Forgive the Law-Related Post, But…

But Anne is so right! The correct spelling of “ho” was decided definitively (I know, it’s dicta, but close enough) in United States v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857 at 859 n.1. To wit:

The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden’s response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin’ ho activities with ho tendencies.”

In other law-related news, the woman whose case I was working on for my asylum clinic was granted asylum! How rockin’ is that?!

And also, can I tell you how much I love my Law of Art class? I get to read about the art of the heist, Nazi looting, and last Friday I got to see one of the largest lending collections of modern art in the world. TWELVE Basquiats! And p.s. Gregory Crewdson? Some of the freakiest stuff I have ever seen.

Broccoli Ain’t Half Bad, But Don’t Tell My Mother

So I discovered that Halloween isn’t half bad once you figure out a costume. And before you decide from the above photo that I am A TOTAL HO (sp?), I substituted a wife-beater* and some jeans for the “dress.” Although really, an ass-revealing mini would have been demure compared to the Sexy Nurses at this party. Anyway.

I also realized where my discomfort with Halloween comes from. From my mother. Where all good foibles come from, of course!

The problem, you see, is that in my household, Halloween costumes had to be educational. My first Halloween? I was a ballerina. Ah, a ballerina! So fun!

No.

I was a ballerina only in the sense that I wore a tutu. A red tutu. NOT a PINK tutu, like my best friend Beth Riley. No, a RED tutu. With a white leotard. WITH FELT SHAPES SEWN ON IT. A triangle. A square. A circle. Because you know, I was learning shapes. And what better way to reinforce this knowledge than to for my poor, non-seamstress mother to painstakingly sew them on my costume?

Love you, Mom!

Damn you, Montessori school.

AND instead of a store-bought SHINY! SILVER! tiara like Beth, what did I have? Some freaky dried-flower garland from a renaissance fair!

Damn you, still vaguely hippie parents.

It just got better each year. One year my mom had me be a witch. But not any witch. Nay, I was The Witch of Blackbird Pond. And really I was only a witch because we could reuse my costume for when I had to play a pilgrim in the Thanksgiving play. Just subtract pointy hat and add a white, poorly constructed apron and presto! Pilgrim!

After these painful experiences**, I lost my passion for Halloween.

But I do have to say, it wasn’t so bad, biting the bullet and donning the construction worker outfit.

Just so I don’t stray too far from my roots, however, I have to tell you what I learned this Halloween.

• Don’t arrive at a Halloween house party at 12:00 a.m. Not only are you rudely late (sorry, Amber!), but things have, um, degenerated at this point. While your girlfriends may just be cutely sloshed, the men there are not cutely anything. Hi! My eyes are up here!
• Being on the man hiatus totally rocks! Instead of giving my number out to any requesting foolio, I felt fine saying, “Um, you have asked me my name three times in the last hour. If I gave you my number, you would not remember who I was to call later. NO.”***
• Halloween is just an excuse for grown-ups to get silly.

So yeah, Halloween isn’t that bad. But don’t tell my mother. Next thing you know she’ll be sewing gold stripes on my graduation robe so I can go as Rehnquist.

*I don’t even know what it means that I now use the term “wife-beater” without batting an eye. I blame K-Fed.

**My mom claims I loved it. But I swear, I was not THAT big a nerd. Was I? Was I?

***Gloria, I will remember this lesson for later and not encourage any more men who approach us by being too nice.

I Hate Halloween

I really do.*

Figuring out what to wear to a party is already painful. But a costume? Fugheddaboudit. And girls have this added pressure of having to look cute in whatever ridiculous get-up they choose.

And! Half the time I don’t recognize even my friends in their costumes and they think I’m either crazy or snubbing them. And! If I meet someone for the first time on Halloween, later I don’t recognize them in street clothes, and again I am either crazy or a snubber.

So in a few hours I guess I’ll put on my hard hat and toolbelt and CalTrans orange vest and head out to get my freak on with people I a) don’t realize I know or b) later will forget because gosh! Halloween is so fun!

Ugh. At least there will be candy. And booze.

