Love and Lust: September 2020

Wired magazine is currently running an interesting and sometimes funny article called "Does a Millipede Have a Penis? Well ... Define 'Penis'." The piece focuses on various penis equivalents that critters have.

Talk of critter penises brings to mind a funny family story. Before I was born, my brother as a little boy asked my grandfather why his rooster didn't have a penis.

This was during one of my brother's summer visits to my grandfather's farm. So my grandfather picked up his rooster, turned it over, and showed my brother the critter's vent, the equivalent of a chicken penis, although it doesn't look at all phallic and instead more like an anus.

"It looks like a doorbell," my brother said quite seriously.

My grandfather is said to have laughed uproariously. Whenever he told the story in later years, and I can remember him telling me more than once, he would laugh so hard it brought tears to his eyes.

Ever since that chicken yard anatomy lesson, the family euphemism for penis has always been "doorbell." My brother, blessed with a good sense of humor himself, has always laughed along.

When I saw this Wired piece, I shot him an email of the link with a one-sentence note: "Look, an article about doorbells."

Sunday, September 27, 2020

toe humor

It took about a second for the joke in the tattoo below to sink in. At least the tattoo's owner has a sense of humor. There's probably an interesting story I'd love to hear about how he lost that.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

bad luck unbuttoning

When I was getting ready to go out yesterday, I saw that a button on my blouse appeared to be coming loose. I didn't want to take the time to remove it, stitch it on securely, dress once more, and then proceed out of the house.

So I prepared to sew the button while still wearing the blouse. But then a warning bell sounded in my head.

My great aunt, who taught me how to sew when I was a small girl, used to say "it's bad luck to sew something while you're wearing it."

I was ready to dismiss that. But then my brain rebutted, "Why take a chance? You could fall down the steps. Or have a car accident. Or one of the children could be injured."

So I hurriedly changed my blouse. I sewed the button back tightly after I returned home.

I'm not really a superstitious person. I don't really believe the old warnings. But then again, I'm not inclined to tempt fate. So does that make me skeptically superstitious? A coward? Both?

Friday, September 25, 2020

pandemic porn boom

Mel magazine has up a new feature article about the boom in pandemic-themed porn, particularly that involves gloves and/or masks.

I couldn't help laugh about the subset of pandemic porn that involves men jerking off into the face of women in surgical masks. That can't be satisfying for the women.

Whatever floats your boat, but I have to say I find this decidedly unromantic. Hot sex involves unbridled, sweaty skin-on-skin action. Pandemic porn is the opposite of that.

Then again, I find leather or latex porn boring as well as porn involving fully clothed people. That kind of porn lacks the verisimilitude of realty IMHO.

I like porn that features hot sex between hot-looking naked people. That's just not possible with pandemic porn.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

hominids

Last night I finished reading the novel Hominids by the Canadian writer Robert Sawyer and found it a very fun read. It's science fiction but grounded very much in present-day reality.

The premise is straightforward: a fictional physics experiment at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, a real facility, accidentally tears open a brief portal to a parallel universe, where a quantum computer experiment is underway.

A scientist from the latter tumbles into our universe but there's a twist: he's a highly civilized and intelligent Neanderthal physicist. In our world, or course, Neanderthals are extinct. But in the parallel world, homo sapiens are extinct.

In some ways it's a fish out of water story. The mass media in our world goes bonkers and the wayward Neanderthal becomes an instant mega-celebrity.

Once the language difficulty is worked out, the Neanderthal physicist and a homo sapien physicist fall in love. For his part, the Neanderthal is not ape-like but, instead, is a hunk in homo sapien eyes, but he thinks our species is scrawny and sickly looking.

The book is fast-paced, escapist fiction without being heavy. There's also a great ticking clock jeopardy engine, because back in the Neanderthal parallel universe, a scientist there is being tried for murder and no one believes his theory that his coworker was sucked into a parallel universe.

I recommend the book to all readers, even those who normally eschew science fiction. It's not heavy-duty scifi and reads much more like commercial fiction as opposed to genre fiction.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

sperm horror story

If you've ever wondered about sperm banks and how you can be sure to obtain "quality product" at one, The Atlantic is currently running a true-life horror story about baby batter that you might find of interest.

