What We Have Here is Failure to Communicate

I always assumed it would be human stupidity that gave me the fatal stroke. I may have underestimated our computer friends.

On a Monday, not so very long ago, I am trying to complete the relatively simple task of printing a proof of service. The printer informs me that there is a communication error. I'm not sure what this means. I try restarting both computer and printer (my fix for everything) because, seriously, the damn thing worked FIFTEEN SECONDS AGO. No use. The junior clerk at Cafe Legalese is trying to fax something across town. Communication error. I give in, and go to Dell's LiveChat support, eager for step-by-step guidance through this problem.

Bad idea. I'm sure this person doesn't speak the English, because he cannot provide an alternate explanation for terms that must have come out of the operation manual for pros. "Ma'am," he begins, never a good thing, because I fucking hate when people call me "Ma'am" like I'm some 60 year old Southern grandma shellin' butterbeans with a bottle of moonshine. "Ma'am, please provide me with your whatsamajiggysomethingabout IP." Excuse me? How do I find that? If I knew what that was, do you think I'd be talking to YOU? I probably would have just rebuilt this thing if that were the case.

I ask him to please explain this to me like a five year old, because I am not good with computers.
"Begin at the left navigation and select the somethingincomputerspeak." Select the what with the what? Ok, we need to talk. Maybe I wasn't making myself clear. I need you to explain this to me like a five-year-old who only speaks English. "I'm sorry sir, but I really need you to explain this without any computer jargon. I don't understand what you want me to do."

Finally, either his fingers were cramping up from typing the manual verbatim, or he sensed I was about to reach through the computer screen and throttle him, because he finally just seized control of my computer and printer remotely and then informed me that I essentially needed to go to the printer settings menu and type in a little number. I spent my entire morning on this.

It's this sort of shit that makes me want to run screaming from the idea or starting my own practice after law school--what if I can't afford to pay someone to deal with this?

Another day, another computer, another burst blood vessel. I am following the step-by-step instructions on the way to compile electronically and thus save my self approximately 60% of the time I spend on compiling articles. Everything appears to have gone well, until I notice that some of the footnotes have been re-numbered. No big deal, I don't save the changes and start over again with a clean base copy. I check again. Two different footnotes have been deleted and now everything is re-numbered. Great. I mutter obscenities under my breath. Dan senses my blood pressure rising and wisely concentrates on whatever he's reading. I take a deep breath, don't save the changes and try one more time, and it looks like I've gotten it this time. Nope, yet two different footnotes have been changed. My face slams into the desk and I'm about 3 seconds from flinging Computie into the wall. Dan, sensing danger, says he's calling it a night and suggests drinking. I'm sure this is a ploy to avoid being hit by richocheting pieces of Computie, but he says the magic word (alcohol!), so I play along.

The next day, I think I've figured out how to fix this. I reject formatting changes that don't make sense. The only change that cannot be rejected is the deletion of the footnote numbers. At this point, I'm pretty sure I smell burning toast. I make a last ditch effort to have Susan explain this to me. At this point, I'm fully aware that I've spent so much time trying to find the quick way to do this that I may as well have done this by hand in the first instance. Apparently, I have done this exactly the way I was instructed to and not one other person's computer did this. It's settled, Computie has some sort of vendetta against me. At this point, even my stubborn ass has to concede the contest to Computie and buckle down to manually compile this article, knowing full well that I've already wasted enough time to have finished it already. Hours later, driving home at midnight, the speed limit changes from 45 to 35 maybe two miles from my house. I'm coasting down and I get pulled over.

What do you want God, blood?

The Call is Coming From Inside the House

A night at home with our kitten, Binx (not his real name, but it's what I would have named him, if Finn hadn't named him before we even decided to adopt him). I 'm still down for the count, and have made a concession to the various evils in my body by sleeping on the couch all day. I can't drink, I can't smoke, and I can't have sex, so I'm not entirely sure what to do with my Friday night. So, I'm drinking tea, watching movies, and cuddling with Binx.

