Did Google Change Its Formula?

My search traffic has been up for weeks, but now it's increasing even more. Along with a handful of other bloggers, I'm noticing an overall increase, and an increase in traffic from Google images as well.

Anyone know what gives?

Out of Action, Tonight.

I'm working on my motive, and doing character sketches. Sorry! But my deadline is a scary one, so blogging and housework are the first things to go. Be thankful you don't live with me.

My sidebar is your friend, and with any luck I'll be back later tonight, or first thing in the morning. After all, I still have some writing to do on Senator McCain.

Re-Reading David Linden's Book.

You should, too.

Fortunately, he's gotten rid of the dreadful British/scientific style punctuation the manuscript sported. Or, rather, his copyeditor has.

I hadn't remembered quite so much science in the first chapter, but a bit of that is to be expected, and I know there's a lot of juicy stuff about sex later on. The volume could, however, use more dialogue. Or perhaps a dismembered corpse: you can never go wrong with dead bodies.

Goodnight, then.

Off I go to read. When you speak of me, speak of one who blogged not wisely, but too well.

"Yeah, I Know," I Say. "Too Dialogue-Heavy."

"No, this section is fine," Bridget tells me. "But we need to know more about these people before we find the body."

"I can do that," I reply.

"Um, what do these people do for a living?" Maria pipes up. "I mean, they seem to spend a lot of time drinking coffee and finding corpses."

"Well," I answer, slowly, "I could give them jobs, of course. But that might cut into the time they have for solving crimes."

"If you want them to be independently wealthy, there are ways to accomplish that," Fred points out.

"Hell, no. I don't want them to sustain that kind of damage," I respond. "Fine. I'll get 'em jobs."

These stupid people in writer's group and their un-fucking-reasonable demands . . .

Yeah. Another Day from Twelve-Step Hell.

I found out on Friday night that I truly was expected to show up at yet another fundraiser today, and man the literature booth. And since it fell under the rubric of my paid functions, I felt that I should do it.

So I got through the day, participated on my panel, and billed the organization for the rest of the time I spent on the event. Next year, I'll make sure they make a decision much further in advance about how they want to handle this.

This year, I said some smart-sounding bullshit, sold some literature, and got through the day without either bursting into tears or cussing anyone out.

This is not, by the way, about my being some sort of victim in any sense. It is about my being a complete nut.

There's a difference.

How Come

. . .we never talk about transexualism?

It's important, I think. Scripture says not one word about it, of course.

Thoughts?

John McCain: Branching Out Beyond Defense

As usual, McCain was great today on the Bloggers' Conference Call. We got a bit beyond Iraq, which had been the focus of the first Call I participated in.

I like the fact that he feels the GOP has to get California back in play, and/or at least actively campaign there. He's right: not communicating here only perpetuates the problem. He maintains that he can make a difference here, that he can talk to us as a fellow Westerner. Maybe. The problem is, he's never done that well with libertarians, and most of us who fall right-of-center here have strong libertarian leanings. We'll see how it goes.

It was nice to see him discuss domestic issues such as tax reform, pork spending, revamping Social Security and Medicare, at the same time he's as well-versed in military matters as he ever was.

More later.

Senator McCain: The Announcement, The Interview

Much as one doesn't want to like Senator McCain, the politician (for we all love John McCain, the hero—and that's as it should be), sometimes it's impossible not to. I know that a lot of us have resistance to McCain's candidacy for two very good reasons:

1) McCain-Feingold;
2) the mainstream media's lionizing him as a maverick.

But the media no longer regard him as their darling; they no longer need him as a counter-balance to Bush. And he is an educated voice standing up for the necessity of finishing the action in Iraq properly, rather than abandoning good people to repression and mass murder, like we did with—say—the Vietnamese and the Cambodians.

He is also willing to educate the public about how to do what is required to win, and that makes him, frankly, a bit seductive. It's no secret that the major failure on the part of the Bush Administration in the conduct of this war has been on the public relations side. There is plenty to "sell" in terms of standing up to tyranny and making an example of one country, so others in the region will understand that the U.S. is still capable of playing for keeps. But neither Bush nor anyone on his team has really been out there, making that case, over the past four years.

For all my quarrels with him, I think McCain would.

Anyway, I'll be on a conference call with him tomorrow on the heels of his recent official announcement. (Yeah, like that was news. I'm sorry: Fred Thompson announcing a candidacy will be news. McCain announcing his? Dog bites man.) I'll be sharing my impressions briefly, before I head out to work, and then in a more extensive form later in the weekend.

[Copyeditor alert: I know that title case doesn't require the definite articles in my headline to be capitalized. But it just didn't look right the other way. I claim poetic license, and the fact that this is my blog. It turns out that the house style of Little Miss Attila requires capitalization of "the" when its editrix so mandates.]

Safari Problem Solved!

I still had some of the old Blogads code lingering in my template. I thought I had removed the cancer, but—alas!—more surgery was required.

The person responsible was harshly reprimanded, and then treated to a dirty martini. (Kind of a good cop/bad cop approach to behavior mod.)

I'm Writing Tonight.

I'm polishing chapter 2 of book 2 to present at writer's group tomorrow night. And I have to put some time in for a client tomorrow, so the work has to be done now—which is really my least favorite word.

Go read Hackbarth's meditation on the difference between mental illness and evil as it relates to Seung Hui Cho.

Or check out Goldstein's thoughts on why Rosie O'Donnell makes Democrats nervous, at the same time they just can't take their eyes off of her.

London Calling.

Rusty has the scoop on six radical Islamists arrested for charges of incitement.

