Not to talk about our exes on our blogs, unless we preserve their anonymity, as I used to do over at Dean's place? (Such as here, and here. And here.)

The fact is, I really like my exes. Even the quirky, annoying one, whom I can only take in small doses. I like 'em all, except the Westwood Village denizen who took my virginity by force. That was not too cool.

Now, do I now question what on earth I was thinking, with one or two of these people? Sure. But that has to do with compatibility issues. I hope they are all doing well. Even Mr. Westwood Village, for that matter; he was a bit out of his depth with me, after all. I never want to speak with him again, but I do pray for him, every now and then.

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I don't think I've ever been made fun of quite this elegantly.

(The next post down is where the Cat and I have been having our debate about Terrorism vs. the Economy as the main challenge of this day and age.)

For the record, I do agree with Ben Franklin about how it isn't a hot idea to give up liberty for safety. And, in fact, that is why McCain ranks so low on my list—and why, despite my admiration for his gender-bending, Giuliani has so many question marks next to his name (and it isn't just gun rights that Rudy is weak on: there were all kinds of infringements on civil liberties when he was mayor of NYC, and seeing that expanded to the Federal level—when the Feds aren't bastions of restraint, even now—certainly gives one pause.

So, yes. I'm over my crush on Giuliani.)

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"The middle class is getting squeezed, and the glass is half empty. La la la la la! I can't hear you!"

Apologies all around. But, food for thought, no?

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"Right—the one about protagonists, and gray hair."

At writers' group they are discussing the fact that some novelists are creating more story lines that feature heroes and heroines over 50.

"Because most readers are over 50 now. Isn't that sad?"

"That's so sad."

"Um." I find myself speaking again, something I try not to do at writers' group when I'm not actually reading my work. "How is this sad? People are living longer. We're not dying as young. Why does this depress you?"

"Because," one of them explains, "it means that young people don't really read any more."

"Um, no. It means that there aren't as many of them in this country as there are middle-aged folks."

They look at me, and I realize that they are completely unaware of the broader demographic trends that underlie the statistics they're quoting. And, once more, I shut up and let them play "ain't it awful." But it's boring.

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going on over at James' place.

My favorite part is Dave's demolishing of the "left/right" construct. Always annoying, those labels.

(Note to self: decide on this blog's style for "health care" vs. "healthcare." And, for crying out loud, pick the latter.

"The cobbler's children have no shoes." To my shame, it's been four and a half years—but I still don't have a style sheet for this site.

I must go now and hit myself over the head with The Chicago Manual of Style, or perhaps Words Into Type. Or maybe Web 11.

Your average proofreader sure knows how to have fun on a Saturday night. Yesirree.)

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So they are "bloggers," and I am only an "L.A.-area blogger." Just a local chick who drove up for the event in her bitchin' PT Cruiser. Oh, the shame of it. Did anyone ever abuse Moxie so? Of course not: after all, she's blonde.

FWIW, I did ask the Big Dawgs for advice on improving my traffic. Rusty suggested that "sometimes the shallowest posts bring in the most hits," and you could never go wrong by posting pics of girls in lingerie. Ace told me that the fastest—if not quite the classiest—way to get traffic was to blog about how hard it was to find a bra that was the right size for one's ample breasts. When I told him I was okay now that my local Nordstrom had a new buyer, he looked at me funny. After that, he spoke more slowly, and a bit more loudly. And he used shorter words.

Finally, I asked Jeff. I was sort of expecting him to discuss some part of my body about which I should do some real in-depth/hard-hitting reporting—and I think I arched my back, just to be safe—but he merely enquired as to whether his pecs had met my expectations.

"Well, you're wearing a T-shirt with sleeves," I responded irritably. "So I can't see them as well as I might. But if you must know, the biceps pass. Get me another Bloody Mary, willya? Put it on Rusty's tab. Or your wife's." After that, I kind of stewed in a corner for a while, muttering under my breath, and then I went upstairs to write neo-feminist screeds in defense of manhaters.

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I'll send you to Sean's site; last time I was at Fred's place the video started automatically, and I'm still traumatized from the experience. (I have a delicate constitution.)

