More stupid ways to waste time

Blogthings - Your Linguistic Profile: "

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

25% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

"

"Do you sodomize your wife?"

The Nation | Comment | Debriefing Scalia

What cojones!

Justice Antonin Scalia got more than he bargained for when he accepted the NYU Annual Survey of American Law's invitation to engage students in a Q&A session. Randomly selected to attend the limited-seating and closed-to-the-press event, NYU law school student Eric Berndt asked Scalia to explain his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case that overturned Bowers v. Hardwick and struck down the nation's sodomy laws. Not satisfied with Scalia's answer, Berndt asked the Justice, "Do you sodomize your wife?" Scalia demurred and law school administrators promptly turned off Berndt's microphone. As Berndt explains in his post to fellow law school students, it was an entirely fair question to pose to a Justice whose opinion--had it been in the majority--would have allowed the state to ask that same question to thousands of gays and lesbians, and to punish them if the answer is yes.

Real Estate Dreams

J is just about to leave New York, but the day before her departure, I find her sitting at my kitchen table. It is a huge, medieval ten-seater oval table, much like the ones that encourage interaction between strangers at Le Pain Quotidien. Her posture suggests lamentation, but there is a tenor in the air around her that suggests hope. She is reading a card. It is an invitation from her mother to the annual garden party of some society whose name I cannot clearly discern. On the invitation her mother’s name is written in at least two ways: her email address is nancyckurtz@yahoo.com but her name is Nancy C. Kovash. Much later in the dream, I ask J about this discrepancy, and J says that both are correct ways to refer to her mother. J says she is saying. “What do you mean, staying?” I ask, in surprise. I’m holding back the effusion of delight until my hopes have been confirmed. She says, I found a place here. Someone offered me something. It’s real cheap, compared to this place. In my head I say, “But you aren’t paying rent!” but my mouth doesn’t make a sound. I’m just so happy she’s staying.

Laura and I go to the garden party together. There are many hundreds of people walking around what seems like the lead-up to the Taj Mahal. That is, there are no marble onion domes, but there are manicured lawns surrounding deep pools. Everything is not as pretty, however; the lawns are overwatered and muddy and the pools are crudely dug with steep sides with no supports keeping the banks from sliding into the water. It seems like the right thing to do is to encircle the pools with a long, slow walk, as everyone else crowds around the massive potluck table for a chance at fruit salad and beef shreds. God only knows what’s actually be served. I walk with Laura, picking my way through the crowd. J is in front of us, but she is talking with someone else—Alexandra? Lexi? Beth?—and doesn’t give us much of her time.

Finally, I catch up with her and say, “Hey, J, where’s your new apartment?” She says it’s not so close to us. “Where?” I ask. On 117th Street, she says. “We’re neighbors!” I exclaim, full of delight. Well, 92-23 117th Street, halfway in Harlem. Not too far.

I am so happy for her because she is going to live in New York. I envision her rise to prominence, fame, riches in the city. She hints at having another invitation card, this one not from her mother, but from a big shot who has important things to tell her.

She describes the apartment to me it and it seems to have long wooden struts holding up the windows and extremely tall ceilings, and it gets lot of light but it comes in concentrated slanted shafts through the windows. The light hits the floor of the apartment in perfect rectangles. It sounds like a cloister. I start talking to Laura about getting a new place a little further north in Harlem. “We’ll get a three bedroom for $2500—no, for $2000—then rent out one of the extra rooms for $800, then pay $1200 for two of us!” Laura rolls her eyes and discounts my suggestion. J takes off ahead of us, but I keep my eye on her.

We finally circumscribe the pools and are ready to eat. Laura and I approach the potluck table. The spread is huge, constituting about a hundred individual steam trays and deep baking pans, but somewhat disgusting. I go nowhere near the entrée dishes, the pastas and meats that have mostly been picked clean anyway. I head to the fruit salads while Laura attempts to spoon some pasta onto her plate. I look over and she is laughing maniacally at her seat at a picnic table. I go over and hiss a warning to her about her looking like a fool, and she shoots me a dirty glance. “What’s so funny?” I say. She is laughing at her pasta, which has retained the shape of the Tupperware container it was poured out from, and now looks like a small, perfect hillock on her paper plate. I find this embarrassing and not funny, so I take my partitioned plastic plate over to the fruits and segregate the honeydew, cantaloupe, and strawberries on my plate by color. I come back and eat.

