sad days

The ancient dog we care for seems to have finally reached the end of her days. She's been sick before but always bounced back. But now she's losing control of her back legs and has great difficulty walking. The vet says it's neurological, so she's in no pain. Her legs probably just feel quite numb to her.

Her decline over the last ten days or so has been very noticeable, to the point where she can only walk a few steps before stopping to rest. She is otherwise the picture of health, still eats well, and has no incontinence.

We took her to visit her owner at the care home yesterday. The elderly woman is now 93 herself and increasingly frail, but still mentally very sharp. She realized this may be the last time she sees her dog, so she had a nice visit and said goodbye. She teared up at the end but was remarkably stoic otherwise.

Her owner found her in 1997, and the vet said at the time she was one to two years old, so that makes her now at least eighteen. She survived a battle with cancer a few years back and has had a few ailments here and there, but otherwise has been very sturdy and healthy.

It will be very hard for us to say goodbye. Even though she's not our dog, we have cared for her every day and love her like our own. As soon as she goes we plan on adopting another dog so that the house won't seem empty and for our son to have a furry playmate. The plan is to adopt an young adult that needs a home, rather than having to deal with a puppy.

I have always loved animals, and it has been such a joy to take care of this gentle, loving dog. She will be deeply missed.

tasered nude for art

This video is purportedly going viral, but I was somewhat disappointed. Yes, I wasn't expecting full frontal nudity on YouTube, so it wasn't that.

I don't think these people are really being "tasered." They're being shocked, but by a jolt nowhere near as strong as what the police use on whacked out and dangerous people.

With that said, a few of the women and one of the men appear to have an orgasm when zapped. I've heard suspects sometimes pee their pants when tasered by law enforcement, so maybe these people really did get off while getting juiced. Or maybe they peed themselves, too.

suddenly, everything's italics

Windows had new updates yesterday, so I installed them. Because my computer had to be shut down, when I rebooted and opened Chrome again, which I use for my browser, that updated, too.

Now, about two thirds of the text on any page I surf to on Chrome is italic instead of regular type. Sometimes bold type is much bolder with really heavy letters. I don't know for sure the font change is a Chrome bug, but I'm betting it is, because it doesn't happen in Firefox. I also verified online with several sites, and other Chrome users are experiencing the same problem.

So I booted my husband's computer and allowed that to update. Chrome on his is now all crazed with italics, too.

If it's an error, hopefully this will be remedied soon because italic is not as easy to read. If it was deliberately done by Google, which releases Chrome, then all the more reason to hate that company and its totalitarian ways. You will enjoy using the new Chrome, comrade.

is fellatio demeaning?

I'm reading a novel where two male characters are talking about a hot young assistant who works for one of them. "You expect me to believe you've never imagined those eyes shining up at you while her head's bobbing on your lap?" the one comments about the other's employee.

The other says he hasn't and then adds: "I think there's something objectively demeaning about a woman on her knees."

The latter apparently doesn't realize that a woman has to be on her knees in order to blow him. But even if she is, how is that demeaning? If she wants to do it, if she initiates it, if she likes it, then how has she demeaned herself?

Does this fictional male, who must represent some real males out there in the wide world, also think that cunnilingus is demeaning? What about sixty-nine? Is any sexual position where one partner is on the bottom also demeaning?

Forcing a woman to suck you off would be demeaning because any kind of non-consensual sex is demeaning -- it's rape. But if it's consensual, then that's the woman's choice. She might get off on being submissive.

Sex should be about pleasing your partner. If your partner is pleased by blowing you, then how can that be demeaning?

a glimpse into the past

I met my husband for the first time when he was 38, so I can only imagine what he was like as a child or a younger man. I've seen some pictures of him in earlier years, but there's only so much you can glean from a static image.

Last week his uncle in Perth, on the other side of Australia, sent a DVD with converted copies of old photos and home movies from when he lived in Sydney, made in the 1960s through 1980s. On one of them, my husband appears as a three-year-old boy.

