"Duh. Give me a tough question, why doncha."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Why am I reminded of the embargo on the word niggardly?

Thanks to Eric of Classical Values. I think.

I'm going to go get drunk now; it's after noon somewhere, right?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Several bloggers associated with The Cotillion (or "Tiara Media") have begun a cookbook project. This promises to be the biggest and most luxurious bloggers' food guide ever, notwithstanding our emphasis on speed, convenience, and how to get epicurean results when you can barely pry yourself away from your keyboard.

But we need your help. We'll need other bloggers, frequent commenters, website designers, SAH/working parents, writers, and others who are pressed for time to tell us:

• your favorite recipes; and/or
• your favorite season of the year to cook, and why; and/or
• your favorite ingredient, and why; and/or
• your favorite songs to pay on your laptop or iPod while you're cooking; and/or
• your favorite libation/mixed drink; and/or
• your favorite piece of kitchen equipment--what is the one tool they can pry from your cold, dead hands? AND
• your URL.

Also, please give us your real name, and SPECIFY IF WE CAN USE THIS IN THE BOOK, or whether we need to stick with your screen name.

Please send all your submissions to me; I'll distribute them to the editors and recipe testers who are working on this book. We'll need your material (the recipes especially!) by the end of the first week in June, as the book proposal goes out that same month--and the nature of the project will be shaped by your contributions!

Naturally, your blog will get a plug in the book, and you will be linked in the website we'll be developing in late summer/early fall.

Don't miss out!

All best,

Joy McCann
Little Miss Attila
http://attila.mu.nu

miss.attila . . . AT . . . gmail . . . DOT . . . com

* * *
Snail mail:
2222 Foothill Blvd., E-313
La Canada, CA 91011

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Here. Wouldn't it be cool if the market could work this one out?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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as Cuffy points out.

"Elitist" means "that annoying guy whose wife makes more money than I ever will, but goes around talking like she's a big freakin' victim. Then he throws awful stereotypes around about small-town people, people of faith, and gun-owners." You know: elitist.

It's annoying when white people do it, too. See Kerry, John. And Gore, Albert, Jr.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via Insty comes this great piece on the worldwide food shortage by Austin Bay. This is one of the reasons I don't like using corn or soy to produce biofuels; I'd much rather we concentrated on algae or switchgrass. (Though there is an argument to be made to have the capability of using surplus crops for some biofuel production, after we've figured out how to make the process vaguely efficient.)

And, of course: more windpower, more solar power. More nuclear plants, and make it snappy. Drill ANWR, and drill off the coast of Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. Hell: drill the La Brea tar pits, if there's any oil to be had there.

But the point in the comments section about how we have fewer "marginal farms" in this country, and therefore less of a buffer against shortages (and less to sell or give to other nations that need it) is interesting. I usually don't buy "organic" produce [as opposed to the inorganic kind, ba da PUH], because I tend to want food that was produced in the most efficient way, dammit. The reason The Population Bomb was wrong is that we've kept ahead of the population curve by increasing production. But maybe it's time to encourage more boutique farming; more family farming; more small farms. If that means I should buy organic lettuce and artisan cheeses so those less well-off can buy the stuff they pick in the fields, maybe that's a safety mechanism this country needs, and can afford.

Also, I happen to like artisanal cheeses, though I've been told the cheese is objectively better in France, due to our hyperactive, overprotective FDA over here. (I know, I know: we want cheese without bacteria. But then, we also want our mushrooms without fungus.)

Dinner for a small planet: lentil soup, with fresh-grated parmesan cheese (the cheapest I can find that doesn't come pre-grated, since pre-grated parmesan is the work of the devil). A little fennel, sauteed in olive oil with a tiny pat of sweet butter. Raw carrots on the side, and oversweetened juice from the supermarket that I was too lazy to dilute.

And life is good; let's export us some crops.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:57 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The definitive takedown.

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience — and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.
Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.

Via ConBelle, who remarks, "Obama sees those who are 'different' as pawns in his plan to achieve."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If we're going to treat Elton John like some sort of "foreign national," we'd have to treat guys like David Bowie, Ringo Starr, and Mick Jagger as foreign nationals. And that's just absurd.

