Health

Despite the story, I'm totally going to try this. Besides, if it doesn't work, it sounds like I will be having a lot of fun hallucinations.

A Miracle cure?

Laviaia Ritkess, a healer in Los Angeles, has been given a recipe for what seems to be a miracle cure. The health says her amazing "space syrup" was a gift from the aliens to humankind and that anyone can prepare it from common ingredients.

"This syrup is truly amazing," said Mrs. Ritkiss, who used the medicine to cure her arthritis. "It costs just pennies to make, yet after a few weeks of taking it, your whole physical and mental conditions change for the better. It contains many ingredients that humans use to improve health, but the formula the aliens' advanced sciense has produced, combines these ingredients in a new and different way, and it has a remarkable impact on the body."

"The aliens told me that it affects the electrical energy of the body, reversing negative impulses that bring about diseases and unhealthy emotions. I take a teaspoon every day and I know that it has worked wonders for me. Now the aliens want me to spread the word so that the maximum number of humans will learn about it and use it."

Mrs. Ritkiss, who runs a healing center that offers natural products and New Age cures, says she encountered the aliens last fall while she was working in her office behind the store.

"Seven small green creatures appeared out of the thin air," she said, "and they used their huge, glowing eyes to immobilize me. They appeared in the corner of my office and they seemed very loving and concerned," she recalled. "They told me they had a great affection and respect for humans and wanted to help us with this gift. I couldn't move or speak. I felt like I was dreaming. When I woke up, the spacemen were gone and the recipe was sitting on the desk in front of me."

Mrs Ritkiss says she mixed up a batch of the syrup the next day and because it contained nothing she felt would harm her, she took a teaspoon every day for a month to see what would happen.

"I couldn't believe what it did for me!" she says. "My arthritis is gone, my skin glows, even my teeth and hair are different. I feel like a teenager again. Since then, I have shared the recipe with hundreds of people and it has cured everything - acne, heart disease, depression and even cancer. The syrup is so wonderful, I know I have to tell everybody about it. It's a miracle gift, a token of love from outer space."

Mrs. Ritkiss says she plans to distribute a pamphlet about the space syrup sometime later this year. In the meantime, however, she has provided the formula so people can start enjoying good health right away.

Space Syrup

2 tsp. diced fresh garlic
3 Tbs. olive oil
5 Tbs. pure clover honey
1 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. cayenne
1/4 ts asafoetida (optional)
1/4 cup strong green tea, freshly made

Saute garlic in olive oil for 1 minute, then add other ingredients. Simmer and cook over low flame for 5 minutes. Let cool. Strain into glass jar. Cover and refrigerate. (Makes enough for a week with one teaspoon a day)

Teachers

I feel sort of bad because I lack the energy these days to care about anything. I'm not a particularly empathetic person on the best of days, but being constantly sick when I've got a bucketload of obligations to fulfill is just making it worse.

So when I see the yahoo article about how some "concerned parents" whose "gentle and kind kid who had been suspended 4 times for bad behavior", and decided to put a tape recorder in their kid's backpack and were just so "shocked" to hear the teacher tell the kids they were being bad and that if the kids are being mean to her she's going to be mean back, I had several entirely unkind thoughts.

1. They should send their kids to Korean schools where random knocks on the head with rulers are the order of the day. And works quite well. Definitely better than being the white girl who has to follow that act up with "in the corner" crap.

2. That is a seriously ugly couple. I probably wouldn't notice it except for the obliviousness to their child's ungifted and unspecial status, and the fact that the wife preened for her news interview by upping her bangs a couple of inches. Ugh. The newscasters also look like they've been shellacked with the most awkward fringes of backward Baptist.

3. Seriously, what is the big deal? Kids get so much worse at home from people who are related to them. And who get off scot-free. I think if kids are being bad or stupid they should be told, so they stop being bad and stupid. Otherwise, they just have to wait for parole. And we have to deal with their shit in the meantime.

