Dave is in da race!

I have not taken this decision lightly. When considering a run for public office, the first thing a candidate must ask himself is: what can I, as newly elected public servant, expect to get out of this deal? I have researched this question thoroughly, and believe me: being President is a pretty sweet gig. Not only does it pay 400 large, it has plenty of perks including "three hots and a cot," and the world's most fearsome military force at my disposal.

The second thing a candidate must ask is: am I qualified for the position? Let's look at the facts. First, I am a native-born citizen of the United States. Second, I am over 35 years old. Third, I have never had a felony conviction stick beyond the appeals court. And Mister, if that's good enough for the Constitution of the United States, then that's good enough for me. Google it.

We aren't worthy!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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They are very dangerous. The husband and I have learned to be careful about what affirmations we place on our bulletin boards and bathroom mirrors, because they all come true. Even the ones that say "I weigh X (X being 15 pounds lighter than what my husband weighs, or five pounds lighter than what I weigh).

Even my car came about as the result of an affirmation: After I'd decided that it was too impractical to get a PT Cruiser, I bought a tiny one on a keychain, and it lived on my bulletin board for months. I saw it there every day. I think it worked on my unconscious, which in turn appealed to my Higher Power.

We become what we surround ourselves with, so those things have to speak a positive message about our aspirations.

My current affirmations:

• I show up on-time or five minutes early for all my business and social engagements. [My tendancy to multi-task sometimes wreaks havoc with this aspect of time-management, so I need to make it important.]

• I weigh 120 pounds. [This figure is just south of the truth. I don't actually care that much, but the older we get the more most of us seem to acquire around the middle, and a round belly is a health risk I don't need.]

• We own a second property, up the coast from here.

• My freelancing brings in $55K a year.

• I keep scrupulous track of my business expenses.

• People find the puzzles I write to be deliciously entertaining. [So far, so good on that score. But the positive affirmation will help me to send my babies out into the world, and given all the time I put into them, they may as well bring in some money.]

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The fact is, my husband is my senior by nine-and-a-half years.

One of my employees once referred to me as John's "trophy wife." Not being particularly intellectually insecure, I assumed this guy was kissing up to me, so I just thanked him, and that was that.

Question: If Woody Allen had married a woman the age of his current wife who was not, by cultural convention, his stepdaughter, how would people have reacted to that? I suspect they would have found it acceptable: it was the quasi-incestuous angle that bothered people.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:52 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Any way, we cut a hit and we toured a bit

With a song he said he couldn't use.

And now he calls, and begs and crawls

—It's telephone deja vu!

We've got percentage points, some lousy joints

And all the glitter we can use, Mama,

So—huh—don't call us now. We'll call you.

Translation: I just got a major client. It dropped out of the sky, more or less.

So. You know.

But can someone just a few years older tell me whether that Beatles riff is, indeed, from "Day Tripper"? I totally missed that in the 70s, due to certain deficiencies in my education that I really don't want to discuss right now.

Please continue to send me money and gin. Because I like gin. And money.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Or nawt?

Personally, I suspect that I'm overvalued. Which means that I should probably sell me, but I'm really a buy-and-hold sort of gal. Except when I'm in debt.

This probably explains my passionate involvement in real estate.

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there is no reason to go anywhere else for your news. We've got you covered like a black fishnet burqa.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Apparently, CNN is in rare form:

CNN supposedly picked "likely Republican voters" -- both actual Republicans and right-leaning indepedents -- to ask the candidates questions.

Let's see how scorchingly liberal the questions are.

Off to a good start -- a woman who lost her husband brother to the war wants to know how to get us out of Iraq.

I'm so surprised CNN found this questioner!

Why, you'd think liberals had some sort of premeditated strategy to put forward victims to push their policies or something!

More! Environmentalism, prescription drug subsidies, and now, from the affiliate's handpicked (liberal) blogger, a question as to whether or not to install a Canadian style single-payer national health care system!

Wow! These "likely Republican voters" sure are reflecting my concerns and interests!

I'm glad I skipped the debate. Maybe someone will bait Fred! into another mini video tomorrow, which would at least liven things up a bit.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:20 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Senator McCain reminds us what the stakes are.

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At least, not very well. Bella Thomas gives us a window into the post-Fidel future, and concludes that it does not look very different:

There were a few signs of change. I heard of some market experiments in certain villages, and that Raúl Castro was quieter and more pragmatic than his brother. I noted the sophisticated restoration of old Havana under the dedicated eye of the official historian, Eusebio Leal, making use of international funds and hotel developments. (The architectural legacy of the enemies of the revolution—the Spanish empire and the high days of the capitalist era—are now, more than ever, keeping Cuba's revolution afloat.)

But there was no real sense of a transition. And I was told that levels of control were, if anything, stronger. Fewer journalists were being allowed into the country, only a few of the 75 political prisoners who had been jailed in 2003 had been released, and at least another 200 were still in prison. Some private restaurants were still open, but two thirds of those in Havana had been closed in recent years because the government did not want to see too much competition with the state-run restaurants and hotels.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . it begins.

The "I'm With Fred" slogan/identifier is very clever, reminiscent of "Join Arnold," or "I Like Ike." And using it as the site's URL is another way of separating F. Thompson from the rest of the pack.