J comes over to us and tells us that this party isn’t as awkward as the other garden parties for this society that she has been to. She says there is usually a lot more cheek pinching, and she feels more grown-up now. I am hungry for scraps and I like to hear her speak with confidence. There’s a moment that suggests an impasse, but it passes and we all clean our plates with mechanical efficiency. Someone suggests going back for seconds, but at that moment, Boo presses his nose into my face and wakes me up from my twitching sleep. No more dreams for me.

Eh, a dull blog post, and a non-licentious dream. Next time: my X-rated dreams of Michael J. Fox's couch, circa 1986; my R-rated dreams about climbing ladders to bookshelves; my PG-13 dreams about leaving a good kisser on a bad Perugian bus; my PG dreams about coconut husks;, and my G-rated dreams about my dog turning into a trout. Beheadings, amputations, and open-mouthed kissing...stay tuned.

Spanish Parliament Gives Approval to Bill to Legalize Same-Sex Marriages

The New York Times > International > Europe > Gay Unions: Spanish Parliament Gives Approval to Bill to Legalize Same-Sex Marriages

Benny Sechzehn's response: "Iniquitous."

Benny Sechzehn was a notsie!!

Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth - Sunday Times - Times Online

Hopeful no longer, the newly appointed pope participated in the Hitler Youth program. Sure it was compulsory, but this gets into questions of complicity with oppressive regimes, right? At the very least, why isn't this more publicized? Yeesh.

Buffalo Ann Bill Coulter

I had to think about genocide to stop myself from giggling maniacally over this photo at work.

It puts the lotion in the basket!

Amy O. is a genius

For finding and forwarding this link from her ancestral Latvian homeland to me.


Latvian Photoshopping

When is a fin not a fin?

When it is a "dol-phin."

Is that supposed to pass as a joke? I'm sorely disappointed in the jokes that come on my popsicle sticks. (The popsicles themselves: cream of the crop!) (Plus--whoo! It's popsicle season again! Time to turn my urine red with Red #5!) Another stupid joke: "Q: Where do bunnies save their computer files?" "A: On "hoppy" disks!" But why not "floppy disks," since bunnies are known for their floppy as much as they are known for their hoppy? What utter bullshit.

And then I write a blog entry overflows the special cup I reserve for self-hatred. Wasting your time and mine, Amy O.

I'm sitting here getting all sentimental because I had too much alcohol over the last few days. It's really making me miss 1999, when I was a really big twat to almost everyone I loved. I'm also missing 1987, when I ought to have accepted the Fudgsicle that Erin Norcia offered me; politesse required otherwise but I periodically think of that Fudgsicle and curse politesse. I'm also a reserving a seat at the table for 1991, 1996, and 2002. Can anyone offer an alternative plot to "About Schmidt"? I'm writing a short story that is inadvertantly turning into an "old white man takes a detour" narrative. This is so shitty. Sorry.

"The Jamie strugleing with her arms."

Also, since I know at least one loyal reader who has too much time on her "graduate student of American labor history at Columbia University" hands, I thought I would throw this delectable link into my blogspace.

Furry porn, written by someone who has not yet discovered the spellcheck function in word processing programs. These brilliant stories never cease to thrill large parties full of grammar nerds. Try reading one of them aloud.

I discovered them last year when I tried to Google "furry buttocks" and accidentally Googled "furry butocks" instead.

KPFK

Also, yay! I was interviewed on KPFK (Pacifica in Los Angeles) for that goddamn report that just won't go away! Whoo! Much to my delight, I managed to sound less like an idiot than like an imbecile. Thanks to the rondure of the earth, the interview had to happen at 11pm, 8pm Pacific time. I studiously avoided saying "nipple licking," since I know that is a phonetic combination that has troubled my immigrant tongue more than once.

Unfortunately for you, KPFK only does live streaming and doesn't archive any of its shows online. But my sound guru of a girlfriend tapped her MiniDisc into my computer and we may post the recording online soon. Keep your jaundiced fingers crossed.

Oprah Winfrey

A few years ago, my favorite facetious way to answer questions about my future career was to say that I wanted to be Oprah Winfrey. (Eventually this gave over to wanting to be Ted Turner, but then Jane Fonda seemed so chameleonic and insecure, and Atlanta seemed like such an unpleasant place to live, so I went back to wanting to be Oprah.) I mistakenly signed myself up for a year of free Time magazine (I wanted National Geographic, fuckers!) when I signed up for the NYC Ford Triathlon, which promises to be a meaty mouthful of Hudson brownwater, which makes this sentence so digressive that I can't even finish it.

