Someone's Knocking at the DoorSomebody's Ringing the Bell

The Keyhole 

I don't think anyone knows about the Paul McCartney song I'm referring to but the song came to mind last night when the cops knocked on my neighbor's door at 3am. My neighbors can be loud and annoying at times, but after 11 at night, they almost always tone things down. I can be quite forgiving unless someone interferes with my sleep-time. Then I get pissed and annoyed. Last night was one of those moments.

In a hazy state, I was almost fully in REM sleep when I heard a knock so loud that I thought someone was knocking on my door. I dozed off. A minute later, the bastards knocked again, even louder. After the third knock, I grew agitated, got up and took a peek out of my peep-hole. I was close to calling the cops. Had I been 20 years younger when I was much more high-strung, I would have simply opened the door and cussed their asses out.

The knockers were the cops. Since I was up, I thought I watch this play out. They knocked one last time and shouted out "police."  What they did next shocked and disturbed me.

One cop reached down to the door lock with an object in hand, put it in the lock, opened the door and walked in. Did the cops have a search warrant? Are any of the residents on parole? Did the cops have an arrest warrant for any of the residents?

I don't know. About a minute after the cops went in and searched the unit, somebody went upstairs and asked what was going on or if their place had been broken in to. The cops asked them to go inside where they could talk some more.

End of story.

Archie's a Big Boy

David Thompson, #44

My mom called me yesterday to tell me that Archie weighs 44 lbs now. He just turned 4mos just 2 days ago, and he's already a big, big , big, boy, and he's going to get even bigger. I don't have any recent photos of him since I haven't seen him in a month. Meanwhile, his sister, Dixie, weighed just under 35lbs at her vet visit earlier this week.

Archie's father weighs around 85 lbs, but I have a suspicion Archie will top-out over 90lbs when he's grown.

The Predictability of Mad Men

I'm starting to see a pattern in Mad Men during each episode:

• Some ladder-climber stepped on someone's back to move up

• Someone yearned for Don's stingy praises

• Someone other than a child acted like a child

• Someone lusted after another man's wife

• Don screwed someone (take that as you want)

• Don acted like a dick to someone.

Random Thought: Lawyers & Assholes

Do assholes make good lawyers or do lawyers make good assholes?

(My apologies ahead of time if this offended any assholes out there for the association with lawyers.)

Random Thought:"Non-traditional Students"

I've seen this word in law school communications and emails a few times and have realized that it is really a code word for "old students."

Random Thought:Doritos and Tacos

The other day at the store, I noticed there were "taco flavored" Doritos. Now Taco Bell has "Doritos flavored" tacos.

Write Like John Roberts

A few weeks before the end of our law skills class last spring, our professor handed out an article about John Roberts' writing abilities when he was a litigator. The article gave examples of Roberts writings from several briefs showing how his writing is distinguished from other's. The article brought back a scathing criticism my law skills professor gave earlier in the year on a memo I wrote.

She sternly criticized me for using a hyphen in my memo. The tone in her comment felt like I had violated something sacrosanct in the realm of legal writing. One would have thought by the tenor in her message that I had done something flippant, such as using things like "omg" or "imho" or shit like that. It was a goddamned hyphen and there wasn't a damned thing wrong with it!

I read the Roberts article closely. I tried to absorb as much writing suggestions as possible. I know that I'm not like one of those liberal arts majors whose writing , they think, is the best thing to come down the pike since Learned Hand or Oliver Wendell Holmes. During the 3rd or so reading of the Roberts article, I noticed that in the 10 or so excerpts (each excerpt was about a paragraph long) the author provided us, there were 8 fucking hyphens in Roberts brief writing! Eight!

Oh god how I wanted to email my law skills professor a copy of that graded memo and the Roberts article and ask her how many hyphens she found in the Roberts excerpts. It would have been like an Easter egg hunt or "Where's Waldo." Had I been younger and more high-strung, I would have confronted her. Instead, I grit my teeth and a few months later bitched about it in on an anonymous blog.

Taking Writing Criticisms Personally

Criticisms  about writing on the receiving end can be particularly personal and painful . I've always wondered why negative feedback about one's writing stings much more than criticisms in math and science courses. And it is not as if math or science professors do not make shitty remarks to their students. Not only will they say ugly things to their students, but they will even go out of their way to rebuke their students and often in a public fashion.

For example, on a day our physics professor was handing out our exams, he accompanied the hand-out to each student with a quick verbal comment. For many students, it was a "good job". But for me, he said "You need to learn algebra." It wasn't enough that he wrote a scathing message on my exam: "You need to learn simple mathematical operations and improve your algebra." No. He had to vocalize his opinion to the whole damn class.

As derogatory as this was, it still didn't hurt my feelings. Looking back, I think it's pretty funny.

Compare this with writing. Every criticism seems to be nitpicky and I question every negative comment made. For some reason in math and science I didn't do that. When I was told I was wrong, I accepted it and didn't dwell on it.

Old People and Self-Check-Out Lanes

No matter how few items an old person has and no matter how few full service lanes are available and no matter how many self-check-out lanes are available, the old person will almost always make a beeline to the full service lane.

Are they scared of the new technology? Maybe they just want someone to talk to. Who knows. But when I've got a shopping cart full of groceries and watch the old person insist on using the full service lane for a handful of groceries, it drives me nuts.

Cynical Thought of the Day:Let the Good News Begin

Now that election season is about to step up a notch, I love how the media has been mining for any good economic news to find any gems in this crappy economy.

The ACC Tournament:Local Coverage Means No Dick Vitale

Thank God! Since we have local coverage of the ACC tournament, Dick Vitale will not be heard. That man has to be the most obnoxious and annoying sportscaster. It's especially excruciating during a UNC-Duke game.   I find it amazing how the man can communicate almost exclusively through aphorisms and cliches.

Random Thought:Birds, Zombies and The Walking Dead

I was watching an episode of The Walking Dead a few days ago and thought "If the zombies have necrotic flesh hanging off them, why don't those black birds come along and rip away their flesh?"

And don't tell some bullshit such as the zombies can infect the birds. If that were the case, you'd see bird zombies flying around all over the place.

My Nomination for: I Am a Compassionate Liberal But I Wish You Were Dead Award

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine

In his obit of Andrew Breitbart, Taibbi called Breitbart a douche and continued with comments such as

"Good! Fuck him!"

"I couldn't be happier that he's dead."

"Good riddance, cocksucker.* Don’t let the door hit you on the way out."






Didn't Obama chide us on our lack of civility after the Representative Giffords shooting last year? I have a feeling Obama was really directing his comments to who he felt were the real culprits: the right. Subsequently, this was a a veiled way to shut up his opposition.


Oh, and for those who don't know about the award called "I am a compassionate liberal but I wish you were dead", check out the link provided.

Sicky

Last week, I had one symptom a day that would go away only to be replaced by a new on the next day. This lasted until the end of the week when they all came back along with some other symptoms.

• Monday: headache
• Tuesday: sore throat
• Wednesday: nasal congestion
• Thursday: coughing
• Friday: all of the above symptoms plus sneezing and a fever.

I think I'm getting better now although I'm still tired.