the great etta james

I have always loved this song. When I hear the word Blues, I always thing of this.

It was originally written for a now largely forgotten 1940s Hollywood musical called Orchestra Wives. It became legendary when performed by the great Etta James in 1960.

Other well known singers have performed the tune, but in my opinion, their coverage could never touch hers. It was not written for Etta, but she made it her own.

the americans

After our straight-through viewing of Breaking Bad, my husband and I wanted to work through another show with several seasons that we could watch from start to finish.

To that end, we chose The Americans. If you're not familiar with the program, it's a fictionalized account of two Soviet spies living under deep cover as an ordinary married American couple in the Washington, D.C. suburbs during the Reagan administration.

We were both indifferent to the first season, but I had read and heard that the second and third seasons were far better, so we had been prepared going in. We are now just about through the second season, and we both agree it has been far better than the first.

I've read and heard that the third season is the best yet, so we're really looking forward to that. A fourth season will be made soon for airing in early 2016.

What has made the second season particularly strong, in my opinion, is the show's focusing somewhat less on plot and more on the main characters, particularly the emotional wear and tear of what they do. The complicated sex lives of the leads really contributes to why the show works, I think.

I love that the couple are thrown together simply to pretend to be married, but they fall in love during their charade. The whole situation is made messy, however, by the fact that they must regularly seduce and sleep with their "marks" as spies, not to mention that they have two children of their own who know nothing about their Soviet mission.

I think the program will succeed best in its overall run if it aims for an exit point at the end of four or five seasons. That's part of the reason why Breaking Bad and The Wire were both such strong shows, because the writers knew where and when the story would end, so they could build toward it over many episodes.

I've read that the two leads in The Americans, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, have become a couple in real life. Maybe making the sex scenes for the show, like the now infamous "double oral" coupling, helped to get the ball rolling off screen.

the world's first murder?

The Public Library of Science published a scholarly article this week about a possible 430,000-year-old homicide of early Neanderthals whose skeletal remains were found recently in a Spanish cave. The primary evidence is a skull with two holes that were not caused by a fall and likely resulted from violent blows to the head.

Not surprisingly, the popular media has picked this up and is running with juicy stories inquiring whether this is evidence of the world's first murder.

Now the original report only refers to this historical mayhem as "interpersonal violence." That's a fancy way to say "homicide."

But the media's extrapolation isn't really accurate. As any thriller or mystery or trial buff knows, murder is not the same thing as homicide. All murders are homicide, but not all homicides are murder.

If I accidentally knock you down the steps and you end up dead, I've committed homicide but not murder. Homicide is one human killing another, no matter why or how. Murder, however, is the unlawful killing of another human.

So these 430,000-year-old humanoids may have been killed by their own or similar species, but it technically couldn't be unlawful because they almost certainly had no system of laws way back when. So murder could not exist.

But even for the sake of argument, say this early society did have some kind of codified laws before the deaths occurred, we still have no way of knowing if they were murdered. They might have raped or killed innocent humanoids so they were executed for their crimes. Or they may have been rabid and were killed to protect the other humanoids.

I dropped out of high school so I never went to college, but I do know that one goal of higher education is teaching people to make conclusions only with sufficient evidence. Here, we have no evidence of murder, only possible homicide.

This may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but I find it interesting that a relatively uneducated person is noticing a whole bunch of presumably better educated people making conclusions without sufficient evidence.

Homicide, yes. But murder? Who knows?

belladonna sexual mania

I was reading yesterday about how medieval women ingested small amounts of belladonna (also known as deadly nightshade) to dilate their eyes in the belief it made them more attractive. That would explain the word belladonna, given it means "beautiful woman" in Italian.

Belladonna extracts were also used to ease discomfort during childbirth. Additionally, some women used belladonna to relax and, for quicker ingestion, administered the drug with a vaginal applicator.

With too high a dose, however, belladonna can be deadly. And a dose that is strong but not deadly can cause vivid hallucinations, including quite commonly the belief that the woman was flying.

My thinking immediately clicked into place: this could explain why some medieval people were convinced that certain women were witches. Indeed, they could convincingly testify that a particular woman had bewitched them and made them fly. They would sincerely believe this.

After a few minutes research on the web, I found a number of academic sources that confirmed this. One has to wonder if the authorities who prosecuted the women knew this and conveniently ignored the logical explanation. No, tis the devyl's werk my lady!

Belladonna is still misused today by recreational drug fanciers but also for legitimate pharmaceutical purposes. Chances are when your eye doctor dilates your eyes, he or she is using a highly refined belladonna extract.

what kind of political critter are you?

I received an email recommendation from a friend to a website called I Side With that offers a pretty comprehensive but quick survey of a US citizen's political positions to determine which party's candidates best match personal beliefs.

I enjoyed doing the survey and was somewhat surprised at the results. It showed me as identifying more with a third party than the major party whose candidates I typically (but not exclusively) support. That support was only one percent higher, however, than the major party.

