the ugly duckling

I have never been a Roseanne Barr fan. Her television show was first on when I was a child, and she always reminded me of a petty, nasty administrator at the first school I attended.

I also thought she was particularly unattractive, overweight in a way that was entirely unflattering. The worst part of her, however, was her obnoxious voice.

I was therefore stunned to see a recent picture of her the other day, which I've posted below. She doesn't look bad anymore. She's lost weight and improved with age. She's now 62 and doesn't appear to have any obvious plastic surgery.

Some people look great when they're young, but time and gravity are cruel, even if they live healthy lives and stay in shape. Others, however, are homely when younger, but as they age, they turn into attractive older people.

My favorite uncle is this way; he was always trim and healthy but not attractive when he was young, based on the old pictures I've seen. He had too much hair everywhere and was gangly and awkward.

I haven't seen him in person in nearly ten years, but we keep in regular touch by email and occasionally via Skype. He's in his later fifties now and has morphed into a handsome dude with thinning silver-gray hair and solid muscle.

I'll send him this post and encourage him to make contact with Roseanne, now that she's single again. He has a weakness for severely neurotic women with far too much money for their own good. Maybe he should look her up. :)

grief and relief

One of my sisters-in-law told me a story recently about her friend who was left a widow in her early thirties after her husband was suddenly killed in a terrible crash. She and her husband were very close and his death, understandably, left her emotionally devastated.

About two weeks after he died, she could not stand being alone in the house -- they had no children and she did not work. She craved physical attention and sexual intimacy with a man, even if it wasn't her husband.

So she went to a nearby upscale bar and allowed herself to be picked up. She went home with the guy and they did what men and women do alone in a bedroom.

For the next two years or so, she did this regularly. Most of the men she never saw again, but a few were repeats. If any of them tried to turn it into a regular dating thing, she bluntly told them she wasn't interested.

After about two years, she happened to reconnect with an old boyfriend from before her marriage. They started dating again and eventually married. They are still together today, nearly two decades later.

In the years since this happened, the woman has told a few close friends about what she did to cope after her husband's death: fucked anonymous men in random, meaningless encounters. Most of her friends were appalled, but my sister-in-law was not.

I share her sentiment. She badly missed her husband. She craved intimacy as a way to alleviate that grief. She found a way to cope and eventually moved on.

Good for her. What is important is that she healed in the way that felt right for her. Meeting other people's standards of propriety is irrelevant.

In all honesty, I would not be surprised if I did the same thing were my husband to die suddenly. I imagine I would miss him so much that I would seek out a substitute for some sort of release, if only temporary.

I seem to remember reading something a while ago about this kind of thing is not entirely uncommon for both men and women whose spouse suddenly dies. Some people just need to fill the empty space for a while with sex. They need to get lost and forget for an hour or so.

I've also known a few people who did this after a sudden breakup. They need something to start the healing, and a quick pickup can act as a little emotional bandage.

I asked my husband what he thought about this, fairly certain what his reaction would be because we've discussed similar issues in the past. "My ghost would have no objections," he said. "But he would not look."

victorian nudists

A few days after I first moved to Australia, I saw a headline in a local newspaper that said Victorian Nudists Worry Neighbors.

What? I immediately read the article because the headline seemed like a mistake. How could nudists exist in the famously prudish nineteenth century, where men and women only fucked in the dark while fully dressed?

I quickly learned that Victorian is the noun used by the media here to describe residents from the Australian state of Victoria where Melbourne is located. As an American, I never realized that was what they would be called, but of course it makes perfect sense.

In the United States, we have New Yorkers and Californians. In Australia, we have Victorians and Welshman (shorthand for New South Welshman, i.e. those from New South Wales where Sydney is located).

I still giggle when I read headlines about Victorians that look like mashups. I've never been able to get the idea out of my mind that they're really talking about corset-wearing dames in the era of Anthony Trollope.

Some headlines in recent days made me laugh out loud, like Victorian Man Tried to Join ISIS and Victorian Minister Resigns Amid Bullying Scandal. Another read Victorians Lost $2.5 Billion on Poker Machines in 2014.

Oh those naughty Victorians.

salad spartans invade china

This is one of those stories that's both funny and sad. Dozens of bare-chested Caucasian men dressed in Spartan costumes showed up suddenly as a group in Beijing over the weekend to hand out free packaged salads to curious onlookers as part of a marketing promotion.

Photos were snapped, giggles were heard, and then suddenly the police arrived. The event was stopped because it was allegedly "disturbing social order."

