early joan rivers

I was looking around on YouTube for a particular Joan Rivers clip (which I didn't end up finding) and stumbled on this: an early Rivers standup act from 1967. The comedy back then sure was tame.

I found her voice from long ago rather interesting -- it's much higher and with far less New Yawk accent then she has today. So was she faking a more mainstream voice then? Or is the Rivers accent of today fake?

epic tattoo fail

Sara gets a large tattoo of Austin's face slapped on her arm. She's only been dating him for a little over a week. (See picture below.)

She shows him her lovely new tattoo, for the first time, on Facebook. "Hey baby, I wanted to show you in person," she coos in an update on her page. Her friends oooh and aaah. "OMG! You're sooo devoted!" one gushes.

Austin's response on Facebook: "What are you insane?"

Over the course of the next hour on Facebook, they message back and forth as their short-lived relationship spirals down to an ugly end, while he's occasionally egged on by other people and her friends come to her defense.

You can read the whole sorry thing here. There's no guarantee this is actually real, but if it's a hoax, someone invested a lot of effort into this. On the other hand, if it's real, I hope his bunny is okay.

cartoon panties hnt

It's another random installment of Half-Nekkid Thursday. Like Washington's Birthday, HNT is no longer celebrated officially, but an occasional nod never hurts. I think Betty Boop would approve.

My cousin sent me a news item about a man in his town who was arrested for walking around naked at Walmart. He then stole a pair of socks and put them on. The news article did not mention where he put the socks. Apparently Walmart does not appreciate unofficial celebrations of Half-Nekkid Thursday.

the fireman's tiara

This is very cute. I hope JC Penney gave those guys the dresses and didn't make them buy them.

sexual impatience

Since I began experiencing pregnancy symptoms and morning sex was no longer possible, my attitudes about bonking has changed. Before, leisurely and protracted sex was always a pleasure. Now I find I no longer have the patience for that.

It's not that sex is running up against any physical obstacles. I'm not even showing other than a barely noticeable swelling in my abdomen that's only visible when I'm naked. There is a sort of hardness below my waistband but I barely even feel that unless I push against it.

Now, instead of protracted sex, I just want it fast and hard. I don't want to be teased to orgasm. I just want him to throw me on the bed, yank my clothes half off, and ravish me. I need a rough orgasm.

I certainly don't want less sex. If anything, I want it even more. I just need it to be very intense. I need cement-cracking orgasms. I need bruise on the back of my head from banging against the wall.

The husband loves foreplay and usually I do, too, but not now. I just need him to go all caveman on me. I told him this, and he's been very cooperative, but I know he misses the foreplay game.

I've read that pregnancy messes with your libido, particularly in the first and second trimesters. That certainly seems to be the case for me.

vagina TV

The Parents Television Council has gotten itself in another tizzy, this time over what is claims is the increasing use of "penis" and "vagina" in American broadcast television dialog.

As a soon-to-be parent, I have to admit I do not understand their outrage. Do they think that simply by hearing the word "penis," children will somehow become more sexually active or promiscuous? That children never hear this word anyplace except on television? What is the inherent harm in the word "vagina" that's not found in a word like "elbow"?

I have a mental picture of the people who conducted this survey, which consisted of watching every episode of every television series on American networks and listening for the two words describing naughty bits. How many hundreds of hours did that involve? Do they ring a bell every time someone says "penis"? Do they text or call each other with breathless excitement to reveal that the latest episode of some lame comedy had nine mentions of "vagina"?

Don't these people have anything better to work about, like trying to stop the wholesale slaughter of innocents in Syria? As for children being harmed by this lacivious dialog, hasn't the Parents Television Council ever heard of an "off" switch?

The Husband and I are both in agreement we will not use television as passive entertainment for the forthcoming child. No leaving on the set tuned any old thing and plunking the kid down in front of it. Programming will be selected in advance and watched together.

That's one of the few areas where I agree with my parents on childrearing. We had very little TV in the home as kids and my husband and I plan to continue that trend.

You just can't dick around with things like this.

porn for prudes

A reader sent along links for these two videos in light of my post the other day about a certain presidential candidate vowing to outlaw porn.

I don't know about the last interview in the second clip -- that seems to go over the line somehow. Given that the guy went along with it, I guess it's okay but just barely.

pole dancer discrimination?

