Blogs:
A couple new reads to share with you:
-Conan Neutron writes about rock-n-roll, life out west, and politics.
-The Daily Dump, written by "the belligerent intellectual" (though I personally don't find him to be particularly belligerent or particularly intellectual), is a good NYC-based blog, and his sharp writing has had me in stitches at times.
-Read the news? American news coverage of Iraq, and now the Israel/Lebanon situation, has been appallingly bad. I've taken to reading European coverage at The Times of London and Germany's Der Spiegel. These, of course, come with their own sets of biases, omissions, and spin, but it's a much less varnished coverage of what's going on in the world outside our big American bubble.

Pictures:
I posted some new pictures of butts at a party you might like to see.

Books:
Has anyone ever read Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses? There are a number of different translations out there and I'd like a recommendation if anyone has an opinion. I love the story and have wanted to read this epistolary novel since I first saw the 1988 Stephen Frears film of it. Since then, I've watched numerous other film adaptations of it and have loved almost all of them. The best of those is the 1959 French film by Roger Vadim, starring Jeanne Moreau. But I also loved the 1999 teen version, Cruel Intentions. I just watched part of a recent French television miniseries version, starring Catherine Deneuve and Rupert Everett--and hated it. The writing was just terrible, and it made me long for the wit and bite of Christopher Hampton's adaptation of the Frears film. Anyway, if you've read it, please let me know which translation you read....

Politics:
-Sidney Blumenthal keeps writing terrific columns over at Salon. This week he writes about presidential power--presidential infallibility in fact--and how it's been abused by the current White House occupant. (You have to watch an ad or be a subscriber to read the article.)
-I'm a regular reader and commentor at the Democratic blog Daily Kos. Today there's a truly terrific article written by "eugene" about Newt Gingrich, the ever-expanding war, and the fall elections. Go read it--it will scare you out of your wits. Newt Gingrich is very very smart, and we dismiss his ideas as irrelevant at our peril.