disney gobbles up george lucas

The word is out that George Lucas is selling LucasFilm to Disney for $4 billion. As part of the deal, a new Star Wars film will be released in 2015 and more every two years thereafter, but apparently these will not be written nor directed by Lucas himself.

Reading around on various entertainment forums, it seems some fans are excited about this deal but more are not. Given Lucas will now mostly be a bystander, some take this as a very bad sign for future Star Wars installments.

IMHO, none of the sequels comes anywhere close to the impact of the original Star Wars from 1977. Yes, the special effects got much better and some of the characters were memorable, but the sequels just don't have the heart and soul of the original film. They were not landmarks in and of their own right like the second Godfather movie was.

So maybe some fresh blood into the franchise will do it some good. I enjoyed all the Star Wars movies as a kid, but as an adult, I only really like the first one. I'd love to see a new sequel that would give the original some real competition.

memorial tramp stamp

She seems young and shapely, which probably means she was too young to remember Reagan's presidency. Or she may not even have yet been born.

So perhaps she got it as a special treat for her significant other, who is old enough to recallr Reagan. But what will he be doing when he's most likely to see it? Won't that sort of kill the moment?

freaking out long distance

I've been following the various news stories about the mega-monster storm due to hit the eastern United States early this week. Some of the tracking maps show the storm center passing directly over where my cousins live in Pennsylvania.

They assure me they'll be okay, but it's still scary for me way over here because I have no real concept of what they're facing. I'd much rather a sudden disaster like an earthquake as opposed to one that you know for days is coming coming coming.

To all you readers in the storm's pathway, I hope you stay safe and it is as uneventful as possible for you. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

the weatherman's erection

Somebody's just a bit too excited about Tropical Storm John. Given the weatherman in question is in Utah, I suspect this was not deliberate.

argh

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, and she now thinks my original due date was wrong. She suspects I'm actually due about ten days to two weeks later than previously determined.

She said she thought this could be a possibility during my last several visits but wanted to wait a few appointments to confirm her suspicions.

I can't say I'm entirely surprised. I've always thought I seemed somewhat less pregnant looking than other women with my same due date. A woman from my class has a due date a few days after mine -- we both are built about the same -- and she's visibly larger.

Too bad I'm not a marsupial. That would make pregnancy so much easier.

adventures in irrelevancy

Has Donald Trump gone insane? He promises an earth-shattering scoop that will upend the US presidential race and then delivers nothing.

If you weren't paying attention, and who could blame you, Trump endlessly promoted that he had some bombshell news about Obama that he would release in several days. On the appointed day and hour, he had no news but instead offered to donate $5 million to charity if the President released certian personal records. It was yet another chapter in his ongoing birth certificant rant.

The media and most of the world responded: that's it?

Trump continues to make himself look more and more foolish. He must be a raging narcissist, considering how much he craves attention.

Given how much his announcement was a dud, I'm left wondering if he actually had something else to announce but then discovered he'd been hoaxed. He thought he had some smoking gun document but it was a fake to dupe him out of some money.

If you haven't seen it yet, Stephen Colbert had an amusing response.

on the cusp of history

Current events steer the course of history every day. A disaster happens, a leader dies, a battle is fought, a terrorist strikes, a government weakens, a major government is arrested, a business weakens, an ultimatum is made. As spectators, we know that the history around us changes, but we don't usually know until after it happens.

That's what makes an election different. We know in two weeks that American history will be changed irrevocably. New entries will be made in the records of time.

Both American candidates have said this will be their last election. So in two weeks we'll either be talking about the Romney presidency or Obama's second term. It cannot be both. And one will never be.

That's one of the things I find most exciting about elections. It's the anticipation that history will change, that an era will close and a new one will begin but another one will never happen. Some of us will be unhappy at the results while others of us will be elated. But we will all move on together.

I'm really looking forward to this election, but not because I'm convinced my candidate will win. I think part of the reason is because I've followed this one much more closely than in the past. It's kept me connected to the United States even though I'm ten thousand miles away.

I think the anticipation is also tied to the fact that I'll probably give birth near election day. My life will change irrevocably and I'll always remember the two concurrent events. I imagine ten or twenty years from now, when I see a picture of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, I'll remember my pregnancy and how I felt in these last few weeks.