So Time magazine reports that Oprah is one of the "100 most influential people in the world." It's hard to put much stock in a magazine that nominates some NASCAR flunkie one of the most influential people in the world, but that doesn't stop me from believing that Oprah has assets of $1 billion. Or believing that Oprah is one of the world's most influential people. I believe in the Oprah myth. The musky scent of the Oprah mystique stimulates my salivary glands. Oprah says jump, I say, "How high?" Oprah says jump again, and I round up all my friends and we all jump in unison. Oprah, the pandemic.

Ain't nothing wrong with that. I don't even watch her show, and haven't since that sad summer of 1993 when I had nothing to do but execute disc-slipping sit-ups in front of the television between trips to the A-1 Liquors to beat Street Fighter II in 25 minutes as Blanka and twenty minutes as Guile, when I watched Jerry Springer quite fanatically and Oprah less for the entertainment than for the promise of filling in the hourlong vacuum between Darkwing Duck re-runs and Roseanne re-runs. But I knew even in 1992 that Oprah would one day be my Supreme Leader and Commander.

She's slow in spreading her tentacles but steadfast. Tonight, after watching one vaguely entertaining show in which five flat-tummied youth put live beetles in their mouths, and one voyeuristic fly-on-the-wall dating show, I tuned in to Oprah to see how my emotions could be jerked around at 2 o'clock in the morning.

The answer: very crudely, and very much!

She was having a show about people who had accidentally killed their or other people's loved ones: a man who leaves a car running in the garage and aphyxiates his sleeping wife, a man who shot his son because he mistook him for an intruder, a woman who runs over an 11 year-old girl. Oprah furrowed her brow appropriately and the audience alternated between sniffles and silence. Dutifully, I opened my eyes and poured myself forth. Lolo was fast asleep in a puddle of drool, so I clutched her passionately and furrowed my brow with worried intent. Lolo turned over and continued to sleep. I lay in bed worrying, and realized, not without some triumph, that I had become exactly like my dad.

Oprah ended the show with some anodynes and I turned off the television. My pathetic mewling ("Oprah made me cry") failed to wake Lolo, so instead I am writing all about it here.

Oprah made me cry.

Thank you, Oprah Winfrey!

Mein PMS

I'm happy to note that a nine-question personality test reveals me to be more similar to

the Fuhrer than any other world leader.

What Famous Leader Are You?

This week is so far better than last, thanks to a new infusion of vitamin D and a Trivial Pursuit game that finally confirmed a decade-long belief: bananas are berries. Also: Cambodia.

Life is full of shitty little mysteries!

No money, no mas.

Another nadir in this godawful week (new couch won't fit into apartment, i humiliated myself in front of others, I quit my job, my dog is vomiting and sad, I am currently sitting in a puddle): not getting a $100,000 scholarship that I had hoped would carry me until my $32,000/year public interest lawyer job could start. Hooray, debt! Suddenly "devotion to the public interest" seems like a mouthful of cavities and "$150,000/year job at Shearman and Sterling" seems like a good dentist. I'm such an asshole.

Trying not to cry to the woman rejecting me by phone was also a good feeling, as was punching the security gate and spraining something in my hand.

Then my dad sent me this email:

mandy , my dear,
love you, don't feel good. ( you have to pay back it anyway!)
nothing can change the way that you want to challenge the world
the enjoy of the study is way worth of the money,
except that the dollar power reduced to half since 4 years ago (
house price almost doubled in four years)
so hurry up, before the perishing opportunity.

love you

Dad.

Anyone who can prise meaning from this gets a cookie. What is he saying?

I'm being a baby. Not getting money that one never deserved to get isn't really on the scale of say, the death of one's spiritual leader or the death of a person in a persistent vegetative state or the memo created by Mel Martinez("'s legal counsel") addressing how the GOP could best manipulate the death of a person in a persistent vegetative state for political gain. Mild depression is only worsened when you recognize the cause of your mild depression to be so petty and privileged.

Onward and upward, I guess. Now my zeal to craft a winning action/comedy screenplay for The Rock has been renewed, as has my interest in being a contestant on a reality show where for minimal ingestion of disturbing substances or momentary endurance of cockroach-filled coffins one can win enough money to pay off the interest on a month of tuition debt. If anyone has any get rich quick schemes they would like to float my way, please remember: I'm a total sucker for you! Send me anything remotely believable and I'll send you some of my non-profit "salary"!

Now if you'll excuse me, a man from Nigeria has emailed me asking for my help in propping up his country's ailing economy. Who am I to say no?

In absentia

Sorry I've been so derelict with the updates. I'm entering a stage of post-adolescent self-loathing/-doubt and am waiting for an upswing before pretending to be human again.