Detroit Lions defensive-line coach Joe Cullen is under suspension for Sunday's game with the Seahawks, partially because he placed an order at a Wendy's drive-thru in Dearborn without any clothes on on the 24th of August.

As grievous offenses go, this one is pretty trivial compared to the other charge against Cullen: he was busted for DUI last week. The Lions, in a statement, called both incidents "alcohol-related misdemeanors."

Wendy's presumably didn't offer to Biggie-size anything for Cullen.

Amazingly, I have some new roses coming in, which reminds me that today is World Naked Gardening Day, a time to give the sunshine a chance to do for you what it does for your flowers. (Yeah, eventually they wilt, but they're outside 24/7 and you're not.)

Last year's commentary on WNGD proved to be surprisingly popular, and I need not repeat it here, except to echo one of the cautions: you might want to have something on when you bring out the Weed Wacker.

And someone asked if I'd ever been, um, damaged during activities of this sort. Well, not with the string trimmer; but once I dropped a rake on my foot, and one of the tines landed exactly between two sandal straps. Still, this is an instance where neither shirt nor pants would have saved me.

Update, 8 pm: This chap seems to be getting into the spirit of things.

Last year, stewardesses stripped for a calendar to protest the increasing uncertainty of ostensibly-guaranteed pensions.

They're doing it again:

I'm not entirely sure that taking your clothes off for a calendar is exactly the way to do this — it may raise something other than "awareness," if you get my drift — but I bought last year's version, and I intend to get this year's as well. For purely political reasons, of course.

Oh, and last year they said that "one of us is a grandmother." This year it's three of them.

But this might be overdoing it a bit:

What's worse, apparently the young lady, whatever her visual appeal, was not the most efficient housekeeper:

(Mental note: Revise Standard Book of Fantasies, Vol. XVI.)

There's just no way I can pass up linking to a piece which includes "How to Meet Naked Montanans" in its title.

Especially, you know, since otherwise normal people are trying to persuade me that Montana sucks.

(Inspired, if that's the word, by this Fark thread.)

The travel business generates something like half a trillion dollars worldwide, so the $400 million or so spent on nude recreation each year is a drop in the bucket, and a small drop at that. One reason might be relative inaccessibility:

AANR (Southwest Region) lists exactly two facilities in Oklahoma, and they're decidedly off the beaten path.

And there's the matter of Arkansas, where it's illegal to advertise any such activities, let alone establish a facility where they can take place. (And you thought Oklahoma's tattoo ban was a trifle arbitrary.)

Before you ask: no, I haven't. The obvious reason: it takes a certain amount of time to work up the nerve. The not-so-obvious reason: barring a sudden change in status, I'd have to go alone, and you should not be surprised to hear that guys of the single persuasion aren't exactly highly-valued in this subculture. (Now that's a barrier.)

Still, I have to agree that the demand is there: even one percent of the travel business is a heck of a lot of business, and, you should pardon the expression, the end is not in sight.

At least ten people in the Hague are recorded for posterity on the satellite photos of Google Earth either partially or entirely unclothed.

Just as a precautionary measure, I punched my own coordinates into the mapping system. Nothing to see. Fortunately.

The store is called "Under the Sun," and it stocks clothing and accessories for nudists.

Um, say what?

And besides, if you don't wear them, you can't wear them out.

Which calls to mind the old joke in the naturist camp, when the beautiful young lady walks by and a couple of fellows, mindful of proper etiquette, make a point of not gawking at her.

Then one of them stage-whispers: "Wow. Can you imagine her in, like, a tight sweater?"

(Suggested by Fark.com.)

A survey by British Telecom, who evidently had nothing better to do, reveals that nearly half of all Britons talk on the phone while unclothed: 40 percent of men and 57 percent of women.

Whether the release of this information has anything to do with BT's manifest desire to sell more videophones, I do not know.

(Via Fark.com.)

Cheri Alexander, head of Travelites, with an observation I can certainly understand:

(Heard on Barecast #16.)

I admit up front that there are streaking incidents on my CV — no actual arrests or anything — and that today I am older and wiser and, most important, slower.

I must emphasize, though, that those schemes were better thought out than this one at an Arkansas IHOP:

"I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time," says Rita.

The Fitworld (now that's a name) gym in Heteren, the Netherlands, starting the fourth of March, will offer Naked Sundays for clients who wish to work out without that tedious workout gear.