It's become sort of a bookmark in time for me.

are lap dances art?

I stumbled on this news item in New York magazine about a recent appellate court ruling that lap dances are not considered "dramatic or musical arts performances" and thus are subject to state sales tax.

The dissent raised an interesting point with constitutional overtones: the court could not allow a tax on Hustler that was not equally applied to an artistic magazine, so the majority justices were getting into trouble distinguishing between "highbrow dance and lowbrow dance."

I think this problem is easily solved: tax everything with no exceptions. You want to see Death of a Salesman? You pay the tax. You want to see some woman parading naked on stage? You pay the tax.

No one can deny that a skilled pole dancer is less enlightening than some shlock musical that closes when it's still in previews.

The problem with tax codes is that politicians keep carving out more and more exceptions. Arguably the greatest unfairness is not a tax itself but its unequal application.

revenge

The photos below are part of a long set that I suspected existed and which I've been trying to find for some time. I would occasionally see one or another online but Google image search would not lead me to the source. And then one particularly image, for whatever reason, provided the key to open the lock. Google can be alternatively helpful and frustrating that way.

I love how the photographer combines a modern BDSM sensibility with a silent film era sheen. Many of the photos look vintage, both in their composition and staging.

The set is from a photography book described as follows: "fashion photographer Ellen Von Unwerth's newest book Revenge is a wild and sexy romp. A trio of young women arrive at the Baroness's estate expecting a relaxing weekend. The Baroness, her chauffeur, and her stablehand soon have them involved in something quite different -- games that involve rope, whips, and lingerie."

Just looking at a few of the photos, I had already imagined a remarkably similar story -- a dominant aristocratic woman seduces several naive women with the help of her randy servants.

So does that mean the photographer was very effective in conveying the story with just a handful of photos, without one seeing the entire set? Or does it mean my mind tends to veer in a sordid direction with very little stimuli?

You can see many high-resolution scans from the book and with more information here.

false labor

I've now experienced two brief periods of false labor, known formally as Braxton Hicks contractions. Some women feel them throughout their second and third trimesters, but not me.

The first batch was scary because it was like my first earthquake. Is this it? Was that bad? Will it get worse? Is it over?

When nothing more happened after an hour, then several hours, I realized what had happened. Weenut is just doing a dry run.

If I went into labor now, it wouldn't be a crisis. The baby would be about three weeks early. I would prefer that not happen, however, because developmentally it's usually best for the child to go full term.

Nonetheless, I am now in fully prepared-and-ready mode in the event I do actually go into labor. My bag is packed. The house is ready. All necessary wifely lists and directions have been typed out for The Husband. Even the blog is in ready mode.

archenemies

The last US presidential debate is almost upon us. It was pretty clear from the second match-up that the two candidates are not in love with each other. Has there ever been a US presidential debate that was so tempestuous?

I think they've become more "reality television" than actual debates. The candidates are not debating issues; they're in some kind of verbal pugilistic rumble, trying to score talking points. The candidates' positions are pretty clear to the public, so they're just trying to one-up the other. The most heated issue of the second debate was whether or not one candidate had used a particular word at a press appearance.

How does a US President deal with complex unfolding issues? Or negotiate with Congress about new legislation? Or deal with a foreign crisis and world leaders?

You can't answer any of those questions from what you learn at the debates.

I am one of those who believe the need for the debates is vastly overstated. This year, they seem to have become the most important feature of the election. I think that's unfortunate.

And I think that only means they'll be even more important during the next election.

witness to history

I love stuff like this -- here is the last living witness to Abraham Lincoln's assassination. He doesn't have much to say, but at 96 he can be forgiven for not being a chatterbox.

My grandfather once told me that, as a young doctor, he had a patient who saw Lincoln's funeral train pass through his town when he was a small boy. He had nightmares about it for years afterwards because the slow-moving train did not stop and was covered with black bunting. Everyone watching it pass by was in tears.

binders full of women

An Australian male friend asked me if I was offended by the "binders full of women" remark during the recent debate. I was curious he knew about that, and he explained his wife had remarked about it. She also is Australian. In case you didn't notice, the internet is already rife with binder memes.

