the piper presents his bill

Unless you live in a cave, you probably know Bill Cosby has now been criminally charged with sexual assault stemming from an alleged 2004 incident. To date, dozens of women have claimed the comic drugged them and then sexually assaulted them. This is the first case that has resulted in criminal charges.

Many have argued that his celebrity shielded him from the scrutiny that an ordinary man might face in similar circumstances. That may be true, but now that charges have been filed in one of those cases, that in itself is a victory.

Thanks to wealth and fame, a celebrity defendant has advantages that ordinary mortals do not enjoy when charged with a crime. But the fact that Cosby was charged serves as a reminder that no man or woman can be above the law in a democracy founded on justice.

isis hypocrisy

Yesterday, Reuters published a news piece news piece about captured ISIS documents that detail how men should treat their female sex slaves.

This, of course, is the same ISIS that condemns the "immorality" of the west, where women are allowed to make decisions, dress how they want, and ignore their husbands if they wish.

So it's immoral for a woman to wear a skirt above her knees but it's not immoral for a man to hold a woman in virtual slavery and rape her at will.

Well fuck that noise.

ISIS is a miasma of hypocrisy. It destroys priceless ancient artwork that it claims is idolatrous, unless it can sell that artwork to fund its brutal regime.

The reality is that ISIS combines the worst aspects of a corrupt cult and organized crime. They want to plunder and exploit as many people as possible for their own enrichment, and then wrap their hypocritical actions in religious sanctimony.

Dictators are often hypocrites. And now it seems the worst dictators are the biggest hypocrites, too.

I think when ISIS clowns are apprehended, they should be sentenced to years of humiliating abuse by dominatrices.

einstein versus darth vader

The gif below (enlargement) was apparently lifted from the YouTube original. I wonder how many hours it took to put together the fifteen-second final product? The little moment when Darth's helmet falls off is a nice flourish.

While I doubt Einstein was a Jedi knight, he nonetheless was a fascinating man. I always thought his life would make an excellent film, if done well, but Hollywood apparently has never risen to the challenge.

When Einstein does appear in a movie, he typically is portrayed as an elderly wizard sort of character, an amusing grandfatherly sort as opposed to the complex and often troubled genius that he actually was. The reason might be the wild hair and big mustache -- that does make him seem somewhat comical.

texting off a cliff

The news over the weekend was filled with reports about a man who fell off a sixty-foot cliff in San Diego to his death while looking at his electronic device. Whether he was texting or reading something wasn't known, but multiple witnesses reported he was looking down at the gizmo in his hands as he walked over the edge.

A first instinct might be to make a joke about this because the story is so absurd it doesn't quite seem real. The Roadrunner cartoons come to mind, where characters were forever running off cliffs before realizing, too late, what that meant.

The reality is that people increasingly seem to lack what cops and solders call "situational awareness." That means not paying attention to your immediate surroundings.

I hate to say this, but I think Americans sometimes have a weaker sense of situational awareness than people from other countries. I see this with American tourists here in Australia -- they seem very wrapped up in themselves and oblivious to what's around them.

Whenever I read in the news about someone doing something stupid while texting, it always seems to be in the United States. I suspect this lack of situational awareness might have its roots in an American sense of invincibility: when you live in a country with few threats except in blighted urban areas, you always expect to be safe.

I'm reminded of an incident recently in Sydney when I was sitting with my son in a sidewalk cafe. An American tourist stood literally so close to our table that he touched it with his backside while yelling questions and food instructions to his wife/girlfriend about thirty feet away as she waited to order food.

When I interrupted him while speaking in my best Australian accent and asked him to move away from our table, he seemed utterly surprised he was standing so close to actual people. If I was a pickpocket, I probably could have lifted his wallet right out of his pants.

My son also has the habit of sometimes repeating what I say verbatim, which he chose to do when I told the man to move away. I wish I had a photo of his startled expression.

the tit flashing rule

I recently read a novel where a female character wants a male character to give her some inside information. "I'll show you my tits if you tell me," she says.

So he tells her what she wants to know. But then she doesn't show him her tits.

Boo hiss. If you promise tits or ass or anything else, then you have to deliver on your promise.

Before I was married, on occasion when I needed something, I would say some variation of this, e.g. if you do X or Y, a tit show will result. If they did what I wanted, then I lived up to my promise.

If you fail to deliver, then you cheapen the currency of the boob flash for other women. Men will come to expect they won't get a tit show, and they'll be less inclined to do what you ask.

The moral of the story: always deliver tits if you promise tits.

ready for brother

Yesterday we spent the day with my husband's family. A cousin stopped by at one point with his wife and two-week-old infant, their first.

My husband and I went out of our way to show the baby to Joey and see how he reacted. He was very gentle with him and was fascinated by his hands and the way he gripped his three-year-old fingers.

On the way home, while the little one snoozed in his car seat, we both quickly came to the agreement that now was the time to tell him that a new baby brother would be on his way soon.

We told him this morning and he smiled at the news. He was ready to go pick up the baby today and was disappointed he'd have to wait several months.

He was downright skeptical when I told him baby was still growing inside my tummy when he looked in disbelief at my swelling belly, which he had not noticed before. Later, however, he walked over to talk to my stomach, apparently expecting that his new brother would answer back.

All in all, he seems to be looking forward to the event but all the pieces to the puzzle clearly don't quite fit together for him. We asked him what he thought we should name the new child; he answered matter-of-factly: "Brother."

happy holidays!

While I don't love the lyrics to this song, the vocal skill and creativity are superb. It gave me goosebumps.

Merry Christmas to all and may your holiday be filled with love, peace, and happiness. (And happy anniversary to my magnificent husband.)

tilda swinton!

My husband and I watched Trainwreck last night. I was looking forward to seeing the exotically fascinating and sometimes strange Tilda Swinton in the movie because she's a favorite and usually entertaining.

