ikea heights

Here is something different: an entire soap opera filmed in Ikea stores without Ikea's permission. The real customers wandering in and out of scenes adds a nice touch.

I like the concept here and some of the bits are funny, but overall the actors could've been stronger. And you can get great actors in LA for free without a whole lot of work.

You can see all the episodes here.

Happy New Year!

porn shutdown

Porn journalist and eroticist Susannah Breslin has an interesting new piece about porn shutdowns (on the Forbes magazine website, of all places). Earlier in December, the porn industry closed down temporarily for the third time in 2013 because a performer tested positive for the HIV virus.

Some people, particularly porn actors, have had difficulties with these unplanned stoppages. It's particularly hard (sorry) for those living paycheck-to-paycheck.

I could see having problems the first time this happened. But such an event should be a warning bell that it could happen again and, like a good boy scout, you should be ready. When you're making $1,000 a day or more shooting porn, there's no reason you shouldn't be saving at least a quarter of that every time. If you're a production outfit peddling smut, you should have a reserve of produced material to use if the business has to close temporarily.

When I danced for a living, there was no telling when I might not be paid for a few days or longer. One place I worked was shut for more than a week by the board of health because of sanitation issues in the kitchen (it always amazed me people would even order food in such a place, but some folks have no common sense). Another place closed for several weeks because of a fire in an adjacent business.

Hell, the same thing happened before I even worked as a dancer, during the two years I waitressed before I turned eighteen.

So I was always Be Prepared Girl. If you don't have a nine-to-five gig, you just can't live paycheck-to-paycheck. You are inviting disaster to stop by pay a visit. Save like your life depends on it, because it just might one day.

a hate worse than windows

I've written here before about how I hate Windows. But I've found a new hate much more intense than my loathing of Windows.

The new object of my enmity is Apple. My ancient MP3 player finally died, so I went out to buy a new one. I quickly learned Apple had so cornered the market since I last bought a player, I really had no choice but to buy an iPod.

That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to program the damned thing. I have several thousand ripped CDs on my laptop hard drive and, after two hours of frustration, I managed to unload all the crap Apple put on the new player and put on what I actually wanted. Then I had to remove crap Apple put on my laptop I didn't want, either.

I decided some Apple products are best designed for people who are comfortable being bossed around and letting someone else make decisions for them. Trouble is, I am not that kind of person.

In the end, I defeated the little bastard. But earlier, when it seemed like it had defeated me, this is how I was feeling...

girlie thighs

I just do not understand why women do this (see picture), particularly young women. Your thighs are one of your most important assets in defining your beauty.

And then you slap this kind of medallion shit on them that looks like a cheap picture from Kmart on someone's wall. They're not designed for female thighs. They're two-dimensional art designed for two-dimensional walls. They make your thighs look thick and short.

If you want a tattoo on your thigh, get something designed more specifically for a three-dimensional thigh, like this or this.

At least there's one positive side, though. With these on your legs, you'll have a strong motivation never to grow fat. Because these things stretched out and misshapen on thunder thighs would be truly horrendous.

all is lost

Recently, when I was going through the batch of DVD award-consideration screeners sent to me by my movie industry friend in California, my husband said he really wanted to see All Is Lost, about a man (played by Robert Redford) sailing solo when he's wrecked far out at sea. The movie opened in limited release in the US in late October but it won't open here in Australia until February.

Although I didn't express my feelings out loud, truth be told I was not looking forward to this movie. I watched it because my sweetie wanted to see it. The film sounded absolutely deadly dull because I knew it had only one actor and very little dialog.

Boy was I wrong. The movie is fantastic. It's gripping and really pulls you in emotionally. I absolutely loved it. It's a simple story but very creatively made and entirely memorable.

James also explained a lot of nautical things to me while we were watching, which I really appreciated, but it's certainly not necessary to enjoy the movie. He liked the movie a lot but did spot a batch of "sailor errors." If you know squat about sailing, like me, then it won't matter.

This is definitely a "must see." You will be on the edge of your seat. Don't miss it.

christmas morning with martin scorsese

Some of these don't hit the mark but others are very funny. I think a few could've been made stronger with better actors. Hopefully your Christmas morning was not something that would make a bad horror film or indy arthouse movie.

merry christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you and happy 2014. Those of you visiting here somewhat regularly might remember that this is my wedding anniversary.

