When you're flooded...

...you'll take it and like it.

Lead off a post with Bogie's pic...

Throw in bourbon, babes and a little Chandleresque chin music...

And theme it around that cheap gunsel Bush, a two-bit bunko artist that thinks a gat in the hand means the world by the tail, and I'm hooked.

I'm weak that way.

I've been helping out with the relief effort here (again, nothing worthy of note, although I do believe my arm might have shown up waaaay in the fuzzy background on the news one night.) It's very rewarding, and the people I've met who put it all together have been dynamite. Almost all they ever hear about their profession (and make no mistake, they are professionals) is what bungling, surly, lazy blobs government workers are, and yet every one of them has said that this very thing -- helping out people who desperately need it -- is exactly why they went into public service.

Public Service.

From the "Rich Man's War/ Poor Man's Fight" Iraqi debacle flogged with every adjective in their arsenal by the sniveling, trust-fund Chickenhawk Keyboard Commandos, to staffing a department charged with saving Americans from disaster with grown-older-but-no-wiser sniveling, trust-fund fratboy wax-mannequin losers, to letting George Bush -- the distilled essence of his Caste -- the Dauphin of the Confederacy of Arrogant Dunces -- run a great, flawed nation into ruin, we now see with stark clarity the price a nation pays for allowing the idea of Public Service to become a pejorative and the political punching bag for indolent fascists.

But on the ground, helping out, are people that have nonetheless chosen Public Service as the mission of their lives, and living under a regime that has expended every effort to mock, vilify and defund them for the last 20 years has taken a toll. Now they are in their element and for all the heartbreaking stories they hear every day, they are also delighting in the chance to help their fellow man.

But it's also emotionally exhausting, and everybody involved -- even at the periphery -- could use a lot of sleep and little laugh.

So how am I not going to suggest strolling over to Jurassicpork's house for a bit of True Crime reading, with extra pulp.

And now to rest, because down these mean blogs a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid nor...somethingsomething...

Cripes, I'm tired.

Jeez, you're still here?

What do you want me to do, count three like they do in the movies?

That's one, Eddie.

That's two, Eddie...