Horseshoes and Handgrenades

I don't think anybody can claim that the Astros didn't exceed expectations this season. Clinging to .500 by the very tips of their gloves in July, falling seven games back in the National League wild card race, and then coming within inches of winning the National League pennant. And they did it all with a certain sort of "Oh, is that us? Well, I'll be" panache that had their fans both charmed and terrified. It was a hell of a run.

And while the Astros' death in the sixth inning tonight was painful, and not only because we missed out on the World Series (bye-bye Beltran), it wasn't tragic. I thought it was. In fact, I was going to write a whole blog about how the Astros won't be able to put together a team like this for ten years and we're all doomed yadda yadda.

But here's the thing.

Yes, Beltran's going away. He's going to the Yankees, where he will get paid $25 million a season to stare at Derek Jeter's ass, encased as it is in his unusually tight pants. It's a crying shame, but it does free up $9,000,000 for Astros owner Drayton McLane to play with. And, oh, Drayton. Drayton, Drayton, Drayton.

Get some middle relief pitching, or I'm going to kill you.

You can get six decent relievers for $9,000,000, and with Lights Out Lidge, we don't need nearly that many. Especially considering how many we have to give away. We can keep Wheeler, too, maybe Qualls. Everybody else: grab your jock strap and get going.

So relief pitching's set. Starting pitching's more than set. Oswalt will be back, Clemens looks good to go, Pettitte and Miller will be healed, and Backe has come into his own. That's the best five-man rotation in the majors. Even if Clemens goes away, it'll still be the best.

The weakness, of course, is the top of our order. Biggio and Bagwell are aging, and it ain't pretty. Worst case scenario, though, Biggio gets replaced by a solid Jason Lane, and Bagwell's arm blows and we get to move Lance Berkman to first base, where, God knows, he should be anyway. The boy does the best he can in right field, but it's like watching George Bush trying to use multi-syllabic words. Painful and unnatural. Wayne Graham knew it. He didn't call Berkman the worst outfielder he'd ever seen for nothing.

So we need to pick up someone for center field, and maybe get a catcher who's not just an Ivy-league pretty boy. (Hey, I like Ausmus, but he needs to be splitting time with some sort of slugging machine. Brains and brawn, it's a delicate balance.) That'd really be more than necessary, though. If we can just get middle relief, I think we'd have a scrappy squad who, while not setting any records for most runs in a season, would be competetive the whole year.

And in Houston, that's all we need for lift-off.

If you still care

The baby's name is Lyra, after a character in a book I read and loved while in Austria.

I promise my next post will be non-cat related.

How to name your cat

Erin: Maeve?
Tex: too many chicks
Erin: ?
Tex: is maeve something other than a band?
Erin: Celtic goddess of song?
Tex: ah
Erin: Eulalie.
Tex: Shantasta
Erin: Good one.
Erin: Fiona?
Tex: i thought we were making up words. i realize now that we're going though potential cat names
Tex: Scarnak
Erin: Wait, did you think we were making up words when we did Maeve?
Erin: And Scarnak is your suggestion?
Tex: right on all counts
Erin: Is [your significantly more with-it girlfriend] around or going to be taking a break any time soon? I need someone more helpful.

Bringing Up Baby: Day One

I have my kitten now. She's tiny and adorable and wreaking havoc already.

She of course has no name yet, so I've been calling her "the baby" all night. The baby is curious, sniffing everything she can get her nose in proximity to. She seems to like shoes and anything that Regan plays with frequently. She does not, however, like me. I'm not sure if it's because I'm so big and scary, or if she's annoyed with humans in general for subjecting her to surgery (she was spayed on Saturday).

The baby likes to cry for no apparent reason, which makes Regan come out from under the bed and hiss at her. Amazingly, neither has taken a swipe. In fact, the baby seems entirely unbothered by Regan. It's only me she hates. Of course, I'm mildly obsessing about it, worried that she'll never like me and we'll be stuck together for the next twenty years in, at best in mild disdain, at worst in seething hatred. I'm neurotic like that.

In the meantime, I've locked the baby in the bathroom, where I can stop worrying about her, Regan can hiss at her through the door, and she can frolick in the bathtub and hide behind the toilet when I come in. I don't know how long she'll have to stay there—another couple of days at least, probably, by which time she'll have hopefully stopped hating me and Regan will have stopped hating her, and I'll have stopped freaking out about both of them.

