nose candy

I read an article over the weekend about how American baseball star Jose Fernandez was legally drunk and had cocaine in his system when he died recently in a Florida boating accident.

The booze I can understand. He was unwinding and got carried away. He apparently was not piloting the boat at the time of the crash so he was behaving responsibly that way.

The cocaine is what surprised me. He had an absolutely golden future ahead of him. He was young and already a huge star. So why did he need to toot?

I know some people think cocaine isn't addictive, but that's a misinformed belief. While not everyone is addicted who uses it, most people who use it do become addicted, to the detriment of their health and their finances.

If you have to get wild, get drunk. But doing drugs is just stupid.

I have never used drugs -- never even tried them -- so I don't understand the attraction. I knew girls who danced in the same clubs I did who tooted up and they were all a mess.

I can see how people were seduced by drugs decades ago, but too much information is available now about the stupidity of drug use. It's all downside and no upside. Just say no.

soul train wreck

I was looking for a really awful dance video to email to a friend and stumbled on this gem. "The Bump" was a big dance craze circa 1975.

This apparently was from some television program. Maybe it was one of those programs where anyone who showed up could be on the show, but you think they would've positioned the better dancers in front of the camera.

Well, at least everybody looks like they're having fun.

sculpture by the sea

Sydney is once again hosting its fantastic annual "Sculpture by the Sea" exhibition where more than a hundred large sculptures by major Australian and international artists are displayed on the one kilometer stretch between Tamarama and Bondi Beach.

Most of the works displayed over the past several years are gathered together in large photographs on the exhibition's webpage.

I took the kiddies to see the works a few days ago. While small children can easily become bored in a standard art exhibition, this is not the case because the public is encouraged to touch and sit on many of the scupltures. While some children took that a little too much to heart as if they were playground equipment, most were properly supervised by an adult.

Joey's favorite was the giant paper airplane -- actually made from steel -- caught in what I presume is meant to be a radar scanner of some sort.

please re-elect gerald

This is actually a real campaign ad featuring both the real candidate and his wife. It's very funny, but it's also very effective IMHO.

The gentleman is running for re-election to a county commissioner slot in Texas. His wife is the real star of the ad.

In less than a month, the ad has garnered close to two million hits on YouTube. He's actually facing a pretty uphill battle because he's a Republican running in a heavily Democratic area. Will this make a difference?

why is election season so long?

My husband saw me reading coverage of the American election online last night and said something like, "I can't believe how long campaigns go on in the US." He then asked me why that was the case.

True, it is ridiculously long and getting longer every cycle. The reason is pretty simple: there's a defined ending point but no defined starting point. So the starter's pistol keeps getting fired earlier and earlier.

A federal election day must be the first Tuesday in November after the first Monday. That's written into the constitution.

But there's no corresponding day for primaries, caucuses, conventions, and the like. They aren't even mentioned in the constitution. It's up to the states -- and to a lesser extent the political parties -- to hold those whenever.

I presume, because of the First Amendment, there's no way to compel states and parties into changing anything.

If a political party wanted to host a presidential debate for the 2020 cycle the week after election day 2016 there would be no way to change that. And the political media would probably show up to cover it.

All of this causes a stalemate of wills, so to speak, hence nothing will change. Election cycles will keep getting longer and longer and, arguably, a higher and higher percentage of people will tune it all out as a result.

Sometimes democracy is pretty damned counterproductive.

hold my hand

My husband and I have always held hands in public. We did it more before we had children because now we have a hand or two occupied with them.

Nonetheless, when the two of us are out someplace by ourselves, then we almost always hold hands when we walk together, whether it be in a store or restaurant or wherever.

I've noticed when I'm out and about that some older couples are holding hands in addition to younger one. I see some of our neighbors doing it when they're out for walks, and I know some of those couples have been together for decades.

I remember visiting my grandparents when they were in their eighties and seeing them walking away from the house at some distance, when they probably thought they were unobserved, and they were holding hands. That moment sticks in my memory because I remember that's when I realized they were still very much in love.

The body language of some couples out in public -- those not holding hands -- is sometimes very telling because you can sense a hostility between them. They're almost like magnetic forces repelling each other.

This could almost be a test of how strong your marriage is: do you hold hands out in public, no matter how long you've been married? If you don't, how would your spouse respond if you suddenly asked or took his or her hand in public?

hooker hooves

In my opinion, the woman's shoes seen below are quite unattractive (click for full-size head-to-toe photo). They're too clunky and have too much platforming with too much slope.

