Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Blas-For-Me, Blas-For-You . . .

As previously noted, it has been flooding in Atlanta, to the point where the highways are underwater. This has caused me to be twice accused of blasphemy.

The first occasion was I told "Robin" that I'm waiting for the frogs.

"Frog legs? What frogs?" he asked.

"Those Biblical-plague frogs," I said, "although I don't really think that was much of a plague, that was kind of weak. I rather like frogs. I think it was some other sort of creature."

It's hard to effectively menace someone with a frog, and God knows I thought about it in Austria. Can you imagine being mugged with a frog? The mugger would come up and thrust the frog at you and threaten to- slap you with the frog, I suppose. Even I would not be scared. So I am thinking this is one of those mistranslations. Perhaps there could be a plague of snakes, that I would legitimately be scared of. It at least needs to bite or sting to be menacing. Locusts, sure, they eat everything. But following the water-turning-to-blood with frogs is kinda like God delegated the task that day to his bumbling yet well-meaning assistant.

Or a mistranslation, like when St. Jerome translated something about Moses into him having horns.

"That's blaspheming God," accused "Robin." Please note the redundancy.

This created a lengthy argument, but I discovered a trump card: I bet "Robin" does not know what Zorah means, and I do, so there.

Then I wrote on my Facebook: Dear God; cities are dry clean only. Do not immerse or submerge in water or severe damage may result. And Sandi accused me of blasphemy.

Well, fine, and the only somewhat morally contemptible thing I have been doing is that I have been having fun with such-a-one, and I do not know how exactly to write about this except that everyone should have the opportunity to, um. Well, I'm not going to MARRY him.

Although he still hasn't taken me up on my offer to drive around real fast and thrash on 350/370zs and then go home and lick chocolate mousse off of him. He did not seem enthused about chocolate mousse being put on him.

Well the first time, and you-know-who stuck her head in in the middle of it, and then - just ask me to show you about it in interpretive dance. I did not know my body could bend in those ways and I told him that if I end up in some sort of brace/cast I am going to tell everyone EXACTLY how it happened. It was like the Kama Sutra and Fountains of Wayne and reading Doestoyevsky and Tolstoy in the original Russian all combined. I had to wash my hair. Now he wants us, us being myself and you-know-who, both to get drunk (that can be arranged, I said) and then- I'm not sure about the rest of it, at all, on both hands, I'm like ooooh, this is- making him happy, but then ooooh, I don't think I would like that.

Let me tell you something else which irritated me extremely. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090923/ts_alt_afp/usunpoliticsclintonobama_20090923141706

First of all, is Obama doing any actual, you know, presidential things? He seems to be jetting off to visit Denmark to encourage them to give the Olympics to Chicago and apparently hobnobbing with Democratic Party has-beens rather than what Presidents do. I'm not going to comment on the title because that seems- well, that's the writer's own words, but- really? The CLINTON Global Initiative? You were a lying amoral spineless sleazeball willing to stop at nothing to get to power and derailed your Presidency by letting a fat intern fool with you. And you're somehow entitled to lead the world, despite not having solved a single problem domestically or during your presidency?

"Bill Clinton has helped improve and save the lives of millions." Who? What millions? Where? How dumb do they think we are?

That's just wrong, but even worse is:

"The global initiative reminds us of what we can each do as individuals."

ORLY? Then you wouldn't need a global initiative in the first place, would you? Even Mother Teresa was an individual working to help people etc but she had the backing of the church. There's nothing individual about this, it's - actually kinda sad, and Whatever Happened to Baby Janeish in that the Clintons just. cannot. stop. They just will not concede and get off the stage and go gently into the good golf-playing speech making and consulting tours. They're still on stage yowling hideously and refusing to cede.

They should thank their lucky stars for Texas, because without Perot they would have been sent packing back to well deserved slimy Arkansan obscurity from whence they came and Bush II took all the popularity licks for dealing with the problems Clinton never touched during his presidency, being too busy with fat interns.

I also do not want to hear about how the budget was balanced and we were in surplus. That's because Congress was controlled by Republicans from 1994 on. They write the budget. Not the president. Spending is entirely controlled by the Congress. Clinton put his finger in the political wind and sensed deep doo-doo a comin' if he didn't get on board with their reform proposals, and he ditched all the moldy old liberal ideas in favour of some kind of Bush-y moderation.

And can they really just stop pretending to even like each other? He didn't get to see his favourite member of the Obama administration? His wife? O please.

