et another late blog, mostly due to illness. As I write this it's late Friday night, and I should have written this late Thursday night, but I was busy doing nothing in particular. I went to bed early but didn't sleep well Wednesday night, and despite two naps that day I was really dragging come Kali class time, at 7pm. My concentration was okay and I didn't feel terrible... until I tried to do something involving physical movement. And at that point I felt like I was carrying around a backpack of bricks.

There were 11 people in class Thursday night, and while that's usually an inconvenient number for the pairs we work in, it was great this time, since I knew I was not up to moving around constantly for two hours, as Kali class usually requires. So when Gura counted people up and started setting pairs, I immediately said, "Put me in the three." and so it was done.

We were doing empty hand vs. stick, where the person with the stick swings and the empty hand person dodges and counters with something nasty. I let the other two start off, and after they took turns throwing for a bit and switched and my turn came up, I started off throwing and knew it was going to be a long night, when even that little bit of exertion had me coughing and feeling very tired. And sure enough, when my turn to go empty handed and counter came, I did about ten turns, and had to go sit down for a while and drink a lot of water to soothe my throat.

Eventually we moved to less physically-demanding stuff, arm breaks and disarms and such, and those were better because they're cool, and they're fun, and they're not very cardio-demanding to do. So it wasn't an awful class or a wasted class, but it wasn't much fun needing to take lots of breaks and sit down and feel unable to go fast or do anything demanding. And as always when I'm lagging in that sort of way, I horrified myself by thinking, "This is what fat/out of shape people feel like every time they do anything!" Hey, it's motivation.

After class I had my second Pepsi of the day, felt wide awake and well fed by midnight, and just never went to bed. Or blogged, for that matter. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I did all night; surfed and read stuff, played a few free online games, but I had no concentration to accomplish any work, and the next thing I knew it was 6am and I should have been asleep for about 4 hours. It was worth it though, since when I went to bed, I was damn tired. Very damn tired, since I woke up at noon to pee, figured I'd get up in an hour or so do to laundry... and next thing I knew it was 5:20 and Malaya was back with all the laundry washed and folded, and I'd been in bed for 11 hours. I couldn't tell you the last time I slept for that long, and even once I was up it took me like an hour to feel fully awake, but eventually I was on my feet and feeling pretty okay. Aside from the occasional hacking cough.

I'm glad I stayed up late and slept later though, since besides the great rest, I'd been up at dawn the previous two days, and that depressed me greatly. Literally.

I've blogged about it in the past, much to Malaya's disbelieving bemusement, but I really think I have some sort of weirdly-inverted SAD. Mine is inverted since while normal (so to speak) people get depressed and antsy and lethargic in the winter when they aren't getting any sunlight, I feel that way in the summer, when warm weather and cloudless days arrive. And it's greatly exacerbated by me seeing more sunlight in a given day.

When I go to bed at dawn and sleep until the afternoon, I get up and dislike the sunlight, but at least I know dusk will be here soon, and I'll be awake all glorious night long. When I get up at dawn or in the morning, my tolerance for daylight is about maxed out by noon... when I've got 7 or 8 hours of it to go, and I know that by the time it's nicely dark and cool, it'll almost be time to go to bed.

Depression sets in quickly in such situations; it only took two days this time, and after being awake all day Wednesday, by Thursday afternoon I was ready to claw my eyes out just to block off the sight of yet more sunlight. Worse yet, we were out running errands, so I had no way to avoid the pain. It's a sad state of affairs, especially since the weather hasn't even been hot. I'm so not ready to lead a real life, and with any luck, and more time spent writing, I'll never have to.

On that topic, I was on the phone with my dad the other day, comparing housing costs. He's living in a house he bought in the late 80s for like $165k, and as is the case with almost all desirable property in California, it's since skyrocketed in price. Two of the neighbors on his cul-de-sac recently sold their homes for around $800k. Property's no different up here; condos around ours have gone up from $200k to over $300k in just over a year, and the houses in this area are increasing $10 or $15k a month. I think it's got to be a real estate bubble, but that point aside, I mentioned housing prices and how much Malaya and I wanted to own our own home. Dad's reply? "Well, you'd better write a really good book then, huh?"

Yes, pwned by dad. Who has plenty of money and should be looking for a good real estate investment, damnit. Preferably one Malaya and me can live in.  Perhaps he's saving it for a multi-hundred thousand dollar down payment wedding present?  Pity he doesn't read this blog, or I could poke him subtly in that direction.