No cat for you

Quick update: I wasn't able to pick up Baby X this afternoon because the Houston SPCA had a gas leak. The officers who were blocking off the road seemed supremely unconcerned, so I choose to believe that nothing's really wrong and they're just being overcautious.

I guess I have 24 more hours to think of a name.

It's a girl! And a cat!

My household increased its membership by 50% this weekend, if you go by pure numbers and not something weird like mass. If you go by mass, my household increased its membership by like, 0.4%.

I adopted a kitten on Saturday.

She is a tiny girl, only eight weeks old and easily small enough to hold in one hand, although much too squirmy for that. She's a lilac-point Siamese, which, for those of you who don't know Siamese, means her tail, paws, ears and nose are a dusky grey. The rest is white, and she has ice-blue eyes.

I don't know what to name my new baby, but I do know that she comes home from her surgery today and that I will spend the night protecting her from Regan, my six-year-old Alpha female who is destined to teach the baby bad habits. So if you have a name suggestion (preferrably something that kind of goes with Regan and isn't a subsistence crop), give me a suggestion.

In the meantime, I'll be trying to figure out how to keep this cat from breaking the blinds like my other one does.

Snippet

From notes I made on a napkin while having coffee with Mary in August

"Hm, he's cute."
"I wonder if he's meeting—oh, that guy. He's gay."
"How do you know?"
"Men don't have coffee dates with their friends. It's too intimate."
"Meaning it involves talking."

As superpowers go, it's a good one

So I discovered tonight I can kill off characters in movies.

I was watching Japanese Story with the girls tonight, and it was, as S. said, going literally nowhere. The two main characters, allegedly in lust but mostly in awkwardness, were messing around next to a desert pool. The main character dived in. Her pseudo-lover took a running start. I looked up from petting Donna's cat and said, "Wouldn't you like this movie so much better if it just ended right now? Like if he were dead?"

And then he broke his neck and died.

Unfortunately it didn't end there, but we all agreed that we liked the film a million times better after that happened. I don't know if it was weird clairvoyance or just random wish fulfillment, but it was awesome.

In conclusion, Toni Collette needs to stop cutting her hair with a buzz saw.

Wolves do not have highly evolved etiquette

I don't know how you were raised, but my mother told me I should never talk to strangers. This does not, however, seem to keep strangers from talking to me.

I was stopped last Saturday in Ikea by a middle-aged man wanting to know if I found his arrangement of candles attractive. "What do you think of this?" he asked. I looked around to make sure he wasn't talking to someone standing behind me, perhaps his wife or mother or SOMEONE AT LEAST TANGENTIALLY RELATED TO HIM. He was not. I said, "Uh, it looks nice."

"You think? Like on a table for dinner?"
"Yeah, that would be nice."
"Do you know where I can find more of these candles?"

Now, I was very distinctly not wearing a navy blue polo with "IKEA" stitched on the breast in yellow. I was looking at wrapping paper (I know, who knew they sold wrapping paper at IKEA?) and carrying a strainer and a mirror. There was no earthly reason this guy should have been chatting it up with me about candle placement.

This isn't an isolated incident, either. In Austria I was frequently trapped by old people who wanted a young ear to listen to their life story. One man, on finding out that I was working as a teacher, told me how out-of-control teenagers were. I agreed, but I was laughing on the inside because as he was telling me this, his grandson was throwing pinecones at squirrels and flinging sand at fellow three-year-olds with a minature shovel.

An old woman at the Südbahnhof in Vienna talked to me for twenty minutes about how expensive bakeries were. I was with my family, and she felt free to comment that my dad looked younger than my mom, and that it was unreasonable of them not to speak German.

Planes, trains, and supermarket aisles—people feel free to accost me anywhere. They ask for directions, donations, and advice; they tell me ridiculously intimate details. It's not limited to adults, either: Sarah, who was sitting next to me on my last airplane flight, informed that she was almost three, having her birthday in October, and, after she asked me what I was doing (to which I responded, semi-sarcastically, "Reading and listening to music,"), she told me that she was sleeping. Sarah's not unique in her inquisitiveness. This was a frequent conversation with strangers in Austria:

"Wie alt sind sie?" (How old are you?)
"23."
"Sind sie geheiratet?" (Are you married?)
"Nein."
"Wieso nicht?" (Why not?)
"Tja...eigentlich, ich habe keine Ahnung."

