grandpa burglar spunks the OJ

A 72-year-old Ohio man was arrested earlier this week after he allegedly broke into a 61-year-old woman's home, masturbated, and ejaculated into her chilled orange juice. Once the act was completed, he reportedly shook the bottle thoroughly and then returned it to the refrigerator.

The home was equipped with a video security system that recorded the act. The suspect later confessed to law enforcement he was the juice violator.

He has been charged with two felonies: the burglary itself and also the juice seeding. I couldn't find details about what kind of penalty he faces if convicted, which seems likely given he confessed the deed was recorded on video.

Now I have to think a 72-year-old man who can successfully masturbate until he pops is not terribly common. I think he has to be recognized for that fact with a reduced penalty.

No indication if this is the first time the alleged perpetrator committed an act of this sort. For all we know, he may have been inseminating breakfast drinks all over Ohio for more than a half century.

this can't end well

I was going to do a little write-up this weekend about the debates for my weekly "No Trump" piece, but I decided to skip that and focus instead on a bombshell that will be reported later today by Newsweek that is teased in the cover below already released by the magazine.

The website Politicus has a preview article that gives some highlights.

It's not quite October but I guess this qualifies as an early October surprise. My little feet will kick with glee if more bombshells are dropped throughout the month to further damage the Orange Clown.

This revelation will be particularly embarrassing for Trump because, only a few weeks ago, he was shooting off his mouth while pandering to Florida voters about how he would reverse President Obama's actions and get tougher on Cuba.

Yes, once more, Donald Trump is revealed to be a hypocritical demagogue. Sad!

neighbor suicide

I found out yesterday a neighbor committed suicide sometime last week. He only lived a few doors down from us, but we rarely saw him.

He was not exactly a recluse but pretty close to it. He was pleasant but distant and extremely private. I only believe I ever spoke to him once, but I would wave and he would wave when I was out walking with the kiddies.

No one knows why he killed himself. He apparently had no friends and only one living relative in Canberra. After the latter tried to reach him unsuccessfully for several days, he contacted the police, who went into the neighbor's house and found his body.

Did he have a history of mental illness or depression? No one on the street knows and we may never know. He kept to himself so who knows what he was thinking or doing or wanting.

His house is apparently a mess and falling apart with piles of junk inside. It's all but impossible to see from the street because of thickly overgrown shrubbery and trees.

I don't feel grief for the man because I barely knew him, but I do feel bad. He was all alone in that house but never reached out. Abd, there's a difference between alone and lonely. Nevertheless, something was obviously very wrong.

Do we have a moral duty to reach out to someone when we see he or she is alone? Both my husband and I did that with the woman in whose house we now live, but she was friendly and sweet and always reached out to people herself.

But when someone is so closed down, so distant, so obviously self-isolated, does his right to be left alone outweigh all wishes of anyone trying to reach out to him?

We have heard there will be no funeral. There is no one to mourn him and that seems to be the way he wanted it. Still, I think that's very sad, but he had the right to live that way if he wished.

brilliant breastfeeding

This article is fantastic. A mom in Georgia was breastfeeding her one-month old in a supermarket when a sheriff's deputy approached her and said he'd have to arrest her if other people found what she was doing offensive.

She calmly told him he was wrong and that state law allowed mothers to breastfeed anywhere they were authorized. Since she was legally shopping, she was authorized to be in the store, and the law was satisfied.

He then doubled down on his mistake and insisted she didn't know the law. She left the store and then contacted the sheriff, his boss.

The sheriff backed her 100 percent and posted as much on Facebook. "Additional training shall follow," he concluded.

The mom handled this brilliantly. She knew her rights, articulated them well, didn't lose her temper, and diffused the tension by leaving the area, even though she had every right to remain in the store.

Most Americans are cool with moms breastfeeding in public, just like most people around the world are, too. So the uptight people need to get over themselves.

A breast is not a dangerous weapon.

far too many virgins

A recent survey in Japan found that nearly half of unmarried men and women between 18 to 34 years of age are virgins.

Many of them say they would like to marry and raise a family, but 70 percent of all unmarried Japanese men and 60 percent of unmarried Japanese women in this age group are not involved in relationships.

Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research conducts this survey every five years, and with each study, the percentage of virgins and those not in relationships rises.

Many reasons are given for this trend, including that Japanese people have a very strong work ethic and often work extremely long hours.

With the world's oldest population and an alarmingly shrinking birthrate, coupled with very low immigration into the country, Japan's population is actually declining, with .95 births for every death.

Obviously, these people need to work a lot less and fuck a lot more. Unless they do something, their country and its economy will start shrinking at an accelerating rate not easily nor quickly reversed.

This leaves me wondering if an unattached, attractive Western male moved to Japan, could he get a lot of action? Or would sexless social mores soon afflict him, too?

For any unattached male, nonetheless, it almost seems worth a try. An entire country may be quietly begging to get fucked.

Look, Japan, this is how it's done...

bottled common sense

I had to laugh at a video segment that appeared on the USA Today website. Affluent parents with more money than common sense are paying as much as $700 American to hire a "baby sleep consultant" who will tech them how to coax their child to sleep.

Most parents I know use the time-honored trick that we also used if the kid wouldn't fall asleep. Bundle him into the car-seat and take him for a short ride.

I have never known that trick not to work. Ride around with the kid for twenty to thirty minutes and he'll be sound asleep. When you arrive home, he won't wake up and you just put him to bed. Problem solved.

Now I guess some parents couldn't do this. If you live in a place like Manhattan, you might not have a car.

That's why there are cradles. Put the kid in it, rock him slowly for about fifteen minutes, and he'll almost certainly drop off soundly.

There, I just saved you $700.

trump's man in the kremlin

Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff broke a story yesterday about how Carter Page, a friend and foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump, may have held backdoor talks with Kremlin officials about the possible lifting of economic sanctions against Russia if the Republican nominee becomes president. Page is known to have deep and extensive ties with many individuals close to Putin himself.

After the news broke, various pundits speculated that these secret talks, if they occurred, could violate federal criminal statutes. Federal law prohibits unauthorized persons from negotiating with foreign governments like Russia that are in an adversarial position with the United States.

Once again, this activity raises the question of why Donald Trump is so intent on forming a close alliance with Russia, which is ruled by a de facto dictator with a long history of anti-American activity. Russia is a declining economic and military power and the United States has no significant interest in closer economic ties, particularly if such ties eroded relations with our long-standing allies.

Of course, Donald Trump is known to have extensive personal financial ties to Russia. One has to wonder if his quest to form a close alliance with Putin's defacto dictatorship is all about helping Donald Trump and not about helping the United States or its citizenry.

IMHO, this troubling embrace of Russia is yet another reason why Donald Trump is utterly unfit to occupy the Oval Office. He cannot escape from his self-serving behavior and would put America at risk in the process.

I hope this topic will be on the agenda in Monday night's debate. And I hope the American people start paying attention to real issues like this in the campaign.

the business woman

Tumblr's random link generator previewed the New York Historical Society's page when I signed in to my account yesterday. Their daily listing featured the 1922 magazine cover below.

The entry included two scans from inside the magazine, one of which showed a woman typing. Apparently the 1922 idea of a "business woman" was some clerical position, given the covergirl is answering a phone as a switchboard operator.

That big heavy thing on her chest looks like it would be really uncomfortable after a while, particularly if you were a busty woman. A century later, the setup looks laughable, given people use wireless headsets.

Still, I guess it was progress with women out working. The 19th Amendment had only come into being two years earlier, granting women the right to work.

Women got their toe in the door, but then it took a long time to rise to the top. Women are Fortune 500 CEOs today but still are a small percentage in those ranks.

The historical society's Tumblr is a good teaser for their main webpage, which has a fascinating digital collection available online. I surfed around for a while, stopping at random places, and at one point read some early eighteen century letters where people talked about visiting peaceful Native-American villages not far from New York City.

The Internet is often like a rabbit hole where you can sucked down to who knows where. Sometimes you end up in some pretty insalubrious places but other times you make a wonderful discovery.

red asphalt

I was driving with the children the other day on a busy multi-lane road. They both ride in back in a baby-seat and child-seat respectively.

