i nearly lost me there

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

dumpster derby

yesterday i had the privilege to witness the second annual event known as the dumpster derby. this is not a race between people in dumpsters, rather, people on contraptions built of implements found in dumpsters. just one hill on the long side of a block in the middle of the neighborhood, and, as a friend put it, *this* is what i call a community event. most successful items were modified palettes or other wheeled industrial products. one dude had a broke ass chair on two skateboards. someone else had a plastic horse (like the ones with springs for kids) rigged up with a stroller and possibly some part of a cart. all in all, a good time. half of the people hanging around were all dressed up for halloween as well, since holidays on wednesdays are fair game on the previous or following weekend. the only disappointment (judging by various comments in the crowd) is that nothing got set on fire. i was told that last year an american flag wound up on fire (accidentally, really) as the rig bearing its banner flew down the hill, causing flaming fragments to haphazardly flutter into nearby yards and on to nearby people, etc. at least the cops didn't show up this year.
i did see a fair share of cops during my legal observing, however. but not regular ones, these guys are the civil something or another. they all wear suits and have an orange arm band. all of them wear suits except for the very few women, that is. they clearly had to make some painful fashion decisions. i honestly felt real bad for a cop in a nonviolent situation. and nonviolent it was. almost non-anything at first; it was pouring rain, including a portion where it came in almost sideways. needless to say, turnout was minimal at the original scheduled hour. i was supposed to stay in one place and wait for my hat, but a center city intersection actually comprises a significant chunk of space. i started in front of a goodwill shop with a awning that was apparently for aesthetic purposes only; whatever it really was, the word "shelter" does not factor into the description in any way whatsoever. the porn shops a couple spots down had decent awnings, but i decided to forgo them for the moment in favor of hoping to be spotted in my appointed place to receive the hat (they're neon green) despite trying to shelter as much of my large person as possible with a rather modest umbrella (ten fucking dollars! on the other hand i would have paid a hundred if i didn't have one when i was in the monsoon...). i eventually crossed the street directly facing the porn shops to take advantage of a real awning on a nice building i believe has condos and a grocery store. i stood there for a while with a couple people who came and went, except one dude who stayed. turned out he was the only visible link in what was hoped to be a human chain through a couple mile stretch or so of the city. we stood under there until some organizer said this guy and the other couple people affiliated who turned up were supposed to be on the other side of the street, so i wound up with them under the porn shop awning hoping to absorb heat from the neon silhouettes gracing the storefronts. finally the rain let up and many more people began to file into the line. after what seemed like an absurdly long wait i received my defining headgear. after that i got to wander around and discovered that quite a number of people were lining the streets back toward the beginning and end of the line; i had been at a turn in the route. one of the interesting facets of this event was that it was mostly comprised of people representing any one of forty-odd groups participating. seems to have been an ideal way to go about it, as it turned out much more successful than i had imagined given the responses i got when i talked about what i was going to do this weekend. the whole event was really quite a thought-provoking experience. it was fun to be there and also certain about my purpose, and also to not have anything demanded of me in my first foray. the civil officers did an excellent job in my experience, taking care of traffic very effectively, in all seriousness. the only counter-protesters i saw were at the end of the line in independence national park territory, so there were rangers there and a a bunch of the civil people and a knot of legal observers. there weren't that many of us, but we outnumbered the counter-protesters two to one, and the ratio of them versus actual protesters was, well, maybe five hundred to one. i appreciate the fact that there are counter-protesters, regardless of my person feelings on their opinions. but i must say that i have never heard a group chant a slogan with no rhyme at all. and not only no rhyme, but simply bizarre sentiment: "war freed the slaves! war freed the jews! anti-war racists, go home!" i had one other equally-confusing hearing. when i was in front of some teachers' group, whose signs made the fact that they were teachers readily apparent, a person drove by and screamed out the window at the people to get a job. man, the giant banner they were holding presented the fact that they were teachers in a font the size of my face. what the hell? public school teachers in huge ass cities need passersby to harangue them like they need no child left behind. one other really odd thing about the whole affair was its anti-climatic conclusion. a huge group of people were at an important historical site and there was a really shitty sound system and some people played some nearly inaudible protest songs were you could mostly just hear the drums. it was kind of like sitting at home in that respect. a lot of the groups had booths set up as well, and that was interesting because you could get a chance to look into what their particular primary issues were beyond simply opposing the war. everything from unions to pro-life groups to a surprising amount of ron paul supporters. my favorite things about ron paul are that almost every piece of information i've ever seen about him is headed by the question "who is ron paul?" great question, always an answer ripe for dissection, as defining oneself in the small space of a political pamphlet in terms of policy views is relevant on a number of levels. i also like how much of his supporters make liberal use of bedsheets to spread their beliefs. i think that says something about having some part of the college vote more than anything, i guess. ron paul is speaking here sometime soon and i doubt we'll be observing it, but that should prove to be an intriguing event in itself. all that aside, i stood around for what seemed like another unbearably long stretch of time before i turned in my hat (i know, i can't believe i don't even get to keep one) and checked out the easternmost trolley station for the first time. weird station, not like anything else i've seen, just needlessly big much like the labyrinths it is probably attached to, city hall/15th street. there have to be minotaurs in that shit somewhere. minotaurs who constantly piss everywhere when no one is looking. i will register to vote here as soon as some candidate for anything, i don't give a fuck if it is school board or drain commissioner (do they have that here?), makes a vow to hunt down and slay these creatures personally.
time for music. no steely dan, i promise. i do want to follow up and say that it turns out the dead did more than i knew, including a rare "i want to tell you" from revolver. nice, fuckin right, eh? also "it's all too much", one of my personal beatles faves. i know there is at least one more too. but i won't go on about that again. right now i'm appreciating the nuances of bar tapes via the back forty at billy's. good ones like this drown out the crowd most of the time, but with a band like this most quiet moments are propelled by rather than marred by bar chatter. great banter from the band and appropriately amusing overly-loud people insert their spot at random into the record. the moments of interaction are always good too. since i am betting against anyone bothering to ever download anything i recommend, i'll just tell you about my small place in this one, on june 27 of this year. knowing this would be probably be my last time seeing them at billy's, i talked to the guitar/mandolin player and made a request. they honored it, and i had introduced myself by my real name because i was trying to get used to doing so, and when they give me a shout out a bunch of drunk buddies (it was the end of the third set, cut us a break) yell "metal!" and the band riffs enter sandman for a couple of bars before launching into a generous version of a tune i had always enjoyed but had never personally heard them play. i find it all funny at least, being well situated for that. this show also has the best version of another brick in the wall part two ever played by anyone anywhere (floyd wasn't the band it had been at that point, regardless of personal tastes for extended live exploration), complete with fear and loathing quotes deep in the jam. but these are the things that make music like this happen in one of its best ways. well, i couldn't help it, i ruined another perfectly good post by talking about music no one gives a fuck about. part of the package. these are the things i think about to help keep my sanity.

wait

i forgot the lyrics. isn't that a show now? don't forget the words, or something like that. some sort of a karaoke competition "reality show". probably on fox. anyway, i seem to have committed the titular error in my last post. here they are, context be damned. if you are unfamiliar with the must to these words, i strongly advise you to fix that problem, for problem it is.

