quizzo night tonight, and unfortunately is was penn-english-free quizzo night (restaurant week engagements). but we still had a good time and got our ass whupped. points for the month, points for the month. if, at the end of the month, you are one of the top three teams in total points for the month you get to spin the wheel for a one in three chance at $100 cash. also, they were ought of yeungling on draft so it was only $2 bottles. bummer, but probably for the best, as i had a late lunch which was mostly unenjoyable and led to no dinner aka drinking on an empty stomach. so i grabbed a forty of the classiest looking malt liquor i could find on the way home. it is so classy that i can't even be certain of what the name on the bottle says. but if your forty is in green glass, you know it is truly classy. billy dee williams?!? any way, quizzo was the only thing of substance i did today. other than that it was well, dicking around on the internet. let's just say i learned a lot about dutch football. and toothpaste for dinner archives. boy was i missing out.
after the cats woke me up at like 630 this morning i found out how sweet it is to have a door. go brawl somewhere where i don't have to hear you, crazy gatos. and now they're laying about all peaceful like. and they still haven't paid any rent at all.
i missed something in my previous post. a place for kindred spirits and overly-serious snack-food consumers (both people and snacks may be too serious). i revolved between being shocked and relieved that such a thing existed. screw social networking based on music or literature, potato chips are where it's at (i've got two turntables and a bag of mack 10 hot bbq rap snacks).
so for a while i've been meaning to go on and on about this animal collective show (wanted to link it, no cooperation from connection, it is available on archive.org it is from helsinki date is... 7/3/06). from what i understand their m.o. is to play a song live for a while, put it on the upcoming release, and never play it again. being in that indie game, there are all sorts of singles and eps that dispatch great tunes at random. anyway, this makes sense given a comparison between the show, the most recent release, and current setlists. i found out that they are playing here next weekend. and then i found out the show was sold out. and then i was pissed. and then i listened to a show from a couple months ago again, and i wasn't near as upset. before anyone starts calling names or pointing fingers, i would like to say that it isn't that i like their first album, or even "the old stuff" in general. i prefer what they've done over the past couple years (sung tongs, feels, this show, presumably the new album i did NOT pay $22 bucks for on vinyl on friday, maybe some other day). i can't even count how many times i've played this finland show, i dig it the most. i still haven't heard devandra banhart (not linking that, i think basket just did anyway) but i guess that dude and animal collective are allegedly the big players in the supposed genres of freak folk and naturalismo (note missing wikipedia links, do the legwork yourself). and this devandra character is playing here soon too, but i am not going unless someone tells me how to hear some for free. the only show on etree is bonnaroo (never trust those sets) and there is only one seeder anyway (great, that should finish in like a month). fortunately, i do not feel that i am limited to obscure bands and have been thoroughly enjoying zappa's "hot rats" and the band's masterpiece "music from big pink". maybe my record collection isn't totally lacking after all, no matter what they would have me believe. a distinct pattern of fans of any band is to look down on any radio single and sometimes the surrounding album, but i think most people would regard that attitude toward the band and this record as pure anathema. if you don't dig "the weight" you're probably hate freedom. and now i'm gonna play some jethro tull, just because i can and no one will be annoyed. i did play thick as a brick the other day. boy was i bummed when i finally discovered the newpaper packaging had no relation to reality as traditionally understood at all. it was a good story though. people always focus on the flute, but there is so much more going on. not that the flute in a rock tune isn't money. that keyboard player from tea leaf green busted out some flute when i saw those guys and it undeniably hit the spot.
kind of like lebowski the other night. it's not like it suddenly solves all of my problems, but it is always a go-to point to springboard from. i wound up taking a definite perspective on the film than i typically do as someone who has seen it over and over. the dude's point of view really got to me, which was a change of pace whatever you may say. just imagining oneself in his situation and trying to deal with the kind of shit that walter is constantly pulling really defines a much sharper focus as to what is going on. i wish i had the sort of theoretical outlet that allowed me to build up lebowskitheory.com or whatever it is (another bad connection link casualty, starting to wonder if i'll even manage to post this bullshit).
so i shaved my beard and head. no, didn't do that, but i did think about and consider it; just too drastic, and overall inappropriate at this juncture. i just trimmed my beard. things had simply gone too far; i could hardly eat without forcing beard hair into my mouth. that is no way to eat, and if it is no way to eat, it is no way to live in my book, which is comprised of ar least 1/3rd eating.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
fuck it, dude
a couple days ago i went to acquire the sandwich i have spoken to many of you about along with the epic circumstances surrounding my initial encounter. it had been a long day once again and i was notably hungry. the place was steady, but not too busy. it having been a long day, i had had a couple beers and wasn't too sure about my sense of time, but i began to get the distinct feeling that it had been too long ten minutes after i had finished my 'wait time' beer. my favorite counter girl looked over and asked me what i had ordered and i told her cuban hoagie, she turned around to the cook who just shook his head. the girl who had taken my order simply hadn't gotten it in. i didn't have much going on, so i wasn't real upset, i just got more beer, and they kicked me a buck back. no complaints. the sandwich once again made up for any other circumstances. for those who may have missed it, cuban hoagie: long roll (like the ones they use for cheesesteaks), roast beef, capicola, swiss cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onion, banana peppers, mustard, and cuban brown gravy. it is so damn good...
yesterday i got to go check out a couple of record stores down around the south street area. i hadn't been that far east on south yet; it got way sweeter than what i had seen before, which was only up to like 15th and was nice but kind of boring. this was certainly not that. as the boat/bus tour thing drove by i could hear the guy telling the tourists that they could have a purple mohawk and no one would look twice at them in that neighborhood. which is probably true, but i saw no purple mohawks, just a whole bunch of hipsters and a good random mix of other people. we parked in front of a store called condom kingdom, which was surprisingly professionally put together, to the point of having stylized c and k door handles in the manner of their signage. the first store was all used as far as i noticed in terms of vinyl offerings, but sweet jeezuz did they have a lot. three floors, just packed full of records, sometimes not enough room for more than one person to be browsing. just crate after crate of overstock and less sough-after offerings. these guys definitely know a good thing when they see it; no crazy scores to be had sifting through the endless bins but extensive enough stock to make sure you could find something you would be happy with. the really good shit was on the walls upstairs, and some fine selections they were, just out of my price range for the time being. some really nice floyd stuff. maybe some other time. this trip yielded a double live doors album and traffic's the low spark of the high heeled boys, both of which have proven to be solid, if not revolutionary picks. the doors show takes a couple tracks to get into full swing, but has a really good when the music's over and celebration of the lizard. the traffic album is what it is, if you've never heard it, you should. steve winwood has some serious skills. the title cut is amazing, and this is also the record with light up or leave me alone on it. overall very listenable with a persistent rhythm and groove, but i don't think it will make go-to status like i have with john barleycorn must die. the second store we went to was much more modern on its main level, pretty even split between both new and used and cd and record. they had a lot of cool newer stuff at prices that are neither notably cheap of expensive. their extensive not-so-popular used collection sprawls throughout a basement room, packed together haphazardly like some parts of the first place. we wound up checking out yet a third place on a limb that they would have the record the dude driving was looking for (the lakeside one with fantastic voyage)., to no avail, but it was interesting in comparison as being much smaller and also a purveyor of musical instruments and equipment. they had a small basement with one and two dollar records, lots of worthwhile stuff in the bunch, but usually not in the greatest of shape, although most of it plays fine i'm sure. the upstairs had a slim but very promising collection at very reasonable prices of well-known used stuff. unfortunately i was trying not to spend any more money.
other than that, life has been kind of frustrating; everything seems so overwhelming and daunting as a whole that it is sometimes difficult to do it all in a context of seeming hopelessness. can't find one of my books and i spent an hour looking absofuckinglutely everywhere in the goddam apartment. not too thrilled about that. cd player keeps telling me no disc when i put a cd in it, still can't get that to work either. realized that i don't have any way to play dvds except on the computer, which has developed a discolored spot in like the dead fucking center of the screen, and it also won't restart right. i'm almost out of beer and can't justify buying any more right now. couldn't get the bed frame together after extended efforts yesterday. long list of shit i'm supposed to be getting done but never what seems like a good opportunity to do it. like i said, sometimes it just feels like there is no way things will work out. my memo assignment is chock full of things to change, as expected, but still, it isn't very encouraging. oh, and it's saturday night and here i am typing on my fucking blog alone in my apartment which is still a fucking mess. sorry folks, just had to get it out there. i'm sure there are wonderful logical answers to all these complaints, but i don't even want to address it at this juncture. i want to get drunk, which is precisely what i should not do. so i'm just gonna watch lebowski on the damned computer, because that is better than no lebowski at all. and it tends to make me feel better.
yesterday i got to go check out a couple of record stores down around the south street area. i hadn't been that far east on south yet; it got way sweeter than what i had seen before, which was only up to like 15th and was nice but kind of boring. this was certainly not that. as the boat/bus tour thing drove by i could hear the guy telling the tourists that they could have a purple mohawk and no one would look twice at them in that neighborhood. which is probably true, but i saw no purple mohawks, just a whole bunch of hipsters and a good random mix of other people. we parked in front of a store called condom kingdom, which was surprisingly professionally put together, to the point of having stylized c and k door handles in the manner of their signage. the first store was all used as far as i noticed in terms of vinyl offerings, but sweet jeezuz did they have a lot. three floors, just packed full of records, sometimes not enough room for more than one person to be browsing. just crate after crate of overstock and less sough-after offerings. these guys definitely know a good thing when they see it; no crazy scores to be had sifting through the endless bins but extensive enough stock to make sure you could find something you would be happy with. the really good shit was on the walls upstairs, and some fine selections they were, just out of my price range for the time being. some really nice floyd stuff. maybe some other time. this trip yielded a double live doors album and traffic's the low spark of the high heeled boys, both of which have proven to be solid, if not revolutionary picks. the doors show takes a couple tracks to get into full swing, but has a really good when the music's over and celebration of the lizard. the traffic album is what it is, if you've never heard it, you should. steve winwood has some serious skills. the title cut is amazing, and this is also the record with light up or leave me alone on it. overall very listenable with a persistent rhythm and groove, but i don't think it will make go-to status like i have with john barleycorn must die. the second store we went to was much more modern on its main level, pretty even split between both new and used and cd and record. they had a lot of cool newer stuff at prices that are neither notably cheap of expensive. their extensive not-so-popular used collection sprawls throughout a basement room, packed together haphazardly like some parts of the first place. we wound up checking out yet a third place on a limb that they would have the record the dude driving was looking for (the lakeside one with fantastic voyage)., to no avail, but it was interesting in comparison as being much smaller and also a purveyor of musical instruments and equipment. they had a small basement with one and two dollar records, lots of worthwhile stuff in the bunch, but usually not in the greatest of shape, although most of it plays fine i'm sure. the upstairs had a slim but very promising collection at very reasonable prices of well-known used stuff. unfortunately i was trying not to spend any more money.
