. . . outside a dinner honoring Steven Spielberg. That was the first time I realized how truly hellish fame would be. The paparazzi were yelling his name, and the names of anyone else they recognized who walked through the doors. The constant yelling of names had become a very loud whirring of helicopter blades. There was something intensely ugly about it, and Lucas is about my height—that is to say, very short for a man. He almost looked scared, though I'm sure he had become acclimated to these events.

Mira Sorvino was near me on my other side. Her star was just starting to rise, and she was almost in tears from the crush of photographers, and the constant yelling of her name.

Holy fucking shit, I thought. How many people in this country think they want to live this way? No privacy. No boundaries. People in your face day and night. You'd live in a fishbowl. Hell.

Lucas was at a party once in the 90s where a friend of mine had wandered by. She had just started doing some writing for Spielberg, and she got introduced to Lucas, who really seemed to embody the classic engineer sensibility: he wanted to talk to her endlessly. I'm not so sure he was interested in her, exactly. It's just that his lack of social skills made him want to play it safe. Why look for another conversation when you already have one?

She found herself using the word "boyfriend" as much as she could, and plotting about how to exit the conversation without hurting his feelings. And she laughed at the irony of it all: most actresses in this town would have killed to have Lucas pinning them down in conversation at a party.

Yes, you are thinking. But they have nice toys.

No number of toys would be worth living on the front lines in the entertainment industry. Not a car. Not a house. Nothing.

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. . . continues his boycott of me. My head is bloody, but unbowed.

It's been suggested that if my site stopped sucking, he'd link to me. Not so!—my site has only sucked for a few weeks. Maybe a month at the outside. And he's been boycotting me for over two years, ever since I started blogging.

I must be a very important blogger to get this kind of negative attention from Glenn. Deep down, he fears my power.

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The Syrian Army is in Iraq.

Via Protein Wisdom, where Jeff appears convinced that Malkin and Hewitt are upset about relatively minor things.

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. . . discusses the murders of women and gay men, which of course are acceptable under certain conditions.

Via Insty.

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. . . is out. I haven't read it yet, since I want to allow enough time to sink my teeth into it and not rush. After all, his essays are the Russian novels of the blogosphere.

But Sissy Willis has the link, a summary, and a few choice excerpts. A little taste.

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1 Thanks for the link. Technical note: Your logo (upper right) only half loads (lower half of figure). I'm using IE . . .

Posted by: Sissy Willis at May 21, 2005 08:45 AM (7WFgX)

2 EGAD. Upper left, I mean.

Posted by: Sissy Willis at May 21, 2005 08:46 AM (7WFgX)

3 Testing in car Used several cars rentals times previously. Often than minutes, a time auto loans online to meet in an Evo car loan s_ford-motor_3 airy, spacious feel be a beautifully presented than a collection s_ford-expedition_7 of leather, interior room clacking away the cabin era It s easy to rent out it s plenty of red eye our accommodation.

Posted by: serena at June 03, 2005 11:40 AM (Y7dVX)

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See if you can leave them now. If not, I'm going to have to call in the heavy artillery (people who know what they're doing with web pages).

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. . . contemplates his roots.

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. . . are having a bit of a spat. A very polite one, so far.

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. . . Toast Roundup, in case you're following the buzz. But don't do that at the expense of reading the site iteself.

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Jeff of BA (Beautiful Atrocities, and the Bay Area) has some suggestions for those of us who just haven't been able to figure out the question of our day—that is, how to flush the Quran down a toilet:

• Flush Cliff's Notes on Quran instead. (This is cheating)

• Place Quran in toilet bowl. Add 1 quart of lye. Let stew for several days. Try to avoid using toilet during this period, or you will have disgusting mess on your hands. (If smell unbearable, add a little Old Spice or Brut.)

• Eat entire Quran page by page. Defecate. If necessary, use Milk of Magnesia

I always want to give up blogging when I stop by Jeff's place. Now read the whole thing.

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There's a great summary over at Photon Courier of a study that shows people can make analogies from the flimsiest resemblences. In the test scanario, subjects were inspired to find analogies between a hypothetical threat from one nation to another: and it was shockingly easy to get them to see either the Vietnam war or WWII as parallels.

Quite an insight into our teeny tiny minds.

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Ever.

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to Huffington's Toast can be found here.

Apparently, there are only two "franchise" characters. One is spelled out in the cast list above. The other is not, so we're still free to speculate. I'm going to go with Jeff Goldstein as Martha Stewart, for obvious reasons. I'm very sad that I was wrong about Moxie's specific role, but I think life will go on. I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest that Jeff was Harry Reid today.

So as a general rule, there's no telling which blogger wrote which particular parody on that site, making it a collaborative piece not unlike improv comedy—except, of course, that no one is "locked in" to any particular character (with two exceptions).

Let's remember to drop by these bloggers' main sites as well as going for our daily Toast. I'm also going to predict that this parody will still be going even after Arianna gives up on the Post itself.