One of the donors with sperm on offer via an Atlanta-based firm was touted as having "an IQ of 160, spoke four languages, was pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience engineering, and looked like Tom Cruise."

But it turns out the donor actually dropped out of college, had been repeatedly hospitalized for mental illness, was suicidal, and was a convicted felon, thanks to a burglary history.

The fake PhD has fathered at least three dozen children via donated sperm. And one of those children has now manifested mental illness problems, too.

The whole mess is the subject of a state supreme court case in Georgia that's currently pending.

I am thankful that I never needed artificial insemination. The husband fortunately has potent baby batter.

If I ever needed a sperm donor, however, I would never have picked an unknown father sight unseen. I would choose someone I knew. I'd sign a legal agreement that he would never be financially liable for the child and then hand him a porn magazine and a collection cup.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

a history before toilet paper

Live Science is running a short article about how people cleaned up "down there" after pooping in centuries past before they had toilet paper.

The piece also includes some interesting information about early uses of toilet paper. Who knew it dated back to the Second Century BC in China?

The story is fascinating without being disgusting. I'd read before about the stick solution. I'm glad the First World no longer has those in common use.

My grandfather used to say that when he was a boy in the 1920s and visiting his grandparents on the farm, instead of toilet paper they used pages out of Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs when in the outhouse. I could see how that might be uncomfortable.

This is one thing you never see in time travel movies and novels — no one ever packs toilet paper!

I found the photo of the antique toilet paper roll on an interesting page that has other excmples of early paper, roll holders, and more.

Monday, September 21, 2020

a prison break romance

The newest issue of The Atlantic magazine includes a really fascinating, well written article about a prison break romance true story.

He is a hardened convict serving a life sentence. She's an office worker who ran a volunteer dog rescue program. She placed some of her dogs in his prison, where they were trained to be more adoptable.

He joined her program and soon they formed a close friendship. That blossomed into more and they professed their love for each other. She's oldest enough to be his mother.

Together, they hatched a plan for her to help break him out of prison. Their scheme worked flawlessly and went on the run from the law. I won't tell you any more of the story so as not to spoil the article for you.

Their true story reminded me of the underappreciated movie Mrs. Soeffel, starring a young Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton. The true story in The Atlantic turned out quite differently, however.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

arrested for public muff diving

Audra and Jim are seen below. At the time their mugshot photos were taken, she was 64 and he was 76.

Police arrested the pair in a public park in the middle of the afternoon in South Carolina. She had her clothes down around her ankles; he was lying face down between her legs, munching on her goodies. Both reportedly were very drunk at the time and vodka bottles were scattered about.

Audra looks seriously pissed off in her mugshot, as if still angry she was denied an orgasm before her arrest.

Saturday, September 19, 2020

indiginous-named sports teams

I read something offline about the movement in the United States and Canada to change sports teams with Native/Indigenous American names to something else. This isn't an issue just affecting professional teams; it also involves college and high school teams.

I believe some names are obviously offensive and should be changed. Any name that could be considered pejorative should go. A good example of these are teams called Redskins or some variations, like Reds, Redmen, Red Raiders, etc.

There are other names, however, that don't seem offensive and aren't inherently pejorative. How is giving a team a tribe's name offensive? What's offensive about the Blackhawks or the Mohawks? And what about a team named for Native tribal roles, like the Braves or the Chiefs? I do agree that the cartoonish mascot images many of these teams have should go, however, even if they keep the Braves or the Mohawks or whatever.

Perhaps the solution is for sports organization to have their member teams agree to an arbitration over whether or not to keep a team name. The arbiters would be prominent Native/Indigenous Americans. If they're not offended, the team name stays. But if they're offended, then it should go.

Friday, September 18, 2020

carousel

I heard Richard Rogers' "Carousel Waltz" on the radio the other day and it's been running around in my head ever since. It's a classically great piece of music, the main theme for the musical Carousel and the later movie of the same title.

The clip below shows you how it's used on screen. This is one of the earliest scenes in the movie and showcases the first big set piece. Without any words, it tells multiple stories at once.