other than that, life has been kind of frustrating; everything seems so overwhelming and daunting as a whole that it is sometimes difficult to do it all in a context of seeming hopelessness. can't find one of my books and i spent an hour looking absofuckinglutely everywhere in the goddam apartment. not too thrilled about that. cd player keeps telling me no disc when i put a cd in it, still can't get that to work either. realized that i don't have any way to play dvds except on the computer, which has developed a discolored spot in like the dead fucking center of the screen, and it also won't restart right. i'm almost out of beer and can't justify buying any more right now. couldn't get the bed frame together after extended efforts yesterday. long list of shit i'm supposed to be getting done but never what seems like a good opportunity to do it. like i said, sometimes it just feels like there is no way things will work out. my memo assignment is chock full of things to change, as expected, but still, it isn't very encouraging. oh, and it's saturday night and here i am typing on my fucking blog alone in my apartment which is still a fucking mess. sorry folks, just had to get it out there. i'm sure there are wonderful logical answers to all these complaints, but i don't even want to address it at this juncture. i want to get drunk, which is precisely what i should not do. so i'm just gonna watch lebowski on the damned computer, because that is better than no lebowski at all. and it tends to make me feel better.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
might as well
i really thought that going back to school would help solidify my notion of what day it is, but i have found that not to be as entirely true as one might think. today really felt like monday for some reason. no matter, one day closer to thursday, since my spoiled ass doesn't have to go on fridays, which might play into my day-identification. also means my research cites are due tomorrow, but that is all in the bag. i feel really good about what i've turned up. i compared notes with a guy from my original group whom i've assessed as being pretty with it, and we were on the same path, and that's always comforting. i was pretty nervous going into it, but i should have had more confidence in my own research capabilities and more so in the prof not handing us more than we could handle. the whole assignment has really turned out to be more interesting than i really hoped it would be. at the outset we were handed a mock note from a senior partner requesting a memo. the question revolved around whether somebody filing for bankruptcy could have her student loan discharged as a part of those proceedings. personally, i was kind of surprised that educational loans have a special status wherein they don't go away with all the other debts discharged in bankruptcy; there is actually a section of a statute declaring that student loans may not be discharged unless repayment of them would constitute an undue hardship. the law itself, of course, remains silent on exactly what the hell undue hardship means and left that up to the courts to decide. i'm here to tell you while sparing the gory details that the situation has been a total mess for the most part, with different jurisdictions developing different standards and tests for meeting them. looking into it has truly been an enlightening experience and i really appreciate that out of a kick-off assignment. this second part has been even better working solo and getting a little trickier. turns out a couple years ago some courts started giving partial discharges of student loans. in many instances this has worked out to be just plain bad, nonsensical law. one circuit i looked at was applying this widely-adopted test to determine whether a loan was dischargable in full and giving partial discharges with horrible inconsistency. i'll admit i have plenty of skepticism about the state of laws in this country, but i was really taken aback at how ridiculous this particular situation was. if it doesn't seem that way to you, it is only because i didn't feel like writing the memo in this blog post and citing eighteen different cases you would easily be able to look up by paying the small fortune required for a lexis or westlaw subscription. or perhaps the thomas m cooley school of law will let you use their library as a member of the public.
so i wrote all that yesterday and decided it just wasn't enough to publish. i wavered over whether or not to include a lengthy meditation on the grateful dead. but in all honesty i don't think anyone's opinion would have been swayed; best result would have been people looking closer at 1973. the one point i really wanted to bring up was that i didn't see a single dead shirt at that tea leaf green show. i don't know if the dead are considered trite or if people just don't get into them like they used to. i have no doubt that many people into "classic rock" (70s) are not well versed in the oldies (60s), and i wonder if the wide proliferation of phish tees on people too young to have seen them (they quit more than three years ago already!) is a reflection of a similar trend. anyway, '73 first sets should convert anyone frightened off by the prospect of a half hour dark star. lots of great tunes packed tight together.
but like i was saying, i wrote that whole law school bit yesterday. today, i would have gone one and on about what a pain in the ass it is and how it can just swallow your whole life and still leave you feeling hopelessly inadequate. such is the nature of the beast. but not the number. recent scholarship indicates that the number of the beast is not 666, as traditionally thought, but rather 616. i'm not making this shit up, and if my internet connection was more reliable i would try and track down some proof. but if you don't believe me, use your fancy-ass connection to do some research. 616, of course. the devil lives in the 616, don'tchaknow. no better place to go than church capital, america. BANG! that was the gunshot i just herd, onomatopoeia inclusion for you there. usually they don't sound so nearby. i heard a bunch when i woke up for no reason at 5 am today. what a shitty time to be awake; almost no good could possibly come of that. 7:30 is bad enough as it is. after ironically self-censoring a long piece on self-censorship, that's all for now.
so i wrote all that yesterday and decided it just wasn't enough to publish. i wavered over whether or not to include a lengthy meditation on the grateful dead. but in all honesty i don't think anyone's opinion would have been swayed; best result would have been people looking closer at 1973. the one point i really wanted to bring up was that i didn't see a single dead shirt at that tea leaf green show. i don't know if the dead are considered trite or if people just don't get into them like they used to. i have no doubt that many people into "classic rock" (70s) are not well versed in the oldies (60s), and i wonder if the wide proliferation of phish tees on people too young to have seen them (they quit more than three years ago already!) is a reflection of a similar trend. anyway, '73 first sets should convert anyone frightened off by the prospect of a half hour dark star. lots of great tunes packed tight together.
but like i was saying, i wrote that whole law school bit yesterday. today, i would have gone one and on about what a pain in the ass it is and how it can just swallow your whole life and still leave you feeling hopelessly inadequate. such is the nature of the beast. but not the number. recent scholarship indicates that the number of the beast is not 666, as traditionally thought, but rather 616. i'm not making this shit up, and if my internet connection was more reliable i would try and track down some proof. but if you don't believe me, use your fancy-ass connection to do some research. 616, of course. the devil lives in the 616, don'tchaknow. no better place to go than church capital, america. BANG! that was the gunshot i just herd, onomatopoeia inclusion for you there. usually they don't sound so nearby. i heard a bunch when i woke up for no reason at 5 am today. what a shitty time to be awake; almost no good could possibly come of that. 7:30 is bad enough as it is. after ironically self-censoring a long piece on self-censorship, that's all for now.
Monday, September 17, 2007
technical difficulties...
please stand by. better technical difficulties than tangible, practical ones, i guess. i've missed posting, believe it or not, but i have actually been somewhat occupied for the past few days, more so than usual at any rate. and that all began last wednesday. i did go to that tea leaf green show. like i had mentioned, i kind of figured i might meet some people from the neighborhood there. i didn't. instead, i met somebody right as i stepped out of my front door to begin walking to the show. this guy offered up a very friendly what's up and he looked like a likely suspect, so i asked him if he was going to the show. he wasn't, but mentioned that he was going to baltimore this coming weekend to check out a sts9 show. we had been talking for less than a minute and he was like well, i live at this house we're standing in front of, stop by some time. so i was free to go enjoy the show without feeling like it was some twisted social networking event. the walk to the show itself was actually amazing. i try not to be a big weather-talker, but there is some serious nice autumn shit going on around here right now and i just love it. the whole walk was a delight for all senses though. i walked through upenn campus on the way there, which looks nice enough on its own but i had never been through at dusk before. there is a very nice lighting effect as you walk through, and so many different people to see, food and flowers to smell, bizarre things to hear. my favorite overheard quote of the walk was "if you pureed her, she would totally fit in this purse". the only bump in the road was being berated by a cadre of overdressed young penn students that i had the misfortune to be walking in the same direction as at the same time at a similar pace as. when i split off to go where i was headed and was a good distance away i started to hear cries of "goodbye moe! goodbye trey!" and some other shit about longhairs. lame on so many levels. i was sort of tempted to go back, act really strange and ramble on about not knowing who people are in a big city and the relative concentration of crazies, but it really wasn't worth the time. i hope they laugh at a homeless person who stabs them with a rusty phillips head screwdriver full of tetanus. anyway, i was more confused than anything, and simply made my way to the show. i was skeptical of the ticket's alleged start time of 8:30, but they weren't fuckin around. by like 8:33 the band was on and in full swing and with a relatively modest set break they didn't quit until almost twenty to twelve. those guys really do kick a whole lot of ass, more than i had even really imagined. the overall heaviness left me more satisfied than i had dared hope for. they oscillate between spacey trance rock and good ol' rock n' roll, only rarely touching on trite cheesy generic "jamband" sounds falling in the middle. the guitarist clearly graduated from the eddie vanhalen school, but had a good range of influences to complement it. the drummer fired on all cylinders and the bass player definitely stepped beyond the role of metronome and was really animated and conscious that he was playing an instrument capable of occupying its own space. the drummer was a machine, clean and perfect execution and transition. the keyboardist, however, is like the centerpiece of the band, or at least i'd like to think so. he and the guitarist split lead vocals for the most part, but he seems to have written a little more material and makes dramatic use of the wide sonic palette at his disposal. the man knows his way around a synth, but has some pretty classic piano chops. if you're curious, the show itself is on etree in lossless format and you can stream or download it at archive.org as well. all in all a unified band with a delightful range, and while the space covered may be unique, i don't think they have the incredible original sound that will propel them to lasting greatness. this is not to say that they weren't a hell of a band to see live or that they make boring music. far from it. i just feel like there was something missing to convert people into acolytes. originality is tough, and everybody out there is drawing on lots of other things, but sometimes the amalgamation really seems to give birth to something somehow apart from everything else. and some people really push envelopes. but none of that seems strongly correlated with how successful a band is or how much buzz they generate. i miss back forty. but in the end, tea leaf is energetic, hungry, into what they're doing, and really good at it. i had a bitchin time. three dollar magic hat pints from a really friendly bar staff, band on fire, intriguing crowd, most classes for the following day canceled. rosh hashanna rules! definitely an unforeseen benefit of moving out here. on my way home i stopped in at a pizza place to grab a beer lest my local store close at midnight and got carded for the first time since i moved (only upon prompting by the trainer to the trainee, and only then because he couldn't ring up a beer and a bag of chips). the dude was like, what are you doin' out here? i was kind of surprised since the place was all but on penn campus and half the ids he sees have to be from someplace else, but on the other hand i guess i'm don't really have the air or appearance of a typical penn student. so anyway, i told him i was going to law school and he said "good for you". i hate that phrase, partly because it is particularly difficult to respond to, but i think i nailed it on this one: "i hope so...".
so the next day was really chilled out, thanks again high holidays, and i got to sleep in and didn't really have much urgent to do after the one class. got a few drinks at this bar and restaurant on campus with some law school folk. they all went to get expensive dinner and i went home eventually. i didn't really have too much going on, so i went a few doors up to say hey to the guy i met the other night. i picked out what i thought was the right door, gave it a knock, and a girl came up, gave me a friendly hello, opened the door and walked back into the living room, no worries. see, people aren't less friendly than the midwest after all; she didn't even know who i was, i guess i just looked like someone who would be there. i asked about the guy i met and he showed up in a minute or two, but everyone was very nice, i hung out for a while and had a good time. interesting mix of people, i liked them because they were just people doing their thing, no one could be pigeonholed into some subculture or another, just like real life. they invited me to this performance art type thing they were doing the next night, but i wasn't sure about it and didn't want to shell out the cash for the ticket. instead i spent the next day hanging out with my sister and ben some, and that was nice. in the afternoon we were going to go on an expedition involving a philly car share vehicle, but when we got to the car we couldn't get it to co-operate. turned out the reservation was for the next day, oh well. we were gonna check out this brewery right by where the car was, about seven long blocks up from me, but they weren't open at the time so we both went home. i didn't have much going on, so i went back when i knew the place would be open. it is called dock street brewery; they've been around in different locations for quite a while. they were one of the early craft breweries in this neck of the woods and there are a lot of pictures/endorsements with michael jackson (no, not that guy, the beer and whiskey guy who just passed away a couple weeks ago). awesome to have michael jackson promote you, but if he was calling it "america's gourmet beer" with a bottle of amber ale in front of him it had to be pretty early on in the game. anyway, their current location is in a renovated old firehouse pretty close to me, so i can dig it. the space was cool, the beer was quality and somewhat adventurous, but the clientele, staff, space, and beer could never live up to founder's like i had dreamed it might. which is not to say it is not a good place in its own right, which it is. i had a rye i.p.a. and a dark cherry ale. both were very well-made, well-balanced, well-planned beers. i'm sure i'll go back again. i hear the wood-fired pizzas are not to be missed from a multitude of sources. one of these days...
