I'm Going To The Country

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Well, as predicted, it snowed a substantial amount this weekend (though not quite the epic biblical proportions that were forecast… but the night is young & it should continue well into tomorrow), the Eagles dominated the Giants (okay, they won, and that’s what counts), Bone Junior met her first rock crush at the AMA’s (and we both actually bought the same first album when we were teenagers), and my mom will be coming for Thanksgiving… though probably just by herself. Oh well… we shall still have fun. Three day week at work, four day weekend with my mama & some sweet pumpkin pie… oh yeah, winter & the holidays are officially here. Well, my weekend was basically a lot of keeping warm and watching football…

and “Son of the Beach” which if you don’t know, was a series on FX back in 2000… and it was produced by Howard Stern… and it’s basically a spoof of “Baywatch” but it’s entirely double entendres (even character names are Notch Johnson, BJ Cummins, etc.), sex & fart jokes, shameless adult content, and basically everything that you can get away with on a TV-M rating. I like it because… well, it’s purposely sick and wrong… and at least once an episode has a daydream montage where somebody will say something like “dozens of big breasted female prisoners confined to a small area wearing nothing but undergarments? I wonder what that would be like…” and then the daydream begins. Plenty of guest stars are on it too… like David Arquette, Erik Estrada, Alan Thicke, Vincent Pastore (“Big P**sy”), and even the great Neil Patrick Harris. Anyway, it’s a lot like Naked Gun meets Baywatch… so if you like the Naked Guns movies then I suggest you check out “Son of the Beach” because… well, I think you’d appreciate it if you read my blog. Now for some world news…

Sexy Politics - A Polish singer and tabloid celebrity has put up posters of herself stretched out on the sand in a provocative bikini as part of her campaign to win a Warsaw district council seat in municipal elections on November 21. Several of the posters (located here) are to be seen around Warsaw's Bemowo district bearing Sara May's slogan: "Beautiful, independent, competent." "The deeds count, not the words, so I will not promise anything. I live in Bemowo in Warsaw," May, whose real name is Katarzyna Szczolek, wrote on her English language website, adding that she would try to make the city a better place to live in. Internet users who posted their comments below May's poster on various websites were not interested in her political views, instead preferring extensive discussion of the extent to which her photograph had been digitally enhanced. Using sex to sell your political views? Preposterous!!! Effective… but preposterous!!! Though I wish you the best of luck in your campaign, Miss Szczolek, I think that you’re going about this all wrong…

