rethink needed

Am I the only one who believes this is possibly the worst AIDS-prevention ad campaign ever devised?

rhetorical hnt

If you know the Half-Nekkid Thursday secret formula, then you will know if there is a secret this week.

rue aubriot

The photo appearing below, titled Rue Aubriot, is by the famous photographer Helmut Newton. Like many modern photographers, he made a limited edition of his most famous images, which are highly prized by collectors today. Only about forty originals of this particular photo were released by him.

A print of this photo sold in 2007 for $78,000 American at Christie's. An identical print sold the following year at Sotheby's for $8,000 American. The second buyer is probably still elated; the first is likely still furious.

I've been reading about the effect of serious economic downturns on art collecting. The two Rue Aubriot sales provide a stark example. The $78,000 one sold when the market was still high; the other sold after the bubble burst. Art, like Wall Street investments, can be highly volatile. This sort of puts a lie to the old adage that art is a sound investment for troubled times.

Antique works of art in precious metals, however, are one of the few overall exceptions to this rule. While many works of art were plummeting in value, like stocks and bonds, there was very much a bull market in ancient gold statues these past few years. Gold always holds value in troubled times. The biblical irony aside, you have to wonder if someone would actually melt down something that was three thousand years old if things got really tough.

pink films

"Pink film" is the name, when translated into Japanese, for the strange form of pornography sold in Japan. You've probably witnessed versions of this if you've done even minimal surfing on larger porn sites. An example appears below.

It's hardcore stuff, but blurry digital blocks somewhat obscure the genitals of both genders. So while they're obviously fucking on film or engaging in oral sex, and we all know exactly what's happening, we only see is an amoebic blur in the immediate vicinity of their interacting naughty bits.

Showing the actual penetration that's happening violates Japanese law. This strange form of censorship has been in place for decades in the land of the rising sun.

With the widespread and easy access of porn on the internet, which can be accessed almost anywhere with the help of a proxy, I'm surprised pink films still persist today. If you want to see hardcore sushi, the real thing is easily found. How this stuff thrives confounds me.

More important, it is and always was a stupid law. How are you protecting society by blurring what everyone knows is happening? We all know she's really sucking the guy or taking it up the pooper. What is the point of this coy nonsense?

To add insult to this irony, kiddie porn wasn't outlawed in Japan until 1999. As well, hardcore, violent, cruel rape scenes are perfectly okay with the censors, as long as -- you got it -- the genitals are blurred. How stupid is that?

When I was an exotic dancer in Vegas, the Japanese tourists were usually, hands down, the best tippers. They sat perfectly still, their faces entirely inscrutable save for a hint of slightly prurient horror, as they watched with rapt attention.

The more obviously American I acted -- with canned greetings like "how are you fellahs tonight; any special requests?" -- the more they would tip. They never, ever asked for anything, though. I often wondered it they even had a clue what I was saying.

the death of copyright?

I realized long ago that most porn I see online is cribbed from a DVD or paysite and then redistributed on free web pages, without the creators' permission.

Equally, I was aware that people share music online although never did it myself. I somewhat realized movie DVDs might be shared online. The whole file-sharing thing, however, was pretty much off my radar. I remember public-service announcements occasionally running before movies in theaters when I lived in the States, asking people not to file-share, but paid little attention to that.

A few days ago, I was searching for something online and stumbled onto a site that had literally hundreds of thousands of pirated movies, TV shows, music albums, software, ebooks, you name it. The stuff is all free for the taking. Grab as much as you want.

I was amazed and, with a bit more searching, found other similar sites, some even larger. Apparently there are thousands of such web pages out there, each with countless thousands of purloined content files.

Now maybe most people knew this, but I didn't. In some ways, I'm very Internet savvy, but in other ways, I'm completely clueless. Log this one in the clueless column.

So with all this free stuff online, that begs the question of what the future holds. Obviously, a whole culture of people out there would rather rip and share than pay.

