@7:19PM

Gonzo porn refers to pornographic films which are filmed by a participant.

lazerfuque:

…

Poli-Blogging groundhog billmon pops his head up after an extended hiatus from teh sphere to deliver a concise historical sketch and typically astute analysis of this Caucasus fiasco.

Imagine the US reaction if China announced a military alliance with Mexico, after which the president of Mexico started dropping public hints about taking New Mexico back – by whatever means necessary. (And if that comparison seems unnecessarily paranoid, consider the history of Russia in the 20th century. Even paranoids have real enemies.)

It’s always instructive to set up comparisons and ask how we would react under similar circumstances.  For all our vaunted rhetoric about promoting democracy and feigned incredulity re: spooks, thugs and oligarchs (see David Remnick’s impotent Comment in this week’s New Yorker, though I don’t mean to single him out: the condemnative cacophony rings out from a wide swathe, encompassing press and politician alike), the briefest glance in the mirror reveals hypocrisy’s medusoid visage.

If you caught Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyer’s show the other night, you may have noticed that his biggest complaint was not that US foreign policy is misguided and destructive (although he clearly thinks it’s both) but that it is being conducted in a democratic vacuum — despite all the florid rhetoric about promoting democracy. We may still go through the motions of a republican form of government, Bacevich says, but the fabric has gotten pretty thin: or, in the case of our national revival of the Great Game in the Caucasus, damned near invisible.

How long before it tears completely?

How long indeed.

I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned before now, but I’m delighted Andrew Sullivan pointed it out. 

In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

On Friday night, an employee of this fine establishment, located at 165 Ludlow St. just above Stanton, spirited my bag into a back room, rummaged through it until he found my very nearly brand new digital camera, then reconstituted the bag’s remaining contents and smilingly returned it to me sans camera when I inquired at the bar as to its whereabouts.  I drunkenly thanked him and left, failing to realize the camera was gone until the next morning.

I know we need to assume these gadgets we covet so much are basically disposable.  I have no illusions that it’s logical to drop our shit behind a banquette so we can dance unencumbered.  I’m well aware, boy am I ever, that shit happens.

Still: please go do nefarious and vindictive things to that place.  I’m channeling some Old Testament vengeful God type look here and condemning the entire place for the unacceptable behavior of one.  May it be smote verily, and may hellfire rain down upon its scrupleless minions. 

BEATRICE PALMATO
A Fragment
Edith Wharton

… “I have been, you see,” he added gently, “so perfectly patient—”

The room was warm, and softly lit by one or two pink-shaded lamps. A little fire sparkled on the hearth, and a lustrous black bearskin run, on which a few purple velvet cushions had been flung, was spread out before
it.

“And now, darling,” Mr. Palmato said, drawing her to the deep divan, “let me show you what you what only you and I have the right to show each other.” He caught her wrists as he spoke, and looking straight into her eyes, repeated in a penetrating whisper: “Only you and I”. But his touch had never been tenderer. Already she felt every fibre vibrating under it, as of old, only now with the more passionate eagerness bred of privation, and of the dull misery of her marriage. She let herself sink backward among the pillows, and already Mr. Palmato was on his knees at her side, his face close to hers. Again her burning lips were parted by his tongue, and she felt it insinuate itself between her teeth, and plunge into the depths of her mouth in a long searching caress, while at the same moment his hands softly parted the thin folds of her wrapper.

One by one they gained her bosom, and she felt her two breasts pointing up to them, the nipples hard as coral, but sensitive as lips to his approaching touch. And now his warm palms were holding each breast as if in a cup, clasping it, modeling it, softly kneading it, as he whispered to her, “like the bread of the angels”.

An instant more, and his tongue had left her fainting mouth, and was twisting like a soft pink snake about each breast in turn, passing from one to the other till his lips closed hard on the nipples, sucking them with a tender gluttony.

Then suddenly he drew back her wrapper entirely, whispered: “I want you all, so that my eyes can see all that my lips can’t cover,” and in a moment she was free, lying before him in her fresh young nakedness, and feeling that indeed his eyes were covering it with fiery kisses. But Mr. Palmato was never idle, and while this sensation flashed through her one of his arms had slipped under her back and wound itself around her so that his hand again enclosed her left breast. At the same moment the other hand softly separated her legs, and began to slip up the old path it had so often traveled in darkness. But now it was light, she was uncovered, and looking downward, beyond his dark silver-sprinkled head, she could see her own parted knees and outstretched ankles and feet. Suddenly she remembered Austin’s rough advances, and shuddered.

The mounting hand paused, the dark head was instantly raised. “What is it, my own?”

“I was—remembering—last week—” she faltered, below her breath. “Yes, darling. That experience was a cruel one—but it has to come once in all women’s lives. Now we shall reap its fruit.”

But she hardly heard him, for the old swooning sweetness was creeping over her. As his hand stole higher she felt the secret bud of her body swelling, yearning, quivering hotly to burst into bloom. Ah, here was his subtle forefinger pressing it, forcing its tight petals softly apart, and laying on their sensitive edges a circular touch so soft and yet so fiery that already lightnings of heat shot from that palpitating centre all over her surrendered body, to the tips of her fingers, and the ends of her loosened hair.

The sensation was so exquisite that she could have asked to have it indefinitely prolonged; but suddenly his head bent lower, and with a deeper thrill she felt his lips pressed upon that quivering invisible bud, and then the delicate firm thrust of his tongue, so full and yet so infinitely subtle, pressing apart those close petals, and forcing itself in deeper and deeper through the passage that glowed and seemed to become illuminated as its approach

“Ah—” she gasped, pressing her hands against her sharp nipples, and flinging her legs apart.

Instantly, one of her hands was caught, and while Mr. Palmato, rising, bent over her, his lips on hers again, she felt his firm fingers pressing into her hand that strong fiery muscle that they used, in their old joke, to call his third hand.

“My little girl,” he breathed, sinking down beside her, his muscular trunk bare, and the third hand quivering and thrusting upward between them, a drop of moisture pearling at its tip.

She instantly understood the reminder that his words conveyed, letting herself downward along the divan till her head was in line with his middle she flung herself upon the swelling member, and began to caress it insinuatingly with her tongue. It was the first time she had ever seen it actually exposed to her eyes, and her heart swelled excitedly: to have her touch confirmed by sight enriched the sensation that was communicating itself through her ardent twisting tongue. With panting breath she wound her caress deeper and deeper into the firm thick folds, till at length the member, thrusting her lips open, held her gasping, as if at its mercy; then, in a trice, it was withdrawn, her knees were pressed apart, and she saw it before her, above her, like a crimson flash, and at last, sinking backward into new abysses of bliss, felt it descend on her, press open the secret gates, and plunge into the deepest depths of her thirsting body…

“Was it … like this … last week?” he whispered.

Mr. Palmato: A Fragment
© Edith Wharton

magicmolly:

If anyone has a copy, please be in touch!