And, yes, that's a very young Shirley Jones in this scene. She was 21 when the movie was shot.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

batman's batvan

A book I'm currently reading mentions Bosozoku in Japan. I'd never heard of that, so I turned to Google.

Where I learned Bosozoku are a curious Japanese subculture, specifically a type of customized motorcycle club that first appeared in the 1950s, peaked in the 1980s, but are still around today. The epitome of Bosozoku style is riding a highly customized motorcycle with lots of add-ons like fins, huge exhaust pipes, trumpet horns, and much more.

Bosozoku subculture, in turn, has morphed into further sub-subcultures. One is the Bosozoku auto club, where people drive and show highly customize cars with the sort of ridiculous extreme modifications seen in Bosozoku motorcycles.

Further, that morphed another sub-sub-subculture with Bosozoku groups devoted to things like highly customized Batman-themed vans. As you can from the photo below (enlargement), too much is never enough for Bosozoku.

If you've going to go over the top, why not go way over the top?

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

amazon women in ballgowns

New York Spring 2021 Fashion Week is entirely online this year. (Fashion Week typically is about six months before the actual season because it's targeted at fashion buyers and the fashion media as opposed to consumers.)

I'm not the only one to notice the Spring 2021 collection overall is more restrained. It might be because of the worldwide pandemic and it also might be that the absurd won't work online like it would with a runway show.

The New York designer Badgley Mischka had a particularly nice show IMHO. Their collection also reminded me, once again, of why my modeling career was never destined to go platinum.

Look at the photo below. I think that's a gorgeous dress. The model is lovely. But, my God, the woman must be close to seven feet tall. She has to be nearly eighteen inches taller than me.

That is the hot look if you want to be a model these days. You have to be that tall or you'll never break into the big leagues. Sure, you can get some catalog work and some commercial spots if you're shorter. But you'll never be a superstar.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

the first douche canoe

I've always thought the phrase douche canoe to be quite funny. On its face, it makes no sense. So I decided to try and discover its origins.

One douches when rinsing any body cavity. Vaginal douches used to be common but that practice is now discouraged by medical practitioners. A douchebag holds the cleansing water solution, in much the same way as an enema bag.

So what does that have to do with canoeing? Answer: absolutely nothing.

The first use of douchebag as a pejorative to describe a contemptible person appears to have been the novel From Here to Eternity, published in 1951. It didn't appear again in print until the 1964 novel Last Exit to Brooklyn.

It reportedly came into widespread common use in the 1980s with the popularity of the TV show Hill Street Blues. The writers on that program are said to have used it regularly on the show when the network's censors didn't let them use another unspecified word.

With time, the phrase douchebag evolved into simply douche. And douche canoe apparently came into popular use with the TV series Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, where it first appeared, apparently inserted in the script by one of the show's writers.

I pity etymologists from future millennia who have to figure this one out.

Monday, September 14, 2020

jet pack dreams

Whoever this guy is, he has balls of steel. One false move and he could plant his face into the ground or a tree or a building.

According to Wikipedia, jet packs are not particularly practical for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, they look very cool.

I would like to try one out as long as it had a governor of some sort that would keep it from flying more than ten feet or so in the air. I have visions of the thing malfunctioning while I was using it and it would be unable to stop rising for some reason.

Looking on the bright side, at least I would black out from lack of oxygen before plummeting to my death when the thing ran out of fuel.

Sunday, September 13, 2020

artemisia's nail

I read an article offline last week about the early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi who painted from the 1610s through to the 1650s. She is one of the most famous female artists from the pre=modern era.

Some of her paintings are really violent. Two of her most famous works deal with decapitation, before and after, so to speak.

Unlike her other violent paintings, the one seen below (enlargement) catches the moment immediately before the violence takes place. It pictures the female biblical character Jael moments before she drives a nail through the ear of Sisera.

I like how this violent painting depicts an instant of peace just before a burst of extreme violence. When it comes to horrible ways to die, having a big nail hammered into your ear while you're sleeping has to rank right up there.

I was very fortunate to see this painting in person when I was in Budapest about fifteen years ago.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

twelve years of blogging

Today is the twelfth anniversary of this blog. A post has appeared every day, day in and day out, for the last twelve years. I never, ever thought I could persist at something like this.