The designer hid all the platforming inside the shoe, and that obscures the woman's natural foot shape. She looks more like she has hooves than feet.

I think the maximum amount of heel a woman should wear is four inches but closer to three is better. Anything higher is just too ungainly and unnatural. Ridiculous five- and six-inch heels -- and even higher -- are an orthopedic disaster in waiting.

The shoes she's wearing look like they could be by Stuart Weitzman or Giuseppe Zanotti, both who favor steep and extreme heels. Why is it always men -- and often gay men -- who dream up shoes like these?

broken penis blues

A British bricklayer became a tabloid sensation over the weekend after sharing his story about how he broke his penis during vigorous doggystyle sex with his girlfriend.

Technically, given a man's willy has no actual bones, a penis cannot break. However, the spongy mass inside his dong which hardens during an erection (the corpus cavernosum) can suffer a traumatic rupture during particularly boisterous sex.

Based on the various articles I read, it sounds like he was pounding with intense slamming while she roughly thrust backwards concurrently. Presumably his manhood popped out of her cookie at some point, and rather than sliding right back in, it was abruptly bent when his rigid cock and her thigh collided.

He was in hospital recovering for four days and was told not to engage in any sex for six weeks thereafter. He also had to be circumcised because of the damage done. Nonetheless, the couple tried sex again shortly after he left hospital but stopped because it was too painful for him.

They sound like a fun couple. Talk about fuckstruck.

While he should physically recover, apparently he may be rendered sterile because of what happened. Presumably his balls would still make baby batter but perhaps that wouldn't escape during ejaculation.

If you are absolutely dying of wonder about what what his damaged manhood looks like, this webpage has graphic uncensored photos. They're somewhat yucky but not nearly as bad as some online photos of medical incidents I've seen. Nevertheless, you have been warned.

fake or real?

This short video is alleged to be footage from a security camera in a British electronics store. A customer appears to knock over four wide-screen televisions accidentally, causing thousands in damages.

This video has been shared millions of times in the past few days and garnered headlines around the world. However, some people are bow questioning whether the footage is really a publicity stunt and no "accident" occurred.

The reactions certainly seem somewhat staged in the footage. And, the display seems to be rigged to cause an accident. Otherwise, why position the four sets so close and so perilously? You sell wide-screens by emphasizing the theater-like experience.

At the same time, this seems like a publicity stunt with little real value and rather expensive. Why would this drive customers to the store simply because of an accident?

the porn industry is struggling

The New Yorker magazine recently ran a very interesting article about the state of today's porn industry. The premise is right at the top of the piece: "While the Internet has made porn ubiquitous, it has also thrown the industry into severe decline."

This is what I took away from the article: porn certainly won't go away. It will continue to proliferate. At the same time, the quality probably will continue to deteriorate.

Forget about story and production values and anything remotely entertaining. Porn has devolved into nothing but filmed fucking. It's just video voyeurism and utterly nothing else.

The erotic potential of porn was lost somewhere along the way. The result really is nothing more than legalized prostitution that has been filmed -- it's only about the money and nothing more.

It almost seems like porn has become a commodity like toilet paper or deodorant. Lots of people need it, but few people pay any attention to it except when they're using it and that's only in passing.

Erotica once had potential in its golden age but no more. Will it ever have a renaissance? Time will only tell but it doesn't seem particularly likely.

donald trump is melting

Time magazine has the perfect cover for this week's issue. We're eighteen days from the national election and Trump's campaign is dissolving around him.

The likelihood of his election are now close to nonexistent. Depending on which poll tracker you consult at what time or day, his chances of getting elected range anywhere from 3 percent to 12 percent. Trump is also expected to badly damage Republican chances in downballot races for the Senate, the House, and at the state-level.

I am so over the clown Trump that I won't write much about him as a person today. He's done just about everything wrong he could possibly have done while running for national office.

When the election is over and he's sent packing, which now seems a near certainty, I hope both major political parties put together some kind of internal taskforces to study how to prevent a demagogue from hijacking a national race again.

The Democrats have some stopgaps that protect them from a Trump-like candidate ever appearing on their ballot. Their use of proportional primary/caucus voting and super-delegates ensures that a rogue can't steer their party into the ditch. The Republicans now need to engage some kind of safeguards, too.

