Day 30 after the date of my first invoice for Ye Olde Public Utility, and no check in my mailbox—despite the assurances I received that it was cut a few days ago. (Yes, boys and girls. But was it mailed?)

I'll wait a few more days, and then I will either have my attorney send them a tense little note, and/or blog about the scale on which this organization wastes money. (I've worked for large organizations before, but they've been private ones. I was really a babe in the woods before that gig.)

Attila Girl wondering how she's going to buy gasoline

if she keeps working for public utilities. "If I don't receive

payment, I'm going to turn your proofreading off!"

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What on earth are a few little bruises between friends?

The person, of course, is Mandy's main human—Rose. I'm merely a backup human who walks her on occasion.

And, no: I haven't figured out how to P-shop out the demonic green eyes. Partly because I don't have Photoshop, and I haven't mastered iPhoto yet.

What? Me? A technophobe? Surely you jest . . .

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How come no one told me we were losing another bisexual patriot?

She'll be back, though; no one stays away from blogging forever. They always re-emerge, once they've caught the bug.

Joan C, let me know when you resurface. I adore you.

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Hackbarth calls her "hot, but misguided." Yup. But she's also a clever marketer—both for her own short films and for other people's products. I think she'll still be around after Ron Paul's career has gone gently into that good night.

I kind of liked this short film. Beyond the long hair and the amazing body, she knows what she's doing as a filmmaker.

And she's not afraid to wear skimpy clothing, so how can her website be anything but a force for good?

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1 Sure. It's all fun until her eyes start spinning like pinwheels.

Posted by: Darrell at October 30, 2007 10:43 AM (tJesk)

2 So what you're saying is, you'd hit it if she wore shades . . .? I'm drinking Citadelle, right now. Thought you'd like to know.

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 30, 2007 11:59 PM (aywD+)

3 Look: the Libertarians (big "L") are halfway there. We just need to enhance their seratonin levels and then coax them back to reality.

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 31, 2007 03:42 AM (aywD+)

4 As a man/nerd/geek, the shades are optional. I wouldn't notice until I lost everything. Even then I would repeat the same mistake in a heartbeat. Think my eyes synchronize with hers so I don't notice? Or does the "lower brain" perform filtering magic? Doesn't matter--same result. And, yes, I did notice. Citadelle goes nicely with what you are wearing. Or not wearing. Or writing for that matter. Hard to stay on topic since that lower brain was awakened. Sorry. It's tough to be a man. A man without sense, self-control, social graces, etc., anyway. It's amazing how many people have been touched by Ron Paul. Or were they just "touched" to begin with?

Posted by: Darrell at October 31, 2007 11:48 AM (8xVaL)

5 I'm afraid it was black leggings and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. Oh!--and the socks you gave me. My feet still get cold at night . . . wool socks are a basic around here.

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 31, 2007 03:40 PM (aywD+)

6 CASHMERE socks!

Posted by: Darrell at October 31, 2007 07:36 PM (rilDu)

7 And they are yummy, warm, soft and nice. My very favorite socks. I'm so glad I kept them--I only had to wash them in warm water once to shrink them down properly.

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 31, 2007 07:55 PM (aywD+)

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If you were the person looking for "the Boone Mamma" on a Google search, you must learn to spell. Try her here. Or here. Or here.

Most of all, try here.

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a) shooting smack;

b) playing volleyball;

c) transferring her normal "clumsy girl" bruises, very painstakingly, from her shins to her arms;

d) kicking ass in a jujitsu tournament.

Please advise; short-term memory is the first thing to go.

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1 F) Biting her fingernails. -B

Posted by: Bob at October 29, 2007 07:31 PM (k94s3)

2 The safe answer is (d). I'll go with that. Bob, those are the nails of a professional editor. Closely trimmed, but no evidence of biting. Middle finger primed and ready.

