slut rights

Perhaps you've been following the case of Susan Finkelstein in the Philadelphia area who has been charged with prostitution for allegedly offering sex in return for World Series tickets last year.

She placed an ad on Craigslist last year announcing that she was a "gorgeous tall buxom blonde" in "desperate need" of tickets, capping it off with "price negotiable -- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!"

Area police were looking for prostitution solicitations on the website and apparently thought Finkelstein was peddling sex. They contacted her offering possible tickets, and she sent topless photos in reply to their request for her picture.

A meet was arranged at a local bar and, according to police, the woman told an undercover officer as she made her pitch for the tickets, "I'm a whore; I love sex; I just can't help it." She then allegedly hiked up her skirt to show him she was not wearing underwear.

In a court appearance last week, her lawyer denied she was a prostitute. In a line I found particularly priceless, he said "you can be a slut; that's not illegal."

Finkelstein is due to go to trial in a few weeks.

I still look

One of the few disappointments I experienced when arriving in Australia was learning that water does not, in fact, swirl in the opposite direction down sink drains and toilets below the equator.

Perhaps you, like me, were fed this myth by a science teacher in school. It's a misconception that has been widely repeated by educators, PBS, major magazines, and more.

I must confess, however, I still watch every time water goes down the drain. I never did that back in the States, but after being here more than a year, I always have to check.

The science teachers, however, were entirely correct when they said that the constellations look entirely different down here. Notwithstanding my naval husband has tried to teach me several times, they still look like a mess of dots to me. The Southern Cross is the only one that's easy for me to spot. I miss the Big Dipper.

I have, on occasion, seen maps here in public places that present Antarctica as being at the top of the globe and the Southern Hemisphere on the upper half. That looks completely bizarre to me. Even my Aussie husband agrees that's an absurd exercise in political correctness.

non urinat in ventum

A regular reader alerted me to this classics blog, where a grad student does a little expose on allegedly Latin tattoos that are nothing short of gibberish. His biting prose tells an amusing tale. The one below translates as "an attractive crucified man" on the left and "a man who is happy about a sacrifice" on the right.

goosebumps hnt

Darling Husband took this Half-Nekkid Thursday shot a few weeks ago at our favorite nude beach on a day that suddenly started turning cooler and breezy. I had a shivering fit as I was hunting for my towel while he was busy playing Helmut Newton.

If you click on the image, you'll see a full-size version where I look positively reptilian. I also notice that I have hair on my chest, which husband finds cute and I find rather, well, yucky. Guaranteed, it's downy hair I haven't been able to find since, even though I examined myself closely in the bathroom mirror. He explained that women have hair on their chests for the same reason men have nipples.

Edited later to add: click here to see the larger version. Apparently with some browser versions, you cannot click through.

twin twins

Scary. There's just no other way to phrase it.

They'd be middle-aged by now. I wonder if they're still all together?

no more plumber's butt

I found this through a banner ad which caught my eye. I thought it was quite amusing.

Truth be told, plumber's butt is quite nice if the guy is cute and in good shape. If you're built like the physiques in the little model drawings in the ad, you need not buy this.

Sometimes, however, plumber's butt can be utterly horrifying. If he's fat, pimply, hairy, and hygienically challenged, it's like looking into the mouth of hell.

Back in Las Vegas, we had a semi-regular plumbing problem. The landlord always sent this geeky looking guy with the most annoying laugh, but he had a very nice tush which he would amply display, complete with full crack, every time he bent over. He apparently had not heard of this fashion trend.

drifting into porn

I heard from a friend that a male model I know back in the States, whom I'll call Sean here, has drifted into porn.

Sean and I still keep in touch a bit. We were never really an item back in my single days, but we were occasional friends with benefits.

He hoped it would be more than that; however, we were not really compatible so I never pursued the matter. Quite honestly, although very sweet, he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Once when I was talking about Nietzsche, Sean thought I was talking about a nightie. I may be a high school dropout, but I'm not a moron, either, and I like a man who's both good in bed and can hold his own in a conversation. Sean is into developing his body but not his mind. He spends his free time, when he's not trying to get laid, playing video games.