*Yes, I realize I am a party pooper and kind of lame.

More Tough Ethical Dilemmas

Laurie gently comment-mocked me for my Shopgirl dilemma:

“This is possibly the toughest ethical dilemma of our time.”

Later on the phone she tried to backpedal and explain why it really really! totally! IS the toughest ethical dilemma facing us today. “Um, it’s really hard, these choices we make in this modern age of media, and moral filters and um….”

Laurie was more articulate than that but no more credible. Still, it was a nice try and made me laugh. It’s a sign of a good friend that she’ll make statements totally unfounded in any form of known logic or social theory to make you feel better about a stupid post you wrote because you were TOTALLY DESPERATE FOR MATERIAL because your life is otherwise vacant of noteworthy events.

So anyway, just so you don’t think I’m not dealing with the Real Important Issues Facing The World Today, here are a few of the other dilemmas I am wrestling with:

• Should I post this? Will Laurie think I am exposing her as the cruel, cold-hearted commenting hubris-stomper we all know she is? Or will she know I am poking fun and laughed when I read her comment?
• What level of sagginess in jean bottoms renders them no longer cutely schlumpy and instead an abomination of ass?
• Related question: how long can you wait between jean washings before sanitation issues arise?
• Can I work for the government if I disapprove of its policies?
• Should I approach this girl who I suspect asked to be reassigned from my team because she hates me and try for some sort of mea culpa, or just let it go?
• There are too many problems in this world! Which one do you tackle? Lack of potable water? FGM? Conditions on death row? Smog? Just figuring out where to spend my energies makes me confused and tired.
• Do I have to give Christmas presents this year?
• Is it wrong to tell your cat to “give it a f*cking rest already” when he scratches and bites your toes AT 5 AM so you’ll feed him? If so, do you get a hellfire discount if you’re not 100% awake when you say it?
• Related question: will I be a horrible mother?

See! Serious questions! Serious, world-rocking, sock-knocking-offing, gobsmacking questions. My mind is like a laboratory of the cosmos’ eternal wonderings. A steel-trap laboratory! No sieves here! Really! I am the posterchild for navel-gazing as a higher art form. I am the Archdiocese of Introspection.

I am a little punchy.

And I am going to bed.

Before I further embarrass myself.

42.

Shopgirl

I read Shopgirl a few years ago. Mainly because Steve Martin had me at hello. Maybe it was The Jerk, maybe Roxanne, maybe Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But probably L.A. Story. Anyway, he had me.

And he sealed the deal in Pure Drivel, more specifically, the chapter, “A Word from the Words.”

“There’s also a nice variety of words in this book, and that always makes it fun. We can hang around with the tough utilitarian words, like the, and have a few beers, or we can wander over and visit the lofty perambulate, who turned out to be a very nice verb with a lovely wife, tutu… I’m lucky. I’m underpants. Sometimes I’m used innocuously, but other times I get to be in very racy sentences in some pretty damn good books.”

My reaction to this passage reminds me of Kissing Jessica Stein, the part where Helen used the word “marinate” and Jess was hooked. But in any case, I was. Hooked.

And then came Shopgirl. There, my reaction was that Mr. Martin was vaguely chauvinistic, and also vaguely old (tho not really, still HOTT, Steve! don’t you worry!). But still more than vaguely interesting.

So now I am torn. I hate Claire Danes. As much as I loved My So-Called Life? That’s as much as I hate her now for stealing Billy Crudup away from Mary-Louise Parker when she was eight months pregnant. Just wrong! WRONG!

But still. There is a line in the Shopgirl previews. “So. I can either hurt now, or hurt later.” And really that’s what dating is like past the age of 25. And I am curious whether the movie has something interesting to say about my dilemma.

I never saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith on moral grounds. But I am really curious about Shopgirl. Do I forego my moral embargo for some insight? Or is it a fruitless pursuit? What do you think?

Truce, Technology?

OK, Technology. I guess I can forgive you for the Friendster snafu. Especially since I hear I can change my settings to stalk anonymously.