the next day, saturday, i endeavored to assemble my one remaining unassembled piece of furniture: the bed frame. i figured it was time to give it a shot. things seemed to be going well until about halfway through, when it became apparent that i had, in short, fucked it up. i'll try it again later. i had better things to do: the guy i had met the other day called to say his girlfriend was having a barbeque and i should go, she lives around the corner. so i went. the little block she's on jogs away from where the street should line up, so i hadn't actually been on it, but it was absolutely gorgeous. the rowhouse she and a couple roommates share was super cool. so i hung out with all those folks again and more, and with free beer and food. good times. they introduced me to lion's head beer, which is the beer i was looking for but never knew it. a month or two ago i was back at mully's sitting with either stephen or donny and this older guy asked us about the old styles we were drinking. he wanted to know if that was the one with the puzzles under the cap, and we were both like what the fuck are you talking about, puzzles on beer caps indeed. never heard of such a thing. so as it turns out this is that beer. the puzzles are like old-school picture word puzzles. and the beer, well, is apparently twelve dollars a CASE! and doesn't even taste like it! in fact, these folks showed me that if you put a little chunk of fresh ginger in there, it actually tastes like good beer. fridge space has been reserved.
while i was hanging out with these folks the conversation eventually turned to the performance thing some of them were in (the what-have-you?) and that saturday would be their last night. i decided i would go, and then the dude offered me a cheap ticket. it turned out to be totally worth it. all in all, pretty interesting. it was part of the annual(?) philly fringe festival(?). the piece entitled "ashes" and was about the apocalypse. weird, semi-abstract projections onto the stage through most of it, prevalent super loud (most people accepted the complimentary earplugs) noise/drum track to back it up, lots of dancing, giant bird puppet. sequences demonstrating evolution and warfare... culminated with the bird puppet giving birth to a human (the show's creator, ass naked) and space aliens turning up and making him into a cyborg. that was about it. this is the sort of thing it is difficult to describe and is better seen (allegedly touring to other cities in the near future), but i hope you get an impression for it. overall, a good time. i went to the cast party afterwards, which was a friendly scene but a little strange considering i wasn't in the show, but there were plenty of other people there who weren't either. and more free beer. and the first two-ended joint i've ever seen people smoke. basically stuck butt to butt with a gapped filter rolled into the small end of each, the gap providing the spot to hit from. weird, but i guess if that's your deal go right ahead.
apparently the real shindig on saturday was a going-away thing for a friend of my sister's. when i went to quizzo sunday with all those folks almost all of them were not drinking due to still riding out hangovers. sounded like they had fun, but quizzo was also a good time as always. we managed to come in second, which is good enough for twenty bucks to the bar/restaurant its at. that'll take care of a couple of those can't-be-beat five dollar yuengling pitchers next week, and maybe i'll get to cash in on this win after missing the subsequent weeks after we came in first a while back and got the big prize of forty bar dollars. looking forward to it. quizzo, if i haven't explained it, is basically a team trivia game which is conducted without the aid of a network and electronic "playmakers", but rather a live deejay. good variety of questions, and also my least favorite round where you try to identify fifteen pictures of somewhat famous individuals. i regret that such a thing was not available back home, i think we really could have run that shit.
so it was back to school today after all that. things still seem to be progressing alright. more of that intimidating legal research and writing to be done. i worked on that for a while today, first time doing the research purely solo, and it went alright, i think i have the kind of stuff she wanted us to be looking for. i guess we'll find that out in spades soon enough. as rough as it seems, this is really the best way to learn how to do it, just jump right in. things are also getting a little more interactive in the other classes as well. for torts, the prof mentioned a recent incident in philly where a bus passed through a shootout and the driver and a passenger got hit and told us to make up a couple extra facts as we saw fit and list off the various torts that were committed. my scenario worked in my favorite tort title thus far, trespass to chattels, which is basically interfering with someone else's property. i had a guide dog get shot, but don't worry, he's okay. if he died, it might have even been the full-on tort of conversion. i love terms of art. hehe, trespass to chattels. i hate it when people trespass my chattels. in contracts, we have made it to the infamous carbolic smoke ball case. it is a strange one, i guess strange enough to be ubiquitous for intro contracts courses in the common law tradition for quite some time; it is an antiquated case. i like the old british manner of speaking "took cold and caught the influenza". diseases sound somehow both more humorous and dread when preceded by "the". inexplicable.
speaking of inexplicable, i made a very strange discovery today. i was sitting in my upstairs room in the chair i am sitting right now where i always sit. i've become quite used to this room, even moving things around in the smallest nooks and crannies, including under the radiator (yup). so while i was sitting, i looked down to my left to grab something and noticed something strange sitting on the ground next to a bunch of my shit i had recently left and moved around there. i have no idea where it came from because there is no possible way i could have not seen it until now, but lo and behold, there on the ground was a small, approximately two inch tall pewter dragon figurine with hands that look like they should be holding something (20 bucks says that something is some sort of an orb). it is pretty cool, not as cool as i would have thought it was six years ago, but i can still dig it. i just can't figure out how in the hell it got there, or if it had been there, how i could have missed it so many times. it wasn't even under the radiator, it was a couple inches from it. not quite a chess piece hitting me in the head in the middle of the woods (ask reynolds, if he'll tell) but still pretty strange. perhaps it was to make up for the resolution of the previous metallic mystery of the household, the rack-looking thing below the window in the kitchen. i can't recall how the thing came up, but when i was at that barbeque it did, and the guy totally knew what it was because he had undergone a similar experience with a similar rack-looking thing in a friend's house. turns out it is supposed to be a fire escape ladder. who knew? certainly doesn't look like it would hold me up, but hey, as a last resort it beats some other options. overall, i am a little disappointed by how much sense it makes.
this already lengthy post will be closed out not with a link to, but a full display of creedence lyrics, as a celebration of my current connectivity and tribute to this blog's history of getting lyrical:
Now, if I was a bricklayer,
I wouldn't build just anything;
And if I was a ball player,
I wouldn't play no second string.
And if I were some jew'lry, baby;
Lord, I'd have to be a diamond ring.
If I were a secret, Lord, I never would be told.
If I were a jug of wine, Lord, my flavor would be old.
I could be most anything,
But it got to be twenty-four karat solid gold, oh.
If I were a gambler, You know I'd never lose,
And if I were a guitar player,
Lord, I'd have to play the blues.
If I was a hacksaw, My blade would be razor sharp.
If I were a politician, I could prove that monkeys talk.
You can find the tallest building,
Lord, I'd have me the house on top.
I'm the Penthouse Pauper;
I got nothin' to my name.
I'm the Penthouse Pauper; baby,
I got nothing to my name.
I can be most anything,
'Cause when you got nothin' it's all the same.
i opted not to include the random stuff he says, especially at the end (pigpen could have run his mouth for like half an hour with this stuff), but all you gotta know is:
"laaawd, look at mah penthouse!"
yes, in the sandwich.
so the next day was really chilled out, thanks again high holidays, and i got to sleep in and didn't really have much urgent to do after the one class. got a few drinks at this bar and restaurant on campus with some law school folk. they all went to get expensive dinner and i went home eventually. i didn't really have too much going on, so i went a few doors up to say hey to the guy i met the other night. i picked out what i thought was the right door, gave it a knock, and a girl came up, gave me a friendly hello, opened the door and walked back into the living room, no worries. see, people aren't less friendly than the midwest after all; she didn't even know who i was, i guess i just looked like someone who would be there. i asked about the guy i met and he showed up in a minute or two, but everyone was very nice, i hung out for a while and had a good time. interesting mix of people, i liked them because they were just people doing their thing, no one could be pigeonholed into some subculture or another, just like real life. they invited me to this performance art type thing they were doing the next night, but i wasn't sure about it and didn't want to shell out the cash for the ticket. instead i spent the next day hanging out with my sister and ben some, and that was nice. in the afternoon we were going to go on an expedition involving a philly car share vehicle, but when we got to the car we couldn't get it to co-operate. turned out the reservation was for the next day, oh well. we were gonna check out this brewery right by where the car was, about seven long blocks up from me, but they weren't open at the time so we both went home. i didn't have much going on, so i went back when i knew the place would be open. it is called dock street brewery; they've been around in different locations for quite a while. they were one of the early craft breweries in this neck of the woods and there are a lot of pictures/endorsements with michael jackson (no, not that guy, the beer and whiskey guy who just passed away a couple weeks ago). awesome to have michael jackson promote you, but if he was calling it "america's gourmet beer" with a bottle of amber ale in front of him it had to be pretty early on in the game. anyway, their current location is in a renovated old firehouse pretty close to me, so i can dig it. the space was cool, the beer was quality and somewhat adventurous, but the clientele, staff, space, and beer could never live up to founder's like i had dreamed it might. which is not to say it is not a good place in its own right, which it is. i had a rye i.p.a. and a dark cherry ale. both were very well-made, well-balanced, well-planned beers. i'm sure i'll go back again. i hear the wood-fired pizzas are not to be missed from a multitude of sources. one of these days...
the next day, saturday, i endeavored to assemble my one remaining unassembled piece of furniture: the bed frame. i figured it was time to give it a shot. things seemed to be going well until about halfway through, when it became apparent that i had, in short, fucked it up. i'll try it again later. i had better things to do: the guy i had met the other day called to say his girlfriend was having a barbeque and i should go, she lives around the corner. so i went. the little block she's on jogs away from where the street should line up, so i hadn't actually been on it, but it was absolutely gorgeous. the rowhouse she and a couple roommates share was super cool. so i hung out with all those folks again and more, and with free beer and food. good times. they introduced me to lion's head beer, which is the beer i was looking for but never knew it. a month or two ago i was back at mully's sitting with either stephen or donny and this older guy asked us about the old styles we were drinking. he wanted to know if that was the one with the puzzles under the cap, and we were both like what the fuck are you talking about, puzzles on beer caps indeed. never heard of such a thing. so as it turns out this is that beer. the puzzles are like old-school picture word puzzles. and the beer, well, is apparently twelve dollars a CASE! and doesn't even taste like it! in fact, these folks showed me that if you put a little chunk of fresh ginger in there, it actually tastes like good beer. fridge space has been reserved.
while i was hanging out with these folks the conversation eventually turned to the performance thing some of them were in (the what-have-you?) and that saturday would be their last night. i decided i would go, and then the dude offered me a cheap ticket. it turned out to be totally worth it. all in all, pretty interesting. it was part of the annual(?) philly fringe festival(?). the piece entitled "ashes" and was about the apocalypse. weird, semi-abstract projections onto the stage through most of it, prevalent super loud (most people accepted the complimentary earplugs) noise/drum track to back it up, lots of dancing, giant bird puppet. sequences demonstrating evolution and warfare... culminated with the bird puppet giving birth to a human (the show's creator, ass naked) and space aliens turning up and making him into a cyborg. that was about it. this is the sort of thing it is difficult to describe and is better seen (allegedly touring to other cities in the near future), but i hope you get an impression for it. overall, a good time. i went to the cast party afterwards, which was a friendly scene but a little strange considering i wasn't in the show, but there were plenty of other people there who weren't either. and more free beer. and the first two-ended joint i've ever seen people smoke. basically stuck butt to butt with a gapped filter rolled into the small end of each, the gap providing the spot to hit from. weird, but i guess if that's your deal go right ahead.
apparently the real shindig on saturday was a going-away thing for a friend of my sister's. when i went to quizzo sunday with all those folks almost all of them were not drinking due to still riding out hangovers. sounded like they had fun, but quizzo was also a good time as always. we managed to come in second, which is good enough for twenty bucks to the bar/restaurant its at. that'll take care of a couple of those can't-be-beat five dollar yuengling pitchers next week, and maybe i'll get to cash in on this win after missing the subsequent weeks after we came in first a while back and got the big prize of forty bar dollars. looking forward to it. quizzo, if i haven't explained it, is basically a team trivia game which is conducted without the aid of a network and electronic "playmakers", but rather a live deejay. good variety of questions, and also my least favorite round where you try to identify fifteen pictures of somewhat famous individuals. i regret that such a thing was not available back home, i think we really could have run that shit.