Topless Politics – Instead please take a note from the brazenly provocative, bare-breasted young women of Femen who are becoming an eye-catching -- if unsolicited -- fixture on Ukraine's political scene. Oh yes… this article combines world news, politics, and bare breasted idealistic Ukrainian women… if only more news was like this. Anna Hutsol, Femen's spikey-haired 26-year-old leader, says she commands a small army of 300 mainly student activists ready to peel off in public to support Ukrainian women's rights (PROVE IT!!!). As the group broadens its activities to embrace wider causes, she says Femen is undeterred by increased police action (or frigid temperatures that may make their nipples resemble AK-47 shells). "We plan more protests this year," Hutsol told Reuters. Femen activists caused a minor diplomatic stir last month during a visit by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a topless street protest in which they made raunchy references to his personal life (so… do I have to kill people and become a dictator for girls to threaten me with nudity?). Last week two semi-clad Femen members disrupted an Iranian exhibition with a protest in support of an Iranian woman held in jail for adultery and complicity of murder. The Ukrainian authorities, who once laughed off Femen's activities as cheeky but harmless antics, may now be losing patience after the anti-Putin demonstration which touched a raw nerve in sensitive ties with a powerful neighbor. "The police are becoming more aggressive now. But at least that shows we are being taken seriously," Hutsol told Reuters in an interview in a downtown Kiev cafe. Established in 2008 by a group of Kiev university students, Femen says its main aims are to improve the role of women in Ukraine's male-dominated, post-Soviet society. "We want to show that our women have a demeaning role in our society. Their place is seen as in the kitchen or in bed," said Alexandra Shevchenko, a 22-year-old economics student who regularly plays a leading role in topless protests. Sex tourists and visiting foreign businessmen who feed Ukraine's sex industry are the group's main targets (note to self). It has also campaigned against sexual harassment of students in universities and railed against international beauty contests such as the Miss Universe competition. Even Mykola Azarov -- the country's dour, grey-haired prime minister -- found himself an unlikely target of Femen when he drew fire by naming an all-male government. But this is no classic women's movement. In conversation, Femen activists invoke no role models. Ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's best known woman, is for them just another actor on a stale political scene. The explicitly sexual nature of Femen's protests -- young women stripping to the waist, cavorting provocatively and chanting near-obscene slogans -- raises the question of whether its activists are not undermining their own movement's values (hey, don’t f**k this up for everybody). But they themselves see no contradiction. "We started out being dressed but we found nobody took any notice. I'm a big fan of taking off our clothes (giggidy!). It's how we get attention for our views," said Shevchenko. "It's all we've got, our bodies. We are not ashamed of this," said 20-year-old Inna, a journalism student. Hutsol says about 300 young women take part in protests, but Internet and email contacts indicate a support base of about 25,000 people. Financing, she says, comes from businessmen and local entrepreneurs who sympathize with their cause (in dollar donations?). Femen's first topless actions in mid-2009 targeted the sex industry, prostitution and the spread of Internet pornography. Early this year the group widened its agenda when Femen activists, protesting about vote-rigging in the presidential election, staged a topless demonstration at a polling booth as President Viktor Yanukovich himself turned up to vote. Since then it has held about 30 protests in the capital Kiev including one outside the government building. Many of them are short-lived: a flash of skin and a hurriedly-squawked slogan before security men move in to hustle the Femen activists off-stage (BOOOO!!!). When Putin visited in late October, six Femen activists stripped to the waist near the statue of Soviet state founder Lenin and chanted sexually-charged slogans, telling the Russian leader to keep his hands off Ukraine. "Ukraine is not Alina," read one -- a reference to Alina Kabayeva, the Olympic gymnast whom media speculation links romantically to Putin. Hutsol said the Putin action clearly ruffled feathers and police had since questioned many of those who took part. Its small support base, meager resources, limited agenda and a "young-centric" membership suggest Femen has little prospect of broadening into a political movement. But in a country deeply cynical about politics, Femen represents -- albeit on a modest scale -- one of the few regular street protest movements. Asked if Femen had a political agenda for the future. Hutsol said: "We do have some ideas, some plans. We are working on them." So ladies & gentlemen, show your support for women’s rights by donating to Femen… and even better, by flashing at the next round of elections to bring notice to the plight of Americans during these times where the middle class is being twiddled away. Mmm… I’ve never wanted to be part of a Russian political demonstration more than I do right now…

Really? This is a Study? – Speaking of girls that can hold their liquor, some women may be able to do so as well as men do, but there's no equality when it comes to whose health suffers more for it. Excessive alcohol use takes a higher toll on women's bodies, with a greater risk of liver, brain or heart damage, among other devastating conditions. "We are very concerned about the fact that more young women are starting to drink in harmful ways, including binge drinking," said Dr. Deidra Roach of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. A decades-long study of data on more than 500,000 people nationwide indicated women ages 21 to 23 were the only group whose binge drinking has increased (college). The research, reported in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, showed a 30% jump between 1979 and 2006 in women who binge drink (technically, downing at least four alcoholic drinks in rapid succession). The physical differences between the sexes play a significant role in how their bodies metabolize alcohol. Women have more body fat and less water in their systems than men do, as well as lower levels of an enzyme important in the breakdown of alcohol, according to the NIAAA. This means they experience the effects of drinking more quickly and for a longer time than men. Of the estimated 17.6 million Americans who abuse alcohol, 5.3 million of them are female, according to the National Institutes of Health. "Because women are smaller than men . . . the same amount of alcohol will be more concentrated in a woman's body than a man's body," said Roach, a health scientist administrator in the NIAAA's Division of Treatment and Recovery Research. "This means when a man and a woman drink the same amount of alcohol, in general, the woman's internal organs will be exposed to more alcohol than the man's."

