I just spent my last dime getting my car tuned, in preparation for The Big Fall Gig at the public utility in a few weeks.

But better I address all that now than when I'm actually depending on those wheels during the commute.

And now I'm going to crash for a few hours before I get up to do a little paperwork and finish up my volunteer nonsense for this month. But one cannot just sleep; not without a book. I just finished The Substance of Style a few days ago, and it was so freakin' good I decided I just had to pick up The Future and Its Enemies again.

I certainly had trouble finding the latter book, though: I checked every pile of juicy readables in the house before finally asking my husband if he'd seen it. It turns out he'd placed it in a . . . what do you call those things? . . . it was in a . . . a bookcase.

The crazy stuff you put up with when you marry someone.

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Ace-the-Lush linked my entry of the other day, expounding on the "Osama La la la la la" theme, and added:

They [the whackjob lefties and the Islamofascists] are not united in ultimate goals, but do share a belief that the current regime must be destroyed or at least greatly diminished by one way or another before the New Utopia can come. They don't quite agree on that New Utopia, of course, and whether or not gays should be praised for their specialness and courage or stoned to death for their perverse blasphemy, but they do know who stands in the way of either of those glorious outcomes, and to that extent, they have a shared enemy.

Which brings to mind, of course, the Beautiful Atrocities line, directed at other friends-of-Dorothy's, about how if the Islamofascists win, "you will be giving head—and not in the good way."

UPDATE: Fine. "Provincial" may not quite be the right word for it. But I really dig linking to someone's link to me. Remember Martin Gardner's commentary on the Red King's dream in The Annotated Alice? It was, he said (IIRC) like "a hall of mirrors," what with the Red King dreaming about Alice, who was in turn dreaming about him.

So we're either provincial, or mathematically interesting.

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You meant more to me than you could ever have known. I read A Wrinkle in Time so many times in my attic bedroom (on nights both stormy and not), I've got passages of it memorized.

(Readers, here's the book's Wikipedia entry. But do not be self-destructive: read it before you go there. And get this book in hard cover, for crying out loud! You can thank me later. No one reads this thing only one time.)

You, Madeleine, were a better diarist than Anais Nin, a better allegorist than C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. You were the best writer of books for children and adolescents ever, bar none. (And I say this as a fan of J.K. Rowling, whose lapidary achievements still can't achieve the breadth and scope your career encompassed.)

And you made it possible for all kinds of imperfect and skeptical people to contemplate the notion that they could, after all, be Christians. "With," as you put it in one of your published journals, "all kinds of doubts." And you made it okay—cool, even—to have a scientist mom. That saved my psychic bacon during the tough years of being a teenager—which, in my particular case, persisted into my 20s (some will say 40s—but they are being unkind).

Even your creative failures were fascinating, and well worth reading.

You made magic. And moral ambiguity. Again, and again, and again.

Ms. L'Engle's official site is here. I've never looked for her before on the web. I'm so glad she's there, but the image on the front page made me choke up, so I haven't explored there yet. How many people have the love of science she had, and yet the same level of faith? Very few.

MORE Wheaton College rawks. They have extensive collections on Sayers, and on a few of the Inklings, and on L'Engle, too? The mind boggles. What a freakin' brain trust they must have over there.

AND YET MORE Nurse Theology had plenty to say to me when we were comparing notes about the various L'Engle books, great and not-so.

The good nurse is always taken aback when I quote her, verbatim, from conversations we had in the 1980s. And yet, she said all those things, and has such a way with words . . . I can't help it. (Even when it got back to me that she'd said "I like Joy. But I can't see how anyone can stand to be around her for more than ten minutes." That perspective was very necessary for me at the time. And simply adorable.)

Ms. Fine Theology on Madeleine L'Engle: "Why won't she give Zachary Gray a break?"

I looked at her when she said that, and I think my jaw sort of floated for a second. Because, of course, I had taken Zachary to be a character of his own. I felt that he was flouting L'Engle's wishes—rather than vice versa.

Of course, that brings up the whole Calvanism/predestination debate, and I'm not sure I have time for that.

