so today i read

"How Not to Succeed in Law School" by James Gordon

2005-12-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mui for sending me this article, and thus getting me through the workday. Wish I could link. Instead, here's this excerpt of an actual judge's ruling:

This case presents the ordinary man-- that problem child of the law-- in a most bizarre setting. As a lowly chauffeur in defendant's employ, he became in a trice the protagonist in a breath-baiting drama with a denouement almost tragic. It appears that a man, whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge, was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinquish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and pressed at the point of a most persuasive pistol. Laden with their loot, but not thereby impeded, they took an abrupt departure and he, shuffling off the coil of that discretion which enmeshed him in the alley, quickly gave chase . . . .

people in spain love blogs too...

2005-11-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

so the prince and princess of spain just had their first baby, and some weirdo has already created a random, creepy-cutesy blog told from the infanta's perspective....

http://leonordeborbon.blogspot.com/

domestic bliss

2005-11-18T14:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books lately....I like the writing a lot, but for some reason, I'm not getting fully into it....as a series, it's no Anne of Green Gables, by far. I rediscovered those books in boxes while moving, and I think I might just reread those for the hundredth time. I always thought Anne Shirley was so great, even though she was way too into poetry. I wanted to look like her growing up, really really wanted to have red hair and gray eyes and freckles. The part where Matthew dies always made me cry.

What's weird is that in the later books, after Anne and Gilbert are married, she just stays home and has lots of babies, despite being a really talented writer and winning all sorts of awards. And being a mother is really important and fulfilling etc etc, but I mean, the last 3 books become all about her children's adventures and domestic duties, which is disappointing.

I just read the synopsis of the last Anne of Green Gables movie, which has her having adventures in New York, while Gilbert goes fight in WWI instead of staying on Prince Edward Island. (First, dork that I am: the chronology is all wrong - hellooooo, the war happened when her children had grown, and two of them went to war, not Gilbert... ) ANYhow, I can see how the producers were like, what the hell...how do we make the fact that she settles down and has lots of babies more interesting? Oh, that's right, send her to work in a big publishing house in New York, imprison her husband in a German POW camp, craft intrigues in which past beaux work undercover, put her in mortal danger.... whereas really, she just lived in the country and had lots of babies and continued to quote poetry too often. But, I love these books, and still think red hair is the prettiest.

now that I'm done with the rats book

2005-10-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

all I am reading is my lease, and keep looking for shady parts that mean I'm being scammed. I don't trust anyone! But anyway, if it all works out I'll get the keys to my tiny studio tomorrow!

I am excited to live somewhere a third of the size of my Austin apartment and more than twice the price. And, to reconcile myself with the fact that I'll be living in a small small apt, this is apparently the bathroom of the hotel this coming weekend:
why hello, four seasons

RATS

2005-09-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

That is seriously the name of the book I am reading right now.

trying to read more than blogs/us weekly

2005-09-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

Flying back from Spain on September 11 was a little nervewracking, but I had some little monster kicking the back of my seat pretty much the whole time, and wanting to hit him was a distraction of sorts.

In the end, I didn't realize until I was there how much I had needed to go to spain. I got to talk to my grandfather, had my grandmother push 10 meals a day on me, was told at least a dozen times I look more like my mother every day, found out my cousin's seven-year old son really likes girls already, drank more than I had all year, and many, many more fascinating things!

I really am happy living in New York, and plan to stay here - but Galicia is just so great. While I am still all sappy, I want to keep closer to uh, my roots, and am re-reading Don Quixote, but this time in Galician. It's hard!

timmy treadwell is not gay, and that's a bummERRRR!

2005-08-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

So I am stopping my half-assed apartment search for a bit, so that I can focus on upcoming trips and catching up at my job. Also, I am hoping that if I am not on craigslist every spare minute of my day I will look out my window and see some sweet Law and Order being filmed at some point. But, if the three people who read my posts hear of any apartments downtown that fit more than a bed and are not uber-expensive, holla.

