But it didn't hurt.

Good. Lord. The word hawt is inadequate.

(And, thank you, David Linden. DJQ has been making me music compilations since he was in graduate school. No, wait—undergrad. I still have most of 'em, and the cassette tapes are holding up well, in every sense of the term.

"No good deed goes unpunished." Last winter after a visit with him and his fam [during which I think I might have been particularly selfish and boorish, but perhaps my lack of manners was within the normal margin], I more or less demanded that instead of waiting for my birthday, he make my next music CD right then and there, before I caught my flight back to L.A. It was ready by the time I got back from blogging in the room outside his office.

The Shivaree track was on it.

Every music collection he makes for me is my favorite, with the possible exception of all the other ones he's made for me.)

Now that I've pulled my head out of my ass long enough to see that an incompetent contractor has basically tossed his beautiful, beautiful office, let's all buy more copies of The Accidental Mind in a show of solidarity.

It turns out mine is in Arcadia. When I called my favorite San Gabriel Valley furniture/decor place to get the new condo measured for blinds, I was informed that both the women who work there had been "enjoying" my book.

"Um. I went back and got that after I left it behind, right?" I started to feel a bit queasy, then.

"No. You said you would, but then you didn't. So we've been reading it, and we really like it."

"Cool. A friend of mine wrote it. But you're sure I left my copy at your store? 'Cause I thought I'd gotten it, but my husband had just put it into storage, with all the rest of my valuable . . . um . . . stuff."

"It's here. I'm looking at it right now; we put your name on it. But we'll give you the book back when you come in to pick out the blinds for the new place."

"Okay. That'd be . . . that'd be great."

To my credit, I didn't ask them to flip through Accidental Mind and figure out whether short-term memory problems in one's 40s are predictive of future senility. I wouldn't have remembered the answer, in any event.

UPDATE 2: To me, the photos suggest that David's tiny antique tea table probably survived the disaster, along with his fetching little cranium.

Is it possible that the Johns Hopkins contractors need to spend more time watching Modern Marvels? Just a thought: I must go, before I get upset again. I'm actually pretty mad, and this thing happened, like, a week ago or something.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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. . . takes on the Canadian Human Rights Commission, along with infamous anti-speech agitator Warman.

Go. Now. S'good.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Goddamn.

If you need me, I'll be drinking myself into a stupor.

Mother England: must we re-fight the Revolutionary War all over again? I thought we were in a groove, here . . .

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Giant pillbugs.

I hope McCain has some kind of seven-legged helpmates waiting in the wings . . . Six-legged, though, would be fine. And eight-legged would be excellent. (Yeah: I still let spiders live, even in this small home. Of course, I usually only let one reside in each room, and we have fewer rooms here. And I don't let them onto my computer or my easy chair, because I don't really want 'em crawling on me. But they do eat insects, and they are better than birds or gekkos.

I did have a girlfriend once who kept house gekkos in her little Santa Monica apartment; it was rather awful, because (1) it is unusual when I don't get up to pee in the middle of the night, but at her apartment I had to screw my courage to the sticking point, and carefully step over any shadows that might be hiding lizards. Also: (2) I'm not much of a night person, and being awakened at dawn by lizards who made human-sounding cries was not my idea of a good time.

But she was the brightest, oddest creature I've ever bedded, so there's that. Totally worth it, in case you were wondering.)

(I got the pillbug thing from Memeorandum. D'jou?)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:25 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 It's probably a felony of some kind, or soon will be, to joke about a major presidential candidate being eaten by giant pill bugs. Still pretty funny, though! I think, in fact, Hillary may well be a giant pill bug. She'll just pry off her latex mask (like the bad guy on Scooby Doo) and reveal these chittering antennae, and then she'll scoop him up with her reticulated legs and pop him in her mandibles. If I had a dollar for every time that shit happened to me.... I could buy real estate in southern california!

Posted by: Rin at June 02, 2008 01:42 PM (bSHZa)

