Diana the Valkyrie

Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - September 1998

A hard man is good to beat

August

Valkyrie back from holiday

You can read a somewhat extrapolated version of my holiday in the Library, under "Valkyrie at Sea". I got back after two weeks to find about 1000 emails as expected. And then the phone company cut the wires for 12 hours ... but I'm pretty much caught up now.

On August 2nd, the wettest area in the UK was Chesham, with 1.6 inches of rain that day, and guess where one somewhat soggy Valkyrie is located? It's nice to be back though. I actually like the climate here.

New and updated Galleries

Bob Bass and Stu went to the Jan Tana, and I've put up several hundred pictures from there. Stu sat in the audience with a telephoto lens, while Bob snuck around backstage. I got 38 rolls of film, it's all on the web site.

Also I put up a load of vidcaps of lift-and-carry, taken from the Jeff Urband videos (which are now in the Shopping Mall).

Also, check out my new thing, the Virtual Galleries, which is available to non-members as well as to members. At this point, it's only a pilot to see what the reaction is, but the idea is to set up a collection of links to pictures that are scattered all over the web. Now I need volunteers to help me ferret out the pages for Sharon to check and list the links. Email me if you want to be a Virtual Ferret.

In the Shopping Mall, under the LH Art shop, you can see some great new art from LH, and you can get even more by buying the books. Plus some rare pictures of Joan Rhodes tearing telephone directories and Sadie MacPherson bending iron bars and pokers.

The Library

Look out for my serial "Valkyrie at Sea", all about a Valkyrie who goes on a cruise and finds herself sharing with the Cabin Mate from Hell. Also look out for Linda the Fluffer, who makes her debut in "The Weightlifting Contest". And "Fluff on".

And I'm calling for volunteers to write story reviews. You'll have to be really literate yourself; someone who really enjoys reading, and can look at a story and rate it objectively. I mean that just because the topic of the story isn't exactly your cup of tea, you shouldn't slate it. But if a story is badly written, rambles without a point, inconsistent, badly spelled and ungrammatical, then it should be given a low score. Ideally, the criticism will include some constructive criticism on how the author could improve. The review should also give a summary of the plotline (without giving away any surprises).

Volunteers for this, please email me at valkyrie@thevalkyrie.com

The reviews area is up and running.

Reviewed stories will be given a rating of from one to five stars; five stars meaning "Top quality" and one star meaning "Readable".

If you want some guidance in writing, have a butchers (butcher's hook) at Diana the Valkyrie's Writing Guide.

Newsgroups - NewsThumbs

This seems to have been a big hit, I see lots of people using it. At the same time I launched it, I added a bunch more newsgroups to the coverage.

The Women's Strength Extravaganza

Members of the web site will be there in large numbers. Wear a badge for recognition, you can get the badge from the web site, download it and print it out. If you can't do colour, do black-and-white. You can put the name that people know you by underneath.

The web site will be one of the main sponsors of the event, a Hosting Sponsor. Watch the WSE Message board for discussions about the event, how to meet up, and so on.

Also, I have eight VIP tickets worth $100 each to give to members. I'm open to offers; what I want is people who will be willing to take pictures and/or video at the event (you're allowed to take pictures inside, and pictures and video outside the main hall). I'll pay for film/development/tape. These VIP tickets get you a good seat, and to the evening buffet, where you can rub elbows with the competitors.

So far, Stu, Tex and Jabber have put their hands up and will be attending the WSE as guests of Diana the Valkyrie; free VIP tickes to each one. There's five tickets left ...

The Movie Theatre

The big news here is the Ladies Professional Wrestling Association. They sent me some video to put up on the web site, and this is the result. You'll be seeing them over the coming months.

I also put up a series showing Thea Bennington talking to web site members, posing and flexing.

This is a complete list of all the video clips available on the web site that were posted in the last thirty days. This index is recreated daily. In the small hours of the morning (while you're tucked up nice and safe in your bed) a Valkyrie looks at every movie on the web site and lists them. Of course, any alteration to a file will change its date, so some of them might be re-uploads of an old clip.

The files are sorted with the most recent at the top.

The Shopping Mall

I've added a Diana the Valkyrie Lift and Carry Video shop, with 37 lift-and-carry videos made by Jeff Urband, the Liftnet Lifting afficionado. All the videos are available in VHS-PAL and VHS-NTSC, and are very simply priced at $40 including post, packing, shipping, handling and taxes.

There's also a bunch of new LH Art books, for people who like illustrated stories, and the artwork is magnificent. You can see samples in the Shopping Mall, LH Art Bookshop. You'll find stuff there by many members of this website, including the famous and infamous Kandor.

Also, check out LH Art's own area on the web site because the JUNE/JULY 1998 Supplemental List is just out.

Ladybumps

I updated the Duncan Gutteridge gallery.