Traffic grew heavier and heavier as often is the case on Sydney highways, which are as bad if not worse than Los Angeles. Obviously, an obstruction of some sort was ahead. Traffic eventually became horrendously slow in that agonizing stop-start/stop-start where you move forward about a dozen feet and then wait a minute before moving again.

As I got closer, I could see emergency vehicles and wreckers trying to clear the roadway of mangled vehicles. Nearer the obstruction, emergency responders directed drivers into a single lane and then on the shoulder to pass the wreck.

For a few minutes our car was absolutely still, as were all of the cars around us. I did not look over to the side where the accident was and instead distracted Joey by having him look at and wave at a policewoman on the left side of the car.

And then I heard it, clear as day in his little voice.

"Blood, Mummy."

I could see in the rearview mirror he was looking near the wrecked cars. I looked over and saw what he saw.

A corpse lay covered with a sheet on the roadway. The outline of feet and a head were clearly visible underneath.

Blood seeped through where the head was. And blood had pooled on the roadway under the head.

"Somebody must have cut themselves," said in the cheeriest voice I could muster. Joey apparently did not realize what was underneath the sheet.

At that point our lane opened up, and I was able to move the car a few more feet forward. The corpse was no longer visible.

"Let's sing a song," I said in my cheeriest voice. I started belting out "You Are My Sunshine," a Joey favorite, and he joined in.

He never mentioned the bloody sheet again, that day nor the next. It was apparently forgotten.

I haven't been able to get that image out of my mind since this happened. Nonetheless, I am thankful someone had the good taste and sense to cover the body, because I don't know otherwise how I would explain a bloody, battered corpse to a child not quite four years old.

worse than tattoos?

I happened to read something recently that mentioned ritual scarification practiced by some aboriginal tribes. If you're unfamiliar with the term, scarification is the process of ritually cutting and/or burning permanent designs into the skin.

That led me to wonder if scarification would ever become a trend as big as tattoos. I've noticed on body modification webpages that it's practiced by the more extreme devotes, primarily men.

As you can see below, some women are sporting scarification as well. The ladies I've seen seem primarily to favor the torso or thighs, although I've seen some on their faces, too.

Some also combine both tattoos and scarification. One woman I saw had an unwanted old tattoo completely blanked out with a new tattoo done on top that was nothing but a field of pure black covering her entire upper chest. That, in turn, was modified with a large scarification pattern that went from shoulder to shoulder.

While I think tattoos are generally a bad idea, scarification seems like an even worse idea to me. At least with a tattoo there's the possibility it might be erased in the future if it was smallish.

But scarification is for life and there's no turning back, unless you want skin grafts. But that way you'd end up looking like a severe burn victim.

Also, this kind of thing could lead to a horrid infection if not done correctly or not allowed to heal properly. That, in turn, could lead to natural scars on top of the forced scars that would be impossible to remove without significant plastic surgery.

Why people deliberately torture themselves with extreme piercing and scarification is a mystery to me. But, hey, you should have the right to do it if you want.

In closing, is it just me or does the woman below look like she has a bicycle tire tread on her body?

are uggs sexy?

More than a few porn shoots feature women wearing nothing but uggs. An example is seen below. Are these sexy?

Ugg boots originated in Australia and New Zealand but have spread throughout the world. They were originally designed to be utilitarian and for warmth; they're still very popular here down under for that reason. In the US and UK, they were first associated with a hip beach/surf culture and then spread into wider acceptance.

I have a pair I wear around the house in colder weather as does my husband. I have never found them attractive. I think they make women's feet look like hooves and never wear them out of the ouse for that reason.

So I've never understood the attraction of having a naked woman wear them. My husband has something of a boot fetish. He loves the look of a naked woman wearing skintight, knee-high or higher boots with spike heels -- the antithesis of uggs.

I asked him if his boot kink included uggs. He said absolutely not. He thinks they're as un-sexy than rubber wellies, another form of utilitarian boot seen less in porn, for whatever reason.

Of course not all men are like my husband. Some, obviously, like a naked woman in uggs. Why remains a mystery to both my husband and me, however. But then, kinks and fetishes don't always make a lot of sense even to those who have them

wrinkle-free genes

My favorite uncle uploaded a whole lot of family photos that he scanned and made available to anyone on his email list. They date back anywhere from a few weeks ago to more than a hundred years.