I hear the text notification on my phone "ding!" so I pick up to see who it is. Wasn't my phone. Finn is in out of town, but it's possible he left his phone (we have the same phone, so there's a lot of "was that you or me?" in our house) at the apartment. So, too lazy to search, I text him: "Hey, did you leave your phone at home?" He replies, which means he has his phone and makes his answer totally unnecessary ("Nope."). Hm. If it wasn't my phone and it wasn't his, whose was it?

I reply, "Hm. Then we have a ghost phone in the apartment. Enjoy the party!"

I puzzle over this. Seriously, I distinctly heard the text noise. This would not be my first experience with a ghost phone. I used to hear a phone vibrating. The first time, I thought someone had left their phone at my house and was lodged in my cushions or something. No one was missing a phone, and no stray phone has ever turned up. But it has been some time since I've heard a ghost phone, and it always vibrated before. I chalk it up to a ghost with Verizon service and start flipping channels.

Phone call: It's Finn. "Hey, can you do me a favor? I'm getting really paranoid."

Lola, thinking: "Oh, it's sweet! He's worried that there's someone in the house and I'm all alone and sick! Expecting him to ask me to check the house and invite a friend over, I reply, "Of course, what do you need?"

Finn: "Can you check Binx's collar and loosen it? I'm worried it's too tight."

Lola: "Yeah, I'll loosen his collar. See you Sunday."

Seriously? Our house is haunted by a Verizon ghost, and he's worried about the cat's collar. Seriously? I'm going back to bed.

Alive and Schticking

A night at home with Lola and Finn:

I'm about to hack up a lung, a lung which feels like it's being dipped in acid. Finn is tossing a coin and catching it in the dining room, watching me white-knuckle the counter and gasp for air like the goldfish in those asthma commercials. For the sake of expediency, I will just reproduce our conversation verbatim:

Finn: So.....when you die, how long should I wait to call the ambulance before it's ruled some sort of assisted suicide or something? Like, can I just stand here doing this and watch you gasp for air and collapse?

Lola: Please call the ambulance while I'm dying and then I'd appreciate some CPR.

Finn: I don't want to catch what you've got!

Lola: Thanks, babe. . . . Ok, If I were you, I'd help me to bed while I'm dying and then pop in a movie. Wait an hour or so. Then, go into my room, make sure I'm gone and then call EMS. Tell them I went to bed because I wasn't feeling well and you could hear me coughing. Then I stopped coughing and you yelled to see if I was ok. I didn't answer, so you came in to check on me and I was already gone.

Finn: Why do I get the impression that this is exactly what you've got planned to do to me?

Lola: I would at least try to give you CPR.

Friendship. We haz it. I maintain that he wants the bigger bedroom and the walk-in closet.

Later, another attack of the Lola-can't-breathe...

Finn: Are you alive?

Lola: I believe so. Barely.

Finn: Are you ok with being alive?

Lola: I'd rather not be.

Finn: Please don't die before the next rent check is due.

In Finn's defense, he did make me hot cider because I was laying on the couch whining about wanting some. When I get better, I'll probably even let him live.

The Abyss

Law school is a cesspool, a veritable breeding ground for germs and new and strange diseases. No one cares for themselves properly, because we don't have the time or the fucking will to live. We don't sleep, eat cheap take-out and gas station food from Spazzy's and binge drink on the weekends to forget about how much our lives generally suck, what with the sleep deprivation, deteriorating relationships, impending unemployment, and constant sense that you're about to be competing with your best friends. We feed off of each others' stress. One person stresses about getting turned down for a job. The rest of us flip, because not only are we worried that this awesome student can't get a job, but then we are struck with the horrifying realization that it means that you have to compete for already scarce jobs, with someone who is not only incredibly qualified, but is also your friend. People with jobs lined up can't even fucking enjoy them as they should, because they know that their friends are imagining themselves playing banjo on a street corner for money. Except most of us don't know how to play banjo, so we'd have to settle for playing Guitar Hero, and I don't think anyone would give me any money to watch me play "Hungry Like the Wolf" on "Easy."