I have now watched this old home movie at least two dozen times. It only lasts a few minutes but it's fascinating to me. I can see much of the man I know as my husband in that little boy -- certain little mannerisms, some of his facial expressions, and more.

I also see so much of our own son in him. Joey is more than a year younger, but the many similarities are astounding.

James finds it funny that I've watched this so often. I wish I had childhood movies I could show him, but as the youngest child, I learned long ago there were never any made of me.

red carpet overkill

Vanity Fair has a short cheeky article in their latest issue about how red carpet openings have become so overdone to the point of becoming cliches. Sometimes these events precede award shows, which themselves have multiplied like mildew in a tropical bathroom.

Overkill often leads to decline, but not in this case, the writer speculates. Because red carpets are now used as a marketing technique, they could well become even more ubiquitous.

Do ordinary people even really care about these things, other than preteen girls? I know women sometimes look at pictures from red carpets in celebrity magazines where outfits are praised or trashed. A red carpet can have a roadside wreck factor, but do people honestly buy things they've seen on them? If Mary Jane Celebrity is wearing a $20,000 couture dress and a $100,000 Harry Winston necklace, do they sell like proverbial hotcakes after that.

I sometimes wonder if western pop culture has reached something of a saturation point, where celebrities and events and news are so manufactured, and there's so much of it, that it's just becoming white noise.

Andy Warhol's prophecy is coming true: In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

mind-numbing chatter

The other day, I was in a situation where I happened to overhear parts of a long conversation between two women which lasted, in total, at least a half hour.

Although I didn't hear every word, from what I did catch, they spent that entire time talking about makeup. They weren't putting on makeup as the did this. They just yapped about it.

I've had to endure women like this before, who talk endlessly about makeup or hairstyles or clothes or shoes. Conversations like this are an ancillary to another form of insipid braincell-killing chatter -- a discussion about going shopping and what they bought and what they thought about buying but didn't.

I use makeup on occasion. It's an enhancement, like toothpaste. I use it, but I don't obsess about it. I don't think I could talk about it for more than thirty seconds, let alone thirty minutes.

If someone can chatter about makeup for a half hour, I think that's someone who needs to broaden her horizons. Significantly. She needs to read a non-fiction book. She needs to attend a lecture or watch a documentary. She needs to visit a museum.

She needs to wake the fuck up.

pizza beard

I've featured bizarre tattoos of celebrities here before. This is a new twist -- a celebrity with a beard made out of pizza. I guess the meaning of that is only known by its owner.

You can see from the photo this belongs to a woman and it's not a small tattoo. She's scarred her thigh for life with this.

Mentally I have a picture of the woman who has this tattoo. She sits, night after night, curled up on her couch, eating microwave pizza and watching Ryan Gosling DVDs over and over and over again. She's seen every episode of Breaker High at least thirty times.

the stripper and the moron

I wonder sometimes how certain people can make it through the day because they're so incredibly dim witted.

A Montana man was arrested last week after he called 911 to report a stripper had refused to have sex with him.

He paid her $350 for a private dance at a club, and expected sex as part of the deal. She burst his bubble and, angry, he called the police to register a complaint.

Instead of busting her, the cops arrested him for offering money for sexual favors. He spent the night in jail.

The man is in his fifties. One wonders how he made it that far in life given he seems so completely lacking in common sense.

burqa lust

I read in a non-fiction book recently about how men who were stationed in Afghanistan sometimes bought new burqas there, then shipped them home so their wives/girlfriends could wear them during sex once they returned stateside.

I asked my husband if he's ever heard of this, given he's ex-military and knows a lot about that life. Yes, he said, but he'd only heard it about men who were in Afghanistan, not Iraq or in the Gulf War. Very few burqas were seen by western troops in the latter two, according to him.

So I asked him if this burqa thing came about because the men were lonely and horny out in Afghanistan and had begun to fantasize about the women under the garment. After a while, the invisible woman underneath became impossibly gorgeous and, of course, naked all the time. Yes, he said, you're probably right.

