Okay, brain-trust, pay attention.

The present perfect tense of "drink" is "have drunk." You can't "have drank" beer before, it just doesn't work. (Although I know a lot of you who have drunk beer before. Many times before.) Now, I know you don't want me to think you're a lush by using the word drunk, but I promise you, I won't. On the other hand, if you use "drank" when you're not supposed to, I will think you're an idiot.

A point of etiquette

If you're going to ask friends to save you seats in a crowded movie theatre, please do not:

arrive late
complain about the location of said seats
bring a harem
roll your eyes at me when I talk during the movie
forget to turn your cell phone off
make me sit on the end, you ungrateful bastard.

Excuse me, Old MacDonald? Move your ass.

So when I left for work this morning there were a bunch of farm animals milling around in my driveway. I mean, they were milling in a truck that was in my driveway, but still. What a surreal experience. I live in the middle of the fourth largest city in the nation, people, but it was a confusing moment of throwback to rural Nebraska when I walked out my door at 8:30 a.m. and heard, "Baa. Baaaaaaa." I literally stopped in my tracks on my balcony and said, "That was definitely a sheep. The hell?"

There were, in fact, two sheep, a miniature donkey of some sort, and something that I couldn't really identify but suspect was either a llama or an alpaca, and they were just hanging out. I assume they were there for the amusement of the children at the Montessori school that's next door, but really, where do you even find those animals in urban Houston? I mean, wouldn't trucking them in from somewhere that they actually live be prohibitively expensive? Or does some guy in the neighborhood just have a flock of sheep in his backyard, all, "Oh, yeah, the sheep. Yeah, they're great for keepin' the yard mowed and fertilized. Oh, and the kids just love that minature donkey. Ride 'im around and chase the alpaca all over the place. I tole 'em they're gonna get hit by an SUV someday iff'n they don' stay outta the traffic, there, but what're ya gonna do, ya know?"

This city is weird. It could happen.

Paging Dr. Ruth

I'd have to say that if your nickname for your significant other somehow involves the name of a ruminant, your relationship probably isn't as healthy as it should be.

It's not called "America's pastime" for nothing

You know, the best part of baseball isn't the game. It's the scandal. I think baseball is the most scandalous sport in the country. There are brawls that are half exciting battles and half high comedy (ever seen a baseball player try to throw a punch? It ain't pretty.). There are corked bats, illegal drugs, shocking disparities between the rich and the poor. There are rumors and allegations and things left unsaid. There's incompetence at the top and disgruntlement at the bottom. People on their high horses and people lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. The drama is fascinating, and all the better for the fact that, in the end, it's completely pointless.

Und jetzt, für etwas total anders...

Ich schreib' jetzt auf deustch, weil ich für Oktober üben muß. Die erste Person, die dieses Blogpost übersetzt und mir ein Email schickt (lassen Sie es nicht in den Anmerkungen), kriegt von mir ein kleines Eis oder sowas. Süßigkeiten während des nächsten Filmes, was weiß ich. Oder, wenn diese Person nicht in Houston ist, etwas cool die ich selbst durch Email schicken kann. Vielleicht wäre es besser wenn diese Person in Houston lebt.

Ich hab' nichts besonders interessant zu sagen. Ich find es geil, dass so viele Leute mein Blog lesen—habe geglaubt dass es langweilig oder schlecht war, weil ich keine Anmerkungen bekommen habe. Jetzt ist alles besser; ich habe vielleicht acht LeserInnen.

Also, eine Frage: wenn du nur ein Ding emfehlen könnte, die ich nach Europa nehmen muß, was wäre es?

Miscellaneous Update

Does anybody still read this blog? Is there a point to this? Seriously.

Sketchy evicted neighbor still not evicted. Seems to be oblivious.

The FCC voted 3-2 today to relax monopoly restrictions on the media, damn it. If you emailed your congressperson about this like I asked you too, thanks, and I'm sorry. If you are lazy, don't say I didn't warn you. If you are a communist who likes central media, bugger off.