Salad Spartans were wrestled to the ground and some were handcuffed. An official investigation is now underway.

If you know anything about modern Chinese history, you know about the Tiananmen Square protest and massacre in 1989.

Ever since then, Chinese authorities have been very wary of any large gathering they have not already pre-approved, so they will crack down very hard on anything spontaneous, no matter how benign.

Dictatorships suck.

to hat or not to hat

I occasionally shop for washable goodies in a resale clothing store near us because you can find expensive designer garb for next to nothing. I usually don't buy items that can't be rewashed because they can have a lingering musty odor.

The store expanded a few years ago with a vintage section, and that's doing very well for them. Some items would work with a contemporary ensemble, but others are probably bought by ballroom dancers, a very popular pastime here in Australia.

The last time I was in, they had ladies hats from the 1940s, so I tried some on to amuse my son. Another shopper told me I should buy one because she thought they looked good on me, but I passed because it seemed a frivolous expense. Where would I wear it?

Later, I started thinking about how, until the early 1960s, women wore hats far more than they do now. Now, women might wear hats for utilitarian purposes, but a dressy one for style only is pretty uncommon now.

I searched around online to see if I could find any studies about why this was so but didn't turn up anything. I wondered if it might have something to do with the rise of feminism and women's greater emancipation, but how is a hat oppressive?

When you think about it, women aren't the only ones who are mostly hatless. Men routinely wore things like Derby hats, bowlers, fedoras, and more in past decades, but now dressy hats on men are very uncommon.

Men and women still wear hats today, but they're usually something more utilitarian like rainhats and ballcaps. Only celebrities seem to wear dressy hats with any regularity.

Whatever future fashion trends might come along, my husband refuses to wear hats. He says he doesn't because he thinks he looks bad in them, but I disagree.

He still has thick hair with no middle-age balding loss, so that may be part of the reason. I've noticed that men past thirty tend to wear hats much more when they're losing their hair. Maybe the ones who don't like to show off what they have.

men who buy hand lotion

I regularly shop in an independent discount store near our house that's something like a dollar store back in the US. It's not a true dollar store, because some things cost several Australian dollars, but it's a similar type store that sells deeply discounted close-outs and household basics.

Earlier this week I made a regular run to pick up toilet paper and the like. An extended family runs the store, so I've gotten to know some of them, including one of the daughters a few year younger than me who always is at the checkout.

A skeevy little man was in the checkout line in front of me with four enormous pump bottles of hand lotion and nothing else. His paws were dirty and the nails filthy and broken, so he didn't look like someone who worried about soft hands.

I imagine, of course, he was buying the hand lotion because a lot of men use it to masturbate. He probably puts on some porn, slicks up his hands, and goes to town.

The checkout girl and I both happened to look at the hand cream at the same time and exchanged a look, at exactly the same moment we both realized, "ew, he's buying that to whack off." We had to stop looking at each other to keep from bursting out laughing.

This is not the first time I've seen a man in a store buying multiple bottles of hand lotion and nothing else. Maybe they give it to their wives or mothers, but I doubt that.

Don't they realize many of us know what they're up to? Men are often a little sheepish about buying skin magazines, but they will shamelessly buy multiple bottles of hand lotion as if it was beer.

My husband said Mr. Skeevy wouldn't be whacking off to porn when using his cream. Instead, he'd be thinking about the checkout girl and me while whacking off. I wish he hadn't shared that thought.

katie's anus

I don't particularly like Jimmy Falon, but this is a funny story. I wonder if it's true. I love Amy Schumer because she's like the un-celebrity celebrity.

berlin 1945

Earlier this week, I finished reading Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by British historian Antony Beevor (published in some countries as The Fall of Berlin 1945).

I read this primarily because I've read and enjoyed several novels recently set in the same time and place, notably ones by Scottish writer Philip Kerr, and wanted to learn more about that period and events. The book was much more battle-heavy than I had expected, but the social history parts were very intriguing.

The author includes extensive detail about the great number of German women who were raped by occupying forces as the war was ending, primarily by the Russians. In total, more than two million women were likely raped during the months that Germany was invaded.

Many women were raped in more than one incident and many were also gang raped. Some victims committed suicide after the crime while many survivors were infected with various venereal diseases.

The book documents one interesting phenomenon: right after the invaders arrived, some women offered themselves to a single occupying soldier, promising to be his sweetheart if he would protect her against all other soldiers. Most such offers were accepted.

This idea interested me, so I did a bit of research on the internet. Some women's advocates empathized with what these victims had done to protect themselves, while others condemned them for their decision.