2 But she was the brightest, oddest creature I've ever bedded, so there's that. Totally worth it, in case you were wondering.) Erm. Ok. 2 things. 3, really. Altho 1's not really related to this post. 1. You've been infested with spam on another of your posts. But since you get notification via email of every comment, you probably know this already. 2. Is that supposed to be an emoticon, or are you missing an opening bracket somewhere, or am I reading erroneously? 3. Seriously. I mean, seriously. I'm serious. Not joking, iow. But... 3a(1). When you say 'her' apartment shouldn't that be 'our'? --> 3a(2). When you say bedded, did you mean boinked? --> 3b. Hence, would you say you were bi or just a practicing LUG? (and tellin' your mama that you weren't a lez woulda been a lie, unless'n you said under yer breath '...yet, and not with her') --> 3c. What does AtH think about that, or does he too have some skeletons in his closet? (No, really, a Japanese woman, for instance) --> 3d. When you say brightest and oddest creature wuz u referin' to the girlfriend, or the geckos? I think I'll stop this line of questioning now. Actually, I'll ask one more. Why the adjective 'oddest'? I gotta tellya, it ain't the first one to pop into my head. Kinky, adventurous, funky, even 'seriously f*ed up shit, man,' but odd? Uh-uh. Even if I wuz boinkin' my own sex, which I won't unless it was maybe Patricia Araujo or Vanity or somethin' and even then... The shit you think up the hour before Bible Study... oh well, I never pretended to be very righteous of my own self. yeah, I think I'll stop now. Maybe take my meds. Up the dosage. I'm safe, really, honest, I swear...

Posted by: Gregory at June 03, 2008 02:17 AM (cjwF0)

3 Spam. Nice in the can, or in the mouth - not so nice on teh intartubes... Ack! I did read erroneously! Um, okay, [/steps back warily], yeah, can I just hope that you did all the Sarge Wild and Corp Wooly stuff back before you and she were Christians... I, uh, have unorthodox sexual tastes, too, (did I mention my sister? No? Maybe I won't then) so, you know. But oh boy, do I hope that I never give in to 'em. I've got enough stuff to try and, er, justify, without loading that on my plate too. It is a good thing that Christ paid for our sins, isn't it, so that we don't have to carry that burden? PS Something I wanted to add and forgot - but what's with the hate of geckos? They power Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox... They also eat a whole lotta insects you'd hate even more. Mozzies and roaches come to mind, and so do flies. We call'em house lizards over here, cause they everywhere. In restaurants, too.

Posted by: Gregory at June 04, 2008 04:51 PM (cjwF0)

4 Are you kidding? I love Mongols! They're hot hot hot hot hot! Check this out. (And you might like my Cambodia/Vietnam pix as well). linky 1 Indian Indians are caucasians. Aryans, at any rate. Not their fault they're Cajun-style caucasians Aside from the fact that we eat large quantities of pork, and observant-type Orthodox Jews don't, we're practically cousins! Not sure what Thomas Sowell said about us, but he's all right by my book. - pretty much despised everywhere outside our homeland (No dogs and Chinese allowed in) - money-minded and born entrepreneurs - traditionally worshipped One True God (YHWH for the Jews, Shang Ti for the Chinese, and yes, He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) - strong family, education and work ethic See, I think God was doing a study in contrast. We're the most populous people around; the Jews, not so much. Pretty much no neighbours threatens China; yeah, you know what they doing to Israel. Yet they were God's Chosen people, and somehow, they persist and survive millennium upon millennium.

Posted by: Gregory at June 06, 2008 01:32 AM (cjwF0)

5 Let's get back to your sister.

Posted by: Darrell at June 06, 2008 08:22 AM (cpLtJ)

6 Bad Darrell. Bad. Bad!

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 06, 2008 06:22 PM (1q/ac)

7 Dear Darrell; Go check out my linky, and my public albums, of which the one with the family portrait is annotated. Then come back and tell me my sister isn't reasonably hot. And then consider my father has about 14 siblings, and some of my 50++ cousins are female, and some half of those are hotter. Why don't we talk about about your sister also?

Posted by: Gregory at June 06, 2008 06:34 PM (/ac8X)

8 I would, but I don't have a sister. I was deprived as a child. Still am as an adult. I was referring to the part when you said "I, uh, have unorthodox sexual tastes, too, (did I mention my sister? No? Maybe I won't then) so, you know." Things like that catch my eye. And no disrespect is intended. I saw your album and all the girls look hot. If you are in engineering, you have NO right to be with half that number of girls in your lifetime! What the hell! AND NONE OF THEM ARE INFLATABLE! What the hell again! When I went to college there were only three girls in the whole program and, I think, one of them was inflatable. What is wrong with girls in the US? What is wrong with knowing that 2 to the 31st power is 2147483648 ??? Who can't name the ship that the original settlers arrived on in "Forbidden Planet"? You mean you don't know 1000 words in conversational Klingon? I got a letter from one of your countrymen today, Richard C.W Choong (General Manager Internal Audit) Maybank Malaysia. He says I may have $10.5 million US coming my way. Perhaps you can collect it for me and I'll give you a 10% handling fee? I just know it is on the up and up.

Posted by: Darrell at June 06, 2008 07:47 PM (8r1rE)

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Is it rude to ride around Glendale, with its high Armenian population, with the They Might Be Giants song "Constantinople" blaring from one's car?

