AddieStan

If one lives on Capitol Hill (which happens to be the location of your blogstress's Oppo Factory), the approach of Memorial Day is marked by the relentless flatulence of the Harley Davidson motorcycle, squadrons of which besmirch the serenity of Our Nation's Capitol each year at the end of May. The two-wheeled noisemakers are invariably mounted by overweight people with bad hairdos who think it their patriotic duty to subject the citizens of Washington, D.C., to a panoply of offenses to the senses, which somehow add up, in their carbon-monoxide-addled minds, to a solemn homage to the nation's war dead. Speaking of the war, your blogstress has gone and really stepped in it by stating, on TAPPED , her opposition to a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq (even though it's the conflict she hates the most). Your comments are welcome, mes amis , but please hold the epithets.

Melissa Silverstein of the Women's Media Center has posted her first entertainment blog entry for Huffington Post , where you will be able to find her musings on culture high and low. For her opener, Melissa tells us of a new documentary about Mukhtaran Mai , the Pakistani woman who defied local authorities to prosecute the men who gang-raped her on the order of a tribal council. The case now sits before Pakistan's Supreme Court, which is having a little trouble functioning these days, what with dictator and U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf having sacked the chief justice, a move that has sparked underreported violence throughout Pakistan over the course of the last month.