Blah, blah, blah. I wasn't so much listening to what he said as admiring the extras on the set he uses. I really dig the artifice of it: how the people in this old-fashioned coffee shop ignore the guy in the makeup under the bright lights and pretending to go about their own conversations.

It's so fake, and yet so well-done that I want to vote for him now!

Um, yes. I did grow up near Disneyland. Just like Zonker. And . . .?

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Another installment from The Codependency Chronicles:

When I left my mother's house yesterday I'd hauled most of the recycleables out to the bin, but left a small pile of them there. With the mom urging me to take off and avoid the rush-hour traffic (it was too late anyway, it turns out), I extracted a promise that she'd do it herself, pronto.

After all, the last thing either of us wanted was to have Mandy tear all the plastic, cardboard and whatnot into itty-bitty pieces and strew them all over the place—necessitating yet one more round of picking up the debris by hand, and then running the vacuum.

And yet, that's exactly what had happened when I got there this afternoon. The dog had also opened an entire bag of potting soil onto the living room carpet, and spread it around. Furthermore, it was a hot day: the place smelled like mouse piss.

(A couple of months ago my mother informed me that there was a mouse in her house. Though was a biology major, and had studied genetics at the graduate level at UCLA, she apparently failed to anticipate what happens when there is a little rodent around, and it manages to find even one friend. And, no: when I showed up with traps a few months ago, she wouldn't allow me to set one of them for her, and come back later for the little mousie corpse. She was going to do it herself. So now I'm doing it, but I need to set many. Unless Cougar Boy takes care of it tomorrow, and gets to rediscover that when mom gets tense, 90% of what one does is wrong. And not just a little bit wrong. Desperately, irrevocably, irretrievably wrong!)

I wasn't particularly happy to see my accomplishments of the previous two days undone, but I got to work cleaning, dusting, straightening, and hauling things around. A few times I asked my mother to get me a beer—which didn't seem unreasonable, in all that heat. (No, I didn't want to turn on the AC. I was trying to air the place out. Did I specify that I'm crazy and codependent?)

But of course the trick with clutterers is that one cannot either (1) touch their things, or (2) ask them to make a decision about the disposition of any of their possessions.

At one point she saw me picking up the second half of a broken chair and taking it toward the garage. "What in the name of God are you doing?" she shrieked.

Ah, my mother. The woman I grew up with, in those bracing pre-Prozac days. How nice to have her back. Really: just like being a teenager again. Without the acne.

"Well," I responded, "due to the fact that it's broken, I was going to take it to the garage. But I won't do that if you want it here in your breakfast nook."

"I want it here," she told me.

"Sure thing. Do you just want this part, or do you want the broken-off seat?"

"I want both parts of it here."

Personally, I think she was confusing me with the dog again, and had just read somewhere about the importance of establishing that one is the "alpha."

A few minutes later I cornered her in the kitchen. "You know," I explained, "I understand that I'm not allowed to throw things away without permission. But not being able to put broken things in the garage without permission is quite a handicap."

"Listen," she replied. "I don't want to discuss this kind of thing with you unless you can get to a better mental place."

I"m working on that right now, eight hours later. The better mental place thing. I took double the normal dosage of Ambien, because the mental place I want to be is unconsciousness. With any luck I'll soon slip away to a happy land in which everyone can be an orphan, with a little hard work and determination . . .

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. . . was such a hotbed of activism? I'm gonna grab my tie-dye and go!

Hat-tip to Ace's crew.

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MapQuest is beta-ing some lame new dysfunctional site. Google Maps keeps locking up on me ("did you mean that address in California?" "Well, didja?"). And Yahoo won't work at all—presumably because it won't give me directions until I log in. Very creepy.

I might have to resort to looking at one of those large dead-tree things.

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And some blogger.

This is at the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, which is run by the excellent Young America's Foundation. It's partly a museum, and it houses some archival materials from the Ranch itself. It also contains a small theater in which footage of Reagan's speeches can be viewed.