The clickbait-obsessed and scandal-of-the-day media needs to be steered and shaped more by the parties IMHO. They need to drive their own parties' publicity and to stop throwing themselves at the mercy of the media.

Some might fault my comments here and object that Trump was democratically elected. Yes -- he won democratically in a badly flawed process that could easily be sidetracked and dominated by a demagogue.

Our country has been battered internationally by what Trump has done to a national election. Living abroad, I regularly see how non-Americans view his campaign and what it says about America.

People around the world look up to us, but when we have an unqualified clown a heartbeat away from winning, that reflects badly on all of us.

This must not happen ever again to America.

before the fall

Two years ago I wrote a blog post about novelist Noah Hawley's book The Good Father, which I gave my highest recommendation. The same author published a new novel earlier this year, titled Before the Fall, and I had been dying to read it.

The library here finally acquired some copies, and I waited with anticipation as my name inched up the reserve list. I hoped I would not be disappointed by having too high of expectations.

The book finally arrived on Monday. I just finished reading it about an hour ago.

Needless to say, I was blown away. I think the novel was even better than The Good Father, which I really loved. I don't have to take the book back to the library right yet, so I'm going to start reading it again it was so good.

The book has been marketed as a thriller, but I don't think that's quite accurate. It's certainly a page-turner and has a mystery at its core that you wait to see unraveled, but it's not a conventional thriller in the terms of a hero racing the clock to stop some catastrophe.

The book opens with a private jet crashing in the ocean between Martha's Vineyard and New York City. The rest of the story is told in media res about the plane's passengers and crew, the survivors, and how the media reacts to the accident.

Without question Hawley is a masterful writer. His characters and dialog are exceptional. The nuances in his storytelling and structuring are amazing. He hides setups throughout the book that don't seem like setups, but then when you hit a reveal, you realize that he brilliantly sowed the seeds for the twist earlier in the book.

If you read novels, I absolutely, positively recommend Before the Fall. I'm certainly not alone in my praise. The book has been lauded by major critics and landed in the top best-seller lists.

My only caveat would be: don't read this on an airline flight. You might find it too disturbing.

hint for heloise

When I was a child, I used to read the syndicated column "Hints from Heloise" religiously in the newspaper. If you're not familiar with this, Heloise is a chatty column with friendly tips about easy household fixes to common problems and clever cleaning solutions.

One that has always stuck with me -- literally -- is her handy tip to remove chewing gum from your clothes. Simply put the garment in a plastic bag into the freezer, remove the bag several hours later, and then break away the frozen glue. It works like a charm.

I have vague memories of sharing "Hints from Heloise" tips at the family dinner table when I was a child. As the youngest family member, perhaps I thought it was some kind of valuable contribution I could make.

The only one I remember appreciating them was my brother, who would then make up ridiculously bogus "Hints from Heloise" to make me laugh. My all-time favorite was "how to remove a live weasel from inside your vacuum cleaner while you're wearing a straight-jacket."

Not too long ago, I came up with a "Hint from Heloise" all by myself. The husband likes to tinker with motorcycles in the garage and sometimes gets grease ground into his jeans. Even though, as a former seaman, he's happy to do his own wash, he could never completely remove the grease stains.

So I put on my thinking cap and came up with a solution. I mixed five tablespoons of common shampoo and five tablespoons of dish soap per gallon of hot water in a bucket. I placed the oil-stained jeans in the hot mixture and then hand-agitated the stained areas for about ten minutes while wearing rubber gloves. I left the jeans in the hot water mixture and let it stand for 48 hours (the water, of course, cooled to room temperature). I then drained, squeezed out the extra water, and hung on the line outside to dry. Once dried, I dumped it in with other dirty clothes in the wash machine.

I've now done this with various stained garments about two dozen times. Almost without exception, the oil stains will completely disappear.

BTW, if you want to see more hints from the real Heloise, I discovered she has her own webpage.

the somnambulist

Last night, for the first time in my life, I sleepwalked. I've never done this while married. I checked with my brother by email, and he said he had no memory that I ever did this as a child.

According to my husband, at about 2:00 in the morning, I arose from bed and went into the bathroom to piddle. But then instead of returning to bed, I slowly shuffled beside the bed toward the door to the hall.

I opened the door and went into the hall, which was dark save for a nightlight. I then sort of moved back and forth in several directions, never moving more than a step.

At that point he came out in the hall to see what the matter was, given he suspected I was sleepwalking and the stairs were not far away. He had a shipmate who used to sleepwalk and his mates, including my husband, used to watch out for him.