I can't imagine, where ever this is, that pole dancers are prohibited from passing down that street. I think it means you're not supposed to swing on the lampposts. At least I hope that's what it means.

entirely naked friday

I hereby unilaterally declare a new holiday: Entirely Naked Friday. It will be celebrated here occasionally.

This was shot a few weeks ago in a hotel room. The shower had frosted glass, forming a window on one side into the main room. As soon as we checked into the room, I knew The Husband would sneak photos of me when I was in the shower. I later discovered my prediction was correct.

Quite possibly the architect had the same idea. Not of me, of course, but any hapless female in the shower.

dancing fool

I decided yesterday I was getting into something of a daily rut -- revolted by food all morning and then food-obsessed in the afternoon. If I baked or made anything after lunch, I ended up eating at least half of it before dinner. I have not gained more than two pounds since I found out I was with child, but that would soon change if I kept obsessing about food half the day.

Before I learned I was pregnant, I had been thinking about teaching a dancing or yoga class of some sort. I picked up a few brochures for places I might approach about teaching but had never gone any further than that.

Yesterday I formed a new game plan: put together a proposal to teach a class for expectant mothers. The class would be part dance, part exercise, directed toward young mothers-to-be like me who don't want to turn into whales during their nine-month ordeal.

I figured just straight yoga or exercise wouldn't be particularly inticing for those who might be a tad out of shape or thinking they'd wait until after their pregnancy to start an exercise regimen. Dancing can be so much more fun and silly and actually seem like less work than exercise or yoga. A woman who's already working out and ends up pregnant won't be looking for what I plan to offer.

I struggled to come up with a catchy name because so many are trademarked; things like Dancercise, Jazzercise, Mommycise, etc., are taken so I can't use those. For now, I'm going with "Dance Mommy Dance" to get across that it's fun and designed for moms-to-be.

I won't try to make any money doing this so I'll teach it for free. I just need a convenient venue. I'm pretty ballsy so I don't think I'll have any problems with local promotion.

I think I'll also play up my past a bit for promotion purposes, as in "former Vegas exotic dancer turned pregnant mom will offer a fun dance-and-exercise class exclusively for moms-to-be who don't want to gain unwanted fat during their pregnancy."

If I can get enough interest, I'll teach more than one class. I'm pumped about this plan and hope it keeps me busy enough that I won't be baking -- and eating -- brownies all day.

mystery contestants

These two pictures were posted on a photography discussion page. Why were these women not showing their faces? Were they paraded before their husbands, who then had to guess which one was his wife? Or is there a more sinister reason?

the eye of the storm

After several weeks of morning sickness on a daily basis without fail, I did not vomit Friday or the following two days. I actually was a little hungry in the morning and the idea of food did not make me turn green.

Of course I soon wondered if baby had checked out. I examined my underwear and bedding and found no bloody discharge of any sort. I still was getting outrageously hungry in the afternoon and none of the other symptoms had disappeared.

So I counted myself lucky. Perhaps morning sickness was over. I've read that some women experience it for only a few weeks.

Fat chance. Yesterday the morning sickness returned with a vengeance, as if my body had been banking torment for three days. Now I'm wondering if I'll be one of those women who's barfing through half her pregnancy.

When I'm crouched on the bathroom floor wretching my guts out, I keep imagining that demonic toddler voice from the Child's Play movies. Puke Mommy puke! Weeee! He he he!!!

politicians vs. porn

One of the US presidential candidates is calling for a total ban on porn and criminal prosecution of its purveyors and potentially its consumers. The proposed ban would impose a blanket prohibition on the scale of what you might find in Iran and other less-than-enlightened countries.

Now this raises a whole lot of issues. The candidate in question, who I will not deign to mention by name here, has vowed also to shrink government radically and make it less intrusive. All the while proposing a plan that would make government massively more intrusive and require substantial new funds. Chalk one up for contradicting yourself on a grand scale.

Another major issue raised is the whole constitutionality of such a blanket ban. I read several articles where various legal scholars were interviewd and they said such a sweeping prohibition would not be upheld in court. One only need look at the record of anti-porn prosecutions of the edgiest stuff in the past and how they failed far more than they succeeded. So not only would the porn-fighting government activities cost money, constitutional challenges to the law would cost money. All this funded by a government shrunk on a purported massive scale with a severely constrained budget. As if.