Sean is good looking and very muscular. He also is healthily endowed. Fitness modeling is extremely competitive and, for whatever reason, he never got a whole lot of work. I first met him when he was a bouncer at a club where I danced.

Back when I saw him regularly, Sean mentioned several times that he had been approached to do porn but had turned down the offers. He always said "no" because he didn't think it was a good idea and would hurt his modeling career.

Muscular guys like him are frequently approached by porn producers, primarily to do "gay for pay" solo jerkoff stuff and, possibly, more. The money can sometimes be very good. My husband regularly turned down such offers back when he lived in the States.

So I was very surprised to learn Sean is now doing jerkoff porn. He recently signed with a manager who's known to steer men into that world, and I can imagine he eventually gave in after a hard sell. I feel somewhat bad for Sean because I wonder if he's being exploited. I would not be surprised if he'll end up soon doing gay for pay stuff where he's not alone, while steadfastly thinking that will get him on the cover of Muscle & Fitness.

An ironic little coda to this story is that, before I met my husband, one of the things that didn't really attract me about Sean was I thought he was too big and beefy. I was more into leaner men those days. My husband, however, is actually bigger and more muscular than Sean, which only goes to show that love is not about the package but what's inside that counts.

sex rehab

Much has been written about whether Tiger Woods or a lookalike has been spotted at a posh sex addict rehab center in Mississippi.

This begs the question, of course, about what the hell do they do at such places? Show horrid STD DVDs like they used to do in sex ed? Hook up electrodes to their naughty bits and shock them every time they think about bonking?

Lockdowns work for alcoholics and drug addicts because that separates the client from their addiction. How do you do that for sex addicts, when you're in a facility full of people? What's to prevent two sex addicts from pairing off somewhere private and revisiting their addiction?

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one wondering about these things.

what was she thinking?

I think you'd be hard pressed to say she isn't pretty. So what possessed her to get an armpit tattoo of a shark eating a baby? Even if she puts her arm down, you can still see some of it.

That's virtually impossible to remove without heavy scarring, so she's stuck with it for life. My tattooed husband says that would be a pretty painful place to get one, too.

PETA approved

I don't think any woman would take him seriously, but at least it will grow out or he could dye it black to cover or just shave his head. Not the wisest decision he'll ever make, but not a life-altering, employment-hampering one like some of the tattoos I've featured here. Maybe he works in a pet store or at a vet, where leopard hair is the new black.

playtime hnt

My Half-Nekkid Thursday images were becoming too naked, so I thought of a compromise this week.

I know it sounds like I'm fishing for compliments when I say with nearly all my pictures that "this makes me look fat," but I think this one really does. Darling husband says it's because he was sitting below me on the floor when he took it and because my arms were pressed against my chest. I don't know about that. The scale says I haven't gained anything, but maybe that needs an adjustment.

chatter

Blog readers get to know a person by the words they write, but the written person is different than the in-person version.

I will admit that, in the flesh, I can be quite the chatterbox at times. I also can talk very, very fast. My husband jokes that I must breathe through my ears sometimes because I can get talking so fast, seemingly without drawing a breath, that he wonders why I don't turn blue for a lack of oxygen.

In contrast, my spouse is a quiet man. He is the definition of laconic grace. Ask him a question, and he'll ponder the answer for half a minute before he gives you a concise, ten words or less, one-sentence answer to nearly everything. Many questions are answered simply with a gesture or a head shake.

If I bought words to use, I'd need truckloads. He could get by with a small mayonnaise jar. James never complains about my chattering away and, instead, just listens with this amused and adorable smile on his handsome face. It's part of our yin/yang that makes our marriage work. He is actually his most talkative during sex.

When my brother was visiting recently from America, he made a very interesting observation about me: "You've become much quieter." I asked him to elaborate.

For one, he said, I don't talk as fast. That was something of a conscious choice. Because I have an "American accent," I realized if I spoke too quickly here in Australia, I was more difficult to understand.

He also said I'm not nearly the chatterbox I once was. He said I'm simply talking less and thinking more before I say something. I think he's right. I imagine some of the answer is that I'm much more self-confident now, thanks to my husband. I also have matured some, too, and have come to realize I don't have to talk all the time just to fill up the silence. Equally, James's way of careful speaking has rubbed off on me.