For now, I think not worrying about finding a place will let me enjoy the simpler things in life. Already, it's letting me obsess instead about that kooky Werner Herzog. The man ate his own shoe! I loved Grizzly Man! It was so fantastic. It's hard for me to even explain why it's so great without going on forever. I actually wrote a paper on a Herzog movie, Signs of Life. It's one of the few papers I've written I really like (when the application for this job required a writing sample, I gave them that one paper). Anyway, it really is incredible how he talks about the exact same thing in his debut as he does in a film almost 40 years later. That is all.

put it on vibrate

2005-08-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to reading some excellent commentary on R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet (thanks Jo!) which is so fun to talk about but so painful to sit through more than once. It's so complex! Like the work of other cerebral auteurs (Joyce comes to mind), the TITC series requires careful concentration and deep analysis. Here you go:

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3100

The glossary of difficult terms is invaluable.

the Brad Pitt and David Beckham of dance

2005-08-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

A Times article from last week actually refers to this one dancer as 'sex incarnate'. It also mentions how the dancer is 'best known for his red-hot, bare-chested man-bird in Matthew Bourne's 1995 all-male "Swan Lake"'

. . .

really?

ps - he is also a huge star in Japan!

beware!

2005-07-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

at my new job, whenever I go to the internet, I get this message:

Entering INTERNET use CAUTION!!!

aaaaahh!!! blogs! page six! the horror!!!

terrible:

2005-07-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

so one thing I won't be reading at my new job are IMs....

it's actually sucky because IM is really my main mode of communication with people throughout the day, so to not be allowed to use it makes me feel very cut off from everyone... blogging is not the same...

besides that terrible piece of news, first day is actually going ok! fingers crossed...

all i plan on reading

2005-07-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

at least for a while, is craigslist. I need a new apt! Any other good places to look?

oh, and yay today's my last day at work! In cleaning out my desktop, I found these two pictures of toby on the subway. that's right, I post a lot of dog pictures.

no blogs this week!*

2005-07-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

* except dooce.

But anyway, what with "work" and reading Harry Potter, blogs have mostly fallen by the wayside this week.

I needed a break from lugging HP on the train, and am rereading bits of an old favorite (and very small!!!) book, The Optimist's Daughter.

It's pretty quiet and spare and so well written. I wish I could write like Eudora Welty.

This is my favorite passage. It's a little dramatic, but it's pretty much the loudest thing in this book, and I swear, it works:

She had gone on living with the old perfection undisturbed and undisturbing. Now, by her own hands, the past had been raised up, and he looked at her, Phil himself-- here waiting, all the time, Lazarus. He looked at her out of eyes wild with the craving for his unlived life, with mouth open like a funnel's.

What would have been their end, then? Suppose their marriage had ended like her father and her mother's? Or like her mother's father and mother's? Like -

"Laurel! Laurel! Laurel!" Phil's voice cried.

She wept for what happened to life.

"I wanted it!" Phil cried. His voice rose with the wind in the night and went around the house and around the house. It became a roar. "I wanted it!"

this week I read...

2005-07-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

an email I'd been waiting for that began with:

"I have some good news. You are approved and now all we have to do is pick a start date. When would you like to start?"

YAY NEW JOB!!!

Rocky and Toby are thrilled for me

I always go back to...

2005-07-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

http://gofugyourself.typepad.com

I love this site for many reasons:

1) it sucks that I can't afford a new summer wardrobe. Thus, it's gratifying to me that people with tons of $ often buy such hilariously disastrous clothes with it.

2) lots of pictures, for the days when that's all you really want from a blog. Except this one of Viggo Mortensen did hurt a bit

3) without it, I really would have never known what a kook Bai Ling is.

2005-07-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

let's read together!

don't be so bald

2005-07-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

well. to get over the (alleged) coke horror, let us turn to an oldie, but totally awesome, blog posting, yes?

http://www.tremble.com/scribblins/000539.html

to wit:

"Wow. Leave your balls alone. Seriously, holy cow. Those are your balls. You guys are sitting, maybe, three feet apart. Jesus, man. There is not a dating guidebook in the world that would even conceive of writing a chapter called "Don't Play With Your Balls (on the First Date)" because any mammal with the gift of literacy would not even consider this a "Do I or Don't I?" kind of question. Wow. There you go again."

so today i read

2005-07-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

this:

http://www.killercoke.org/

can this be true?? first it causes lupus and then this?