Bleah

I wonder how many blog entries I've titled bleah? I could look, but maybe I'll do it later. (procrastination being the key here.)

But it is the most appropriate title I can think of because today is a bleah day if ever there was one. It's rainy, and "weather bug" keeps flashing at me warning me of possible flooding. I worked out this morning, and had a good lunch. I haven't fixed the glitch that yesterday made my cute little "witchy women" border that used to be on the left not overlap text, so for now, we're plain vanilla. But now I need to get a little work done on the dissertation before Andrew's head pops off.

On other news, I have two (count them ladies and gents, two) relatives by marriage (in other words, they aren't blood relations, which makes me feel slightly better about it, but sad that blood relations married the wankers) who have very recently gotten into trouble with the law. One of them is in serious your-ass-is-going-to-be-growng-mushrooms-cause-they're-going-to-lock-it-away-in-a-dark-room-trouble, and the other is less serious but serious enough--he isn't in jail, but definitely needs (and has) an attorney.

I heard about the one who is in jail's issue when I called home on Mother's Day. What a fun conversation that was! Other things came up in the discussion which, on another day, would have make my blood pressure go up, but with the whole criminal activity thing, the things that would have bugged me about the rest of the conversation went fairly un-noticed (I didn't even remember to tell Andrew about the "smaller" things till today, in fact.)

It's all so very "Jerry Springer."

Then, this weekend, while at the lakehouse, I found this board game called Ghetto. No, it's NOT the Monopoly-based game causing all the controversy, although I think that based on what I saw with the game info, another company (if the one that created the 1969 version of the game) has a case for suing the guy in charge of Ghettopoly. As I said, it was put out in 1969, by a company called "Educational Games" or something like that. It's got a lot of interesting elements for a serious study on race relations-- I mean, it's got these profiles of people you "play" and cards like "hustler" and "work opportunity". The people in the game have various "rap sheets" and the scoring has something to do with 1. making money (any old way you can) and 2. staying out of jail. I was amazed that someone had bought the game, and I wonder if it was bought cause they thought it would be funny, or were aware of how bizarre the game was. But it really made me want to steal it, because one of the things I do is teach on race relations and minority literatures. And it would be an incredible find, research wise, to write about. So I may have to steal it. At least it fits the spirit of the game, right?

Somehow, this keeps running through my head:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." --From Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)