Any news was good news
And the feeling was bad at home
I was out of mind and you
Were on the phone
Lonnie was the kingpin
Back in nineteen sixty-five
I was singing this song
When lonnie came alive

Bring back the boston rag
Tell all your buddies
That it aint no drag
Bring back the boston rag

You were lady bayside
There was nothing that I could do
So I pointed my car down
Seventh avenue
Lonnie swept the playroom
And he swallowed up all he found
It was forty-eight hours til
Lonnie came around

Bring back the boston rag
Tell all your buddies
That it aint no drag
Bring back the boston rag

it does lose something with the music missing, but i think even more without the backing vocals like "bring it back bring it back now" and "you'd better bring on home" during various choruses. if you bothered to read the fagan link from the real post from today, you already know the background of the idea for this song. if you didn't bother, seriously, just read it, you're trying to kill time, aren't you:? good choice, best seller.
i have been on an inexcusable steely dan advocacy rage, and i don't really understand it. proclaiming the virtues to people who neither know or care. in the words of the hippo: "jimi hendrix said music is my religion/ and that's the only one i understand". can't really link their lyrics just yet. that song also contains one of the most notorious pair of lines to my mind: "i read the good book/ before i used all the papers". i knew a dude who rolled cigs with pages of a copy of the book of mormon (spell check wants it capitalized, interesting). mostly, right now, it is taking serious restraint to refrain from appending the words to "my old school" as well.

i've got a feeling

that the beatles' song of the same title is top five for them. maybe just personal preference. it seems to be a jam band favorite for covering a beatles song, for whatever reason. i don't think anyone huge has ever done it; as far as i know the dead did hey jude finale and tomorrow never knows, i think they did lucy in the sky too, but i'm not as sure about that. i know phil at least has though. now that i think about i feel more like the dead proper did it as well. phish of course had the whole white album once, and day in the life many times. i personally just find it interesting to examine the treatment of what is perhaps the most revered canon of rock and roll gets in a scene partially concerned with iterations of well-regarded and beloved songs. obviously song structure feeds into cover choices to some degree, but i find the prevalence of i've got a feeling particularly intriguing, perhaps just because it was one of those beatles tunes i did not discover until later on in life, and also because said prevalence largely exists with small-timers i've scoped out on archive (although the choice cut so far isn't so small time; tea leaf with i think vince from leftover salmon guesting). also saw one set list with the tune that follows it, one after 909, denoted as "punk version". made sense. if i was in a jam band, though, i think if i was going to choose a beatles tune off let it be i would go with get back. lots of ground for keyboard improv. why do i think about these things? i don't know. fantasies of entirely different lifestyle i guess. this whole record is so strange, from the jarringly brief maggie may thing at the end of the first side after the title cut (wonder if it is shorter than her majesty at the end of abbey road?) to all of the odd background comments at the end of lots of tracks. anyway, lots of great stuff that didn't make it on to the compilations i knew growing up, especially the "blue" two record set. old brown shoe? what the fuck? i don't think i know anyone into that tune. if you are, speak up and defend your claim. i think maybe george wrote that one though, maybe the tune is there for diversity's sake. but i'm not here today to go on and on about the intricacies of the catalog (would that it were), and you're not here to read me go on about it so. no, rather, i am here to gripe about a wider scope of things.
what those things are; i'm not sure. let me see, yeah, school. that was it. the man is getting me down, and i'm not even employed (employed? let me explain something to you...). i had my first practice exam this past week. wait to see how that went i guess. i feel pretty decent about it. the difference between this and the exam i took earlier, apart from one being graded and one not, is that this practice one was actual exam format with strict time limit. basically, they give you a fact pattern and want you to tease out and analyze all of the legal doctrines and rules at work and usually make a prediction about how things will be resolved. it is very difficult to get these things "wrong"; in fact, i don't think such is possible if one is actually trying. the question is much more how well do you demonstrate that you know about a bunch of different shit by applying it to a situation you've never seen before. the real deal is usually pretty convoluted from what i understand, usually extreme things that would never happen with crazy shit that lands various tangentially related parties whose interactions somehow hospitalize all of them where they will all inevitably be killed by malpractice. things like that. but this one wasn't really too out there, sort of a compelling story really. i just hope it compelled me to regurgitate something meaningful and appropriate and not a complete load of useless shit. like i said, we'll see. the things i learn best at law school aren't the meta concepts that must be garnered from intense exposure and synthesis of many issues, but the little things like seldom-applicable terms. the other day i heard about frolicking and detour, a doctrine excusing typically-liable employers from responsibility for their employee's actions when those actions vastly exceed and possibly contradict the employee's delineated responsibilities. i thought about the valets in ferris bueler. and no, spell check fans, spell check did not mark ferris. law school also gets me to reconsider words sometimes, especially when i read a really old case and see things in an earlier context. etymology makes a lot more sense when the language is less developed. for example, i always sort of thought of the word aggravated as a synonym for pissed off, considering it in an emotional sense. sort of made sense for aggravating injuries too, it was like you had upset the healing process. and likewise i figured aggravated assault or aggravated robbery meant something pissed you off and prompted the crime. this, of course, is not the case, as many of you probably know. breaking the word down, the core is really "grave", and to aggravate something really means to make it more grave. so rather than aggravating circumstances being things that upset the actor and led to the crime, an aggravated crime is one that is one that has been made more grave, that is, worse, by the factual circumstances. so aggravated murder is like instead of just killing someone, you dismembered them. arguments can be made as to whether this actually makes things worse or not and why, but now i feel i've better tapped into the appropriate understanding of the word. maybe i'm getting my money's worth after all. this week's educational highlight, however, has to be the introduction of a concept entirely unthought (yes, spell check marked it, even when i tried a hyphen) by me until now: linoleum rugs. i was in contracts and the prof, bless her heart, had done some additional looking into the case we were covering, which dealt with the unconscionability (marked) of a door-to-door company's sales to someone where all payments were prorated to all items purchased. basically this lady had paid 1400 dollars and owned nothing, and the contract she signed for the goods allowed the company to repossess everything if she missed payment, and so they were taking all of her shit. on this long list of shit were various household necessities, and some other random shit like a super expensive stereo, toy guns, and a linoleum rug. i couldn't help it; the prof uttered the phrase and my facial expression immediately shifted to my best "what the fuck?" look. my expressive features have done me incalculable harm in my life. of course, the prof looked over and asked me what my problem was and all i could say was "linoleum rug!?". she claimed they were a real thing and then sort of backed off a little unsure. so i looked into it, and yeah, of course, they're real. but seriously, linoleum rug? that sounds like an oxymoron to me. i wanted to link something, but honestly, for best results, just do your own google image search, and regular google. if i could, i would change this blog to linoleumrug.blogspot.net. if i had a band, i would call it linoleum rug. and let me just say because someone should: not on the linoleum rug, man.
the commute to school continues to offer its own frustrations and joys as well. i would say that now, on average, three trolleys pass before i get on one. doesn't really matter when i still get to school half an hour or so early. i'd rather not spend my first 15 minutes in public feeling like people want to stab me for existing in the particular point in space-time i happen to be inhabiting. and it is nice to sit and not almost fall onto someone every start and stop. what i really like to do is read over peoples' shoulders. this is horribly unethical because people reading over my shoulder is like my longest-standing identified pet peeve. but i can't help it; i find it way too fascinating to see the text, look at the reader, and think about why. lots of christian reading on public transport in my experience. wonder about the percentage breakdown between here and the g rap. but that is on the less interesting side of things. my favorite is to see people reading classics and wonder about how well-versed they are in that sort of thing and what made them pick this one up. you can't ask; talking on public transportation is surprisingly limited. it is kind of like being in an elevator, something about the circumstance discourages discussion. anyway, the best thing (in some sense anyway) i've seen anyone read so far is a book entitled "thugs and the women who love them". the whole thing just left me in stitches. the book was pretty thin, and the font was fairly large. i got to read this one from city hall all the way to my stop, and it was pretty hilarious. mostly semi-pornographic poorly written literary junk food. the dialog was my favorite, entirely comprised of things no one would ever actually say, much less my conception of either "thugs" or the "women who love them". one of the top picks: "it's heroin, baby, but call it h". all the sex scenes lacked much dialog except for "damn baby that feels good" about three times per page. funny stuff, but it still doesn't top tempting the beast by laura lay. if you've never heard back forty doing visionary this valentine's at billy's, avail yourself, that reference is to some rag they read from (i kind of wonder how much research they did to find something so terrible yet somehow perfect) for a couple minutes during the jam, excellent. just like those guys always are at billy's. my prospect for catching those guys while back home are kinda slim though, unless i make it a ways into january, they're playing founder's on like the 12th (where you'll have to sit through treetown underground; i guess that is better than jam samich), leading me to believe a repeat fantasy double new years bill with the hippo is unlikely. at least i should get the hippo.
for all of my jam banter in this post, the true obsession is still steely dan. i just can't get enough of countdown to ecstasy. i knew there had to be a story behind my old school, but i never really knew what was up until i came across a great article. i was surprised that entertainment weekly had anything of interest to me, but lo and behold. it would have been great to do this interview. i just wish i could have as flippant an attitude towards institutions of my past, but i have the typical nostalgic regard for all of them. i think, though, that my best time at calvin was actually during summer break when mr. ja and i stopped in and had a cigarette at our pit right after they paved it. the cement was still wet, and i excitedly engraved my moniker, only to come back a month later and find a brick post erected over the signed portion. ah well.
i have spent most of today feeling sorry for myself. i don't know what really brought it on, but it was kind of intense for a while there. i feel alright now after a couple beers, but the issue was basically the same as always: school is an enormous omnipresent pain in the ass, and that would be one thing if there was a definite reward. but being a lawyer still sounds like more of a punishment than anything in my view, paycheck be damned. instead, i feel like i will never be able to get a worthwhile job i enjoy and my best hope is that the metaphorical big lebowski kills me before the student loan people cut my dick off. i don't even feel like cutting my losses is an option, and i think that is part of the strategy for law schools. no matter how much you don't like it, you're already so far in debt that if you don't get your shit together and make a bunch of money you'll never get out from under your loans. but then they get people to do so, and they're good enough, and then they make a ton of cash, and some of that gets donated back to the alma mater. that's the strategy as i see it anyway. but it really ratchets up the pressure, and sometimes it all seems too much for me. i have never been more convinced that i am a completely useless idiot with an absolute dearth of appreciable talent. i try and chalk it up to not fitting the profile of a law student correctly, but i have never had less confidence in my intellectual capacity. part of that might be my inability to assert myself in class. i just don't feel right voluntarily speaking in front of seventy people, because most of my peers who do so raise nothing but contempt in my eyes. and my thoughts don't serve to push the issue; rather it is usually more of a wait, let's take a step back here. i'm not in philosophy seminars with seven other people anymore though. i'm just some fucker who did well on the lsat and fooled the schools and myself into thinking that i'd be a good fit. some fucker whose house it is raining in right now, which might not help my feelings at this time. i don't know if you've ever lived in a leaky dwelling, but i find it incredibly discouraging. i usually like the rain, but not as much when i cannot avoid it if i choose i guess. regardless, i think i've decided that it is not so much lawyering that i am opposed to. there are some awesome lawyers out there who do really cool shit. the problem is that they do their thing for cheap, even though the pressure is incredible and the stakes are higher than well, pick your favorite stoner. i don't want to be relied on unless i feel as strongly about something as whoever i'm helping out. there are just so many people who are so smart and motivated and i am starting to feel like i should never have tried to consider the big time. just keep my head down and live on in complete obscurity because i'm not remarkable enough to move beyond that. it is difficult to describe the feeling. i just wish could be professor of classic rock and call it good, but that is not how the world works. instead, the game is rigged and loaded, and i just feel like there is no place for me anywhere. that is the only thing i've really learned so far. if i want any inhabitable space in this society, i can no longer be the i that i am. i have found that i am just lazy, marginally able and theoretically redundant. this country does not need more middle class white men forcing their opinions on others, especially not if those middle class white men are anything less than the top one tenth of one percent of the intellectually aspiring crowd. and that is fine and good. i would be more than happy to return to the midwest and keep my head down and never have anyone worry about who i am and make a paltry salary allowing homeownership and slight discretionary income. i just have to find out how, and reconcile to myself the realization that i am not special. everyone with good upbringing is told that they are, but at the end of the day it simply cannot be true. however remarkable i was as part of a small sample, perspective is bound to assert itself somewhere along the line. and the east coast is a great place to get that perspective. real movers and shakers out here, and i do not fit in with that. i am ready to give up on aspiration already. i now know that there are people who are smarter and want it more, and that combination is unbeatable if you lack either element, more so if both. blah blah blah. i really wanted to say something meaningful here and i have fucked it up miserably. add it to the list. i thought about going back and deleting this portion, but nah. let it ride. something still beats nothing, which is all i typically have. but now i have the dan: california tumbles into the sea - that'll be the day i go back to annandale. tomorrow i legally observe for the first time. hope the weather improves, and something worth blogging about happens. you'll find out either way.