Will this cause creators of copyrighted material to stop creating? Force tech geeks to devise truly uncrackable anti-pirate protections?

It also begs the question of whether content providers have killed their golden goose. With DVDs, cable, theater tickets, albums, and the like continuing to rise in price, are megacorporations being too greedy? Had they priced content more equitably, would people have less of an incentive to rip and share?

I don't have the answers, but I imagine the future for the creative industry might be much different than it is now.

the trek family singers

Appearing all this week in the beautiful Bimini Lounge out at the Holiday Inn on the Route 39 Bypass, it's none other than the ever-popular Trek Family Singers!

please no

I truly, truly hope the business on her face is only temporary makeup. I pray that is not forever. The business on her chest and arm, I imagine, is permanent. But not the face. Please God not the face.

sexy stamps

A reader here alerted me to his blog which features real-looking erotic postage stamps he designs and creates. Releasing real versions of these would be a brilliant idea for any postal system needing to raise revenue. I'm sure such a strategy would vastly improve enthusiasm for paying the light bill.

He has many more gorgeous examples on his site, so be sure to check it out!

open sesame hnt

Do you know how to perform the magic to discover the secret of this Half-Nekkid Thursday picture?

slave to fashion

The Husband and I were out and about in Sydney yesterday. At one point, we were walking on the street behind a woman in her mid-forties who was probably about fifty pounds overweight.

And she was wearing skin-tight hiphugger jeans.

Now I don't think heavier women should wear burkas, but at the same time, I don't think it's the best idea for them to wear clothes designed for a hundred-pound teenager. (For the record, I don't wear hiphugger jeans because I find them uncomfortable.)

Seeing Ms. Cupcake got me to thinking. You could almost divide people into two camps: those who wear clothes because they're comfortable, and those who dress for someone else's eye.

Now I will admit, on occasion, I've bought clothes because I know I look good in them, even if they weren't the most comfortable things in the world. There are times when you need to look killer.

There are people, however, who seem always to choose clothes entirely because of how they believe it will make others see them. Folks who wear clothes far too young for them are a good example. People who buy clothes that will only be in style a few weeks are another good one.

Clothes can hide certain things, but you can't alter reality, either. Certain clothes for certain people are the equivalent of a balding man's obvious comb-over. An overweight middle-aged woman in hiphuggers cannot be confused with anything other than who she is. The only person she's fooling is herself.

As to who she is below, I have no idea. She's definitely not the woman we saw. Maybe this is who she thought she was in her mind's eye.

pets vs. iPads

After Apple spends countless billions on research, development, and marketing the new iPad, this is the result. People use them to torment their pets.

The dog we are caring for is the mellowest pooch I have ever seen. She rarely gets excited about anything, even food. If you put an iPad in front of her, she wouldn't even sniff it. Her life's motto seems to be "eh, whatever."

porn professor

I picked up a book recently at the library about porn called Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible" by Linda Williams, who is a feminist film critic and professor of film studies at Berkeley. I knew nothing about the author nor the book when I selected it randomly at the library here in Sydney.

Professor Williams exists in a world know as film theory, which my Hollywood screenwriter friend Ted insists is a load of crap that can't survive outside academia. He said nobody in the biz talks about the stuff which obsesses film theorists at universities.

While Williams is not anti-porn, unlike many feminists, I have to say the book is somewhat heavy sledding. It's not meant for the casual reader. At times I feel like I'm reading one of my brother's psychiatric journals.

Originally published in 1989, the book was revised and published again in 1999. With that said, Williams's work has many thought-provoking ideas. Much of what she writes about is porn from the so-called "golden age," made between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. The genre has evolved significantly since that time. I'd be curious to hear her thoughts on the porn of today.

While Willims is often intrigued by what she sees on the screen, she always comes across as quite distanced from the material, in my opinion. She seems to view porn as primarily for the lower-brow male audience and not inherently enjoyable by women. Her approach is downright clinical at times.

