took the long road home

i never considered my new digs to be a move to the tropics, and hey, it is not. but on the other hand, i cannot recall the last time i voluntarily took a thirty-odd block walk in january. i don't have any reference as to whether this is a mild winter for the city; i guess i could ask around. but there has not really been anything i would classify as a proper snowfall. i did miss a few weeks in the middle of winter though, and didn't really bother to check and see what the weather was like while i was not around. the point is that the walk, as usual, was a good thing. really helped to clear the head. i was in a pretty foul mood leaving school today.
things started out with me walking into a rumor mill dedicated solely to producing the single rumor (very specialized operation, you see) that our only class today was canceled. while i find it annoying to hear people toss around any idea that has no basis i am aware of, this goes double when i am unshakably certain that there is no basis. no email, no sign on the classroom door, nothing. to make matters worse, a full four people who never talk to me stopped to ask if i had heard class was canceled, 'cause, you know, they heard it from somebody, and heard some other people talking about it. after the fourth one the only thing that could have pissed me off more was if they had against all odds been correct. fortunately, they were not. unfortunately, i had spent a good amount of time yesterday preparing the three cases for today, and we spent the first third of class on a case i thought we had wrapped up at the previous session, and the rest of the time went towards considering only the first of the three assigned for today, approached in a way inconsistent with and unrewarding towards how i had studied the case for the most part. also, about halfway through, i noticed that a large portion of the class was all dressed up "professional" like. big interview day today! the overheard sentiment was that if you didn't have your ducks in a row and your panties in a bunch today, you're just shit out of luck, because this is the one day where anyone who is going to get a good job for the summer is going to start down that road. kiss my fucking ass, my only regret is that i didn't bring a bottle of shiraz to placate me and spill on your $800 suit. have i mentioned my distaste for my peers? two of them who also don't normally speak to me stopped by to express their frustration that their unofficial transcripts did not yet bear demarcation indicating their distinguished class participation. what ever will they do if they don't have it when every law firm within ten miles from their home interviews them? they did, after all, compile a list and mail a career services-approved resume to each and every one of them. i would really hate to see their rampant douchebaggery go unrewarded. a friend and i conferred and decided that if we were hiring associates, we would see their note and be fully aware that they were one of THOSE PEOPLE who can't shut the fuck up and emits a cloud of smug every time they speak, whether they are making an irrelevant and asinine contribution or answering the boringly obvious questions we're subjected to on a daily basis, and thus not hire them. the thing is, the kind of people who get to be in charge of hiring at law firms are probably were the exact same motherfucker when they were in law school, and are thrilled to take in an eager protege. after all, the only real purpose law school grades (and thus the majority of the entire process of "legal education" itself) serve is to identify the people who are most willing to ask how high when told to jump, the sort who will unquestioningly eat sleep and breathe whatever they are told to do. and honestly, they'll fit in the best at the big firm with the fat salary. have fun with your mercedes and your meaningless lifetime. the world is a better place now that you swung that contract between those two multinational corporations, i know i was hoping the rich could maybe get a little richer. usually i try not to throw around generalizations and take on a fuck you you're so corporate attitude, because the world is a nuanced place, but sitting here knowing that my life will be just fine and i have tons of options while i watch all these other people scurry around trying to find all the right hoops and jump through them gracelessly fills me with nothing but disgust and derision, because i have a front row seat. i bear witness toward something more mindless than watching last night's episode of a network sitcom on a cell phone in an escalade stuck in highway traffic while sipping starbucks listening to top forty on a speaker system as underutilized as marvin in hitch hiker's. so yeah, i kind of didn't mind the walk. it was sunny, if a little brisk.
the walk was actually was precipitated by the sacrifice of my free transfer to go get coffee with a compatriot i don't spend enough time with (due in some part to my apprehension about getting to where she lives - shady south philly). she and i had a pretty good talk, and her approach to things is really inspiring. i find it immensely comforting that someone who always seems to be pretty with it in class and leads a pretty righteous and socially responsible lifestyle (she does a lot for food not bombs, and is generally what i would call a good person) hasn't made any more inroads into the employment bullshit than i have, but has tons of ideas about what to do instead. she also shares my deep-seated distaste for the public interest clique and their insufferable self-righteousness in spite of their palpable lack of results. they just congratulate themselves and each other for not making a bunch of money while doing something nominally responsible. neither she nor i know how we're going to work any of this crap out, but i walked away feeling like hey, fuck 'em. no one but you can stop you from doing what you want to do about it. that just leaves a personal translation to be desired, but step one was knowing that it was possible.
so, other than law school, oh wait, i spent all day on it. the nice thing about this semester is that things are mostly more discrete and concrete. criminal law was impossible to pin down, despite being well-taught. it is subject to innumerable mutations across state lines and over time. torts was hopelessly bad, owing to materials and really lousy teaching. contracts was the only thing that really went well, because of defined focus and an atmosphere lacking the abject terror that permeated the criminal classroom. now, constitutional law has a direct reference point for everything, property is incredibly integrated, ip is covering something i care about, and civ pro at least, well, that kind of sucks i guess, but we'll see where it goes. the only enduring thorn in my side is legal writing. prof is an asshole, always setting you up to knock you down (two drafts in: okay, here's what you people SHOULD be doing, nevermind what i told you was right before) , just plain rude and unhelpful at turns, and focused more than anything else on the elephant in the room of my life known as "real job". the most annoying aspect is that it is all being filtered through what one unproven commodity (my so-called educator) thinks it should mean. she's not exactly a published authority on the subject, but that does not prevent her from exerting a lasting impact on students' perceptions and prospects. the whole crapshoot is easily revealed by talking to people with other profs. although, at the end of the day, i guess no one is really going to be able to give an acceptable justification for things being the way they are in legal practice. why do we do it this way? tradition. why should we follow tradition? it is what judges expect. why do they expect it? that is the way they learned it; the way it has been done before, also called tradition. i want to call it a tautology, but i guess the extra step just makes it circular. but i guess my response is just as bad: don't go to law school. why? it sucks and is a giant crock of shit. why? because it is law school. the difference is that what i have to say is helpful in some way. if you were thinking about law school. cause i know you were, given the glowing endorsements you've read here. it is cheaper and just as effective to get trashed at your favorite watering hole and telling people to go fuck themselves without knowing why you're advising such a course of action.
i'm sorry if you read this. it was kind of self-indulgent, but it was all i had, and i wanted to write something to keep me occupied. what is a blog if not an opportunity for venting and distraction?

