beating up grandpa

The Hollywood Reporter just published a long feature about alleged elder abuse directed at the late Mickey Rooney when he was in his last years.

The story opens with a recollection by one of the article writers who says he personally witnessed Rooney's eighth wife and stepson kicking the aged star when he was 89. (Rooney died last year at age 93.)

This follows media reports a few months back about how bestselling author Ann Rule was allegedly abused by her two grown sons when she was in her eighties. They were later arrested and will soon face prosecution.

While both examples are heartbreaking, they are not rare. Elder abuse is the most common crime suffered by senior citizens in first world countries like the United States and Australia.

The majority of people who commit elder abuse are relatives -- most commonly spouses, children, and grandchildren.

I think of people who abuse the elderly the same way that I think about people who abuse children and animals. What kind of sick monster could harm a helpless person or creature who relies on you for help and support?

When I read about stories like Rooney's, I hope the concept of karma turns out to be real. You hurt an old person now, and you will suffer later when you are old or sick. Karma is a bitch.

robosexuals

The Sun, a British newspaper, ran a piece recently about how robots of the near future will be able to satisfy humans sexually, in addition to doing household chores and other mundane tasks.

Sorry, count me out. No matter how realistic the robot might be in resembling an actual human in looks, touch, and interaction, I would always know it was a machine, not a man.

Half the fun of sex is knowing you're turning on your partner and deciding what to do next. If I lightly run the tip of my tongue under my husband's balls and hear him moan, that satisfies me, too.

So even if the android moans when I run my tongue under its robot nuts, I will know it's fake and means as much emotionally to the machine as "are you sure you want to delete that file?" or "directory not found."

Watson can do my housework, but it can't access my coochie.

The great photograph below is by a husband and wife creative design team based in Venice, California. They have more examples from this robo-shoot on their webpage.

dear leader's harem

The recent photo shown below attracted my attention (enlargement) with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. As you can see, he's surrounded by a dozen young women who look almost like clones with the same outfits and hairstyles.

This was distributed last week by Reuters without any explanation of who they were, other than the big boy in the middle. I thought they were merely attractive women plunked all around him for propaganda reasons.

But they actually could be part of his private harem. Like his dictator father and grandfather, Kim Jong-un now has his own harem of young women. When he tires of them, they're passed on to senior military and government officials.

Eventually they will be retired and given a cash settlement and household appliances. I imagine the women are so brainwashed they think this is a wonderful accomplishment, to polish Dear Leader's knob for years in exchange for a dishwasher, but only after they're humped by old navy goats.

Meanwhile, ordinary people in North Korea are starving. If the people in North Korea ever overthrow their leaders, I predict the end for Kim Jong-un will not be pretty.

porn versus art

The Daily Beast has an article currently running about French/Argentinean filmmaker Gaspar Noé's newest movie Love, which includes lots of explicit, unsimulated sex.

The flick sounds like it might revive the old "when is porn art" debate, also known as "when is art porn."

In my mind, a movie is porn if the primary intent is to stimulate your naughty bits. A movie is art if the primary intent is to stimulate your gray matter. A movie is entertainment if the primary intent is escapism.

And, yes, a movie can be several or all of these at once.

Noé is no stranger to explicit sexual activity in his movies. Arguably he's an artist and not a pornographer because he wants to stimulate your brain with shocking sexual imagery, much the same way a horror filmmaker might use gore.

He veers into scold mode in the article when he says "the whole Western system is far, far more conservative and castrated than people even know." Here, I think, his argument is somewhat disingenuous, because without that Puritan mindset, there would probably be little to no market for Noé's films.

In other words, don't bite the hand that feeds you.

I'm glad filmmakers like Noé are working because they can produce interesting movies. But I suggest he focus on making those and less on ranting about social mores, because you can't shame someone into feeling less embarrassed about something.

The way to turn around "castrated" people is to make a movie so beautiful and astounding and memorable that they focus less on the sex and more on how the movie touched them.

In other words: show. Don't tell.

$55,000 for potato salad?

I was reading a piece online about former presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee's pathetic fundraising efforts. That in turn linked to another article from last year about a man who raised $55,000 online to make potato salad.

What?

