i do this; i be he

ready to get this show on the mofo road. at least i'm going to be more on point for this last exam: when i was awakened by a power saw nearby this morning, i didn't cuss and wonder why someone was doing something noisy before i was up, i immediately ran through the significant points of a case dealing with power tools. this was succinctly followed by thinking no, i'm wrong, there is a power saw running making the noise. this is more like a different case because it is not pneumatic tools causing arthritis. then i thought about how strange it was that law school had taken over even my semi-conscious mind and how i used pneumatic tools when i worked in that factory for like a month or whatever. i honestly don't know which is worse, but neither proved to be very inspiring.
i am currently sitting around at my sister's place, not focusing on studying. i came over to print my big ass outline and borrow a bag from ben, and realized i should also do early check-in for my flight. however, i was under the impression that i could do that within 48 hours, as opposed to the 24 the website is presently insisting on. so i've just kind of been chilling for a couple hours, another forty minutes to go or something, but i'm not gonna leave and come back. it isn't that far of a walk, of course, but it is cold and there is nothing i would be doing at home that i can't do/haven't been doing here except for dealing with a shitty internet connection instead of basking in the glorious functionality of this one. although my bit torrents are still moving like molasses... oh well. oo, i am also looking forward to taking a vacuum cleaner home with me, they apparently have an extra here. so in a while i will be that guy walking down a sidewalk with a laptop bag, empty suitcase, and a vacuum cleaner. i expect it to look pretty sweet. in my mind i just thought of myself in stride looking like that behind the beatles on the cover of abbey road.
i just got an email about a law book sale coming up in january. great, another thing i will need to spend money i don't have on, nice to be reminded. the best part is that they are calling it a "law book faire", that's right, with the old school spelling. first, there is nothing festive about an organized market for text books. it is just as boring as the regular book store, which does not claim to be a book shoppe. second, where do they get off using that e on the end of fair? just being in the northeast is not enough to append extraneous es. i guess it could have been worse. they could have used "fayre". i'm not going unless guinevere shows up and sings me a request to bring her there.
as much as i am looking forward to going home, i'm also trying to brace myself for disappointment. this is not a dig on anyone else, it is simply a realization that i have perhaps placed too high an expectation on the experience. i left there because i wasn't happy with it most of the time, and it probably won't be that different. this is the same reason law school has been such a disappointment: i pinned too high of hopes on it for changing things. one can shift scenery and some significant settings, but the real problems don't just go away on their own. sad but true. all too true.
i was glad to see dekkinga scored tickets for that big wilco run in chicago, but unfortunately i was not in his shoes in terms of awareness that 2008 dates had been announced, and so the show here was sold out before i even knew it was going to happen. the consolation prize is that tapes from when wilco plays at home are usually fantastic sources, and the threat of serious set list variability has me quite excited about the series. i haven't been to a show in ages. new clutch dates just came out and they are playing NOWHERE CLOSE. absolute bullshit; they used to play the trocadero like every fucking tour. until i moved here. i'll at least get to see the hippo on new years when i go home. at the new founders, where you cannot smoke. absolute bollocks. might go see la famiglia if i'm feeling frisky, will probably go see covert operations because i'm self destructive. well, we've almost reached the magic 24 hours before flight time, and i guess i've written enough optimistic and uplifting things for one post. gonna go home and try to stay on task with the outline from heaven via hell. torts: it's what's for dinner. but not in cake form.

better all the time

once, word crashed on me and i lost everything i did one day. that day was today. even though the program autosaves constantly, i somehow cannot recover any of it. just tried to undo one autoformat and boom, program freaked. awesome. i guess it doesn't erase what i learned by typing things out, but it would have been nice to have been able to go back and look at it as intended. i am reminded of a favorite catchphrase of mine from a couple years ago: "GOD DAMMIT!"

freakin out

i'm not feeling real great about tomrrow's exam. i have had a terrible time trying to stay focused on studying, and there is just so much detail that i really worry about being able to pull together what the prof is looking for. i certainly have not lived up to his lofty standard of virtual enslavement to law school, and i have a sinking feeling that this test is designed to expose precisely that. shouldn't be too tough to do that to me early tomorrow morning. we'll see. i'm fine with here are the facts, this is the law, how should things shake down, but i'm not so good on here are the facts, tell me about three different jurisdictions' positions on this particular crime and the model penal code provision chapter and verse, tell me how it will shake down in each, and then tell me which one is the best and why. i can do all that except busing out word for word statutes. there's a hell of a lot of those things out there. laws change all the time, and lawyers presumably look up plenty of shit every time the write a brief or whatever. so i really don't see how expecting people to regurgitate snippets of law is an enterprise which actually teaches people about the law write large or how to be a better lawyer. cases are not won or lost based on memorization skills as far as i am aware. all that being said, memorization has been a strong point for me, and if this were an ordinary format test with fill in the blank, short answer and the like, i would feel differently. but it is gonna be more along the lines of three big ass essays, which kind of changes the dynamic. the tension is between focusing on the bigger picture and getting down and dirty in the details, because one particular word in one applicable statute can mean the difference between an acquittal and a death sentence. no one is going to kill me based on how i perform on the exam, but the prospect is still pretty daunting. daunting enough that i am typing this up rather than attempting to engage the material. at this point i have two dead reference books on top of my criminal law text, so i should probably get back to it for a while.

