A College Sex Columnist Ponders the Major Geopolitics Questions of Our Day

With internecine strife threatening to carve up Iraq into hundreds of warring sectarian tribes, can the Sunnis and Shi'ites ever "just be friends"?
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Indie Film Boy and I were bickering at the campus store over whether to buy hummus for our marathon night of French New Wave movies for our class on postwar directors. He wanted it--extra-garlic, no less!--and I took that as a clear sign that there would be no "breathless" make-out session with Mr. Existential Commitmentphobe. (What, you thought I was going to make a joke about "The 400 You-Know-Whats?") As our argument escalated and grew more vicious--me, passive-aggressive? Never!--it got me thinking: With internecine strife threatening to carve up Iraq into hundreds of warring sectarian tribes, can the Sunnis and Shi'ites ever "just be friends"?

* * *

The place: a Sigma Phi keg party. The time: Friday night. The temperature: 90 degrees, and the brothers' A/C was on the fritz. The silver lining? It gave me the perfect excuse to show off my calves in my new Gucci miniskirt (thank you, elliptical trainers in the rec center!). As Hockey Mountain Man and I played beer-pong and sweated buckets of Coors Light in the stifling room, I started wondering: When do we pass more stringent legislation on fuel mileage standards and recognize that global warming has gotten too "hot and heavy"?

* * *

I was grabbing my morning Starbucks mochachino (extra shot of espresso, please--I needed it after my all-nighter for Intro to Soc!) in the Campus Lounge when I saw a poster with pictures of the student government presidential candidates--and there was Poli(te) Sci Guy, earnestly beaming. But something about him--the perfectly parted brown hair, the blue Brooks Brothers button-down, the long résumé studded with community-service experiences--turned me off. Almost without thinking about it, I ended up voting for a guy my roommate Melissa once dated and said was a total dick who did coke all day in his secret society and bragged about how his powerful father always got him out of trouble. And it made me question: Why do women always ignore the nice guy at the polls who will listen to and address their needs, and instead go for the "bad politician"?

* * *

Having our weekly lunch-and-gossip session--or "dish and a dish," as I call it!--at Planet Tokyo with gal-pal Julie the other day, I noticed that the price of salmon teriyaki had risen. Obsessive over-analyzer that I am (hmm, wonder why I'm an English major?), I couldn't help but ask Jules, in the intimate style only BFFs can have: What will be the long-term repercussions of the Bank of Japan's actions in March 2006, when it ditched its 2001 "quantitative easing" policy and returned to the more conventional usage of the unsecured overnight call rate as a monetary adjustment target, rather than the outstanding balance of private financial institution-held current-account deposits at the central bank?

Also, I'm totally addicted to Planet Tokyo's inside-out California rolls.

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