The major worry seems to have been addressed:

It might not be a bad idea to offer really dark glasses to the customers.

A fortyish Brit, mother of four, poses for some Italian art students, and the first thing anyone sees? Butterflies:

But one must rise to the occasion regardless:

We will not mention that upon her return to Blighty she dropped fourteen pounds.

(Seen here; this link may not be safe for work.)

You may remember this story from Wednesday; I suggested that the blog where I found it might not be safe for work.

The blogger responds to this characterization:

Well, "anyone," maybe. I don't know if I can pull this off, so to speak, or not, but this is more likely due to the fact that I usually have to work late on Friday than to any particular fear of bringing up the subject.

More to the point, I'd hate to go to "family night" by myself.

We will entertain no jokes about graduation gowns:

Criteria:

I looked at the application form, and there's an essay question at the very end: "Write a 250 word essay listing your goals in life, future plans, chosen profession, and explain how social nudism has affected your life."

I suppose the only thing truly remarkable about this is that I was surprised to find it.

The Southwest Region includes the four states with ZIP codes beginning with 7, although there are no AANR member clubs in Arkansas, due to legal constraints.

Last October, the community of Loxahatchee Groves, Florida voted to incorporate, and ten candidates for the town council have been meeting in local forums.

Well, mostly. One of the ten begged off last week from a forum held at Sunsport Gardens, a local naturist resort; she said that she'd be embarrassed to bring her children along, as she'd done in two previous gatherings. It may have cost her some votes.

Another candidate admitted to some nervousness beforehand, but pressed ahead:

I bet he did just fine.

Dylan once came up with a line about "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." This hasn't caught on in D.C., for reasons I'd just as soon not imagine, but Nudist Day reports that things may be different in Madrid:

Of course, this doesn't mean that Zapatero himself is necessarily going to be getting his Vitamin D in this fashion, but how likely is it that he doesn't know about the nude use along Vera Playa?

From the very last issue of Premiere magazine — their Web site continues — the startling revelation that Marge Simpson sleeps in the nude:

"Mmmm ... shapeless ...."

If you're a merchant in Florida's Osceola or Pasco counties, the person who just handed you a stack of two-dollar bills for his purchase will be dressed — temporarily:

Of course, once a boatload of $2 bills gets into general circulation in Florida, some unsuspecting snowbird from Schenectady is going to get a couple of them in change, she'll fly back home, and months later, this same story will be back up at Fark and her friends will just naturally Assume The Worst. Which isn't The Worst at all, really, but some people are not prepared to deal with this sort of thing.

Addendum, 19 March: A clothed resident has a plan:

I wouldn't think it too likely that a merchant in mid-sale would give the customer a wink and say, "Oh, you're one of them, are you?" Keep in mind, though, that I have never had any retail transactions in Florida, unless you count a stop at a Burger King in Bradenton.

Black's Beach, near San Diego, is perhaps the largest stretch of clothing-optional (or clothing-nonexistent) beach in the States; it is difficult to get to, but staggeringly popular. Dave Cole of the Black's Beach Bares group passed out a questionnaire to women visiting the beach last summer; the results have now been published (no illustrations, ya perv), and some of the findings caught my eye:

• Age range: 17 to 66. (Average: 34.7.)

• 90 of 98 respondents described their beach visit that day in positive terms.

• One of the more common negative responses: creepy guys, possibly with cameras.

• While most of the women were from Southern California, there were visitors from as far away as Atlanta and New York.

• "My cell phone got drenched by the tide."

I don't know if I could do this, though this is at least partly due to the fact that it's a hard climb down to the actual beach, and I don't do climbs (in either direction) especially well.

(Via Elendil.)

Local car-dealer ads tend to be annoying, and that's if you're lucky. If you're not so lucky, you get pitchmen in whom you'd like to stick a pitchfork.

I don't watch much Boston TV these days, being as how I'm halfway across the continent and all, but if these spots are actually running — well, ten points out of ten for style, anyway.

Jack Valenti is dead, so it's pointless to ask him now, but I suspect it was pointless to ask him before, given the general inconsistency in US motion-picture ratings. (It's not that I have a problem with the concept: as Quentin Tarantino once noted, "The alternative would be every jerkwater county in America having their own obscenity laws," and nobody except a handful of jerks actually wants that.)

