new blog percolating

The last time I was single, I was in my 20's. It's all different now at 35. All my wingmen are gone. I'm too old for the clubs. I no longer have any sort of crew that I go out with regularly. I'm a little lost.

Enter the internets. Yes, I fear I may be at that dreaded internet dating age, where that's my only option to really meet people. It makes me feel a whole lotta old and pathetic.

I'm not really looking to date, especially not anything serious. Actually, I don't really want anything not-serious either. I'm not even at the point where I am ready to even get laid. I'm still in occasional sad mode. I've been contemplating camping trips alone to clear my head and get in touch with my soul. I've been keeping too busy to breathe, much less think about dating.

But as I mentioned in my last post, I'm considering dating for entertainment value and starting a blog dedicated to my adventures. I'm not there yet, but it's starting to look more and more promising. I can't sit around my house forever, watching everything ever posted to Hulu, listening to Bon Iver late at night and getting all emo and shit. Eventually I have to get out there and put the smack down on some free meals.

In an initial move toward this laudable goal of dating freaks and mocking them online -- I really am going to hell if there is one, aren't I? -- I perused some of the ads on craigslist. Well, I know where I need to go to find the weirdos. Look no further! And I'm beginning to wonder if this is such a good idea. It might get a little tedious, especially if I'm looking at spending an hour in a very public location with the likes of this guy:

Architectural catastrophe wrapped in a muddled beard surrounded with shining stars shaped like bright spectacled midgets lit ablaze by the lighter of God. Yes, I just said that. Bright spectacled midgets. Not the kind you bowl down the alley in a pseudo-Lebowski manner under the skirts of awaiting beauties. Those kind of midgets that only exist in ones mind.

Why, may I ask? Just why? Just why do people feel so attracted to the vision of the douche standing in front of the mirror with his camera phone a-blaze in the post “Im a fucktard” glow of another myspace photo taken? Why must people dip themselves into the shallowness of “look at all the shit I own” when they’re standing in front of a craptastic 20 dollar countertop pretending to be a thirty thousand dollar millionaire? As if that would somehow make up for their propensity to grow hair on their as and lose it from their head? What of the man sitting on his mountain bike in all his regal majesty in that “spandex fucking rocks” attire that screams that he’s making up for the lost nut that Lance purchased to replace his over used testicle. Does this make either of them better? Obviously Lance may be more balanced and aerodynamic from the winds that blow from below! Not the smelly kind of winds; well, perhaps picking up a slight tinge of unwashed ass. After all, 8 hours on the bike without taking a number 2 has to leave a skidmark here or there.

Its odd. Really odd. Im odd. Really odd.

Anyway. Be 24-35. Be balanced. Be free thinking. Be smart. Like fur faced weirdos. Don’t be furry. Picky, yet not too picky. Be aerodynamic, like the aforementioned nut-o-speed. Drive, but not too fast. Fly, but only to the scene of the crash. Decorated, with the perm. Ink, but not the ink that one gets out of a bic pen. Prison sucks, so I’ve heard. Have paper that says you’re qualified – even if it is from ebay at 10.99 shipped. Thrifty wooden nickel. Tack sharp wit. Haunted mind, stink fingered, fiddler of your own tune. Be yourself, but only you and not you-part-dooo. Scooby doo perhaps. I don’t know. Hippie, emo, rocker, showered angel dumped at the seat of us undeserving here in the great _ATX_.

Eyes are twitching both ways, and Im hitting submit. Oh, I hope I pass the test of “please input two words that appear here but are fuzzy as hell.” Craig is crazy. Does anyone read, or did _you_ skip to the picture at the bottom to figure out – should I even bother? After all, those high school beauty queens are all knocked up and gained 50 pounds and the former football players serve me beer that I enjoy with such fervor are probably still living the glory day at 8 bucks an hour.

Its Austin. Its 70 degrees and quite lovely for Feb. A bird farted somewhere. This blew a leaf. In turn, that leaf is probably piled in my yard waiting to be swept up. Indeed. Compost? Yes, it does. I think so. Go James Joyce – you inspired this one. After all, letting the mind go one and dribble into the fingers is better than the sausage fest that continues to post the “Look at me and my beautiful towels in a bathroom somewhere cause I have no friends who will take a picture of me with my shirt off.” Go shaven man boobs!

SEND!

Oh, lord.

So, where ya been?

Oh, internet, I know I've neglected you. But here I am now, trying to make it up to you. I have plenty of excuses. In the past week I've traveled to Athens, TX, Houston and San Antonio. I'm co-chairing a major fundraiser for the Lilith Fund (donate here) in April and the National Network of Abortion Funds summit in June, so that's been keeping me, oh, a little occupied.

