Ten Photographs of Salma Hayek's Photogenic Breasts

I have no desire to turn this blog into a leering lad's-mag kind of site. The thing is, though, that any simple Google image search of Mexican-American actress Salma Hayek will demonstrate that it's all but impossible to look at a picture of her without your eyes being drawn, quite involuntarily, towards her rather spectacular rack.

See the thing isn't merely that Salma Hayek has great breasts: it's that she has remarkably photogenic breasts. They just photograph well. It's not their fault. Here are ten (or I guess twenty, technically) examples. Clicking on any of the tiny little pictures will reveal massively larger pictures (in most cases).

1.	SALMA HAYEK IN RED WITH A PLUNGING NECKLINE: A palate cleanser of sorts, before delving in further. I think this is on the set of a movie or something. Can't guess why else she'd be wearing this particular piece of clothing.
2.	SALMA HAYEK IN WHITE WITH ACRES OF CLEAVAGE: This is from some press conference, I think. One that was amply photographed, it seems, because any mere Google of Salma Hayek comes up with several pictures of her in the same dress at the same table. I can't guess why this press convference is so important. Might have something to do with the word 'ample' I used above. In these photos, Hayek's breasts are simply incredible. I can't imagine a person in the audience heard a word she had to say that day.
3.	SALMA HAYEK'S SIDEBOOB: This photo is paparazzi trash in extremis, from some E! show or something. But sideboob is one of the greatest gifts God bestowed on humanity, and when it's Ms Hayek's sideboob, you know God is great.
4.	SALMA HAYEK IN A STUDDED BLUE DRESS: This dress has to have been custom-made to fit her particular dimensions. Or else maybe it just wraps on, like cling film.
5.	SALMA HAYEK IN WHITE ON A BEACH: This is a seriously attention-grabbing picture. I can't see anyone, straight, gay or a-, looking at this picture and not finding their eyes magnetically drawn in a single direction. She's on a beach, though I don't blame you for not noticing.
6.	SALMA HAYEK IN RED ON A BEACH: Seriously, this woman should stay away from beaches. She's a drowning hazard.
7.	A YOUNGER SALMA HAYEK COVERING HER BREASTS WITH HER ARMS: She looks kind of Egyptian or Greek or something in this 'classic' picture - not quite of a prehistoric vintage but clearly from a younger era. For all this below-the-neck salivating, I should also point out that Salma Hayek is a beautiful woman as well.
8.	SALMA HAYEK IN A BLACK BRA ON UGLY BETTY: America Ferrera is also a beautiful woman, making a lie of the TV show's name. Still, it's rather unfair to subject the poor lass to this kind of competition, isn't it? Incidentally, those are two of the most perfectly round breasts I've ever seen.
9.	SALMA HAYEK BREASTFEEDING AN AFRICAN BABY: It turns out Hayek is a breastfeeding advocate - perhaps she just likes having the opportunity to talk about breasts to an eager audience. Here she is in Africa apparently breastfeeding a child whose mother was unable to. This child will grow up to realise how blessed he truly has been.
10.	SALMA HAYEK'S BREASTS AS A WORK OF ART IN FRIDA: And here they are au naturel, though I don't really feel the need for an 'NSFW' label, as they've been painted up here , into the works of art the world already knows them to be. This is from the movie Frida, where Hayek plays the titular role, as Frida Kahlo, the monobrowed Mexican artist.

Ten Political Moustaches

Here in Canada, we're only days away from a federal election. What's really shaking up the scene is that for the first time in ages we'll have a leader who might well have been inspired by Stalin or Lenin... not in his politics, I don't mean, but in his facial-hair decisions. That, by the standards of 2011, is revolutionary.