I know that sometimes law enforcement/intel on both sides of the Atlantic prefers to monitor those it could arrest for "incitement," so they can get to bigger fish, but I hope they cooperate with each other, and remember that combatting terrorism is not like fighting organized crime: the "broken window" principle requires that at some point these people be brought in. Threats against people and property are crimes here, and they should most certainly be crimes in a country that has essentially decided there is no universal right to self-defense.

(As usual, I skimmed the comments section for a moment. Alas, Rusty's comments are still as chock-full of the "all Muslims are terrorists" sentiment as the generally are with the "homosexuals are out to destroy the family" nonsense. And, as usual, I fear that he comes awfully close to endorsing both positions in his posts. But he is a good source of information on Islamic terrorism, and despite his myopia in those arenas, a genuinely nice guy.)

Just in the Nick of Time!

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It looks like my ship has finally come in.

Crittenden

On the current Democratic Party train wreck:

Reid: Bush [is] in denial. This from a member of the Democratic leadership that is pushing a symbolic retreat plan he knows won’t survive a veto, simply to make the petulant point.

More on what he calls "the non-plan that is going nowhere":

Troop withdrawal begins Oct. 1, with the bulk of the troops out by April 1. It sets strict standards for resting, training and equipping troops, though it’s not clear why Democrats want to waste money on that, if they don’t plan to use them. It also sets benchmarks for the Iraqi government to reach on dealing with militias, re-Baathify, share oil revenues, etc. Not clear what incentive the Iraqi government has to meet any benchmarks, because all that is going out the window with the current government once open season starts, and any Iraqi official with half a brain is going to be actively working on an individual survival plan.

Meanwhile, my mother continues to insist that we should have "finished Afghanistan," before "starting in Iraq." Just like we finished Germany, before starting in Japan. Oh, wait . . .

Okay. Sheryl Crow.

Bidinotto has a nice roundup on the Crow Crap issue. (I shouldn't say that, perhaps: I do like her music. But when will singers, actors, and directors realize that when we like their creative work, it doesn't mean we find their ill-informed policy prescriptions less annoying—it means we find them more annoying.)

As for Sheryl herself, I would like to point out that there are important issues, and very important issues. I can argue all day with my lefty friends about whether the Important Issue of the day is the environment, or women's rights and classical liberalism being under threat from radical Islam. But the Very Important Issue of the day is oral sex, and Sheryl Crow is not doing her part in that arena . . .

Okay. Seriously, I do believe that the single square of toilet paper proposal was a joke. It does seem, however, that both Sheryl Crow and Laurie David have are guilty of the same sort of slipperiness that Jim Treacher once busted Jon Stewart on: now I'm serious, now it's a joke.

"If I want to preach, it's serious. If you call me on my intellectual shortfalls, it's a joke." Or, in the cases of Crow and David, we will preach at you. But if you challenge us on the science, we'll say "blah blah blah" and refuse to engage (David), or make silly jokes about toilet paper (Crow).

And if you point out the disconnect between the way we live, we'll explain that it's okay, because we're "doing our part," despite our music tours (Crow) and our use of private jets to support a bicoastal lifestyle (David).

I Don't Know About This Quiz.

It kept asking me either/or questions. Some of them were obvious: after all, of course geometry is better than algebra, and of course it's better to navigate via intuition than to actually get out a map (cheater, cheater!).

But "do I have my best ideas sitting up, or lying down?" Well, which kinds of ideas, for crying out loud? I do editing and expository writing sitting up; I do better fiction writing when I'm lying down (preferably with my eyes closed, so I can't read what I write as I go along).

It was ultimately a rather stupid test: its designers wanted to conflate my intellect with my personality. They are, of course, different things.

You Are 40% Left Brained, 60% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Via Virginia Postrel, who is apparently way more logical than I.

So. What Does Larry See in Her?

Laurie David is all over the news.

Wow. Where does one start with this? She concedes that she's "confrontational" with respect to others' eco-crimes, but when presented with her own, she explains it all away: "Everybody has to strike their own balance between how they want to live and how they can reduce their impact." Everybody, that is, who can afford to drive a hybrid.

Double Trouble Is Over.

As far as I'm concerned, the day was a success: I scaled back on my emotional commitment, and got through the entire event without going off on anyone.

B. is concerned that our group didn't appear to make as much money this year as we did last year. I don't know whether that's true, though: when one takes into account the fact that neither he nor I subsidized the event in the way we did last year, I think we did just fine. After all, part of the point of throwing this annual party is to be of service, and show people—especially "creative types"—how to run businesses in a sober fashion.

I. didn't follow through on her commitment to handle the food, so it would have been an utter disaster if I'd counted on her—or if I'd been more than my requisite 15 minutes late. As it was, there were just enough of us to make the event successful. We could have used one more pair of hands (though not the perfectionistic gal with the catering background), yet we pulled it off.

And now I'm blogging and dozing and getting ready to go back to work tomorrow.

Life works better when one follows through, but doesn't over-invest. I've been telling people all about that for several years now, so it's rather delightful to learn how to do it myself.

The Volunteerism Weekend From Hell.

Well, I got through the day yesterday without freaking out: mostly, I did it by imposing on my mother. I crashed at her place on Friday night so I could get some stuff done in the office where I do my nonprofit work, and she fed me oatmeal and tea on Saturday morning before I washed up, changed clothes, and went in for Meeting Day.