While I might align more with a third party philosophically, in all honesty I would not vote for any of their candidates unless polls showed one was in a position to possibly win. If the candidates from the two major party are at 48 percent and 46 percent, for instance, while the third-party candidate was at 5 percent, then I absolutely would not vote for the latter. I believe in making my vote count.

But even if a third-party candidate were to win, unless he or she aligns with one or the other major party, the elected official would be handicapped in office by not having fellow elected officials behind him or her. Because we don't have parliamentary systems in the United States, the political dynamics are such that a two-party system has always prevailed.

I think it would be much more effective for third-party candidates to run for slots in one of the two major parties and then cause change from within. Whether or not you agree with the so-called Tea Party, that is what they did with the Republican Party. Had their candidates tried to run on a third-party ticket, I think they would have had no impact on national or local politics.

That's something Greens and Libertarians should consider. Change the country by changing one of the big two parties, not by constantly tilting at windmills by running and being repeatedly defeated.

Just a closing reminder that any time I reference or recommend another website, I was not asked nor paid to endorse that site nor have the site administrators contacted me requesting support. When people do email asking me to plug their sites, that is the best way to ensure I will never mention them in these pages.

betty crocker sucks cocks

For the first two years after I moved out on my own, until I turned eighteen, job prospects for me were somewhat limited. Even though I was legally emancipated, I was considered a minor for employment purposes, so I could not work past certain hours at night nor in any place that served alcohol.

My first job was conducting surveys over the phone part time. I would have happily worked at that full-time because the pay was decent and the work had a lot of variety, but they only operated five hours a day.

So I found work as a server/busser/dogs body in a greasy spoon. One of my daily tasks was cleaning the tiny restrooms. The men's and ladies' were tiny and identical: one john, a petite sink, and that was it.

This task was both an indoctrination into humility and a chance to learn more about graffiti. I quickly concluded that men are much more likely to scribble on a restroom wall. Their messages and drawings were almost always either sexual or scatological, although on rare occasion someone would make an interesting political statement.

Women were far less likely to memorialize something in graffiti. Usually these were personal about some male who had disappointed the correspondent in some way. "John Smith is lousy in bed" and that sort of thing.

On occasion they were political and/or witty. I think that was because some patrons were graduate students, who would order coffee and then read for several hours. They usually were female and the best tippers, often 100 percent if it was coffee, which was really no work for me

My favorite bit of graffiti was something I was not able to clean off the ladies room wall. The words were neatly printed in indelible Sharpie ink: Betty Crocker Sucks Cocks.

I really didn't understand back then, but with time and a lot of self-education, I did. The memory never fails to make me smile when I think about it.

remembering memorial day

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. Best wishes to all who celebrate.

I guess it's not appropriate to say "Happy" Memorial Day, because it is a day to remember all those who died in service to their country. I have relatives who paid the ultimate price, although they died long before I was born.

My grandfather had a brother who died in the Battle of Corregidor the last year of World War II. He was only twenty and left behind a young widow, a woman who is still alive although now very old. She never remarried and I always imagined she and my uncle were madly in love.

Australia celebrates an equivalent to Memorial Day, called Anzac Day, always held on April 25. As an Australian veteran, my husband participates in official remembrance events. That is the one day each year I see him in his uniform.

Many Americans, of course, celebrate Memorial Day with festive events. If you are one of those, have a safe and happy holiday. And please take a moment to remember and thank all those who paid the ultimate price to safeguard freedom.

the dead man's birthday party

I have known people who, as children, celebrated a birthday for a sibling or parent after the latter had died. I think that's a perfectly healthy way for kids to remember someone who is gone and also to come to terms with the finality of death.

My husband and I know two sisters who are somewhere in their forties who hold birthday parties for various relatives who died in old age. These are not people who died when the women were children but in the last decade or so.

They have cake and decorations and the whole works. They sing songs to the dead person. They and their guests pretend the dead person is at the party. No children attend these events. Gifts that are brought are given to the sisters. (So no necktie for dead Uncle Fred please.)

This strikes my husband and me as strange. What's the point? You need this to remember your dead relative? We were invited to one of these events and, thankfully, had a prior commitment and could not attend.

The two sisters themselves are somewhat odd. They have never been married, but they're not chaste virgins, either. They tend to date men who are on the cusp of being elderly or are downright old. They both are heavy smokers and love their liquid refreshments.

Of course, they should have the perfect freedom to hold their little parties if they want. I'm glad we didn't end up going to the party, but I can't deny that I was somewhat curious what it was like.

I was thinking about this because my deceased grandfather's birthday is next week. I think about him all the time, so it's not like I need a party to remember him.