This led me to wonder what I'd think if I was a man stationed in Afghanistan. I suspect I'd be more pessimistic about this. I'd presume the woman was ugly as sin unless proven otherwise. I wouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt under there. In some ways I'm a real pessimist by nature.

But maybe when you're pumped full of testosterone, lonely and far from home, and the only sex you're getting is with your right hand, then fantasy trumps pessimism. Your subconscious knows she could be dog-ugly, but your subconscious is muzzled in a dufflebag and told to STFU.

Which leads me to wonder what the women under the burqas in Afghanistan fantasize about. The males of that culture would insist their women couldn't even form such thoughts, but I'd like to hear the women's uncensored opinions about that.

endless twilight

I can't decide if this is pathetic or creepy or both. Would it be worse or better if she was married or unmarried? A parent or childless?

There's something about human wiring and human nature that fosters this kind of obsession. I'm curious what kind of outlet people like this had several centuries before the mass media age.

When I lived in LA, I briefly roomed with a woman who was obsessed with Cabbage Patch Dolls. I answered an ad for roommate wanted, and she lived in a decent neighborhood, so I took the room without seeing the whole house first.

Then I saw the dolls after I moved in. She had two bedrooms chock full of Cabbage Patch Dolls and assorted accessories.

I moved a month later because I found a place closer to where I was working. I suspected she was renting the extra bedroom to pay for her doll habit. She was divorced and never dated, so the dolls and other Cabbage Patch collectors became her whole life.

I always found those dolls creepy before I lived with her, but doubly so afterwards. They look like cuddly fetuses.

classy porn

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night crawler

My husband is one of those lucky souls who only needs about four hours of sleep a night. He is fully rested after that time and can't actually sleep any more. He gets up in the middle of the night to dabble in his workshop for a few hours, then climbs back in bed with me about the time I wake up for an early morning bonk as need be.

Our son seems to have inherited his gene for not needing much sleep. Although he goes longer than four hours, Joey will usually sleep about five to six hours, which is short for a child his age. He rarely needs naps, either.

That means he's often ready to get up at five in the morning. Fortunately, my husband is up at that time, so he'll get him to the bathroom, change him, and keep him occupied so I can sleep.

The problem comes when my husband is on an overnight trip for a dive. Joey is ready to get up and play no later than five. I usually don't awaken until six.

Fortunately, our son is resourceful and usually can find something to play with until I rouse. Unfortunately, sometimes that play can be on the noisy side. In his mind, a toy hammer is a great thing to test the baseboard at five in the morning. Or, he'll come into our room and decide to sing while sitting on the floor right beside the bed.

Needless to say, when this kind of thing happens, sleep is over for me. I just have to get up and be a mommy and then drag around late in the day when I'm dog tired.

It's at moments like these I don't entirely regret I'm still not pregnant. I have visions of a little brother or sister who will have the same slight sleep needs as the older brother.

bad people vs. evil people

I was talking with my husband about the difference between bad people and evil people. In my view, bad people can do some very bad things. but they are potentially redeemable, even if that means they must stay in prison for life. Behind bars, they have the potential to transform into better people who are honest and peaceful.

There are a lot of bad people in the world. There are criminals, of course, but also people who are never caught and prosecuted. And then there are bad people who do things that cannot be punished in a court -- psychological cruelty or abandonment or a lifestyle fueled by greed, for example.

Evil people are a whole lot worse. They're remorseless, without a conscience, the type who could cruelly torture a fellow human for days for the sheer hell of it. The worse they act, the more they feel fulfilled. Fortunately for us, evil people are few and far between.

My husband, who is an ex-Catholic, said that sounded like a Catholic point of view. (I am from a Protestant background.) Bad people go to purgatory, I guess, but evil people go to hell, per the Catholic paradigm.

