I swear.

I was sworn in today. I'm now a licenced lawyah. and i feeeeeel the powaaaah.

The ceremony was short & sweet. Take an oath, sign your name, and go eat. Do i feel different? Yeah. I actually do. I know, I know, lawyers in NY are a dime a dozen. And I'm a bit of a loner, so having a community has never really been a strong draw for me.



Nonetheless, for what its worth, now I'm a recognizable commodity, a brand name if you will. There will never again be the need to answer "what do you do?" with more than one word. And that is worth something.

The non-ironic post

the news this morning was so painful to read that I my mind started to go into one of its obssessive modes. I won't explain, suffice it to say that it's not pleasant, and seems to take the form of some exaggerated sense of responsibility, I get maddened when I can't fix things. ridiculous, i know.

Makes me also wonder why a person in one longitudinal setting has to worry about getting hacked to death with a machete, or blown up or tortured to death, and another person in different setting has to worry about their SAT scores or doing their taxes or their morning's commute. it can't be the will of god, unless god plays dice, and karma seems too pat, I mean if there is karma, then every person has some bad and some good. No one deserves what they got in Rwanda, or are getting in Darfur or Baghdad unless we all do, which i think is the essence of why i'm obsessed with my inability to fix things. I know i'm making sweeping generalizations here, this is not a reasoned, logical argument i'm making. bear with me.

but i can't fix things, and i do no good to anyone when i'm in my obsessive state. so perhaps i should just not read the news today, and go back to my taxes.

there's comfort in taxes after all.

mush on slop

on thursday, after my lunch-hour-power-gym-treadmill time, as i dripped treadmill sweat (sorta like real sweat, but nastier) and headed for the shower, the "moms-and-kids" play group broke up and the breeders and the brooded over tumbled into the locker room.

Now, I generally scowl mightily when this happens, just because crumb snatchers are oddly attracted to me, especially when i'm red-faced and struggling with an uncooperative sports bra; and i want to keep them and especially their mothers far far far at bay. But, this time I had to crack a smile, because one of the cuter larva had started to sing a little ditty, over and over in that repetitive way that drives mothers crazy (and that I never outgrew...). I present below, the sweet child's most charming ditty:

would you like some
mush* on slop?
a dop a dop a doppity dop?
(tempo change, speed up)
mush on slop, a dop a dop dop
mush on slop, a dop a dop dop
mush on slop, a dop a dop dop

repeat

coda
mom of course had had it by this point and started the shushing and the usual distracting chirps: "jasmine (or brittany, or crestview or appaloosa or whatever the name was) look over here, jasmine, have you got your (panties, swimcap, juicebox, telescope, gasmask), jasmine don't get your feet wet, jasmine other people have to get by, jasmine ..... on and on. But the winsome and tiny entity would not desist, bless her little heart.

So, yours truly, being soft of mind and hard of heart, now has the mush on slop song firmly engraved in her somewhat limited brain. And now i pass it on to you. It's the least I can do.

*note: "mush" is pronounced the way kids pronounce it: to rhyme with "swoosh." NOT to rhyme with "flush."

pcb (phriday cat blog)

sigh. if i must, i must...

abby distractedly faces mecca:











pink poses like pegasus.

Rocky Top

"once I had a girl on Rocky Top
half bear the other half cat
wilder than me but sweet as sody pop
I still dream about that"

I'm listening to High Lonesome, one of my favorite tapes. Every march it seems I get the urge to hear it again, must be some sort of roots thang (dad's side = scotch-irish from arkansas; moms side = shotgun shacks & drifters). This thang must have skipped a generation though, my parents had pretensions to middle-class modernity. (except where the twin demons of alcohol abuse and religion abuse raised their seductive heads...one curly and crosseyed, one stick straight and thin lipped)

anyway. I once choreographed a dance to "jerusalem ridge." In retrospect, although I had very little talent as a choreographer, it was a good dance. I'd like to unearth it and see if my current non-dancer body could handle it. It'd be fun. And maybe I could reclaim the "half bear the other half cat" side of me...
grrrmmmmrrorrooooow...

sports, money, and ocd

i've said it before. I don't much like spectator sports, but I do enjoy a wager. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before I joined the office pool and bought a bracket on sportsline.com for the NCAA championship.

Despite my last minute persusal of the standings, I managed to make some rather silly choices. I'm at about 60/40 win/lose at this point, a solid B- in betting GPA. Now I've said i like to bet, but I generally bet when I have a pretty good chance of winning. Or, I bet on incredibly dumb things, like the number of times a real estate broker says "charming" when describing an apartment the size of an outhouse, or how many people will cross at the crosswalk versus in the middle of the street.

In fact, i make mini-wagers with myself all the time. Will I see that man with no cheekbones who's reading a mystery about egypt on the #4 today? Will I manage to get out of the house in time to get across highway 9 before the morning stream of traffic starts? will I manage to avoid my boss on the elevator ride? Of course, betting with yourself is not really a lot of fun, it's more like my very own little brand of OCD. Considering I also have a symmetry OCD (can't stand to have or see one sock on, one off, can't stand to step on crack with one foot, and not the other), the wager compulsion is at least a tad more entertaining, and, let's face it, you don't go broke.