James gently called to me and shook me while I bobbled around in the hall. At that point I started to waken. Unlike some reactions I've since read about online, I didn't feel any distress but, instead, the experience was rather pleasant.

Since my little adventure in somnambulism, I've been reading about it online. It's obviously something I'll need to consult a professional about if it happens again in any frequency, but for now the reasons will remain a mystery.

national anthem protests

I've read some news items from the United States about athletes engaging in political protest by not standing during the national anthem. They are certainly free to do that if they wish, but the cynic in me is left wondering if such acts are sincere or if they're really motivated by narcissism.

These protests also raise a question I've never seen satisfactorily answered: why is the national anthem even being played at a sporting event? What does it have to do with a ballgame?

I have similar thoughts about the pledge of allegiance, often recited at various events. Why is that even necessary? What true purpose does it serve? Its constant use as a touchstone seems more like something you'd see in the Soviet Union or Maoist China, where crowds chanted slogans and pledged undying support for a dictator.

It's no secret many Americans have an abysmal understanding of American history and civics. They know all the words to the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance, but they probably couldn't name more than a handful of constitutional amendments, if any at all.

Rather than playing the national anthem or everyone reciting the pledge of allegiance over and over and over again, arguably an inspirational one-minute reading about some important historical event or civics milestone would be of much greater value.

Arguably, patriotism is not expressed by singing songs or rotely reciting pledges. Instead, patriotism is expressed by truly understanding your country's history and how it all works.

Only then can you appreciate why it is extraordinary and worthy of great pride.

bliss

I had my iPod on shuffle yesterday and this track popped up. I've always found it profoundly beautiful and somber.

It's somewhat symphonic and somewhat filmic. Unfortunately, whoever posted this on YouTube did not mix any images with it, which could make it more stunning.

Bliss is a now apparently disbanded Danish musical group. Their material is all over the map, with some of it frenetic and electronic and other pieces more like the one featured here.

Where they went and why the went does not to seem to be a secret the internet is willing to reveal.

bob dylan

Like many people, I was surprised at the announcement this past week that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Public reactions ranged everywhere from ecstatic to contemptuous.

I was not one of the ones who thought this was some kind of brilliance. With so many writers of actual literature being overlooked, I couldn't help feeling the Dylan selection was more about making the Nobel Prize seem edgy and au courant.

There's nothing wrong with writing song lyrics and Dylan has had a long and hugely successful career full of extraordinary achievements. But it all boils down to the question of whether pop song lyrics are literature.

I would argue they are not.

Literature is a written body of work. The word itself derives from the Latin word for the act of writing.

A song may be beautiful and brilliantly written, but it's not a piece of literature meant to be experienced in its written form. It's meant to be experienced in its musical form. To experience the full effect of a Bob Dylan song, you listen to the song; you don't read the lyrics.

Here's a thought: rather than the literature award, perhaps the Nobel Committee should have recognized Dylan with a new award -- The Nobel Prize for Music. That, I think, would be much more noteworthy and a greater honor.

Some have speculated that Dylan may not accept this award. Jean-Paul Sartre famously declined his Nobel Prize. Time will tell.

Notwithstanding the press coverage of this year's award to Dylan, another Nobel fact received far less media coverage:

Not one single prize was awarded to a woman.

one or two

I've always found the quantifier one or two to be illogical, as in "one or two people met with him" or "the police found one or two previous incidents." I see this regularly in print.

So which is it? How could you confuse once with twice? If one person called you, how could you think two people called?

Now I could understand "seven or eight people applied for the" whatever. That makes perfect sense -- too many people to quantify exactly in a memory amalgamation, so you're given an approximation.

I suspect this "one or two" business is a pet peeve for me because it represents sloppy, lazy writing. The writer fails to pin down the subject and doesn't strive for conciseness and clarity. If the topic is anything of importance, it shouldn't be either/or. Keep at it until you have an answer.

spying on australia

The news here in the last several days have been filled with stories about how an unnamed foreign nation was spying on the Australian government by hacking into their computers via the Bureau of Meteorology.

While the government did not name the country involved, various media outlets have said it was China.

I know this is serious business. With that said, both my husband and I couldn't help chuckling at this news. It would make sense if someone tried to hack a superpower. But Australia? Seriously? What, you couldn't crack Peru?