looking back

"badass sunset" should be a cocktail of some sort, an answer to the tequila sunrise. although tequila is sort of badass in the first place. "badass sunset" sounds more like a drink that leads to passed out rather than pissed off. my most prolific foray into drink-inventing thus far has been the rather unappealing and hence unpopular "bird flu", which i believe contained barenjager, 151, orange juice, and sprite, maybe something else with booze in it too. let's just say i'm open to suggestions regarding the content of a potential badass sunset.
yesterday, i had my first for reals exam. it was contracts, but unfortunately it did not involve linoleum rugs in any way. all in all i feel pretty good about it, wound up hitting the word limit on the nose, not that it matters much. didn't quite use all four hours, and i don't really feel bad about it. i'm more concerned about the next one, which is limited to three hours. these aren't ordinary "do i know it or not" kind of questions; more like, what all am i supposed to talk about here, and how much. the upshot of the memo/exam crunch has been to take my mind off of the extremely troubling meta concerns i have about going to law school/being a lawyer. this respite was rudely interrupted by an email from a friend and classmate who will not drop out but noted that the link he sent me made him want to. i'm not the person who needs encouragement about dropping out. this link wasn't all that disturbing when viewed in a vacuum, but it was enough to throw my mind back into a mode of serious skepticism and doubt. the link included a distribution graph of salaries for lawyers and there really are mostly two choices: making less than a decent factory wage by working your ass off within reasonable hours doing something noble and never being able to escape your crippling debt or get a job with a big firm where you make an assload of money and never have any time to enjoy it while in the meantime getting caught up in firm culture and kissing unfathomable amounts of ass. this is the last thing i needed to be reminded of right about now. i was kinda of cruising along, thinking well, i can probably deal with this law school bullshit, and i could probably be some kind of lawyer maybe. nope. doesn't work like that.
yesterday also afforded me the opportunity to enjoy a nice barley wine down at the local brewpub. it really hit the spot, but the beer itself didn't go anywhere remarkable, kind of dominated by a grape flavor. it was also only like a month and a half past brewed date; perhaps it would improve with a little more age. i also enjoyed a rye ipa which, while refreshing, mostly made me look forward to sipping red's rye in a week or so. these folks over here could use a lesson in hop schedule, and probably hop bill in general. seemed like this place probably went with the more economic high-alpha stuff and kind of skimped on the aromatics. for a second i thought spell check marked that, but no, i had originally just typed it wrong. anyway, it was like they thought simcoes could cover all the bases based on their versatility. news, people: this does not work; just makes it seem like you're brewing for people who don't know better. of course i can't really bitch at this point: my current beer experience is rooted in seeing what pouring from a forty to a pint glass does for pbr. mostly i just can't believe how clear it is; never looks like this at mulligan's. i mean, i know they've probably never cleaned the damn lines, but it is a little disconcerting to know so much shit gets in there that it comes out an opaque pale gold rather than looking like severely diluted apple juice. i have also discovered that pabst is probably better when you don't get the aroma. it smells on clothes that got spilled on the night before. this is something of which i am painfully aware.
the vast majority of time since my previous serious post last week has been spent on the clumsy, painful, grinding process of attempted studying. although it was not all for naught with contracts; something in the process helped me along. on saturday, though, i did kill off a good chunk of the day going to the casino protest to observe. i got down there pretty early, hoping to poke around the area as i had not been up that way. the particular part of the neighborhood i was in did not have a whole lot to look at, however, mostly little-utilized warehouse space and the like. lots of little chunks of trolley track and obvious places where it had been paved over. they're gonna regret doing that one day. i took the el to get there, and for the first time i was actually elevated on the el, and that was kind of a neat view out the window, racing along next to the expressway. i went to where we were supposed to meet, which was not too long of a walk from the el stop. the weather was alright at first, but it just seemed to get colder and more windy, which was probably more perception based on standing outside for a few hours in a row. anyway, when i got there, the only people were one of the chief organizers and some guy. in a little while a few more of the movers and shakers behind the event showed up. from what i heard, the game plan had been kind of open until the very moment people got there, so it was neat to hear them decide how things were going to go down. i guess the original hope (and future plan) was to actually go sit-in on the site of the proposed casino. however, the developers and investors behind the project had asserted that they would utilize legal authority to arrest any people who went on the land and charde them with a third degree misdemeanor or something like that. the long in the short of it was anyone who got cuffed was not going anywhere until monday morning when they could be arraigned, and i don't think anyone had made weekend plans to sit in the lockup. thus, no one actually went on the property, and things were pretty low key, not counting the overwhelming amount of cops they had around. better safe than sorry from their standpoint i guess, but they had like 60 cops. probably only like 50 protesters made it down that day. the observers got there so early that for a while there was roughly one of us for every protester. i guess drexel gives people pro bono credit for doing this, so almost all the people there were drexel folk. i was the lone representative for my school, which is supposedly a model of NLG activity. there was the NLG observer chair dude, who is pretty cool, and one NLG dude who is pretty righteous who always does these things. wish i could say i felt the same way about other NLG folks i've met; most of them have been, well, lawyers in the pejorative sense of the term. oh and the cool rutgers girl was there too. the fact that she was present did not present me with a whole lot more to say to her, however. not that it matters; dating people in serious grad study pursuits is not always so easy, and if both parties are up to such, well, good luck i guess. not something i am going to chase after at this juncture. anyway, although my presence at the thing didn't wind up being too important, the experience was not a total loss. i got to talk to strangers, which is a hobby (whoops typed hoppy instead of hobby at first, still dreaming about red's rye) of mine. i talked to a very inspiring and active person who showed up in a powered wheelchair thing. her speech was a little difficult to understand at times, especially with traffic, but she didn't mind if you said you didn't catch it. she had some pretty cool stories about blocking offending bus drivers and various protests. another person was a lifetime resident of the area they want to put the casino in. he had a ton to say, but i was most interested in what he had to say about this boat. there is a river boat moored where the people were protesting, and it is one sorry sight. all listing off to one side, windows all smashed out, generally looking dilapidated as hell. looks like something out of a stephen king novel, a la abandoned amusement park. the dude told me it had been there and looking like that since he was twelve, which he roughly calculated to date to the early to mid seventies. i just can't believe something like that has sat someplace like that for so long. well, i guess this is believable, but something about it really struck me for whatever reason. the guy had a real cool perspective on all the various shit we talked about, someone who knows what they think and knows why but is pretty sure they've got it all right. at any rate, i was not unhappy i had the experience. if nothing else, the observing gig always provides a veritable feast in the food for thought category, lots of real life sociology and psychology things, and philosophy is always a given.
the only other recent highlight i may have missed was a good meal. got some goat the other night in some kind of "west indies" sauce. lots of rice and beans. some fried plantains. shit was delicious. i talked to the dude at the place about it to build some good will, and he got real excited. apparently goat is definitely his favorite meat: some people think it is not good meat, but it is the best. i asked him about where they get it, and he gave me the regional breakdown for where to get goat. at like half the places, you pick a goat. like a live goat that is there and you see and you say i would like this goat, or more precisely, i would like this goat butchered for me, and that is how you get your goat meat. sounds like quite an adventure. i thought that this was my first time enjoying goat, but my sister (who shared this dish with me; only way to order it is as a massive platter thing) informed me we had gotten it before when we went out for ethiopian once. all i knew was that the food then was delicious and i was not in a hurry to wonder what it was. if you have not had the pleasure, i would say that goat is really pretty close to beef. more like beef than it is like, say, lamb.
in music news, go ahead... ask me about brent mydland. feel free, any time. i have some things to say about all that. in fact, i have a lot of things to say about that. and if ya wanna know ya just got ta ask.
this is going to be one long week waiting for things to wrap up. i already don't give a fuck about my last exam. well, that is not really true, but i give a minimal fuck about it, minimal enough that i would just as soon take it the day after the next one and have it over. that class was a hopeless clusterfuck of cloudy terminology and poorly articulated theory, but i kicked the shit out of the practice exam and the real one is apparently open book. not that the book was great, but it will provide plenty of fodder to yammer on about in a manner which conveys that yes, i went to class and i have as good of an idea about what was supposed to be taught as anyone. unfortunately i have like five days where i will feel like i'm supposed to study but will be wholly unable to accomplish anything meaningful of the sort. that will probably call for more pabst. and general time killing, so this is the place you will want to look if you're up to more of the same. if you are or will be in west michigan, think of something fun and memorable we can do over the break. i'll be there, man.

badass sunset

well, if it had to get dark, this was a pretty sweet way to go about it. dark purple clouds with neon pink underbellies, wispy grey clouds off in the further parts of the sky that range from baby blue to whitish grey. fiery orange base silhouetting the massive dome of some nearby house of worship in the foreground. slowly dissipating jet trail cutting across the whole scene which is itself slipping away. choose your own metaphor.
and all that while axis: bold as love was on, with its excellent color-based lyrics. some hendrix tunes just never get the love they deserve. corollary: some get way too fucking much. seriously, i think i could go at least five years without hearing his version of watchtower. he did like a rolling stone way better anyway. that dude really dug dylan. like anyone should really. speaking of which, i still haven't seen i'm not there and probably won't catch it in the theater. this is the least of my losses resulting from educational commitments. the only element of my life which has not been rendered lossy (wow, spell check does not mark that) is my audio files. hooray for flac. i swear sometimes it sounds better than cds played through the exact same equipment. this does not change the fact that at this very moment a number of my classmates are studying more effectively while listening to 64 kbps mp3s played through the earbuds that came with their ipod. i know itunes uses some fucked up audio format that isn't that bad to listen to, but i also know that most people haven't filled their ipods exclusively via itunes. the feds know you didn't, and they are coming to get you. do not ask me what to do when they get you. i'm ass deep in criminal defenses as i write, and i will probably drown in them before i get the call. also, it would be against rules of professional conduct for me to give advice. this is a thing i have learned. it will not be on this exam, whereas myriad nuanced and incredibly detailed aspects of criminal law i have yet to fully penetrate (sorry, working on the rape materials right now) are more likely to be the order of the day in, uh, less than two days. shit.

fuck auto format

caffeine + nicotine = some progress. but the auto format function of word cuts both ways. sometimes it is really nice and other times it fucks my shit up so bad i spend more time trying to make things appear to have some semblance of organization than i do writing things down. why don't i just turn it off? one, i don't remember where that function is, and i am not about to ask a damn animated paper clip how to find it and two, sometimes it works well. why so inconsistent? remember when word was made by microsoft and how it still is? that's why. can't bitch too much since my beloved diet coke is sort of doing the same thing, fueling my progress while causing the distraction of having to get up and piss like every half hour. the sun is already on its way down, meaning it is past four. by five i will have to study under the dreaded overhead light as the pleasing lamp does not give enough light from its location. life is just not fair.

another hour

and i have accomplished nothing more. half was due to eating, the other half was due to not wanting to disturb the cat on my lap. he seemed so happy and comfortable. i think they will miss me. they have not offered to take my exams to get me to stay around though. i now plan to waste ten minutes or so choosing music. i also just noticed that my computer was running on battery power because i set the plug next to the power strip instead of actually plugging it in. this is going swimmingly. i got sick of my computer asking to restart for updates and reset it. without saving the notes i've been making while studying. i've made so little recent progress that word recovered the whole document. mixed blessing. moving forward with a big glass of diet coke and some '73 dead. most of those shows are longer than three hours with more than 25 cuts, and they don't even have drums and space segments (no mickey). i'll say it again, '73 was a great year for the dead. and 2003 was a great year for doritos.

bad at studying

too much effort for too little payoff day after day after day.
i want to get drunk.
it is about noon.
thanks, four-hour exams.

when am i going to post again?