Finished stories for my grandparents, but I won't be posting the other one here. That's because it sucks, you see.

On the movie front, I can cross Scotland, PA off my list. I can also stop hating Andy Dick quite so violently since he was involved in that fine film. Next up: Finding Nemo.

Is it possible to clean your ears too much? Because I think I'm developing an unhealthy dependence on Q-Tips. My ears are not even that dirty, but I've cleaned them three times today. Q-Tips are the coolest.

You look like a monkey...

Happy birthday to E3, who is a whopping 18 years old today. That's right, boys, she's legal. Step off.

I am lame, but my hair totally affects my mood

So I curled the ends of my hair out instead of under tonight, and really, it makes a world of difference. I feel trendy and flippy and carefree. It's a 180 degree change (or more, if you want to be literal) from the usual staid, curled-under look I have. Kind of like going from being a brunette to...well, any other color, really.

However, if you have short hair (shorter than shoulder-length or so), beware. I have only ever seen one person pull off the short-hair-flipped-out look. Most people end up looking like they have a duck butt on their head.

First Iowa, then the world!

This is a war I could fully support.

Okay, I lied

I decided to post the triptych in its component parts because it's pretty long. Here's the first one. Hopefully the other two will be finished tonight.

________________________
You're All Right

I was 15 when I last saw my grandfather. I had had my learner’s permit for about three months and done a rather limited amount of driving, even though the small plastic card had burned a hole in my back pocket all the way from Wayne to Pendleton. My parents let me drive a single two-hour stretch, less than one-twelfth of the actual time it takes to travel between the two cities. Demands for more time went unheeded, and I felt cruelly persecuted. My parents were clearly trying to prevent me from ever becoming a driver or a grown-up at all! My brother, who was over eighteen months younger than I, had spent more time behind the wheel of a car by the age of six, due in large part to my grandfather and father, who let him drive their pick-ups short distances when they were out doing man things presumably unsuitable for girl children. Life was cruel.

As long as I could remember, Grandpa had had two pickups, the gold one and the blue one, and it was in these that my brother learned to drive. I presume each had specific uses, but I was completely unable to distinguish a pattern in which one they would choose to take on any given outing. I preferred the gold pickup, not for a good reason, but simply because it seemed shinier. In fact, I had once tried to improve on its shininess by teaming up with my cousin Kristy and washing it one afternoon. The scrub brushes made a delicious swishing noise as we pushed the brush down hard, then ran the length of the truck side, leaving a trail of soapy water from bumper to bumper. Grandpa’s reaction upon hearing of this free service was less than enthusiastic, worse even than the time we’d deliberately flooded the garage. “Ma truck! What have ya done to ma paint job! Go see if your grandmother has something for you to do, ya good-for-nothin’ kids, and don’t touch my truck ever again.” He wasn’t really angry—we were hand-fed M&Ms from the garage candy dish later that afternoon—and I don’t think we scraped off too much paint, but all access to water was strictly controlled after that summer.

* * *
We took the gold pickup when we went out. Somehow, I think Grandpa saw the rectangle scorched in my back pocket where I carried the learner’s permit, and one rainy afternoon about a week into our stay, he loaded up me and my and we headed out for a driving lesson.

I don’t remember my dignity being offended at the idea of getting a lesson after I had already taken—and passed with an A—driver’s education the summer before. Grandpa, oddly sensitive to the teenage ego, must have phrased it more carefully, something like, “Well, let’s go see if you can drive better than your mother says.” I’m almost sure that was how it went. Like most adolescents, I was eager to prove my parents wrong about anything, and my lack of driving skill was a particular sore point. And time spent with my grandfather was rare enough that I was willing to tolerate my know-it-all brother tagging along.