I knew I'd be receiving some [well-deserved] criticism at the Board for some of the paid work I do for them, but I also came under [undeserved] fire afterward for the volunteer side of my activities there. And I handled both just fine. In the first case, I admitted to the problem ("yes, I do have a tendancy to misplace receipts—which I must stop doing"), and in the second case, I was feisty-but-ultimately-accommodating ("I'm sorry you don't find our system for doing this convenient, but we are a volunteer-run organization. Here's my contact information; sometimes we can very likely find a way to make things easier for you, but I'm not promising anything.")

Today will be even harder, but B. removed me from the food committee and instead had me negotiate a better rate for the room we'll be using. So my role in setting up today's event will be more on the support side, which suits me fine. I haul the supplies in. I help with the setup. I put out fires. I avoid taking control, and I don't let myself get so wound up that I snap at anyone.

(Last year, I didn't go off until the event was over, and it was because two cops saw me loading supplies into my car, which was parked in the handicapped zone. We exchanged eye contact, and I figured they were going to give me five minutes to finish loading the organization's stuff. But when I came back out with my arms full of supplies, they were ticketing my car. We had a rather spirited discussion in which a friend of mine tried to intervene on my behalf, and I eventually told her loudly that it was no use trying to get them to change their minds, since both cops were "assholes." Thirty years ago, that might have got me arrested. This time, I hope it gave them some pause about how they are getting along with the community they supposedly "serve.")

And there's an event next weekend, too. May can't come fast enough.

Light Blogging Today!

We're shopping for a car, and I'm behind on my pages for the Arizona mystery. See you tomorrow (or whenever)!

The house recommends: The cotillion blogroll on my sidebar.

I Guess the Supreme Court

. . . has now taken possession of my uterus.

I'll send them codeine to go along with it for the cramps that used to occur monthly, and now take place whenever my body decides on them . . .

I would have been down with those who insisted that there be an exception for the preservation of a woman's health, if I didn't know from first-hand experience that "health" is interpreted to mean "mental health," and "mental health" is generally regarded—within certain segments of the health-care community—as "not having given birth to a child one didn't plan to conceive."

Had the phrase been "physical health," I would have felt better about the insistence on including that language. As it is, Kennedy essentially invited that modification:

Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a reason to allow the disputed procedure.

"The medical uncertainty over whether the Act's prohibition creates significant health risks provides a sufficient basis to conclude ... that the Act does not impose an undue burden," Kennedy said Wednesday.

While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a patient suffering certain medical complications.

The law allows the procedure to be performed when a woman's life is in jeopardy.

This should be interesting to watch. I wonder whether it'll make a difference as a practical matter: there really are those to whom the "right" to terminate a pregnancy is as essential to human existence as oxygen and fresh water.

I do think abortion should remain nominally legal, but it's way too widespread and casually-undertaken right now. In fact, the major abuses all go the other way: young women get buffaloed into this major procedure, without any counseling about how it will affect them for the rest of their lives.

If I'd heard anyone say that when I was 20, I would have laughed and said they were merely being sentimental.

I know better now.

More From Hackbarth

. . . on just locking up the weirdos. (And, you know—why that wouldn't work.)

So. How Are My Links and Comments Working?

Right now, it appears that the Mac/Safari people are screwed on my site, whereas the Wintel/Explorer people are holding their own.

Let me know, boys and girls. Just give me system-browswer-what's working.

Thanks!

The Good News:

Democrats are primates! That means they can be educated!

Oh, Meg. Oh, My Darling.

How I love your pizazz.

How I envy you your clothes, and your face and your beautiful body. I saw you read at the UCLA Book Fair once, and realized on some level that I just wanted to be you, with your beautiful embroidered cloak and your thick black hair.

And how I forgive you your leftism, despite the fact that I don't think it's done your humor as much good as one might hope. And yet, and yet . . .

Marguerite is grieving:

I look at the shooter's expressionless face on the news and he looks so familiar, like he could be in my family. Just another one of us. But how can he be us when what he has done is so terrible? Here is where I can really envy white people because when white people do something that is inexplicably awful, so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says – “do you think it is because he is white?” There are no headlines calling him the “White shooter." There is no mention of race because there is no thought in anyone's mind that his race had anything to do with his crime.

So much attention is focused on the Asian-ness of the shooter, how the Korean community is reacting to it, South Korea's careful condolences and cautiously expressed fear that it will somehow impact the South Korean population at large.

Sweetie, you haven't even studied criminology in the way that my fuzzy-headed 70-year-old mother has, or my 54-year-old husband (who is also a comic, by the way), or . . . or the way nearly any other sentient creature has.

Take if from a short, young, homely white chick (who just happens to be a crime writer)—

If there is any industry other than "NASA engineer in the 1950s" that says "White Guy" with a capital W andG, it is the field of multiple-victim homicide. Whether expressed in serial killings or in the type of "mass murder" young Mr. Cho perpetrated at Virginia Tech, the first picture anyone get in his/her mind of a mass murderer/serial killer is that of a pale white male loner. Or, sometimes, two pale white male loners who work together. (See Columbine, or the Hillside Strangler[s].)

Sure: there have been blacks involved in this type of crime. And even Asians, though I've been told it isn't fair to count Pol Pot or Chairman Mao. And Aileen Wuornos tried to make us—the women of the world—slightly less underrepresented in the annals of multiple-victim homicide. (Bloody Mary helped there, too.)

But the undisputed champs in this particular arena of evil are pale white men.

If people discuss his Korean-ness, Margaret, it's because that factor makes it different from the norm. It's because this very disturbed young murderer doesn't fit the mold, racially. It's the "man bites dog" element in the story.

Young Mr. Cho has no more in common with you than I do with that white guy who executed people in the cafeteria in Texas, or with Ted Bundy. [Well, there is the name, Cho, but that's just the luck of the draw, and it will give you great material over the years, once you've absorbed this horrible shock.]

