Blogging about nothing.

 
In case you missed it in the earlier post, the following is an excellent example of why the use of metaphors should be a licensed activity:

"It's sort of like you know how women are like with their bags and purses? You have all your stuff in there. Everyone knows it's your purse and no one looks in it. And it's like someone comes along and your bag gets dumped out in front of everyone, and everyone sees what's in there. Except they misinterpret everything in there. No, it's not lipstick, it's a gun! Or it's a secret spy weapon!"

I think this is a metaphor for Jennifer Lopez's private life becoming public and not a simile, despite her frequent use of the word 'like'. I think in this case the word 'like" is more a space filler, if you, like, know what I mean. Feel free to disagree.


posted by mindse at 12:36 PM

 
I'm working from home today.

This is usually good news. But not if the day you are working from home is a Saturday. Not if the default position is No Working At All. But, I must work and so I do.

For the reader who took the time to correct my pronouns from an earlier post by email, I urge you to utilize our handy comments feature for that purpose. Actually, I would urge you to "Get a Life." You're my mom, though, and that just wouldn't be right. Instead, I shall refer you to the comments feature and be done with it.

Now -- can anyone explain what the big deal is with the word "However"? I enjoy using that word to begin sentences. However, recently I've noticed many people saying that you absolutely just can't ever do that because its shameful and bad. Why come is that, Grammar Mavens?

Here are some things that deserve mentioning: if anyone believes that this was just an innocent mistake on the part of a huge multinational pharmaceutical company, I've got some high quality clam ranches you might be interested in buying. Clam ranching will soon surpass emu and buffalo farming on the list I keep in my head entitled "New Food Choices or Old Tax Shelters -- You Decide." Further, Eugene Volokh bitches about law review editors, which always makes me terrifically happy.
posted by mindse at 12:17 PM

 
My friend Dave outs me in this Last Days, The Week in Review, by David Schmader (02/20/03). Despite my repeated pleadings with him not to reveal certain details about me if he should choose to use my miserable life anecdotes in his column, he smokes a lot of pot so forgets sometimes. If he must report these details, I wish he'd get it right as he did before, when he explained that I work on the Seventh District Court of Circuit Appeals. Which, of course, I do. In Canada.

Oh, yeah, yo. She's just Jenny from the Block dontcha know.
posted by mindse at 9:07 PM

 
Memo to Amy E. Keel:

From the options below, please choose the most valuable way to spend time helping victims of sexual abuse:

a) Volunteering at a local rape crisis center
b) Patrolling local watering holes while dressed as a feminist superhero
c) Talking with your peers about your concerns.
d) Anything other than destroying some dumb snowpenis

Memo to Jonathan H. Esensten

From the options below, please choose the stupidest part of your article about the dumb snowpenis:

a) The paragraph with all the greek stuff in it.
b) The paragraph with all the greek stuff in it and the paragraph with the token references to the phallus in other cultures.
c) The paragraph with all the greek stuff in it, the paragraph with the token references to the phallus in other cultures, and the suggestion that the snowpenis was public expression warranting some sort of debate instead of just the inevitable result of too much snow, too much studying, and too much frat-quality booze.
d) That bow tie.


posted by mindse at 8:52 PM

 
You know, out West they really have a thing about direct democracy. I couldn't really get interested in it. Until now.
posted by mindse at 1:53 PM

 
Might I suggest PHITOPEEK?

Willy's post reminds Jen and I of how glad we are that we are attached to others. Because if we were both single we would shamefully mud wrestle for Willy's favors. This can also be expected of many of Willy's future female law students, depending on which school he elects to profess at.

I have a neighbor story, but it does not involve parking. Instead, it involves me making an ass out of myself.

So I have a new neighbor. He lives downstairs. I have a crush on this neighbor. But only in that completely innocent and retarded way. It is as if he were the quarterback of the football team and I were the treasurer of the Dungeons and Dragons club. That kind of crush. The kind of crush where you wonder why you trip over furniture at the exact moment that he is checking his mail. Then you realize its because he makes you nervous. Nervous the way strapping Irish furniture refinishers can make a person. Especially when said strapping Irish furniture refinisher fixes a lot of things around the house and owns two bulldogs on whom he dotes ridiculously. The guy sauntered out of The Bridges of Madison County, for chrissakes.