The links

More division; to break up that huge links page more, I now have four link pages off the main page; Fighting, Muscle, Training and Videos. The categories aren't black-and-white of course, many web sites fall into more than one category.

New Server

On August 1st, we had an outage. Blame the phone company; they cut the wrong wire, and the whole Washington site was cut off for several hours. Now you see why I'm so keen to move the main server to New York, I think I'll get better service there (if only Greta hadn't ...).

There were problems with Greta - that's why we've spent some time running on Diana, some time running on Greta, and why I summoned Joan to take the main load. Joan arrived on August 20th, now we have to get her loaded up with files, and ready for the trip to New York.

Meanwhile, Greta (relocated from New York to Washington) has been performing flawlessly. I think we fixed her problem, she needed a kernel upgrade. That means, a patch to the operating system. Greta runs Linux, you thought you can do this stuff on Windows?

But Joan is bigger and stronger, so Greta has missed her chance to be the main server. It's a hard life. Never mind, Greta, you can be the News server. Joan has 108 gigabytes of disk space, 256 megabytes of memory.

News. Yes. More problems. My upstream news provider dried up near the end of August, and I had to poke the blockage with a sharp stick. The blockage had nothing to do with Newsthumbs, I wasn't getting the newsfeed, so my old news system wasn't updated either. So, I'm changing news provider; hopefully the new one will be more reliable. The sharp stick seems to have unblocked the blockage, news is flowing again now. Also, we're on the new newsfeed now.

I also wound up with two new helpers, Ingrid and Katie in England, to do picture and video processing, so I can create the stuff I upload to the server.

Oh well. If it was easy, it wouldn't take a Valkyrie, would it? And I prefer it hard.

The Clubhouse

The big news here is the Message Boards. There was a sudden rash of postings that were forged; I think it might have been only one person doing it under dozens of names, but that's not really important. What was important was postings purporting to come from Dragon, Anita Ramsey, Shiela Burgess, Lili Ewing, and many other regulars. These postings were deliberately inflammatory, and several boards had already deteriorated away from their real purposes. Instead of discussing biceps, or whatever, they were arguing about who posted what. This is bad.

Worse; there's a danger that Mr Nuisance was trying to drive away the women who hostess message boards, because he seemed to be targeting them especially. I will not allow one boy to spoil the fun of a lot of folk. We lost Lisa Houston recently, and if you go back further, we lost Cheryl Harris, Nicole Bass (but I persuaded her to return).

So I added the name-stamp to the message boards. Now, when a member posts, their membership name is stamped by the system onto their posting. Forgery of members is now impossible.

Non-members have to log on too, they use the name "non-member" and the password "sesame". So access is still free, and open to everyone. But impostoring becomes impossible, except of non-members, by non-members.

Why does someone want to spoil other people's fun? Well, there's always been people like that, and there always will be. You just have to sit on them occasionally. Spanking is a good thing. Basically, teenage boys crave attention "Look at me!". It's hard-wired into the human psyche, tied up with the reproductive urge. You've probably seen peacocks putting on a display, it's the same thing. If not peacocks, maybe you've seen pigeons doing it. It's perfectly normal, and he'll grow out of it. Think of the things you did when you were that age, and try not to cringe in embarrassment.

One or two people didn't notice that they still had free access, and I had to explain it to them, but this idea seems to have been widely welcomed, I got a lot of emails saying "Thank you". And it's really upset Mr Nuisance, you can see howls of outrage from him, posted under several names, plus threats, plus he's going to deprive us of the glory of his ineffable presence. Oh well. Chance would be a fine thing.

The main effect of this on members, has been that the "latest posting" dates on some of the message boards seems to be wrong, because it reflects the date that Mr Nuisance made a post; you can't see the post because I chopped it.

So then he tried spamming, posting the same silly message again and again to all the boards. That doesn't come under the heading of free speech either, so I simply deleted them.

So then he started posting messages that had no content. So I deleted those, too. Hopefully you haven't even noticed any of this happening. If you have, then Mr Nuisance has succeeded in his objective of being a minor nuisance.

Mr Nuisance is still spamming, but you won't see most of that, it's either trapped when he tries to do it, or removed so quickly you probably won't see it.

Mook has his own Message Board now, and it got very active from day one! Real catfights. And the Mook has some experiences to share, so there's now a Mook Bookshelf.

Tex Biceps ran a Fantasy Armwrestling Contest in his Tall Tower; here's the result.

DIANA THE VALKYRIE WEBSITE ARMWRASSLIN' CHAMPIONSHIPS

By Tex Biceps

PREFACE

After her relatively-easy win over a game-but-outmuscled Colette Guimond, Andrulla faced a seemingly impossible task..the only thing standing in the way of Ms. Blanchette's goal, the ARMWRASSLIN' CHAMPIONSHIP of the greatest website on the net, was the Largest Female Bodybuilder in the World!!!!

