If there isn't any salt in it, why do they call it the "Salt River"? It sounds like it's fresh water, and related to the canals in the area. I like that, but I want two different types of water bodies (with different effects on decaying human flesh, of course—sorry to be gross, and all that).

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:22 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Interesting. I'm actually thinking of chopping my body up, and having different parts decay at different rates. Reader Bob just pointed me to Wickenberg, which has a river that flows underground: I like that. I might put part of the body into the Salt River, and part into this underground river in the mountains.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 12:25 PM (1tv3E)

2 Well, they call it Salt River because there is salt in it. More accurately dissolved minerals-calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride, and bicarbonate--about 480 mg/L. At tha level you cold taste the "salt". I bet that's the origin of the name! Anything less than 500 mg/L is onsidered safe for most uses--that's about a quarter teaspoon per gallon of water. Your Pacific Ocean, by contrast, is about 35,000 mg/L, If I remember correctly. Know what your mailbox had since Monday?

Posted by: Darrell at April 03, 2007 08:25 PM (U0POy)

3 Ooooh, how annoying! I stopped by, and said I had two packages--he said there was only one there, so I assumed they put two "oversize" notes in there by mistake! I was curious because I had the impression that the Salt River forked off of a freshwater river--wasn't it the mighty Colorado, from which we Californians steal all our H2O? I'll double-check on that. Anyway, I've got my protagonists; just need my method/motive, and it'll be nearly finished

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:24 PM (cJnPC)

4 The Colorado flows over the same sort of terrain, under the same brutal sun, so it, too, is "salty". The 480 mg/L for the Salt R. is something I looked up, btw. I can't remember everything! Not even to proofread even though my keyboard is failing and skipping letters occasionally. Unless I give the keys the finger of death. The USPS said noon Monday. If they give you only one, it should be mine! At least in my world. . .

Posted by: Darrell at April 04, 2007 08:47 AM (9iZ9f)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I'd need to produce 3-5 pages a day.

A the H informs me that he'd be happy to switch our anniversary vacation destination from La Jolla to Arizona. (Sorry, Desert Cat: the timeline doesn't permit me to set the story in Tucson. I have to draw on my existing knowledge base of the Phoenix area in order to get this one done on time. So the main location will be one of the Fenix suburbs. I still want to introduce some small-town color, though, and I'm taking nominations for that. I want an excuse to really get some bitchin' landscape into the plot.

BTW, feel free to tell me what you know about the hydrology of Scottsdale/Phoenix: which bodies of water are natural, and which are man-made? Isn't one of them a salt-water river? Why?)

I think I know who my protagonists are. I just have to whip up a crime, and I'll be practically done.

Gotta go: time for a nap. (Seriously: I need to get my unconscious mind to work, here.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:22 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 187 words, total size 1 kb.

1 http://www.arizonan.com/Wickenburg/ There used to be a picture of an antique trailer home with *small* picket-fenced rock garden on this page. -B

Posted by: Bob at April 03, 2007 11:01 AM (CP6tB)

2 I seem to have to much time on my hands today. Okay it wasn't a rock garden, there're actually two trees in the pic. The Way-Back machine isn't always our friend, but today it is, even if your spam filter doesn't like it. http://[way-back-url]/web/20060508082225/http://www.arizonan.com/Wickenburg/ -Bob

Posted by: Bob at April 03, 2007 11:11 AM (CP6tB)

3 You have to have a character complain about the traffic, and the illegal immigrants, and the crystal meth. Uh, don't forget mentioning the pawn shops on every other block.

Posted by: Sean Hackbarth at April 03, 2007 08:14 PM (QJ5cf)

4 Funny--I've been going out there for 15 years or so, and I've never noticed any traffic whatsoever . . . nor any illegal immigrants to speak of. Hm.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:26 PM (cJnPC)

5 Well here's a fun fact: Scottsdale recycles its purified poop-water back into the aquifer and then draws it up to serve its residents as drinking water again.

Posted by: Desert Cat at April 04, 2007 08:57 PM (xdX36)

6 Won't my characters be delighted to discover that? Thanks! Does the water from the CO river and the Salt Water River go through any desalination?