Still, what's the deal? Female nudity is more or less routine these days at any level above PG, but let a guy take his junk out of the box, even for a couple of frames, and suddenly it's an instant R — unless it's Bart Simpson:

Fritz the Cat was unavailable for comment.

(Link and title swiped from Fark.)

Okay, I missed this, but I don't intend to miss this.

Even though it's technically more work.

The American Association for Nude Recreation is cranking up its youth-outreach programs of late, perhaps because they'd like to have some members still when the old farts who pay most of the dues die off. (Dying off, incidentally, does make one's member still, but don't go there.)

Out of curiosity, I downloaded the enrollment package (as a PDF file here), and the pièce de résistance is a multi-page (okay, two) Affidavit of Good Moral Character, which details a whole bunch of Thou Shalt Nots intended to disqualify anyone who might cast dark shadows on the lifestyle. On the cleanliness scale, the proverbial hound's tooth doesn't even come close. I can't really blame them: gotta keep the pervs out, after all. But while I haven't come close to these depths of depravity — okay, once I made use of the pictures and accounts of a game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball — I'm still kind of put off by the sheer size of the list. Of course, this is just a ruse: what really puts me off is how much lower the student dues are.

Oh, and where did I find out about this? On a MySpace bulletin. (I don't know if AANR has a presence on Facebook, but if they do, you can pretty much write your own joke.)

Addendum: Tom Mulhall of Palm Springs' Terra Cotta Inn weighs in:

That's got to be true.

Microsoft has missed more shipping dates than Nicole Richie has missed cheeseburgers, so this particular delay wouldn't be especially interesting were it not for its cheeky nature:

How obscure? It's not actually in the game itself, but in a map editor application. Should you screw up your edit in such a way as to produce an ".ass error," whatever that is, you are virtually mooned.

Me, I always assumed that ".ass" would make a better top-level domain than filetype extension, but then I don't work for Microsoft.

(Via Elendil.)

There seem to be two issues plaguing Brattleboro, Vermont these days: an influx of people without clothing, and the difficulty of getting bicyclists and motorists to coexist.

In a letter to the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer, local resident Cindy Coble presents a two-pronged solution:

I guess the really surprising thing here is that someone from Vermont admits to drinking Scotch.

There was real live sun this afternoon, something there hasn't been a lot of lately, so I spread a blanket on the grass and did a brief Vitamin D-gathering session, the chores actually having been completed for once.

About three minutes into my semi-slumber came a cry from the north: "Oh, my God!" Sounded like a twelve-year-old. I've heard it before, but I've not been inclined to check out its origin. Still, there's something disconcerting about this sort of expostulation, even though it was fairly unlikely (though not completely impossible) that I had motivated it by my resemblance to an albino walrus.

So I had to listen to the entire conversation, which turned out to be older child threatening younger child with something along the lines of "Wait until Mom sees this mess!" Mom did eventually enter the thread, and she was not pleased. Or so it seemed; after a couple of sentences, the hitherto-unheard sound of a lawn mower next door drowned her out, and eventually I stretched, pulled a few weeds within easy reach, folded up my blanket (not especially neatly) and went back into the house to scrape up something for dinner.

I'm not much for tanning booths myself, but this I understand:

Actually, I did, but you don't want to hear about how I found out.

I don't think there's a reliable recipe to make sure you brown evenly on all sides, unless you stay under the UV for hours at a time, in which case in less time than you'd think you'll wind up vaguely resembling your old high-school history teacher's cordovan-colored wing-tips, not my idea of a favorable result.

Matt has issued the decree:

One of these years they're going to hold this on my day off. I hope. In the meantime, here are my previous participation posts, neither of which was written at work, if you know what I mean.

(Disclosure: I did actually buy a webcam this year. I am not hooking it up. I have some standards.)

Found in the AANR Bulletin:

And before you ask, that was all they were showing:

There is much to be said for not scandalizing one's neighbors, after all.

How slow a news day?

The likelihood of this happening in my neighborhood is next to nil; I can't even imagine said mysterious blonde showing up at a Circle K in a '94 Ford Escort. Still, one question nags at me: the EU still allows cigarette sales?

Disclosure: I have operated a motor vehicle while unclothed, though never a Ferrari, and never in the company of someone else.

(Via Fark.)

