one problem solved

so it turns out that all of my password difficulties with logging in to post were actually precipitated by my own oversight. rather than sign in with my blogger i.d., i was supposed to be signing in with my google i.d., which, despite superseding my blogger i.d. sign-in from before, did not want my blogger i.d. username, but rather the email address i gave it. i'm sure all this would never have happened if i just had a regular attractive functional gmail address like everyone else i know. that would just be too easy though. not that login difficulties have prevented me from posting. that was mostly because i have had nothing nice to say. that happens sometimes. but i decided that i would do my part to keep such personal bitching and whining out of all this for once.
suffice to say no one out there missed much. regular existential crisis. conclusion: fuck law school. i'll kick its ass. now to do so... it still needs some getting used to, but i'll get there. torts has been a massive disappointment, however. the prof has some teaching habits that make learning difficult, and the text, while initially purporting to offer several approaches to various situations, sometimes borders on the simply absurd. enjoy this snippet; i know i got a good laugh:
[in accounting for various elements of negligence, here, proximate cause]
The two sailors [bertha and agnes, piloting vessels approaching one another], again, are on a collision course. Bertha COULD [emphasis in original] avoid the collision, but Bertha sees two nude sunbathers. [parentheticals original] (Consider these nude sunbathers. Do the sunbathers share identity characteristics with the reader or with the dominant cultural images of beauty? Imagine the sunbathers in a non-sexist, non-heterosexist way.)

I appreciate the sentiment of the parenthetical, but really, fuck you. I understand why you want people's mental processes to operate along these lines, but is that a reasonable expectation, does anyone really think like that, does everyone immediately call up a mental picture, and is this anyway to change people's thought patterns? The clear assumption (supported by other conduct by my prof, who is one of the authors) is that because i am a white male, i will mentally picture two sports illustrated swimsuit models letting it all hang out. Honestly, i didn't picture shit. I thought, why the hell is this the example for proximate cause, and then all the other things i just bitched about. In class after this reading we considered a problem with supposedly gender-neutral names and people of unidentified races involving dana, from the suburbs, two window washers, and someone named bo. the prof's line of inquiry implied that most of us were to imagine a blonde suburban girl as dana, the window washers as disheveled black men, and bo was whatever, some dude in a mustang. when an indian girl mentioned she thought of dana as an old indian grandmother, the prof ceased talking to her and returned to a real live suburban white girl from the class, presumably because the issue was to prove the point that we all have racist imaginations. while all people's thought processes are all probably racist under some consideration, this thought experiment was really unproductive in my view. imagination is informed by personal identity and experience, things that involve absolutely minimal conscious intention or choice. if i have never known a male dana, am i sexist for thinking dana is a chick? is the fact that i think she's a chick inextricable from the accident she caused fleeing the window washers? does this mean i think women are bad drivers in general? mostly, all that was at work was an assault on the respect i had built up for the prof and the class. does this loss mean i'm a racist because my prof is a black woman? what does it mean to be racist? am i a sexist because i preferred it when her husband taught half of one class because i found him easier to follow? notice how i never approach any questions i ask. this mimics the way the text is structured. enough about that. the only other thing i want to say about law school right now is that today i saw some dude wearing a t-shirt that just said "tortfeasor" on it, and i thought that was fuckin sweet.
i had the excellent experience of attending victory brewing's fall fest over the weekend. it was a very large and family-friendly event with awesome beer and a traditional german band or two. i had some good drinks and a good time while i was there. some other stuff happened later that i'd just as soon not leave on the record as it is already indelibly etched in my mind. if you're curious, call me and ask (let me know te extent of how much you want - no one but me knows the full details yet, ask while i still know it all, like that story from back in the day about looking for fungi beyond freemont or rockford or whatever it was). it is kind of funny and kind of not. let's just say i'm a little banged up. hop devil is still the best ipa this side of arcadia. although i've seen posts from beer geeks in the philly area talking about some arcadia brews, i have yet to discover availability for myself. that would be nice though. i can get two-hearted though, which is an unforeseen blessing. and a one-up on chi town. but chi town gets fat tire, one of those odd holy grails of american craft brewing. other than that, let's just say that i'm not too bummed out about not seeing goose island shit out here. although their summer ale (really a kolsch) is perhaps the most drinkable beer of all time. i bought all siciliano's had one time. but summer has gone, and i know of no better oktoberfest brew than victory's festbier. at the event it was soooo fresh and smelled soooo good. the nose was like the smell of the brewing process itself, absolutely amazing. but not as sweet as when they opened the door to the walk-in hop cooler. if i were to ever wear some sort of fragrance product, i would want it to smell like hops. that would be a sweet way to find girls into good beer. and not smell like tobacco smoke. cream rinse and tobacco smoke, that sickly scent is always always there.