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In Best of the Web:

It seems both fair and accurate to note that there is a confluence of interests between bin Laden and those Americans who seek defeat in Iraq. It is little wonder that this is an embarrassment to the latter. But it would be unfair and inaccurate to suggest that this is anything more than a de facto tactical alliance. The Angry Left wants America to lose in Iraq for its own ideological and partisan purposes, which have little to do with the establishment of a global caliphate.

So what are we to make of bin Laden's striking a pose as a global warmist who hates capitalism? Here's a theory: Slate reports that by one estimate 10% of al Qaeda's "soldiers in the global jihad" are converts to radical Islamism, a religion/ideology that, as Slate puts it, "has become a magnet for some of the world's angriest people."

Blogger Roger L. Simon speculates that "the true author (or scriptwriter) of the tape" is Adam Gadahn, né Pearlman, an American-born "spokesman" for al Qaeda who, as The New Yorker reported earlier this year, had a decidedly countercultural upbringingmdash;raised by hippie parents who converted to Christianity and lived on an isolated farm raising goats. A "shy, bookish" boy who rebelled against his parents' faith, Gadahn immersed himself in the world of satanic "death metal" before converting to Islam.

The bin Laden tape evinces a familiarity with, but a lack of sophistication about, America's political cultur—just what you'd expect from the sort of alienated and immature weirdo Gadahn seems to have been. In particular, it seems not to have occurred to the makers of the tape that hardly any Americans, including bitter foes of the president, would actually want to be associated with al Qaeda. Bin Laden has succeeded here only in embarrassing his putative allies, and perhaps in somewhat diminishing their effectiveness at a crucial political moment for the future of Iraq.

But wait!—Taranto also has some interesting comments on the sticky wicket some of the anti-war crowd is in. If their major commentary on bin Laden's video appears to be that we shouldn't pay any attention to what it says, the question becomes, "why?" Well, it's like reading Mein Kampf in the original, Taranto implies. Or (it occurs to me) actually getting impartial translators to divulge the contents of Palestinian schoolkids' textbooks.

You know: because it's there.

So read the whole thing.

Via Insty, but all he has is a dumb link. I provided "added value." So there.

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And, quoth he, regarding Fred D. Thompson: "it's on."

So it is. If I'd been stuck in a Republican debate tonight I'd be pretty pissed about that.

Hat tip: the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

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When one member of the Evangelical Mafia sent this link along, and made a tart comparison between Al Gore's / George W. Bush's environmental habits (though noting that he still couldn't stand either one of the gentlemen in question), it reminded me that I've been thinking a good deal about government subsidies of alternative energy sources, particularly when it comes to meeting transportation needs—for instance, the fact that we are pursuing fuel-cell cars so aggressively at this moment, when they are still so far from being practical.

Of course, there is the issue of whether Federal subsidies are truly the best way to midwife the birth of a new industry—a question which may not have an obvious answer. After all, there is the issue of the internet to consider; where would it stand without the DOD's underwriting of the ARPA net? Beyond, that, though, I'd like to know if you all think there's a philosophical justification for this action at the Federal level? Energy independence is a bona fide national security issue.

(Yeah, I know: first, I won't take the "no new Clintons" pledge. And now this bit of heresy. But dangit: I'm curious, and slightly torn.)

Discuss, please.

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I stopped by work "to help out a bit," and it turned into more than I'd bargained for.

I called my husband on the way home and told him, "I don't want to lead anything. I don't want to manage. I don't want to make decisions." But, of course, it's too late: I'm in the game now, like it or not.

It was too late when I arrived here; I figured I'd missed out on Fred's "Late Night" Appearance. So instead I'm going to bed with a G&T and a copy of Newsweek.

Fred's certainly ubiquitous tonight. And, starting tomorrow, there may be even more of him around than there is today.

You'd think we were the sort of hussy-ish party than welcomed anyone, providing he had a SAG card . . .

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Fred's gonna be on Jay Leno tonight.

Somewhere, Rudy Giuliani is cussing up a blue streak.

Though I still haven't promised not to vote for him. Hell—everyone's going to get mad at me, but I haven't promised I won't vote for Mrs. Clinton, either.

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Apparently, Fundamentalists Anonymous has been very helpful to a lot of people who've experienced Christianity-turned-abusive, including some of Robert Hymers' victims.

