A New Year's Day Surprise

Kellie doesn’t allow sexy time to happen unless the bedroom door is locked. Period. Unfortunately, for me, the bedroom door on our Cannes apartment was lacking the required lock. I improvised by wedging a beach umbrella under the door handle, propped up by a couple of magazines and copy of Rick Steves’ France, the 2011 edition with the foldout color map.

Breasts To Die For

A German study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that staring at women's breasts improves men's health. According to the research, men who stared at woman’s breasts had a reduced risk of heart disease and better cardiovascular health.

John Hutchison's Ray Guns Redux

The Ray Gun

Kellie is back home in Oceanside, California, and I’m alone in Gold Beach, Oregon, trying to quell my neighbor’s ray guns. Since they first showed up next to our vacation rental property with their ray guns mounted on top of an old, white sheriff’s bus, they have been busy establishing a more permanent setup. They are remodeling their building, formally a small storage facility, into a laboratory with personal living quarters for self proclaimed scientist John Hutchison and his lovely wife Nancy. It looks like they are spending a good deal of money. I never knew crazy was so lucrative. 

Binge, Distracted By Breasts

I’ve gone off on a binge, a reading binge, which has effectively starved me of any time for writing. It started when I offered to do some research on Daniel Kahneman’s and Amos Tversky’s prospect theory for my friend David Marquet, a retired submarine captain and author of the book Turn The Ship Around. When I discovered that I had online access to academic journals using Kellie’s community college account, I spent days looking up and reading all manner of papers related to the theory because that’s what we obsessive-compulsive types do when we fixate on something. Subsequently, I decided it would be worth reading Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow. This forced me to put aside the other two books I was reading, Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday:What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? and E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. 

Foot Orgasm - A Dutch Treat

Photo Credit: Philip Leara

By now I probably have the husbands out there thoroughly confused. First I said that doing housework was the key to getting more sex, and then I said that doing less housework was the way to go. From the feedback I've received it's obvious that neither strategy is particularly effective, which begs the question: Is there any sure fire way for a husband to put his wife in the mood? Fortunately, there is one aphrodisiac that never fails. It's called a cruise ship. There's something about undulating on the high seas that brings out a woman's inner Jenna Jameson. That's why in less than two weeks Kellie and I will be departing for our sixth cruise this year. 

Less Housework, More Sex

Al Bundy, enticing his wife.

I never intended to mislead my readers, but apparently that's what I've done. In a previous post, The Secret To Having More Sex (With Your Wife), I told my fellow husbands that doing more housework would lead to more sex. It seems I was wrong – oops, sorry – but it wasn’t my fault. I was a victim of the self-serving, feminist propaganda machine that controls every major network and cable news outlet, all of whom ran stories claiming that the reward for helping with chores was more sex. Internet sites helped spread the lie too. The Huffington Post ran Why Housework Will Get You Some, and the communist website China Daily pressed their massive misinformation machine into service by publishing Men who do housework may get more sex.

Turn the Damn Lights Off

When I was a kid my father would yell at me and my siblings for leaving lights on everywhere.  We never appreciated why he got so annoyed. "When you pay the electric bill, then you'll understand," he'd bark in frustration. As with most things, dad was right. Now I'm the ranting father, chasing my kids and complaining about finding lights on in empty rooms. I know the situation is hopeless because teenagers have a congenital defect that  renders them incapable of turning off lights.

The True Cause of Global Warming

Since the mid 19th century, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere has risen by 0.8 ^oC, with most of the temperature rise occurring in the last 30 years. The global warming environazis want us to believe that man’s industrial activities are the cause, but a relatively straightforward calculation proves that men are blameless. Full responsibility for an overheating globe lies squarely in the failing wombs of menopausal women.

The Menopause Bomb

Credit: James Cridland

Over the past few weeks, one of my older posts, The Thermodynamics of Menopause, has been getting flooded with hits from the Ukraine. That post explained how my wife’s 35,000 hot flashes released energy equivalent to 4,809 sticks of dynamite. There’s only two possible explanations for the sudden Ukrainian interest in Kellie’s World: They're either having a global warming induced menopause crisis and they’re looking for expert help, or terrorists working out of the former Soviet Republic are trying to weaponize menopausal women. I hope that I wasn’t the cause of those recent terror warnings that lead to the closure of several U.S. Embassies across the Middle East.

