some other news

I apparently feel some sort of pressure to write about Africa on here despite not actually being in Africa. Which gets sort of hard, because there are all these other things going on right now and I hardly have time to think about Africa. Well. “All” is perhaps an exaggeration. Mostly my days consist of frantic studying for the bar exam. I am reminded once again that it was not my study skills that got me through law school, oh no. It was my sheer ability to parlay tiny snatches of remembered information into eloquent essays. Let’s pray that this works on the bar exam as well. (Combined with my talent for multiple choice questions, maybe? Standardized tests love me, and I’m happy to love them in return for the undeservedly high scores they spit back at me.)

Meanwhile, I’m sleeping in an air mattress on the floor of my little studio apartment. I have two chairs: a fake furry butterfly chair that was on sale at a less-organized, less nice version of T@rget, and one a “last chance” kitchen table chair that was 99 cents at Goodwill. (I covered this one with a suspiciously Christmas-like red chair cover. Surely no one will notice the poinsettias embossed into the satin. But it was on clearance. How could I possibly have resisted $3.74 in favor of $20 for the non-clearance one?)

I have finally had to start betaking myself off to internet-less coffee shops in order to accomplish anything, because my apartment now has internet. Also cable, but that does not cause the same productivity problems because I have no tv to which to attach the cable. I do question, daily, why I got cable if I don’t have a tv, but I have decided (despite earlier anti-tv thoughts) that I do intend to get one when I have access to my friend’s car and a Goodwill. I love that place. Cheap things? Cheap things whose purchase did not require making of additional earth-killing things?

Hopefully this tv-procurement will occur in time for the Season Premiere of Lost on January 31. I’ve been anticipating that date since, oh, Sudan. Note that Lost is essentially my entire reason for getting a tv and paying for cable. Otherwise, I usually forget that television is an option when I’m bored. Isn’t that what books are for?

I might watch it now, though, considering that with cable I have access to all those cool investigation shows – not the crime ones but the ones that tell you about how things are done, how things are made, how things happen. In Sudan, I watched one about this plastic substance they can put on walls so they will withstand earthquakes. Unbelievable.

…

Random story regarding earth-killing, spurred by thoughts of Goodwill: on the Scrabble-in-a-smoky-coffeeshop evening, about a month ago, my uncle mentioned that he was getting a new truck. J., my Scrabble opponent, said something about it being earth-killing (paraphrase) and my uncle said, “That requires that you believe in global warming, which I don’t.” Clearly I was horrified. How can one disbelieve global warming, still? But for the first time, ever, I managed to come up with a response. I was proud.

“You don’t have to believe in global warming,” I said, “to know, when you stand on the corner of [major intersection in hometown] and smell the air, that the fumes that all those cars are spewing out are bad for human beings.”

Do you want to know what he said? Do you? Do you?

He said, “You’re right.”