Think Greek!

First of all, the weak rhyme is the best rhyme of all. If Wordsworth can throw out "chord" as a rhyme for "word" then it's open season, friends. Besides, you can't say Theek Greek, can you?

I gots this here mail thing what says I gots smarts enuf for to be in this here society with the funny name: Kappa Tau Alpha. Says here you gots to be nominated and be super smart to be in it. And I is! It's unpossible!

I'm a little worried about shelling out my dough to get the KTA key (does that mean I can play with it like District Attorney Ellis Lowe?) because what if I blow it this term? What if the GPA takes a dive because I'm having a really, really, really hard time keeping up with the classes. Will they drum me out? Such fear. And if they drop me like a bag of dirt, do I get my $30 back?

Do I have to dress like other Kappa Tau Alphas? I hope there's a secret handshake, but if I have to live in a house with them, it's probably not going to work out ... unless someone else does the cooking.

That is all.

Post-Posted Depression

So I'm sitting here at work by myself and "Stardust" sung by Nat King Cole comes on the earphones and I think about Cat and I start to cry, and I've been worried all day because maybe I shouldn't have put in that thing about how I'm irritated at "the situation" -- not that it isn't true, because it upsets me most of the time, but maybe I shouldn't have put it in anyway -- and I think about how I work and go to school with a lot of people on anti-depressants, and, sure, you've got to wonder why the hold out, and what the hell makes you think you're above it when the rest of the community needs that emotion inhibitor to get through the day and you're sitting at your desk alone in the dark at work letting people bark at you on chat about how your company has this agenda to screw them and the Internet is run by witches, all the time worrying about school, work, friends and crying about a departed cat.

But you've got to wonder how much would be missed by inhibiting these moments. Emotion is a too way street, and putting up the tire spikes is going to keep traffic from traveling either way.

I guess the trick is making sure you can ride back up the hill from the bottom.

Back to work now. Hey! But here's today's customer of the day:

It will purchase the [item #] from Korea lye, it does. The post office thuk the possibility of receiving with Song it is?

Where do you even begin to try answering it?

Just a blog before I go

I promise, I won't use YouTube to fill the space anymore. At least not today.

Veda was taken in for her first shot and did very well in the car. I think she'll be the traveling pet, the one that goes with me across the country in my Winnebego and helps me solve mysteries (and help people with their personal problems). She was fine in the vet's office until the temperature-taking part. Telling her that we've all been through it and that we still respect her didn't seem to help. She didn't like the first shot either and made that sound that I would hear other cats make at the vet -- the sound that made me think "Geez, I'm glad that's not MY pet." And now it is. 3 more weeks until she can go outside, which is too bad today because it's finally SPRING!

I left the window open all night last night. Crazy, I know, but it was so nice, and I saw Mercury on the horizon just like the scientists said. (Veda's on my lap trying to paw me back from typing. Is it because I talked about your butt? We all have one.) Time to pull the weeds and save up for a new barbecue. It's making me itch to solve some issues and have friends again, but that is apparently not my business and that's all I can say because it will already lead to an angry shouting match with the cousin/roommate (Why did you have to say that on the blog?!?). But it irritates me and I want a new barbecue, but only if we're going to use it. I won't be publically censored anymore. Besides, opinion is protected under Oregon's First Amendment (King v. Menolascino, 276 Ore. 501, 555 P.2d. 442 1976).

Speaking of law, in terms of groups projects, I'm pinching myself. So far all of the groups I'm in (Reporting and Law) are filled with people actually taking an active part in the project! I know, it's weird. It's making up for 3 years of slugabeds. Did I mention the sorority teams that copied each other's paper, even the typos? The professor put it on the overhead and said he wouldn't name-names, and they went and outed themselves anyway: "You didn't tell us we couldn't work together." You copied the typos. One person worked, the other one copied. Get it? A really nice student from my Reporting class is trapped in one of those groups. Pray for him.

Ethics? We don't need no stinking ethics!

Best overheard remark in Ethics: "Dude, this guy's a total douche-bag."

