the porn machete murder

The LA Weekly, an alternative California-based newspaper, has a fascinating and disturbing new article up now about a hanger-on in the porn industry who appeared in some "mope" roles in femdom porn. After a long spiral, he eventually snapped and attacked several people with a machete at a porn production house, killing one of them, and then committing suicide after a standoff with police.

If ever there was an antithesis to a feel-good story, this is it. You might want to take a shower after reading it. Nonetheless, it's sort of the journalistic equivalent of driving by a car accident -- you can't help but look.

fashion collision

In another installment in my continuing series on how the inmates are running the asylum known as the fashion industry, here is the latest womens collection from top London designer Katie Eary.

The look on the third model's face sums up how I would feel if I had to wear one of these travesties. Eary normally does menswear, as can be seen in the last shot. How many men do you know who want to wear bunny ears and faux orthodontia?

When asked by a fashion reporter to name three things inspiring her next collection, Eary replied, "the American Dream, horror movies, and the ways I’d like them to collide."

I like to feel pretty and admired when I dress up. I don't want to look like something from a horror movie, thank you.

erotic or freaky?

I don't know who originally created this. I found it surfing one day. To me, it seems sort of freaky weird, like an extreme closeup of a leach's mouth or something. My husband thinks it would make interesting wallpaper. Whoever made this is very skilled with Photoshop.

the flu has passed me by

In an update to my post earlier in the week, I did not come down with anything. As I wrote the other day, as soon as I feel the very beginnings of a cold or flu, I mass-dose Vitamin C, fluids, citrus, etc. Within a day or at most two, I almost always feel back to 100 percent. The trick seems to have worked again this time.

Of course, there's always the possibility when I do this that I've just picked up an extremely weak strain and/or my resistance is very strong. Maybe if I did absolutely nothing different as far as diet and sleeping, I would feel the exact same way. Without extensive testing, I'll never know, and that's certainly not cost effective.

As well, the whole mindset that I think I'll beat any illness ahead of the curve is an important factor in not getting sick. I've psyched myself up not to get any worse, so I don't.

And, hey, spitting milk into someone else's mouth probably isn't the healthiest thing in the world, but I liked the photo.

artificial respiration hnt

The husband has been teaching some basic diving classes where mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was covered. He apparently got confused the other night, however, and thought a different part of my anatomy needed artificial respiration.

can androids have orgasms?

I've been reading about the Singularity movement. In a nutshell, it's a loose confederation of scientists, futurists, and other eggheads who collectively predict in the next three or four decades that both computers will surpass humans in intelligence and that medicine will progress to the point where people will live almost indefinitely.

Part of the reason these advances will come so soon and not centuries away, they speculate, is because medicine and science makes exponential advances. You can read a good overview about the subject here.

While I have no doubt medicine will expand the human lifespan significantly over the next century, I believe the near-immortality speculation is just a little too much wishful thinking. I'm no doctor, but both my parents are, as are two siblings, and I had two MD grandparents. What I absorbed from them is that medicine, with all its advances, still has so many unknowns and quirks.

As for computers, I think the recent Watson versus human faceoff is good evidence that, while computers are getting faster and smarter, their true intelligence is questionable and their common sense is lacking. I'm still looking for the "chemise" key on my laptop key board. (That will make no sense if you didn't see the "Jeopardy" human/computer challenge; if you didn't, you can watch the entirety here.)

Undoubtedly computers will be faster and with far greater capabilities. But they will never be sentient. The spark of life cannot be replicated. There are joys that we flesh-and-blood creatures experience -- love, laughter, sadness, grief, orgasms, and many more -- that no machine, no matter how advanced, could understand.

An android might be able to fake an orgasm. It might have a lot of information on the subject. But it will never have one. I just don't think that could ever happen.

the flu is a girly man

Ever since I was about sixteen or so, I've had great success in fighting colds and flus by aggressively getting ahead of the curve.

The instant I feel the slightest hint I might be getting sick, I increase my vitamin C intake from one to six tablets a day. I take aspirin every four hours. I ingest lots of fluids, particularly orange juice, tomato juice, and chicken soup. I also try to eat a dinner with plenty of garlic and get an extra hour or two of sleep that night.