I kept watching for her but she did not show up. Two-thirds of the way through the film, I was really getting disappointed because she had not yet come on screen. Then I suddenly realize she's been in the movie all along but I just didn't notice, thanks to a transformation that turns her into a completely different-looking woman.

She plays a completely un-Tilda like character in a very un-Tilda performance and does a brilliant job. So my already high opinion of her has been notched up several ranks.

Tilda aside, the rest of the movie left both of us indifferent. None of the characters are particularly believable or likable, so you really don't care if they prevail or end up smushed by a runaway train or a stray meteor.

The picture below (enlargement) shows the real Tilda on the right and her character in Trainwreck on the left.

love on fire

I love this quote that I found to put on my Tumblr page, where I feature sexy pictures and an inspirational quote every day: "Love is friendship set on fire."

The source is Jeremy Taylor, a name I'll admit I did not recognize. Turns out he was a seventeenth century English cleric.

I know this saying certainly was true when I first fell in love with my husband. He was my friend first, but then at one point, for no known reason, I felt like I was burning with a fever of a sort I never experienced before.

And the flame keeps burning brighter and hotter with every passing day.

miss universe scandals

The Miss Universe contest typically is an absurdist yawnfest, but this year's pageant has caused not one but two international scandals.

First, Miss Israel and Miss Lebanon appeared together in a selfie with Miss Slovenia and Miss Japan. Trouble is, more than a few people in Lebanon don't like Israel, so they're demanding Miss Lebanon renounce her title for fraternizing with Miss Israel.

Perhaps to save face, Miss Lebanon is now claiming she did not want to appear in the photo and that Miss Israel has been stalking her. The problem with that explanation is that she's smiling broadly in the photo she now claims she didn't want.

As if that wasn't enough, when the final winners was announced, the wrong one was crowned. The title was supposed to go to Miss Philippines, but host Steve Harvey erroneously announced that Miss Colombia had won.

After Miss Colombia stood on stage for a few minutes wiping away the expected tears and beaming her deer-in-headlights smile, she was told about the mistake and the previous Miss Universe removed the crown and presented it to the rightful winner. For her part, Miss Colombia was graceful through the whole disaster.

The screw-ups and scandals have turned out to generate far more publicity for the moribund pageant than it usually would receive. Next year, in order to goose their profile even more, they should stage a hair-pulling brawl between some of the contestants before the final winner is announced.

This talk of beauty pageants brings to mind one of my favorite New Yorker covers.

beasts of no nation

A few weeks ago I wrote an entry itemizing what my husband and I thought were some of the year's best movies. We had not seen all the screeners that my Hollywood friend had sent, which we're still working through, so the list was not meant to be conclusive.

We have one strong addition for "best of the year" that blew us both away: Beasts of No Nation, a hauntingly beautiful and powerful film. Neither of us found anything to fault with the exception that it's so bleakly sad.

The movie tells the story of a young boy from an unnamed African country who is taken prisoner and then indoctrinated into a rag-tag group of boy soldiers fighting in a brutal civil war. The central character, Agu, is never identified by age but appears to be about ten years old.

He's played by newcomer Abraham Attah, who in his first role achieves much more than many experienced actors. In most of his scenes, he's so achingly good you can't believe he's never acted before. Agu is a child turned into a monster, but you still hope he'll be redeemed somehow, thanks to Attah's subtle, breathtaking performance.

Idris Elba is also exceptional in his role as a demonic yet charismatic "Commander" who leads the boy soldiers with love, torment, and sexual abuse. Elba, of course, is widely known to fans of The Wire.

I was reminded of both The Killing Fields and Precious in the way it contrasted the innocence of children with the beastly cruelty of adults.

It's not an easy film to watch but is one of the most memorable movies I've seen in a very long time.

merry catmas

I showed this to my son, and he wanted to watch it over and over and over again. He has never expressed a desire to have a cat, possibly because a neighbor feline visits nearly every day to lounge on our back patio, but he seems fascinated by any animal. Maybe he'll be a vet or zookeeper when he's grown.

Our rescued dog must've come from a household with cats because it could care less when kitty shows up. And the cat pretty much ignores the pooch. Call it animal detente.

We are looking forward to Christmas this year because Joey is really into the whole holiday spirit. He was somewhat into it last year, but now that he's three, he understands a whole lot more.

young harrison

I was scan-reading some of the voluminous coverage about the new Star Wars movie, and a few of the stories featured photographs of a young Harrison Ford. I usually think of him as an older man, but the pictures reminded me that he was a hottie when younger.

From the original film's three younger stars, he was the only one who really had a lasting career. He's also the best preserved; time has not been kind to either Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher, notwithstanding that Ford is by far the oldest of the trio (he's 73, Hamill is 64, and Fisher is 59).

Neither my husband nor I have any particular desire to see this latest Star Wars flick. IMHO, only the first one was really memorable, and some of them were just insufferable. When the new one comes out on DVD, we'll have a look.

My uncle went to the first showing of Star Wars in 1977. He said the theater was 95 percent empty. What change time has brought.

thug praises thug

Corrupt thug Vladimir Putin and corrupt thug Donald Trump are having something of a bromance. Yesterday, the Russian dictator gushed to the media about the clownish presidential candidate, calling him a "brilliant and talented person."

Putin then added that Trump "wants to move on to a new, more substantial relationship, a deeper relationship with Russia." Considering Putin is something of an international pariah, apparently he'll look anyplace for love now.

For his part, Trump declared a few months ago that he and Putin would get along swimmingly, of course with utterly no explanation as to why and how that would happen. Apparently he thinks he has such a winning personality that Putin and other heads of state would fall at his feet.

Nonetheless, the fact-impaired Trump doesn't seem to realize that Putin is a brutal dictator who lovingly supports another brutal dictator, Syrian President Bashar Assad, who in turn ruthlessly slaughters his own countrymen. You'd think that someone who wants to be the leader of the world's most powerful democracy would realize that showing your cards before you even play the game makes you look like an idiot.

