CruelSecretary tweeted the following question:

if you cld bundle the perfect safer-sex bag, what wld you put in it? No judgments. Just doing some research...While I do that, answer this: if you cld bundle the perfect safer-sex bag, what wld you put in it? No judgments. Just doing some research...

I responded that in my bag I would have MONEY; especially if it is a date where you're being driven around. You want to make sure you have extra money to leave from wherever you are from a bad date.

Sex is not just about the act. In my book, sex is about a whole set of social practices between two people trying to figure out if they are meant for each other. Even if it is a quickie, one shut fuck, you still go through a whole ritual of social "tics" to figure out if the guy is, well, fuckable.

A lot of those social tics have nothing to do with a penis being inserted or a vagina or anus stimulated. A lot of what goes around the sexual act has to do with getting to the point of feeling comfortable enough with the object of your lustful desire to take your clothes off and go for a sexual ride.

So here's what I would put into a safe-sex bag:
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Congressman Murtha Dies - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Representative John P. Murtha, the longtime Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, has died at age 77.

His aides released a statement saying that he died shortly after 1 p.m. today at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mr. Murtha had been placed in intensive care last week after complications from gallbladder surgery, his staff said then.

Given that with Teddy Kennedy's passing the Demcoratic Party lost their US Senate majority to a Republican, am naming the coming electoral fight for this seat the SENATEPOCALYPSE.

It's not going to be pretty.

I wasn't going to write about how cute Brangelina looks in these photos after seeing them over at Oh No They Didn't. That is, until I saw on my twitter stream a messed up article about the Jolie-Pitts, ganked right out of gossip blogs, published on the Puerto Rican newspaper EL Nuevo Día.

What the hell people?!?! No wonder journalism is dead.

To which I say, TEAM BRANGIE! They soften this cynical bitch's hard cold heart and make me want to fall in love again.

They're just adorable.

The Wolfman is opening in theaters this week in the United States and El Papi Chulo to end all papi chulos, Benicio del Toro, has been in full force promoting the movie. This video is from 20minutos, in Spain.

So y'all know he's not just that gruffy voice and killer bedroom eyes, he's got producer credits for this little cinematic beast. From Benicio Del Toro - Wolfman Inspired By Del Toro's Memorabilia Collection - Contactmusic News:

We went to Universal with the idea. That is how you do stuff. You go to the studio."
And Del Toro is convinced his hairy appearance when he went to meet movie bosses persuaded them he was the right man for the lead role.
He adds, "I was in the middle of getting ready to do the Che movie. So I looked pretty much like a Wolfman! I looked either like The Wolfman or a smaller version of (Star Wars character) Chewbacca."

In this video, El Papi Chulo talks about approaching Universal with the Wolfman idea, watching old horror classics in Puerto Rican TV and identifying with the misunderstood monsters more so than their killers.

Awww!
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Bianca Laureano (@BiancaLaureano) has started culling contributions by blatinos (my word for Latinegros) in a Tumblr blog. Here's the description:

As the formal US focus on Black History Month (February 1-28/9) is upon us we seek to celebrate all of the peoples who have influence and history via the African Diasporas. Expanding the inclusively of Black History Month is a goal for several of us, self-identified LatiNeg@s, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Caribeños. As people who recognize and claim the African heritage and history, we have often been excluded from US History, whether it be Black history or Latino history (Septermber 15-October 15). Join us in honoring and recognizing LatiNegr@s this year during Black and Latino History Month. We are Black, Latino and from the Caribbean. We REPRESENT!

Please share any images, videos, quotes, websites, links etc. you'd like to include on this page. Go to http://lati-negros.tumblr.com/submit to submit what you'd like to contribute.

Am more than happy to oblige with samples from 6 of the almost 10 years I have been blogging. This is not all of it, follow the keyword links at the bottom of each post to find more artciles in the archives:

Condoleezza Rice, a Sally Hemmings for the 21st Century
My claim to infamy.

Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell are proof Race is a side-show on the road to Empire
BushCo's dexterity at race sock puppetry.

A little piece of history in my braids
Of course, it's about hair.

Black mother, white child
Miscegenation FTMFW!

Happy birthday to me!
A thank you to my mother's little black power revolution.
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Drop everything you are doing right now and read Born Poor? | Santa Fe economist Samuel Bowles says you better get used to it right now. Here's a taste of why:

“Inequality,” she says, “really holds us back.”

Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. “Inequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources,” he says.

In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive.

Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.

The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.

The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds.

It's moments like these, when am reading about economists doing empirical work on the fallacy of the "free market economy", that it makes want to go back in time to complete what would have been my Bachelor's Degree on Economics (yes, when I went into college, I wanted to become an economist).

What am more excited about discovering Samuel Bowles, is the fact that he considers himself a radical. Not because he theorizes about the eternal disruption of the status quo but because he has found evidence, actual material and empirical evidence, that point to the root causes of our present day economic problems.
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