Rest assured, however, I can still talk a thousand miles an hour if need be. I had one of my verbal volcano moments the other day in the supermarket when I was talking to an American neighbor while waiting to pay. She's also a very fast talker and I realized that people were turning to look at us in surprise because we were talking so fast.

naked politics

I normally don't write about politics on this blog for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there are already several million political webblogs out there.

I think I can be nonpartisan, however, in saying political history will likely be made today in the US because of a special election in Massachusetts for the vacant senate seat. Major legislative issues hang in the balance, depending on the outcome.

An intriguing thing about the race were media reports that one candidate, Scott Brown, had "posed nude" when he was a student. The pictures were pretty easy to find on the Internet, so of course, I had to check them out.

For starters, the media got itself a bit piqued over this "posing nude" business. Scott Brown may have been naked when the pictures were shot, but his naughty bits are not showing. Big disappointment. If the aspiring senator was packing ten inches soft, say, then that would be newsworthy, in my humble opinion.

In all honesty, however, I can't see what all the fuss is about. Scott Brown certainly wasn't bad looking, and nearly thirty years later, he's stayed in decent shape. At the same time, however, he was hardly Adonis material. If he was wearing a swimsuit at the beach, in all honesty he wouldn't stand out as "wow" material. He's above average but not outstanding.

I also have to wonder, if a woman politician had posed semi-nude three decades ago, perhaps with a strategically positioned plant and hands over her naked breasts, would the public be this nonplussed about the whole thing? I don't think so.

Drew

I think Drew Barrymore looked absolutely fantastic at the Golden Globes on Sunday night (which was really Monday lunchtime here in Australia). Although that particular award is a crock, I'm glad to see she was recognized for her fabulous work in Grey Gardens, playing Jackie Kennedy's bizarre cousin.

While I think the movie had some shortcomings, the performances were all outstanding; it's an acting tour de force. If you haven't already watched it, check it out on DVD. My favorite scene is the one with the gonorrhoea line.

babe magnet

Was this sent to a woman to impress her? Did she respond favorably? If so, what closed the deal for her -- the pot belly with the bikini underwear or the rocker mullet and guitars?

That bed looks real inviting, too, doesn't it? A single with no boxspring.

The rabbit vibrator mixed in with the guns is a nice finishing touch, and is that a grenade towards the front next to the combat knives?

In the words of my friend Amanda who sent this gem to me: "be still my heart."

a rational explanation?

He just needed to use the restroom? He ran out of gas? He went inside a minute to ask directions? There was a buy-one-get-one-free deal on anal lube?

pointless tattoo?

This tattoo is just the black box. The idea is that its owner can then draw in any picture desired in the black box, wash it off, draw in another one, etc. The only thing permanent is the box.

So what's the point? Why not just draw the box on, too, if you're going to be drawing the rest of the thing?

This seems to be tattooing just for tattoo sake.

going green hnt

I've noticed ferns do not seem to be common in the Sydney area. I imagine it's too hot and dry. The only place I've seen them growing are in older neighbors' gardens, particularly those belonging to expat Brits who tend to water heavily and have a lot of thick shrubby plantings. They remind me of the older Californians who thought water conservation was baloney. It was all right to water lavishly when they were young, and they refuse to budge from that mindset, notwithstanding that water is far less abundant now.

We're still tending to the house and dog of our elderly neighbor, which includes watering her thirsty plantings that are not well suited for Australia. So going green is my theme for this week's Half-Nekkid Thursday. I also discovered that a fern can be used like a feather in bedroom play.

amish online dating

The Amish are not as technophobic as everyone is led to believe. Now they have Amish Online Dating.

pirate protest

Over the weekend, a group of activists from the Pirate Party showed up at the Berlin airport in their underwear to protest new full-body scanners soon to be introduced at airports.

My first thought was: they wouldn't have received the worldwide media coverage they did had it not been for the two young women in the group wearing the black bras and panties (although the guy in the blue boxers on the right in the last picture is cute, too).

