Daily Bloggerback
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Candide's Notebooks

From the left, the right, the in-between: we include the political,
the social, the cultural and the undefinable.

• Hossein Derakhshan tells US & EU to focus on regime change in Iran.
• Ralph Taylor’s Labor Blog on warts in Chile’s privatized Social Security
• Abu Ardvark on Arab press speculating over al-Qaeda after bin Laden
• Mark Thoma on fuel prices in 1856
• Ruy Teixeira on deceptive economic optimism
• Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis scoops all on value of scoops v. collaboration
• Debbie Schlussel doesn’t like Pamela Anderson bashing Colonel Sanders
• Ruminate This turns out the lights on the Alito nomination
• Rightwing Nuthouse takes a cue from TV’s “24” to defend torture
• Iraq ain’t enough: Captain’s Quarters begins war drools over Iran
• Little Green Footballs’ avocado break (thanks)
• Daily Kos on a blogger’s ethics conference
• Ashcroft raking it in in “retirement”
• Say Anything dredges up some Winston Churchill Islamophobia
• Jonathan Dworkin, live from Iraq’s Kurdistan: City of Refugees
• Beautiful Atrocities riffs on Libya’s Saadi Gaddafi, son of The Gaddafi
  

Featured Blog I: Internal Affairs
Talking Sex With Mom
SAFIRE

So the other day, my mother and I got to talking about sex. Now, this might seem weird to a lot of people, or you might be wondering "Wait, Saf is just now getting the birds-and-bees talk, wha-what?!?" But I assure you. My mother and I talk about everything from Beyonce to butt plugs, and I have been in the sex game about as long as LL has been in the rap game. What can I say, I was an early bloomer. Which is probably what led to my very open attitude about sex and sexuality, and my never-ending quest to improve my sex life. I don't know about anybody else, but I found teenage sex to be some of the most disappointing, anticlimatic shit EVER. As I moved into my twenties, shed my stupid MCMW (middle class midwestern) sensibilities about that shit i.e. baptist, black girl, bullshit repression, I began seeking the thing that should always come after foreplay and before afterglow. Begins with an O, and I ain't talking about Omarion or Oprah. Believe it or not, I had not encountered any O's at 20 (Ummm...apologies to any exes that read this shit). So being the Type A that I am, I got armed with info from books and articles and went on an expedition. And here are some of the things that I've learned... Read the rest at Safire...

Featured Blogger II: Reading Derrida in Teheran
A Modest Proposal: Total Torture Salvation Management
The Brooding Persian/January 14, 2006

[We don't pretend to understand every word we read, let alone every word we write. Nor, thankfully, do most bloggers worth their saltines. Genius is in the eye of the indulgent. With that in mind, we found this post from the Brooding Persian more irresistible, and certainly more valuable, than most of the foghorned prose dribbling out of the Council on Foreign Relations these days.]

Here at the BP, we strive not only to express our disenchantment with the state of our war ravaged planet, but also to offer some sensible solutions every now and again. “Neither whines nor dissimulations,” our motto here. To that end, our humble abode hosted a conference last night attended by many of our more mischievous, perverted inner children best kept out of sight most of the time. The subject was to be aporia. That, of course, immediately raised the ire of the more Americanized BP so enamored of the good old fashioned American common sense, ingenuity and straightforwardness. Oh, how we yearn for its reappearance. Any how, he shouted, “To hell with the pompous elitist Greco-French cow dung. You mean Clusterfuck.” The more bureaucratically inclined wheeler dealer with a propensity to overindulge in the asinine practice of offering meaningless acronyms then suggested a compromise which was developed to serve as the title of this post. An observer of the seedier aspects of the global life started the proceedings with a report on the developments in the Middle East of the omnipresent Western S/M scene.The flourishing of sites such as the Saudi Mistress, and the BDSM Haifa, and the Iranian Mistress and Slave among others are clear indications, he argued, of a new phase of enlightenment, progress, and a much welcomed sign of cultural renaissance in the region all thanks to American presence. Read the rest at the Brooding Persian...