sometime shortly after i stop becoming more depressed and boring with every passing day. ha ha ha. i've honestly tried to post a couple of times and i've been pretty unhappy with the attempts, which is why they are not here. things are pretty sad when blogging seems like too much work. well, sometimes that is the issue, and other times it seems like i am incapable of typing anything even the generous perusers of this backwater blog would not feel cheated to have read. the past several surgeons general have been derelict in their duty by failing to make public warnings about the possible harmful side effects of legal education; the whole ordeal has harmed my brain. studies show this, man.
classes ended yesterday, leaving me with little more than fumes left in the proverbial tank. when i was running my mouth about going back to school and leaving the widely disparaged world of wage labor, i often fielded questions about the difficulty of transitioning from work to education. i wrote that shit off writ large; i felt like school was something i had a long background in and would be more than happy to return to the friendly confines thereof. i was sort of wrong, of course. law school is a horse of a different color. magenta, i believe. but the peculiarities of law school extend beyond pedagogy to the scope of swallowing one's life wholesale. that is something else i had counted on. not that i have been able to bring myself to attack law school with the same zealous unabating (marked, what the hell?) fervor some of my contemporaries display. but i have spent a lot more time on this bullshit than i recall ever spending simply on school, and also significantly more time just worrying when not working. in short, school work never followed me home the way it does these days, and the end result is exhaustion.
which brings up the sore and unavoidable subject of finals. yes, they're coming, like they have been for an awful long time. so i'm going to have to dig real deep in the pocket and try and scrape together some brainpower (not marked as one word), motivation, and focus to make it through this most critical pass in hellish unnecessary and entirely avoidable mountain range known as law school. today was most unproductive, and i really feel more bored than bad about it. oh well, that time was killed earlier today, with a vengeance (who knew how to spell that? be honest). the point is, as is my wont, i perpetually disregarded advice about progressive outlining. you know, authorities at law school are constantly telling you about all this bullshit you're supposed to be doing to avoid being unequivocally fucked, but the problem is these are the same people who repeat mantras about making time for things which are not law school. the two approaches simply cannot be reconciled. given that much, i'll take the one where law school doesn't take up every minute of existence.
one last complaint about the way law school is run: yesterday marked the seventy-fourth anniversary of the enactment of the twenty-first amendment, repealing the eighteenth and worst. this fact failed to find its way into either class i had, however. in a profession where drinking is at least approved if not outright encouraged and which is supposedly concerned with the fucking law, you would think someone would have brought celebratory beer. despite this lack, both classes concluded with rounds of applause for the profs though, which was fairly odd. they were both quite good, really. i will say that other classes have ended, none of which finished with appreciative clapping. *cough cough terriblefuckingtortsclasswithineffectiveunhelpfulprof cough*
but what was that i was saying about getting more boring every day? maybe i shouldn't talk about law school. the other day i had the distinct pleasure of viewing r. kelly's "trapped in the closet" chapters one through twenty with my sister and some of her folks. i cannot recall the last time i encountered such a source of entertainment where i walked away mostly just thinking that i had been adequately entertained and not much more. not that scholarly questions are irrelevant to the whole piece, in fact i had many, but damn was it a good time. if you are unfamiliar, you should avail yourself somehow. i know that netflix can help. one of my facorite moments was the lead-in to the second act where eventually multiple r. kelly figures appear in outrageous white suits harmonizing the phrase "oh shit" while retelling the story to that point. to improve the experience further, one of my sister's friends brought over some gourmet chocolate. now, i'm not real huge on chocolate, but it can really hit the spot sometimes. here's the thing: this chocolate was no ordinary chocolate. the credibility of this bar did not come from its cocoa percentage or national pedigree or anything. no, this was a chocolate beyond all chocolates, a previously unthought (fuck that marking) culinary concept. this, friends, was bacon chocolate. actual chocolate bar with actual bacon in it. yeah, that's what we thought too. could be really good or really terrible. it was really good. like i could not have possibly imagined it being. this was unquestionably my best chocolate related experience of all time, and certainly helped to heighten what was my best r. kelly related experience of all time. that dude has a serious midwestern (also marked, whatever) accent. more serious than i have ever contemplated. overall, i guess i'd have to say my mind was blown. look at that, i can use the passive voice without getting bitched at. if you bitch at me for using the passive voice, i sentence you to two semesters of legal writing. that'll learn ya. learn ya real good. legal writing is like bizarro writing: if you're bad at the real thing but you're smart, you'll probably be good at legal writing. if you're good at real writing, whether you're smart or dumb, fuck you. legal people apparently hate people who know how to write like human beings.
wasn't i going to move on from yammering about that shit? oh yeah, i was also talking about how it swallows everything in my life. that causes these things to happen. well, one of my favorite distractions from it lately has been reading this really really nice dead book i have. mostly appealing to the dead fan, of course, but actually a beautiful collage of all sorts of historically meaningful photos, thing is all set out time line style, national news events included. lots of great stuff, despite the purported dead focus. not that such was a problem for me. oddly, my favorite part to read is the small bit about the very last tour in summer of 95. i don't really know why that is. perhaps just that so many things go wrong and the entire experience was basically just shit, which is how i feel about my position sometimes. i don't know. i like the fact that a book about a band is forthcoming about the painful experiences and mostly forthcoming about the problems, although they leave out some things like portable toilets (with occupants) getting turned over by gate crashers at like half the shows that tour. but the book still includes most of the big stuff. the band constantly played with about TWENTY THOUSAND ticketless motherfuckers outside every gig, creating quite the incubator for problems. even the first show, way up in vermont, had so many riotous fools that they had to open the gates to avoid a disaster. the band didn't even play well. they go down to jersey and jerry sits out for whole songs. they go to upstate (not marked) new york and a bunch of fans and cops get hurt in the ruckus. they go to d.c. and lighting strikes. literally. three people. the weather is shitty for a bunch of the tour. they go to the palace of auburn hills and things actually go alright. imagine that, detroit being the bright spot of your ginormous stadium tour. the band goes to pittsburgh and gets poured on again, but they play like four songs with rain in the title to coincide. pretty cool, but not as good as the band actually playing well. they cut back to deer creek in indiana, where some asshole phones in a death threat against jerry. they still play, but with the lights all on, and in the middle of the first set, the band shows a little humor and plays dire wolf, where the chorus goes "don't murder me, i beg of you, don't murder me, please, don't murder me". about this time, as many as five thousand people crash the gates, and people inside help them get in. ugly scene. the cops don't like it, and refuse to act as security for the next night, and the band has to cancel the show. they go down to missouri and play with the house lights on again. show goes ok, but the rain keeps coming down and a bunch of people cram onto some cabin porch and the whole building collapses, injuring like 100. then they made it to chicago, and if you care about any of this you know enough about the last shows already. the last one is a fine show in my book, say what you will. the best part is after the tour is over and jerry is getting on the bus, he says he had a great time and wishes the tour didn't have to end. little did he know it was over for good. ah, the dead. they were the band for a lot of times and a lot of places. mostly america, so america, in the best sense of the term.
speaking of which, i'm about to get back into a little more america via another legal observing gig, hopefully. the big stink in town recently has been about this casino they're supposed to put in fishtown. the state supreme court recently told the city government they were not allowed to drag their feet anymore and had to hand over the permits. the neighborhood is not pleased. there is some general disapproval thing going on saturday and people who are not authorized to hang out on the premises of what will become said casino will do just that. has the potential to be a little more volatile than the peace chain thing i did before. mostly i'm looking forward to seeing a little bit of the city i have not been to yet, and hoping things go alright. as long as it doesn't rain on me all day again, it should all be alright. may have a few more notes to jot down than last time though; this isn't the sort of happening that has a permit and such. legal observing is a great crucible for immersing oneself in the actuality of legal happening though. personal sympathies aside, one must track the facts as they happen as best as can be. stranger in a strange land (still haven't read it? fuck is wrong with you?) has a pretty good legal observer concept in the form of a "fair witness". just another fictional job i would love to have. fuckin' jobs. either i can't have 'em or they aren't real, or if real are fairly impractical. aquarium owner!?!?
so somewhere in all this mess, christmas is still supposed to happen. i phoned my mother earlier to attempt to articulate a minimal list of potential gifts she had asked for. unfortunately she either did not hear or did not understand my lead-in to this part of the conversation and proceeded to let me know what other family members might want as presents. this led to a fairly awkward juncture where i really did not know what to say, because i am probably not funded well enough to get anyone anything more than a dollar deuce or maybe their favorite item from a fast food value menu (this was all offset by a previous conversation with my father wherein he spoke of avoiding calories so he could save them for taking me out for lunches with heady brews and dank food; bad nutrition science, great logic, appraised via ourcome). the worst part is that i could not manage to artfully transition from that explanation to answering the original query from a separate talk about what i might want from those who may be better funded and disposed to give me uh, something. well, whatever. the saddest thing is that i will not be at all disappointed upon receiving gifts of socks and underwear. i need that shit. you might be getting old if something that was used as a device of terror to motivate you to compile a christmas list in your teenage years is now a perfectly acceptable suggestion. but it has gotten tougher to work up a list as legos lost their appeal. what now? septa tokens? do the state-run wine and spirits shoppes sell gift certificates? they probably have gift cards which only function properly at the nicer outlets not located near to my apartment.
well, for all of my complaints, i must say i'm alright overall for the moment. sometimes things work out suitably. it is not impossible to have a good day. it just takes a lot of bad ones to put things into perspective sometimes. other times it just takes something you've been missing that you know full well could improve everything all at once to come back into play. right now i want to check back into my blog and find that link to the website for jsnack connoisseurs and join in a community that feels like i do about the herr's kettle cooked sour cream and onion potato chips i'm eating right now (hint: i feel pretty good about them). the world is a crazy place with no good answers, but i feel like junk food must fit in there some place important. if it doesn't, that would only further negative perceptions about the national way of life. this is not something anyone needs at this point. like this post getting longer. i missed you too. and not editing posts, fucking school.

hiatus for one and all

i feel like i should post something since i haven't in a week and if you've been checking for something i feel like i owe you something small to look at, so this is that. my memo has been swallowing my mind and face, and i figure that i've beaten that dead horse sufficiently. so rather than spend a lot of time ranting about how stupid it is (don't worry, it's still super stupid, but not in a good way like that parliament song), i've opted just to avoid the temptation. it's due pretty soon though, so i hope to be able to write about other things after it is turned in. i could probably write about those other things now, but i have a feeling a digression would be unavoidable, as this post itself sort of indicates. and most likely we'll return to a similar situation as exams begin to loom on the horizon. for alternative blog thrills, reynolds has a new blog staked out and will purportedly actually make use of it. r.j. reynolds got me a question right at quizzo yesterday. based in winston-salem, of course. if i hadn't known it, i could have just looked in my pocket. we finished a strong second (good for $20 as always) and once again won the end-of-the-month top-three spin-off for a hundred bucks. a good night, to say the least. thin lizzy got me an answer too, and it is about time they did something for me because "the boys are back in town" has been a thorn in my classic rock side for years. i don't know why so many people love that song. i can do asinine and/or cheesy lyrics and music just fine, but that track is just crap. not ridiculous enough to be good, too ridiculous to be legitimate. time to get back to work... but a quick thing: the east coast loves ginger ale. if you know why, tell me.

