Give us shelter.

In an important and clarifying article that appears this month in The New York Review of Books, author Mark Danner contends that there has really been two wars going on in Iraq.

An imaginary war — the one which the administrations touts, full of “turning points’ and “dead-enders” in their “last throes” — and the actual war on the ground, the one that reporters report, the one exploding nightly outside the 4-mile-square perimeter known as the Green Zone, a vast bunker, redundantly fortified, with no windows looking out.

So invested is the administration in its own imaginary narrative, Danner argues, that our government is unable to figure out not only when or how possibly this war could end, but where it began: (more…)

“Why is being gay so out this season?” asks Bruno, a loopy boytoy fashionista. The question is being posed to a real-life preacher who runs an “ex-gay”ministry.

Bruno is one of Sascha Baron Cohen’s repertory of ditzy interviewer characters. (At right, a rare — and rather handsome — picture of the comic, out of character, as himself.)

Like Cohen’s more famous idiots — the clueless Kazakhi “Borat” (the subject of a movie that is now packing them in at the multiplexes) or the syntax-impaired gansta-rapper “Ali G” (late of HBO) — Bruno is always posing improbable questions to unsuspecting real-life dupes. (more…)

If it is were up to him, Darian would not have pardoned the White House turkey.

There’s entirely too much looking the other way, he says, in this administration.

“Impeach the fucker” is his succinct view on the matter.

A veteran of the “Shock and Awe” campaign, a reservist who was recycled three times “by a back door draft” into that little bit of hell we call Operation Enduring Nightmare, Darian knows a thing or two about turkeys.

He also knows the difference between dressing and stuffing.

“If it’s cooked inside the turkey, it’s called stuffing,” says this former military chef. “But if you bake it in the oven, it’s dressing.”

Roger that, D.

Roger that, Nightcharm.

I think we’re ready to get properly stuffed now. Bird looks big and healthy. Just don’t forget to slide a little cranberry sauce on that thang.

Darian is one of our star Cruiser Boys this November. You’ll find him in the Inner Circle, with a video demonstration on how this man can cook!

(MEMBERS / non-MEMBERS)

We’ll be the first to admit it. Bringing our queer eye to the art museum is somewhat redundant.

The great works so clearly speak for themselves, and often in accents we recognize as native to our own little corner of the universe.

Digital artist Harald Seiwert decided to take this idea over the top and do explicitly homosexual versions of great masterpieces, calling his new series Inspired by …

Using a combination of Photoshop and photo shoot, he enhanced already homoerotic works like Caravaggio’s nubile boy cupid in Amor Victorious, at left (click here to see the Caravaggio original), by switching in a live model.

But why limit himself to the handful of often marginally attractive men — mostly burghers, popes and patrons — in great art? The vast majority of masterpieces envisioned beauty in an exclusively female form. He needed to throw in a few transgendered curves to widen his scope, often to pranksterish effect. (more…)

Because the boyfriend — Monsignor Hot Face, below — is oh so fuckable, that’s why.

Monsignor Georg Gänswein — Don Giorgio as he is known to Vatican watchers or, with a certain knowing wink, due to his handsome looks, beautiful Georg — is the pope’s personal secretary.

It is an envied and powerful post the studly monsignor has held since 2000 and that — as in the case of many a minor sexbomb thrust into the spotlight when she marries a megawatt superstar — took him out of the obscurity of his scholarly duties in a small German town and onto the international stage.

Now he is the man who holds the microphone to the man who rules the world — or at least the part of it that still bends the knee to Catholic doctrine, which holds that the pope is Christ’s kingly regent on earth, infallible and fully perfect in matters celestial. (more…)

“Gay culture has been a feature of seafaring life for centuries,” states the website for Liverpool’s maritime museum. “It is still a hidden one, even today when the Royal Navy actively recruits gay sailors. ”

The Merseyside Maritime Museum, which is dedicated to the seafaring history of that port city, is throwing a light on this hidden culture in an exhibition charmingly titled Hello Sailor: Gay Life on the Ocean Wave.

To promote the show, which runs to the end of March, a series of brief essays have been posted on the museum’s website filled with insider tidbits and an unmistakable first-hand authenticity.

Here we learn that though homosexuality was a crime in Britain until 1967 (sometimes punished by prison sentences, most famously that of Oscar Wilde, as well as the man who broke the Nazi war code, Alan Turing), the “sodomic” tradition was allowed to flourish in the Royal navy as an open secret. It thus endured as a haven for randy middle-class boys who, with often only nominal attempts to pass for straight, joined up to meet men and see the world. (more…)

Dreamgirls.

Ever wonder what the Salem witch trials must have looked like when the young girls went into mass hysterics? Screaming and tumbling and being fed upon by invisible black “witch birds?”

Or what Bedlam might have sounded like when the lunatics were hosed down for the entertainment of guided tours?

Behold our evangelical brothers and sisters in the grip of something called “Holy Laughter,” led by Reverend Kenneth “Papa” Hagen.

Beyond Beyond! (Hat tip to the Evangelical Right website.)