Evil is its own ethnicity. Count on it, Margaret. Rational white/black/brown/Asian people all over the world aren't suddenly looking at their Korean friends/neighbors/colleagues/schoolmates/vendors/clients any differently.

It's a stupid world, Baby-Doll. But not quite that stupid. Not quite.

Notorious C-H-O

So. Should we have a national "report the weirdo" hotline?

Sean: No.

Ace: Maybe.

Me: Absolutely. But I shall report myself, so as to beat the rest of you to it.

Seriously—as a creepy strange person and part-time crime writer, I don't know how far I want to go down the road of judging people on the basis of the shit they come up with for their fiction. You know?

I mean, I've got some nice landscaping in my backyard, and I'd prefer that the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department avoid digging it up just because I'm writing about disembodied, semi-decomposed corpses right now, and my last manuscript discussed the sexual side of serial killing.

But the fact that his classmates were thinking about what they would do if he showed up one day with a loaded gun suggests to me that we might need more citizen-driven threat assessment.

How that's consistent with the Bill of Rights isn't clear to me. Unfortunately.

Please discuss.

Who Are You Calling Weird?

At least I don't sit around making up quizzes that compare people to one of the five digits on a human hand, Mr. Composer-of-Blogthings!

I just, um. I just print the results:

You Are a Pinky

You are fiercely independent, and possibly downright weird. A great communicator, you can get along with almost anyone. You are kind and sympathetic. You support all your friends - and love them for who they are. You get along well with: The Ring Finger Stay away from: The Thumb

Via Caltechgirl.

Thank God for Liviu Librescu.

Hackbarth has the story of a Virginia Tech professor who gave his life to save the students in his classroom.

Details are still sketchy, but the way I got the story, he bought his students enough time to escape via an open window—and was shot and killed while he tried to block the murderer's path.

Just when I'm ready to weep at the utter blackness of human nature, I hear a story like this, and start to weep again at the good.

I was raised on bromides about how "everyone has some good and some bad in him/her." That's true enough, as far as it goes. But which part of you is stronger? Is it the beast who might kill, or the angel who could save others at the cost of your own life?

It's the part you feed.

Feed the good: Ninety-nine percent of the other stuff we worry about is bullshit.

UPDATE: Darleen weighs in on the hero of the Virginia Tech massacre.

From the Mailbag.

This person may want to identify herself, but I'll leave that up to her:

I was 12 years old when Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the Texas University clock tower and started murdering people below.

I had to refresh that old memory of grainy, black-and-white TV coverage by
doing some research, but one of the reasons he didn't kill MORE people than
he did was that not only did the local police fire upward at him, trying to
keep him down . . . but LOCAL CITIZENS ran to their homes and cars and brought back their guns and rifles and joined in on firing up at the tower.

Now we all just wait around for the SWAT teams and heaven forfend any
civilians try to help.

But the police aren't doing much either: they're too busy "securing the perimeter," as Attila the Hub points out. They don't try to get the shooter, so lives can be saved: they just seal off the campus, as they did at Columbine. Meanwhile, the students we've disarmed so V-Tech can be a nice, safe "gun-free zone" are being systematically executed. Law enforcement wasn't there. School security wasn't there. Those students who owned guns weren't permitted to have them on campus.

And we've told kids that when someone has a gun, we ought to do what they say. So when they were told to line up, that's what they did.

Ace on the Duke Prosecutorial Misconduct Case

He's especially amused by the allegation that Magnum was in mid-air when she was assaulted; it's apparently among the many very different accounts she gave of the "rape":

Absent the discovery of a complex canteliever-and-pulley-sexual-flying-harness in the bathroom—a discovery I'm quite sure Mike Nifong would have revealed—we're to believe that Crystal Gail Mangum was raped while floating around like Baron Harkonnen hopped up on Bene Gesserit meth?

Maybe she just got confused. Maybe it wasn't the Duke lacrosse team at all, but the notoriously badly-behaved Duke Acrobatic Sexual Assault & Levitating Synchronized Sodomy squad.

I've had run-ins with those guys. And let me tell you, once they've psychokinetically raised you in the air, they go at you with their meat-bats as if you were a friggin' pinata.

Honestly, I don't know how the hell those guys still manage to collect $5000 a year in student fees. I don't care how many Meals On Wheels fundraisers they hold, I'm just tired of being gang-raped by sodomaniacal Sith masters of white skin privilege.

Ah! The Hoplophobes Are Here.

Barry Saunders of Raleigh, North Carolina's, News & Observer encapsulates the "reasoning" we'll be hearing a lot of in the weeks and months ahead: that if only a big magnet in the sky could suck up all the firearms on the planet, no one ever need fear "gun violence" again. And events like those at Virginia Tech would need never happen again.

I'm too angry to send him a polite, reasoned reply. Perhaps I'll be capable of it later.

There's an e-mail address at the end of the piece: you might try sending him a note if you can compose one that will create reasonable doubt in the back of his mind about the wisdom of his views. Don't just vent. It won't do any good.

Chalk Up Another Success

. . . for Gun-Free Zones.

Does anyone have a current body count from these very-safe gun-free zones?

I mean, at least high-risk activities like sky-diving aren't generally considered critical to one's career (in the case of colleges) or mandated by law (in the case of high schools).

Our schools are turning into do-it-yourself killing fields, due to the proliferation of gun-free zones—which are, in effect, target galleries for the unhinged.

