Adventures in policing

My brother, a Philly cop, told us about another officer who got in an altercation with a deer. It was in a cemetery, I think, or a small lot; the deer jumped over the guy's car, and he got out and chased it around and shouted at it. He claimed it was a "vicious animal." (Me: "I don't think deer are particularly vicious." J.: "I bet they're pretty irritable after you've been chasing them for half an hour.")



The deer eventually got away. The kicker is, the officer actually filed a report about it. The offender was described thus: "Deer. 5 feet tall. Brown in color. White tail." The report, my brother said, spread very rapidly through the rest of the department. (I don't think civilians can get a copy, alas.) And the guy's high on the list of Who Not To Be Partnered With.

What not to say

What not to say when drawing cards for a tarot reading: "Whoa, that's not good."



(I actually did this to someone during one of my very few readings-for-other-people, but he took it in stride.)

Power, again (or not again)

Dear everyone who lost power,



That sucks. I'm sorry.



I'm glad Philly didn't; twice in three days would have been a bit much. (Okay, a lot much.)



J. pointed out that millions of people, south to New Jersey, north to Ontario, and west to the Great Lakes, have lost power, but it's being treated like a New York story. Of course, most of the U.S. national media is based in New York, so anything that happens there is local news to them, and they get as excited as Channel 17 Podunk on a snow day. And I guess that they have trouble connecting via satellite or Internet or whatever to anyone anywhere else. And, since New York is an island, anyone who's stuck there is stuck there; it had never occurred to me that, without electricity, the only way out of New York is by boat. The sight of thousands of people lining up for the ferry was amazing.



I mentioned in my power-outage post that I was surprised (okay, "depressed" is the word) about how many things are impossible without electricity. And there were other things mentioned on the news last night and today that I hadn't thought of: ATMs, for instance. No power, no money. (And ergo no way onto the ferry if you don't already have the fare in your pocket.) Toilets at airports and other large facilities: many of them are run by electric pump systems. (And the ones with the electric eyes wouldn't work at all, I guess.) It's also distressing that many of the power companies themselves rely on the Internet to relay information...um, guys, that's not such a good idea...



Anyway: to those of you affected, as I said, it sucks. I'm sorry. I hope you got/get time off from work, at least. Forsan et haec.

Holidays

I'm copyediting a book for teachers about holidays. Today, I've run into the surprisingly thorny issues about the official and/or approved names of holidays. The author has "Grandparents' Day," or sometimes "Grandparent's Day"; the National Grandparents Day organization (yes, there is such a thing) doesn't have an apostrophe anywhere. (I used their version; it's their holiday, they decide what it's called.) U.S. federal holidays have official names designated by the laws establishing them—technically, it's "Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr." (The author has "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day" and the Chicago Manual of Style has "Martin Luther King Jr. Day" [no comma]—I'm going with CMS.) The day on which elections occur is, in CMS, not capitalized (it's just "election day"), and it isn't capitalized on the Federal Election Commission Web site; but I think it looks pretty stupid that way. But, aha!—in certain states it is an official holiday. Capitalization can stay. The author has "Three Kings' Day"; I wanted to get rid of the apostrophe, but alas, the Vatican Web site provided no guidance; they use the more common Epiphany. The Spanish name, el Dia de los Reyes, doesn't provide any help. (I kept the apostrophe.) And who has the final say on April Fools'/Fool's/Fools Day? (CMS has "All Fools' Day," so I guess I'll use the final apostrophe.)



Bozhe moy...I guess I can't make everybody happy. I'll just try to maintain a balance between being technically correct, editorially correct, and not looking too funny.

Overheard

At a Starbucks in Center City: a group of women, presumably lawyers, discussing their clientele.



"He says she doesn't appreciate him. C'mon, you're in prison. What's she going to appreciate, that you made her a personalized license plate?"



"He says 'You're not a real lawyer, you're just a public defender. You're wasting my time.' I said 'You're in prison. You've got nothing but time. You're wasting my time.'"

Half-Assed Apology Dept.

Well, anti-gay Minnesota legislator Arlon Linder, a.k.a. the frickin' Holocaust denier, has, after touring an exhibit from the Holocaust Museum that provides photographic and documentary evidence that gays were indeed persecuted, imprisoned, and killed by Nazis, said that, okay, yeah, he was wrong about saying they weren't. (At the time of the writing of the first article, he had refused to attend the Holocaust Museum exhibit. So apparently, eventually, you can lead a whore to culture.*)



Anyway, despite this "eye opener" on the "homosexual perspective," he still says that gays and lesbians shouldn't have civil rights protections, are sinful/wrong/perverted (all three, in case just one didn't make his point), and that he's not going to "go against my maker" by believing, saying, or acting otherwise. But at least he's not a frickin' Holocaust denier. Not about this, anyway. (Has anyone asked him about gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses?)



*Dorothy Parker, after being asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence: "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."

Bugs

I am so, so pathetic. I was held at bay by a cockroach for nearly 20 minutes last night.



I woke up at 3 a.m., hungry and edging towards a hangover—I'd eaten practically nothing all day, and gone to a concert and drunk two five-dollar beers and inhaled lots of cigarette smoke. I decided to go downstairs and have some bread. I went into the hallway and was reaching for my robe when I saw a huge frickin' cockroach at the top of the steps. It had frozen when I turned on the light; I froze when I saw it. I edged towards it and made a sweeping motion in its vicinity, and it scuttled down the top stair. And clung to the underside of the lip of the step. So I was stuck.



Well, if I'd been a normal person, I wouldn't have been stuck. But I didn't want to walk down the stairs with the cockroach there, in case it...I don't know...did something icky. (That's really what I'm afraid of, with most bugs: not that they'll harm me, but that they'll be...icky.) I stood. It clung. I tried to figure out if I could go downstairs without using the top step, and decided I'd probably fall, which would be exceptionally humiliating. I stood. It clung. I tried turning off the light, then turning it on again, hoping the roach would scuttle again; it didn't. Finally I decided to try to poke it out of the way; I grabbed a toilet plunger and ran it back and forth under the lip of the step. The roach scuttled and disappeared. I don't know where. I didn't care. I couldn't see it.



So I went downstairs, and realized that I hadn't actually put on my robe. I didn't want to go back upstairs for it—I didn't want to push my cockroach luck, and didn't want to wake J. by going up and down stairs too much. But I didn't want to go into the kitchen with no clothes on. (I guess it's unlikely that anyone would be looking into my kitchen window at 3 a.m., but I didn't want to push my luck with that, either.) I found a towel that hadn't made it all the way upstairs after being laundered and wrapped it around myself and went into the kitchen. Turned on the light—roaches scuttled. But they went under the fridge and I didn't worry too much about them.



Ate bread, turned off lights, went back upstairs, took off towel, went back to bed. Felt pathetic. But, hey, at least I didn't scream or fall down the stairs; and I didn't wake up J. and ask him to kill it, which he would not have appreciated.