To me, the statement was more surreal than offensive. It reminded me of a "little black book." If Don Draper is in your Rolodex, then maybe you have binders full of women, too. Men who keep things in binders are so 1960s. They would never type that into their own laptop because typing is for "the gals."

Outside of a few short-lived temp jobs right after I turned eighteen, I've never worked in an office so I'm not really too familiar with that world. I have the sense that many offices are still male-dominated, so when staffing for top slots takes place, the binders are mostly filled with men.

Does that bother me? Not really, because women can reverse that trend. Yes, women on the average earn less than men, but we have the power to change that.

One of the best places to do that is the ballot box.

Uma Thurman goes hardcore

A news story caught my eye about how Uma Thurman will be doing explicit sex scenes in a forthcoming Lars Von Trier movie.

It will be interesting to see if this causes any kind of media scandal when the film is released. Von Trier is a decidedly arthouse director and Thurman is an eclectic actress, so hopefully it'll be a non-issue.

If this does become a scandal, however, it will only underscore the hypocrisy in modern society. People have no problem with media whores like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian making their own porn videos to promote themselves, but when a real actress does something edgy, then that's an outrage.

politics and snowjobs

Ten thousand miles away, my only real connection to the American election is through the internet. I talk to some American expats here, but they're not particularly engaged in the race. Most of them have lived here so long that the US seems only a distant memory for them.

I keep seeing news stories about how Factor X will mean Romney wins or Factor Y will mean Obama wins. Obama will take such-and-such swing state and win the election or Romney will take this-and-that swing state and win the election.

Blah blah blah.

All these pundits seem to think the election exists in a vacuum or that it's entirely within the parameters of news coverage. So many yet-to-be-determined factors will decide the outcome, and these have nothing to do with news coverage. Who has a better ground game on the day of the election, for example, with the get-out-the-vote effort? This won't really be visible until election day itself, and the candidates' spin now about this doesn't matter.

I think one big factor -- and I've not seen any coverage on this -- will be the weather. Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa are key swing states and not far from each other. A big, bad storm hits the upper Midwest and it tips the race for the Republicans. Conversely, clear weather in the same region means the Democrats win.

It could be as simple as that, and the billions the candidates are spending won't matter one tiny snowflake.

where is my big hollywood deal?

My movie writer friend from LA sent me a link to this news item about three different twentysomething women with forthcoming American TV sitcoms based on their blogs.

One is Granny Is My Wingman and has a clever concept: a woman in her twenties and her grandmother write a blog about their dating life. You can clearly see how it would make a TV sitcom. If it's well written and acted, it could be a hit.

The other two, however, are long shots IMHO.

Fuck! I'm in My Twenties is a catch all Tumblr with doodles and chatter "about the plight of today’s millennials" as it "chronicles a woman’s experience as a twentysomething living in the big city." The harried big city millenial is becoming an entertainment cliche, but that's not stopping American networks from feeding more through the grinder.

The last of the three, the Hollywood Assistants Tumblr blog, is nothing but animated gifs ripped from movies and TV shows coupled with captions about how terrible it is to work as a lowly underling in the entertainment business. This sort of artwork is common all over the web at places like 4Chan, yet Hollywood apparently thinks it's clever. The harried young Hollywood assistant is not anything new, either, and we've seen that in both movies and TV shows.

I'm crushed, of course, that no one in Tinseltown is interested in a blog written by a sex-crazed American girl who was once an exotic dancer and now lives Down Under with her hunky Australian husband. There can't be too many projects like that around, can there?

Maybe if I had a wacky talking kangaroo sidekick, then Hollywood would come calling.

who needs casual sex?

Salon has a new column up by Tracy Clark-Flory, who defines herself as an "outspoken defender of casual sexual culture." In the piece linked aboved, however, she finds herself flummoxed by a very traditional first date that did not end with sex.

She admits in her piece that she has treated men as commodities in the past -- she describes them as "The Pilot, The Lawyer, The Frat Boy, etc." What she doesn't seem to realize, at least from my perspective, is she's actually reacting to the man himself on the date, not the idea that he was a throwback to the 1950s. She's missing the proverbial forest for the trees.