Ed Isler points out:

Pollsters have found that 85% of Americans would find it appropriate for a principal or teacher to use "a gun at school to defend the lives of students" to stop a school massacre (Research 2000 poll).

The words of Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker should be haunting him in the wake of the massacre at his school. Last year, a bill was killed in the Virginia legislature to enable those with concealed weapons permits to carry their guns at schools. Hincker said that "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

I'm sure the parents of the dead kids appreciate it very much.

UPDATE: More here, via a fairly good Instapundit roundup. I am just enraged that we disarm people, and tell them never to resist the nice guy with the weapon. Thirty-two innocent people dead. With a different public mindset—and different policies—it could have been one or maybe two, including the gunman.

Don't let the silly words of Larry Hincker die: make sure he and the other state legislators around this country know that we don't want to feel safe. We want to be safe—at least, as safe as we can be in a world that includes the criminally insane.

Change the Drinking Age.

Either that, or defer legal adulthood and voting rights to 21. We can't have it both ways.

Insty has more.

As far as I'm concerned, if you are old enough to die for your country overseas, you may drink. Period.

Discuss among yourselves: at special family dinners, at what age would you give a teenager a little wine&mdash:say, on Thanksgiving day? Sixteen? Seventeen? (Assuming that this is not a teenager with a chemical dependency history, of course. Just a normal kid, to whom you want alcohol to be as neutral an issue as possible.)

Steyn on the Imus Flap

He pretty much nails it:

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper, and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

Yeah: to me, the galling thing was the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton being consulted. Both of those guys are bigots par excellence. A friend of mine said Oprah shouldn't have weighed in, because she's so rich.

"Oprah can say whatever she likes," I told him. "Having money should not exclude one from speaking on the issues of the day. But given how freaking anti-Semitic Jackson and Sharpton are, they are acting like total hypocrites."

Like Steyn, I don't know much about Imus' work, but I do live with a comic. There's really no way of guessing what these guys might say next, and sometimes it's outrageous stuff. But 95% percent of it is ironic, and 99% is really funny.

In a sane universe, Imus would have apologized and the MSM would have moved on.

Of course, if a "botched joke" is a firing offense, it would seem that John Kerry's career should be over. No?

No. Big Media don't see it that way, because soldiers, airmen and Marines can never be victims in the sense that champion basketball players can.

Who Knew They Had New York Money People in the Middle East?

Laurence seems tense. Are all the New York Money People in Texas like that?

It seems like some people want to ethnically cleanse the planet of New York Money People, and there's tremendous overreaction to that in some quarters.

Perhaps instead of ethnically cleansing them, we could simply send them back where they came from.

Every Once in a While, I Just Get This Craving

. . . for a nice fag. I mean, really: who doesn't?

Except those who are dreaming of spotted dick. Professor Purkinje's ten-year-old daughter once asked him if "dick" meant "penis." When he confirmed that it did, she asked about the spotted dick she'd seen on English menus.

"It's a sort of custard," he explained. "If you meet a boy who really has spots on his dick, you run fast in the other direction."

The next morning he woke her up and asked her what she wanted for breakfast. "Spotted dick!" she announced.

"We're fresh out of that," informed her. "How about cereal and milk?"

Nice Little Site on Your "Favorites" List . . . .

It would be a shame if something happened to it.

My traffic took a dive over the weekend. Now, I understand that some of you were put off by the facts that:

1) I didn't really post on Saturday or Sunday;
2) The site was taking forever to load, because I still had the old Blogads script in my templates;
3) Comments weren't working;
4) There were moments that mu.nu itself appeared to be down;
5) I'm a snotty, rather irritating person.

However, you know what happens when my traffic drops too drastically: I reach for my smelling salts, and then I stop posting entirely, even during the week. Yes, I know that other bloggers—weak-willed, spineless ones—assume that "if I build it, they might come."

That doesn't fly here. My philosophy is, "if they show up, and I feel like it, I might entertain them.

So be sure to show up, and leave me lots of comments. If the mu.nu comments are down, please write your concerns on a $50 bill and mail them to me via the U.S. Postal service. Remember: the money will go to a good cause. Me.

UPDATE: Since I'm in an unsentimental mood, the text "during the wee" above has been corrected to read "during the week." I do, however, still reserve the right to blog while on the potty, and there's not a thing you can do about it. (And if you're on the phone with me and hear tinkly noises? Those must be my wind chimes.)

Hm. Job-Hunting Via One's Blog.

I don't know if I've really exploited this angle—at least, not directly. Every once in a while I do remind the world that I am G-d's gift to All Matters Editorial, and no slouch in print/electronic production, either. And, yes: I spent years designing print ads, so I have a pretty good eye.

But I'm not sure my market as a freelance copyeditor is the same segment as those who follow my blog.

Although the "getting work via one's blog" tactic worked for Laurence and any number of others, I prefer to skip the middleman and demand money outright from my readers. This seems to work the best.

Of course, maybe there's someone out there looking for a new-media-savvy, whip-smart editor who happens to be a potty mouth on her personal blog. That'll work.

Via Sean.

I've Got Your "Tortuous Interference" Right Here, Baby.

The JL Kirk Associates/King & Ballow shitstorm has been raising my hackles to the point that I've been slightly afraid to post about it: bullies make me absolutely furious.

People who use unfair tactics against those in the job market piss me off, and unjustified legal threats against those exercising their First Amendment rights do the same thing. JL Kirk Associates and King & Ballow are both behaving not just like assholes, but like idiots. I'll let you decide which is worse in either case—the assholism or the idiocy.