Almost without fail my trick works. I will wake up the next day and any hint of illness is gone. On a rare few occasions, I might feel the same way the next day, running at about 95 percent, ever-so-slightly off normal but with no overt symptoms. I'll repeat my vitamin/fluid onslaught. By the following day, I'll feel back to 100 percent. I will never have any sniffles or sneezing because the illness never has a chance to take hold.

I woke up this morning with the slightest of sore throats on one side. So I put my commando ninja assault into immediate action. I'll see in the next day or two if it was a success.

wild and kinky victorian sex

Salon has a very interesting interview/review up now of a new book about the surprising history of sexuality in the Victorian era. Contrary to popular opinion today, many Victorians were quite libertine and sexually daring although nonetheless discrete.

This surprised me, as revealed by author Deborah Lutz: "Amazingly enough, prostitution was legal during the Victorian period. There were tons of brothels all over the major cities of England, and of all different kinds. There were lots of flagellation brothels; these were places where primarily men would go to be whipped by women or by men."

The book, titled Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism, sounds more like academic than general reading but interesting nonetheless. I'm sure I'll make the cute shy male librarian blush when I request it on interlibrary loan.

oscar best picture madness

The Academy Awards are next week. The show plays live midday here in Australia, which adds to the already surreal effect. I was looking over the list of nominees just now. Some very excellent contributions have been recognized.

What strikes me as being even more bizarre than when introduced last year is the massive laundry list for Best Picture. Now although fewer and fewer films are being released every year, in 2010 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to double the number of nominees for Best Picture.

Does anyone not on drugs actually think this was done for any other reason than to increase marketing opportunities for movie studios? Does anyone seriously think Winter's Bone or Toy Story 3 has a snowball-in-hell's chance of winning Best Picture of the Year?

If Hollywood wanted to show common sense and restraint (as if that were possible for them), they should cut down the number of nominees to four. Or even three.

The Oscars once were a brunch with a little glitz and less than 300 people attending. Now, well, you know what it is. This year, there is even a specially designed official Oscar envelope. What's next? Official Oscar facial tissues to snivel into when one has won? Or lost?

the ultimate villa

This is a pretty incredible house. Seen from the air, the blue disk around the exterior appears to be a patio of some sort, but it's actually a wraparound infinity pool. The villa is located in Costa Careyes, which is near Puerto Vallarta and fortunately in one of the still-safe sections of Mexico. You can see more pictures and read about the place (albeit in fractured English) here.

hands-on versus hands-free blowjobs

Look at any picture of a woman sucking a man off and, nine times out of ten, she's also using her hands.

I would posit that if you want to give a really good blowjob, you'll keep your hands out of the way.

The temptation, if you're hands-on, is to lick at his organ like an ice cream cone. But if you keep your mitts otherwise occupied, you're compelled to use your mouth both more actively and assertively and will provide more oral stimulation. You'll also take more of him in your mouth if you're not using your hands.

Men also seem to respond more to a woman who's giving them a hands-free blowjob. Maybe it's something to do with the greater perceived submissiveness or perhaps she appears more carnally invested in the process because you really can't be timid if you're only using your mouth.

lonely girl hnt

When the husband is out of town or off somewhere on a gig, I sometimes send him photos like this to entice him home. He'll send a message back like "don't start without me!" And then I'll write to him, "well, if I do, do you want me to send pictures of that?" And on and on it goes, passing the time until he returns and I am happily ravished.

bill murray tattoo

I'm mentally seeing a scene in my head right this second of the real Bill Murray, in full deadpan dry wit mode, reacting to encountering someone with a Bill Murray tattoo.

flipping the bird

My cousin serving in Afghanistan emailed a photo the other day showing him with some of his platoon buddies. They're all beaming for the camera while flipping the bird.

I just don't get this trend of people giving the finger in photos and not intending offense by it. When I see it, I can't help but think it's a sort of visual throw down. It's like yelling "fuck you" out the car window when an asshole driver cuts you off.