I wasn't really thinking in a religious context, however. Bad people don't scare me -- although I want to stay away from them -- but evil people do frighten me. There's something primordially terrifying about them.

A friend back in the States once told me he was called for a jury in the trial of a woman charged with murdering four of her children. He said at one point she turned and looked suddenly at the potential jurors and locked eyes on my friend for a long time. He said that was the only time in his life he had seen pure evil.

He was not picked for the jury; the woman was convicted and now sits on death row. My friend is an excellent raconteur, and I still remember how spooked I felt after he told me that story.

I've met some bad people in my life -- we all have -- but I don't believe I've ever met someone who is truly evil. I hope I never do.

imminent disaster

The image appearing below is part of a series called "A Kind of Tension" by photographer Adam Thomas from Brisbane, Australia. He's captured eight images of objects in imminent danger. Some are less than a second from certain catastrophe while others are several minutes away from an unfortunate end.

I'm reminded of assassination footage, where we see a victim moments before he's cut down by a bullet, or images from moments before a terrorist strikes. The photographer captures the last few seconds of innocence for an audience with the advantage of hindsight.

ancient stuff

Like many people, I hated history class in school. It was a deadly dull, dry recitation of lifeless facts as window dressing for easy morality lessons.

And like many people, I also love history.

History class is a regimen designed by someone else who thinks he knows what you should study. When you're on your own, you can discover what you like about history and ignore what doesn't capture your imagination.

Military history bores me to tears, but history about ordinary people and daily life is fascinating IMHO. To that end, by accident I came across a great online site last night, the Ancient History Encyclopedia. Yes, it has some big history stuff but also quite a lot about ordinary life.

Unlike Wikipedia, which is cobbled together by any yahoo with a keyboard, the ancient history site is written by scholarly people, yet the writing is interesting, accessible, and sometimes fascinating. The AHE also features a lot of high-quality photographs of ancient art and a library of videos. And, like anything I recommend on my blog, it's free.

Ancient history intrigues me because it's so far in the past yet we can see how people were still people. They had to deal with some of the same things we face today. Yes, we have better resources and are far more blessed, but a sick child is a sick child, no matter what century.

The photo below is of an ancient erotic plaque from 2000-1500 BC. I love the way the couple are maintaining eye contact. Pleasure is timeless!

public grief

At the risk of sounding like a grump, I found it odd that scores of people are leaving flowers, candles, personal notes, teddy bears, and assorted items in a memorial to Robin Williams outside the house in San Francisco that served as the exterior for the primary residence in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire.

IMHO, the money people invested in that stuff would be much better spent in donations to a charity Williams supported when he was alive.

Perhaps it's my upbringing or my nature, but I don't understand what drives people to do this. The comedian is dead. He can't read the notes. He can't see the flowers or the stuffed animals. He's oblivious to the flickering candles.

Maybe this has something to do with graveyard rituals. In my family, when someone died, they were cremated and the ashes buried in a cemetery. No one in the immediate family ever visited the graveyard after that, except for another internment. So no flowers on key dates, no visits on birthdays, nothing.

I don't think I was closer to any relative than I was to my late grandfather. I loved him dearly and was deeply saddened when he died. Yet I had zero inclination to visit his gravesite when I lived in the states or to send flowers there.

It's just a big "why" to me. My grandfather is not a cold rock planted in the ground in some graveyard. He wouldn't see me if I visited. He wouldn't get the flowers if I sent them, and they'd just slowly wither and die, if not pinched by someone else visiting the cemetery.

So I suppose this is the reason I don't understand why people would spend money on flowers and then put them on the steps of a house where a movie was made. What's the point?

a womb with a view

Motherboard has a great short article about ectogenesis, the science of raising growing babies in artificial wombs. What surprised me is the fact that technological advances could very likely make the practice commonplace within three decades.

The piece recognizes, of course, that the possibility of fake wombs is "a social and political minefield." I imagine some overly religious types will screech it's playing God, blah blah blah.