My husband and I were married five years ago today. Back then, I was a little worried I was rushing into something with a man I had only known for a few months. Five years later, I see how those fears were ridiculously unfounded. I would not give him up for the world.

Happy holidays from the three of us down under. And if you can't be good, be careful.

august: osage county

The husband and I continue to work our way through the box of screeners my Hollywood friend sent us. Our most recent viewing was the superbly acted August: Osage County, starring Ewan McGregor, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Sam Shepard, and many more fine actors.

The movie is not light fare. If you want ninety or a hundred minutes of escapism, you won't want this. It's essentially a tragic comedy about an extremely dysfunctional family that tears itself to pieces in front of your very eyes. Streep plays a pill-addicted monster who tyrannizes her family. Roberts plays her daughter, a control freak destined to turn into her mother.

The piece is very funny in parts yet rather grim overall, but I don't recall ever seeing a film with so many terrific performances. You could pretty much fill out the whole supporting actress Oscar nominations from this movie alone: Margo Martindale, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, and Roberts all are stellar.

Streep is in absolutely top form. I think she plays the nastiest character ever in her huge repertoire. She is a monstrous ogre but you can't help but watch as she rips into her family with devilish glee.

My favorite line from the movie, delivered by Streep to her on-screen sister: "you're about as sexy as a cardboard box."

Don't miss it when you're in the mood for something heavy but with absolutely luminescent performances.

about your trip to mars

The Mars One foundation plans to establish a permanent human colony on the red planet by 2025. The plan is to select four colonists at a time to be sent every other year thereafter, until the population reaches around twenty in 2035. So far, several hundred thousand have applied to be considered as future colonists.

This is a serious endeavor with lots of serious money behind it and serious technical advisors with serious scientific credentials. Part of the funding would come from a future reality television program that would broadcast continual live footage from the Mars colony. (Actually, not quite live, as the time delay from Mars to Earth varies between three to twenty minutes because of speed of light limitations and the position of the two planets relative to each other.)

But the project comes with a really awful cavaet, in my opinion.

It's a one-way trip. There are no plans or equipment to bring colonists back to earth. So you go to Mars when you're thirty, you could spend your next fifty years there in a big tin can on a lifeless desert millions of miles from home. Need an appendectomy? Hopefully you packed your penknife.

The various news articles I read on this were silent about gender considerations for the colonists. What if the first four colonists are all heterosexual men? They wait eagerly for the next batch, two years later, and that's three more straight men and a hetero woman. She only has eyes for one of them.

Or worse: she originally is paired with one of them, but then cheats with another one, eventually leaving the former for the latter. That could get ugly.

By the time the third batch of colonists arrives, chances are some of the original seven men would've killed each other by then.

pregnant women claim they're virgins

Well here's a holiday-themed post for you: roughly one percent of pregnant women report they're virgins, according to a British medical journal.

I didn't find this all that surprising. I imagine some become pregnant without really understanding how. They were drugged when raped or they so little understand sexual reproduction that some fast-talking male convinced them they weren't having sex when they actually were.

Here's a telling statistic in the story: roughly a quarter of these self-professed virgins said they didn't have enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters. That suggests to me they're pretty clueless about this whole sex thing.

If anyone wants a solid rationale why students need mandatory sex education, this study would provide all that's necessary.

(The link above goes to a news article about the study. Here's the link for the actual study itself.)

a mother's struggle

Start by reading the Amazon review below. If you can't quite see it, right click it or click here for a larger size. I'll wait while you read it.

You're finished and back now?

Well, I don't know about you, but I haven't laughed so hard in a good while. I was fairly sure it was a fake review and that turned out to be correct. It's actually written by a man who's a children's book author. But it's still very funny.

It's not the only one he's written. He has a whole bunch more. You'll find his "reviews" here.

I had to stop reading those after a while. I was just laughing so hard it was difficult to breathe.

egghead versus airhead

My husband and I were riding in a car earlier this week with one of his friends. We had to wait at an intersection for quite a while as road workers directed drivers around some construction work.

While we sat there, I watched this one guy standing near our car. He was just staring out to space for minutes at a time, until summoned by walkie-talkie to allow his lane of traffic through.

I commented about what a horribly dull job that must be, just staring at the same thing for hours on end. Sure, you could woolgather, but can anyone do that for eight straight hours?

My husband's friend mentioned how some people don't think in situations like that. They just let the breeze flow through their ears. They put themselves on idle and just don't think. He also noted how they were often not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I'm reminded of some article about a famous inventor I know, who revealed his mind was always running, that he was cobbling together some possible future invention in his head while he did some routine physical task.