For women, the consequences of drinking include damage to organs and increased rates of chronic diseases.
Liver damage: Women develop alcohol-induced liver disease - including hepatitis and cirrhosis - over a shorter period of time and after consuming less alcohol than men, according to the NIAAA. It may be the female hormone estrogen that increases these risks.
Brain damage: MRI scans have shown that certain brain regions are smaller in women alcoholics than in other women and in men who are alcoholics, even after measurements are adjusted for head size, according to the NIAAA.
Heart disease: Many studies have shown a drink or two per day is heart-healthy. However, other research shows similar rates of severe damage to the heart muscle among women and men who are alcoholics, despite the fact that women who are alcoholics consume 60 percent less on average over their lifetimes, according to the NIAAA.
Breast cancer: The risks of developing breast cancer go up dramatically for heavy female drinkers. According to Loyola Marymount University, a large analysis showed the risk of developing the disease jumped 9 percent for each 10-gram increase (0.35 ounces) in daily alcohol consumption, up to 60 grams (2 ounces).
Violent injury: Not only are women put at greater risk of being assaulted, sexually or otherwise physically, by heavy drinking, according to the NIAAA, there has been an increase over the past decade in the proportion of women drivers to men drivers involved in fatal car crashes. So please don’t drink & drive.

Unhealthy drinking habits place women at greater risk for a variety of adverse health and social consequences, including becoming infected with the AIDS virus, Roach said. "We are seeing a growing body of evidence that binge drinking is a major risk factor for acquiring HIV among some groups of women," she said. Even less serious conditions, such as sinus or bladder infections, can be brought on by alcohol abuse. Joyce Rebeta-Burditt of Los Angeles said she had chronic sinus infections when she drank excessively 40 years ago. Rebeta-Burditt has since become a UCLA-certified alcohol recovery expert and the author of two books about recovering alcoholic women. "Alcoholism is very dehydrating," she said. "I didn't appreciate how sick I was physically. I got IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] from alcohol irritation, and I still have bouts." Rebeta-Burditt compared alcoholism to diseases such as diabetes that "sneak up on people," making it difficult to know when the line has been crossed. "The difference is, most people know diabetes is an illness and don't know that alcoholism is, too," she said. Roach said the NIAAA encourages health care professionals to screen women of all ages for problem drinking, because symptoms are so easily overlooked. For example, in older women alcohol may be a "hidden culprit" contributing to depression, frequent falling or heart failure, she said. "Neither health professionals nor patients should ever simply assume that alcohol could not be a problem," Roach said. Sigh… so in short, the study shows that men can handle their booze better than women. Period. Did they really need to study that for a decade to come to that conclusion? Last weekend, I went drinking with Bubbles, a lovely creature who’s maybe pushing a hundred pounds… but she drinks like a fish. She wanted to keep pace with over a hundred kilos of Grade A American beef like myself… but I’m a lightweight when it comes to booze. In the end, I needed a little water in the morning to take care of my headache… and she spent the whole day in bed sleeping it off… and honestly, we’ve drank more together. Case closed. Pocket the rest of the grant towards my own research on how alcohol lowers inhibitions… or at least is a great excuse for being freaky.