Also did you know there is a movie in which Joan Crawford appears with the Three Stooges? I did not know that. I think the Three Stooges are extremely tedious. At least for me, I can't watch stupid people hit each other over and over again. It's only interesting when intelligent people argue and then smack each other, like in "Mommie Dearest."

And I saw the Devil Wears Prada. It was excellent.

I have a whole new list of insults from a letter to Inland Revenue, which I will share with you:

pissant gas mongerer

Pauper council

Lombardy pirate banker

lackwit bumpkin

canker-blighted, toppling folly

Bunterish lickspittle

dancing whore procurer

marrow sucker

Monday, September 21, 2009

Atlanta Underwater

Seriously y'all? This is the Connector. I am not happy.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Cruella's Fauxject

What's a fauxject? Cruella's reader asks (I think I only have one).

A fauxject, says Cruella, is a kind of dream project. Please note how it sort of rhymes with pro-ject if you mispronounce pro-ject as a verb and not a - shut up Cruella, no one wants to hear you ramble about language.

Say I was not up to my neck in law crap and incomprehensible Business Tax which- seriously, is it written in Klingon? I need to provide samples of this- but if I had money, and time, what would I do since I temporarily have been deprived of the Cadillac? Ideally. What would I do if I were permanently deprived of the Cadillac- which I am not going to allow, but, just in case. Someday I will have lots of money and time and probably be dead and then maybe I can come back from the grave and accomplish several of the things I should have done in life and never got round to.

Also I think that this whole working along the learning curve thing and a new toolbox have gotten me overconfident in my car-repair abilities. Maybe if I started from 0, then things would be easier.

But I think you know what would be kickass? Well you all know how Lady Thatcher (the car) is kick ass. So wouldn't an SBC with a twin turbo kit be - whole new dimensions in kickass? And suppose you installed it in an 80's b-body wagon. That would be- awesomeness cubed. Especially a plushy model, like the Buick or Olds, with the little turn signal repeaters, and woodgrain trim, it would be so kickass, no one would be able to stand it. You could go eat every little Honda with the fart-can muffler in Atlanta and still have room for ugly body-kitted Mitsubishis.

That's what I think. Watch me spend a whole bunch of money doing this, and soon.

Anyway another thing I have been doing is that - one of my professors won't let us use the internet in class, which would be good if we could because she kinda. Rambles. I am forced to think of pre-internet ways to waste time, like writing uncomplimentary songs about - some of my classmates.

I tell "Robin" about this (o yes, we are speaking again). He wrote a poem excoriating lemons, about "that nasty yellow thing." Actual line: "Why it that nasty bitter lemon."

I feel this gives me license to write a song about a big fat toad shaped person in class.

"Robin" does not agree. "Is it nice to make fun of fat people?" he asks.

"No-oh," I say, "but- I can't help it!"

This is true. I absolutely cannot help it. Y'all know I am absolutely hypnotised by fat people. I have to stop and stare when I see someone who is fat like most guys would stare if Megan Fox suddenly appeared covered in whipped cream but otherwise nude in their midst. (Congratulate me, I just used a current pop-culture reference. That was harder than it looked.) They just fascinate me, how you can be all completely round and larger in diameter than I am tall? And why didn't you stop stuffing your fat face when you started not to fit through doors? How did this happen to you? I am trying to figure out why that is and have come up with a few possibilities.

A) there is a fat person inside me struggling to get out
B) I have an unconscious fear that they will eat me, nom nom nom and I will be gone
C) I have a very conscious fear that they will want to have sex with me and this could happen, if enough gin were involved and I would feel shame again.
D) I feel vicarious shame through them, being largely incapable of feeling shame directly

"Robin" disagrees with all these reasons. "You shouldn't do that," he insists. "It's not nice."

As though I look like Rainbow Brite or something! It's an entirely involuntary reaction, is what I say.

I still don't know why I can't parlay this into a career, as in Personal Services Consultant. Makeover artist. I am thinking, Businesses often hire people to tell them what's wrong with them, so here I am offering this valuable service for free.

I would be good at this because A) I have lots of experience and B) I'm right all the time (ask Alex, who will deny this but it's true) and I have impeccable taste!
Someday, I will think of a way to make money doing this.

O and Alex criticised my use of the phrase, "Hoisted with his own petard."

"Why do you talk like that," He complained, "no one says that."

Again, just because YOU don't say it doesn't mean NO ONE says it. He claimed it was all archaic and I was apparently doing this on purpose to annoy him.