unabomber?

no, certainly not. but i am beginning to get the impression that the sort of things i would like to talk about and the way i would like to express them would have the same end result of only seeing the light of day as a force-published diatribe originating from some mid-western (only kosher with spell check if hyphenated) wilderness. i will also never rock a pair of aviator sunglasses like in that infamous f.b.i. sketch; i look silly in those. the point is, both myself and the unabomber (wikipedia article is really interesting) may have had thoughts we thought worthy of dissemination, but did not see fit to seek out and utilize the acceptable channels. if the dude would have used the right language and obtained the appropriate degree and position (specialization denies people with phds in math the outlet to be a well-regarded social critic for the most part), he probably would have enjoyed the same niche notoriety/fame of academics across the nation. he probably could have even put it how he did had he stayed on as a prof somewhere and taken classes in some other discipline. what someone has to say is oftentimes irrelevant if they do not choose the correct way to express it. and thus his writings and my own will inevitably disregarded as manifestos of malignant minds. not that i have one worked up or anything, but you get the idea.
the practical application at this point in my life is that even if i go through the charade known as legal education, i do not believe that i will be able to wrench it into anything i find satisfactory. i'm not saying it would leave me incapable of doing anything worthwhile or good; quite the opposite really, but at the end of the day nothing i personally want to do. i realize that the majority of people spend the majority of their lives doing things they would rather not do, but i am also aware that there are plenty of people who enjoy what they do, be it drive a bus or give graduate seminars in astrophysics. i do not feel like i have been backed into a choiceless (not a word, says spell check) corner; my life has been one of relative privilege imbued with a certain degree of ability. i find it problematic to value "the right thing" over one's own interest, as the result tends to be a severe degree of self-righteousness.
this need not be the result in the former or latter case, in fact there was a talk today given by people who worked in the private sector in a manner they felt allowed them to "maintain their progressive ideals". i'll spare you the details, but i think it took a little convincing on their own part a lot of the time, even if they had the ability to paint a road picture in which they were eugene v fucking debbs. they have jobs which are reasonably remunerative even by lawyerly standards, and they can indeed view it as a social positive. however, none of these things seemed to bear any resemblance to anything i would want to do for a living. in short, it seems like legal work for good or evil will have the necessary consequence of boring the shit out of me. i have also reached the conclusion that it is something i could do. i may even become decent at it through practice. but that alone cannot make me want to do it.
this is a major component to my present impasse. here i have an opportunity to get a decent job by putting up with a couple years of bullshit. law school, in my experience, is nothing but a means to an end. i know no-one who does or did enjoy the experience of "legal education", and i imagine that this is mostly because it is not education. college was education. this is the scholastic equivalent of the eliminator at the end of an episode of american gladiators, except the competition takes place in hell and has doubled its prescription for steroids. i for one did not decide to attend law school as purely a means to an end, although that was naturally a consideration i took into account.
i showed up expecting an education without a strictly defined end. i wanted to learn about the law and find a way to put that into use, either within some appealing enclave i discovered within the vast realm of legal employment, or alternative and preferably in some other field in which a j.d. carries some weight. the last few months have been bearers of bad news on this front. even appealing areas of the law are heavily if not entirely infiltrated by the dominant legal culture. so whether you're facilitating divorces, defending pharmaceutical companies, suing the federal government, or providing a wide variety of services to a needy and worthy non-profit, your writing has to look the same. the big business nature of "important firms" informs law schools and by extension lawyers in all walks of law. the point is always to cut to the chase and inform the reader. do not plan on them reading your document in any logical order. they are busy and more important than you are. they need to make meaningful decisions, and fast. to delay them is to cost time and time is money. so do not let your writings be readable to a true human being, for this is an unnecessary expense. individual expression through inappropriate forms must not be allowed, or the machine will not run properly. if you don't play by the rules, you are not a real lawyer, and if you're not a real lawyer, no one wants to hire you to pretend to be one if you don't act right. i asked my legal writing prof if what we were being taught is what would be required of us at any legal job. she said mostly yes, but perhaps i could get a job at a small job and "get right into court!". that is precisely the last place i want to be in any capacity whatsoever.
so with chances sufficiently diminished within the traditional legal realm, natural home of those holding j.d.s, i once again cast my glance toward employment outside of the field also placing value on that particular piece of paper. the purported utility of the degree is somewhat misleading. while there are certainly jobs where one is not a lawyer but preferably holds the degree, these jobs are by and large within legal trenches, i.e. legal publishing, law librarian, f.b.i., etc. in that respect, i might be forced to say that i not only have an aversion to being a lawyer, but also of utilizing that skill set in the name of furtherance of lawyerly activities. these jobs hold minimal interest for similar reasons stated above. beyond that, i had encountered several lengthy lists of things one can do with a j.d.. while these lists are long, i did not immediately realize that these were simply things that having a j.d. certainly not preculde one from, and where it may be helpful. however, you don't really need the degree. these lists are mostly for people who are already lawyers and want to find something else to do. basically a lot of you could be a (fill in the blank)... with a LAW DEGREE! Mostly studies in career changing. In fact, most people who make these lists are former lawyers who have found alternative careers telling lawyers what else they can do, a perverse parasitic relationship in my view. on the other hand, some jobs still require a j.d. and are not bogged down by proximity to lawyerly work, such as being a law professor. this was indeed a hope i held upon enrollment. guess i should have done a little more looking into things before hand. the fact that i had encountered programs at law schools outside of the most lofty echelon dedicated to training law professors gave me some hope. however, the explosion of higher education in america has of course reached this portion as well. if you want a job where you need a j.d. due to the nature of the work but that job is not being a lawyer, you damn well have better gone to one of those schools in the aforementioned echelon. i suppose one is not automatically forbidden from pursuing or obtaining such employment, but let's just say the odds are pretty good that someone who got into and made it through one of the best of the best and is more than ready to forgo an unearthly salary is probably brighter, more organized, and a better interviewer with a better resume than you will ever have. personally resolved global warming, darfur crisis, etc., while maintaining a four point and heading up the championship skulling (can't believe that got marked, it's an olympic sport!) squad. they have also written and published more scholarly text than half of your professors, and they haven't even attained such a post yet. enough of that, the point is that those jobs where a j.d. is necessary but you will not be a lawyer are pretty fucking tough to get.
overall, i'm driving at the fact that law school is not inherently of enormous value, and the means-to-an-end prospects are seriously unappealing in my opinion. at best my completion of the degree gains me the right to throw that on, you guessed it, the resume. and at that point one is subject to as much benefit as detriment. in my mind, a considerable number of people who get the first look at resumes would immediately think "what is wrong with this person? why is he not a lawyer? he could be RICH! something has to be off about this guy...". i suppose they are correct after a fashion. i am off in the sense that a significant part of me doesn't want to get into certain business just to make money. oh well. could put a good spin on that if i made it to an interview i suppose. whether or not i go through with all this, i firmly believe that what one does for a living does not or at least should not define who one is. and beyond that, much like the importance of how one says something versus what one says, how one does is more valuable than what one does. thank you calvin for that. and for giving me a by-and-large legitimate and worthwhile liberal arts education. it is not the fault of the believers of liberal education that we graduates don't all get amazing jobs; the market is far from their control. as a fellow believer, i am finding that out in sharp relief through this experience.
i believe it was voltaire who said "well, then, fuck them". i cribbed that from achewood. allow me to reiterate that it is good stuff and you should read it. plus then you can call me out on my bullshit when i subconsciously rip it off, dude style (i don't think the dude is fully aware of where he gets his phrases, but i think he knows he heard it "somewhere"). in any case, that is an excellent statement of a classic position, and i defy someone to deny that. also makes an appropriate conclusion to what turned out to be one hell of a vent, even by my standards. if you read it, thanks. hopefully there was some value in there somewhere, i am under the impression that there had to be. so anyway, to restate my conclusion one last time (you wouldn't believe how many conclusions are restated how many times in any given memo): fuck 'em. regardless of whether they can take a joke or not. fuck 'em.
man, i just put on a soul coughing show, which reminded me that mike doughty is playing nearby tonight and i am not going, which is a bummer. on the one hand, my favorite things about soul coughing certainly include the crazy sampling and jazzy upright bass playing which will of course be absent, but then again i would love to personally witness this guy talk or sing about anything; the delivery is fascinating and hypnotic (and only occasionally pretentious, but even then not in a bad way) to my ear. although i did hear that his solo acoustic stuff is of a somewhat different stripe, guess some of it made its way to prime time television show soundtracks, but i guess those have some decent tunes in them these days from what i'm told. either way, recent set lists indicate a reasonable amount of soul coughing material in the mix. hey, he wrote it, he can play it. although it must miss something. in any case, i am not going to find out firsthand tonight, and that is too bad. i am too busy alternating between reading a bunch of cases and writing their corresponding briefs. if i was truly a non-conformist, i would write boxers for my cases. although they usually provide less but more purely relevant coverage of the case. this metaphor is going nowhere; best result is that i declare that i write g-stings for cases. that's how you know i haven't been drinking: i didn't say fuck briefs! i write fuckin g-strings for my cases bitches! my notes are sexy as hell compared to everyone's lame ass old school briefs! back to the what is said/how is said idea...
come to think of it, that very distinction was dispositive in a criminal law case i did for today, common law looked to an accomplice's statements and his intentions in regard to how those statements were to be interpreted to determine his culpability. but i know i've had more than enough law school for one post, so i figure it is safe to assume everyone else has too.
i've switched the tunes to vinyl, billy joel's piano man. excellent album overall really, hell yes billy the kid. "ain't no crime" is on right now, and i know someone reading this loves the hell out of that song. out yourself. i really want a copy of street life serenader, that was one of my favorites as a kid, and one i curiously couldn't track down in the folks' collection, so if you happen across a copy pick it up for me if you will. surprised i haven't found a copy myself yet. billy joel has been a constant in my life, surprisingly, but soul coughing to billy joel is a weird transition. not as weird as one time where i went to him from cradle of filth in the car once though. that was just classic. this was before ipods. and i didn't even use the word "random". which reminds me, becky, invite me to the group about nothing random about your new photo album or whatever. that word has been unconscionably abused over the last decade (right up there with "plethora"), which was a real bummer for me, since i had been using appropriately for a while before all that started.
but back to music for a moment. i keep meaning to go on about how much i like built to spill, and i can never remember if i have before on here or not, so sorry if i already have, but they do kick some serious ass in my book. the vocals strike me as the sort of love-it-or-hate-it kind though, so be forewarned, but i think most of my readership could dig it. sort of in the neil young tradition in some ways. if you like wayne's voice from the flaming lips or how the my morning jacket guy sounds, it is sort of closer to that. if anyone out there digs this band already let me know so we can talk about how sweet they are sometime, favorite tracks, and maybe point me at a studio album or two to track down.
well, after all that, i think i have to admit that another distinction between me and the unabomber is that dude had better focus. and at least some doctorate. and he was smarter. and i'm loving the shit out of technology right now. and penthouse will most likely not volunteer to publish anything i wrote. even my notes which are sexier than regular legal briefs. i guess i have almost nothing in common with that dude. good thing i looked into it. i suppose this is a favorable overall result. some small things work out sometimes.