It also speaks volumes about the kind of man Putin likes to befriend. Perhaps if Trump doesn't win election (and many people, including me, hope he won't), he and Putin could do a new reality show and call it "Everybody Loves a Dictator."

are pierced navels trashy?

One of my 40,000-plus Tumblr followers contacted me and asked if I deliberately did not never feature women on my Tumblr page with pierced navels. His/her observation is correct; I almost never do.

Why? The answer is simple: I've never found pierced navels attractive. I think they can mar the natural lines of an attractive woman's torso.

A piercing catches your eye and draws your attention away from the woman's natural assets. You should be looking at her tits and her coochie, not her navel.

Things that are "too much" -- make-up, clothes, accessories -- and can distract rather than enhance are trashy, in my humble opinion. The woman lessens herself by doing such things. She takes away -- she doesn't add.

I don't think I've ever seen a pierced navel that made a woman look better or more attractive, hence the reason why I don't like them. If I see a picture of a naked woman with a pierced navel, I'm less inclined to like it and thus will not use it.

And, yes, that's not a typo -- I now have more than 40,000 Tumblr followers.

women vote in saudi arabia

Certain media outlets, particularly those targeting females, are celebrating the first election in Saudi Arabia over the weekend because women were allowed to vote for the first time ever. A few women were also elected in municipal races on the ballot.

In all honesty, this was a hollow victory. Because Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, those elected -- both women and men -- will have no real power. They will simply serve as advisers of sort. If the crown wants to ignore them, it will.

Because Saudi Arabia is subject to strict gender segregation, the female candidates had to speak behind a partition while campaigning or have a male relative read their speech. Those women elected will be similarly segregated.

The election notwithstanding, Saudi women still have almost no rights. They cannot drive. They cannot travel without an adult male relative escort. They cannot start a business. They cannot associate with men in public. They must wear a head-to-toe robe that obscures all but their eyes every time they leave the house.

Some media sources are calling this election an "historic first step." But if women are prohibited from walking more than two or three steps after that initial step, the journey will be for naught.

felonious barbie

I was not much of a Barbie fan when I was a little girl. I was more interested in doing weird things with dolls, like making nooses and hanging them. You can imagine how my shrink parents reacted to that.

Canadian photographer and artist Mariel Clayton, a guy, likes to do twisted things with Barbie dolls and then photographing them. He does shoots featuring nympho Barbies, serial killer Barbies, cannibal Barbies, and many more.

His Facebook page features hundreds of examples of his work. One of my favorites is poor Barbie discovering that Ken doesn't have a cock.

yes, Trump is a fraud

If you know anyone planning to vote for Donald Trump, this article about scores of lawsuits against Trump should make crystal clear that the candidate is a con artist and a fraud who does not deserve anyone's vote.

Now they might say the piece is just an example of the media out to get Trump, but it's all based on court documents. Trump was repeatedly documented blatantly lying to people in order to cheat them out of thousands of dollars per person.

The article in question deals with the now-shuttered "Trump University," which was nothing more than a scam to swindle people into thinking they could learn real estate investing secrets. In reality, it was the same kind of huckster hoodwink seen in old late-night infomercials.

Trump blatantly lied and misrepresented himself and did it repeatedly in the scam. He claimed he would earn no money from "Trump University" when in fact he made checks out to himself for $5 million.

After reading the piece, I was left wondering why he did not face criminal prosecution for what he did.

blow-dried idiots

If you've always believed television news personalities are mostly over-coiffed morons, this very funny video will help reinforce your opinion.

My favorite is the BBC news reader who's busted while brushing her hair on camera yet is completely frosty cool when she realizes she's on the air. Talk about a stiff upper lip.

the literary pelican

This morning I finished a novel by American writer George Pelecanos, the third book of his I've read to date. I was struck by the really strong writing in all three books.

I was initially attracted to his fiction because I knew he had also written some episodes in all five seasons of The Wire, my all-time favorite television show. His novels are as sharp and poignant as his writing for the small screen.

I read somewhere once where Pelecanos was called "the pelican" as a nickname when he was young, likely because his surname sounds somewhat similar to the bird species. Greek-American in heritage, he has a perfect ear for dialog and beautifully voices his richly detailed characters of all races.

For whatever reason, Pelicanos has not had quite the commercial success of two other Wire writers who are also novelists, Richard Price and Dennis Lehane. In my opinion, Pelicanos is the best of the three, although Price is a pretty close second.

If you like modern urban gritty crime fiction, I strongly recommend you check out Pelicanos's work. To date, I've read Drama City, The Night Gardener, and The Turnaround, and I plan to read more of his books very soon.

gender news

A real world friend who also reads this blog on occasion commented in an email that I had not mentioned Baby Number Two's gender. That is true, partly because I don't want to make this too much of a motherhood blog.

But that aside, we've known for a quite a while that the new baby will also be a boy. I was not surprised when we learned this, because I've had as much morning sickness this time as last time.

While opinions range all over the map about whether or not morning sickness is a reliable predictor, some scientific correlation has been found. Somewhat related, I read that Kate Middleton's morning sickness during her second pregnancy, when she was carrying a girl, was not nearly as bad as when she was carrying a boy.

All things considered, I was somewhat relieved to hear the news. I would be perfectly happy with a girl, but I think I will be a better mother with sons than I would be with a daughter.

This likely will be my next to last pregnancy, if all goes well. We would like one more child in a few years; if and when that happens, I might change my mind about boy versus girl.

As for Baby Two, we have narrowed down a list of favorite names but have not yet decided for certain. I imagine we will not finalize until the magical day itself when he arrives on the scene.

the bill cosby of porn

In the last two weeks, nine different female porn performers have come forward publicly to claim they were sexually assaulted/raped by male performer James Deen (seen in the still below).

