Because it is my name.

And the never-ending nightmare of my existence continues....

So, as you may or may not know, I recently began the process of applying for my Italian citizenship. They require that I present both of my parents' birth certificates, my dad's certificate of naturalization, my parents' wedding certificate, and my birth certificate. The latter two documents need to be "certified" copies, have an apostille attached, and must be translated to Italian. Awesome.

My mum, being phenomenal, went straight to work and got me both their birth certificates (in long form) from Italy in a little over a week. They were in my hands before I even went to my birth state's Dept of Vital Statistics to figure out how to get my own birth certificate. After a little clicking around, I was able to submit my request online (I had to fax a copy of my license to prove it was me). Imagine my pleasant surprise when I got an e-mail informing me that my birth certificate was on its way less than a week later.

Now, imagine my outraged frustration when I looked at my certified, embossed, freshly-signed birth certificate and saw that my name was spelled incorrectly.

I hoped that it was merely some kind of typo in preparing the document, but a call to the issuer confirmed that it was, indeed, a copy of my actual birth certificate. Somehow, my municipal birth certificate and every document created since the date of my birth have had one spelling of my first name. The spelling I thought correct. But my actual, legal, certified, official birth certificate had another spelling. Every time I corrected this common misspelling of my name, it was ME who was wrong. I have been living a lie for 29 years.

This, of course, has caused my soul to disconnect from my body.

Now, in order to "correct" my record (as if I was the one who made the mistake -- I was 0 years old!), I have to provide proof of my name before the age of 7.

Proof. Of. My. Name.

Think about that. I have to prove to someone that my name is what my name has been for 29 years. Obviously -- for reasons that were not explained to me -- my municipal birth certificate is not enough. Neither is my expired government-issued passport from when I was a child. Instead, I must provide one of the following:
1) School records;
2) Baptismal certificate;
3) Immunization records; or
4) Census records.
I cannot begin to process why a baptismal certificate will suffice where an effing United States passport won't.

Once I submit the above, they'll let me be the me I've been for 29 years within four to six weeks. (At this rate, I'll get my citizenship right around retirement age. Part of the point was to be able to flee if John McCain is elected president.)

What surprises me is just how furious I am at the moment. I'm a pretty easy-going person in general. (Right?) I want to be calm and rational. Didn't Shakespeare write,

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Ah, fuck Shakespeare and that stupid slut Juliet, too. She was wrong. John Proctor got it right in Arthur Miller's The Crucible:

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"

Your engraving goes here.

This past weekend, I was in beautiful New Jersey for Nancy's beautiful wedding. It was a truly lovely ceremony and reception and a ton of fun. I was still a bit hurting from the prior night's festivities when I boarded my 6:22pm train at 7pm. The train was packed, but I didn't care so much. My plan was to pass the hell out the second I hit the seat. I was passing between cars when my headphones were pulled off my neck, where they'd been resting. The cord had caught on one of the train attendants. He apologized. I said, "No sweat," and kept walking. And then I looked at my headphones and realized that the right ear piece had been completely ripped off. Sweet.

As I sat in my seat listening to the woman on my left talk into her cell phone about some crazy party she'd attended the previous night and the guy on my right talk into his cell phone in an attempt to make plans with someone for later that evening, I decided that maybe it was time to purchase that new iPod I'd been considering. I've been planning to purchase the new iPod nano (after I decided that the iPod Touch was a bit out of my price range) but had been putting it off due to other expenditures. Now, I figure that the $20 I would invest toward a new pair of headphones would be better spent going toward a Nano.

As you know, I'm not great with decisions, but I immediately opted for the red Nano. It's part of the (product) Red campaign and the most aesthetically pleasing. (Frankly, I sort of hate Apple's new range of pastel colors.) Who knew that I could make decisions on my own?! Then, the silly people at Apple foiled me: Free Engraving. What was I supposed to get engraved on my iPod? Clearly, this isn't the sort of decision that I can make on my own. I've gone from something as banal as my name to an only mildly less banal quote about justice to -- so far my favorite -- simply the words, "I'm the Boom King."

Help.

[Edited to add that "I'm the Boom King" was originally Cicie's idea.]

A Typical Morning

I woke up without my alarm for the second time this week. I figured that I'd sleep in a bit this week because I don't really have any reason to get up. I'm on vacay before my new jobs starts (a week from yesterday!) and, other than finally submitting my DC Bar application, I had little in the way of responsibilities. Still, I was out of bed before 8:30am. Not sure why. I was just very awake. I know that I had been dreaming, but I can't for the life of me remember what.

