heavy sleeper no more

Before I had a child, I was a heavy sleeper. I could sleep through ringing telephones and alarm clocks.

I've learned that maternal instinct trumps being a heavy sleeper. My husband can get a late-night call on his cell, answer it and talk without leaving our room, and I sleep on.

The minute Joey fusses, I am awake. I can hear him before the husband does, and he's a light sleeper.

Because he's at that age, Joey can awaken anytime during the night. Sometimes only once. His record is four times. As a result, I am like a walking zombie some days now, particularly when he's awakened me several nights in a row several times.

Thankfully, I don't have to go to work. I can be a half-dead automaton during the day and still function enough to do mundane tasks. I'm writing this on one of those cloudy brain days from a lack of sleep.

I once thought it was horrible that parents gave their young children hard liquor to help them sleep. Now I'm wondering how much scotch one mixes with milk to make a toddler nightcap.

Happy Halloween.

a tsunami of spam

I have a Gmail account in my real name with an email address of firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I use this to keep in touch with select family members and friends. It's not an address I give to many people. (I use another, older email address for that.)

I receive some spam on this account because of the firstnamelastname business. Spammers long ago learned to take the 100,000 most common first names plus 100,000 most common last names, pair all possible combinations, and bombard the results with spam.

So that's why I usually receive a trickle of spam each day, perhaps no more than three or four messages. If you have an email address made up of your real name, chances are you receive spam like I do because of this.

For some reason, starting over the weekend, I have been absolutely bombarded with spam -- at certain times of the day with more than 100 messages an hour, but never any less than about two dozen per hour.

I trashtalk Google on occasion here, but their Gmail service is extremely efficient in filtering spam -- it never misses putting the spam into my spam folder and never adds real email to the spam folder. So this hasn't been an inconvenience, just more of a curiosity.

I imagine virtually all of this junk is being sent by bots, but I have to wonder at the thinking of the people who seed these spam zombies. Do they actually think when they send someone dozens of copies of the same message, with the same header and sender, that anyone will read them?

Maybe they hope one of these somehow will make it past spam trappers, then some dolt will open it and believe they've just inherited $40 million from someone they never knew in Nigeria.

I guess the spammers are looking for one needle in a trillion haystacks.

never before seen

If you're a scifi geek girl like me, or a geek boy, you might like this blooper reel from the original Star Wars movie that has just been unearthed in 2013. There is no sound in parts of it, particularly the scenes toward the beginning.

My favorite is when C3PO pitches over in the sand. Somehow I knew that was going to happen as soon as the scene opened. He was absolutely my favorite character when I first saw Star Wars as a little girl. My older brother took me to the theater to see it when it was re-released theatrically sometime in the early 1990s.

misogyny and misandry

Salon has a new article about how women are lashing out at misogyny (the hatred of women) by engaging in misandry (the hatred of men).

This seems quite childish to me. That's like saying the way to fight religious intolerance is for victimized religions to start picking on other religions. Or fighting racial intolerance by having victimized ethnic groups pick on other ethnic groups.

Like Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

Rape, for example, is an extreme form of misogyny. The way to deal with that is not for women to start raping men, but for society to be vigilant in prosecuting and punishing rapists.

Yes, men can be pigs. I've experienced some of them. But men can be heroes, too. I've known quite a few of them. For every man who hates women, I'd say there are far more men who love them and worship them.

Why should a man be punished just because he has a dick? The men to punish are the ones who are dicks.

I'm a narrative device

We spent yesterday visiting with my husband's very large extended families: all siblings and spouses, plus children, plus aunts and uncles and cousins plus more.

It struck me that those of us who are inlaws serve as necessary narrative devices, particularly the younger ones who are new to the family. When someone in the family recounts part of a story, an inlaw or two or several will not know the background. One of us asks a question, and we get a thirty-second explanation of something.

