obscene or publicity stunt?

A story was widely published in the media this week that occasional model and professional celebrity Adrianne Curry was "prevented by San Diego police from entering ComicCon" because the costume she was wearing, seen below, was "too provacative."

Excuse me, but that sounds like nothing more than publicist-generated bullshit. If the police thought her outfit was unlawful, she would've been arrested or, at a minimum, issued a citation for indecency. She wouldn't have been sent packing.

Apparently the only "source" on the story was Curry herself. So if some celebrity claims that little green men live in his underwear drawer, that will be accepted as news by the media and reported accordingly?

I'd have to think those boots would be wickedly warm on a July day in California.

ugly breakup

This is sort of cute. Harrison Ford acts up a storm here. He really looks furious.

I don't think this is the "real" Chewbacca, who was played by Peter Mayhew in the movies. Mayhew is over seven feet tall, but this one is clearly not that big.

sex for swinging seniors

The Daily Beast is running a very interesting article about the sex lives of older people. While it's no surprise seniors have less sex than younger folks, what I found surprising was how oldsters are still getting quite a lot of nookie.

One interesting statistic is the fact that nearly 70 percent of married couples still have sex. That is way more than I realized. Of course my next thought after that was, "hmm, so that means my grandparents still -- oh good lord no, do not go there!"

Now I can't resist a little agist joking about this one: 11 percent of men aged 90 to 95 say they have had sex at least once in the past year.

So how do we know they're telling the truth? And how do know if that 11 percent isn't senile?

I do know that when we visit the elderly woman whose dog and house we watch, some of the very old men in the care home are quite flirty with me. And one in particularly has very libidinous hands.

He asked me to help him get a chair for him, which I discovered was just his ploy to cop a feel while my hands were full. I discovered this is a trick he's pulled on many younger staff and visitors. If I wasn't afraid it might give him a seizure, I'd tell him I once danced naked for a living.

wistful wayfarer hnt

This is the last in the series of shots from the spontaneous HNT shot in the Barcelona hotel. We've been back for nearly a month now and it seems like we were in Spain a year ago. That's always the case for me after a long trip -- time seems to accelerate once you return home. I imagine that's the same for some other people, too.

and now a word about trannies

Wandering around the back alleys of the internet in search of interesting images and porn, I sometimes stumble on tranny porn. The fact it exists -- and quite a lot -- suggests a sizable demand.

The audience for this is a mystery to me. I can't image they're straight men. But gay men don't seem a target, either. I can't say I've ever encountered a man who was attracted to trannies, but I guess some are out there. I certainly don't think women are consumers of this stuff.

I'm not saying tranny porn is wrong or should be banned. If people want it, more power to them. I believe in free choice in sexual activities, as long as it's consensual and no children or animals are involved. I just don't get it.

I have yet to see any tranny midget porn, however. Not that I'm out there looking for it or anything.

is she too sexy?

I should say from the start that I am a big Amy Adams fan. I think she's astoundingly talented and has a unique look and personality.

With that said, I have to say I don't think she does herself justice with some of her recent shoots where she attempts to dial up the sexpot factor. It just doesn't seem right for her. She's trying to turn something unique into something generic. She's a gorgeous woman but somehow she's lost a little of what makes her so special.

Now I'm sure she reads my blog every day faithfully and will take everything I've said here to heart. Hi Amy, you go girl!

politics and poultry

I've been reading various news stories about the debt and budget showdown in Washington. Many sites include comments that readers may add.

The message section in virtually every article is identical. Some posters blame the Democrats. Others blame the Republicans. Some blame Barack Obama. Some blame John Boehner.

You can tell some of these commenters have been doing this a long time, because they know the behavior of their opponents they're trying to shout down as they beat horses long dead.

So that leads me to wonder: has anyone ever changed his or her opinion on a political topic because of strident comments left by some anonymous poster somewhere online?

I doubt it. So why bother? You're only preaching to your choir while the other side preaches to theirs.

A few commenters are witty. In two or three sentences, they can get their point across without trashing other people.

Most are tedious and relentless. They post thousand-word manifestos. They post diatribes that have nothing to do with the article. They want you to visit their webpage with more of the same tripe. And they so often misspell every fifth word and use screamer caps.

No one reads those. No one. Not a soul. So why bother?