I think teachers who tell kids when they've had enough should get a medal. And parents who think placing a recording device in their kid's backpack instead of actually raising them should be paddled outside the principal's office.

Just my humble opinion of course.

Update

Serial killer called me last night. And in the middle of laughing and sorting it all out, asked me why I thought he was a serial killer. So, somebody WAS reading my (old) blog. This boy is as stalkerish and nosy as myself.

Big grin.

Conclusion

So, one mystery solved. Today while heading to an appointment I got a text out of the blue from a number I recognized as the serial killer's (I had erased it in a streamlining binge this weekend).
It said: "sorry about all that. That is all."

Oh dear god. Can anyone be more vague, complex and heartbreaking in a text message? I realized that dating this guy would be a lot like dating myself. A series of malentendues, freak-outs, sudden bursts of ecstatic passion, and veiled purposes. Except that I am not a serial killer. One bonus for me.

You know, I really was very expressive with this guy. Well, as expressive as someone who doesn't like to be vulnerable and isn't ready to just jump into bed with potential future husbands can be. Which meant everything I wanted to say would come out completely garbled and defensive and then he would just look at me intently, and say "I don't understand. Use smaller words."

At least I'm not the only one with a gift for being vague and disappointing. No - there is a whole subspecies of us and we really should be on dating probation.

I texted back: "Use smaller words." My one regret is disparagement is probably not 100% expressable via SMS. Oh well.

One distraction concluded. Officially over it.

At least now I will be able to write about that insane evening and my brush with death on Camp Street. Well, when I'm not aching all over and just ready for bed.

I am so fucking sick of being sick.

I went to my acupuncturist friend today who is back from Asia doing splendid charitable work like teaching blind people how to do acupuncture. He's really very good. There's very few people who I can trust with burning herbs close to my hair.

He says: "Here, I'll give you some to use at home. Sometimes I set my hair on fire, but I never get a cough."

Oh Quang, I love you dearly but this is exactly why I hire professionals.

Neighbor (new)

I met my new neighbor today. Mostly because I parked in her off-street spot since I have a lingering bug that will not go away and I did not feel like driving around the block again. But she was so incredibly nice about it - she just wrote me a note saying "Hey, when you need to get out, just tell me and I'll move my car." Then when I went to introduce myself she told me to park in her spot all I want on weekends because she's never home. Oh, I will.

She's from the coast, she adopted a Columbian son, she has great Virgin Mary paintings.

But the best part is that she is a special ed teacher. Which should be helpful in dealing with the rest of my neighbors.

For the rest, I've been taking a lot of time off from work/school etc. and still can't seem to get over this bug. I finally caved and went to my fave doctor at Student Health. Who pointed out that if I'm in bed and can't sleep, I need to get out of bed because then I'm just conditioning my body not to sleep in the bed. I actually found this incredibly helpful (and so much better than ambien which makes me cook oatmeal in the middle of the night, wake up the next morning not remembering why I cooked oatmeal and thanking God that at least I turned the burner off). So, I'm going to give it and the melatonin she recommended a shot - I really don't think I can lose much more sleep without doing something devastating. Expect lots of sleepless posts.

Yawn.

Conversation

I went to a little happy hour after work and stopped by the gas station on Washington and Magazine for cigs on the way back. A well-dressed, well-manicure middle aged woman approaches me as I'm standing in line.

"Where can I get some liquour?" she asks.

"Hm. Probably your best bet is the A&P about three blocks down."

"Is it far?"

"No, not far at all. You could probably walk there."

"Good, because I'm supposed to be at work."

TMI.

In other news, I have now officially turned into that girl who calls the Chinese restaurant and they already know what I'm going to order for take-out. Oh, so sad.

Gotcha!

Of course I forgot to mention that at the end she's still thinking of him on the train and him in the car, so he drives like a madman to meet her at the station in Paris when her train arrives. And they embrace, and we know everything's going to be fine.