So we end up like narrative devices for the family. We are the reason they can start one recollection or another, then they compare now-somewhat jumbled and slightly differing versions, and a new narrative is cobbled together by committee. We are the juice that runs the family stories.

I have imagine it's this way in many families. "That time with Johnny and the bees" makes no sense on its own to an outsider, but when it's explained to an inlaw -- Johnny accidentally knocked over a beehive when the older cousins were playing rugby -- a picture clearly emerges.

I'm like a narrative device character in a novel but instead a flesh-and-blood one in real life.

downton abbey days of our lives

My husband is an avowed anti-royalist and believes the British aristocracy should be retired. He long ago convinced me of the same. With that said, we both enjoy Downton Abbey, particularly me. I've watched it straight through several times.

Season Four is now playing in the UK and, if you know where to look, it's easily found online. The rest of the world, including Australia and US, will have to wait until at least early 2014 to see it broadcast.

I've watched some fourth season episodes from online sources. While the show is still very good, I have to say I don't think it quite hits the high mark of the first three season. But I should also add the caveat that I didn't think the second and third seasons were as good as their predecessors until my mind was changed later in the respective seasons. Perhaps I'll have the same reaction to this fourth one.

What strikes me about the show is how it really is built on a foundation chocked fu of cliches and melodrama, but because it's so bloody well written, acted, and directed, it all somehow works without seeming like a groaner. Look at some of the conventions upon which the story is built: the paralyzed character who can suddenly walk, the rich girl who marries the working class chauffeur who once drove her, the woman who unquestionably stands by her man no matter that he's convicted of brutal murder, and much more.

In lesser hands, the show would be torture to watch. But Downton manages not to fall into the hackneyed trap almost impossible to avoid for most dramatists. The creator/writer Julian Fellowes satirized the same conventions in Gosford Park, so the fact he can pull them off seriously with Downton is doubly remarkable.

The husband and I also recently watched the two seasons of the 2002/2003 version of The Forsyte Saga on DVD, which is quite good but not up to Downton's very high mark. Forsyte frequently traffics in melodrama and cliches, where it stumbles on occasion, because the acting, writing, and directing can't quite lift it out of the trap. The Forsyte writers and actors can be forgiven, however, because the source book is full of what now seems melodramatic and cliched, although it wasn't at the time it was written.

Here are some ladies on their way to Downton Abbey, but something tells me they won't be invited inside for tea and scones. I guess this was a "naughty postcard" of the era. To think one could actually go to prison back then for peddling such harmless fare.

fishy forever

I'm at once fascinated and repelled looking at this, in a way I might react if I watched a documentary of someone calmly taking a lethal overdose of a drug in order to die.

I could give her my standard lecture of, "well, when you're sixty and saggy, what will you think of this mess then?" But then I imagine she cannot even imagine living to forty let alone sixty.

You may look like an exotic sensual mermaid now, but when you're sixty, you'll look like a dead and bloated fish floating in a prize bowl at a carnival softball-toss game.

Her hair appears to be shaved on the one side, but the rest is so long and thick she can flip it over the tattooed portion when she wants.

she stole how many handbags?

Police in the UK recently arrested middle-class mom Jayne Rand after she stole a designer handbag from a store in Wales. Turns out it was not the first purse she stole, but it was the first time she was caught.

Rand had actually been stealing handbags as something of a career. She would walk into a store without a bag, pick one up and act like she was examining it for possible purchase, put it on her shoulder to see how it looked in the mirror, and then she walked elsewhere in the store for a few minutes before leaving with the purloined item.

She didn't want the bags for herself. She resold them online via eBay. Her thievery was quite profitable. In three years, she stole more than 900 bags and made £135,000 selling them, which translates to more than $215,000 US. She was convicted a few days ago and now will spend 18 months in the pokey.

I'm surprised authorities took this long to nab her, but I suspect that may be because stores she targeted were reluctant to request outside help. She was stealing, on average, almost a bag a day for three years. The stores had to know some of their expensive bags were missing.