1.	JACK LAYTON: Asked recently about the reason for his surge in popularity in Québec, Jack Layton apparently quipped, "je ne sais pas... moustache?" He's not far wrong. Whether or not Layton radically changes the electoral landscape of Canada next week, it's already a guarantee that he'll change the relationship the voting public has with political face fur.
2.	HAROLD MACMILLAN: After all, to find a moustache in the PMO, in the UK at least, you have to go all the way back to the early sixties and the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Macmillan was Prime Minister during the first rush of Beatlemania, that's how long our leaders' upper lips have been shorn. A quick scan of Wikipedia suggests he was a decent man, best-known for decolonisation in Africa. And for saying, 'events, my dear boy, events'.
3.	THOMAS DEWEY: In the United States, you have to go back much further. The last time a moustache was a serious competitor for the White House was all the way back in 1948, when the Republican candidate was Thomas Dewey, bizarrely best known for not defeating Truman, whatever the newspaper said that day. His historic loss was so tragic that a soup strainer has ever since been seen as a curse on the President. Okay, not really.
4.	MOAMMAR GADDAFI: It's probably folks like this who have put the moustache into disfavour. To be fair, Gaddafi hasn't been rocking a moustache very long, but God knows it's a hideous addition ot a hideous person. He doesn't seem fully capable of growing a moustache or a goatee, so I'm not sure why he tries. Especially when the curly locks are, in contrast, quite striking.
5.	R. TAYYIP ERDOGAN: The moustache is perhaps more common in that approximate area of the world. In Turkey, for example, it's the rare Prime Minister or President that doesn't have a small animal on his top lip. Here's the current PM, Erdogan, but it could have been almost any of them.
6.	LECH WALESA: After all, the moustache is the symbol of liberty, of workers overcoming the aparattus of the state. Or of grandfatherliness. Both work in the case of cuddly-old-guy Lech Walesa, who could donate some of that full and manly moustache to Gaddafi and never even notice.
7.	V.I. LENIN: This very photogenic gentleman, after all, created a vogue for facial hair and a vogue for revolutionary workers' communes. "Let me in, let me in", cried the Mensheviks. "Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin", replied Lenin.
8.	JOSEF STALIN: And then we get Stalin. I only had room for two moustachioed mass-murderers on this list, so the famous Hitler you-missed-a-spot gets cut (ho, ho, ho). But Gaddafi gets in, and here is the fearsome 'stache of the post-Lenin era in Russia. Stalin's moustache was so loathed that Brezhnev's destalinisation was also effectively a demoustachisation, as no subsequent Soviet leader wore one, excepting of course Brezhnev, who had two above his eyes.
9.	EMILIANO ZAPATA: Wikipedia will tell you that Emiliano Zapata, the turn-of-the-century Mexican revolutionary who sought to overthrow the quasi-feudal state of affairs there, is best known for his (admittedly cool) aphorism, "It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." However, the truth is that Zapata is best known for one of history's most awesome moustaches this side of Salvador Dalí. It might not do much for the fight against Mexican stereotyping, but it does plenty for the fight against boring facial hair.
10.	CHESTER A. ARTHUR: Something Zapata had in common with the 21st President of the USA, who might, like Jack Layton, have been Canadian (take that, birthers!), who was a 'Stalwart' Republican, and who had truly fearsome muttonchops joined by a healthy moustache.

Ten Quotes from Right-Wing Blowhards That I Can Actually Agree With

I embarked on this project with the best of intentions. About a year ago, I stumbled across a list of what someone thought were the 'best ever' quotes from Ann Coulter. I decided to read down the list (it was an extensive list), and found myself agreeing with, well, with two or three of them. Which surprised me and took me aback, frankly. It stuck in my head.

And may well have been all a dream. Because in compiling this list, I found it more difficult to find somethig - anything - Ann Coulter had said that I could agree with, as you'll see below. Most of the seven other people on this list were comparatively likeable, actually. Which took me by surprise. Must be the Christmas spirit filling my heart with tidings of comfort and joy.

What is a blowhard? Well, dictionary.com defines it mostly as a boastful braggard, but I don't think that's it at all. To me, a blowhard is that drunk guy in the corner of the bar willing to spout off about any topic. Little so-called 'political commentary' strays very far from this template; rarely does it rise above the level of mere partisan shouting.