(I swear: I don't have any idea how Tiny Toons got in that vid: I had no idea that they'd done a version of That Byzantium Song—much less one that featured Elmyra!

But I have to go, because I'm sailing for Byzantium now: I hear it has a lot of stuff in it that's made of gold. I likes me some gold.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It should be a large-ish one: at least as big as the old one, which was enormous by my standards but quite modest among entertainment-industry people. As I recall, these things are measured on the diagonal, which would have made ours 4-5 feet. I think.

Any advice you have would be appreciated.

Naturally, we'd like a flat-ish screen, and HD capability. But we won't be hanging the thing on a wall: rather, we'll probably just place it on the entertainment center I got to hold my LP collection. It's shallow, but I like it. If we keep it, I'll probably have to get holes drilled in the back, and get one of those thingies installed: those doohickeys that allow a flat-screen to be angled in one direction or another. (If we have to get a new entertainment center, that's okay. Though I'd rather not. A the H likes glass, but A the H hasn't thought about how difficult it is to keep glass clean.)

We're retaining the old television so we can keep our VHS tapes, and so I can get back in the habit of watching television in one of the other rooms. Not the kitchen, though: we have to get the Charter Charmers [these guys are really, really nice--A the H is ready to write a letter to The Powers That Be about how great their techs are] back in order for me to watch TV in the kitchen. So it's the office, or the bedroom.

As you can imagine, with no media room and only one den/guest bedroom, we're going to have to coordinate much more closely about hours from now on. The touchy time is late at night before A the H has gone to bed--but while I'm starting to groove in "vampire" mode. If A the H is watching the big TV, I'll be in the den. If he's watching the small TV, I'll be in the living room. It's a matter of me not having to relocate when he goes to bed, because I'll be trying to unwind, too: it's just that I take 3-10 hours to do it.

But, yeah: when we're rich again, I might get a small telly for the kitchen so I can watch movies while I make soup or bread or whatever.

I'm starting to really like this place. Except for the piercing screams of children and the occasional yelling down on the street—or engine-gunning—by the local youts, it's not a lot more noisy. And there aren't all those fucking birds around here: just pigeons, and (yes!) hummingbirds.

I figure if I want to see birds, I can go hiking in Brand Park. Or I can go walk my old loop in Flintridge—it was 3.3 miles, and it took me an hour in my prime. It was more like an hour twenty, an hour fifteen, in the last year, but that route contains ungodly changes in elevation. If I don't stop off to check out any of the views, I can do it in an hour and ten. Not bad, considering.

Now I can start the loop any place I like, so I do the hike up front, rather than ending on the steepest climb, after I'm exhausted. Like hiking to the Rio Grande: expend all your energy up-front, going downhill. That way you can just fucking die on your way back to the trailhead, and as you pass the rangers, your face beet-red, your spouse can come up and give them a hearty "hi," so they don't attempt to try their first-aid skills on you.

Where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: advice on TVs, and on either repelling or attracting birds, depending on my mood. Please send. Thank you.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:37 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I'm so glad we went with Charter for our entertainment/internet/phone service package, rather than AT&T. For ten to twenty dollars more a month, we:

• don't have to put up with an awful dish taking up space on our balcony;

• deal with the nicest installation/customer support people out there (quite a transformation from eleven years ago!);

• could pull out all the ugly extra cables around here, and cover up the ugly extra outlets in the wall;

• are getting a much faster internet connection.

Of course, I haven't attempted to actually watch TV here, yet. I must get around to that soon.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:57 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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When it comes to the economy, 47% of voters trust John McCain more than Barack Obama. Obama is trusted more by 41%. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that, when it comes to the War in Iraq, McCain is trusted more by 49% of voters. Obama is preferred by 37%. McCain has an even larger edge—53% to 31%--on the broader topic of National Security. These results are little changed from a month ago.

Obama enjoys a 43% to 39% advantage when it comes to government ethics and reducing corruption. McCain has a 44% to 38% advantage on taxes.

It is interesting to note that while McCain has the edge over Obama on these issues, Democrats are trusted more than Republicans on a generic basis. This ability of McCain to outperform the party label helps explain why he is competitive with the Democrats in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking poll.

It'll be an interesting fall, in at least one of the senses of "interesting."

h/t: Insty, who notes:

a lot of Republicans don't like McCain, but it seems clear that the GOP primary process nominated the one candidate with a decent chance of winning in November. If Democrats respond to this year's primary debacle by revising their procedures, they should probably conside adopting a winner-take-all primary, too. Of course, that approach on the Dem side would have produced a Hillary nomination. . . .

Yup. But she's the stronger candidate.

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