My thought on that is -- if God didn't want humans doing this science, then God would've prevented mankind from gaining the necessary knowledge. I think a supreme being would be far less pissed at artificial wombs than at something like an atom bomb.

I think ectogenesis would give a real boost to humankind. In a few centuries, it might even enable humans to visit other planets that have intelligent life. Advanced ectogenesis technology would enable a deep-space starship to travel for hundreds of light years, and then AI controlling the craft would throw the switch to start some babies on their way to life and planetary exploration.

if critters had talk shows

Pandas look cute, but a friend of my husband, who is a naturalist, says they don't have cute personalities. He worked for a while with them in a Chinese nature preserve and said they spend much of their waking time eating and have little interest in humans.

He also said they're like penguins because they're not fussy about walking or sitting in their own shit and smell bad as a result. If you try to interact with them, they can get bitchy because they just want to eat. Also, he said they're not smart.

Cute to look at but not really cute to be with. I felt the same way after I saw koalas in person here in Australia. They seem dull-witted and just want to eat or sleep.

Dogs and cats live with people for a reason.

an apology

Less than a month ago, I wrote this post, which I now deeply regret. I am not taking it down because that would look like I was hiding what I had written.

I just heard that Robin Williams committed suicide today. I highly doubt he saw my post, but that doesn't make what I said any less shitty.

He was a brilliant comedian and will be deeply missed by millions. Depression is a terrible curse, and I hope he has found the peace he so desperately sought.

playing hard to get

I'm reading a novel now where, in one passage, a man starts coming on to a woman at a crowded table of friends in a restaurant. He says things like: "what kind of panties are you wearing? If you don’t tell me, I’ll reach right under there and pull them off your legs. Then I’ll put them in my pocket. They’ll be mine."

She repeatedly tells him to stop, to the point where it really seems like he's upsetting her. But he persists as he continues talking about her intimately. She ignores him for a long while, then starts talking with him again after he moves on to another topic. Later, he's much more blunt when the group leaves the restaurant, to the point where he's groping her in an alley. She resists somewhat but doesn't tell him to stop.

Then he starts roughly taking off his and her clothes in the alley. She does not resist but doesn't really help, either. He then fucks her there in the alley when she's entirely passive, not violently or cruelly, but rather roughly.

Based on my own experiences being around other women while a man was trying to reel them in, I have witnessed women who play hard to get, who say "no" for a rather long time but then give in and say "yes," when "yes" was really the point all along.

Before I was married, at times I also was on the receiving end of men's attention like this. I made it clear from the get-go if I was interested or not. If I was interested, I talked dirty back if he did that, or responded to his signals in kind, and made it clear I was worth pursuing because a payoff was in the making.

If I was turned off by a guy, however, I was very clear that no meant no. Some guys persisted, because some women play the "no means yes" game and they likely thought I might be one.

I think women do a disservice to the sisterhood, to borrow a feminist term, when they do this. When you play hard to get and then put out, other men at other times will think this is what's happening. "No" is no longer the "safe" word because it's been so abused by both men and women.

Every woman who plays hard to get may be putting other women in danger down the road. If you mess with a man's head, then who knows where that mess will end up.

true detective

My husband and I have been watching the HBO series True Detective, which is now available on DVD here in Australia and much of the world. We've seen the first three of the eight episodes so far.

What a fantastic show. Both of us agreed independently it's the best thing we've seen on the small screen since The Wire. Both Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, who play the two leads, are terrific. Everything about this complexly nuanced show is top rate. The audience rating for the series on IMDb is 9.4, the same as for The Wire.

Like in The Wire, some of the True Detectivecharacters are creepy and/or unlikable, but they're still riveting to watch. A second season is already in the works with an entirely new cast but the same writer and producers.

If you haven't already seen it and you really like moody, dark crime stories, you should definitely give it a watch. It's not particularly gruesome, at least in the first three episodes, but it is very R-rated with frank female nudity and adult language.

earth-shattering orgasm

Many women can fake an orgasm. If you've seen When Harry Met Sally, you'll know what I mean.