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 04, 2007 09:47 PM (6C0F9)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I think it's important to point out that Southern California is in the Southwestern United States. Would someone please send a map to the people at St. Martin's Press? (And what do you mean, L.A. isn't underrepresented in the genre?)

Hm. I wonder if I could quickly re-write Ye Olde Mystery so it takes place in Tempe, Arizona rather than Santa Monica, California.

So: "She could feel the sea air over her skin" becomes "she could smell the scent of the cactus as she drifted off to sleep." The problem being that cacti don't have much of a smell.

Or: "She checked for slugs in the grass as she walked across the yard" becomes "she saw a lizard dart over the gravel ahead of her."

Or: "the air got misty" becomes "it rained hard and was freezing cold and why is the weather so extreme in the freaking desert, anyway?"

Easy shmeasy.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 162 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Whel, you could always take up residence here for a year and a day. Get a more genuine sense of place and all. But it would have to be Tucson, because Phoenix is just LA East.

Posted by: Desert Cat at April 03, 2007 09:04 PM (xdX36)

2 Hm. If my subplot is in Bisbee, my main plot would have to be in Tucson. Once I win the Hillerman prize, I'll talk A the H into getting us a vacation property somewhere in southern AZ, and that will solve all the problems.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:28 PM (cJnPC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

"You know how we are in my family: we like to drive them into the ground."

"That's fine," he replied. "But the car is in the ground."

A new starter and a new fuel pump in the same month. I feel like someone's trying to tell me something . . .

This week, a question for Bachelor Number Three: "I crave Vitamin D. Why do I have to buy $1500 worth of options just to get you with a moonroof?"

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 102 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Why did I have to pay $1500 more and get a moonroof that will never be used because my wife wanted a six CD player? It's one of the mysteries of the universe isn't it? Actually, it's not so mysterious. Toyotas come bundled with popular option packages. You can still special order what you want, but the salespeople will attempt to discourage you from that in order to persuade you to choose what's in inventory. Special orders can take a long time to fulfill. -Bob

Posted by: Bob at April 03, 2007 05:57 AM (CP6tB)

2 Well, why don't I get the Matrix without the option package, have a hot stereo put in it, and then trade with your wife for the one with the moonroof? I don't get multiple-CD changers. I like to decide what to listen to on the fly, rather than premeditate. Actually, if I could get a car with a tape deck for a reasonable price, I'd be tempted--but I know my brother paid $200 or something for his, which seems silly. The fact is, I still have plenty of compilation tapes my friends made for me in the 1980s. (There has to be a way to get those digitized.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 08:00 AM (1tv3E)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Another link over at Glenn's place. This one is about ambitious teenagers and the strange signals they are sent.

I could only read the first page: the messages sent to young women today sound too much like the ones I grew up with. All of the "you can have it all" stuff eventually transmutes into "you can do it all." It's a lie, of course.

"Why," I once asked my mother, "did you tell me grades didn't matter, that you just wanted me to learn? Why did you say that when it was so patently untrue?"

"It didn't occur to me that you'd actually get bad grades," she told me. "It just that I thought the 'A' level was down here"—she brought her hand to her waist—"and I really wanted you to achieve up here." She raised her right hand high above her head.

She laughed. My aunt and my cousins were there, watching us. They've spent 44 years watching us; we must be fascinating, like a cock fight. Or, I suppose, a hen fight.

I said nothing that day, because I couldn't trust myself not to say or do something awful. But later on I figured out what she had really meant by "don't worry about grades, just concentrate on learning." She had wanted me to get very good grades, but make it look effortless.

On some level, I got the message: I manage to hold the idea of housework, for example, in complete contempt as a total waste of my time. And yet at the very same instance I'm deeply ashamed that my house isn't perfectly neat and totally spotless. I should do it perfectly without looking like I do it at all.

I require myself to be completely yin, and yet totally yang. At any given moment.

And I carry the hen fight within me, every day.