At 6'2", 225lbs., Nicole was supremely confident...Why shouldn't she be? There few women who can even approach her size (Gabrielle Hames)...And Andrulla, thought Nicole, I'm a foot taller than the Limey, outweigh her by 50 lbs...I don't care if she's got big guns....MINE ARE BIGGER!

THE MATCH

Andrulla, wearing a shiny-gold posing-bikini, flexed her biceps for those in attendance (Diana's favorites). The sleek-yet-thick muscles of this extremely-beautiful-yet-brawny Valkyrie rippled sensually, her powerful-nearly-seventeen-inch arms contracting into seriously-solid softballs....

As Andrulla posed, Nicole entered. Her short-short cutoffs and yellow tank-top revealed the phenomenally-massive muscularity with each step Ms. Bass took. Spying Andrulla posing, Nicole snickered sarcastically, "Ooh, such a big girl...", then hit her own double-biceps shot. Though not as thick as her English foe, Nicole's arms still looked huge.... Andrulla replied, "This isn't gonna be about inches, Big Nikki, it's about strength!" She tightened her muscles to emphasize her point... Nicole's cocky smile melted in a frown. "I've got 'em both, little girl...let's get it on!"

The luscious ladies set their elbows on the table and struggled to get their grip, their biceps jumping....Tex, honorary ref, centered their gripped-fists and counted 1-2-3...GO!!!

Massive-muscles contracted as each woman felt the other's strength for the first time. Nicole's look of confusion showed her surprise at her smaller opponent's power. Andrulla looked up at Nicole and smiled. Knowing this was not going to be the breeze she thought, Nicole applied serious power, her arm straining, a loud GRUNT escaping her lips. For a moment, the Brit's arm began to move tableward, but Andrulla responded to the challenge, her biceps swelling unbelievably, and pushed Nicole's arm back to a neutral position...

Nicole's husband, BLU, yelled, "Come on, Nicole...put her down!"

A totally-biased spectator, ShyGuy, screamed his encouragement to his favorite Valkyrie, "Andrulla, use the physics I taught you!"

Andrulla, contemplating the leverage-formula for success, launched her first offensive of the match. Her lovely face wrinkled with concentration, the Bicepsuous Brit's arms contracted explosively, pushing Nicole's fist halfway to the table. Nicole re-doubled her effort and succeeded in halting Andrulla's advance...

For a few tantalizing seconds, the ladies' fists remained stationary as their supremely-muscular arms shook with exertion. Incredibly, Ms. Blanchette's biceps looked BIGGERs than the arm of the Largest Female Bodybuilder in the World!

TomNine, having first-hand experience with Nicole's muscular power, yelled, "Get her, Nicole!"

An intense Andrulla moaned, "You're goin' down, Nicole!"

"No fuckin' way!" replied Nicole, but the worried look in her eyes was incongruent with her words.

Andrulla's powerfully-muscled upperbody exploded into action as she threw the strength of her massive delts, traps and pecs behind a thrust that slowly pushed Nicole's knuckles toward the table. Nicole gave it everything she had, but she could not budge her oppponent...

"It's over, little girl!" sneered Andrulla before she forced Ms. Bass arm to the table with a resounding CRACK! Nicole's look of disbelief said it all!

Tex

Chat room review

This is London.

Looking south over the rooftops of this defiant, beleaguered city, one can almost see the trail of lust and destruction left behind by Diana the Valkyrie as she wended her way home on the Utopia. One can definitely see the swath of ruination left behind when she drove the boat, under full steam, to her publishers in Fleet Street in order to see her latest penny dreadful hot off the presses. She was greeted by a cheering throng of masochists and reprobates celebrating her return from her Mediterranean vacation. Some among us had been driven to such desperation by her absence that, like Shy Guy, they resorted to entertaining their parents. Others, like Rhys, required surgery. Others, like Andrulla, took up hobbies, such as acting. Others, like Scooby and Harley, whiled away the time making elaborate plans for JoanneK's bachelorette party which involve the two of them leaping out of a cake and promptly being throttled to death by the irate bride to be. These party plans enthralled Joanne to such a degree that she even had a dream about scissoring Scooby to death, much to the Scoobster's delight.

A mysterious Fire raged early in August and proved to be Sheila Burgess, a beautiful Canadian body builder with a fondness for bagpipes and plumes and a healthy hatred for fowl of any description. She rapidly became a crowd favorite. Sheila can, of course, talk shop with any of the boys - but she can also play merrily with the guy over in the corner in the funny hat with a plume in it. With a courtly wave of my plumy hat (and a little wiggle from the frilly apron), I officially welcome you aboard Sheila. Long may you sojourn among us.