if my cats lived in the zoo

they would live in a big habitat next to the lions and tigers section, distinguished on your map as the "big cats" and "tiny baby kittens" areas.

mystery packet

on sunday, i walked out the front door of the building i live in and noticed a large manila envelope on top of the mailboxes. mail that wound up in the wrong box usually sits on top of it, but this was not really mail. no stamps, no addresses, none of that. all it had was my first name on it. now, this is strange for a couple of reasons. i'm beginning to get used to my first name again, but the situation is more complex. not that many people know that i live where i do, really. i don't think school even has my correct address at this point. my bank doesn't. my fellow building-dwellers know i live here, as do one or two people i know from the neighborhood. my sister and her boyfriend know. i think i wrote this address down for NLG legal observer stuff. and that really about covers it, and none of those people really seem to match up with the packet with my name on it. however, who is not nearly as pertinent a question as why in this instance, given the contents of the envelope.
the package contained a few pamphlets, a stapled copy of a letter and news articles, and a print-out of a photograph. all of the materials deal with revolutionary blacks in philadelphia, particularly russel "maroon" shoats/z and joseph "joe joe" bowen; most of the material was written by shoats/z. admittedly, i was entirely unaware of either of these individuals and their remarkable experiences, activities and philosophies. the perspective the things i have received convey is incredibly different from any way that i have ever thought, which i find absolutely fascinating. and now here it is for me, ME, in photocopied format, in some cases clearly having passed through generations of copies. who would provide this sort of thing to somebody like me, and why? i've read much of it at this point and find it to be seriously stimulating intellectual fodder, but still. i am a white boy in a fairly thoroughgoing sense, not that i don't have sympathies people who share my skin color might not, but i'm not exactly a racial activist, nor even a legal activist approaching an attempt to address such complex and divisive issues. my only hope is that whoever delivered this package wanted me to have some serious thought sessions, because in that case they are successful. the question as to who and why, however, is still entirely unanswerable as far as i am aware. this situation is approaching mindfuck status in a way; just too out there. the only definite thing thus far is how profound of an impact the whole thing has had on me, really caused the posing of some serious questions. even if i knew who and why, i would be left with questions about what children are taught and what they're not and how much it matters where they learn what they do and what effect that has on their later lives. and so on and so forth. but mostly, admittedly, i am perplexed about the random appearance of the material. as is typical, the linchpin question is one of why. i have a perverse hope that i never find out.
confession: i just uttered the phrase "well i'll be" upon finding a septa (no spell check mark there either! must be the greek thing, remarkable effect it managed to have on english in the end, who knows, we'll ask my sister) token in my chair's padding. that means that the time colloquially known as "a night" has arrived and should be "called".

yo yo! steely dan rocks! asphyxiate!

thus posted george w. bush on a radiohead message board. in a friend's dream in high school. she explained that he wanted to seem cool by referring to steely dan and use big words, i.e. "asphyxiate". as much as i enjoyed the story, i unfortunately did not take it as a sign to look into steely dan in a serious fashion. neither did strangely early knowledge of the trivial origin of the name of the group: name of a dildo in william s. burrough's "naked lunch". fortunately, by the time i came across this article, i was already aware that the band told the guy attempting to interview them during the recording of aja that peg was "a pantonal thirteen bar blues with chorus". at least the guy still got to write for the sleeve and knew they were fucking with him, whereas any jackass at pitchfork would just print that shit.
another quizzo night, of course, and another second place to those same dudes. we were pretty much glad to escape with that, had a rough final round. but we got everything and the bonus in the first round but didn't double unfortunately. hey, it is another twenty to the bar. tonight, we had the most garlicky (wow! spell check didn't flag that!) of all bread. it still possesses me like three and a half hours later. suffice to say i can claim from personal experience that garlic cigarettes will not soon overcome menthol as the popular flavor option.
as has become habit, i've been thinking about jobs and something to do. i have been thinking a lot about the limits language places on thought, and more particularly how terms of art can control thought based on a diversity of interpretation. the problem is that if you're really going to talk about language for a living in any capacity you should probably be fluent in a few, and that is a task i find more daunting than my present one. besides, it is beginning to strike me as perverse to constantly use getting an additional degree as a solution as such thinking is what got me into this mess in the first place. the grass is always greener, i guess.
i almost feel an historical pressure to needlessly extend this post despite not having much to relay. i could talk about how pretty my baby kittens look, but anyone reading surely is already aware. i could post the lyrics to the boston rag, but they're just not near as effective out of context. i could complain about something or another. but that is simply unnecessary. i could talk sports or weather, but who needs more of that in their life? so i'm just going to call it good and hope that i'm right about that in many different arenas.

