BLOG POSTS FROM THE COMMUNITY

Before I officially start, a word of warning: some links may not be safe for work viewing.

Hi, I’m Rachel Kramer Bussel, and I write and edit smut. Or porn. Or erotica, whichever you choose. I don’t really care what you call the dirty stories in my books, and tend to think that those who press the porn vs. erotica question are simply looking to obscure the issue. The point of my books is to get people off, and hopefully along the way, make them think a little.

Today I want to share how I went from an NYU Law student to the editor of 24 anthologies ranging from spanking to foot fetishes to exhibitionism to crossdressing. You could say it’s all because of Monica Lewinsky. She was the protagonist of my first published story, called “Monica and Me,” written circa 1999. It was a fantasy about, well, Monica and me, about what would happen if I (or rather, my narrator) met her at a booksigning....

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1. First off, lose the black-and-white checkered kefiyahs. Like Hillary Clinton, they're too polarizing. You don't want people to think you see the world only in black and white, do you? Oh wait... Nevermind.

But hopefully you understand the point. They're about as meaningful a symbol of protest and solidarity as all those American flags that were embroidered onto the clothing of hippies years ago. Lose them.

And don't be afraid to add some color into your wardrobes for crying out loud. Nothing says "I love oppressed people and so should you!" like a visual pastiche of long, flowing, brightly colored, hand-made garments. Think of the Native Americans. Or the Tibetans. Or the Peruvians in the New York City subway playing pan flutes. Trust me, nothing mollifies Western insecurities and piques Western sympathies better than arousing some actual interest in your beautiful culture. Stop presenting it in such a drab and utterly boring way!

Sometimes...

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1) "The deeper the better" but even more so research shows that "the harder the better." As a therapists I agree, that superficial change is never the answer.  People move to different countries to run away from hard problems but they just follow them. Life is not always all "fluffy" but changing partners, places of residence etc. is not the answer. For example, If you are a bad kisser in N.Y. you are not going to magically become a good one in Israel unless you are willing to learn. The harder the problem and if you can still work through it together the deeper and more meaningful the relationship can become.

2)Men are just as complex as women. After all, it's just as hard to find the prostate gland as the g-spot. And I see just as many men who suffer from sexual problems as women i.e. low libido, inability to hold an erection etc.    

 3) I think moving away from the goal being an orgasm makes sense but eventually we want...

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Pure unadulterated ignorance is an interesting thing.  Well, not really "interesting."  It amazes me though that people could be "that" ignorant.  Yes, I do see that then shows ignorance on my part.

The story goes that my wife is at her sister's house smoking a cigarette with her sister's boyfriends mother outside.  The mother being an old hag from some shithole in East Texas has recently found Jesus.  She begins to say a prayer for her to find Jesus while she runs her hands her body.  My wife is both rendered speechless and motionless as this woman eseentially feels up my wife in a way I'm a little jealous about.

This is my Texas.  A land filled with people who wholeheartedly believe that not just must you believe in Jesus to be "saved," but you must believe in Jesus the way they do.  Seventh-Day Adventists, Pentacostals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Non-denominational, Lutherans, Methodists, LDS, Church of G-d, Church...

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Andrew Sullivan has a useful roundup of Gaza reactions that gives a lot of food for thought. He just misses Daniel Larison's sudden return to the keyboard. Though, as much as I like Larison, I think he's pretty off-base in that post, and doesn't really seem to understand what this operation looks like to Israelis. (In particular, he mistakenly believes that Israelis see the Gaza op as another Lebanon. While that perspective may eventually develop, even the Israeli left wing is
behind the current campaign, and every Israeli I've spoken to sees the current operation as a massive improvement. Update and caveat: the press is beginning to whisper.)

What I want to make clear is that...

