After searching a few headline stores - Drudge and the like - I settled on Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, read the latest in his string of extremely dry jabs at the left, and in a bit of bother flew right past it - and assumed he was, like Andrew Sullivan, beginning to complain about the unavoidable instability in newly post-war Iraq. I sent him a firm e-mail - something I could have legitimately done for Sullivan in addition to the blog responses I posted. But no - I did it for the wrong guy.

I can imagine, if by some cast of bad luck he read it, what the scene must have been like:

"Ubaldi...he's the...that's the...uh...whoa! What? No! No! Joke! Joke! It was a joke! Haven't I been doing this for weeks? Don't you get...the...what?...joke! Geez! I...well, the nerve!....I...no! Joke! Joke!"

And so on.

As I said in my unbelievably necessary follow-up letter, I need some powder for this blush.

God help the world from the scourge of us occasionally choleric Mediterraneans!

As one bit of face-saving, Drudge has up a lead on a story that reports dissent and bitterness in the Baghdad-bound Army. You know what? GIs resented Japan, too. They got through it.

UPDATE: He got it. Read it. Responded. Good-natured, as always. The letter wasn't as overly serious as I remember. Isn't this the time where I sulk back to the apartment and eat lots and lots and lots of chocolate to make myself "feel better"?

UPDATE II: No chocolate at the pad - though I do have Edy's Rocky Road from this afternoon's hot dog cook-in. Dramatic sulking and sadness-eating begins....n..n-now.

UPDATE III: And no, I won't gain weight. I filled out after college, but no more. "Slight build," as they say.