r u n 2 t?

i know i'm hooked. but not like that. if you don't know that story about donny and into t, make sure to ask someone who does. funny shit. but yeah, tall cans of green tea are my new jam. this may even supersede diet coke (heresy, i know). but it is so delicious and only a dollar. this local brand called cintron has the right stuff, lots of good flavors of sweetened green tea. i think mango is my favorite, and guava passionfruit and pomegranate are quality as well. it is simply easier to drink, really, and yet somehow they seem to last longer. and the aesthetic quality of a big ass can is not something to underestimate. the question is always which flavors the people's market will actually have on any given day; i've given up hope for more variety at the truck by school that has them; it is always pomegranate or unflavored there. satisfactory enough though, i've got a habit to feed now. i guess these guys make energy drinks as well, but that is one thing i've steered clear of. show me a beverage that tastes better with liquor in it and i'll show you a beverage not worth drinking on its own. or paying that much for if no booze is involved. two-dollar eight-ounce energy drink? you don't put vodka in it or nothin'? i would say i have to find out what a two dollar energy drink tastes like, but i already know the answer is melted gummy bears.
it has been a long but fruitful day in the case law mines; i have sorted through a bunch of shit and found that i have a few diamonds in the rough. i've been working on researching a memo for my writing class, and while we have to start all over again, i don't find the topic to be too onerous. i was working on bankruptcy discharge of student loans before, and that was just depressing. it was like a big long neon sign flashing to let everyone know that they had better get their shit together already because your life has to go to or already have been absolute shit in the financial sector to get rid of student loans, even if you're bad off enough to declare bankruptcy. but this... well, i wish i could link it, but y'all can't very well log into blackboard for my school, so i guess i'll let it take up an obscene amount of the post. i'll just post the interview for my client i guess. or not. i tried it; it was even longer than i expected and an uncooperative pain in the ass when i tried to format it more better. ah well, i guess i should be able to write my own summary of the whole affair, i suppose that is one of the skills i should supposedly be developing anyway. my client is a small business owner in california. he runs a hemp products business and has a history of political activity. recently, he has made a small contribution to the campaign of a gubernatorial candidate in california. the other week, he participated in an online chat forum about the race and eventually made his support of a particular candidate (who is openly gay and supports legalization of marijuana) clear and got into it with the forum moderator. the moderator published an article on the ISP's website (he works for them) the next day, claiming my client is one of the candidate's "gay elite" who he will pack government posts with if elected. this article calls my client's company a "pot business" and insinuates that he made illegal campaign contributions. my client has since received numerous harassing emails and phone calls and lost an investor for his business. well, my client is not gay, runs a legal business, and only ponied up a modest sum in a legal manner for support. so basically i need to decide whether or not my client has been libeled. this entails finding out what constitutes libel in california, the status of online publications in regard to defamation claims, whether my client counts as a "public figure", whether there was "privileged communication" involved, and how the fact that he was libeled as a screen name factors in, along with a host of other stuff. all in all, not so bad.
in other "well, maybe law school is not completely terrible" news, i went to a training session for legal observing the other evening. basically what legal observers do is go to protests and wear silly neon green hats and watch what goes down. the idea is that you are a 3rd party presence who can offer an less-biased account of any problem between the authorities and protesters. they didn't need me for a small time thing today, but i could have gone. i guess something pretty big is happening in town next weekend and i'll probably wind up working at that one. sounds like it will be pretty chill though, they have a permit and all that good stuff. the more organization and planning, the less likely shit is to hit the fan. sounds like philly is usually pretty laid-back on this sort of thing anyway, there is a whole branch of the cops who just keep shit together for events like this. the real shenanigans are down in d.c., and i'll likely get down there for something somewhere along the line. i dunno, sounds like a decent time to me, feel like i'm doing something worthwhile and get a chance to scope out some scenes. at the end of the day though, it just makes me feel like i should have gone into journalism, even though it has its own set of bullshit and problems to deal with. jobs are jobs, but at least in journalism i wouldn't have to cramp my style into narrowly defined acceptable discourse. they really take a lot of the fun out of writing in the legal profession from my impression; ironic considering writing is really at the core of what a lawyer mostly does. law review "notes" aren't so bad, but official memos seem like a pain in the ass to me, that is what i have to write for that assignment i was talking about.
today i also gave myself a little time to take it easy in the morning. went and hung out with some buddies and watched the chelsea and man u matches, good times. after that we got some lunch and went and ate in love park right by the fountain. all i could think about was tony hawk, well, that was all i was thinking about apart from my sandwich, which was pretty stellar. they had me when they offered something with cappicola and prosciutto. seriously delicious. sharp provolone was also featured, and i had never encountered such a cheese. i have no problem with provolone on this sort of a sandwich, but usually it doesn't assert itself so much; kind of bland for a cheese. but this was top notch, along with the remarkable assortment of sweet and hot peppers. ahh, glorious. enough so that it sent me to a nap i could not avoid. the way saturday should be.
the way last saturday should have been for me was going to havest fest at founder's. no one i've talked to back home even bothered going, and i woulda killed to be there. parties at founder's are enough excuse on their own, but this was a huge night for the backest of all forties. fortunately, the show is on archive and i managed to get it a couple days after finding out, sizeable and worthy download; the show clocks in almost exactly three hours and forty-five minutes over three sets. a sick show on its, and one of the best recordings i've heard from the less than ideal venue i've ever heard. crowded, but a nice change from cavernous spaces. anyway, those dudes are cookin' for this one, give it a go-round. more than anything, i am stunned by their maintenance of sobriety; founder's makes it tough for ya. and there is that notorious new year's tape from this past calender shift with the hippo double bill. but they held on until the latest this time, you know how things tend to extend past traditional closing time down there. only downfall of the show is no theme song (see last t.c.'s show; they're getting it so right) and no ad jingle about laying carpet despite dan's weird new vocal processing equipment (but it is sweet, enough reason to check it out on its own, allows him to harmonize with himself in like four parts almost barbershop style while just singing one). he really restrained himself with it though, for the best, very commendable keeping it from taking over at all. the whole show had a a more old-school organic feel to it. i guess i should just review the thing on the damn website where someone might actually be interested, but let me just say it brightened my day, and i'll support those guys to anyone anytime, they're so much more original and entertaining than i find just about any current band, especially in the so-called "jam" realm.
i don't really get much in the way of television, but i read about this show on the food network called "two dudes catering" or something, and it centers around two california, well, dudes, i guess, long-hairs at any rate, providing service to L.A.'s elite. i guess i'm just encouraged to see anything about long-hairs being employed in any fashion in this day and age, as i ponder my options. is it really that big of a deal? not really. can i imagine how i would look without long hair or any at all? sort of. and i don't really like it; just does not seem right. we shall see, however...

law school

i fuggin hate it. yup.