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crossposted from http://somepolitical.blogspot.com

Now that Israel has definitely rejected the 48-hour ceasefire, I want to explain why I support the rejection. But before I can do that, I need to lay some groundwork. Freddie is once again on the moral warpath, suggesting that anyone talking about Gaza who doesn't regularly avow either absolute agreement or disagreement with the killing of children is an intellectual coward. Roque usually irks me at Culture 11 and elsewhere but he calls Freddie out correctly on this one: it's a failure to understand the difference between humanist-philosophical investigation, and political-tactical analysis. Plain and simple, Freddie does not know how to separate these two fields, and I would guess he probably...

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His original post can be found here: http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/12/illegitimate-pro-israel-arguments.html

this is crossposted from http://somepolitical.blogspot.com

Freddie lists a number of what he calls "illegitimate" pro-Israel arguments, with a summary note at the bottom for wrap-up. Once again, he's the victim of a stubborn insistence to contort political reality to a rigid moral dogma that one imagines might even give Kant pause. I'll try to respond to each numbered point, and then the summary. In all cases his descriptions are longer than the quoted passages, so make sure to visit the article and read it in...

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Amy Winehouse

That was some genius who put Alex Haines in charge of the Good Ship Winehouse.  Though the young bloke in the pea coat had no problem jumping into Amy’s boat, he was barely able to keep her afloat.  Seems Amy’s Boy Friday kept her bed warm as well as buttered her toast and poured her coffee in the morning.  All Wino had to do was craft her pipe and smoke some crack.

"It was like having my own little porn star. Amy was so dirty—she wanted sex all time. We did it four or five times a day and she’d even wake me up for it. She was addicted...

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Last week I was at a Shabbat lunch where one guy mentioned that it had been a hard week for the Jewish people what with the Madoff scandal and all the Jewish organizations and individuals financially injured or crippled by the losses incurred. he said that we all need to think about where we fit into all of this and do a cheshbon nefesh as a community. That got me thinking about a number of things I will explore after laying out the following vignettes:   

Vignette #1: I am at a Jewish Entrepreneurs Organization event featuring Mark Cuban as the speaker. He said that as a kid he felt like as one of the few Jewish kids in his town that he had to be good with money and a sharp businessman. As such, he started a small business selling garbage bags and expanded on that until he was making a lot of money for a boy in middle school. All well and good except that it bespoke a certain acceptance and internalization of essentially anti-Semitic stereotypes. Perhaps...

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The thickness of his thighs was not being accommodated by the skinny
jeans. The proportions were off, rising from the stick ankles and
calves - underdeveloped thanks to a decade-long neglect of physical
activity, and, possibly, some blame placed square on the shoulders of
childhood malnutrition cause by a single-mom who was an outspoken
proponent of a Vegan upbringing - to the burgeoning of those meaty
drumsticks that now seemed to suffocate behind the fabric.

"My thighs ate my ass," he would sometime joke. But it was true.
Head-shakingly true. The back of the jeans was one loose flap of fabric
sinking into the tightness around the legs.

But I didn't have the heart to tell him. This was something new, this
adoption of the hipster style. First the skinny jeans obsession, then
the "vintage" Converse with the pre-worn soles, followed by the tweed
jacket with elbow patches. A conglomeration...

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Calling all dance fans: Keshet
Chaim Dance Ensemble celebrates 25 years as the premier
American-Israeli contemporary dance troupe in the United States.  In salute, the troupe presents "Keshet For Life: 25 Years and Counting"
on Sunday, February 1.

Commemorating its...

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 יחי אדוננו מורנו ורבנו מלך המשיח לעולם ועד

Hello!

Welcome to my first blog post here on Jewcy!  I'm very excited to have a new forum in which I can speak the truth and I hope you will come here with an open heart and mind. 

First, Let me get this out in the open - I was the "Bayou Rabbi" and I created and edited a web blog that went by that name.  If you have never heard of it I will tell you that it was a very offensive page which took shots at the evangelical faith.  I had a few friends who wrote posts for it and I welcomed anyone who wanted to post hate against Christians to do so. I did this because when I moved to Louisiana I was constantly accosted by evangelicals who told me and my family horrible things.  I know that these people do not represent all people of the Christian faith but I was so offended and angry that this was the course of action which I took.  I went so far as to earn a bachelors...