She discusses several well known porn films in detail, including one now considered a classic, Insatiable, which starred the late Marilyn Chambers. The scene which appears below, from that movie, is subject to considerable discussion by her, but always as a distanced spectator.

As a woman who likes good porn, I found the scene below somewhat engaging but also disappointing. The way the male speaks, for me, is the most erotic aspect of this scene. While Williams focuses heavily on the design and symbolism of this scene, I think she pays too little attention to its erotic potential.

This scene ultimately succeeds or fails, in my opinion, if it does or doesn't allow the viewer to suspend disbelief. In a good thriller or horror scene, the viewer is genuinely fearful -- the heart races, fists grip the edge of the chair, and so on. Equally so, for a porn scene to succeed, I'd suggest, from a feminist's point of view, it must arouse at least some women.

For me, the scene is somewhat arousing but could have been so much more so. The idea of a dominant male seducing and deflowering a woman without being violent could be very erotic. This scene doesn't achieve that, although I argue the man has the potential to pull it off. Whether it was mores or filmic limitations of the era that constrained that remains to be seen.

I have to wonder if this scene was shot by a skilled female director, could she have made it much more arousing for a woman?

the wisdom of Chuck Palahniuk

I will freely admit that Chuck Palahniuk is not my favorite novelist, but I thought this was a great nugget of profundity that ejaculated from his brain:

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

topical titties

Which is your favorite website? Explosions and Boobs? or Boobs and Explosions?

screwed by the taxman

So all you stateside Americans had to finish your taxes by yesterday or file for an extension (but still pay the money, of course).

One of the advantages of being an American living overseas is that we get an automatic extension.

There is a big downside, however. If you live abroad, you have to pay whatever is the higher rate -- the IRS's or wherever you live. So if your tax rate in the US is 15 percent but 20 percent in Country X, you pay the 20 percent, and the IRS credits the whole thing on your IRS bill. But if your tax rate in the US is 15 percent but only 10 percent in the foreign country, you still have to pay 15 percent -- 10 percent to Country X and the difference (5 percent) to the IRS.

Here's my tax tip to keep from being audited: fill out all the forms in Roman numerals.

artsy or scary hnt?

I can't decide whether this Half-Nekkid Thursday attempt looks scary or artistic. Does it appear to be made in a moment of intense passion? Or moments before she hacked off her sleeping husband's head with a dull ax?

That notwithstanding, I'm amazed at how many people still don't know the HNT secret. I guess it just hasn't clicked with you yet. Perhaps soon it will.

pandas love porn

This just in from China: because pandas are notoriously unromantic in zoos and tend not to mate, scientists have bettered the odds with a the combination of porn, exercises, and the occasional menage a trois to get young males curious about sex.

Zhang Zhihe, director of Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, China, has proven with hard statistics that his panda porn program has increased procreation amongst eligible couples to 60 percent from only 25 percent a few decades ago.

In recent years, record numbers of panda cubs have been born as a result of these new mating techniques.

One major problem is that males of the species would rather lounge around eating as opposed to some hot panda love. A typical mating session lasts for only a few minutes and may be as short as thirty seconds.

When searching for a picture to illustrate this piece, I found these below. Apparently rocking horses are like crack to pandas.

the creature from the androgynous lagoon

Clever how his hairband, nail polish, and daisy dukes are all color-coordinated. And I hear nipple tatts are the new black.

sex + art + porn + gibberish

I've changed the overall subhead for this blog. It used to be "the adventures of a hypersexual woman," but the scope never ended up being focused primarily on that.

When I started this blog more than a year and a half ago, I was not yet married and had only recently met the man who would become my husband. While we did travel to Australia together, I had already booked my trip before I met him.