In my opinion, the women who did this were smart. Why endure a horrendously violent act that could be repeated and leave you diseased or dead when you could choose something not nearly as awful?

Yes, you would have to sleep with someone you didn't know or like, but chances are he wouldn't be anywhere near as violent or brutal as being gang raped. It was the proverbial lesser of two evils.

There are times to take the moral high road and other times when it's foolish when your very survival might be at stake. I think this falls into the latter category.

The rare color photo below from 1945, made shortly after Berlin fell, is one of several from an interesting vintage photography website. Most war photos at that time where black and white.

meanwhile, on fifth avenue

I cropped the enlargement below from the original I found online (along with another taken moments later). I have no idea why Danny DeVito was walking a dog in a funny dress.

I made a loud noise when I saw this photo online, and my husband came in from the other room to make sure I was all right. I was freaking because I realized the picture was taken about three minutes from where I used to live.

I recognized 202 Fifth Avenue, a small block filled with a half dozen older office buildings that have stores on the ground floor. It's directly across the street from Madison Square Park, where I sometimes went on my days off and read on a bench in nice weather.

The south end of the park is across the street from the Flatiron Building, one of Manhattan's earliest skyscrapers. Of course, in New York City, celebrities are commonly seen and people usually leave them alone.

In my time there, I don't ever recall seeing one walking a dog in a silly dress, however.

the queen's nazi salute

Many royalist Brits are in a tizzy over the recent publication of still photos and a seventeen-second video showing a seven-year-old Queen Elizabeth giving the Nazi-straight arm salute in 1933. They contend it should never have been made public.

In the pictures and film, the future queen and her younger sister, Princess Margaret, were being instructed in the film how to perform the gesture by their uncle, the future King Edward VIII, and their mother, the former Queen Elizabeth (also later known as the Queen Mother).

If you know your history, you'll know Edward VIII abdicated so he could marry his divorced lover. He is also widely known to have been too cozy with Nazi Germany for most Brits' tastes, one of the reasons many believe he was pushed into giving up the throne.

As to this supposed scandal, I think everyone on all sides needs to step back and take a deep breath about this. First, the picture was taken long before World War II, when the world had not yet seen what a horror the Nazis could be. Yes, in 1933, they were known to be thugs, but not the beasts they evolved into.

Second, the queen was seven when she did this and raised in a very sheltered household. She might still have believed in the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas at that age. She almost certainly had no real idea what the Nazis were all about.

The fact that they were egged on to doing this by the future Edward VIII and also the future Queen Mother is more troubling. But they're both dead now, so what is past is past.

My anti-royalist husband predicts this will all blow over shortly. "They'll trot out Kate Middleton and the kiddies for some ooh-and-aah photo-ops and everyone will forget about the old girl's salute."

masturbating while driving

A British newspaper is reporting that roughly one quarter of drivers aged 25 to 34 admit they have pleasured themselves while driving. Only 12 percent of those older than 34 have done this.

I fall squarely into this self-pleasing age bracket but have never been tempted to diddle while driving. I won't even talk on a cell phone when on the road, so I don't think front-seat masturbation is in my future.

I have, on occasion, seen men beating their meat in heavy traffic. Here in Sydney I sometimes use an on-ramp that gives a good view onto a lane of cars on a roadway about eight feet lower. Traffic is often very slow at this bottleneck, so if you look into the cars, you'll see all sorts of activity going on: reading, crossword puzzles, knitting, dope-smoking, and self delight.

The linked newspaper report came after an accident a few days earlier where a masturbating woman crashed into the back of a parked fish van. Because her activity was caught on a security camera, she couldn't lie her way out of the situation.

I don't pleasure myself much because the Husband usually takes care of that, but when I do, I always do it in the privacy of our bedroom. A soft comfy chair or the bed are the best places for self-love, in my opinion. Why not relax when you're floating on wings of fantasy?

voyage to planet X

I was looking around online for the best pictures of Pluto after lask week's NASA flyby. I don't need them for anything, but I love looking at that type of thing.

Originally, the photos on the NASA website were small, maybe to preserve bandwidth. Now NASA has a big collection of them available and they're stunning.

I really like the gif loop that I've reposted below, which shows how astronomers saw Pluto through telescopes from its discovery in 1930 to today.

Planet X was an earlier name for Pluto and arguably the most prominent among several of them. I like this name better than Pluto, because it's edgy and reminiscent of sci-fi, whereas the latter makes me think of the goofy cartoon dog.