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cross-posted from somepolitical.blogspot.com

Well it hadn't been two days before my Gaza fears came true. A lot of what I said earlier is now irrelevant to the current situation, especially with regard to air strikes. I admit that I was not hopeful that Israel would avoid air strikes, but I also definitely didn't realize the extent to which they were going to be used.

Understanding now that it was Israel's intention to take Hamas relatively by surprise, and that the Egypt meeting (and possibly even Barak's reluctance) was merely a ruse, helps explain tactics. A ground campaign without this kind of air support would have been long and grueling,
giving Hamas leadership more than enough time to go underground. In the last post I had been assuming that high-priority Hamas targets had already gone into hiding, and that it therefore was not a concern to Israel. I now see that this was not the case. To that extent, I'm happy
with Israel's operation. It feels more...

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That's right Tzipi Livini is HOT!  Call me crazy, call me insane, call me whatever.  Just call me with Tzipi's phone number;-)

Seriously folks we are in the midst of radical change in the middle east and Ms. Livni is one of THE principle players.  She is destined to become Prime Minister of Israel and a serious contender on the world stage overshadowing all world leaders.

She regards Barack Hussein Obomber with the disdain that he rightly deserves and sees the other world leaders as waffling puppets of the terrorist driven international media bias towards Israel.

Tzipi Livni is going make all the enemies of Israel rethink their murderous ambitions towards the Jewish state or they will cease to exist period!  She has the will and the determination to go where others have compromised and cajoled in hopes of peace with Israel's neighbors.  The policies of negotiation have not worked and will not work.  Talking with those who have nothing but deadly intentions...

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It's the holiday season.

It's the time of year when Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and the New Year happen. Hence "holidays."

So why is it, exactly, that some people are adamant about only greeting people in the month of December with "Merry Christmas"? My own mother refuses to stray from "Merry Christmas," and she converted to Judaism thirty years ago.

I'm not one to rewrite the laws and customs just so nobody could possibly be offended. I'm not a proponent of changing all the pronouns in the Bible to "she" or a completely gender-neutral alternative. I don't think "under God" should be removed from the pledge of allegiance. I don't even find "Merry Christmas" to be offensive. My family celebrates everything.

So when I heard a news clip on Fox News (which is not my network of choice, but when I'm home for the holidays, I have to accept my mother's fondness toward Greta Van Susteren) saying that a...

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Good For The Jews perform December 25th at Echoplex in Los Angeles; December 26th at Red Devil Lounge; and December 27th at Schuba’s in Chicago. Their national tour is sponsored by Jewcy.com.

Hello, all you sexy, Jewcy Jews out there in Jewland. This is Rob and Dave checking in from the first leg of our Putting the Ha! in Hannukah tour. Well, so far so good. We’ve played shows in D.C., New York, Philly, and Seattle, and Rob still has his wallet. His trademark is to leave behind something of value in each city we visit.

Thanks to our agent, Mohammed, we have a pretty hectic schedule. We fly and play on the same day, every day.  This means that if we hit one knish-sized snag due to weather, or an exploding shoe, the show has to go on without us. It’s okay, though. As a precaution we’ve gone ahead and sent slides of our trip to Israel to each venue just in case. Incidentally, we’re beginning to wonder about Mohammed’s abilities, as the pre-show ticket sales...

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Good For The Jews perform on Wednesday night at the Triple Door in Seattle; on Thursday night at Echoplex in L.A. (with singer Jill Sobule and comic Dan Levy); on Friday night at the Red Devil Lounge in S.F.; and on Saturday night at Schuba's in Chicago. 

GoodForTheJews.net
MySpace.com/GoodForTheJews 

Rugelach: That's what we get when women come backstage. I'm pretty sure that's not the norm for bands on tour. The phrase isn't sex, drugs and rugelach, is it?