Some of them I had seen before but most of them I had not. He thoughtfully provided identifications for all the ones he could.

One thing I noticed after scanning through the photos for a while: the relatives on my father's side of the family have very few wrinkles, no matter their age.

So hopefully I'll be fortunate and inherit those genes. My face is shaped like the people on my father's side of the family and I resemble that side far more than I do my mother's.

Although my mother shares much the same ethic roots as my father -- primarily Irish with a little German and other Anglo-Saxon mongrels thrown in -- her family does not have the wrinkle-free genes. I have not seen my mother in almost ten years, but I do see family gathering pictures of her and my older sisters that my brother shares with me via email.

All the women in my mom's family have prominent facial lines, sagging necks and double chins, even the women of normal weight. Most of those women all have a much rounder face shape than I have.

Of course, I could turn out to have a hybrid of both -- the face shape from my father's family and the Basset Hound skin from my mother's family.

on pins and needles

The terrible news this week is that the US presidential election has suddenly grown very close. The chance that fraudulent huckster Donald Trump could become President increased dramatically for a variety of reasons.

I've already detailed many reasons why he is woefully unfit to occupy the Oval Office but have not yet focused on perhaps the most important one: he could shape the Supreme Court for the next three to four decades.

He has already promised several times to hand over responsibility for selecting Supreme Court justices to an extremist conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation. Some experts have argued this would be an unconstitutional abdication of a presidential power to an unelected organization.

Many court experts believe at least two and as many as four Supreme Court vacancies will occur during the next President's first term; already one seat has been vacant for month. If Trump is elected, he would fill those available slots.

An arch conservative-dominated Supreme Court could roll back advances from the last sixty years. Goodbye to equal rights, voting rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, and many more. Hello 1950s.

The absurd reality of this is that Trump isn't an actual conservative, but he's sold his soul to the Heritage Foundation and others to become President. He will say and do anything to get elected, never mind that his positions on issues have changed dramatically in the past year.

America, this man is a danger to the future of our great country. It's not a joke any more. He could be elected. That must not happen. Don't let him fool you into voting for him.

how long is too long?

The New Yorker recently published a piece on a new Japanese art film about daily life that's five hours and seventeen minutes long. The magazine's film writer gushed about the movie while using phrases like "painfully close contact with the agonizing intimacies of contemporary life."

Hmmm. Painfully? Agonizing? Sounds like dental surgery without Novocaine. I don't think I'm a philistine and have enjoyed many art films, but this write up does not make me want to see the movie.

While I think creative artists should innovate, I also believe they should adhere to some conventions. If you do a play where everyone whispers so they are unintelligible, for instance, that may be innovative and unconventional but it's also unwatchable.

You could think of many similar comparisons: a potter throws a soup bowl the size of a thimble; a composer creates an opera featuring nothing but people screaming at the top of their lungs; a poet makes up his own alphabet and words then writes a poem. And so on and so on.

Movies have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They should tell a narrative story that fits within a reasonable window of time.

In sum: Less is more.

IMHO a 317-minute film should be cut down to no more than about two hours. A skillful editor can do that. Find the essence of the story and don't fall in love with every frame you shot.

Art for art sake is not art, I'd argue. It's an exercise in tedium.

a tattoo trainwreck

I usually post horrible tattoo pictures directly on the blog. However, the one I have for today is so bad, I'll put it in a link you can only see if you click through.

In a nutshell, a very weird man in Texas is addicted to tattoos. Correction: make that addicted to very bad tattoos.

The worst thing about him isn't the fact that he actually has fourteen different tattoos on his body of people taking a shit.

No, his worst tattoo is the Roman numeral 666 inked on his penis and balls. Not only is it a bad idea, it's really badly done.

So now comes the link. Don't click if this kind of thing disgusts you; scroll down instead. Or, if it doesn't, click this to see.

I mean, does that guy look like a complete doofus or what?

Okay, now here is some adorable eyebleach so you can just forget about looking at that guy's nasty junk if you braved the click-through link.

greed is good?

I've read several articles in recent weeks about billionaire Sumner Redstone and his complex legal battles playing out in court and in the media. In case you don't know, he's the 93-year-old majority owner of Viacom/Paramount/CBS and related media companies.