Now if they had pulled their pants down and flashed their junk, I would have no complaints.

happy valentine's day

I'm not a big fan of hirsute male posteriors but I thought this was kind of cute. I wonder if the photographer had someone style the bubbles or if it was photoshopped.

politician caught surfing escort sites

It's nice to know Washington DC doesn't corner the market in sleazy sex scandals. In Italy, Simeone Di Cagno Abbrescia, an important member of parliament, was photographed recently during a key legislative debate surfing a website with scantily clad escorts plying their trade. He later claimed he had stumbled on the site by accident because he was unfamiliar with the workings of his iPad.

A photograph of Simeone caught in his "accident" appears below. This does not look like a man who surfed onto a page by accident. Why isn't he using the touchpad in an attempt to steer away from the page immediately? Why is he holding it up and partially blocking the screen to shield others from what he's doing?

Simone hasn't visited his Facebook page in more than a year and likely doesn't realize keyword links on his page whisk one to none-too-flattering discussions of this very scandal.

the duplicitous wingman

We ran into a friend of my husband's the other day who talked about a guy both of them know. He was slated to be the best man at a wedding in Canberra a few weekends ago. Prior to the wedding, he did what some best men do -- arranged a getaway for the groom in case he developed cold feet at the last minute.

Needless to say, the groom pulled the ripcord and his wingman best man fled town with him. Guests had to be called the morning of the wedding and told the news. The bride was crushed. Her family was livid.

I later asked my husband if he would ever do that -- prepare a getaway for a groom. "I've already done it," he replied. Alas, the ripcord was never pulled so no nuptials were crushed.

I asked him how he felt about doing that. He said he wasn't happy to do it, but it was expected of the best man and went with the gig.

I knew a guy in LA who was left at the altar. He never got over it and forever compared every woman to the bride who dumped him twenty years before. He never married nor entered into anything more serious than a friends-with-benefits relationship with a woman.

I've been thinking a lot about the Canberra bride-to-be who was dumped recently. How does one pick up the pieces after that? Horror stories like this make me glad I never planned an elaborate wedding. I was the one completely in control and my husband-to-be never knew which day it would be or if it would even occur.

sex versus remotes

So this study is disturbing or depressing or something. The peripherals company Logitech conducted a survey recently and learned that 36 percent of Americans would rather give up sex for a month than surrender their remotes.

In contrast, 27 percent would prefer to forfeit their toothbrush for a month as opposed to giving up the remote. Some statistical extrapolation thus suggests that some people would rather give up sex than their toothbrush.

More of the survey is to be revealed in the run up to Valentine's Day. I shudder to think how some of these people might have answered other questions. I don't want to know how many would sit in their own poopy pants rather than give up the remote.

bridge to nowhere hnt

Or does this look more like coming to the end of a tunnel, when you're about to drive back into the sunlight?

ford fiesta fucking

I don't know about you, but when she lowered herself on that stickshift, my blood ran a little cold. I have to think you could do some serious damage to yourself if you slipped while trying to put that inside you.

meanwhile, in the sex aisle

Speaking of the sexual products department, I'm reminded of a time I was in Rite-Aid in Los Angeles looking for lubricant or something and noticed someone had put an index card written in black marker with boxes for a particular brand of condom: "These don't work too well. The baby's due in June."

every six minutes

I remember reading a fairly well documented article a while ago with scientifically tested statistics that went something like this: men think about sex on average once every six minutes while women think about sex on average once every nine hours. Now I may not have the time intervals exactly right, but I do remember the article proved that men think about sex far more often than women.

I don't think the article defined what "thinking about sex" exactly entailed. I guess it was some kind of random sexual thought, a momentary fantasy, a random moment of lust directed at an unknown hot female passerby.

Now I was no math whiz in school but I do know the difference between mean and median. That doesn't mean more than half of men are thinking about sex every six minutes or more frequently. But to achieve that average of six minutes, a whole lot of men are at least thinking about sex a lot. Women, conversely, have other things on their mind.

I bring all this up because I think about sex probably close to every six minutes. I guess I'm in the 99th percentile or something for women. I see an attractive male, and the first thought running through my mind is "what's he like in bed?" Or maybe "if I was still single, how likely could I seduce him?" Or "I wonder how good he is giving oral?"