While I'm by no means a famous inventor or egghead, my mind is never idle. If I have to do some mundane or repetitive task, I'm always thinking about something. It may be unimportant, but the wheels are always turning. My husband said the same for him, too.

When I was dancing in clubs, I would always be thinking about something: how a book might turn out that I was reading, things I had to get at the store, a conversation I'd had with a friend, whatever. I do this now when I cook or clean or perform other mundane child-related chores.

I always thought everyone was this way. I never realized people could just not think about anything for extended periods.

The only time I clear my mind is during sex. That just washes everything up there out of the way for a while.

I can't decide if I'd be envious of the people who don't think and just park their brain in neutral. Arguably they'd be less likely to get bored. But then, they might also be very boring people.

told you so

Last month, I wrote a blog entry (here) about Bitcoin and how I thought it was a foolish investment. I said Bitcoin had a "massive potential bubble in its exchange rate now."

Because of that post, I received several long, detailed, link-laden emails from readers who took me to task for my thoughts. One was downright rude and called me a "complete moron" and "a stupid idiot." (That latter bit suggests idiots exist who are not stupid.)

The others were far more civil but nonetheless disagreed vehemently. I was told a bubble could not happen. Bitcoin would only increase in value.

Oh what a difference a month makes. Since I wrote that piece, the Bitcoin bubble has burst, not once but twice. On December 5-6, Bitcoin values plummeted, losing half their value in 24 hours, from $1,200 to less than $600. The price recovered somewhat, but crashed again this week, dropping to $455.

If you bought at the peak, you would've lost nearly two-thirds of your money. Ouch.

So who's the stupid idiot now?

america the vulgar

The Wall Street Journal ran an essay a few days ago titled "America the Vulgar." (It was not in their international editions but is available online here.)

The writer has several complaints, which could roughly be boiled down to two: first, kids absorb naughty stuff in popular entertainment like sponges, and second, stuff is much more pervasively naughty than it used to be, back in the day when naughty was more sparing and daring.

Variations of both complaints have been seen many times before. The first one is easily addressed: be more careful around your kids. The writer bemoaned how his seven-year-old boy was looking at his laptop over his shoulder and how his three-year-old daughter got her hands on his wife's cell phone.

So whose fault is this? You don't like what your kids see, yet you're careless around your kids so they end up seeing it, then you complain about it in print. You have nobody to blame but yourself.

Parents should treat risque material and personal electronics like kitchen knives: always be aware where they are and always keep them out of your kids' reach . My son is a year old and almost certainly too young to understand an X-rated image, but when I'm looking at adult stuff, he's asleep or elsewhere. When he is awake, the laptop is out of reach. I know other parents like this.

His second complaint, how naughty has gotten naughtier, is also easily addressed: don't consume a product if you don't like it. If you don't want to listen to raunchy lyrics then don't. No one forces this stuff into your home. Turn off the TV, power down the laptop, and stop complaining. Alternatively, be a more selective consumer.

how to pick up girls

The AV Club, a witty and irreverent entertainment website, is reporting that a circa 1968 manual titled How To Pick Up Girls may soon be turned into a major motion picture. It's not the first time the book was adapted; a movie with the same title and starring Desi Arnaz Jr. was released in 1978.

I've never read nor even seen the book, but several years ago The Village Voice highlighted some of its more ludicrous suggestions for picking up hot chicks: "Try on some of the new wild clothes. Bell bottoms and English boots and wide ties. Wear a body shirt or dungarees or a groovy vest."

Wow, you had me at groovy, baby. I can dig it!

Who knows if this will ever be made -- Hollywood only films a small fraction of what it puts into development -- but I have to wonder how valuable a 35-year-old mediocre sex guide will be as a foundation for a memorable movie.

It could be the kernel for a very funny comedy, with maybe a Rip Van Winkle type waking up in 2014 and desperate to get laid, using his 1968 pickup lines. Maybe he even wrote the 1968 manual. If that's the case, they're really only using the title and nothing from the book.

Equally, this could be a wretchedly bad movie. It has all the earmarks of a stinky bomb in the making.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to come out.

teddy bear coat

After my recent post about a couch made entirely out of stuffed animals, a reader sent along this photo of a coat made out of teddy bears.