ain't no time to stash the gumbo

salutations, interwebs. my communiques have been waylaid by a couldn't-put-it-down novel, which is really what my free time needed. the only problem is that when i read a novel this good, i really don't look forward to it ending. after one gets comfortable in an artificial world, the real one feels that much colder when one is forced back into it. strangely enough, this book included an unimportant list of something an incidental character was hauling out of a car he was trading to more central figures of the story, and this list included only a book that happened to be the last book that i felt strongly about, namely the manifesto known as "stranger in a strange land". a passing reference, but no doubt a tribute to an author who had exhibited a marked influence on the writer whose work i was actually reading at the time. indeed, the whole thing had a heinlein meets douglas adams quality to it. something of the transcendent quality, enough to admit no distractions of life's daily problems when one is engaged with the work. one of the few that truly deserving of the mythopoeic mantle too often tossed around. oh, yeah, the book is "american gods" by neil gaiman. i could link to something about it, but you're really better off just reading the damn thing. it'll go quick and you won't be the least bit sorry you checked it out. i guess if you have that i read books networking thing you could track it down on there, but on the other hand i believe i've told you all you should really have to know about it at this point (on a side note, megan, i didn't get the notion with the queen cd, figured it was coming but it didn't, you must be referring to another gaiman work, let me know what it was and read this if you haven't). overall, it left me with the feeling that i would be happier or somehow better off if my life consisted of reading a lot more books i chose on my own while working for a living. if that is what you are doing, cheers. i'm jealous.
i've had some occasions to consider the structure of my life in similar ways recently. a friend of mine who i met here recently moved all the way across the country to semi-rural oregon. this guy has done a fair amount of bouncing, hither and thither. well-accomplished squatter with skills to pay the bills, like basic carpentry. not that he has much in the way of bills; in fact i wonder if he has ever paid rent. not in a bad way, just musing on whether he has found a better way. i find the notion that one can navigate the twenty-first century in a rambling romanticist manner comforting in a way. but once again, i find myself a little jealous. they say the grass is always greener, but something like this gives me pause to wonder if perception is not the only thing at work. i spent one month in the netherlands, collecting college credit, looking at churches, and sliding by on the myriad connections of my school and goodwill and financial support of relatives. he spent four months there, trading small-batch homegrown for vast quantities of industrial crops, hanging out with a girlfriend and participating in planned squat takeovers of abandoned property, remaining for the legally required time while other organizers brought him food, beer, cigarettes, and other supplies, eventually providing the table, bed, and two chairs required to seal the property takeover. i might have learned a little more about the language and the culture writ large, but he at least took home gezellig, even if he couldn't pronounce it. right now he is on his way across the whole of the country in a pickup he paid for fairly rigged up like a collapsed covered wagon for the journey, probably seeing friends in chicago, recharging via partying. i mostly doubt that i am cut out for that kind of life, but it lends a spark to the imagination that i imagine joining the circus held for some several decades back, or perhaps being a mercenary or pirate centuries before that. i don't really know what i think about it all, but it is definitely something to consider. like anything else, we gaze from our own vantage point and take from it what we wish to see.
after all, it can only be a reference point. i sit here, nominally a student, with the existential angst that is usually reserved for my previous tenure as a philosophical undergraduate. i'm not a square peg going into a round hole, no, its a round peg into the square slot: it is not meant to be, but it can be accomplished with enough force. for all the value i put into my contemplations and deep-seated opinions about the world, with all my skepticism and desire to find my own way, i cannot help but crave the stability of a comfortable middle class lifestyle. ironically, i find myself at my present juncture based on that unshakable longing for what i perceive as an overarching comfort coupled with those very same notions about doing my own thing, manifested here by skipping dodge. i just had to do it, it all seemed like such a good deal. give em all the finger, but set out for something substantially similar at the end of the day. the sum of all this found me today reading about the supreme court's review of a federal law about possessing firearms at or near schools of all stripes. like many cases worthy of casebook canonization, the decision was a narrow five-four. the majority thought it was too much for washington to claim it had the right to pass what looks like a police-power criminal statute predicated on the idea that regulation of guns in educational areas falls under the commerce clause of the constitution, which grants congress the power to regulate commerce among the several states, and to foreign nations, and the indian tribes. the claim was that guns in and around schools harm education, and damage to education translates to an inadequate workforce, which assuredly is deeply connected to interstate commerce in our modern mobile economy, according to both congress and the dissent. it made me mad enough to spit. the post hoc ergo propter hoc monster (conveniently linked for non latin/logic/look it up types - i just like to say and write the phrase) was pissing on my leg and telling me it was raining, as they say. wait, nobody says that. nobody. the point is, i think the problems keeping people who deal with guns at their schools from getting good jobs are the same problems responsible for guns being at school in the first place, rather than the guns themselves or the people who wind up carrying them to school. we're not talking about columbine, we're talking about unions and centrals all over the country. i'm just offended that none of the nine most deferred-to justices even went there in their sundry opinions.
but that isn't even the half of it in the readings these days. i spent most of saturday really upset after reading a property opinion recounting and justifying the takeover of native lands in america. being pissed and depressed about it doesn't do anything, really, but i just could not shake the horror and injustice for a while. from almost ten million to about two hundred thousand over the course of only a hundred and fifty years or so. just wiped them out, piece by piece, parcel by parcel. all so i could live a comfortable life and study and thereby perpetuate the theoretical fictions our forebears utilized to perpetrate something that i had never properly regarded as so unspeakably heinous. on the other hand, it wasn't just for me. no, it was the foundation for the long, cruel building process of a nation inhering the enslavement and mistreatment of so many individuals and families. guilt hardly begins to describe it, and this is not or at least should not be something i or anyone else should feel because of the christian reformed church, or catholicism or anything of the sort. no, this is the sort of thing the majority of modern day americans can and should find repugnant for a number of reasons, chiefly because we would rail against an analogous process in this day and age. your human rights sticker does not make it alright, but nothing ever will. i don't think anything along these lines made it into the state of the union address this evening, but that is hardly the fault of our current figurehead, even though he did mention something about economic prosperity guaranteed by sticking to the philosophy this country was founded upon. it is not as if he wrote any of the speech anyway. same for whatever asshole next year, and the year after, and four years after, and so forth.
uplifted yet? i'm working on a career transition to motivational speaking.
let's talk about something else. music, perhaps. right now i am listening to a scintillating instrumental, nothing too drawn out, just enough to create a feeling. from a sterling quality uncle tupelo (all you too cool for wilco kids know they're still way better than son volt) show. the song is called sandusky, and the beauty of the tune belies the feeling of the locale. i was around the area for once, not counting youthful excursions to the finest amusement park around, and damn was that place a bummer. in other music news, the two newest live music archive back 40 downloads feature a recently penned number i thoroughly enjoy, an aptly titled newgrass tune called "play a little music and drink a little booze". great bluesy break two thirds or so into the track, along the same lines as lake erie but a more accomplished song and trading the reggae segment for something a little more classic. other than that, i just want dekking-ja to know how awesome steely dan is.
oooh, and in actually reported music-related news, the beatles are un-banned from israel. to be honest, i didn't know they got shut down there way back in '65. go figure. of course they would have corrupted the zionist youth and prevented national success against egypt and company. the whole thing just seems kind of surreal, state representatives meeting with john lennon's sister. also covered by the bbc today: marijuana vending machines in california. i don't know what to think anymore. mostly, i am amused by the fact that every other time the substance has come up in bbc coverage, it is always ALWAYS referred to simply as cannabis, anywhere else in the world. but today, in california, it was "the drug marijuana". maybe illegal was appended to the front of it; i cannot recall. but they're right, vending machines. finally, some credence for the middle school joke and confusion about pop machine/pot machine. with the rigmarole surrounding it all, i don't understand why they don't just treat it like any other prescription. more frightening, the article mentioned in passing how the developer behind the technology is naturally expecting more and more prescriptions to be distributed through vending machines. we're even phasing out pharmacists? is no occupation sacred? the whole thing is too much, kind of like the "marijuana" graphic included in the news page. looked like some pretty raw and rude clippings. perhaps to differentiate from the "yellow card civil offence" cannabis brits know and are comfortable with from the crazy shit those cowboy americans are up to. whatever the media says, they dig our style too dude, got that whole cowboy thing goin' on. lebowski was on the big screen here tonight too, costumes encouraged. i couldn't make it; six bucks or so i didn't have plus the temptation to spend more i didn't have on caucasians. finally enjoying the requisite loan problems endemic to pursuers of higher education. hopefully wrap that up in a week or so, ideally before i choose starving over peanut butter sandwiches.
that's about all for now i reckon, but as this has been a somewhat thoughtful and meditative post, i feel the need for a truncated lyrical addendum:
even the mole people they got to get religion; they gonna join that underground church.

