I wanna do bad things with you...

I nearly named this blog "Porno Weekend", but that would be wrong. Very wrong. It nearly got named "Pretty Dirty Things", but that don't cut it either.

So I came up with this title because it fits the bill. With the only think on the telly being the Olympics at the moment, I think I'll be watching a lot of Vampire porn over the next few weeks. Not that I'm against the Olympic Games, its just thatI really only like to watch the diving, gymnastics and occasionally the dressage. That's it. 

So yeah, the title comes from the fact that most of the last day has been spent considering the effect of soft core pornography on the soul of one delicate, seriously celibate Pandora. 

It all started last night as I departed from the office at 5 p.m. I'm loving my new role of instructional designer at Sparks and Ladders. I love the team - not a Gen Whine, mega ego or other type of office freak in sight. Everybody's a little nuts, but it's the nuts that I get on with. I'm back in the land that I enjoy and appreciate - back working on the periphery of engineers - this time of the brown cardigan, ex-government, infrastructure types, which are infinitely more daggy than the telecommunications engineering types.

The other thing I'm loving about the job is that a being an instructional designer - the person who designs training courses - when it's a day like yesterday. I spent the day pondering colour schemes, axis positions and click orders - which is fun and frustrating in equal measure. Sometimes I write things. The rest of the time it feels like I'm herding cats. Another story for another time, but my manager - a very patient woman, has charged me with keeping the team business analyst and the site builder in order. After eight days on the job, I'm starting to think that herding cats would be a far easier task. 

Anyway, I turned off my computer at a quarter past five, walked out of the office into a drizzly night and knowing that I had nothing other than a haircut, a session of Pump and a visit to Blarney on the cards for the weekend, I took myself off to see Magic Mike.

Yeah, Magic Mike. 

The softest of soft core voyeurism for the outer-suburban masses.

It's brilliant fun. After a heavy week at work - just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes it's a good thing to sit back with a choc top and think, "Hmm. Pretty."

Strippers seriously don't float my boat. The thought of going to a strip show - no thank you. But there is something lovely and dorkily watchable about Channing Tatum. Nobody's ever told him to put his shirt back on. Ever.

As films go, it's one of pure, brains-off escapism. It's sweet. It's fun. And it's full of semi-naked, preened, waxed, beefcakey men with sock-stuffed jock straps. After a hard week at work, there's not a better form of entertainment to be found.

There is also the slutty, filthy charm of Matthew McConaughey. Oh, he had some fun - and he took his shirt off too. He's good at that. Really good at that. 

I walked away from the film some tow hours later happy. The brain went out at the door and was put back in on the way  out. Perfect relaxation fodder.

As I said, strippers don't park my tractor at all. I've been at enough hen's parties to witness the degradation of both the stripper and his prey. Besides - willies aren't that interesting. Seen one, seen them all, only taking on mystical status when you have something going with it's owner. Strippers are more about the humiliation of the bride than for enjoyment. 

I think this is why Magic Mike was surprisingly enjoyable. There was a story - albeit lightweight. His character was rounded out. He was a good bloke (unlike his skeezy protege). There was a lot more than beefcake on stage prancing around, though give him his dues, Channing Tatum can REALLY dance.

So off I go home to bed after the film. I'm still trying to shake the last of the lingering cough from that cold and sinus infection I had a few weeks ago. With me, replacing the cat that recently went home, a copy of "Fifty Shades of Grey."

More housewife porn.

Okay, I'm reading it to see what all the fuss is about. 

Is it rubbish? Yes. Readable rubbish. The lightest of light soft core porno - sort of Mills and Boon with handcuffs and riding crops.

Is it the worst thing I've ever read? Hell, no. That honour still goes to Helen Brown's mega-woeful "Cleo - the  Cat that Healed a Family." (Still berating Blarney for that choice for book group). It's not well written at all - in the league of sexed up Twilight without the vampires. (I've heard that this all started as fan fiction gone wrong - and I can see that)

 Is it titillating? Not really.

After witnessing the better portrayed, lighter side of BDSM practices in the movie "Secretary", this has left me wanting.

Really, I can't see what the fuss is about. On the BDSM scale, it's like a two. Both parties are consenting, both have dulled, agreed limits. He doesn't get off on degrading her. There are no kids, animals, water sports, fisting, gimping or scarification on the table. What's the bother?

The thing that keeps me reading is what is not said in all the hype. It's not to see what they get up to in the bedroom. It's not about the alleged shock factor of the bondage stuff. It's not the wow factor of the over-the-top banality of the mega-rich man being attracted to the ordinary girl - though that is fun. I'm finding the flowery, cliche-driven text scoffable - just like with Twilight, although by the end of the fourth Twilight book I was ready to strangle the person who gave Stephenie Meyer a word processor.

Worryingly, or more to the point, disconcertingly, it's got me pondering that thing about the one person you meet in your life who pushes your buttons. The person who's buttons you push back. The person you ache for in the middle of the night when when you wake with a start. The one who when you smell their scent in the street, every hair on your body stands on end. The person who you're supposed to be with and you know it from the second that you meet. 

And this is where this book, all dreadful prose and "Look Mum, I can shock you!" activities has got completely under my skin.

It's left me wanting. Not wanting to be spanked or degraded or ferried around in a late spec, upmarket Audi.

This bloody book has left me pondering something I though I left behind years ago - sitting with a mess of wildly inappropriate thoughts, the desire to smoke half a pack of Embassy Reds, down a pint of bitter, go to the Walthamstow dish lickers (greyhound racing) and drink in the scent of Davidoff's Cool Water for Men.

And this may well be the power of this wretched book. On a badly-written, cliche-filled, shockingly flimsily plotted way, this bloody book has brought him back to life.

He who shall not be named or thought about. The one that got away. The one that I will always ponder on "what if" - if I let myself.

The one that knows how to push every one of my butons - who's buttons I push back in return. And we both know it.

Bloody book.

I think I'd better go have a tepid shower and stick something less arousing on the telly.

Like Red Dog. Or March of the Penguins. Or the West Wing. Or the Sound of Music.

Ho Hum.