Iced Borscht

!!!DECEMBER: GUEST BLOGGER MONTH!!!

If you followed a Twitter or Facebook link to get here, it means you’re officially invited to guest blog at ICED BORSCHT & OTHER DELIGHTS during the month of December 2009, A.D.

It also means I’m impressed by your writing chops and/or your ability to express an idea, whether it’s through the written word, comedy or vlogs. As such, I’d be thrilled to feature one of your contributions.

Here are the guest-blogging rules:

Submit your post to me via e-mail (mike AT icedborscht DOT com) by November 30, 2009.

• If you don’t want to use your real name, then please provide a pen name of choice. A short, preferred bio paragraph to preface the post would be swell too, as would a mugshot of some sort.

• Please provide any pertinent hyperlinks or accompanying photos you think would be appropriate for the post.

• Write about whatever your heart desires, dammit! Make it long, keep it short, it’s up to you. The item may be a blog post you’ve put off for a long time, a political hot potato not right for your own site, your recipe for gruel, etc. Tutorials, how-to lists and other such items are encouraged too (especially if you’re an expert on, say, making antler lamps or silent drape-runners).

I realize these are vague guidelines. If you’re looking to adhere to concepts that the Iced Borscht blog explores, they generally fall into this list:

1. Russia/Ukraine/USSR
2. Portland/Oregon/the Pacific Northwest/the West Coast
3. Sex
4. Unique/strange/rare/fun music
5. Weird museums/collections/exhibits
6. Strange (albeit aesthetically pleasing) art/photography
7. “Contrarian” politics
8. Atheism/agnosticism/religion/God
9. Good food/weird food/strange food
10. Green Bay Packers/NFL/Brent Lorenzo Fauve
11. Wisconsin/Michigan/the Upper Midwest/the Canadian Shield
12. High Desert Cosmonautica and Other Desert Cha Cha Cha

But…I’m not asking anyone to conform to the tone or the “ethos” of the Iced Borscht blog. Feel free to disagree with something I’ve written. School me. And feel free to launch into an unapologetic political diatribe, be it left or right in origin. Inform me; I’m a wandering political agnostic hopelessly lost in the quagmire of transpartisan rage. Show me the light.

However, more benign topics such as holiday baking ideas are damn fine too. There are no hard and fast rules.

I may edit items, but only for cosmetic purposes (e.g. correcting an obvious misspelled word).

Lastly, I want to share that I’m not doing this with any sort of link-baiting or traffic-inflation goals in mind. Two of my old sites received enough hits from the likes of BOING BOING, Indie Nudes and various odd/hilarious/perverse Japanese blogs that the novelty of big-traffic days has worn off. ICED BORSCHT is simply a labor of love, and you’re invited to the party.

Do come!

Thanks,
MC

CLEANING OUT THE LINK CAGE 10/27/09

• Insipid NEWSWEEK journalist goes on and on about HER CONTEMPT FOR WHITE MEN…and then says something about poetry…and atheism.

• The Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All-Time

• Feodosia, Ukraine partially evacuated after scuba divers uncover World War II Nazi bomb

• Girls and Corpses

• The Most Powerful Old Farts in America

• “Stray rabbits are getting a raw deal in Sweden. Thousands of them living in the center of Stockholm are being culled, deep frozen and converted into biofuel for heating homes.” (via Jacob Grier)

• Russia’s Seven Giants of the Urals. Astonishing.

• Governing underwater in Maldives

• Portland wins nearly every “Progressive City” award around, given that it’s a “youth magnet” with “mad urban planning skillz.” But our heroic bastion of white guilt isn’t likely to earn fist bumps from the African American community anytime soon. As Aaron Renn writes at NEW GEOGRAPHY:

  “Civic leaders in city after city duly make their pilgrimage to Denver or Portland to check out shiny new transit systems, but the resulting videos of smiling yuppies and happy hipsters are not likely to impress anyone over at the local NAACP or in the barrios.”

  Well said, Renn. One problem, though. Renn seems to write from the perspective of someone who is perturbed by Portland’s whiteness. Thus, he misses the point: it is a never-ending source of amusement that Portlanders cannot get black people to move here and discuss Gus Van Sant films and Guided by Voices music with them. This “dog chasing tail” bit never stops being hilarious. When will Caucasians of Portland learn! Sleater-Kinney music sucks! So does independent cinema, public transportation and artsy-vegan food! Black people have known this for years.

• Alice Cooper on Soupy Sales’ show (via Boing Boing)

• Bill O’Reilly to John Stossel: “Stossel, if you let people smoke pot, then it all becomes heroin! Heroin heroin heroin! Heroin users will sell pot to kids who will smoke pot and sell it back to heroin users for more heroin! Heroin!!!!“

• DRUGS!!!!! DRUGS!!!!!!!!!! DRUGS!!!!

• Intaglio prints by Ukrainian artist Oleg Denysenko (via John Coulthart).

• Glenn Beck, art critic, details the Communistic undertones of Carl Paul Jennewein.

• A fairy tale carved in a well-lit ostrich egg shell (via Boing Boing).

• Art inspired by abducted Ugandan children yields stunning and creepy Rorschach mind-fuck.

• This Michael Moore! He is some kind of big thinker! I cannot wrap my gosling mind around his thickness. His weight. He is light!

• Important American Michael Moore is delivering messages. He is broadcasting sunshine to cavernous mulch. He is a prime-time soul.

• Michael Moore‘s radiance lets me know that His America is the Correct One. He beams when he tells me what chafes him. He is a Proud Man.

• I am convinced that Important American Michael Moore knows how to stop Pain in All Parts of the World. He knows the formula to Winning Life.

• Do you feel like your underpants scrunch up with goodness due to Important American Michael Moore? If not, you must make this happen.

• Are you getting a chubby of Great Joy thinking thoughts for Michael Moore? He can show you the Way out of this Black Bog, this boiler room.

• I get special feelings in soft places when Michael Moore sings Sweet Music to Kill Evil Doers. He is like glistening dew on an osprey.

• There’s a spiritual element to Michael Moore; his backside emotes tender feelings, sweet muscles like those of the apostles.

• My gosling mind weeps, because it is so far from the light of Important American Michael Moore. How do I get closer to his cha cha?

• Michael Moore defies gravity; his knowledge makes my bottom coo.