I thought there had to be some twist to the story. Maybe he really wanted to start a farm to feed needy people or to open a soup kitchen and then he would make potato salad to celebrate finishing the project.

Turns out there was no twist. He just wanted to make salad and needed $10 to do it, but people kept sending him money.

This is the moment where I'd like to be Zeus so I could pick up the Earth in both hands and shout at it, "What is wrong with you people?"

Donors actually sent him $10 and $20 apiece. I'd like to know who these people are who spend money so frivolously. Don't they know any worthy charities?

And shame on the fundraiser, too. Instead of keeping the money and making the salad, he should have just given the whole sum to a charity that helped people who don't have enough to buy their own potatoes.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

killing baby hitler

The New York Times Magazine posted this provocative Twitter question late last week: "If you could travel back in time, would you kill an infant Adolf Hitler?" Those who responded said "yes" 42 percent of the time, "no" at 30 percent, and "not sure" at 28 percent.

The question offered no alternatives, such as preventing Hitler's parents from conceiving him or stealing Baby Hitler and raising him in a loving home.

If given the option, I'm sure many people would rather find an alternative to prevent Hitler from rising to power as opposed to killing an innocent baby. Personally, I would much rather find some other solution.

But if it's just a yes-no question with no alternative, I'd have to say "no." While the idea of killing an infant is abhorrent to me and I doubt I could do it, that's not the reason I'm voting thumbs down.

Hitler did not come to power in a vacuum. He had millions of supporters. So if Hitler died in infancy, those supporters very likely would have rallied around another horrible psychopath who rose to prominence and power, someone like Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Eichmann.

That alternative Fuhrer could have been every bit as bad if not worse than Hitler. And while Hitler may have been the most notorious dictator in history, he was hardly the only one.

Josef Stalin probably killed as many people, if not more. Snuffing Baby Hitler arguably could have made Stalin much more powerful, thereby killing many more people than he did.

My husband had an interesting take on this: maybe someone died because of Hitler who would have been ten times worse had he lived, so killing Hitler would unleash that unknown beast.

tattoo bonehead

I'm wondering if the tattoo artist or the recipient was drunk when this went down. Possibly both were.

Extra double bonehead points for putting it in a place where it might still show even with short sleeves. Triple bonehead points for putting it online the day you got it to trawl for compliments.

I think the only way to salvage this would be to visit a much better tattoo artist who can come up with a clever design to hide the whole thing. But that would cost a lot more money.

ninety days without sex

Actor/athlete Terry Crews recently said in an online interview that he and his wife took a three-month break from sex in order to strengthen his marriage. He described the period as "90 days -- no sex, all relationship, all talk, all cuddle."

If it worked, good for them -- different strokes for different folks and all that. But I think I would go absolutely nuts if my husband did jump my bones for three months.

I disagree with the idea that you can't have an active sex life and also a close relationship with lots of talk and cuddling. I'm wondering if perhaps Crews has such a busy professional life that he doesn't have much quality time alone with his wife.

As for us ordinary folk without media attention, if you're just fucking without communicating, then that's not good. But you can still do both.

The only time I would say you couldn't do both would be the heat of the moment. When we're making the beast with two backs, I don't want a report on the car's leak or plans to paint the kitchen or anything like that.

are putin's spies running wikileaks?

I am one of those who has always wondered whether Wikileaks was a dubious organization. Governments must keep certain things secret to protect their citizenry and national interest, and Wikileaks seems determined to overturn that precedent and disclose everything, regardless of the possible harmful consequences.

Over the years, Wikileaks has brought some secrets to light that probably caused change for the better. At the same time, however, it seems to many people that Wikileaks has published a great deal of information simply to hurt or embarrass the United States and its allies, to the point that seems to be the organization's primary goal.

As an American, I find this possibility very troubling. The recent public dump of private and personal information about the CIA director's wife and children is a good example of Wikileaks' apparent spiteful behavior.

Only a few minutes after reading the article I've just linked, I came across this detailed analysis by a Reddit member who poses the provocative question: are Vladimir Putin's spies now running Wikileaks?

It certainly is an interesting question. The fact that Wikileaks suddenly stopped publishing secret information about Russia with utterly no explanation -- after repeatedly promising to dump something really compromising -- while concurrently making huge dumps of American secrets simply to embarrass the United states certainly leaves one wondering.

chicken learns to use twitter

An Australian chicken restaurant is garnering international attention because it has taught a real hen to use Twitter.