Sadly, dads help those who help themselves, so I'll stop with the blogging now and get to the aforementioned book. And perhaps a snack...

¤ If you think the whole pope selection process is arcane and boring and haven't paid it any attention since John Paul died last week... I sympathize, since I'm right there with you. It wasn't always this way though, as a fascinating article on Yahoo details. It's quite gory.

One of the most bizarre loose ends was the "cadaver synod" after the election in 896 of the insanely vengeful Pope Stephen VI. He harbored so much anger at a predecessor, Pope Formosus, that he had his corpse exhumed.

Formosus' decomposing body was dressed in papal vestments, propped in a throne and put on trial for crimes against church law, including perjury. Unable to mount a defense, Formosus' ghastly remains were convicted. As punishment, the three fingers Formosus once used to bless the faithful were hacked from his right hand. His body was dragged away and thrown into the Tiber River.

Piling crime upon crime like a modern suspense novel, Stephen soon was thrown into prison himself. Formosus' friends crept into his cell and strangled him.

There's worse.

Because the papacy often was treated as a political pawn, popes sometimes found themselves at the mercy of ruthless rulers.

Consider poor John XVI, who thought he was the rightful pope, according to Roman nobles who pushed him onto the papal throne in 997. Unfortunately, another politically powerful pope, Gregory V, was alive elsewhere in Europe .

Gregory returned to Rome with an army and wasn't amused at finding a rival. He ordered John's eyes put out as well as his nose and ears sliced off. Then, to underline the point, John was excommunicated. Should he wish to object, his lips, teeth and tongue were removed next. And his mutilated body, still alive, was shipped to a monastery.

The article goes on and on with many more juicy details about bastard-siring popes, a female pope, and much more.

¤ You read these news stories about old people losing the ability to drive all the time, and it's sad to think of your own parents or grandparents getting some decrepit that they forget which pedal is the brake and which is the gas, but it happens, and often with tragic results for pedestrians.  It doesn't usually happen while they're still at the dealer, though.

FORT MYERS, Fla. - An 81-year-old woman preparing to take a test drive at a car dealership hit her husband, a salesman, a car and a tree before running into a wall. "She must have panicked," said Joe Sica, sales manager at Honda of Fort Myers.

The new Honda Accord shot backward after Dorothy Byrum got behind the wheel and apparently stepped on the wrong pedal Wednesday.

The open car door hit her 88-year-old husband, Robert, and the salesman. Then the car struck the parked car, the tree and the wall. The air bag deployed, and Byrum was not injured. Her husband was knocked down but was in good condition the following day. The salesman was released after treatment and is expected to be out of work for about a week, Sica said.

The article is very short and doesn't say if they still sold the woman a car after she wrecked the first one, but you've got to hope that the DMV reads this and makes her take a driving test, since she's clearly no longer capable of handing a vehicle on public roads.

¤ There's no way I could pass up blogging about this one. I'll try to keep my comments quick, though. *rim shot*

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Premature ejaculation occurs in just under two minutes, as opposed to about seven minutes for men able to stay the course, according to a U.S. study aimed at setting some standards for the disorder. And it can indeed lead to dissatisfaction, a sense of losing control and strained relationships, said the report released on Wednesday.

The researchers timed ejaculations by giving stopwatches to the sex partners of more than 1,500 men.

So there you have it. Two minutes or less is premature, and seven minutes is average.  How do you or your past lovers measure up? Or have you never thought about it, because time stops during those magic moments?

Unfortunately, the article gives no details about how the time is spent or how they arrived at the averages, and as usual I have a bunch of questions:

• Are they counting the seconds from first insertion to ejaculation?
  • I hope so; imagine if 2 minutes was the time from first sexual contact, I.E. any sort of kissing or foreplay?
• Is this only the first orgasm per session, or do they allow a second time when the edge is taken off and the guy can last much longer?
• Is this a heterosexual-only study, or were gay men included?
• Is this vaginal intercourse only, or does it include fellatio and anal?
• Were any of the men wearing devices to deaden the sensation (condoms) or prolong the act (cockrings)?
• How about men on Viagra or men who are really drunk?
• Does external stimuli factor in, I.E. watching porno, being exhibitionists, role-playing with costumes and bondage, etc?
• Did the study allow position changes mid-act?
  • If so, did time stop during position switches and restart when the boots started a'knocking again?
• Did they break the time down by position, I.E. doggy times were quicker or slower than reverse cowgirl or missionary or whatever?
• Does time keep running when/if the man slows down or stops to prolong things, or does it stop when his thrusting stops and start again when he starts moving again?
• Is seven minutes the average of every man who lasts longer than 2:00?
  • Did any guys go like 2 hours and skew the averages?
• How did they categorize men who finished in the 2-7 minute range?
  • Is 3 minutes rounded down to premature? 3:30? 4? Etc.

