No patriotism, up there in the Midwest.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:57 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

my favorite Grateful Dead song:

My time coming, any day,

Don't worry about me, no

Been so long I felt this way,

I'm in no hurry, no

Rainbows and down that highway

Where ocean breezes blow

My time coming, voices saying,

They tell me where to go.

Don't worry about me, nah nah nah, don't worry about me, no
And I'm in no hurry, nah nah nah, I know where to go.

California, preaching on the burning shore
California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine.

My time coming, anyday, don't worry about me, no
It's gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so
Seems so long I felt this way and time sure passin' slow
Still I know I lead the way, they tell me where I go.

Don't worry about me, no no no, don't worry about me, no
And I'm in no hurry, no no no, I know where to go.

California, a prophet on the burning shore
California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine.

You've all been asleep, you would not believe me
Them voices tellin' me, you will soon receive me
Standin' on the beach, the sea will part before me
Fire wheel burning in the air!

You will follow me and we will ride to glory—
Way up, the middle of the air!

And I'll call down thunder and speak the same
And my work fills the
Sky with flame
And might and glory gonna be my name
And men gonna light my way.

My time coming, any day,
Don't worry about me, no
It's gonna be just like they say,
Them voices tell me so
Seems so long I felt this way
And time sure passin' slow
My time coming, any day,
Don't worry about me, no.

Don't worry about me, no no no, don't worry about me, no
And I'm in no hurry, no no no, don't worry about me, no.

And, no—YouTube still crashes Safari on this machine, so I can't post the video. Someone else can link it in the comments, if they like.

UPDATE: I've heard the original of this referred to as "reggae," but I'm not sure that's how I see it. Nor did it sound that way to me when I've heard it performed live. But most of the remakes have been in that genre. The one by Burning Spear certainly was.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:55 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 449 words, total size 2 kb.

The answer isn't surprising: it's a Democrat in the White House:

The fourth-quarter edition of the Brinker Barometer, which polled 236 advisers in December, found that 22% indicated that a "Democrat in the White House" worried them more than all other economic or geopolitical concerns.

Rounding out the list of concerns was "global unrest" (15%), "U.S. economic growth" (15%), "a terrorist attack" (13%) and "a recession" (13%).

When asked what their greatest tax concern would be under a Democratic administration, 81% of advisers cited a potential increase in the capital gains tax, an income tax increase and heavier taxes on dividends.

I am impressed, however, that the fear of a Democratic President beat out the fear of a recession or a terrorist attack.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 139 words, total size 1 kb.

You were the first, and the best.

Hat tip to Linguist Guy.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:05 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . on Tim Blair's behalf; he's got cancer.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 20 words, total size 1 kb.

to talk to my friends' teenagers. Mostly because the first twenty things that are likely to come out of my mouth are stipid remarks like "you are older now than your parents were when I met them," and "the last time I saw you, you were this tall" (with appropriate hand gestures).

And partly because I can't stop staring at them; they're so good-looking. "Wow. Even nicer-looking than you two are," I tell their parents—both of whom I dated, back in the day.

Finally, I ask the teens what they do and don't like about their parents. The older boy smiles at me. When I ask him what he doesn't like about his dad, his father prompts him, "starts with an a . . . ." And when I ask the same thing about his mom, his dad jumps in again with "starts with a b . . . "

When I pull out my camera, the younger, fiercer one says, "that ain't gonna happen," which I take as the same sort of challenge it is when my younger nephew dodges the camera.

"Yeah, well," I follow him around his house, snapping occasional frames as he ducks and weaves.

"Really. Why are you doing this?" he asks me with the tired sophistication one sees in the young.

I could reply that someday he might actually want a picture of himself at this strange, awkward almost-a-man stage, but it would be too easy. Instead, I just say, "well, I'm a friend of your dad's, and I'm just as much of an asshole as he is."

Which seems to satisfy him.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 279 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm in New York City—specifically, Brooklyn. It's beautiful here, and the air is crisp. It even snowed last night. A little. Enough to put a little magic in the air.

My friends' faces are starting to look a bit like those of their parents when I first met them. They all look like they're in their forties, for reasons that remain obscure to me.

They are, to a woman/man, thrilled that I'm drinking again, although when I hang out with the Scottish side of the family I drink good black tea.