BREAKING NEWS: Candidate Says He's Not A Weiner

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NEW YORK–In an effort to head off yet another scandal, Anthony Weiner, the disgraced politician who thrust himself into the political orgy otherwise known as New York City’s mayoral race, held a press conference today outside The Pleasure Chest in West Village.

Six Degrees of Senator Al Franken

Al Franken

I scanned the bookshelves in Annemiek's Paris apartment. No, I'm not cheating on Kellie. Annemiek is the French woman we exchanged homes with. She's currently in our house in Oceanside, California, critiquing the books in my library, no doubt. I wanted something to read, preferably in English, or with pictures, since I don't understand French. I couldn't find anything interesting so selected Al Franken's book Liars: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, one of three books in her collection by Franken. I was a little curious about Annemiek's Franken fetish. Why would a French woman be interested in an obscure American comedian turned senator of an even more obscure state? (I believe Minnesota is a state and not a Canadian Provence.) Franken is a liberal, and the French are almost communists. Liberals and communists are essentially the same thing, at least according to Rush Limbaugh, which might explain her fascination with the senator.

That's when the wet T-Shirt contest began.

The only picture Kellie will allow.

We stood in line for three hours to get into the catacombs hidden below Paris. For the first two hours we broiled beneath an unrelenting sun, feeling and smelling like stale bread plucked from a fondue pot. The next half-hour brought relief as thickening clouds and a quickening wind interrupted the heat wave that had suffocated Paris for days. Then, in the final half-hour, the sky split open like a ruptured waterbed mattress. That's when the wet T-shirt contest began.

The French Condition

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The French are a morose people, and I'm not the only one to make this assessment. Roger Cohen recently wrote about France's Glorious Malaise in the New York Times. Cohen thinks that the French temperament reflects a fatalistic realism. I don't think it's necessary to get quite so philosophical to explain the French condition. They simply haven't mastered some of life's basic routines.

The problem starts with a horrible night’s sleep. I’ve been to France multiple times, slept in many hotels and few French homes, and I’ve yet to find a comfortable bed. In France, any rectangular object with a sheet qualifies as a mattress. I'm staying in a Paris apartment right now where my bed is a pair of wooden shipping pallets.

Who Was That Helmeted Man?

I was sitting on a park bench, engrossed in Nissim's Taleb's new book Antifragile, when I detected a new aroma. I lifted my head and saw a woman and her dog walking away. On the ground, five feet from where I was reading, sat a fresh pile of dog crap, glistening in the late morning sun. Moving to another bench wasn't an option. Shaded park benches with free WiFi connections are a rare find in Cannes, and it was going to take a lot more than olfactory assault to dislodge me.

I Had A Dream

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Kellie awoke from a two-hour afternoon nap and plopped down next to me on the couch. "I had dream," she said.

I dreamt we monkeys. We had just arrived on a tropical island with a baby monkey and loaf French bread wrapped in plastic. The island was already populated by other monkeys and they wanted to kill us and take our bread, but we hid in a tree behind a sleeping baby bear. The cub began sniffing the air, he smelled our bread. He grabbed it from me but couldn't manage to claw his way through the plastic wrapping. He was making so much noise I was afraid he would alert the other monkeys, so I opened it for him and gave him some bread. The bear fell from the tree and when he hit the ground all the monkeys turned their heads in our direction. We fled and they started chasing us. Swinging on vines through treetops, we nearly escaped, but I had epic swing fail that left me dangling. One of the female monkeys grabbed me by my big toe. I screamed for your help and when you arrived she released my toe and started making goggly eyes at you. Music began playing, Jungle Boogie, I think. She turned blue and the two of you started undulating in unison. Then the dream ended.

I asked Kellie what she thought the it meant but she couldn't explain it. I think it means she should do whatever is necessary to ensure that I'm not tempted by undulating blue monkeys, but I'd like to hear your interpretations.

Excuse Me Miss, Are You Ovulating?