It's not the how but the who, girl. This man, whoever he is, has rung your chimes and you just don't know it yet.

For what it's worth, the "traditional first date" never really appealed to me. I guess because I knew, as nice and polite as the man might be, he still wanted one thing more than anything else -- to fuck me. I can't say I blamed him -- I wanted that too -- but the flowers and the dinner were just props. He was auditioning too hard for the part.

I guess I appreciated a man who was more direct. If he showed up without flowers, he actually was being more honest and not trying to bamboozle me.

the past is present

I ran across this very cool page on BuzzFeed where old pictures are manually integrated into contemporary shots. Some of them aren't very good matches while others are fantastic. Rather than reproduce them here, where Blogger shrinks them too small, just go over to that page and check them out.

true love

This truly belongs in the Tattoo Fail Hall of Fame. The fungal infection on the owner's feet is a special bonus. The upside to this -- if there is any -- is that a pair of socks could hide the whole sorry mess.

veep debate vs. main debate

If you're an American, chances are you've been watching the debates. I'm writing this soon after the vice presidential showdown finished.

IMHO I think the format makes all the difference in the world. The veep set-up is much more conducive to an actual debate, with the triangular desk/table and the engaged moderator. It's designed for modern TV. The shorter topic sections are also better, too. The whole thing really popped.

The presidential debate format, with the lecterns far apart a la middle school student council elections, is just dated and has to go. It's from another era of TV where cameras were big and lots of room was needed. I think if the two presidential candidates were at a table, like the VP candidates, with an engaged moderator, it would actually be more of a debate, as opposed to two competing speeches.

Alas, the format will not change this year. The candidates have already agreed to everything and it's highly unlikely to change. But the debate commission really needs to get with the times.

anticipation

I'm now counting down in weeks, not months, to my due date. Some days I can't wait for my pregnancy to be over in my excitement to welcome the baby and so I can go back to feeling physically comfortable again. Other times I realize that when Weenut arrives, my life will be changed irrevocably, so I should relish the quiet before the storm.

I have never faced any kind of anticipation like this. It's getting closer fast. It's a good kind of anticipation unknown to me. I've had a few "bad" periods of anticipation, like when my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and was given only a few weeks to live. With the "bad" variety, you anticipate a day that is surely coming, but cannot be marked on a calendar. And when it arrives, it's not what you expected, and it seems to come faster than you realize it could.

I wonder if "good" anticpation will be the same way. Some day soon, my water will break, and then I will no longer be counting in months or weeks or days, but instead in hours and minutes. Part of the wonder about this, facing something that billions of women have faced for countless thousands of years, is how it can be so utterly new for me.

It's a journey I will only take once. If I have more children, it will no longer be a new experience. It will be familiar, like a journey back to a city you've visited before.

When I am alone, I talk or sing to the baby a lot now. I don't know exactly why. I blather on about all sorts of things. On a rational level, I know I might as well be talking to the dog. On a different level, however, I feel like I'm connecting somehow, maybe because the baby settles down when I do this. The rationalist part of me realizes that it's probably my voice vibrations that quiet him down. But the more spiritual part of me wonders if we can connect in a way that's not possible once he's born.

After all, if he's feeding off of me physically, maybe he does so in other ways, too.

political castration

For those tired of news about the American presidential debate, here's some political thunder from down under. The female prime minister, Julia Gillard, has been involved in a dustup caused by a crude text messages sent by a political ally to another male.

As a result, the leader of the other party, Tony Abbott, has repeatedly denounced the prime minister by making outraged noises about sexism and misogyny.

Trouble is, Abbot himself has a long, long history of making incredibly sexist remarks in public that would end an American politician's career in one day.

So the prime minister stood up in Parliament on Tuesday and delivered a fifteen-minute castration of her opponent on live television. "I was offended when he stood next to a sign that described me as a 'man's bitch,'" she said at one point. And, "he has said, 'if it's true that men have more power, generally speaking, than women, is that a bad thing?'"

The entire fifteen minute castration can be seen below. If you'd just like to see a two-minute highlight of her most pointed barbs, you can watch that here.

golden showers

Before I became pregnant, I was one of those women who didn't have to go to the bathroom frequently. I usually went five times a day.