If I were going to do that I would talk like one of those (fat) Renaissance Faire twits and say things like, "Prithee, wherefore forsooth is thine bodkin on the morrow, fair wench?"

But I don't.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Celebrate Labour Day, vote Thatcher!

Like everyone else in creation, I am feeling under the weather, but not because of flu.

Rebecca came over Saturday night and I got some accidentally- well, not ON me, but awfully close. I have never seen someone go from 0- falling down drunk in 5 minutes.

She was fine when we left her house. She was drinking something suspicious looking from a Coke bottle- And you know something, I know WAY too many alcoholics WAY too well to be able to spot the 12 telltale signs of alcoholism without reference. I can't even remember what day it is without consulting my phone, but I can recognise over liquored diet Coke on sight.

That is kinda sad for me, isn't it? But not unexpected.

So then she managed to get falling down drunk on the way here- which is like a 10 minute ride? Depending on which car I'm driving.

I was supposed to go to dinner with her and another friend but being as how she was not really mobile by the time we got here, not so much.

And I can understand and sympathise with alcoholism, but I cannot understand and sympathise with alcoholics who wear 4 inch platform heels. That's just taking bad judgment a little too far.

Also ask me in person for the REST of the story; there was quite a bit more.

Cruella, shouldn't you be helping your friend instead of making fun of her?

Well, I didn't make that much fun of her. Also, I am completely out of the Helping People Who Don't Want to Be Helped Business.

I tried it with Pam; That did not work.

I tried it with Sheridan; that did not work.

I tried it with Trey; that did not work.

Perhaps if people come to me in future and ask me for advice/assistance I can do something, but please remember this was her idea to come over and I'm not chasing her down looking for people to mock. And I have plenty on my plate with helping myself through Business Tax and all the other things I have to do.

Well, fine, Cruella, what else did you do for the Labour Day weekend?

I am still stuck in Bar Fitness Hell but almost done with it, I found some things in Dekalb County that I need and am waiting for them to get those records together and then I'll be done. I'm actually (because I might as well be on crack) excited about the MPRE, it's like a milestone in my almost-done-with-law-school-ness, and then I got one of those fancy smart phones and can take pictures, but I can't figure out yet how to put them on the computer. It hooks to the computer by USB but I can't get the computer to see the phone. I don't understand technology. Y'all I wanted to purchase a case for it, but they didn't have any case that went over the screen, which is the main thing I wanted to protect- so I have done something quite ghetto and am carrying it round in a baggie.

I rather wanted to go to DragonCon- one of these days- but somehow missed out.
O and we went to that restaurant, I think I wrote about that, and then- Alex wouldn't let me tell the story of what ensued (Alex! :( ).

O and I forgot to tell you the Important Question I asked at Sea World! You know how dolphins and manatees are mammals? So they breastfeed their young, right?

Yes, I did go there.

Their nipples are behind their flippers. Betcha didn't know that! And if you did, you have been watching entirely too much Animal Planet.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

I am Really Not on Drugs

Ok! So I spent most of class Tuesday imagining that the professor was a large bat. Please also note that in my imagination, I made the bat talk like Margaret Cho's mommy. Please also note that A) I like this professor and he does not at all look like a bat or Margaret Cho's Mommy, and B) I am not on drugs.

Then I was having a conversation with "Robin," and was entertained by the fact that he apparently has a new racial stereotype, which is that "Koreans don't know that the smell of gas means danger." I think that's nearly as good, if unfortunately more complicated, than "Blacks are good with computers."

Y'all I either need desperately to - no, wait, first of all, I really need to smack these people who are having this inordinately inane conversation about "and then I sit in one place, and then I'm going to go home and sit, and then I sit some more, and then I sat across the room, and then I sat on one side of the Marta train, and then I sat on the other side of the marta train,"- and please note first they were talking about sports, specifically college football, so y'all know I am just all eaten up with loathing.

Inside, I am making that face that I make when I accidentally get pussy on myself.

-anyway, I desperately need to buy a ?Blackberry? Some kind of phone with an appointment book in it because I - cannot keep track of all the things that I am supposed to do and I am proving some theory maybe that time doesn't exist by just doing things when they occur to me and pretending that time exists so that I can rationally not perceive them all at once? But I just- well today I showed up for an appointment that I had gotten an email about two weeks early. So I think I will get a Samsung Finesse because it seems to have an appointment book in it. I will have to investigate further and then I will have to get insurance for it because it has all the touch screen and so forth? I'll probably never be able to actually work the thing.

MBT's? Check.