I mean, we invented rock 'n' roll; we have a bond with the British over that, and over some wars we've fought with—and against—each other. It's like that older brother who once burned your house down to ash and rubble. (What do you mean, "no"?)

Besides, haven't you listened to the song "Rocky Raccoon"? The album Exile on Main Street? "Panic in Detroit"? Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy?

British rockers should be grandfathered in, and that's that.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm self-satisfied in many, many ways. And so are my fellow green, liberal Mac-heads, like Rush Limbaugh . . .

Thanks to Val.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This further reflects the fact that all men are rapists: they rape us with their minds, with their dicks, with their hands, with their political web sites—and, when we're lucky, with their tongues . . .

Oh, wait. I had to take a short break, but I'm back now.

Look: What matters more?—the fact that a lot of people, including me, originally associated AllahPundit with Hot Air? Or the fact that Michelle Malkin started that site, owns it, and recruits top talent thereto? This, ahem, girl owns two of the top-fifteen websites in the 'sphere,* and she's positioned to make a bundle—and keep her voice alive and strong—as New Media grows. Don't cry for her, or for any of us laboring in the field of political analysis/citizen journalism.

One is reminded of Thomas Sowell's Conquest and Cultures, one of my favorite books, in which he reminds us that around the turn of the last century the U.S. had a lot of immigrants who were Italian, and a lot who were Jewish. These people started a lot of businesses, and their families became very successful. As it happens, more of the Italians became tailors and clothing manufacturers/designers. More of the Jews went into cooking and food-related industries. Who knows why? It doesn't mean Jews didn't care for nice clothing, and it doesn't mean Italians didn't appreciate good food. It might reflect the fact that traditional Jewish diets are more restricted, so the need for kosher foodstuffs nurtured the delicatessens of my youth (at least, the ones that made it out here to L.A., after the trend began in New York a generation earlier).

Write what you like. Write what you know. Find a way to turn a buck. "Make five hundred a year by your wits." * *

UPDATE: Rachel Lucas has a nice takedown of the original premise. Well, she has a long, wordy takedown that was juicy enough for me to—eventually, after skimming around the edges—read the entire thing.

(Also, she has another cute doggie pic up, and since her birthday is on April 21, she's asking for cash gifts. Which you could give her, if you weren't all saving up your money to send to me in July. [Or you could use Darrell's approach, and send me stuff for my "Chrysler Birthday," which is May 5th. That's when I got the PT Cruiser last year, so all kinds of yummy stuff has been showing up this month. Of course, he's my most loyal stalker.])

* Using the N.Z. Bear Ecosystem, which I employ because The Bear himself is such a dish . . . men being, you know—only decoration to me.

* * Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own. From memory, so feel to fact-check my rather amazing ass on that one. As I recall, five hundred pounds a year was a comfortable living in England during "the long weekend" between the two World Wars.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:31 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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They are discussing the McCain economic plan.

(For those of you who skim the financial pages, Carly Fiorina became the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company when she assumed the helm of Hewlett-Packard, though her star rose much earlier, when she worked at AT&T and managed the Lucent spinoff. Controversy followed her throughout her tenure at H-P, due to differences with the Board of Directors regarding the Compaq merger. She released her memoir a few years back, and is now an advocate for free market economics—as well as a public supporter of John McCain. Her Wikipedia entry is here.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's actually tricky for bloggers, but I don't see how one cannot simply say, "this is off the record," if it is—indeed—off the record. Though I generally ask permission before I quote something another blogger said in a "party" setting. The couple of times I didn't, I got into trouble.

I thought that the rule was, no Presidential candidate has privacy. Ever. Perhaps I'm wrong about that, but isn't that why Colin Powell decided he didn't want to join this circus? Isn't it the reason Condi Rice still may not?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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SR writes:

96 Years Ago . . .
That's how long ago the Titanic sank. As always, someone has managed to come up with a news story about it. This year it's rivets. Did Harlan and Wolff, the ship builders, use cheaper rivets than specified because they were short of the better, more expensive rivets? Well, someone has written an article saying this is so, but the controversy over the rivets has been around for years, and this really adds nothing. As in most things, the Titanic sinking was due to a confluence of events. A calm sea. No binoculars for the lookouts. Ignoring ice warnings Marconied in from other ships. The failure of Third Officer Hitchens to steam ahead (instead of reversing engines and trying to turn). And, of course, an iceberg.