While Betty the chicken tweets a great deal, nearly all of what she types is pure gibberish. lf bt z x ``` zq `2 c, reads one of her recent messages. Another time, she was all worked up over something when she insisted hrg 1613waq2 waq2ß44rrrr4t6fhjg 5r6rdrrr6rrd66666r62w16d`d /. z dygcfe ;;;/ o;.l

Notwithstanding her flurry of activity, she has managed to type only one actual word: bum.

If you visit the restaurant, you can witness Betty live-tweeting in her pen while enjoying a chicken dinner.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't think I could enjoy a chicken dinner while watching a live chicken a few feet away. I would be left with the subliminal idea that I was eating Betty's sister, who never could quite master Twitter when they tried to teach her.

a clown named trump

Vanity Fair has a razor-sharp analysis of Donald Trump in their latest issue. It offers some very wise, albeit unsolicited, advice for the other GOP candidates: Trump is a fool, so stop trying to pretend he's a legitimate candidate.

"The trouble with Trump is that he is, by temperament, by experience, and by character, utterly unqualified to be president of the United States," the writer says in the first paragraph. "He is a buffoon."

This is so obvious to so many people, yet all of his opponents are afraid to speak this truth. So most of them are mired way down low in the single digits, jabbing little rabbit punches at each other instead of ripping into the Donald.

Otherwise, if they don't rip him down to size, what do they have to lose? They're an indistinguishable herd now, partly because they're so mealy mouthed on this issue.

I would love to see one of them just speak bluntly and candidly about Trump, as he frequently does about them. Just go at him with no punches pulled. Tell the whole truth.

"The man is a completely unqualified jackass," this candidate should say. "There is no there there. He has no policy, no plans, no proposals, no solutions. He just says whatever idiotic thing pops into his head. He's a reality show celebrity, not a real candidate. You might as well vote for Homer Simpson."

Go ahead. Say it. I dare you to. You're worried your poll numbers will take a hit, but I think the opposite will result. You will become the sanity candidate.

kangaroo loose in new york

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about a pet kangaroo in Staten Island that escaped from a backyard through an open gate and hopped around the neighborhood.

Now if this was some kind of exotic cat, the creature would've sneaked away after breaking out, keeping to the shadows and out of sight. The thing would be at large for weeks.

But not a kangaroo, one of the stupider animals in the wild kingdom. It busts loose and then hops around where everybody can see it. "Wee, I'm free, look at me!"

Not surprising, the scofflaw 'roo was quickly recaptured and returned to its owner.

Like many American expats living in Australia, I was woefully disappointed after moving here and learning that the cute Down Under animals I've adored since I was a wee child are actually rather stupid and boring.

Koalas are like homeless junkies except with much better PR. They're rather dull witted, have nonexistent hygiene, and are obsessed with food. They will pay attention to you only if you have snacks for them, as I've learned when we took our son to a koala rescue ranch.

As for kangaroos, they seem as dumb as goats, equally food obsessed, albeit much more hyperactive. Unlike dogs and cats, which are careful not to step in their own droppings, kangaroos will gleefully stomp around in their own shit.

have astronomers found advanced aliens?

Media outlets are reporting the possibility that astronomers may have discovered enormous alien megastructures orbiting a distant sun that has been called "our galaxy's strangest star."

It looks "like something you would expect an alien civilization to build," an American astrophysicist said. The light from the star is "consistent with a swarm of megastructures" around it, he added.

The star and possible mystery structures have been nicknamed WTF 001, which stands for What the Flux (flux is a star light measurement).

More news about this possible discovery is expected in the next few months as astronomers pay closer attention to this curious phenomenon.

My immediate reaction upon reading this was: OMG, they found Ringworld. I read that book when I was fourteen or so. I should read it again.

If not Ringworld, then maybe they found The Borg. Uh oh. Resistance is futile.

too stupid for fiction

This is one of those videos that's both funny and sad. A woman was arrested after livestreaming her drunken drive home.

As you can see from the footage, she freely admits in her narration that she's drunk. Somewhere along the way, she hit two curbs, but fortunately no person was a victim.