so it was back to school today after all that. things still seem to be progressing alright. more of that intimidating legal research and writing to be done. i worked on that for a while today, first time doing the research purely solo, and it went alright, i think i have the kind of stuff she wanted us to be looking for. i guess we'll find that out in spades soon enough. as rough as it seems, this is really the best way to learn how to do it, just jump right in. things are also getting a little more interactive in the other classes as well. for torts, the prof mentioned a recent incident in philly where a bus passed through a shootout and the driver and a passenger got hit and told us to make up a couple extra facts as we saw fit and list off the various torts that were committed. my scenario worked in my favorite tort title thus far, trespass to chattels, which is basically interfering with someone else's property. i had a guide dog get shot, but don't worry, he's okay. if he died, it might have even been the full-on tort of conversion. i love terms of art. hehe, trespass to chattels. i hate it when people trespass my chattels. in contracts, we have made it to the infamous carbolic smoke ball case. it is a strange one, i guess strange enough to be ubiquitous for intro contracts courses in the common law tradition for quite some time; it is an antiquated case. i like the old british manner of speaking "took cold and caught the influenza". diseases sound somehow both more humorous and dread when preceded by "the". inexplicable.
speaking of inexplicable, i made a very strange discovery today. i was sitting in my upstairs room in the chair i am sitting right now where i always sit. i've become quite used to this room, even moving things around in the smallest nooks and crannies, including under the radiator (yup). so while i was sitting, i looked down to my left to grab something and noticed something strange sitting on the ground next to a bunch of my shit i had recently left and moved around there. i have no idea where it came from because there is no possible way i could have not seen it until now, but lo and behold, there on the ground was a small, approximately two inch tall pewter dragon figurine with hands that look like they should be holding something (20 bucks says that something is some sort of an orb). it is pretty cool, not as cool as i would have thought it was six years ago, but i can still dig it. i just can't figure out how in the hell it got there, or if it had been there, how i could have missed it so many times. it wasn't even under the radiator, it was a couple inches from it. not quite a chess piece hitting me in the head in the middle of the woods (ask reynolds, if he'll tell) but still pretty strange. perhaps it was to make up for the resolution of the previous metallic mystery of the household, the rack-looking thing below the window in the kitchen. i can't recall how the thing came up, but when i was at that barbeque it did, and the guy totally knew what it was because he had undergone a similar experience with a similar rack-looking thing in a friend's house. turns out it is supposed to be a fire escape ladder. who knew? certainly doesn't look like it would hold me up, but hey, as a last resort it beats some other options. overall, i am a little disappointed by how much sense it makes.
this already lengthy post will be closed out not with a link to, but a full display of creedence lyrics, as a celebration of my current connectivity and tribute to this blog's history of getting lyrical:
Now, if I was a bricklayer,
I wouldn't build just anything;
And if I was a ball player,
I wouldn't play no second string.
And if I were some jew'lry, baby;
Lord, I'd have to be a diamond ring.
If I were a secret, Lord, I never would be told.
If I were a jug of wine, Lord, my flavor would be old.
I could be most anything,
But it got to be twenty-four karat solid gold, oh.
If I were a gambler, You know I'd never lose,
And if I were a guitar player,
Lord, I'd have to play the blues.
If I was a hacksaw, My blade would be razor sharp.
If I were a politician, I could prove that monkeys talk.
You can find the tallest building,
Lord, I'd have me the house on top.
I'm the Penthouse Pauper;
I got nothin' to my name.
I'm the Penthouse Pauper; baby,
I got nothing to my name.
I can be most anything,
'Cause when you got nothin' it's all the same.
i opted not to include the random stuff he says, especially at the end (pigpen could have run his mouth for like half an hour with this stuff), but all you gotta know is:
"laaawd, look at mah penthouse!"
yes, in the sandwich.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
grand re-opening
at my new location around the corner. haven't been able to post in a couple days due to being busy and in and out internet. it will be all good when i get the wifi modem that was shipped to my old place unsuccessfully, returned to the ups station waaaay down in south philly where i did not get an opportunity to go at the same time as feeling like going, and then all of a sudden they sent it to some place called round rock, texas, where it had never been before. i don't know why there of all the places, but that's where it is now. so i tried to use my shipping number from my confirmation email to re-route the thing, but no, that wasn't the right number. they wanted a number off one of the little slips they leave when they show up at the most inconvenient time possible and you are of course not there. i thought i had one somewhere, but it was packed up in all my shit. my most recent move has brought one of these to light, and so i should be able to make arrangements sometime soon. until then, the connection is usually decent enough to get by. except right now when i'm trying to do some instant messaging. of course.
anyway, the place is great, plenty of room for myself and los gatos. got a nice set-up in the upstairs in one room, using the smaller one for storage for now, although i don't need it for that, plenty of closet space downstairs. the room i hang out in has all my ikea furniture finally set up, and i must say i dig it, most especially the poang chair i'm presently chilling in. the bookcase type thing is also sweet, i have it aligned horizontally, two rows of four cubes, they fit vinyl perfectly and i have the record and cd players and speakers on top of the shelf. beats the old set up on janky chairs with no backs. it felt really good to break out the records; going a few weeks without got real old real fast. really hit the spot when i got it going again a couple days ago. lots of music i had been missing, kicked things off with lou reed's "transformer"... total fuckin classic. but the room has a great feel to it, all up high and apart from everything, much different than being in the middle of a bunch of rowhouses normally is. i should have taken one of the thursday signs i guess, cause this room is totally worthy of being thursday's east. business hasn't exactly picked up just yet, but i'm sure i'll meet some people around here eventually. no one i go to school with lives in this part of the city, they all live in center city or way out in like mt airy or manayunk or even further. a lot of people drive in; i couldn't imagine doing that from far out because most of them wind up on broad for like at least 15 blocks which probably takes an hour in itself. traffic is always fucked on that street, but hey, it is a main drag in a big city, so as much should be expected. the only person from my school i've met out here is a guy who dropped out of the law program. cool dude, and did live here when he went too. hopefully i fare a little bit better than that; i'm sure the neighborhood wasn't the problem. the neighborhood is really sweet. it was the part of philly i knew best when i came out here, and after checking out a few more neighborhoods in a city comprised of them i really think i still like this one the best. it is appealing in many respects. you can check out the wikipedia entry for it, or not, it is called university city. better than the entry is a article it links to which i'll just throw here. honestly a really informative and fairly accurate piece of journalism, i must say.
i finished my first legal memorandum writing assignment this afternoon. i've had a couple other written assignments but they were in the dreaded group format. yeah, we had a guy who didn't do shit, which is frustrating, but on the other hand it was all stuff one needs to work on in order to obtain an understanding of how to do legal research and writing. i am very satisfied with the general pedagogy of the course, which indeed is named legal research and writing. hopefully my memo doesn't get totally eviscerated. in all honesty i feel like i did a pretty good job, and that generally works out okay. i actually worked on it over a few days and completed it before the deadline was imminent and looming, which i believe is a first for me, coming from the school of classical procrastination. on the other hand, i've never written a legal memorandum before and it has some unique demands in regard to format and even more in regard to citations. the good news is that i really shouldn't feel too bad no matter what happens because this is a new thing i am learning to do, and the professor obviously knows that. also, the more i get the feel of school and my pers, the more i feel like i am right where i've always been academically. i try to remind myself that i am a reasonably intelligent and articulate person with a history of success and that there is no way i could really wind up on the bottom of the pile. not that my classmates aren't smart people; they are, but i think it will be the same old story with a mix of people who work hard and people who are naturally gifted and people who get by. after all, there are lots of lawyers out there, and they cover a broad spectrum of aptitude, intelligence, and ability. i'm not trying to stroke my ego here; you're just witnessing some self-therapy and i apologize. but i really hope to communicate something about the law school experience with this blog which is why i keep writing about it. if people always ask me on the phone how school is going, i take that to mean people have at least some interest in what law school is like. and obviously my experience will be far from monolithic, but it is a narrative for me to go back and look at and you to reflect on as you see fit. a certain perception surrounds the profession and has for centuries upon memory, but everyone in the modern era who has been a lawyer has most likely experienced law school in one way or another, and it is a special environment, just like business school or graduate school. i wonder if there are many people who attend business school just for the interest of learning about business; people who have no interest in climbing some corporate ladder or even calling the shots at a socially just and very likable non-profit. not that i am necessarily attending solely to learn, but it really tops my list. i'll probably be some sort of a lawyer for some period of time, but the details there are very sketchy at this point, and i think that is the way it should be. i've got three years to go, and that is a damn long time. think how your life was three years ago. it might not have been all that different, but if you really think about it many things have changed. you're still you, but experience just builds upon itself inevitably to produce new and different perceptions and opinions. ah, listen to me gettin all philisophical and whatnot. i really don't think a grad program in philosophy would have been for me; there really is a big gap between being interested in the material and being interested in following a program of study with all attendant hassles. i miss the approach, though. my schooling now really operates as a professional program, not as an extended humanities study. there are lots of big meta questions i think about while i sit in class, but i honestly think i would get shut down pretty quickly if i started asking questions about societal relations with the law on a purely theoretical scale. there's probably more room for that sort of thing in upper level classes. i kinda hope so anyway. but enough about law school; you're probably not gonna go. but if you don't know what to do with yourself, take a practice lsat, you can download one at lsac.org, and you'll probably do just fine. good enough to get into a decent law school anyway. it's something to do. or at least it was for me. but enough about all that. there's more to life.
like music. i just finished listening to a godspeed you! black emporer show. i haven't given those guys a shot since senior year of high school when i was like yeah, whatever. now, different story. i can dig it the most. too bad i'm late in the game like always, guess they are on indefinite hiatus, with certain plans to reconvene at some point. i decided to check them out again cause i was dicking around on archive.org downloading shows of bands that are gonna play at that venue i'm excited about (not crane jackson's fountain street theater; that is where i'm performing my dance quintet, you know, my cycle) and after i exhausted the list i just grabbed more because i was getting good speeds. i've got my ticket for tea leaf green tomorrow and i'm pretty excited about that. i saw a show from a couple days ago posted on etree this morning and they did an opening set as coffee bean brown, the name they use when they play acoustic. that would be pretty cool, and not surprising as the venue seems to book concurrent shows at the downstairs and the upstairs. i was surprised to learn that upenn owns the place, or at least i assume so, the name of the place is copyrighted by the trustees of the university of pennsylvania. oh well, they apparently book sweet shit. really diggin' this agent moosehead stuff i've got; they are philly's macpodz. with a better understanding of setlist theory, which is very important. if i could study setlist theory in a professional setting, my life would be complete. also got some lotus, and the recording sucked, gotta try a different show. or the alternate source for that one. but it was listenable despite the recording; i needed a little electronica. sound tribe sector nine and the disco biscuits do it better though. i can't wait for some sick db shit, those guys play philly a lot; they all were upenn students, which cracks me the fuck up. funny how the east and west coasts of the country spawned two bands so similar in idea but so different in practice; really speaks to the effect region can have. the difference actually reminds me of phish and the dead. bands two people unfailingly associate with one another who do something similar but sound nothing alike. if you've missed it before now somehow, check out the ultimate site delineating difference between things that are superficially similar. good times. all that aside, i'm actually diggin some live little feat on vinyl right now. time and a place for everything, you know?
life, in the end, is mostly alright for me these days. i have everything i need to enjoy life except for the glaring hole left by leaving (almost spelled that leavening - watch out folks) my friends and family. i hope to meet somebody, anybody tomorrow at tea leaf green. gotta be some good people in there; i can spot the difference between a hippy wearing the uniform and a decent person, i hope. i've seen enough small-time jam shows in bars to have a pretty good cross-section of people, and many have spoken with me. i hold my usual position of just hearing them out. i can think what i want, but i try not to ever be too sure. we'll call it a post before things get out of hand.