Knowing him, he'd probably think the party idea was odd, but I expect he might try to hit on one or both of the sisters, even at an advanced age. I think Grandpa was HyperSexualMan in his day.

otherworldly earth

Someone put together a nice collection of photographs featuring alien landscapes on earth. I have visited two places on this list: Fly Geyser and Painted Dunes.

Indeed, the dunes are impressive in person. The geyser, however, is somewhat underwhelming. The latter is in the middle of nowhere and much smaller than I had imagined after seeing pictures of it when I lived in Vegas. I was expecting something on the scale of Old Faithful and instead it was the size of an ordinary municipal fountain.

Some of these landscapes look so barren and hostile. If aliens landed there, they might assume the planet had no advanced lifeforms.

Which reminds me of something that annoyed me about the movie Interstellar. The astronauts traveled countless lightyears to far-flung galaxies in search of habitable places on earth-like planets, but abandoned one after only trying a single location. On the other, they set up their colony in the first place they landed.

It's called exploring for a reason, people. You explore space, and then you explore the planet once you get there.

That would be like aliens landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then zooming off to another planet. "Meh, lots of waves, some fish, but nothing else to see and no land forms. See ya."

software recommendation

Several years ago I tried several types of ad blocking software to prevent popups and annoying web ads on the various pages I visit. Browsers are supposed to block popups, but so many get through anyway, the software developers seem to have given up.

Unfortunately, the various ad blocking software I tried either caused the browser or computer to crash or slowed down the browser to a ridiculous crawl. The result was the disadvantages far outweighed the benefits.

So I eschewed ad blocker software for the time being. I grumbled through the popups the browser could not block, which seemed to be most of them, and the annoying ads on various webpages I visited that were becoming more and more intrusive, with countdown java screens holding me hostage for five or ten seconds while playing an ad I killed as fast as I could.

And then I read a tech page recommending a simple shareware add-on called AdBlock. I was highly skeptical at first, but I thought I would give it a try because the recommending page said it was easy to uninstall.

I installed -- it was super fast and painless -- and was almost instantly charmed. It worked flawlessly, did not crash my browser or system, didn't slow things down, and obliterated every web ad in every page I visited. It also removed all ads from YouTube and other video sites and works within the browser itself, so no cumbersome manual loading or ride-along overlays. I was hooked immediately.

The good news is that it works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers. I use all four of those and have tried it on all of them without problems.

The not-good news is that it won't work at all on Internet Explorer. Don't even bother

The program is free to download and use. You're encouraged to make a donation to the developers, but that's not required and no nag screens will appear if you don't.

If you want to try AdBlock yourself, visit the downloading and informational webpage. Please note I have no connection whatsoever to the AdBlock developers nor have I ever communicated with them in any capacity nor have I received any compensation for this recommendation. I simply like their product and am recommending it to benefit readers, not the developers.

does cursive writing matter?

I've read a variety of articles recently in the American press about the decline of cursive writing in society and, in particular, its instruction in school. Some people say it's obsolete, should not be taught, and should be allowed to go extinct. Others say it must be preserved and taught.

Personally, I think it's a waste of time and should no longer be taught in school. Students today will compete in a digital world, and cursive really no longer has an important place in modern society.

Yes, it looks pretty when done nicely, and calligraphy can be particularly striking. But if anyone wants to learn that, such instruction could continue in optional art classes.

I attended a "progressive" private elementary school and we were taught printing and later touch typing but not cursive writing. When I need to write something by hand, I print, which I can do quite rapidly and neatly. I also can type wicked fast, close to 100 words per minute with very few errors.

My husband attended a Catholic school and had penmanship beaten into him by militant nuns for years on end. Fat lot of good it did because his handwriting is utterly unreadable. His printing, however, is very tidy and easy to read.

I see news reports about politicians from more rural regions of the US who insist cursive must continue to be taught. I've never seen one of them articulate a good reason why.

Sure, we could teach kids how to churn their own butter or shoe a horse or build a log cabin. But is that needed today? The answer is obvious. The same should be said for cursive handwriting.

blowjob mystery

Early in my marriage, I learned that time had a way of solving some little mysteries about my husband. On occasion, we would meet someone he long knew, reminiscences would occur, and stuff I never knew was revealed.

In the beginning, sometime shortly after we had sex for the first time, he revealed he wasn't really into getting blowjobs. I said I would change his mind about that and, with time, I did.

He has always favored muff diving and intercourse, but he's never had any complaints when I give him head. And he's asked for a blowjob plenty of times now, too.

Yesterday, the secret finally slipped as to why he told me way back when that he didn't like blowjobs. Turns out, about a year before we met, he was dating a woman and she turned him off to getting head.

They had a nice dinner and went back to her place. Soon things turned passionate and clothes were discarded. This was the first time it had happened with her.

At one point, he was lying on the bed and she started giving him head. And then she suddenly puked her entire dinner all over his cock, his lower torso, the bed, everywhere.