I don't know why people feel that they can talk to me when I'm just trying to find the damn lemon juice and go home, for crying out loud. I never ask random strangers if they like my candle arrangement or why they're not married. I mean, who does that?

Everybody, evidently.

Meditation: On Green Beans

When green beans are ripe, they snap off the vine into your hand with just a little resistance. When they are overripe, long and hilly like the eastern Nebraska landscape, they fall off into your palm at the slightest touch, as if they are tired of hanging on the bush and just want to lie down for a bit. Sometimes we throw these to the dog, who doesn't eat them. It's unclear if this is because he doesn't like them or because he can't find them; the grass where we throw them is too high to tell. He pounces through it with great glee when we fling vegetables, but the outcome is a mystery.

My father's garden has two kinds of green beans: bush beans and pole beans. Bush beans grow close to the ground on their little shrubs, and they often become entangled in the stalks of their plants. Unable to escape, they're forced to grow in curves and curls that are hard to harvest. You have to hunch on the ground and bend the little bush back and forth, and pull the curvy beans away without breaking the stalk. It's somewhat painstaking and the crouching makes my calves burn. Later, we will take one or two of these curly beans and throw them on the kitchen floor, where the cat will bat them about until they fly under the pantry door. Then she will sit in front of the door, staring expectantly at the doorknob, reaching up a paw to pat it or occasionally sliding an arm under the door to grope for her lost toy. If no one rescues the bean, she will mope for a few minutes and then attempt to get into the cupboard that holds the extra grocery sacks.

Pole bean bushes are more attractive than their midget siblings. The stalks twine around the pole in a criss-cross pattern that looks too complicated to be achieved without a loom, and the leaves have fewer holes in them. My father can't keep the rabbits out of the garden, despite the electric fence, and they chew the bush beans. They're too short to do much damage to the pole beans, so the leaves and shady stalks are healthy and rife with ladybugs, although I can't see any aphids. Do aphids eat bean plants? If they don't, why are there ladybugs here? I remember that old rhyme: "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children are alone." The babies are probably on fire, too, I think. Ladybugs don't crawl very fast.

In addition to being prettier, Pole beans are easier to harvest, because not only do they grow long and straight, but they are far enough off the ground that you can stand up to pull them off the plant. At the top of the bean is a little curly cap. You can tell it used to be a white flower before it became a bean. If you pick the bean correctly, all that remains on the stalk is a small green stem that ends in a little flourish. If you pick a bean that is not quite ripe, though, the cap and stem hold on, and the bean snaps off at the first joint. It is decapitated, frilly cap still in place. It makes me think of the guillotine, and wonder how many people were wearing hats during the French Revolution. It's gruesome. Beans make me think of gruesome things, like ladybug babies flambé and disembodied, hatted heads.

My mother is getting tired of beans, because she's had to prepare them every night for a week, and there's no end in sight. She promises to send some home with me.(Fortunately, she will forget, and I will go home with no more produce than a Walla Walla Sweet onion. I won't have any room in my suitcase, anyway.) She fixes them the same way every night, steamed with a little bit of salt and pepper. When beans are steamed, they change from their decorous medium green to a deep kelly. Sometimes my mother adds small pieces of bacon before steaming, and, when my brother and sister aren't home or aren't paying attention, diced onions. The beans taste very faintly of dirt, but mostly of green and salt and nutrients. We eat them gladly, and my sister's not-boyfriend endears himself to my mother by having a second helping. My sister picks them out of the serving bowl with her fingers, and my mother glares at her. My father pokes her with the serving fork for the chicken, since she is too far away for my mother to reach. We laugh, and continue eating our beans.

Five five-item lists

1. Things that they sell at the Everything's 99¢ store, with commentary
This list is so not even made up.
1. Air Freshener Jesus (I'm as much a fan of Jesus as any Catholic, but I doubt that Our Lord smelled like vanilla.)
2. Official souvenir major league baseball helmet. Team: Cleveland Indians. (Keep in mind, this store is less than four miles from Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros).
3. Clam juice. (Evidently you use this to make white clam sauce. Or to make people vomit on command.)
4. Official Olympic program, 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. (Is this the Mary Lou Retton factor?)
5. DVDs of old Ronald Reagan movies. (I don't know if that has more to do with him being dead or a crappy actor.)