anyway, the place is great, plenty of room for myself and los gatos. got a nice set-up in the upstairs in one room, using the smaller one for storage for now, although i don't need it for that, plenty of closet space downstairs. the room i hang out in has all my ikea furniture finally set up, and i must say i dig it, most especially the poang chair i'm presently chilling in. the bookcase type thing is also sweet, i have it aligned horizontally, two rows of four cubes, they fit vinyl perfectly and i have the record and cd players and speakers on top of the shelf. beats the old set up on janky chairs with no backs. it felt really good to break out the records; going a few weeks without got real old real fast. really hit the spot when i got it going again a couple days ago. lots of music i had been missing, kicked things off with lou reed's "transformer"... total fuckin classic. but the room has a great feel to it, all up high and apart from everything, much different than being in the middle of a bunch of rowhouses normally is. i should have taken one of the thursday signs i guess, cause this room is totally worthy of being thursday's east. business hasn't exactly picked up just yet, but i'm sure i'll meet some people around here eventually. no one i go to school with lives in this part of the city, they all live in center city or way out in like mt airy or manayunk or even further. a lot of people drive in; i couldn't imagine doing that from far out because most of them wind up on broad for like at least 15 blocks which probably takes an hour in itself. traffic is always fucked on that street, but hey, it is a main drag in a big city, so as much should be expected. the only person from my school i've met out here is a guy who dropped out of the law program. cool dude, and did live here when he went too. hopefully i fare a little bit better than that; i'm sure the neighborhood wasn't the problem. the neighborhood is really sweet. it was the part of philly i knew best when i came out here, and after checking out a few more neighborhoods in a city comprised of them i really think i still like this one the best. it is appealing in many respects. you can check out the wikipedia entry for it, or not, it is called university city. better than the entry is a article it links to which i'll just throw here. honestly a really informative and fairly accurate piece of journalism, i must say.
i finished my first legal memorandum writing assignment this afternoon. i've had a couple other written assignments but they were in the dreaded group format. yeah, we had a guy who didn't do shit, which is frustrating, but on the other hand it was all stuff one needs to work on in order to obtain an understanding of how to do legal research and writing. i am very satisfied with the general pedagogy of the course, which indeed is named legal research and writing. hopefully my memo doesn't get totally eviscerated. in all honesty i feel like i did a pretty good job, and that generally works out okay. i actually worked on it over a few days and completed it before the deadline was imminent and looming, which i believe is a first for me, coming from the school of classical procrastination. on the other hand, i've never written a legal memorandum before and it has some unique demands in regard to format and even more in regard to citations. the good news is that i really shouldn't feel too bad no matter what happens because this is a new thing i am learning to do, and the professor obviously knows that. also, the more i get the feel of school and my pers, the more i feel like i am right where i've always been academically. i try to remind myself that i am a reasonably intelligent and articulate person with a history of success and that there is no way i could really wind up on the bottom of the pile. not that my classmates aren't smart people; they are, but i think it will be the same old story with a mix of people who work hard and people who are naturally gifted and people who get by. after all, there are lots of lawyers out there, and they cover a broad spectrum of aptitude, intelligence, and ability. i'm not trying to stroke my ego here; you're just witnessing some self-therapy and i apologize. but i really hope to communicate something about the law school experience with this blog which is why i keep writing about it. if people always ask me on the phone how school is going, i take that to mean people have at least some interest in what law school is like. and obviously my experience will be far from monolithic, but it is a narrative for me to go back and look at and you to reflect on as you see fit. a certain perception surrounds the profession and has for centuries upon memory, but everyone in the modern era who has been a lawyer has most likely experienced law school in one way or another, and it is a special environment, just like business school or graduate school. i wonder if there are many people who attend business school just for the interest of learning about business; people who have no interest in climbing some corporate ladder or even calling the shots at a socially just and very likable non-profit. not that i am necessarily attending solely to learn, but it really tops my list. i'll probably be some sort of a lawyer for some period of time, but the details there are very sketchy at this point, and i think that is the way it should be. i've got three years to go, and that is a damn long time. think how your life was three years ago. it might not have been all that different, but if you really think about it many things have changed. you're still you, but experience just builds upon itself inevitably to produce new and different perceptions and opinions. ah, listen to me gettin all philisophical and whatnot. i really don't think a grad program in philosophy would have been for me; there really is a big gap between being interested in the material and being interested in following a program of study with all attendant hassles. i miss the approach, though. my schooling now really operates as a professional program, not as an extended humanities study. there are lots of big meta questions i think about while i sit in class, but i honestly think i would get shut down pretty quickly if i started asking questions about societal relations with the law on a purely theoretical scale. there's probably more room for that sort of thing in upper level classes. i kinda hope so anyway. but enough about law school; you're probably not gonna go. but if you don't know what to do with yourself, take a practice lsat, you can download one at lsac.org, and you'll probably do just fine. good enough to get into a decent law school anyway. it's something to do. or at least it was for me. but enough about all that. there's more to life.
like music. i just finished listening to a godspeed you! black emporer show. i haven't given those guys a shot since senior year of high school when i was like yeah, whatever. now, different story. i can dig it the most. too bad i'm late in the game like always, guess they are on indefinite hiatus, with certain plans to reconvene at some point. i decided to check them out again cause i was dicking around on archive.org downloading shows of bands that are gonna play at that venue i'm excited about (not crane jackson's fountain street theater; that is where i'm performing my dance quintet, you know, my cycle) and after i exhausted the list i just grabbed more because i was getting good speeds. i've got my ticket for tea leaf green tomorrow and i'm pretty excited about that. i saw a show from a couple days ago posted on etree this morning and they did an opening set as coffee bean brown, the name they use when they play acoustic. that would be pretty cool, and not surprising as the venue seems to book concurrent shows at the downstairs and the upstairs. i was surprised to learn that upenn owns the place, or at least i assume so, the name of the place is copyrighted by the trustees of the university of pennsylvania. oh well, they apparently book sweet shit. really diggin' this agent moosehead stuff i've got; they are philly's macpodz. with a better understanding of setlist theory, which is very important. if i could study setlist theory in a professional setting, my life would be complete. also got some lotus, and the recording sucked, gotta try a different show. or the alternate source for that one. but it was listenable despite the recording; i needed a little electronica. sound tribe sector nine and the disco biscuits do it better though. i can't wait for some sick db shit, those guys play philly a lot; they all were upenn students, which cracks me the fuck up. funny how the east and west coasts of the country spawned two bands so similar in idea but so different in practice; really speaks to the effect region can have. the difference actually reminds me of phish and the dead. bands two people unfailingly associate with one another who do something similar but sound nothing alike. if you've missed it before now somehow, check out the ultimate site delineating difference between things that are superficially similar. good times. all that aside, i'm actually diggin some live little feat on vinyl right now. time and a place for everything, you know?
life, in the end, is mostly alright for me these days. i have everything i need to enjoy life except for the glaring hole left by leaving (almost spelled that leavening - watch out folks) my friends and family. i hope to meet somebody, anybody tomorrow at tea leaf green. gotta be some good people in there; i can spot the difference between a hippy wearing the uniform and a decent person, i hope. i've seen enough small-time jam shows in bars to have a pretty good cross-section of people, and many have spoken with me. i hold my usual position of just hearing them out. i can think what i want, but i try not to ever be too sure. we'll call it a post before things get out of hand.
Friday, September 07, 2007
reconnaisance
completed on a day with nothing else i felt like doing, typed on a night where i had nothing else i felt like doing. went for a nice walk today through the neighborhood and a little beyond, including a stroll down the 'avenue of technology', a.k.a. market street. there wasn't much in the way of technology, and the street reminded me of wealthy, zero to shit in like a quarter mile. in fact, my apartment here kind of reminds me of my place on wealthy except the whole apartment is split in half and stacked on top of each other instead of the bathroom being split in half. further info on apartment move-in scores: there is a trash can, which i had thought about needing right before i looked through the place again. hell yes. also, most intriguing is... mystery metal. no, not me (although the re-metaling has begun, more on that later), but this really inexplicable thing in the kitchen of my new place. i've talked to a couple people, racked my own brain, and engaged in some serious peering, but nothing really comes to mind. check it out: about eight inches or so off the floor in my kitchen is the bottom of this compressed metal accordion-rack type thing. it is clearly very old, and it doesn't compress entirely correctly, but it begs the question of what in the hell it could possibly be. my sister and ben will get a good look at it tomorrow when i get to for real move in, so maybe one of them will have an insight that my limited drawing and explanatory skills could not provide. if not, you had better get your ass out here. you've got some 'splainin to do. yeah, that's right, you. tell me what that shit is.
but serious sources indicate some sites of significance in the area. there's the nearby cvs of which i was already aware, but it is still pretty handy. lots of restaurants to check out, usually a few of every kind. few pizza places, few chinese places, few more interesting places, indian, ethiopian, soul food, etc. and some place with a 25 cent wing night with 20 flavors to choose from. soooo hitting that up. surprising and definite lack of mexican restaurants, however. i don't really know what is up with that. there really don't seem to be many hispanics around, not compared to home. nothing is bilingual here either, which i find kind of strange, surprisingly, since it is not like spanish is my first language, or even one i know a damn thing about. still, a noticeable difference from back home. another odd thing is that although being a food establishment is what allows a place to sell beer to-go, but only the pizza places really seem to be the venues offering this option. i'm sure there is some underlying logic there as well.
i found my laundromat, which is further away than i would have expected or hoped, but it really is not that far at the end of the day. i don't think i've ever patronized a laundromat before; i don't know why there isn't any laundry in the basement of my building, but i'm sure there is a good reason for that too. i haven't gone in the laundry place yet, but that day will come. so far, all i know is that it shares space in a mini-mall with a porn shop called risque, which had big sign proclaiming that you should "get your risque gift cards here". it also had a large piece of graffiti alerting everyone that "corporate media lies". great graffiti for the front of a porn shop if you ask me.
more importantly, i think, i located my nearby "beer distributor", which is the place you have to go if you would like to purchase more than twelve beers in a single transaction. however, i hear the price break is not that great. we'll see about that, i'm mostly curious about the selection. all i know for sure is that they offer keystone light half barrels for fifty bucks. not going to be taking advantage of that deal any time soon, but it is somehow comforting just to know it is out there. yet another pizza and sub shop is right next to said beer distributor, and they also offer the four tall boys of beck's for five bucks. and for the first time, i noticed a price scaling that made sense in regards to beer purchase here. six packs of pbr tall boys five dollars. hell yeah. although the house that's the best across from my place does offer two for five forties as well.
also located the nearest grocery store, which i also did not enter just yet. however, the name has me excited enough. the place is seriously called supreme shop 'n' bag. what more do you need to know? my sister does her groceries there, so it can't be too bad. unfortunately i don't think i will have her situation where the guy at the fish and meat counter never lets her pay full price. today, she got charged full price and the guy chased her down like five minutes later (she was still in the store, it isn't that crazy) to give her two bucks cash. she was a little weirded out, but my position is hey, it's two bucks, fuckin take that shit. just like how i save seven dollars if i pay rent before the first of the month. i'll take it. but yeah, SUPREME shop 'N' bag.
most importantly i found my concert venue. there is a place not all that far away called world cafe live, and i had heard the name in some tapes, but looking at the lineup they have posted for they next couple of months is pretty impressive. tea leaf green, jacob fred jazz odyssey, project object, robert fripp, agent moosehead, lotus, and that's just the shit i've already heard of that i would like to check out. i just missed drive by truckers the other month there, unfortunately, and u-melt as well. but it is reasonably priced for most things and really quite nearby. i'm looking forward to checking it out proper; that tlg show is like next week already. i am excited to see those guys, i wrote them off at first but a serious consideration of their sound and ability has me questioning that. anyway, it should be fun, and lord forbid i might actually meet people i don't go to school with. maybe even some, uh, people, you know. i like to have people i know, who have people they know. i don't know if that exactly counts as "social networking", but i like to have that sort of thing together.
speaking of social networking, it is one of the skills some bullshit on npr listed "the millenials" as having. that's right, if you are a "twentysomething", you're a millenial, which means you are high-risk, high-demand, and high-output in the job market. you expect more than you deserve, and it is because you've been coddled your whole life. that's right, everyone who is within a decade of being born with someone else is the same as them. never mind actual age, economic status, ethnic group, whatever, we're all the same. and fortunately for us, some good folks out there have broken it down in an economically useful manner for the good folks who hire people. FUCK YOU WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THE TERM AND DOUBLE FUCK YOU TO WHOEVER PERFORMED THE STUDY. this is a prime example of the perpetuation of selective stereotyping of groups. in a culture of political correctness, this must be done very specifically and with a defined intent - we're not claiming to make assumptions, it's just the numbers... that shit just gets me. really really bad. so thanks for reading this, if you're between 20 and 30. we're the same, so i'm sure it all makes great sense. fuck you npr for airing that. i'll save my npr rant for later.