We drove out into the hills surrounding Pendleton. It was winter, and snow lay dirty in the ditches and cupped the bottom of fence posts, but for the most part the ground was bare, dampened to a dull brown with the dreary, persistent mist that would have been snow if the mercury had ridden just a few degrees lower in the thermometer. The roads weren’t slick, although they were wet, and when we drove off of the paved roads onto gravel ones, the ground was still firm. Grandpa pointed out a deer and a few pheasants, although I was forbidden to look; I tended to turn the wheel when I turned my head. The houses were somewhat far apart and the roads narrow, although we weren’t far outside of the city limits. Another pickup passed us from the other direction; I nervously pulled a little too far over on the shoulder. “Get back on the road!” Ethan yelled.

“Shush,” my grandfather replied. “She’s fine.” And to me, “You’re fine, just wanted to check out that tree. You’ve seen it, now get on back over.” He was always calm, faintly amused. It was a refreshing change from my father, who when stressed tended to raise his voice as he repeated himself: “Fifteen miles an hour around the corner, fifteen miles an hour around the corner, FIFTEEN MILES AN HOUR AROUND THE CORNER, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!” I suspect he probably wanted to swear and would have if it had been my brother instead of me at the wheel. My eyes still fly to the speedometer when I make a 90-degree turn, checking to see that the needle is indeed hovering somewhere around 15 mph.

My mother was no better, gripping the dashboard and flexing her brake foot convulsively while failing to produce complete sentences. “ERIN! There’s—! Watch tha—!” When confronted, Mom theorized that Grandpa’s calm came from the fact that I was not his child and that made the experience amusing rather than terrifying. This made no sense to me; it was still his car and his life on the line when I was behind the wheel. I just figured he was more laid back and less into picking on me. I liked driving with him. Even when I accidentally pressed the gas instead of the brake, coming within inches of the car in front of us, obediently stopped at the red light and having no pedal confusion, Grandpa just laughed like someone had told him a good joke. My heart was threatening to break ribs with its furious pounding and my fingers refused to release the steering wheel, but he seemed unaffected. His belly shook a little and all the wrinkles on his face folded up neatly as he chuckled at me. “You’re all right. Brake on the left, ya good-for-nothin’ kid,” he laughed. The light turned green. “Head up the hill; we’re goin’ to Bi-Mart.”

* * *

Last summer, six years after my grandfather taught me to drive with patience, I found myself in the passenger seat, trying to teach a friend to drive my Tracker, which is shinier to me than even the gold pickup. I don’t let many people drive it, and certainly not six-year-old boys or teenagers in the first flush of driving lust, so I was expecting to be as nervous, flexing my foot and yelling, “Slower on the turns! Brake! NO! Clutch, then brake!” But I didn’t channel my parents. Instead, I heard my grandfather’s easy laughter bubble out of my mouth as Nolan lurched around a parking lot and came to a screeching stop, the engine dying with a groan. “Clutch on the left, ya good-for-nothin’ punk. Clutch on the left. You’re all right.”

For Bo, whose praise evidently gave me writer's block.

Sorry the blog's been so boring lately. I'm working on a triptych of stories about my grandparents that I'm writing for their anniversary. If I ever finish them, I will post them and then you will have a lot to read. Or, knowing some of you, a lot to ignore.

I can't breathe

You can understand how I would be a little crabby.

More on the media:

For some reason I've become a little media obsessed lately. Not sure why—maybe I just like to complain, and there's plenty there to complain about.

For example, have you read about this Jayson Blair thing? Super-interesting. I, much like most of America, don't know who to blame more. That kid is a total punk—doesn't appear to have any remorse at all, not to mention journalistic ethics, and has generally been a bad apple from the get-go, but the Times sort of did this to itself. Get some fact-checkers, honestly, and quit giving people so many free passes. And an editor-in-chief who's not so into ass-kissers.

I've pretty much stopped watching TV entirely now. I still love movies, but TV has gotten to the point where it just irritates the crap out of me. The only thing I pay attention to anymore are the commercials, and those I watch online.