At the beginning of the month I spent 4 days in Dallas for the National Network board meeting and there were many conference calls leading up to that. Right after that I spoke on a panel at a public interest law conference at UT, on a topic that I am not an expert (yet), and I totally procrastinated all my preparation until less than a week before. And my good friend, Jill Adams of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, was in town from Oakland for the same conference & I had to spend quality time drinking Mexican martinis with her instead of practicing my talk. Turns out it was pretty informal and I was mega-overprepared, except for the whole not being an expert thing like the other panelists, which I couldn't have helped with all the preparation in the world. I've got another presentation coming up in a couple of weeks, but I'm much more comfortable with that topic.

Then there's all the other responsibilities I've taken on with Lilith since I became board president again in January. I don't even want to talk about it!

I'm also desperately trying to keep up with my health goals. I've set a goal to be a triathlete by Memorial Day, well, actually on Memorial Day. I'm working on getting over my whole "I hate running and not particularly fond of swimming either" thing. And I need to get my bike fixed. Yeah, right now I'm zero for three in the triathlon sports. I'm working on it.

I'm also grappling with realizing that I'm really single for the first time in over six years. I'm not sure how to describe how I'm feeling. Sad at times, but other times just exactly the same. I'm not ready to get on the dating horse, although I enjoy my boss's stories of Match.com dates. Perhaps once all this other crap settles down (i.e. after mid-June), I will do some online dating purely for the entertaining blog fodder. I'm actually digging that idea a bit - I could experiment with different wording in my ads to see what kind of responses I get and I could purposely pick the freakier responses just so I'd have more to write about. And the free meals would just be a bonus. So you see, internet? I'm going to make it up to you. I will sacrifice my dignity in order to entertain you.

Then there are all the San Antonio trips. It all started with a call from the immigration detention center about a sexual assault survivor/political asylee being detained there who wanted an abortion. I did my job and got the money together for her. Then immigration decided they didn't want anything to do with this woman and her messy predicament, so they released her on her own recognizance to a homeless shelter, leaving her with no way to get to the clinic. She's African and speaks a language that isn't exactly widely spoken outside of her area of the world. Fortunately she knows a little English, thanks to the history of colonization, so she can communicate a little bit. I didn't have time to find someone else to take on the task, so I took a day off work and spent the bulk of it in an abortion clinic two Fridays ago. Unfortunately, I just can't view social services in a vacuum and when it became apparent that the shelter was woefully ineffective at tending to anyone's basic needs, I got more involved. Oh, and by the way, Salvation Army fucking sucks giant donkey dicks dripping green schmegma. Have you been in a Salvation Army thrift store lately? They charge up to three times retail price on some items! The cheapest thing in there was a ripped and stained shirt from 1982, priced at $2.99. And it's not like they're some trendy thrift shop. Their stuff is hideous, practically hipster-repellant. And they're all smug about it, too. I asked the manager how they have the audacity to exploit the poor and the generosity of unsuspecting souls by price gauging like that & he told me that he couldn't do anything about prices...the manager! So he gives me the name of Major Dumbfuck, who apparently controls the prices. What's up with the stupid army titles anyway? It's not really an army! How fucking dumb is that? And they totally have an army mentality too - them against an enemy (the poor, not poverty), don't question anything just act, think as laterally as possible, take orders without question. Then there's the shelter, which has casemanagers who aren't allowed to provide their clients with much in the way of services. They can't give out bus passes or take clients to important appointments. They have to kick everyone out onto the street for the majority of the day. They aren't allowed to give out clothes or hygeine supplies. They basically do very little. But the case manager for this woman is a good guy & I can tell that he's frustrated having his hands tied by upper management, I mean, his superior officers. Anyway, I helped this young woman get the clothes & supplies she needed. Then I helped her get in touch with an immigration attorney and even tracked down an interpreter for her. I've been trying to find better housing for her and have been researching ways to get her some form of ID, but so far I haven't been successful. I recently met with the interpreter who is also trying to help me find others from her country who might be able to help. I'm totally sucked in and as soon as I started talking to her attorney about some of my immigration work in the past, he immediately tried to get me to take a U-visa case that actually seems really interesting and I'm seriously contemplating taking it. Oh lord, I'm like the crazy cat lady who keeps taking in strays.