This is very cute for a child and a few adults might be able to pull it off, but I think many people would look foolish in this. It's sort of cuteness overkill. It also seems impractical for anyone driving or riding public transportation. I suspect it would be rather uncomfortable to wear in many situations.

This is a classic example of function follows form, when really clothes should be form follows function.

weird cupid

I had saved the photo several years ago where I found it in a humor forum. No one there knew of its origin.

I assumed this was some frat prank or someone re-enacting The Fisher King on April Fool's Day.

Flash forward to this past week. I saw it again in my "bizarre photos" folder.

In the interim, Google image search went online. I love image search for exactly this need -- you find a photo and have no idea what the history might be. Feed it through the Google gizmo and it will show you many places on the internet where the photo has already appeared.

Within twenty seconds, I learned he's apparently not deranged but instead a Manhattan performance artist named Matthew Silver based in the East Village. You can see from his webpage and Youtube channel he has a variety of bizarre antics he performs in public. The getup in the picture was to promote his film Love Comes Out of Your Butt.

Of course, the line between performance artist and delusional, deranged behavior may not be easy to determine. And only in Manhattan can you act like a complete lunatic in public and be paid handsomely for it.

Apparently women find him adorable. Something to consider guys if you're dating life has been lacking lately.

vibrator scandal

A big shitstorm in Milan this week over a public Christmas tree decorated with large balls and pink vibrators. After originally granting permission for the tree, the city council reversed itself once the display was finished. It had been erected (snicker) to promote a sex toy line.

The council claimed their permission was revoked not because of the vibrators but because they were pink. Congratulations for making yourself look like jackasses to think anyone would believe that, in addition to looking like repressed prudes for your hysteria over nothing.

You can see a picture of the tree in question below. If you're too young or sheltered to know what a vibrator is, then how could you be shocked or offended? They'd just look like abstract ornaments.

Maybe the council was worried some innocent child might blurt out: "my mommy has decorations just like that in her drawer at home." In Italian, of course.

(Right click to see a larger picture.)

motorcycles

My husband and I have been married for nearly five years now. I am nonetheless continually amused at how much we are like each other in many ways, but in some ways, we are utterly dissimilar.

Take motorcycles. I have always been indifferent to motorcycles. I find them as intriguing as a public bus or a panel delivery truck. In my way of thinking, a motorcycle is a better alternative than a bicycle, but not as good as a car. If you can afford a car and have a car, there's little need for a motorcycle.

The only possible exception is when you live in a dense urban area with mediocre public transportation. A motorcycle is thus a better alternative because you can move through traffic congestion easier.

But we have good public transportation in our part of Sydney. I would never drive nor take a motorcycle to go downtown. That's what trains are for.

My husband, in contrast, is completely nuts about motorcycles. He can carry on a conversation for hours with another motorcycle enthusiast about nothing but motorcycles. He would rather ride a motorcycle than take a car, except in really bad weather. Bad weather is not common in this part of Australia, so he's practically in heaven.

He is very accommodating, so it's never an issue with us. Without asking, he's always volunteered to take the car if we're going anywhere together. He has never suggested a sidecar now that we have Joey. It's the bike for him, and the car for us or me.

This is part of the reason why I love this man so crazy much. He does this for me without even asking.

Some men might say he's pussy whipped, but given I never insist, and he never asks, I say he's a gentleman.

cruel shoes

Artist Sebastian Errazuriz created twelve surreal shoe designs to commemorate failed relationships with twelve different women. Some of them are quite amusing. He included a narrative about many of their bedroom performances to accompany the display.

He's also indirectly bragging a little here, I think. What better way to broadcast what a babe magnet you are and a hot stud in bed then to detail at length some of your past lovers with detailed chatter that happens to accompany your artwork.

I can imagine at his opening he had some interest from women who wouldn't mind being number thirteen. I know how artists can be.

To see all twelve designs with his individual write up for each, visit here visit here.

a rooftop in Paris

This photo is for my fellow fear-of-heights readers. This made my skin crawl. If I was standing up there, I couldn't stop thinking about how an earthquake could strike at any minute. Or that the ledge on the building might give way. Or that I could slip on pigeon shit and go sailing over the edge.

The man in the photo is Raoul Coutard, a cinematographer for legendary French directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Here he's filming a scene from the classic Breathless. Coutard was obviously careful enough when he did things like this because he's still alive and nearly ninety.

I could never, ever do this in a million years. Yes, if there was a good, sturdy railing that I couldn't slip under and perhaps some sort of harness to hold me. But absolutely "no" without a barrier and some kind of safety measures.

