Meat Puppets
Backwater, 1994

I hate lawyers.

I don’t, really.  I have in-laws and friends who are lawyers, and I don’t hate them. I guess what I really hate is the sort of institutionalized bureaucracy and down right idiocy to which some lawyers are more prone than are members of the general public. Like today, for example, when I had to drive to Reidsville to pick up a personal item from my uncle’s estate. The firm told me it was much too large to ship, so I had to come pick it up and sign some papers while I was there. I made an appointment for 1:00 today, because that was the least objectionable time for me this week.

Of course they “lost” the appointment, and when I called to say I’d be about five minutes late dute to misjudging my travel time, they asked if I could come later this afternoon instead. I informed them that I’d already driven an hour to get to Reidsville from Winston-Salem, and I had no intention of lurking around for a few hours with nothing to do but sit downtown and watch the rednecks stroll by. So they said I could come on in.

When I arrived, I saw that this “big” item was in a surprisingly small box that would’ve cost between five and seven bucks to ship to me.  The item itself was of minimal value. Thus, I wasted almost three hours, and between fifteen and twenty bucks in gas to complete a transaction that could have been handled for the price of seven dollars and two faxes. No wonder it’s taken fifteen months to settle this relatively simple estate if everything they do is this bloody convoluted. I shudder to think how many hours of this shit they’ll be billing for and how much of the final amount they’ll wind up with.

Another Sunday afternoon at my little website factory in Winston-Salem. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on such a big pile of changes that will never be noticed by most users. I’ve spent two days fixing my department’s website, repairing dead (or badly-constructed) links and giving some logic and rationality to the file structure and the stylesheet. At least it will make my future life easier. That’s the important thing, right?

I haven’t really left the house much all weekend. Maybe it’s some ingrained fear, left over from my years in San Francisco, of running into thousands of lukewarm leatherettes outside my front door during the last weekend in September. Or maybe I just had a lot of work to do.

But my friend Duncan did surprise me this morning with a phone call inviting me out to lunch. This was particularly unexpected since Duncan lives in upstate New York. Hell of a commute just for lunch at the cafeteria, huh? And I ventured out for a little while looking at, but not purchasing, some new monitors.

Maybe a Paul Newman movie after dinner…

Jeez, people. Will you get a fucking grip?