maurine & noreene

The "free" bin in the lobby of our local public library sometimes has the most curious rejects. One day it had several thick, heavy medical textbooks still in plastic shrinkwrap. I took them home, looked them up online, and proceeded to sell them for several hundred dollars.

Recently the bin had a bunch of New York magazines from the last several years. How they ended up in Sydney, Australia, I'll never know. I took those home, too, to reminisce about when I lived in the Big Apple.

One of them featured a little writeup about Maurine and Noreene, twin sisters from Texas whose snapshots in identical outfits spanned more than sixty years. The photos were bought on eBay. I thought it was sort of sad how the pair, now dead, were no longer a treasured memory for anyone and their snaps were being flogged as so much used stuff.

You can see about two dozen snapshots of the sisters through the years here and read more about them here. They look like the sort who would've called themselves "gals."

congressional pirate hypocrisy

You may have heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act, controversial legislation now pending before the US Congress.

The bill purports to stop online piracy, but many opponents say its draconian measures would lead to online censorship by wholesale elimination of access to many legitimate websites like YouTube and Flickr. Some legal experts have said the measure would never be enforced if passed because it would be found by courts to violate the First Amendment.

TorrentFreak, a website providing original reporting on digital issues, revealed this week that Congress itself is a massive hive of illegal piracy, with habitual downloading of bootleg movies, music, television shows, computer software, and pornography via more than 800 Congressional IP addresses.

Some samples of the material downloaded on Capitol Hill include bootleg Windows software, Sons of Anarchy episodes, and a porn film with the illustrious title of Gangland Creampie 21.

Boys and girls, can you say "epic hypocrisy"?

end of an era hnt

Osbasso, the Grand Vizier of Half-Nekkid Thursday, has decided to retire the HNT tradition. You can read about his decision here. I think it's a smart move. His collage of final HNT posts can be found here.

HNT has been running for close on seven years but, at the end, it was a pale shadow of what it once was. I participated in roughly the last third of it, and I can see it has seriously waned in appeal, particularly this year.

Because I will continue blogging here, I still may do occasional, one-off Half Nekkid Thursday entries in the future but not on any particular schedule. It may end up as All-Nekked Saturday on one occasion or Barely Nekked Tuesday on another. They are fun to do when I have a new idea, but when I couldn't attempt anything creative, they did become a bit of a chore.

This HNT ended up looking much more like a salt print, a process I discussed briefly a few weeks back. So I decided this would make a good "last edition" in the official HNT tradition.

moron at the gym

My husband came home from the gym yesterday with an ugly bruise on his thigh and a swollen knee. He was nonchalant about it and said with a shrug "some bloke dropped a twenty-kilo dumbbell on me by accident."

I was livid. James was "eh, whatever, what can you do about morons." I wanted to go to the gym and perform a proctological endeavor on the clown with the offending weight.

I just cannot fathom how people can be so careless at times. The husband insists it barely hurts, but I've spied him rubbing it several times today.

vote with your gum

It's funny how the littlest thing can bring back a vivid memory. I saw this photo on Gothamist and it brought back instant memories of living in Manhattan.

I used to see lots of "vote with your gum" signs out walking in Chelsea and the Village and they always made me laugh. They usually depicted pictures of two politicians or celebrities with the request "who's the bigger asshole -- vote with your gum."

I miss New York almost as much as I miss Los Angeles. My husband seems ambivalent about visiting there someday, but I'm sure once he was in Gotham he'd love it. I could move back there in a heartbeat.

eternal high school

After my post recently about Facebook, a regular blog reader here sent me a link to this interview with the brilliant Diablo Cody, pointing my attention to the last paragraph.

Cody says: "I feel like I'm part of a generation of people who are stuck in the past and are really self-absorbed. I mean, we're actually taking pictures of ourselves and posting them on Facebook, and keeping in touch with people that should have been out of our lives 15 years ago. Obsessing over who's getting married, who's having kids, who's more successful. It's like we're recreating high school every single day using social media. And it's weird."

