It is time to go to the Girlfriend Store and get a girlfriend and name her...Stormont. And then we would go to the Puppy Store and buy a puppy. He would be a Small Pembrokeshire Welsh Corgi named...Burton. And we would take him home to our loft apartment and he would sit between us on the couch and watch aneems and be petted. This would be a vur' good and most pleasant way to spend a Saturday.

Geologists tell us that there are vast opal deposits in Wyoming. That's a lovely thought, and all the more so in that the opal deposits would of course be guarded by our small prairie dog friends. Little prairie dogs are named Smaug, which does give them confidence in guarding underground treasures.

[Note: It was Elizabeth-Claire who pointed out to me that prairie dogs are named Smaug, just as small marmots are named Esquival.]

I did give an exam this afternoon, and while pacing the room while my students wrote, I did have to make a small fashion note to myself. The girl at the front table, the one who's worn the faux-fur trimmed coat all winter, does make a habit of wearing cropped tops and ultra-low hiphuggers. All well and good. But... If you're going to wear ass-cleavage baring jeans, you do have to realize that your thong will be totally above the jeans. So you might want to re-think the thong-- especialy if you wear hot-pink cotton thongs with Disney characters. The jeans themselves are deliciously slutgirl-sexy. The visible pink Disney thong...is not. All the more reason to just accept that hiphuggers are meant to be panty-free. As all tall, leggy, slender, wicked, lovely girls should repeat to themselves: *Ultra-low hiphuggers = good, underwear = bad*...

When I got to my desk this morning I noticed that something was...wrong. I looked over my desktop and realized that one of my favorite Rotring Core fountain pens was missing. I was furious about that. The pens aren't expensive-- twenty or twenty-five dollars --but they have been discontinued by the evil Foreigners at Rotring. I searched my desk and my floor and never found anything. Some useless Quebecois scum, some vile gibbering unhuman Andaman Islander, some batrachian Manxman, some cheese-eating surrender monkey Frenchman, some turbaned and misshapen Hindoo, some evil alien Esquimaux, *took my pen*...! I swept through other offices at the firm in an icy Tarantino rage, prepared to say, "Herr Kollege, you took my pen, and now you die!" Alas, though-- no Rotring Core. It was done by some black thaumaturgic trick... I can't suspect the cleaning crew-- what would they want with one fountain pen? But mark my words: someone will die for this. Very, very soon. I'll have my fountain pen (Rotring Core, Fine nib) *and* a trophy skull to mount on my office wall.

Small Mongolian Ponies are named Edmund. They are Our Friends. Small Mongolian Ponies on clandestine missions are code-named Vorkut. Write that down in your Moleskines.

Someone asked what in my life would make me happy. I could only answer her: sleep. The ability to sleep and sleep and sleep and awaken only when morning has long passed. Though having a Girlfriend would be nice...and a life and a career. And being able to escape to Sapporo or Hakodate or Tallinn... A life far away from here and my past... That would be good.

I do believe in shame, I had to tell another girl. I believe in external standards; I believe that I'm always judged by an invisible audience of Others. And I know every day that I've failed to live up to those standards: age, career, height, finances, place of birth, place of residence, wardrobe, looks, future... I'm not good enough to cast in a film about my own life-- that did occur to me last night.

I really do think that back before law school, back when I was just in grad school or teaching, I did have some belief in my own worth, my own place in the social rank-hierarchy. There was a time when I could ask girls out, or go to clubs or films or concerts, or have sex. There was a time when I thought that I might have some external value. Yes, I know-- I have never been invited to a dinner party. But at least in my Lost Youth I would ask girls out and have affairs. I don't bother speaking to girls-in-the-flesh any longer. It's too depressing...and humiliating.

It's not acceptable to go to a party or a concert or a club without a date. Single males are considered both pathetic failures and bad luck. Single males disrupt the boy-girl-boy-girl arrangement of parties; single males at clubs are considered potential disruptive elements. I have no idea how people acquire Signficant Others, or how they end up living with them or marrying them. And as I've noted before-- I was afraid to have a girl live with me lest it lead to having access to family money cut off. Or, worse-- lest it lead to having to Answer Questions and Make Introductions. Any girl who has been out with me knows the drill: no underwear, no meeting his friends or family, no asking him to meet her friends or family. I have no intention of being asked Questions by my friends or family, and I won't risk having *her* friends and family point out my all-too-obvious flaws and failings.

As long as I'm a voice or a construct made of words, I can be valued and valuable. As long as I'm a shadow or a silhouette, I have value. All I have to do is avoid any situation where I have to be a physical presence.

KdG at Karma_Sue tells me that one thing she hates about her graduate program is that no one bothers to tell grad students how to start doing the conference-papers routine and no one tells you how to get published. I agree absolutely. My doctoral advisor and mentor, whom I did admire for years, never gave me the first piece of advice or instruction about how to go to conferences or how to get articles placed. And I never realized it until it was too late.

Scented told me that her advisors at Oxford required that she present two of her seminar papers at conferences. I think Erin at Sea-Change- has to do the same. That's something I wish I'd had to do. And yet... I had a problem in that I wasn't at Oxford or Harvard. Oxford, Harvard, Columbia-- those are places where conferences are held-- or are at least within railway commute of conference sites. To get to any of the more usual conference sites-- e.g., Chicago, Chapel Hill, Los Angeles, DC, New York --I'd have to travel. In other words-- *fly*. And, worse-- *pay* to fly and to stay at hotels. Even assuming I could actually board an aircraft, I couldn't afford to go. I couldn't afford to do a spring break with a girl; I couldn't afford to go to a conference out of town. And I still have no idea how one submits a book manuscript or an article or how one chooses a venue.

I would kill to be published-- to have books out under my name, to have articles in refereed publications. I'd cheerfully slaughter Foreigners and Natives and (Other, Younger) Males in any case-- and I'd depopulate whole countries to get published... I just need...checklists and procedures. I need to know *how* one gets published.

I still want my pen back. I want my pen back and I want someone's head on a spike. Taking a man's fountain pens...like offering a blow in the Code Duello, it's something that cannot be forgiven. And I will have both my pen and...vengeance.