Needless to say, that put a chill on the evening. She ran out of the room and hid in another bedroom, refusing to speak to him. He cleaned himself up, changed her sheets, put the puked ones and his clothes in the wash, and took a shower.

She still wouldn't speak to him, repeatedly telling him to leave as soon as his clothes were done. He took everything out of the dryer, remade the bed, put on his clean clothes, and left.

He tried calling her for several days but she would not speak with him. And that was that.

He'd been dumped before so he soon moved on, but the experience cooled him to blowjobs for a good while after that. It's a funny story to hear now, but I can imagine that would disgust any man who experienced this, to have your hard cock bathed in steaming, stinking puke.

No matter how many blowjobs I give him in future years, I doubt he'll ever forget that experience. Fortunately he can laugh about it now. As for the woman in question, he has no idea whatever happened to her.

mr. creepy rogers

Because I'm on the other side of the world, one of the ways I keep in touch with "back home" is with various American radio podcasts. That way I can cure a bout of homesickness with something that's so familiar to me, it seems like I'm "back there," if only for an hour or so.

I usually listen to public radio podcasts of national programs from NPR like All Things Considered, which I used to enjoy on my way to work. I also listen to programs from local stations that I loved, specifically KCRW and WNYC, so I'm living in Sydney but listening to Santa Monica radio, albeit a podcast.

I was listening to an interview podcast the other day and the guest said something like "I always thought Mr. Rogers was creepy when I was a kid." I immediately though, wow, finally, I'm not the only one.

I've admitted this to Americans here face-to-face in the past and they always give me a look like I confessed to smothering puppies or something. How could I not love him?

I can't put my finger on why. After all, I'm thinking back to when I was about five or six and the memory is no longer crystal clear. Maybe he reminded me of someone I didn't like. But he always made my skin crawl.

When I was a little older, my oldest sister told me about John Wayne Gacy, Chicago's notorious serial killer, probably to scare me. When I looked him up in the library, even though he looked nothing like Mr. Rogers, I had the same crawly sensation when I saw his picture. It's in the eyes.

wolf hall

Given I had mentioned them in a post recently, a longtime reader wrote to ask me what I thought about the book and TV adaptations of Wolf Hall, set in the Tudor era during the reign of Henry VIII and told through the eyes of his chief fixer Thomas Cromwell. I read both books and also just marathon-watched the TV series with my husband in two nights.

If you're not familiar with the books by Hilary Mantel, the first two of a projected three novel series have already been published: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The final book, The Mirror and the Light, will be published later this year.

The first two books were adapted by the BBC into a TV series, also called Wolf Hall, for broadcast earlier this year in Britain and more recently in the US and Australia. I've read that the third book may be made into a sequel series next year.

In a nutshell, I thought both books were very good, particularly the second one. I liked the first book and very much liked the second one.

On the whole, I thought the TV adaptation was better than the books, particularly the last three episodes of the series. Each episode was stronger as the series went along. Both Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn and Mark Rylance as Cromwell were consistently excellent. Damian Lewis was very good in the less challenging role of Henry.

The series is also just gorgeous to watch. The costumes are fantastic and all the interesting settings and period bits are a real treat. Very little artificial light was used, if the publicity is to be believed, so some scenes are a tad dark but neither of us found that a problem at all.

In my opinion, the biggest problem with the books, specifically the first one, was how the dense historical detail cluttered the major characters out of the way. Mantel reportedly spent five years researching this book, and I had the sense she included in the books nearly every little bit of trivia she found.

The detail in the first book was too much of a good thing. I think had she followed the rule of "less is more" and focused more sharply on her important characters, the novels would have been even stronger, particularly the first book.

All this detail is compounded by an absolutely dizzying number of characters, which must number into the hundreds. The TV adaptation stripped away most of the minor players, but I still felt there were too many. More character combination would have worked better, I think -- less is more once again.

When reading through the Amazon ordinary person reviews for the books, I saw a number of readers shared my opinion. Nonetheless, both books received the prestigious Booker Prize.

I would definitely recommend both books for readers who enjoy historical fiction. If you're a more general reader, however, you might find the books dense and overwhelming. The more British history you already have in your head when you sit down to read, the more you would probably like them.

In contrast, I think the TV series pretty much stands on its own, even if you don't know much about British history and did not read the books. My husband has a general knowledge of the era and did not read the books but thoroughly enjoyed the series.

He coped with the excess of characters by not worrying over the ones who had little screen time. Follow the story and the central characters and that's all you need.

humor versus humour

My husband and I were talking about some people we know and at one point I said that I was fairly certain a particular woman was a lesbian.

Him: Really? Seriously? A lesbian?

Me: Does Raggedy Ann have a patchwork pussy?

I don't know where that came from. It just popped into my head. I don't recall ever hearing it before. But I thought it was a good comeback.

James had no idea what I was talking about. He didn't know who Raggedy Ann was and wasn't sure what patchwork was, either.