So, we sit for hours in close, confined spaces, stressing, and gnawing through stale bagels like a trapped coyote chewing off its own leg. There's no fresh air, there's no natural light. There's no way around it. It's hard. It's supposed to be. "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." I have to tell myself this on the days when the only daylight I see is ten minutes on the way to work and five on the way to class. Because when I get to campus, I get the by-product of the price we pay for greatness: a petri dish of exotic, mutating germs. There's the typical coughing and sneezing, the sniffles. Fair enough. But no one can take time off, so we get sicker, and my cough runs into Luke's fever in the elevator, and they mate, and while we hunker down to crank out a complaint and master some sort of understanding of intestate property division on the per stirpes system, the Cough/Fever couple runs into Jenny's body ache and invite it to a threesome. And, despite the fact that we're all supposedly going to die of H1N1, no one wants to chance getting behind unless they've actually got the Hamthrax. That's Karen's sinus congestion comes across the Ache/fever/cough and now we've got a fourgy. And they must be into some kinky shit, because somehow or another, when it comes back around, it's mutated and added inner ear pain.

Everyone feels marginally better, which means it's time to drink like we're auditioning to be Bluto Blutarsky's replacement at the Delta House. On Sunday, we realize that the sore throat someone picked up from a fundergrad at the bar has joined the fun, and we've got a full-on gang-bang goin' on in our throats/heads/noses. And, we incubate. At this point, I'm less concerned with Hamthrax and more concerned that some of my classmates are going to start sprouting tentacles from their noses like some sort of "Alien" movie reject or the stand-in for Davy Jones.

Sunday is also a time to ruminate on the poor decisions made over the past 2 or 3 days. In college, we used to wander into the lounge and compare our drunk bruises (or, as E calls them, "UDI's"). Now, there is a slew of phone calls, and discussions over overpriced coffee to piece together and dissect the weekend. This is usually accomplished by looking through text messages and cameras. I have a friend who carries a camera and cell phone specifically for the purpose of retracing and reassembling the weekend's antics. Today, I'm doing it with the assistance of a "Flipping Out" marathon, and my fantasies of Jeff Lewis becoming my new gay boyfriend. He is, after all, my soulmate.

Thankfully, this was actually a pretty tame weekend for Hurricane Lola. After falling asleep sitting up on my couch (with the result that my right cheekbone is incredibly tender), Finn and I joined the P-funks for a night of killer sangria (which I managed to spill on the carpet), Rockband, and discussion of important topics such as a man nicknamed "Jimmy Horseballs" and the virtues of punctuality. He-funk and Finn are discussing the virtues and flaws of Darcy, the closet gentleman who went from normal speed, to middle-school slow, to way too much for the emotional fuckwittery that is Lola at the moment. He-funk, no doubt prefacing a derrogatory comment about Mr. Darcy's personality, leads in with this "He's a good guy. He's nice, he's polite, he's sweet. He's...punctual." It occurs to She-funk and I that if "punctual" makes the top five in a list of positive traits, it's the equivalent of saying that they have the personality of an empty pizza box. Apparently, he doesn't make eye contact. He-funk continues, "but, he's kind of douchey." Finn jumps into the fray "Is he kind of douchey? How would I know? He never makes eye contact!"

Last night, I think the worse decision I made was trying to sing "Sympathy for the Devil" on Rock Band. I greatly underestimated how many "Woohoo's!" there are at the end of that song. After "The Medium Squad" rocked it out, Finn turns to me and remarks "I'm surprised you're still lucid after that." I'm surprised by two things: 1) that I remained conscious and 2) that someone called me lucid.

And, appropos of of nothing, Keep Fucking that Chicken.

What Lola Wants

There's a little saying about law school: "First year they scare you to death, second year they work you to death, and third year they bore you to death." Well, it's only taken me a month, and I can tell you, it's absolutely true. Except with the added bonus of me being stressed out of my goddamn mind about finding a job. A HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN clerkship applications and the only response I've gotten is three "thanks, but no thanks" emails. Blah.

It's recently come to my attention that we have some new readers. To you newbies, I say "Welcome! Also, don't talk about Fight Club outside of Fight Club."

Finn is lying on the back of the couch, trying to will the remote into his hand. It's going badly.

After a day of drinking and narrowly avoiding being peed on (Nikki's words, not mine) we're walking back to V's car so we can eat and sober up for round two. A bald man bends down in front of us and flexes his "muscles." "What do you think about this?" He asks us. What does Lola think? I think he's a fucking idiot. I choose to express this by taking my wristlet of justice and thwapping him across the top of his bald head. Nikki giggles and I keep walking.

