Word

Every once in awhile I learn how to use the goddamn computer in a way that actually helps me. For example, I just figured out that, yes, I can make Word alphabetize shit for me. And this makes me obscenely happy.
Next, I really want software which will do all my legal citations for me. If you find this software for me I'll, I don't know, write an ode-a-licious blog about you. MLA made sense to me. Legal writing and citation confounds me.
Oh, and I'd really like Gore to run.
Alright, back to my sort function glee.

Amor and Armor

Driving home today I began to wonder whether amor and armor have a common root. Amor, easy enough: latin, love.

Armor? From the Middle English 'arumure,' from the Old French 'armeure,' from the Latin 'armatura' from 'armatus' past participle of 'armare': "to arm.”

Ah, 'armare', but one letter away from 'amare': “to love.”

Not good enough.

Amor? What is Amor? I am looking too hard. Amor is a Greek God. Amor is the Latin name for Eros. Amor: God of Love, armed with his bow and arrow, proto-IE 'ares': "to be angry."

OK, I get it. It's just like Pat Benatar said, "Love is a Battlefield." Love is war.

It's much clearer now. No, not really at all.

The Unthinkable has Happened

I have gotten into a summer law class I am actually excited about. Yes, I admit it: I am actually fucking giddy about a law class. So giddy in fact I wrote two ridiculously excited emails, one to my mother, one to my grandfather, saying "guess what! i'm so excited! i got into a class i really wanted! it's so neat! isn't that cool!"
Welcome to the Dark Side.

Where's Home?

Watching the advice of the dearly departed on “Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead” Andy the Saint says “make a list.” A list, he says, of ten things you want to do in your life and if you cross off five or six you’re doing good.

Someone I know posted a picture of a house in the middle of the woods and ferns. A red house like the red house we lived in the first house they bought. Small but enough. This is the house you want to live in. This is the house you want to die in. This is the house that feels like a life-long afternoon nap.

I am thinking number one and number ten on the list are “find home.” Home, I think, is not a locus. Maybe for some people home is a locus.

“Where are you from?”

If you have a ready answer to this question perhaps your home has a locus.

I have a collage. Floating as a child on an inflated mattress in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Maui. Riding horses in the 4-H parade and sleeping outside in the summer on the farm playing cowgirl for a day. Rowing the dinghy wherever we anchored the boat and checking crab pots. Sleeping on the couch in Oakland and waking to the sound of my cousins as toddlers. Sun Valley in the Spring. The Puget Sound after midnight.

I am thinking lately, the answer to numbers one and ten is a live-on boat.

Where is home? Is it a feeling? Is it the place you want to be buried? Is it a person or a group of people? Is it the place you came into the world? The place you’ve remained the longest? How is anyone from one place? How? Is it simply the place you want to return to when you’re somewhere else? Is it the place you think of for comfort falling asleep?

This is turning into that Abbott and Costello skit, “Who’s on first?” only who’s home, what’s home, why’s it home, today’s home, tomorrow’s home and oh, I don’t know.

Throwing Money Away

I just went through my trash for the second time in 2 weeks to find cash I'd literally thrown away. I got lucky this time and found the two twenties in my kitchen can. Last time around I had to root through a week's worth of trash out back before I came up with the missing twenty.
How does a person manage to throw out money, you ask? Easy, at least for someone who knows to look for her glasses in the freezer.
When I run errands I don't take a purse, just shove my card and I.D. in my pocket and go. If I get cash back, that goes in the other pocket with the receipt. And when I get home, cards go back into the purse, receipt goes in the trash.
Whoops.
I feel so bad for the guy who just got paid for a movie rental with a moist twenty I found under rotting spinach and last night's curry.

Getting back a graded law exam

is one of the least satisfying experiences. You spend 13 weeks trying to generate the energy to drive to campus just so you can hike through the woods in the rain to get to a class (because you go to an ever-loving environmental law school and evidently a parking structure would be unsightly or kill two trees) when attendance doesn't even matter because your entire grade is the fucking exam. Then the only feedback you get on said exam is a couple of red marks on some misplaced apostrophes? Fuck you very much! Nice working for you!