This morning, I'm downstairs getting my laundry out of the dryer. Strapping Irish Guy emerges from around the corner wearing flannel pajama bottoms and holding two cans of paint. He then begins a very normal conversation with me about the current operational status of the dryers. As usual, I find conversation with Strappy challenging but especially more so at this moment cuz he's looking both a) sleepy and b) like he's about to paint something. That's porn for women, okay? So I'm trying to extricate myself from the conversation but succeed only in stammering and backing up the stairs. He says something like, "Yeah -- there's a lot wrong with this house that no one tells me about." And I then deliver the following zinger as an exit line:

"Yes. The secrets of the house will open up to you like the petals of a flower in bloom."

He says: "Okay."

And then presumably goes back to his apartment to call the police.

What WAS that? A freaking fortune cookie? Some days I even amaze myself.
posted by mindse at 1:12 PM

 
I have been saving this link for a slow blog day. I think I must use it now, however, so that Mark and Jen will stop sniping at each other and become immersed in what is surely the greatest web site on the Internet.
posted by mindse at 2:43 PM

 
Jen, you are not underestimating the size of my apartment. What you are underestimating is your own enjoyment of cleaning. That's what makes it unfathomable to you, I think. Unfathomable that anyone would share the joy of cleaning with another, unfathomable that anyone would want to take a brief respite from the joy of cleaning for the purpose of drinking or eating something.

Of course, its also possible that you are underestimating the level of filth the Brigade had to deal with when it came here. A level of filth that the brigade soundly trounced. The score is: Brigade, 1, Filth, 0.
posted by mindse at 11:58 AM

 
There are lots of really good things about having a 300-cd changer set on random. When "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham! follows "I'll Take New York" by Tom Waits, though, you gotta wonder if all this technology is such a good thing. The problem could be the human factor -- at the time you thought it was an awfully good idea to put all 15 of your Time-Life 80s collection in there didn't ya?

I'm just blithering cuz I'm nervous about the approaching brigade.
posted by mindse at 3:53 PM

 
I would think, Robert, that with your propensity to find contracts everywhere you would think that the "Do Not Disturb" sign amounted to a promise and the entry in spite of it a breach of said promise. I'd like to interview the maid. I suspect that she has been up to these kind of voyeuristic hijinx for some time.

Speaking of maids, I have this to say. Tomorrow night I am scheduled to host the Great Baby-Making Book Group of which I am a member. I call it that because there are at least three pregnant ladies involved in this group at any one time. Recently, one of the pregnant ladies gave birth. At the next meeting, one of the non-preggie holdouts announced that she had recently gotten knocked up. The bad news for Robert and I is that yet another one of the pregnant ladies gave birth yesterday so that necessarily means that either myself, Erin, or my friend Kelle is with child. I doubt its me but there's a quota here that seems to defy the laws of nature so who knows.

But the maids was the thing I wanted to discuss. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I AM A PIGGY PIGGY SLOB. No kidding. I nest in one area of my house and trash collects around me. Back in good old Brooklyn, my trolly roommate and I had ameliorated our collective slobbiness by contracting with the world's sweetest woman, Gloria, to come to our house and clean it for us. I felt okay about this because, hey, Gloria needed a job and we paid her more than she asked for. I still felt the shame that goes along with being physically unable to clean up after yourself probably because you were raised like a milk-fed veal. But I could live with that if it meant coming home to a house cleaned seemingly by elfin magic.

I'm still a slob but I live alone so I can't use the "It'll mean no fights about stupid shit like dishes" argument for employing maids. Plus, I read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed and could NOT believe the shit that corporate maid services make their employees endure. So I vowed never to employ one of those outfits.

And today I have broken that vow. Josefina and Felix, two young ladies who work for an outfit called the Maid Brigade, will be coming to my house at four. I must first dash home and clean it just a little so that Josefina and Felix do not flee back to their native countries upon entering my disgusting sty. But I want to report here an awkward discussion with the Maid Brigade owner person, in which I tried to make sure that the bizarre and inhuman rules that Ehrenreich had to abide by "while in a client's home" (such as, oh, no DRINKING WATER or SITTING DOWN) did not apply to my house.

So I says to the owner person, "I wanna know how much you pay these people and if there's benefits and stuff." and she gives me a satisfactory answer. She also says that most of them have been with the company for over two years which she cites as proof that they're really, really happy. (Having stayed in shit ass jobs for much longer than that, I could but don't disabuse Owner of that notion.) Then comes the awkward part:

Me: So, do you, um, have any weird, like, etiquette rules for your employees to abide by when they're at a client's house?

Owner Person: What do you mean?

