I Am Completely Serious

Me: Is this show live? If I go to his studio and shoot him right now, will it just go off the air?

Mom: You may not shoot Chris Matthews.

Me: Sure, just keep talking, asshole! Your guests' jobs are just to sit there and look earnest and nod. You have failed to communicate a single idea in the past ten minutes you've been talking, but that's fine!... You're just shouting! You're not saying anything! Shut up!

Mom: Dear, please calm down.

Me: ...You think if I shoot him they'll just replace him with a robot anyway.

Mom: No.

Me: It would be funny if Keith Olbermann's contract had said they could just replace him with a robot if he left. Like they get a copy of Vocaloid or something and they load samples of his voice into it, and his show is just, Vocaloid screaming in rage. One half-hour-long Vocaloid scream.

Mom: *is now ignoring me*

Me: Or they can make it sing and there can be a musical interlude.

Are you a law student? Are you considering doing a legal clinic where you'll
learn about the discovery process hands-on
interact with real clients (whom you seem to think are basically zoo animals)
get some bullshit to put on your resume
"network" by means of social interactions seemingly calculated to get you punched
you have done nothing but text all day I don't know why you're here
learn about the discovery process hands-on? Take this quick quiz to determine whether I hate you!

Question 1: You are helping an elderly client respond to a set of discovery requests. One of the questions is, "Have you done any repairs to your home, and if so, what kind?" The client responds, "Oh, lands, it was a mess, honey. And there was this greasy dust just everywhere, you could hardly even breathe."

(a) Ask her the question again, rephrasing it and speaking more loudly if she seems not to understand.
(b) Write down "it was a mess and there was this greasy dust just everywhere you could hardly even breathe" and move on.
(c) Write down "did not answer" and move on.
(d) Complain to the person training you that the client talks too much.

Question 2: A client has given you a handwritten list of damages, and he is sitting with you as you type it up for him. He has written this: "lost two cars. my truck is destroyed just can't drive it. you can drive the car though." What do you do?

(a) Ask him to explain what he means by this.
(b) Type those words in exactly.
(c) Type those words in exactly, noting conscientiously at the end "I don't really understand what he means by this."
(d) Complain to the person training you that the client is stupid.

Question 3: A client has filled out a worksheet consisting mostly of questions, which you are typing up. The last page is a checklist of documents she needs to turn in. There are three boxes that she can check for each document: "This document is attached," "I'll send you this document later," and "This doesn't apply to me." You have her file, which contains all of the documents which the client has turned in. What do you do?

(a) As you type up the last page, make sure the client has actually attached all of the documents she says she's attached and that the ones she says don't apply to her actually don't apply to her.
(b) Type up the last page as-is.
(c) Don't type up the last page at all, because it doesn't look very important.
(d) Complain to the person training you that there are too many documents in the file.

Question 4: A client has filled out a worksheet consisting mostly of questions, which you are typing up. The client is sitting there next to you. You find that he has left some questions blank. What do you do?

(a) Ask him to answer the questions he left blank and type them up.
(b) Ask him to answer the questions he left blank and hand-write his answers on sticky notes which you attach to the worksheet.
(c) Type in "did not answer."
(d) Complain to the person training you that the client is lazy.

Question 5: You are going over a client's claimed damages. There is a note on the file that the client is given to exaggeration. The client has claimed $15,000 for a destroyed car, but the client's most recent vehicle registration values the car at $6,300. What do you do?

(a) Tentatively change the number to $6,300, and write to the client explaining the change and asking politely if he has any documentation supporting his $15,000 number.
(b) Do nothing.
(c) Don't even notice the discrepency because you never actually opened the file in the first place.
(d) Complain to the person training you that you didn't know this law stuff meant you actually had to, like, READ things and INTERPRET them and make INFORMED DECISIONS and stuff.

If you answered "a" for every question, congratulations; you should go ahead and do the clinic. However, if you answered anything other than "a" for any question, not only may you not do the clinic, you must drop out of law school immediately, apologize to everyone you've ever met, and select a job in which your inevitable failure will not bankrupt anybody or get them sent to prison. You stupid jackass.