A stranger happened to see this online as she was driving and notified the police. They quickly found the drunk and busted her.

Some people just cannot stop publicizing their stupidity. I'm wondering what her employment future will be like after this little stunt, which made the news as far away as here in Sydney.

playboy nixes nudity

The official word from the Playboy mansion this week is that, as of early next year, their iconic magazine will stop publishing photos of naked women.

This change marks the first time in 62 years, since the publication's founding, that an issue will contain no naked women. Playboy said it's turning puritan because of the easy availability of porn online.

In my opinion, this is a mistake. Nudity defined Playboy -- it was the first mainstream magazine to do so.

So by killing nudity, they're killing their identity. And I think their excuse is very short-sighted.

With so much porn available online, I think Playboy should have attempted to rise above that by doing something that no one else was doing. Maybe that involved an aggressive contest of some sort where the readership would select future Playmates or a whole new way of depicting classy nudes. Something memorable and highly creative.

But, no, they chose a safe route. Now they'll just be another boring male lifestyle magazine. Ho hum.

I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end for Playboy. It won't die right away, but it will continue to become less relevant and, maybe ten years from now, quietly fold with little fanfare.

the orgasm mushroom

A variety of news outlets are reporting about a Hawaiian mushroom that caused instantaneous orgasms in half the women in a clinical study. The bad news is that men in the survey said it smelled like horse manure.

The mushroom, technically known as the phallus indusiatus, grows only in Hawaiian lava fields where it is commonly found. Like many species of mushroom, it appears overnight and releases spore around dawn, then begins to wither and rot once in direct sunlight, necessitating a daily harvesting.

I suspect I would be in the group of women who do not respond to the phallus indusiatus. I can work myself up alone, but I can only achieve a really good orgasm with a man's help.

And this mushroom sounds like something a woman needs to enjoy alone at home after she has aroused herself into a pre-orgasmic state. Because if you're sharing your bed with a man and suddenly release an overwhelming barnyard odor, that could kill the moment.

Unless, of course, you and he are into scat. And if you don't know what that is, I suggest you not Google to find out. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

the aging feminist

The latest issue of The New Yorker has a long profile of Gloria Steinem. I know who she is and her major accomplishments, of course, but not much about her as a person, so reading the article will remedy that.

She is now 81, so she's old enough to be my grandmother. She did a lot for many women early on, so younger women like me benefit from the trail she blazed back in the 1960s and 70s and later.

I've always thought of her as a "nice feminist," the sort of woman other feminists should aspire to be. She doesn't have that in-your-face angry persona and is usually seen smiling in her public appearances.

I think that provides a good model for any woman. It's better to try to win someone over with a winning personality and a reasoned point of view instead of acting like you want to hit everybody.

As an earlier generation feminist, she's probably not worried a bit about what people think of her looks. Nonetheless, I think the picture accompanying the article shows she's aged well and looks great.

I don't think it's anti-feminist to wonder how you look and how you're aging. If you think you look good, you feel good, and you can achieve more as a result.

I hope if I live to be 81, people will say I don't a day over seventy.

peter pan porn

Porn distributor Wicked has begun releasing Peter Pan XXX, a hardcore retelling of the classic children's story. Personally, I think porn parodies are lame, but this one may be the lamest of all.

In the well known tale, Peter Pan is the boy who refuses to grow up. The J. M. Barrie story embraces the classic mythical concept of the "eternal child," a plot device that is several millenia old.

As a result, I think there's something inherently weird about a hardcore porn version with an "eternal child" engaged in explicit sex. The result has a pedophilic wiff about it.

In my mind, good porn is steamy and erotic. It is the subconscious come to life, where fantasies are transformed into a quasi-reality. The people are all attractive and the sex is lusty and hot.

So when you mix Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle into that, you're throwing icewater on the coals. You're left with something that makes you think "ewww."

the man with no forehead

The New York Times ran an article last Friday about how Donald Trump might drop out of the presidential race when his poll numbers (hopefully) begin to crater.

The most interesting aspect was the photograph used to illustrate the piece. As you can see from the shot below (original enlargement), the profile reveals Trump has a very low forehead.

This problem is exacerbated by his head's overly round shape and his weak chin. The bullfrog neck doesn't help, either.