just don't tell 'em that you know me

back at it again today, it being school and here, i guess. the five on, three off day schedule is still as jarring as it was back at work. yesterday was my first MLK day off, ever. am i a bad person for not doing a service project? no, i am probably a bad person for some more cogent reasons. moving to a place not overwhelmingly white has provided me with more opportunity to reflect on "race" and all subtopics. i think that is a good thing. on the other hand, i have mixed feelings about the notion that the day calls for service projects. from one standpoint, i dig the notion that the day is not to celebrate a problem that we as a nation solved, but a chance to take part in an ongoing effort. alternatively, there seems to be some implication that the day is for people who need "us" to help "them". kind of like the whole aid to africa thing. i dunno, just a feeling of baudrillard (man i cannot spell french shit, somehow got that one right. yeah, i totally checked) disaster porn. merits of the argument aside, that was always a debate favorite, probably most run by teams who had the file but not the understanding. that itself forms a strange metaphor for the way the day was approached by schools i have previously attended.
all that aside, the day after was set aside on our academic calender as another somewhat dubious occasion: the posting of grades. well, really, the alleged posting of grades. half of mine were not in by the "final deadline" and none were in by the "original deadline" which was like four days ago. this is probably one reason why these people teach and don't practice. real life lawyer shit cannot pass deadlines, like for real, that just cannot happen. they won't let it. anyway, i have not failed anything. this was the first time in my life where that was a serious concern. everything is just so different. and they do their damndest to scare the hell out of you and make you realize that this is a thing that could happen. and it is not entirely far-fetched. knowing some of my classmates, i would actually be a little disheartened if some of them did not fail something, given their earlier indications of having no idea what was going on.
despite that looming specter, it was business as usual in the classroom. my time off did not really recharge me for the same bullshit all over again. one class today seemed overly simplistic. the other one was interesting for reasons that will not be on the exam. as i think i mentioned before, constitutional law gives rise to many in-depth historical discussions, and the prof really knows his shit when it comes to that. unfortunately, and this is also probably repeat, i cannot stand reading jurisprudence more than fifty years old. modern court reporting/stenography is an oft-overlooked blessing to everyone who comes in contact with the legal system in any way. the old stuff is typically real dodgy as to the actual facts leading to the lawsuit, and is written in a terribly verbose manner. i encountered a sentence with seven commas and a semicolon today. also, remember, these people are judges, and such types work with a peculiar lexicon. i could go on, but the point is that shit is a serious pain in the ass to read because it is so difficult to focus on for reasons listed. the reason that this bothers me more than any equally dense reading i've done (19th century philosophy translated from german, anyone? followed up by contemporary continental thought of any nationality) is that what they are trying to say in the opinions can be stated in a much more readable manner, whereas other difficult to read language owes to the complexity of the idea it is trying to get across and often painfully self-aware of language. the old opinions sometimes seem to be difficult for the sake of being difficult, and i feel that is a near-universal annoyance to everyone. other times, my brain just makes things worse: i totally read about the native population of a pacific island in the middle of nowhere paying their taxes in "rats, mice, and other objects". i couldn't decide if it was stranger that they would pay tribute in this way, or that the colonial power would accept it. i also had a brief though about animals not being objects. turns out they were paying in mats, rice, and other objects. just when things were getting appealingly odd.
perhaps in an attempt to counteract the difficult to read with a diametric opposition, or maybe just because i, like most people, crave distraction and amusement, i have been getting into more web comics. i know that this is a dangerous road to tread upon, or at least i believe it to be such. kind of like getting into an anime series is dangerous. there are innumerable web comics out there and most of them are probably not very good, but i have been consistently entertained by the few i have read for a while that people i am friends with in real life (serves as an important distinction to just going out there and reading whatever) that i have given a shot to a couple more referred to on the achewood boards. so far, so good. i went through the archives for xkcd recently, and they were mercifully brief compared to the others i have caught up on. oh, yeah, they were mostly pretty good too. some really funny, some puzzling in more than one sense, some over my head. i do not know enough about physics and computer programming to get all the jokes, but thankfully those themes are far from omnipresent in the strip. it is not like penny arcade where you have to be a for reals gamer for life to get what are undoubtedly hilarious jokes. overall, the comic usually tries and succeeds at geekily intelligent humor. i liked it enough that i will probably check it when it updates. married to the sea/tfd/natalie dee spoiled me with those daily updates. i am also getting into dinosaur comics, but cannot yet fully explain the appeal. i suspect you may hear more about it later. or not, but you should probably give it a shot too. achewood still takes the cake in my view, so i will take this opportunity to once more plug it for those of you who still haven't seen the light. is so good. is so funny.
i was going through one of the spin-off blogs for achewood that i haven't read while i was killing time during a break and took notice of the google ads you can put on your blogger account. diss my internet knowledge if you must, but for some reason i hadn't previously realized that the spiders try to fit the ads to the blog. i have no interest or hope for making money from a blog, least of all this one, but i must admit i really wonder what kinds of ads would go with this blog, or your blogs. although i did mention disaster porn theory in this post, and that would probably fuck things up for a while, no pun intended. i was also reminded about using labels for this post. i would still limit to the suggested scooters, fall, and vacation. albuquerque, sushi, and the smashing pumpkins are also fair game, since they were in the "how to use labels" (man i am all about the quotation marks tonight) tutorial. they never seemed to attract anything good or bad though, so i suppose it is mostly a matter of personal amusement. yeah, i still think it is kind of funny.
so while i was reading this particular blog the other day, i also came across a mention of sierra nevada, and i have lusted after one of their pale ales every moment since. it has been a little while, and it just sounded like it would hit the spot. but when i went to go buy it, there, right next to it was sierra nevada esb, which i was unaware existed and may very well be a recent addition to their arsenal. so i got one of each and even though i wanted the pale really bad, i just couldn't resist the urge to try something new. years of trying to develop as broad as possible knowledge of beers of the world has made this an irrepressible impulse of mine. so here i am, drinking the esb, and i probably won't even open the pale tonight. oh well. maybe putting it off will make it even better. but for now, not much to complain about with the esb. there is one thing. upon closer inspection of the label, the text underneath the graphic reads "early spring beer". i had a moment of apprehension, as if i had purchased something i had not meant to. ordinarily, esb is supposed to stand for extra special bitter. this is a gradation of the family of beers known as bitter, which, despite the name, really are not particularly bitter, doubly so to modern american craft beer aficionados who regularly rock our palettes with barrels of high alpha pacific northwest cascade hops and the like. the idea is that there was bitter, for a time the standard english beer, mild, lower alcohol, suitable for quaffing a couple quarts after a day in the coal mine. special bitter has more alcohol and hops, and extra special bitter is another notch up from that. the good news is that despite the label (which really annoys me for some reason, imagine some fuckers putting "internationally prized ale" on a bottle of ipa), this is that precise style of beer, fairly adjusted to the current american craft brewing standards. alcohol just under six, classy and classic maris otter malt base and old school british hops for the base, with some american counterparts to top it off. i wouldn't want an uncompromising historical imitation from sierra nevada anyway. poured with a great head, those folks are well known to have that bit literally down to a science. the aroma was very pleasant, and not overwhelmed by the hops, and much the same can be said of the taste. eminently drinkable, i almost feel like it should be consumed someplace that can rightly be called a pub, and nowhere else. that being said, the carbonation out of the bottle is ideal for the style, a happy medium between the effervescent canned corporate brew and the nearly still quality of some heavier beers; enough to facilitate drinking, not so much as to slow anything down. nice color too, some varieties of the style come out too amber in flavor in appearance. overall, a good beer, solid on all sides, nothing to scream about, because then too many people might find out and it won't be there when you want it. speaking of which, the style has never been seasonal, and i will be annoyed if i discover that they called it early spring beer because they're only gonna run it for a quarter. but not really upset, because although this is a very good beer, i live at a time and place where i have the luxury of selecting from several fine varieties of a micro style. i sympathize for the proto-revolutionaries who had to make due on hard-to-find imports back in the 80s. may american craft brewing never fail again!

no worries

straw is doing well. ideally he'll be home tomorrow. for now, i am going to drink old crow bourbon (no, seriously, that is what it is called) and watch face/off because it is silly. the two-disc set i received for christmas is, according to the sleeve "exploding with all-new special features". Sneaky dvd making terrorists and their IEDs.

