I am thirty-five years old.

From: xxxxxxx@aol.com [mailto:xxxxxxx@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 9:29 AM
To: xxxxxxxxx@mindspring.com
Subject: happy easter and passover

A___, a trip back.

Daffodils and Tulips safely underground,
In spring sent up a crocus to have a look around,
The crocus said it's winter, there's frost on everything,
But a passerby who saw it said, "A crocus, IT IS SPRING!"

Everytime I see the first crocus, I think of you reciting that little poem.

Love,
Mum

Folk songs for people with short-term memory problems

So That's What You Do With the Drunken Sailor

Wait a Sec, the Flowers Are Right Here

Oh, I Do Have a Hammer

Slightly unpleasant thought for the day

You can never defeat General Tso. You can only hope to contain him.

Now that's hard core

It's been about 11 weeks since I moved from Brooklyn, and that means the management company responsible for my last apartment is at least a week overdue in returning my security deposit. I turned the apartment over to a new tenant, who took the place "as-is," meaning I'm due back the entire sum. However, I'm not optimistic about my chances of collecting: When I was placed on hold and routed to a voice mailbox, the interstitial music was "We're Not Gonna Take It" by the Who.

Word on the street

"Heaven's where you never die. You get plenty of pussy, and get high."

-- overheard on 14th St. outside of Yum's Carryout

American Life: Dept. of Second Acts

It's 5:30 p.m. newstime and this is Dan Rather, your eye in the sky, reporting.

All lanes are open on Kenilworth Avenue at Benning Road after a stalled taxi cab, its engine block steaming like a Baptist preacher come Sunday after the barn dance, got a tow. Minor delays back to Eastern Avenue.

At the Wilson Bridge, southbound Route 1 is crawling like a two-legged frog from Pendelton Street to the Beltway.

On the inner loop of the Capital Beltway, there's nothing but red tail-lights and redder faces between Connecticut Avenue and the 270 Northbound exit.

On the outer loop, a tractor-trailer is wedged underneath an overpass near Telegraph Road like a badger trying to squeeze through a mousehole.

After two separate accidents, traffic on I-395 near Seminary Road looks like the line for an H Street whore on check day. It's stop and go all the way to Washington Boulevard.

This is Dan Rather, your eye in the sky. Courage.

Law & Order: Zombie Briscoe

Back from the dead, with a grab bag of wisecracks clipped from the afterlife, Jerry Orbach hits the streets of Manhattan in an all new Law & Order -- Law & Order: Zombie Briscoe

....

EXT. NIGHT. DET. GREEN HOLDS UP YELLOW CRIME SCENE TAPE AS DET. BRISCOE SHAMBLES UNDERNEATH. BOTH STAND OVER THE CORPSE OF A YOUNG WOMAN

GREEN: I guess she's dead.

BRISCOE: You don't have to tell me. I know from dead.

....

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM. DAY. BRISCOE SITS ACROSS FROM MURDER SUSPECT, A BALDING, NEBBISHY MIDDLE-AGED MAN WHO ROCKS NERVOUSLY AS HE SPEAKS

SUSPECT: I was alone. I was drinking. I don't remember what happened.

BRISCOE: I know how that is. I used to drink alone... when I was alive.

....

EXT. STATIONHOUSE. NIGHT. BRISCOE AND GREEN EXIT THE SQUAD. GREEN'S CELL PHONE RINGS. HE GLANCES AT THE NUMBER AND THEN SILENCES THE PHONE AND RETURNS IT TO HIS POCKET

GREEN: What do I have to do to shake this girl?

BRISCOE: That's the great thing about being dead... no alimony.

....

INT. SQUADROOM. DAY. DETS. BRISCOE AND GREEN SIT AT FACING DESKS. GREEN DEVOURS A CORNED BEEF SANDWICH. BRISCOE WATCHES HIM INTENTLY

GREEN: Man, this case is getting inside my head.

BRISCOE: I'd like to get inside your head... and eat your brains.

....

Previewing the Trends

Now that I have a job, I just don't have time to pitch trend articles to editors at glossy magazines and then wait months before giving up on ever hearing back.