Over at Patterico, the smart-and-dishy Justin Levine puts it this way:

I’m late to the game here, but I wanted to join the growing numbers in the blogging community who officially declare JL Kirk Associates, Alan E. Korpady and the Nashville legal firm of King & Ballow to be complete asshats. No self respecting person who supports free speech rights should ever utilize the services of these people.

In my experience, the bigger the law firm, the less likely they are to understand how blogging culture has changed the landscape. These people don’t understand that a legal threat is far more likely to damage their client’s reputation, rather than repair it.

Ah, yes: but isn't it a beautiful thing? Before King & Ballow issued this legal threat, many people in Tennessee hadn't even heard of either them or JL Kirk Associates. Now both companies are household words: the former as a sicko scam operation, and the latter as an extraordinarily clumsy handler of media relations.

Here is the post that King & Ballow thought might constitute "tortuous interference" with the business of JL Kirk and Associates (and their reasoning is tortuous, indeed):

J.L. Kirk & Associates: My Story

Feel free to skip to the end for the juicy stuff...

JL Kirk & Associates found my husband's resume online. They contacted him a couple of weeks ago and offered their services as an 'Executive Placement Firm'. As I'm wont to do, I of course Googled them as much as possible and found very little in the way of solid information. So I've decided to write up our experiences with them for anyone else who is interested in finding out more about this particular operation.

Anyone who has been searching for a job for any length of time is well aware of the various vulnerabilities that are part of the process. There's the self-doubt, frustration and impatience, coupled with no small amount of worry. So when a job searcher gets an email that says "maybe we can help!" the relief is almost immediate.

My husband filled out an application and questionnaire, and returned it directly to the company. He then received an appointment with a counselor the following week. During that appointment the representative of JL Kirk & Associates interviewed him just as one would for a position. The afternoon after the interview he received an email that congratulated him on making it through the first step of the process. They wanted to schedule a second interview which required my presence as a Support Person/Spouse/Significant Other. When he scheduled the interview he questioned them directly about their fees and payment arrangements. He was told that if we received approval after the second interview the money would be discussed at that time.

So today was the second interview, and we drove to Maryland Farms for our 2:00 appointment. We sat in a waiting room next to a fake fireplace and a lone man in a suit. At 2:11 a matronly woman came out and announced to the other man--in front of us--that she would not be able to meet with him because he wasn't able to bring his Support Person. They had a lengthy conversation in front of us about this failed meeting and his disappointment. He asked to speak with her behind closed doors (as would I) and then five minutes later that conversation ended with him leaving dejectedly. She then turned to us (it is now 2:17pm) and greeted us warmly.

We were led into an office that appeared to have been the result of a decorating war between a loan officer and an eccentric grandmother. The prototypical office furniture clashed with a giant print of Raffael's Cherubs a reproduction oriental rug and a handmade mosaic table with a tilted top. The Husband and I were seated in two chairs across from the interviewer, who sat on a sofa next to a pile of throw pillows.

Here's where the fun starts. We heard all about how hard it is to find a job, how most jobs aren't posted online and are only found through networking. We heard about how the really good jobs are available only to those 'in the know' and can only be obtained through some wizardy combining Masonic handshakes, good dentistry and whatever pixie dust this particular company stores in the backroom. This interview seemed very carefully designed to exploit every potential vulnerability that any jobseeker feels. After about 10 minutes of conversation subtly designed to push every button we may have, the interviewer handed us a booklet that was said to be a tailored write-up of my husband's profile as a job-seeker. The interviewer left us alone in the room to digest the booklet on our own terms.

The booklet consisted of three pages of reiteration of the interview's strong-arm tactics, followed by a regurgitation of information from my husband's resume, all summarised with a couple of pages essentially saying "the job market is tough but we think you're really great and so we'll be here to help you get a job!" We skimmed the booklet and reviewed our game plan, then signaled the interviewer by opening the door.

Our game plan was to ask direct questions about the company's operation and placement record. In short, 'what exactly do you do and how well do you do it?' We had test answers in mind. In short, if we ask a direct question and get a vague answer such as "every case is different so numbers are hard to apply here" that tells us a great deal about the company's services.

Sure enough, our first question about placement rate was answered with an "every case is different, etc." style answer. Ultimately she gave us the figure of "90 to 92% placement rate" and then proceeded to tell us a long tale about a 'failed' client who showed up 37 minutes late to an interview with a CEO from an out-of-state firm. We all agreed that was indeed very unprofessional of said client and what a shame and how good to not work with him. (I of course was thinking about how we were on time for that interview which she failed to start until 17 minutes after the promised appointment time.)

She then gave us the very good news that they were prepared to accept us as clients. Then the fun began. We were told that Headhunters and Employment Agencies took fees only when a job had been secured for the job seeker, and they took their fees (generally 30-40%) from the hiring firm. But that means the job seeker gets a lower starting salary because all of their good money is going to the headhunter/employment agency. Thankfully, though, JL Kirk & Associates will be able to get my husband a job making a far larger starting salary. All we need to do is put $4,420 on a credit card today. Once we do that the entire weight of the firm of JL Kirk & Associates will begin the task of navigating treacherous shark-infested landmines of the job search on behalf of my husband. And just trust them, because they find jobs for 90% of the people who pay them to.

So that's how it works. And that's pretty much how we expected that it would work. But both the spouse and I believe that it's irrepsonsible to not pursue any lead during this time so we thought we'd go through the process. Especially since they kept so much of it in the dark from the outset.

JUICY STUFF BEGINS HERE

But I'm very angry about it. If you've made it this far, I suppose maybe you could tell that I've been supressing most of my irritation. However, irritation makes for good blog reading, and so here it is.