2. For Mary: Things that are always funny
1. Monkeys
2. Pirates
3. Jesus (E.g., Our Lord did not smell like vanilla; bobblehead Jesus.)
4. People tripping
5. Word play, particularly puns and malapropisms (Impulsive fetishes and the like)

3. Tools that I have deliberately misused in setting up my new apartment
1. Drill (to frighten cat)
2. Pliers (to pound off screw that was stuck)
3. Saw (to measure so that picture frame would hang evenly)
4. Staple gun (to frighten cat, again)
5. Paring knife (to turn screws—I have somehow lost all my flat-head screwdrivers)

4. Grocery stores at which I have shopped in the past week, in order of preference (most preferred to least preferred)
1. SuperTarget
2. Everything 99¢ Store (Hilarity has probably artifically inflated this score, but I did get some cute flip-flops there.)
3. Fiesta on Dunlavy (You can't actually get horchata at Fiesta, at least not as far as I can find. Weird. They have it at Target.)
4. DiscoKroger (Open all night, heavily gay clientele)
5. Kroger

5. Words that I consistently mispronounce because I learned them from reading and not speaking
1. Debacle (DEB-uh-cul)
2. Forte (Fort-ay)
3. Yarmulke (Just makes me stutter)
4. Canape (Can-ape)
5. Superfluous (Su-per-FLOO-us. I know better now but sometimes still pronounce it wrong because I think it's funny.)

There's a strange number of simian references in this post

I don't know how much moving you've done lately, but let me give you a good piece of advice: don't. Don't move. Cling to your current residence with all the strength in your bony little arms.

At this point, nine days after I started moving, none of my stuff is unpacked I've spent a ridiculous amount of money, and my father thinks I've got the IQ of a retarded lemur.

This last is the result of the desperate pleas for help that I keep sending him over email. They go something like this:

Dad-

My couch is broken. Can you help? Keep in mind:

1) I am broke.
2) I am incapable of using any tool more complicated than a screwdriver. That
includes hammers, Allen wrenches (they're all bendy!), and drills.

Love,
Beelah*

My father, amazingly, was able to give a good suggestion (C-clamps and Gorilla glue), but since I can't figure out how to make C-clamps work on a T-joint, I fixed the problem with duct tape and a screw. Well, actually two screws, because I stripped the head of the first one and had to break it off in its place. Whatever. If you come to my house, don't flop on the couch, that's all I ask.

So now I have somewhere to sit, but other problems remain unsolved. For example, finding a grocery store. In my old apertant, I lived literally around the corner from my favorite grocery store in the world, SuperTarget. It was the best thing about the old place. Now SuperTarget is over 20 minutes away, and the only things in my neighborhood are Kroger and Hollywood Food Store. On a scale from one to 10, Hollywood Food Store has a Sketch Factor (SF) of about...oh, 15. They're invariably tiny and of questionable cleanliness, and I have no idea how their various locations stay in business.

Kroger, on the other hand, is possibly the most retarded supermarket in existence. It's apparently been "organized" by a chimpanzee on crack, because the meat is strewn all about the store: cold cuts at the rear right, butcher at the front left, and bacon lost somewhere in between. The frozen food section is interrupted by a flower stand, and the produce is both banal and overpriced. Worst of all, they have the stupid membership card system. I don't really object to them tracking my purchases, since I imagine it helps with stocking, but it's a damned irritant because things that aren't on the card discount tend to be just slightly more expensive than they should be. They think I don't notice, but I do. SuperTarget doesn't pull that crap.

The other pending problem is my mailbox key. My property management company doesn't have it and told me to call the post office. The post office was patently surprised by my phone call, and said they don't have anything to do with handing out mailbox keys (which seems reasonable to me—I've never had to get a mailbox key for a residential mail box from the post office before). So I can't get any mail, and I NEED my mail. Some butt monkey is lying to me, and that person is going to suffer my wrath.

Let me reiterate: DO NOT MOVE. It can only end in tears.

*"Beelah" is my dad's nickname for me. I've had it since I started talking, and he's the only person who uses it. I like it because not only does it make me feel close to my dad, it reminds him that sometimes I'm not all that far away from the two-year-old that he first used it on. As if he couldn't figure that out from the body of the email.