See, it's so hard to let go of even serial killers when they seem like the type to do that.

I guess we'll just have to see.

In the meantime, life.

Repose

I've been feeling kind of bummed out lately about how the magic with this guy I met a couple of months before at a friend's party and saw again not too long ago completely burned bright and fizzled in the same evening. Lundi gras to be exact. I blame the vomitous and undressed crowds, getting stuck in the French Quarter with the parades, and the fact that we started the night out at Jean Lafitte's patio at the exact moment the guy came to clean the port-a-potty out. It was obviously a sign.

I know I shouldn't long to see him again (and keep obsessing about his 8:21am phone call with no message last Saturday) because I also learned during the night that he is probably a serial killer. But I guess serial killers are kind of charismatic. One day I will tell you all the story when I get over this little mini-crush. It involves a chalkboard in his kitchen with a list of "Things to Acquire." Shiver.

But the point being, I saw a movie tonight which was so beautiful and so right on the mark about that evening. Sorry for the rough translation from the French, but towards the end of A Man and A Woman when they finally consummate* this long drawn-out little romance they've been having, all she can think about are these beautiful images of being in love with her dead husband who will never be dead for her.

And so, after carefully and intellectually constructing this little dream world for themselves in which it will all be okay because the possibility of loving someone else is all there, they are left with unsavory crumbs. And he puts her on the train back to Paris (where they used to always drive back and forth when they were getting to know each other) and his monologue sums up the situation so beautifully, I wish I had seen this before. But it doesn't matter, because I know that I still did the right thing.

"Some Sundays start well and end badly. All the same, it's incredible - unbelievable to keep oneself from being happy. If I were to do it again, what else would I do? What else could I have done? Date her for months and months. It's the same thing - to force a relationship is to be in one."

Ah, the vindication of French drama. And the laughter from a friend's reading suggestion:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Awesome.

*For the record, we did not consummate anything. Mainly due to the chalkboard and other observed serial killer tendencies. Breathing is nice.

'Flu

Yeah, so I've got the flu. Again. I haven't been sick in years and this is the second time around of wondering at what point I can request a spinal tap so that they can diagnose what I am convinced now is meningitis. Except, I know it's really just the flu and I'm kind of a big baby.

For a brief second, I regretted not getting the flu shot. Brief second. Okay, for those of you are really tired about my tirades against processed food and the twisted conspiracy that is US healthcare, you can skip the next paragraph. Although I'm not promising the next ones will be any more interesting because that's just where I brag about my grasp of really arbitrary information and how it made me look smart in class. Actually, you may want to just go to the last one, which is probably the most humanizing and/or slightly pathetic.

So, flu strains mutate approximately seven times each year (if you think that's bad, HIV mutates 23 times in a year, which is why we don't have HIV vaccines), and the strains that go into a vaccine are basically handpicked which means that potentially problematic strains are often excluded. That means, at best, you're getting vaccinated against a flu that's no longer around. It's like getting vaccinated against someone's great-great-great-great-great grandfather – who might’ve been a bastard. And if you can't remember their name and where they really came from, they probably can't give you a disease. (Exception made to this analogy for members of the Heritage Foundation). So, essentially, flu shots are a way to just get everyone to cough up $20 to once again risk that the egg yolks that the virus was cultivated in were not contaminated and won't make you sicker than just getting the goddamned flu already. And this year, they REALLY missed the boat:

http://www.buffalonews.com/nationalworld/national/story/277491.html

Yeah, so those of you who have read my blog in the past know about my newfound hate relationship with my International Institutions professor (for those of you don’t, I included the archived post below.) But the other day, while having a discussion about whether Kosovo should be recognized as a private entity, and various states’ oppositions, and despite the fact that thanks to my efforts there is no grading on class participation, I actually had something to say.

