I wonder whether memory problems in my Mac might be related to my inablity to post anything over four lines. Anyone have any ideas about that? So far I've been very lucky in not needing to upgrade my memory, but I know with a Mac one always gets needs to upgrade, sooner or later.

Posted by: Attila at 06:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . worrisome.

Posted by: Attila at 01:10 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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MT has decided I'm too wordy, and will only accept entries that are a few lines long.

This could be an opportunity to Become Concise. Or, perhaps, find out how far into the yard my computer would go if I threw it right through the freakin' window as hard as I could.

Posted by: Attila at 12:25 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 !?!

Posted by: k at September 17, 2005 08:30 AM (6krEN)

2 This could be an opportunity to Become Concise. Or, perhaps, it could become an opportunity to Switch To Wordpress... Just a thought. ;-)

Posted by: McGehee at September 17, 2005 11:33 AM (lAOTn)

3 Well, one problem I've had with WordPress is that it tends to blink on other people's blogs as I scroll. Can this be fixed?

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 17, 2005 04:14 PM (Kti1Q)

4 I use Firefox, and sometimes your page doesn't load properly. Thankfully this time it did.

Posted by: ratan at September 17, 2005 07:04 PM (xdPoU)

5 Hm. I don't think that's MT's fault. It's probably mine, for loading all the stupid crap onto my sidebars that I do. Even my blog is cluttered! That's how inadequate I am!

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 18, 2005 12:07 AM (Kti1Q)

6 I doubt it's the fault of MT. Your blog isn't very cluttered at all, at least not compared to some others I read. Which makes the difficulty loading it in FF all the more strange. It does load fine in IE, so I'm not too troubled by it.

Posted by: ratan at September 18, 2005 10:26 AM (xdPoU)

7 Miss Attila, You're just fighting with a setting in MT. Shoot me an email with the version you're using and perhaps I can help you fix that. I haven't had any problems posting 2000 word rants...so I think it's a setting that got messed up. Love the blog...and the look. Nothing jumbled about it. You got it going on! See you on the high ground! MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at September 19, 2005 05:28 PM (tdEnf)

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. . . this post over at Hubris, I considered proposing marriage. Then I remembered my husband's views on polyandry are not flexible at all.

So scratch that. But read the freakin' post, okay?

Via the gossip in my Cotillion Ball in-box.

Posted by: Attila at 11:27 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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. . . getting a mite testy with the good Senator?

Posted by: Attila at 08:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How on earth do you expect me to post interesting things if you don't stop by?

Visit more often, and I'll post. It's only fair.

Posted by: Attila at 08:23 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Testing again. I'll best this one actually posts. The thing to do is trick it, by titling something "Test," and then posting an actual blog entry.

Posted by: Attila at 02:33 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Be sure to check out this week's roundups of smart-chick commentary.

For one-stop shopping, check out our main Cotillion site at Munuland, and just keep scrolling down; everything is cross-posted there.

Posted by: Attila at 04:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hm. Wonder what's going on, here. MT appears to have some sort of mental block.

And, you know—it's a lot younger than I am. Definitely on the other side of that 40-divide. So there's no real excuse for it.

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. . . she's going to collapse from dizziness. Or was that ditziness?

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila at 12:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . has a nice little summary on why the FEMA response to Katrina was faster and more efficient than what is usual and customary, and why the local and state authorities are supposed to be able to handle the situation for at least 72 hours.

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. . . compares Federal failures on 9/11 to local/state failures during Katrina, and asks which level of bureaucracy would you rather be let down by?

Certainly events in NO haven't shown us our favorite side of human nature: not for the most part.

Posted by: Attila at 01:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . Goldstein takes Newsweek to task, ever-so-gently, for an article that appears to ask the eternal question "who's your Daddy?"

And to answer itself, "The Federal Government, of course."

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. . . I was sleeping in the living room, because I was slightly under the weather. The phone rang and it was K calling from Florida on my husband's land line. She was saying something about what sounded like an armed standoff at the Pentagon and another bomb at the World Trade Center. "It sounds like we're under attack," she exclaimed, and under stress, her voice betrayed the years she'd spent in the Upper Midwest, the word "attack" coming out with a slight Chicago accent.

It was too far to grab for the phone, but I made a mental note to find out what was going on. One of us would call her back—probably my husband would do it as I went to work. I knew I should wake him up, though.

I had overslept slightly, so I started to run the bath water in the master bath; I needed to shave my legs before getting dressed. With some sort of crisis happening, the radio had to go on, but it's not a nice thing to wake someone up with media blasting in their ears, so I needed to nudge my husband awake first.

It was around 7:30 a.m. I had to hit the road by 8:10, which was fine: instead of breakfast, I'd drink a Slim-Fast in the car on my way into Los Angeles. I shut off the bath water and kissed my husband, letting him know his ex-girlfriend had called about something weird unfolding on the East Coast.

"Honey, we have to listen to the radio now," I tell him. "I think there's been another bomb at the World Trade Center or something."

"Sure," responds. "Turn it on."

In the master bath I flipped the radio on loud enough for us both to hear it and started to take my clothes off. Bill Handel's voice came on; he recapped the morning's events for people like us who don't get up early. I was down to my underwear as he announced that planes had hit both of the World Trade Center Towers. I forget about bathing and went back into the bedroom, wide-eyed as we both listened to Handel. Our eyes locked as Handel announced that "both World Trade Towers have been reduced to rubble."

