when am i going to post again?

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