So Year Thirteen begins. Will it be a bad luck year or a good luck year? Various cultures view the number thirteen very differently. In many parts of Asia, it can be a very lucky number. In Europe and North America, it's a very unlucky number.

It's also my thirty-fifth birthday. I've already written about that a few days ago so no use dwelling on it. I've made peace with the march of time.

I've decided I'll be like Mae West — my age number may change but I refuse to age.

Friday, September 11, 2020

unmasking true love

I thought this was adorable: an eleven-second very short film telling a love story that is very topical for our time.

It has a beginning, middle, and end. Plus jeopardy, tension, and plot twists. All the necessary elements for a good story and all in only eleven seconds.

Thursday, September 10, 2020

the topless voter

A citizen in New Hampshire wore a T-shirt with a political message to her polling place on Tuesday. Fearing that would violate state law that prohibits electioneering in a polling place, a poll worker told her she could not enter to vote.

So the woman simply removed her top. She had nothing on underneath. Poll officials then allowed her to vote — topless.

She may have violated state indecency laws in doing so. Poll workers, however, had no legal authority to summon the police for nudity so they just let her vote and leave.

The woman and the poll workers may have inadvertently discovered a way to significantly increase voter turnout. If women are encouraged to wear political T-shirts to the polling place, then told they had to remove them once they arrived, a day-long topless show would result.

And because only voters may enter a polling place, looky loos would have to vote in order to see the topless women. Poll workers could also be encouraged to wear political shirts and then made to remove them, thus ensuring the polling place would always have nudity on display.

This would probably drive voter turnout into the ninety percents.

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

moron couture

Gucci's fall collection includes eyeglasses and sunglasses, as it always does. When I saw the ones seen below, at first glance I thought one of the models was clowning around and had put on a pair upside down.

Closer inspection reveals that's not the case. They're supposed to look like they're upside down. The part over your nose and the curved portion for behind your ears are not part of the upside-down style.

IMHO this makes the wearer look like a moron. A small child might do this with a pair of glasses to clown around. To wear this day-in, day-out makes you look like a dunce.

They're not cheap, either. Just the frames alone will set you back $755 American.

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

tennis tantrum

On Sunday at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York in the middle of a match, number-one ranked Novak Djokovic was disqualified and expelled from the event after his temper tantrum that injured a line judge. In anger at losing a point, he hit a ball behind him without looking and that struck the judge in the throat.

The judge fell to her knees, clutching at her neck while coughing and struggling to breathe. After about ten minutes, she had recovered enough to rise to her feet with assistance. Djokovic then argued with judges for a further ten minutes that he shouldn't be disqualified because he didn't intend to hit the woman but was overruled.

Serious question: why was he not arrested and charged with assault? While he didn't intend to hit anyone, he certainly did intend to hit the ball and certainly knew it could have hit someone. This wasn't an accident. It was an intentional act.

In New York, based on some Google research, if you throw something from a moving vehicle and it strikes someone, you can be charged with assault even if you didn't intend to hit anyone. The same thing if you toss an object off a bridge. If you fire a gun in the air, not intending to hit anyone but end up doing so, you can be charged with crimes that are a lot more serious.

Likely Djokovic was not charged because of who he is — the number-one ranked men's tennis player in the world. And that stinks. If he'd done this on the street and the ball hit a cop, he wouldn't be heading home real soon.

Monday, September 7, 2020

pangolin dreams

The New Yorker has up a really fascinating article about pangolins now up on their website. I imagine a lot of people are like me and know next to nothing about the exotic creatures. What's really interesting about the piece is how pangolins may have been the ultimate source of the Covid-19 virus currently plaguing humanity.

I always thought pangolins were closely related to aardvarks and armadillos but that turns out to be completely wrong. None of those three critters are genetically close to each other.

If you were making a list of species that look like they originated on another planet, I think you'd need to put pangolins near the top. Their scales and the way they move look like something from Arrakis, the extraterrestrial world which is the setting for the novel Dune.

Sunday, September 6, 2020

a classic scene

One of the things that makes a classic television series great, in my opinion, is that you can watch an episode or even a scene out of context but still thoroughly enjoy it, even if you've seen it before and possibly several times — or have never seen the program at all.