"The adventures of a hypersexual woman" was something I came up off the top of my head in about fifteen seconds because the blog layout needed a subhead title or whatever it's called. I've talked a fair bit about my past and present sex life, but it's not the exclusive focus of this journal. While blogging tends toward narcissism as it is, I didn't want this to be all about me me me me me.

Hence, the new subhead: sex + art + porn + gibberish. That's much more what it turned out to be. I talk a lot about sex, art, and porn, while I'm never lacking for a helping of gibberish.

adorable porn

I thought all three performers in this porn clip were rather adorable. Considering so many so-called porn stars are somewhat on the skanky side, it's always nice to see something that's an exception to the rule. It's almost like Stacy, Jeff, and Matt decided, "hey, let's make some porn for our senior project!"

burqa porn

A reader took exception to the photo in a recent post I made about female terrorists. I found the image on this page, which I found linked here, fwiw. Obviously I wasn't offended by the photo, or otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.

As a consumer of porn (which generally means I wander the Internet looking for free stuff like most people), I've noticed an increase in what I'll call "burqa porn."

Now no devout Muslim girl is actually making porn. I think we can be fairly certain of that. If she's so constrained that she's wearing a burqa or something that obscures portions of her face and body, you can be pretty sure she won't allow herself to be filmed with some guy's meat stuffed in her mouth for all the world to see.

I imagine these girls are dancers and escorts who are picking up some extra dinero making porn. It's an old game.

What interests me are the consumers of this material. Are they less observant Muslim males who have fantasies about what's underneath all those billowing garments they see on the street? Are they servicemen who've similarly fantasized while posted overseas? Are they jingoistic Westerners who fantasize about putting one to Osama's daughter? Is it the attraction of the forbidden more than the cultural attire?

Here's a thought: if you really did get it on with a women who actually wore a burqa, isn't it likely she would be pretty clueless about sex and not at all responsive nor skilled? I think it falls into the same category as nun porn -- what you can't see doesn't mean it's worth having.

dystopian

My husband had never seen The Quiet Earth, which is not surprising, considering many people do not know about this scifi classic made in New Zealand about twenty-five years ago. I ordered a DVD copy via the library, and we watched it the other night. He quite enjoyed the movie, too.

Later, we were talking about the film, and he commented that I seemed to favor dystopian movies and books. If you're not familiar with the term, this genre depicts a near-future, often bleak society, sometimes where most of humanity has died out and some variety of anarchy or totalitarianism rules. I had never really thought about it, but he's absolutely right. I wrote here recently, for example, about THX 1138, which we also watched not too long ago.

Some of my favorite books are things like The Road, The Children of Men, The Pesthouse, Oryx and Crake, Blindness, A Friend of the Earth, etc. Movies include some of the Mad Max series, Zardoz, On the Beach, 12 Monkeys, Soylent Green, Testament, Gattaca, and more.

I've always had a wandering mind, and I do at times wonder what it would be like to live in such a society. Perhaps that's why I'm attracted to movies and books like this; they propose a sort of thesis, and I imagine how I would fare in such a world. I'd like to think I would be resourceful and help others, but also being a woman could be a disadvantage unless I had someone like my husband to protect me. That might sound sexist, but in a chaotic world, a woman alone would be extremely vulnerable.

The still image below is from The Quiet Earth at the very close of the film. If you have a chance to see it, I hope you enjoy it, too.

camera obscura hnt

Do you know the Half-Nekkid Thursday secret? Many people do. It's a worldwide conspiracy of hidden knowledge, but many know about it. You have to discover it for yourself, however.

Once you do, all sorts of things might click into place. You'll go back to images you've seen before and discover there's so much more than you thought. You'll wonder "why didn't I think of that before?"

I know some of you know, but some of you don't. Will you discover the secret this week?

building a better blowjob

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dragon

While as a rule I think whole body tattoos can be a serious mistake, I'd say this one is an exception. There's something very erotic about it, perhaps in the intimation of an exotic creature tightly wrapped around the naked woman's torso.