The small-but-growing library encompasses all the ideas commonly labeled conservative ("from Ayn Rand to Dinesh D'Souza," as our gracious guide, Bryant Conger of the local staff, put it). And YAF will be installing a bookstore soon. The library is not for archival purposes, of course—there's something-or-other in Simi Valley that handles that task—but rather a working library that will ensure the students who attend workshops, events, and classes at the Center will be able to access ideas that their high schools and universities may have, um, forgotten to let them in on.

The main feature in the entrance is a piece of the Berlin wall (from the colorful, graffitti'd Western side, of course), framed by the Pink Floyd Ronald Reagan quote, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

The most important room in the Center is the classroom. YAF takes a lot of its educational work "on the road" to campuses throughout the country, but it now has a facility in Santa Barbara that makes larger-scale conservative functions affordable to those who live in the Western states on a shoestring (such as mendicant bloggers and, much more importantly, college students).

The entire installation is run, by the way, with private funds only, with no corners cut—or even rounded off a little. (Really: don't get me started on what a class act YAF is—from hosting bloggers at the Leadership Conference to the quality of the banquet food at its events. I've attended a lot of entertainment industry functions, and the catering at the YAF banquets was a step above what I've had at any of those dinners in Manhattan or Beverly Hills. [Blogging ethics standard disclaimer: I ate the food. But only enough to verify that it was up to my foodie standards.])

Naturally, there was no general agreement from Conference attendees about such things as the relationship between Church and State, or on what Reagan's legacy might be beyond the liberation of millions of people from totalitarianism. That's all to the good: Classical Liberalism (that is, conservatism) is about the free exchange of ideas. Open dialogue.

So why does YAF use Reagan's legacy—the preservation of the Ranch and the installation of the nearby Center—as a jumping-off point for promoting conservative ideals? Because, like Abraham Lincoln, Reagan got lots of things wrong, and got the most important thing very, very right. In fact, the thing they both got right was the very same thing.

Slavery is wrong, whether it is perpetrated by private individuals, or by the State.

Thanks once more to Jason Mattera of YAF's national team for putting together some of the media outreach at this rather extraordinary event.

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(Hey! What did I say? Stop looking at me like that!)

Her latest bitchfest in Salon is incredible. On Hillary Clinton:

Hillary seems to have acolytes rather than friends -- hardly a reassuring trait for a potential president whose paranoia has already been called Nixonian. Isolated monarchs never hear the bad news until the people riot and the lynch mob is at the door.

And on the paucity of good female candidates for President:

I have repeatedly said that Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California should have been the first woman president. With all due respect to Salon's perspicacious Glenn Greenwald, whose hard-hitting columns on Feinstein as a Beltway politician have been must-reads, Feinstein's statewide and national popularity are mainly due to her unflappable performances on television as a shrewd, steady, articulate public servant, deeply informed about military matters. She handles and deflects media queries with silky ease. Exuding both authority and compassion, she has true gravitas -- a rare quality in women. Dianne Feinstein, not Hillary Clinton, has already created the paradigm for a female commander in chief.

Well, except for that whole "I want to ban guns that look scary" campaign. And the "here, Mr. Serial Killer! We know what your tennis shoes look like, so you might want to dump them in the Bay!" escapade. And, of course, that awkward moment during the Milk murder. Other than those itty bitty problems, Feinstein is just terrific. I would definitely nominate her for Gun-Grabber in Chief, or Investigation Botcher in Chief, if we had such titles.

As far as I'm concerned, the archtypal female CiC remains Condi Rice. Hillary might have been fine in terms of her presentation skills (which, of course, is a big stumbling block for Paglia), but my problem is that ever since she got her face botoxed Hillary can't really show emotion (except by popping her eyes out), and I want someone in the Oval Office who's going to scare the shit out of our enemies. (Yup. We have 'em. Sorry to break it to you.) I don't care so much whether it's a man, or a woman, or . . . what was that other sex? I'm getting very absent-minded in my old age.

We've had some bitchin' female heads of state throughout history. It's simply an accident that we haven't had one in this particular country quite yet. But there's no rush, for it will certainly happen at some point.