I am reminded of when I was a little girl visiting my gentlemen farmer grandfather. He took me a few times with him to buy pullets. We went to some place out in the sticks with yards full with hundreds of chickens.

They all constantly cackled as they scratched around the ground. They were incredibly loud, making all kinds of noise, but not a one of them paid any attention to the others. They just made noise for the sake of making noise.

I guess that's how the phrase "dumb cluck" originated.

goodbye amy

I was saddened to hear of Amy Winehouse's death. I was a big fan of her music in her earlier days. I'm also cringing a bit at a post I wrote two years ago here on this blog, speculating that she would not live past thirty. I'm sorry to see that came true.

I think, with time, her fame will grow. She's my generation's Janis Joplin. Both Joplin and Winehouse died at age 27, as did Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain.

I thought this was a lovely photo of her I found online.

exciting new movie

This looks like a fantastic new movie. I can't wait until it comes out. This preview really had me on the edge of my seat.

about my annoying popups

After I posted the other day about a company with annoying popups, I was shocked and embarrassed to learn from several readers that my own blog had popups for the very same company. Yeesh!

Needless to say I was royally pissed. It doesn't happen to me here in Australia, but when I signed on via a proxy in Europe, lo and behold, I saw the popups.

I never, ever would voluntarily add any advertising to this blog let alone popups. I've been approached quite a few times about running ads but turned down the companies that approached me. I am flatly not interested.

I think I have discovered the nasty evil culprit -- the XVideos site. Whenever one of their inserted videos appears anywhere on a page here, the popups occur, even if you're not visiting that post.

So no more videos from XVideos. I have temporarily hidden the last two posts I put up with clips from their site. That seems to have licked the problem. If not, please let me know in the comments section.

suspenders hnt

Another HNT shot in our hotel room in Spain. Once I discovered The Husband was taking photos without my knowledge, I started putting on his clothes and cavorting about. He wears suspenders -- or as he calls them, "braces" -- under his suits which, unfortunately, he doesn't have much chance to wear. Needless to say, I couldn't figure out how to get the things to adjust properly.

are porn watchers the same as johns?

A regular reader tipped me off to a current Newsweek article that roughly attempts to equate casual porn consumption or the occasional strip club visit with patronizing a prostitute.

The article has generated a great deal of criticism in academic circles as well in the mainstream media, including this excellent piece in Salon that exposes the story's many failings and its over-reliance on a dubious source.

Salon sums up their criticism by dismissing the article as an example of "sexual fear-mongering sells" and that fear distorts reality.

I recommend reading the Salon piece first and then the Newsweek article, so that you can see the proper context.

I'm always amazed at how both the media and the public are quick to embrace many so-called "experts" who really are only experts because they've declared themselves to be so.

is jasmin taking over the world?

If you spend any time visiting porn sites, you'll invariably encounter a pervasive spate of popup ads from a site called LiveJasmin. They seem to be everywhere.

Sometimes I suspect the video feeds are pre-recorded and not really women or couples actually online at that moment because they're too attractive and engaging in boisterous hardcore activity. That just seems to fit into the "too good to be true" category.

Other times, you'll encounter a bored looking woman in her underwear or less just sitting there, doing nothing. Some of these women are cute but some would make your eyes bleed. I have a feeling they're all for real.

The site advertises so much I have to imagine they're pulling in a good revenue stream, but a lot of it is going out the door again in advertising. I've also heard that they take outrageously high commissions from the women and couples camming online, in the neighborhood of 50 percent or more.

Of course, LiveJasmin isn't the only cam site out there, but they all operate pretty much the same, with sizeable commissions eaten into the performers' pay.

The inner entrepreneur in me wonders if a new site could steal some of their thunder. If they charged a more moderate flat fee, would all the more attractive people end up there? Or would they lure too many unattractive ones, too?

Nevertheless, the industry seems ripe for a new player with a better business model that will completely blow them out of the water. No pun intended, of course.

Edited to add: I did not realize that LiveJasmin pops up on my blog. It doesn't happen here in Australia. Maybe it's a Google thing?

phone hacking hijinks

Like many people, I've been following the phone hacking scandal in the UK. The media here down under is giving it plenty of play, likely in part because Rupert Murdoch is Australian, so it's hard to miss.

Some Americans may not realize that the scandal is years old. It's long been common knowledge in Britain that certain media outlets have hacked voicemail accounts.

