goals versus resolutions

I don't make New Year's resolutions. There's an inherent negative sense to that word I think. It's sort of like you're punishing yourself for something. And then if you slip up, the whole resolution can end up abandoned.

I do like to make goals at the start of the new year. I've already made my short list for 2011. Goals allow for little slip ups.

I had a big goal for 2010 that did not come to pass -- I did not get pregnant. That's a disappointment but we certainly tried. So one of my goals for 2011 is to develop a plan of action for a solution if I don't get pregnant this year.

I also like to look back and see where I was in my life's path on New Year's Eve for preceding years. New Year's Eve 2007 was certainly not a happy moment for me, but that spurred me to make goals for the next year that I did end up following, which put me on the road to meeting my husband. If I had only taken life one day at a time as I did four or five years ago, I seriously doubt I would have ever met him.

So if all goes well, this time next year I'll be vomiting in a bucket in the throes of morning sickness or maybe I'll even be wiping newborn baby puke off my blouse. Aren't goals wonderful!

time marches onward hnt

This was shot here in Australia at Port Campbell National Park, which is located on the southern coast in Victoria state, about three or four hours west-southwest of Melbourne. It's an unbelievably gorgeous place with wild cliffs and surreal limestone stacks.

I loved this particular formation known as Island Archway because it created an optical illusion when you stood looking at it long enough, like you could reach out and stick your finger right into the hole. If you're wondering why I used the past tense, that was deliberate. The formation collapsed last year due to natural erosion.

Time is always marching forward, always changing, always leaving moments behind in its wake that shall never be again but always remembered.

are you a dunce?

I was reading this tech blog which revealed how easy it is to hack people's online accounts, based on their commonly used passwords. Some of the post common ones are "123456" and none other than the word "password" as a password. D'oh.

This information came to light, in part, thanks to the massive security compromise at Gawker a few weeks back. That led to a domino effect at unrelated sites like Blogger, which pulled down thousands of blogs, including mine. Even though my Blogger account was never compromised because I use different and complex passwords for every site, careful users can get caught up in the backwash.

The moral of this story is (1) don't use simple passwords like "password" or "internet" and (2) don't use the same password for multiple sites, particularly on email and financial accounts. Why is this second step important? Because if one site is compromised and you have the same account name and password on another popular site, your other accounts may be hacked, too.

thanks to ron jeremy

I saw this ad on RedTube or one of those sites for this product.

If you read the ingredients, the first one listed is "aqua," also known as "water." That means it's more water than anything else. The next one is isopropyl palmitate, more commonly known as palm oil, found in products like hand cream.

Other ingredients include benzocaine, a very mild topical numbing agent used for bug bites; stearic acid, better known as animal fat, propylene glycol, a common moisturizer; glyceryl stearate, a common lubricant; plus more and more infinite amounts of things found in ordinary household products.

The ad is sort of sad and pathetic. How much (or how little) is he getting paid to shill this bogus dick enlarging scam? In Hollywood, washed-up former A-list stars and up doing infomercials. I guess this is the porn world's equivalent.

great-grandpa's new bride

The news broke yesterday that 84-year-old Hugh Hefner is engaged to his 24-year-old girlfriend, Playmate Crystal Harris. He purportedly popped the question and presented a ring on Christmas Eve.

Am I being too cynical in wondering about her motives? Can a woman really fall in love romantically and sexually with a man old enough to be her great-grandfather? Will there be a prenuptial agreement?

Hefner twittered the news, saying: "This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory." And that of course begs the question -- how many Christmases can a man his age actually remember?

turning over a new leaf?

I wrote earlier this month about how my family, with the exception of my wonderful brother, never contacted me and only communicated (very briefly) when I reached out to them.

I checked my email early Christmas morning and was dumbfounded to find an email from my father. (I had not yet sent them a message and planned to do so later in the day.) Not only had he written, but it was three full paragraphs of chatty news and good wishes.

Of course I was delighted to hear from them and wrote back in response. At the same time, I had a little nagging worry something might be wrong. Was one of them sick? I queried my brother and he insists they both seem fine and he hasn't heard anything.

Perhaps a thaw has finally begun?

merry christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone out there in cyberspace. Today is also our second wedding anniversary! I hope you spend your day with someone special.

And don't forget my motto, always helpful for any holiday: if you can't be good, be careful.

bizarre surgery

This made my blood run cold -- a photographer had a tiny camera surgically implanted into the back of his skull to beam images continually to a new art museum. My first thought was, what if he falls backwards with that thing in his head? And I want to see him try to get through airport security with that thing.