The more I tried to explain it, the more confused he looked, and the more I couldn't stop laughing.

I should not complain, however. I'm sure the average American wouldn't understand the phrase "a mad dog's breakfast." It took me a while to get that one.

the sound of music?

To look at the picture below, you might think she was singing a big showstopper in a theatrical production with her eyes looking out over the footlights to the audience as her voice rises to a dramatic crescendo.

If you peek at the whole photo, however, you'll see something entirely different is happening.

the toothless internet police

CNET Magazine has an article in their latest issue about "the internet police" who attempt to remove naked personal pictures from circulation on the Internet without someone's consent. On the whole, while well meaning, I found the article to be rather silly and lightweight and reads like a press release.

Trying to stop the release of nude pictures once they're in an antagonist's hands is like trying to stamp out moonbeams.

I've written here before about how my nude pictures were widely disseminated online by a crazed ex-boyfriend who also released my address, phone number, and place of employment with them. Stopping the pictures circulation was ultimately fruitless. I still see them on occasion in teaser ads for "revenge porn" websites.

The woman in the linked article has an experience much like mine. She spent $300 on a dubious-sounding service to erase her photos yet they are still circulating out there.

The moral of the story I learned long ago: never give someone your naked pictures unless you realize they may be released without your consent one day. If you allow yourself to be photographed in your birthday suit, you have to accept that the photos may be scattered to the wind.

My husband has taken many naked pictures of me as well as X-rated ones with the two of us. We have only shared them with each other and hopefully things will stay that way.

But if his camera or my laptop is ever lost or stolen, then the pictures might find their way into cyberspace. We both know that might happen and will accept the consequences if it happens.

If we didn't, then we shouldn't have allowed the pictures in the first place. Naughty photos wouldn't harm our reputations, because both of us have earned money at one time for taking off our clothes.

It would be a different story if we were teachers or lawyers or doctors. So photograph accordingly.

I do think the linked article is off the mark when it says that the revenge porn trend has worsened recently. Revenge porn has been around for a long time and widely circulated; the article's writer just wasn't looking.

I've been an active Internet user since the late 1990s and spent my early teen years online in places I shouldn't have been. I saw lots of revenge porn back then.

One of the first adult things I remember seeing was a webpage where men submitted pictures of themselves draping their junk on the sleeping or drunken faces of their wives and girlfriends. I imagine some of those photos are still being circulated out there in cyberspace.

dear leader goes apeshit

I heard on the radio this morning that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had one of his senior ministers executed for the heinous crimes of leaving a meeting early, falling asleep at a state event, and talking back. The condemned man had no trial and was shot with an anti-aircraft gun at close range in a summary execution.

One can't have an awful lot of sympathy for the executed man. When you willingly get into bed with vipers and scorpions, you can't be surprised when you end up bitten.

In the annuls of modern history, few dictators would seem as bloodthirsty as the present North Korean overlord. If such behavior was in a movie or novel, it would seem over-the-top and unrealistic.

This is not the first time that Dear Leader, as he is called in North Korea, has singled out members of his inner circle for execution. He has executed at least seventy in at least five different purges. He's following the old rule of ruthless tyrants: terrify everyone around you so that they never question you.

That only goes so far, however. History has shown that the more brutal he becomes, the more he sows seeds for a coup to depose him or even his own assassination. Several leading policy experts who study North Korea have speculated in the media about whether this might happen if these types of purges continue.

I feel sorry for the ordinary North Koreans. They're largely cut off from the outside world, so they have few resources to lift themselves out of their misery and oppression.

The picture of Dear Leader at a lube factory seen below originated in this slideshow. Notice how his toadies duly record everything he says at every event in their little notebooks.

murdering bloggers

I read a BBC news item about how three athiest bloggers have been murdered so far this year in Bangladesh. This is certainly not the first time people have been killed by others who appoint themselves proxies for a supreme being. You offend God, they say, so you must die.

The United States is not immune from this kind of thinking. When people have spoken out against certain religious figures, they receive death threats and sometimes worse.

I have never understood the thinking behind the people who commit these acts and threats. If your supreme being is all powerful, isn't committing murder in his or her name admitting the god in question is powerless?

After all, if a god is all-powerful and can damn someone to eternal hell for offending him or her, shouldn't these supposed offenders just be left up to the deity in question?

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we are taught "thou shall not kill." Yet people still kill in the name of God and/or Jesus. I think those people seriously misunderstand the religion they claim to love. Rather than pearly gates or fifty virgins or whatever, they may be in a big surprise during the big checkout.

good vs. not-so-good plastic surgery

I saw a promo recently for Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin's new TV comedy Grace and Frankie. It's the first time the two have appeared together onscreen since Nine to Five appeared thirty-five years ago.

Looking at current photos of the two women together, I think they provide a good example of successful plastic surgery versus the not-so-successful.