“So,” our professor says, “let me read you out the list of names of people opposed to this. (Blah, blah…China…Indonesia..)…Slovakia. Now, any idea of why Slovakia?” He leans back in his chair because I can tell he’s just dying for us to sit there in stunned silence so that he can then impress with his knowledge about Slovakia.

Except this bitch went out with a Slovakian for 2 years, and knows that particular speck of Eastern Europe.

“Well, professor, my first instinct would be that the fear of recognizing independent states based on minority populations might mean that the Slovakians have two potential problematic groups. The first would be the Roma, or gypsies, but due to extensive legislation and integration efforts on the part of the Slovakian government, the gypsies actually enjoy more extensive rights there than in most places in Eastern, and for that matter Western Europe as well. Therefore, because of that, and the gypsies’ wide dispersal, the more likely problematic group would be the Hungarians that have settled around Eastern Slovakia, particularly the town Kosice (which I pronounced correctly as Ko-shitz-sa). These used to be largely Hungarian territory and that group actually in many ways sees themselves as natives and the Slovaks as intruders. Although it has yet to be a pronounced problem there is always that potential as demonstrated by the Kosovo situation.”

Bam! Now I won’t have to participate ever again, because my arcane knowledge of totally useless things has saved me. I also know how to catch a chicken for dinner, because that is something else I learned in Slovakia. I should’ve found a way to slip that in. I seriously doubt my professor has ever had to catch his own dinner.

Last, you wanted something humanizing and/or slightly pathetic? I’m afraid you’ll just have to read the book. If I ever find that kind of material to get in it.

International Institutions

I went in to talk to one of my professors about a paper I have to write for his International Institutions class today.

First of all, I have no interest in International Institutions at all. International Institutions have occupied a space in my mind akin to those Victorian illustrations of the Mad Hatter's tea party, except twice as useless. International Institutions embody many of the reasons I am so disenchanted with law, namely you go in all starry-eyed about changing the world and then learn that the world will never be changed because of the bureaucracy, then starting to appreciate the bureacracy because it guarantees a future income that might return you to the point where you may begin something else similarly starry-eyed. And debt free. And if there are no longer any stars in your eyes, well I guess that's the point where you have kids and complete the idealistic cycle.

My reasons for taking this class were purely material -- it was the last credited slot I needed to fill in Mondays and Wednesdays so I can spend the rest of my days dressed up in a suit downtown making ridiculous money doing random things like figuring out how to diagnose blunt head injuries by getting the privilege of flipping through forensic books with literally hundreds of black and white photos of murder victims with such grotesque injuries that you start making excuses not to accept lunch invitations. Or document review. I actually prefer the blunt head injuries.

Anyway, I knew this meeting was going to be bad because at the beginning of the semester the prof pulled a surprise on all of us by announcing that he was going to change the class into a seminar which meant we had to write a paper and then asking after the fact if everyone was alright with that idea. Having spent about a gazillion hours on a comprehensive review of internet enforcement of US security policies last semester, I was less than thrilled, but had little alternative. Moreover, since it is my last semester of law school, I was banking on cruising a little. So, I raised my hand and innocently stated "Does this mean we get graded on participation? Because if that's true I am totally against this idea." To which everyone laughed. Or, as I'd like to think, acquiesced humorously.

Well, we are not getting graded on participation, but the prof definitely now has it in for me.

So, I've been late getting back to him about a paper topic, namely since it's become apparent to me that every person in the room spends what is probably copious amounts of spare time that I do not have reading the Economist or The Wealth and Poverty of Nations or The Audacity of Hope or many other books that I'd love to list on my read list besides all the cognitive behavioral shit I've been into lately. Therefore people are writing papers on things like the International Organization for Determining Whether Standing On Your Head is Masochistic or a Laudable Physical Feat or The Middle East: Coalition for Turning It Into A Place to Dump Our Nuclear Waste. I'm a little lost, and never bothering to do the reading is probably not helping.