Another thing, is any one else really sick and tired of pretending to give honest exam answers to "how we failed to prevent 9/11 and how we can detect and prevent the next attack?" Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to parrot the journal article you authored and assigned us just to get brownie points. I had a hard enough time not writing "war is an inevitable facet of human existence, go read WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING by Chris Hedges."

In another news, I got exactly the grade I thought I would and I deserved. So, I will now quit my bitchin'.

One of the most manipulative uses of the First Amendment I've ever seen.

Get this: God Hates Fags, a.k.a. The Westbro Baptist Church, now lists funerals for soldiers taking place at my family's cemetery as a location for their twisted excuses for publicity, or what they like to call Love Crusades.

You just can't make this shit up.

Let me say without a shiver of doubt I fucking hate war protests at funerals.

Don't like the war, fine by me. I don't care for war, or death, myself. Been around death my whole fucking life. Walked my grandpa's dog around the sections for soldiers since I was about 7. Trimmed their graves by age 15.

And I really, really don't like funerals. Kind of funny, huh? I've seen soldiers' funerals too. They freeze your heart full of anger then the sadness bursts the ice quicker than your breath can catch up.

I've fantasized about ways to accommodate war protesters for funerals. I have.

But bullshit Baptist publicity seeking "protesters"? Would someone tell me why the "stay the fuck off our cemetery" fantasy accompanied by dobermans and shotguns isn't legal? I'd like to show these people a Love Crusade.

Deauthorization of the War in Iraq

Hillary Clinton has introduced a resolution with Senator Robert Byrd that calls for a deauthorization of the war in Iraq. Join me in signing on as a cosponsor of the resolution.

Craigslist Missed Connections

Solve everything. Next time you get a tinge of loneliness go to Craigslist Missed Connections. Not because anyone may have seen you; they probably haven't and even if they had they'd likely write something so ambiguous you'd never have a clue...

"I saw you today: two eyes, arms, feet: me, male: you female"...

But because of all the aching bleeding beautiful hearts...

"I just want someone to write me a missed connection" or "All I want is to sit on my porch and remember what it's like to enjoy the smell of spring and the simple things. simple. simple."

The secret hopes...

"Last night while you were sleeping I said I love you" or "We are not together yet but I know we will be."

The things that remind you being single ain't so bad...

"You're a cheating merciless whore. I hope maggots eat your heart and you die." "All of your friends see you for the shallow, duplicitous, manipulative bitch you are. You convinced me I was the problem but now I'm with someone else and I realize you were the problem and there was nothing wrong with me at all."

Viva la Craigslist. Viva los lonely hearts.

Nothing makes me happier than a couple of gibbons.

"Times" Article on Gun Rights

The "Times" has a really interesting article on the liberal case for gun rights today including how Laurence H. Tribe came to embrace the right from a "rights" perspective.
Good stuff.

This pretty much sums it up

What does Amazon recommend to me?
(1) Flannery O'Connor
(2) Laura Mercier
(3) AC/DC

Um, where do I sign up for the job

where I sit and watch cable news all day? You know, one of those people who keeps a tally of how many times they say words like "terror" or "liberal" in one show?
I could totally do that. Give me the fucking standardized test for that. I would rock that exam.
Jesus Christ fucking Mary and Joseph. How did I get into law school?

Sometimes I think,

nothing is lonelier than someone looking right at you and not really seeing you at all.

blah. blah. la-blah.

I just finished re-writing the outline my computer ate at about 1:30 this afternoon. Evidently my computer got rather hungry. Too hungry to back up the goddamn outline before swallowing it. Instead of crying I played a fun game where I pretended having to re-write an outline I spent however many days on was a jolly good idea and would help my studying. I will now pretend this sense of tiredness signifies not a total depletion of brain cells but the emptying of unnecessary brain cells such that I will vomit pertinent and pithy answers on demand tomorrow when I take my exam. Let's hope I mange to pull as many bullshit theories over my professor as I pull over myself.