Round two, party at Bruiser's house a nap, clothing change, bowl of soup and piece of pizza later. I've coaxed some beer out of the reluctant tap and am wondering if I can get drunk again before it's time to leave. V makes a joke about me having a morally-relaxed attitude. "Haha, it's funny. Lola's a whore. You're charting some new territory there, Magellan." Looks are exchanged over the top of the keg. Ok, maybe I'm into making some bad decisions. I decide to go with it. An hour in the fitness center was not enough to make my id quiet down and shut up. I'm ushered from the party, having promised to call and engage in some more poor decision-making.

I sit in the car, realizing that I didn't get drunk. I grin. Excellent. At 2:30 a.m., I'm driving back to pick up Bruiser. Phone call. I pick up, expecting random drunk shenanigans. It was drunk, definitely, random, certainly but the calller is telling me some interesting information and all of a sudden, I'm in a towering fury. I white-knuckle my steering wheel, laugh and hang up. Luckily for the recipient of my anger, I'm picking up Bruiser and an hour delay to go beat someone's ass would have been difficult to explain. He jumps in, and apparently, my rage hasn't entirely subsided because I'm still gripping the steering wheel so hard I might actually yank it off and I'm driving fast enough for him to call me "Nascar." As I'm in the hallway fiddling with my keys in the lock and having my top unbuttoned I think, "I know a good way to work off some aggression."

I'll spare you all the details, but it was an even better idea than the fitness room. What Lola wants, Lola gets. I woke up with fewer bruises though. I think I'll wait until they fade to atempt a round 3. It's like the little blue bristles on your toothbrush. When they turn white, it's time to get a new one.

Id wants a pretzel and a slurpee at Target. I give in, even though I just did a blow-out grocery shop. It was every bit as good as I could have wanted. Id is pleased.

Finn has given up on the remote and is tying a tie over his pajamas.

I've been informed that I'm some sort of soul-sucking, lying, drama-manufacturing succubus. Shame. I guess you can't please everybody. I accidentally hit my bruised arm against the end table. Hm. Maybe I am some sort of succubus. I don't hear anyone complaining. Most often, I hear Nikki laughing on the other end of the phone.

Phone call: It's Nikki. She called to tell me that she's intoxicated. I'm waiting for V to pick me up for the downtown festivals. I'm about to tell her that I'm going to keep her hubby out of trouble for her while she's away, when she gets distracted and ends the call.

Downtown, I see my old roomate from the Hash Palace. The one with the demon cat. I pretend not to see him. I then get one of my all-time favorite voicemails:
"Lo, it's Nikki. Why you no pick up my call? Is it because you didn't want to tell me where you were going?" And then she giggles, tells me to be safe and hangs up.

Id wants beer and Mexican food. As I finish my taco, I realize that Id has some amazing ideas and vow to indulge it a little bit more.

Well, it's time for me to guilt myself into doing my work. So, I bid you adieu (except the ones I'll see tonight) and to my new readers: stay tuned.

Jailhouse Rock

This week did not start well. Computie is dying. The slow painful way. Which was really inconvenient when I needed Computie to do me a solid and help me through the slow, painful process of applying for clerkships. Instead, I battled with Adobe for hours when I should have been adding PDFs of my writing sample to my bazillion clerkships. I got this close to pitching the damn thing across a coffee shop. Unfortunately, I had most of my overpriced Kahlua and Cream latte to drink and a hundred and some odd applications to upload, so that satisfying option came to nothing.

I woke up Monday, with my back and neck completely fucked. What was Lola doing Sunday night you ask? Sleeping in her own bed. The two friends who slept on my couches? Slept perfectly, woke up raving about my comfy couches. I call shenanigans. So, I was already fairly cranky when Computie started rebelling. I was up until after 2 and then awakened by my neighbors moving shadily out of their apartment at 6 a.m. At first I thought they were burglars, and then decided that Finn was bigger and stronger and closer to the living room, so I tried to sleep. And then realized that someone was getting the hell out of Dodge. Sweet.

