. . . who didn't even know we had levees here? Well, of course we must: how else could we steal water for agriculture in the Central Valley? But other than that "keep the produce coming; I like water; faster, please" attitude, I hadn't thought much about how we actually channel the stuff. Stupid of me, really.

Arnold knew, though. Along with Crime-Fightin' Feinstein, who co-signed his letter asking for Federal funds. (No. Thanks for asking: I'll never forgive her for tipping off the Nightstalker when he was in SF. What a stupid woman; Ramirez' victims deserved better than that.)

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are the ones who need the fucking Prozac.

Or a little lead poisoning; one of the two.

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. . . the Port Deal Controversy.

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. . . and parse it.

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whose time has come.

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And I've been too depressed to get more.

Send me some SSRIs, stat.

I wonder if the PayPal button will work for pharmaceuticals. It should, you know; I would think drugs would be a perfectly acceptable way to tip a blogger. A good entry would go for some bud. A really funny one would get me a week's worth of Prozac. Something truly provocative would net me a few Ambien 10s, and if I hit it out of the park, you PayPal me a few Tylenol 3s to help me batten down the hatches next time I have a bad period. Next person to choose me as his/her blog-crush can buy me a little Tanqueray. Tanqueray 10 if you've convinced yourself you're in love with me.

This is a workable system.

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don't count your broken omelet eggs before they're hatched. Or something.

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It's happening at Krempasky's blog, and (primarily) at On Tap. Krempasky postulates:

Traditional (read: career) reporters who have never had a “run-in” with bloggers are a lot like the wide-eyed college kid who still drinks tequila.

Traditional reporters who have had that “run in” tend to become one of two people:

1. The cautious but respectful one that realizes that thereÂ’s fire in that there bottle. One? Two? No problem. Life of the party and all that. Five? Call your office, you wonÂ’t be in today.

2. The villain at the end of every Scooby Doo episode shaking his fist at the sky (or in handcuffs) saying, “if it wasn’t for those damn kids . . . ”

[Yes, everyone. I fixed a typo in the quote. I really can't help myself, okay? Get off my back. I didn't change "damn" to "stupid," so I'm not wearing my fact-checking hat. But the proofreading one is permanently attached to my head.]

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Hitchens:

Update, Feb. 22: Thank you all who've written. Please be outside the Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue) between noon and 1 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 24. Quietness and calm are the necessities, plus cheerful conversation. Danish flags are good, or posters reading "Stand By Denmark" and any variation on this theme (such as "Buy Carlsberg/ Havarti/ Lego") The response has been astonishing and I know that the Danes are appreciative. But they are an embassy and thus do not of course endorse or comment on any demonstration. Let us hope, however, to set a precedent for other cities and countries. Please pass on this message to friends and colleagues.

It would be lovely to see this in other cities as well. Perhaps it should be in every city, on every Friday at noon. But if you're in the D.C. area, please consider going, for it is certainly happening there.

Via Foster.

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As usual, Malkin is able to make a cogent-sounding—yet somehow still unpersuasive—case for the DPW deal being an unwarranted risk. But at least we can't accuse her of not having enough information on it: go to her site, and you may drown in data. (Not all of it helpful, mind you: but it does contain facts, which we could all use more of.)

Via commenter Jack, though I should have realized Malkin would be a treasure-trove on this.

Contrariwise, Hackbarth has an update on senatorial self-importance in this arena.

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With writer's group looming tonight, I look at all the raw material I have in my files. As usual, every single thing I've ever written sucks. If it doesn't suck, I've already read it aloud in group and received the usual critiques ("less dialogue, please" "is that really autobiographical? You're a fucking freak, aren't you?" "Your fiction has too many characters in it, and I can't keep 'em straight." "Do you ever think of anything other than sex?" [Answers: fuck off, yes, fuck off, no]).

I should read from my Big-Ass Crime Novel, but that sucks more than usual this week. In desperation, I turn to an embryonic piece I've had on the back burner for a while about triangle relationships in my teenage years. I start to flesh it out, and end up with something I'm (just barely) willing to read tonight. Presumably that will end up being part of my looming semi-autobiographical flim-flam.

But at least I'm not writing poetry any more, which is a step up. I think.

When all else fails, I metaphorically take off my clothes: the story begins with my feelings about jealousy, and a few snapshots from times I felt it very strongly. I'm not discussing envy, here: I'm talking about jealousy, when you desire attention from someone who's enraptured by another person. It's an amazing feeling, because it's so purely an expression of id. And it's the most bald-faced liar of any emotion: what else can make you murderous at the same time you feel disempowered and insignificant?

