[Around 12:43, if you were wondering. I'm getting tired of annotating these entries. Maybe next time I'll just retroactively post them at times that correlate to their actual composition. Alternately, I'll begin to limit myself to blogging about interesting things, rather than my rich interior life.

Just kidding.]

"I just got a few things," I tell my husband. "And they were cheap. Like, I got this pen that will fit in my pocket, and a sudoku book so I can start doing sudoko and my mind won't ever really age."

"Don't give me that look," I warn him. "I'm right about this; I'm always right about things like this."

This particular character [ahem] happens to be right about most things. I know, because I made her that way.

There is, to be honest, a sort of rush in playing God this way. The downside is that my characters all rebel against me, sooner or later. I hear I'm not the only one.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

[Composed at 12:33 p.m., over a lovely cup of organic Earl Grey tea, with just a bit of whole milk in it.]

I haven't been online since last night; this is tough. Most of the local businesses require passwords before one can steal their bandwidth and connect, gypsy-stye, from their accounts.

Furthermore, the account I was hoping to tap into simply isn't working, even here at its point of origin.

I really am about to start going through WiFi withdrawal.

According to the barista here, there is a problem with the internet connection that extends throughout Southern California.

This happens to be the most populated state in the Union; whassup with MAE West right now? (It couldn't be MAE West, though: that hub is in Northern California.)

UPDATE: The connection works just fine from home; I wonder who the ISP is for Camp Lefty Bookstore and Coffee House?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 143 words, total size 1 kb.

[The first segment of this was written today at 12:02 p.m., when the internet connection was not functional at Camp Lefty, and I therefore wasn't able to post from the coffee shop next door over my breakfast burrito. As Charleton Heston would say, "darn the luck!"]

I'm sitting in a coffee shop here on Foothill Blvd. in La Canada. There are a couple of firemen having lunch two tables over.

They are discussing what firemen are always discussing: home remodeling, coubustile materials, and food. But, of course, mostly food.

Good Lord: firefighters are even dishier than cops. And they cook as a rule; I can only advise young ladies to stay away from 'em. I can't imagine that it's easy to break things off with a fireman.

(Now someone is going to point out to me that the average firefighter cannot converse intelligently about the Bloomsbury Group. Which is fine. They cook. Did I mention that?)

* * *

Note to Professors Purkinje and Fractal: Speaking of famous late-20th Century Angelenos early 20th-Century Londoners, A Space Child's Mother Goose is back in print!

Here's the only rhyme I remember somewhat-accurately therefrom; will someone fact-check me on this?

A Pimlico dream
Of the Bloomsbury Group
May have made Mayfair
A Keynesian soup.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 175 words, total size 1 kb.

Too much time on the road, Buddy. Way too much time on the road.

Though Senator Clinton has certainly been taking charisma lessons from . . . someone. Hm. Wonder who . . . someone with a lot of charm, who's a good liar.

Also: Blogosphere APB! Will someone check on Stacy's wife and child? I want to make sure they really exist. I mean, I can see that he's sincere about this . . . not like a Bosnia kind of thing. But I just get concerned about ol' Stacy's perceptions on these things.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 101 words, total size 1 kb.

please.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 3 words, total size 1 kb.

The objectively reasonable price is somewhere north of double what we paid for it. Plus commissions.

Otherwise, why knock yourself out buying in the Los Angeles area?

My friends have informed me that for the amount I'm paying for a condo in Glendale, I could buy a mansion in Riverside, or an estate in Lancaster.

All very well and good, but where would I actually, you know—work in one of those areas? They aren't big media/entertainment centers.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Yes! By all means, move to Riverside! that would be so very very nice. For me.

Posted by: Rin at March 26, 2008 03:50 PM (bSHZa)

2 Fine. I'm sure the magazines I work for will relocate--and I imagine the studio execs and agents A the H deals with would be happy to drive out to the big R for his pitches.

Posted by: Attila Girl at March 26, 2008 04:39 PM (Hgnbj)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

. . . against sugary breakfast cereals.

Grainist.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

Yeah.

The fact is—much as it pains me to say it—I agree with the Huckster on this. I definitely think Wright should be granted more latitude than if he were saying equivalent things from some sort of Klanlike, white-supremacist point of view.

What I can't do is condone the fact that Obama entered public life without distancing himself from this man in some way. Even if it meant that his wife and kids went to one church, while he attended another (or didn't go at all), it would satisfy me.

