Wildcat!

It appears that beach cats aren't the only treacherous brand of feline roaming the American countryside. This morning I left for work approximately forty-five minutes before my first hearing. I stopped at the intersection from my parking lot to turn onto the road and saw that traffic was gridlocked. A quick scan uncovered the reason for the delay: A tail-less kitten was sitting in the middle of the intersection and approaching various cars.

After a wait of about three minutes, the junior cat left the road and sauntered directly under my car. I knew I couldn't run the bastard over with every stopped motorist pointing under my car, so I exited. Sure enough, the kitten was lying in wait under my car, slowly walked out, and began meowing at me like it owned the place. Immediately, I flashed the kitten my gang sign to let it know that it was on my turf.

Wouldn't you know it, I was stupid enough to leave my car door open and the bastard jumped inside and sat on the passenger seat! At this point, I wasn't entirely sure on how to proceed. If I didn't remove it, the cat would think that I was some scum of the earth taxi driver. However, if I did try to remove the wild animal, it was liable to bite my face off. Eventually I made the decision that my dignity was more important than my face. Damnit, I'm an attorney and that wildcat was going to respect my authority.

I removed the kitten with remarkable ease. However, it just sat there, looking at me and meowing. I made some cat noises with my mouth and the motherfucker followed me everywhere in the parking lot. A plan slowly formed and I allowed the kiten to follow me to the far end of the parking lot, then I sprinted back to my car, jumped inside and prepared to do a victorious burnout. However, the cat darted under my vehicle before I could put the car into drive. I tried this plan a couple more times without success. For a tiny animal, that kitten is one fast beast of prey.

Several minutes passed and the situation was getting ridiculous. I lured the kitten over to the woods near my house. Petting it, the kitten purred. I then gently picked it up, and hurled it down an incline into the woods. Yes, I know, one who hurls small animals into the woods is normally a bad person, but remember, cats always land on their feet. This kitten apparently had the instinct and landed A-OK, but still bolted up the hill towards me. However, the incline thwarted the kitten's previous agility and allowed me to make my escape from the parking lot. As I escaped at a rather high speed, I saw the kitten chasing after my car.

Had this been a Beverly Cleary book, I would have been obligated to adopt the wildcat. Unfortunately for this homeless feline, this is AMERICA, and no creature, plant, rock, or superintelligent computer-being has the right to beg for handouts. I was late to court but didn't have the nerve to tell the judge that my tardiness stemmed from tossing a kitten off a hill. I blamed traffic.

Things I'm Thankful For

All too often I fall into the "glass half empty" mold when things aren't going precisely how I planned them. When I was ten, I envisioned my life at 26...I was an astronaut/spy/crimefighter with seven dogs, a flying car and played in the NHL as a side gig. When I was twelve, my vision of life at 26 remained the same, with the addition of a super hot girlfriend. When I was five, I always thought I would grow up and transform into a van.

Life doesn't always turn out like we planned and sometimes we resent the fact that all of our dreams haven't come true. Playing into this resentment leads to the pessimism that occasionally afflicts us all. But in these moments, it's important to remember that sometimes chasing the dream is as important as having it. By having dreams to chase, we forget the foundations that gives our imagination the platform to form the dreams in the first place.

For instance, without food, I would be sitting outside of the Qdoba all day wishing for a burrito. But "wishing" is not dreaming, and although the sweet taste of queso sauce on my palate has the potential to turn the holocaust into a cheerful misunderstanding, it would not help me step outside the boundaries of basic needs and allow true human dreaming to unfold. Because of things like Qdoba, Bud Light, and air, I can concentrate on greater goals...like my letter campaign to Rob Cohen to create xXx Three: State of your mom.

In all seriousness, the "real world" has very recently exposed me to a whole class of people who couldn't take care of their basic needs and really live life without dreams. They seem empty from whatever is missing...food, care, crack. I can't imagine what it's like to live like that, so in comparison, I feel thankful. Maybe it's the thought of all the food I'm about to ingest, or the fact that I will be able to feed my dog more than most homeli receive, or the fact that Jesus visited me in a vision and told me to make a mental list of all the things I'm thankful for, but I feel like I have to share some of the most important on the internet.

1. Money. Damn, it's nice to have cash coming in for once. I can go to Taco John's without regret and buy a DVD with three Vin Diesel movies on one disc. Some people say money can't buy you happiness, but those people don't have the option of eating Hardees once a week.