And you know, you have extended the olive branch:

• Through the wonders of Google, Marnie Winston-Macauley, the author of my A Little Joy, A Little Oy desk calendar, e-mailed me to tell me she was happy I was enjoying it. She read about how Laurie gave it to me for Christmas on THIS HERE BLOG! How crazy is that?
• Somehow I think all my paranoia about my classmate discovering my inadvertent Friendster stalking was misplaced. The smirking has dissipated. Perhaps he just had gas or needed to be burped.
• And finally, it was through the magic of e-mail and voicemail that I finally received an offer to work at a firm. That’s right. I am not unemployable. And the firm doesn’t even suck! Maybe everyone there had a cold that day and couldn’t smell the desperation. Maybe they are crazy. Maybe they meant the other Jennifer they interviewed. Who cares! They can’t take it back now! I’ve GOT THEIR OFFER LETTER IN MY E-MAIL.

So I guess, Technology, we’re even. Truce?

Speaking of Exes, Part II

Another of my exes, Lucas, came to town on Tuesday. We went out at UC Santa Cruz, almost TEN YEARS AGO. How have I lived long enough to have an ex from TEN YEARS AGO? I dunno. Somehow, I have.

It was too much fun seeing Luke, who is on a grand tour of the West on his way back home to New Mexico. He’s still the same dashing goofball I remembered. Same mannerisms, same smile, same jaunty little walk even.

We headed out to El Carmen for some cervezas and carnitas and catching up, and then he crashed on my couch. We stayed up way too late talking for me to stay awake through Real Estate Finance this morning. Not even talking really — more like yelling (me from bed, he from couch) a constant exchange of: “Hey, do you remember when…” and “OMG, no way! But do you remember…” None of which is interesting to anyone but him and me, but wow, it was weird to suddenly re-experience memories you’d buried a decade later.

Anyhoo, isn’t he the cutest? And, since he occasionally reads this blog, the answer is YES.

Idiosyncrasies, Schmidiosyncrasies

So Gloria tagged me (yay!) to come up with five ways in which I’m a weirdo. Or you know, five idiosyncracies I have and am willing to own up to. So here goes.

1. I still have a sticker collection. Yes, I am in fourth grade.

2. First thing I do when I get home is to put on pajamas. I like to think it’s just because, as Cher Horowitz once said, “My party clothes are so binding.” And this might have been true when I wore a suit every day, but now it’s just because: how wonderful are pajamas? I know this luxury has to end some day. I can’t pass this habit onto the children I’ll allegedly produce one day. Can I? No. Yes? No.

3. I take a lot of baths. The first one I take is in the morning, sometimes preceded by a shower, but most times not because:

a) I am not awake enough to stand, and
b) A bath affords at least 10 minutes of extra psuedo-sleep.

I also usually end the day with one. And in the winter, I have such a hard time maintaining a normal core body temperature (poor circulation), I often take an extra one when I get home from work/school to warm myself back up. My record is winter 1997 in D.C. when one day I had to take five. I know! you could bathe an entire country in the water I waste! And I’ll take that guilt to my grave. But at least since I’ll probably be in hell for my lack of water conservation, I’ll be warm there!

4. I usually buy my shoes one size too big. I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe having visually larger feet lengthens my ridiculously short frame in my mind’s eye. Maybe it’s the same reason I also like to carry packages that are too big for me, and am secretly proud I have an abnormally large noggin. I’ll leave that to Freud.

5. OK, this one is really like a few idiosyncracies in one and if you’ve read this blog with any regularity you already knew these, but I take perverse pleasure in the following, totally useless skills I possess:

a) painting my own nails
b) maintaining a constant speed on the highway
c) cleaning my apartment thoroughly
d) spotting D-list celebrities

So who’s next? How about Laurie, Gwen, Crystal, Carolyn and Neeta?

Technology, You Are Not My Friendster

I don’t know if you have heard, but Friendster has sold us stalkers out.

Yep. Friendster has this cute, convenient new feature where you can see who has viewed your profile! Fun!

Um, p.s. THAT MEANS PEOPLE KNOW WHEN YOU VIEW THEIR PROFILES.