Some ransomware was found, and that's understandable -- pay us money or well shred your system. That was only a small part of the intrusion, however. The exact details beyond that are very vague in the media reports so far.

Obviously there's a reason for this and it is a serious issue, but at the same time it does sound like a punchline or the setup for a caper comedy.

What's next -- hacking McDonald's to find what the secret is in the secret sauce? Is nothing sacred any more?

inhuman humans

When I was leaving a routine doctor's appointment yesterday, as I stepped out of the medical building, an older man of about sixty was lurching toward the entrance door and asking "is this the door to the eye doctor?" I could see he had just stepped from a car that was already moving away from the curb and into the parking lot.

The man clearly had trouble seeing while I was giving him the directions he wanted. That didn't seem to help because he couldn't focus on anything.

I realized he was all but blind so I took him by the arm and led him to the office he wanted and inside. A young woman behind the desk recognized him and took over from there.

I walked back into the parking lot and saw the vehicle that had dropped off the apparently blind man. Whoever it was behind the wheel was obviously healthy and young -- he was focused entirely on his mobile phone, either text messaging or playing a game.

I was sorely tempted to tell him what a shit he was for dumping that poor man at the door and then just driving into the lot so he could sit on his ass. Had I not been coming out the entrance the moment he arrived, the poor man could easily have ended up in the busy street which is very near the entrance door.

I decided against it because I was alone and the younger man was quite large. No amount of me telling him what a dipshit he was would cure his behavior. But a part of me still regrets not speaking my mind.

I'm guessing the younger man was some relative of the older one. No matter how troubled their relationship might be, it's no excuse for ignoring basic human decency.

freefall into the abyss

Each week, so much has happened since my previous week's Trump installment and this one's no exception. The very good news is that his campaign and the polls are in freefall now and, historically, it's almost certainly too late for him to turn it around.

A veteran political wonk opined on Sunday night following the second debate: "Sometime over the last week -- probably after the release of the video showing him bragging about sexual assault -- Donald Trump realized he wasn't going to win this election.... He's now speaking only to the audience for a speculated media venture."

Trump is widely believed to be planning the rollout of a new cable channel and/or media outlet after the election that would feature himself as the star where he and select guests could peddle various conspiracy and hairbrained political theories. Whether or not he can pull that off will remain to be seen.

For this reason, some seasoned pundits have speculated he will never concede the race after he loses and immediately start peddling his newest conspiracy theory: he won in a landslide but the results were rigged to make it appear he lost. Some of his support almost certainly will fall away with that, but his hardcore will embrace the crazy even more tightly.

As to Trump's dismal chances of winning, Politico put up a new article last night with the title Trump looks into the polling abyss -- No candidate in the modern era of polling has climbed back from a similar deficit in October to win the presidency. I like the sound of that.

The race is not over, and there's always a chance polling could be wildly off, but historically that has never happened on a widespread scale. I thought early on Trump would implode in the general election, and I certainly hope that prediction holds true, as now seems to be the case.

If Trump loses by the expected historic margin, how will the Republican Party react to that humiliating loss? Will they finally purge the crazy or will the internal civil war continue -- or worsen?

Whatever the answer, I will be happy to see the back of Trump once and for all. Hopefully in the 2020 race, the election will move back in a more normal direction. Our country both needs and deserves it. The world is counting on us.

Right click to see an enlargement of the illustration.

how american politics went insane

The Atlantic ran a fascinating and somewhat longish piece in their penultimate issue titled "How American Politics Went Insane."

The article makes some very interesting and counter-intuitive arguments about how American politics went wrong. In short, some of the reforms of the last century or so, designed to make things better, actually may have made things worse.

Greater democratization, for instance, may lead to more political instability and then threaten the democracy itself. Term limits and campaign finance reform similarly may also cause instability.

In what may sound like a strange concept, on the whole the article posits the question of whether too much democratization is a bad thing.

The piece is a very interesting read. I'm planning to give it a second go because some of the ideas warrant further analysis and study, particularly in how the article posits how things likely will get worse for they get better.

I don't know if I agree with everything in the piece, but it really made me think. I highly recommend the piece if you're at all interested in Ameriacn politics.

atonement

I've written here before about British novelist Ian McEwan who I believe is one of the greatest English language writers of the last century. I've not yet read his newest book Nutshell, published a few weeks ago, but I've been on the library waiting list and am now almost at the top.

Other than that, I've read all his other books several times over. A few of them I've read at least a half dozen times a piece if not more.