(Right click the picture below to see in the larger original size.)

kate and cate

The husband and I continue to work our way through the screener DVDs my showbiz friend sent me. I have two more film recommendations because of particularly strong performances by two actresses.

The first is Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. The film first opened during the summer but is not yet available on DVD.

The movie overall is quite good and something of a 21st century retelling of A Streetcar Named Desire in an entirely different context and setting. The real diamond in the movie is Blanchette who absolutely dazzles. It's her best acting I've seen in an already outstanding career. She's been nominated five times for an Oscar, winning once, but this is even better than those performances.

The second is Kate Winslet in Labor Day. That movie has not yet opened anywhere in the world, so it was a particular treat to see it on DVD. The movie is something of a hit-and-miss, with some very strong moments but some big flaws, too.

That aside, Winslet is singularly outstanding. It's her best work I've seen, too. She has been nominated six times for an Oscar and won once, and again her work in Labor Day surpasses those roles.

The really wonderful thing about Cate and Kate is that we still have many movies from the pair to enjoy yet in future years. I always liked them both, but these two movies made me love them all the more.

Don't miss either to catch two truly outstanding performances.

a day at the beach

My cousin in Pennsylvania sent me an email yesterday, lamenting the snowstorm they were having. I couldn't help but gloat: we went to the beach yesterday because it was sunny and in the high 80s Fahrenheit.

We took Joey to the beach last summer a few times, but this was the first time we've gone this year with him, now that he's walking.

I should really say running, because he spent most of his time running, not walking -- along the waves, from the sand back to the water, across the sand, everywhere. I am amazed at how he can store up so much energy.

He wasn't really interested in a sand castle nor looking at stuff that washed up on the sand. It was just run, run, run, stumble, run, run, run. He had the time of his life.

When we left, he fell asleep about three minutes into the ride and slept all the way home. I am not surprised.

I don't feel too guilty gloating. We're having winter when the Northern Hemisphere is enjoying summer, so now it's our turn to bask in the sun.

what if Elvis is alive?

This site has commissioned a variety of manipulated photo portraits showing how a dozen now-deceased music legends might look today if they were still alive -- people like John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, and more.

Candidly, I think the site has romanticized some, if not all, of these performers. Elvis, for example, was very conscious of changing styles; at the time when he died, he dressed like the 1970s, not the 1950s. So why would he now look, as the image below speculates, like he was trapped in the 1950s? I don't buy that. He'd be a slave to 2013 fashions with his own distinct interpretation, and the result would probably look rather weird.

In none of the hypothetical portraits is anyone balding. Nor have any of them become corpulent or lost their teeth. None show any ravages of living hard for too long, notwithstanding that half of the dozen actually died of drug overdoses.

Like most or all of them, I think Elvis Presley would look pretty bad today, and I don't mean that in a good way. At 78, he'd still occasionally be doing shows in Vegas, but now as a washed-up has-been appealing to a dwindling and aging pool of fans with a voice that was a whisper of what he once was. He'd be a mere shell of his former self.

The good may die young, but in for some celebrities, it is the best possible boost for their career.

what's on your coochie?

This is actress Meghan Ory at an entertainment industry event, doing the red carpet for the photographers.

I'm sure she paid a lot for that dress, and it's by a famous designer and everything, but I think it's an unflattering disaster. She's a pretty woman, but instead of looking at her, your eyes go first to that strange panel in the front of her dress that looks like a loincloth made out of a spread from Architectural Digest magazine.

If you use your right click button and enlarge, you'll see it's a scene of a couch, lamps, and accessories in a hypothetical room. On her dress. Over her crotch.

You know, just because some big name designer designs it doesn't mean you have to buy it. Or wear it even if you got it for free. Particularly when it looks terrible on you.

interplanetary bullshit

I was intrigued by the title of this article on Buzzflash so I read it: "Life on Another Planet Would Have a Lot to Teach Us," written by someone named Steven Jonas.

I found the piece a big disappointment. The writer makes many presumptions without saying why, then goes on to base his conclusions on his unsubstantiated presumptions.

He says there are hundreds of planets in our solar system that may host some sort of lifeform, as well as countless more in the universe. He then concludes "it is unlikely" humankind will ever find out whether other planets are in fact inhabited. He never says why he's come to this conclusion.