Me: Like, are your employees allowed to drink a glass of water or something if they're thirsty?

Owner Person: Well, if a client offers, then they may. But otherwise we wouldn't have them rummaging around in your cabinets.

Me: Okay. I want to make something really, really clear. RUMMAGE AWAY. If they're thirsty, THEY CAN DRINK SOMETHING. If they're hungry, PLEASE TELL THEM TO FEEL FREE TO MAKE A FUCKING SANDWICH. No bizarre rules like that applying in my house, okay?

Owner Person: (nervously laughing) OK. I'll note your file.

This assuages my guilt slightly but not really. I've crossed over into the creepy just so's my book club won't know how big of a pig I am. An odd thing to do since I've just told the whole Internet I'm a pig.

Another Useless tidbit:

Today cool blogger Tony Pierce complains about the cretins at his job who told him that his Gwar t-shirt sent the wrong message to the kids today. It just so happens that the main reason I'm sure Tony Pierce is cool is that he was wearing a cool t-shirt at that Blogosphere panel thing. So, you can't please everybody. Most often, you can't please cretins. Some will hate you for your t-shirts -- some will love you for them. I continue to think Tony's cool, fro or no fro.

This reminds me of a story, lucky for you all. I saw Gwar one Halloween in either 1989 or 1990 (its all a blur) at the Pyramid Club in NYC. They made me sick. Now, you might think that their act made me sick, what with the huge grotesque latex monster costumes and the bikini-sporting fire dancer. You might think that. But you'd be wrong. That I loved. I did, however, have a bizarre allergic reaction to the fog machine output, which smelled like urine and coconuts. I spent the next two days retching. To this day I do not respond well to those car air fresheners that purport to smell like "Pina Colada"
posted by mindse at 12:50 PM

 
You know, Bashman has never steered me wrong. But I would like the minutes of my life back that I wasted corresponding with whoever the kid is that reported on Judge Kozinski's appearance at his property class. Peruse those comments and then riddle me this: Why can't I leave well enough alone, people? Why take it on myself to tell the dumb that they are dumb? Is there any real damage done in permitting twerps to wander the earth finding uncanny resemblances between themselves and people I think are really cool? Do I really need to disabuse them of those silly notions? Answer: No. OK. I've learned my lesson. No more target shooting at clams: way too easy.

I'm really wishing I was in New York today because of pictures like this one.
posted by mindse at 3:49 PM

 
Esteemed blawgfather Howard Bashman has just thoughtfully pointed out to me that Attorney General Ashcroft apparently did not get the memo about the Yale-bashing moratorium. This administration is really spreading itself way too thin. Does New Haven have a "no first strike" policy? I need more plastic sheeting.
posted by mindse at 2:39 PM

 
Well, I'm in Los Angeles this weekend. Believe me, I wouldn't be. But a certain much-loved co-blogger makes his home here. If you can call this cruise-ship-cabin-esque tiny cube a home. On the bright side, the one small window was easy to cover with plastic sheeting.

So last night we went to this event called "Live from the Blogosphere." It was a panel discussion where bloggers (all of whom are waaaay cooler than us) talked about blogging. The panel answered pressing questions like: Why blog? (why not), Will blogging eradicate print media? (no), and How do I get three million hits a day? (include the words "Anna Kournikova" and "bukkake" in the same hypertext link). It was really interesting, actually, and really fun. The guy who invented the publishing tool that makes it possible even for boobs like me to start a blog was one of the panelists and he announced Google's acquisition of his company, which should lead to some interesting stuff I would think. Some great pictures of the event are posted here.

(There was no talk of blawgging, which is way too nerdy for this superhip crowd. Scary to learn that among the nerds, you're nerdier? Welcome to my world people.)

Another panelist, Susannah Breslin, has a blog I really like called The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog. She's really funny. This I knew. What I did not know is that she's really tall and really hot. Another thing I did not know is that her boyfriend is a guy I went to college with, Christian Ristow. Nor did I know that Christian Ristow makes really big robots for a living. Learn something new every day.

I had to confirm that Christian Ristow was, in fact, the Christian Ristow I went to college with. (By "with" I really mean "at the same time as." In no way did we set out on the college adventure together.) So I walked up to him and asked him if he was, in fact, the same guy. Those of you who are familiar with the last time I approached someone in Los Angeles who I thought I went to college with will be pleased to know that it, in fact, was him. So I'm more confident about my instincts now. Did I just hear a collective sigh of relief?
posted by mindse at 2:04 PM