I imagine in the next few decades, we'll see better and bigger images of neighboring planets and other occupants of our and nearby solar system. But I doubt anyone would travel to Pluto in my lifetime.

That seems like an awfully long and complex journey for not much payoff on arrival. It would be like taking an expensive luxury cruise to Newark, New Jersey.

facebook ghouls

Sometimes you wonder what people are thinking before they do something incredibly stupid. A man in Lorain, Ohio was arrested earlier this week after he filmed teenage victims in a deadly traffic accident rather than render aid to the victims; both were seriously injured and one later died.

The budding cameraman later tried to sell the video footage to two local television news programs and also posted the video on Facebook.

If he had just stood on the roadside and filmed the carnage, then he could not have been prosecuted. Being a insensitive heartless jerk is not a crime.

He went afoul of the law, however, when he opened up the car to lean in and film the battered, bloodied victims. All the while he provided a voice-over narrative, calling the victims "stupid."

The opening up the car and leaning in was what triggered the criminal charges. But his greatest punishment might be the public outrage directed at him by people throughout the world who saw his mugshot and were disgusted about his behavior. I have to think he's not everybody's favorite neighbor in Lorain, Ohio, right now.

But not everyone was necessarily repulsed, however. The video artist, if he could be called that, has had more than 4,000 friend requests on Facebook since the incident.

the duke of douchebagnitude

Recently I have seen the words douchebagnitude and douchebaggery in print, one in a new novel and the other in a mainstream magazine article. I like how this word and its derivations are becoming more and more mainstream -- it's a handy descriptive for certain types of people.

My movie writer friend once told me douchebag was not widely used until the 1980s when TV writers needed a nasty-sounding word that would get past network censors. The word originally entered the vernacular in 1950s, according to The Dictionary of American Slang.

I wondered at first why it wasn't douchebagitude without the "n" but then I realized that spelling also made one think of magnitude. One might only reach douchebagnitude after particularly sustained and elevated levels of douchebaggery.

Donald Trump comes to mind. He is a douchebag of the highest order -- he has reached true douchebagnitude. The man seems to be deliberately trolling the American people.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow had an interesting piece about him earlier this week. He wrote that Trump's campaign is, essentially, a sham.

"Trump will not be the president of the United States," he wrote. "But I firmly believe that Trump not only knows that, he doesn't want to be president. Trump is brand-building. This is all free publicity for a salesman in the business of selling himself."

He continues: "There is a cottage industry among some public people that is breathing new life into the adage 'all press is good press.' These people use ignobility as an elevator; they inflame their way to infamy. They get the country talking and their names trending, then they turn that cultural currency into hard currency."

I'd be willing to bet, shortly after Trump drops out of the race, whenever that comes, he will be cast in a high-profile new "reality" TV show or talk show, and he'll be out with yet another new self-aggrandizing book.

radioactive porn

Apparently all you need to become a professional photographer in the porn biz is a camera. Skills are not necessary.

If you know anything about photography, you know what's wrong with this picture. She's "too hot" on the left side of the image, meaning that part of her is overexposed, because the photographer did not properly compensate for the natural sunlight. Her features are washed out and the contrast is blasted to nothing.

It looks like her face is being zapped with nuclear radiation or the sun is beginning to erupt in a supernova.

This is easily corrected in several ways. The easiest way is by having an assistant position a scrim between the model and the sun to diffuse the light.

Alternatively, the photo should be somewhat underexposed when shot and then adjusted digitally afterwards. This takes all of a few seconds on a computer.

You need to underexpose the image, so that the model's features are preserved. But when it's blasted out like you see below, there's not enough left to adjust digitally. It's much easier to dial it up than to dial it down.

I fiddled around with a simple photo editing program to come up with the result seen below. The original is even worse. I didn't want to dial it out any more, because then her coochie is too much in the dark.

I have never taken a photography course in my life, but I have learned a thing or two as a model. I've also supplemented that with some reading.

So it's not like you need a heavy-duty education to be a porn photographer. You just need to think and use some common sense, which apparently is beyond some of them.

The rule is simple: you need more than just pussy to take good porn pix.

mental illness is cruel

The Washington Post ran a very interesting but sad article earlier this week about a man who graduated from Harvard Law School with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts but now is homeless, largely due to his schizophrenia. This fact came to light when he appeared on criminal charges before another Harvard Law classmate who is now a judge.

I've had the opportunity to witness the effects of mental illness first hand. Because both of my parents are shrinks and consulted some patients at their home office, I occasionally saw schizophrenics coming and going.