 In Washington, D.C. last Sunday night, for the start of our "Putting the Ha! in Hanukkah" tour, we returned to the Birchmere, where last year a teenager insisted we autograph his forehead. <i> In black Sharpee. </i> This year, my bandmate David Fagin and I each received a carefully-wrapped, bulging box of delicious rugelach from a female fan. And another fan gave me a three-pack of Kinky Friedman "Texas...

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I've been surprised to find that the vast majority of articles I've stumbled upon since joining 'Jewcy' have been written from a predominantly right-wing perspective. I am beginning to worry that the radical leftist political element of American Jewry has become, by and large, a thing of the past. Granted, leftist sentiment in American regardless of cultural/religious affiliation seems to have witnessed a steep and ongoing decline in the past thirty years or so. I no longer see any distinction between the economic agenda of the two political parties.

Call me a sucker, but I was one of the radicals that actually...

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Hey guys, I'm alittle nervous writing this because I'm the new kid on the block but I hope some of you will respect me enough to give me a thoughtful answer.  However, despite my nervousness, I'd feel rude if I asked you for your honest opinions without giving you an idea of who I am.

For starters I'm a jew by choice (hence the "jbc" on the nick) who was born and raised Christian (Pentacostal) and was quite devoted for most of my life with some sprinkled devotion through highschool which then became stagnant in college.  All the same I remained a Christian up until alittle over a year ago.  Got a new job and with it came a plethora of interesting people from all over the world.  Finding my place amoung my co-workers I naturally found myself having the "get to know eachother" conversations.  Upon one conversation with one of the managers the topic of religion came up and, to make a long story short,  he is a Jew (by blood and faith), I was a Christian...

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Can you think of any movies--especially good ones--that feature Christians who kill? I'm making a list, and checking it twice...and then some. Please help! 

My favorites, including WHAM!, at my blog. 

 Click here for original post

You know you want to keep negiah, but the temptation is too much. You know
you can only hold out for so long until your likely to mess up. In your
head you begin to justify, maybe by asking yourself if God really
wanted us to suffer so much by having all this pent up sexual energy
with nowhere to go, or maybe its not really halacha and only a whacked
out rabbinical decree from the middle ages, but whatever it may be, you
are likely to mess up bad against your will at some point, I know I
have been forced into all sorts of unwanted situations.

Instead of justifying all of your premarital touching, why not
create some loopholes for touching before marriage and be off the hook,
from the supposed wrath that you will incur according to books like
Path of the Just and The Light of Efraim.

Shomer...

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Choose your Chanukah Color War team today – Red, Blue or Green. Unlike the Color Wars you joined at summer camp, there’s no tug-of-war and no capture-the-flag. Instead, you and the other members of your team will get an alert on each day of Chanukah with your mission for that day. Missions will be online acts of good for the Jewish world; none will take more than a few minutes to complete, and we hope you’ll find them to be interesting and fun. The more people on your team who complete each day’s mission, the higher your team’s score will be. We’ll keep you updated on the score each day, and at the end of the eight-day Color War we’ll award Gold, Silver or Bronze medals to all participants for your Facebook profiles.

By taking part in the debut year of this international micro-activism event, you can win a coveted SuperJews Gold Medal for your Facebook profile while strengthening the Jewish world one click at a time. This campaign is being run by United Jewish Communities...

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my first installment on my jewcy blog.  the form prompts: what is your channel? i am split between politics and religion. lifestyle and sex are obviously out, since my lifestyle and sex life are barely of interest, even to me.  culture: i consider myself a film buff, though roger ebert might consider me a mere neophyte and my knowledge of literature is embarrassingly thin, although i aspire to publish the novels and screenplay that i have written.  but still culture is not why i blog here, rather i am here because of the questionable state of being a jew in this year of their lord 2008, with 14 days left until 2009.

wondering jew, obviously a play on the phrase wandering jew.  what is it that i wonder about?  i wonder regarding the future of israel and the future of judaism.

it is a useful exercise, if only for clarity sake, to begin with a blank page.  if we were living in an ideal world and my predicted lifespan was hundreds of years rather than tens of years,...