To the extent that I've actually watched any of these people (all of whom are American mainly because I'm not aware of any Canadians of a similar type), I must admit that I don't find left-wing political commentators much more appealing than their conservative 'nemeses' - I think we're supposed to see Keith Olbermann, for example, as a kind of countervailing force of good against the people on this list, but I watched him in preparing this list, and found his politics unimpeachable but his personality smug and superior. God help us all if he's what stands between these ugly hatemongerers and true political power.

And ugly they are. I really attempted this with the best of intentions: understand the 'other side', so to speak, seek out common ground. But the vast majority of the things these commontators say is rank, indefensible nonsense. David Letterman famously told Bill O'Reilly that 60% of what he said was crap. Frankly, I'm still looking for that other 40% (okay, 39% - he did make the list, after all). It must comprise mainly the introductions he gives his guests as they appear on his show.

Still, by the mere law of averages, even the most wrong-headed person is bound to say something less than entirely offensive every now and then - even if it's just by accident. Here are ten.

1.	NEWT GINGRICH ON POLITICAL CLICHÉ: "In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins." This is a refreshingly honest look at partisan politics from someone who has actually been elected as a member of one of the two parties (no points for guessing which). Most of these blowhards are extremely partisan, and have this inbuilt belief that the Republican Party is by its very nature superior to the Democratic Party. Some are nearly Manichaean about it. So this more realistic view of party politics is nice to see.
2.	SARAH PALIN ON POPULISM: "We need leaders who will stand up for the little guy and listen once again." I don't know if Palin really qualifies as a blowhard, but she has the business of cheap soundbites down just as well as the media professionals do. Somewhere along the way, the left has lost its ability to speak with conviction as defenders of the 'common man'. We may have come to wrinkle our noses at cheap, pat populist sentiment, but the result is a feeling that the left is out of touch with the hoi polloi. If we really do shut ourselves up in ivory towers, we will have forever lost the battle. Palin is right: leaders need to listen to and stand up for the common man. People are so desperate for this that millions have convinced themselves that the Republicans in some way represent their interests best of all. This is frightening.
3.	SEAN HANNITY ON PUBLIC SERVICE: "One of the best lessons I learned early is that not everything in life is about you. It is about service. If you want trips and excessive gifts, then don't get into public service." Yeah, fair enough. It's tough to complain about someone criticising graft and corruption in the public sector. I don't know the circumstances he was discussing, but yeah - dishonesty in the public sector is something to condemn. With kickbacks and 'donations' being a daily reality in American public political life, it's tough to see this changing, but the endemic corruption in politics ought to anger people on both the left and the right equally - if this is what he's talking about. If he's merely saying that public servants shouldn't earn a decent wage, then it's rather tougher to defend him.
4.	GLENN BECK ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: "Political Correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up." I think this is absolutely true, and important. Beck says it to talk about how political correctness is ineffective, and as far as that statement goes, it's true. Our political discourse has progressed to the point that, for example, if you insult gay or black people in public with derogatory language, you will be criticised on all sides for it. This is a good thing, but what it has also done is driven the bigotry underground. Beck is right: when the cameras are off, when the notepads are away, the opinions expressed by a large number of conservatives suddenly seem very different. Political correctness can unfortunately give the illusion that society has progressed further than it has. This forces sheep's clothing onto wolves who otherwise might not hide their wolfish natures, and that makes it harder to fight them.
5.	RUSH LIMBAUGH ON PRO-CHOICE EQUIVOCATION: "The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them?" This one is a genuine, legitimate criticism of the mainstream left. In the abortion battle, conservatives have a simpler message than the mainstream left. Its mere unequivocal directness gives it a sense of moral superiority over the hedge-betting that goes on in the mainstream left. If we are truly pro-choice, we have to be able to say the word 'abortion', and we need to be comfortable with it and speak with no uncertainty about how enabling a woman to take control of her own body is indeed a moral act. Limbaugh is right that it's hypocritical to be pro-choice if you still insist on 'softening' your message with talk about how abortions need to be avoided. There is nothing morally wrong with abortion, so behaving as if there is (or might be) helps no one.