i know what i did next summer

wait, no i don't. but many of my peers are well on their way. it is hardly half way through fucking october and already my inbox is filling up with events concerning what i should presumably be planning on already. this kind of shit just drives me up a wall. oh, it is also time to start freaking out about exams - they're ONLY two months away, after all. i'd rather be in the timbers of fennario worrying about the dire wolf. either way, i get the distinct feeling that my suppers will be comprised of a bottle of red whiskey on a semi-regular basis.
but let's have some good law school news. i recently read a case known as wagon mound (1). i find it great that such could be the name of a party in a case, but better still is the fact that it refers to a boat called the s.s. wagon mound (there is also a place called wagon mound new mexico). what the fuck is up with that? and it was an "oil burning vessel". what, was this thing powered by lamp oil? seems a little unlikely, but i have much to learn about ships. admirality law is still one venue i think i would dig, but if i wanted to get into it i really should have gone to tulane.
philly, of course, has many of its own benefits, including being much bigger, not recently devastated, and no so hurricane-prone. the only hurricanes i may encounter are the dylan track and the malt liquor. i'm sure public transport has its interesting elements wherever one is, but i had a couple odd ones recently. the other day this chick got on the subway with a dog. think it was a pomeranian. seriously. she was just holding onto it in her arm, little girl couldn't have been more then 13 or so, just her and the dog. she had a weird purse with some netting on some parts, looked like dog and purse may have been compatible, but it was definitely not in the purse. or the sandwich. just there, hanging out. a while back i saw a crazy looking dude get off the subway with the prettiest kitten since mine wrapped up in the bottom of his shirt. real kitten too, so it was almost as little as mine. kitties gotta get places too. aside from animals, today's subway ride home had its own interesting element. i got on and four young men began to make fun of my appearance without any pretense of keeping me from hearing. i guess if comparing a random white guy to two well known white guys is so funny that it has you falling out of both seats you were occupying, you must have really needed the chuckle, so i won't begrudge it. first comparison was silent bob, which is of course pretty far from accurate, but really not inherently offensive. but "drew carey with a ponytail" was enough to bring the pulse up a little. then i thought a little and decided that while they chose to laugh at me for a way i choose to appear at this time (well, i don't actively choose to be corpulent enough to draw the drew carey comparison - i hope i haven't gained that much of it back), they have to deal with a lifetime of people doing something more subtle and sinister than making ill-advised likenesses to celebrities based on a way they look but never chose to. and concluded there was really no reason to be upset - i had nothing to prove to these four young men. it is sad and primitive and human that superficial differences in natural appearance shuffle the vast majority of people in this country into a lifetime compulsory cooperation with a largely separate and relatively narrow culture. the result is unavoidable misunderstanding. america has a unique problem in that the tradition of the geographic area's culture has been devastated and while such cultures were far from monolithic, the replacement result is far more disparate. and it never seems to get better; few things really change. i had always found it helpful and admittedly occasionally preferable to term things as class-based with the assumption that it was more fundamental. but that isn't how things work; class cannot trump race and neither can race trump class, the two exist in interplay. a few weeks back i read an incredibly well-written article about michael vick, even though i don't give a shit about american football. but the vick thing has been labeled as 'racialized'. while this cannot be true since race was always already a factor without anyone slapping any labels anywhere, the article was really chiefly about race in relation to the vick issue. it was helpful to enhance one's understanding, i felt. and written by a temple alum, no less, guess he's a writer for espn. but the one thing that has stuck with me the most about the article was when he addressed the question of class standing, considering the millions vick has made, allowing him to retain high-powered, high-priced counsel not commeasurate with what is provided for the average victim of racial profiling. this writer pointed out that vick had transcended class bounds in the financial sense only, which at the end of the day carries a minute portion of weight when compared to the true realization of class ascention, which in his case would still never fail to take his race into account, but still. i don't claim to have "the race issue" all figured out, but i think that i've come a ways toward realizing that no matter what, it doesn't go away in society as i know it. would these four people have made fun of someone bearing more surface resemblance to themselves in the same manner? perhaps, probably not, and almost certainly not by making the worst appearance comparisons i've ever heard. does it matter? probably not a whole lot. what is my point? i don't really know for sure; this is just something that happened to me and this is some of what i have been thinking about it.
most of what goes on in the city of any interest has nothing to do with me, of course. but it might interest me. over the past couple days i've been seeing this plane flying above the city, one of those little planes flying a big ass banner, just like back in the day. still see that sort of thing sometimes. this one doesn't really bear much of a message, though i don't think. it always catches me off guard, though, because i usually see the side of the banner where things are backwards, and i always think this banner has a picture of che guevara on it, which is quite confusing. and then i get a better look and realize that the picture is supposed to be one of those cave men from the geico ads. i guess they have a t.v. show now or something? a movie? anyway, backwards cave man looks like che. i swear. one of the upshot of being on broad street is you get to see a little of everything going past in traffic, sometimes vehicles bumping music so loud you can tell through the concrete walls when inside the school. but while i was outside on the stairs today a car was stopped in traffic. this car stood out not only because it was very sleek sharp and slick - an all-black grand prix, probably an '04, with really tasteful rims, but mostly because the high-quality high-volume stereo system was BLASTING milli vanilli. true story. girl, you know it's true. true that whoever that crazy bastard was got that song stuck in my head.
remember how i mentioned i was looking forward to going to that debate on drug policy on tuesday? no? well, i did, and i was. but i turned out my business basics class was meeting during the same time; it is taking an hour out of our lunch break for the next few weeks so that it will end sooner. take the good with the bad. irksome as that is, on tuesdays we actually have nothing mandatory from eleven until one-thirty, with school-wide break not beginning til noon, so there is still plenty of time for lunch. so on this tuesday i decided to comfort my lack of a free lunch which is the guaranteed benefit of almost any event put on by an organization with some semblance of funding with a lunch i could hopefully enjoy. this meant a return to the legendary crepe truck. honestly, this experience did not go as well as the first. the first one was delicious, but a little crowded, so i crossed a couple veggies of the list, and apparently "no broccoli, no spinach" can be translated as "no broccoli, no spinach, so please load the thing with onions, peppers, and unidentifiable yellowish-green chunks of something else". i got this gyro crepe, and i won't make the mistake again. i don't know what they were using, but it was unlike even the most unfortunate gyro meat i've ever encountered. it wasn't all bad altogether, but it wasn't nearly as good as i had hoped. perhaps tatziki sauce is truly the rug that ties the gyro room together; and that was certainly lacking and the "zesty feta spread" was not an adequate substitute. ah well, many more crepes wait to be experienced. this won't stop me at all; i know they can be great and they leave me full for like six, seven hours.
this afternoon, however, i did not have anything cutting into the normally-free time enjoyed by all students, and was thus able to attend some other event with a purported free lunch, and also a free book. the good news was the same as the bad news: this was a talk about doing well on exams, given by an odd-looking fellow whose last name was, believe it or not, whitebread. fairly accurate. not only was a free lunch promised, but also a free book; a copy of one he has written about taking law school exams. when i showed up i did get said book, and also a free bar/bri t-shirt (they were putting the talk on; bar/bri is a bar review service demanding several thousand dollars of tuition and they're already after us. here i thought it was bad to feel pressure about exams two months away and summer employment two seasons away, but to worry about the bar way more than two years before the fact? damn). unfortunately, i was mostly interested in getting a free lunch, which was nowhere in sight. fortunately, the talk turned out to be way better than i had expected. the speaker is a prof at USC law school and has been a law prof for like 40 years. pleasant old man in a bow tie, incredibly enthusiastic in his manner and about his work. he mentioned philadelphia and temple over and over, and some people poked fun at this, but i was kind of impressed. he goes to like 60 law schools between start and thanksgiving while continuing full time prof work, and i have to credit him for knowing where he was, even if he may have been reminding himself. he's good buddies with my criminal law prof though, and i find that good will spills over easily in this line of work, so i'm sure he did his best. seemed helpful to me, even though thinking about exams, especially this early, is particularly nauseating. he got a lot of laughs from the crowd, mostly by being excitable and strange, a little juvenile but seemingly the right tonic for 1L students. and then, at the end, on the way out, they had the pizza they had promised. papa john's even, which was surprising, since the ubiquitous pizza for meetings of this sort is city view, more on that later. but papa john's has never seemed better than it did at that point today. sometimes, the little things are all you have to get by and seemingly all you need.