When I shut off the computer in relief to make myself my eighteenth cup of tea for the day, I think about the songs I've heard that have tried to capture not just the pain of jealousy, but its ugliness as well. How do you write about an experience so universal, so painful, and so prone to transform the sufferer into a complete monster?

The partial green-eyed discography:

• "Jealous Again," The Black Crowes
• "Alison," Elvis Costello
• "Jealousy," by the Gin Blossoms, which conveys the energy, but not necessarily the excruciating pain of the experience.
• "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" Joe Jackson
• that Marianne Faithfull song "Why D'ya Do It?" which documents the ugliness of jealousy, but fails IMHO because it becomes ugly itself.
• "Jealous Again," Black Flag
• the Alannis Morissette song "You Oughta Know." This might be the best effort: it's got plenty of energy, which—say what you migh—jealousy will give you, though I don't mean that in a good way. ("Will she go down on you in a theater?" "And every time I run my fingers down his back, I hope you feel it—yeah, do you feel it?")
• The Pursuit of Happiness' "It's Hard to Laugh" ("You have to laugh to prevent yourself from cryin'").
• "Jealousy" by Queen; one of the reflective, mournful takes.
• "I Want You," by Elvis Costello, which is quiet and reflective, but no less intense than tunes with lots of drums and bass. It tears my heart out every time I hear it. ("I want to hear the things you do that we did, too . . . were you fool enough to love it when you heard him say, 'I want you'?")

Did your id ever lie to you more than when you were jealous? And how did you come to terms with the situation?

Do you know anyone who escaped this?—and did they really, or did they just learn to lie and pretend they were above it?

How ugly did you get when you were jealous? What's the worst thing you've ever done under its influence? (No criminal confessions, please. Don't make me call the cops or anything like that.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:29 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I managed to commandeer Attila the Hub's laptop computer for a while today until I made up with my own. And I would like full credit for not fixing his browser bookmarks, which are all wrong (also, there aren't enough of them; if you don't have to scroll for five minutes, you don't have enough).

I'd also like full credit for not fixing the pre-sets on his radio when I borrow his car. Those are likewise not as they should be.

Question: What went wrong? Why don't I rule the world? I could save all of you a lot of decision-making time on these issues. You'd actually find it rather liberating.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:25 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 And the winner is, Attila Girl, for putting up with our insufferable nonsense. When I used my sister's (tired old) PC, I did not erase my brother-in-law's bookmarks, which include luminaries like Juan Cole, Dkos, Atrios, etc. However, I did add a few, just to see if he'd notice

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at February 23, 2006 06:48 AM (zmzBp)

2

Posted by: Attila Girl at February 23, 2006 11:30 AM (s96U4)

3 I thought that was a male trait -- a biological/genetic need to fix things. I fix things until I hear a female voice yelling, "Stop that!"

Posted by: Attila (Pillage Idiot) at February 24, 2006 10:18 AM (C31gH)

4 Well, there's plenty of evidence that I'm actually a 17-year-old boy trapped in a curvaceous, short female body. I mean, what do I like?--guns. Trains. Tanks. I don't do the channel surfing thing when I watch TV, but I do it in my car when I listen to the radio. No attention span whatsoever. I used to try to fix people, until I realized they are simply, as a race, beyond repair.

Posted by: Attila Girl at February 24, 2006 12:47 PM (s96U4)

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This is some fucked-up shit. Omar at Iraq the Model has the local scoop:

• President Talabani promises to make rebuilding the shrine his personal responsibility and to donate the required money from his own.

• Head of the Sunni endowment sheikh Ahmed al-Samarra'I announces that he will allocate 2 billion dinars (~1.4 million $) for the rebuilding of the shrine from the treasury of the Sunni endowment.

• Huge demonstrations in many of Iraq's provinces including Samarra and Mosul where thousands of people condemned the attack.

• The top 4 Shia Ayatollahs hold a meeting at Sistani's home to discuss the situation.

• The Association of Muslim scholars and the Islamic Party condemn the "criminal act".

• Retaliatory attacks on reportedly 29 Sunni mosques and the Accord Front warns from the consequences of such violent reactions.

