It's New Year's Eve 2022, and yet I'm up at my customary 4:30am. Out of habit rather than necessity, since it's Saturday and I don't need to rush off to work. I'm in my robe sitting in the dark family room listening to the sound of the rain on the roof and the gentle snore of my dogs as they sleep. In an hour I will doff the robe and run through my morning exercises. The holiday season has made a rather serious dent in my physical improvement. I had been down thirty pounds, and exercising up to 45 minutes a day, but since mid-November my habits have slipped. I fell off keto and have gained a handful of pounds back, and gotten lazy with the exercise. That all changes tomorrow. Back on keto, back on intermittent fasting. Love this picture... Much of my thoughts lately have been on physical enjoyment. I'm, as I've described myself, a Bohemian Hedonist at heart, even if my day-to-day lifestyle doesn't seem to reflect it. I have a deep appreciation for th...

(There are far more important and weightier topics, but it's the holiday season, so a little lighthearted Scrooginess for the week.) Here we are on the cusp of a whole new year. 2023. When I was a kid that was the far off future. Now it's a week away. Wow. If you are of the Christian persuasion, Merry Christmas. If you're Jewish, hope you're having a Happy Hanukkah. If you're something else, Happy Holidays. This time of years always brings with it some time for reflection, some time to consider what we're doing, how life is going, and hopefully some time with the family. It also brings tons of advertising for products retailers and other hope we'll buy for our loved ones. One such product caught my eyes, and for a few wrong reasons.  Pajamas. No nudity required. There's a company called Pajamagram , who specialize in, you guessed it, pajamas. Bedtime attire. For men, women, boys, and girls, according to their advertising. And what they produce is pretty ...

(The title, for those who don't speak Spanish, translates as "Dance with Me." You'll understand in a moment.) Here it is December of 2022 and the year has flown by, as I'm sure it has for you. I don't even remember much of November. It seems we just celebrated Halloween when Thanksgiving rushed by. And now we're on the verge of the December holidays.  Unreal. I've struggled with a topic for this entry. I'm worried about the repetition of my entries, and while I try to do something new and have a reason for posting, at some point when you have a hundred-fifteen articles you tend to duplicate a lot of things - though hopefully with updated thinking rather than reposts of the same information said a different way. It may seem to some readers I'm obsessed with labels. In my own way I like to categorize myself and things around me. Not for any reason of needing to do so, but because I hope to convey a particular sense of something to a casual reade...

 So my weight keeps fluctuating, and the holiday season - starting with Halloween - is making it harder to maintain let alone lose weight. I'm up a few pounds against my lowest last June, and struggling to get back on program. One of the positive factors is that I am exercising regularly, which ought to change the course of the weight I'm gaining. (This is purely a willpower thing, kids. I know that.)  My morning workout routine is going quite well, and I'm up to a half hour of high activity most mornings. And I can readily feel the improvement in my musculature. My ass and abs in particular, though my abs are still embedded in a stubborn layer of fat and my ass - which itself is resuming its "bubble butt" appearance from my college days - rests below a similarly stubborn pocket of back fat clinging to my lower back and oblique muscles.  Not me...yet Much of all this, of course, is psychological. Mental. And I've noticed a shift lately in my self-perception th...

In college I had a girlfriend who was utterly fascinated by the fact that testicles move.  For the uninitiated, the evolutionary design of our balls is to enable the production of sperm, which requires temperatures a bit below the normal body temp. The solution is to have the testes hang just outside the body cavity, cooling them just enough that they can freely produce copious amounts of swimming tadpoles, who, ideally, will race hellbent towards an ovum once they're deposited in a uterus. Okay, so much for the technical. Our balls hang outside the body, but since outside conditions change they can drop and contract, pulling, as necessary, free of the body when you're in warmer conditions such as a beach in Barcelona or a sauna in Sweden. Chill dude Conversely they can contract, as in the classic Seinfeld episode in which George screams "shrinkage" when a woman sees his chill-reduced package. The testicles pull up tightly against the body hoping to share s...

I am very aware I'm a bit of an outlier when it comes to my attitudes about nudity, sexuality and my aging body. I am conscious of the societal limitations on behavior and I don't transgress. I'm occasionally and uninhibitedly nude around my wife, my best friend, my physical therapist and a few medical types, but don't "flash" anyone else. I point that out because in the course of reading the variety of online forums relating to nudity, masculinity, and exhibitionism, there are a small minority of participants who promote a more aggressive approach bordering on and sometimes deliberately encouraging outright assault. Not rape, but flashing people who not only aren't prepared for it but are offended by it. In many cases men are deliberately getting erections. That's assault, guys. Don't mind me, I'm just the scenery A few months ago I posted a piece based on a comment made by a friend to the effect that women don't see nudity in the same fra...

  It's been a while since I last posted. Just no topics catching my eye or rambling around my noggin. However I just read a rather disheartening blog post from a man lamenting his own body issues but celebrating his own children's unabashed approach to being naked.  The writer, Jeremy, has made his home clothing optional as a way to raise his kids in a body-positive environment. But, as it turns out, Jeremy is the one with body issues not the kids. As a little boy - and by that definition anything up to the onset of puberty at 14 - I was pretty uninhibited. I've recounted nude swims at a friend's house and with the cub scouts at the scoutmaster's home. The time I fell in the pool at a different friend's house and spent the next forty or so minutes playing naked in his bedroom while his mother dried my clothes in the dryer. Swimming in rivers and ponds with the scouts. And I would guess a lot of adults have similar stories, or stories about their own kids being ...