the ramble

The “slippery slope” argument.

Well, if we let gay people get married, obviously that is going to lead to people marrying their cats, and six-year-olds, and inanimate objects…

And if we force pregnant mothers who are alcoholics to go into recovery programs, obviously that is going to lead to us taking away all the rights of all the pregnant ladies ever! No more driving! No more eating ice cream, even if you’re craving it!

And if we hand out condoms in school, OUR KIDS WILL BE HOOKING ON STREET CORNERS!

Really, people? Can we all agree to start laughing at anyone who makes a slippery slope argument? Whether you agree or disagree with the actual viewpoint represented, can’t we all agree that these arguments are just silliness?

As Relatively Dashing Roommate pointed out: how would you know if something nefarious was going on at the Zombie Crawl? Everyone is screaming and growling and pretending to die.

Why is it that whenever you take life into your own hands–declaring, tonight, tonight I will sleep through the night!–that is the day (or the night, as it were), that no matter what you do, you cannot get the thing that you want. In this case, the thing being sleep.

So, this week.

This week has been a week of sleeplessness. I can speculate a little, saying perhaps it is excitement about planning next year’s adventures or maybe it’s feeling overwhelmed or maybe it’s because I sit at a desk a lot and my back hurts…but at the end of the day, I cannot tell you why it is that I can’t get enough sleep.

Nonetheless, I decided to take matters into my own hands and I bought myself a nice massage, ate a filling meal and came home sleepy as all getout.

Unfortunately, the sleepy was trumped by the important research I was doing on UK destinations and before I knew it, it was after 11. Drat. Still, though, if I let myself sleep in, I could still get some nice REM cycling.

Only not. Because at 1 or 1:30 or some other ungodly hour of the night, Luna started to growl. And I could tell she was growling at the weird noise happening outside, but I just wanted to sleep through it. So I hushed her and snuggled her against her will and attempted to fall back to sleep.

But the noise outside grew louder.

In my half-sleep state, I wondered what it was: the car/motorcycle noises I sometimes hear south of the house (I have a sneaking suspicion that there is late-night racing going on near or on I-25) perhaps? Or a cat making its low-growl noise? Or a cat making its come-mate-with-me noise? Or a prehistoric, man-eating creature stalking in the bushes?

Finally, the low growl turned into an all-out cat fight, confirming the cat suspicion.

I turned on some music to drown it out.

Not working.

I tried to ignore it.

Not working.

And, finally, with some trepidation due to the fact that I didn’t want to be scratched to smithereens, I went into the back yard and located one of Luna’s tennis balls, yelling and flinging it into the middle of the cat fight.

That worked.

Unfortunately, at about 3 in the morning, Luna began to growl again.

OH MY GOSH, STOP.

This time my temporary roommate was returning home and Luna had decided she was burgling the house.

I let Luna sniff her for a moment and then carted her back off to bed, finally to sleep. And to dream of bridesmaid dress disasters and all sorts of weird stuff.

I spent last night eating mussels and fries at a French restaurant just outside downtown Denver. With a bona fide French man (and one of my favorite lady friends and a charming Canadian).

Of course, taking a French man to an Americanized French restaurant is a rather humorous experience. First, he started greeting people as they walked in and out the door behind us–in French. A rather charming thing to do…but one that caught the Americans quite a bit off guard. They looked nervous.

We made our way to our table and ordered some wine (and there’s not much to say about the wine, as it was authentically French) and began to peruse the menu–a menu which turns on a variety of types of steamed mussels with French fries, which is, according to our French friend, a Belgian dish. And then there was the beef bourguignon, which should never be served with pasta (sacre bleu!). And the very confusing dessert menu, full of American wolves in French sheep’s clothing.

It reminded me of my visit to Vienna many years back, where I learned from a very passionate group of Austrian college students that the movie Sound of Music is an absolute travesty. No one ever eats schnitzel with noodles!

“It’s interesting to experience what Americans think is French food,” He said.

And we laughed and apologized for subjecting him to it. Of course, he was delightfully good natured and the whole evening was dripping with humor–not actual dislike or exasperation as you might expect.

I suppose it would be akin to traveling through Italy and having your new Italian friends take you to an American restaurant where they served the hamburgers with peas mixed in or the hot dogs with a dollop of marinara sauce.

1. I have killed far too many spiders in my house this week. And not killed two that were near my bed and may now be in my bed. Shockingly, sleep has been hard to come by and I have fang marks on my ear. No, not joking. Fang. Marks. Gross.

2. The absolute worst businesses for customer service are internet and cable companies. It’s fully expected that at some point these things would break. But when they do break, you get to hang around your house without internet or cable for four to eight hours, waiting for the technician who can fix the mysterious issues that keep your internet/cable from working. No other business can work this way. When you call the plumber or a carpenter or painters or any other sort of service that makes house calls, they’ll give you a specific time or a short window (”I’ll be there around one,” or “I’ll be there between one and two”). How does this not apply to internet companies? I’m looking at you, Qwest.

3. I saw Harry Potter’s final installment this week, which was good, but would have been better if the theater was not full of the noisiest children, teenagers and eaters alive today. OH MY GOSH. BE QUIET. I MISSED A WEASLEY JOKE.

4. The Hunger Games books = still awesome.

5. This.

That’ll be all.