I have a couple very thin, raised red welts running down the length of my left arm, along with some other smaller welts decorating the skin around them. This is a change from last night, when there was a single arm-length welt on my right arm. The welts appear and disappear spontaneously and in random locations/sizes/shapes, which I find v. interesting (if a bit bizarre). Tonight, perhaps they're caused by stress -- mostly the stress of devoting two hours of my life to the finale of "Project Runway", only to see my least favorite designer show the ugliest clothes ever (there are a lot of blogosphere/twitterverse comments comparing the clothes unfavorably to the Jaclyn Smith collection at Kmart, which triggered a nice Zoolander memory) and win the whole damn thing. Ugh.
I also had another "I hate children and, more importantly, their parents" moment today, this time from reading the NEW YORK TIMES (which I should not be allowed to read). More specifically, I got annoyed at their comments section on an article about how a judge ruled that a lawsuit could move forward with a four-year-old as a defendant in a civil suit claiming that she was negligent while riding her bike, causing the death of an 87-year-old woman. From the story, it sounds like she and another four-year-old (also mentioned in the suit) were racing their bikes down a sidewalk in NYC while being "supervised" by their mothers, ran into an elderly woman and knocked her down, causing her to break her hip, and she died from complications of hip surgery three weeks later. I shouldn't have opened the comments because I saw exactly what I was expecting to see (saying the four-year-old couldn't possibly expect that the woman would die from being hit, and so apparently it was okay to run into her?). Worse, I saw even more extreme thoughts -- that if she was frail enough to be killed by a four-year-old, it was the woman (or her guardians) who were negligent in letting her walk outside, that she had already "outlived the actuarial tables" and so this wasn't a big deal, and that the estate was being greedy for suing, since the woman probably wouldn't have wanted to ruin a child's life just because she got killed.
Grr. I really hate most children and their parents. They aren't just suing the four-year-olds -- they're suing the parents for negligence, but named the children as co-defendents. And if the kids had been taught to watch where they were going and not race down a city sidewalk -- and then watched while they did it -- the woman might not have died. Stupid.
Anyway, enough about children. Today was great; I slept in, grabbed a burrito for lunch, went to Whole Foods (home of more children and parents), and bought ingredients for chili (although I couldn't make it the way my mother makes it, exactly, since she certainly doesn't use organic pinto beans, and the only tomato juice they had was some overpriced tomato puree in a glass bottle -- but I wasn't in the mood to go to Safeway too just to get the midwest variants of these ingredients). Then I came home, procrastinated for a bit, and put in about four solid hours on the manuscript -- I didn't get as far as I would have liked, but I got farther than I was yesterday. I made my chili, made an awesome grilled cheese sandwich to accompany it, and watched the finale of "Project Runway"...and you know the rest.
Now, it's definitely time for bed; I didn't intend to stay up until two a.m. again tonight, but somehow I always manage it. Goodnight!
2 comments:
Suing the kids and bringing the parents in as co-defendants is how one reaches the deeper pockets of the insurance company. The plaintiffs attorney bringing the case will walk away with a third of any judgment or settlement. Someday after accumulating riches this trial attorney will take the bench and allow some young attorney the same courtesy. The plaintiff's trial lawyers have taken over the judicial nominating process in nearly every state.
In a modern setting Maddy could be working as a checker in her family owned grocery chain and Fergy could be learning about his family's bakery chain by driving a bread truck. These two blue collar workers could then meet at the wedding of a child of a meat magnate known to the parents of both.
Your cousin's football team is in the sweet sixteen having won their first round play-off game.
Now get writing! Slater
Well, the age and fragility of the old lady are actually irrelevant here. You take the plaintiff as you find them.
The child's age, however, is relevant, and this is completely absurd.
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