Nice to know the kids still throw around insults like "douche-bag".

I'm supposed to be doing school work, but I've completely lost the love. I don't want to be a newspaper reporter anymore. I want to be a normal person. I know -- I KNOW -- there are reporters out there that don't pay half as much attention to what they write and they can still buy a house. Plenty of them don't give a rat's ass about ethics either, tell you what. Big test tomorrow on Physiology too -- have to remember how humans go pee and where the mitral valve is. I've got the PowerPoint slides, so it should be okay. Something is due tomorrow though ... and I really don't remember what it is. There, I'm a college student at last. Screw grades. YEAH. pass the beer bong, I'm goin' in.

Speaking of ethics, Hobbes and Kant ...

Ed Words

You've got to love a class with homework that includes watching this:

• First -- it's snowing
• Second -- I just heard on "On the Media" that the Pennsylvania primary "may be the deciding factor in deciding the election." Fahhhhhhhhh that was supposed to be Oregon. Kiboshed again.
• Third -- it's snowing. Not small snow. Real snow. Big, fluffy, snowy snow. It's April and we have real snow that we don't even get in December. It's pretty tho'. But it's going to suck taking the bike to work. The Le Tour isn't really all-weather, although it does run better in rain than sun.
  

They're talking about the debate last week -- this is still on "On the Media" -- and how boring it was. I had to turn it off because I didn't like the way either one answered the questions, but maybe it was because the questions WERE STUPIT. Why didn't they just ask about first boyfriends/girlfriends? Or whose clothes they were wearing -- oh, wait there's the question about the flag pin. That counts.

I'm moving to Australia. This country is irritating me -- pretty when it snows, but irritating.

Conversation

"How do you do it?"
"What?"
"That whole work and school thing?"
....
....
....
....
"I don't know."

Wouldn't you know it? I blog about Wilson and then he's gone.

He is sorely missed.

Oh yeah -- a little gem -- I overheard this at the Friends of the Library Book Sale on Sunday:

"Are books for reading or for smelling? I think they're for smelling, especially the really old, yellow ones."

WILLLLLLLLSOONNNNNNNN

This is Wilson. He showed up last Monday. First he was in our driveway. Then he disappeared. Then he came back on Wednesday on the lawn next to the drive way and he had the red hand and face you see above.

And, sure, I thought "Voodoo" right away. Because that's what I think. That's what I am.

Now he's like a friend. Every day I say goodbye to Wilson. Every night I say hello. Sometimes I miss him.

He was kicked last night and is now down in front of our neighbor's house. No one's moved him back yet. Or picked him up. He's like the neighborhood pet.

I'm afraid one day he'll be gone.

And then I'll cry. Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllssoonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Makes you want to ride around the blacktop on a red tricycle, doesn't it?

Hot Butter - Popcorn (1972)

Everybody Must Get Blogged

Me mum, a very clever chick and fun in Vegas, was recently laid-off from work after being lackey to the man for about 23 years. She now has a lot of time on her hands and some small measure of bitterness, and, in the tradition of my family, she has decided to take it out online in a blog.

She had actually sent these articles into her local newspaper where they disappeared, until she got a call from an editor in Real Estate/Business (!) who told mom to post them in a blog attached to the paper and maybe they'd print one someday. Here I bust my hump in J school to get in and ... well ... Anyway, she's good, is mom, and t'anks God they didn't get the ol' laugh-and-heave treatment at the City Desk.

Now she's blogged and has a cute little avatar as well.

Ma's linked at the right. I hope my use of the F word the other day doesn't work against linking to the newspaper blog (they have rules about profanity), seeing as how it is my First Amendment right to express myself. God bless Americur.

I hate your commercial! But I love your product!

Head hurts. Mom sent me Head On about 3 or 4 years ago ("It's supposed to work" which is one of her favorite sayings, especially about new, untested products) and it's been sitting on my dresser ever since. I only just realized today that it's that irritating crap they advertise on Jeopardy!.

No. It's never worked. I just tried it and it actually hurts. I'm going to go wash it off right now.
(mother corker. It's just an irritant to make you forget about the other irritant. That's not right.)