What happened to simple anti-theft sensors? They never thought to set up a sting or install extra monitoring cameras? It sounds like, ultimately, she preyed on people lacking some common sense.

hands-free orgasm

Salon has a piece up this week about a woman who learned how to think herself to orgasm without using any manual stimulation or a sex partner.

I could see how this might come in handy if, say, you were a woman sent to prison and missed your lover or some similar scenario. But otherwise, I can't see the need for this. Cumming without a man -- or using your fingers in a pinch -- would be emotionally empty.

Part of the thrill to experiencing a mind-bending orgasm is the fact that you're sharing it with him and he probably caused the whole thing. Cumming solo and hands-free would be like getting hypnotized to think you visited Paris without actually going there.

Sorry, I'll pass on the mind-meld version. For me, there's just no substitute for the real thing.

pretty in pink

I almost figured out how this was done. I searched around and found this explanation of sorts, and saw I wasn't quite right.

I thought it was one shirt with a flap that's flipped, but turns out it's two shirts, but I was right about the flipping. The giveaway was the fact you can see they're not wearing just one shirt and the one underneath is somewhat rumpled.

Most of the girls were quite cute. I imagine they only asked pretty ones or edited out the non-cute ones.



this explanation

a new breed of porn?

Salon has a new piece up with the title "a self-published erotic novelist pioneers a new kind of porn." It's an interesting article, but the porn in question isn't particularly new.

A very successful self-published writer named Selena Kitt sells smutty novels via the internet. They're not the usual sort of erotica targeted to female readers -- romances tarted up with explicit sex, a la Fifty Shades of Gray. Instead Kitt's material is just porn from a woman's perspective without much romance.

It's nice that Kitt is doing well, but she hasn't invented a new genre, contrary to what Salon thinks. Chick porn has been around a good while. I remember reading an explicit paperback book in middle that was published in the 1980s. It was pure chick porn -- female sex fantasy wrapped up in a thinly plotted novel.

I must've read the thing twenty times. I knew it was badly written but the sex was pretty steamy to my impressionable mind.

What's interesting about this Salon piece is that it was written by a man. He's apparently just discovered chick porn by reading Kitt and thinks it's a brand new thing. But he's just behind the times.

losing one's shit

Earlier this week, I read about a midair engine explosion and fire on a commercial jet back in the US. Passengers could see the engine explode and falling parts, followed by a ball of fire and the cabin filling with smoke.

Many of them, understandable, thought they were going to crash and die. Some were calm and called family members, others prayed out loud, while a few panicked and lost their shit. Fortunately, the pilot landed and no one aboard was injured.

I always wonder, when reading news like this, how I might have reacted if I had been a passenger on that plane. I'm pretty sure I would not have prayed aloud. I might pray, particularly if my son were with me, because I wouldn't want him to suffer in a crash. I'm also fairly confident I wouldn't lose my shit. While I've never experienced an air emergency, I have had a few hairy experiences in my life and managed not to panic.

So I'd like to think I'd remain under control and would call my husband if that was possible and he was not with me. Of course, this might just be wishful thinking that I'd be Ms. Control, but I'd rather not have to prove my theory.

The one time I think my get into trouble when in some kind of deep shit was in a terrorists-with-hostages type of situation. I tend to be the "question authority" sort, so when someone pushes me, I push right back. I am definitely not damsel-in-distress material.

So I could end up mouthing off to a terrorist and that would be the end of me.

sydney is burning

Thanks to those who sent emails inquiring if we are near any of the fires. There's a smaller one not too far from us but we're in no danger at all. The most serious fires are to the west and north of the city whereas we're on the south side.

I am always Be Prepared Girl, so several years ago I packed up an emergency trunk that's always kept in the garage right next to the door, something I had learned to do living in California and Nevada. That has several changes of clothes for us and Joey, food for all of us for several days, first aid stuff, dog food and medicine, and assorted other essential items.