I think my favorite part is that they gave the partners (women only?) the stopwatches. Because you know for damn sure they couldn't trust the men not to cheat worse than a hometown scoreboard operator.

About 200 of the men in the study suffered from premature ejaculation, they found. A man with the condition took 1.8 minutes to ejaculate after beginning intercourse compared to 7.3 minutes for most of the men.

Premature ejaculators and their female partners also had higher ratings for personal distress, interpersonal difficulty with their partner, lack of ejaculation control and dissatisfaction with sexual intercourse, they found.

"Premature ejaculation (PE) is the most common male sexual dysfunction, affecting approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of the male population at any one time," the researchers wrote in their report.

There's obviously far more work to be done on this topic, but at least they've taken some baby steps.

As for premature ejaculation in general, I'd always thought that the "two minute brother" term was a joke women enjoyed bandying about, but having spoken to several women in my life who assured me it was not, I guess this is a more common problem than I had imagined. The funniest/saddest part is that the guys who are consistently like that usually have no clue what lousy lovers they are. The frequency with which women struggle to bite back laughter during (or after) the sex act is pretty damn frightening.

I've asked women (not only women I've been intimate with, so their responses weren't necessarily tainted by trying to preserve my fragile male ego) about past lovers, and they usually laugh or shake their heads talking about guys who hopped on, thumped away for 90 or 100 seconds, came, rolled over, and asked, "Was it good for you?" in all seriousness. The fact that the women involved lied and said yes is clearly a testament to the inherent kindness and nurturing nature of the female gender, though I have to wonder how they even had time to fake it when they guy was done before he'd even gotten properly started?

I'm no master lover, but here's some free advice. Quickies are one thing, but in your own bed, when you've got time to really make love, two minutes isn't going to cut it, and if your woman tells you she doesn't mind, she's lying. Even if your foreplay is extensive and expert, she still wants more penis than you're giving her, and be honest, your foreplay isn't that great all the time.  I know that sometimes hoochie just feels too good, but exercise some control; it's what separates us from the beasts. Slow down, stop and wait a moment to reset your internal circuits, change to a less-stimulating position, etc. How often do you have sex? Even if it's every day, even if it's more than once every day, isn't it worth the effort to make it really good every time?

Women seem to vary a great deal in their orgasm-requirements, both from woman to woman and occasion to occasion, and sometimes they're telling the truth when they offer those conciliatory "I just wanted to feel close to you." type words... but not always.

¤ If you're looking for some laughs at the expense of people far richer, more famous, and more successful than yourself (I always am) check out GoFugYourself.com, my new favorite blog. It's all about fashion, and by that I mean it's all about humorous criticism of bad fashion, when said fashion is draped over a celebrity.

This looks like something Snow White would wear on laundry day.

The woman in the photo on the right is no one you've ever heard of, but you can't fail to notice her frock, cut from the couch in your grandmother's den. Better yet are her shoes. I've lightened the photo a bit so you can see just what they look like; the hooves of ebony Clydesdale horses. Bad boots are only the start of the fun on Fug Yourself, though, so go and dig in. 

Best of all, they've been going since early 2004, and since bad fashion never goes out of style (or something like that) the archives are just as good as new entries. I'm trying not to read the whole thing all at once, but it's hard to stop from scrolling through yet another month of trainwreck photos.

What really makes the site though is that it's not just silly celebrity photos, it's that the writing is good. It's sharp, biting, and funny, and while it's occasionally a bit wordy *cough* it's also clever and even intelligent. The two female authors point out things I would never have noticed too; things like skin tone not matching clothing color, wrinkled slacks, flat shoes with cocktail dresses, excessive accessories, mismatched belts and hats, and so on. It's educational on that level, since while I know enough to recognize a bad outfit, I don't know exactly why.