BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE TODAY, thanx and a hat tip to all who attended my second live reading and promo for The Big Book of MISC. last night at Elliott Bay Book Co. Further events TBA.

(ADVISORY: The rest of today's edition contains tasteful language about topics some of you might find borderline-icky. But that's America for you.)

In his new book For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, the author-cellist Wayne C. Booth quotes Walt Whitman liking Ralph Waldo Emerson's writing for the "amount of passion--the blood and muscle--with which it was invested, which lay concealed and active in it."

That's as close to a workable definition of "amateur" as I can find these days. The previously-dominant definition, of working without financial renumeration, was pretty much buried a few Olympic Games ago.

The "passion" definition's also better than the "unpaid" definition to describe the thousands of "amateur adult" Websites out there these days.

Yes, a good proportion of those sites are trying to earn money. Many of them charge for access, to everything or to extra-hot "members' areas." Many of them sell videos, CD-ROMS, photos, autographed mementos, and/or undergarments.

But these sites (or at least the better ones) offer something you can't get from the formulaic rites of corporate porn.

Call it a spirit, a joie de vivre, a feeling (even if in some cases it's just an affectation of a feeling) that these women really like to do their varying degrees of wicked things (from nude posing on some sites all the way to, well, all the way on other sites) and to let you see them doing them.

Three of these webmistresses recently made a pair of joint public appearances in Seattle and suburban Des Moines, WA. One of them, Oasis, was having a west-coast tour of these "bar meets" with fans; two others, the local Gina and the Portland-based J, accompanied her on this stop.

All three have husbands (Gina for 20 years) who attended the bar meet; all have "open" relationships, at least for the purpose of gathering photo and video material for their sites. Oasis even invited some of her bar-meet guests to an "after-party" safe-sex photo shoot back in her hotel room. (I didn't attend or ask to.)

All three women were extremely nice and personable. Even while legally dressed in the bars, they exuded an open sensuality and an enthusiasm for life. They were perfect hostesses, graciously leading the shier computer-nerd fans into the bar-table conversation. The women talked a lot about how they love bodies (their own and other people's), they love sex, and they want to use their sites to help people overcome their own inhibitions and lingering prudish repressions.

But, just like "indie" rock, "amateur" webmistressing is still show business, which means it's business. Oasis conducts her bar-meet tours so she can personally bring in new fans, so she can turn current occasional viewers into paid members, and so she can make cross-promotional photo ops with other webmistresses across North America. She and her hubby have also worked as consultants and server-providers to other amateurs. Their site claims,

"If you can be a consistant model, have the desire to attend functions, meet new people and promote a website then you could be an internet star! We won't shit you, the pay-off is much faster being a model, but the long term investment is greater to have your own site. Don't believe any of the 'get rich quick' crap you read on other sites... It takes a while to establish a website and turn a good profit. But if you have the drive, patience and charisma you can earn big bucks with your own website."

MONDAY: A little more of this.

ELSEWHERE: Some ex-Yugoslavs dream of Cyber Utopias; while others retreat to the paranormal... Probably not the ultimate ad-placement abomination, but the lowest for now...

(For an explanation of the above, look here.)

Recent highlights:

• I wouldn't blame Limp Bizkit for the Woodstock rapes, but...
• Fun and inventive stuff in the fields of candy, gum, religious music, home design, and video.
• The new hipness leaves no "alternative."
• Some words to live by.
• Is two years already too old for a video-game history book?
• A 'breast man' faces a loved one's breast cancer.
• If the religious right fades, what'll middle-of-the-road Democrats use for a bogeyman?
• How prejudiced are YOU?
• Web journals, the evil (or maybe the good) twin of weblogs.
• Single men, America's social pariahs since way back.