Every once in a while, I get bitten by the envy bug about the hit statistics (and ad fees and public appearances and articles published) by some of the big-name bloggers. Gee, I think to myself, all I have to do, really, is what they do. Write emotionless, dry, sometimes-fact-based opinion pieces (while also toeing the conservative or liberal line, depending on whom you want to emulate). I have the talent. I have the discipline: I edited my college paper and have published a few magazine pieces.

But y’know, every time I think of trying to cut out the emotion and snark in my posts, I realize that I don’t want to cut out the emotion and snark. I know it costs me Instalinks. Glenn Reynolds likes to link to dry, emotionless analyses of topical issues. He particularly likes lawyers, which is not surprising, what with his being a lawyer who writes — you guessed it — dry, emotionless pieces about topical issues.

And on the flip side, I could change over to being wholly emotional and over the top, like some bloggers who I stopped reading long ago because, well, they bore me. You can only read so many rants before you get utterly tired of the person ranting. It’s predictable. It’s boring. It’s the reason that I don’t listen to talk radio except during the drive to and from work, and then, rarely. I mean, how much outrage can you take?

Of course, sometimes that happens to me right here, which is why we then get kitty pictures, Random Thoughts, and posts about dishwashers. When I can’t take reading yet another article about Jew-hatred, I make the subject go away for a while. I suppose it’s a way of recharging my batteries.

A friend of mine thinks that I’d make a great public school teacher, because I really like teaching Hebrew School, and I’m very good at it. The kids love me, they come out of my class knowing more than they did when they started (thankfully!), and the parents are pretty much fans of my work.

But I can’t be a public school teacher, and it’s for the same reason I can’t write dry, emotionless posts. Public school teachers have far less freedom than private school teachers. I have a curriculum to be followed, but it’s up to me to figure out how to teach it. There are very few restrictions on what I can and can’t do. In other words, I can be myself as a Hebrew School teacher, whereas I’d have to tone myself down a lot to teach public school.

So I guess I’m doomed to stay in the midlist bloggers, neither big nor small, but able to do what I want, how I want, pretty much when I want it.

I can’t complain. Ilyka Damen told me a couple of days ago that my readers are the best she has ever encountered:

If you get in a mood to pat your readers on the back sometime, Meryl, please do, and tell them I seconded it. Because though quiet, they READ things. They click the outgoing links, they explore, they stick around. And I would rather have that than some big site’s megatraffic of attention-deficit mouth-breathers ANY day.

I must be doing something right to attract a following like that.

Bows and applause all around, everyone.

A suicide bomber and his handlers from Nablus were caught just outside of Ramallah today by the IDF before they could pick up the explosive belt and slaughter anyone in a cafe, bus, or checkpoint.

For the second time in 24 hours, security forces have captured a Palestinian suicide bomber before he managed to carry out an attack inside Israel.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers from the Duvdevan undercover unit arrested three members of the Fatah’s military wing from Nablus during a predawn raid south of Ramallah on Wednesday.

The suicide bomber, accompanied by two assistants, were nabbed while on their way to carry out a terror attack inside Israel.

They were members of Fatah, who has this guy as a boss:

Apparently, Mahmoud Abbas is too busy congratulating the winner of the Annual C. Everett Coop Lookalike Contest to tell his minions to stop blowing up Jews or his “security forces” to stop them.

Go figure.

I really want to beat the crap out of a pinata right now.

No blindfold. No yanking it up and down to tease me.

Just batter up, and bash the damn thing into bits.

I’m not in it for the candy. Just the random, senseless violent release of energy.

And if someone tells me I ought to spell pinata with a squiggle over the n, I’ll beat the crap out of the pinata, then I’ll beat the crap out of them.

Two weeks ago, while talking to the apartment maintenance folks (not exactly the sharpest needles in the kit, generally), I asked if there were any way to get a new dishwasher. It isn’t that mine was broken, per se, but, well, it didn’t exactly wash the dishes. Not unless there was a lot of pre-washing involved before loading the dishwasher. As far as I can tell, the dishwasher had finally arrived at the state where it put soap on the dishes, but did nothing else. And I’m rather boggled that it managed to do that much, because there was always soap caked in the container on the door. I changed to a different soap, and, well, the bluish-caked soap became the spotted bluish-caked soap. That was when I first decided I’d ask if I could get a new one. And if the answer had been no, I intended to break the dishwasher and then call up and tell them that it broke.