So why are people still hacked? The answer is easy -- they select simple passcodes that are public knowledge, like their own birthdates. Or they never change the basic code that came with the phone.

D'oh.

What struck me as particularly telling was how members of the royal family's inner circle could not figure out why messages appeared as "saved" on their accounts when they had never heard them.

Double d'oh.

Apparently common sense and logic are in somewhat short supply within the House of Windsor.

cottage cheese porn

A majority of women have cellulite. I am fortunate that I don't have any, but I also work to make sure that I don't get any. The more years you add, the more difficult it is to keep cellulite at bay. You're better off if you make sure it never appears, because once it does, you're more likely to see it become permanent at some point.

Not that I have much of a modeling career these days, but cellulite is pretty much a job killer for many gigs. If you're going to do swimsuit or lingerie work, you absolutely must not have any visible cellulite.

I notice in older porn -- say what was produced before 2000 or so -- that the women usually have little to no cellulite. In more recent porn, particularly stuff made in the last year or two, you'll find no shortage of women with significant cellulite on their backsides.

So I'm thinking: the decline in pay for female porn stars came at the same time as a significant rise in cellulite asses all over the screen. Is there a correlation? Maybe. I know if I was a porn star, I'd be damn careful my ass didn't look jiggly cottage cheese.

You can rest assured that I strive never to use photos in this blog in which any cellulite is visible.

scary

Somebody has had waaaayyyy too much plastic surgery. In case you're wondering who the victim... er, uh, subject is, that's Joan Van Ark who was very hot on TV how many years ago. She's 68 and trying to look like she's 38. Sorry, Joan, but it's a major fail.

stalemate solution

I have a new idea for how the United States can solve the current budget and debt ceiling stalemate in Washington, D.C.

Gather together the eleven most important members of congress: majority and minority leaders from both houses plus a few extra whips and assistant leaders. It must be eleven people total, no more, no less.

Lock them in a conference room with the president. That makes an even dozen. Six from each party. They can't come out of the room except for short potty breaks. Cots are brought in for sleeping. Meals are brought in.

They can't emerge from that room until they come up with an agreement. Just like a jury, they're forced to stay in that room and talk to each other until they decide. They have no access to cell phones, no contact with anyone else.

If there is a national emergency, the vice president handles it. Denmark invades North Carolina, the VP is in charge. The president is locked in that room until the agreement is reached.

"But," I hear you saying. "But what if Congress doesn't approve the deal they agree upon in that room."

Easy solution to that: before they go into that room, Congress votes to agree to whatever plan they decide. Members of Congress must have faith in their party leadership. They delegate the job to the eleven plus the president.

Problem solved.

in the closet hnt

Here is another in my series of "Barcelona hotel closet HNT." By this point, I had caught James with the camera phone and was giggling and making silly.

dominique strauss-kahn and me

I won't comment on the substance of the criminal case involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Time will tell if the last chapter has played out or if more is to come.

I will comment on the overall behavior of some older, powerful men toward women. Strauss-Kahn is only one of many older men in positions of authority who have been accused of boorish behavior toward women. America has also seen its share of powerful men identifed as relentless seducers.

I think I've figured out the mindset of a man in his sixties who acts as if a young woman is just dying to fuck him. I encountered more of a few men like this in my exotic dancing days. Some of them were old enough to be my grandfather and often grossly out of shape with bad combovers.

Do they really think a young woman enjoys a blunt hard sell from them? I often dated older men and married one, but they had a lot more going for them than their age. They were gentlemen who worked at making themselves attractive in many ways and didn't just assume they were a hot commodity because they had a dick.

When I danced in Vegas, a local politician frequented a club where I worked and was well known by the girls to be relentless in pursuing a woman he liked, never mind he was well in his sixties and pushing 400 pounds. We called him "The Lobster" both because he had an absurdly florid complexion and would roughly pinch you if you came within reach of him. He had a pretty filthy mouth and always made lewd remarks to women implying that they badly wanted him to fuck them.

I think with old farts like that, the pursuit of women turns them on even though they realize they don't have a prayer. They're not a stud because they pleasure a woman in bed. They're a stud -- at least in their minds -- because they talk the talk without shame. They are ready and willing, but probably not able, and it won't happen anyway, but they pay little attention to that.