Once I became pregnant, I did have to go more often. This is common during the first trimester because hormonal changes mean more blood passes through your kidneys. And, as is typical, by the second trimester the need to pee backed off somewhat, although I was still getting up at night to go, which never happened before.

As I moved into the third trimester, nothing changed too much. I still could go a good while without a trip to the loo. I had no complaints.

All of that changed rather suddenly around the beginning of the month. Now I have to go constantly. Weenut needs room and has declared an eminent domain on the space formerly occupied by my bladder.

I have to make sure that I have bathroom contingencies wherever I go. A car trip into the city is out of the question because I might be stuck in traffic and really have to go. Similarly, riding the train is fraught with danger, because it may be delayed for twenty minutes and I'm in danger of baptizing the passenger car.

I took the dog to the vet yesterday, and they were running behind schedule. They have no public bathroom. Yes, you guessed it, suddenly I had to go, even though I went just before leaving the house.

I have learned that if I stand and walk around when I feel a need to pee, suddenly the urge can go away. Although I don't necessarily feel Weenut shift, I guess my movement eases him off my bladder, or at least the spot that creates the sensation to pee.

So there I was in the vet's waiting room, having to go, and I stood by coincidence at the same time an older man entered. He misunderstood and thought I was offering my seat to him, so he just insisted up and down with charmingly chivalrous urgency that he could not accept the chair. Then a younger man stood up, as if to settle the matter. I had to tell the truth -- sitting was becoming "uncomfortable" but left out details about why.

Then a woman brought in a basset hound who shamelessly peed on the floor. Ah, to be a dog and just go wherever I wanted -- that would be heaven these days.

lindsay lohan plays elizabeth taylor

I saw a web ad today for a forthcoming TV movie with Lindsay Lohan playing Elizabeth Taylor. The flick, called Liz & Dick, tells the story of Taylor's on-again-off-again romance with Richard Burton. It's a Lifetime project, so you can't expect it would be at the quality of HBO dramas, and the result probably will be more trashy than classy.

I think Lohan's casting is both a good and bad idea. As for the bad, she doesn't look like her and is physically miscast; hair coloring and contact lenses can't hide that fact. Lohan is pretty in a pixy vixen sort of way but not a classic bombshell like Taylor. Lohan is a girl while Liz is a woman.

As for the good, Lohan is a very talented actress. She has the potential to turn in a stunning performance. I hope she does, because it might put her career back on track again. She's a spoiled brat but a good actress; we need to see much less of the former and much more of the latter.

the lightbulb

I'm trying to decide if this was a very bad idea for a tatt or a good one.

On the positive side, your scalp might be a good place to put a tattoo if you later decide you don't want it to be seen. As long as your hair is thick, it would be mostly hidden. So it's not one of those "scarred for life" tattoos you cannot hide.

But if you want it to be seen, you must always wear this hairstyle. It might be hip and trendy now, but what about in five years or more? What if it becomes as unfashionable as, say, a mullet?

There's also the issue of whether people, with time, will not recognize what it is. Considering lightbulbs are starting to look a lot different, a trend that will continue as LEDs become more popular, will the day arrive when only old people know what a then old-fashioned bulb will look like?

I suspect there may also come a day when no young people have tattoos. It will be viewed as something only the old farts have, the parents, the authority figures. Rebels will be ink free. Because fashions always come full circle.

wild & crazy endorsement

Comedian Steve Martin gives a non-partisan political endorsement for a real candidate that is unlike anything you've ever seen before.

declining sex drive

Now that I'm eight months pregnant, I've noticed over the last week to ten days that my sex drive seems to be dialing down. It's not that I mind sex and I still orgasm when the husband does his duty, but the need and desire for sex seems to be waning.

The husband was up very early and worked a long day yesterday, so he fell asleep shortly after we ate. At one time I would've woken him up so he could bonk me, but I let him sleep and went to bed early myself. I discovered a few hours later, when I got up to go to the bathroom, that he had gotten into bed and snoring softly.

A few months ago, I think I would've freaked out if my sex drive wound down like this, but now I'm like "meh, it'll come back." Quiet rest is the supreme luxury in my life right now, not sex.