twenty-four and there's how much more?

the more i look at my options in life, the more i want to gouge my eyes out. i'm ten kinds of bummin' these days. probably doesn't help that it is dark by five. i've been spending disgusting amounts of time lying in bed the last couple days. tough to summon up the motivation to do a whole lot else sometimes, even though activity is the precise prescription. i cannot distract employment from my mind though. i'm so desperate for an answer that simply cannot come as easily as sitting around trying to think about it. but i cannot even come up with step one; i hardly know where to start. i know almost everyone has problems like not knowing what to do for a job to hopefully help you get through life, but most people seem to be rolling with the punches better than i have been recently. i'm really really disappointed that the notion of further education has not turned out anywhere close to the way i hoped it would. i don't completely lack interest or ability, but while the breadth of my interest subsumes legal study, the depth there does not match up with what i have taken on or would take on in actual employment, and consequently ability has become difficult to express. as painful as it is to experience a letdown like this and the social implications, however well hidden, are undeniable. it is not generally held honorable or desirable to attempt something of this magnitude without the fortitude to follow through to completion, or at least that is how i perceive things.
every time i come up with some fanciful idea, i can find some reason to shoot it down just as quickly. most things i think i may enjoy doing are either a) jobs people just don't generally get b) require experience which is difficult to obtain c) next to impossible to make a living at d) something plenty of other people do better than i ever will, and typically some combination of these four. i am willing to accept that i have a decent head on my shoulders, but this does not inhere any employable prospects on its own. a lot of people seem to think that it would be a great idea to do peace corps or teach for america, and while that is certainly a great route for some folks, i really don't have that much interest. to me, it seems like another way to delay the inevitable, with the booby prize of something to throw on the god damned resume. i don't think i could get a job based on my extreme distaste for the culture of resumes, but if i could, that is one area where i would have more passion than anyone i have ever met. here, please reduce yourself to a certain amount of page space. we will not tell you how big this space should be, but there is a good chance you will guess wrong and we will sneer and recycle your submission at the bottom of a bird cage, please enjoy the complementary metaphor. i have had a difficult time discerning whether i am a credible rebel with a time-honored notions of refusing to play by the rules or just a lazy slacker with a convenient excuse. in any event, the one thing i have to hold onto for employment is that i have strong feeling that the time has come for me to tend some bar. this i know i can do. i just need to find a place and talk them into it.
while that may not be a permanent solution either, it is a better holding pattern than what i have at present. i've been sort of hamstrung since a class a couple weeks ago. the topic was money and happiness. i am pretty sure i already knew this somehow, and i think most thoughtful people will find it intuitive, but the point is that people's happiness is generally pre-programmed. graphing happiness reporting shows pretty quick levels of normalization for people who have either won the lottery or suffered an accident rendering them quadriplegic (total bitch to spell that, not intuitive at all). a year or two ago i wound up in a break room discussion about greatest fears, and most people had answers involving violent crime or animals (fish!?!) and of course i had to really think about it and give some serious answer, but at least i was probably accurate. i said i was worried that i would never really be happy. so it was a little rough to hear that in my present condition. the good news is that those examples refer to a one-time event's effect over time, and hence leave out data on tangible changes in lifestyle. and they are of course generalizations as well. there is no guarantee that i will fail to ever be happier than i am at present, which is not setting any upward records on the y-axis, to say the least. and there is always dutch comfort: it could be worse.
for some perspective on that i got a phone call while i was writing this. someone near and dear to me signed up for the air force. she signed one dotted line, but i think she still has one chance for an out. the really sad thing is, this might be her most tenable option. she's been doing really well at school majoring in criminal justice at a four-year place after wrapping up an associates. but her living situation is absolutely unbearable, and she is literally broke. but the military... damn. may or may not work for her, but it is truly a bummer that someone who has turned her academic trajectory around over the last couple years is forced into this because of shitty circumstances. but it is a similar cusp, does one carry on with something that has visible problems mitigated by probable benefits, or does one bail and hope for the best? rough.
life is so fucking arbitrary.
after several attempts at talking with various people about how frustrated i am with my current situation and generally being a bad sport when these people were trying to help and comfort me, i am now feeling much better after a conversation that had little to nothing to do with what is going on or what should be going on. i don't know if that means that it is best to approach things in an indirect manner or just ignore the problem until it solves itself or somehow goes away (a favored and dangerously effective strategy i have successfully employed many times over the years) or what, but one way or another, this darkness has got to give. the bar was even closed the last time i tried to go. sign in the window, usual shit, bad wiring, no exit lights, no capacity posted, yadda yadda. typical shit. but we had a decent time nonetheless back at my buddy's place, saved some bucks and ate some heady takeout.
which was about the order of this evening, minus takeout plus cards. didn't last too long but it was a cool game, take-off on an older idea but eliminated possibility of a draw. no drinking game should end in a tie, after all. i think i won the last one tonight... no, i didn't, but it was close. man, i tried to go out and be sociable and have a good time, but here i am again and nothing has changed at all. i've tried to act right over and over, but i just don't seem to be getting anywhere. i got my education, and i even had a job with health insurance a couple times. this does not seem to have made any appreciable difference.
i have been told on multiple occasions that my age is deceiving. many people guessed far off base during odd plasma shop conversations. kat was shocked, and repeatedly told me i was "old for my age". even my mother referred to me as "24, but an old 24" today. what is going on here? i like to think the idea is that i have taken way too many things much too close to heart, but the end result is mostly that i am meaner, more sarcastic, and in some ways more savvy than my contemporaries. like i'm some bottle of wine that peaked before that general varietal should, and yet the verdict is somehow definitively in. i like to think that this makes me more credible in some way, but i think that all it really means is that i am more bitter and just generally more of an asshole than i should be at this point in life. unfortunately, and to return to the point, i do not think that this makes it any more likely that anyone would want to give me a job. sort of like buying an '03 car that somehow has like ninety thousand miles put in on it. i am a fucking saturn belonging to a commuter from delaware who works at an investment banking gig in philly. the only good news is that my owner loves dog fish head. but they do not know shit about automobile maintenance. alright, this metaphor has been extended beyond perceptible applicability and then some.
my only comfort now is that i have killed enough time to sufficiently end this day. i even left the house and hung out with people. i feel like this is enough. better than yesterday, where i made it out of bed for less than twenty percent of the day and went to bed earlier than my grandmother. and your grandmother too. i almost felt bad that i missed the early bird special at denny' it was so early; should have at least made it worth my while at that point, you know?
sorry, now i'm just rambling shit because i cannot get a good enough connection to just post the shit i have already laid down, and that is how it is. feel my wrath, er, boredom. speaking of which, i was really serious about achewood. i must admit that i have now viewed every strip one can access from going and looking into it. my only regret is that i squeezed it all into this past week. what am i going to kill time with now? the point is that if you were not convinced to look into it before, you should now. this is a literary phenomenon one cannot afford to overlook. i saw an interview where someone described the characters as having tokeinesque depth, and that was the truth being spoken. this isn't just characters in a novel, this is really well developed archetypes. carl jung would probably be satisfied. more satisfied than i am with this internet connection at least. hell, i could give a second-by-second breakdown on neil young's cowgirl in the sand before i can actually make this post at this point. in fact i will probably give up on waiting for this to work tonight and post this in the morning, and feel real good about the lack of typographical errors despite a moderate amount of beer consumption. i should just get a job as a copy editor. i would be good at it and i get a sick satisfaction out of writing devoid of stupid errors. now i just need to find someone to watch my cats over the holiday. or maybe i should just sneak them on board in my pockets. they're so fuckin little.