Now this is what we need to keep men like that in line...

ear-popping sex

So the husband was doing his manly duty the other night, pounding away and making me a happy woman. All of a sudden my ear popped really loudly in a painful way, like when a plane suddenly drops altitude on a sharp approach to the runway.

"Ouch," I sort of yelled.

He was immediately contrite and thought it was his fault. I reassured him everything was okay and he went back to work, distracting me from the pain in my ear.

The next morning the pain had dissipated somewhat but I still had an earache. I could hear better out of that ear, so obviously I had a little wax blockage. I cleaned my ear with a peroxide and water solution, something my physician grandfather taught me how to do when I was a child. That helped some, too.

I'm guessing this was some sort of delayed situation caused by our recent and very long series of flights from Spain back to Australia.

I have to say that was a first for me: sex so good it makes your ears pop. I'm thinking about having a T-shirt printed up for my husband to wear in recognition of his achievement.

music pet peeve

You're surfing online, you see a link for something that sounds interesting, and you pop through to the blog page.

Then your browser freezes. Half a minute later, music starts pouring out of your speakers or earbuds at full volume.

I can't imagine anyone likes that sudden and unwelcomed aural assault. You may already be listening to music. You may not like the style of music the blogger is forcing on you. You may not want 104 decibles slammed into your ears.

Why do people put such annoying things on their pages? Yes, sometimes you can find a button on the page to silence that shit, but sometimes you can't, either.

I solemnly swear I will never put an involuntary soundtrack on any blog I ever author for the rest of my life.

the anti-porn crusade

You may have read in the media about how certain presidential candidates in the U.S. are embracing a broad-brush approach to stamping out porn, including one vowing as president to appoint an attorney general committed to prosecuting smut producers vigorously.

What is this, 1956?

The Supreme Court has long held that most porn is legal. So the only way to really make it illegal across the board would be to amend the U.S. Constitution.

That's what we should be spending time and money on as a country? Instead of dollars fighting terrorism or reducing the debt, we should waste it on chasing someone down who produced Anal Vixens 9?

google's "safe search" is not safe

I always have a good laugh when using Google's "image search" function in a hunt for adult material. Because my cache clears every time my browser closes, all settings default whenever I start a new session and return to Google.

So even though Google has reset to "safe search moderate," meaning no porn or explicit contact is supposed to be shown, of course it does. I randomly Google the phrase porn+facial with safe search on, and I see several explicit shots. Googling the phrase cum+facial pulls up even more.

So I dial it up to "safe search strict," which is supposed to return only G-rated family fare. I try the phrase "tory lane"+anal and the results are even worse than when I try the same phrase in "safe search moderate." Moderate ends up with a few X-rated images but strict triples the haul to a veritable cornucopia of explicit buggery.

Appearing below is one of the images returned when I had it set at "safe search strict." That doesn't exactly look like a scene from The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland.

X-rated music video

I guess someone made this on his or her home computer by splicing together some music with clips from porn videos. It's actually pretty good, a better presentation than a lot of commercial porn.

I like how the action seems to be one or several of the masturbating females' fantasies. The girls look wholesome and don't have that typical dried-up porn whore look.

spanish hnt

Unbeknownst to me, The Husband was snapping photos one night while I was changing in our hotel in Spain. I didn't want to upload these in the little internet cafe I was using out of fear of over-encouraging the sweet proprietor who let me use a computer for free nearly every day. He might've gotten the wrong ideas, considering I never brought James with me.

we're baaaack

We made it home to Australia safe and sound. The dog we care for was beyond ecstatic at our return.

She's elderly and thus quite mellow so seeing her excited about anything is sort of amazing. She actually barked, which we've never heard her do before. She has not left our sides since we've been back, perhaps to make sure we don't wander off again someplace.

Our flight out of Hong Kong was delayed for hours, but we couldn't leave the airport, so that was no fun. I never fuss about delays, however, because when you consider what a luxury air travel is, what's a few extra hours? One hundred years ago, it would take months and months to travel from Spain to Australia.

debt and deficit idea

Every day, I read in the international press about all the debate over the debt limit in the United States. Everyone in Washington talks about cutting spending but many (most?) solutions seem nebulous at best. I have no idea if the issue gets much attention back in the US, but it garners a lot of ink overseas, at least from what I've seen.