Now 77, Fonda has been open about her nip and tuck five years ago. She did not have a lot of work, just a little around her eyes and some on her chin. She also has a hairstyle that flatters her with natural colors.

In contrast, the 75-year-old Tomlin had plastic surgery but apparently a more extensive job. She has the typical frozen rictus in the middle of her face that so many women have after undergoing too much alteration. She also doesn't help herself with too-dark hair that's all one color and obviously out of a bottle.

Fonda proves that less is more. Each woman is tremendously talented and would be terrific no matter what they looked like, but I think Fonda has done a better job in aging gracefully.

What would have happened had neither woman had any work? That may have been the best choice, because both looked great before they went under the knife.

When I visit the elder center here, I often see one of the oldest residents who will celebrate her 100th birthday in a few months. Her face is nearly without wrinkles except a little around her eyes. She looks no older than seventy.

She's frail but sharp as the proverbial tack. I asked her not long ago what her secret was to looking so great. She said she never wore makeup in her life other than a little lipstick. She also never used anything on her face other than soap and water and a bit of skin cream before bed. I was very pleased to hear this, because I've always followed almost the same regimen.

porn coloring books

I was reading in the last The Atlantic about the increasing popularity of coloring books targeted to adults. The idea that coloring in pictures with pencils or crayons is a good way to de-stress, and adults who crayon for relaxation swear by them.

I sometimes sit down with my son when he's drawing or playing and will just start filling in whatever page strikes me in one of his coloring books. I agree that it is quite relaxing and fulfilling in a mindless sort of way.

Joey can be fascinated when I do this, stopping to watch me at times, like I'm some great artist at work. At thirty months, as is typical for his age, his coloring style is eclectic. Lines, what lines? And what's wrong with a green face?

Reading The Atlantic got me to wondering. Hmm, adult coloring books ... what about pornographic adult coloring books?

A quick Google search reveals I'm not the first one to think of this by any stretch. All sorts of explicit X-rated coloring diversions are available, from the conventionally erotic to the kinky. And, yes, Amazon does sell The Lesbian Bondage Coloring Book.

it always happens

Why is it that whenever my husband is away for a few days on business, I become outrageously horny soon after he's left home? He's only been gone a few hours now and already I'm hornier than if it was an ordinary day and he was due home at dinner.

I could see getting hornier after he'd been absent a whole day or two. But it's like my libido shifts into anticipatory hyper overdrive because I know I won't be having sex for several days.

It's as if my libido is deliberately tormenting me. Sexual images and ideas just keep popping into my head uninvited.

I think I should binge watch some mindless TV garbage that will keep me distracted. And I know my son wouldn't object to a twelve-hour SpongeBob marathon. It's the most sexless thing that comes to mind.

talking to strangers

As the parent of a small child, this short loop makes me very uneasy. But I'm not angry at the prankster who made the so-called "experiment" (which is actually memorialized on a longer video) because he's inadvertently performed a public service.

I'm uneasy because I know that my son would do the same thing. We've tried to teach him not to talk to adult strangers who approach him.

But he's just too friendly and trusting. He initiates contact with strangers. A supermarket cart seat (called a "shopping trolley" here) is like open mike night for him. He talks to anyone and everyone he passes.

At the playground, he'll start talking to other parents even though he hasn't a clue who they are and has never seen them before. And every child has to be personally approached and welcomed by him.

I'm not worried that some child molester will abduct him. Cases like that are extremely rare. But that's not to say he wouldn't wander off and just decide to ride in someone's back seat unseen. Hiding is one of his favorite games.

My husband has a wicked sense of humor about this and has what he thinks is a perfect solution: tell him not to talk to strangers because sometimes strangers are doctors in disguise who will try to give him several shots.

betting on hooking up

Getting my husband to talk specifics about his sex life in the years before he met me is sometimes like pulling teeth. He has this very courtly idea that somehow I'll be offended or annoyed about what he once did.

I've told him a thousand times that, as long as he didn't have sex with children or animals or without the consent of all parties, then I have no problem with the good old days. And I know he was once a very wild guy who ended up in brawls and assorted scrapes, so I can't be shocked about anything he did.

Last night one of his friends from his Navy days came over for dinner and to stay the night as he's visiting from out of town. I have never met this guy before but have heard various stories about him.

In the course of a reminiscence about their wild times, the friend revealed that he, my husband, and other shipmates had a regular betting game whenever they had shore leave in other than their home port. As soon as they were down the gangplank, the clock began ticking.

Who ever picked up a woman and got her into bed would be the winner. The deciding time was the hour and minute actual sex started, not kissing and making out. Just picking up a woman was not enough, of course.

They were on the honor system and it had to be free sex, not something with a hooker. More often than not, either my husband James or his visiting friend was the winner.

Later, when we were alone, my husband apologized for his friend having told this story. I was not at all bothered by it. Stories like this actually turn me on, as does any tale about my husband's one-time sex partners. I love this stuff.