needle in your d

not easy being a tiny baby kitten sometimes. the vet called to update me and say they removed the blockage and catheterized him. jack is starting to wonder where he is. or maybe i just project that on to him. not anthropomorphizing one's pets' thoughts and actions is tough. probably only accurate if you're a nihilist. at least for my kitties, who avowedly believe in nothing. except maybe getting petted and jumping on laps at inopportune times. enough cat drama until tomorrow.
i had a bitch of a time concentrating on my reading tonight. and also getting this post to not be in times new roman, blogger sometimes just cannot resist that font. the reading might have been problematic mostly because late eighteenth and early nineteenth century judicial opinions are not the easiest things to read. not exactly mystery novels, although there is certainly an element of mystery to them. such is the stuff of constitutional law. its a rough night when civil procedure reading is the best the homework has to offer. both books are used, and whatever the previous owner was up to in the civpro book is more interesting. handwriting is almost illegible, book is beat to shit. turns out the book was previously used by my twin who writes in books more. no, then i would be able to understand what they were up to. i really like trying to scrutinize the shorthand and highlight selection and color choices. man, i am in the wrong field.
i'm listening to billy joel again. partly because it sounded like a good idea, partly because it was still on the record player. there is this line in piano man, "microphone smells like a beer". when i was a kid, i found that lyric unbelievably hilarious. i still do not know quite why. the other lyric i remember getting a huge kick out of as a child is in paul simon's gumboots (whoa, that is totally an acceptable word for spell check) off of graceland, "believing i had supernatural powers, i slammed into a brick wall". so for all of you psych hacks out there, let me know precisely what it is that is wrong with my brain.
speaking of psych backgrounds, dekking-JA, you are officially bad at the internet. i found airfare under 250 with like one google and one click while i was reading homework and doing shit in four other tabs on firefox. you sounded like you were having a good time tonight. thanks for calling, it did cheer me up. but you're still bad at the internet. if you don't step it up, i am totally calling calvin and telling them that you have to re-take RIT. and DCM. and any other bullshit core class known by a set of initials. you had better get some new dip and whippits.
the wings finally got it back together tonight. good to know some things are looking up. they had dropped three straight previously, drawing all sorts of scrutiny from the over-reporting world of sports. people who are too cool for sports have it all wrong. sports need not be approached with a white baseball hat and a bud lite (man, i wish spell check would mark lite). there is an immense mine of information, and i am a sucker for observing things that have broad cultural appeal. and i just plain like hockey, which doesn't really have the broadest appeal of all sports. but i like to reflect on the media coverage sports get versus non-american news in the mainstream media. it is also a lowest common denominator of conversation, which can lead to thought-provoking conversations about how much certain people know about it all. whatever. the point is zetterberg beat luongo in a shootout, and that is a classy win.
but this is not a blog for sports, even if i'll go there. no, this has become for mostly bitching about law school and rambling self-indulgently about music which may or may not be self-indulgent. but the rambling will be. no one wants to hear about brent mydland's cheesiest (acceptable spelling) synth licks. but if you just can't look away, at least you will have learned something about which you may not care a whole lot about. that is the point of the internet, after all. so if you want to check out some extreme (extremely what? so many things. much like the mountain dew i purchased in a bizarre move today) 80s keyboard technology, hit me up for the 6/30/85 soundboard. i'm sure you all will. one of the funny things about music is how extremely subjective it is. in my experience when people who know each other fairly well have one another listen to music they're sure everyone must love, the results are fairly well mixed between hit and miss. in fact, this is the reason for the vast american sonic landscape over the years; especially now people are eager for a realm of the personal, and music has a unique and effective way of filling such a void. this also goes to explain how bands get serious followings: if a band is identified as defining a aspect of one's personality, people will bond with others who exemplify that same trait in the same manner, namely obsessing over certain music. yeah, i just used a ; and then a :. brings us back to early american jurisprudence... no. not tonight. i'm all set, as they used to say. expect more cat drama updates tomorrow, i guess.

that's what love will make you do

today featured the bane of my academic existence, namely, missing class. you would think with all the complaining i do that i would be just as happy not to be there. not true. the things that bother me are not so much doing the reading and going to class to talk about it. still kinda dig that; one of the reasons i stuck around i guess. but if i had to miss one, the writing class i kind of not a favorite so today was a good day to have to miss something. missed constitutional though, which is kind of a bummer, but i'm right back at that tomorrow.i could have missed ip in the morning but that meets less frequently than con and the prof is amazing. anyway, i had to miss class and take a long walk in the wettest of snow to bring straw in. it is a good thing i did. they diagnosed him pretty quick with a blockage in his urinary tract; his bladder is apparently like the size of a softball. not good for a tiny baby kitten like him (side note, he weighed in at 13 and a half pounds, i always wondered). the bad news is that such blockage requires first, removal, and then a catheter draining his bladder over the course of like two days. bummer. as you may have surmised, this thing is not cheap. fortunately i have parents who care deeply and understand how important my kitties are, and so i will not have to sell one of my own kidneys to take care of whatever is wrong with the cat's kidneys. the vet people were really awesome and understanding while we tried to work out the financial stuff. they offered a few options, and it was clear that they were genuinely concerned with him being treated asap, even if it was not by them. both the front desk and the actual vet people were really professional, even though some of the up front people wouldn't pass a "looks professional" test in some circles. i would rather deal with people like this than someone stuffy in "business casual" appearance. hit trader joe's on the way back too (after planning in my head about transferring to the el and going to a different place on the way home - totally forgot this was on the way) and it is the same way there. really great people at a business one can feel decent about patronizing, and holy shit, tattoos and piercings, longhairs and beards, and yet they still do their job well. who knew? maybe a few years down the road people will be forced to get over that shit. maybe not. who knows? if the people who don't like it were smarter, they would realize that the more it is accepted the less allure it has to many of the people who are all about it. when i left the store, my trolley showed up immediately. that was sweet. so for all the stress related to today, i'm feeling reasonably peaceful for the time being. now i'm going to go wreck it with homework.