but serious sources indicate some sites of significance in the area. there's the nearby cvs of which i was already aware, but it is still pretty handy. lots of restaurants to check out, usually a few of every kind. few pizza places, few chinese places, few more interesting places, indian, ethiopian, soul food, etc. and some place with a 25 cent wing night with 20 flavors to choose from. soooo hitting that up. surprising and definite lack of mexican restaurants, however. i don't really know what is up with that. there really don't seem to be many hispanics around, not compared to home. nothing is bilingual here either, which i find kind of strange, surprisingly, since it is not like spanish is my first language, or even one i know a damn thing about. still, a noticeable difference from back home. another odd thing is that although being a food establishment is what allows a place to sell beer to-go, but only the pizza places really seem to be the venues offering this option. i'm sure there is some underlying logic there as well.
i found my laundromat, which is further away than i would have expected or hoped, but it really is not that far at the end of the day. i don't think i've ever patronized a laundromat before; i don't know why there isn't any laundry in the basement of my building, but i'm sure there is a good reason for that too. i haven't gone in the laundry place yet, but that day will come. so far, all i know is that it shares space in a mini-mall with a porn shop called risque, which had big sign proclaiming that you should "get your risque gift cards here". it also had a large piece of graffiti alerting everyone that "corporate media lies". great graffiti for the front of a porn shop if you ask me.
more importantly, i think, i located my nearby "beer distributor", which is the place you have to go if you would like to purchase more than twelve beers in a single transaction. however, i hear the price break is not that great. we'll see about that, i'm mostly curious about the selection. all i know for sure is that they offer keystone light half barrels for fifty bucks. not going to be taking advantage of that deal any time soon, but it is somehow comforting just to know it is out there. yet another pizza and sub shop is right next to said beer distributor, and they also offer the four tall boys of beck's for five bucks. and for the first time, i noticed a price scaling that made sense in regards to beer purchase here. six packs of pbr tall boys five dollars. hell yeah. although the house that's the best across from my place does offer two for five forties as well.
also located the nearest grocery store, which i also did not enter just yet. however, the name has me excited enough. the place is seriously called supreme shop 'n' bag. what more do you need to know? my sister does her groceries there, so it can't be too bad. unfortunately i don't think i will have her situation where the guy at the fish and meat counter never lets her pay full price. today, she got charged full price and the guy chased her down like five minutes later (she was still in the store, it isn't that crazy) to give her two bucks cash. she was a little weirded out, but my position is hey, it's two bucks, fuckin take that shit. just like how i save seven dollars if i pay rent before the first of the month. i'll take it. but yeah, SUPREME shop 'N' bag.
most importantly i found my concert venue. there is a place not all that far away called world cafe live, and i had heard the name in some tapes, but looking at the lineup they have posted for they next couple of months is pretty impressive. tea leaf green, jacob fred jazz odyssey, project object, robert fripp, agent moosehead, lotus, and that's just the shit i've already heard of that i would like to check out. i just missed drive by truckers the other month there, unfortunately, and u-melt as well. but it is reasonably priced for most things and really quite nearby. i'm looking forward to checking it out proper; that tlg show is like next week already. i am excited to see those guys, i wrote them off at first but a serious consideration of their sound and ability has me questioning that. anyway, it should be fun, and lord forbid i might actually meet people i don't go to school with. maybe even some, uh, people, you know. i like to have people i know, who have people they know. i don't know if that exactly counts as "social networking", but i like to have that sort of thing together.
speaking of social networking, it is one of the skills some bullshit on npr listed "the millenials" as having. that's right, if you are a "twentysomething", you're a millenial, which means you are high-risk, high-demand, and high-output in the job market. you expect more than you deserve, and it is because you've been coddled your whole life. that's right, everyone who is within a decade of being born with someone else is the same as them. never mind actual age, economic status, ethnic group, whatever, we're all the same. and fortunately for us, some good folks out there have broken it down in an economically useful manner for the good folks who hire people. FUCK YOU WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THE TERM AND DOUBLE FUCK YOU TO WHOEVER PERFORMED THE STUDY. this is a prime example of the perpetuation of selective stereotyping of groups. in a culture of political correctness, this must be done very specifically and with a defined intent - we're not claiming to make assumptions, it's just the numbers... that shit just gets me. really really bad. so thanks for reading this, if you're between 20 and 30. we're the same, so i'm sure it all makes great sense. fuck you npr for airing that. i'll save my npr rant for later.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
act right
i promise to try and not make this post suck so bad. sorry about the others. we'll start with a fun story. once upon a time this morning, i had to go to class like always. i walked the two or three blocks or whatever to the trolley stop and there were more people than usual standing around. i figured the trolley would be along soon if that many people had built up. i wasn't too worried; i had decent time in hand, thought i saw a trolley coming when i was crossing to the correct side of the street and figured i would stand around and finish my cigarette and let other people get on even. except that trolley i saw wasn't there. or if it was, it went the other way, or around, or something. but it probably wasn't there at all. so i just kept waiting with the other people, but at this point there were twice as many of us as i had ever seen before, so i was a little suspicious. i became much more suspicious when a group of people doubling my own double number became visible approaching from the west. the good folks confirmed that yes, as a matter of fact, we were fucked; there was a trolley broken down at 61st street (west end of the loop) and thus nothing was going to be coming along any time soon. not surprisingly, this was not a situation i had dealt with before, and i wasn't really sure what to do. at first i thought i would just kinda join in with the knot and assume they all knew what to do in this situation (i imagine this was not the first time septa had let some of these people down and they probably knew a good backup anyway). but the group peeled off in various directions and no vocal indications of what they were planning to do, and my y chromosome firmly prevented me from asking anyone at random. i tried calling my sister a couple of times but she was still kinda getting up when i left and didn't answer her phone at all. so i just kinda kept walking east down baltimore, and tried to think of what i knew, which took a little effort as this was still relatively early for my taste. i knew that there was an eastbound bus that would drop me at a good spot that runs down spruce a few blocks north of where i had walked to on baltimore, and then walnut/chestnut depending on which way it's going, so i thought i would go and try to check that out. stood around at the corner with the stop for a minute with no sign of the bus, so i figured i would start walking east again and just keep looking back for the bus and go to the nearest corner stop whenever i spotted the bus. so i kept walking and i kept looking and the bus kept not being there. finally i got to 40th and had about given up on the bus when i saw it coming a block or two behind me. i had already crossed to the wrong side of the street for the bus and noticed there was no official bus stop sign on the corner i was at any more, and i guessed it turned there so i was going to try to anticipate the turn but the light for spruce was green (go figure) and i couldn't get back across and the bus blew by. so there went that; it looked super full anyway. the only other thing i could think of as a transport option was the market-frankford el. i know nothing about the market-frankford el at all at this point, aside from that i assumed it ran down market and frankford and i knew it stopped at city hall with a free transfer to the broad street line i take to school because i walk past it when i change from trolley to subway. and i knew it had an a train and a b train, but not what that meant. it just made me think of that jazz song 'take the a train'. phish played that one. so anyway, as time until class slipped away and i walked even further with fifty pounds of shit in my bag (which is still a kick-ass bag maybe even better than zip-lock) i figured the worst thing that would happen is i would walk my ass all the way up market to city hall and catch the broad street line. the hope was that i would stumble on this other subway somewhere though. and that is when things started to get together: my earlier misstep of continuing to walk to 40th which caused me to miss the bus led me straight to a subway stop at market and 40th. this seemed like an unbeatably better bet than the lengthy walk with fully loaded saddlebags, so i figured i'd give it a shot. ladies and gentlemen, i shit you not, this was the nicest subway station i have ever encountered, and it was totally a minor stop. it was in good repair, shockingly clean, and, most unbelievably, there was not even a *hint* of piss in the air. i was a little worried that it wasn't a real subway station at that point. but lo and behold, after not even two minutes of waiting, along came the train. it was the b train, but i wasn't too worried, having seen trains of both flavors stopped in the part of city hall station i was trying to get to. i got on and was immediately again overwhelmed by the step up in quality this subway has over the broad street line. not only that, the train also hauled more ass and stopped less. a+ public transit, would ride again. it was like my reward for not freaking out when i found out there weren't gonna be no trolley a-comin' round the bend. so thus ends the suspense, i got to city hall at like 8:42 and some seconds or whatever before my nine o' clock class and was in my seat with like five minutes to spare. kind of anti-climatic, but hopefully not a bad story, albeit perhaps a touch unnecessarily long. they're more fun that way. more fun to write, at least.
so i made it to class on time, and class was class. i'm starting to get more and more used to it, but the feel is definitely not what i was used to, but i guess eventually it will be what i am accustomed to. profs in law school know how to ask questions in a very unique and penetrating way, probably owing to their experience as lawyers. the thing is, typically it seems as though they aren't hunting for a particular answer at all. there are things they want to hear and analysis they want people to utilize, but the idea is not that there is a "right" answer they are trying to tease out of people. you can be wrong or more wrong (not as wrong as you are dude), or right or more right, but the prof is not going to wait for someone to get close and then tell you exactly what they were looking for. i'm still a little intimidated by that since my nature is more to listen to what people have to say and try and distill my own thoughts from there. i just have to be a little more willing to go out on a limb. just not a flimsy one that causes me a nasty fall on the way down. if i'm gonna go down, i'd at least prefer to avoid the intervening branches, you know?
one bright spot is my anticipation of doing decent on my upcoming memo-writing assignment for legal research and writing. the prof seems to think that most people are really confused by the format-heavy habit which legal memos must occupy, but it seems like the most logical thing in the world to me. the only worry is how to fit it within a rather confined space. the organizing acronym is CRuPAC, not to be confused with tupac. however, when i ride on my enemies, it sounds about the same (biatch!!!). the idea is to state your conclusion outright, establish the rule governing the situation, prove that this is the right rule to use, apply the cases facts under above rule, and then restate the conclusion. i kind of don't want to make the analogy, but the whole thing really reminds me of all the policy debate arguments i dealt with back in the day. people always asked me back then if i planned to become a lawyer. i definitely was not planning on it at first, then i considered it, and then i thought certainly not. so, of course, here i am now.
today concluded classes for my week, and it's always nice to feel like i have another one under the belt. it would have felt even better to have this one settled if i could have participated in an exclusive happy hour for my section (the only one with no friday class) and an overlapping happy hour with the irish law organization at the bar and grille on campus. unfortunately, i could not attend because i had to get back to west philly so i could (singing) sign my lease and get my fuckin keeeeeys. so that is now settled; i have a place. i will be able to move all my shit in on saturday, but i can go and hang around in an unfurnished apartment tomorrow if i want i guess. not gonna lie, i did do that for a little while today, just because i could. so my key ring is now more full than it ever has been, and i don't have any car keys any more. nor do i even have my mailbox key. but this place has two separate front doors that need different keys and then the key to my apartment. move in bonuses include a twin size box spring and mattress and half a bottle each of triple-sec and sour mix. like all move in scores (other than that stupid white winter abercrombie jacket karnes and co. found at wealthy that i wore for a winter), i don't really need or want them, but i don't really know what to do with them. i'll probably use the sour mix and triple-sec as excuses to by half gallons of shitty liquor to make long islands with. i'll be able to make like four and then i will be stuck with shitty rum and vodka i don't want to drink but will anyway. and then you'll be subjected to the subsequent post. better that than getting lost on a nearby side street, thanks mulligan's esp. gwen. oh, and there is a thoroughly decent rug and some sort of furniture thing i think might be called an armoir? whatever. the rug is alright, but i don't plan on making much use of that thingy with the drawers which isn't exactly a dresser. the real question is what to do with my vast amount of space. probably accumulate shit i won't want to move when i go.