The biggest issue, in my mind, is why is this even an issue at all this year? With economic woes, unemployment, gas prices, foreclosures, wars, and many more problems, a candidate has decided porn is a big deal? Why would you even waste three or four seconds thinking about this when a president should be focusing on nine or ten thousand far more important issues?

Most people are acclimated to porn now even if they don't sample it. Taking something that's legal and making it illegal is usually not successful. One need only look at Prohibition to see why. It's the old rule of trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

the penis vs. the computer

Here's something intriguing. One human sperm contains about 37.5 MB of information. Hence a normal human ejaculation represents a data transfer of about 1.6 TB in three seconds.

If you don't know exactly what those statistics mean, here's a down-to-earth comparison: 1.6TB is roughly equal to 16,000 music CDs copied to a hard drive. How long would it take your computer to transfer all 16,000 of those music CDs from one hard drive to another? Certainly much longer than three seconds. It would take hours.

With that said, I don't think you can play chess with a penis like you can with a computer.

But you could play poker. [Ducks rotten vegetables.]

giant slingshot

I wonder how many attempts they tried before they actually hit the basket?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

do you have a dirty mind?

When you glance at these three pictures, do you see something innocent or do you see something "dirty"?

I must confess I immediately saw dirty in all three. Ditto for the husband.

my body in rebellion

I have known several women who, early in their pregnancies, showed no symptoms of their condition save for missed periods and weight gain. Otherwise they could feel nothing and life went on as usual.

Now that I'm pregnant, I find that astounding. That's like someone telling me a hundred-piece marching band stomped through her bedroom while playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" but she never woke up.

Every day the little creature within decides to play a practical joke on my physiology. How about some sleeplessness, mommy? How about some prickly heat? How about I make you really cranky!

Some women look forward to the day they first feel their baby kick. I'm starting to dread it. I wouldn't be surprised if the little tyrant inside me has oversized feet just like the husband. He can't wait to stomp up and down on my bladder.

selling oral sex

The subliminal message here is curious: wear Puma shoes and you'll get more blowjobs. This ad campaign runs in Europe. Imagine the outcry if this ran in the United States.

iPad customized for porn

I take it this is not an actual product but an idea for one. What would Steve Jobs think?

spiders overrun australian town

These are pictures from the town of Wagga Wagga, about six hours from Sydney, which has been overrun with countless zillions of wolf spiders in a web-spinning frenzy. They've blanketed entire trees and fields as you can see.

Wolf spiders are cousins to tunnel spiders back in the States. This spinning mania is actually very beneficial to humans because the little beasties are devouring billions of mosquitos caused by recent flooding.

I love spiders. I never step on them and try to scoop them up in a cup and set them free outside. I would love to see this but it's a long drive away.

You can see more pictures here.

high in the sky

So I'm wondering what my fellow acrophobics think about this picture. (Click to see a larger version.)

I actually don't find this disturbing because it's just so impossible to imagine myself in this situation. They're on top of a transmission tower in Manhattan -- I believe it's the Empire State Building because that looks like Broadway at Herald Square far below them. They're so far up in the sky it looks like what you might see from a plane.

Actually being up there with them is another story entirely. They appear to have harnesses, but those of course could snap or the structure they're fastened to could come loose. As you plummeted to earth you'd could be skewered on another antenna of some kind and left to twist in the high wind for a few hours in a slow, lingering, painful death.

Now that I'm thinking more about this it's making me dizzy. I'm going to stop tormenting myself and look at something else for a while.

hyper realism

These are giant sculptures by Australian artist Ron Mueck. I think they're both fascinating and creepy. They're interesting to look at but I wouldn't want them in my home.

The first and the last ones below are the best, in my opinion, but they're also the most disturbing. They look like corpses.

scofflaw macaw

Because we live adjacent to a massive park, I often walk the old dog along trails there later in the afternoon. Sometimes I drive her a bit of the way and other times we just walk closer to the house.

About two months ago, I noticed a very large red bird high up in the trees near to the house. It was more than two feet long. Sometimes it would squawk and occasionally would flit down to a lower branch as if to get a better look at us. I knew it wasn't a king parrot, because it was considerably bigger and I've seen those before.

I told the husband about it and we looked for it together the next time we were out for a walk but did not see it. I spotted it again several times when I was out alone but never with James.