"Must know location of Holy Grail."

SWF, 23, seeks SM (Single Mechanic) for good times and free auto repair. Must have bachelor's degree in liberal arts. Must understand inner workings of carburetor, plus how to spell "carburetor." May also be called upon to do heavy lifting and minor home repair (preferrably without complaint).

Successful respondant will join pool of other useful friends, including computer expert, accountant, doctor, and lawyer.

Positions also available for chef, pharmacist, and masseur.

You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes I have TOO MUCH tact

Sometimes I just want to look at people and go, "You're being stupid. Do what I say."

Sometimes. Or all the time. One of the two.

Anyway, it was kind of a lame weekend, in that I spent 75% of it moving and the other 25% sleeping. In any case, I've decided that Mary's high school English teacher was right; we are all developing T-rex arms from typing too much. My forearms were screaming after hefting just a couple of boxes. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what I can do in normal life to strengthen those muscles. Scooping ice cream seems somewhat self-defeating, and Lord knows I don't want to move any boxes (or any thing, really) that I don't have to. So I guess I'll just go through life with weak arms. The tragedy.

The highlight of the weekend: I was packing boxes in the kitchen, when all of a sudden I hear a giant sploosh! from the bathroom. Regs, my 10-pound, negative-IQ cat, comes streaking out into the living room, tail thrice its normal diameter and a peeved expression on her pointy kitty face. Her chin, front paws, and stomach were dripping, and I discovered a large puddle around the toilet. I looked at her and said, "Well, that's what you get for being a pottymouth." And then I laughed for an hour. You can't buy that kind of entertainment.

Finally, the Olympics are over and I didn't really write about them, although I of course watched as much of them as I possibly could. Bob Costas was annoying, Michael Phelps was hot, and Svetlana Khorkina was a bitch. On a side note, the name "Svetlana" cracks me up, because that's the fake name Mary and I always intended to use when we wanted to sit in on one another's classes or meetings in college. "This is my cousin Svetlana. She's visiting from Russia." We never actually did it, but it was amusing to think about, since neither one of us looks particularly Russian.

Yes, I act like I'm 800 years old. What of it?

I'm looking for playmates to play the following games, which my real friends won't play with me:

Pit
Cribbage
Scrabble
Rack-O
Canasta (If you know how to play this, are under 80, and aren't related to me...it's a miracle.)
Spades
52-card Pick Up (I'll deal)
Uno
Five Crowns
Scattergories ("No adjectives" rule strictly enforced)

Admittedly, I don't have some of these games, which could be impeding our ability to play them. But in general, my friends are much more resistant to board games and cards than I'd like. (Isn't everybody?)

Games my friends will play with me, if reluctantly:
Trivial Pursuit
Hearts
Blackjack
Taboo

And finally, just to weed out the losers...

Games I won't play, except maybe on pain of death, and even then it's not a guarantee:
Charades
Guesswords
Pictionary (Not even on pain of a really horrible death, or Bob Costas)
Checkers
Chess (More because I don't know how than anything)

Screw you, Houston

So my car needs to go into the shop.

That sentence sounds so simple until you break it down. Why does it need to go into the shop? It makes a growling noise when it hits speeds above 30 m.p.h. That's as specific as I can get. I don't know why it makes that noise (Tex suggested bad bearings, SB thinks it might be the exhaust system or something that starts with T that I can't remember [not transmission]), so I don't really know what kind of shop I need to take it into.

Second, I'm really resistant to taking it in during normal working hours, because I don't have any way to get to and from work. Or at least not any convenient way.

So if you have any advice for me and my Tracker, please fork it over.

Thanks.

The overzealous dentist strikes again

I'm always amazed how much of my face is controlled by the nerves in my gums. I've had three shots of novocaine today; my left eyebrow is numb. Basically, I look like a stroke patient.

Anyway, I went in today to get a cavity on my upper left molar filled, and this time Dr. T. felt no need to deviate from the plan of attack. She shot me up with novocaine, let it soak in for AH second, and then started drilling. I don't know if it was my contorted facial expression or my scream that clued her in to the fact that, yes, I could feel that. She's lucky I didn't bite her fingers off.