Beside it are filled spare water jugs and an extra filled petrol can. I check the stuff semi-regularly to see if anything needs attention. We are ready to hit the road, if need be, on a moment's notice.

James's father is quite near one of the fires, so he has already been moved to a relative out of any danger. His dad is pretty much completely back to normal since his stroke, but he does need to avoid situations that could affect his breathing, and the air is really terrible where they live right now.

These last few days, I have been reminded of when I lived in California during fire seasons. The air is dry and breezy, and the slight stink of something burning is always on the wind. Los Angeles is far away, yet this week it seemed so very close.

krokodil

I've been reading lately about a trendy and illegal new drug called Krokodil on the street and desomorphine by medical professionals. A morphine derivative, it has some clinically uses.

Much of what is sold on the street is not made in pharmaceutical laboratories but, instead, in someone's kitchen and often cut with paint thinner, gasoline, or hydrochloric acid.

The drug is injected and produces a short but intense zombie-like high. Problem is, poorly manufactured Krokodil can result in vein damage, soft tissue infection, gangrene, and necrosis. In simpler terms, the flesh simply rots off a user's body and can result in both amputations and, in severe cases, death.

If there ever was a reason to "just say no," this certainly would do it for me. I have no particular need to watch flesh rotting off my body. I'll get high the natural way, with a good workout and them some boisterous sex.

I had a pretty screwed-up upbringing for a variety of reasons, but I guess my parents did something right that I never was tempted to try drugs. My vices were males and sex. They both could have disastrous consequences, too, but fortunately I was lucky.

what's with all the pussy eating?

One reader commented here the other day "for the past several posts, most of the pics have been of guys eating their lovers out. I love it but is there something subtle going on?"

This observation is correct as far as the pictures go. I've posted more than usual lately, often as unrelated illustrations to entries I've written here.

But there's nothing subtle going on. They simply happen to be what's struck my fancy lately. I try to select pictures where it's clear I'm not one of the subjects because a reader once got confused on that point.

Eating a woman's pussy is one of the nicest things a man can do for her, so any encouragement I can give anyone on that front is not a wasted effort, in my opinion.

And here I go again...

anal horror stories

Somehow I ended up at this page where a physician writes about all the things she has removed from people's rectums in the emergency room and the various resulting injuries and fatalities.

I can understand some of the things people are putting up there for pleasure but some are a challenge to understand.

When my MD older brother was an intern, I hung out once with him and some of his med school friends in a pub. Some were interning in emergency rooms and, as low rungs on the ladder, they had to deal with the worst patients.

Talk turned to various patient horror stories, including hygiene horrors and what they had removed from people's VJs and butts. One tale has always remained something of a chilling memory for me.

A man had a two-pound plastic shrink-wrapped package of ground beef from the supermarket stuck in his rectum. It had been caught up there for several days and, accordingly, the meat had gone bad.

I've always wondered how he got it up there, why he put it up there, and why he waited so long to deal with the problem. The package was not phallic shaped, I was told, but instead sort of flat and folded over by the patient before insertion, so this doesn't sound like a pleasure/pain thing.

I cannot buy or open a package of ground beef to this day without remembering what that intern said. I told this story once to my husband and he laughed so hard he got stomach cramps.

is this in poor taste?

Every day on my Tumblr, I feature several new erotic photographs, each titled with the first relevant word that pops into my head. In the shrink trade, this is known as "word association," and it's something analysts use at times in therapy.

Today I featured the photo below with the first word that popped into my head: "oy." I'm not Jewish but, having known many Jews, it's a word they sometimes use as a general exclamation. If you look at the photo closely (right click to see the larger original image), you'll notice she's wearing a Magen David (star of David). Hence, the origin of my "oy."