I don't think any woman can fake a limb-quavering orgasm. When she shakes and shivers all over, then I think it's safe to assume it's real.

I imagine many, if not most, women in porn scenes are faking it. Whoever the fake-titted chick is below, however, is having the real thing. You go, girl.

ebola panic

The Internet's importance in our daily lives makes the online world ripe for panic about threats with an extremely remote chance of affecting ordinary people. The recent outbreak of Ebola in Africa is a perfect example.

Ebola is a terrible disease, but the chances of someone in the developed world contracting it are close to non-existent. You must be in direct physical contact with someone who already has Ebola, and you also exchange blood or body fluids with that patient in order to contract Ebola yourself.

But that hasn't stopped people online from worrying about innumerable impossible scenarios. Some think dark governmental and other nefarious forces will control or kill people by spreading Ebola in water supplies. Less conspiracy-prone but under-aware people worry they'll catch it on a flight because of "germs in the cabin."

This unfounded hysteria is not confined to the internet, however. Never one to be outdone, Donald Trump is shouting to anyone who will listen that the US should bar flights to and from West Africa and prevent any Americans in returning from that continent.

The more sensational press is happy to panic about anything, including Ebola, if it will sell copies. The two front pages I found on the internet (see below) are excellent evidence of that lack of common sense. Panic sells! Irrational panic sells even more!!!

Hopefully you're like me and aren't worrying a microsecond about Ebola. Any of us is much more likely to die in a car accident or from something as boring as the flu. But we needn't worry about plague-crazed zombies.

people are really good at heart

Earlier this week in the suburb outside Perth, the largest city in Western Australia, a man slipped while entering a subway, failing to "mind the gap." Within minutes, scores of people pitched in to push the subway car slightly so he could be freed.

The video below is a fast minute-long time lapse that shows what happened. I found it very touching.

science versus religion

I had the radio on yesterday, and some talking head was pontificating that, and I'm paraphrasing, "you either believe in science or you believe in your religion but you can't believe both."

Well, I changed stations at that point, because whoever he was, he's an idiot. Of course you can believe in both.

You can believe in evolution and you can concurrently believe that evolution was divinely created. It's not an "either/or" proposition.

No one knows if evolution happened out of sheer accident or, conversely, it was part of a grand design crafted by a supreme being. Just as a tiny acorn can grow into a mighty oak, life on earth may have begun small with single-celled creatures specifically designed to evolve into the living things all around us today. And this model of evolution could be paralleled on other planets throughout the universe, all part of an original divinely designed seed that exploded in The Big Bang.

No one knows for certain, so when someone emphatically says "you can't believe in both," I see a very narrow-minded individual. Atheists can sometimes be as strident as religious zealots and vice versa.

Strident, rigid people like this are narcissists and control freaks IMHO. They're really saying "I know all, and unless you believe exactly like I do, then you're wrong."

You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. There are unknowns that may never be known.

pussy art

As you can see by looking at these photos, the woman had bead artwork applied above her veejay. This is custom work and not a ready-made temporary ink tattoo available in cosmetic shops. I'd love to know how long this took to apply and the cost.

I think this is far better than a tattoo that lasts forever. With the permanent variety, he'd probably tire of the artwork before too long. But the temporary art can act as a surprise, something he'll only discover once he pulls your knickers off.

male plastic surgery

The husband and I were watching a DVD last night with Matthew McConaughey in the cast, and James asked, "who is that?"

I identified him by name, and James said he didn't even recognize him. "Did he have plastic surgery?"

While I don't know for absolute certain, I think the answer is a pretty obvious yes. And there are plenty of gossip websites that share this opinion.

McConaughey appears to have had some eye work and also some overall lifting and maybe some hair grafting. At 44 he has less facial lines than he did five or even ten years ago.