The crux of the legal wrangling pits his sometimes-estranged daughter against two of Redstone's female companions for control of his fortune. Until recently, the latter two were due to inherit tens of millions each and have already received tens of millions in gifts from Redstone.

Currently, the daughter has the upper hand while the former companions have been disinherited and pushed out of the picture as a result of litigation. Redstone has also largely relinquished control of his companies to other people, one of whom is his daughter.

In a nutshell, a lot of vultures who already have tens if not hundreds of millions each are suing each other for a bigger share of the Redstone money pie. Redstone himself suffers from moderate dementia and has difficulty speaking and seems largely oblivious to the legal brouhaha.

Reading about people like this always makes me shake my head. If you already have a hundred million, why do you need hundreds of millions more, if not billions?

How much is too much?

Money brings financial security and peace of mind. At some point, I have to think too much money negates that, at least to a certain extent.

IMHO, a net worth of about five million is the maximum anyone needs. With that kind of nest egg, you can provide for any contingency, no matter how terrible.

I can't imagine, if I had five million, that I'd feel a need for more. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I know myself.

Of course, I may never have five million, so this could just be digital naval gazing.

send in the clowns

Jeremy Scott is a controversial American designer because many of his clothes have been mocked by fashion critics and he's been sued repeatedly for plagiarism. Nonetheless, he's still an extremely popular figure in the fashion world.

He unveiled his Spring 2017 collection this week and many of the outfits are beyond ludicrous. I will say, however, I like a few of them.

This one with the dog leash is fundamentally unwearable. This outfit with the big cartoon legs makes a statement, but you could only wear it once because otherwise it becomes a cliche.

This sequined jumpsuit ensemble looks like a costume for a bad 1980s scifi flick. This black jumpsuit is so impractical I'm just shaking my head with disbelief. The enormous button looks like a dinner plate and the stiff cape looks like a baby's wading pool.

I actually like this midriff combo because of the print but would worry it would become tiresome if worn too many times. I really like this sundress because of the unusual fabric and the design, although it's poorly fit on that model.

The dress seen below takes the cake for preposterous. How do you sit in that thing? How do you take a pee? How do you hang it in your closet?

In closing, I hate the pink eyeshadow on some of the models. It makes them look like they have a bad case of pinkeye.

too pretty for porn

I've seen the girl below, named Adel, appear in many softcore porn shoots. She's done a lot of solos like the one seen below (source).

IMHO, she's too pretty for porn. Had she not done erotica, she probably could land a lot of work as a commercial model.

I suspect she may be from Eastern Europe, where the opportunities to do higher-end modeling seem quite limited. She may have settled on porn thinking it was big money, not realizing she could make so much more as a mainstream model.

Unfortunately, the way the legit modeling world operates, she almost certainly now cannot land mainstream work because of her porn past. That has always struck me as a particularly pointless talent barrier.

Unless someone regularly looks at porn, he or she would not be able to spot the erotic models and thus would never know. As for porn consumers, would they even care?

blogiversary

Today marks eight years since I started this blog. I vowed to put up a post every day and I have stuck with that.

Yes, a lot of what I post is gibberish, but I have fun doing it and will keep on going. So thanks to my long-time readers and occasional readers and anyone wandering by for throwing in your thoughts when the muse strikes.

I know I sometimes piss off people with an entry, but you can't please everybody all the time. I speak my mind, and sometimes that bothers people, but hey, I'm human and fallible.

I think back to how different my life was eight years ago when compared to today. That was more than a quarter of my life ago. I am so much happier now than I was back then.

And, yes, today is my birthday, too. I'm now thirty-one. That's old to some but young to others. In the end, it doesn't matter how many years you have under your belt but what you do with those years.

So I will continue blogging every day. To infinity and beyond!

the idiot speaks

I recently discovered the very funny -- and frightening -- website Donny Flip Flop that collects memes featuring many of the absolutely moronic statements that Donald Trump has made.

I mostly read coverage about the election back in the states. I infrequently watch video coverage on the net.

Hence, reading what Trump says makes it abundantly clear the man is a babbling clown. He doesn't think about what he says and just yammers nonsensically on and on.