Facebook is a good way of keeping in touch. But so is email. And the thing about email is that it has to be more personalized. You can't just wallpaper your life via email like you can with Facebook, unless you do some kind of tacky email you send to fifty people. (I say this realizing the great irony that I'm terrible about responding promptly to email. But hey I respond. Eventually.)

Email's within your context, not the context of some commercial site constantly trying to sell you shit and make money off you. I dislike Facebook for different reasons than Cody. I flunked out of high school so I haven't spoken to any of those people in ten years. But I think she has a very valid point nonetheless.

happy holidays

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate the holiday and to those you hold dear. Courtesy of a variety of family photo websites, I bring you some extra special yuletide photos. That monkey looks like a tabloid headline waiting to happen.

third anniversary

Tomorrow is our third wedding anniversary. It truly seems like we've been together much longer, and I mean that in a good way. A time without James seems so long ago.

Looking back on my life so far, a wide variety of metaphors come to mind. My favorite perhaps is the turtle I often think about.

About five years ago, while driving from coast to coast in one of my transcontinental moves, I stopped at a roadside rest to answer the call of nature. Before getting back in the car, I took a little stroll away from the interstate for a few minutes. There, all alone, I came upon a small turtle, upside down, its little feet flailing helplessly. I turned the little guy over, and he scrabbled away.

Life before James was like being a turtle trapped on its back, flailing around. Once I was set right-side up, life is so much better. A serendipitous encounter can change your life in a heartbeat.

homicide by penis

Sometimes news is a bit slow to cross the hypersexual editorial desk here. So I'm late in hearing about Kasia Rivera, who was arrested recently in New Jersey after injecting a man's penis with silicone.

She's not a medical doctor nor does she have any medical training. The man in question paid her to enlarge his junk at a "pumping party" in her home, but the industrial silicone she used caused a clot, and he died the next day as a result.

Now how many of my male readers would let a stranger with no credentials jab a big needle in your cock while you're lying somewhere in her house? Would you let her pump your cock full of industrial-grade silicone that she bought at the hardware store? A show of hands please.

I didn't think so.

The man certainly sounds to me like a prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.

'tis the season hnt

The Husband snapped this a few months ago during a power failure. It wasn't originally intended to be a Chrismas-themed Half-Nekkid Thursday but I thought it had a holiday feel so I decided to use it.

unlively blake

I think Blake Lively is both sexy and very talented but sometimes I wonder about her clothing choices. She clearly can afford nice togs, but this getup looks like something that she pulled out of a Goodwill bin. If you're going to wear something with a daring neckline, it should fit well. Your eyes go straight to her tits and you can't help but notice the jacket is a serious problem.

The pants have visible hanger marks and, worse, wrinkles in the knees from being hung up incorrectly. The jacket both fits poorly and was sloppily tailored. There's a hidden button under her boobs but it's pulling, so the lapel is rolling and crooked. The seams are bunched and not laying flat. The fabric is too lightweight to tailor well as a suit.

I like the color and the shoes are nicely matched, but the suit just looks cheaply made. She also doesn't have to wear a pantsuit this tight to let everybody know she has a great body. If the outfit had a little more fullness in it, the whole effect would be much more flattering.

christmas porn is weird

This time of year, the adult corners of the internet are awash with Christmas-themed porn. Does anyone find this stuff erotic? I don't object on religious grounds. I object on sexual grounds.

Maybe if you have some kind of holiday fetish, you'll enjoy seeing an elf with 52-inch plastic-enhanced tits getting sodomized by some over-tatted gym bunny Santa with a cheap fake beard and Caverject-enhanced dick.

But I suspect many people are like me and find it just a little creepy and not at all arousing. Infantilized sex just does not work.

secret agent girl

My husband had to run into the bank the other day when we were out, but then he realized he didn't have an important account number on him. I told him I had it written down, pulled a slip of paper from my wallet, and went inside with him. Once inside, he looked at the little piece of paper I had and said, "that's just some calculations -- there's no account number on here."