But the most telling evidence, I believe, is the lack of natural mobility and plasticity in his face. It's just not as elastic as it once was. It's that recognizable nearly frozen "mask" of plastic surgery patients.

If this is true, he's certainly not the only star in middle age who had work done. Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise all look to me like they've had nips and tucks.

In contrast, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and George Clooney do not look to me like they've been altered. IMHO they look so much better as a result. Craggy and lined is sexy.

Any child who Googles can learn how old an actor is, so why bother trying to cheat time? We all know how old someone is, and plastic surgery makes them look not quite "right." Actors don't face the age discrimination that actresses do, so the guys should just go the untouched route.

better living through chemistry

This little clip below is from a live show at the DuPont Pavilion in the 1964 World's Fair in New York City called "The Wonderful World of Chemistry."

The show mixed information about DuPont products with a live stage show featuring singers and dancers. This was performed in front of a live audience day in and day out, numerous times a day, for the entire run of the fair.

I have to say the choreography here is about the stupidest, most surreal performance possibly. But then again, how do you create a stage show about plastic products?

The entire 24-minutes production is archived online. You may not be tempted to watch the whole thing, but if you want to skip around and sample some of the surreal factor, it truly is a hoot. The dancing at around ten minutes in is bizarre, a sort of modified go go while slap-happy people sing about your freezer.

I pity the performers who had to do this nonsense all day long, day in and day out, week after week after week.

sky high risks

The photo shown below was taken by a Russian guy whose hobby is going to the top of tall buildings and taking ridiculously dangerous selfies (right click to enlarge). He does this without any ropes, harnesses, or other safety measures that keep him from going splat.

In this one taken atop a Dubai skyscraper, if you look closely and put the pieces together, he appears to have climbed over a safety railing on an observation platform and is sitting on a ledge. He has one foot perched on a smaller ledge below him and the other one out in the air. He's holding his hand out and has the camera in the other hand, so he's not holding on, but someone could be holding him from behind.

If you've read this blog before, you know I don't like unprotected heights. I have no problem looking out a window on the fiftieth floor. Perching on a ledge outside the fiftieth floor, with nothing to prevent me from plunging to the ground, would give me serious problems.

I dream about stuff like this. They're not nightmares, but they aren't pleasant, either. A typical dream scenario involves me trapped in some kind of building, I'm looking for an exit door, I find one, pop it open, and discover it leads to an unprotected ledge hundreds of feet in the air.

Then I learn the building is on fire or due to collapse for some reason, and I have to get out. I then fruitlessly search for another way down. Just when time is running out, I wake up.

I guess people who can gleefully sit on unprotected ledges dozens of stories in the air don't have the brain wiring that triggers fear. In some ways I envy them, but in other ways I don't. I think I'd rather be afraid and safe than fearless and falling.

Counting windows up, this guy appears to be on at least the 75th floor.

schadenfreude

I was thinking the other morning while taking a dump that Paris Hilton is pretty much off the zeitgeist radar now. She has definitely passed her sell-by date. I Googled around and learned she's still making some appearances and doing a little work, but she's certainly not the big fabricated name that she once was.

Appearing on a reality show in Bulgaria is hardly the berth of A-list celebrities. I found this story about a commercial she's done, and her makeup looks like it's copied from Kim Kardashian. Did whoever shot this deliberately position her so it looks like she has deer antlers?

I guess when you're a talentless professional celebrity with utterly no reason to be famous, it's hard to keep your starship moving forward forever. She has definitely been eclipsed by the walrus-assed Kim Kardashian.

That's a bad omen of sorts for the latter, intimating that she, too, will soon be overshadowed by whatever new self-promoting media whore who happens to land in the brightest media spotlight, possibly one of her shameless sisters.

I wouldn't be surprised if Hilton is clueless to the fact that she's now a has-been. As long as the tabloids show up when she calls them to snap some fake paparazzi stuff and birdbrains stop her in airports for autographs, she'll still think she's a star, notwithstanding that she never actually was one.