Today I had dinner with my mother. I drove her where she needed to go, and let her buy me dinner, and listened to her criticize my driving—relentlessly, and in a thoroughly illogical, inconsistent fashion. And when she got around to apologizing, I told her it was fine.

"I'm not insecure about my driving," I explained.

I'm a human bonsai: twisted by nature, and made more grotesque/beautiful by strange nurture.

But what I will do is endure. And endurance is triumph.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:51 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 393 words, total size 2 kb.

I don't think he has to announce soon. He may not even want to run; he might only be thinking that he ought to if the top 3-4 guys can't generate just a little bit more excitement.

But the fact is, should he decide to run he's got a couple of huge advantages over the other candidates. (And it ain't just "the actor factor," either.)

At this point, McCain, Giuliani, Romney—and Gingrich, if he's actually serious—had better be bringing their "A" game onto this "pre-primary" testing ground. Because if they don't, Thompson could swoop down like a hawk. And let's face it: with his connections (political and entertainment-industry) and his charisma, his fundraising is going to go a lot more quickly than anyone else's has, and Sean's concern about "the money primary" WRT Thompson is probably a bit misplaced.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:05 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.

Insty has a mini-roundup on the incident in which CNN "reporter" Michael Ware actually heckled John McCain during a press conference.

See also Ace's take on Michael Ware. He's right. This guy isn't a reporter. But how much longer is CNN going to continue to pay him to party hard and slant the news?

After one of Glenn's readers points out that a "dogma" is developing in the MSM (the "Standard Total Journalistic View of Iraq"), he responds, "Hmm. There's a developing standard view on journalists and the war, too."

Yup.

UPDATE: Okay: this is turning into another one of those annoying situations in which each side has its own "facts." If Drudge made this up, I'm going to be pretty pissed. See here. Does anyone know if this video is accurate/edited?

Anyone? Fucking Bueller?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:46 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Your old man???

Posted by: yazoota at April 02, 2007 06:56 AM (xUyci)

2 Ouch! Thanks. Does this mean I have to stop getting mad at people who pronounce my last name "McCain"? I hope not.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 02, 2007 08:20 AM (1tv3E)

3 All that time you spend on The Dark Side is making you paranoid, that's all.

Posted by: yazoota at April 02, 2007 08:43 AM (xUyci)

4

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 02, 2007 07:39 PM (1tv3E)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

That it isn't a good idea to drink and P-Shop.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:01 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

Jane's got a primer right here.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.

I'd never quite thought of it in those terms, but now Fox Interactive Media has bought Sean Hackbarth's The American Mind, specifically to create a political arena within MySpace. (Why not? Someone ought to do something with it, now that the youngsters have moved on to Facebook.)

The American Mind is an interesting weblog, in that it discusses a lot of the political and pop culture issues the rest of us cover (and, yes—it is a Wisconsin-centered blog, or has been: I don't know to what extent Sean's moving to Iowa will change that). Yet at the same time, Sean's background is in economics, and that comes across: his analyses are more informed by his understanding of how markets work than are those of some of his peers.

And he is, despite the earring and soul patch, a rock-solid conservative.

As for me, I'm having the usual reaction: "wow! Another blogger is going pro! Terrific! A rising tide lifts all boutique blogs, doncha know. On the other hand, why wasn't it me, this time? I'm sooooo willing to sell out, if only someone would buy."

UPDATE: Sean's commenters look at the calendar, and say maybe not.

Hm. It's true that I'm awfully gullible, since I don't do April Fool's Day jokes myself. When I saw that Google was implementing a new "feature" that would have them printing out paper copies of e-mail for archival purposes, I thought, "wouldn't the volume have to be a bit high in order to make that efficient?" So I've been pwned at least once today before breakfast: five or six more to go, depending, before I can have my eggs and bacon.

UPDATE 2: Someone's pointed out that the Red Queen believed impossible things, whereas I'm only believing highly improbable things. In the real world, there may not be much of a difference.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:13 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 330 words, total size 2 kb.

. . . discusses global warming, genetically modified foods, and how tough it is to "predict the past."

Via The Anchoress, as part of a worthwhile pre-retreat linkfest.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . a need for speed.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.