This is true for dramas like The Wire and Breaking Bad and comedies like I Love Lucy and Seinfeld, to use examples from American television.

Someone mentioned the now famous "magnet truck scene" in an episode of Breaking Bad on an online forum recently that had nothing to do with the series. I sought out the scene on YouTube, which you can see below.

You don't need to have ever watched the show to enjoy this two-minute scene, which tells a story in its own right. The two leads need to destroy a laptop that's in a police evidence locker without entering the station. This is how they do it.

Saturday, September 5, 2020

memo to self: get a grip

I have to admit I've been less than wildly thrilled about turning 35 next week. A little voice in my head keeps saying "the day after your birthday, you'll be closer to fifty than to twenty."

Today I decided that little voice is an idiot and is the same age as me. Yes, my age ticks up one number next week, but I will only be seven days older than I am today.

I honestly don't feel any older than I did when I was twenty. I weigh less than I did before my three pregnancies. I still have no white or gray hair. My tits don't sag. I have no wrinkles on my face, not even crows feet around my eyes. My husband still can't keep his hands off me.

So I will embrace 35. After all, I'll still be closer to twenty than I am to sixty and that will be true for a good long time.

Friday, September 4, 2020

cautionary photos

Jane Fonda was featured in a New York Times column earlier this week which was accompanied by several new photos of her. She looks good in the first shot below but the second one looks off.

Fonda has never made a secret about having plastic surgery some time back and also said later she regrets having it done. She has also vowed she would never have any more work done.

She'll be 83 in December and is still very fit. The second photo looks odd, I suspect, because her face is developing the rictus mask that elderly woman usually get when they have a history plastic surgery. Her face just doesn't as naturally as someone who hasn't had work done. And the older she gets, the more this will be noticeable.

Cosmetic surgery is like a tattoo. Once it's done it really can't be undone. So anyone considering it shouldn't think about what they'll look like immediately after the procedure. They should think about what they'll look like in twenty or thirty years.

Thursday, September 3, 2020

all famous

While searching for information about a writer, I wandered into a website called All Famous. It boasts that it has profile information for more than a million "prominent personalities."

That made me laugh. Their idea of famous is decidedly different than mine. Thumbing through their records, I see quite a few entries for people described as things like "YouTube Star" and "TikTok Star" and the like.

Just because you can find somebody on the Internet doesn't make them famous. Are such people mobbed for autographs on public streets or in public spaces? I highly doubt it.

The photograph below British police holding back hoards of screaming Beatles fans in the 1960s (enlargement). Now that's famous.

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

martha moron

Yesterday I took a shower in one of our bathrooms I don't normally use. The drain appeared to be blocked as I showered, so when I was finished I fetched the plunger and had a go at it but nothing happened. I plunged and plunged some more. Still nothing. No movement at all.

How could a drain be clogged in a shower that hadn't been used in months? It made no sense. So I plunged and plunged and plunged and plunged and plunged and plunged. Still nothing.

Then I noticed the drain plug had been flipped up. Was it that way before I took a shower? I never checked. It could have been pulled up with my plunging, but I suspect it was up before I even used it.

I flipped the plug down and the drain cleared without incident. Needless to say, I felt like such a moron.

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

the dark dark ages

A recent issue of BBC History included an interesting article about the Dark Ages in Britain, that period roughly from 400 to about 650 AD. While the piece's primary focus was on whether or not "the Dark Ages" was appropriate for that time, it nonetheless includes a lot of interesting detail about the era.

And the writer makes clear it was probably a pretty awful time to be alive. I imagine much the same could be said about the Dark Ages throughout most of Europe at that time.

Disease, famine, lawlessness, crime, violence — it sounds like a dystopian hell. It didn't sound like you had much chance to live beyond your thirties. No wonder people found refuge in religious orders. It would be a good place to hide even if you were an atheist.

As for whether "the Dark Ages" is inappropriate or politically incorrect, the article's writer makes a solid case for why it should be called exactly that. How else would you describe it? "Just About the Worst Time in History to Be Alive"?

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Monday, September 28, 2020