I guess I'm proclaiming that thing I always get cranky at other people for saying: in certain arenas, the standards have to be higher for public servants. I'm sorry, but they do. If we don't expect a United States Senator to distance himself in a concrete way from rank bigotry, how can we expect to move forward? Even if that bigotry is less rank than it would be if Wright were white?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.

Don't we all?

Of course, if you send Dave money, he'll get something cool with it—whereas I'd just squander it on books and red wine.

I'm taking my hat in hand and asking you to send an email pledge of financial support with the subject line "Make Iowahawk Happy Pledge Fund." Please, no actual cash or PayPal donations. Just a pledge amount that you'd be seriously willing to contribute on the condition that I actually get the car [a 1964 Galaxie with a Turbonique "rocket-charged" engine; 1500+ hp to the real wheels]. If that happens, I promise a free rocket car ride to any pledger that comes to Chicago.

Excelsior!

PS - Even if you don't want to make me happy, I'll still take your pledge! Just send it with the subject line "See Iowahawk Splattered On a Cliffside Pledge Fund."

Dang, I wish I had money. Iowahawk should so have that car.

(Dave: "any pledger who comes to Chicago." Let's not get so excited about this car that our grammar goes out its mid-century window.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 169 words, total size 1 kb.

we amscray around 5:15 because one of the local agents is bringing a potential buyer by at 5:30 p.m. We decide to go to the largest local indie bookstore/coffeehouse. A the H Resists Temptation, so he can Set an Example, but I buy a few things because I want them. (Not the Goldberg book, however: I can't quite justify that, and the paperbacks tend to come out on these types of works in a reasonably timely fashion.)

We come back around 6:30 p.m. and try to figure out whether the potential buyers are still there. So it's a rousing game of "try to spot the agent's car." A the H insists that the blue Toyota Matrix must be in.

"No way," I tell him, but enter carefully and yell, "hello?" No answer.

Of course, if the househunters are still here, they could be in the yard. AH goes off to some sort of athletic hoohah event, and I stay. I pour a glass of wine, sit down, and open my laptop. I haven't yet turned off the extra interior lights, or locked the back door—because what if the agent is just starting out? What if that really is his or her Matrix?

After about three minutes, I realize that what I really need—more than I ever have, and more than anything else—is to take a really huge crap. It's worth noting here that none of our bathrooms have locks on the doors.

So I take care of business in one of the upstairs bathrooms, and come out again. No sign of anyone in the yard. The Matrix is still parked in front. No one in this area drives anything like that—it's too nice to be a housekeeper's car, but not nice enough to be one of the local homeowners'. I figure it belongs to the tenant who's renting out the guesthouse next door, and remind myself to ask not to trample our plants next time he hikes up to his car. I don't mind him taking the shortcut, but he should go easy on the landscaping if he's going to go through our yard.

Contra my husband's opinion, a Matrix isn't the kind of car a real estate agent would be ferrying clients around in. Not in this town.

I lock the back doors, and turn out the lights in the rooms I'm not using. I hope we get an offer on this place before the electricity bill shows up; I daren't even think about what that's going to look like.

And, you know—Mother Earth is weeping. And stuff.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 437 words, total size 2 kb.

And my birthday is almost five months away.

Thank you, Johnnie!

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

thinking about what Nancy Reagan wants. Wondering, hoping. Imagining that if only I could get her opinion on a given issue, I might start to see it clearly.

Okay, I'm done with the snark. I think. But the fact is, the only position Nancy has held that has interested me at all was that on stem-cell research, because of the beauty in it: her stance was at odds to that of a beloved conservative icon whom she was married to for decades—but her views were motivated, at least in part, by her love for that crazy and amazing man.

Hackbarth suggests that the N. Reagan endorsement could be played to McCain's advantage, by drawing the obvious parallels between the War on Terror and the Cold War. Maybe. But I doubt that Nancy would go along with the idea.

I'm not sure, of course, that I'm big on endorsements in the first place. Even if I like someone, shouldn't I be thinking for myself? Or is that an eccentric view?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 183 words, total size 1 kb.

Big fan, by the way, Mr. Norris: more of us caucasian niggahz should be doing martial arts.

And, of course, I adore Thomas J., as well.

But when you quote him about an issue on which he was very much a creature of his time, I find it just a little tempting to point out that (1) he "owned" other human beings [legally, of course; morally, one cannot do any such thing; (2) one of these human beings may have been his girlfriend.

I was appalled when I read the American Family Association report that Friday, April 25, "several thousand schools across the nation will be observing 'Day of Silence (DOS).' DOS is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools. Â… DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network."