If I'm thinking about sex every six minutes, that probably means women are out there thinking about it every six weeks. We have to average each other out to get the nine hours thing.

the super bowl may harm your masculinity

Pizza, nachos, beer, and similar male indulgences may actually be feminizing them. So if you're including them as part of your Super Bowl entertainment, you might want to know that they can cause a drop in testosterone.

According to a Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism study, testosterone levels in men have fallen about 1 percent a year for more than 20 years, which may be linked to an overall change in male diets. Routinely eating sweets and carbs, which your body turns into a form of sugar, continuously hammers at your ability to produce testosterone.

You can read more about this trend here.

facebook at seven - should we care?

"Facebook is seven years old today," the headlines announce. Congratulations on being able to recycle a press release.

I haven't signed into my Facebook page in probably more than a year and going on two. I find everything I need by surfing the net and don't need to be squeezed through somebody's marketing hoops on a regimented website. I find there's more I dislike about FB than I like, so I don't bother going there.

I know people believe that somehow Facebook has revolutionized the planet but I think that's more hype than fact. Yes, it's a convenient way for some people to communicate. But it's just branding the internet and making it easy to navigate. It's nothing particularly new. If you like it fine, but enough about it already.

As for those who think that Facebook will continue to grow and grow, that the forthcoming stock IPO will be the most important event in the history of the universe, I have a few words for you. Try this: AOL. And another: Friendster. And another: eBay. And another: Craig's List. And another: CompuServe. They were all thought to be the next fabulous thing that could only grow and grow. They did for a while. And then around the bend they went.

If you're not a Facebook fan, you might find this page funny.

has randy quaid lost his mind?

Vanity Fair magazine has a fascinating article in their January 2011 issue about the surreal exploits of acclaimed actor Randy Quaid and his bizarre wife, now both on the run from the law in Canada. After reading the piece, I can't see any other explanation than Quaid's wife is delusional and mentally ill and has pulled him over the edge, too. It's a compelling and sad story. He once was such a talented actor.

artsy smutty hnt

I sometimes wonder if I cross the line into some vague territory of "inappropriate hnt." My more ribald images are shielded, but when they're more faux-artistic, is it still too much not to mask them? Considering the explicit porn that adventurous twelve-year-old boys view every day on the internet, I can't imagine too many of them end up in this blog nor that I'm corrupting any previously unsullied morals.

goundhog day weather forecast

More weather humor from my cousin in Pennsylvania, where they celebrate Groundhog Day today. Pennsylvanians insist, of course, that their state is the real home of the festivity because it originated there and not some other state. My relatives in Pennsylvania always pooh-poohed the event in Punxsutawney because they said the holiday had its origins in the eastern part of the state.

My husband told me that, until the well known movie, no one he knew in Australia had ever heard of the holiday nor the critter involved. If a groundhog day popped out of the dirt here today, he'd realize he dug his hole far too deep.

the tiger cub's rebellion

You've probably heard about a new book about tough mothering called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Basically, author Amy Chua designed a very rigid, controlling upbringing for her daughters complete with many "ordinary" things they could not do -- no sleepovers, no TV, no video games, etc. When they refused to obey her, she made them stand in the freezing cold.

Some people are applauding Chua for her "old fashioned values" and so forth.

I am not of that mindset. I don't believe in "anything goes" parenting but equally I don't believe in micro-programming your child. A child must have some chance to learn by mistakes and also how to make his or her own decisions.

I am the product of a mother who thought she could program her children into becoming what she wanted -- medical doctors or professionals of equal status. Two of my siblings became doctors, the third a lawyer, and I became a high school dropout and nude dancer. My brother quietly conformed but secretly rebelled; my two sisters conformed completely. I openly and vehemently rebelled.

She didn't go tiger mother on me when I rebelled; she just gave up on me. Had she not so vehemently insisted I become what I had no interest in becoming, however, I might not have rebelled so stridently and spectacularly.

There's an old expression -- the harder you squeeze, the more slips through your fingers. Amy Chua will probably sell a lot of books and has certainly made a name for herself. Her daughters might be successful, but are they really happy? Will they wake up one day at 35 or 40 and deeply regret their life's path?