this already extensive post has been brought to you by yuengling premium beer and wilco, which will be my final extended springboards for rants to fill out what shall become an even longer post. first of all, yuengling premium beer is different from yuengling traditional lager. for some reason the idea persists that lager is a style of beer rather than a family of styles of beers. typically when something is called a lager, it is a pilsner. the interesting thing here is that there is a marked distinction between yuengling lager and yuengling premium beer, which is more of a pilsner, and not as delicious as the "lager" somehow. the premium is more like a budweiser, but still several cuts above that. and at only a dollar more for the four pack of tall boys than beck's, i figured i would give it a shot. alright for a change of pace. i was already wondering before i cracked one what the difference from the lager would be though, and my research revealed what i already said. however, i also discovered that yuengling used to make something called old german, which was their discount line of lager which sounds like it would have been pretty good. twenty years ago, you could get a six pack of it for a buck fifteen. damn. i don't know inflation backwards and forwards, but that seems like a bargain, the best i never had. they don't make it any more anyway, but some place called pittsburgh brewing company has the rights to make it now; i'll have to keep my eye out for that. these guys also make a beer called, no shit, "totally dirt cheap beer". even better in name, there is naturally a "totally dirt cheap light beer" as well. this is true, and you know it is 'cos the wikipedia said so. check it out. told you so.
as mentioned previously, the other fuel source for this incorrigibly long post is wilco, specifically a show from all of four days ago freshly downloaded off of etree. if someone out there has never checked out etree, you need to. you will be shocked at the diversity and quality of the available audio. if you haven't used bittorrent, it isn't difficult, the site will show you all you need to do, but i think everyone out there could find something they'd be really happy with. in fact, if you wouldn't be happy with this wilco show, you're a rat fink. good recording, good setlist, and classic jeff banter. i think he cracked a Yes joke earlier, something about having some people come up and play close to the edge (which is like 20 minutes, see, it's funny). but way better and more typical was his brief bitch session about A.M., talking about how that record gets the shaft. the crowd reacts favorably as if to suggest, yes jeff, you're right, those bastards never give that album the love it deserves. further commentary from jeff indicates he is actually castigating the fans. he says that this lineup of the band is going to re-record the whole record and "you all are gonna eat it up and be like 'this is the best record ever'". you want to be pissed at him, because you know you love a.m., but when you think about it, he's really probably right. we can all aspire as much. good enough for now. at least an improvement. comment, fuckers. and thanks for reading.
so i made it to class on time, and class was class. i'm starting to get more and more used to it, but the feel is definitely not what i was used to, but i guess eventually it will be what i am accustomed to. profs in law school know how to ask questions in a very unique and penetrating way, probably owing to their experience as lawyers. the thing is, typically it seems as though they aren't hunting for a particular answer at all. there are things they want to hear and analysis they want people to utilize, but the idea is not that there is a "right" answer they are trying to tease out of people. you can be wrong or more wrong (not as wrong as you are dude), or right or more right, but the prof is not going to wait for someone to get close and then tell you exactly what they were looking for. i'm still a little intimidated by that since my nature is more to listen to what people have to say and try and distill my own thoughts from there. i just have to be a little more willing to go out on a limb. just not a flimsy one that causes me a nasty fall on the way down. if i'm gonna go down, i'd at least prefer to avoid the intervening branches, you know?
one bright spot is my anticipation of doing decent on my upcoming memo-writing assignment for legal research and writing. the prof seems to think that most people are really confused by the format-heavy habit which legal memos must occupy, but it seems like the most logical thing in the world to me. the only worry is how to fit it within a rather confined space. the organizing acronym is CRuPAC, not to be confused with tupac. however, when i ride on my enemies, it sounds about the same (biatch!!!). the idea is to state your conclusion outright, establish the rule governing the situation, prove that this is the right rule to use, apply the cases facts under above rule, and then restate the conclusion. i kind of don't want to make the analogy, but the whole thing really reminds me of all the policy debate arguments i dealt with back in the day. people always asked me back then if i planned to become a lawyer. i definitely was not planning on it at first, then i considered it, and then i thought certainly not. so, of course, here i am now.
today concluded classes for my week, and it's always nice to feel like i have another one under the belt. it would have felt even better to have this one settled if i could have participated in an exclusive happy hour for my section (the only one with no friday class) and an overlapping happy hour with the irish law organization at the bar and grille on campus. unfortunately, i could not attend because i had to get back to west philly so i could (singing) sign my lease and get my fuckin keeeeeys. so that is now settled; i have a place. i will be able to move all my shit in on saturday, but i can go and hang around in an unfurnished apartment tomorrow if i want i guess. not gonna lie, i did do that for a little while today, just because i could. so my key ring is now more full than it ever has been, and i don't have any car keys any more. nor do i even have my mailbox key. but this place has two separate front doors that need different keys and then the key to my apartment. move in bonuses include a twin size box spring and mattress and half a bottle each of triple-sec and sour mix. like all move in scores (other than that stupid white winter abercrombie jacket karnes and co. found at wealthy that i wore for a winter), i don't really need or want them, but i don't really know what to do with them. i'll probably use the sour mix and triple-sec as excuses to by half gallons of shitty liquor to make long islands with. i'll be able to make like four and then i will be stuck with shitty rum and vodka i don't want to drink but will anyway. and then you'll be subjected to the subsequent post. better that than getting lost on a nearby side street, thanks mulligan's esp. gwen. oh, and there is a thoroughly decent rug and some sort of furniture thing i think might be called an armoir? whatever. the rug is alright, but i don't plan on making much use of that thingy with the drawers which isn't exactly a dresser. the real question is what to do with my vast amount of space. probably accumulate shit i won't want to move when i go.
this already extensive post has been brought to you by yuengling premium beer and wilco, which will be my final extended springboards for rants to fill out what shall become an even longer post. first of all, yuengling premium beer is different from yuengling traditional lager. for some reason the idea persists that lager is a style of beer rather than a family of styles of beers. typically when something is called a lager, it is a pilsner. the interesting thing here is that there is a marked distinction between yuengling lager and yuengling premium beer, which is more of a pilsner, and not as delicious as the "lager" somehow. the premium is more like a budweiser, but still several cuts above that. and at only a dollar more for the four pack of tall boys than beck's, i figured i would give it a shot. alright for a change of pace. i was already wondering before i cracked one what the difference from the lager would be though, and my research revealed what i already said. however, i also discovered that yuengling used to make something called old german, which was their discount line of lager which sounds like it would have been pretty good. twenty years ago, you could get a six pack of it for a buck fifteen. damn. i don't know inflation backwards and forwards, but that seems like a bargain, the best i never had. they don't make it any more anyway, but some place called pittsburgh brewing company has the rights to make it now; i'll have to keep my eye out for that. these guys also make a beer called, no shit, "totally dirt cheap beer". even better in name, there is naturally a "totally dirt cheap light beer" as well. this is true, and you know it is 'cos the wikipedia said so. check it out. told you so.
as mentioned previously, the other fuel source for this incorrigibly long post is wilco, specifically a show from all of four days ago freshly downloaded off of etree. if someone out there has never checked out etree, you need to. you will be shocked at the diversity and quality of the available audio. if you haven't used bittorrent, it isn't difficult, the site will show you all you need to do, but i think everyone out there could find something they'd be really happy with. in fact, if you wouldn't be happy with this wilco show, you're a rat fink. good recording, good setlist, and classic jeff banter. i think he cracked a Yes joke earlier, something about having some people come up and play close to the edge (which is like 20 minutes, see, it's funny). but way better and more typical was his brief bitch session about A.M., talking about how that record gets the shaft. the crowd reacts favorably as if to suggest, yes jeff, you're right, those bastards never give that album the love it deserves. further commentary from jeff indicates he is actually castigating the fans. he says that this lineup of the band is going to re-record the whole record and "you all are gonna eat it up and be like 'this is the best record ever'". you want to be pissed at him, because you know you love a.m., but when you think about it, he's really probably right. we can all aspire as much. good enough for now. at least an improvement. comment, fuckers. and thanks for reading.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
westward to wagons...
so it is apparently in the bag, all i have to do is show up with the money and i can become a non-squatting resident of west philadelphia. and i could use a wagon to move my shit. either like a regular wagon or the wagon of cucamonga. or a wagon to be named later. i think i left some part of me that enables excitement back home, i haven't been able to get real geeked up about anything out here, even things i really like. not that i'm not having fun, but only a few things have gotten me super hyped. mostly new potato chips. and a new wilco show on etree. those fuckers are playing detroit. and pittsburgh. and not philly.
not that i'd have money to go. i'm never going to have any money ever again for the rest of my life. i wish there was a biolife in west philly; that would kick more as than i could ever tell you. that was really the lynchpin of my earlier financial success during educational times. i had all i could have wanted, really. fifty extra bucks a week is no joke for a person like myself. fortunately i will have the best house. i know i've mentioned it many times, but i really can't say enough about how the best house is the best fucking house ever. and opening soon i will open the best apartment, conveniently located across the street from the best house. list of inventory and offers coming soon. let's just say that if you want to move to philly, call me. i'll tell you where i live and then you can live there too cause its fucking huge. and it will have cats. and the best house. the best house has a bigger menu than eastown deli ever imagined. breakfast all day. that's right fuckers. and i don't even like breakfast. but they also have like 40 some sandwiches, pizzas, calzones, platters, you fucking name it, it's on senor. no burritos, that's the only glaring omission. but there's el vez for mexican food. i'm gonna rob some shit so i can eat at restaurants all the time. lawyers don't usually get to be restaurant critics. i fucked up. or booze critics. i really fucked up... michael jackson the booze dude died last week. bummer. i drank that expensive booze for him. anyway, restaurant week is coming up here in philly. all the good places make up special menus where shit is cheap and appealing. i can dig that the most. even more than 120 minutes on vh1 classic. but not as much as getting drunk. i still like that one a lot. and nothing here is mutually exclusive.
as you can tell, i don't have shit to say. i'm drinking and reiterating much of what you have already slogged through what i've blogged.
well, i just deleted like five paragraphs that no one needed to see or read. not even a therapist if i had one. at least not that i would tell them. don't trust 'em. i'm gonna stop this non-post before it gets any worse.
but i will warn you about the coors light train. it's comin down your street to wreck your shit. you think it's good arnes but its just gonna straight destroy and leave you with only ONE beer. not compensation enoguh.
not that i'd have money to go. i'm never going to have any money ever again for the rest of my life. i wish there was a biolife in west philly; that would kick more as than i could ever tell you. that was really the lynchpin of my earlier financial success during educational times. i had all i could have wanted, really. fifty extra bucks a week is no joke for a person like myself. fortunately i will have the best house. i know i've mentioned it many times, but i really can't say enough about how the best house is the best fucking house ever. and opening soon i will open the best apartment, conveniently located across the street from the best house. list of inventory and offers coming soon. let's just say that if you want to move to philly, call me. i'll tell you where i live and then you can live there too cause its fucking huge. and it will have cats. and the best house. the best house has a bigger menu than eastown deli ever imagined. breakfast all day. that's right fuckers. and i don't even like breakfast. but they also have like 40 some sandwiches, pizzas, calzones, platters, you fucking name it, it's on senor. no burritos, that's the only glaring omission. but there's el vez for mexican food. i'm gonna rob some shit so i can eat at restaurants all the time. lawyers don't usually get to be restaurant critics. i fucked up. or booze critics. i really fucked up... michael jackson the booze dude died last week. bummer. i drank that expensive booze for him. anyway, restaurant week is coming up here in philly. all the good places make up special menus where shit is cheap and appealing. i can dig that the most. even more than 120 minutes on vh1 classic. but not as much as getting drunk. i still like that one a lot. and nothing here is mutually exclusive.
as you can tell, i don't have shit to say. i'm drinking and reiterating much of what you have already slogged through what i've blogged.
well, i just deleted like five paragraphs that no one needed to see or read. not even a therapist if i had one. at least not that i would tell them. don't trust 'em. i'm gonna stop this non-post before it gets any worse.