A friend told me her sex battery ran down about a month before her baby was due, so I'm not alone. Her libido stayed on a low idle until a few weeks after her baby was born, and then it fired back up again with a vengence.

I'm assuming -- and hoping -- the same will be true for me.

programmed dreaming

I've written before about how I frequently can control my dreams if I think about something before I fall asleep. A lot of people can do this -- it's called "programmed dreaming," among other things -- and it just takes a little practice.

Some topics seem easy to program dream but others do not. At least for me, the simpler the idea, the easier it is to dream. Think about going to the beach before bed, and I'll dream about the beach. Think about traveling to another planet, but I won't have any space flight dreams.

I suspect some of the reason more fanciful dreams usually don't happen is because I never experienced the reality myself. Yet, on occasion, I try to program dream experiences I've never had and do end up dreaming about them. I've never been involved in espionage or been an undercover operative, yet I can program dream that. I suspect the reason why is that I've had to do things in my life like evading a stalking ex-boyfriend -- that's a little like going undercover.

Sometimes I end up program dreaming even when I don't intend to, and I think that results from something unresolved in my past. While I certainly don't regret the course my life has taken, I do sometimes regret I didn't finish high school the "normal" way and had to earn a GED. I don't like the idea that I did not finish something I started.

So a quick thought will drift through my head during the day about not finishing high school, and that night I end up dreaming about being back at school, struggling to take a test on a subject that's a complete mystery. Or, I'll dream it's the first day of school and I'm determined to be a good student, but for some reason my plan goes completely off the track almost immediately.

Arguably, I'm a better self-educated person than I might have been had I finished school the usual way. So I don't know why my subconscious, as revealed by dreams, clings to something that really is water under the bridge now.

I guess sometimes my subconscious just likes to be contrarian.

older sex symbols

Older actors can be memorable sex symbols. Paul Newman and Catherine Deneuve come to mind among many. They obviously age but they still ooze sexuality. The transition is timeless, from hot, sexy younger person, through middle age and onward.

Gerard Depardieu was a major sex symbol in Europe when he was a young man. You can see why in the first two photos below. I'm not surprised he reportedly bedded hundreds of women.

He will not, however, go down in history as a timeless sex symbol. The ghost of Paul Newman has nothing to worry about. The Gerard of today can be seen in the third photo below.

He looks more pregnant than me. Yeesh.

play musty for me

I don't know if this is real or some sort of conceptual art -- pictures of a girl who purportedly keeps the spent condoms from her various lovers all over the wall along with their photos.

If it's art, then it's an interesting idea. You could have a long conversation about the symbolism of all this, the implications, the subtext, yada yada yada.

If it's a real girl collecting real used condoms, then that's totally gross. Imagine the stench. Imagine the extremely low standards of the men who will go in that room to fuck her and provide yet another sample for her trophy wall. Well the place stunk but she let me do her in the ass.

I guess that makes a statement about art -- when you see something strange, you hope it's meant to be artistic and not real. But the variation in photo quality and consistency here makes me wonder if it's not art.

city of angels

Talking Points Memo has a great series of photos showing the Space Shuttle Endeavor on its final flight to Los Angeles. The best shot shows the craft floating over the Hollywood sign.

I had always hoped to see a Space Shuttle land but now I'm too late for that. I've known people who have witnessed a landing and they said it's much more dramatic than seeing a plane.

If you're an American around my age, you probably had school units and projects involving Space Shuttles. While we were always fed a variety of facts, we never learned the stuff I wanted to know, like how the female astronauts pee in space or what happens if someone accidentally throws up inside the Space Shuttle.

As an adult, I have wondered how many of the astronauts were inducted into the hundred-mile-high club. Yes, many of them were married, but yes, some were up in space an awfully long time.

I saw a recent news piece about some female astronaut interviewed onboard the International Space Station and noticed that several male astronauts spent most of their time looking at her, not at the camera. In my fevered brain I imagined the broadcast had interrupted some squabble among the males about the female -- the body language suggested that might be the case. Maybe she had them all doing her chores in exchange for a handjob.

Which leads me to wonder about something I didn't think about when I was a child -- do astronauts masturbate in space when they're horny and the lone female aboard won't give them the time of day?