But, I do like real betting, with money, and other people too. Which is why it is good that watching most sports doesn't do much for me. The NCAA is a tad different, because watching college basketball is pretty palatable. For one thing, it goes pretty fast, unlike football. For another thing, there's always a lot of scoring. We likes fast boys and scoring. Other things i really like are boxing and horseracing. I haven't quite figured out why, perhaps I'm really an old italian man at heart, and this is the 1930s. Chi sa?

Friday Cat Blog (St. pat's edition)

Well, I could have done this (see below): oh, i guess i DID do it...




At any rate, it is interesting to note that St. Patrick is also the patron saint of Nigeria. So I don't understand why the average St. Patty's day parade does not reflect that.

of moons, life, and death

One of saturn's moons has geysers, which indicates that there is a possibility it can sustain "life".

NYtimes says that "life requires at least 3 ingredients "water, heat and carbon based molecules." I'd probably add a few more (sex, drugs and rock & roll? blood, sweat and tears? cinnamon, curry, and cumin? goretex, neoprene and nike? pick your poison...), but i guess that's a start. Anyway as any good sci-fi writer will tell you, the NY times is talking about "life as we know it," i.e. carbon based life. It's always interesting though to speculate about life based on something else, like silicon, or electromagnetic force. Larry Niven wrote a story which had a being shaped like a sail that lived off of solar energy. Niven comes up with some very cool entities, i must say.

Speaking of entities, and moons, this morning I woke up sad. On a brilliantly sunny day just like this one 2 years ago, March 13, 2004, my favorite cat, "moon launch," died in my arms. He had lung cancer and couldn't breathe. I carried him out from the vet's office, his heavy weight in my arms, blinded by sun and tears.

Odd of course to carry on so for a cat. But i did.

Anyway, one should remember moon fondly, and with a touch of exasperation. He and I were together for 13 years, he came to me as a completly wild stringy gray kitten on superbowl sunday, 1991. Over the years he flung himself out of 2 windows, raised kittens, fell in love, trashed innumerable apartments, ate about a megaton of plastic bags, made friends with enormous dogs, demanded constant infusions of tuna water, and vocalized loudly whenever he felt he had something to say, which was often. He was huge, irrascible, annoying, determined, crazy, he loved me...and i loved him.



"all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die" -- Blade Runner

Om mane padme hum, moonie.











(top picture courtesy of www.phlonx.com)

put me in my place. NOW.

Today I received an interesting email from someone I barely know (I exchanged 3 or 4 emails with her, some time ago, and then we (i thought, although she says it was me) just stopped corresponding). She told me I was:

arrogant,
narcissistic,
elitist, and
full of "hubris,"
and that this would be my downfall.

Hmmm. wow. This from someone who barely knows me. Think how many more adjectives she could have used had she really known me. oooh, i'm not sure I even wanna go there. How do I live with myself, one wonders?

Actually, this was good news. I guess I'm glad I come off as arrogant, because I usually feel that I come off as pathetic. I guess, given a choice between just those two, I'd rather be the one than the other. Trouble is, I thought that I was nicer on email than in person, especially to those I don't really know.

I guess the fact that I have the audacity to blog when I really don't have much to say proves my arrogance. Ah well. It's all fodder for my johari window, which I keep asking all my 3.5, oops, er, 4.5 readers to fill in. HEY. Perhaps if some of you had filled it in as asked, and put "arrogant" in, I could have been forewarned of this disturbing development. But NO. I was forced to be ignorant. Thanks a lot guys. I hold you all, every one of you, personally responsible for my downfall. There. It's not MY fault after all. sheeeeeeesh.

oscar > nascar > nasdaq

Since I did a super bowl blog, and since my interest in the SB is probably roughly equal to my interest in the oscars, fairness and lack of anything better to do with my sunday night, combined with the fact that I have a new reader (HI ED!) urges me to write an oscar post. However, since i am singularly unqualified to opine on art, entertainment, talent or pulchritude, I have chosen do do something uniquely bloggrrilla. Here then, with no word from any sponsor, I bring you My Oscar Blog:

I may perhaps be a tad asperger syndrome, but I have some trouble keeping the above named entities/events apart in my brain. thus my first quiz. The Os/nas/car/daq quiz:

1. guess the event/entity which spawned the following quotes:

a) they are hot, they are edgy..

b) weak rubber and tires...

c) updo, downdo...

d) the power supercouple...

e) silly season...

f) in the event of a crash... (ooh that's a toughie folks. especially THIS year...)

g) first of several shoes to drop... (SEVERAL shoes. wow.)

h) this is a fantastic dress you're wearing...(ah ok, just checking to see if you're awake...it's...NASCAR! oooh yeah.)

2. What do Oscar and NASCAR have in common?
(besides that they rhyme and are thus connected in Bloggrrilla's phoneme obsessed brain)
A: click here..

ok ok this is not one of my more inspired blogs. But, well, i was compelled. I've done my duty now. Go eat your freakin popcorn or pizza or whatever people eat while watching the oscars. Oh sorry, champagne and caviar blinis.

(answers: a) OSCAR; b) NASDAQ; c) OSCAR; d) OSCAR; e) NASCAR; f) NASCAR; g) NASDAQ; h) OSCAR. oh come ON. whaddija think?)

The Ferals of Ferry Land

Here we have some Staten Island denizens. Note the big hair.

Friday cat blogging

Pink and Abby on the (guitar) case.










Pink and Abby run the numbers again.