you would think (if you were me), that finding pants - nothing fancy, just plain old pants-that-aren’t-jeans, suitable for “business casual” - would not be a herculean task.

you’d be wrong. at least, you would be if you went to a mall to buy said pants, which is what i did yesterday. g and i braved tyson’s corner (never, ever, ever again). we started at nordie’s, because i figured that their half-yearly sale would be a good place to buy pants.

wrong.

they had two - count ‘em, two sale racks of women’s pants. that’s it. all fugly. and i started to tense up.

“let’s get out of here, check out another store.” said g. and so we did. brooks brothers had nice pants, but at more than $200 a pair (that’s more than $100 a leg!), they weren’t a viable option. we continued on, braving gaggles of teenagers, murders of mothers, sieges of senior citizens.

“you’re getting anxious.” g observed.

“well, yeah. how hard is it to find pants? and why is it so crowded?”¹

our next stop was ann taylor (all pants 25% off, the sign outside proudly announced), where after trying on at least 85 million pairs, i found one pair of pants that were adequate. (what size am i? 8, i thought, or 6, perhaps. no, in AT i’m a 4. that’s nonsense.) unfortunately the store only had one register working, and the cashier was elbow-deep in new purchases. i left the pants on the counter. as we left, the security guy/greeter happily chirped to incoming patrons, “all pants! 25% off!”

“yeah, but you only have one working register!” i snarked.

g grabbed my wrist. “you’re getting angry.”

“yes. how hard is it to find fucking pants in a goddamn mall?”

“look, let’s just go to the gap. the gap has pants.”

and so we did. and they did. and in short order (after determining that i’m generally a 6 and sometimes a 4, and wouldn’t it be simpler if all pants were sold by waist/inseam measurements like my 501s?) we left, three pairs of pants (and two new basic belts, one black, one brown) the richer.

i wore new pants today. brown corduroys. narrow wale. very nice. i even got a pair of rockport clogs to go with them.

if the gap ever runs out of pants, i don’t know what i’ll do.

_________________
¹ oh, yeah. xmas shopping season. silly me, it begins before thanksgiving now, doesn’t it? amazing how the gift-giving holidays become more of a chore and less fun with each passing year.

for the last several weeks, maybe months, my 12″ powerbook has been out of commission. something about the power input thingy needing to be replaced, according to my friend jesse who diagnosed it - not unlike the cartalk guys - from my verbal description. (”i plug it in and nothing happens. nothing happens no matter which of the 3 power cords i use to plug it in. and they all work on the other powerbooks in the house.”)

so i sent off to ifixit for the proper piece (according to jesse), and it arrived faster than expected.

and jesse came over yesterday to jessefixit.

i won’t bore with all the details, but turns out the last time the powerbook had been stripped down totally - likely when the CD/DVD drive was replaced twice, and when it was still under the applecare warranty - the idjits who “fixed” it botched the job. the heat sink was missing one of two screws it needed to hold it down to the motherboard, and the other screw had come undone and was floating about the innards of the machine. beyond that, the thermal paste had cracked and moved from where it was supposed to be, likely accounting for the excess heat in my lap whenever i had my ‘puter on for more than ten minutes.

luckily, g and james went out to get more thermal paste (and more potatoes and lemons, so there would be enough starch for dinner and i’d be able to make hollandaise for the asparagus), and jesse was able to complete the repair, mostly. the heat sink is still held down by a single screw - hopefully this time it won’t migrate - and i’m under strict instructions not to drop the ‘puter again.

then i made dinner, and it was good. pan-fried trout in butter, garlic, and fresh thyme; oven-roasted rosemary red potatoes, and steamed asparagus. all with as much hollandaise as you could want. james, not liking of the fish, made himself a steak. and gave the snuffster the bone. the snuffster was happy, perhaps happier than the laloca at the prospect of a functioning 12″.

and there ya go. a productive day, despite the disturbing way it began with me developing a nasty allergic rash to something in the bulb section of the merrifield nursery.

i browse the verizon entertainment news from time to time, usually when stuck in traffic on the bus on the way to work.

last friday i made the mistake of reading an article about a girl i’d never heard before, some hudgens or something. apparently she’s done some work for disney. and apparently she let someone (or perhaps did it herself) take nude photos of her. and apparently she’s eighteen. and apparently, inevitably, uptight folks are angry and she’s gone and issued the now-standard apology.

um.

how scared of the human body is our culture, anyway?