With no apparent cause for this neck/back evil, I have been informed that it's probably stress. Well, that makes sense. I'm like 9 months from graduation and job prospects are lookin' bleak, and all the men I know have their own kind of special weird and crazy.

Every time I think about this shit, my neck seizes up more. No fucking wonder. Law school does not lend itself to happiness. We're all dead tired, overworked, stressed, malnourished, and fighting the first battles of the war against alcoholism and substance abuse.

Sitting uncomfortably in the Law Review Office with the Kid, who has apologized to both Dan and Aaron for his behavior in the Attack of the 2Ls, but not to me, who he groped. Phone call, it's Rick. "The internet isn't working. What do I do?"
"With my Spidey senses, I see that the modem needs to be reconfigured?" How the hell should I know? My fix for everything is to restart my computer.

Sancho Panza swears there were "no signs at all" in the building where he fell. Cut to Lola, watching him walk past a sign in the surveillance video. "Oh, you mean in the main part of the building? Oh yeah, but that's not what I meant. I meant the other part of the building." And the only sentence he can repeat is, "yeah, he said 'that stupid "B," she just mopped the floor." If hear the phrase "that stupid 'B'" one more time, I am going to suck on the exposed wires from where they're renovating the elevators.

Phone call. Collect from city jail. Neck Crack has landed himself in the big house. I grin. Things are lookin' up.

Fatal Attraction

Your days of reading The Penal Gallery may be numbered dear readers (I know you're both devastated), because my days may be numbered. Finn's batshit crazy ex-girlfriend, Crazy, is coming to visit this weekend. This means two things: 1) there are people crazier than me and 2) they are coming to visit. Presumably to see the kittens, sleep with Finn, and kill me. Probably in that order. Expect to hear from me barricaded in my room Sunday night with my dresser pushed in front of my door. (Anyone want to take me out of the house on Sunday night? Anyone? Bueller?)


On a related note, don't drink and text. You ever get drunk and forget? It happened to me. I returned home from the bar(s) on Wednesday night (don't judge me) and got drunk with Finn while we discussed my imminent demise and my apparent inability to give it away. (For the record, he is amazed and saddened by my inability to close the deal. In my defense, I've been thwarted by circumstances outside my control). I sent a cryptic text message regarding my imminent demise. I never even got a "you're nuts" message back. You would think I'd learn, but if you thought that, you probably haven't been reading all that long.

For those who doubt that God likes to mess with me, reference the hour I spent lined up with 3 out of the last 5 men I've hooked up with at a school event. It was not a fair, it was a parade of all my drunken escapades. My friends laughed at me and none of them knew why. Thanks, God.

I'm rambling, which is a good way to avoid the things I should be doing. I should be finishing a memo on adverse possession. Lame. I should be redacting my writing sample so I can get a job. Tedious. I should be applying for jobs. Scary. I should be reading for class. Boring.

I have three binders worth of cite-checking assignments on the desk right now. I am staring them down, hoping that they will compile themselves if I look at them the right way. I somehow doubt this is going to happen. This post has not had the requisite amount of snark; so, I'm going to make up for that by complaining right now:

I wanted to be as clear as possible and give as much direction as I could to the incoming staff members who were anxious as a whore in church about their assignments. We had the managing department send out a spiffy checklist detailing exactly what they were to do, we held cite-checking class, I sent the world's longest, most detailed email about the particulars of the assignment and several members of the e-board donated a block of three hours to answer questions at a help session. Of course, most of the staff was freaking out anyway, like we were going to torture those who forgot to put BlueBook rules in the margins. Except for one person, who apparently knows how everything should be run anyway. I'm not sure that she knows that I was the one giving out the assignment, or maybe she thinks little things like tact are beneath her because she complains, in the office, in front of me, in this nasty condescending tone: "Yeah, this entire assignment was an exercise in confusion." Like we didn't know what we were doing and fucked up the instructional process. I'm sorry, maybe your uppity ass could have come to the three hours' worth of help time where someone could have shown you exactly what to do. Or, you could have emailed for clarification instead of taking no iniative to figure out what you were doing and then bitching that you didn't have somone holding your hand.

I kinda hope she fucks it up so badly that I have to email her and ask her why she didn't come in for help since she clearly had no idea what to do.