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Daniel Bergner's new book, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, is packed with useful information. In a previous post, I told you about women's secret predilection for porn. Researches have also discovered that the strength of a woman's desire for smut is predicated upon the time of the month when she first views an x-rated video. Women whose first exposure to porn occurred just prior to ovulation showed greater interest and excitement than women who first viewed porn in different phases of their menstrual cycle. However, the women whose first exposure coincided with ovulation maintained their level of interest in watching porn throughout the rest of their cycle, whereas those whose first viewing occurred at other times in their cycle never achieved the same level of interest. The importance of this finding did not escape Kim Wallen, the researcher responsible for this discovery: "One lesson is that you don't want a woman to form her first impression of you when she's in the wrong menstrual phase. You'll never recover."

A Day At The Beach

There's nothing like a day at the beach on the French Rivera where the locals enjoy overexposing themselves. Who can't help but smile at seeing the joy on a young boy's face as he frolics in the surf, playing paddle ball with his bare chested mother, her drooping breasts glistening with oil, flopping to and fro as she leaps through waves.

Geography With Kellie

Relaxing on a sixth floor balcony of a beachfront vacation apartment in Carnet-Plage, France, Kellie asked if we were looking at the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Dumbfounded, it took me a moment before I responded to her question.

"It's the Mediterranean, my dear."

Kellie claims that traveling is the only way she can learn geography. There has to be a less expensive way to receive an ineffective education.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

We know why she's smiling.

Next time you nuzzle up to your wife or girlfriend and she tells you that she's not in the mood, you can be confident of one thing—she's lying. Oh she's definitely horny, or she could be rather quickly. How do I know this? Thanks to groundbreaking research by sexologist Meredith Chivers, we now know that female sexual arousal can be achieved in under two minutes. Amazing, it takes me longer than that just find the vibrator.

The Real Problem With Marriage Equality

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I could feel the bile creeping up the back of my throat as I realized that Pat Robertson was right. Same-sex marriage will destroy the traditional family and lead to the disintegration of civilization, but not for the fellatious reasons he typically tries to ram down our throats. Homosexuality won't lead to polygamy, bestiality or pedophilia; it won't cause birth rates to plummet and populations to collapse, and I doubt that fire and sulfur will rain from the heavens and destroy us in a Sodom apocalypse. The real path to our demise is much more insidious.

A Vision Of Love

Kellie stepped out of the shower. I examined her naked body, smiled, and was about to pay her compliment when she cut me off.

"You want some of this, don't you?" she said as she slid her hands along the sides of her torso and wiggled her hips. "But you're not getting any today because it's my birthday, not yours." 

Take Two Of These And Call Me Johnny Depp

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When Kellie and I first met, I barely needed the fingers on one hand to count the days between conjugal visits. I still use my hands to mark the time between copulations but in a totally different way. There’s an old joke that I’m sure you’ve heard. How do you stop a woman from having sex? You marry her. Scientists have long known the cause of this problem, it’s called H.S.D.D., or hypoactive sexual-desire disorder, and the pharmaceutical industry, which has been working feverishly to rid the globe of this scourge, may soon market a magic pill that accomplishes for women what Viagra has done for men. Fifty years from now, the Rolling Stones song Mother's Little Helper will have a totally different meaning.

Women Are Like Cars

Hey friends, it's been a busy few days and with Kellie and I leaving for Alaska in a few hours I'm not sure if I'll publish much next week. I decided to rerun one of my favorite posts, it was originally published in January 2012. 
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www.fhm.com

Last Friday night, we attended a birthday party for our friend CJ, a young Marine who recently returned from Afghanistan. I whispered to Kellie, “You know, I think we’re the oldest couple here.” The youngest couple at the party, Rick and Lindsay, both in their twenties, were recently engaged.  Having been married twice, once successfully, I felt that Rick might benefit from the wisdom of my years. I told him getting married was just like buying a car.

Sexiest Nationalities

“Do I make you horny, baby? Do I? Do I make you randy?” If you’re a typical American female, you’re likely to answer yes to those questions from Austin Powers, at least according to a recent online survey that asked American men and women which nationalities were sexiest. U.S. females put Brits and Irishmen at the top their lists, while males preferred Latino women. I started thinking about how my preferences, as well as Kellie's, matched those in the study.