Posted by: Darrell at October 29, 2007 08:04 PM (sJ3qn)

3 Ah! You understand the publishing industry! Actually, I solved the mystery: it was Mandy, getting rowdy and nipping at me/jostling against me when I crashed at my mom's place last week. I was reminded when I dropped by today to take a nap there, and remembered that she likes to get rowdy when her humans are tired (their resistance is lower, then, and she can pretend not to hear the "n-word" as she digs around on my mom's bed or on my favorite couch). Fortunately, my mother was awake, and led the girl away whenever she came over to bother me. I swear: if she weren't so cute, I'd make her into doggie stew.

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 31, 2007 12:04 AM (aywD+)

4 Well I've been on the receiving end of a lot of those middle fingers. If I considered them sexual encounters (and as a man/nerd/geek you know I do), I have as many notches as Wilt Chamberlain or Julio Iglesias. Ah, good times! In my defense, with the type of writing I do there is often no room for creative license--certain technical jargon has to appear the same way always. Some creative types can't seem to grasp that concept. No, "undiscovered recoverable resources" can't be restated as "undiscoverable resources." Really. Ever. Never. Unless it's in the suicide note for my career. And let's not even start with the chemical names/reactions, etc. No room for word play there, either. Except in private, off-the-record, of course. There we laugh and laugh and laugh for hours at our cleverness. It's the most effective form of birth control, by the way. But you've already guessed that.

Posted by: Darrell at October 31, 2007 12:02 PM (8xVaL)

5 Well I've been on the receiving end of a lot of those middle fingers. If I considered them sexual encounters (and as a man/nerd/geek you know I do), I have as many notches as Wilt Chamberlain or Julio Iglesias. Ah, good times! Yes--but a lot of 'em came from driving around in Chicago, right? In my defense, with the type of writing I do there is often no room for creative license--certain technical jargon has to appear the same way always. Some creative types can't seem to grasp that concept. No, "undiscovered recoverable resources" can't be restated as "undiscoverable resources." Really. Ever. Never. Unless it's in the suicide note for my career. I cannot see how someone could have inserted the word "undiscoverable" in there; it certainly changes the meaning. When I was editing psychology papers for publication in an academic journal, I used to cover them with little sticky notes that contained arch little remarks about scientists' writing styles. But I did try to be restrained . . . I tried. And let's not even start with the chemical names/reactions, etc. No room for word play there, either. Except in private, off-the-record, of course. There we laugh and laugh and laugh for hours at our cleverness. It's the most effective form of birth control, by the way. But you've already guessed that. Yeah, well--I once did a newsletter for my dad that had a lot of chemical names in it. Pretty dry stuff. But it was work! You just need some engineer groupies--hot ladies who read your papers and then throw their underwear at you. How difficult can that be? Think of all the idiot rock and rollers who manage it just fine!

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 31, 2007 03:49 PM (aywD+)

6 Yeah. One day we can compete with idiot rock-and-rollers. I believe. But I think it's best that the Japanese keep working on those robots. . .

Posted by: Darrell at October 31, 2007 07:59 PM (rilDu)

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(Otherwise known as Linguist Guy) relaxes at his house in Santa Monica on a Saturday night . . .

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. . . on Christopher Dickey's Newsweek article, which conflates the movie Deliverance with real life:

If Cheney is Burt Reynolds, and the rest of America is Jon Voight, and the river is Iraq, who are the hillbillies? Well, presumably (for he doesn't spell it out) they're the dark forces you make yourself vulnerable to when you blunder into somewhere you shouldn't be. When the quartet returns to Atlanta a man short, they may understand how thin the veneer of civilization is, but they don't have to worry that their suburban cul-de-sacs will be overrun and reduced to the same state of nature as the backwoods.

