Retired.

Colonial Jumbo is officially retired.

Instead, try visiting terenzonia.tumblr.com.

2 years.

For about two years, I posted not a thing. I think it's because my job -- no, my life -- has been exhausting me entirely too much emotionally. Writing isn't easy. Even when it comes to writing a silly blog post. (Especially when it comes to writing a SILLY blog post?) I don't work 24 hours per day. Not even close. But there's not much left about me after what I do. Poverty is exhausting. It must be even worse to actually BE poor. (NOTE: I don't make a lot, but I get by.) But there's something about malaise that leaves you unable to share yourself with others. (Well, without a few drinks, at least.)

I miss writing. These weren't exactly my memoirs, but it was fun to keep up this blog. I liked feedback, whether it was a friend's comment or a simple visit from a Snorg Girl afficionado from abroad. It definitely meant something to me that someone out there was reading my writing. It kind of felt like it did back when I had my column in my college paper. People read me. I want to be read again.

So here goes. I'm not going to advertise this anywhere right now. Maybe someone who is strangely committed to me will come back and see it and hope that I'll write again. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. I'm going to try to write again. Maybe not every day. But I'm going to try. And trying is the best I've got these days.

Holla.

Excuses, excuses...

I know what you must be thinking: He gets us all excited with a bunch of posts all in a row and then he disappears again!

But, no! I'm not disappearing! It's just that I need a certain amount of inspiration to blog and there's not been much inspiring me this week.

I mean, I could write about Sarah Palin, but I don't feel like she's really worth my time. (But check out this site for some women who are less than pleased with her.) I would write about a few clients that are driving me batshit crazy, but that would be a breach of client confidentiality rules and I'm not looking for a lawsuit. I thought about writing about September 11 (a friend did so here), but I don't know that I have the emotional energy to really explore that.

Even last night's viewing of this week's 90210 wasn't enough to move me to write. Sure, it was at the same time squee-inducing (Someone from high school is Kelly's baby-daddy! Jackie's back and she's still a drunk!) and terrible (Except for Dixon, everyone looks 30! Aunt Becky is too young to play Carol Potter! I hate every character except Silver! Where the hell is Lucille Bluth this episode?!), but not so much that I cared to delve into it.

So, yeah. Deal with the fact that I have nothing to say right now. Hopefully something inspiring'll happen over the weekend and you'll have new material come Monday.

Snorgtastic.

I love seeing how many people read my blog and -- even more interesting -- how people get here. True, the majority of my readers are friends and acquaintances, but I've mentioned before that a few curious Google searches (e.g., "Ahmedinejad hotness") have led quite a few strangers my way, many of them foreign. With my latest return to Colonial Jumbo, I've started checking my site meter again and I couldn't help but notice a bit of a trend. A large percentage of my traffic comes from one particular image search on Google: "snorg girl."

So I tried it myself. My blog is the FOURTH link. This post gets more hits than anything else I've ever written on here.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about that.

UPDATE: "Let's give the boy a hand..."

My office looks out on an alley with another office building no more than 20 feet away. Across the way, is a man sitting in his office. His back is toward the window (and us). His blinds are mostly drawn. He is, without a doubt, masturbating to internet porn. Apparently, he's been at it all day. He even has headphones on. And the best part is that his office door is wide open.

I just wanted to share that. It's the sort of thing you see on the televisions all the time, but never in real life. Yay!

UPDATE: He's STILL at it. Yesterday, it was funny; today, it's sad. I feel bad for the guy. Not because we've seen him (or because I'm reporting his masturbatory habits to my readers), but because this is clearly someone who's had a bit of a mental break. I feel like psychologically stable people don't masturbate constantly at their desks with their doors open. (But please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) Is there a hotline for this?

(I changed the headline because I thought it was a more appropriate song lyric than yesterday. I think that it's a nice amalgam of humor and concern.)

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!"

There's no place like home.

After a period of angst earlier in the summer, I recently found myself becoming more peaceful about my existence. I'm an attorney at a great organization, doing the sort of work I imagined myself doing when I applied to law school. I'm teaching again -- albeit this time at a law school. My angsty thoughts of the past few months are beginning to coalesce into a solid plan for the future. And certainly not least, I'm living with one of the most spectacular people on earth in an apartment that we've both come to love. Obviously something was bound to go awry.

Then our landlord told us that he wants to sell our apartment. Natch.

First, the obvious issue: We'll probably have to move. In DC, it's actually quite hard to evict a tenant, but personal use and occupancy is a legitimate reason to have someone vacate. From when notice is given, tenants have 90 days to vacate. If they do not, the landlord can sue them in landlord-tenant court. I guess it would be an interesting experience in learning what it's like to be one of my clients. Bah. Although we were committed to being in this apartment at least through May, that may very well not be an option.

Also annoying is what comes with a landlord's desire to sell. We got a phone call tonight from the realtor. She wants to come and take pictures of the apartment. She wants to come up with a schedule to show the apartment. She prefers that we not be here when she's showing it. We prefer not to care so much about what she prefers. If she thinks she's rolling in here on the weekend, she'd best be ready to find us splayed out on our lovely couch. And, although I plan to perhaps avoid one of my standard clothes explosions, I am not going to go super out of my way to make the apartment look like the Bluth model home. (Although, I'd happily allow my landlord to get us a cleaning lady.)

All this nonsense leaves us in a bit of a quandary. Do we just hang tight, put up with the realtor, and carry on until the magic moment when this place sells? Or do we take on the unhappy task of finding a new place now and perhaps control our destiny just a tiny bit more? And then, regardless, do we try to find another 2 bedroom/2 bath that we can afford? Or do we try to capitalize on the moment and perhaps suck it up for a little bit and live with a few others in a larger space? If I really have to move, I wouldn't hate paying less rent.

In the meantime, we've been brainstorming how to make our apartment as unappetizing as possible. First, I think we should leave the blinds all the way up. Show prospective buyers the beautiful, street-level W Street view. Second, I think it's very important to put out as much gay porn as possible. Finally, we're looking for a tasteful photographer. After a lot of discussion, we decided that it would be awesome to superimpose twin images of our naked crotches from below. Then we'd blow it up and hang it over the couch.

If we have to leave, at least we'll leave with our pride intact.