If the screen below is too small, you can click here to see a larger format video on YouTube. You can see a different video about this project here.

What's next? A camera in somebody's asshole? A dildo-cam?

shipwreck hnt

The husband took me on a dive recently to a shipwreck site. No sunken gold bullion or anything like that. (I know I'm supposed to call the ship "she" but I think that's stupid.) I'm mostly not-naked in this shot because one cannot frolic around actually naked underwater at a wreck site.

another fine mess

If you've noticed how some of the photos illustrating my blog suddenly seem blurry, it's not your eyes. My image host is at sixes and sevens, as the Brits say.

I host many of my images at PimpAndHost.com, which until very recently has been extremely reliable. Suddenly, however, they've randomly reduced the size of many thousands of images hosted on their site, including some of mine. This problem seems to be server related, as the sudden change has nothing to do with original image size nor bandwidth used.

Hopefully this will somehow be remedied soon. Many of my HNT images are now blurry. Fortunately I archived all the originals for every image that has appeared on this blog, but the process of replacing each one, now that I have nearly 840 daily posts, would be a bit daunting. The rectangular images I can continue to host here at Blogger, but I don't like how they reduce the vertical ones. So I'm on the hunt for a new host that will allow "adult" imagery and am test driving one today.

Given that old superstition that things happen in threes, and considering the Blogger meltdown of last week, should I worry about another disaster on the horizon?

secret spenders

I recently read this short piece claiming 80 percent of husbands and wives secretly spend money unbeknown by their spouses. I was amazed at that high number as well as how the people interviewed spend (or waste) their hidden money on purchases they deem so essential.

We've been married a few days shy of two years and both agree that our "no secrets" rule keeps us happy, no matter if it's money or something else. If one of us wants to buy something, we talk about it first. My husband will freely admit he was not a good money manager before we married and leaves most financial matters to me.

We both recognized early on that money can be a major source of tension in a marriage and were determined not to let that happen. He does tease me at times about his "allowance" from me, but he's glad he doesn't have to worry about money any longer.

In my opinion, the people in the linked article have some growing up to do. Sneaking shit into the house? Now really.

to kindle or not to kindle

My husband and I were in a big electronics store a few weeks ago where they had a Kindle display. They're not (yet) as popular here Down Under as they are in the US and UK, likely due to the fact they weren't introduced here until much later. The display kiosk had working models of the contraption so shoppers could try then hands-on.

Later James asked me if I wanted one for Christmas. I said thanks but no thanks.

I liked a lot of things about the Kindle. The size and handiness can't be beat. You can carry an entire library in a little gizmo the size of a DVD jewel case. They're super easy to read, too, with nice crisp black type that works well in bright light.

What I don't like about them is that they're not a book. I like paper and ink books. I like the whole tactile page-turning book experience. A lightweight plastic thingee just doesn't have the same presence and feel for me.

I have a visual, spatial memory, so if I want to go back to re-read a passage, I'll usually remember exactly where it was on which page, left or right, top, middle, or bottom. I know you can search by words on a Kindle, but that's not how I remember things. I also like pacing a novel by the page count -- 37 percent completed just doesn't do it for me. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I'm also quite frugal. Although libraries are acquiring ebooks, the process is very slow, particularly down here. No matter where I've lived, I have been able to get almost any book published in English via free interlibrary loan. I read many books a year, but almost all of them come from the library. If I buy one, it's usually used and less than a dollar. I've been content with my supply of books.

I'm not saying anything is wrong with ebooks. I know many people love them, and they should have what they want. I'm just glad regular old-fashioned books will be around at least for a while for people like me.

my homicide arrest

I love when my dreams are labyrinthine and complex and with such a vividness they seem real while I'm dreaming.

I had a very curious one a few nights ago. I was working in some sort of grungy foundry with blacksmiths and molten ore being poured into molds, very much a Dickensian nineteenth century setting. I wore a shapeless coverall and swept the place; none of the men working there seemed to care I was a woman or much noticed they were so intent on their work.

A man came into the foundry that I somehow knew to be very evil. The other workers seemed to realize this as demonstrated by their behavior. When I was standing about fifty feet from the evil man, someone struck him on the back of the head from behind and knocked him unconscious to the ground. Other men then poured an unknown flammable liquid on him and set his body on fire.

