Ennie

I think I just need to make it through this little valley mood wise.

I have been trying. Had nearly all social media blocked on my phone all day. In a minute I will block all again.

Haunted.

This is why when I worked at Starbucks I would go out of my way to work on Christmas Day, morning shift. Everyone is delighted to see you. “Oh my god, I didn’t think you’d be open!”

Probably I will make more of an effort to start limiting my time here. Though my intent was to have this be a place to post the oddball things, legally, research wise, that nobody wants to hear, it has become a way of drowning out the unfeelables, which rebound when the phone is down.

Festive.

…not sure I buy that.

Opposing counsel kept insisting that he be allowed to admit full sets of requests for admission into evidence.

Me: I object.

OC: They’re admissions.

Judge: Read the rule.

“Extra stuff.” Well. At least he noticed.

Nope, too complicated.

I am very good at scrabble.

I congratulated him, but said I didn’t get it. How was he, you know, meant to be depressed?

“Can’t you see? I’m deep in dispair.”

One guy, maybe a dancer, from Brooklyn, showed up completely nude, holding a pear over his genitals.

I was shy, avoided him, particularly once I noticed that he was actually, arguably, engaged in an act with that fruit.

He took first prize for his costume, “situational depression.”

One of the house chairs showed up with bedding tied around his waist. He said he was a wet dream, because he just came in his sheets.

Some of the better costumes were those entirely made with stuff swiped from the dining commons.

My roommate stapled lemon slices to her underwear. A “sourpuss.”

Prizes were given out based on creativity, novelty, humor and fealty to theme (I.e., the less worn, the better).

You could not get away with cheap, overdone shit like leaf-shaped nipple pasties and an opposite-gender friend, and call it “the expulsion from the garden.”

Tell us a dirty joke.

The college I went to, briefly, was known for a few traditions. Some of which would make it into the overwritten novels of someone who considered himself a generational talent, one of which was adapted into a fairly decent movie.

The house I lived in was known for a naked costume party.

(I don’t even have a dog.)

Where did I put the charging cord for my dog's bark collar? She's freaking out about the snow and I'm about to go crazy!

Start looking on shelves, countertops, or bins near electrical outlets. Start with the electrical outlet in the highest-traffic area (in my house, that would be kitchen counter), and spiral outward, counterclockwise, until you find it.

FUCK ICE

You *completely* escape your current life. Where do you go and what's your first stop? Peoria, Illinois, to play some gas station slot machines?

But I wouldn’t want to completely escape my current life. I would just like a little break. No slot machines. Gambling makes me nervous.

How about just someplace to read for a while. Borrowed cabin. Off-season at a hotel facing the ocean. Snacks, crackers, cheese, wine, books and time to write.

So I guess I am saying, sure, of course, there are unsolvable murders. The world is crammed full of them. But I don’t think that an unsolvable murder can be planned.

Leigh Frances Savoie disappeared, mid-day, in a crowded place where dozens of people knew and ought to have seen him, in the spring of 1974.

Is there any particular reason why nobody knows what happened to him, that afternoon? That nobody saw anything? Or just bad luck?

I think there are murders that can never be solved, but I don’t think it is possible to *plan* a murder to be unsolvable.

There are too many uncontrolled variables. Too many crowded places and people who might notice or remember something out of place.

Or does “solved” mean anyone, anywhere, at any time, is able to connect the death to the killer, notwithstanding proof?

And, “could never be” — what level of impossibility are we talking?

Is a perfect murder possible? By which I mean one that could never be solved.

Let’s first define terms.

As to “solved.” Does “solved” mean “the killer is correctly identified, by a person seeking to make such identification, his or her identify made publicly known and proof is available sufficient that he or she can successfully be prosecuted?”

Maple bacon cornmeal pancakes.

Sunny-colored yellow pancakes, not dense like johnnycakes but almost more of a cornbread texture, distinctly maple but not cloying or sticky, studded with little broken up bits of bacon, cooked so crisp that the fat diffuses into the surrounding crumb.

You look younger than you think. Look at your hands.

I don’t think I look particularly old. I think I *am * old. My age shows most in my forehead. My hands do look their age, I think.

Post a video of you singing or talking. Would love to hear your voice

Absolutely not.

I’m tone deaf. You’ll only hear me sing if you catch me with a crying baby or maybe, maybe, a foolish old cat.

And my voice is embarrassing. Very tentative. Hard to believe I talk for a living, occasionally. So no.

What do you most yearn for?

Each, every, of the typical yearnings.

I think everyone yearns for the same: some type of physical comfort or satisfaction, recognition, safety, connection. Belonging.

Also there is a specific type of pancake I have had only intermittent success recreating.

If you could change the time zone of where you live what time zone would you change it to?

I’d set it off by about a half hour. Yes, that would make programming difficult and it would be chaos for neighboring states, but it gets dark too fast here in the winter.