sunshine snowstorm

well, not quite, but it a few flakes floated down on me during some bright daylight today. if nothing else, a thought-provoking contrast, somehow more rarefied than seeing the rain coming down on a sunny day. it did not serve as a springboard to anything deeper or more meaningful. i was in front of the laundromat on the phone, and it mostly represented a magnetic distraction from the conversation at hand, which itself oscillated between the heartfelt and the inane. the real distraction in that setting is the people watching though. every time i do laundry, i bring a book, but i am beginning to suspect that it mostly feeds the illusion that i am otherwise absorbed and not constantly analyzing the happenings and interactions around me. one of my favorite things to do while i stand out front is hold the door for people. on the one hand, it is a nice thing to do, but i am fascinated by the reactions it gets, from the expectantly entitled to the unnecessarily grateful. today while i was doing this a couple kids went in with whomever i held the door for, and the kids seemed to get the biggest kick out of it. one little girl really wanted to hang out; she kept pressing her face to the inside of the glass and waving at me while i stayed outside for a while, and then, much to her mothers chagrin, came to stand on the porch and show me her dora the explorer gloves. kids are something else man, but i always run into a few when i'm doing laundry, usually a few with some questions. the best, and i may have typed this back when it happened, was the two little brothers who were convinced i worked at trader joe's. at least i assume they were convinced, because they remained unconvinced of the opposite despite my unwavering position that no, in fact i did not work there.
but come on, have i really done nothing but laundry since i posted last? thankfully, no, although the detailed description of the week's activities is typically law school laden. had a chunk of a brief draft due, and that sucked up some hours, as many obsessing and planning as actually typing. no fun at all. and this week i will have my conference with the prof to talk about it. i tried to do it the way she wants, but past experience has consistently proven that doing things the way she has advised inevitably leads to the most criticism. every time we "learn" how to do something, the next class we have is dedicated to telling us we did it wrong, and fraught with contradictory instructions about how things should actually look. the sad part is that the more i go through it, the more i realize that she is not so much teaching us to write in a way consistent with legal practice as she is teaching us (after requisite setting us up to knock us down) how she, personally, would write the assignment. i'm sure her formulation is acceptable, but i resent being graded on imitation over function. also, the persecution of the passive voice serves to make writing more boring, not more clear. if you're so stupid that you can't handle passive voice, go fuck yourself, and give me your gavel and robe. i'm miles of experience and credibility from a courtroom, but the fact that judges serve as a justification for the inanity of legal writing fills me with derision for them. the only good news about all this is that review conferences are preempting class tomorrow morning, so i get to stay up late and write this and then sleep in.
los gatos are running around and making crazy noises. i do not know what they want. probably food. unfortunately, i've recently discovered that if i put food out when they agitate for it, one of them always eats too much too fast and pukes some of it up, which is no fun for anyone. the other day i learned that shakespere invented the word puked. pretty far out. in fact, there was a fairly cool list of like eight or so words and phrases that the bard imparted to the language that today seem pretty indispensable. however, the list was on cracked.com, and i refuse to link them, cause most of their shit is pretty weak. on the other hand, what is the harm in linking one list? just know that i do not endorse this site. this is one of the rare instances where one of their arbitrarily numbered lists is rooted more in opinion than fact. also, it turns out this was actually a list of ten, and i really think people should read it, and the direct link satisfies the inherent laziness of any internet denizen. i feel like i'm twice as likely to click hypertext (not marked, appropriately enough) and get somewhere than i am to take the painless step of opening a new tab and doing a quick google (wonder how long before that one doesn't get marked) for whatever it was. easy, quick, reliable, but yet somehow not the instant gratification that makes the web the wonder it is today.
on friday i spent some time and too much money at two bars i know. one of them is my least favorite bar i am familiar with, and the other is maybe my favorite bar, perhaps because i am most familiar with it, along with its proximity, pricing, and lax (read: nonexistent to the point of still putting ashtrays out for everyone) enforcement of the city's smoking ban. for my least favorite bar that i know, i am resolved to never ever ever go back again, even though i managed to not pay for one of my beers (least they could do after they charged me five dollars for a blue moon that was just as flat and skunky as the rest of the tap). as close as it is to school, there is another bar on campus that is a little cheaper, has a way better tap, and doesn't constantly play music that makes me think i'm back at work at the plasma place. as for my preferred dive, the mill creek tavern, i decided i should stop by their web page more often to determine the odd dates where they have music that doesn't completely blow, and perhaps arrive before they start overcharging for cover. it was worth it this time though. not only was it my buddy's birthday, but the bands were a contrast to the dull grind metal and off-key punk bands eligible for rhythmic welfare they typically feature at the establishment. one band sounded a lot like primus; bass heavy in the mix at the wheel of a sonic bus with psychedelic keyboard renderings to add a unique flavor. another one sounded like a proggy jam outfit guided by bjork's twin's vocal stylings. the third band was the best of the bunch and was somewhere between these two idioms. on the downside, i'm pretty sure it was a four-piece that billed itself as sea trio. was that seriously the hippest thing you could come up with? we have four people and call ourselves a trio? in any event, they were thoroughly decent, but the primus-inspired band was probably the most fun to see in my book. i'm not really sure what any of them were called; i knew the four names on the bill, but i missed one band and at least two of the three i saw never announced themselves. two of the names were pretty quality though, voodoo economics (bueller? anyone?) and bear is driving, which i imagine was inspired from a clerks animated series episode. if you are unfamiliar, well, i wish i could tell you how to avail yourself, because the reference is the most pure stroke of genius in the whole series. i thought about trying to describe how it goes down, but it really isn't nearly as funny unless you see it. the only way i know how to see it is stealing the dvds from an old roommate, but netflix might work too. for some reason, netflix is the top ad link for valentine's day on my internet service login page, closely followed by 'find a new job'. i love it when internet advertising makes little to no sense. the other ones are all related to flowers. the only good news is that no specific link to heart shaped jewelry made it.