"It's the account number," I insisted and showed him where it was. I had encrypted the number with a little technique I've used for quite a while -- you can carry your account number but it just looks like a scrap of paper with some random equations on it.

You'll see an example below. The first and third lines are the actual account number, left to right (528-736-74). The second line is just bogus to make it look like I was doing some simple math. The four and one above the five and two suggests subtraction isn't my strong suit and I have to resort to the second-grade trick. Anyone who found this in my wallet wouldn't realize what it was and throw it away.

My husband was impressed but then added quietly. "You're sure you didn't once work for the CIA or something?"

I have no idea how and where I originally came up with the idea to do this. The actual account number is not shown below -- it's just an example. On the slip of paper I use, I have several handwritten calculations but only one is the actual account number -- the one that has been slightly scribbled out.

shunning facebook

The New York Times ran an interesting article earlier this week about people who have either given up Facebook or never joined in the first place. For me, the most interesting part was the reader comments after the article, which are decidedly more anti- than pro-Facebook.

I still have a Facebook account but have only signed on once this year. When I did, I learned there at been one or several unauthorized access attempts to access my account so I had to jump through hoops to reactivate it.

I had fun on Facebook for about a month when I first signed up and then the novelty very quickly wore off for me. I didn't like the rigid constaints of the site. I'm an NC-17 girl so a decidedly PG-13 website just doesn't much appeal to me.

There's also something weirdly totalitarian and undemocratic about Facebook that I have never liked. Some anonymous monolithic company run by goofy geeks I don't know has decided how life should be on the internet. It's their way or goodbye, so I chose goodbye.

men modeling bras

A dutch discount store chain called HEMA has started an innovative campaign to sell women's bras -- by having a man model them in advertisements.

The man in question is Andrej Peji from Australia, who cultivates an androgynous look. You can see him modeling a dress and push-up bra in the photo below.

In my opinion, the ad doesn't scream "look, a man in a woman's dress and bra." If it was on a train or on an billboard somewhere, I would probably ignore it. So is that successful marketing if you have to tell people you're doing something off the wall? I could see running the ads for a while before revealing she was really a he. But it seems a little pointless to give away the punchline so early.

I don't think I'd be more inclined to buy a bra because a man can pass for a woman in it. I might, however, visit the store and examine their selection. But quality is all important, not gimmickry. I hate bras that are uncomfortable (who does?) or shoddily made.

So maybe that's the whole idea of the marketing campaign: it's not trying to sell the bra; it's trying to sell the store.

sexy without trying

I was searching for quotes to use on my Tumblr page and found this one by Daniel Craig: "The moment you try to be sexy, then it's not."

Is he talking about in movies or in real life? About men or women?

If you're talking about movies, I will defer to his expertise. I could understand how the only way you might come across as sexy on screen is if you don't try to turn it on. It's either real and natural or it's not.

I don't think the same can be said for real life, at least if you're a woman. You might not be able to turn it on, but you can definitely turn it off. I know I can. When I want to be unsexy, I can go there quite easily. It's not about what you wear or even how you act. It's how you think and project yourself.

I also think I can dial up sexy when I want to. Maybe it's already on, but I can turn it on more. That is an art I believe I have mastered to some degree. I know other women who can do this, too.

I know I did this when I danced. I could feel bored or distracted or troubled but my audence didn't know that. Some old toad was smiling at me in a private room and peeling off the bills as I danced stark naked. I was thinking about the jerk ex-boyfriend who was making my life hell, but the ancient toad didn't know that. I think my healthy tips demonstrated I had some considerable success. Either that or the men who liked me had very bad eyesight and were a poor judge of women.

