Monday, January 15, 2007

hardly surreal

Sometimes my life seems surreal. Okay, so mostly when I'm drunk. Or, well, tipsy. I've always wanted to spell it 'typsy,' but I think that's wrong. That has something to do with when I first heard the word. Berck was telling me about Courtney getting drunk, and he told me Courtney said he was just 'typsy.' And that's how it was spelled in my mind...forever more.

Anyway, when I'm typsy, and sitting alone in the subway station, my life seems surreal. Tonight, around 2:00 a.m., I was sitting there listening to music and reading Faulkner. Faulkner is weird when I'm sober, but it's even weirder when I'm not. And music is cooler when you're not entirely sober.

Earlier, when I was waiting for a train on my way to Manhattan, there were (at least) 3 mice running around, in and out of this hole in the wall, right by me. Usually I see rats in the subway, and they're always in the tracks or otherwise far away, but these were three little mice, running around right under the bench. Once, in the same station (my station), I saw a big rat run out of the tunnels and stop right next to the this guy. He didn't respond, which I thought was very New York of him. Then, the rat started running back to the tunnels. The guy, who was like a foot away, suddenly noticed him and physically jumped. I was amused. This is why I love public transit. It involves the public. Despite my usual hatred for the public, I sometimes rather enjoy it...them...ugh, pronouns.

Our language has pronoun problems. When writing my memo (due at noon on Sunday--wtf?!?) I had problems with the antecedent/pronoun agreement for corporations and universities. "Baxter Corp. was prohibited from using ___ bone marrow separation devices." Should be its. But their sounds more natural. Berck says in Britain they would say "Baxter Corp. were prohibited from using their bone marrow separation devices." That makes more sense. (Btw, Baxter wasn't...CellPro was, due to a patent owned by JHU and licensed to Baxter.)

Does it make sense that we use federal money to buy AIDS drugs which were developed with federal money? Policies are whacked. It's just funny the different political circles around those two policies. Perhaps the result would be different if considered together, but I'm not sure. I'm probably not in any state to be discussing this...

Okay, I'm off to watch a bit of Ally and return to my mind, which I rather like.