold shoulder. What’s there is art, of course, and what you’ll find are artistic figure studies. It just happens that some of those figure studies have whopping great bosoms. I’ve found old friends like Alyssa Alps and Christy Canyon, and some who became new friends very quickly.

Compuserve is the largest competitor of America Online, which we toured last month. Because Compuserve is rooted in the dull old days of character-based screens, before the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows made fancy graphics the standard, it took the Compuserve folks a while to put on as good-looking a front end as America Online sports. Now that it’s available, with a program called WinCIM, you can easily browse conferences and download images. Here’s how.

WinCIM is available as a promotional disk or CD-ROM with many computer magazines; if you’re on the right mailing list, it’ll arrive at your house. If you’re not already a Compuserve subscriber, there are free sign-up deals all over the place. If you’ve got an account – or if you have a generous friend with an account – you can dowload the program (but beware: it’s huge, close to three megabytes). Whatever you do, don’t pay the $30 for a sign-up kit. Look in the box your modem came in, or check the extra papers that came with a major software release.

To download, sign on and type GO WINCIM. You’ll get a menu of options, from which you can order the program to be mailed to you (but they charge $25) or download it (there’s also a fee, but you get much of it back in online credit).

Installing WinCIM is simple. Put the distribution disk in your computer’s A: drive. Start Windows, pull down the File menu, select Run and type A:SETUP. The rest is automatic.

When it’s done, you’ll have a Compuserve group in the Windows Program Manager. Double-click the group icon, and double click the the WinCIM icon you’ll find within. You’ll need to initialize the program before starting, so pull down the Special menu, select Session Settings, and type in your name, user ID, password, and the phone number you dial for Compuserve access. Also make sure the program knows which COM port your modem is using, as well as the top speed for the modem. If you’re using a fast error-correcting modem, set that number for at least twice the modem’s rated speed. Click OK to confirm your settings.

Compuserve is divided into forums, which are simply areas of common interest. Each forum contains section areas for messages and files, and the file areas include pictures in the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) formats. WinCIM has a built-in viewer that displays those formats, and you can see the image as it travels over the wire into your computer.

Try it out. Let’s visit one of the best sources of images, the Graphics Corner forum. Start a Compuserve session by clicking the big “Today on Compuserve” button on the main screen. You’ll hear the familiar dialing and hissing of a modem connection. When you get to the main screen, click the button near the top of the screen with a traffic light picture – it stands for “go,” the Compuserve change-forum command. A small box pops up; type CORNER and click OK.

Before you’re let into the forum, confirm that you want to join. It’s a formality, but you have to do it to get file access. It also helps the forum administrators track traffic, and, needless to say, those cheesecake photos provoke a lot of traffic.

A window of 12 buttons hangs near the top right of the screen; click the one with a picture of a hand reaching for a book. That brings up a window of Library Sections. Double-click “Plain Brown Wrapper” and you’ll see a listing of images with one-line descriptions. For more information about a particular image, click the “Description” button at the bottom of that window. To simply download a file, click “Retrieve.” To view it as it comes across, click “View.”

Keep in mind that as you’re viewing it, it’s being saved to disk only in a temporary file. Once the image is complete, double click the upper left corner of the image window and you’ll be asked if you wish to save it. Click OK and you can add the picture to your permanent smut collection.

Check out the other sections near the bottom of the list, too – there are plenty of warnings when nudity is involved, so you’ll know which files to check out. And always check the number of downloads a file has received. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the larger the breasts. And the emphasis is on breasts – no split beavers in these collections; you’re lucky to find a tuft or two of public hair.

Other forums with juicy photos are Graphics Plus (go GRAPHPLUS), Graphics Showcase (go GRFSHOW), Photo Gallery Plus (go PHOTOG), and Entertainment Drive’s Movie forum (go EMOVIE) and Video forum (go EVIDEO).

Video? Oh, yes. Full-motion sound and video files are also available, which we’ll look at in a future column.

Web News:

Danni Ashe’s Web page is looking better and better. I visited during her preliminary testing and watched the files get fancier looking. You’ll find everything from the story of her life to information about her photos and videos – and D-CUP is visiting the site as well. Her home page address is [long since gone]. The Danni Ashe House of Worship, run by an ardent and adoring fan, is at [long since gone].

Another fan-driven site salutes the ubiquitous Ron Jeremy; you’ll find it at . Former porno star Brandy Alexandre talks about her life and career – and has some movies for sale – at [long since gone].

– D-Cup Magazine, December 1995