This may explain why he wears that absurd hairstyle. If he had his dome closely cropped, the true shape of his head, which is something like a squashed melon, would be revealed for all to see.

One has to wonder if his habit of wearing hats now proves he understands that his hairstyle is ludicrous. Hiding it puts it out of sight, out of mind.

For a man who regularly knocks other people about their looks, he is no Adonis in his own right.

crocodile contraceptives

My sister-in-law told me the other day that ancient Egyptians used crocodile poop as a form of birth control. I thought she was telling porkies (American translation: pulling my leg).

Turns out she was telling the truth. I checked online and found numerous credible sources verifying this.

The dung was shaped as a pessary and dried, then inserted into a woman's vagina with some honey used as lubricant. Crocodile poop is alkaline so it acted like a spermicide.

This leaves me wondering who discovered this originally and how. A woman needed to shag but didn't want to get knocked up, so she stuffed a crocodile turd up there?

Hopefully this remedy didn't smell too bad.

blowjob horrors

I was a reading a post on a woman's forum where someone wrote about how she's having serious problems with her fiance and may end up breaking the engagement. While parts of her post weren't always clear, the root of the problem seems to be sex.

Her boyfriend likes oral sex, both receiving and giving, and she loathes both. I don't understand how a woman cannot enjoy cunnilingus, but she never specified why she did not like it.

She wrote this about blowjobs: "I hate the idea of putting his junk in my mouth. That's what he pees with. It's an ugly wrinkled thing that looks like raw chicken. Why would any sane woman like sucking on that horrible thing?"

If they're having bedroom problems now, that tells me this relationship is doomed. Marriage will not make things better and almost certainly worse.

Women who misunderstand blowjobs seem to think it's about the penis. It's not. It's about the man.

His cock is his most important erogenous zone. When you stimulate that, you pleasure him in a wonderful way. So a blowjob is about pleasing the man you love and filling his heart with joy.

It's not about pleasing an organ. The dick is the means to the end.

For me, the best part of giving my husband a great blowjob is watching him and hearing him react. I like to see him travel to heaven for a little while, and my mouth is the means to that end. It is a gift like no other.

A dick can be a fun toy for the girl, too, but that's beside the point. It's basically all about him.

Miss Raw Chicken sounds too wrapped up in herself to really understand what a blowjob means to the man she claims to love. She seems to be thinking about the act entirely in terms of her as opposed to him.

Marriage is a constant give and take. You sometimes have to give up certain things for his benefit, and he does the same for you.

So giving a blowjob may not be your most favorite thing. But he does so many wonderful things for you, that it's a small price to pay to make him supremely happy.

I predict he'll ultimately receive some great blowjobs. But it won't be from her.

terrifying fall

This is a real video made by some French hikers in New Zealand when they were near the end of a four-day walk. As you can see, what happens is nothing like Hollywood movies with collapsing structures -- it's all over almost as soon as it begins.

After seeing this, I'm sort of glad I don't like heights. Mother Nature is warning me and I need to listen.

webcam sex for cash

The British television station Channel 4, which broadcasts throughout the UK, has a new show called Sex Diaries, a documentary about sexuality in contemporary society. The first episode dealt with webcam couples: real people who broadcast their bedroom activities to paying audiences, some of which are quite large.

I watched a few minutes of the show, which is available on the Channel 4 webpage in its entirety, and plan to view the whole thing when I have some time. The web broadcast was not geographically embargoed for me here in Australia, but I don't know about the US.

I wrote on this blog a while ago about how my husband and I considered for a while joining the ranks of webcam couples. In all candor, I was more interested in this than he was, but he was still somewhat game.

With time, however, I talked myself out of it, and he was fine with that. I realized I had two general objections.

First, with children, the parameters to this kind of thing change. We went from being adults to being parents.

You don't have to give up your love life when you're a parent, but you do have to make certain choices that subordinate your own wishes to your children's best interests. Broadcasting yourselves fucking might remain a secret to people who know us and our community, but then again it might not.

While the chances of any kind of scandal were probably small, there was always that chance. So with a situation like this, it was best to err on the side of caution.

Second and unrelated, I came to realize that sex for money, even if with the man I love, wouldn't be like sex for fun. When you have a paying audience, you're performing more for them than for yourselves.