I reacted in alarm to this but an older man beside me said not to worry, the man had been knocked unconscious by the blow and would feel no pain as he burned. Once the flames burned down -- which were pretty indistinct at the distance I stood, plus he was partially blocked by a large anvil -- everyone went back to their work in the foundry as if nothing had happened.

I pondered in the dream if I should notify the police but knew instinctively I would be arrested for killing the evil man regardless of what I did. I knew that was my inevitable fate but this fact didn't alarm or upset me. I simply went back to cleaning and waited for the authorities to arrive, which they ultimately did. I was the only one arrested in the foundry, notwithstanding the police questioned the actual perpetrators.

I have no idea where this scenario came from but the whole experience wasn't unpleasant, as odd as that may sound. I used the picture below to illustrate this entry because sometimes my dreamscapes are grungy, abandoned buildings that are inherently dangerous, much like this photograph. The buildings are usually enormous and maze-like, where I can never find my way back to where I started, no matter how careful I am to watch for familiar landmarks.

puzzler

I'm not sure what these TinyTatts are supposed to be. Chest hairs? Copulating punctuation? Planarins? Oh you slave to fashion you.

grabby girls

Most everyone is familiar with the unwritten rule that men usually make the first move on a date. More often than not, the woman parries the movie somehow and that ends that. He goes home unhappy.

It's mother nature at work -- the male courts but the female scorns. Homo sapiens are but one of many species founded on female rejection. We've all seen the nature documentary about the double-crested green-billed jungle finch that waves around twigs for hours on end to attract a female that most likely will ignore him and fly away. That won't stop the males, however.

When I was a single woman, I didn't always play by this rule. Some men were put off by that but most weren't. Most of the time, their eyes lit up and a smile bloomed on their face -- the little brain was thinking "hot damn, I don't have to work to close this sale!"

Of course, subtlety is still important if you're a woman making the first move. You don't grab his crotch in public and whip out his cock; that usually only happens in porn. I always preferred a gentle touch -- lightly caressing his upper thigh beneath the table when you laugh at something he said or placing your hand and rubbing slightly on the flat of his stomach just above his belt buckle if you're standing close.

Sometimes, however, you just have to grab. I remember one guy in particular. He was very cute and playing hard to get. We were in a crowded club and standing very close so I just grabbed the bull by the proverbial horns, slid my hand down the front of his jeans, and gave his junk a little squeeze. That did the trick.

Christmas tree hnt

It's always summer at Christmas time here in Australia, where wintery decorations seem out of place like they do in Vegas and LA. It's not quite Christmas for me when it's blazingly hot and sunny with a cloudless sky.

We didn't have a Christmas tree last year and won't have one this year, either. Personally, I think the holiday trees here look funny, as you can see in the picture below taken at a tree farm. I think these real trees look fake because they're too even and perfect.

Part of our long-term housesitting duties include taking care of the elderly lady's houseplants, of which there are many. We've managed not to kill any of them yet. Now that we're completely out of our old place, we brought along our one own houseplant, which I decorated last year with little twinkly lights because I like how they look at night. I left the string up all year and often turn it on in July or August when it actually feels like winter. It's back for a seasonal appearance this year if you know the secret entrance.

cuteness warning

I saw this on a webpage and was overwhelmed by the adorableness. I guess the puppy is howling and barking in its sleep. Sorry if you find this too saccharine, but I just could not resist.

I'm back and thanks for the love

I did not kill my blog. The Gawker network was mass compromised and that caused a chain reaction at Blogger. Countless thousands of blogs disappeared without warning, including mine. I was down for most of yesterday like everyone else. The wait to restore the blog was about eight hours after I filed the necessary e-bitch.

Thanks to all the readers who emailed to inquire if I was okay. Everything is AOK on this end.

inside the wikileaks bunker

Regardless of how you feel about Wikileaks, you have to admit their bunker looks pretty cool (see images below). If Batman and James Bond put their heads together, the result would look something like this. You can see more images and blueprints here.

little miss felonious

Kumari Fulbright, a former Miss Arizona contestant and star law student who gained international attention after her arrest and embarrassing mugshot (see before-and-after below), was sentenced this past week to two years in jail plus six years probation for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and aggravated assault.

The gossip and true-crime media, no surprise, has been having a field day about the fall of the former pageant queen. What I find most notable, however, are the circumstances of her crime, not the alleged glamor angle. Here is our heroine's life of crime in the cliff notes version:

1. She broke up with Boyfriend #1.

2. Some time later, she asked Boyfriend #2 to sell jewelry Boyfriend #1 had given her.

3. Still later, she gets back together with Boyfriend #1. When he asks about the whereabouts of his gift jewelry, she lies and tells him Boyfriend #2 stole it and sold it.