He began to tease me about my imaginary bird friend, but then finally he saw it the other day when he was out with me. "That's a macaw," he said. I thought he was crazy because macaws are from South America. He explained some are known to have escaped in New South Wales and gone wild.

I poked around on the internet when we got back to the house and he was correct. The big red bird is clearly a macaw. I think it's scarlet macaw. The poor thing might be lonely and looking for a mate but none of its species are around in the wild.

My project now is to see if I can find out who its owner might be. They are extremely expensive so I don't think someone just let it loose, but who knows how long it has been living out in the wild. They can live close to a hundred years so his owner may be long gone.

guacamole and bourbon balls

I promise I'm not going to turn this into a pregnancy blog. I find it annoying when pregnant women babble about nothing but their little burden. So I will try to sprinkle baby blather in between other posts.

I think it's too early for genuine pregnancy food cravings but then that doesn't explain why I had an incredible need to eat some guacamole yesterday. Cravings are supposed to be your body telling you it desperately needs some vitamin or nutrient. But what's in guacamole that my body couldn't get from something else, for which I had no particular craving?

Nevertheless, I was determined to make some yesterday when I stared getting quacamole cravings after lunch. Avacados are easily found here in Australia but they don't taste quite the same as the California variety, even though they have some of the same species. I guess it's the soil.

To make guacamole properly, you need fully ripe fruit. Unfortunately, Australians seem to sell avacados on the underripe side, so I had to pick through quite a lot of them at the market to find some that were ripe enough. I either already had the other ingredients or found them easily enough.

As I went to check out at the market, I saw some bourbon-flavored candy near the register. I don't generally eat candy nor do I drink bourbon but for some reason my body decided it had to have the bourbon candy. So I bought some of that, too.

I ended up having a second and rather large lunch of fresh guacamole on crackers with bourbon candy chasers. Yum yum. I laughed thinking about how that morning, when I was vomiting in the toilet, how the very idea of a saltine cracker made me ill. I intended to save some of the guacamole for the husband but I ate it all. Oink.

I told James he has to handcuff me inside the house so I don't go out and buy food when I'm alone. I don't want to end up two hundred pounds by the time the baby is born. Once noon passes I start to become ravenously hungry. The little beastie inside me wants to eat and it is very demanding.

next year's dangerous asteroid

You may have heard about 2012 DA14, a newly discovered asteroid that will come extremely close to the earth, quite possibly the closest since these things have been studied and recorded. Measuring approximately 150 feet long, it's expected to pass about 17,000 miles from the surface and thus under the orbit of some manmade satellites.

Scientists place the chances of it actually hitting earth at about one in five thousand. As disasters go, you're more likely to be in a car accident but less likely to be in an airline crash. If it actually strikes earth, the destruction is estimated to be on the scale of a nuclear bomb hitting a random city.

Of course conspiracy theorists and assorted tinfoil-hat denizens are already convinced this portends all sorts of certainties, like the idea that the earth has less than a year to live or that it's really an attack by a massive alien craft cleverly shielded to look like an asteroid.

I must admit to a certain morbid curiosity about what might happen if, predictions change, and scientists say the thing will hit us with near certainty. What would people do? Would it be like all those disaster movies? Would people become more religious or more hedonistic or go all different ways? If scientists predict it will hit a certain point on earth, will people there try to get out of the way?

As for me, I'm not worried it'll hit. Why worry about what you cannot control? I could die tomorrow or next week in a car wreck anyway.

my tits hurt

Before my first morning vomit, I noticed my breasts were oddly tender and somewhat itchy. This went on for about half a week. A little voice in my head said maybe pregnant, maybe pregnant but then another voice said cancer, cancer, cancer so I stopped listening to the voices.

Then I woke up one morning with the urge to vomit. The husband was outside so I slipped into the bathroom and puked. I thought "flu."

But the same thing happened the next day. James was shaving when I came rushing in to puke. He smiled and said he had been dreaming I was pregnant. Him and his superstitions. I told him I thought I might be. He kissed me. With puke on my lips. Lovely.

As other symptoms began to appear, my breasts went from tender to outright hurting. I stopped wearing a bra. Then I had to stop wearing anything like a tanktop that rubbed my tits. I wore one of my husband's T-shirts for a while, but even that rubbing was annoying. I bought a peasant blouse at a thrift shop. Then I bought another one because I couldn't keep wearing the same blouse. I'm thinking about just wearing a poncho and nothing else. Or maybe a garbage bag with a hole cut in the tope.

