Well, bad first line contests happen "out there", maybe you should run one?

casting is materials science :-p

That's what I get for trying to make a worm poop joke...

On Aafia Siddiqui

There is more to the story. In this case the New York Times has omitted details that give a much different picture of the woman. Information from the blogs I read limn a woman with emotional problems caught up in a world of deceit. She shot at the U.S. agents in the hope she would be killed in return. Suicide by special agent in other words.

The story also reminds us of one thing the FBI would much rather we did not know. Namely, the Federal Bureau of Investigation are not all that hot about finding and keeping track of people. You really want to it's easy to disappear, even in America. In Afghanistan it is much easier. Aafia Siddiqui disappeared because she wanted to, and didn't show up again until fairly recently. Her condition is largely due to her wounds, suffered in her capture. With her emotional state and possible paranoia contributing some of it. Before then? She was underground. It took years of hard work for the United States to find and capture her. Years in which she apparently deteriorated mentally and physically. For all I know her allies may have betrayed her, recognizing the threat she posed to them as her mind disintegrated.

You can tell a lot about people by the way they use their enemies. You can tell even more by the way they use their friends.

That's pretty much the official narrative, yes. What do you think of the possibility that she'd been confined at Bagram the entire time? A woman prisoner certainly has been, that's well documented.

I don't know the facts of this case, and doubt I ever will. My point was that we can even reasonably consider that she'd been confined for five years under torture is a profound betrayal of American principles. And after five years of confinement and torture, she certainly would have been as unstable as you describe.

Could she have been at Bagram all this time? She could, but, I'd have to say it's a vanishingly small chance.

I don't doubt some of the prisoners held there did see a woman. But was she a prisoner as some have concluded? She could have been someone stationed at Bagram, or employee of an outside contractor. As far as we know, she could've been a local hired to work there.

Where Siddiqui's condition is concerned when they announced her capture; a hard life on the run, combined with a deterioration in her ability to take care of herself as her emotional state progressed, plus the wounds inflicted during her capture go a long way towards explaining them. Most anybody with severe injuries would not only throw their mother under the bus, they'd drive the damn bus in order to get relief. Pain changes you. When you weren't stable to begin with, it will warp you.

She could be the way she is for any number of reasons. A genetic cause, all the way to self-inflicted. For mood and thinking can be changed by what one consistently feels about things, and what one thinks about.

Speaking of troubled women, Tim Blair posted about columnist Catherine Deveney, who appears to be having a breakdown, and may be going into a severe depressive stage because of Bipolar Disorder. Ms. Deveney has been overhead talking about resisting the urge to take the Valium she carries on her.

I mention Catherine alongside Aafia because mental illness is a horrible thing to have, and needs special care and consideration.

You know, I haven't heard much about Aafia Siddiqui since her capture. She might be under psychiatric care now, and the next we hear about her is that she has been found not competent to stand trial. And we all know the sort of speculation that announcement could inspire.

The writer for Sally Forth has a pretty edgy sense of humor.

Here is his website, which has the rest of Ted's opening lines.

http://francescoexplainsitall.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-06-09T08%3A41%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=7

Thank you for linking to Francesco Explains It All. This discovery made my morning.

Let's see if I got this one right.

This is another link you'll enjoy. This guy crits everything from "Mark Trail" to "Herb and Jamal", with special hate for "For Better Or For Worse."

http://joshreads.com/

The Comics Curmudgeon is great. I like what he has to say about the comics. Sadly, I'm partially in agreement about FBOFW, although on the whole I like following the Patterson's lives. The whole idea that the grandfather dies on the wedding day is unappealing to me, however my father-in-law's cousin died at his daughter's wedding reception (quite literally, I gather he was pronounced dead in the reception hall). There's an old fiction-writers' saying that you can never be too mean to your protagonist.

Thanks for the link.

Are you familiar with this comic blog?
Comic Riffs by Michael Cavna
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/

He is described as a "recovering cartoonist." Not much acid bite to his comments, he had a few good zingers as well as a couple of interesting interviews.

I do like both of the links you sent me.

Thanks.

Dude, you buried the lead. This should have been link #1.

Political stories are always at the bottom of my links...sometimes that's not so smart, I guess.

If you want more fun first lines, check out this year's winners of the the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

I like the Sci-Fi RunnerUp and Dishonorable Mention.

- yeff

I dunno, the one about the gnomes actually sounds like something worth exploring...