So, yeah, this is really hard, this school stuff. I'm going to have to do something about work if I'm going to have time to write papers and read when it's not 4 am or 10 pm or a time when I could be calling my mom to find out how my cousin's wedding was last weekend. These are the considerations of time. Time won't give me time. And time makes students feel like they've got something real.

I can quote you some court cases tho'. Fecking A this law class is fun. There's Socialists, Communists, guys with "Fuck the Draft" on their jacket, Krishnas, picketers, flag burning, cross burning and leaflet throwing. I seem to be the only one in the class that enjoys it, and that makes me a little bit of a kiss ass, but I get kind of goofy around citations, especially when it's taken me 4 days to pull them all up with summaries, judgments and dissenting opinions.

So far my favorite has to be Cohen vs. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), which is the "Fuck the Draft" case:

"That the message was thrust upon unsuspecting viewers, who were not captive and could avert their eyes, did not entitle appellee to protect the sensitive by curtailing all such speech."

Yeah! Fuck the Courts! .... oh ... wait ...

S.A. - T.U.R. - D.A.Y. ... night-night

Spent the day typing up a 3-page response to a silly ethics scenario and reading legal briefs. Of the 40 cases we're supposed to know from last week and this week, I've looked up and summarized only 19. It's taking forever and there are another 15 for next week. Stopped long enough to make dinner and ruin the ending of "Dog Day Afternoon" for the cousin/roommate -- DUDE! I thought he'd seen it before. Turns out he hadn't. On the question "Does Lance (Henrickson) ever say anything in this movie?" I replied with the old "Yeah, at the end just before he ..."

Yeah. Well done me.

We watched "Capote" while eating food and settling in -- I could afford a couple hours away from the Supreme Court, right? Fine little movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman is unsettling. Cousin/roommate hasn't read "In Cold Blood" either, so there's another story ruined.

Hey, but Kubica's on pole in Bahrain, so all is well. All is well. All is well. (It's the wave of the future - the future - wave of the future - it's the wave of the future)

I'm going to bed.

First pole for Pole

YAYYYYYYYYYYYY Kubica on Pole and Matchett wins the Speed Channel Pole Pool.

Watch how quickly I can pedal backwards

Okay, so the first day of Spring Term wasn't that bad, all considered. The workload is going to suck, but I actually like the majority of the professors, even the J school ones. The Ethics class ... that's going to take some getting used to. "What's the difference between Ethics and Morals?" hahahaha right out of Election. I wanted to raise my hand and give the Tracy Flick response, but was afraid my face would freeze like Reese Witherspoon's. I'm dying to pipe up one day with "I'm not talking about ethics! I'm talking about morals!"

But Law and Reporting are fun so far, although both seem to promise a kind of Info Hell-style project that's worth some huge percent of the grade. It's a group project in Law and I know -- I KNOW -- I'm going to end up with the two girls behind me who began class with this scintillating conversation: "Um, like, is this Law or Econ?" "Oh, yeah, like, I don't know." "Does anyone know?" "I guess we'll just wait and see." "I hear this class is hard."

Which class? Law? Or Econ?

Maybe they're right to call us all collective morons. I swear these kids are stoned. If not, they should be. They need some excuse.

my major malfunction

Got up early to read my 4 newspapers available online (have to pick up the paper copy of the fifth one at school since it's not updated online until noon) and I feel prepared for another term of school.

It's going to suck. You know, last term was bad bad, no doubt about it, but the instructors weren't a-holes. They didn't talk to you like you were an a-hole. Or maybe they did and I didn't notice, but if they did it wasn't that "I know going in that you, student, are a woodentop, so just sit back and try to see if you can follow along" kind of a-hole talk. J classes are different. We're already getting emails telling us about how we'll be molded into moral agents and how our excuses won't be tolerated. We haven't even had a class yet.

If you ladies leave my classroom, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human, fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit. Because I am hard you will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers; freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved News Corps. Do you maggots understand that?