When weighing the relative merits of the three major weekly news magazines tonight, I rejected Time on the grounds that it was too masturbatory. Has anybody else noticed this? Time is pretty much in love with itself, and not afraid to tell you about it. As a matter of fact, the entire AOL-TimeWarner conglomerate is a little too narcissistic for comfort. How many times have you read the words "Entertainment Weekly parent company AOL-TimeWarner" while reading something in EW? Too many. I end up feeling like I've walked in on a very private moment.

Clear Channel Communications, on the other hand, is not masturbatory; they're too busy pleasing their advertisers, the record labels, and everybody but their listeners—I need a radio station that has more than five songs in the rotation, for the love of Pete! And Cox Communications is not much better. Of course, the other option is KTRU. Right, pirating and mix CDs it is.

Please email your congressperson about the FCC.

"But nice self-esteem there, Barbie."

Driving home from M3's tonight, this is the promo I heard on one radio station:

"Houston's favorite station for the country legends is Houston's only station for the country legends: 97.1."

How is that special, now? You're the favorite because there's no other alternative? Congratulations! That's quite an accomplishment. Now play some damn music and stop saying stupid stuff.

I don't usually embrace causes, but...

This one is easy to do something about, even if it's small.

The FCC is considering a relaxation of the regulations on media which would allow a fewer number of companies to own a larger share of the market—essentially, media anti-trust regulations become a thing of the past, and we only get to hear the opinions and views of a few large conglomerates. Hardly unbiased, I promise you.

So. If you would rather have a more balanced media environment where independent networks and journalists and so forth actually have a chance of survival (and we're not suddenly living in 1984), go to this website and dash off a quick email to your congressional representative. It's arranged so you don't have to remember who that is or to compose the email yourself, although I encourage you to put a personal message at the end so your congressperson knows you actually care and aren't a) a form-filling-out computer program or b) a lemming.

Thanks.

I am a snot factory

Damn you, Houston, Texas! Damn you, and your pollen too!

And another thing!

This is seriously a case name I ran across today in the Evidence Handbook.

United States v. 33.90 Acres of Land, More or Less, Situated in Bexar County (5th Cir. 1983)

Why is the United States suing a plot of land? How is it possible for AN INERT PIECE OF GROUND to commit a crime? HOW?!

Law-makers are...not intelligent

One of the funniest parts of my job is running spell check on large sections of legal code, both Texas and federal. I don't know what the deal is, but evidently normal nouns, verbs, and adjectives aren't enough for these people. My spell checker gets snagged on some really great words. For example: surplusage. This is an actual word, found somewhere in the bowels of the Texas State Business and Commerce Code. Surplusage. What is that? It's "surplus" with a noun ending on it. Like at some point, the codifier was going, "Surplus is a noun...but it's not quite enough of a noun. We need to nounenate it. More noun! It needs to be nounnier!" Other good examples of this that I've found (as Dave Barry says, I'm not making this up): additivity, wharfage, supplementations, peonage.

Sometimes the hilarity comes from a misapplication of endings. Case in point: recordation. Presumably means "the act of making a record" or, what we normal people like to call "recording." "Effectuated," more commonly known as "effected" and "representationor," which is a fun non-word for "representative."

What is this reckless disregard for the rules of English? This is why laws get a bad rap, you know. People can't understand them because THEY'RE NOT WRITTEN IN ANY SORT OF VALID LANGUAGE. Gah!

A little help-out, here?

Okay, I need some advice. I'm trying to decide whether to apply to grad school this summer (meaning that I would go after I got back from Austria) or wait until after I get back to apply.

The advantages of applying: I get through with the Ph.D sooner, I like school a lot, GRE scores still valid, able to get better recommendations.

The advantages of not applying: I have a job that I like lined up for when I get back, I would live in Houston for another year, I wouldn't have to take the GRE subject test in Vienna this fall.

Any advice you can offer would be gladly accepted, if not followed to the letter. Thanks.