The political elite seem to be joyriding collectively with the pedal to the medal, aiming straight for a brick wall, and blaming each other for the problem. My solution is the only one that will work, everyone claims, while the others' solution will bankrupt the country, enslave our future, mortgage our heritage, insert doom-and-gloom scenario of your choice here.

How about some symbolic efforts both in Congress and the administration to show they're serious. How about all elected officials voluntarily surrender half of their salary for the next four years? They all earn well into the six figures, and many (most?) at the very top are millionaires many times over from outside earnings. They could cut other expenses too -- meals on the taxpayer's dime, for example.

How about they actually lead instead of just throwing talking point spitballs at each other? By cutting their own pay, they would demonstrate they're willing to make personal sacrifies and are actually serious about solutions.

pinocchio's penis

I'm guessing this is body paint, not a tattoo. At least I hope it isn't.

It's good for a one-time giggle, but if it's permanent, I think it would seriously impede his sex life. Hey, baby, wanna play with Pinocchio's nose. Uh, no, I wouldn't.

Happy Independence Day to everyone in the United States!

porn perfect storm?

The BBC webpage is running a short first person account of a reporter visiting a porn set in California.

The writer includes the unsourced claim that piracy has had a deleterious imact on the smut business. That's an oft-repeated mantra, yet the porn industry never provides any accounting proof of that allegation. One has to wonder if this is anything more than crocodile tears. One is reminded of something Stalin once said: repeating a lie often enough makes it the truth.

Here's my analogy for the industry's illogical claim: a man shoots himself in the foot on a rainy day; soon he complains the rain is causing his foot to hurt.

Yes, some piracy happens. But the porn industry also churns out a phenomenal volume of absolute shyte. At the same time, they fail almost without exception to take some easy measures to stop piracy. Some smart producers tag their online clips with unique codes, so if they're shared, the instigator is easily identified. And, some content producers also use only streaming to prevent sharing of files.

The porn business model seems squarely in the pre-online era yet complains about its economic woes in the online age. At the same time, the number of online porn outlets continues to proliferate at an exponential rate. If the business is dying, how come so many new sites keep cropping up literally every day?

When most businesses are failing, they curtail production. The porn industry would like us to believe down is up -- even though they claim to be losing money, they keep making more and more and more and more.

Hollywood movie studios claim they're losing billions to piracy. Then on another day, they churn out press releases proudly tooting about how they've had yet another record-shattering year of revenues and profits.

One can only wonder how much business is created by piracy. If someone sees a bad bootleg of a movie online, how many times do they seek out a high quality, legitimate version?

up up and away

When this posts, we'll be up in the air somewhere between Spain and Australia. We fly a different route home this time, via Paris and Hong Kong. If we're grounded for several days in either of those cities, I certainly will not complain.

The Husband insisted to the people paying for our trip that we would not fly airlines not based in Europe or Australia. Maybe that sounds "first worldist" of us, but considering some countries have abysmal track records when it comes to air safety, we did not want to end up slammed into the side of a mountain somewhere.

Flight costs are a total mystery to me. A flight from Barcelona to Sydney is a total of about 26 to 27 hours in the air. When we checked flight availability before we left, a three-leg trip stopping in major cities with convenient plane changes could end up costing half of what a five-leg trip stopping in minor cities with long layovers. Unfortunately, a two-leg flight was too much to hope for.

leeches versus laxatives

The hotel where we stayed in Barcelona had a large rack of travel booklets for places all over the world. While waiting for the car to take us to the airport, my husband and I were looking through them.

One struck me in particular -- traveling to Iran. Now I have no desire to visit that country with its present government, but I picked it up and began reading out of curiosity.

The booklet included a section about what could and could not be brought into Iran. I learned, for example, that laxatives are strictly prohibited. They were even included in the same section as narcotics, as in "narcotics and laxatives are forbidden." I didn't realize Ex-Lax was as dangerous as heroin or LSD. But who am I to argue with Iranian authorities?

One item included in the "allowed" category surprised me, too. It's AOK to bring live leeches into Iran. The booklet offered no explanation why. Where does one go to by leeches anyway? Parasites-R-Us?

Wacky.

The wonderful photograph below is by Scott Morgan. He has lots more goodies at his site. I have to imagine a picture like this is strictly forbidden in Iran. Unless maybe it's a leech losing her panties.