The flip side, however, is the fact that while this looks alluring on a woman of twenty-five, what about when she's seventy-five? She could end up looking like an old carny. If you had some guarantee that this would disappear in, say, five or ten years, then I think you could increase the market for exotic body art.

I worked with some dancers who had larger tattoos like this and a few were very well done. I think that definitely helped their market appeal, at least based on their tips and the way the men acted toward them. As a woman without implants or tattoos who is somewhat small in the tits department, I usually was below the median when it came earnings as an exotic dancer.

I occasionally felt somewhat envious of the top-earners, but that would soon be tempered with the realization they had made irreversible life choices. Given that former exotic dancers who can no longer work on stage at fifty sometimes end up stuffed in tight blouses and too-short skirts riding up their cottage-cheese thighs while doling out drinks during happy hour, a day might come were such decoration would be much more of a liability.

antique sex toys sell for $5,500

Two wooden dildos dating from the 18th century sold at auction last week for £3,600, or about $6,000 Australian/$5,500 US. Antiquarians said the two items -- one measuring ten inches and the other eleven -- were probably French and listed in the catalog as "Travel Godermiche."

The pair were sold fitted in their original kid leather case. The ten-inch one had testicles and the other 11 inches without testicles.

This story makes my sex-obsessed mind wonder about their original owner. I'm assuming they belonged to a woman.

Were the made in the shape of a lover or lovers? What's with the one without the balls? Did she need to travel with these because her lover was left behind or traveled out of the country? Did she have two lovers and was involved in a ménage à trois, hence the need for two dildos? Did she lose her head in the French Revolution?

Why didn't they teach this kind of stuff in history class? This is so much more interesting than who signed the Treaty of East Westenheimer in 1537.

Shout out to "The World of Major Voyeur" where I originally learned about this.

no fun

I would posit that this is porn completely lacking in any reality.

It's certainly not arousing for the woman on the bottom because she would experience no tactile sensation. The woman in the middle might feel a little something, but it certainly wouldn't feel like a real man. However, both wearing and receiving a strap-on like that looks uncomfortable. As for the woman sucking on the thing, she might as well give a blowjob to a vacuum cleaner attachment.

This might turn a guy on -- three women so desperate to get fucked they have to resort to simulation. For a woman, however, I'd argue it's just not erotic and certainly doesn't inspire fantasy daydreams. I imagine a lesbian would find it uninteresting, too.

ironic mugshots

I think the moral to these are: if you're going to wear a goofy T-shirt, don't do anything that would get you arrested while you're wearing it.

new sensation

April has arrived, which is the first month of our attempt to get pregnant. I went off the pill the first of the year, but my doctor recommended cycling through three periods before attempting to get knocked up, so The Husband has been using condoms in the interim.

Now we're contraceptive free and actively breeding. Having spent almost the entirety of my sexual life striving not to become pregnant and never having had a whoops, reversing the situation feels a bit odd.

When James ejaculates inside me now, I wonder "did that do it?" For his part, my husband has taken to cheering between my legs after he cums, egging on his baby batter like a sports team: "Go boys go!" I'm reminded of that old Woody Allen film Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask where the sperm are like paratroopers leaping into the void.

It's even a little scary now because, if all goes as planned, I will be experiencing something entirely new for me. I feel sort of like a ticking bomb may have been planted inside me.

Sometimes the pill makes women more libidinous, so I was a bit worried my desire would lessen once I was "all natural." Thankfully that did not prove the case for me. If anything, being off the pill has made me hornier because now I have an extra reason for sex. For his part, James has only been too happy to assist.

new tattoo hnt

Half-Nekkid Thursday is a perfect time to unveil my new tattoo. I've written before here about how I've toyed with the idea of getting a tatt if I could just find the right one to complement my personality. Well I saw this and had to have it immediately -- something about it just clicked. I think it's just perfect for me. It hurt like hell though getting it done and took nearly forever.