hurts me too

straw is going to the vet tomorrow. he does not want to go on his own, and thus i must bring him there. not looking forward to it, but i really want him to be okay. he is not feeling so premium. all lethargic and obviously pained to move. even the medical world of pets is fraught with bullshit. i fully expect the vet to be appalled that he has no medical records to transfer to them, excepting getting neutered like four years ago. listen, the cats and i have been to the doctor an equal amount of times since i've had them. i refuse to be guilted on this one. all that aside, the logistics of the whole ordeal are nothing to look forward to. i managed to borrow a cat carrier from my neighbor, so that is one thing dealt with. the real concern is how to get this cat so some place like thirty blocks away. cab is kind of cost prohibitive. this situation is yet another reason why i should already have a car share account. i'm kind of wary of taking the cat on the trolley, but its really the only thing that makes good financial sense. i can't really articulate why i'm uncomfortable with it, but i just don't want to upset the poor thing while he's already not feeling well. i also feel a little iffy about being the dude with the howling feline in a box on public transport, but in reality, fuck it. like i don't deal with assholes having annoying loud conversations on cell phones and blasting shitty music out of crappy headphones every day. i don't ten dollar feel bad for you listening to my cat complain about riding with you all. not on the way there, not on the way back. the posting inside the vehicle bans animals except in "approved containers". this has gotta count. i will be pissed if i am missing class only to have a legal debate with a septa employee. this whole thing is a frustration i do not need right now. people always talk about taking health for granted, but here i was taking my cat's health for granted, and now it is a thing. in the end, i will be glad to see him back to normal though. hopefully i will be happy enough to assuage the bummer of budgeting concerns.
have i mentioned lately that i hate law school and the life i have governed by it? yes? good, just wanted to make sure. no updates; it is still a pain in the ass leading to nothing better. seriously, i wouldn't give a shit about the whole thing if i wanted to be a lawyer. therein lies the rub.
let's talk about something else. i had one of the most serious slices of pizza i've ever encountered this evening. if ever one slice was all i needed, this was it. just a plain sicilian slice from across the road, but man was it good. took a while to even eat the thing. don't think i could have done another one, so it is a good thing i didn't overshoot it. this was enough to restore my faith in pizza, as i had made the mistake of taking advantage of the notorious free pizza at so many lunchtime talks at school. seriously, there has to be another pizza place in the area they could order from. the ubiquitous pies are the worst pizza i have ever had, including the pizza product in the high school cafeteria, boxed chef boy-ar-dee, and the infamous hot 'n' ready. well, wait. the law school pizza is only the second worst. the worst ever was a pizza we bought at one of those canadian highway convenience islands on the way back from coventry. god that was awful. we seriously didn't even eat half of it, despite being seriously hungry. everything was wrong with it; but the raw doughy-ness of the crust elevated/lowered it to worst pizza ever status. but the pizza at school is worse than late night pizza mister pizza (no, really, those five words were the name, and they had some wicked bad pie). it is greasy as hell, the cheese tastes ersatz, the crust smacks of starch, the sauce is inadequate in quantity and substance, and the toppings are all somehow not quite right, like the pepperoni doesn't come out the color or flavor pepperoni should, onion chunks are unnecessarily large, green olives are always bad and come on the veggie and the supreme, and the mushrooms are like brined or something. i usually just go for plain, but the problems that has have just been noted. there is nothing good to be said about that pizza other than that it is eaten at no additional cost beyond tuition. all that being said, come on. pizza does not have to be bad, and in fact has no excuse to be bad. it is pizza, for christ's sake, it should bring tastiness and joy, not lubrication and regret. is this so much to ask?
seeing all the zs above i thought about scrabble (not marked! didn't know that was a word), or more accurately scrabulous. oddly enough, yesterday, between covering intellectual property material and glancing at my scrabulous tab, i wondered how they were pulling this off legally speaking. the board is the spitting image, and the name is even a take off on the original. c'mon. then today, sure enough, news about how the kibosh has been put on the whole thing. what were they thinking? nothing probably. if i remember correctly, the application was an independently designed add-on the site itself later incorporated. dial one eight hundred sue yer ass. probably they'll just get an injunction for facebook not to do it any more, only money changing hands is going from business entities to lawyers. some jackass just got fat paid to throw out a bunch of WHEREASes and THEREFOREs. maybe even a WHEREFORE or two. weak, but if one must be a lawyer, i suppose that is really one of the more palatable options in my view.
the rest of this post has been canceled due to a phone call that was more encouraging than just whining. i'll be back.