That's the flaw in the thesis: Robert D. Kaplan, a shrewd observer of global affairs, has referred to the jihadist redoubts and other lawless fringes of the map as "Indian territory." It's a cute joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: No one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue, just as Burt Reynolds never had to worry about the mountain man breaking into his rec room. But Iran has put bounties on London novelists, assassinated dissidents in Paris, blown up community centers in Buenos Aires, seeded proxy terror groups in Lebanon and Palestine, radicalized Muslim populations throughout Central Asia – and it's now going nuclear. The leaders of North Korea, Sudan and Syria are not stump-toothed Appalachian losers: Their emissaries wear suits and dine in Manhattan restaurants every night.

That is the essence of it, right there. And it is something most of my friends don't understand: to them, Hitler was a threat to Europe, but the jihadists are a threat to nobody in particular (minus a few thousand people in New York's financial district who are already dead—but wouldn't be if the West would just learn to act nice).

Denial, as they say, isn't just a river.

ht: Stud/God Insty.

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If you really want to stick it to the man, don’t pirate—install open source.

—Zeke

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We get to meet Sam's mom!

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Eeyore Man made a joke about cannibalism today. He's Jewish, so I remarked that I hadn't ever heard before that "the long pig" was kosher. No one got it except Desert Girl, who teaches English in Parts East.

As I slid my eyes over to her she smiled. "Extra credit," she told me quietly as the conversation moved along.

That's all I've ever really asked for, you know.

Well, that + sex/drugs/rock 'n' roll.

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I thought it was funny.

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Three weeks for the public utility, and two weeks for the bimonthly magazine.

And now I need to sleep for about five years, go to a Halloween party, do some housework, and catch up on my staff job.

Then I get to scrounge for clients again.

I know I sound tired, and I am. That is not, however, the whole story: when I'm working it reminds me how fucking good I am at what I do, and that fact really keeps the depressions at bay. If I were to learn how to sell my editing and production abilities on that basis (or, for crying out loud, my fiction), it would indeed be a grand thing.

But in the meantime, sleep sounds good.

Over at Hog Beatty's, a few of his friends and neighbors met for drinks in the eveing. This was cool, and I had a little gin, nibbling my way through the appetizers brought over by one of the people in his housing complex. When someone offered me a good cigar, I accepted. Count Linguist and I shared a smoke there on the back deck in Santa Monica, and my jaw finally unclenched after over a month as I listened to people speaking Arabic and Russian and Ukranian&none of which, of course, I understand. It was all so fucking good.

I don't smoke enough; can't we do a PSA about the need for more cigars in the 21 Century?

I'd like to teach the world cigars,
and perfect harmony . . .

Of course, if they don't start smoking, that's more for me. And nothing else quite does it: even booze. (Though, you know: the best booze comes pretty darned close.)

Happy Halloween. Make friends with the local spiders; they are your friends, despite what J.K. Rowling would have you believe.

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"Why does fire hate us?

h/t: Insty.

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The NASW (National Association of Social Workers) actually responded to my post referencing the George Will column on academic orthodoxy, as enforced in social work curricula.

I think the NASW people just dropped by because . . . well, because they felt sorry for me, and they thought I was kind of pathetic. They sensed that I needed help.

Anyway, here's their letter to WaPo. My issue with those who call themselves "liberal" in this day and age (which generally means they are the opposite of real liberals) is not their ability to feel empathy for the disadvantaged, but rather in the, um, "what is to be done" realm.

The idea that our answer to the problem of homelessness (just to pick an example) is to go all codependent about it—and then take it one step further by filtering this codependency through a bureaucracy—preferably from the largest govermental agency available—just blows me away.

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Some sites are suggesting that there are 110,647 blogs out there that are almost as good as mine, and are slightly more well-trafficked.

I refuse to believe it.

And even if I did believe it—well, since when is the blogosphere some sort of popularity contest?

Oh. Wait . . .

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I worked at Job A today, and dropped by Job B with a lick and a promise. (Get your minds out of the gutter, please.)

The idea tonight was to crash here on the Westside at the mom's place, and go to bed early so I could catch up on sleep. And yet after a nice dinner my mother and I had to squabble gently about something-or-other. And now it is nearly one in the morning. See, Mom? We could have watched Boston Legal after all, with no harm done. But then—that's why God made DVDs. Helen Gurley Brown informs me helpfully that I can have everything, which sounds somewhat correct.