Everyone's taking great care of me, and I'm spending very little of my own money. Though this city is hard to get around in, and getting lost is a different experience without a car to provide a protective bubble.

But I'm not sure I'd want to live here. Why would you want to live somewhere that looks like a movie set? I'm sure it would get tiresome.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 166 words, total size 1 kb.

Looks like Fred got that jump he needed. The NY Times is finally interested in him as a candidate, and the other candidates are starting to insult him.

Yep, it's finally getting serious.

h/t Adler

-CTG

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 48 words, total size 1 kb.

So Attila Chick asked me to step in and post a few things while she's away, and well, I plumb forgot. So, better late than never, right?

CTG

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:20 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

But first I have to prowl the internet, and . . . there's nothing on.

I'm like a child, really: "there's nothing to dooooooooo."

(Actually, I want to watch a video, but Safari and YouTube are not getting along right now. So I guess I get to learn about that delayed gratifithingie.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:28 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

had three glazed doughnuts and half a glass of red wine for dinner.

She's very excited about the antioxidants in grapes, but she left sugary residue all over my keyboard.

When is someone going to talk some sense into this person?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.

Postrel soundsdisappointed; Ace sounds . . . almost tense.

Captain Ed wonders where all the PaulBots went, but notes that they are back. Only . . . they're apparently more sluggish now.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

WRT this voter ID issue: Americans hate to show their I.D.

And Americans hate to be fucked with when they are voting.

Personally, I find the idea that hotels ask for my I.D.—even when I'm paying with cash—to be rather oppressive. And the idea of living in, um, a country like Europe, wherein the cops could stop one on the street and ask for "papers," fills me with loathing.

But voting is a solemn thing; it's at the core of democracy. And voter fraud is intolerable. We've got to allow states to put safeguards in place. Yeah, yeah: Chicago will be especially hard hit if voter fraud goes out of fashion. But somehow I think the Windy City—and the rest of us—will soldier on.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:52 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 142 words, total size 1 kb.

Aw, come on. The man was busy: he had a medical practice to attend to, for crying out loud.

These passages bring back great memories. My husband and I spent some time on the outer extreme of anti-PC dialogue back in the 90s. We started with gun activists and other mainstream libertarians, and ended up hanging out with survivalists and State Citizen types. We found some of our dearest values, such as a belief in a small government and a desire for self-sufficiency, brought us into contact with people we could only describe to each other as "characters."

I'm not sure when, exactly, it was that we began to see all this as rich material for our respective writing. I only know that we immersed ourselves in it and found a lot to laugh at in some of the "black helicoptor" thinking—all the while agreeing that skepticism about media and government is an important virtue, as long as one takes one's meds.

We didn't personally know any racists or anti-Semites, but we were aware that they were out there, and their literature was even easier to find at State Citizen events than it was at gun fairs. One of our comrades-in-survivalism was black. I remember asking him how he felt about the fact that there were racists involved in the militia movement.

He shrugged, and pointed out that he and his wife were some of the best shots he knew. That seemed fair enough. I suppose they were betting against a race war within the survivalist fringe.

But, oh—if you ever get a chance to see a Linda Thompson video, do it. There's some great stuff there.

UPDATE: Turns out there a lot of this political identity theft going around.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

shares his New Hampshire predictions, and has a mini-roundup of other 'sphere luminaries doing same.

I've been trying to avoid a lot of the negativity out there, but it's hard to counteract the mindset that "even if we win, we'll probably still lose."

Of course, I am still PMSing, so you might take that with a grain of salt—and keep your distance.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:13 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.

endorses McCain!

Oh, wait: that's not what he's saying, is it?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

The fact that Fred doesn't pander, or the fact that Chris Muir sometimes does?

(Congratulations, Chris! You've earned it.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:55 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I bow to my appetites...

Posted by: Chris Muir at January 07, 2008 07:28 PM (sbwiN)

2 Yeah, but did anyone send you socks?

Posted by: Darrell at January 07, 2008 10:46 PM (uolFW)

3 No. He's strictly amateur hour.

Posted by: Attila Girl at January 07, 2008 11:48 PM (Pj4Qc)

4 Don't we all in some way or another?

Posted by: Navy CPO at January 08, 2008 09:39 AM (IrbU4)

5 Bow to their appetites, or send socks to their favorite bloggers? Presumably, the former . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at January 08, 2008 10:33 AM (QCozz)

6 We'd just like to know "How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?" I bet it's the socks myself. . .

Posted by: Darrell at January 08, 2008 11:54 AM (V8Kgs)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Now that's a great idea for winter.