fajitas to the rescue

blah blah law school whine whine this sucks that sucks, inane shit about music you don't like, blah. what's that? i already wrote about that a bunch of times? oh, i was just worried i wasn't making things clear. today i had an exam. an exam for which i felt fairly well prepared and was open everything. i kind of assumed that since it was an end-of-the-class exam it would cover a little bit of everything we had done, you know, like how exams are supposed to work and stuff. but as it turns out, i probably could have passed just studying about options in depth. call options, put options, financial options, real options, straddles, you name it. cause that shit was not in the book but we talked about it for part of one class. so of course it comprised like half the damn test. i felt i knew enough about options, but apparently one can never know too much. if "business basics for lawyers" is that much about options, i just wish they could have been more up front about it. mostly i am chagrined that the prof repeatedly stated that the exam was not intended to fool anyone. he should have qualified that with "that is, anyone who knows a shit ton about options". i don't think i failed or anything, but i left school a little miffed and generally unhappy about the whole ordeal. but let's go back to the beginning of the day, which had already served to put me in a foul mood, more than i should have let it. i was sitting down waiting for class to start, still had a while before all that. sitting next to my original law school chum, shooting the shit about the reading for today's class. and in walks my arch-nemesis, reigning champion of least favorite person i know. she sits in front of us. let me say a few things about this broad. remember how you had an intro to philosophy class and some jackass could never shut the fuck up despite having nothing valuable to contribute? this chick is like that, except about law classes. and, being in law school, that is the only kind of class i have. and being in the first year of law school, she is in all of my classes. people generally regard her as arrogant, but i think that in order to be arrogant one must actually be good at something in the first place. if she has the right to be arrogant about anything, it is being a total pain in the ass and a human incarnation of fingernails on the chalk board of life with an appropriate voice. so anyway, i am talking to my friend about how repetitive a certain portion of the reading was and voicing my reaction of "alright, i get it already", and this girl turns around and says to me "do you REALLY get it?" in a cocky ass tone. i am not amused. this could be a poor attempt at a joke by a humor-impaired person, perhaps, so i just say that i think i do. then she asks "are you SURE?" and i arrive at the cusp of the situation. i pussied out. just said yeah, and she left to go get a coffee. part of me really wishes that i had never been forced to sublimate the aggression that was a hallmark of my youth (thanks for the therapy, now i just take it out on myself and not other people) and could have just jacked that fucking bitch in the jaw like she deserved. one of those unforeseeable consequences. anyway, i knew i shouldn't be rattled by some highfallutin' ho, but i just can't help it sometimes. violence is bad, but that would have been a classy way to leave law school. if you're gonna pick up battery charges, that's the way to do it. this isn't a violence against women thing. this is somebody who needs to be taken down a peg. so, while i didn't get to physically deck her, i hope she realized she got theoretically backhanded during the course of the class. she raised her hand and gave some asinine answer at one point. i got called on (way to wear a bright orange shirt, jackass, real easy to lay low in that) and rose to the occasion. turns out i did get it, go figure. while my school day was bookended by some bullshit, i must say i had a bitchin good time between classes. crackin some jokes, fuckin around on the web, gettin some dank cheesesteaks, talking about starting a band where our buddy with verbal diarrhea just talks over some lame jams. my buddy met the challenge (i did not suggest this) of navigating from "jesus" to "anal sex" in wikipedia using only links. the original strategy was to get from jesus to romans to greeks to anal sex, but it didn't quite work out, some dead ends at caligula, surprisingly. winning strategy: jesus to people named jesus to fictional people named jesus to lebowski to pederast to anal sex. other recent law school highlights: case where the issue was "what is chicken?" (no, not about kfc, about imports/exports and germans), the word "reconnoitering". it is a real word; spell check did not even mark it.
so i left law school feelin a little down about the exam. i just wanted to go home. so when i was at the stop past where i got on, i transferred over to the express train which happened to be at the same stop when i got there. it goes to where i was headed, just with fewer stops. so i get on and they announce the next stop, which i know from staring at in-subway transit maps that the express does not stop at. i am confused, and the subway is going even more underground than normal. the stop we are at is a stop i go through every day but it is not the way i know it looks. this is a problem. i am confused, but i don't immediately bail because hey, maybe i just didn't understand the map or something. no. i am on the weird spur of the line, headed to nowhere i want to go. so i got off at the next stop someplace i have never been. unfortunately there is no compelling drama to relate; i sort of knew where i was after walking a couple blocks and just had to walk a ways and lose my free transfer. i made it back alright, but i was feeling less than thrilled. fortunately my sister called and invited me for dinner. it was fajitas. i felt a lot better for a while. she also got me beef jerky the other day and pointed me toward achewood. she is good to me. i wonder how things would be if i had gone to new orleans instead. no way to know.
the other day i saw a big pile of tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces on the sidewalk. i imagine someone dropping the box and looking down and thinking aw, fuck it. i mean, this is doable, but really, is it worth it? do i want to bother? seems like way more trouble than it is worth. even if i get all the pieces together, am i going to take the time to put it together? did i already do this one? basically, this is how i feel about my current life situation.

get your slack on

no, not your slacks. slacks usually imply one will somewhat ironically not be slacking. although this is not always the case. a buddy of mine showed up at school wearing suit pants (kinda like slacks, especially this particular pair) and it was mostly as a direct result of slacking and thereby running out of other suitable pants options. but i feel like i've been slacking here, sorry. i was gonna type up some shit last night, but i wound up on the phone with mando for a long time and that was way sweeter for me. and honestly, i looked a list of shit i had considered writing about here, and it was kind of shitty (no spell check mark on that). not that it matters anyway, since most of what i type on this is shit that results from extended rambling based in some sketchy ideas. but anyway, on the slacking front, i have recently begun to enjoy two great time killers: online networking and a good web comic. i got a facebook (marked, thank god) page so i could check out some pictures. that was worth it. i'm just hoping i don't get sucked into sitting around on it all day, which is one reason why a touch and go internet connection is sometimes an o.k. (won't take ok or okay, what is o.k. supposed to be an abbreviation for?). managed to find a workable non-name after a bit of wrangling. i don't understand why it gives you so much shit about what you make your name; one could easily make up a passable name of john smith or anything really, so why not just let me be metal if that is what i want to be? more people could probably find me that way as it is. isn't this supposed to be a networking thing for people who go to school? aren't a lot of people better known by nicknames as it is? ah well, what's done is done. the other great distraction in web comic form is achewood. i really can't believe i didn't get into it sooner; my sister had even showed it to me before. i guess i wasn't as actively looking for something to distract and entertain me then as i am now. anyway, it is pretty fucking sweet, and if you haven't already checked it out, you should. takes a little time to get into it, but the page is set up nice so that you can read a couple of story arcs to get what is going on (i recommend "the great outdoor fight" as a starting point, as good as any i guess) or you can read the wikipedia article, which is really pretty helpful. if you've checked it out before and didn't get into it, maybe you should give it another go like i did. if you have been into it already and dig it, we should talk about how great it is some time.
other than that, i don't have a whole lot in the way of major updates to offer. i'm still in law school and it still sucks ass, but for the time being i am in "feel like this is a doable thing" mode", for no particular reason; i didn't exactly spend all weekend working on things. which is not to say that i didn't put in some hours, but as always, feels like there is more to do. earlier in the week, the travails of school led one of my buddies to explore the possibilities of mixing whiskey with all he had available, namely, tea. if you haven't ever had a whiskey and tea, well, let's just say you don't have to bother. this is not a good thing to drink at all. he had a handle of banker's club, and i already had to drink that straight once as a result of school, and i don't know if that is better or worse. during one of my more intense stretches during this past week, i was reading about the waterboarding debate while i should have been doing something else, probably paying attention. but i thought to myself, shit, i would rather be waterboarded than do this school thing straight up. if law school is legal, i guess it just isn't fair to rule out waterboarding. but once again, i am paying to be waterboarded. and i don't even have any information to confess. on the brighter side of things, i did discover that work-study funding is available for first summer law school bullshit jobs, which is great because all i knew thus far is that they were pretty much all unpaid. it isn't totally encouraging, but on the other hand i am glad it is possible for me to maybe be a research assistant or something and get enough money to hopefully live meagerly on. my buddy had an interview with merck or someshit already, and i'm glad i don't have to think about that. as if it wasn't bad enough that they're a huge pharmaceutical company, they are even currently making headlines for being egregiously shitty for marketing vioxx and more or less killing a bunch of people. with the shit i'm doing in criminal law right now, it is a wonder that actual people within the corporation haven't been formally charged with some sort of homicide crime. school, for all of my problems with it, has helped to bring into relief the fact that i still have some serious deep-seated moral and ethical positions. like not working for the united states government, which unfortunately precludes me from working a bunch of what would otherwise be pretty excellent and interesting gigs. social justice is a fairly unattainable end to valiantly strive for, but shit, even i've got some standards. so it goes. i'm still willing to give it a go round for the time being. i recently discovered that paul simon went to law school. extremely briefly. things worked out pretty decent for that dude. unfortunately i do not possess overwhelming songwriting talent as far as i am aware.
today was pretty good, featuring the return of quizzo. we sneaked (spell check takes sneaked but not snuck, confused about that, always thought it was snuck) into second in the last round after a fairly dismal outing. there was some controversy, but at the end of the day we walked out with another gift certificate. and i personally walked out with a couple of the mystery prizes from the bonus round at the end from being the first to answer the name of the bi-monthly publication of the jehovah's witnesses and the name of daria's sister (watchtower society and quinn, respectively, if you were curious). took a good walk earlier in the day and did a little bit of grocery gettin', no cart this time. unfortunately i will still have to go pick up a bigass thing of cat litter sometime soon; didn't realize we were gonna take the trolley back or i probably would have grabbed up on one today. ah well, i can always use a walk and the exercise it entails. what i don't think i could use is a three hour criminal law session in the morning, but that is what i have to look forward to for now. the waterboarding thing is sounding like not such a bad option again.