pabst brown pacifier

please alert me to any job postings for professional chilling the fuck out. i am currently striving to do so after what you may infer from the previous post has not been an entirely pleasurable day. feet up, forty, cig, billy joel. i need some good novels to read. something not too heavy. a buddy has a bunch of pratchett for me, and i think that will do the trick. i need something to get away. i'm already screaming at my text books, and we're two days in. i somehow got wides lights instead of wides filters. being wides, they don't leave me as wanting as regular lights, and the filters were admittedly getting a little harsh, but these have a habit of dropping their cherry. not cool. also had to correct the clerk on some pricing for my brew, i feel like a dick, but i'm not going to unquestioningly overpay by like three bucks. he didn't seem too miffed; i was right after all. like hell i don't know how much beer costs, despite the general refusal in this city to price mark fucking anything at those kinds of places.
in any event, i have made it through the trying portion of another day. one at a time. the civ pro reading was the worst: no real cases, just a poorly worded and presented rehash of things i already knew/learned last semester. that is the one prof i have yet to meet. my ip prof seems pretty sweet, another academic badass. dude has some degree with FOUR LETTERS that i've never heard of. but you know shit is serious when there are four letters involved with the abbreviation of a degree. something about public international law and treaties and such. right on. i could look up what the fuck it actually is, but no. i prefer the mystique. my constitutional law class today was a welcome history lecture, really. after class i got into a discussion about how it had not been a law class at all really, and how that was kind of nice. my friend commented that the material demanded an historical introduction, which is certainly true, but i responded with how struck i was that any and all legal classes demand the same sort of grounding really, since it is a fiction to approach such things in a vacuum. to be fair, most classes to make passing references to matters of historical influence. unfortunately they are usually hopelessly dry and stultified, significantly dimming the light they could shed on the formation of modern law. in all honesty, i've come to realize that what i really wanted to do was study law in a grad school setting as opposed to a professional school. i love learning about the law, but all of it here is tainted with career concerns. i "suffer" from a chronic failure to approach things "professionally". ah, quotes around individual words. see, i really do belong in grad school. of course, such is fraught with its own host of irrepressible bullshit, but it is at least a different set of bullshit, and we may never know if i am better equipped to handle said set, since some set is inevitable. such is life.
so american idol is kicking off here tonight. the funniest part about that is that is the probably the most recognizable reference to where i am that i have made here in some time. paranoia. whatever, good luck turning up my shit on a google with my real name and so forth. not gonna happen. anyway, they wouldn't let me on. something about how i look like bo bice (sp?) after his career went nowhere. i know i actually don't look anything like that douche, but some lady back at the plasma place was convinced that i looked like a ringer. i didn't even know who the hell the guy was when she kept telling me this. some of my more mainstream media savvy co-workers filled me in, and i was mostly just confused. so yeah, that turned out pretty weak. that was the best american idol joke i had folks. a while back i caught a mad tv parody of that guy, don't know how or why i was watching that shit, but i was glad to see him lampooned. i am also glad that lampooned is a recognized verb. good word all around. even if i can't make an easy joke (i know there is a good one lurking in there somewhere) i can at least bust out with some solid vocabulary. unlike whoever had my civ pro book before me, motherfucker defines the most mundane words in the margin and highlights like a retarded manatee, assuming retarded manatees highlight only verbs and the occasional poorly structured and generally meaningless phrases. there, maybe someone laughed at that. better than the other attempt at least. anything is funnier than me bitching about school, unless you've got that sense of humor which delights in my self-imposed plight. i am pretty sure i know everyone who reads this drivel and am also pretty sure that y'all feel good enough about me not to give me the nelson point-and-laugh for fucking up and trying to do what seemed like a good idea at the time (don't they all?).
tonight is the night where trash goes out. this is good, because since i got back all umpteen barrels we have for this modest rowhouse have been stuffed with packing supplies and containers since new people moved in somewhere downstairs. i don't have anything rotting or anything, but it will be nice to clear a little space with shit from last semester i decidedly will never refer back to. there are other things from last semester that i think i would still rather burn than throw away though. if my rage yet smolders, thus too shall the materials inspiring such fervor. huh, while typing all that i slipped into some serious british spelling habits. some words just look better with the u in them, coincidentally including smoulder and fervour. i'm not even sure the brits do the u in fervor, but whatever. i'm starting my own language and we will.