Any other greens we should try? I've always thought baby mustard greens were lovely in salads, but I'm not sure I could eat as much of them in one sitting as I could arugula. Cilantro might present the same problem—plus, it's as much of a summer herb as basil itself is.

As I recall, Molly Katzen had a great desperation-time "winter pesto" that was made with a small amount of dried basil. I believe it was in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I must admit that during my vegetarian years I kept one basil plant growing indoors at all times, for after the outdoor one went to seed.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 118 words, total size 1 kb.

I finished D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity? several days ago, so I'm now reading Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

I love both these guys. On the whole, I think Hitchens may be the better thinker, but on this topic he has it wrong—D'Souza gets it right. Of course, the two men had slightly different missions. Hitchens wrote a polemic against all religions, which is, I believe, easier to pull off. After all, no faith is devoid of its superstitious moments, and with the world awash in radical Islam right now, it's easy to point out that "religion" has poisoned quite a lot. D'Souza chose the harder task by focusing on one faith—his very own—and writing a spirited defense of it and its place in the intellectual tradition that brought us good things like science, the American Revolution, and dark beer.

Of course, D'Souza isn't carrying socialism around with him everywhere he goes, so in general he probably has it easier. (He has other ridiculous ideas lodged in his cranium instead.)

It's sure a pleasure to read both of these guys. In an interesting way, they make nice companion pieces to Jonathan Rauch's Kindly Inquisitors. In addition to having coined the term "apatheistic" (to which D'Souza makes one or two snide allusions in passing; sigh), Rauch provides a nice history of the framework of free inquiry that we need to preserve, above all else, if Western traditions are going to endure.

Rauch makes the very best case as to why we might not want to spend a lot of time squabbling over religion, for what that is worth.

Even Hitchens claims that all he really wants his religious friends to do is to "leave him alone," and stop confusing his politeness on matters of faith with openness to witness. Both Hitchens and Rauch were clearly shaken—as they had every freaking reason to be—by the fatwa against Salmon Rushdie, and the ghost of that event flits across the pages of both Not Great and Kindly Inquisitors.

When I went to see Salmon Rushdie speak at a book fair one year I had a few pangs of fear. I knew we'd probably have to pass through metal detectors, but I wasn't sure whether or not the building we were in might somehow be detonated from outside. And I was also acutely aware that the fear I was feeling that afternoon was a part of Rushdie's existence 365 days a year, merely because he wrote a silly little piece of religious satire some time back.

"Aw, what the hell," I told my friends. "We have to die from something." And we headed down the hill to hear the man out.

Religion isn't invariably toxic. But, used incorrectly, it can certainly cause a lot of damage. Just like love, which Joni Mitchell once called "the strongest posion and medicine of all."

The problem lies with human nature. Whether this has to do with overdeveloped adrenal glands, as Hitchen maintains, or original sin is not altogether clear to me. But I know it doesn't quite work.

So: people of faith, agnostics, and athiests—let's be careful out there. Be kind to your fellow humans. Promote public inquiry and criticism. And, you know: try not to kill anybody in the name of God.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 557 words, total size 4 kb.

is no longer the haven for amateur pornographers that it used to be. I'm sure there are those who feel pretty wistful about that.

And perhaps it depends upon whom one knows.

As one might expect, Reynolds and his trusty blender are on the case (jumpt to his main page, and keep on scrolling for more). The main Popular Mechanics site has a fair amount about it, too. And here is the Consumer Electronics Show's own blog.

Of course, the SHOT Show isn't until next month (February 2-5), and I probably ain't going, since I must make it to CPAC this year (February 7-9), and I like to be home part of the time. (I did once go straight from Las Vegas to the East Coast, though it was a bit of a shock to the system. That was back when I was still working evil staff jobs in Old Media. Early mornings! Sixty/seventy-hour weeks! Low pay! Yippee!)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 178 words, total size 1 kb.