My husband is sexy in a Daniel Craig way. It's just effortless. He's that way without even trying. So maybe Danile Craig was talking about men in that quote all along.

at the window hnt

I liked this photo better than a back shot I did a few weeks ago. The other one was actually out of focus, which gave it a gauzy effect. Here things are a little more sharply defined.

doodle face

I think he was voted "Most Likely to Commit Necrophilia" by his high school class. In case you are wondering, he was arrested for marijuana possession. I was expecting something more serious.

android noir

The New York Times recently had a great item featuring the surreal imagery of French photographer Cédric Delsaux. He combines Star Wars themes with gritty earth-based urban landscapes.

I think this demonstrates how much cinema has permeated our culture and art. It's become almost like a new mythology. Artists of past centuries incorporated Greek and Roman myths into their artwork. Today, it's icons from the movies. Some purists might shriek at this, but I think it's a good thing. It's expansive, not restrictive.

the horny widower

My brother-in-law told me a true story recently that I thought was both sad and erotic. A guy he works used to be the quintessential bachelor. He never had a steady girlfriend but had lots of female friends with benefits and a very active sex life.

One day he met an incredible woman and fell immediately in love with her. Her feeling was mutual and, after only a few months, they married. She was in many ways the opposite of him but they had an excellent marriage and several children. They had a very active sex life.

Cut to ten years later. She was diagnosed with a particular virulent form of cancer and sickened rather quickly. The husband was grief-stricken but nursed her through her last few months. They had to abstain from sex because of her illness, but he never stepped out on her during that time. She ultimately died.

Up until his wife's illness, the husband had not gone without regular sex since he was a teenager. Her cancer put him into a self-imposed abstinence. Once she died, however, he used sex as therapy to get over his wife's death. A few days after her funeral, he picked up a woman in a pub, took her home, and fucked her brains out.

This pattern has continued. He has not dated another woman since his wife's death about five years ago. He doesn't have a stable of female friends with benefits. When he gets horny and can't stand being without sex, he picks up a woman somewhere, shags her silly, and then never sees her again.

My first thought was: I wonder what it was like for the woman whom he first picked up after his wife's death. According to my brother-in-law, the widower is good-looking and in great shape. He went without sex for months and then she was his catch-up sex. I have to think that was a memorable evening for her.

Like many women, I find something very erotic and alluring in the wounded-animal male. I remember a few hookups from my single days with men who had recently been divorced or separated from their wifes. Unlike my brother-in-law's friend, however, I never experienced one who wanted to bolt as soon as he got his rocks off.

If anything, they were clingy because they weren't used to being without a woman. More than once I used the old "inverted numbers" trick when he asked for my phone number -- you invert two numbers so it's not quite like you're lying. It just won't work.

sapphic

Most lesbian-themed porn does nothing for me. Maybe because the women don't really seem to be into it. They're not good enough actors to hide they're not turned on.

This photo was an exception. Both seem really hot and bothered. Maybe it's fake and I was fooled, but it feels real. It would be hotter for me if they had a man join them. If they were both into each other and him at the same time, then I think it would kick it up another level.

adventures in DUI

I'd never heard of hockey and ESPN star Matthew Barnaby until I happened to see a news item on an entertainment blog about his recent arrest.

County sheriffs in New York State busted him at three in the morning after he failed several field sobriety tests and refused a breath test. His car reportedly had significant front-end damage when pulled over for erratic driving. ESPN fired him after the news went public.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barnaby was arrested for drunken driving near Buffalo after "reportedly steering his Porsche Cayenne on the wrong side of the road without a front tire."

The New York Daily News wrote that his car "had damage to its front end and [was] causing sparks because it was missing its front tire."

How exactly does one drive with only three tires? Like a sled? Was there a lot of snow? Doesn't that do tremendous damage to the underside of the car?

The damaged front end also suggests he hit something somewhere and then drove away. Maybe he was so blitzed he didn't know he hit something. Or someone. Is anyone missing a house?