Yeah.

So needless to say I got this news a little late.

Last week, Neeta was telling me I had to check out the Friendster pics of one of the boys in our class, her Friendster friend, because he looks really cute with short hair. And sure, you know, I am on the man hiatus but this does not mean my curiosity has also taken a vacation.

So anyway, I checked out his profile. Thoroughly. I read about his interests, perused the pics. All the while, secure in the knowledge that HE WOULD NEVER KNOW I was ogling the cute pictures of him with his niece.

But then I read that FRIENDSTER HAD DECLARED WAR ON STALKERS. And I knew. Sure as I know my own name. That Tuesday, when we had class together, he’d start looking at me in a completely different way.

And lo and behold, not only has he started SMIRKING at me when he has never smirked at me before, but as luck would have it, I HAVE SEEN HIM EVERYWHERE over the last two days.

Maybe I am just paranoid. Maybe he has always smirked at me and I never noticed. Maybe he is just kind, smiling nicely, oblivious to my stalkerdom. He did try to rescue me one time when the professor didn’t understand my question.

But deep in my heart, I know the truth. Friendster has betrayed me.

Thank goodness I viewed all the profiles of my exes, and their exes, like, months and months ago! At least I am safe from that humiliation.

Still, I hate you Friendster. For killing the stalker in all of us.

Dashboard Confession

OK, before I got all happy about life again, I have to confess I did something pretty mean. Have to confess because I guess somehow this blog has turned into some kind of journal instead of something fun! and! interesting! these days.

So anyway, at the nadir of my angst this weekend, I was chauffeuring the gaggle of girls to the Beverly Center. And I SHOULD have been happy because I had just heard my FAVORITE mechanical voice in the world: “Please take the ticket.” Which means you’ve entered the nirvana of retail therapy.

But no, I was still peeved, which was only exacerbated when this ever-lovin’ BEEYATCH in a purpley-silver Lexus would not let me cross traffic to enter the 2nd level parking. Oh no. Even though there was a line of EIGHT cars in front of her to exit the structure, she would not leave me The Gap. You know The Gap, that polite space you leave so people with THEIR LEFT TURN SIGNAL ON can quickly pass across you.

I mean what, was she RAISED BY WOLVES? Nay! She was raised by her mother, who was in the passenger seat, LAUGHING ALONG WITH HER DAUGHTER at her total and utter lack of human decency.

How do I know this? Because she blocked me so effectively she was directly perpendicular to me, and…

She had her window open.

Trouble, thy name is five girls who have just been cut off from the manna of consumer heaven by some 19-year-old in 300-dollar Prada sunglasses who is now laughing at your misfortune. And probably also at the fact that your 2000 Subaru has only one hubcap left.

And of course my girls were righteously indignant, and rolled down their windows a little further in the hopes that their curses of “bitch,” etc., would carry into her little coccoon of entitlement. Thanks, ladies!

But me, at my nadir, I took it a little further. Somehow, by pure instinct, REALLY LOUDLY out of my mouth came:

    “That’s OK. Because she has HORRIBLE hair.”

Apparently this induced a gasp of horror and a flipping of the entitled head back toward us, but I was on too much of an adrenalin high to notice.

Even now, writing this, my hands are a little shaky.

Because you know, probably she is just a bitch. The kind of girl you only invite over for Sunday dinner if you want to set an example for your children of how failure to take responsibility for your actions leaves you an empty, rotten shell of a person. And really rich.

BUT. What if she is just like me? What if she was just at some sort of nadir and really couldn’t take one more car passing in front of her? Because if she is, then you know first thing she did when she got home was schedule a hair cut.

I mean, I can’t feel too bad. Her hair appointment was probably at Jonathan. Or Umberto. Or Juan Juan. Or wherever.

But still. If I can’t maintain some semblance of humanity when I’m in the midst of some late-20s angst, how can I expect to maintain any in times of real catastrophe? Or you know, when I’m A LAWYER? We all know how bad they suck.

It does not look good, people. Doesn’t look good at all.

But neither did her hair.