As a result, Deen's contracts have been terminated at several prominent adult production companies, including two that release particularly rough BDSM material.

One of his nine accusers labeled him "the Bill Cosby of porn" in a recent public statement, likening him to the popular comic and actor now engulfed in sexual assault allegations of his own.

After refusing to speak to the media about the accusations for nearly two weeks, Deen finally came forward publicly to deny the allegations.

In a classic he-said-she-said, one person is the accuser and the other the accused. Absent corroborating evidence, it all boils down to which of the two you believe.

But when you have nine accusers, does that change the equation?

I should say at this point that I have never liked James Deen porn scenes. He's often very rough toward the women and physically abuses them onscreen, something which he visibly seems to enjoy.

Yes, I know, what's onscreen is consensual, but the emotions a performer exhibits can also be quite real. Deen is not a particularly good actor, so it's hard for me to believe he was only pretending to enjoy mistreating women on screen.

So in this case, with the odds stacked nine to one against him, I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Will these accusations drive him out of the business, or will he end up doing shoots for even nastier and rougher production companies? The way the industry works, it could well be the latter outcome.

baby broker busted

Sometimes I read news stories about a man or woman who was arrested, and I'm left wondering what in the hell the alleged perpetrator was thinking in committing the crime.

Take the case of a 47-year-old woman from an Atlanta, Georgia, suburb who reportedly ran an ad on Craigslist seeking a free baby she could give to her 14-year-old daughter.

The ad included detailed instructions about how people could put giveaway newborns in a "baby box" that would be left in a location obtainable via text messaging.

Not only are the baby requirements ludicrous, the woman had no way to enforce them. For instance, she supposedly demanded a baby must be placed in the box by a legal guardian, but if it's an anonymous donation, how would anyone know who was the responsible party?

She also required any donated baby's birth certificate along with a child, which would negate the whole anonymous thing.

One might be left thinking this was all some joke, but the woman admitted after her arrest that her ad was genuine and a serious proposition. She was worried her daughter would obtain a baby by other means, so she wanted to make sure she had a say in the process.

Apparently Mom didn't want her daughter to acquire a baby the ordinary way. No unwed mother stigma for her little angel.

I'll but mother and daughter are both a real piece of work.

penis transplant news

Earlier this year, I ran a short piece about a successful experimental penis transplant. An article in yesterday's New York Times says that American doctors plan to perform as many as sixty penis transplants on soldiers with combat-related injuries to the groin.

The Times also notes that the first penis transplant patient has now fathered a child.

I'm tempted to make snarky remarks about this, but for the men in need of a new penis, it's surely no laughing matter. I know if my husband needed one, I'd certainly be glad if he was a recipient.

The article stated that "some doctors have criticized the idea of penis transplants, saying they are not needed to save the patient's life." I wonder if those doctors would feel the same way if their junk went missing after an car accident.

Best wishes aside, I'm a bit prurient about this subject. I want to see pictures of a man after he's had a successful dong upgrade.

Do they try to match the skin tone, for instance? And what about length and girth; do they try to match that, too? What if a man was uncircumcised before his injury; will he also receive an uncut replacement?

Kudos to men willing to serve as donors after they're dead. There's something oddly sweet about a man's joystick still bringing pleasure to a woman or women after he's shuffled off his mortal coil.

tit envy

On occasion I see a photo of a woman with larger breasts and I wish I had the genes to give me a pair like that. The picture seen below made me think about that again (right click to see full sized).

Her knockers are obviously real. There's just no way you can achieve that look with implants.

That's part of the reason I would never have surgery to boost my boobs. Medicine cannot perfectly recreate the look bestowed by Mother Nature.

The flip side of my tit envy is the realization that big hooters are only wonderful when you're young. Motherhood and aging are guaranteed to make them sag.

The clock is almost always kinder to small breasted women like me. Regular exercise also helps keep everything as pert as gravity allows.

I also realize that bigger tits would give me no particular advantage. Nothing in my life would change except my bra size.

And I might never have met my husband if I had big titties. He's a small breast man, and had I had a big rack when he first spotted me in a Nevada desert, he may not have given me a second glance.

early gump

Two things surprised me about this early 1990s video of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright auditioning for Forrest Gump. First, I'm amazed an actor of Hanks's prominence had to audition for a part at all.

And second, he's not very good in this video. He's not horrible, but just average. It doesn't seem like he ever read the book or had any idea that Forrest is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's just going through the motions.

Somewhere between this and the actual filming, he realized what the character needed and then some. His performance went from forgettable to memorable.

how to take down trump

I've read several news articles recently about how the Republican establishment is formulating plans to knock Donald Trump out of the race in favor of a more mainstream candidate, whomever he or she might be.

I think this is a recipe for failure. I'm no political expert, but I think the strategy avoids the big elephant in the room.

Bottom line: there are too many candidates. There have always been too many candidates. Originally, seventeen were in the race. Now there are fourteen. That's about ten too many.

Too many candidates means divided loyalties. Trump polls at 20 to 30 percent, depending on the poll, which in a normal race with just a few candidates would probably be a losing hand.

The GOP establishment needs to bump all but the two or three strongest candidates from the race. They have to tell the lower ranked candidates, point blank, get out of the race now because you have no prayer of winning or you will never receive our party's support in any future race.

Right now, depending on the poll, the lower ranked candidates in the single digits together have about 30 to 35 percent. With those candidates out of the race, the 30 to 35 percent will shift toward stronger candidates.

Yes, Trump might pick up a bit of that but not much. It will go to the strongest conventional candidates.

I seriously think that, without thinning the field, Trump will win the party's nomination. He's too dangerous and unstable to be allowed to go that far.

sisters in combat

Yesterday, the Pentagon removed all gender barriers to all positions in the United States military.

"There will be no exceptions," the Secretary of Defense said. "As long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before."