The Malevolent Machine

The Face of Evil

Unlike most other clothes dryers, which are little more than highly evolved, sock eating Venus Flytraps, my dryer is a conscious, sentient organism. It knows I'm an empiricist and it likes to amuse itself by fucking with my ability to perform inductive reasoning.

Double Vision

I called central appointments hoping to see my doctor that afternoon, but after I told the nurse my symptoms she sent me straight to the hospital. It would not be an understatement if I said Kellie was very concerned about my condition – it would be a misstatement. This wasn't the first or second or even the tenth time she's had to drive me to the emergency room. She was more annoyed than worried.

Losing My Religion

Conflicted

I remember looking up at the big, round stained glass window on the back wall of Saint Rose of Lima. I remember looking down at the clear oak pews. I watched as the priest, standing on marble, held a golden goblet above his head. I watched as adults dropped bills and coins into the collection plate. Something didn't make sense. God didn't need gold chalices or marble alters, but the hungry needed food and the threadbare needed clothing. I couldn't understand why our congregation would spend money on a house of worship while people suffered. It was inconsistent with what I had learned during Saturday catechism class. With only two weeks to go before my Confirmation, I had my doubts. I also had to make a decision. 

Charming Idiosyncrasies

During the initial stages of a budding romance, both parties are usually very well behaved, hiding those charming idiosyncrasies that might frighten away a potential mate. People do more than just control their endearing quirks, they also tend to suppress the basic bodily functions that make us part of the animal kingdom. We try to make believe that we don't urinate, defecate, menstruate, belch, burp or fart. But over time, maintaining the charade becomes burdensome and we eventually let our guard down. Kellie has decided to restore some of the mystique in our relationship by banning the fart. Since we can't eliminate flatulence, the new rule is: "Thou shall not release audible flatus in the presence of thy mate." She has also declared that the offender shall be punished with a pinch.

Once the law went into effect, we quickly discovered how much Kellie liked to blow her own horn. Whereas I bravely accepted my punishment, Kellie tried to escape her comeuppance by fleeing. This past week, my 15 year-old daughter caught us as I chased Kellie to administer her punishment. Turn up your volume and enjoy.

Speak English, Woman

"Bonjour, mon cher. Avez-vous bien dormi?"

Those were the first words Kellie uttered as I lumbered down the stairs.

"Please don't start with me," I begged, "I just woke up."

Before our first trip to France, Kellie began studying French. Now, two years later, she speaks well enough to annoy me in two languages. To speed up the learning process, she immersed herself in French. She switched the language on her computer to French, her shopping lists are in French, and even the kid's chore lists are written in French, which provides a handy excuse for not doing them. She listens to French music and watches French films. I'm surprised that it hasn't increased her libido since every French film on Netflix is a hump-fest. I don't understand why those Frenchman are so obsessed with sex, they act like they never get any. Worst of all, she’s constantly talking at me in French. And when she's not bombarding me with French she's haranguing me with a rambling discourse on everything that happened during her last French class. My eyes glaze whenever she starts talking about her French lessons. French, French, French - it's all French all the Frenching time. As I write, she's sitting at her laptop mumbling away in French. I want to instigate an argument just so she gives me the silent treatment.

My Little Stinker

Michela

I give the gift of flatulence. It doesn't come from me directly, but I have the rare talent of inducing it in others, particularly my granddaughter, although my wife, Kellie, occasionally claims I give her indigestion too. This skill is quite useful because when that little turd (the granddaughter, not Kellie) gets a gas bubble stuck in her belly she wails like a cat in blender. Freeing that aromatic source of discomfort is not difficult, all it takes is pumping those chubby little legs up and down a few times (again, I'm referring to the baby, not Kellie), and after a few seconds, out pops some sweet relief.

Spousonomics

The book arrived last Monday, the one that promised to help me do less housework, win more arguments, and have more sex. Spouseonomics, by Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, is no ordinary text on marital relations. This book analyzes marriage with the same scientific rigor and mathematical precision that we've come to expect from economics. By using cutting edge econometrics, couples can look forward to achieving the same sort of results that were once attainable only by top tier corporations like Enron, AIG, and Lehman Brothers.