6.	GLENN BECK (AGAIN) ON THE NEXT GENERATION: It does not have to be that the greatest generation is behind us. It does not have to be that our children will have a lower standard of living. It will be that way if we choose to believe that. I choose not to believe that. I like this one. A little bit of optimism is refreshing coming from the mouths of these doomsday-sayers. Conservatism by its very nature sees the past as glorious and sees any change from how things were in the past as regression, so pessimism about youth is pretty much a given in conservative circles. Beck would probably suggest that all the next generation has to do is 'embrace our traditional values' to become the greatest of generations, but nonetheless I have to give him credit for not immediately dismissing the future out of hand.
7.	SARAH PALIN (AGAIN) ON HELP: "Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us. I don't know if by their very definition, the old, the young and the sick are the 'weakest' among us, but Palin's sentiment is still well-taken. I suppose as far as people-helping-people goes, the main difference between conservatives and progressives could be construed as whether or not the government is the best agent to provide that help. Alternately, it might be that one side is genuinely for helping those in need, while the other side just gives lip service to the notion.
8.	BEN STEIN ON ALTRUISM: "I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty...This is my highest and best use as a human." In the midst of hundreds of quotes from this elderly blowhard (once upon a time famous for saying, 'Beuller? Beuller?' in a teen movie, now famous for spouting all kinds of ugly conservative rhetoric at any given opportunity) focusing on personal gain and the rewards of personal effort, a sudden sense of civic duty leaps out in this quote. Stein has a lot to say in favour of the self-interest and greed that serves as the spirit of capitalism, so siddenly seeing a quote in praise of altruism is a welcome relief.
9.	ANN COULTER ON OLYMPIC BOYCOTTS: "In another show of America's force to the world, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Carter responded by boycotting the Olympics. And thus was a fearsome blow struck at little fourteen-year-old American girls who had spent their lives training for the Olympics." I found it very hard to find something Ann Coulter had ever said that I didn't find merely obnoxious, offensive garbage. So I had to go and find this rather obscure topic: the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics. I think boycotts can be useful tactics to change other countries' behaviour or attitudes, but boycotting Olympics is a numbskulled move that changed nothing politically, dashed kids' dreams, and led to the orgy four years later when the Eastern Bloc boycotted the Los Angeles olympics, denying Americans their chief competitors.
10.	BILL O'REILLY ON TEEN PREGNANCY: "Millions of American families are dealing with teenage pregnancy...It is true that some Americans will judge Governor Palin and her family. There's nothing anyone can do about it." I had no idea that the relatively charismatic and seemingly likeable O'Reilly was probably the most reprehensible on this austere list, bar Ann Coulter. He has decades of nonsense behind him. You could fill bookshelves with the garbage he's spouted. Yet, while Sarah Palin was campaigning for the office of vice president, her unwed teenage daughter discovered that she was pregnant. The temptation to give in to Schadenfreude here comes from the fact that Palin and her ilk are eager to condemn unwed teen mothers at every chance they get. One wants to point out her hypocrisy. But I think the left should have resisted the temptation to gloat here, since Sarah Palin is not the same person as her daughter, and having sex outside of marriage is no crime. We shouldn't need to attack the right for how their opinions and their lives contrast each other: it should be enough merely to point out how wrong their opinions are.

Ten Women With Shaved Heads

The bald head, be it through age or through shaving, is not that uncommon at all. You'll see bald heads all around you. But there's probably just shy of a one-hundred percent chance that the person you see sporting a hairless head is male. Male pattern baldness is encoded on the Y-chromosome. The buzz-cut is a male fashion. Women with Rapunzel-length locks are often complimented on them, and women are expected to use their hair as a fashion statement. Merrely having no hair at all is no fashion statement, is it?

No, really: is it? Almost all of the following ten women look great. In some cases, better without hair than with. It's an acquired taste, sure, but finding women with shaved heads beautiful is, based on current evidence, not that hard a taste to acquire.