I sank down on the bed next to Attila the Hub and he crossed himself. We were looking at each other, each hoping that we'd somehow heard wrong.

Ten minutes later I got a call from one of the managers at work, who told me that because of the uncertainty about what the attacks in New York and Los Angeles meant, I should stay home that day.

"Call K," I told my husband. "And then I'm leaving: I've got a manuscript at the office I want to retrieve."

"I'm driving you," he insisted. He returned K's call as I got dressed. We proceeded slowly back through Los Angeles, which had become a ghost town, and cautiously parked at the office building near Museum Row where I worked. We gathered my manuscript up so I could bring it home. It wasn't clear how long I'd be stranded at home, so I piled together all the reference works I could, but we also tried to minimize our time in the building, because we still didn't know whether there would be attacks on other business districts. The silence all around us was eerie.

Hustling into Attila the Hub's Saturn, we made our way back home to the hills near Pasadena.

In the big cities most people were still glued to their televisions, watching planes fly into buildings over and over again, and crying. I tried to give blood because it was all I could think of to do, but the hospital was swamped, and they sent me home, telling me to try again in a few hours. I lay on the couch and fell into the kind of sleep that comes from feeling overwhelmed. Attila Hub headed out to meet his sister, who was swinging through Southern California on the last leg of a car trip. They had lunch at a local coffee shop, but not for long: she was feeling the homing instinct too, and wanted to hurry back to Arizona. When I awakened my husband was there again, and I headed back to the hospital with yet another book in my hands, hoping they would finally let me give blood.

As I waited I alternated between my book and the television, looking back up as they announced that another office building next to the WTC had collapsed from the stress it endured that day. Another hour of waiting, and the clock ran out. They sent some of us home without getting our blood. We feel cheated, as if we'd had rainchecks for products we were going to buy on sale, but the store ran out of them. And we knew it was absurd to feel that way. At this point the nation was still hoping for survivors, like there had been after the Oklahoma City attack. A sinking feeling in our hearts, however, told us there was little chance anyone's blood would be any use at all.

By day's end I was a different person than I had been when I woke up.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dreams; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connelly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

—William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916"

As I lay down that night I mentally told Al Qaeda "you have no
idea what you've unleashed. None at all."

Posted by: Attila at 10:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . has a roundup on the Gretna bridge incident, wherein people from New Orleans were being cut off and not allowed out of the city. This roadblock may be the single worst scandal to emerge from Katrina.

One of the debates going on about this roadblock of the only dry route out of New Orleans has to do with whether Gretna police locked their city down out of racial motivations, or out of real fear that their town would be overwhelmed, or that criminals would cross the bridge and cause problems in their neighborhoods. All that aside, it still looks heartless: had I lived in Gretna, I would have been happy to take some of those people in, and I'll bet the town's residents feel that way too.

And, of course, the other question has to do with where the fucking Governor of Louisiana was at the time. You know: the chick who's trying to blame this all on the Feds, but wouldn't give them the authority to come in—nor use the National Guard to restore order so it would be legal for regular troops to take up positions to help.

UPDATE: Video here.

Posted by: Attila at 11:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Let's just Federalize all disaster preparations, and then get a dirty martini with three olives, made with Tanqueray Ten.

Goldstein attempts to point out the problems therewith, including that Constitution thingie.

Posted by: Attila at 08:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Jeff Harrell expresses his contempt for a would-be blackmailer, and raises funds for Katrina relief at the same time.

Actually, I'm hoping he spends some of the money on a tripod. The right tool for the right job, ya know.

WARNING: Not suitable for my sensitive readers. But straight chicks and gay men, in paricular, will be delighted.

Posted by: Attila at 04:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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An amazing eyewitness account from NOLA. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to verify it. But it's dramatic, for sure.

I'll snoop around over the weekend to see if I can authenticate it. Or, if you know its origins, leave the source in the comments.

UPDATE: The concensus appears to be that this narrative was strung together from a series of rumors. Unfortunately, we don't know which ones are true and which aren't. Like the Titanic disaster, this situation will be argued about for years. If there are hearings, perhaps historians will be able to figure out the main strands of responsibility—beyond Mother Nature's fury.

I did see the leftist bias in this narrative, but there are some factual problems: C-rations haven't been used in years (they are all MREs now), and National Guard units are deployed as units, rather than one guy from this one, two guys from that one, and the like. A lot of people have expressed skepticism about the notion that any authorities would actually physically confiscate food from citizens.

I do suspect there are elements of truth in this, but which aspects one tends to believe will probably depend upon one's political leanings.

That's why I'd like to see hearings: it would be nice to have someone other than Snopes trying to separate fact from fiction.

Posted by: Attila at 01:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . by one of GayPatriot's readers in this post, which posits that overreaching by activists could have the effect of setting gay rights back in this state for years.

Posted by: Attila at 05:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Sully stooping to new lows by insisting that Prop 22 only meant to ban OUT OF STATE gay marriages. Do you suppose he believes this shit, or just thinks we're idiots?

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at September 11, 2005 01:19 PM (uulnD)

2 Well, he does have that selective memory thing

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 11, 2005 06:42 PM (EtCQE)

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. . . which was apparently higher in that state under Bush vs. Clinton.

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