that was some cake for y'all. wow, spell check doesn't mark y'all. i support that; i've always thought it was bullshit that english doesn't have a differentiation for second person plural. also on the music front, animal collective is still great even though i didn't get to go to the show here over the weekend. i did get their new album on the finest vinyl, and it truly delivers. no luck finding "feels", however, and so i will try and steal that from n. reynolds upon my return to g r usalem. i wasn't overwhelmed by the record, though, probably because i was familiar with more than half of it. awesome stuff upon discovery, however. they just play shit live before putting it down, and i dig that, but here it meant that their "new" stuff was mostly things anyone into live recordings and the band had garnered long ago. allow me to reiterate, 7/3/06 helsinki, get it. archive.org, it's nothing tricky folks, and you'll be glad and better off for it. right now i've been listening to a soul coughing show, and i've been really impressed. i've heard ruby vroom and el oso before, but hearing them live is pretty sweet, too bad i'm once again like a decade after the ship has sailed. they knew what they were up to though. the show has considerable crowd noise, which to some leaves it permanently marred, but this is one of those rare instances for me where i really appreciate it. they're a new york city band if there ever was one, and the show is from there, and the electricity of the audience actually lends to the feeling of experience rather than detracting from pure listening pleasure. while they conspicuously play every song that received minimal mainstream media meditation, some of those classics elicited very fond memories. like the steedelijk museum (like the museum (museums... a place to work?) of modern art of amsterdam), where mr. hah and i considered whether one of the prominently featured artisits with a name sounding like something from is chicago is not chicago was indeed the focus of the tune.on a side note, i just went downstairs to get a beer from the fridge and when i opened it the light shown proudly for some unknown reason, as it has never shone in any manner before and i assumed the bulb had long since burned out. hopefully there is some significant omen to be derived therein.
tonight has been, in no uncertain terms, an absolute pain in the ass which i will without doubt continue to feel in the morning. and it is all over the stupidest thing of all time: tokens. we all know that tokens of any sort are purchased for a nominal sum of actual money with the value of the token being largely fluid depending on one's circumstances. sometimes you need one more token to win another round in the simpson's arcade game and it is worth all of the five dollars almost six you have on you to calls it even (we;re endin' this thing cheap, man!), and other times you've had it with getting your ass handed to you in virtua fighter two and you'd readily swap your spare five tokens purchased at 50 cents a piece for a real dollar so you could go next door and get a 20 oz. bottle for two bucks cheaper than the arcade wants. gotta watch that dollar at all-time lows against the canucks and the notorious euro. makes it more difficult to escape to some place comfortable. and that is why i cut my hair off. no, wait, i still haven't done that. but nevertheless, the issue is on my mind. i just cannot imagine what i would look like. except dutch, not clutch, but dutch. this font is way better than courier (new). that forced font fucked my memo. i think the reason the prof requires it is that she had to do all of her research with real books and type on a typewriter. just a theory, but i wasn't going to talk about law school any more. and to tie it all together, i never got a token for the subway despite walking all the way to the penn bookstore, which had an out of order token machine. and that means that i will have to try and use two dollar bills to get to school tomorrow, and people look at you like you're the biggest douche in the universe if you pay two cash bucks to get on the packed out trolley in the morning. looking forward to that and carrying all of my casebooks to school in the morning.
but moving on, your ballroom days are over. i'm playing the live doors album i picked up the other week, and it is rewarding to give it another go. although jim seems somewhat lackluster on the first side, the band is incredibly tight, with slick transitions in a long medley of alabama song (fond memories of baambrugge, ask kevdek) > back door man > love hides > five to one. the next side starts things in earnest with a full on build me a women and then gets legitimate for when the music's over.
and i'm sure you needed to know that. as good as a time as i had at victory fall (read: oktober) fest, i would trade it in a minute to go to harvest fest at founders and catch the backest of all forties. if you have the opportunity you're a fool not to take advantage of it. and report back to us as soon as it's done. (here's the money... and the phone...). the macpodz and one more uv hippo set are now on archive, though, so that will patch me through for a bit. can't wait for a new back forty tape though, was hoping for one from the whiskey lounge, anyone catch that one? this has been your formal local music coverage. if i wasn't lazy i and my connection didn't blow i would link up to that married to the sea comic with the trashed guy holding a bottle of wine yelling about how local music rules. well, you get the idea anyway, and you didn't even need a new tab. best browsing update ever, if not the best blog update ever. but here it is.