Prior to the announcement, some 10 percent of the military, or about 220 jobs, were closed to women. Now, that barrier is lifted for every woman who serves.

As a woman, I cheer this development. As a mother, it makes me cringe -- now all of our children could die in battle.

Nevertheless, all opportunities in every field open to men must be open to women as long as individual candidates meet the necessary non-gender criteria. It doesn't matter if it's the military or the civilian sector. The only exception I can think of are sperm donors.

With more women in combat, military leaders might be more scrutinous about sending troops into harms way. Erring on the side of caution is rarely a bad policy.

I have zero military experience, but my husband served in the Royal Australian Navy for twenty years, where all combat roles have been open to women for more than two decades. He supports full integration of the military and has served alongside women during most of his career.

As he has said on more than occasion, "it matters what's inside a sailor's head, not what's inside a sailor's nickers."

best movies of the year

My movie biz friend sent us a package of industry DVD screeners for many of the big studio films they're hoping will win some awards. Some of the movies opened recently while others have yet to open anywhere in the world.

We were both underwhelmed at some of the much talked about movies. A few of them, however, were well above average, so I thought I'd mention our six favorites here in no particular order, as I've done in previous award seasons.

Spotlight--Starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and more, this is one of the best movies we've both seen in quite a while. It's heartbreaking and makes you angry, but it is a story that had to be told. I would not be surprised if this wins the Best Picture Oscar this year.

Steve Jobs--Starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, the movie obviously is about the Apple pioneer. A real stunning surprise, it's not like any biopic I ever remember seeing. Jobs comes across like a raging narcissist but you really understand what makes him tick. Fassbender is terrific as is Winslet as a long-suffering senior Apple employee. Kudos to director Danny Boyle and writer Aaron Sorkin for masterful work.

Black Mass--Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Sarsgaard, Kevin Bacon, and more, this is the story of ruthless gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger and his FBI agent friend John Connolly. Depp is astonishingly fine and also unrecognizable. It's arguably the best thing he's ever done, and the same can be said for Cumberbatch and Edgerton.

Carol--Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, the movie tells of an unexpected love story between a 1950s department store saleswoman and an older married woman. Blanchett and Mara are both electrifyingly superb and Todd Haynes's directing is lush and beautiful.

The Lady in the Van--Starring Maggie Smith, Dominic Cooper, and Jim Broadbent, this is a fact-based story about the unconventional friendship between an ordinary man and a deranged homeless woman, the latter played flawlessly by Smith. Both writer Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner are at the top of their form.

Brooklyn--Starring Saoirse Ronan and Jim Broadbent, this is a lovely romance about an Irish immigrant in 1950s New York. The screenplay by Nick Hornby is heartbreakingly good. This small film unfortunately may be overlooked by some of the showier films this season.

As often is the case, many of the best films are historical and/or fact based. It's interesting how Hollywood always seems to do a better job with that genre than with others.

juvenilia

The picture below is from one of Channel's new ads running in the top fashion magazines and features some of their spring collection (original larger image).

I'm not a fan of clashing patterns. I think they overpower the woman. This is a good example of why.

I'm not a fan of these suits and dresses, either. They look like ill-fitting 1970s vintage polyester stuff found in thrift stores, like garments with an odd smell and faint grime that won't wash clean.

Given these are Channel couture, you can expect to pay thousands of dollars for each. Thanks but no thanks.

What really strikes me about these ad are the models and the way they're style. They look like tweens who found some of their grandmothers' old things and decided to put them on.

Their makeup seems absurd to me. It's too loud and too heavily applied. They have a whole Pretty Baby vibe that's just a little too weird.

The model on the left is Stella Lucia, who earns masses of money as one of the top fifty models in the world. I just don't get her appeal. She's just too plain in my opinion.

Kitty Hayes is in the middle. She's another huge moneymaker, but to me she looks too doll-like and juvenile. Some of her shoot show her smiling, and you can see the braces on her teeth.

Charlotte Free is the pretty one on the right, but she's often styled so badly she looks awful. Here she just appears strange.

This ad makes me realize I was too old at eighteen when my modeling career had a bit of heat. I should've started much, much earlier if I really wanted to earn big bucks.

But I think that would have made me more of a screwed up teenager than I turned out to be.

the internal stopwatch

For as long as I can remember, I have had what I call "perfect pitch" in terms of my internal clock.

Any time during the day, even though I haven't checked a clock for hours, I almost always can tell what time it is to within a minute or two.

This morning was a good example. I hadn't looked at a clock since I climbed out of bed before seven. At some point in mid-morning I decided to check the time and thought it would be about 9:25.

I looked at my cellphone (I don't wear a watch) and saw it was 9:26.

This happens nearly every day, no matter what time. Before I check my cell or a clock on the wall, I think in advance what time it is.

Almost without exception, my guess is within a minute or two of the correct time. On the few times that I'm not, I'm within five minutes.

I can even do this in the middle of the night. Wake me from a deep sleep, and I'll know the time to within a few minutes without checking a clock.

I don't know why I can do this. I don't count the passing time, the minutes and seconds. It just happens.

My husband said he's known men in the Navy like this. On the sea, in olden times, I could see how this would come in handy.

Each of us has something called an internal clock, a portion of the brain that quietly calculates the time. Supposedly all mammals have one.

For unknown reason, some people are more accurate than most. It will be interesting to see if any of my children inherit this curious gene.

body litter

Here's a special kind of stupid: an eighteen-year-old man in Norway paid about $250 to have a McDonald's receipt tattooed on his arm.

After that earned him media coverage, he had the receipt for the first tattoo permanently inked on his other warm.

"Now I'm a living billboard, but I think it's all just fun," he told a reporter. "Maybe it won't be as fun when I'm 50 or 60 years old."

I cannot imagine why anyone would think a tattoo like this would be a good idea. If I had to choose between a receipt tattoo and sticking my tongue in a wall socket, I think I'd choose the latter.