I remember one in particular who had grown up as a nearby neighbor, the son of successful parents. About fifteen years older than me, he was a true golden boy, both a brilliant scholar and a gifted athlete who was courted by several Ivy League schools. He and my brother taught me how to swim when I was about four.

I occasionally saw him as I was growing up, and he went away to college when I was about ten or so. Two years later, he had dropped out of college and moved back into with his parents because he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. He became one of my parents' patients.

The troubled man who shuffled in and out of my parents' office barely resembled the golden boy he had once been. Medication and therapy helped some, but he was nothing like he was in his glory days.

Shortly before I moved to Australia, I was talking to my brother on the phone, and he told me that the former golden boy had died. While the death was ruled accidental, the circumstances were such that it could have been suicide.

At the time of his death, he had been homeless for several years. It was such a sad end to someone who once seemed like he could be anything he wanted and have a full life.

laundry day

When I first saw this photo, I thought it was a garden variety cheesecake shot. But when you look at it more closely, you'll start to notice something else.

I laughed like a loon when I realized what it was. Shades of Monty Python. You might have to look at the larger original to really see it.

is Bill Cosby a necrophiliac?

You've almost certainly read or heard some recent news pieces about allegations that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted various women. To date, more than forty women have leveled accusations against him, some in lawsuits, others in criminal investigations, and still others in media reports.

Many of these claims allege Cosby first gave the woman a drug so she was either unconscious or severely impaired before the sexual activity. For his part, Cosby has always maintained that the claims are not true, although in recent months he has been all but silent.

These sexual assault accusations began appearing publicly in 2000 because of several lawsuits relating to alleged incidents dating back to the 1960s. The story erupted into the zeitgeist last year due to a comedy routine that has snowballed into a media feeding frenzy.

The whole thing was taken to a new level earlier this month with the release of a sealed deposition Cosby gave in 2005 where he admitted giving Quaaludes to women he wanted to fuck.

So what should we make of all this. The old cliche holds that where there's smoke, there's fire. One or two women making accusations against a celebrity could be dismissed as gold-digging.

When you have more than forty accusers, and given that some never filed suit nor wanted their names made public, the odds this is some grand conspiracy to get Cosby seem pretty remote. Cosby's deposition certainly doesn't help his claims of innocence, either.

The drugging component to this is my focus here. As previously noted, many of the forty-plus women claim they were drugged.

Whether or not this is true, incidents of men drugging women and then sexually assaulting them are not uncommon. Some men trick women by giving them Rohypnol and then fucking them after they've passed out.

Some doctors and medical personnel fuck unknowing women under anesthesia. And some men fuck unconscious women without their knowledge after they've passed out from drinking.

So this left me wondering: what is it with men who want to fuck unconscious women? In my mind, that's one tiny notch above necrophilia. Is there any sensory difference between strangling a woman and then fucking her or making her pass out and banging her?

Some of the men who do this probably are troll ugly and have all sorts of personality disorders, so this is the only way they could get a woman to spread for them. Conscious women would tell them to piss off.

But what's Cosby's story? He's rich and famous -- plenty of women would fuck him for free, as they would almost any celebrity (with the possible exception of Gilbert Gottfried).

That makes me wonder if Cosby specifically gets off on fucking unconscious women but not conscious ones. If she's moving and smiling and talking, he goes limp linguine. But when she's comatose and looking like she's ready for her coffin, then maybe Cosby's engine is really revving.

Whatever the answer is, I predict this whole situation will end very, very badly for Cosby. And some media reports are even suggesting criminal prosecution is now possible.

exotic but not beautiful

We have a nice public park near where we live with an excellent playground. If my son spent ten hours a day there every day, he would still want to spend more time.

Various parents come and go with their children at all different times, but many more are moms than dads. I see many regulars and have gotten to know some of them a bit. We're a melting pot mixture like Australia itself: mostly Aussies but some Brits, Yanks, Canadians, and more.

I see one woman there about every ten days or so. I cannot figure out her nationality, and her English is close to nonexistent. Her little boy is younger than mine, but they often play together.

The mother is very striking and exotic looking but not what I would call beautiful. She's tall and slim and has a very elegant way about her.

The parts to her face don't fit together, and that's why she's not beautiful. None of us have a truly symmetrical face, but hers is decidedly not. From one side seen in profile, she almost seems like a different woman than when you see her from the other side.

Given her complexion and coloring, I've been wondering if she could be Iranian. She's very shy and, besides, I think it would be rude for me to try to worm the answer out of her, particularly given the language limitation.