Oh, and then there's my actual job, the one that puts food in my big belly. It's been pretty busy. I'm heading to Dallas again in the first part of March for a conference. I'm taking on more with the human trafficking coalition, which I'm really pleased about but really don't have the time for. And I'm about write my first real appellate brief, and I haven't written one since my first year of Legal Research and Writing class. However, I am undaunted & strangely, nerdily stoked about it. It was one of my assisted pro se cases with a particularly nutty opposing party who is also in prison for a very long time, with lots of time on his hands to find cases from the 1800's. My former assisted pro se client is in and out of the hospital and I worry that she may not live to even see the end of this appeal. I'm not the attorney of record yet, mostly because I haven't gotten the okay from my boss to do this. It's really not in my job description or in our agreement for limited legal assistance. But I want to do it so bad. I've been following the case and waiting eagerly for this guy's brief. Oh, and it is 42 handwritten pages of glorious absurdity! The best part is that throughout the brief, he keeps talking about the judge's abuse of discreation. Oh, you creator-diety and your abusing of your creation powers! How dare you! It's a whole new standard of review and I love it. The clerk wasn't going to give me a copy, but I totally charmed her and she ended up giving me the actual original to take to the law library and photocopy. But then who's the loser who only had $2 in her wallet? Me. Dammit! Fortunately I have recently drunk the iPhone Flav-R-Aid and was able to take actual photos of each page, which I then printed out at my office, yielding copies almost as nice as the 10 pages I managed to photocopy with my whopping $2. So, yeah, I don't have a whole lot of time to hammer this thing out. There goes the weekend. Fortunately it's for something I'm dorkily excited about.

Oh, and the rest of my time? Where has it gone? There's an app for that. Yeah, I'm constantly checking my four emails accounts, Facebook and Twitter on my phone. For a couple of years now, I have shunned the iPhone and its hipster image. Resented those catchy commercials. Mocked the tiny internet. And then I decided I needed a smart phone and started researching the options. And I realized that deep down, I totally fucking wanted an iPhone. Then I spent two week battling T-Mobile and my inability to get into my voice mailbox. And my crappy phone kept spontaneously shutting off, sending calls straight to the voice mail I couldn't access. So I marched right down to the AT&T store and plunked down my credit card. Now I'm hooked. I love that I can google map something (yes, I just used "google map" as a verb) and then watch a little blue dot that represents me getting closer and closer to my destination. (Okay, so technically I'm driving while I'm doing this, but I can multitask.) I think the only danger is that I tend to check my email while I'm in the car, driving. I'm trying to force myself to limit this only to stoplights, and eventually I'm going to ban it entirely. I have no real need to check email that often anyway. I do miss texting with one hand while driving (and not looking). I had become a master of the old school texting style, knowing exactly where the keys were and how many times to press each one to form the words. The touch screen QWERTY is taking some getting used to, but I'm getting better, chubby fingers be damned. Overall, fantastic purchase. Phone, you complete me.

And now I have just admitted to the entire world how pathetic I truly am.

World, let's get me a real life, shall we? Sure, I'm so busy I can barely settle down at night long enough to grab six hours of sleep, but considering that my phone is my best friend right now, I think I might need some help. Or to get laid.

So, I'm signing off for now. It will probably be a while before I knock out another meaty post. Until then...

echoooooo ooooo ooooo oooo

Yeah yeah yeah I never blog anymore. Whatever. My life's been totally batshit insane lately and it's going to continue awhile longer, so hang in there. The urge to blog will return eventually.

In the meantime, I'd like to recommend that if you have a Skype account, you call yourself and just say a word or two into the phone, while you're sitting at your computer. Pretty cool effect because as you're talking into your phone and your computer is playing it back, the microphone is also picking up on what you're saying into the phone and the Skype goes nuts. I found this out when I called myself so I wouldn't lose the $5 I have remaining in my account. Apparently with Skype if you don't use it for 180 days, you lose whatever credits you have. Clearly I need to be traveling more!

In other news, how was your Valentine's Day? Mine blew. I never realized how much I hated that fucking manufactured holiday. First, it's all fucking pink everywhere. Ugg. Second, it's innocuous when you can take the high road and avoid celebrating it when you're in a relationship, but try being single and confronted with fucking Valentine's day. So gross. And to top it all off, I decided to check out a new bar in heavily-gentrified East Austin and it turned out to be lousy with uber-trendy 20-something hipsters. Blech. The night was not a total waste, as we ended it at another dive bar in a heavily-gentrified area of East Austin that has a much better crowd. And I ate two nitrite-free hot dogs. And I passed out before I had to overhear my roommate having sex. Everybody wins!

Let's just call this laziness

Yes, I know I am long overdue for some real blogging, but today is not that day. So here it is, the combination of my crappy reality TV obsession and my Barack obsession.



Thoughts? I felt a little...wrong watching this.