It would probably burn my tongue and throw me across the room, but the stupid would wear off after a few days.

The stupid on his arm, however, will last forever.

band of brothers

After we finished our complete watch of The Wire, my husband and I picked another show for a start-to-finish viewing. Our criteria was a show that one or both of us had not seen or had only seen a few episodes.

We settled on Band of Brothers, which my husband had seen several times all the way through, but I had only seen one or two episodes. I was not wild about this choice, but since we had gone with my choice the last time, I thought it only fair.

After seeing all ten episodes, I'm now a Band fan, too. Before watching, I feared it would have a lot of action violence and war-is-great propaganda.

I was very wrong in my thinking. The series is both pro-war and anti-war. You see the necessity for World War II but at the same time the ludicrous idiocy and random brutality of war.

The program first aired fifteen years ago, but because it is a period story about real events and real people, it's just as relevant and timeless today. If anything, as the world faces the increasing threat from ISIS, the program has an added value.

I definitely want to read the source book now that I've seen the series. I know that the author, Stephen Ambrose, was somewhat controversial, but I want to learn more about the real men behind the story.

If you've never seen Band of Brothers and have been resisting because you think it's a "war story," I recommend you reconsider and watch it. The program has the highest user rating of any series on IMDb, and while I might not say it was the best series ever, it certainly is one of the best.

Some of the real soldiers depicted in the series are seen in the period photograph below after they captured Eagle's Nest, Hitler's Alpine retreat. The photo is huge, so you can right click to see the detailed original.

terrorist ducks

The Independent has a short piece about a new internet meme trend that combines pictures of rubber bath ducks with ISIS fighters. You can see an example below and others and the link provided.

I laughed at some of them, specifically the well done ones. Some of them are pretty sloppy and not really funny.

This made me wonder, however, if laughing at and mocking ISIS is counter-productive. ISIS members are evil, vicious, cruel people. By putting a silly face on them, does that end up making them seem less awful?

Before and during World War II, Hitler and/or the Nazis were sometimes lampooned. The Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplain is a good example of that.

But since World War II, arguably a lot of Hitler/Nazis depictions in the mass media have been humorous. Does that end up glossing over their horrible history?

I guess it's all right to laugh at evil if you make sure you also publicize all the horrible things someone or some group is doing and has done.

I just noticed the toilet brush when positioning this photo. Nicely done!

dumping on trump

The New York Times recently ran an editorial cartoon contest for high school students and unveiled the winners yesterday.

Not surprising, several winners did Trump-themed works and none are flattering. The contest artists found some witty and creative ways to lampoon him.

Trump has become uglier and nastier and has been stooping to lower and lower depths in the past few weeks. He always was a boorish bully, but he's getting worse and worse now.

Despite all his bombast, his public statements still continue to be devoid of any specifics about how he would achieve all the ludicrous promises he has made. I'm amazed people are dazzled by his obvious horseshit.

I certainly hope the American populace wakes up pretty soon and realizes what a colossal mistake it would be to elect that man to the presidency.

turkey day humor

Happy Thanksgiving to Americans everywhere -- those at home and those expats like me. Turkey Day is a holiday that every Yank on earth has the right to celebrate because the tradition is entirely American.

For those who might need a Thanksgiving giggle or two, here is a humorous collection of puns and word jokes I found posted on Imgur. I admit I did not understand one or two of them and couldn't tell if they were brilliantly witty or incredibly bad.

somebody's pissed

I don't really follow the endless Kardashain/Jenner faux drama so I don't know who all the people are in the picture below. You can see Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner in the white dress accepting some award (larger original), and the look on attention whore Kim Kardashian's face is priceless.

She definitely looks cheesed off that her attention whore star is being eclipsed by Miss Bruce's attention whore star.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if the blonde woman on the far left, whoever she might be, is at all worried about how this shot makes her butt look enormous. A little free tip for her from me: a good outfit will flatter your best feature, not the other way around.

embarrassing genealogy

I am supposedly a direct descendant of King John, who was arguably the worst king in British history and one of the worst monarchs ever to reign anywhere. If you know your history, you know he was so bad, the English aristocracy forced him to sign the Magna Carta.

I have a relative who spent a great deal of time and money researching the family genealogy and documented our King John ancestry. He was a historian by profession, so presumably he was fairly accurate with his research.

I have never understood why he expended such an effort to prove we were related to a historical embarrassment. Yes, it's not as bad as being Stalin or Hitler's descendant, but it's nothing to be proud of, either.

He certainly didn't do this in an attempt to establish any claim on the British throne. Our family is supposedly descended from one of King John's female progeny, so we are shut out of any possible spot in the line of succession.

While the Magna Carta was a positive development in history, it certainly didn't come about through King John's good deeds. I guess the only thing to be proud of is the fact that King John was so bad, he inadvertently helped kindle the idea of democracy, given that the Magna Carta was purportedly an inspiration for the American constitution.

unwrapping burt reynolds

The latest issue of Vanity Fair has a longish piece on Burt Reynolds, who is now 79. The article proffers a good bit of evidence about how Reynolds has some serious money problems, which he both denies and then somewhat confirms by admitting freely several times he has no money sense and is a lavish spender.

I've never understood Reynolds' public appeal. I guess it's one of those generational things. With two exceptions, any movies with him I've seen with him have been entirely forgettable, in my opinion.

He's not a bad actor, but his roles offer little challenge as an actor, with a few exceptions. I've always felt he mostly was just playing himself in derivative stories.

Reynolds was considered a huge sex symbol in his day, but again I'm at a loss to understand that. Looking at him and watching him in his physical prime, he doesn't have any magnetism that I can see.

The present-day photograph the magazine chose to run doesn't do him any favors. Like many people who have had plastic surgery in earlier decades, those tucks and trims have made him look a bit freakish now.