1.	SINÉAD O'CONNOR: Sinéad has to be first on this list, because even all these years later, when you think 'bald woman', she's still the first name you think of. In fact, she's perhaps as well-known for being bald these days as she is for covering a Prince song and tearing up a picture of the Pope. Sinéad O'Connor was a beautiful woman, and her shaved head was a dramatic, challenging statement. Everything that's great about her in the early days straddles the divide between hard and soft. As, frankly, does her appearance.
2.	GRACE JONES: In fact Grace Jones was doing it years and years before. Grace Jones was a fashion model - slash - singer - slash - who knows quite what she was? She was, mind you, gorgeous and terrifying in equal parts. Lady Gaga claims her as a hero, but she's way cooler than Lady Gaga could ever be. Grace Jones couldn't find softness and femininity in her shaved head, but she was never about softness. In her case, hair just got in the way of her ability (or God-given right) to kick your ass all over the place.
3.	SIGOURNEY WEAVER: This is also true of Sigourney Weaver, though in her case the bald head was responsible for the transformation. It was the lack of hair that truly made her into Ripley, "Alien"-trilogy heroine and scary-person. Just look at that picture. With hair, Sigourney Weaver is a Glenn Close-style Hollywood mainstay. Shorn, she's a sci-fi heroine.
4.	DEMI MOORE: Demi Moore joins this list, like Sigourney Weaver less as a fashion statement than as a job requirement: for her role in the movie "GI Jane", she had to shave her head. The result wasn't as iconic as the previous three, but it was impressive nonetheless.
5.	NATALIE PORTMAN: And also Natalie Portman, who shaved her head in order to star in "V for Vendetta". However, in Portman's case, she is somehow equally gorgeous with or without hair. Looking at her bald, one wonders why women ever thought they needed hair to be seen as beautiful. I don't think there's anything Natalie Portman could do to her appearance that would make her anything less than gorgeous.
6.	MENA SUVARI: As opposed to Mena Suvari, who is less gorgeous than 'cute', or more precisely 'doll-like'. Having extremely short hair (not technically shaved but almost there) makes her no less doll-like than if she had Pippi Longstockings hair.
7.	ALEK WEK: Alek Wek is a Sudanese fashion model, whose main distinguishing trait is her shaved head. It suits her, and she is beautiful, but I don't know if the bald head enhances the beauty or if it just makes her stand out on a runway. Stand out she definitely does, though.
8.	ME'SHELL NDEGÉOCELLO: Me'Shell NdegéOcello is an American singer whose name has various spellings, accents, apostrophes and mid-word capital letters, depending on who you ask. None of this nomenclatural weirdness is the fault of her parents, who named her "Michelle Lynn Johnson". What's interesting about NdegéOcello's shaved head is that it fits her so naturally that if you show someone a picture of her in performance and say, 'describe this woman', the person is perhaps not even likely to notice the hairless head.
10.	MELISSA ETHERIDGE: I wasn't sure whether or no to include this: this is not a shaved head. This is a head whose hair has fallen out as a result of cancer treatment. Not the same thing at all, and it would seem insulting for me to include it on the list, except... here she is in the picture on stage, defiantly performing completely bald, not a wig in sight. This is not only an act of bravery and defiance but it's a welcome acceptance of her own personal appearance, whatever form that might take. That's inspiring.
10.	BRITNEY SPEARS: Probably the most famous shaved head on this particular list. Some have done it as a fashion statement, some as a career move, some as a health necessity. In the case of Britney Spears, shaving her head was done for reasons quite opposite to these: to attack her career and her reputation as a fashionplate, and done in a moment of very poor health - mental health, that is. Britney Spears's famous head-shaving incident was a tragic example of what a life under the spotlight can do to you. I like Britney - she's been through a lot in her life and it's tough not to wish her well. Even seeing her smiling with that ludicrous bald head makes me feel a stubborn pride in her. No idea why, really.

Ten People Born in 1975

I'm 35. It's a strange age, really. It's not 'old' by any means. It's not even 'middle aged'. But it's not 'young' either, by any estimation. It's just this age, stuck in there between old and young. I think I'm at approximately that exact age that advertisers salivate over the most, but I certainly don't feel all that desired, like a mover-and-shaker. In fact, I kind of feel like our generation just kind of slipped by, moving from one irrelevance to another. Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. After all, the ten names on this list are not minor irrelevances, and the real paths of power - politics and business - are travelled by people who would consider me young.