The "steaming ahead" thing would have been daring; I doubt anyone would have thought of that one in time.

UPDATE: Let's not forget that they were going too fast.

Now I want to re-read my Walter Lord books, but an evil person packed them and took them to storage.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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please stop helping. Please.

Gay Patriot East (Original Gay Patriot, or OGP) is proposing that Carter be officially censured.

I dunno: that's like giving the man attention; it'll only encourage him. Next thing you know, all the other former Presidents will be misbehaving, and we'll have to send them to that Camp for Defiant Former Presidents for counseling and maybe a cross-country trek.

Related, from Ace's News Sidebar:

Breaking: State Department Employs Reverse Psychology on Hamas, Issuing White Paper Entitled "It Would Suck So, So Bad If Hamas Kidnapped Jimmy Carter, I Mean Garsh, We Just Don't Know What the Hell We'd Do."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:06 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Which means that (1) you can read my awful blog; (2) I can add more sucky entries to my awful blog; and (3) if I can remember what they were, I can add all the juicy items I wanted to post this afternoon.

In case I do not get around to this, please note that they were brilliant posts: pithy observations, scintillating links. Trenchant analyses. All flirting—nay, petting heavily—with cliché. All worthy of Pulitzer Prizes/Instalanches.

Thank you, Pixy, for rescuing us once more. Even if it's only people on the Big Important Sites (e.g., Ace and Rusty) who get these personal postings from The Australian Rock Star Himself. It's because they're male, right? Or because they have actual readers? Maybe it's because they know more Latin than I do.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I almost forgot what day it is.

I'm off to buy a gun.

h/t: Double-Plus Undead

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . going on in universities. A lot of this conflict could be avoided if we simply made the professors use semaphore, and required that students who participate in class discussions do so in the form of haiku.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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He's such a typical partially-white person.

(Sandra Loh has taken to calling her family "whiteish," in the context of being middle class; I think we should simply use "middle class," but that's me. Of course, what she really meant was "nonblack," modern America having been magically distilled into two main ethnic groups.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . tall women.

I know it causes the tallish (and even the medium-ish) women I know a great deal of pain that they aren't "petite."

On the other hand, they probably haven't been mugged as much as I have, and they probably don't need help reaching things on high shelves. Furthermore, if their sisters-in-law decide that a good place for the microwave is on top of the refrigerator, they don't need to drag a chair into the kitchen just to heat up some coffee.

I just make the tall person stand on the penultimate step on a staircase, though I don't know how that would come off from a man who happened to be the shorter party.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Juliette solves the conundrum of Obama linking religion (which he supposedly likes, and "has") to guns and racism (which he supposedly deplores, except when he's campaigning and has to pretend to support the Second Amendment).

In Obama’s mind, the religion clung to by the “average poor white Pennsylvanian” is BLT’s [Black Liberation Theology's] demonic “white” Church. The "white" Church is the tool of oppression for all—including poor whites—and should be shaken off just like other social maladies. Just like anti-immigration (sic) and racism. One will note that, in the defense of the earlier remarks, Obama still does not say anything objectively positive about the religion adhered to by the average rural white Pennsylvanian. What he actually says is that government should answer their prayers.

She concludes: "Never forget where this guy is coming from."

Yup.

See Karl's thoughts here, particularly on the fact that Andrew Sullivan and William Kristol are "talking past each other" on the Obama "bitterness" remarks.

Via . . . everyone, but I first saw Juliette linked today at Insty's place, where he's got an interesting little roundup going on his own, including this quotation from a Melissa Henneberger article in Slate:

When I went back there, and visited similar small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, one thing I heard over and over—from registered Democrats!—was that their national party leaders were elitists who couldn't seem to relate to their struggles.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now, if Obama is sticking by the essence of what he said out of stubbornness or arrogance, that's one kind of problem. But if he really doesn't see why this could be a game-changer, that's worse.

Hey: I like the audacity. "Vote for me, you provincial idiots!"

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Woah! I just had a déjè vu moment! When you eliminate the duplicate post, this will look silly.

Posted by: Darrell at April 14, 2008 07:21 PM (ODkYj)

2 What duplicate post, pray tell?

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 14, 2008 09:31 PM (Hgnbj)

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