Thursday, September 28, 2006

smarter, but



this law school gig is making me smarter, fo sho, but it's also making me a whole lot more tense. and tired. i am consistently punchy. as in, i am very tired and not thinking as clearly as i would like, and i also want to punch things.

this post is a prime example: you can attribute my failure to capitalize any letters two ways. 1. holding down the shift key is just too much effort. 2. it is an act of passive aggression; i suspect most people get slightly annoyed when they read text that is completely capsless. or maybe that's just me. and that leads to a third possibility: that it is an act of sado masochism.

i would venture all three have some validity.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

elder rage


Whence this anti-elderly aggression? Today, an elderly man pulls up beside me, zooming up behind the stopped car next to me, then jamming on his brakes. He powers down his window, and waits eagerly as I fiddle for the controls. I don't know what he's going to say, but I know I won't like it.

He tells me: "Turn on your lights. It's raining." He is a bit agitated. I roll my eyes and turn the lights on. He says: "It's the law!" I say "okay. Then, as he's rolling up his window, I blurt "Thanks, you old coot." His window is almost all the way up, and he waves me off, as if to say "No need to thank me. I'm just doing my job."

If he heard me, he pretended he didn't. At least part of me had hoped to provoke him further.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Good Fences Make What Again?



That defender of our nation's values, the House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly today to construct a wall between the US and Mexico. They call it a fence. That should stop the terrorists from coming to America. I mean, that's how the 9/11 plotters got into the country, right? Maybe the "fence" will look something like the above. Maybe, in a hundred years, people will marvel at it, like other great and successful walls, like the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Great God...



..Great Adventure is expensive. You can get discount tix online, and I got a kid in who was slightly over the max height allowed for a junior ticket, but it still ain't cheap. They jack you for ten dollars for parking (you can get premium parking for $20!), the food is expensive (though cheaper than at a ballgame), and every game costs a minimum of 3 dollars.

...Great Adventure is aggravating. The lines are brutal. For two of the crappiest coasters I rode yesterday, the lines were an hour and a half each. I spent most of the day waiting endlessly for thirty seconds that left me slightly queasy. (Then there is the food itself.)

...Great Adventure is trashy.

...Great Adventure is mercenary. They have a new speed-pass thing. You pay $50 for a little device, then $35 or so for every person who will use it. $85 for 2 people on top of the ticket price. The device allows its bearers to walk up to a ride, swipe their devices, and get a reservation time to return to the ride. This allows people to scoot right to the front, and wait for multiple rides at the same time. Meanwhile, the poor shmucks who have been waiting in line for two hours have to watch as their seats are usurped by saucy intruders. So us poor shmucks begin to think that maybe the $85 extra is worth it.

...that place is silly.

...El Toro, the new wooden roller coaster at GA is excellent. Hands down the best coaster I've ever been on. Terrifying, gut-wrenching, blindingly fast. You're delirious when you get off it. Your eyes shake, your legs tremble, and your adrenal gland is about ready to explode. There is nothing like a wooden coaster, and this coaster was like nothing I'd ever been on. Up to that point, I'd thought Nitro was the best I'd ever had, but El Toro made me a believer. Yes, it's a near-religious experience. The speed whipping around the corner just emptied my head, so that the only thing happening, in a sort of slow-motion, was Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Friday, September 01, 2006

Pluto? Never Heard of It.


Actually, I think I might have heard about an asteroid by that name. Or was it Kupier Object 1342 I was thinking of?

Either way, it can't be anything of consequence. What's the difference between one object which isn't able with its own gravitational force to be pulled into a hydrostatic equilibreum, and hasn't cleared the space around its orbit, and another?

It's all just space junk.

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html