Life, Approximately

The past several months of my life were devoted to studying for the LSAT. That five hours of standardized testing on a random Saturday morning is so determinative is absurd, no argument there. I was tempted to bubble in "Gregor Samsa" as my name on the Scantron sheet. More absurd is that the LSAT allegedly tests logical thinking. By that score one should fail by merely taking the test in the first place. Joseph Heller would agree, no? Shrug. I'll play the game. Besides, it's been so long since I've been last quantified.

But now I have to wait several weeks to be bell-curved. Being American, I want closure dammit. Preferably within 30 minutes and punctuated by a laugh track and Gap commercials. I typically hold up under pressure though, only to lose my shit afterwards. Well, so far I have remained continent, but I do have ants in my pants. (Incidentally, I used that in a pick-up line once, not because I was even necessarily attracted, but just because the line worked in that situation. Him: "Boy, I've got ants in my pants." Me: "Maybe you would like Grant in your pants instead?" I'm an idiot? What an insight. You should be a Russian novelist.)

So I had to chill out. Perscription drugs could do the trick, but the more I learn about PharMA the more pissed off I get. Girlfriends say we pay twice as much for pharmacueticals than any other developed democracy because pornographically high prices needed in order to finance their Messianic powers of life-saving innovation. They've been doing too much of their own product. Thirty percent profit margins and they spend vastly more money on marketing than research. And what research they in fact do is pimped off of progress made by the NIH and major US research universities. Oh, I feel a rant coming on, where's that 'scrip of Xanax?

No. Instead of popping muscle relaxants, I went back to the Old Country--Minneapolis. I had idly told the fam in the nadir of my test prep that I may come back home to visit for a while. In the meantime, I had forgotten about that trial balloon, but they hadn't and held me to it.

While I love my time in Mpls, it is the drive out there that is most cathartic. Ten hours of threading through rust-belt highways, using the centrifugal force of the Chicago turnpike to sling into Wisconsin, and riding up and down those amber waves at a cruise-controlled 75 mph. I have to say though that Wisconsin let me down. "Wisconsin is Bush Country" campaign signs (what is he, an occupying power?) marred the otherwise dignified landscape.

This changed upon entering the Twin Cities. Kerry signs were in mating season or something. And the ubiquitous Wellstone! stickers made me sentimentally-retarded. Then angry. Y'all could've had Fritz Mondale and you chose that oleaginous Norm Coleman. The man makes me throw up in my mouth a little. I witnessed him in action while I was working on Haiti at the State Dept. last spring. He was debating Chris Dodd on the News Hour with Jim Lerher. Dodd--long time Latin America hand--could speak cogently and extemporaneously on any topic relating to the Haiti debacle and integrate them coherently. Coleman, however, clung to talking points printed off the White House website like a kid on out-sized monkey bars, dangling and thrashing in the air.

This is unattractive of me, right? Politics makes my butt look big.

I feel like ending this abruptly. I was lying about that whole closure thing. Truffaut is my (second) favorite director, after all. But I have binged on the details of decidely un-blogworthy life enough for now. I'll post tomorrow, wherein I haunt art museums, stalk the floors of the shiny new IKEA store, cultivate some bad habits and let my eyes roam a bit too far....