I suspect her husband is of a different nationality and may possibly be Australian. Her little boy is lighter skinned than she is and has very light hazel eyes. He doesn't speak much, but clearly has the toddler version of an Australian accent, so he's around native English speakers somewhere in his life. The mother speaks to him in another language but in very low tones, so I can't tell if it's Farsi.

When I see her, I think about how we, as humans, have ideals about what is beautiful and what is not. Except for her face, she's truly striking.

She has a real presence, and I could see how a man would find her attractive, even if not beautiful. Unfortunately, the times that my husband is with me, she's never been there, so I can't get his ruling on the subject.

These trips to the mark have also made me thing about the book and movie Little Children, where a married father and a married woman meet at a neighborhood park with their kids and end up in a torrid adulterous affair. A few dads in our park seem to have watched that film and thought it was meant to be instructional.

One is particularly flirty, and I told my husband I need a T-shirt that says: "I'm very happily married and my husband could easily beat you up if I asked him." That way he might get the hint.

successful TV series secret

I've been researching what TV show my husband and I can marathon watch after we finish House of Cards. (We are not true marathon watchers because we don't cram many episodes in one day, but we do watch an entire series start to finish before moving on to another.)

If you look at recent history, many of the American dramas with the highest critical acclaim have abbreviated seasons of no more than thirteen episodes and some have less. Think about the biggest hits in the last few years: True Detective, Orange Is the New Black, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The Americans, House of Cards, The Wire, Deadwood, and many more -- all had shorter seasons. The only "exception" I can think of recently is The Good Wife.

In contrast, traditional network dramas run to twenty-plus episodes. Some of these are good, but they generally don't receive as much praise or awards as the shorter-season programs.

Most series on British and Australian television, in contrast, have short seasons. And many are shorter than even the "short" American series, with only four to eight episodes per season.

I'm sure the big commercial American networks realize this, but I guess they have such a need for quantity they're willing to sacrifice quality if need be. Traditional network TV has had some very good shows, but in recent years, they really seem to wane after the first season.

I suspect this might be because most multi-episodes stories have a harder time over a longer season keeping up the necessary dramatic tension and drive to sustain them.

pdf software recommendation

I have another software recommendation and, as usual, I have no connection with its creators nor have I been in any communication with them. I simply like the product.

My tip today is about PDF reDirect. This is freeware that allows you to print PDF files from any program, whether it be an image or document. Commercial software is on the market that does this, too, but why pay money when you can get it for free?

Adobe software, of course, will create PDF files, but that package is very pricey. I've tried other freeware PDF creators, and they either don't work very well or they add an ugly watermark to the finished product. Some versions of Word create PDF files, but if you're not working in Word, that's not very helpful.

I've been using PDF reDirect pretty much daily for more than a year without one single glitch. If you're not already familiar with it, you might want to check it out.


My tip today is about PDF reDirect. This is freeware that allows you to print PDF files from any program, whether it be an image or document. Commercial software is on the market that does this, too, but why pay money when you can get it for free?

too much money?

When I looked online yesterday how much Trey Parker and Matt Stone are each worth (the answer is $370 million apiece), I found the details at a click-baity website called Celebrity Net Worth. The page is a shameless homage to lavish excess, but I nonetheless found it fascinating in a cheesy sort of way.

The site is full of gossipy details about people who are worth as much as tens of billions, own to "only" hundreds of millions. After a while, I was starting to feel saturation overload and moved on. Our culture does have a possibly unhealthy fascination with obscene wealth.

If I was named dictator, I don't think I'd let people amass billions or hundreds of millions. I'm not advocating communism, but I think a finite limit on wealth is a good idea. I'm thinking a $10 million net worth cap would be best, with no more than $5 million in liquid assets.

If your liquid assets are $5 million, you'd be earning around $200,000 to $250,000 per year in return on your investments. That's on top of any salaries, and you're left with plenty enough. The rest of your income in my dictatorship would be taxed at 100 percent.

I happened to be reading about China lately, so let's take that as an example. Even though the country is a sort of hybrid communist, health care is not free. Millions of Chinese in extreme poverty suffer with no medical care and barely scrape out a living. Infant mortality is terrible.

Yet China has no shortage of billionaires. So something is definitely out of balance. And, of course, China is not alone. The US and Australia both have billionaires and also people living in poverty, as do a number of other countries.

Why does anyone need a hundred-room house costing tens of millions? It may be fascinating to read about such things, but at the same time maybe we should be asking ourselves if something is wrong with a culture where that kind of lavish excess results, particularly when some people have no place to live and not enough food.