4. She and Boyfriend #1 kidnap and torture Boyfriend #2 to get him to confess what he did with the proceeds of the supposed jewelry sale, when she knows all along she's lying and the victim, Boyfriend #2, is innocent.

Boys and girls, can you say "bitch"?

A final little cherry on this delight is her testimony describing her victim, Boyfriend #2: "[he was] someone [who] was educationally inferior to me, not as well-read, not as well-traveled."

Boys and girls, can you say "nasty cunt"?

Camilla's big night

Given Australia is part of the Commonwealth, the brouhaha over the attack on Charles and Camilla's Rolls Royce limousine has garnered considerable press here.

Elizabeth is also officially Queen of Australia, with that title, which means her son could be King of Australia in the future. That day may never come, however, because recent polls show well over half of Australians favor abolishing the constitutional monarchy as do the ruling Labor Party bigwigs.

I married into an anti-royalist family, so they didn't lose any sleep over the incident. My husband commented sardonically, "well, if they had taken the Tube, this wouldn't have happened now, would it?"

Independently, we both came to the same conclusion about the photo below, described in the media as depicting Camilla's alarm/shock/fear/horror as the incident unfolded. In contrast, we thought she was caught bellowing at the driver to get them out of there. You know, one of those "if you value your job and don't want to be picking up litter for the next twenty years in St. James Park" sort of snits. As further evidence, note how she's looking directly toward the driver, not at the mayhem outside, where Chuckie's attention is directed.

I thought a telling image of Windsor disconnect was a shot a few seconds before this one: angry youths are surrounding the car yet Chuckie is doing the stiff-handed royal wave.

you're so money

Like many internet finds, the creator's identity is lost. If they're origami, that's truly impressive, but if the bills have been cut, then I would be less impressed. I had a Japanese neighbor once who could do origami with ease -- apparently a lot of children there learn it in school in art class.

artsy fartsy hnt

Turn an unintended photo shot by accident from color to black and white and suddenly a whole new surreal perspective is revealed. An ugly shadow becomes a subliminal phallic presence.

taming the gag reflex

Whoever she is below, she has good oral skills. It's safe to assume she's some pornstar, considering this looks like a gif loop made from an adult film.

Notice the technique when she has him all the way in her mouth. She's stimulating his glans with her throat. You can't achieve that without mastering your gag reflex. He's also somewhat thickly endowed, which makes this more of a challenge.

At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, I'm proud to say I can do this, too. I think that's part of the reason my husband did a one-eighty on blowjobs. He used to be indifferent to them, but now he's "please ma'am, may I have another!?"

I wish I could say exactly how I learned to do this. I just picked it up with time. I do think it's important the woman like to suck a man. If you're disgusted by it or afraid, you'll never master the art and more than likely will blow chunks on his lap.

It's important to learn with increments. Like with any exercise, the more you work at it and go a little further each time, the easier it becomes -- don't try to take too much all at once. I also think it's very important he let you set the pace. Note in our example here how he's keeping his hands elsewhere. He's not shoving her head down on his groin. Don't do it on a full stomach, either. If you're on the hungry side, that may help, too -- it does for me.

If you have good oral skills, when you go to bed with a man for the first time, you'll probably amaze him. He'll be hoping for a little oral action, and then you'll give him an encounter to remember. That can be very helpful in the quid pro quo department. Of course, he can end up like a stray cat you can't shake when you want to move on. He'll beg to keep seeing you, and of course we know why.

celebrity cheesecake

Recently I was loading pictures for this blog on PimpAndHost.com, the free image host I use, when I noticed another user had uploaded Photoshopped fakes of Lauren Bacall in explicit sex acts like she was a porn star. I bookmarked the album, but when I went back later, the photos were no longer available.

I tried to find the images via web searches but couldn't locate them. In the process, thanks to some weird Google alchemy, I did find (when I wasn't looking) R-rated fakes of Patricia Richardson, a popular TV star, perhaps best known for appearing in "Home Improvement." There are a whole ot of them here, if you're so inclined to look.

Now that is a curious hobby -- spending considerable time creating these fakes. Did the anonymous creator have a particular affinity for Richardson, or was the idea of seeing any celebrity in faux cheesecake exciting for him (or her)?