Ageism can be cruel for nearly everyone, but never more so than for sex symbols of yesterday.

faux vintage porn

Here's is a curious item: an uncredited photographer has created a fake 1940s porn shoot in a sort of hardcore Bettie Page homage.

I like the idea but the execution needs work. For starters, someone cast a model with obvious breast implants. No 1940s model would look like that.

She's also using a modern sex toy of a style that never would've been sold in the 1940s. So one glance at the photos and you know they're fake.

Also, rather than simply shooting the photographs in true monochrome, someone has dialed down the color to a highly desaturated result with a weird, slight pinkish tint which is inconsistent from picture to picture. (I color corrected the four images appearing below.)

I'm left wondering why the effort here for this fake vintage look. You'd have to be in your seventies or older to remember the 1940s well, so who is this shoot meant to entice?

Would a twentyish or thirtyish man looking at this understand what the photographer was trying to do? Or was this meant to be porn for the Social Security set?

The shoot reminds me of how 1940s hairstyles were not flattering to women. I hope those updo wings never come back into style during my lifetime. If they do, I refuse to wear them.

past transgressions

A news item caught my eye about how some Princeton University students what their school to remove former President Woodrow Wilson's name from campus facilities because he was in favor of racial segregation.

Wilson, of course, was President from 1913 to 1921 and died in 1924.

My immediate thought upon reading this was to wonder if people soon would be calling for removal of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's names from all sorts of landmarks because they had owned slaves.

Abraham Lincoln also favored segregation and returning all blacks to Africa. Should his name similarly be purged?

What about Henry Ford and Martin Luther? They were both anti-Semites; surely that must mean their names must be scrubed from any public placement.

This begs the question: when is enough quite enough? Does every person in the past who committed some sort of transgression immediately a candidate for such ex post facto banishment?

If someone living now advocates racial segregation, then I think that person deserves to be condemned. I think institutions have a perfect right to remove that person's name from honorary landmark titles.

But once decades have passed -- or centuries -- I think it's a pointless gesture. More seriously, it's wasting time on a past controversy instead of focusing on inequality issues in our own time.

Why not deal with present-day racism instead of trying to settle scores on old injustices? No one is advocating purging all references to Wilson's racism. History books will still tell us that.

Here's a thought: Wilson may have been a racist, but he was also an advocate for women's rights, specifically the right to vote.

Doesn't that sort of balance out his transgressions? So you're not honoring Wilson the racist in your campus facilities but Wilson the visionary feminist?

good versus perfect

One of my favorite sayings is: "don't let perfect be the enemy of good." Many people understand and embrace this, but too many do not. The expression is applicable to many things in life.

I occasionally see this axiom posted on political discussion forums after someone complains loudly about something/someone and how X, Y, or Z would be so much better. They won't support a candidate because of one issue or event and then bemoan how all candidates are terrible, we're all going to hell in a handbasket, and all hope is lost.

Politics are like many things in life. You'll never get exactly what you want, whether it be a candidate or a menu item in a restaurant or the color of a garment. So be happy with the good and stop whining about the perfect.

True perfection is great but rarely obtainable. So you need to settle for something less and not throw up your hands and refuse to participate just because you can't get exactly what you want.

what is a woman?

In 2003, Glamour magazine named Moira Smith "Woman of the Year." Smith died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after leading more than a hundred people to safety.

Last week, her husband returned the award to Glamour, objecting to the magazine's selection of Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner as "Woman of the Year."

In rejecting the award, he wrote to the editors: "Was there no woman in America, or the rest of the world, more deserving than this man?"

I agree with him. Give the award to a woman who has made the world a better place, not to a man who puts on a dress.

If Bruce Jenner wants to dress up like a woman, he should have the freedom to do so. But that doesn't make him a woman.

He has a man's chromosomes. He was born with a penis and fathered children. He still has a penis (he has said he has not had sex reassignment surgery; thus his junk is intact).

Biologically, he is and always will be a man. Even if he cuts off his dick, he will still be a man.

I don't buy this idea of "you must pretend he's a woman because he says he is." If he wants to pretend to himself, fine. He should have the freedom to do so.

But he doesn't have the right to demand that everyone else pretend along with him.

The absurdity in all this is that Glamour also gives an award to "Man of the Year." If they wanted to present something to Jenner, that would have done the trick.

tasmanian tigers

I heard a radio program the other day while I was driving about the ethics of cloning the Tasmanian tiger, an unusual Australian species that is probably extinct. The last known Tasmanian tiger, popularly called a Tassie tiger and technically called a thylacine, died in 1936 in an Australian zoo.

The more sensational media carries occasional reports about Tasmanian tiger sightings, but these have never been confirmed. The creature was nearly extinct on the Australian mainland when Europeans first arrived but were not uncommon on the island of Tasmania.

The present controversy revolves around the so-called de-extinction process, which would use existing gene samples from that last living thylacine to clone new animals. Those creatures would then naturally reproduce to repopulate the species. The full technology for this does not exist now but likely will in the near future.

Those in favor of the endeavor say we have a responsibility to bring back species that are now extinct because of modern man. Opponents argue it's "playing God."

IMHO, if scientists can bring back the Tassie tiger from extinction, I think they should. The animal was heavily hunted by humans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I would argue man was "playing God" by driving it into extinction. Humans trashed the supreme being's creation.

The thylacine looks like a striped dog and is dog-sized but is not a canine. It was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. (For those rusty with their biology, marsupials are pouch animals like kangaroos and opossums.)

Neither is it a feline, despite the name, and bears no relation to tigers in Asia. It is more closely related to the Tasmanian devil and other animals not largely known outside Australia like quolls and kowaris.

The picture below shows two Tasmanian tigers photographed in a Washington DC zoo in 1904.

symptom versus cause

One thing I learned by having a lot of doctors in my family is that often the best way to solve a problem is to
attack the cause, not the symptoms. You fight the rash by curing what's causing the rash.