To save time, I'm now offering the following pitches for trends that have yet to materialize. Any magazine writers interested in the following are welcome to claim them as their own.

Shadow-blogging: The creation of a website or "blog" that tracks or "shadows" the activities of a particular personal online journal for the purposes of vendetta. In shadow-blogging, an individual blogger's navel-gazing entries are themselves subjected to savage critiques, creating a parallel blogosphere, if you will, where down is up, cool is lame and the original is hackneyed and banal.

Faux-Brow: The practice among business owners -- especially restauranteurs -- in rapidly-gentrifying neighborhoods of engaging in skin-deep rebranding to appeal to the new residents without a keen sense of what the new arrivals are seeking.

Surly-chic: As business-speak becomes increasingly passive agressive (i.e. "it would be great if. you could..." or "Nice work, I just have a couple of notes...") inevitably there will be a backlash in the direction of open hostility. Though managers, especially high-profile managers, currently live in fear that some vindictive underling will expose their overt cruelty in a roman-a-clef (i.e., "The Devil Wears Prada"), eventually a flood of such books will necessarily dilute their effect. Once that happens, managers will again feel comfortable demanding that their assistants go for coffee, show up on time, and do their fucking jobs.

The Week in Plagiarism

Homer's Kin Sues Joyce Estate for Plagiarism

THE HAGUE, Mar 2 -- An Athenian man claiming to be a direct descendent of the Greek poet Homer filed suit in the World Court today in an attempt to recover damages resulting from the alleged plagiarism of the epic poem the Odyssey by Irish novelist James Joyce. Nicholas Theophilis, 67, charges that Joyce "with malice aforethought did appropriate the structure, characters, syntax, and in some cases, actual passages from the Odyssey" in his novel, Ulysses. The suit seeks £8 million in damages, a public apology, and explicit acknowledgement of Homer's influence in future editions of the book. Representatives of Joyce's estate are refraining from comment until Theophilis's ancestry is established in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Basketball Great Orders Youth to Cease and Desist

OMAHA, NEB. Mar 4. -- All Gerald Simkins wanted was to be like Mike. Simkins, 16, earned local renown -- and a cease and desist letter from his hardcourt hero -- for his letter-perfect rendition of a Michael Jordan dunk. "It was unreal," said Sam Jett, 15, a longtime friend of Simkins. "He would start his drive at the top of the key, jump from the foul line, cock his wrist, do the thing with his tongue, and dunk." In a written statement released to the press this morning, Jordan's attorneys announced that they were not seeking monetary damages, but argued that the "current climate" had "increased their vigilance in the protection of Mr. Jordan's intellectual property." Through a representative, Simkins announced his intention to switch to a slashing finger roll that is in the public domain.

Love Note Author Jilted Over Plagiarism, Academic Penalties May Follow

EUGENE, ORE. Mar. 5 -- Todd Burden, 22, a senior at the University of Oregon, thought he was being romantic when he sent his girlfriend, Laura Mendoza, also 22, a note commemorating their six-month anniversary that contained passages from William Shakespeare's sonnet 18, which begins, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Mendoza, unaware that Burden himself was not the poem's author, showed the card to friends. When she was informed that Burden had cribbed the lines from the well-known poet, she terminated their relationship and filed a formal complaint charging Burden with violating the university's honor code. Burden would not comment directly on the charges, but did tacitly acknowledge his culpability, suggesting that he may have been "in a coma" when "the whole freaking world went psycho."

Plagiarism Reporter Suspended Pending Plagiarism Investigation

BOSTON, Mar. 7 -- Boston Globe reporter Rebecca Price was suspended today by newspaper management pending an investigation into allegations that she had used without attribution several passages from a Boston Phoenix article in which a local academic was himself accused of lifting three paragraphs from an out-of-print biography of the Irish patriot Charles Parnell published in Australia in 1928. The Boston Globe had recently established a plagiarism desk to deal with the large volume of complaints pouring into the paper and hired Price, a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, as its sole correspondent. Tim O'Neill, the author of the Boston Phoenix article, characterized the controversy as "ironic," a description that Price did not dispute. "That's gold," she told a reporter. "Can I use it?"