I get really ticked off at people trying to use fear to motivate others. I don't care if you are a fire-and-brimstone preacher, an insurance salesman, a used-car salesman or a cat burglar. Finding someone else's fear and vulnerability and using that vulnerability to somehow enrich yourself is a cheap and underhanded tactic. It's wrong and it's cruel. And I think that's exactly what this placement firm did to us today. There were times when I felt like I was sitting across from a spider. We were meant to feel at home enough to let down our guard so that the woman could then ply us gently with tales of terror. All of it was designed to make us hand over nearly $5,000 without question and without possibility of a refund.

The husband and I are not always idiots. We both expect to pay for services rendered from any provider. But we generally like to be treated as responsible adults. We had legitimate questions about the fee structure and we raised those at several points in the process. For them to not even discuss that fee structure until they had battered us emotionally for half an hour is what I would consider to be unethical. I'm sure there are other employment agencies and headhunters out there. We'll continue to look for them.

In the meantime, I would discourage anyone who stumbles across this entry from even going through the JL Kirk & Associates "interview process".

UPDATE

I should also mention that this company was formerly Bernard Haldane before it was purchased by Mr. Kirk Leipzig. One of the accusations against Bernard Haldane was that they would make an examination of the potential client's assets and charge accordingly. I find it interesting to note just how close our "fee" was to the tax refund we recently received. Hmmm. Makes you wonder, no?

The rule in business now is that whatever takes place in private may be brought into the public square if either party attempts to take unfair advantage of the other.

Be careful what you do in the dark: someone may lift the rock up at any moment.

Glenn has a few mini-roundups:

Insty on JL Kirk, #3: The Media Bloggers Association is on the case;
Insty on JL Kirk, #2
Insty on JL Kirk, #1

Now, you all have a nice day. And fight fair!

Writers' Group Night Again.

I announce that I'm working on a new mystery, and I've given myself two months to complete the initial manuscript, so I can spend most of June polishing it.

Everyone is thrilled—and even more so when the hear the first scene, in which our intrepid hero and heroine (sort of) discover the body of the victim.

"Wow. This one really moves along," remarks one of the other writers. "And the people are must less sarcastic with each other than in your other book."

"Well, they're less sarcastic because they are married to each other," I explain. "It isn't in their best interests to draw blood every time they speak. And the story is actually moving along because I decided that there was no time to go for literary merit."

Someone else chimes in: "is there any way that this time you could give them some sort of excuse for solving mysteries? I mean, could they have specialized knowledge of medicine, or be private investigators, or something like that?"

"No," I reply. "They solve murders for the same reason Nora and Nick did it. The same reason Tommy and Tuppence did it. They just do it because it's fun. Either the reader buys in, or he/she doesn't.

"That said, I promise you'll like them. They are very likeable people."

"Great," says our teacher. "Now go home, put these copies away, and don't read our notes just yet. Just keep typing out that first draft."

I suppose I ought to shut down my blog for the next six weeks, but let's see if I can get by without taking that sort of extreme measure.

Naturally, Marvelous Mike starts a list for me of golden-age mysteries set in the non-Los Angeles southwest. He tells me he's going to email it to me later in the week.

"Take your time," I respond. "I'm on a diet right now, anyway, for obvious reasons."

Tim O'Reilly . . .

can admit his mistakes. I shall have to take my hat off to him, reluctantly: there is still something about the notion of formal blogging rules that rubs me the wrong way. Who knows?—maybe it has to do with bad potty training in my early years. I shall have to take that up with my mom. ("Mom, I feel damaged. Cash, check, money order, or PayPal?—or would you like to trade steak dinners and pharmaceuticals for peace in the family? I can cope with that, you know.")

But he does have a point, inasmuch as we fall into several separate camps regarding how we handle our commenters and how we frame our arguments. It might indeed be handy to know what someone's policies are just by perusing his/her sidebar.

One sticky little issue, though: what about those of us who haven't managed to meet our own standards?

Perhaps I should ban myself from my own blog for name-calling. Wouldn't I look noble if I did that?

I've decided that falling down once in four years is entirely permissible.

After all, if there were no hypocrites, that would indicate that no one had the guts to stand up for morality at all.

I Can See That the Islamofascists

. . . have been reading their Dale Carnegie.

David Linden's Book Mentioned on Jay Leno

The Accidental Mind is getting more media attention—albeit obliquely, in this case.

But a profile in Newsweek: Fuckin' A. Furthermore, Jan Steckel is buying copies for her near and dear.

David is now Bloomsberry-in-Chief from among the Santa Monica High School Crowd of Pimentos or whatever it was that they called themselves. Unless one counts Sandra Tsing Loh. I would certainly count David Coons. That is, David B. Coons. And Nora Zungri certainly qualifies, along with Kate Sanford, Greg Turk, and Keith Goldfarb, whose icon at the top of the page appears to be a photograph of him taken by a brilliant young photographer in her 20s, using a borrowed medium-format camera.

Aw, heck. One cannot be thorough about this, but I'm starting to dig embarrassing people: I've always liked doing that sort of thing. Let's mention Eric Enderton, his lovely wife Elaine, Jon Mandel, and Mike Marinacci, as well as Janine Ellen Young.

Here endeth today's catalog, but it remains to be seen who will emerge as the group's Virginia Woolf—and who's destined to only be Maynard Keynes.

BTW, I'd actually love to see an intelligent creationist take David Linden's book on. Alas, I'm one of those "creation through evolution" milquetoasts.

Do I Really Believe in "Drafting" People for President?