I could see Lauren Bacall as lusty fantasy material but Patricia Richardson? Maybe if a man favors a shrewish schoolteacher type. She's not exactly sex on a stick.

his versus mine

I've written here before about how relations with my immediate family are estranged, with the exception of my brother, with whom I'm very close.

For the past three years, I've always made sure to send them an email at holidays and birthdays to let them know I'm thinking of them. I've received nothing in reply from my sisters -- total utter silence. My parents respond a day or two after I send them a message; never more than two sentences and always written by my father. My mother is apparently in the same Siberia as my sisters.

As an experiment, this Thanksgiving I did not send an email, with the exception of my brother. I did not hear from any of them -- big surprise.

In contrast, some half dozen of my husband's Australian relatives called to wish me happy Thanksgiving, a holiday they don't even celebrate. One always-cheery one even said "I bet you're missing your family." Well, I am missing my brother, so I didn't lie when I said yes.

What a contrast between the two families. I will contact my family this Christmas and New Year's just to keep the lines of communication open. I've tried to mend fences with my family but that seems unlikely to happen. I often wonder if my father died whether my mother and sisters would ever speak to me again. I suspect not.

Okay, I was a screwup in my middle teen years, but that was ten years ago and now I'm settled and married. It's not like I was ever arrested or became a national scandal. Yet they continue the ice age.

I'm lucky I married into such a warm and loving family. They have become very important to me.

my inner dominatrix

I often wonder what my future would have been like had I not met James and fallen in love. I imagine I could have continued exotic dancing into my forties because of the pay and my limited resume otherwise. That wouldn't go on forever, though, as age is a career killer in that biz. And after that?

I was thinking the other day I probably would make a pretty good dominatrix. Some of them make a great deal of money. A man pays you several hundred per session and you thrash the daylights out of him. Now that's not a bad way to make a living.

There are certain men I could not do this to, the alpha dog sorts. Others would be very easy, however. If he was a little toady submissive man, I could be a wonderful bitch. Give me a submissive fortyish bank manager who blushes when he looks at my tits, and I would enjoy working him over.

I can't imagine too many assertive alpha types visit dominatrices. It would be the meek guys who crave abusive. Them I could definitely handle.

(And I wonder if I should read anything into the fact that I spelled "dominatrices" correct on the first try?)

married with children

I recently stumbled on this very NSFW journal today, called "Out of Me, On to You," which is pretty fantastic. The host is a married polyamorous woman, a nurse by profession, and a mother of three.

She's sexually submissive and documents her adventurous sex life with lots of pictures and narrative updates. It's not a pay site; it's just her putting herself out there for all to see and enjoy. That's a shot of her with her husband and friend below.

Reading through her posts made me wet. That's the simplest way to put it. My husband looked at some of it, too, and he thought it was pretty hot.

I would love to do an explicit blog like hers (minus the polyamorous factor) but both my and the husband's employment prevent that.

I did chuckle when I thought about all the porn featuring lascivious nurses. So there really are some of them out there. I wonder if many of her professional colleagues know? Some apparently do, because their pictures are on her blog.

reality tattoo

I've never seen the "reality" program Teen Mom nor was I familiar with the controversy surrounding the "star" shown here, Amber Portwood, until I saw this photo page posted on the internet. (I don't think I've ever watched an entire reality show from start to finish, for that matter.)

From what I read, Portwood used her boyfriend/baby daddy as a punching bag while being filmed for TV and as a result she's now lost custody of the child seen here. This angst compelled her to endure a nine-hour tattoo session.

I can't fathom why someone would want to broadcast their personal life to the entire world like this. Is it a quest for fame or money or both? The hideous tattoo makes me question her grasp on common sense even more. I think the nine hours could have been better spent trying to straighten herself out.

I remember my father warning me about how I was screwing up my life. I can only imagine what he'd think if he was Portwood's father.

nearly summer hnt

It's almost summer here in Australia, and the air is full of the fecund odors of growth and warmth. These trees remind me of broccoli. You see them all over the place here out in the boonies. On occasion, wild kangaroos can be spotted shading themselves underneath.

clash

The fashion industry seems determined to dress men in bizarrely clashing patterns. I've seen numerous spreads like this in various fashion magazines. Would any real person actually dress like this? Would a man really buy that suit, let alone mash it up that way?

The only people I've seen who dress like this in the real world are guys who carry around all their worldly possessions in shopping carts and shout to themselves.