My second thought was: they were contradicting themselves with this protest. How could you complain about the intrusiveness of a scanner while simultaneously baring what the scanner would see, but only by security personnel? For this protest to have substance, they should've worn burqas.

I must say I don't see full body scanners as any big assault on privacy. It's not like the police are going door-to-door forcing people to be scanned and then the results are being broadcast on national TV. The scanners are no more intrusive than what a doctor might see during a patient consultation.

The reality is that a security person, looking at hundreds of body scans an hour, isn't going to care what you look like under your clothes. He or she will only be concentrating on whether you're carrying something you shouldn't.

Then again, I used to take my clothes off for a living and I now post naked pictures of myself on the Internet here on this very blog, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of this topic.

lust lamp

Ancient erotica can be fascinating. This is an oil lamp depicting a man doing a woman doggystyle and dates from Imperial Rome, so that makes it close to 2,000 years old. While most early erotica is primarily or exclusively artistic, this was obviously utilitarian.

Was it used for sexy time or was it just to amuse its owner? Was it something a man gave to his lover? Would many households have had this sort of thing or was it reserved for worldly bachelors? Was it used in a house of prostitution?

I'm guessing that if I took a course in archeology, they couldn't answer any of these questions for me.

here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

One of the great things about living in a Commonwealth country is that we get all sorts of ignominy reported by the media in a much different way than in the States. Political scandals in America are covered with a sort of horrified indignity, but here they're a spectator sport in the press.

A hot story now in the Australian and UK press is a sex scandal involving a 60-year-old married female politician from Northern Ireland, improbably named Mrs. Robinson, who was caught steering developer loans to her 19-year-old toyboy lover. You can read more about the imbroglio here and see a picture of the lad in question. The story is now so widely reported that news readers simply use the shorthand "Irisgate" (from her first name) so they can skip to the latest juicy bits.

Not only is she old enough to be his mother, she's actually old enough to be his grandmother. Now I don't think he's any particularly hot catch -- he looks more like a dull-witted, pimply face kid who corrals carts at a supermarket -- but you have to give her points for her sexual stamina. Her husband is also a bigwig politician, too, who happens to have more than a passing resemblance to Bill Clinton.

I love stuff like this.

but I'm not wearing a bra

So have you heard about the viral bra color craze?

In all honesty, I have to wonder if these sorts of things make any difference. How will talking about your bra color increase breast cancer awareness? So I know Sara's is pink and Rachel's is black, so that translates into what? I'm reminded that women have breasts? That I have breasts?

And how can I participate if I'm not even wearing a bra? I don't wear them very often because, unlike the woman below, I'm rather small in that department.

Breast cancer awareness is very important, but I just don't see what a bra color fad has to do with education and information.

currency prophecy

A charming and somewhat eccentric Canadian acquaintance of my husband is a walking reference library of conspiracy theories, many which he seems to believe. Or at least he wants you to believe he believes, because he's also a great kidder.

He explained to me recently that if you fold American currency a certain way, a prophecy of the World Trade Center destruction is revealed. Now this is an interesting coincidence, and it certainly does look like the falling towers, but if it really is part of a conspiracy, why would this be advertised by slapping it on the back of something nearly every American handles on a daily basis?

lost keys hnt

Darling Husband took this Half-Nekkid Thursday photo a while ago while I was napping and showed it to me later. Then, about an hour after that, we were getting ready to go out, but he couldn't find the keys. I was certain I had seen them but couldn't remember where.

Then I recalled -- the photo. He must have put them down while he took my picture, but then they disappeared. We searched around the tiny bedroom and finally found them under the bed. I apparently rolled over in bed while sleeping and kicked them down the crack next to the wall.

You can't really tell from this image how tiny the bedroom is. It's really more of an alcove, only about two feet wider than the bed itself on one side. The three other sides of the bed fit right up to the wall. The mirror makes it seem larger and is also great to watch ourselves as things turn passionate. When we move, the mirror will be moving with us.

number two in the world?

I do not understand how Tumblr rates my other blog. A few hours earlier it showed my "Tumblarity" was the highest-rated in Australia and the second-highest in the world. I think that's a mistake.

Tumblarity is calculated based on the number of "likes" and "reblogs" and "followers" your blog draws. My overall numbers keep going up every day, but daily ratings fluctuate.