Maybe. I sure tried to get Condi to run, back in the days before diplomacy made her hands so dirty, Neptune's seas may never wash them clean.

And I do believe George W. Bush got drafted; I was never convinced he really wanted the job, deep down.

But it's kind of a crappy job, if you think about it: the pay sucks, and you have to deal with Islamofascists. Plus, everyone blames you for things that have nothing to do with the Executive Branch. Including the damned economy . . . whassup with that?

On the other hand, this sure makes for good theater.

Another Completely Fictional Piece of Dialogue

"I got a new phone."

"So I read; you didn't really get the one you linked, though—did you?"

"What's wrong with the one I linked?"

"Well, it has flowers on it."

"Those aren't flowers; they are cherry blossom tattoos. Different thing entirely. The fact that they're tattoos makes them tuff."

"Joy, it's pink."

"More like a magenta color, really. It matches my iPod."

"Why didn't you just get a Hello Kitty phone?"

"Because I'm holding out for a Hello Kitty car, you woman-hater."

Misogyny in the blogosphere rears its ugly head once more.

Okay. Say You Knew Someone

. . . who was pushing 45, and had dry, sensitive skin even in her youth. This person's hands are beginning to look like she wears crocodile gloves, and her face is covered in fine lines.

But she's breaking out. As in, acne.

Whom would you blame for this phenomenon?

I'm going to go with the tried-and-true—George W. Bush—unless someone has a better idea. I'm certainly open to suggestions.

Yep. Chicks Do Rule.

Iowahawk has some cool car porn up: very hard-core stuff.

And Yet More on the Proposed Code of Conduct:

Frank J rolls his own.

Via Cal Tech Girl

(That was a Google-bomb, BTW: I don't like "CalTech Girl." I want it to be "Cal Tech Girl." Who cares how she actually wants it to appear?—she's a scientist, and she should leave these delicate issues to a competent editor. Like, um . . . me.

From now on, please link her as Cal Tech Girl. Cal Tech should be two words.)

UPDATE: I've been vetoed! Apparently, Pasadena houses the California Institute of technology. Who knew?

But someone ought to tell the CS Department, nicht?

I have been given special dispensation to use "Dudette from the Land of the Nerds," but it's small consolation, really.

Apparently, things are almost as bad at the website for the Massachusetts Institute of technology, since in display type they use "mit," and in plain text it's MIT. Of course, at no point is it styled "MIt," which would be the equivalent of "Caltech."

Not that I'm an embittered English major who never gets her way, and has never truly accepted that it's The New York Times, but Los Angeles Times (no article required). Or why I once worked (I kid you not) at Hunting Magazine. (Why the capital "M," if the word Magazine isn't part of the name?)

Goodnight; I'm off to consume huge quantities of gin.

Nope.

The proposed "Blogger's Code of Conduct" seems too restrictive to me.

I like some of my anonymous commenters.

I reserve the right to engage trolls if I feel like it.

I will, at my whim, delete any comments that don't seem to further discussion in some way.

In four years of blogging I've never really had a nice blog war, but I hear they are really good for traffic, and I reserve the right to engage in one should the spirit strike. I won't agree to contact people privately, or submit to mediation, though I've certainly done the former, and I may well accept the latter—should the situation warrant it.

In short, my policies boil down to this: I consider WWJD? (That is, What Would Joy Do?) Then I do it.

H/t: Wendy.

Tony Snow's "Get Well Card"

Via the New York Post:

The ailing White House press secretary and amateur rock musician got a special get-well gift this week: a guitar signed by Roger Daltrey (The Who), Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) and Paul Stanley (Kiss). It was presented to him by David Fishof, creator of Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp, which Snow attended last year.

H/t: The Cotillion gals (we stopped talking about sex for a moment, and I found out about this cool story).

News Flash: People Get Nasty on the Blogosphere!

And sometimes women are equated with their genitalia! (Men are, too, but somehow female genitalia is just . . . nastier than male genitalia. Because no one is supposed to talk about ours, for some reason. Because it is nasty: lather, rinse, repeat.)

Okay, sorry. But I'm starting to weary of the Cyber-Stalking/Online Sexism/Kathy Sierra "issue."

Let's lay it on the line, here:

1) Mary Katherine Ham is perfectly correct in the CNN segment: conservative women endure more verbal abuse than liberal women. And MK's performance here was a tour de force.

It's easy to see why center-right women get singled out for abuse: After all, a) sometimes conservatives are inhibited by religious convictions, so they do pull their punches sometimes; and b) there is a species of self-evidently unsexist person on the left [all women, plus men who go to pro-choice rallies] who because of her/his credentials has license to throw otherwise sexist language around as much as he/she wants.

2) As everyone with opposable thumbs/forefingers has noticed, anonymity tends to loosen people's inhibitions, and thereby fosters assholism of every variety.

However:

3) Complaining about verbal abuse of female bloggers is the online equivalent of bemoaning the fact that women are the victims of so many serial killings. Guess what? Some men really, really hate women. That's unlikely to change—at least, not in the next few weeks. Even if I hold my breath.

I feel sorry for the haters: they had mean mommies.

4) At the end of the day, I don't care.

If it's threatening, report it. If it isn't, ignore it or delete it. As RightGirl remarked, "as much as I sympathize with her, it seems to me that all Kathy Sierra has succeeded in doing is making us all out to be a bunch of weak wallflowers."

There is something to be said for that point of view. Sticks, stone, and .45 Government Models will break my bones, but calling me a whore is just uncreative. Frankly, it makes you look bad, Bro.

UPDATE: Hackbarth has a mini-roundup on the proposed "Blogospheric Code of Conduct."