it's that time again. that time where i talk about music and you scroll to see if there is something else to read about. tonight, i am here to tell you that bruce hornsby is fuckin sweet. the lasting appeal of the way it is testifies to the man's pop sensibilities, but my god, the chops. i'm tellin ya, the dude has serious musician credibility. and he can actually sing, the bane of most serious musicians. plus, he plays squeezebox. what more do you want. but back to singing for more musical rambling. i've lately been mesmerized by the pipes on trevor from tea leaf once again. while vocals are something to come by anywhere in the music world, they are perhaps exceptionally scarce in the jam realm. this man has it together. if you're ever so inclined, this whole show is a pretty good example of how they roll. right now, the band is taking votes from all over the country as to where they should play a particular gig. i like the idea that a band will play a show wherever the most people want them to play it. not bad for a group of minor means. if my crc background taught me one thing, though, it is that if you're gonna talk about something, it should come in threes. so tonights final musical prop goes to my morning jacket. jim evokes a certain type of dylan, and i think that is why i find the whole thing undeniable. also, anyone who talks on hippie music fests should contemplate how awesome it would have been to be at the langerado show in 06. is so good. so there is your three for the post. and there wasn't even any steely dan. or lyrics posting. nothing will ever live up to posting the words to lily rosemary and the jack of hearts, as they are quite possibly the best ever, but right now i'm fighting temptation to include new madrid. oh, jeff. dekking-ha, may you get new madrid and not i'm the man who loves you at that show. still salivating over the tapes, gonna have to clear out some hard drive space. dude, you need to start loving chicago. remember when you got to live in a big city but it was still the midwest and there were people you knew from before, and you could drive home easily, and they had some place where you got to be an expert on dank brew and kaas for a living? yeah, that wasn't all bad. mostly alright, really. if you honestly don't dig it, we can always trade. law school is awesome. really. you should give it a shot. it'll be straight; nobody's gonna look at your eyes.
right now, i am mostly missing my old car. not my most recent car, no, my old car. my old school car. my great aunt's car. gun metal gray. they don't call it a celebrity for nothin. over break, donnie and i had some good reminiscing about all that, and even watching it get towed over the course of a couple hours. good times. an associate of mine recently claimed that there is an all "good times" t.v. network on cable. can anyone confirm or disconfirm? whoa, spell check is not having disconfirm. i'm willing to go out on a limb and say that regardless of what spell check has to say, any word used in lebowski dialog counts. doubly so in my new language. dammit, dialog also seems like it wants a u. i am on a total u kick right now. once, in high school, i designed a platform for running for president that featured supporting an increase in the use of the letters k and w. i like to think that such a platform would win out in this year's running of the... man, i can't even think of anything derogatory enough that would fit well in that sentence. anyway, with the power of a couple of solid letters on my side, i'm better than all those fuckers. politics is its own cartoon; i don't see how people make a living making caricatures of it all. john stewart and co. are the only people making an honest living off of politics.
that's all folks. tthings aren't going to get much better, in terms of this post, politics, or salt 'n' vinegar chips, like someone used to say. no, i just said that. and that's all i've got to say. bad at endings,
meddle

fuck this shit

so in keeping with the idea to try and give law school a more open minded go round this semester, i went to a presentation about summer internships at the aclu. the meeting featured the same asshole i can't stand who i know from other things i've gone to, so that kind of set the tone. basically, nothing changes; they're all just a bunch of lawyers, aka a bunch of pricks. even if what they do is something i would consider positive overall, this does not enhance my desire to either work with these people or do the work that they do. which brings us to the larger summer job picture, and it is bleak. everyone wants 1ls for legal research and writing, the bane of my scholastic experience. also, this is all people get to do when they start out with real legal jobs. oh, hooray. fuck lawyers, and fuck lawyering. the more i find out, the less i want to do with it. and yet here i am. so much for trying to learn something for the sake of knowing it, or being able to work it into an acceptable career. law school: the worst decision ever. also on the horizon: what is sure to be a rousing meeting with career services. i'm sure they know how people should write and design resumes such that they secure summer work. the problem is my allergy to resumes and legal work. why the fuck did i come back? nothing better to do. fear of being perceived as having failed. felt like it was what i was supposed to do. the first year is the worst, huh? i am having a really difficult time imagining what the possible difference between the first and second year could be that would make one universally regarded as shitty and the other being generally acceptable. perhaps the notion is that people get to go out and do legal work and find having a job in the field encouraging. this is not something i anticipate happening to me at all. being able to choose classes next year is not going to be enough to radically alter things on its own. law classes are still going to be law classes, profs will still be profs, etc. right now, i want to scream incredibly loud and beat the shit out of a managing partner at some important law firm i haven't heard of and will continue to fail to give a shit about. lexis summaries include not just counsels' names, but what firm they work for and where that firm is located. this makes me retch. what can i say? i guess i just hate america, freedom, you name it. more than anything, i'm upset with myself for getting me into this mess in the first place.