blog review

i went back and found a couple of my favorite posts, and both of them were fairly recent. what really struck me was no one commented. c'mond, those were the best!! low spark of high heeled boys from early october and dumpster derby from a couple weeks ago. that was some of the most worthwhile shit i've had to say. other than having my cats occupy a tiny baby kittens section if they lived in the zoo, of course. yeah, this is my second thoughtless post today. life is kind of slow if you don't want to hear about hockey and. more law school. or how great neil young's 'harvest' album is. res ipsa loquitor. it is not my responsibility to enlighten you about that if you don't know.

readin' and briefin'

in a drunken state, and i'll be briefin' my cases from here to hell's gate. well, i don't know about all that and i usually wait to drink until after briefing is finished, but sometimes i wonder if some things would make more sense if i didn't wait. is it worse to recognize psychological cycles than to simply endure them unknowingly? because i've only been at this thing for a couple months but it already seems to have a definite pattern swing between despair and confidence with the same detours and incidentals along the way. i guess it would be better if at the peak i actually liked what i was doing or thought that it was a means to a particular desired end. if lawyering is anything like law school, no amount of money would be sufficient to keep me doing this kind of shit. i'm sure there are significant differences; i just wonder how strong the commonalities are. all of which begs the question of why, if i wouldn't be compensated to go through something like this, would i pay someone else to put me through it? sheer masochism? i don't think so. no, the issue here is that i didn't fully grasp what i was signing up for, and that's my bad. i have come to the realization that i am psychologically incapable of walking away at this point. my notions of how other people would perceive it if i did quit play a role, but i think really that is mostly me projecting my own feelings outside of myself. i could not continue to exist as a similar person, and so rather than endure that pain i stick with what i've got. and that is the only viable option at this point; i don't have any great ideas about what else i should be doing to further myself. one of the most important things i have learned, to put it simply, is how the smallest parts of our personal realities are dictated by possibilities we can and cannot think for a wide variety of reasons. i feel like this is a reality i have some how consciously foreclosed to myself, which is an odd result because normally if something can't be real-ized by an individual it is because they literally cannot think it. i've thought about saying fuck it all, but i really do not believe i could do that without widespread ramifications to my own personhood.
blah, blah, what a load of shit. i don't know why i'm not deleting it.
especially since i now typed it over a day ago. oh well. i still hate law school, but let's have some good news. i had a go in the proverbial hot seat (no, not keyboardist for the dead) in torts the other day. i didn't think much of it other than the fact that my stay was rather extended. i felt alright about it. but a lot of people commented to me later that i had handed it to the prof. i still don't know about all that, but i will say that it felt really good to hear other people have nice things to say. it doesn't really matter what they think and it is kind of pathetic to care, but i can't help it for some things. a good chunk of my identity involves other people regarding me as intelligent (which probably relates to the psychological inability of not finishing this hell ride i attempted to articulate above and my perceived need for academic forays that led me to where i am now) and landing someplace where people do not know anything about me except how i look made me more insecure than usual. thus, this was a welcome experience. but that was a week ago, and life moves fast. torts today brought a practice exam. i feel pretty damn decent about it, but the level of feedback to be expected is unclear, ranging from "ungraded" to "check, check plus, check minus, maybe a 'see me' if there is some issue requiring particular discussion.." well whatever. i wrote it; it's done with now.
i'm worried that i am getting old. over the weekend a got a call from my brother when i was in bed and he was having a hell of a good time in chicago. the hour difference is one thing, but he called me again at like four something my time (didn't pick that one up). it is one thing to be asleep when someone calls and miss it, it is another to be lying awake in bed when the phone rings. well, i guess it was just one night. and i'm glad he was having a good time seeing one of my favorite bands for his first time. he was probably the happiest person in the whole crowd; only one digging the opener (clutch) and the headliner (coheed and cambria). no one has offered a satisfactory logical explanation for this touring combo. in fact, the snack food known as combos is probably better thought out, with more pleasure per penny perhaps. by the time the tour makes it to philly i'll probably need to save that thirty bucks i could spend on a ticket to buy enough peanut butter and bread to feed myself for exams. which means i'll have no booze money during exams, which means i will undoubtedly lose my mind. whoever visits me in the institution first can have my records; they're not gonna let me out.
cash concerns coupled with other logistical problematics kept me from making it to the railroad earth show this past weekend. it was at some venue that has, like many places throughout the country, become "the fillmore". i want to know why the fuck that happened, and if bill graham is rolling in his grave. i wonder if his estate had a claim on the name. it just seems ridiculous to call venues in denver and detroit "the fillmore". what's next, a winterland in indianapolis and orlando? the greek theater at bowling green university? i would really like to see the marketing data regarding the name change for all these venues now calling themselves the fillmore. i would suspect that it hasn't made a huge difference just yet, but i'd be very curious if it does have an effect over the long term. someone probably got paid for that shit, and i would wager clear channel fits in there some place too (did they just get bought by something else?). anyway, railroad earth is a solid band, look into that. as with just about any band i get into, they have copious offerings on the live music archive. they usually get sold a little short as a bluegrass band, because that is the backbone of what they do, but i see them as an americana kind of act because they work in a lot of other stuff as well. think old wilco with bluegrass instead of country as a springboard. speaking of which, i still can't get enough of this uncle tupelo show. in the tradition of admonishing people to download things they won't, this show has been on etree forever and still has like seven seeders; you could probably download it in fairly short order. the sound is incredible, direct into a dat from the soundboard. i still don't always follow all of the notations in a show's (spell check marks a possessive for show?!) recording and conversion, but i can tell you that much.
picked up a new beer today, really hoppy amber from magic hat, called roxy something, don't have the bottle at hand. damn good. this is the second amber/ipa love child i've come across, and i hope the trend continues. troegs makes the other one i've had, hop nectar or something like that. the nice thing is that rather than just getting bashed in the mouth with cascade grapefruit, the hops not only seem to be better thought out, but the malty character inherent in amber stylings (spell check also does not think that is a word, but will accept the singular) provides a more nuanced and satisfying balance to big league hops.
so after much badgering from one of the few people i would let get away with it combined with other purported benefits i have attempted to sign up for the face book. i have not been successful just yet. is that shit really gonna shake my real name out of me? i'm more leery than a reader's digest subscribing senior citizen about putting my name on the internet. it will probably be just one more reason why i'll never get a decent job. i go through enough effort being vague on here, in my backwater corner of the interweb (spell check still marks that, but for how long?).
speaking of jobs, as always... i attended a "panel discussion" of pathways to a career in international law today. it was comforting to see the diversity of approaches people could take, but on the other hand it was just some people talking about what they do. and what they do is pretty sweet and all that, but knowing what someone else does for a living doesn't really help anyone else get a job. (break time) awwww dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip boom boom boom boom boom boom get a job, sha na na na, sha na na na na na na. still the best of doo-wop if you ask me. (spell check marks doo but not wop; is that the spelling for the ethnic slur against italians? doesn't mark whop either... or any other racial epithets i tried, apparently they don't need capitalization). anyway, illustration has no inherent value to others. my only conclusion was that the turkish woman was smoking hot, confirmed even by a good straight female peer. and there was free pizza. was poppin' some pills and all the alcohol was free (gratis? oo, also not marked by spell check). wait, that last part is not true. would that it were. they owe me at this point. fuck free ipods, schools should give out free psychoactive compounds as part of scholarship packages. "we are pleased to offer you the leary fellowship, full tuition and ten thousand mics of bear's finest" until then, i guess i'll compile my resume as a set list theorist and hope for the best.