I'm amazed that people think he's somehow profound or smart or has leadership qualities. He's just a big chattering box of ignorant nothing.

The text below is something Trump actually said during the so-called "Commander in Chief Forum" this past week. He vomits out a lot of words but, at the same time, he says absolutely nothing at all.

Please, America, wake up. Take off your blinders. This man is woefully unfit for the Oval Office.

the heroin family

You may have heard news reports about an Ohio police department that found a couple zonked on heroin while their four-year-old son rode in a carseat in back. The mother had passed out as she began overdosing and the father had nearly passed out and was attempting to drive her to the hospital.

Police wisely prevented him from leaving and arrested the couple. Their small boy was removed by child services.

The police department distributed the photo to the media because, as they said, "we feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess. This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."

That's a noble goal but the police department released the pictures without obscuring the child's face. They say they want to protect children, but then they thoughtlessly shame the boy by shattering his anonymity.

The photos are seen below (enlargement) with the child's face obscured.

the ripple effect

Seventy-year-old Larry Ripple of Kansas was tired of living with his wife and said he'd rather be in jail than continue living with her. So he robbed a local bank last week and then waited in the lobby for the police and FBI to arrive and arrest him.

Why he couldn't walk out on his wife and live somewhere else was not reported. It sounds like she wore the proverbial pants in the family.

The system thwarted his plot, however. When Ripple appeared before a magistrate after his arrest, rather than being held for trial, he was released on his own recognizance and sent home.

What is it with men who can't stand up to their wives? I can understand when women feel this way, because a husband is usually bigger and stronger and could batter her.

Of course, domineering women and timid men could gravitate toward each other. If that's the case, then the man either has to grow a pair or accept that he's a doormat.

the pinocchio family

I just read an interesting article in a recent issue of Vanity Fair magazine about a suspected Wall Street con artist and his fabulist father.

The son, Andrew Caspersen, has been criminally charged with running a mini-Madoff scheme that allegedly bilked investors out of at least $95 million. Many of the victims were his friends and members of his own close family, including his mother.

His father committed suicide a few years ago when he was all but destitute after having long convinced many people he was a billionaire when in fact he was anything but. Although he was a habitual liar, the father apparently never did anything that would warrant criminal charges.

Like many people, I find stories about con artists to be fascinating for some reason. I would be horrified at living in constant fear that I could be exposed as a criminal at any moment.

I could understand swindlers who planned to cheat a certain number of people and then skip town with the proceeds. It's a classic case of take the money and run.

But I can't understand people like Madoff and Caspersen who never planned to skip off with their ill-gotten gains. They put down considerable local stakes, owned real estate, and planned to stay in town no matter what.

I guess it's narcissism and/or extreme denial that keeps these people from realizing such scams almost always have an unhappy ending for the criminal. It may take a while, but you almost certainly will be caught.

parental coercion

The Washington Post ran an interesting column the other day about college students forbidden by their parents from studying liberal arts even if they want to. Instead, they're pressured into pre-professionalism programs with an eye toward an eventual MD, JD, or MBA.

That brought to mind my own upbringing. My parents, both MDs, decided early on their children would be MDs or JDs. My three siblings became two doctors and a lawyer. I became a high school dropout and an exotic dancer.

When I was seven or eight or nine or so, I can remember my mother scolding me for mediocre report cards. "You could never get into medical school or law school with those kinds of grades," I was told. "You want to end up working in a supermarket?"

When I said I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer, I wasn't punished but I was answered with shaking heads and rolling eyes. My mother was more guilty of this than my father, although he certainly condoned what she said by remaining silent.

I don't think at any point I said to myself I would deliberately do poorly in school so I couldn't become a doctor or lawyer, but I never felt compelled to live up to my parents' standards, either. At some point they realized I was a lost cause and decided I needed therapy instead.

The students in the article obviously didn't rebel like I did. They undoubtedly were always good students and motivated by whatever they studied.

But I felt sorry for them nonetheless, because they were pushed into careers they don't really want. By middle age or so, many of them will probably be deeply unhappy and depressed and unfulfilled.

The bottom line is too much parenting can do more harm than good. My husband and I vowed early that we would not make important decisions for our children when they grew older before they had a chance to make those decisions for themselves.