but i will warn you about the coors light train. it's comin down your street to wreck your shit. you think it's good arnes but its just gonna straight destroy and leave you with only ONE beer. not compensation enoguh.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
went alright....
dude's car got a little dinged up. so i got called on at random for the first time in law school. i guess that is the way it is supposed to go, according to the paper chase and so forth. there is actually a student group dedicated to raising awareness that law school is not like the paper chase. i didn't need them to convince me once i got there; the profs are generally really nice people and they don't tear anyone a new asshole unless somebody really begs for it (they do sometimes). here's the thing: first of all, i got called on as a result of doing the right thing. there is a supplement book we're all supposed to bring to contracts. the prof called on three people before me, and none of them had their book. i was just the next one in line and of course i had the book. but it wasn't like, would you please read this section from the book? it was, what part of this section is corollary to the objective theory of contract formation? and that is where it started. i was responsible for questions for the next twenty five minutes, and it was mostly okay. far from perfect, but not inadequate. which is about the average for anybody when they have to deal with that many questions about a case we had to read a little over a week ago. as if the general situation wasn't enough on its own, i was describing the case, which involved a potential buyer of a parcel of land and the seller, to keep things nice and basic. and while she thankfully didn't note most of what i said on the board, she was also interested in getting the basics down. so while i'm trying to recall and communicate the details she decides to abbreviate on the board "pot. buyer v. seller" and of course i immediately imagined a lawsuit over a skinny or shitty bag and i couldn't laugh or joke or anything, i had to keep answering questions. rough. and yet, somehow, i made it through. it's good to have that first one out of the way.
actually, that really isn't the only thing that happened to me today. i also finally got my refund check from school, which is a first. i've never had loans before, how thrilling. well, i'm glad to have money, even if a bunch of it at once is strange. the odd thing is more that this is the only check i will be getting for a really long time. i wish i got these every two weeks. well, i wish i got these every two weeks and didn't have to repay them. that's another concept that takes a little getting used to. of course this comes with all the attendant fun of new bank account, etc. something to look forward to in the next day or two.
and now, what there is really to look forward to: spending a good chunk of that money to finally rent another apartment. i think i have found the place. out in west philly a couple of blocks from my sister's. nice big space, bi-level apartment (cats are gonna freak with excitement; they haven't had a place with stairs since logan), few closets, room i don't even know what i'll do with, next to a coffee shop (oh wait i don't give a shit about coffee shops, they don't have booze). what is really sweet is that it is at the top of the building. the upper half of the place is actually higher up than everything else in the area; it's the fourth floor in a neighborhood of three floor homes, so the view is totally badass; tons of beautiful old victorian houses in this part of the city. kitty corner from a pretty cool park. and most importantly, across from best house, or as i like to call it, the house that's the best. or the house of best. but house that's the best is great cause i can sing that norman greenbaum song "spirit in the sky" when i die and they lay me to rest, i'm gonna go to the house that's the best. except i'm gonna go while i'm alive to take advantage of the kick ass sandwiches and microbrews and 5 dollar 4 packs of 16 oz. beck's cans. hopefully everything will work out. stay tuned.
actually, that really isn't the only thing that happened to me today. i also finally got my refund check from school, which is a first. i've never had loans before, how thrilling. well, i'm glad to have money, even if a bunch of it at once is strange. the odd thing is more that this is the only check i will be getting for a really long time. i wish i got these every two weeks. well, i wish i got these every two weeks and didn't have to repay them. that's another concept that takes a little getting used to. of course this comes with all the attendant fun of new bank account, etc. something to look forward to in the next day or two.
and now, what there is really to look forward to: spending a good chunk of that money to finally rent another apartment. i think i have found the place. out in west philly a couple of blocks from my sister's. nice big space, bi-level apartment (cats are gonna freak with excitement; they haven't had a place with stairs since logan), few closets, room i don't even know what i'll do with, next to a coffee shop (oh wait i don't give a shit about coffee shops, they don't have booze). what is really sweet is that it is at the top of the building. the upper half of the place is actually higher up than everything else in the area; it's the fourth floor in a neighborhood of three floor homes, so the view is totally badass; tons of beautiful old victorian houses in this part of the city. kitty corner from a pretty cool park. and most importantly, across from best house, or as i like to call it, the house that's the best. or the house of best. but house that's the best is great cause i can sing that norman greenbaum song "spirit in the sky" when i die and they lay me to rest, i'm gonna go to the house that's the best. except i'm gonna go while i'm alive to take advantage of the kick ass sandwiches and microbrews and 5 dollar 4 packs of 16 oz. beck's cans. hopefully everything will work out. stay tuned.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
the man who stepped into a non-day
i guess that characterization is a bit harsh, but i have that feeling like i really didn't do shit today, which is overall fairly accurate. even now it is late and i sit up typing this mostly because i'm not doing anything else. so be prepared for some shocking news and scintillating insight. first of all, 120 minutes on vh1 classic kicks a bunch of ass. moving on...
i did get up at a reasonable our today and get out of the house, though unfortunately without any places to go look at which may have been my house in the future. not much shakin on the weekends, especially holiday weekends, in that regard. the city is large and has a home for me somewhere, just gotta track it down. but i did get out to go down to a friend's right near love park to hang out and catch authentic futbol as referred to in some earlier post i didn't write drunk, so it was a few back. either way, i watched a lampard-deprived chelsea side lose two-nil at aston villa. they just didn't have the execution one would expect out of the bunch. i was just happy to see some EPL and i wasn't too broken up over the loss, but the guy whose apartment it was and another guy who was hanging out are both chelsea die-hards, so they were kinda disappointed. those fools (chelsea, not the people i know) were in some new gear that was highlighter yellow; a bit of a departure for a team so widely known as 'the blues'. anyway, it turned out that after that match barcalona was playing bilbao on another channel, and that one was even more fun to watch; barca pretty much had the run of things for most of the game, some excellent set pieces from ronaldinho, who really does bear serious resemblance to a horse. not any particular horse, he's just horse-like in appearance. never has the term 'pony-tail' been more apt.
we later got some lunch at five guys burgers and fries, which i guess is a relatively minor chain out of the d.c. area, and those are some good burgers walter. cool little place, more pricey than it should be (to my mind), but overall really quality food and not shockingly expensive. they seriously hook it up on the food front too, i didn't realize when i was ordering that all the burgers are double burgers, and that a 'regular' sized fry is a full 16 oz. cup with about half as much spilling over into the bag containing the food you have ordered. needless to say i did not go away hungry. in other food news, i also recently patronized the establishment pioneering the "yes! in the sandwich!" approach to the french fry/gyro relationship, but have yet to eat said gyro. maybe next time. final food note for this post, i promise: earlier my sister asked me what i wanted done with a cvs bag i had sitting on the table, and i went to go move it and she made some comment about the odd assembly of contents in the bag, which featured mouthwash and dry-roasted peanuts and i made some reply about all the msg from the nuts making the mouthwash super delicious and how i've never been able to find dry roasted peanuts without msg and a discussion of msg ensued. hours later, i opened and began to consume said peanuts, noting that the flavor was not exactly what i was used to. i postulated first that they may be old; i don't know how quickly the university city cvs goes through large jars of dry roasted peanuts. but that wasn't it at all. i checked it out, and these are totally msg free. i am still recovering from this shock to my worldview. if you are trying to avoid msg and love dry roasted peanuts, cvs is the brand for you my friend. actually i would be curious if there was a regional difference on this. this is why i am still awake; these sorts of pressing issues occupy my mind and keep me from rest. how can i sleep during a crisis like this?
so yeah, those have been the highlights. i have big plans for tomorrow like finishing what little reading i have left to do before class on tuesday. hope you all have big labor day schemes smiled upon by gorgeous weather. i think i'll mostly repeat today, listening to new downloads, playing snood and solitaire, dicking around on wikipedia, having lengthy comforting phone conversations, looking for an apartment by hitting the refresh button in the craigslist tab, etc. i need to take a nice weekend away from the strenuous physical labor i engage in for which this holiday was established. you should too.
i did get up at a reasonable our today and get out of the house, though unfortunately without any places to go look at which may have been my house in the future. not much shakin on the weekends, especially holiday weekends, in that regard. the city is large and has a home for me somewhere, just gotta track it down. but i did get out to go down to a friend's right near love park to hang out and catch authentic futbol as referred to in some earlier post i didn't write drunk, so it was a few back. either way, i watched a lampard-deprived chelsea side lose two-nil at aston villa. they just didn't have the execution one would expect out of the bunch. i was just happy to see some EPL and i wasn't too broken up over the loss, but the guy whose apartment it was and another guy who was hanging out are both chelsea die-hards, so they were kinda disappointed. those fools (chelsea, not the people i know) were in some new gear that was highlighter yellow; a bit of a departure for a team so widely known as 'the blues'. anyway, it turned out that after that match barcalona was playing bilbao on another channel, and that one was even more fun to watch; barca pretty much had the run of things for most of the game, some excellent set pieces from ronaldinho, who really does bear serious resemblance to a horse. not any particular horse, he's just horse-like in appearance. never has the term 'pony-tail' been more apt.
we later got some lunch at five guys burgers and fries, which i guess is a relatively minor chain out of the d.c. area, and those are some good burgers walter. cool little place, more pricey than it should be (to my mind), but overall really quality food and not shockingly expensive. they seriously hook it up on the food front too, i didn't realize when i was ordering that all the burgers are double burgers, and that a 'regular' sized fry is a full 16 oz. cup with about half as much spilling over into the bag containing the food you have ordered. needless to say i did not go away hungry. in other food news, i also recently patronized the establishment pioneering the "yes! in the sandwich!" approach to the french fry/gyro relationship, but have yet to eat said gyro. maybe next time. final food note for this post, i promise: earlier my sister asked me what i wanted done with a cvs bag i had sitting on the table, and i went to go move it and she made some comment about the odd assembly of contents in the bag, which featured mouthwash and dry-roasted peanuts and i made some reply about all the msg from the nuts making the mouthwash super delicious and how i've never been able to find dry roasted peanuts without msg and a discussion of msg ensued. hours later, i opened and began to consume said peanuts, noting that the flavor was not exactly what i was used to. i postulated first that they may be old; i don't know how quickly the university city cvs goes through large jars of dry roasted peanuts. but that wasn't it at all. i checked it out, and these are totally msg free. i am still recovering from this shock to my worldview. if you are trying to avoid msg and love dry roasted peanuts, cvs is the brand for you my friend. actually i would be curious if there was a regional difference on this. this is why i am still awake; these sorts of pressing issues occupy my mind and keep me from rest. how can i sleep during a crisis like this?
so yeah, those have been the highlights. i have big plans for tomorrow like finishing what little reading i have left to do before class on tuesday. hope you all have big labor day schemes smiled upon by gorgeous weather. i think i'll mostly repeat today, listening to new downloads, playing snood and solitaire, dicking around on wikipedia, having lengthy comforting phone conversations, looking for an apartment by hitting the refresh button in the craigslist tab, etc. i need to take a nice weekend away from the strenuous physical labor i engage in for which this holiday was established. you should too.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
wind up workin' in a gas station
if you don't know zappa, you don't know phish. if you don't know phish, you don't know shit. lebowski. i know my rights man. i want phil kuntseler. or ron kube. or metal.
truth
for now, this goes out to karnes, until he can send it back my way:
I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty don't ya know, and I'm still, willin'
Out on the road late at night, Seen my pretty Alice in every head light
Alice, Dallas Alice
I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'
I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet
Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still... willin'
Now I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico
baked by the sun, every time I go to Mexico, and I'm still
And I been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin
always willin' to be your attorney when i'm bar approved (not that bar, the other one),
metal
I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty don't ya know, and I'm still, willin'
Out on the road late at night, Seen my pretty Alice in every head light
Alice, Dallas Alice
I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'
I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet
Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still... willin'
Now I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico
baked by the sun, every time I go to Mexico, and I'm still
And I been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin
always willin' to be your attorney when i'm bar approved (not that bar, the other one),
metal
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