Despite having passed the Foreign Service Exam, the only real International Institution I'm familiar with in any way is the UN. So I was hedging my bets on writing a paper on its Declaration for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Which is a great document about how we shouldn't treat women badly that has ran into a lot of problems because in a lot of countries treating women badly is just good policy. So, state sovreignty and perogative versus the need to give power to an international entity to resolve what is seen as a universal problem.

Except my prof wasn't buying it because violence against women is apparently not an international issue.

At that point I should've given in and breathed the magic word "NATO." Unfortunately, I decided to ardently defend my point of view about how violence against women has important societal and economic implications that transcend political boundaries. Or some such nonsense. Being ardent is always getting me into trouble because I never have identified what exactly it is I'm being ardent about while being ardent. I use my hands a lot to distract the other party from this fact.

He says: "Wife-beating is just a domestic problem. I mean, all I know about this is the Battered Women's Syndrome or whatever silly American thing that is and that doesn't have anything to do with global policies."

My mouth dropped open at that point and I think I let him talk me into some other paper topic instead. Probably doing with oil and gas rights, or antitrust issues or something equally heinous and tedious. I'll have to ask him again what it was. Being ardent also affects my listening skills.

As I'm leaving the office still annoyed, he asks me, "Aren't I your advisor?"

"Yeah," I reluctantly admit.

"You're a 3L, how come you've never come to see me?"

"I guess because I never needed any of your advice," I shoot back somewhat bitterly.

On the way down the stairs, I remember why I hate seminars. The grading isn't anonymous.

There goes graduating with honors. Fuck.

Privacy

So, unfortunately a lot of people found out about my blog. People I hardly know would come up and be like "yo, that entry you wrote about babies was soooo true," and "wow, you're a really angry person." Which sucked. Because I'm not really an angry person, I'm just expressive and I feel passionately about things, even if they're something as trivial as why white sugar is destroying Western Civilization (it is!).

Part of it's my own fault. Every once in awhile I share an entry on facebook which used to link back to my blog. I made a point to not share too too personal entries, but unfortunately, well, there you go. I also kind of figured out that I've grown up a little and no longer really crave the attention of strangers. So, this is a better medium to talk to my friends who, like me, have the inestimable gift of procrastination.

Of course, then I found out that some peeps from work got my blog address, and well, it was obvious from that point I had to make the big move. I was laughing because apparently the same thing happened over at anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com. Anyway, point being that the corporate law firm world probably does not need to know my views on anything other than my work product. I do have debts to pay.

So...welcome. I have to say I kind of like the new format and the fresh start. I didn't delete my old entries from xanga, just hid them, so maybe once I get brave and hopefully once no one can no longer detect me on a search engine I'll post some archives.

So, blogging is back. Hells yes.

Insomnia

I absolutely cannot remember the last time I got a good night's sleep. I think it was sometime before August 2005.

This is obviously turning into a problem (since I am blogging at 7am after having been awake since 4:30 counting the dust particles on my ceiling fan, which has introduced many existential Horton Hears A Who dilemmas).

While it's easy to blame the Medicolegal Investigation of Death which has largely been distracting me with its page-turning photos of tissue remnants of air crash victims, people buried at sea, suicide victims who cut their own throats (always, Dr. Spitz says optimistically, with "hesitation marks" - as if that makes a difference) and yes, a head "nibbled at by a small dog," I think the real problem lies with my inability to keep absolutely still.

My sister and I used to play this game when I was young, where one person would pretend to be a corpse and the other would inflict all manners of painful injuries in order to make the person move. We both built up an incredible tolerance for pain. It's probably no accident she's in intelligence.

All I know right now is that you could probably put bamboo shoots under my fingernails, punch me in the solar plexus, and waterboard me - but why go to that effort? Just don't let me sleep and all the US secrets you want are yours. Well, if I had any to dole out. I'm sure I could make up a few.

Oh, exhausted. Exhausted, exhausted, exhausted.