As The New York Times goes, so goes the nation, at least in terms of pulp volume. From The Bulletin, the monthly tabloid published by the American Association for Nude Recreation, this front-page announcement by James Banttari, who heads up commercial printing at The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida:

Link added by me. Mr Banttari doesn't mention it, but The Ledger is more than just a remote print site for The New York Times: the paper is actually owned by the Times company. This isn't a problem, really, but perhaps he should have said so.

As for The Bulletin, my main concern, of course, is whether the present level of coverage will be changed.

Venomous Kate would like to know: What are you wearing?

Feel free to fill her in on the details of your current wardrobe. It's got to be more interesting than mine.

I mean, really:

I don't know if I'd borrow an excuse from Bill Clinton, but then again, it's way older than he is.

Besides, there's a cause afoot:

And, well, resistance to the Disney machine may be futile, but I ordered the calendar anyway.

Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl caused something of a scandal upon its publication in 1962, mostly because it was understood that single girls didn't have sex, or at least weren't supposed to. As it happens, dating stuff was only a small portion of the book: a lot of the pages were devoted to career enhancement and financial advice. An example of the latter:

Garblessness has never struck me as that much of a money-saver, personally, but others extol its pecuniary virtues, though apparently there's room for doubt.

(Seen here.)

Blogdom has been much amused by the fourteen-page spread in Harper's Bazaar (October) in which Mary-Kate Olsen dresses up with Lauren Hutton and declaims, "I run around my house naked with heels all the time."

I have no doubt that she does — why would anyone make up something like that? — but I suspect that the running is at a pretty slow pace, what with the heels and all. Anyway, this is the full context:

I am the last person in the world to discourage young women from taking their clothes off, or not putting them on in the first place, but it seems obvious to me that her focal point is the jewelry, and you could probably get her into a Brooks Brothers tailored suit if you told her there would be bling involved.

Or not, in which case you have something like this.

Flashers: dangerous sexual predators or merely pathetic slobs in raincoats?

According to forensic psychiatrist David Greenberg, presently at the Health Department of the Australian state of New South Wales, definitely the former:

Greenberg's research in Canada found that as many as one-third of women over 18 had been flashed at least once, and about 15 percent of the exhibitionists in his study graduated to full-fledged sexual assaults.

Now I've always believed that pointing and laughing was a fairly effective form of birth control, but I have to assume that someone sufficiently deluded to think Joanne Sixpack across town is going to be impressed by his display of wangage is probably insane enough to try something worse, so I can't recommend breaking out in guffaws, however much he deserves it.

This doesn't mean, of course, that you should fall over yourself to get to the phone and dial 911 because the couple up the street is having a barbecue in the buff: you'll be left off the invitation list forevermore.

(Via Nudiarist. Title courtesy of Ray Stevens.)

And I was thinking leather seating, in and of itself, was sufficient to discourage driving around without clothing.

On the upside, at least no one complained about the state of her underwear after the accident, which should please moms everywhere.

(Via Fark.)

Not a good defense for an exhibitionist:

Mr Carney, says the article, is a "quality inspector for a plastics firm," which makes me wonder why he didn't cobble up a prosthesis in his spare time.

Sentencing will be next year: in the meantime, kindly neighbors will no doubt forward him spam offering herbal embiggeners and such.

(Via Fark.)

Tim does some coupon scanning:

Well, it is December, after all.

There's something a tad askew when somebody writes to Dear Abby with a tale like this:

Sounds like something's missing from the narrative, right? Right:

You have to wonder how she defines "in her presence": although she says that she and the lad's family are "good friends" elsewhere in her letter, at no point does she mention any actual encounter other than watching him from a distance. Abby herself confounds the issue:

I have to admit, my sympathies are with the kid, if only because (1) this is a fairly typical wardrobe for me and (2) I was coming up on sixteen when it occurred to me that pajamas were superfluous at best. (I am still so persuaded, despite the fact that it got down to about 20 degrees — call it -7 Celsius — last night.) I do a better job of keeping the shades in position, though.

I get a lot of search-engine traffic for "nude old farts" and variations thereof, not so much because my own flatulence is especially mature — at least, I don't think it is — but because there's a perception that people who doff their duds at vacation time tend to be people who knew Methuselah personally.