I'm not going to say I'm not glad about the weight-loss thing. But if, like, Yuuko from xxxHolic or someone had showed up the night before graduation and told me I had twenty-four hours to choose between thirty pounds and extended existential horror + special bonus brain surgery, I suspect I'd have gone with the former. It's not an end that I feel justifies the means.

So it annoys me when people I haven't seen for a few years get wide-eyed and congratulate me, because clearly I must be far better off now, regardless of all other factors. Yesterday I wrote myself a new script:

"Thank you for contacting Sarah! Your opinion is important to her. Please stay on the line, and an operator will be with you in: (here I need to switch into a robot-y voice I guess) seven. bajillion. years."

Then I mime hanging up a phone.

I think that this will communicate my feelings effectively. It's more convenient than my other idea because I won't have to carry teaching puppets and mace.

1) A Blackberry Pearl.

2) phpMyAdmin.

3) A garlic press I got at Wal-Mart for $4.

The garlic press is the only one of these things whose behavior I think is really excusable. Blackberry Pearl, you are an expensive product which a lot of people worked on, and some of them had to have been at least moderately intelligent. Why are you terrible in every conceivable way? Why do none of your functions ever work without fiddling, and why do a lot of them not work even with fiddling? Why do you always misspell my name?

I have this phone because Dad got a Torch and didn't need it anymore. The Torch isn't really much better.

And sometimes two of them are just the same question rephrased. Obviously, I rephrased some of my sentences and changed the order of the paragraphs.

So I’ve been looking at the message board for a Facebook game.

I know that I yelled at my cold cream the other day, and I made libelous remarks about Octavia Butler due to my displeasure at her having gotten Serious all over me, and I suggested that Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest series might have been the result of a stroke or head injury. And I may have threatened Nalini Singh’s pets.

But… I’m not serious about these things? I think I would feel kind of embarrassed if people thought I was truly distraught about my cold cream, or seriously angry at writers for not meeting all of my expectations. Yet I think these people on Facebook are seriously angry at the programmers of the little farm game.

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(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

This is the best stupid Second Life argument I’ve ever been in.

I’m just pleased with how my last sentence there turned out. And the intended recipient will never read it! She is too busy being wrong on the internet someplace else.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

1) Olfactory Rescue Service - A frequently-updated blog of really detailed incense reviews. No, these guys are crazy. BPAL people may want to look at it? (Because BPAL international shipping is expensive, I’m trying to transfer some of my perfume nerdery over to incense, of which Japan has a lot.)

2) Amazon is preventing gay and lesbian books from showing up in searches, something that, given Amazon’s monopoly status, is obviously going to have an impact on their ability to get sold. You can write cuss words to them via their web form, or phone cuss words to them at these numbers provided by rydra_wong.

3) Last night I had a dream involving a very stoic eight-or-nine-year-old boy who was captain of a naval ship, in a very small island country engaged some vaguely Napoleonic-looking war involving dragons. (Though I don’t think that the dream was Temeraire fanfic - I think it’s based on hanging around in Second Life pirate-themed areas with Jenan yesterday, plus Warcraft withdrawal.) When he was on his ship or on the docks, everyone treated him with proper respect, as if it was perfectly normal that a little boy be the ship’s captain. The other captains and the admiral of the fleet often came to consult him, because his knowledge of the weather was unparalleled - he could predict storms and calms days and sometimes weeks in advance.

But the further the captain got from his ship, the more people began to feel that it might be a little strange that a child should be in the navy.

One day he and a few of his crew were betrayed to the enemy. When the captain was carried onto an enemy ship, the spell seemed to break entirely. Suddenly everyone, even those of his own crew who had been taken with him, saw him only as a little boy. As always, his face was quite calm - but a deep sadness fell over him. When left alone on the deck of the enemy ship for a few moments - because he was only a little boy, so what could he do? - he took a small wooden flute out of the pocket of his red greatcoat and began to play. Though it was a summer day and only a little past noon, and the sun was bright and the wind was strong, a little mist began to rise up off the water.

And then I woke up.

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)

Cut for hissy fit.

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(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)

In reference to the day I decided to look into drinking as my new hobby:

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