I was thinking about what would be my ideal law job- and it came to me all in a flash. What I would most like to do is corporate-style training seminars in which I give quick explanations of general legal principles important for companies/individuals who may not want to hire lawyers, but to staff to prevent the problem from getting to a legal problem. Like employment discrimination, employment law, harassment, etc for big corporations, train police departments on evidence and so forth.

Then I could also parlay this into marketing small firms/solo practitioners for groups like churches, neighbourhood associations and such so that I would email a church and say, I'd like to do a 90 min q and A on some issues affecting your community, and then come up with 45 min of FAQ and answers and then some preselected questions and answers. Then at the end I would provide referrals to local attorneys, and I would get paid to help with this. And I could get paid by the church to do wills etc. (but having kickbacks from the church to include them in a will sounds like a conflict of interest).

I could do seasonal seminars at churches about tax law in April, family law one part of the year, estate planning one part of the year, criminal law one part of the year, and then employment law? Senior law? Immigration law? one seminar targeted to that community.

So I think that would be a good idea.

What else has been happening?

Well we went to the Laser Show last weekend, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was oddly moving. I was trying to get a "friend" to go, but no one will answer their phones, which is one of those stupid guy tricks I can live without.

I mean, I know it was good, because I had to wash my hair the next morning, ok? So answer your damn phone- not necessarily immediately but you know, within 48 hours?

In the future, I'm going to start being more honest with people. Not necessarily brutally honest, as in, your breath smells like cat food and your beard feels like a brillo pad and on a one to ten sexy scale I would rate you slightly above mulch but more like, you're a great person but I'm not really feeling it. I'm not going to make any more stupid excuses about it's not you it's me or ignore their calls until they give up.

Ooo but then the consequences of this might be I might turn into an asshole who makes duck faces.

Anyway- Moby Dick has not yet been repaired or dealt with properly, it is still at the dealer waiting for the insurance company to come. They are threatening to total it which would make me very unhappy; it's just a little bent.

And we went to Eno last night for Midtown restaurant week. It was very MTM and I'm going to start using her name as an adjective. As in, it was, even with the discounts, way pricey and way little food and mediocre.

You can, on purpose, eat Octopus with watermelon and lemon vinaigrette. I have to report this was not quite as revolting as it sounds- it didn't taste like- that- but it wasn't good either. Maybe bacon.

And y'all should know from previous posts, my food universe is not limited to meatloaf and potato buds and frozen veggies. My food universe is wide, but I do not like needing a dictionary to find out what I am eating. Please note that their menu featured "ramps" and I do not know what those are, except some kind of vegetable?

You could have oysters with pickled beets, a combination I had never previously considered, although I do love them individually.

You could order something called "glacier" lettuce, which I am thinking is an extreme kind of iceberg lettuce?

You could order a "rougie foie gras torchon, corn sorbet, corn madeleines, and blueberry," and I have no real idea what a torchon is despite a degree in French. (the Third Degree! Ha!)

You could order something which comes with "truffle-banyuls" sauce and "crispy fennel" which- what the hell is a banyul? They could be feeding us bat embryos and no one would know. And I don't care for fennel, crispy or otherwise.

I don't know what "guanciale" is either.

I don't know what "tobiko gremolata" is but that dish also included a "gently poached egg" as opposed to- the violently poached egg? The egg which had to be poached with whips and chains? The mind reels.

Another dish featured "singed black olives" and I can't really think of much which is improved by being singed.

I have no idea what "blackjack tomato emulsion" is.

"smoked potato" sounds like something an extremely desperate and inventive pothead might do.

Also they have to name all the places the meats came from, as in "Eden farms pork chop," "Painted Hills New York Strip," "back of the alley dumpster chicken breast," (kidding about the last one.) This just baffles me.

I drove Lady Thatcher. This impressed several people, including Alex's friend and He Who Does Not Return Phone Calls. We were listening to - 90.1 which was remarked upon by Alex' friend.

"That's so cool," he said, "in this car, listening to what we decided was Brahms."

Alex did not like that discussion. He Who Does Not Return Phone Calls and Alex' friend and I were all discussing who we thought the composer was of the music we were listening to. It was a violin ?concerto? and I thought it was 19th century and didn't have the repeated motifs that characterise Mozart, I said.

"There's too much culture in this car," Alex said. Also he tried to make fun of me when I said he was "hoisted by his own petard."

Also once I got to the restaurant I was so - well you know- that I forgot to put her in Park and she tried to escape. The valet jumped in and stopped her.