and i missed all the reformation day parties

because i was busy procrastinating. my plan to not have fun instead of work was successful insofar as i did not have fun so much, but i didn't really get the work done i had hoped to. that just meant i had to do it today. which is what was bound to happen, despite my earlier bargain with myself to work thursday on my normal day to have a good time and have a good time on wednesday. at least i got the fun part of that one. but before i get there, i am desperately afraid that my current assignment about libel has permanently warped my appreciation of what may be (or have been?) my favorite dylan tune: idiot wind. "they're printing stories in the press..." and all i can think is libel law. terrible. but i did have a good time on halloween. went down near south street and caught a free outdoor concert/costume contest. the whole day is apparently some event in the neighborhood celebrated as the day of the dead, in many different sense of the word. hence the band was a dead cover band. they were really good; been doing that gig for like ten years. called splintered sunlight, after a lyric in box of rain. these dudes busted out a better feels like a stranger than the actual dead ever did, no joke. the guitarist had the tone thing down to a science, and while no one could ever be jerry, some talented people like this guy can emulate him pretty well, play about on par with a decent 80s show with some great moments. and the dude looked remarkably like midas. spell check did not mark midas. sweet. the costume contest was also truly excellent with obvious time and effort expenditures even beyond pecuniary considerations. my personal favorite was this bizarre giant frankenstein (spell check accepts that if capitalized). this costume was about ten feet tall, and the head was more than four times the size of my torso. and the guy piloting it made it look like he was in a cage the frankenstein was holding onto (and yes i know it is technically "frankenstein's monster"). overall, very credible. i was also amazed by a skeksis costume that looked like it must have been procured in some manner from the actual set of the dark crystal. a well-done marge simpson with an outstanding hair rig won the contest, i believe. lots of other wild shit, trannys handing out fliers, a long conversation with someone dressed up as jesus, which oddly contained almost no discussion of religion, my own uncharacteristic writing on the wall in some bathroom, someone giving a long confession to the guy dressed up as jesus, something i thought was supposed to be a hummingbird introduced as a psychedelic falcon or something. overall, a worthwhile experience which also included a nice evening walk, and i treasure those when i tread new streets. old city was particularly nice; the weather was incredibly comfortable for the occasion.
right now is the time where i have to limit the urge to return to the discussion of lily rosemary and the jack of hearts. i have conducted more research, and have been pleased to find no comprehensive line-by-line analysis. no one really has it pinned down just yet.
i got to walk again this evening and it really helped me get my shit together for what i needed to write tonight. got more done in the two hours after walking and getting dinner and a good beer (surprisingly aggressive variety of red hook ipa) with my sister than i had gotten done in the ten hours i had spent earlier in the day. so go take a walk, it'll be nice.

i nearly lost me there

after an extended sequence of existential crises, i hope to have put some of that shit behind me. i've come to the realization that law school is going to blow regardless of how much work i do. that's just the way it is. but the fact that it blows can't stop me from getting through. it might not be easy, but it really can't be that impossible. a good law school buddy of mine today could not stop from repeating the phrase "law school is FUCKED UP". and he's right, of course. and sometimes it seems so fucked up that there is really nothing else one can say about it. i understood how he was feeling and it was comforting to know a true peer had the same feeling: law school is super fucked up, and if we knew it was gonna be like this, we never would have shown up. but we did. and there is no going back now. nick put it really well on the phone tonight, the only time worth bailing on this is when my life is at stake. and it won't be. but to return for a moment for the fucked up-ness of the whole thing, the problem is that they put you with like sixty people, and most people are confined within that social contact. and then they make you compete with your friends, hardcore. with one be all end all exam at the end of the semester. and that is fucked up. leads to a very high school atmosphere in a lot of ways. the good news is that i've made at least one good move in living where i do; apart from where most of my colleagues reside. i've had the opportunity to make friends who have nothing to do with law school, and i already had the advantage of having my sister here, and the people in her cohort who are really nice to me and don't give a fuck that i don't go to penn. the sum of all this is that i'm starting to come around to the fact that whether i like it or not, i'm in for the long haul, so might as well make the best of it. rumors abound that the first year is the worst. things can always improve.
unfortunately the job issue just won't go away. i've done a decent amount of looking around, including via metafilter (thanks erin!), which brought into relief a really important point. like many others, i fell prey to the claim that "there are a million things you can do with a law degree!", but it turns out that out of those million things about roughly 999991 of them can be done without a law degree, you just happen to have one if you do it. but that doesn't matter now, because i have accepted the fact that i am going to get this degree with a booby prize of shitty debt. the good news in that regard is that i don't have undergrad debt, so i should really quit bitching and suck it up. if i have the same amount of debt as the run of the mill private institution bachelor's degree holder when i get a jd, then fuck it. can't hurt. who knows, maybe there is some lawyerly job out there that won't make me want to gouge out my eyes and excise my gonads. but my job fantasy of the day is to get into journalism. i really love the writing i get a chance to do here, and i am actually proud of a lot of the shit i got to write in undergrad where i got to work beyond the menial dutiful obligations it inheres. legal writing is fucking stupid and stunningly particularized, but it is helpful for developing a host of different analytical and stylistic skills. i have no idea how it could work out, but mostly i just find it comforting that something may be out there somewhere. there is still such a stunning array of bridges to be crossed that i just don't know what will happen. but honestly, i really feel like i have made some peace with where i sit at this moment. it was really really tough to make it even to this point though, so i guess we'll see what happens. i want to get into intellectual property stuff and see how i find it. could lead to whatever.
i got to talk to a buddy of mine from my old job today, which offered a lot of food for thought. he doesn't even have his bachelor's yet (he's almost there) and has probably been working there for just shy of two years now, and he scored a badass promotion at the other office on the other side of town. i'm really happy for him and i think he is the right kind of person to be doing what he will be doing, but the whole thing gave me pause, as i had as much time in at the company when i left as he does now. i never jockeyed for position there, but this sort of thing makes me wonder how it could have been if i had. i had a bachelor's, the key to climbing the ladder there. but i also had the wrong look and the wrong attitude of this is not where i'm going to be very long. he'll be great, and although i don't doubt my ability to do many of the sorts of better paying and higher ranking jobs at the place, my distaste of the corporate culture would have made it really tough. the problem is that this is an ironic claim on my part at the point where my job prospects largely drive me towards similar cultures. but i'm glad i'm not in that specific mix. the best part is that this guy i used to work with will be in charge of the wagon, who, like me, is working this job with an eye on further education outside of the region. i don't think the wagon reads this blog, but if you do and you talk to him, at least admonish him not to go to law school. he is too good of a person for it. if i had my druthers i would totally pay his tuition to go doctoral on they ass. i've also begun to accept the fact that i most likely never get a doctorate of my own, and will therefore probably never do the only job i've ever really wanted to do: teach college. i guess i'm better off than the athlete who realizes they will never be drafted into a professional league, but the disappointment and requisite questions are still palpable. like i said before, the most honorable lawyerly jobs are beyond the scope of responsibility i would be comfortable handling. but once again, i need to remind myself to wait and see.
i don't really have anything to report from the non law school aspects of my life, sorry about that. today has been quite an exercise in adopting appropriate mental stance. there is a strong temptation to drop out of the world and not live to potential, but exactly what that means and how it will play out i must reserve judgment on. for now, living to potential means getting through this bullshit, and for the time being i feel like that is something i can do. from there, who knows? the fact that it is all so far off is both scary and comforting. i need to learn to appreciate the good things about my existence and not hate myself for putting me in the situation i am in or any other reason. that's tough, but it is simply not helpful to exclusively bear ill will toward oneself.
i want to talk about music as always, but try and not go on about the same bands as always. don't worry dekkinga, you didn't make me feel that bad about the dan, i know that you just need to listen to more. and the back forty is the back forty, if you're gonna check it out you will and probably have by now. so today's band is built to spill, because i don't think i've ever professed the high regard in which i hold them. they are the cream of the indie crop for me. they've been around long enough to go through the phase of being darlings and haven't wavered through mandatory indie band lineup changes, i dig what they do and especially that they know what it is they do. i don't feel like they're repetitive while maintaining a particular style. i really hope i get to see them some time. they make music i can listen to while in a variety of moods, which i think is difficult of a focused band to do. they also apparently put on a hell of a live show, which is enough to get me to go see any band. i was playing a show of theirs from a couple of months back earlier with a really interesting piece of banter. doug (? lead dude) gives a shout out to the opening band and talks about how glad they were to get a chance to play with them and all that and then mentions that this band is kind of dicks, but it is okay because they're good. can't believe i've never managed to see wilco, almost as much as i can't believe they played pittsburgh and not philly this tour. i really wanted to see drive by truckers as well, and they played fucking state college and not here. on the other hand they played here right before i moved this way. unfortunately i haven't gone to a show since tea leaf green; i found out stinking lizavetta played close by like the day after they did so. i'll catch those folks sometime; this is their home base. i did get to see them open for the mighty c! once, and it was a damn good time; i can only imagine how they throw down with a full set in their home town. doom jazz? that's what they call it. all i know is they're a trio (almost always dig-able) with a stand-up bass (hell yeah) and the guitarist likes to make use of his teeth in playing (right on). good to know that. good to know that i have pretty baby kittens. good to have people call me sometimes. hopefully it is good enough to get me through. allow me to point out just one more time that time will tell.