Tom Mulhall, who runs the Terra Cotta Inn, acknowledged as much last summer:

I have yet to verify this empirically — and 55, for me, is less than a year away anyway — but I have reason to believe there is indeed an abundance of older folk in this, um, industry. Exhibit A: renewal notice from AANR, rendered on a dot-matrix printer. Not even in near-letter quality, for Pete's sake. And I thought I had creeping Luddite tendencies.

An east German travel agent is selling nude air travel packages:

The inaugural flight will travel from Erfurt to Usedom, an island in the Baltic Sea between Germany and Poland. The fare is high (€499) and the seating is limited (50). It's probably cold, too.

Then again, I've been pushing for such things for years now.

Proof positive that wealth and wisdom are only tangentially related:

I've played plenty of bridge in my day, and at no point in no hand, even the one where the only way to make the slam was for the singleton queen of trumps to be on my right, was this ever the case.

I am, however, amenable to taking part in a test. Be warned: I have been known to open one no trump with only 15 points.

(Via Fark.)

Seen in the Border Mail by Ray Dixon, this odd little advertisement:

Mr Dixon attempts to explain:

I suspect Mr Dixon is giving us the Trans-Hemisphere Chain Pull with this latter, but I have to admit, I'm amused by the concept: wouldn't that just frost NBC's, um, bottom line?

The really shocking thing, when you get right down to it, was that it happened in Wisconsin in March:

He made it, too: in ten minutes, wearing nothing but socks. Unfortunately:

Geez. Where was the SWAT team? This is at least as heinous as littering in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

There is family precedent:

And it was Dad who put young John up to the run — and who wound up writing the check for the balance of the fine.

(Seen here; header graphic might qualify as NSFW.)

The Federation of Canadian Naturists has a bone to pick with PayPal:

I've seen only one issue of Going Natural, but I can't imagine anyone thinking it was "sexually oriented": yes, there's the occasional photo of someone without clothing, but it's about as much of a turn-on as US News and World Report. And there aren't any college ratings either.

The FCN says it's contemplating a lawsuit. [Insert "suit" joke here.]

(From CTV via Fark.)

That nude air travel package in Eastern Europe might not ever get off the ground:

Too bad; it would take something this outrageous to get me up in a plane again. (Driving without any clothes on is problematic, and besides, my car has leather seats.)

That on-again-off-again East German nude travel package is allegedly on again:

Depends on whether the charter service is providing towels, I should think.

Well, okay, if you say so. There goes that one lingering flight-attendant fantasy.

(Seen here; your workplace may not appreciate the external links.)

For instance:

When neither option seems acceptable, the proper course of action is inaction:

Sounds like he's about my age, which might be another justification for suspicion.

Disclosure: I doffed my duds for a photo once, though it was for a Good (or at least Amusing) Cause, and the guy with the camera wasn't the slightest bit interested.

Each week I put together a collection of strange search-engine queries, and I discard rather a lot of queries which aren't strange at all but do perplex me somewhat: some folks appear to believe that there exist nude photographs of everyone on earth, and if they word their search strings carefully enough, those photographs will be found.

The Academic Naturist argues that privacy is being sufficiently diminished by technology that those of us who occasionally don't bother to get dressed will eventually be Googlable, or worse. One substantial threat comes from Microsoft Windows Live:

But it's nothing compared to this:

I knew there was a reason I'd never bothered to unpack, let alone connect, my webcam.

Up to now, I have to admit, I hadn't given this a whole lot of thought:

Maybe it is, though I have to admit, the picture didn't do a thing for me. And it's not just because my brain is equipped with an Automatic Jailbait Filter to process incoming image material, either: it's because it appeared in Vanity Fair, a publication whose sole raison d'être these days is to remind people how utterly lovely it is to be rich. Besides, Cyrus is fifteen and a half, precisely the age at which I decided that pajamas were superfluous, so the idea of a teenager lacking same is not going to put ideas into my head.

At best, or at worst, the Cyrus incident is just one more manifestation of the wrongheaded cultural notion that our youngsters, especially our girls, ought to be sexed up, that they may be adequately prepared for the fiercely erotic Real World out there — although such preparation is intended, I submit, not for their benefit, but for the benefit of those who would use them. Like, for instance, Vanity Fair.

It would never occur to me to flash a Google Maps Street View camera van.

On t'other hand, I can't do a blessed thing about their damned satellite.