So she gave me another shot of novocaine, waited approximately two seconds for it to kick in, and went back to her joyful drilling. I could still feel it, and evidently she was paying more attention this time, because she asked, "Can you still feel that, Erin? I'm going to have to knock you out with a two-by-four," and then she made a "psh" noise to indicate the piece of wood hitting me upside the head. I stopped grimacing. She went back to drilling.

Eventually the novocaine actually started working, and I stopped bowing my back in the chair every time she put the drill in my mouth. The rest of the filling went smoothly, although I wasn't pleased when she put the metal shaping brace in my mouth and tried to sever my gum with it. And I don't know why, but she always uses enough filling substance that I'm spitting out silver chunks two days later.

She managed to drill and fill in about 25 minutes, meaning she had 35 minutes left before her next appointment. We were sitting there, waiting for the silver to set, when she looks at me and goes, "You have a small cavity on the upper right side. I think we'll just go ahead and take care of that one today. Let me give you some more anesthetic."

So she shoots me up again and starts drilling. Before you ask, yes, I could feel it, yes, I was grimacing, and no, I didn't ask for another shot. The novocaine eventually kicked in, about halfway through the drilling. And she was using the big drill, too, the one that makes your head bounce on the chair. I was sort of skeptcal about her claim that it was a "small" cavity. She managed to fill that one in less than 10 minutes, at which point I was getting nervous that she was going to start looking around for something else to be wrong.

Thankfully, though, she just tested the height of the fillings and then booted me out of her chair. However, she didn't escort me to the door before she asked this exact question: "I may have asked you this before, but has anyone ever told you you look like Monica Lewinsky?"

Me: "Uh, no."
She: "Really? Hunh."

I didn't respond because I was spitting silver chunks into a tiny, tiny sink, but seriously, can you think of anything more horrible to hear while your mouth is full of metal and your face is numb?

Me neither.

Intentions, road to hell, you get the idea.

So the book I'm in charge of at work? Sucks. It's error-ridden, complicated, and quickly falling behind schedule. It's supposed to go out Friday, but I'm having my doubts about whether it's going to make it.

Just so you know why I don't really ever want to look at print again.

$50,000 because it's so shiny!

Normally I flip right past PBS when I'm searching for mindless entertainment on T.V., although occasionally I get sucked in for five mintues by something like Sunday's documentary on Ayer's Rock. (I like the weird intensity of the photography in PBS documentaries. Everything is sharply focused and brightly colored in a way that normal television is not, and I don't know why.) But for the most part, I find that PBS lives up to its reputation as the most boring channel on television.

Last night, however, I was baking chocolate-chip cookies and looking for a little background noise, and I made a very important PBS discovery: Antiques Roadshow is, as far as I can tell, the television equivalent of pot.

Seriously. First of all, everybody on this show acts like they're drugged. There's lots of inappropriate laughter, and they keep mentioning the bright colors and patterns. Anything that's shiny gets particularly close attention. Swirls and curliques seem to blow people's minds. Most convincingly, everybody speaks in that weird, floaty voice you only hear from people who are spaced out of their minds. And psychics. Hm, I guess that's the same thing. People begin making wild plans with absurdly slow diction. "Iiii can get fiiiifty thooooouuusand dollars for thiiiis soooooup tureeeen? Amaaaazing. Iiii'm going to goooo hooome and put sooooup in it!"

You watch this for long enough and you start to get a contact high. You feel very mellow, sort of blissed out on the slow voices and the bizzare pattern of the $8,000 rug some woman's had in her attic for the last 25 years. Your head lolls back on the couch and your eyes slide half closed. The abrupt scene changes seem normal because you immediately forget whatever it is you were looking at before. Eventually you get to the point that you just want to have a cookie and go to bed.

So Antiques Roadshow will be my new drug. Actually, it will probably serve to keep me from ever trying pot, because I know the first thing I'd want to do after I got high is watch Antiques Roadshow just to see what that would be like, and if that ever happened, I'm afraid my brain would explode.

I don't think this is a logical idea, Captain

Somebody gave William Shatner another T.V. show. Playing A LAWYER. I mean, lawyers are already hams, but to add WILLIAM SHATNER? Does anybody else think this is just going to end badly?

"I'm...sorry, your honor. Iiii...just couldn't file the brief in time. But the peeeeople need...to have this information about...my client." And then he shoots the jury with a phaser.