The big news for the media is a celebrity is in trouble and gets fired. I'm more interested in what he did to the car. I still want to know how he drove with only three tires for several miles, as one news outlet revealed.

tossing my salad

I was skimming some new porn clips on a website and noticed one had an extended bit where the man tossed the woman's salad quite vigorously. She was making all sorts of orgasmic sounds that were probably fake.

I wonder, outside the porn world, how many "real people" practice anilingus. I'd wager it's a fairly small percentage of the population.

I only recall two men who tried to toss my salad. I put a stop to that right away. You do not kiss my mouth with lips that have been back there. I don't want your mouth on my pussy either, because that's a great way to pass bacteria if you've been munching my anus.

I never had a man ask me to toss his salad and I never offered. I don't do sexual acts more commonly seen in household pets that are grooming. Mother nature designed us so our mouths cannot touch our own poopers. I think that's a good enough reason to keep your mouth away from back there.

lunar eclipse hnt

Saturday will bring a total lunar eclipse, visible in many parts of the world, at least during part of the darkening. The entire eclipse will be seen here throughout Australia. In honor of this celestial, I present the Lunar Eclipse Half-Nekkid Thursday. Or should that be the Half-Nekkid Lunar Eclipse Thursday?

tripping to another planet

I thought it was very cool news that an earth-like planet which may be able to sustain human life has been discovered. It's 600 light years away, but who knows if future techology will be able to shrink the traveling time.

It's not the closest possibly inhabitable planet to earth but apparently it presently stands as the most likely candidate discovered so far to possibly sustain life. I remember reading some old magazine a few years ago where various notable scientists postulated that life likely did not exist on any other planets. Only a few decades later they were easily proven wrong.

Of course the newly discovered planet, named Kepler 22-b, could already be supporting intelligent life. They might be much more advanced than us and have long-ago discovered our planet. Considering it would take 600 years for our image to reach them, they would be seeing us in the year 1511. Henry VIII would still be king of England. Europeans would have barely explored the new world. Copernicus would still be in his early years of scentific study.

For all we know, they might have a much more sophisticated means of studying us from a distance. They might know everything about us. We could be providing them with great comic relief, like a popular sitcom is here on earth, as they laugh at a species that hasn't even discovered electricity.

You can see Kepler 22-b for yourself at the boffo website WorldWideTelescope.

sex and mirrors

Occasionally I hear curious conversations in the ladies room. I was sitting in a stall recently at a restaurant loo when two women came in. I was on the far end from the door, so they probably didn't know I was there.

One woman was lamenting about how her husband/boyfriend has a big mirror in the bedroom and loves to watch them having sex. Both women agreed that repulsed them. I couldn't tell if the one girl nonetheless relented and did it anyway in front of the mirror or refused.

I could not see what she looked like, because both left before I finished my task. So maybe one or both are not particularly hot to look at having sex.

I love to watch myself having sex in a mirror in the bedroom. Sometimes I'm too distracted to watch but other times I really get off on it. If the angle is positioned right, it can be like watching someone else having sex while I'm having sex. I also see expressions on my husband's face that seem different than when I look at him directly.

But then again maybe that's weird. Should I be imagining someone else when I'm having sex? Is that objectifying my own bedroom?

I asked The Husband and he said, "kitten, I think sometimes you think too much."

men's strip club confessions

I've been reading a new blog called Letters from Strip Clubs, an ongoing collection of anonymous posts by male patrons. The site is compiled by well-known journalist and blogger Susannah Breslin, who has been described by others as chronicling the seedier sides of life. She's done similar blogs in the past on sex topics, usually focusing on men, which run for a year each. A lot of men are visiting her newest site, given a reader poll she has showing more than a thousand responses about strip club experiences.

Having danced in clubs for several years, I find what she's compiling a great insight into the sorts of men who were my customers. I can't say I'm surprised at what much of them say. Some are lonely and have various reasons why they don't connect with women. Some are older, an age demographic that makes dating a younger woman fairly difficult. Some are gay, which didn't surprise me either, as I always suspected some male patrons in clubs are.