I'm not turning into a Marxist or anything, but I think there comes a point where some people just have too much money. And I wonder if our societies would be better off if that was not the case.

south park

I read an article yesterday about how the TV show South Park has been renewed for another three seasons, which will bring its total to 23 years on the air.

The show is hugely popular of course, but I've never watched it. The same is true for The Simpsons, notwithstanding one of my friends-with-benefits in Los Angeles worked on the show.

I have the feeling these two shows appeal more to males. During my dating years, I knew men who were fans of one or both of the programs. With one exception, I don't know any women who watch them.

For whatever reason, I've never particularly liked animation, even when I was a child. All entertainment requires a suspension of disbelief, but animation more so, at least for me. I can't ever get beyond the thought that the characters are just drawn lines. They're not real.

Of course, all characters and TV shows aren't real, but good acting makes you forget. That seems to be a window into a parallel universe. I like watching the actors and how the react.

But animation? Just doodles to me. I can see what they represent, of course, but I can never get caught up in them.

Does this make me weird? I don't think so -- I'm wired goofy for a whole lot of reasons, not just one. And for what it's worth, my husband doesn't really like animation, either. That happened to be one of the first things I learned about him, when we were looking at a newspaper and deciding what first movie to see together.

This is not to denigrate people who like animation. Different strokes for different folks. And good for Trey Parker and Matt Stone; they must be backing up dump trucks at the bank.

monkey hugging

My husband and I took our son to the zoo recently, one of his favorite spots. What kid doesn't like a zoo?

It's always a hoot watching him, because he stares at the animals with such intense concentration. Joey seems to particularly like the ones that are active and interactive with each other, which is not surprising.

Primates are always a highlight. I imagine their human-like behavior and quick movements are part of the attraction. He has a stuffed monkey pair at home, and he often will entertain himself by having them "climb" various things at home, including the dog.

During this most recent trip when we were at one of the monkey exhibits, he watched them all with fascination as usual. After a while, my husband and I started talking about something utterly unrelated and were looking at each other, not the animals. Suddenly, our son interrupted with excitement and said "monkeys hugging!"

We both looked and saw what our son thought was "hugging." The truth was that no hugging was going down -- the primates in question were in the process of making more monkeys.

My husband said something innocuous like "how about that." Soon the event finished, and Joey's attention was drawn to something else.

He's too young to understand what was really going on, and we weren't about to explain. Both my husband and I had to fight to keep a straight face when he talked about it later.

Not surprisingly, "monkey hugging" quickly became adult code for sex in our house. The story has now also been passed along to my brother-in-law, and they've adopted the code, too.

Time for some monkey hugging baby!

(The picture below is not the actually monkey hugging we witnessed but instead similar activity found on the Internet.)

anti-tattoo manifesto

A long-time reader emailed a link to me for a thought-provoking article that ran two years ago in the British edition of GQ magazine. The premise of the piece is that tattoos are a major life-long mistake, unsightly, and a stain on the nation.

I'm not a big fan of most tattoos, as evidenced by the catty items I've run here about disastrous inking disaster. But I do think the article's writer is too harsh overall.

He's wrong to define tattoos, or any behavior for that matter, in class-based terms. A very well done tattoo can be a work of art, but most tattoos are akin to clowns on velvet.

Yet mocking the social class of people who like clowns on velvet (or tattoos or whatever) is petty and mean. When critiquing a piece of art or writing or a movie or whatever, the critic should focus on the work and not make personal attacks about the artists and owners of the work. The same holds true for tattoos.

The above aside, I did find this factoid interesting from the article: "A survey ranked tattoos on a woman as the greatest turn-off for men, just ahead of smoking and bad breath." That surprised me.

It's definitely food for thought to be chewed by any woman thinking about getting some ink. Waiting probably won't cause a problem, but not waiting might.

aphrodisiac myths

I miss listening to NPR, which of course is not available here in Australia. So I catch them on occasion via podcast.

I happened to hear an All Things Considered piece over the weekend (available online both in print and audio) about whether allegedly aphrodisiac foods actually work.

The conclusion was that they have no real effect on libido, but that they could help put you in the mood for whoopie by stimulating your imagination. Unfortunately, any truly meaningful conclusions are hampered by a paucity of research data. Researchers need to study sex more.

Personally, I have never experienced any change in sexual desire or mood because of something I ate. The only thing that has had an effect would be in the negative -- if I eat too much or something is too spicy, I'm less in the mood.