Honestly, though: this week in particular—with fires raging in huge swatchs of the Southwest—it's hard to complain, though I'm lying on the couch we suspect of being infested with mice, thankful for Mandy's presence at the foot of the "bed." Because I'm not here every night, I get preferential treatment from the local APBT.

Which is cool, other than the issues of (1) how long does it take this stupid dog to settle down, and (2) why is she sleeping exactly where I had wanted to put my feet?

Rule Number One in relating to terriers, whether it's the medium-large one that lives with my mom, or the teacup-size one that hangs out at work: the dog does not move. The humans move around the dog.

That's just how it is. I'm thinking of sleeping with my legs up the back of the couch, counting desperately on the slipcover to protect me from any mammals with whom I don't have any real rapport. (Rodents: you know who you are.)

Oh, Mandy—how you came and you took without giving.
But you killed a nice mouse,
Oh, Mandy—
How you toss my laptop in the fireplace
At my mom's house
And my tech's barely living,
Oh, Mandy.

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My friends who are at risk from the fires are all with-it, pragmatic types. They'll grab their family photos, their precious jewelry and their legal documents (along with changes of clothes, extra water, and their meds). They will not wait until the last minute to evacuate.

I know two households that have already relocated (one in Malibu/Topanga Canyon, and one in Canyon Country).

Presumably my cousins in San Diego have done the same, along with the ones around Newhall (from the other side of the family).

So all we do is sweat it out, and hope:

1) none of our near and dear lose their homes, and
2) the wind doesn't drive it up into our hills at some point.

Pray for Southern California: I swear we're careful when we landscape. I's just that the heat and the dryness and the Santa Ana winds make it interesting around here—all year long, if you want to know the truth.

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Not only did my local newsstand have Garage magazine this past week, but Dave is working on another story for them! (And if you ever want to go "beyond Iowahawk" in reading Dave's stuff, Garage is the go-to mag.)

I adore Garage, and I'm not even sure why. It's not about having worked on Hot Rod Bikes and Petersen's Hunting (though I certainly did work on both those books; long story, that). It's about the fact that while Garage is very, very butch, it is also a real art magazine—as much so as Flaunt or Good or Swindle. (Yeah. I read Good, despite its sometimes flagrantly lefty leanings. Wired does a better job of keeping the leftism in check, but Wired is part of the Condé Nast empire, whereas Good is a little start-up, and I have a certain affection for scrappy underdogs, even when they are staffed by the wealthy offspring of industry titans/silly politicians.)

And Popular Mechanics remains very sexy, in a hip-to-be-square sort of way.

Yeah: I'm a magazine crew slut. So sue me.

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Bobby Jindal. No surprise. Apparently, votors in Louisiana don't blame the Bush Administration for the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina after all.

Over at Ace's digs, Drew calls this a "nice little pickup for the GOP, heading into '08." Yup: I think the Democrats who are banking on Bush's low poll numbers haven't been looking at the Congressional polling data. They could be in for a bit of a surprise.

Notice I didn't use the word Reconstruction in this blog entry. Oops.

Are Indians really "nonwhite"? I mean, by people other than those who call Arabs, "Hispanics," and Jews "nonwhite"? Just curious. I mean, I was raised on the 1962 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which posited three actual races (in the larger sense, not the Yeatsian "the Irish are a race" sense). That always led me to believe that anyone without classical Asian or African features was some variation on the Caucasian theme.

Not that it matters to me: I'm the ultimate mongrol, and Asia is the only continent that I don't think is reflected in my racial makeup (unless one buys the land-bridge theory, and regards Native Americans as Asian: I do have a spot of Osage in me—and, I have always romantically hoped, a bit of Nez-Perce).

The whole race idea is soooo 18th/19th/20th Century.

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