Later, however, I wondered if that was inappropriate or insensitive. If I was Jewish, I don't think it would be, because people can be self-deprecating about their own ethicnity or culture. (Except, of course, you can't if you're a WASP like me, because WASPS have no culture. Ha, get it -- an ethnic joke about WASPs. And I can do that because I am one.)

So I emailed it to two Jewish friends and asked their opinion. Both thought "oy" was funny. One of them, a male, wanted her phone number.

If you're offended nonetheless, I apologize. No offense was intended.

anonymously brilliant

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about a very talented painter who happens to be an elderly woman with no interest in selling her work. She simply paints because she loves it and has no interest in the commerce of art.

I was reminded of J. D. Salinger, who purportedly wrote scores of unpublished novels, short stories, and other material in the last thirty-five years of his life. He had once engage in the commerce of art but fled the marketplace.

When I was living in Los Angeles, my writer friend with the foot festish once introduced me to another writer who he said was the best writer he had ever read. Other writers shared this opinion. Yet the so-called brilliant writer refused to have anything published and only shares his material privately with friends.

I'm sure we've all had a relative or a friend who is a very talented artist or musician or whatever and who has utterly no interest in making a name for him or herself. This is very intriguing in our era of professional celebrities. "Reality television" is filled with narcissists, often with little to no talent, who would do nearly anything to be famous. While tucked away in ordinary life are talented people who have zero interest in showcasing themselves.

I'm writing this because I wonder if I'm one of those people myself. I took an acting class when I lived in New York and the instructor told me I was the best pupil she had ever had, and she was rather old, but I have no particular interest now in acting. I'm not nervous about appearing onstage -- hell, I used to it naked all the time -- but I have no interest in being an actor.

Of course, there's always the possibility this is due to fear of failure: better not to try and never know than to try and fail miserably. I honestly don't think it's that, because if you fail as an actor, no one really knows.

But that's not to say, sometime in the future, I might try to give it a go. I could take more classes and see where it leads. But not for now.

the rebel

Some men are meant to go shirtless. Other men are not. I do not want to know what it is he smelled.

This is not a tattoo, because you can see the paint running a bit. I think the "Skynyrd" should've been lettered a little lower so it wouldn't be obscured by his fat roll, but who am I to judge.

That begs the question of how it was painted, though, with the blubber roll in the way. Maybe he was lying on his stomach so the fat tumbled over the side of the chaise or bed or whatever.

I believe this is the first I've seen manboobs on someone's back.

free vibrators for furloughed feds

If you're a furloughed federal employee in the US and want a free vibrator, here's your chance. A sex toy company is giving away 200 free vibrators per day while the American government is shuttered.

This got me thinking about male readers. If you're male and know a furloughed female federal employee, this may be your chance. Are female feds in any greater need of stimulation and an orgasm when compared to non-fed females? Do female feds have a greater sex drive? What's with all the questions?

So men, send an email to any attractive female fed you know. Offer to take her to lunch. Once there, over desert, steer the topic to sex. Now you're cooking with gas. If you don't end up laid by dinnertime, don't blame me.

the song inside my head

The song appearing in this little clip below has been running through my head for the last several days. It's from a big "feel good" scene in a Swedish movie As It Is in Heaven that the husband and I watched on DVD the other night.

We both enjoyed the movie very much, although I almost didn't borrow it because I mistakenly thought it was a religious picture. It is not. The story revolves around a church choir, but there's no attempt to preach whatsoever and no religious message.

The story includes some scenes that could almost be sugary chestnuts in the wrong hands, but the director and writer steer clear of the sentimental. It also avoids the sort of cloying slop Hollywood would've dished out by the bucket had a studio made this movie.

If you can find it on DVD and need a feel-good movie without it being sickening sweet, you might enjoy it, too. Although it involves a choir, it does not have wall-to-wall music and could not be considered "a musical."

period art

This is very cute. It's street art in the city of Saint-Étienne, France.