If this happens, the best way to resolve the problem, at least in my experience, is just to wait a while after eating to have sex. This is not unlike "the swimming rule" of waiting a set period after eating.

So a nice meal out that leaves me a little too full is best followed by a movie. Once that's over and I'm no longer feeling stuffed, then I'm ready to be stuffed.

five fast facts

Several months ago I stumbled upon Heavy, a news, pop culture, and technology website that provides "five fast facts" in narrative form about newsworthy current events and issues.

I found the site is a great way to obtain a briefing on topics when you don't want to read a longer, more detailed news or magazine article. The site covers plenty of subjects so you can quickly see what interests you and ignore the rest.

If you want to keep up on events but don't have a lot of time, you might want to check it out.

As is the case for all websites I mention or link in my blog, I have not been paid any testimonial by the site nor have I been approached by them or any of their representatives for publicity. When anyone does that from any site, I let them know because of their contact, I will never mention them here.

independence day!

Happy Fourth of July to all of my American readers. Sadly, it'll just be another Saturday here in Australia.

My grandparents used to take me to a hokey July 4 parade in Pennsylvania when I was a child. But I have to say, living so far away now, I wouldn't mind teleporting back to the US so I could attend some cheesy Independence Day events. I'm nostalgic for some 'Merican cornball entertainment.

Pictured below is casual wear that would be ideal (snort) for men at a Fourth of July picnic. When you weren't being laughed at, you could pick the ants off your ruffles. And without boobs, you'll have trouble keeping that top from sliding down.

Just when I think the fashion industry couldn't create designs that would be any more humiliating for men, I see things like this. But this really needs a finishing touch, like a totally douchy tattoo complete with a misspelled patriotic phrase, something like "librety and justice."

I don't think I have ever met a man who would be tempted to wear something like this. And I've met a few eccentric fellows in my day.

her pierced nipples

I've never really been into so-called pinku films, a particular type of soft-core Japanese avante garde film. The acting is often mediocre at best and the scenarios ridiculous.

But this description caught my attention for a movie called Woman with Pierced Nipples: "A man and woman share in some bizarre and masochistic sex-games, including chain-bondage, shoe-licking, watersports, and car-antenna fucking." Now the first three of those four kinks are pretty standard stuff. No shocks there.

But car-antenna fucking? Seriously? That sounds very un-erotic and potentially dangerous. A car antenna sounds about as erotic as a pencil or a screwdriver. I wouldn't want any of them inside my treasure chest.

a slut named adrianna

Every day my spam folder receives about fifty new messages. About 99 percent of the time they're garbage and quickly discarded, but occasionally a legitimate email slips in so I must always check.

Roughly a third of the spam seems to be varieties of the Nigerian email scam. Another third or so are phishing come-ons in an attempt to trick me into doing something digitally unwise.

The last third are what I think of as slut mail, where the scammer pretends to be a beautiful young woman who's dying to connect or re-connect with a male recipient. These are either a come-on for some scammy dating website or virus bait or yet another attempt to steal credit card numbers.

What I find curious about the slut email is that around a 20 to 25 percent or so are allegedly from a woman named Adrianna. The Adrianna named emails far outnumber those from any other name. They're different come-ons but that same first name.

When I haven't checked the spam folder for several days, invariably five or six Adrianna mails will be waiting with a variety of alluring messages. Has the name Adrianna proven to be the most successful at these scams and that's why the senders use it? Or is Adrianna known to be the biggest slag name around so it'll snag the most male eyeballs?

And I'm forever amazed that anyone actually still falls for any kind of email scam. How many thousands of articles have been written about them?

robin wright

The Husband and I are midway through a start-to-finish viewing of all House of Cards episodes to date. We are both enjoying the show tremendously.

The political insider genre has been well mined before in movies and TV shows, but Cards outshines them all. I occasionally have to annotate certain things about American politics for my Australian husband, but he's having no problem understanding the program.

I was already a Robin Wright fan and the show has made me even more so. She's both a brilliant actress and an elegantly beautiful woman. James wasn't too familiar with her before watching the show, but he's found her very striking and watchable.

She turned 49 this year and looks the best possible for a woman her age. She doesn't try to pass for thirty, but she looks as good as women who are. I hope I look that good when I'm her age.

Her clothes on the show are gorgeous. She hasn't had a dud yet, and we're into the second season now. Of course she doesn't shop for these herself, but I imagine she does have some sort of approval.

I thought the dress shown below was magnificent on her. Not many women could pull of this look, but she's done it masterfully.