looking back

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