In any case, these twelve individuals and I could have been in the same class at school. We watched the same TV, perhaps, and listened to the same music. They're probably as shocked as I am to find themselves at 35. When exactly did that happen?

The list goes in reverse chronological order. I have no reason for doing that. I just liked the resulting narrative.

1.	TIGER WOODS: Of course, Mr and Mrs woods didn't name their baby boy "Tiger" on December 30, 1975. They did, in fact, name him "Eldrick Tont Woods". Because "Tiger" would have been, you know, silly. He's the richest sportsman in the world, has spent 623 weeks as the Number-One ranked golfer, and has had over a dozen extramarital affairs. And what have I done with my thirty-five years?
2.	CHARLIZE THERON: This South African was born on August 7th, and makes the list largely because she's South African, and I was looking to make my list 'diverse, but still people Americans might know'. I tried to avoid overly exploitational illustrations, but in the present case, I was powerless. That's just a gorgeous photograph.
3.	ANGELINA JOLIE: Born June 4th, Angelina Jolie started out life as Jon Voight's daughter. Now she's about as close as Hollywood comes to royalty, but along the way she was the defiantly 'alternative' kid seen here in Hackers. She stands out so much in that movie that anyone who sees it walks away asking, "who was that girl?" Yet I certainly never saw her tabloid ubiquity coming. I wonder if she did.
4.	50 CENT: Certainly if you're looking for a symbol of arrested adolescence, though, it would have to be Curtis Jackson, a/k/a "50 Cent", born July 6 and thus 15 years away from actually being 50. Though a rapper by trade, 50 Cent is currently perhaps more famous as a Twitter celebrity, whose semi-literate stream of tweets truly makes me feel young... like, middle school young.
5.	JAMIE OLIVER: Jamie Oliver's face remains much fresher than mine thirty-five years later. Perhaps it's all the disgusting food that he eats. Born May 27th in Essex, England, Oliver is part of that strange group of 'cooking-related celebrities' that also includes Gordon Ramsey, Rachel Ray and other celebrities not especially deserving of their success.
6.	DAVID BECKHAM: The English footballer has, like Tiger Woods (and everyone on this list) had a rather more illustrious life than I have. Talented, rich and photogenic, with a glamorous wife (who I personally don't find attractive, and anyway being born in 1974 she's over-the-hill), Beckham seems to just make it all seem so easy. Wouldn't a nice crack habit give him some much-needed grit?
7.	EVA LONGORIA: Eva Longoria was born March 15, just three days after me. My mother and hers could have been in the same maternity ward if it weren't that she was born in Texas and I, well, wasn't. She's so my-generation that her screen début was in Beverly Hills 90210, and she then went on to document my generation's descent into suburban banality on Desperate Housewives.
8.	DREW BARRYMORE: Ah, the love of my life. I can say without seeming creepy that I've been in love with Drew Barrymore ever since E.T. because whatever age she was when she made that film, that's how old I was too (give or take a month - she was born February 22). We've gone through the ages together, Drew and I. So has everyone else on this list, of course, but they weren't famous then.
9.	HARISU: Certainly not many North Americans are likely to have heard of Harisu, but I think she's amazing. A Korean MTF transexual, Harisu is absolutely gorgeous and also an actress and singer. Though it's a bit disappointing that her stage name is meant to be the English phrase 'hot issue' rendered with a Korean accent. She, or for historical accuracy he, was born February 17th.
10.	BOTH MEMBERS OF OUTKAST: They might have differing weights and degrees of 'hardness', but the two members of Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast have much in common - like both being named André, and both being born in 1975. Big Boi is the bigger boi, with a February 1st birthdate. André 3000 is the runt of the litter, being born on May 27th, perhaps within minutes of Jamie Oliver. Perhaps they're actually twins, seperated at birth! Er, or on second thought, probably not...