He also points out that it's very unlikely that Sunnis in Samorra were behind the attack, since the shrine has been there for a very long time, and Shia pilgramages to it help the local economy.

It really looks like this is another present to the Iraqis from the insurgent outsiders who are there to "help" (read: destroy the country).

But when the Ayatollah Sistani calls for protests, the situation is very dire.

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Sean basically has this one right: there aren't a lot of good solid arguments against the DPW running our ports. I'm also hearing a lot of "ick, Arabs" stuff that's pretty offensive.

Remember, folks: if we turn into a nation of bigots, the terrorists will abso-fuckin'-lutely have won.

UPDATE: David Foster of Photon Courier and Chicago Boyz is smarter than I am (which is offensive to me, but he doesn't seem to do it on purpose) and he responds in my comments:

Remember, ports are used for export as well as import (as hard as this is to remember sometimes) What happens if we need this export capacity in support of a major military operation?...and the government in question disapproves of the operation and decides to shut down the ports? We will have just lost a huge % of our total outbound freight capacity, until we can take control and reorganize things.

This is not a theoretical objection. Already, during the current Iraq war, a European company refused to supply JDAM missile parts on grounds that its country was a neutral in that war.

At a bare minimum, the company and the government should be required to post a surety bond, forfeitable in event of nonperformance as described above, of such magnitude that its loss would bankrupt the company and take a major chunk of of the hide of the government.

And Yolanda adds:

The UAE has not done much to vociferously support America in front of its citizens, nor does it forcefully condemn acts of terrorism perpetrated by its citizens.

She suggests that deals of this magnitude should be reserved for more reliable partners in the War on Terror.

I'm still wondering, however, what the real risks are here: presumably for the DPW to stop running the ports for some reason (because we're defending those nasty Jews again, say) would cost them money they couldn't afford to lose. I'm still more concerned about our dependence on foreign oil than I am about this particular deal.

But let's keep talking.

UPDATE 2: Marshall Manson weighs in over at On Tap. He'd like us all to take a chill pill, too.

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. . . until I figure out what's wrong with my computer. I'm on Attila the Hub's PowerBook right now, while mine gets over whatever little mood it's in. I'm giving it a time out so it will learn to play nice with the other kids. Especially me.

Of course, if that doesn't work it's back to the Genius Bar at the Mac store; they are so tired of me there.

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I agree with Bill. [Charlton Heston voice] Darn the luck!

Islam is not the enemy; Islamo-fascism is. There are plenty of perfectly decent, sane Muslims. Like these guys, for instance.

My argument with Islam has always been that too many mainstream Muslims have failed to condemn what the jihadis are doing, but that is also changing.

Via Protein Wisdom.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:56 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Time to sterilize my coat-hanger again.

The problem with ultra-late-term abortions is that when a exception for the "health" of the mother—excuse me: innocent victim kidnapped by vicious alien fetus—is written into the law, the phrase is often interpreted to mean "mental health," rather than "physical health." And once that interpretation is permissible, nearly every abortion can be allowed because carrying the child to term will cause the woman "distress."

(And, before everyone stampedes to either agree with me or attack me, I need to point out that I am still pro-choice. But I'm tired of seeing women buffaloed into having abortions when there are better options available. And I'd like to see a few of the "safe, legal and rare" people act like that phrase has some real meaning to them.)

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. . . is hosted this week by classy Cassandra, who put it together with sass and verve. James Lileks is expected to drop by just to check out her cool mid-century graphix.

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Writing in Slate:

There remains the question of Denmark: a small democracy, which resisted Hitler bravely and protected its Jews as well as itself. Denmark is a fellow member of NATO and a country that sends its soldiers to help in the defense and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. And what is its reward from Washington? Not a word of solidarity, but instead some creepy words of apology to those who have attacked its freedom, its trade, its citizens, and its embassies. For shame. Surely here is a case that can be taken up by those who worry that America is too casual and arrogant with its allies. I feel terrible that I have taken so long to get around to this, but I wonder if anyone might feel like joining me in gathering outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, in a quiet and composed manner, to affirm some elementary friendship. Those who like the idea might contact me at christopher.hitchens@yahoo.com, and those who live in other cities with Danish consulates might wish to initiate a stand for decency on their own account.

Good idea.

Via James Joyner, who quotes extensively and provides worthwhile commentary, concluding:

The impulse to not offend Muslims is decent and understandable. In the context of Muslims murdering innocents over free speech, however, it is also dangerous.

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Discuss.

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