I guess if I was a card-carrying feminist I should feel sorry for the women who my husband and his shipmates "exploited." But the reality is that any woman who picked up a seaman on shore leave and agreed to sex that night could not have been expecting a meaningful, long-term relationship.

Who's to say the women didn't have a pool of their own running as to who could bed a seaman the fastest and win the bet?

saccharine interlude

This video was too cute not to share. Two red fox pups sneak into a suburban yard in Washington D.C. and start playing with a tennis ball left behind by the sleeping dog inside.

The young intruders don't realize they've activated the security motion-detecting lights. The homeowner investigates who has tripped the lights and witnesses the mischief.

I found it interesting how the fox kits act somewhat like cats and somewhat like dogs. If anything, they're more like cats than dogs.

Red foxes are not native to Australia, but you're more likely to see them here than in the US or UK. They were introduced down under in the nineteenth century for fox hunting and to control rabbits, another non-native species that was introduced some time earlier.

The result is that both species, rabbits and foxes, have bred wildly out of control and have become dangerously invasive, leading to the outright extinction of some native Australian species and severely threatening others. Hardly a week goes by when we don't see a fox or a rabbit or both behind our house.

is bruce jenner's story a hoax?

Unless you've been trapped in a collapsed mine in Chile for months, you've probably heard something or other about Bruce Jenner recently. In a nutshell, he has announced that he's transitioning into a woman.

When I heard this, I couldn't help wondering if this was a hoax. He's been a reality television "star" for years now that the original source of his fame -- his Olympic history -- has all but faded from public consciousness. So now he's famous for just being famous, like all reality "stars."

But perhaps his justification for appearing on a reality show was starting to run out of steam after he and his third wife Kris Kardashian divorced, which alienated him from the epicenter of realty TV histrionics, as manifested in the Kardashian family. So what better way to catapult yourself to new fame and back into the limelight than by changing your gender. Now, he's eclipsed the Kardashians with his headline-grabbing announcement. Indeed, he'll soon be starring in a new forthcoming reality show that will only focus on him him him.

Maybe he's not driven by the need to free his alleged inner woman but the need for continuing attention. Any attention is better than no attention at all, so however you can garner attention for yourself is okay. What's a little lipstick and a push-up bra when it comes to a man's need for fame?

I'm not saying I believe this. But at the same time, I don't believe Jenner's transgender story unequivocally. If he wasn't a long-time reality "star," but instead some former Olympic champion who had been out of the public limelight for decades, then I would be much more likely to believe it.

Mass media encourages hoaxes. That was established in the early years of yellow journalism with the Piltdown Man's amazing appearance. If you know your history, you know that Piltdown was a monumental hoax that millions believed before the truth was revealed.

In turn, reality TV by its very nature encourages hoaxes. Some shows, like Amish Mafia, are entirely built on a hoax. And then there are reality "stars" like Timothy Michael Poe, Russell Hantz, and Jermaine Jones, all who invented their pasts to make themselves more attractive to television producers.

Perhaps Bruce Jenner is just the newest incarnation of this kind of fraud: an established reality "star" who must keep reinventing himself to keep himself famous.

This might even lead to a new generation of reality show: hoax versus reality. Two contestants take you into a day of their private lives. One is real, one is a hoax. You, the viewer, must decide which is which.

baby mania

The whole drama of Kate Middleton's new baby is now over. Like my husband and his family, I believe the monarchy should be abolished, but Kate seems like a nice person. She is a positive role model in a family that desperately needs one.

And I also feel for her that she's trotted out in front of cameras about eight hours after she popped the kid. She looked tired but had a nice smile for everyone. The baby, of course, was cute but what baby isn't?

What amazes me about the birth of her two children is how zany some people can be about the whole thing. Married to the heir to an heir, she really is nothing more than a glorified cheerleader. Not unlike a reality show participant, she's famous for being famous.

I get the biggest hoot over people who camped outside her hospital for weeks at a time in anticipation of seeing a fleeting glimpse of Kate coming or going. Don't these people have anything better to do with their time?

They're really not any different than the people who camp outside of churches and cemeteries after some celebrity has died so they can see who's coming and going from the funeral. They're like human pigeons -- waiting around because they have nothing better to do than wait around.

You'd have to give me a goodly sum of money before I would camp out on a public sidewalk for a week. I'm thinking $20,000 at a minimum for the first week with an escalator clause for additional weeks.

the nymphomaniac queen

In preparation for watching Wolf Hall, which is now running here on telly in Australia, I have been reading the two source books and am nearly done the second one now.

If you're not familiar with them, they're both Booker Award-winning novels based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, the right-hand man to Henry VIII during his first three marriages. Although fictionalized as to dialog and scenes, the books adhere pretty much to the truth as far as known history goes.