I've been thinking about that maxim in the aftermath of the Paris attacks this past weekend. A considerable effort will be spent pursuing and fighting terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.

But terrorist groups are really symptoms of a problem, not a cause. So what are the causes, the root social illnesses?

Many books and articles I've read since 9/11 return to a common issue: terrorists often start out as disconnected, disillusioned, disenfranchised younger males drifting through their lives.

They are young loners existing in society's fringes who find radical terrorism attractive because of a comradery with like-minded loner males. This is also true for urban gangs and other modern forms of organized crime: loners belonging to an organization of loners who channel their anger into self-destructive nihilism.

I read an article recently about how ISIS deliberately targets disenfranchised young males who have little to no knowledge of religion and almost no family support structure. In many ways, ISIS then acts like a religious cult to draw them in, indoctrinate them, and isolate them from the rest of their world as they control them.

So how to cure this problem?

I'm sort of wondering aloud here in print by thinking some sort of compulsory civilian corps for young males that might direct such individuals into a more productive mindset. Directionless, drifting young males would find some structure in their life through a quasi-militaristic work program, a "civil draft," so to speak.

In the real world, I know quite a few young men who were major fuckups in their directionless teenage years and turned their lives around after a stint in the military. I also knew a firefighter in Los Angeles who was a model citizen but as a teenager he was prosecuted for several felonies until he entered a bootcamp sort of program where young offenders helped fight wildfires.

A large country will probably have more young males than it needs for the military, so that's why I was thinking about some kind of compulsory civilian corps that would be military in discipline and structure but not involved in defense activities. Alternatively, young males could enter the military for compulsory service, as is required in some countries, like Austria, Denmark, and Israel.

Such civilian corps could work on infrastructure improvement, conservation, and other public works projects. Of course, all countries where terrorism germinates would need a similar system of compulsory service.

So what about women? Why are they usually less prone to becoming disenfranchised loners who turn to violence? I think some of that is genetic but some is the way girls are raised differently than boys.

That leaves the question of whether ladies must also join my compulsory civilian corps. As the benevolent dictator spinning this idea, I don't know about that.

near-death experience

This is a pretty scary video. An elderly man in Brazil carrying a heavy satchel of some sort is nearly struck by a freight train moving through an urban area. If he was one second slower, or even less than a second, it would be curtains.

He's moving parallel to the crosswalk in the street itself, so perhaps there were barriers and he went around them. You can see people behind him calling out to stop but he obviously either did not hear or ignored them.

When I lived in Los Angeles, about once a month or so the media carried reports about people who were killed crossing railroad tracks in the northern San Fernando Valley part of the city. It never ceased to amaze me how people didn't apparently realize that a train is a lethal object.

alien nudity

I was amused reading this short article about the images sent by NASA decades ago on spacecraft traveling into deep space outside our solar system. One featured a naked man and woman waving in a welcoming greeting.

"NASA faced a backlash for the nudity of the human figures," the article explains.

What kind of idiot worries about an alien race seeing earthlings with their kit off? (American translation: "kit off" means naked.)

Quite likely, any far distant galaxy with an advanced race that receives these messages countless millions of years from now will look nothing like us. They could look more like starfish or zebras or tribbles than humans.

I wonder how these human prudes who are so worried about nekkid people would react if an advanced species in a somewhat humanoid form showed up on Earth, willing to help us with their super advanced technology...

...and those aliens were completely buck naked.

la ville de la lumière

Paris is one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world. It lives on forever in the memories of all who are lucky enough to visit.

I am writing this as news continues to pour in about the horrible terrorist attack in the city of light. War is horrible, but terrorist attacks like this arguably are worse because civilians are viciously targeted when they least expect violence.

No cause is just that warrants the slaughter of innocents.

charles manson sitcom

I have only seen a few episodes of the American sitcom The Last Man on Earth so I don't know the whole backstory. But I've seen enough of the show to wonder why Will Forte (first picture below) looks so much like Charles Manson (second picture below).

In the episodes I've seen, there was no explanation. The resemblance is so strong in certain shots, I find it distracting because I'm paying more attention to that and not the story.

I'm not the only one to notice this. Google Will Forte Charles Manson and you'll see both professional critics and ordinary people making this comparison.

Manson has been in prison for decades, but he's still so widely known, he arguably remains one of the most notorious criminals in the world. He could not walk down a city street unnoticed. So you'd think the show's producers and network might be more alert to this strange coincidence.

Unrelated to the above, while researching this topic online, I learned a curious fact: since 1949, Manson has only spent a total of four years as a free man.

good sex/bad marriage?

I read a magazine article recently where a woman was quoted as saying she had a bad marriage but great sex with her husband. I turned that over in my head for a while because that didn't seem to make logical sense.

I was left with the conclusion that her definition of great sex is different than mine. Maybe she just had an orgasm when she shagged her husband and thought that was landmark sex.

If you have a bad marriage, that means something is seriously wrong between you and your spouse. That problem (or set of problems) has to create a great deal of animosity that begins to fester into dislike and then even into outright hate.

So how can you have great sex with someone you loathe fundamentally at least on a certain level? Because sex isn't just about getting yourself off -- it's about taking your partner over the moon, too.

How could you do that if you're warring with the other person?

This left me wondering if my idea of a bad marriage is different than the woman. In my mind, a bad marriage involves a major breakdown in communication and a serious disagreement over fundamental issues.

It may not mean you're shouting at each other all the time, but some kind of animosity is always seething and roiling below the surface. Because otherwise you would be able to communicate and connect to resolve your mutual issues.

Maybe she's really having great anger sex. That could be it.

I never could get into anger sex. It's mixing two diametrically opposite emotions. I guess I'm hopelessly romantic or something, because for me sex is always about connecting and loving and sharing, not warring and conquering.