I made myself a bowl of cereal then hopped on the interwebs for my morning dose of news and snark. The Republicans debated last night. Apparently the audience applauded waterboarding. Super. I should probably be shocked, but I'm mostly not. Jerry Falwell is still dead. I'm still feeling guilty about being happy about it. Like a good Catholic, I was taught to not speak ill of the dead and I certainly found some of the stuff I found in message boards yesterday a little extreme, even if he was a hateful bigot. But someone (and I'd credit him/her if I remembered where I read it) paraphrased what Bette Davis said upon hearing of nemesis Joan Crawford's death: “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good." In the case of a person as unambiguously vile as Falwell, I'm loath to disagree. But I digress.

After realizing that America is still fucked and neither Wolfie nor Gonzo resigned, I went about folding some laundry. I did a ton of laundry yesterday in preparation for my trip to NJ (oh yeah, I'm going to be in NJ for the next few days). My plan is to have my apartment in as pristine a state as possible so that it'll be ready for me when I return from the Jerz and start work. I had just swiffed my floor when I decided that I'd love a coffee. Like most Washingtonians, I have a Starbucks exactly a block away. I threw on a pair of jeans and grabbed those things that are always with me when I leave my apartment: Wallet. Cell. iPod. Keys. Keys? Shit. Where were my keys?

I scoured my table but, because I actually cleaned it significantly yesterday, it didn't take long to figure out that they weren't there. Well, if not there, then where? Checked my desk. Dresser. My bookcase. Nothing. That's when I stopped, smiled to myself because I do this all the time, and checked my pockets.

Nope. No keys.

Had they fallen to the floor? Were they on my five inches of kitchen counter space? No. Did I toss them on the bed? Maybe set them down in the bathroom? No dice. I was getting a bit crazy at this point. What if I had dropped them outside? I can use the call box to get into my front door so, when stepping outside for a sec, I'll leave my door unlocked. No keys necessary. Then again, I don't like doing that late at night, so I always bring my keys. But what if I had dropped them somehow? I couldn't be 100% certain that my keys were in my apartment, so I didn't feel 100% great about leaving for an extended weekend knowing that my keys might be in the hands of nefarious peoples. (In case you're just tuning in, I'm a bit of a paranoid person.) I started panicking. I went outside and scanned my front porch. I checked to see if a neighbor had found them and put them on top of our mailboxes (our de facto lost and found). I returned to my aparment and started tearing it apart. I was moving stuff. Looked under the bed. Shook my garbage can to see if maybe I'd thrown them out. Nada. Looked behind the bed. Behind the dresser. Under the desk. Cleared off the table. Cleared off the desk. Went through my medicine cabinet. Under chair cushions. I looked in a pair of shoes that were under the table. Sweatshirt pockets. I started opening drawers. Drawers that I haven't opened in weeks.

No keys.

I was losing it. Where were my keys? I couldn't go to Jersey without knowing where my keys were! Where could they be?! Rechecked every place I'd already checked. Lifted up my bath mats. Looked on top of the fridge.

Pause. No. That's silly. They weren't IN the refrigerator.

I opened the refrigerator door. No keys. I looked in the butter tray. Nothing. Up. Down. Nothing. Then I pulled out the pizza box sitting on my top rack. There, in the back of my refrigerator, behind the pizza box from last night, were my keys.

Yeah.

I (heart) Snorg Girl.

As you may know, I’m an avid reader of Wonkette. Wonkette – unlike this dinky affair – is a professional website with advertisers (ooh!). Recently among those advertisers is a website called Snorg Tees that sells novelty t-shirts. Most of their ads feature a young woman wearing one of their novelty t-shirts with her mouth open in an expression of what I’ve decided is best described as surprised glee.

Now here’s the weird part: I just can’t get enough of her! Snorg Girl affects me in a strangely primal way. I don’t know what it is about her, but just seeing her in the Snorg Tee ads completely cracks me up and fills me with a brief but distinct sense of completely unbridled joy. I can be in a terrible mood or extremely tired and just one glimpse of Snorg Girl will make me laugh out loud and fill me with enough energy to get me through another hour of work. It’s inexplicable. I sort of want her to be my best friend.

So here, for all of you to enjoy, is my favorite picture of Snorg Girl in her “I’m Kind of a Big Deal” t-shirt (© 2007 Snorg Tees):

My cell phone leaks jelly.

I wish I were joking. I have no idea what's going on, but something sticky and goo-like is seeping from the side of my cell phone's main screen. Looking at my phone, I can actually see some clear, jelly-like substance along the edge of the picture and, based on touch tests, it seems to be slowly seeping out the side.

The phone seems to be working just fine. I wonder if it has anything to do with the time Charles threw me in the pool with my phone in my pocket, but that was nine months ago. I cannot think of any place my phone has been where it might have collected a gooey filling.

Needless to say, I'm extremely grossed out. Has this ever happened to anyone else?