One brief letter from a man in his sixties really captures what I often thought might run through an older customer's head while he was watching me dance:

I’m old in years – 61 – even though I’m an 18-year-old at heart, and I like to think this is my revenge for all the beautiful women in the world whom I can’t approach, whom I can’t get, this idea that I can have some young beauty dance and smile at me any time I want. I like to talk to them, get them to talk dirty, ask them about what kind of sex they have, and tell them about my own kinky desires. I try to keep it sexy, I don’t want to take the edge off by asking them any questions about their “real” life.

Some men used to like to talk dirty to me as I danced and they particularly seemed to like when I was slightly shocked at what they said (although I wasn't really). A tiny bit of modesty while you're dancing bareass naked seems to be a very alluring dichotomy. I always thought it heightened the illusion among my regulars that we had some sort of relationship and that they were seducing me.

I'd be curious if any regular male readers of my blog end up sharing their experiences at "Letters from Strip Clubs." If you do, please let me know.

ass over teacups

I was trimming a tree yesterday in the back yard of the place where we housesit. Somehow while I was up on the stepladder, I lost my balance and the ladder flew one way while I went the other.

I landed hard on my hip but felt utterly no pain. Today I'm getting a whopping bruise on that side but still no pain whatsoever.

My knee on the other side, however, is quite sore but I'm certain I didn't hit it against anything when I fell. My cellphone was on that side in my pocket, so when I plummeted to earth I made sure I rolled away so that wouldn't get damaged. I know it didn't hit the ladder because that flew about four feet away.

I'm still mystified how I lost my balance -- I wasn't even leaning one way or the other. The old dog we care for cocked her head and looked at me like I was insane sprawled on the ground and then went back to sleep. I guess she was reassured her meal ticket wasn't harmed.

the tree of life

I had time to kill the other day waiting for The Husband, so on the spur of the moment I went to a matinee of The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

Tree won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received both loud boos and an extended standing ovation. Roger Ebert called it a masterpiece while, in contrast, another prominent reviewer labeled it "a gargantuan work of pretension and cleverly concealed self-absorption."

To cut to the chase: I was not blown away. Visually, the movie is stunning in passages. The music is lovely. Some moments are truly lofty.

But.

If you're looking for narrative cohesion, this is not the movie for you. To call it unconventional and impressionistic is an understatement.

I once read a true account about a man who went to the same museum every day, for several months, and stared at the same abstract expressionist painting for hours on end.

If that sounds like your idea of a good time, then you might enjoy The Tree of Life. If you like your movies more conventional and mainstream, then you probably won't much like it.

Needless to say, I sat through the whole film, although at least half the audience had walked out by the end of the first hour. Reading the various "ordinary people" reviews at sites like IMDb, MetaCritic, and RottenTomatoes, I was struck by the great divergence of opinion. Most people seem to either love or hate the movie; there's not a lot of middle ground.

the 25 worst passwords

I recently read an interesting article at The Atlantic about a writer whose wife had her email hacked. If you, like me, are not a computer professional you might find some of the insights helpful. If you're thinking "ugh, computer article," don't worry -- James Fallows's crisp prose can make anything interesting.

A few minutes after I read the article, I happened on an item listing the twenty-five most hacked passwords. If your password is on the list, chances are much higher you'll be compromised.

I can't imagine someone would actually be so incautious as to select "password" as their password. Considering it's the number-one most hacked password, chances are someone reading my blog today uses it as his or hers.

In an unrelated coda, I think the photographer of this image should've called it "snakes on a plain."

sunrise hnt

This photo was an underexposed shot the husband took early one morning when I was sleeping. Fiddling around with it, I recycled it into an artsy Half-Nekkid Thursday shot. I was somewhat reticent to post it because it makes me look like I've gained weight, which I haven't.