I was a little turned off by the site's ad for Rational Recovery, since I maintain my ties to the twelve-step world, and it's been my perception in the past that RR was fueled by resentment of AA—that it had a certain negativity driving it. Yet I can see how the wrong group and/or the wrong sponsor could easily turn the twelve-step experience into something profoundly cultlike: the potential for abuse is definitely there. And I certainly think there are plenty of misdiagnoses in AA. I was one of them, for eleven years.

So, yes: practically any good thing can be warped into a compulsive behavior. Including abstinence from compulsive behaviors.

Everything in moderation, Folks. Including moderation.

A lot of my family members live on that ragged edge where Evangelical leanings begin to flirt with Fundamentalism, so when I discuss Scripture with them I try to keep it all in general terms so we don't argue too much. ("So, you do realize I'm a Papist, now, Grandma. Whaddya think? Am I saved, or lost?")

In my own twelve-step-based nonprofit organization I had an exchange recently with the Chairman of the Board. He is my boss when I'm getting along with him. (When I'm not, I inform him tartly that I report directly to the Vice Chair, and he needs to respect chain-of-command. Or at least I think that, really hard.)

This guy told me he really admires me, because even when I'm overwhelmed (usually because I've taken too much on), I simply don't give up.

There is a word for that, of course: compulsion. I wonder if there's a twelve-step program for that?

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. . . humidity, and all: Write Enough on the Disneyland Half Marathon.

I've seen the finisher's medal, you know: it's the size and weight of a manhole cover.

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To tell us what we can name our children.

Another reason to be glad I live in the USA, where a man can name his kid "Moon Unit Zappa" or "Madonna Ciccone" or "Willard Mitt Romney" without fear of official reprisal.

Yup. Does the government also check the initials, to make sure no one named their daughter "Anne Sue Smith," or something like that?

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I am alive and well. It just so happens that I got waylaid by the following projects: 1) catching up on sleep; 2) fulfilling family obligations; 3) dealing with business overhead; 4) catching up on sleep, again; 5) reading an Ellery Queen mystery about a serial killer loose in New York City during a heat wave in the late 1940s.

The point to remember is that detective fiction is strangely analogous to humor: just as the comic must deal in material that is as funny and uncomfortable and painful as possible—without actually drawing metaphorical or literal blood—so the crime writer must come up with a solution to the puzzle that, upon reflection, must appear to have been staring the reader in the face the whole time. In both instances, one must play footsie with a very fine line.

That is why one man's wit is another man's hostility; there is an element of the subjective to the whole enterprise.

I am, as a mystery reader, pretty cooperative: I try not to actively solve the puzzle unless I feel I've got no choice. (Some books practically beg one to get out a piece of paper and start listing clues, but these are normally of the poorest quality, and barely worth finishing at all.)

I want to be fooled. Yet if at all possible, I want to be fooled only slightly. If it's the least bit feasible, I'd like to guess the final mystery one page before it's revealed in the text, yet before such knowledge would spoil the surprise. It is just as one pulls off that wrapping paper that The Truth should knock one over: "of course!"

"Hide it in plain sight." It's easy to say, but almost impossible to do.

I finished reading the mystery by the Queen cousins, and resolved to close the gaps on the L.A. and Phoenix puzzles I'm creating, once and for all.

I decide to get all "twelve step" on my husband, regarding the creative process. "I don't have to create the perfect psycho for this particular book," I explain to him, rather earnestly. "I just have to create the best psycho I can today."

The mystery writer is, at the very same time, the most moral and the most amoral of creatures. There is no resolving this one; we can only craft the best books possible, and keep them scrupulously free of talking pets. At that point, our missions are fulfilled, and the editors, critics and readers take over.

Keep in mind, though, that more readers one acquires, the less one has to care what the critics and editors say. At a certain point, one can even bring back the talking pets, and all is well. What are the critics going to do, after all?—argue with one's bank balance? "It's slop, that financial security," they will say.

"I don't care for the dreck that she put in her IRA," they will complain.

"The quality of her beach home? Strictly second rate," they'll sniff.

I, of course, won't care at all. I'll just install a swimming pool for my husband, and buy another car.

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