To my surprise, they had no problem with giving me a new dishwasher, but I’d have to wait until a new shipment came in. Apparently, they’re in the middle of upgrading the older models. I suspected my model came with the original apartment. This place was built in the 70s. I know 70s styles, even though we didn’t have a dishwasher in my mother’s home until, let’s see, the 90s. (I’m not counting the five years of her first stint in Florida; she lived there, I lived in NJ, occasional visits do not a dishwasher habit make.)

So I left work early today to wait for the installation, because the last time any Maintenance Guy showed up without me around to dull the shock for the kitties, Tig wound up compulsively licking himself to the tune of throwing up several hairballs a day. And Gracie’s already neurotic and is licking herself bare in places. So no, they are not allowed in without me around to soften the blow of strangers coming in and making loud noises. After two, I told them. On schedule, they told me.

At three o’clock, Maintenance Guy shows up. “I thought there’d be two of you,” I said. There were supposed to be, he told me. The other one was on a sink emergency. Seems they found two holds in the kitchen sink of another tenants. Both of us were rather puzzled as to how they got there in the first place.

Anyway. He did most of the work, Maintenance Guy Number Two came over about half an hour later, and they assured me that yes, I was right, and my dishwasher was the original 1970s model.

It’s 1970s-model trash now.

And since Maintenance Guy Number Two was mostly standing around watching Number One put the dishwasher together, I said, “Hey, while you’re here, I have a kind of light fixture problem. A couple of them, actually.” So they fixed my globe hall light, and they took the metal part of the lightbulb out of my bedroom fixture, so I have a wall switch that actually works, and a globe back in the wall where it belongs. Today was a threefer.

Of course, the downside is, no more goofy Tig pics. At least, not with a globe over his head.

The upside: I’ll let you know after my first load, but I’ve just put most of my meat dishes in the dishwasher to see if the new one will clean off the soap the old one left. Plus, there will be tonight’s dinner dishes.

But it’s going to be great not having a 30-year-old dishwasher. Wow. What a concept. It’s older than Omri. But I’m sure it can’t write as well as he.

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, he used the phrase “Arkansas journalism” when describing really bad reporting or writing.

That phrase always comes to mind when I read the Arab News.

In pursuit of this cynical tactic, there seems little to which they will not stoop. The prime target of their raid was Ahmed Saadat and other leading members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Saadat is accused by the Israelis of organizing the murder four years ago of Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi. Even last week the Israeli government announced that if it chose to, it would murder members of the newly elected Hamas government in response to any terror tactics, just as they have murdered Hamas leaders in the past, including Sheikh Yassin, the movement’s spiritual leader.

How would Israelis react if a Palestinian force with overwhelming firepower from the land and air were to move into Israel and seize those who killed Yassin and carry them back to Palestine to face trial? Israelis would certainly not shrug their shoulders and admit that such a move was after all fair. Instead they too would be buzzing like angry bees and vowing revenge.

Sorry, but I think “Arkansas journalism” is too high praise. I’m putting this around junior high school logic level. Although, come to think of it, it’s more on the level of my fourth-graders. “But that’s not fair!”

But hey, it’s good for a giggle.

The AP continues its anti-Israel spin. Note the headline and remember, when palestinians are doing the killing, Israelis “die.” Let’s note the differences in verbs and adjectives, shall we?

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Fugitives
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli troops raided a West Bank refugee camp Wednesday, killing a wanted Palestinian militant and forcing two others to surrender, the army said.

The raid came a day after Israeli police thwarted a suicide attack, chasing down the would-be bomber in a high-speed pursuit along one of Israel’s major highways. Police said the bomber planned to blow himself up in central Israel days before Israel’s March 28 elections.

And then there’s this quote from perennial whiny girl, Saab Erekat:

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian legislator for Jericho, condemned the killing, saying that Israeli raids and border closures were making life intolerable for the people of Jericho.

“This is part of an open war against the Palestinians,” he said.

Gee. An open war against the pals. Would this be why?

On Tuesday, police cars with sirens blazing and backed by helicopters chased down a van along the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, pulled out the suspected attacker and safely detonated the 15-pound bomb that was concealed in a bag, police said.

The suspected bomber had ties to Islamic Jihad which was responsible for all seven bombing attacks since a yearlong cease-fire took effect last March, police said. Islamic Jihad made no claim of responsibility.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli Ynet Web site that Iran was pushing Islamic Jihad to carry out an attack before Israel’s election next week.

“We know that Iran transferred in the last month $1.8 million to the Islamic Jihad organization in order to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel,” he said, without elaborating.

All those subtle things add up to one great big anti-Israel bias in the AP. But they’re unbiased. Really. It’s not like they use terrorist terms when describing Hamas or anything like that, right?

Wrong.