Is encouraging or teaching about homosexuality what our Founders expected for the public education system they started? Even the most liberal among them opposed it. For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill concerning the criminal laws of Virginia, in which he proposed that the penalty for sexual deviance should be unique corporal punishment. Jefferson's views were indeed representative of early America:

"Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least." Can you imagine a statesman proposing such a law today?

While I'm not, of course, espousing such treatment, I do believe that we equally and adamantly should oppose such aberrant sexual behavior from being condoned or commemorated in our public schools through textbooks or a so-called "Day of Silence."

You can check to see whether your local schools are on the DOS observance list by going to www.MissionAmerica.com. Whether they are or not, write their administrators to inform them your family will be boycotting the event if it takes place in your vicinity.

To each of the social dilemmas in these three news stories (regarding guns, God and gays), a remedy can be found by turning back the clocks of time and consulting our Founding Fathers.

Not endorsing it, huh? But you thought you'd bring it up anyway. That's swell of you, Chuck.

I'm glad we're refuting the Todd Rundgren claim in "Swing to the Right" that conservatives desperately want to "stop the hands of time."

Oh, wait; we're not.

Forget it, then. Slavery. Outdoor plumbing. Doctors "bleeding" their patients. Short life expectancies; crappy nutrition. No refrigerators. No dentistry to speak of. No microwaves.

Let's do it, Chuck. Let's go back.

You first; you might take Huckabee with you, as well.

Via Memeorandum.

Oh, wait. I'm not done, after all.

Do we pay you to think, Chuckie? No. We do not. We pay you to appear in movies in which some pretext is found to separate you from your sidearm, so the we can watch some cool, choreographed karate. That's it.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 510 words, total size 3 kb.

I'm hiding out here at my mother's place for a while during the agents' caravan; we'll be going to get her car fixed in the valley in a half hour or so.

My Mandy is here. There is some talk of my mom getting rid of the dog, since Mandy's so spirited—and my mother isn't getting any younger. If she does, I hope Mom takes her to Pit Bull Hall and "trades her in" for an older, more sedate dog she can keep up with.

But it would make me sad.

I haven't been around much to help, though, lately, and I cannot complain about it.

I can't take her, because my husband doesn't want a dog at all—much less a rambunctious, large-ish one.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:19 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

Nearly a thousand hits yesterday; today, I barely got 300.

Um. Spic?*

Wop? **

How about this one: if you don't visit my site faithfully, every single day, you're a dirty pig-dog.

* That's Spaniards, right?

** Isn't that Italians? I grew up on Southern California, so I'm not good at this. I have to ask my friends who are from big cities for the translations sometimes.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:53 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.

It's been a day; I've been online intermittantly, but in between I've been washing windows and mopping the balconies.

I still have miles of clutter to work through; I also have to finish cleaning the downstairs bathroom.

I haven't slept much the past two nights; I spent part of the evening with my mother yesterday evening—and am now thoroughly apprised of all the mistakes I could be making, and what I might be doing wrong, and at least a few things I am doing wrong. When my husband got home yesterday from his run, the mom and Mandy were already here. I followed him into the bedroom and announced that I was definitely having a martini with dinner.

"She's only been here for 45 minutes," he told me.

"She's in rare form," I replied.

The "for sale" sign went up at 9:00 a.m. this morning. At 10:00 a.m. some pushy agent tried to talk his way into the house a day early, because he had a client with him. (As if he hadn't brought her with him on purpose; what'd she do?—materialize suddenly in his car?) I said "no."

The real estate agents' caravan is tomorrow; we have to be finished, and out of here by 9:20 or so. Which means that after I knock off today, I have just over two hours' of daylight in which to finish the windows. And anything else that needs to be done.

Oh, and—my body informs me that I have PMS. So if there were any chance of getting through this week without either crying or screaming at someone, it went out with the estrogen supply.

I'll be here, cleaning my .357 with a grim smile and guzzling red wine. Come on by.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

whether you believe in God or not.

And I know that's not enough. (And I know, Mrs. Steyn, that bumperstickers aren't enough.) But I feel so helpless right now. And it's a good place to start.

Its flirtation with capitalism notwithstanding, China is a fucking problem.

UPDATE: I forgot Reynolds' hat tip!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

Or is it swing voters McCain needs to connect with?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:33 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

I just don't want to talk about it.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:05 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

Why would anyone ever "fall away" from a terrorist organization?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.