Not to sound like a complete whore, but check out my Tumblr blog if you haven't already -- there are now more than 1,500 erotic photos.

shirtless tiger

The February 2010 issue of Vanity Fair magazine will probably sell a ton of copies because they have Tiger Woods in shirtless photos. I have to say, however, I think it's much ado about nothing.

The "cover story" (link here) seems thrown together and thin, nothing like their usual in-depth investigative reporting.

And, frankly, I'm not impressed by the shirtless Tiger photo, either. He looks rather like a middle-aged man going a bit doughy, and his midsection lacks any significant definition. This is a billion-dollar athlete?

cross-dressing celebrities

Considering how far Photoshop skills have come in the last five years or so, one has to wonder what kinds of output people will achieve in another five years. Will the day come when it's virtually impossible to tell if a photo has been doctored? And who knew Arnold had a rack like that?

censorship in Australia

As an American, censorship laws in Australia have a 1960s timewarp feel to me.

In a nutshell, it's illegal to make many kinds of porn but not to possess it -- so a producer can be prosecuted, but consumers are free to possess the stuff and buy it through the mails. Certain things aren't supposed to be sold in most parts of the country, except that enforcement is so lax, it's nonetheless widely sold. Much of the porn made in the US could not be made here, although it can be owned without fear of prosecution.

Trying to stop porn with laws like these, in my opinion, is like rushing up to a Sherman tank with a flyswatter and preparing to do battle.

The latest dust-up involves an enormously successful Australian company called AbbyWinters.com, which produces all-female porn exclusively featuring amateur models who have never appeared before in erotic material. The site is quite popular here and abroad.

A popular Australian newspaper has waged war against the site, presumably to drive up readership, and from what I can tell, police and prosecutors are pretty much acting at the paper's direction. As a result, the CEO of AbbyWinters.com was arrested a few months back and charged last week with a laundry list of "serious offenses," what they call felonies here. He was slapped with 54 counts of "making objectionable films for gain" and "possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films."

Australians seem far more relaxed about sex, nudity, and porn than Americans. So I have to wonder who really cares about all this falderol, other than the politicians who constantly rant about how they're protecting children by prosecuting porn producers. Perhaps this sort of nonsense plays in certain political corners of the country that I've yet to see.

These Australian officials seem to be using exactly the same tactics American politicians adopted in the 1960s and 70s when they tried -- and failed -- to stamp out porn.

What an incredible waste of time and resources.

not bound for sin

Have you ever faced a difficult choice that you mulled over for the longest time, but shortly after you made the decision, you amazed yourself you even considered what, in hindsight, was a no-brainer?

Darling Husband was recently offered an opportunity to work for a year in Singapore under contract. The compensation package was quite generous, as was the living and travel allowance. We were sorely tempted to go and tossed the idea back and forth for weeks. We would have to move from our little love cottage soon in Sydney anyway because the property is being sold, and plans for buying a gym have yet to materialize.

While the money was good, many reasons weighed against going, too. I won't bother to list them all here. Yet we were tempted because there were many positives, too. Finally, when time had nearly run out and we made a decision matrix of reasons to go versus reasons to stay, James told them "thanks but no thanks."

Now, a few weeks later, we've both said several times something along the lines of, "what were we thinking -- why would we even have considered going there?"

In case you're wondering --"SIN" is the airport code for Singapore BTW, hence the title of this entry. We joked about whether we were "bound for sin," but that will now not be the case.

wrongfully convicted

My personal motto has always been: "if you can't be good, be careful." I share that thought with you as we start our new year and new decade. It's always kept me out of trouble.

Mr. Loser here in this photo should have heeded advice of that sort somewhere along the line. Yes, that's an orange prison jumpsuit, and yes this is a mugshot. Can you say "repeat offender" boys and girls? He obviously was convicted of something, then was released at some point and landed himself in trouble at least a second time.

Something tells me one of the first things his new cellmate said upon meeting him was along the lines of "you got a real pretty mouth."

I love this photo because it combines two of my personal fascinations: morons in mugshots and idiotic tattoos. He is definitely a keeper.