Paul finalized the long threatened purchase of his motorcycle this month and named it for Diana. In doing so, he may have started a trend, for Shy Guy was scrambling about his abode seeking something worthy of such a noble appellation. Enjoy, Paul. Let's hope you don't have to give it back to that drug cartel that gave you such a great price on it.

For those who like to see the room stick to the business of female muscle and how it gets on the female in question, there was plenty of deep discussion this month about curls and concoctions. A couple of men of the cloth even attempted to formalize a religion based on the discipline, but went into ecstatic trances before they could get very far. Rev. Femuscle and FatherScooby, we hope and trust you survive your ascensions without starving to death.

Off topic discussions included a rollicking rendition of the Albigensian Heresy and a debate about the strategic bombing campaign against Germany in World War II. On the creative side, Scooby devised the first ever animated cartoons to be seen in the chat room through the miracle of HTML. Cells will be on sale soon. And, one night, a marvelous Possum Quartet was formed around our resident male possum with Diana making her debut on the bagpipes, of all things. She truly hit her stride when she switched to the castanets, though.

Major life changes include sub's decision to move to Sarasota to be nearer to Sandy. Sub, by the way, gave the quote of the month, which I can't quote due to the vagaries of computerdom (having carefully noted it in my diary, but losing the diary in a lockup), but it went something like this: "I'd like to tell you that having wood is not everything, but the truth is, it is." I'll leave you to figure out the context. That sub is always dead on the mark.

Nicole went to Japan to the delight and amazement of the Japanese. She had six matches there, and won them all. Before you know it, all of TomNine's proteges will be out there tearing up the world.

As a final note, I give you the top ten chatters of the month by postings. count. I had hoped to do one on time also, but it proved too labor intensive and I had to abandon it. I also was pondering doing a word count, but Diana assures me it can't be done unless you know Perl and I don't know it *]:-). Anyway, I had intended to put up the entire list so you could figure out your total by spotting all your aliases, but there were over 500 (count `em, 500) names used this month. So forget it. Excluding Clepsy and me (since I might have doctored my figures to win), here's the list (I went to 11 in case you want to disqualify Diana.
TomNine 4162
Warrior Poet 4005
HardbodyPaul 2694
Scooby 2337
Diana the Valkyrie 1887
TwoPossums 1647
Sen 1325
Shy Guy 1113
JoanneFan 1047
JoanneK 1019
Sheila 844

And so, until the wheel falls on my number once again, I bid you good sailing.

Anita Ramsey

Maybe you always wanted to sponsor an FBB, but thought that $1000/month is a lot of dough. Well, it is a lot, that's true. And maybe you thought that if you sent someone $10 they'd be insulted. But you know, it only takes a hundred insults like that, and you're looknig at a lot of dough.

Because it isn't an insult, it's a helping hand. It costs a lot to compete; a lot of time (meaning you can't do a regular job) and a lot of money for food and supplements. Yes, even food costs a lot, you can't just pop down to Ronald for a Big Mac. You have to have boiled white fish, steamed chicken, and other such delights. And vitamins, and supplements (read Flex magazine and you'll see all the adverts for Creatine and suchlike).

Anita has launched an appeal for help. She's just won the Southern States championship, and is setting her sights on IFBB North American Bodybuilding Championships to be held in Detroit, Michigan August 29th. And tomorrow, the world!

Women's bodybuilding doesn't attract the big bucks that other sports get, but the fans can help make up the difference. Go to her page on and you'll see how your $10 or $20 can help her achieve her goals.

Thea Bennington

Thea has a whole new Gallery, including a story written by her, about her young days and how she discovered the delights of crushing men between her thighs.

There's also ten minutes of video of her, which she made specially for the web site, talking to the members and saying who she is and what she does, and flexing and posing, wearing different outfits. There's some video noise on the clips, but you can see Thea's fine physique.

Nicole Bass

On the 12th August, Nicole travelled to Japan to wrestle against Japan's Finest. She came back on the 18th, having beaten the best that Japan had to offer. In fact she won all six of her matches there, and the Japanese people loved her!

Back Page

For me, the important events of the month were getting Joan into place (the people who built her took several weeks instead of the promised ten days), the failure of the newsfeed (I changed to a new newsfeed because of that) and catching up from my vacation (a thousand emails). And the Virtual Galleries - we'll have to see how popular they are.

Also this month, I agreed to be a Hosting Sponsor at the WSE, this makes the WSE our event in a sense, in that it's the event that a lot of members will meet up and have fun together. This web site isn't just about pictures and stories, it's about real people enjoying themselves.

Member HardBodyPaul named his new motorbike after me, and CaptainCorc gave his Flintlock musket my name.

I checked the site statistics. that Sandra counts up each night. About 80,000 pictures (four gigabytes), 5.3 gigabytes of video, 2300 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about nine gigabytes.

To the Library