Hackbarth is concerned about how the Fred! strategy will affect the primaries:

If Thompson goes the “travel little but make up for it with big gulps of the internet” he won’t win the nomination. Iowa and New Hampshire voters are spoiled. They expect and demand candidates suck up to them in person in private homes and at town hall meetings. How can a candidate have a good ground game when the he doesn’t bother covering much ground?

The question becomes: how addicted are voters in Iowa and New Hampshire to having their asses kissed? Or, to put it less bluntly, will they get enough hard data on where Fred stands to feel comfortable voting for him without a lot of hand-holding? And if they are accustomed to acting as the presidential gatekeepers, can they set their egos aside and vote for a man on his merits, rather than based on how much time he spends in their states?

Fred!'s advantage here is the fact that he doesn't necessarily want the job of President: he's being drafted. So an unorthodox campaign might just work. The danger, as I see it, lies in the fact that most people still get their news from the mainstream media rather than the web. And the producers of segments for television like soundbites. They like to send reporters to cover the news on the ground. So people like my mother won't have much of a sense that Fred! is really running, unless he makes a splash despite being physically absent.

The whole thing is a huge gamble, but if Thompson wins, he wins big. A strong showing in the first few primaries despite the "travel little" strategy will be big, big news.

And then the MSM will come to Fred!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Dennis is oppressing Amanda Marcotte on the side.

"Knock-knock jokes." What a strange, fascinating creature Dennis is.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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If we don't want the "forced pregnancy lobby" to get its way, then we must have utter reproductive freedom, with the lowest possible risk to the woman's life. I'd suggest that we simply legalize infanticide: allow the woman to give birth, and then give her four weeks or so to decide whether she wants the child to live or die.

Anything less is misogyny, you know.

Geez, Louise. I swear—some of these male "feminists" think we're made out of crepe paper.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:34 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I'm feeling quite a bit bitchier than usual tonight. I wonder what it is. Let's consider the possibilities:

1) Joy, it's just that you're tired. Go to bed. Like, now.

2) Either give up volunteering, or go somewhere where it'll be appreciated, rather than working with those slack-jawed, dimwitted ingrates you're hanging out with these days.

3) Men. It's their doing. All of them. They collude.

4) Welcome to menopause.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:17 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Start here.

UPDATE: Okay, it looks like I've got a few readers who like them a Kool-Aid cocktail every now and then. So, one question: if the damage at the Pentagon and the crash site/"crash site" in Pennsylvania weren't caused by planes, then what happened to the two missing planes that day that didn't hit the WTC?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:02 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Week Two of The Kabob Project. The thing that both A the H and I noticed this week was how much pleasure we derived from eating last week's leftover kabobs. He heated his back up, but I ate mine cold over at work on Tuesday night in Culver City (20 miles away—but 45 minutes to an hour to get out there, given L.A. traffic).

Even unheated, rare grilled steak and grilled veggies with charred edges were great eating on the other side of town, particularly when washed down with a luscious ripe peach.

So back to the grill again, this weekend. Saturday night we had turkey steaks. I would have bought chicken breasts, but who has time to pound them down to the right thinness for grilling? [Insert joke here.] The turkey was cheaper, and it was easier to freeze the extras for next weekend. A little Asian-style marinade, rice, and a salad—and dinner was done. I boiled the marinade to use again as a sauce; I'm thrifty that way.

Tonight I continued with the kabobs, but I got a thinner type of steak, rather than the Top Sirloin my local market uses on its pre-assembled kabobs (the husband likes his meat well-done, which doesn't really happen when the meat chunks are the size of small aircraft). The unit price was acceptable-but-not-great; however, I figured being able to freeze the last few small steaks meant I'd get at least three meals/six servings out of that package. Not bad.

This was beef loin tri-tip, and thin enough that I knew I could cut it into tiny chunks, so the first few kabobs to make it onto the grill would definitely be well-done, in accordance with husbandly preferences. I used Spanish onions, instead of the red onions the market employed last weekend, and in addition to green bell pepper I added some red bell pepper. I also threw in some mushrooms. The last few skewers were only peppers/mushrooms, and spent much less time over the fire than the meat/onion kabobs had.

Most of all, I decided that all these flavors would probably be just fine on their own, and I forewent a marinade—just threw the suckers over the fire. We ate them with small amounts of salt and pepper, and a butter lettuce salad with cherry tomatoes on the side. We drank Trader Joe's blueberry soda; it was truly a royal meal. And not a bad belated anniversary celebration, considering we were able to fit it into our budget constraints and our respective diets.

Next, week, though, the plot thickens: we're going to add pineapple, and go Polynesian. (But, no: no wooden skewers. I'm not going to soak those suckers for 30 minutes before dinner. Metal is fine for us. I might get kabob baskets for the veggies, though, depending on what the casualty rates are there-among.)

But for Polynesian, I'll definitely want to marinade the kabobs. Suggestions?

And, of course, I will create a dessert using grilled peaches at some point this summer. After all, grilled desserts are the Final Frontier on my balcony.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . in the sand.

UPDATE: Link fixed. I blame society at large for the error.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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From Glenn, who mentions once again the Popular Mechanics work on recapturing handiness for males (and interested females), and points out that even Rush Limbaugh is aware of the trend toward males being Distinctly Unhandy.

I've been wanting to get The Dangerous Book for Boys for one of my nephews. But the very title could get me kicked out of my family: my sister-in-law is a safety nut—to a pathological degree. I'm not sure either of my nephews has ever skinned a knee.

The loophole: I could get it for my brother, their father. You know—as an Item of Cultural Interest.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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