I'm assuming the artist is a male who has never lived with a woman. Otherwise, he would've known the color should be more brown and not so red. If you can't figure that out, I'm not going to explain.

I imagine that part of the street gets a little cranky about once a month.

remembrance of pain past

My shoulder is not so painful now as I write this, some thirty-six hours after my close encounter with a concrete wall.

The muscle spasms seems to have subsided almost completely. Now I'm just left with a deep, slightly throbbing ache. It intensifies when I turn my arm in certain directions.

I was describing the pain to my husband this morning and suddenly remembered something from my past. The pain feels exactly like when I was a small child, perhaps four, and had some kind of vaccination in my upper arm.

I remember distinctly the deep-seated pain, the sort of sharp feeling way down in my muscle when I moved my arm in the days following the injection. The memory is now almost twenty-five years old.

It's amazing to me how our brains hold on tight to memories of a specific pain. Childbirth was in a class of its own and I can remember that pain without experiencing it now. I'm sure when I have a child again, if I do, it will embrace me with its fierce familiarity.

About a year ago, I was hunting around in some cupboards in the garage. When I opened one, a box tumbled out and hit me smack in the face. I ended up with a nose bleed but no real injury.

The pain and sensation of the blow to the nose and nosebleed brought back memories of similar nose accidents and nosebleed pains when I was a small child and always mashing my face into something. I don't think I've had a nosebleed for fifteen years before this recent incident, yet the memory of that specific type of pain seems so familiar.

The reptile part of our brains just doesn't want to let go of certain sensations, no matter how unpleasant they are. If only specific orgasms burned into our memories with the same ferocity.

I'm not indestructible

Yesterday I slipped on our back walkway -- how I do not know because it was dry. I think maybe a garden slug or something similar was the culprit. I had a typical ass-over-teacups fall, and I should have landed flat on my back and, perhaps, knocked the wind out of myself.

Problem was, a concrete retaining wall was in the way. So I slammed my shoulder into the wall in a sort of flying tackle as I fell.

It hurt -- and still hurts -- like a bitch but I'm thankful I wasn't carrying Joey at the time and that I didn't break anything. I've already developed a hideous bruise on my shoulder. If people don't know my husband, they'll think he beats me.

This is the second rather painful injury I've sustained in the span of a few months. The last time was to my hand. I need to start reminding myself to be more careful. When I was single, given I am a bit accident prone, I alone was the one who suffered.

Now that I have a dependent child, I cannot be so careless. He doesn't understand why Mommy can't pick him up until the pain lessens somewhat. As long as I don't move my arm too much, it doesn't actually hurt significantly. But too much in one direction or the other and the pain is intense.

google brilliance (not)

Once again, Google has made an "improvement" that seems pointless and counter-productive. On their home page, they previously had a series of links across the top to pages like news, images, videos, and the like.

But now, in the last several days, they're replaced that with an extra step. To go to their news page, or most of the other portal pages, you now must click a menu icon, then a pull-down menu appears, and only then can you select news.

I could see if they did this to sucker more eyeballs into seeing more ads, but no ads appear during this process. It's a pointless, time-wasting extra step.

And like most all Google "improvements," you can't opt out of this nonsense, either.

chicken nugget nastiness

I've never eaten any kind of chicken nuggets and I encourage others to avoid unhealthy food like them. So I was intrigued to read this recent Reuters article about some academics who dissected and analyzed chicken nuggets in a laboratory to see what they in fact contained.

Nuggets from one fast food chain were found to have only 50 percent chicken meat, with the rest made up of fat, blood vessels, cells that line the skin and internal organs, and nerves. Nuggets from a competing fast food chain had 40 percent chicken meat, and the remainder was fat, cartilage, and bone pieces. Salt, sugar, and fat are generally added to nuggets to make them more appealing to customers.