write it down

all day long at various intervals i think to myself, i should put something about that in the blog. and i forget bunches of that shit every day. the sad thing is that this problem is not limited in any respect to blog postings. i'm sure i've had lots of worthwhile ideas about what to do with my life throughout the spectrum of importance that i simply considered, filed, and lost. a friend of mine carries around one of those classic little notebooks to jot shit down in, kind of a combination quote book and note-to-self file i guess. but it seems like a good idea, and this is by no means the first time i've considered doing something like that, but i still don't have a little notebook. it wouldn't be too burdensome of an addition as i regularly carry vast amounts of useless and useful shit in my pockets all day every day. but what good does it do to mentally note to get a little notebook if the suggestion just winds up buried? and on the other hand, how much time are people willing to spend reading this shit? i write long enough posts as it is, imagine if i had twice as many topics and went off just as much as every one. hope you've got time to kill; i'm here to help.
one thing i forgot and fortunately remembered was that this weekend i somehow failed to attend faerie con at the palace known as the philadelphia convention center. the city is serious about that place; they've poured a lot of money into it. the odd thing is how similar the situation is to back home, except on such a greater scale. and i'm sure faerie con in west michigan would draw more religious protesters than attendees. but the whole thing was really kind of interesting, lots about knowing what kind of faerie you were, lots of people wearing wings. the article i saw in the metro was quoting someone involved with the convention talking about how the "faerie movement" is like the hippie movement, except without the drugs and dirtiness, or something like that. i got a kick out of it, considering how those are the two things people think of most readily at the mention of hippies these days it seems, with nominal consideration given to the theoretical ideals they allegedly espoused. someone else was telling me about a recent wedding where all the women were wearing faerie wings, and i just hoped that in twenty years they could all look back and laugh.
i don't get enough laughs these days, that much is certain, so one is always most welcome. man is the animal who laughs at himself. i have alway found that to be a very satisfactory and stimulating notion, and i ran across it as i re-read stranger in a strange land, which has proven to be eminently worthy of another read. if you're reading this now, the odds are pretty good that i already told you to read it and you have not. i do not fault you for that, but would merely like to reiterate my admonition that you do. i'm no sci-fi buff, but i know that this one stands as a landmark in the field with justified reason. incredibly deep and provocative, yet with plenty of movement and plot. really the best example of philosophical fiction i've ever encounter. i miss fiction. that was basically a habit of my well-spent youth, and i would really like to bring that back. i've just spent so many years reading plenty of things i had to, with fiction only making an occasional cameo, and voluntary fiction even less so. i don't have oodles of time to whittle away these days, but i need to balance things out some and reading is a better distraction and use of time to relax than just drinking. and a much more effective method of taking one's mind off things, really, offering an alternate universe in which to exercise imagination.
i can use any break i can get from school, which feels like throwing my body into an enormous brick wall every day: entirely ineffectual, intimidating, and seemingly hopeless. i have never felt more brain-dead in my whole life. i guess if i were serious about cheering up i wouldn't be playing tom waits, but he's just been hitting the spot. i even broke donny's one strict rule of personal conduct: do not listen to tom waits while drinking alone. he's right though, it will get you inexplicably intoxicated. anyway, don't be deceived by all my bitching and moaning; school is not all bad i suppose. there's always contracts, which i prefer for some reason. good prof, excellent text. i just don't see why it must be so much better than the others. i don't think the material is intrinsically easier to grasp, but i could easily say i feel the most on board with this class. no exams until the end is a blessing and a curse; sometimes difficult to gauge one's position without grades as reference points, or an indication of what one is expected to be learning, really. i think i have the general idea down, learn the law and be able to create analogies between its relationship with different sets of facts, but how that plays out in specifics is liable to have some variation from class to class and from prof to prof.
enough of that. as much as i want this to be a forum for my law school experience, there is no place of endless obsessing to an audience that cares but is not similarly situated. so how about some good news... steely dan is the real deal, the more i hear the more i dig their project. i just can't believe these guys did reelin' in the years and rikki don't lose that number. i fuckin hate those songs. this album i just got, countdown to ecstasy, started out with a song i didn't really dig either, bodhisottva, where they give their interpretation of some old-school rock n roll stylings with some classic guitar parts that would seem more at homem in a stray cats swing-rock rave-up. strange, really, not all bad, but not really what i was hoping to hear when i put it on. fortunately, the next few cuts are exactly the sort of thing i hoped for: sensible jazz-rock with great rhythmic texture, intelligent lyrics, and outstanding interplay between instruments. oh, also in music news, i heard that pitchfork lets you choose your own rating for the new radiohead album, a dig on the band letting you pay what you want to download it. and i thought pretentious had already been taken to its highest level, but leave it to those folks i guess. aw snap, this album has my old school on it. did not realize. thought that one was on royal scam for some reason; obtaining that is higher on the list than ever before. although this album was still when they were actually sort of a band, mention of this group always reminds me of the phrase 'crack team of studio musicians'. i think 'crack team' is reserved for assemblies of researchers, scientists, or steely dan studio musicians. some other music has certainly involved crack teams of studio musicians, but not in the same mentionable way as this. i owe a debt of gratitude to reynolds and stephen for combining forces to put aja in my possession. and joe (not squaw joe) for pointing out the correlation between college profs and steely dan acolytes, worth looking into. whatever is on now sounds like radiohead eventually ripped it off; steely dan covers a wide swath of musical territory. what are these "synthesizers" you speak of? let's fuck with 'em. and that was probably the notion behind much of the music we all know and love. sorry to go on about music as always, but i am simply not wealthy enough to eat at interesting places on a regular basis. just be glad i didn't write about john kahn's bass playing for a few pages.

and it stoned me...

in the immortal words of the wolf: "is that like a, uh, traditional song?" maybe one day it will be, but for now it is forever entrenched in my mind as the opener off moondance, despite many fine jgb incarnations. i have never personally owned this album until yesterday, although i have possessed it at many lengthy periods for various portions of my life. they say possession is nine-tenths of the law, but i can tell you firsthand that statement is complete horse shit. let's just say i do know that whoever 'they' are failed to qualify 'their' statement at their own risk. anyway, i haven't spent much time on anything involving possession, and all of my possessions of this record left me without it when i moved, and even before that i guess. i actually had not heard it for quite some time, and the emotional experience was even more than i had anticipated; i was transported to a former part of my life instantaneously. strange how music can do that sometimes, but i suppose that is really sort of the appeal. on the other hand, there is the bizarre notion that i feel extreme nostalgia for music older than i am: how can i "look back" at something before my own existence? regardless, this is simply a classic.you've probably heard it, but play it again once for me if you've got it.
tonight was a solid quizzo night, complete with some issue involving the yuengling as always, effecting a bait and switch on the alleged drink special. the good news is, all this was inconsequential since we were rolling with quizzo bounty in the first place. interesting how money easily obtained has a different place in the psyche than traditionally-earned cash. but we got some drinks (including the notorious chicken of wine, albeit a "chicken little" (have to cite my sister on that call)) and a bunch of food and still had plenty for next week. and then we came in second and won another twenty bucks to the bar. huzzah. we played a good game and lost to this team that was getting literally everything right through the first few rounds. fuck that; we'll get 'em next time - that way we'll get forty instead of twenty on the tab. we didn't even get to spin the wheel between the rounds; there were a bunch of teams there. the place is having its official opening of the "new bar" which has been there for like two months this week, i might go because there are free appetizers and half-priced beer from 5-7 tuesday through thursday. also, i am back to no friday class, so thursday sounds like a good option. just have to make it all the way there.
this just in: lexis-nexis kicks ass. i have known this to be true for some time, but not in near as robust sense as i do now. the fun thing is to watch the interaction between the respective representatives of lexis and westlaw, very professional friendly. they're really nice people, which is why they're representatives to law students of all stripes for incredibly rich and powerful companies who are both phenomenal at what they do. not a bad job, really, but certainly one with its bizarre intricacies. all i know is that is more of an alternative j.d. career than anything represented in the upcoming talk on non-traditional jobs for law graduates. basically, they're lawyers who don't work for law firms. but they're still lawyers well within the traditional scope of the notion. that talk also conflicts with what looks to be a promising talk given by the federalist society (i think? maybe gov't affairs?) whose fliers pose the question "should your 14 year old be able to buy heroin?" and the people speaking are someone who was a drug policy adviser in the present administration at one point and a prof from school. should be intellectually stimulating and entertaining at the same time, and i also believe free food of some kind will probably be involved. all that aside, the real answer to the question on the posters is "only in baltimore".

the people's post?