And here's Camille on the environment:

This facile attribution of climate change to human agency is an act of hubris. Good stewardship of the environment is an ethical imperative for every nation. But breast-beating hysteria merely betrays impious tunnel vision. Thousands of factors, minute and grand, are at work in cyclic climate change, whose long-term outcomes we cannot possibly predict. Nature should inspire us with awe, not pity.

I probably don't read Paglia enough, because 1) her blindness about the War on Terror is irritating, given that this is the primary challenge we face today, and 2) I have an old-fashioned feminist streak in me that once in a while gets hit crosswise with her swashbuckling PI rhetoric.

But the important thing about Paglia is this: she writes what she thinks, notwithstanding how her homies are going to feel about it. Truth trumps diplomacy, every time.

It's an enchanting quality, and a rare one. It's the same reason I adore Christopher Hitchens, with whom I agree on very little.

Read Paglia's whole essay, though: as a special bonus, she wrote silly apologetics about the morally/intellectually bankrupt Norman Mailer, and they made me giggle.

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. . . the problem of Mandy taking up 70% of the loveseat, leaving very little room for me. I swung my feet and legs above her body, resting the right foot on the farther arm of the tiny couch.

The left knee is propping up my mom's laptop, and Mandy has her nose resting on my right knee.

Time for another sleeping pill. It turns out they work better if you take them with other pills (I picked a few at random), and wash the whole chemical salad down with some beer.

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then how does that change the game in the 2008 election?

Insty:

[It's] bad news for the Republicans in that those who have held their nose and stuck with the GOP because of the war are likely to feel freer to vote for people they agree with on other issues. And while it's true that Iraq is not the war on terror, it's also likely that the post-2009 phase of the war on terror will involve less outright war and more spying, backstabbing, subtle undermining, bribery, extortion and cooptation. Hmm. What candidate might be good at that sort of thing?

Don't fear the reaper.

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Helping her get the place ready for a houseguest—who happens to be my brother. And, you know: when the Sultan of Software comes to town, everything has to be just so.

Here, late at night, I can clean things with some impunity; that's probably why I elected to spend the night. But when my mother is around, the rules of engagement are different. It is paramount that she interrupt me every few minutes with some of the following types of concerns:

• "No! Don't put those piles of paper together. I had them sorted!"

• "Oh! Instead of dusting, would you fold laundry?"

• "No!" (This one's directed at the dog, but I swing around, wondering what I'm doing wrong.)

• "The way I usually do that is, I . . ."

• "You're not throwing that away, are you?"

Of course not. When you have a house that's cluttered up to the rafters, and you're trying to transform it into a livable environment, the last thing you want to do is throw anything away. Particularly when it's a partially used paper towel, or the plastic lid from a carton of cottage cheese.

Mandy decided I was probably playing some kind of fun game, and got in my way a lot until I lost my shit and yelled at her, warning her to not jump on me while I was doing housework. That subdued her for a while.

Meanwhile, I have obligations creeping up on me from my volunteer life. But for the next day or so, I'll want to focus on Matricide Avoidance.

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Iowahawk's got a new post up (car-related, rather than satiric or political).

I should have something like this. Perhaps not, though: I've noticed that small people tend to like big cars, and big people tend to like small cars.

Is that because some people consider their rides a type of avatar? If so, this gives the driver a chance to "try on" a new body type—metaphorically.

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Re: the writer's strike, Glenn has a note from one of the writer/producers involved, along with some devastating video that shows them bragging about all the revenue they'll be making from the internet—while continuing to insist that writers' compensation shouldn't take these monies into account.

Bonus question for my younger readers: The added background sounds are a persistent clicking, along with the ringing of a bell (thank you, foley artists). What are these noises meant to represent?

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It's what's for dinner.

Via Insty.

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In some cases, it can delay brain development by several decades. At least, that's what I hear.

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A cool book about the erosion of civil liberties by Jonathan Rauch. (A bit out of date; I hope he revises it at some point.)

In case my SoCon readers want something to be annoyed by, they can always check this one out.

I love Jonathan Rauch.

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