I am reminded of fifteenth century scientists who insisted the earth was the center of the universe. Because why? They had no grasp of technologies yet to exist; therefore, they had to be correct. Jonas has an MD no less yet he seems incapable of expansive, creative thinking. Then again, having an MD is not really expertise for this subject.

He then concludes, if intelligent life exists elsewhere, that it will have evolved much slower than humans on earth. Again, he gives no reasons why nor any substantiation for this claim. This is critical to his thesis, however, because all other points he make are built on this conclusion.

Jonas thinks very narrowly inside a small, confined box and never considers aliens may have figured out to accelerate their own species evolution, for example.

Along the way, he also seems to say that humans are on of the few creatures on earth that don't kill fellow members of their own species; this is said in a convoluted sentence so it's not entirely clear that's what he means. He's flat-out wrong there; many species prey on their own -- the strong on the weak, the older on the young, males upon males, males upon females' offspring, etc.

Next, he proceeds to laundry list a whole rant of things he doesn't like about humankind and how for any intelligent alien species to have survived, it could not have committed many of these same transgressions. Again, there's no real basis for this conclusion, other than it seems to have given him a reason to rant about these issues into irrelevant tangents.

If I might make an analogy, Jonas describing life on other planets makes as much sense as a fifteenth century human explaining how a cellphone would work.

You don't have a clue, mister article writer person. We don't know what we don't know and we therefore can't pretend to be experts on the unknown.

gravity

My writer friend in California with the foot fetish sent me a bunch of DVD film screeners given to members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for Oscar voting. He's done this every December I've been in Australia.

Husband and I have had only one opportunity to see a movie in theaters this past year because of having a baby so this will be a real treat.

I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the films he sent. To start off, the husband and I watched Gravity last night, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

I can't gush enough about this movie. Now I want to see it on the biggest screen possible. I also want to see the commercial DVD when it comes out so I can see how some of the scenes were shot.

If you have not seen it yet, drop what you're doing right now and go see it. I can't remember the last time I was as blown away by a movie as I was with this one. My husband totally loved it, too.

It is totally incredible. Wow. Don't miss it.

wtf is that?

This has to be one of the ugliest tattoos I've seen. It appears to be positioned on the front of a man's leg.

If its owner wants to be revolting, I think he's succeeded masterfully. Just looking at it makes my skin crawl.

I can only imagine how a man feels, imaging what it's like for needles to be stuck in dick like some kind of terrorist torture.

teddy bear couch

This is a couch made entirely of teddy bears and assorted stuffed animals. It's sold at Harrods so it's definitely not cheap.

My son is totally nuts about stuffed animals, an obsession I imagine he shares with many one--year-olds. He is always clutching one, or offering one to the dog, or babbling some kind of nonsense to them. He'd go bonkers if he saw this.

I can't imagine this is an easy piece of furniture to keep clean. And imagine if you dropped a valuable piece of jewelry or your keys into it by accident. The cuteness would wear off real quick.

If you want a better view, right click the image below to see a full-screen version.

married lady porn

I once scoffed at how some women only liked "romantic" porn, which means smut specifically marketed to females with some kind of romantic plot, fairly tame albeit explicit sex, and nothing "out there" like anal, facials, bondage, multiple partners, and more. You might think of it as porn for the squeamish.

Lately, I find I'm not turned on by porn unless it has a lot of kissing and the two (or more) partners are really into each other. I don't care if it has anal, facials, bondage, multiple partners, whatever -- but it has to have a lot of passion to do the trick.

Sex for me was once about release. But now that I've been married for nearly five years, sex is about intense love and passion. I need to see some kind of tangible passion in porn or it just seems dull and mechanical.

Take the picture below as an example. If they weren't kissing, this wouldn't register on my radar. The kissing adds a whole new level that wasn't there at one time for me with porn. Now I want to track this down and find if there's a video of this. If they weren't kissing, I'd probably just give it a glance and move on.

bad engagement photos

I've never really understood the point of engagement photos. They seem like another way for the wedding industry to make a buck. You have to have your photos taken, then special cards printed, mailed in special envelopes and on and on.

An engagement is not a ceremony event, like a wedding. It's a milestone event. The whole world will know when you're wedding is announced.

A few days ago, I stumbled on the site Bad Engagement Photos which uses real but odd coupling images to spotlight the absurdity of this practice. The one I selected below is my clear favorite.

But it's not really an engagement photo. It's more like a subjugation photo: congratulations, you've just been pussy whipped for life, sir.