"YouTube City, man."

Says a man who's frustrated that his presumably video-capable "phone can't come out of the scanner fast enough." Someone else is there with a video device capturing him saying that about the scene at the airport as a woman....

Well, what the hell is her game? Is she the victim of horrific TSA intrusion or a fame-seeker seizing the viral video route to celebrity? She's awfully carefully coiffed and made-up for the occasion of her humiliation....

Emergency...

... brassiere.

"Jean [Harlow] did not like to wear bras and was advised by her mother to ice her breasts to keep them firm."

"Similarly, she did not like to wear underwear because she disliked lines and she also preferred to sleep in the nude. Although these clothing practices were considered racy, especially due to her sex-symbol status, she actually approached them with a child-like freedom from confinement."

That all makes sense to me. Except the part about ice!

I ran across that by accident after searching — unsuccessfully — for the old Clairol ad with the tagline "If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde." While it made being blonde seem awfully important, I always thought it was bizarre to remind us that we're all going to die. How much compensation for that calamity could we get out of blondeness?

Another commercial from the same era tried to encourage us to use the product (Schlitz) with: "You only go 'round once, and you've gotta grab for all the gusto you can."



Wow. They really rub it in with the sharks that ate the guys in the shipwreck. Must drink beer! I guess it takes a heavier hand to use death as leverage against guys.

Anyway, what's this post about? Freedom, commerce, death as an incentive to live, an icy brew and... for the adventurous: icy breasts!

You think the new issue of Rolling Stone is tough on General McChrystal, but how do you think Lady Gaga feels?

She posed for the cover in a big machine-gun bra and a nearly naked ass and purports to "tell all," yet everyone's talking about McChrystal, whose name isn't even on the cover! Life is so unfair to Lady Gaga!

ADDED: That gun bra made me think of this crotch-gun in "From Dusk 'Til Dawn":

Sarah Palin had breast implants, she's divorcing Todd, she bought a place in the Hamptons, and Trig is not her own child.

Things that are equally untrue, per Sarah Palin.

"Nooo, I have not had implants," said Palin. "I think a report like that is about as real and truthful that Todd and I are divorcing or that I bought a place in the Hamptons or that Trig is not my own child.

"And we still put up with that garbage, too."

Speculation was rampant after photos of the former Alaskan governor at the Belmont Stakes showed her looking a little more buxom than usual.

"'Boobgate' is all over the Internet, because there are a lot of bored, idle bloggers and reporters with nothing else to talk about," Palin said in the interview.

Come on, Sarah, don't put down bloggers generally. And don't put down talking about breasts generally. I reject the idea that breasts belong at the bottom of the list of things to talk about. Breasts are important. They mean something. Let's not minimize their significance in our culture. They are the subject of many journals, books, and movies. I have taken my knocks for talking about the meaning of breasts in politics (though, of course, the knockers were my political opponents, motivated to squelch what was a criticism of Bill Clinton, whose attraction to Lewinskis was well-known ). So I will talk about breasts, and it's not at all for lack of better raw material. Breasts are big! Let's talk about them!

Now, speaking of breasts and bloggers, what amuses me — aside from the endless obsession with Sarah Palin, specifically, and with the physical aspects of female politicians, generally — is the low level of knowledge of breasts on the part of the Boobgate bloggers. They didn't seem to realize that different bras and different kinds of shirts and jackets affect the way breasts look. A woman can draw attention to her breasts or downplay them. In professional settings and for political appearances, women tend to wear jackets. Even when jackets are fitted through the midsection, they flatten and disguise the curve of the chest. That's the point: to blunt the point.

By contrast, the contour of the breasts is accentuated by a knit top — especially if it's thin, clingy, and light-colored, like the one Sarah Palin wore to the Belmont Stakes. And when a woman wears such a shirt, it's particularly easy to perceive the existence of nipples. Everyone knows they are in there, but reasonably modest women — like Sarah Palin — try to avoid the nipple protrusion of the sort you can see in this photo of that woman who's suing her ex-employer for objecting to the way she dressed for work. The way to do that — and I laugh at people who write about breasts but don't know this! — is to wear a bra with a reasonably thick layer of foam padding.

I feel sorry for the bloggers who know so little about breasts that when they saw that Palin photograph, their first explanation was surgery. Before you think scalpel, think Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is most likely. Palin was wearing a t-shirt and a t-shirt bra. Now, go, get a life, and some real experience of your own in this fleshly world, you blogger losers.

ADDED: Thanks to Crack Emcee (in the comments) for pointing out my typo:  "a reasonably think layer of foam padding." Corrected.

"OK, I understand the psychologists' point. I do think they should consider seeing a psychiatrist about their explosive anger."

Funny line from an excellent post about how the NYT is overreacting to some stuff in Wikipedia revealing things about the Rorschach test.

***

And, hey, this one's a lobster or you're crazy...



... and I see an invisible woman in a blue bra and green stockings with yellow pincer-hands...

"I feel terribly '20th Century' with these two boulders of silicone in my chest."

"They simply don't fit with the whole androgynous aesthetic of the day, as epitomised by the elfin figure of the new supermodel Agyness Deyn.... Now I long to go braless, to wear all those pretty little spaghetti strapped tops, to have that elegant, cherry-pipped silhouette that all the models in the magazines have."

***

(Fashion pics of Agyness Deyn.)

ADDED: I love this one:

Drooping breasts and bralessness.

I talked about breasts on Instapundit. Ha ha.

"The way that underwear is being sold in Saudi Arabia is simply not acceptable to any population living anywhere in the modern world."

"This is a sensitive part of women's bodies. You need to have some discussions regarding size, colour and attractive choices and you definitely don't want to get into such a discussion with a stranger, let alone a male stranger. I mean this is something I wouldn't even talk to my friends about."

WiFi on airplanes. What's the downside?

Terrorists coordinating things? The fact that the mere suggestion of terrorists coordinating things has me instantly eagerly ready to have the government monitor anything sent to or from an airline laptop? Come on, we let them X-ray the intimate items our bags and look at us in that machine that lets them see us naked. And you know how ridiculous you look naked but with your invisible clothes squishing your body into the dressed shape? Or do you think you look better that way, what with your Spanx and your push-up brassiere? I'm thinking of belts and waistbands. So, come on, WiFi on airplanes. It will be great. The time once spent doing that crap crossword in the in-flight magazine and snoozing to a half-heard audiobook will feel just like all those hours you willingly sit in your desk chair on a beautiful warm February day when you could be out traipsing around your beautiful city.