On a day in which i encountered the people's market (frequent), the clark park people's flea market (first time), and the people versus somebody or something (at least once a week), i was left wondering exactly who the people are. looking to my past, i also recall the people's building, which was full of clear channel offices (go figure), the people, a band appearing on several jam bills throughout michigan, and the people's elbow (i have not forgotten that if becky's death involves the rock in any way i am sworn to avenge her with the sword). but all that did was make the notion fuzzier. i may or may not be one of the people, given the context, i guess. i try not to be one of "those people" or the people in "people say" and especially not "one of those people who talk about 'gross'". today, most importantly, though, i was one of the people benefiting from the clark park people's flea market. there was a lot of really intriguing old shit i didn't need or have any use or space for, but for some reason wanted to possess. and lots of cool crafty shit that made me wish i had a girl to buy for; she would have been thrilled, bags, earrings, and so on. most importantly, there was the finest selection of vinyl i have ever had the good fortune to encounter. i didn't measure the time i spent perusing, but it was considerable. i would hate to go down the long list of things i had to pass up given that i could only justify spending a certain amount of money, but suffice to say that some difficult decisions were made. the end result, however, was still quite the haul. after participating in the time-honored ritual of flipping through box after box of used records (and i make no pretense about having seen it all - i would have been there from whenever they started to whenever they left), i walked away a happy man for the time being. i find the ultimate consumer joy in purchasing records; for whatever reason they are a most satisfying acquisition, surpassing other formats of music in some way. i think the size has something to do with it, along with the inherent scope of the artwork and the testimony of durability borne by the fact that i am becoming the owner of functional artifacts which are in many cases more than a decade older than i am. let's see... the band's self-titled record, which is one i've always wanted, even if i have all the songs live on vinyl from bootlegs or official releases. steely dan's countdown to ecstasy, which i am hopeful for, even though i don't think anything they've done will ever approach how i feel about the first side of aja, a constant front-runner in my estimate of vinyl strictly by side. also picked up an early 'best of' for traffic, which contained nothing off of the two records i have, and so i figured that if they had a best of before those albums, it had to be pretty good. and it is. the funny thing is that of the two cuts off of that compilation i was familiar with, i was not really too familiar with their original traffic incarnations. i think everyone knows 'feelin' alright', but the dave mason solo live version is by far more prevalent. the traffic version is pretty cool though, much better organ work, but the lack of backing vocals once one is familiar with them is a loss. dear mr. fantasy is a song i understand via the mydland-era dead incarnation coupled with the 'hey jude' finale. i can see why brent added that bit; the original feels like it is going someplace but left me a little unsatisfied with its fade-out jam at the end; no punchline. still a great tune, but lacks the benefit of a refrain. speaking of the dead, that was definitely in abundance. i got europe 72 for THREE FUCKING BUCKS. that's right, a dollar per record. and the vinyl is immaculate, even if the sleeve has a couple bruises. when i was sorting out my records to give all of donny's back to him, i had to resist serious temptation to appropriate his copy "by accident". i didn't, because i just could never fuck him over, and karma got back to me on this one. when i found these four albums i had walked through almost two-thirds of the set-up and was kind of disappointed at the lack of vinyl which i had been told would be abundant. i got these four for three bucks a piece at the central table, which i believe was sort of the mastermind behind the event and the namesake; the group is basically for solidarity from the white community with the worldwide movement for African liberation. good people. but anyway, i walked a little further, and then i saw it: two huge tables full of boxes full of vinyl. it was simply overwhelming. even though i had europe 72 in hand the dead prospects were amazing. painful as it was, i had to pass up skull and roses, the eponymous debut (what a stupid cover!), historic dead, bear's choice, and dead set, and that was only what i came across, like i said, there was even more to be seen. but the scores were of equal magnitude: aoxomoxoa and workingman's dead. i hadn't heard either of those albums in some time, and had forgotten the poppy joy of studio china cat, the sensible psychedelia of doin' that rag, just how great of a tune easy wind was, and the amazing slide work on dire wolf. but the depth of dead was of equal match to the breadth of other selection. i found a sealed copy of queensryche's operation: mindcrime, and that thrilled me beyond belief. a nearly 20-year-old record, and i had to unwrap it to play it. interestingly enough, that made it the first record i have owned on cd, tape, and vinyl. i think it is worthy of the distinction, really a masterpiece of a record, combines my taste for theme, precision, thoughtfulness and heaviness. if you've never heard it, i'm not going to tell you to listen to it, because if you still haven't heard it, odds are good that you don't give a fuck about some prog-metal concept album. that being said, the story it tells is still pretty interesting and better than one would expect out of some 80s band with hair like they had. i found another can't-refuse record in pink floyd's music from the movie more. just can't pass on floyd vinyl, and i actually have always been fond of this one. it isn't exactly canonical in the collections of people who profess to be fans of the band, but has some really cool tracks, especially the unbelievably heavy for its time 'nile song' and the twin tune on the second side. green is the colour and cymbaline are very good too, i wonder what rick wright could have done if roger hadn't given him short shrift for so long. we may never know. the first thing i saw and knew i had to have when i walked up to the bar of vinyl, though, was a tom waits compilation called 'the asylum years'. every record store i've ever been to has had a tom waits section, and it is either always empty or has a copy of alice (which i own) and/or blood money, and never any of the old stuff. well, this was all old stuff, and it rules. the best stuff in my mind, though, is the tracks gleaned from small change and i guess i would have been as well off had i just found a copy of that, but this record has plenty of stuff i hadn't heard and will probably get more into. that being said, it was incredible to spin tom traubert's blues, step right up, and small change itself. it was also interesting to hear waits' variety of vocalization; he's right up there with robert zimmerman himself for having an unstable vocal identity. you would think after all the waxing iv'e already done on this, well, wax, i would be satisfied. and i was. but as i curled through the final tendril of the flea market of the people i ran into yet another giant table full of records flanked by additional tables of records, with boxes of records beneath all the tables. fortunately, i had already put myself on a budget and resisted severe temptation to seriously peruse and purchase, but i was not going to go back to the damn atm. that just ain't right on a fixed income. i am definitely not buying more for a while, especially because i did have a little more money and did give the selection a gander. i once again can't mention the vast amount of reputable records i didn't get, but i walked away with a personal and nearly-universal classic in van morrison's moondance, which i have sorely missed on vinyl, and a beautiful copy of the talking heads' 'stop making sense". the thing is, i already own a copy of that, and a damn good one at that. but the one dude who has taken me to every record store i've been to in this city has been looking for that unsuccessfully for a long time and i saw the guy next to me flip past it and i immediately snatched it with that guy in mind. he got a parking ticket the first time we went to look for records; i felt this was the least i could do: 5 bucks! i swear some people just don't know what they have sometimes. or maybe i value things much differently. performance over rarity; not that the two are mutually exclusive. all in all, a pleasant haul.
thanks for reading me ramble about records. the alternative was to bitch about school, and i just felt that this was more worthwhile, even though i still spent more time with required reading than looking through pleasing cardboard packaging. let's see... the other day i wheeled my cart (sweet donation from my sister) to go grocery shopping for the first time, and it was certainly an experience. have you ever wheeled a cart 10 blocks to go grocery shopping, empty on the way there (awkward to be seen) and full as shit on the way back (awkward to pilot)? i've gotten groceries without it before, but i had to get litter and food for los gatos and fuck if i'm gonna haul forty fuckin pounds of litter and twenty pounds of food back by hand or pay like 50% price increases for smaller quantities, so car hauling it is. there are worse things. if i was that worried about it i would get around to getting a car share thing going and use that. i do miss driving. but i don't know about driving in this city. gun rue it ain't. sweet and ridiculous indeed. anyway, the best pick-up of my shopping experience was a bottle of cholula hot sauce. it makes almost everything better. in retrospect, i'm surprised i haven't gone through a phase of putting hot sauce on damn near everything already, but now is certainly the time. i've recently been getting all of my cheesesteaks with hot sauce, which has consistently proven to be a genius food maneuver. rest assured i've considered crepes with hot sauce. the strange thing about hot sauce is that it must have been invented and developed to make anything more interesting and easier to eat and yet it paradoxically is devoid of caloric content. this is why it is generally considered why it is an element of poor cuisine; it obscures taste to a greater degree than it enhances it when used even in modesty. but if you're just eating a cheap ham and swiss on shitty bread, what the hell, why not? it also has served to perpetuate my longstanding and ever-tiring peanut butter habit. i'm also finally mastering the art of natural peanut butter after a tradition of losing most of the oily part in one sort of disaster or another. i've caved once or twice and gone for that hydrogenated bullshit, and as good as it is i feel like i'ts just wrong. i'm not an exceptionally healthy person or anything, but for some reason hydrogenated oils have outraged me since the first time i encountered chemistry. i will concede, however, that trans fats are necessary. i can't find any internet articles, but the metro the other day had a feature about how some city council rep got a bunch of bakers to bring in a ton of pastries, some of which had trans fats and some which did not, and apparently the reaction was that trans fats made certain things way more delicious, and was i believe deemed necessary and allowable. either way, i like the fact that the city council took up their civic duty to eat a shit ton of pastries. something about that is very old school, kind of typical i guess. i wonder how much beer germanic statesmen consumed in considering the reinheitsgebot. all in a day's work, i suppose. and here i thought i could never come up with a good job for me to have.