I've been told is that it will soon subside. I certainly hope so.

I'm sure this is only the first of many discomforts that will be paying me a visit. For the time being, I refuse to look at pregnancy books and websites because I don't want to hear about all the tyranny my body is planning for me.

But I can't get the pictures of the Octomom out of my head. What if it's twins? The husband and I both have twins in our family. Or Lord, triplets.

My husband calls it "the baby." I've been calling it "the monster inside me."

I am pregnant

Well I've gotten myself knocked up. I strongly suspected I was pregnant, starting about two weeks ago, and I received medical confirmation last week.

I debated with myself a while about whether or not to post the news here. What if I lose it in a week or a month? But given a blog is both more intimate and yet more distanced, I figured I might as well. My closest friends and family already know but other than that we'll keep it a secret until I start to show. You people won't stop me in the street and ask "so when is it due?"

The husband is beyond ecstatic. He can't stop smiling. I told him as soon as I started suspecting. But I couldn't keep it much of a secret even if I wanted to because I vomit as soon as I get up in the morning and can't keep anything down until noon.

I am excited and thrilled but also quite anxious. This is the biggest thing I've ever done in my life in terms of responsibility.

All sorts of nightmare scenarios pop into my head about what the little bugger could do once he or she reaches thirteen or so. Aren't you the mother of that child who stole the car and drove it into a store, killing all those poor people?

What have I gotten myself into?

hilarious if true

I'm a little suspicious that this is legit because it seems a bit too polished. A good improv actor could pull this off, however, so maybe it's real.

After I went out on my own and before I turned eighteen, I worked for a while doing phone surveys. I never had anyone pull anything like this. I did have a few men ask me what I was wearing and tried to turn it into an obscene phone call. Because we had to make an hourly quota, I'd head them off at the pass by answering that I weighed about two hundred eighty pounds and had a bad problem with facial warts. They usually completed the survey, perhaps out of sympathy,

crime fighters

I've heard that cities back in the States have been facing some extreme budget constraints. I have to wonder, however, how good of an idea it is to hire dogs to replace cops. What if he wants to hang his head out the window while he's driving?

a journey to hell

I did not grow up in a religious family. I don't ever recall going to church except for very infrequent weddings or funeral. When I visited my grandparents, they were occasional churchgoers, so I went along with them a handful of times.

One of the last times I went with them, the minister gave a sermon about some topic I've long forgotten, but I do remember he said something like this: "Hell is not all flames and burning. It's nothing like that at all. Hell is a virtually silent place where you're all alone in a vast void, with nothing to do, nothing to see, and no one to talk to. It's you all alone with yourself for eternity."

Now where he he got that idea I do not know. I suspect there's not any Biblical basis for it.

I've thought about that occasionally in the intervening years. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that hell could not be like that because its occupants would, sooner or later, lapse into insanity and then eventually catatonia. You'd no longer be aware of your surroundings nor have any real sentience. Still, the curious mind wonders what it would be like.

I've also devised other variations on hell when I've been woolgathering. I once had a telemarketing job, which was much worse than a surveys-by-telephone job I got later. So hell could be like a really bad job like telemarketing or cleaning filthy hotel rooms where you never could do anything else.

Today I thought of a particularly nasty idea for hell when I was in a public restroom. I noticed a huge unused roll of continuous paper for the towel dispenser that was sitting on top. Somehow I got the idea that hell would be having to type an extremely long number with trillions of digits on that roll. Make one mistake and you'd have to start all over again. Of course the number would have no spaces nor any commas. If you fell asleep or idled, you'd be zapped with a severe electrical voltage.

Not that I'm rushing off to church, given my new idea of hell. But I'll have to work at thinking up a worse form of hell.

(I realize in writing and posting this piece that my little friend who leaves anonymous and voluminous Biblical passages in the comments will probably be whipped into action again, but be forwarned mes ami that I will just delete them without reading.)

valley of love

I was looking at a photography website and saw some images from a place called "The Valley of Love" in Turkey. Is it just my mind in the gutter or are others seeing it, too? Do the formations look extremely phallic to you?

I couldn't find any information about why the site was called "The Valley of Love." Maybe there's a perfectly harmless, innocent reason. But I'm hard pressed to imagine what it might be.