My own experience gives me plenty of reason never to veer from that course.

women can't find their lady parts

A new survey of one thousand British women found that half could not locate a vagina on medical diagrams of female reproductive organs. For those over 65, less than one in four could correctly label the female anatomy.

In contrast, 70 per cent of women correctly identified the male anatomy, including foreskin, penis and testes.

Okay, I found this staggering. How could you not know all about what was down there and how it works?

What's dangerous about this is if a woman isn't body aware, she's far less likely to know about the signs and symptoms of a gynecological cancer.

If you treat your lady parts like an unknown foreign country, you could be seriously harming your future health.

Look and learn, ladies, look and look. Make friends with your coochie.

amnesia or acceptance?

My husband asked me last night, "so what do you want to do for next Monday?"

"Huh?" I responded. "What's so special about next Monday?"

"You seriously don't know? You forgot?"

I felt a momentary panic, like I was supposed to remember something very important to him and it slipped my mind. What a shit you are, I cursed myself. But I was drawing a total blank. Finally, he laughed.

"Next Monday is your birthday, kitten."

Oh, yeah, right. Duh. I'll be a year older, but, meh, whatever.

I had, honestly, forgot my birthday was almost here. And I think that's a good thing, really. Last year, I was somewhat freaking out about turning thirty, about being an older woman, no longer a kid, nearly middle aged, forty was now on the horizon, blah blah blah.

Now, I'm nonplussed. Yes, I'll be thirty-one, a year closer to forty. But I can handle it.

Unless-- unless-- forgetting my birthday means I'm getting really old old. That I'm starting to have memory lapses due to aging.

Nah, I'm just funning. I'm not worried about that. It's way too early to think about memory loss and aging.

Isn't it?

I'm dark and twisted

As the parent of two small children, I should be outraged at this video. But I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe because it's so deliberately offensive I can't be offended.

sex with a chicken sandwich?

The more sensational media was beside itself this past week because of a now widely circulated video they're describing as a man having sex with a McDonald's chicken sandwich. "Man Has Sex With McDonald's Sandwich" screams one London tabloid headline.

I found the actual video inside a minute with Google. It turned out to be what I expected: a man is masturbating with a chicken sandwich. He has his hard penis between the sandwich's two halves and is simply using it as a masturbation toy.

This is not the first time the media got itself all excited about a "man has sex with a [item name here]" story. I seem to remember a headline around the holidays about a man who had sex with Christmas decorations on someone's lawn.

You can't have sex with an inanimate object, and the media should know this. You can have sex with a dead bear, but you can't have sex with a teddy bear. You're using the teddy bear as a masturbation toy.

This all begs the question about why the media thinks the chicken sandwich violation is newsworthy at all. The answer is obvious: sensation sells.

check your credit

How often do you check your credit reports? Chances are you already know there's a free, government-run website where you can review all three credit agencies' reports from the same platform without cost.

If not, then this is it.

Even though I'm in Australia, my credit cards are from US institutions. So if anyone tried to do anything hinky with my credit accounts or applied for credit in my name, I would know from looking at my credit reports in the US.

Federal law entitles you to one free copy per year of your credit report from each of the credit agencies. You can get all three at one time or each one at different times.

I pull one free credit report every four months, going round-robin through the three credit agencies. Wednesday was the end of the eighth month, so it was time to check another credit report, which I did yesterday. There were no problems, which is what I was expecting.

sexless millennials

Recently The Washington Post ran an article about why millenials are having a lot less sex than previous generations. So then the Los Angeles Times ran a piece chiming on on the same topic.

The bottom line is there isn't one big primary reason people of my generation are more sexless but a variety of little reasons. Both pieces did tend to focus more on unmarried millenials compared to married ones like me.

One eighteen-year-old male virgin interviewed in the Times piece said he preferred porn over dating and sex. "It's quicker. It's more accessible. What you see is what you get."

Wow. Don't knock it until you try it, pal. Yeah, it takes a little bit of effort to put down your videogame doodad and find a woman to date, but the rewards of actual romance and love and sex are a whole lot better than online porn.

My conclusion after reading the two articles and digesting what the interviewees had to say about their career- and achievement-oriented selves: I'm glad I'm not any of those people.