It’s a feast day, what better picture than of a well-prepared feast?

Happy Thanksgiving!

There’s hope for the mainstream media yet. Old and stodgy they may be, but when Time publishes a story about a combat soldier who carries his wife’s panties in harm’s way as a good luck talisman, it’s refreshing. Better yet, they report it deadpan, with nary a hint of puritanical eyebrow raising nor distancing jocularity:

Corporal Michael Compton carries a plastic bag containing a pair of his wife’s underwear. She gave it to him before his first deployment to Iraq, when they were still dating. “She said that she would stick by me,” he says.

But on a patrol outside Fallujah, the bag fell out of his pocket and blew away. “I thought it was long gone,” he says. A week later, while “out in the middle of nowhere,” he noticed a plastic bag and picked it up. The underwear was inside.

“I couldn’t believe it. I guess it was a sign because, sure enough, when I got back, me and my wife got married. I deployed again to Iraq, and I figured I should bring it with me. After all, if it found its way back to me, maybe it could guide me back to her.”

What makes this all the more fun is the photo, which is, sadly, buried in a horrid Flash-y slide show that makes the specific photo unlinkable harder to link. (I said there was hope for old media, not that they actually and currently have two clues to rub together when it comes to putting stuff on the web.) The photo shows the soldier, his plastic baggy, and what looks like a very insubstantial bit of fine feminine frippery inside. Her granny panties, these were not!

Thanks to Pursed Lips for the link. Updated: And thanks to Olav for rooting out the direct link to the photo.

It’s been well over a year since I last linked to Naked Jen, and I’m not sure why I’ve let it go so long. Jen has one of those life blogs, I’d guess you’d call it; or, if you’re old fashioned, it might be considered an online journal or diary. Content: Jen, writing about what happens to Jen.

Except for the special sauce: every so often, Jen takes off her clothes in public and posts the picture. Frequently without any commentary at all, like it was the most ordinary thing. It’s really quite delightful.

Just fer instance, here’s Jen discovering damage to her Honda Element:

Luckily for us, she recently posted an uncharacteristically detailed account on the “Why naked Jen?” question, which I think is worth quoting in detail:

It was a really lovely party, a gathering of some folks who I already knew and many that I did not, with amazing food and laughter and beautiful children who were quite busy adorning themselves with sparkly things and glittery paint and just the right balloon animal.

At one point, Gwendomama mentioned to someone at the party that I was Nakedjen. As in THE Nakedjen. From the Internet. The one she talks about all the time. The one who just gets naked whenever. The one who got naked at the Mexican restaurant when she was there and she missed the opportunity!

That Nakedjen.

But then it didn’t stop there. She loaded this blog. On her very large flat screen monitor that was sitting right on the buffet table. There was a smorgasbord of food and behind it was me, upside down on a bed, naked. Well, I suppose it’s not a party until someone gets naked, as I always say, and it was probably a good thing that it was me.

Anyway, everyone was, as you might imagine, quite curious about exactly what it meant to be Nakedjen. Why I did it? What was the purpose? What was it all about?

So I happily explained that I am quite comfortable in my body. That being naked for me is a celebration of my body and of myself. I also explained that I was very tired of the distorted images of women that we are constantly fed by the media that make women feel that they are imperfect. Or not quite good enough. I was upset by a media that was constantly shoving the photo shopped perfected Barbie Doll images at us from the cover of magazines and television and billboards and was doing its best to create a very large population of women who absolutely hated everything about themselves.

I wanted to change that. And I was going to start with me.

So I started writing Nakedjen. It was my very subtle political platform. Because obviously I chose to be naked about my entire life, not just that particular agenda. Once I really started writing Nakedjen, I decided to write completely from my heart and soul. Bare it all. To be truly naked. And raw. And very real.

I also decided that I would post naked pictures of myself. That, I will admit, came more from my job at the time than from anything else. I was the product manager for an on-line sex chat community. Basically I was working in the porn industry. And I didn’t like what I was seeing at all. Because the women who were being served up to the men were not REAL. Men were paying lots of money for the fantasy of these women (and there’s nothing wrong with fantasy!), but I decided that I would give them a bona-fide, genuine, absolutely 100% real naked woman.

Now, let me reiterate that for me it wasn’t about being sexual. That honestly has never been my intention. I’m just me. I realize on an intellectual level that there are plenty of men (and women) out there that find my naked body attractive. Or even, gasp, HOT as they like to tell me. But for me, it honestly was just about saying, “Look, here I am! Nakedjen! This is my body. I love every inch of it and think it’s beautiful. And I think your naked body is absolutely perfect and beautiful, too!”

Thanks, Jen!

(Previous links: Naked Jen Goes To Washington and Naked At Disney World.)

I’ve been known to have fun spotting erotically-charged road signs, and it isn’t surprising to discover I’m not alone. (If you read the comments there you’ll see that the Photoshopped picture has already been identified as a fake, so let’s not bring that subject up here, k thanx.) As the poster at Get Along Gang says, some businesses choose such a name because they know it will get them attention.

Whatever. It would sure be nice to go into a Cocks store and let my eyes linger over their selection…..maybe even choose a thick one to take home since I don’t have a boyfriend. What I’d like best is for this poster (from AllPosters.com) to be predicting my future:

Thanks to my sister (the hippie-type cool one, not the one that’s making me get into a bridesmaids dress next month) for the sign link.

Although I myself have not (so far as I know) spent much time at bars or clubs or parties where the other guests are routinely stealing away into the “bathroom” (let’s be honest and call it the toilet, since that’s what’s in there and that’s what any busy one smells like) for quickie sex, it’s become something of a trope of modern partying. And apparently it goes on quite a lot in certain horny and impatient circles.

Kids these days, they think they invented sex in all its forms. Usually, they didn’t:

Here’s another, perhaps better, angle on the pair of sun-worshipping nudist women shown below, the ones who look like mother and daughter to me. (Lots of commenters disagree.) Perhaps the different angle will shake loose some different opinions:

Here’s a woman who seems not totally in love with her work:

Similar Sex Blogging:

• It Can Be Orgy Time Now
• The Cautious Lover