In a statement, Disney said it hoped Hudgens had learned a valuable lesson. “Vanessa has apologized for what was obviously a lapse in judgment.”

lapse in judgment? c’mon. who hasn’t had naked pictures taken of themselves at some time or another? (yes, i have, and no, you can’t, unless someone else has put them up online somewhere else in which case if you can find them, yay you.)

and how much of a prude is Renee Rollins-Greenberg?

“She’s damaged,” Renee Rollins-Greenberg, a Los Angeles mother of two, told Reuters. “She’s got this teeny-bop audience, young preteens and younger, who are admiring her and thinking she’s this wonderful, pure innocent person. Eighteen is awfully young for this kind of display.”

eighteen is awfully young? how do you figure, ms. rollins-greenberg? (well, california does seem a tad prudish, what with the age of consent there being eighteen….)¹

but then, those l.a. mothers do seem a rather sensitive sort. just listen to rosie konkel:

“I’m devastated because I have an 8-year-old for which I now have to have an explanation,” said another Los Angeles-area mother, Rosie Konkel. “She’s always looked at this character as a very smart and proper young lady.”

what exactly do you need to explain, ms. konkel? that an adult exercised her free will? that humans have bodies under their clothes? that sometimes asshole ex-boyfriends (or whomever) get their sad little kicks out of posting nude photos of their exes?

c’mon, people. get over it. the last thing we need is to raise the next generation of americans with still more sex-is-dirty and bodies-are-shameful neuroses.

_____________
¹ well, not strictly. the relevant section of the code is as follows:

261.5. (a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor. For the purposes of this section, a “minor” is a person under the age of 18 years and an “adult” is a person who is at least 18 years of age.
     (b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor. ed. note: so… a fourteen-year-old who has sex with a seventeen-year-old is guilty of a misdemeanor. come again?
     (c) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.
     (d) Any person 21 years of age or older who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.

such a simple word. such a simple act - until you can’t do it anymore.

day six after my tonsils were electrocauterized from my throat (a marginal improvement over my own suggestion of using a serrated grapefruit spoon), and i feel like i’ve got a miniature john cleese in the back of my throat intoning,

NONE SHALL PASS! (current state of the throat below the fold, of course.)
(more…)

because the navy should lead the joint chiefs while we’re fighting a desert war.

according to reuters and cnn, female cheetahs “sleep around,” practice “serial infidelity,” and engage in “duplicitous behavior.”

bwah?

a few moments ago i received an e-mail from the georgetown club of metropolitan washington. i generally ignore the alumni missives, but the subject line on this one caught my eye:

PISCO TASTING - THE NATIONAL DRINK OF PERU

mmm. pisco. pisco good. this, i learned in high school. so i read on.

Pisco is a clear brandy-like liquor made from grapes grown on the coastal planes of Peru. It is the only spirit in the world made naturally without any added enzymes, yeast, sugar or water.

other than pisco being brandy, (brandy: a spirit distilled from wine or from the fermented juice of grapes or of apples, peaches, plums, etc.) not merely brandy-like, i was interested to learn that the lack of added enzymes, yeast, sugar or water made it “natural.” i read on.

Be seduced into euphoric delight by enjoying a few Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru, and some light Peruvian food. Because pisco is all natural, there’s no hangover!

hold on a sec. now, i agree that pisco can produce a “euphoric delight” (it’s been my experience that most non-goldschlager/tequila/vodka spirits can have that effect), but no hangover? hah! what do they think the ceviche is for?

that’s it. it’s too much. i’m sticking my head in the sand until next november.

maybe it was the three hours spent at walter reed, and the fact that the kid with the above-the-knee left leg amputation who was sitting in the waiting area when i got there was still there, same chair, same position, when i left. or the kid in the cafeteria, trying to untangle his service dog’s leash with his prosthetic hand. or the guy wheeling himself into the elevator with a thick stack of medical records precariously balanced on what was left of his lap.

or maybe it was the realization that if this Court rolls back roe, women’s equality (such as it is) could easily be history.

it may have been bush’s 1776 gaffe, and his “i’m just a dumb kid” attempt to cover it up, but really, that’s so minor. more likely it’s his vow to veto the second iraq spending supplemental.

fires in los angeles, drought in florida, and rogue tornadoes decimating towns in kansas. sounds nigh-on biblical, doesn’t it?

paris hilton driving drunk on a suspended license. brad & angelina splitting up. what is this world coming to, that such things are considered news?

another fired u.s. attorney, terrorists in new jersey, pope rat in brasil. i’m telling ya, it’s more than i can handle.

good grief. snow on april 7. that’s just wrong.

in other news, we have goldfinches. they’re not eating the thistle, though. they seem to prefer the mixed sunflower feeder.

silly goldfinches.