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You know, I haven't helped to get someone fired since Mary Mapes, and I've got that itchy feeling again. And I'm not the only one.

Apparently, W. got so mad, he started his own blog:

"So it's rioting in the Middle East and guess who has to deal with it," Condoleezza Rice complained, "Me, that's who. Why couldn't I be Secretary of Defense?"

"Because diplomacy is for women and kill'n is for men," Rumsfeld answered.

"I'll show you killing!" Condi shouted and approached Rumsfeld.

"Let's save our violence for Newsweek," Bush said, "Now hand me my fact-checker."

"The 12-gauge?" Condi asked.

"That'll do."

Laura walked into the room. "Are you going to use violence to solve a problem again?"

"No, dear," Bush answered, stuffing his pockets with shotguns shells.

"You know, when someone in the media writes something that isn't true," Laura told him, "the popular and effective way to combat it is to blog about it."

"Blog!" Rumsfeld yelled, "Sounds like something for homosexuals."

Via Insty.

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remains barren; the bureaucrats who are haggling about how to proceed might want to read this Wall Street Journal article.

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. . . writes about the Supremes taking their sweet time adjudicating California's medical marijuana law; it's a nice summary of the legal issues involved.

Here's my constitutional reasoning: we passed a freakin' law. For the Feds to come in here and arrest cancer patients who are following state law is just outrageous.

Growing dope and then smoking it is not commerce, any more than knitting a scarf and wearing it is. If the weed wasn't purchased, you must acquit.

If SCOTUS upholds the Feds on this, I'm going to scream. And you'll be able to hear me around the world. After that, I'll hold my breath until I turn blue. Then I'll join the tunnel-vision single-issue losers at NORML, out of frustration.

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1 I'll come with you.

Posted by: gail at May 16, 2005 05:21 AM (47cun)

2 Yes.

Posted by: k at May 16, 2005 10:01 AM (ywZa8)

3 Can an employer fire an employee if he/she doesn't pass a drug test that envolves Medical Marijuana?

Posted by: JFH at May 16, 2005 12:38 PM (XD9Ug)

4 Interesting theoretical question, but a lot of the people approved to receive marijuana are too sick to work, at least full-time. And their conditions--and treatments--would be known prior to employment.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 16, 2005 01:18 PM (x/EKm)

5 When they're done with this case, maybe SCOTUS can look into some Florida cases. Here, we jail patients for taking legal, legally prescribed painkillers. You think you got it bad? It really can get worse.

Posted by: k at May 16, 2005 04:07 PM (6krEN)

6 Nothing wrong with joining them early either. They may be single-issue, but that issue has wide applicability for the concept of individual liberty.

Posted by: Desert Cat at May 16, 2005 10:10 PM (xdX36)

7 Yes. And I've been a single-issue "loser" forever WRT the NRA and All Things Gunny. So it's probably time.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 16, 2005 10:41 PM (x/EKm)

8 Heh! Look at your google ads. Can they zero in or what?

Posted by: Desert Cat at May 16, 2005 11:28 PM (xdX36)

9 I'm seeing ads for hotels in Weed, CA; gardening supplies; and two ads for "vaporizers," which appear to be the latest alternatives to bongs, I mean water pipes.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 17, 2005 09:32 AM (x/EKm)

10 Right. Growing and using supplies. Nobody grows tomatoes indoors under HID lights.

Posted by: Desert Cat at May 17, 2005 12:37 PM (n/TmV)

11 Shocked, shocked!

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 17, 2005 01:57 PM (x/EKm)

12 Great. Good ol' Florida. After the turnkey hydroponics and Medical Marijuana Pro/Con ads, I see: Help for Marijuana Addict. And where? It's a Florida facility. **sigh** This used to be such a fun place to live.

Posted by: k at May 18, 2005 06:15 PM (6krEN)

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Mark Steyn, in his essay "Not Over the Hill" (should be at the top of this page for a while), tells us why we should be concerned about Hillary's impending candidacy.

Why, in short, he thinks she'll probably win.

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explains that it's sorry it reported that the Koran was being desecrated at Guantanamo, but it's not that sorry, even though people died because of it. And—hey!—look over there! Something shiny!

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Thanks to Jane at Armies of Liberation for pressuring the Yemenis to do the right thing for a change by enforcing their own laws.

Of course, if they want to be taken seriously, the religious persecution within their country has got to stop.

But let's give credit where credit is due: they recovered al-Wazer, and he is apparently safe from both the kidnappers and the crooked people inside his own government.

I was ready for some good news.

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There's a nice little roundup of Huffington's Toast here. It's not comprehensive, but it'll get you started.

When all is said and done, I think "Toast" may get a lot more attention that the Huffington Post. It's certainly more interesting (unless Arianna wants me to write for her, in which case of course the "Post" is brilliant and puts the "blog" in "blogosphere").

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