Sex should be fun and pleasing yourselves. When you're doing it to make money, it becomes a job.

So while you may like your job, whatever it is, there are days when you won't, but you still have to do it. If fucking is your job, then that same rule applies.

smoking is not sexy

I saw this magazine cover with Daniel Craig on a newsstand recently. He's on the Malaysia edition of Esquire and also the UK and Singapore ones but not the American one.

Craig is well known to be a heavy smoker. This picture makes me think his tobacco habit has hurt his looks.

I also think he looks older than his age of 47. He's two years older than my husband, who has never smoked, and the same age as other non-smoking men I know, but Craig looks much older than any of them.

Long-time smokers like Craig have a particular cast to their face. Their skin around their noses and cheeks often sag in a way not seen in non-smokers.

And that's not just my opinion. It's a scientifically documented fact that tobacco will hurt the skin, among other body parts (check the photos on this webpage to see skin damage and aging effects caused by smoking).

I'm not writing this as a put-down against people who smoke. I realize many were hooked at an early age by a ruthless tobacco industry that did not have consumers' best interests at heart.

Craig used to be a handsome man. I don't think he is any longer.

He probably could have aged much more gracefully if he had quit smoking long ago. But it's never too late to quit.

I will give him credit for one thing: he refuses to smoke onscreen in the James Bond films. Good for him.

the greatest TV show ever

My husband had watched some episodes of the acclaimed television show The Wire over the years but had never seen the entire show from start to finish. I have seen every episode by watching straight through several times.

So we decided to watch together. We're almost at the end of the second season now, and he's really enjoying it. So many character and plot nuances are woven in so many intricate threads that a straight-through viewing really is the best way to appreciate the program, in my opinion.

Watching it once more, I once again firmly believe it is the best television show ever made. I love shows like Homeland and Breaking Bad, but The Wire is still king of the mountain.

Sometimes when you watch or read something several times, you come to realize it wasn't as good as you first thought it was. But other times, when you love something more with each revisit, you know it's truly exceptional.

I dated a cop back in the United States who was a huge Wire fan. He said the show was the closet thing to real police work he had ever seen in a TV show or movie: the boredom, the petty politics, the crazy compromises, the heartbreak, and the few moments of true joy and exhilaration when everything comes together and justice is served.

There is little commonality between my own life and The Wire's world. I've never used nor sold drugs, I'm white, I never lived in Baltimore or a bad city neighborhood, and I've never been a cop or had any involvement in the justice process.

I guess that's why it's such a powerful show -- it can speak to anybody. My husband heartily agrees.

If you've never enjoyed The Wire, treat yourself and watch from start to finish, all sixty episodes. Binge watch it or, if you don't have the time, enjoy one or two episodes every night.

political art

This curious photograph (enlargement) was posted on Reddit. The artwork, if you want to call it that, was seen atop a car in Arcata, California.

If you know your Golden State geography, you'll know Arcata is in the far north part of the state in Humboldt County, well known for forestry and marijuana cultivation. That might help explain this.

I understand the money in his mouth and the American flag pasties. I don't know if I quite understand why the stuffed Rottweiler toy dog is buggering him.

pregnancy sex

My pregnancy is not yet showing. Naked, I look thick-waisted, but dressed it's all hidden.

I'm not wearing maternity clothes but am favoring outfits that are not snug in the middle. It's early spring here now, so the days are warming and I'm favoring comfortable cotton shifts.

One of my favorite sex positions has always been the so-called anvil, also known as the rock-and-roll among other names, which produces intense orgasms. He's on top, I'm on my back, and my legs are up around his shoulders. Yes!

But when I'm pregnant, this position becomes less and less comfortable as time goes on. As with the last time, I find that when I'm on top, that feels the most comfortable.

So it's goodbye anvil and hello cowgirl. Sometimes cowgirl spices up her act by binding his wrists to the headboard.

Sex for pregnant women in earlier eras when missionary was predominant must've been a bastard. Why men used to panic about women on top has always been something of a mystery for me.

I'm sure there were couples back in history who rebelled against missionary and did whatever the hell they wanted. Unfortunately, so little record survives about what women wanted and liked to really have any kind of clear picture.

the martian

Chances are both my husband and I will end up seeing The Martian, the new Matt Damon movie about an astronaut stranded alone on Mars, which is now playing throughout the English-speaking world and many other countries. With a few exceptions, it'll be playing everywhere by the end of the month.