I am currently re-reading his brilliant Atonement, my absolute favorite of all his books. If I could only take three books to a desert island, I think this would be one of them.

I'm not alone in my praise. The novel was nominated for all the top prizes after it was published. Time magazine and The Observer, a British newspaper, both independently named it one of the hundred best novels ever written.

If you've never encountered McEwan and/or you've never read Atonement, I urge you to pick it up and dive in. It is nothing short of a masterpiece.

a series of unfortunate events

Someone posted this recently on Reddit. I'm guessing she was more than a little buzzed when this photo was taken, given the two booze bottles she's holding.

The gangsta ink, of course, is why I posted this here. She has a lovely face and, from what the picture reveals, an above average figure.

But Holy Moses -- why did she get those tattoos all over her body? With the exception of her face, she's slapped one or more on every available space on her body.

They have no unifying theme or artistry. They look more like stickers in a child's scrapbook the way they're just slapped randomly all over the place.

She's obviously barely an adult. What will she think of these when she's fifty?

where the buffalo roam

I was leafing through an animal encyclopedia for children at the library with my older son and showed him a picture of an American buffalo. "What's that?" I asked.

"Cow?" he said with great uncertainty.

As an Australian, it's natural he would be confused. There are no bison here down under.

Once at home, I showed him some pictures on the internet of American buffalo. This webpage has some really nice ones, and he particularly enjoyed their videos of bison chasing after humans.

I taught him how to say the word "buffalo" and was amused that he pronounced it as an Australian would, even though he heard me say it the way Americans do. We Yanks tend to emphasize the first syllable of a multisyllabic word whereas Australians tend to emphasize the last one.

So I say BUFF-a-lo. He says buff-a-LO.

I told him I had twice seen bison in Yellowstone, first when I was in elementary school when my grandparents took me on a two-month-long summer trip through western national parks. The other time was when I made a Yellowstone and Teton detour for a week when I drove from New York to Los Angeles some years back.

He seemed disappointed to hear that I was not chased by any of them. Both encounters were entirely unmemorable. The bison were several hundred yards away in the distance and showed utterly no interest in humans.

How stunning it must have been in earlier centuries when literally millions of bison roamed through America's heartland. Do their descendants today have any concept of how their recent ancestors dominated America?

the tax scandal

The biggest development in the past week for the continuing calamity called the Trump campaign was publication by the New York Times of three pages from his state tax return for 1995. They showed a net operating loss of $916 million which may have allowed him to avoid paying any federal income tax for eighteen years.

This was a legendary October Surprise that some pundits believe will put the final nails in his campaign's coffin. Let's hope they're right.

While Trump may have been within the law in his tax filing, the bombshell revelation nonetheless raises a number of troubling questions.

First, before the story broke, Trump had repeatedly criticized lower income people who pay no federal income tax. Now it turns out he's no different, and he's a demagogue and a hypocrite for having condemned the economically unfortunate for what he himself has done.

Second, ordinary Americans who do pay taxes have a low opinion of wealthy people who wiggle out of tax responsibility because of generous loopholes reserved only for the most affluent. Indeed, a poll released earlier this week showed that 61 percent of Americans say it's unpatriotic for a presidential candidate to pay no taxes and 67 percent said it was selfish.

Third, Trump has repeatedly said his tax avoidance history means he's the most qualified to lower taxes for everyone. (Set aside for a moment the fact both his accountant and lawyer have said in public statements he's not particularly knowledgeable about tax law and simply signed returns they prepared for him.)

This claim of expertise hides the blatant lie he has no interest in lowering your taxes. Not only has he released proposals to lower tax rates for the wealthy and also allow much more generous loopholes for property developers like himself, his plans would significantly increase taxes paid by millions of middle class Americans.

Fourth, his proposals aside, if Trump says that his tax paying prowess makes him particularly qualified to be President, then why is he refusing to provide proof of that claim by releasing his tax returns to the public? That's like saying you have terrific letters of reference and then refusing to show the documents.

If tax avoidance is "smart," as he claims, then why is he still hiding his tax returns? How can he pretend this is a fabulous qualification at the same time that he's hiding as much as he can about his tax history?

I'm certainly not alone in accusing Trump of being a mendacious fraud. His endless refusal to release his returns is the most glaring proof of this. He's trying to pull one over on the American public, and now that his pants are down thanks to the New York Times, he's feebly trying to turn this into proof he's some expert. Thankfully more and more people are seeing that he's a charlatan and a huckster.