exile on broad street

well, i'm back. back in the city, back to law school, back on the blog. thanks to everyone back home for making the trip more than worth my while. despite my claim of no expectations for my journey home, there were some that inevitably persisted, none of which were frustrated. however, i can't resist the opportunity to complain nonetheless: it all made it shittier to leave again. sure, i like this place, but is not home, and it would take a long time for it to be that way. i got rained on the whole walk from the train station to the apartment, which was not an encouraging sign. it has been nice to see everyone here again, but the unavoidable lack of history along with a host of other things makes it different. i was so bored my first night back. yes, there may be more to do here, but fewer people to do whatever with, and not enough money to do it anyway.
today marked the resumption of my personal hellish trip down the demented oregon trail known as law school. i was not excited. i had somehow quickly forgotten while away exactly how much i despise the whole ordeal. i had all these plans to come back with a good attitude and be a go-getter this semester, but that is already beginning to seem highly unlikely. i expect more of the same ups and downs for the most part, and that was pretty much what today was. started with the legal writing class (continued from last semester) with the same prof and the same pile of bullshit to work on, but with a great speech about how we were all going to get shitty grades when they finally arrive next week or whenever. the prof advised us to go talk to our profs to find out what exactly we were doing wrong (or, heaven forbid, right). the thing is, almost everyone submitted their exams electronically and grading was anonymous. i'd be kind of surprised if profs kept graded exams lying around and i don't think they hand them back to you, but i guess i could be wrong. either way, this is not something i am personally likely to follow through on. law profs seemed to be convinced that everyone's problem is that they do not "get it" (they could be right about this) as opposed to they get it, but they did a bad job for any other number of reasons. if people out there really don't understand how to logically write a fucking exam response, the curve should treat me well. unfortunately i doubt this is the case. so after this entirely uninspiring start to the day, i at least had a new class with a new prof and i am a sucker for the first day of class when everything seems exciting and the theory of how the class will run has not been savaged by the realities of the classroom experience. the prof is a total academic badass and i am into the sort of work he publishes on, so that is cool. in this moment of optimism i am actually contemplating trying to get to know a prof as a one-of-seventy student. that shit still throws me off a little i think; i certainly don't run my mouth like i did at undergrad. maybe i've just changed. probably some of both. which is oddly enough one of the major writing tricks i picked up in undergrad: lay out a few possible answers, synthesize, repeat. it makes you look smart. homework tonight followed a similar pattern. i started with reading the constitution, and i swear that shit got longer than when i had to do that last time. maybe things just being inside a law text makes them more laborious to read. that damn book is somewhere in the neighborhood of four inches thick, and not cool. the other reading contained the phrase "Giggle Bunny evidence," and that sort of thing always makes my night. enough school.
the cats are being weird and that always disconcerts me. straw has spent most of his time sleeping in his hiding place, but when he was up and about he kept squatting over things like he was going to pee on them, but not actually doing so. this is stressful. jackie has been scampering all over the place, making strange loud noises and generally tearing up whatever he can. gatos muy loco. hopefully they shape up and act right.
in an effort to revitalize my good feelings toward the city, i went out and about the other day on a mission to some record store a friend was checking out because they were going out of business and everything was half off. sounded like a pretty good idea to look into, so we did. unfortunately in the early stages of execution the plan was delayed by a cat knocking a whole coffee into my open bag, still full of everything i could fit into it to take here from home. bummer. anyway, we are looking around for the place and i see the sign out front, but the windows are displaying sundry electronics and clothing and a large sign proclaiming that they are purchasers of gold. hmmm. so i guess the building had two businesses of the same name which were separate. either way, the music portion was indeed closing, but if the business were unrelated the appropriateness of the record selection for people who would be shopping downstairs was surprising. there was a great depth of music, but not so much the breadth. i just don't know that much about hip-hop/rap. i know some, but a very white boy some. just the big names and the ones white people listen to who seem to enjoy all-around credibility, i.e. talib kwali. which is not to say they didn't have some cool stuff. the whole place was odd, located basically in center city, so a good mix of people in there, enough to where i wasn't the geekiest looking white guy. the dude i went with loved it though, so that was cool for him. he had some solid scores, including the newest sage francis album, which i probably would have gotten if i had found it. he also found that kriss kross album, which could not be passed up at half off (the fuckers wanted like 17 bucks or something regularly - and it was used!), and a bunch of other stuff he liked, and one he bought for the cover, which i had admittedly studied. odd takeoff on that really ugly 80s baltimore orioles logo. one guy who i presume was an employee spent most of his time in this deejay booth type thing in one corner, spinning absolute shit. but in this pile of crap, he played one song that really stuck out and made the whole experience that much more confusing. it is difficult to convey music in writing, especially poorly done rap, but the basic idea was an entire track all about doing heroin and how awesome it is. while this is not an entirely novel idea to music, it is usually approached through veiled reference and not outright endorsed. while i don't think they ever said heroin, it was pretty straightforward: the hook went something like "first i hit the weed, then i popped the pills, sniffed the cocaine but now i got the real deal oh boy, that boy, my boy, oh boy, that boy, oh boy, he ride with me in the chevy cause he's my motherfuckin boy, oh boy, that boy". the verses detailed the pleasures and differing effects of brown boy and white boy, and overall i would say perhaps a full third of all words were "boy". never got why that was the slang, but i guess that's how slang works. overall, just bizarre in my view. on the other hand, people rapped favorably about crack twenty-odd years ago.
while the journey to this record store didn't provide me with a wealth of new music, i did manage to scare up some stuff while i was back home. mostly i've been grooving on this reconstruction show. they were only around for like 8 months in 79, but damn are they good. mostly they are a jazzier iteration of the jerry garcia band, but i feel like john kahn and merl saunders got more of a say in this one, plus they've got a saxophone and a trombone. it pisses me off how people shut down when they hear "garcia" like it is automatically going to be some dumb hippie bullshit. the man was a great musician who played with lots of talented people and was a master of multiple idioms blessed and cursed by his part in the dead. but whatever, i am not going to rant about him here and now. i played a wilco show tonight that really hit the spot. the synth on "i'm always in love" is superb, heavier in the mix than it usually is, and that is my favorite aspect of one of the few songs that almost always cheers me up. i hate to skip songs when i'm listening to a whole show, but i think i will always skip "i'm the man who loves you". i fucking hate that song. everything about it. the progression is annoying and the lyrics are some of the most vacuous jeff has ever written. oh, and they always play it. yeah, i'll always skip it.
man, i've got to get it together. i don't even feel like this was a worthwhile post and i'm not going to prolong it. i feel like i just should have written "Giggle Bunny evidence" and left it at that. maybe i'm just rusty. i'll try again some time soon.