2. That line from Dr. Dre's song Let's get high, that states "Yeah, I just took some ecstasy, ain't no telling what the side effects could be, all these fine bitches equals sex to me, plus I got this bad bitch laying next to me." Much like the old folk song that cured Holden Caufield in Catcher in the Rye, this line caught me at a moment of self-pity and helped define my life. From the first time I heard this song, I wanted nothing more than to become an awesome drug dealer that mistreats women.

3. A license to practice law. Wow, did I ever fool some chump at the Board of Bar Examiners when they gave me a license to do immeasurable harm. All I do during the day is daydream of ways to transform the man-eating pigs in Hannibal into brief form. So far, all I've managed to do is capture the smarmy feeling Jared projects in his Subway commercials to oppose a warrantless search. I also included a footnote citing "Goddamnit! I am sick and tired of all these futherfucking snakes, on my motherfucking plane!" No wonder I keep losing...

4. The Big Ten Network. The mere thought of this infuriating arrangement that robs me of half the Badger games makes me smile. No matter how poorly I behave, I know that someone will always hate the assholes responsible for this idea more than me.

5. World Peace.

So in the spirit of Charlie Brown, Happy Thanksgiving.

What's New in the World

I know, it's been a while. The lack of new posts is complicated by the new lack of a computer. That's right, my laptop finally died. I fully intend to get a desktop, but I'm lazy and it could take awhile. Delivery is also complicated, since I don't trust my neighbors not to steal it if it's delivered in my absence. I've been down lately because the novelty of my transition has worn off. I live in a peaceful town, but there's nothing to do, few people my own age (that aren't clients) and no Qdoba. It's safe to say I miss living in a city and am beginning to question this move. However, on the up side, I'm getting alot of experience (XP) in real world legal matters that will hopefully serve me well should I choose to go elsewhere.

On the upside, Nip/Tuck has been fantastic this season. As some of you may recall, I had my doubts about the move from Miami to L.A., but this season has come through once again. What other show can start an episode with the girlfriend crapping her bathing suit in a hottub and throw in a lesbian ex-wife, ex-scientologist drug addict son and wife (who dated both of her current husband's fathers), sex-crazed quasi-stepdaughter, and decisions to pick up a side business of man-whoring while not performing plastic surgery. Christian is becoming more of an asshole, which is entertaining, and Sean is finally getting some of the success and recognition he deserves, although I think he's going to fall big time. Here's how I see it going down: (1) Christian informs Sean that he slept with (again) Sean's ex-wife, (2) Sean's relationship with the television star is compromised in some fashion, most likely infidelity on his part, or the fact that she crapped her pants in the hottub (3) Sean sleeps with his new quasi stepdaughter, (4) Sean discovers Matt and Kimber's drug use and makes poor decisions on how to intervene, further destroying their lives, (5) Sean turns to help from the dominatrix he met, (6) McNamara/Troy becomes an unpleasant work environment, mediated by the smooth temper of Liz.

Suffice it to say, Nip/Tuck is a fantastic show. Rosie O'Donnel reprises her role of Dawn Budge next week in which her face was ripped up by an eagle. Some may recall that she paid Christian $100,000 to do her last year after they reattached a synthetic ear grown on the back of a mouse. Dawn was "ear-jacked" last season when a theif on a motorcycle rode by her and cut her ear off to get a valuable diamond earring. Portia de Rossi, quite possibly the hottest lesbian on TV, plays a lesbian companion to the promiscuous Julia, who did Sean, Christian, the Carver, and Jude. It's quite possible that Annie's father is actually a tyrannasaurus rex. My instincts tell me that Gina Russo will be back with a worse case of AIDS, and I'm hoping for the return of Dr. Merrill Bobolit, whose addiction to "the tank" (nitrous oxide) landed him in prison and made him the bitch of Nip/Tuck supervillain Escobar Gallardo. Unfortunately, Escobar won't be returning, except in dream sequences, since the doctors tied hams to his corpse and fed it to alligators last season.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of this season is the return of Matt. He's always been a downer on the show, and his dumbassedry is one of the more unrealistic parts of the series. In a short period of time, he was party to the crime of reckless injury, became involved with a transsexual, committed battery against another transsexual, became a scientologist, married the ex-girlfriend of his biological and legal fathers, been involved with a white supremicist, been party to a crime to the murder of her father, and recently blew $250,000 on meth. The fact that he was a 28 year old guy trying to play a 16 year old didn't help much either.

Since I've managed to waste an hour of my workday thinking about how awesome Nip/Tuck is, I suppose I should return to work.