Free Breast Exams? – That really works? Again, case closed on the whole inhibitions thanks to alcohol thing. An Idaho judge has set bond at $100,000 for a Boise woman police say posed as a physician and duped at least two other women into having their breasts examined by her at Boise-area nightclubs. Hmm… apparently the key is to be a woman. They wouldn’t possibly want to fondle your breasts for the heck of it. Kristina Ross, 37, remains in Ada County Jail in Boise on two felony counts of practicing medicine without a license. Police say Ross introduced herself to victims -- one at a downtown Boise bar and the other at a nightclub in a Boise suburb -- as a plastic surgeon named Berlyn Aussieahshowna, a name that turned out to be bogus (gasp!!!). The two women told Boise officers they believed Ross was a physician because of her apparent medical knowledge (she used big funny sounding words), and they agreed to undergo what they thought were breast exams, which happened at the bars. As part of her ruse, Ross gave the women the telephone number of a real licensed plastic surgeon in Boise, the state capital, authorities said. Staff at that medical office became alarmed at the number of calls they received from women in recent weeks attempting to confirm appointments or surgeries with a Berlyn Aussieahshowna, according to charging documents. Medical workers on Tuesday alerted Boise police about the pattern, and they later arrested Ross. The suspect's gender is unclear (ugh… what?). Idaho court records show that Ross was arrested for petty theft in the spring and that the arrest warrant was issued to a Kristoffer Jon Ross. GASP!!! The Idaho Statesman website reported that Ross has a previous criminal record as a man but identifies herself as a woman and was booked into Ada County Jail as a female. Ugh… I know a way to clear up the misconception… but do I have to have a medical license before examining? Cosmetic surgical procedures Ross discussed with victims after she / he / it touched their breasts under the guise of a medical evaluation included breast augmentation and liposuction. The court on Wednesday found Ross was eligible for a public defender and set a preliminary hearing on the two felony charges for December 1. If convicted, Ross could face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for each count. So ladies… the next time that you are at a bar… or a nightclub… and a person, male or female or all of the above, offers you a complimentary breast examination… BEWARE… because they may not be a professional. I know, I know, it’s quite unbelievable… as that’s pretty much the perfect place to locate a prospective client, perhaps buy her an adult beverage, gently break her down by pointing out what she may consider physical flaws (emotional erosion), offer her your expertise, give the business card… with cell phone number for “emergency” calls & then a few weeks later she’s upgrading from C to DD. See ladies? Just because I know the game, doesn’t mean I’m going to manipulate you. I tend to rely on my gentlemanly ways… and that may be why I’m spending my nights alone. Oh well, at least now I know that even if I have absolute consent to handle your chesticles, but it’s under slightly false pretenses, I face five years in prison. Do you at least see how it can be frustrating & confusing? Maybe this is why I’m in so many sexual harassment classes at work…

Even Their K-9s are Smaller - Meet Japan's newest police dog -- all 3 kilos (6.6 lb) of her. In what is a first for Japan and perhaps the world, a long-haired Chihuahua named "Momo" (Japanese for Peach) passed exams to become a police dog in the western Japanese prefecture of Nara. The brown-and-white, perky Momo was one of 32 successful candidates out of 70 dogs, passing a search and rescue test by finding a person in five minutes after merely sniffing their cap. "Any breed of dog can be entered to become a police dog in the search and rescue division," said a Nara police spokesman. But he admitted that news a Chihuahua had been entered may still come as a surprise to many. "It's quite unusual," he said. Television footage showed the 7-year-old Momo bounding across grass or sitting proudly, long hair blowing in the breeze. Momo will be used for rescue operations in case of disasters such as earthquakes, in the hope that she may be able to squeeze her tiny frame into places too narrow for more usual rescue dogs, which tend to be German Shepherds (aka REAL dogs). The public response to the news of Momo's selection took police by surprise, the spokesman said, adding: "The phone's been ringing all afternoon." Probably from somebody looking to do a Taco Bell commercial. I just… don’t see this little peach striking fear into the heart of ninjas or anything… but hey, congratulations on being a pocket-sized rescue dog nonetheless. And yes, I could certainly make some kind of stereotypical joke about a dog in Asia… and some timeless Face/Off reference about how “I could eat a Peach for hours” but I think I’m going to take the high road. Wait, if I explain the joke & why I’m not going to make it… does that still count as taking the high road? Eh, ask the referee for a ruling.

Anyway, that’ll do it for today. Two more days until my mom comes to visit for Thanksgiving!!! Seriously can’t wait… I’ve missed her. Also, to celebrate Black Friday, we may do some Christmas shopping… and then take in the casinos, while Boise State comes to town to play the Nevada Wolfpack. It should make for a great game… and would be two undefeated teams if Nevada hadn’t had to travel to Hawaii to lose there… but oh well, it’s just one less team in the ultra-controversial BCS BS. Also, there’s a weekend coming up where there’s a Cash’d Out concert & Santa Beer Crawl in Reno… and then my work is having an anniversary gala… and I say gala instead of party… because the dress code is “elegant evening attire” so… I may be able to get my ballroom dancing on… ladies? It should make for a great start to the winter season… and I definitely want to get out there and do more and have more fun than last year when I knew nobody and didn’t know where everything was. I’ll make it an early resolution or something. Now that I have a little spending cash (very little) that’s my goal… because honestly, other than my roommates (current & former) I don’t really have anybody else that I can “hang out” with per se. Everybody else has a family or we’re just not that close or anything… but hey, I figure if I get out there, meet people at “things” and just let it be known that I’m not a hermit & am looking for peeps, then that’s a great start. Have a great day everybody!!!