this

is sweet and ridiculous. i hope to find a bbq sauce called sweet & ridiculous. g.r.usalem isn't even on there and that one is still the best.

the low spark of high heeled boys

what the hell does that mean? the phrase gets stuck in my head from time to time, always has since i ever heard of the song. i was listening to the record today and decided i really needed to find out what the deal was. not that finding out took much work, as this sort of minutiae is always a wikipedia search away. i never would have possibly conjectured such an origin, but i am glad just to have an answer. this search combined with a listen to the other traffic album i have in turn led to an inquiry into the history of john barleycorn, a traditional english song with known roots all the way back to the 1400s that traffic did a version of. someone could write a book about that shit, very extensive, varied, and intriguing history as well as being an excellent subject for hermeneutic inquiry with myriad interpretations. back to records for a moment. i was looking for something to put on that i haven't played in a really long time if at all. at some point i somehow acquired a copy of supertramp's breakfast in america album, but have never even played it as far as i can recall. i was missing out; this is a great set of tunes, and of course three hits everyone knows (fuck that crappy rap group for sampling the title track, even if i had the pleasure of playing the original on the box and confusing all the chaches that one time). but the other stuff is really solid too, and the warm vinyl sound meshes with the instrumentation these guys had really really well. tasty keyboards, late 70s f.m. delicacy here. prominent disco bass interpreted for poppy rock works out nicely as well. i hadn't even looked that close at the sleeve before, that cover is really far out. i want to live in that city, even more than i city completely made out of mirrors. i had to laugh just writing about that idea; hadn't considered it in some time. just another million dollar idea from your favorite purveyor of new dip.
today was the day of my first-ever law school exam, and i have good news and bad news. the good news is that exams only happen at the conclusion of a class, and that means one of my classes is done, in this case my monday morning class, which means more sleep and a more gentle transition from the weekend. also good news is that this was a pass/fail exam which no one has ever failed, as it is entirely objective and open-book open-note. needless to say, i feel alright about my performance on this first-ever exam. the bad news is that i will most likely never see another exam like this in law school with the possible exception of business basics for lawyers, another one credit pass/fail i have. this means that i have no idea what real exams will be like or how confident i can be about them. i understand that the library has old exams on file for people to check out, and i have received a couple words of advice strongly suggesting i look into that. unfortunately this experience sounds to me like a good way to freak the shit out of yourself. but it will have to happen, either way. not looking forward to it, but it is unavoidable. gotta get a gauge somehow. i continue my roller coaster of feelings about being in law school. when i hate it though, i don't have anyway of knowing if i hate law school in general, hate my law school, hate the first year of law school, hate certain texts, hate being in school geared toward work, hate having to think about getting a real job, hate being transplanted from nearly everyone i knew and loved or just hate having to do difficult shit at all. not an easy question to answer, but for now i'm at one of those points where i feel alright about what i'm doing, fortunately. when i'm not feeling so positive the whole ordeal seems completely unappealing, unapproachable and insurmountable. i just try and remind myself of how many other people make it through all the time, but that doesn't help with questions about not wanting to be a lawyer and worrying about loan debt.
but enough about all that. the major success of the day on campus was not conquering a watered-down gimme exam, but rather the location of the near-legendary crepe truck i had unsuccessfully searched for on two previous occasions. my buddy swears we walked it once and i insisted that the truck couldn't be the one, but i don't think that could have happened since the whole truck is painted like a french flag. either way, i am most pleased that i am now fully aware of its precise location. most of you are probably already aware, but if not, i would like to inform you that crepes are not just for fruit and dessert and such. no, there is much more to be had in the realm of savory rather than sweet, and damn, is it delicious. the menu thrilled me with its variety and special options, as well as the "french-mex" section, which is pretty much just comprised of the savory-style crepes served in a tortilla rather than the pastry, and i think that just makes them weird improvements over the ubiquitous wrap, but the phrase "french-mex" really pleased me (go ahead and google french-mex; i don't even know what to link). i just went with a fairly basic grilled chicken crepe which comes with some mozzarella, choice of dressing (i went with caeser and felt alright about that) and an odd mix of vegetables, i think onions, broccoli, mushrooms, peppers, spinach and tomatoes. the finished product is friggin huge, i'm still really not hungry. the crepes are bigger than the traditional frying-pan sized ones, when they put the batter down it takes up almost as much space as your average frozen pizza. best of all, any crepe and any beverage is five bucks, so be prepared to hear about it when i find the perfect combination of the wide variety of meats, veggies and sauces; they encourage you to just tell them whatever you want in it despite the 30-odd options on the list. my mouth waters just thinking about the exploratory process and the prospect of crepe-based gyro-type sandwiches. weirdest thing i saw as a special crepe on the menu today was one involving ribs. no bones, obviously. high cuisine it is certainly not, but kick ass lunchtime variety it most definitely is. well i guess it could be high cuisine in the sense that they don't call it high cuisine for nothin'.
so i deleted a post the other day; i don't think anyone ever got to see it, which is for the best. i went off about how ridiculous the name of this place was and how there had to be translation and alphabet rendering issues at work, but then i finally saw that the place was not called warzistan, but rather waziristan. oops. news is bad, but not that bad. even good sometimes. i just read about some guy being saved by a vodka IV drip. the story wasn't as cool as it could have been, but hey, they still did save the guy's life with vodka. in other news, "polish police end nun rebellion". gotta love headlines; that is pretty far from the reality of the situation. that being said, i find it pretty wild that this kind of stuff is still happening. apart from the guitar, the whole thing sounds pretty old school. i just can't believe they took the monk away in handcuffs; the article mentions no allegations of criminal conduct on his part as far as i can tell, with the possible exception of occupying an abbey against the commands of the church or something. even so, they just wanted the people evicted, and they got evicted, and i didn't know you got cuffed when you got evicted. i've known a few people to get evicted, and no handcuffs were involved. then again, they weren't being evicted from an abbey. and say what you want about poland, but those people seem sensible enough to me; the whole thing is just bizarre. if i could dedicate a legal practice to aiding nuns and monks evicted from abbeys and such, i would do it. especially in poland. who has the balls to nominally oppose the pope in legal proceedings? i don't know why exactly, but i dug the natalie dee pope thing from the other day. there seems to be something inherently humorous with the word pope, especially when used as a prefix, i.e. pope-mobile, pope-ball, etc. maybe i just automatically laugh at authority. no, that's not it...
i got a good laugh during my huge block of free time this afternoon created by the cancellation of a class so we could study for our non-exam. regardless of how you feel about sports, i think that anyone with any sense of aesthetics or design could appreciate the absurdity of this compilation of terrible hockey logos. this was shown to me by a classmate who follows every sport imaginable except for basketball. my long hours at the bar back home re-ignited my appreciation for sports. i know most people i know don't give a fuck about sports, and i'm not here to obsess about sports, but i really appreciate them as a lowest common denominator between certain segments of the population and nothing but a complete diversion. i realize a lot more things about sports now that i'm older, most importantly how much betting has an impact on the exhaustive nature of sports coverage. gambling has some sort of classic appeal to it, especially betting on sports. in england you can make all sorts of great proposition bets if you're at an actual football match. imagine that: nationwide gambling and they haven't collapsed as a country. here i thought it was important to make illegal things people had moral oppositions to, go figure. remember like five years ago when texas decided sexual conduct between consenting adults couldn't be criminally punished? yeah, that happened then. so much for my dream of prosecuting someone on counts of treason and sodomy. c'mon, it's funny, you're under arrest! for treason and sodomy!
watch out for that...