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in my life i learn something new everyday weather by experiencing something personally, hearing about it or through reading,ect.. i find the best way to learn about someone is to listen, and open your mind to what is being said otherwise you just have empty words. my dad always says you can find out everything you need to know about a person in the first five minuets of talking to them. i find this to be both true and of course the obvious reality of the matter. i remember talking to a girl on the phone for about 5 min. and i remember telling the friend that put us on the phone to say hi that this girl was 1:nice 2:needy 3: didnt realy have that many true friends and 4: could be a pushover, all this in five minuets. later as i got to know her we became good friends and everything i had stated about her was true . so when you first meet someone really listen to them and you kind find out alot about them. all apart of living everyday and being in the moment.

According to the WWII-era Japanese government, Jews are fugu, the deadly-but-delicious pufferfish delicacy famous for nearly killing Homer in a season 2 episode of the Simpsons. (And just how did he survive? Was that ever explained?)

In 1919, while fighting alongside anti-communist White Russian forces, the Japanese were introduced to the notorious anti-semitic pamphlet The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Moreover, fifteen years earlier, a giant loan from a Jewish banker named Jacob Schiff had helped Japan defeat Russia in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War.

Two Japanese military officers in particular became convinced that Jews were almost magical sources of money and influence, especially due to their far-ranging contacts in the diaspora. Koreshige Inuzuka and Norihiro Yasue had fought with the White Russians, and their interest in Jews inspired them to visit the Palestine and meet with Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann in the 1920s. Yasue translated the Protocols into...

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I have some travel helps for the western states and Hampstead Heath.

You LA people (and others) should take a fun look at http://squidoo.com/eastern-sierra-nevada for travel and ski information for Mammoth Mountain and other Eastern Sierra information. 

Now that I've had some coffee, a few words about why I am posting this week.  I wrote a book, WHY FAITH MATTERS, that works along two avenues.  Part of it is intended to argue with the recent works on atheism -- Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett (HHDD -- all of whom have written books decrying religion).  But part of it was also born out of multiple experiences of cancer.  My wife had cancer right after my daughter was born, I've had both a brain tumor and lymphoma, and shortly after completing chemotherapy for the latter began work on the book.

  As a result, not only the truth of God but the effect of believing in God is much on my mind.  Recently my father was diagnosed with cancer, and my mother suffers the after effects of a bad stroke some 25 years ago (she is aphasic, almost unable to speak, and has other detriments from the stroke.)  The succession of crises -- hardly unique to my family -- always highlights faith.  Sometimes it makes it...

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Has anyone noticed that blogging forces one to lie?  Let me explain.

Usually, when you spill orange juice on yourself in the morning, there is no one to know.  You aren't concealing or lying by not mentioning it.  But now, one is upposed to blog about one's life, so NOT mentioning the spilled orange juice feels strangely like a lie.  Is this just an overactive Jewish conscience ginned up by the whole Rabbi thing?  I don't know for sure, and since I'm in NY, and therefore a jackhammer pounds outside my window, I don't know if I can know. 

More later.  I'm going to try to keep the coffee off my lap.

This is basically about my drive to Texas:

My hand is out the window making waves in the afternoon sunlight,
the free flowing air moving about my fingers as if they were stuck in
the white sand along the Mexican coast, swishing and swooshing and
enjoying the warmth. Its so warm I have shorts and a t-shirt on and its
November. I am in my happy place, Grateful Dead baring from my speakers
meandering on some forgotten byway, lost in time, devoid of other
travelers because they prefer the sing song of concrete and the fast
windows closed motion of their box of steel hitting super sonic speeds
that make all the fast food billboards look like a picket fence.

In Missouri it sure seemed that way, the picket fence scenario
played out at 72 miles per hour on Interstate 44. I cruised along
paying no attention to much besides for the current song on Ipod
shuffle, another invention of the laziness...

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