You can expect his opponent will pummel him about his taxes in the two remaining debates and will also blast him with negative ads, as well she should. He is dishonest and deceitful, and this brief glimpse into his tax history has made his deficiencies all the more obvious.

ugly 1990s clothes

I look at some of the photos in this Tumblr dedicated to 1990s clothes and styles and I burst out laughing.

I was a child then a tween and finally a teen during the 1990s. Some of what I loved wearing back then I wouldn't be caught dead in now.

Like many people of the day, I favored loud colors and blacks. Bold patterns with big zigzags were also a favorite.

I frequently wore big bulky sweaters -- cotton in spring and fall and wool in the winter. I think I liked those because I was small in the boobs and they hid what I thought of then as a shortcoming.

I don't know what to make of Robert Downey Jr. Was the bizarre pose a way to suggest subliminally that he hated what he was wearing?

schadenfreude souffle

Professional media whore Kim Kardashian was allegedly robbed over the weekend in Paris. She claims the thieves stole $11.5 million in jewelry.

Now I have no personal knowledge about this supposed crime, but if you told me that she staged the whole thing for attention and/or to collect the insurance proceeds, I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

Her publicist is certainly milking this drama for all it is worth, releasing constant, breathy "breaking media updates" about every possible minor development. Kim has landed in New York! Kim is rushed by motorcade to her hotel! Too bad the whole thing wasn't filmed -- or maybe it was -- because then Her Kimness could peddle that as a made-for-cable super special event.

She may have been targeted by the notorious Pink Panther gang of jewel thieves, which are believed to have committed close to 400 armed robberies in France and elsewhere in Europe with a total haul of about $500 million. The crime spree was documented by CBS in a 60 Minutes broadcast two years ago.

Actually, the Pink Panthers sound a lot more interesting and exciting than Kim Kardashian, now that I think about it. Too bad they can't have their own reality show.

Hubris apparently was Kardashian's undoing -- what a surprise. The thieves may have targeted her because she constantly brags about and shows her jewelry online and on-camera. When she stupidly announced online about being in Paris and alone, she might as well have put a "Rob Me, Please" sign outside her door.

Not reported in all this vaporous coverage was any hint of why Kardashian is famous. As you may recall, she has no talent other than promoting herself, but does that quite successfully and now earns more than $50 million a year.

Pictured below is the twenty-carat diamond she was forever flashing whenever she could before the purported crime. I'm usually not one to quote scripture, but pride goeth before a fall and all that, Kim.

friendly neighborhood serial killer

Someone posted an anthology of serial killer interview links online a few days ago, and I started looking at random portions of them last night. Then I followed some of the YouTube links to more serial killer interviews and watched parts of a few more.

This was after the children were in bed and I was waiting for the husband to come home, so I sufficiently creeped myself out and shut down the computer after about an hour. I shouldn't watch stuff like that when he's not in the house.

When I was small, maybe six or seven or eight, I remember asking my parents at breakfast if they ever treated serial killers as shrinks. I was really bummed out when they both answered in the negative.

As scary as psychopathic killers are, if I was a shrink, I think I'd want to deal with patients like these or at least some kind of violent criminals. IMHO this would be a lot more interesting than hearing patients bitch about overbearing parents or spouses.

At the same time, being around people like that too much could get old very fast, I suspect. It might be one of those professions that would be fascinating for a while and then turn hellish when it went on year after relentless year.

baby kangaroo cuteness

Some people here love kangaroos and keep them as pets but other people loathe them. They are undeniably cute when they're small like the one in this video and quickly bond to humans.

They're not the smartest animals around, more at the level of a goat than a dog, in my opinion, and I'd rather have a canine. Our son Joey would dearly love to have a pet kangaroo, but that will not be happening. The only humane place to keep an animal like that is on sizable acreage.

death star over florida

The webpage Twisted Sifter has an intriguing photo story which takes big things and drops them in more recognizable settings so you see their true size.

Examples include the world's largest oil tanker dropped into New York City's Central Park, a huge scorpion with a gaggle of housecats, a B-2 bomber in a crowded American football stadium, and more.

My favorite is the Death Star hovering above Florida. I honestly thought it would be larger. In the Star War movies, it always seemed to be much larger, maybe about the size of our own moon.

That monster scorpion is just too creepy. I don't even want to think about one bigger than a tomcat. Imagine the sting on that thing.