You wouldn't pick up a cookie or candy you found lying on the ground in a public place and eat it. Why? Because you have no idea where it's been or what's in it. I think the same rule should apply to fast and convenience food.

steven king vs. stanley kubrick

Salon has an interesting new article up about the long-standing enmity between Steven King and Stanley Kubrick over the latter's film adaptation of the former's novel. This was news to me but apparently not so for hardcore King and Kubick fans.

I like both the novel and movie for different reasons, but I certainly wouldn't call either high art. They're both very enjoyable and well crafted escapist entertainment, but they aren't rivals to the Sistine Chapel, either.

I'm somewhat surprised that King would take exception to a filmed adaptation of his work. It's hardly news that a writer peddling his or her book to the entertainment industry is like selling your middle-school daughter into prostitution -- you have to expect it likely may not end well. By the time he wrote and sold the rights to this book, he was already an experienced novelist. No one forced him to sell his film rights, so when he did, he arguably waived rights to protest once he cashed the check.

I think people have to expect that a movie adaptation of a book exists in something like a parallel universe. The novel is one way of telling the story and revealing the characters, but in the alternative universe of movie land, it will have some similarities and just as many, if not more, differences.

It is nonetheless interesting to read specifically why King did not like the Kubrick film. If you're a fan of either -- or both -- you won't want to miss the Salon piece.

sliding into the street

The photo below is of a very clever house-as-art project in Margate, a seaside town in Britain.

Designer Alex Chinneck had the front torn off an abandoned house and installed this in its place to look like the brick facade is literally sloughing off into the road.

It will last a year and then will be removed so the abandoned building can be renovated for use.

You can read more about this project plus see scores of photos here.

who's your daddy?

Vanity Fair magazine is running a preview of an article in their November issue about Mia Farrow and her tempestuous relationship with Woody Allen. She had a child named Ronan when they were together, of which he has long been described as the father, but in an interview for VF, Farrow reveals that Frank Sinatra may have actually sired him.

Farrow and Sinatra were once married and she describes the legendary singer as the great love of her life. A DNA test has never been performed.

Take a look at this picture and this picture, then decide whether Ronan looks like Sinatra or Allen. To me, it's obvious which one is his father, and no DNA is even needed.

bummer

The Husband's possible paid business trip to the American West Coast will definitely not be happening this year. Had it happened, my airfare would also have been paid, since he would be gone more than a month. We would have had to pay for Joey's ticket, but the otherwise free trip would make it very worth it.

I always knew the likelihood it wouldn't happen was greater than the chance that it would. So I was prepared to be disappointed, but that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed now it didn't happen. I'm not crushed but I'm still bummed.

We still are thinking of taking a trip to the United States, but that looks more likely in 2014. James is beating the bushes to see if there might be any all-expense-paid freelance gigs for him, but if not, we might just bite the bullet and pay for it ourselves.

C'est la vie. My disappointments are tiny compared to so many people in this world, so I am still truly blessed.

driving wrecks your lady parts?

You may recall that women are prohibited from driving in Saudi Arabia. It's a woefully sexist, medieval society in terms of women's rights, so the driving ban is far from the only restriction.

To demonstrate against the prohibition, Saudi women have organized a day in late October to protest by driving cars. In response, possibly thinking he could scare women away from getting behind the wheel, a prominent Saudi cleric with no medical training issued public statements warning that women who drive may damage their ovaries and pelvises and mother children born with the vaguely described "clinical problems."

The cleric in question has now become a laughingstock online. In Saudi Arabia, however, authorities are taking the protest plans very seriously and have blocked all websites promoting the event.

Saudi women have few rights, so I think they need to be more assertive in their protest scheme. Rather than a driving protest, they should organize nationwide to refuse sex unless fundamental changes are made, like granting the women the right to vote and the right to make decisions about her own life without mandating that a male must consent first.

So, for example, starting November 1, all women in Saudi Arabia could refuse sex unless a list of conditions was met by the monarch. Then uneducated clerics would have more to worry about than lady parts.