The Thermodynamics of Menopause

Kellie’s hot flashes continue unabated, repeating every 45 minutes as they have done for the past three years. That’s like getting burned at the stake 35,000 times. Each attack turns her into a hot, sweaty mess. It's then quickly followed by a rapid drop in temperature that leaves her cold and clammy. Watching her repeated heating and cooling cycles got me wondering about the thermodynamics of a hot flash: how much heat energy gets released in each episode? It shouldn’t be too hard to calculate. We only need three pieces of information: the specific heat capacity for skin, the skin temperature change during a hot flash, and the mass of the flesh getting roasted.

Self-help

Like many other Americans pursuing a personal improvement project, I headed straight to the self-help section of the nearest Barnes & Noble, only to discover that we are a seriously troubled nation. Maybe we’re just more afflicted here in Southern California, but there's more shelf space devoted to tomes on fixing our lives than any other genre. Overwhelmed by choices, I soon realized that I needed a self-help book just to help me find a self-help book that might truly be helpful. 

The Twilight Zone

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Submitted for your approval. After cruising the Caribbean during the New Year’s Holiday, a family of four spends the night together in a single hotel room in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Though they share a common room, each family member experiences a completely different reality as they retire for the evening and enter their own personal corner of . . . The Twilight Zone.

Unleash the Hounds

“I hate my bras.” 

Is she talking to me? There’s no one else here so she must be talking to me. It wasn’t an actual question so maybe I’m not supposed to say anything; maybe this is one of those times when I’m just supposed to just shut up and listen. Uh-oh, can’t resist the urge to respond. 

“Then get new ones, dear.” 

That was good; my reply was short, responsive to the problem at hand and neutral. I should be safe.

He used to be a Mormon

Kellie, recovering nicely

It had been over five weeks since our Caribbean cruise and Kellie was suffering from severe vacation withdrawal, so I stuffed her in the car and speed off to Palm Springs for a medicinal vacation. 

At our hotel there was a large group of swingers who put on an afternoon, poolside show. We missed some of the best performances because the day before we arrived management had asked the troupe to keep their displays G-rated. The free outdoor entertainment was great but the free in-room coffee forced us to make daily trips to Starbucks.
 

It's a Little Chilly Here

This morning I told Kellie that she’s failing in her primary duty as my muse for this blog. I also speculated as to the cause: insufficient sex. I don’t know if my diagnosis is correct, but even if it's wrong, how much harm could an accidental overdose cause? Kellie refuses to render the requisite medical assistance unless, as judged by her, my behavior improves. She’s unhappy about the resumption of our long running heat battle.

Cruising, Grandmothers, and Vibrators

As long time readers of Living in Kellie’s World are well aware, Kellie loves taking cruises. We normally go alone, but during our last voyage over the New Year holiday, we invited family and friends to accompany us. In all, our group totaled 16 people and included our mothers. To take advantage of every available discount and credit offered by the cruise line, Kellie assigned us to staterooms in a manner that would produce the greatest cost savings. Consequently, our reservations had me sharing a stateroom with my mother and Kellie was listed as sharing a stateroom with her mom. This arrangement would obviously deprive me of one of the prime benefits of taking Kellie on vacation, so once we were aboard, Kellie went to the purser's office to switch room assignments while I began settling into the cabin that had I assumed would be ours. But I was wrong, as usual, and had to gather the few things I had unpacked to switch rooms with our mothers who were in the adjacent cabin.

Balance

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It’s now approaching two months since my last post and several friends have asked me what happened to Living in Kellie’s World. Let’s just say that I’ve been a bit distracted. I’ve been spending so much time learning the alphabet soup of technologies necessary to become a web developer (PHP, HTML, CSS, MYSQL, JAVA, APACHE, JASON, JQUERY, AJAX,  OAUTH, CURL and whatever else I find required) that I’ve neglected my blog. Whenever I embark upon a new enterprise, I tend to pursue it to the exclusion of almost everything else. This is an easy trap for someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and I succumb to it frequently. During the first year following my retirement I dedicated myself to getting a teaching credential. After completing all the necessary coursework with 4.0 GPA, I decided to forgo the teaching and began blogging. I then proceeded to drive my family and friends nuts with incessant entreaties to read and share my posts. Eventually, the blogging was displaced by my latest obsession: web development.