Before seeing the movie, I toyed with reading the source novel by Andy Weir. I admit I had some reservations about that because it was initially self-published, which can often mean a book is not particularly well written.

The novel happened to be available at our library, so I picked it up and started reading. I'm happy to say I was pleasantly surprised and wrong -- the novel is a very fun page-turner and well crafted.

If you're looking for sex and romance, the novel has close to none. There are a few scant passing references about sex near the end of the book, but that's it.

The novel gets a bit technical at times but never for long stretches. And I will admit I learned some science from reading it.

What really impressed me was the writer's very capable handling of jeopardy. I was actually afraid for the central character and felt anxious as I read through his ordeal.

I can't remember the last time I read a book that kept me on the edge of my seat like this one. It was very hard to put down when the real world interrupted, and that's what you really want in a book.

I also am now convinced I never, ever want to go to Mars, thanks to the book. The idea of traveling 140 million miles with no hope of a speedy rescue is not my idea of a good time. (And this clever site reinforced that belief.)

If you're a reader and have not already enjoyed it, I highly recommend The Martian. I'm looking forward to seeing what Weir writes next.

kids who read early

I was already reading a lot before I started kindergarten. when I was small, I was read to, mostly by my grandfather or my brother, and as often happens, I learned how to read through that experience.

And then I just kept reading on my own, learning more the more I did it. I loved to read (and still do) so the process accelerated.

My memories of kindergarten are hazy at best, but I do remember few in my class were readers when we started. I know that because I was put in the "reader" group, whereas a large majority from the class were in the non-reader group.

The big group was taught how to read. Our little group was taught how to improve our existing skills.

I often wonder if my early reading was why I later became bored with school. I was steered into "gifted" classes but found them tedious because I could read through the material so much more quickly than the other kids, so I ended up reading whatever I brought to hide in the textbook.

As a parent, I think about this a lot now. A month short of three, my son is already picking up some reading. He likes looking at books and magazines and finding words he knows.

Should we encourage him to read more? Or should we let his eventual school set the pace?

My husband was also an early reader and later bored by school. He ultimately fell into the same rut I did, ignoring his classes and just reading whatever he liked. Unlike me, he did graduate.

The Atlantic has an interesting new article about how kids in Finland have a less structured kindergarten than the United States, so many kids are illiterate when they enter first grade, an intentional result. I think the piece has some good points, but it somewhat overlooks a possible solution: kindergarten can be about both learning and playing.

trump, the horror movie

Salon has an amusing slideshow up now featuring Donald Trump as a variety of horror movie villains. I liked the look of the Hannibal Lecter one best so I featured that below.

Casting wise, I don't think Trump would be a good fit for Lecter. The good doctor is much craftier and more intelligent than Trump. Other than the little cannibalism issue, Hannibal might be an interesting person to engage in conversation.

Hannibal likes to dissemble people and figure out how they tick. But Trump is all about himself and me me me me me. He would have zero interest in someone else.

I'd say Trump is closest in personality to Freddy Krueger. Both are extreme narcissists with nihilistic tendencies.

Both Donald and Freddy are freakish to look at, too.

there's something about that girl

I saw this picture in an article about forthcoming movies this holiday season. I immediately recognized the face but couldn't place the actress.

Then I realized it wasn't an actress. It's an actor. It's a man. It's Eddie Redmayne.

The photo is a still from the forthcoming movie The Danish Girl, where Redmayne plays Lili Elbe, one of the first men in history to be surgically changed into a woman. That happened in the early 1930s.

Like many people, I can usually spot men dressed as women. They never quite look right.

I was really fooled by Eddie, however. I had no idea he wasn't a woman.

I've never thought of Redmayne as effeminate or androgynous. On screen, he has a sort of slow burn masculinity.

He often seems boyish but never girlish. Looking at his features in his usual role as a male, he is small boned with a slender neck, so that may have been part of the reason he was cast.

Redmayne was incredible as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, which earned him his first Oscar. He could do a Hanks and win a second year in a row with The Danish Girl, as some critics are already speculating. The Academy Awards have always favored chameleon roles.