Henry's second wife Anne Boleyn is not portrayed in a flattering light in the two books. She's a Machiavellian schemer who ends up as her own worst enemy. If you know your history, you know things did not end well for her.

The second book, Bring Up the Bodies, makes Anne out to be something of a nymphomaniac. She likes sex with a lot of different men. That, no surprise, leads to her undoing. History books, however, sometimes make Anne seem like a virtuous victim who was falsely accused of adultery on trumped-up charges.

The author, Hilary Mantel, never makes clear whether Anne's libidinous behavior results from a desire to control men with her pussy or simply because she's lonely and horny and always needs a good fuck, no matter how recent the last one. She suggests both but lets you draw your own conclusion.

In many ways, if the truth is the second one, she is a pitiful character. Men could bang any number of women in the Tudor era, as Henry certainly did. Yet a woman could not or she might die as a result.

It must have been hell for any woman with a healthy sex drive who was not partnered with a man who could satisfy her. I could see why a woman would aspire to be a courtesan, because then she'd have some control over her own pussy.

That's why societies like Saudi Arabia are so infuriating. We're five centuries later than Henry VIII's reign, yet for women in certain societies, the clock has never moved.

fashion tragedy

When I first saw the cover photo below on this French magazine, I thought the man was wearing an adult diaper. A closer look reveals his designer underwear has a contrasting waistband and white fabric.

But it still looks like a diaper. That's because his trendy styles are clashing and have resulted in a fashion catastrophe. The underwear showing a la gangbanger is an earlier style meant to be worn with baggy pants. That's now out of style.

When you wear low-rise skinny jeans, you have to wear snug bikini underwear. It's not meant to be seen.

But when you mix the two style, as he has done, you end up with the Depends look.

He's boyfriend to Nabilla Benattia, a sometimes model in France who's also a reality TV "star." She's often described as the French Kim Kardashian.

She actually makes Kardashian look classy in comparison. For instance, Benattia was arrested when she was seventeen for her role in an identity theft ring that used stolen passports and targeted many elderly victims. She was sentenced to six months.

More recently, she was investigated for repeatedly stabbing her boyfriend, none other than Mr. Diaper himself. She's a real piece of work.

naked pedestrians

I found this photo set amusing. Two naked women calmly stroll down a major street in Budapest, snapping photos like tourists.

You can see by the changing background that they travel quite a distance. This is not one of those shoots where a naked person pops out of a car for a few snaps and then escapes twenty seconds later.

Some male passersby and a couple of women react, and a few of the former stop to snap cellphone photos. Others, however, continue blithely on their way, including more than a few men. Those on bicycles and motorcycle seem immune.

My favorite indifferent man on the street is the one doing the land surveying. Maybe his wife or girlfriend is much better to look at, he's in love, and she's the only one he needs to see naked.

I recognized this as Budapest because of the Parliament Building along the Danube. During my long hitchhiking trip through Europe when I was nineteen, I spent about two weeks in Budapest.

While there, I had a torrid short-term romance with a very cute virtuoso violinist who also rode a big motorcycle. He spoke very little English and I spoke no Hungarian, but we didn't spend an awful lot of time talking anyway.

I remember his first name, Lajos, but not his last name. He was a rising name in classical music so maybe he became famous.

I wonder if he ever thinks of me, or was I just one of a long series of conquests? I do recall he was very good in bed. I would like to think he has the same memory of me.

urban unrest

Here on the other side of the world, I have been following the news about Baltimore, which one Australian newspaper characterized euphemistically as "urban unrest." I've been to Baltimore twice, once for a wedding and another time for a weekend getaway when I lived in New York.

The city was pretty in parts but clearly very poor in others. I'm actually more familiar with Baltimore, like many people, from watching the acclaimed television show The Wire than from my visits.

I think people are right to protest peacefully over what certainly looks like gross mistreatment of a suspect in custody. The man in question was certainly no angel and had a long arrest history.

But that doesn't explain how a handcuffed man would end up in a coma with three fractured vertebrae and a nearly severed spine. Hopefully the matter will be fully investigated and any responsible parties brought to justice.

The peaceful protesters' efforts, however, have been far overshadowed in media reports by news about rioting and looting. Trashing a store that had nothing to do with the man's death and stealing merchandise is simply inexcusable.

These cretins pretty much ruin it for the civic leaders and concerned citizens who are trying to affect positive change. What people know and remember now about Baltimore is not so much the death nor the peaceful protests but the senseless rioting and looting.

Men like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King advocated peaceful change through civil disobedience. That certainly doesn't include looting a drug store and stealing DVDs and gaming systems.

Many of the looted business were owned by innocent people of modest incomes who live in the communities that have been severely damaged by the looters. Some businesses may now close, putting more law-abiding locals out of work.

When the looters are prosecuted, rather than send them to prison if convicted, they should be given sentences requiring thousands of hours of work towards rebuilding and restoring the communities they have tried to destroy.