Serreptitious Reading Plus Historically Accurate Sex

Robin ran out of things to read yesterday so he cruised on down to the library. He ran into some pals. When he showed up back at the house two hours later, he was empty handed.

"I thought you said you wanted to take out some books."

"I do. The library closes at five on Sundays, right? I'll go back down around 4:30."

"Why didn't you take the books out when you were just down there?"

Robin widened his eyes. "Oh, Mom. C'mon. No. I mean – I don't want my friends to know that I read. They'd think I was a jerk."

He was serious.

I've run out of books to read too, but my insane schedule doesn't allow for library trips. So instead thanks to the Bea Tea Faerie I've been doing total immersion in cable television. The latest dunk: Showtime's The Tudors which is vastly entertaining but filled with so many historical inaccuracies it sets my teeth on edge.

To wit:

(1) They cast Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII. He's not bad. In fact, he's good – he does this sudden quirky widening of his blue, blue eyes during the credits that's really sort of amazing. He may actually look like the youthful Henry who history tells us was a young man of prodigious appetites, handsome and athletic.
Henry VIII grew fat after he injured his leg in a jousting accident. He couldn't exercise after the accident, though he continued to eat.

I can buy the uber-handsome Rhys Meyers as a youthful Henry, but see the fateful jousting accident takes place in the first or second episode of the series. And Henry does not grow fat! Henry remains slim and aquiline. And this is just wrong.

(2) Anne Boleyn did not have blue eyes. Nor was she particularly young when she took up with Henry.

(3) Cardinal Woolsey was not a suicide. He died of natural causes on his way to London where he was to be tried for treason.

(4) Okay – don't read this if you're under 18. There are a lot of sex scenes in The Tudors. Its one line summation might be: Blowjobs – they're not just for modernists.

The sex scenes mostly show Henry copulating with his various mistresses. He fucks like the proverbial stallion, thrusting and bucking. I mean, maybe guys fucked like that in the 16th century. But I doubt it. My own personal experiences – ahem! – lead me to believe that uncircumcised men don't fuck like that. The heads of their penises are a lot more sensitive than circumcised men's and it actually hurts them to use a woman's cervix as a battering ram. As the historical Henry VIII was uncut, I very much doubt his sexual style was as shown and wonder which of the executive producers projected himself into the action this way.

Hillary Clinton's Candidacy - Dead In the Water

No way the Democratic Senator from New York survives another sex scandal.