i had a brief conversation with one of my neighbors the other day; one of the strangest exchanges i have ever been party too. this was the nice lady who lent me the carrier to take straw to the doctor (damn cat couldn't even get himself some insurance, we're going to canada). let me preface this by saying i have only knocked on her door once, when i was borrowing the carrier, and i have never come close to going all kramer and just bursting in or anything. so i'm coming up the stairs to my door, probably loud as hell, with my thick-soled shoes and heavy gait, and i hear "hello? hello?" and she says my name, so i'm like "hello?". odd, but makes enough sense. then she starts apologizing profusely, and i confusedly reply that it's okay, whatever it may be. she pleads with me not to come in, apologizing agian and explaining that i should refrain from entering because she is extremely exhausted from packing to move. i try and assure her that this is alright, not mentioning the fact that i had no intention of entering, kind of like the other hundred-odd times i've come home. i do not have anything profound to say about the exchange, nor do i find any metaphorical significance in the event, but i still think it was one of the strangest conversations i have ever had, and for some reason i have felt a need to share it since it happened. now i have.
jack just jumped on me and the keyboard, and somehow opened outlook express and almost made it some sort of a default, which it probably already is, considering a cat jumping on a keyboard caused it to launch. i should have let the cat's contributions to that memo draft i turned in stay in. the conference would have been a bit more interesting: so, why did you include this long string of the letter b? well, not only did it sponsor today's sesame street, which taught me more than you ever will, and my cat thought it was a really valuable and persuasive contribution. you don't think the judge will be convinced? well, just wait 'til he sees my cat. this is the prettiest, littlest cat of all time, you see. i really don't think the opposition will be able to respond or recover from this devastating illumination of the evidence. the analysis is really top-notch.
the other day i was thinking about how to best improve my situation in regards to the institution that has somehow become my nemesis (higher education? you don't remember me? we used to party and get along so well!) and i made a list of habits/vices in an attempt to gauge their effect. one that made it on that i don't usually think about was sodium. man, i cannot get by without something crunchy and salty when i'm trying to really get down to business working on something. but then i thought about it a little more and checked some shit out, and damn, for someone who never ever picks up a salt shaker, i have way too much intake of that shit. i probably can't let go, but i find it odd how that habit plays a role in my activity and finances. with that reflection in mind, i went to the grocery store making sure i at least didn't get potato chips, because sodium is bad enough without fat. so i went with pretzels, even though they bring me back to the days where my schedule was wake up at noon, eat a peanut butter sandwich and read a book, go to work, eat nothing and smoke at least seven cigarettes during an hour's worth of break time, go home, eat pretzels, drink four dollar deuces of steel reserve until i couldn't read, and try and find my missing cat by wandering around drunk and meowing. all that aside, i have discovered the best form of pretzel. they come in an astounding variety of what is essentially the same thing: extruded dough in a strange shape covered in salt. how much can the shape matter? a lot. the experience of eating anything is related to how compact the item is, especially true for something crunchy. the best pretzel shape is... the whieel. closely related in compactness to the mini or tiny twist, these are circles with five spokes, and something about them is far superior to the little twists, my previous preference. man, this is a long meditation on pretzels. am i so white that i revert to seinfeld-style humor at certain junctures? could be. in fact, the packaging of the wheel pretzels offers an unnecessarily lengthy meditation on dippers versus non-dippers of pretzels and the application of the instant pretzel incarnation to that activity. no dipping here, but just as engaged. whatever. i've got some new dip, and i'm gettin' whippets. i've got a new hip, and i'm gettin' rickets?
enough of that silliness. getting down to some serious business, i'm playing abbey road. i'm on side two right now, and in the middle of some deeply-felt personal conflict. i fancy myself a john man, and in fact when i put on the record i looked at the sleeve and recalled a detailed discussion of the appearance of each member of the band that i hijacked to obsess over how fucking cool john looks, and how that would make sense because of how cool he actually is. the point here is that i'm on side two, the paul side, and damn am i a sucker for it. abbey road is immaculate, but side one is all john, but not the best of john. the other side is really probably as good as paul gets, but it is just so together. i know it is paul's show for this part of the album and i feel like it is somehow not as credible, but i just love it. the diversity, the flow, that mini rock opera attempt. i think that is what really does it; paul takes the implicit and shoves it in your face, being like so, this is what is up, i don't care if you dig it because it hangs together on its own. and of course he couldn't give it its own light (viz. wings) but these guys could do the rest for him.
speaking of wings, they're bollocksing it up all over the place, typical of them to lose to two of the worst teams in the league, but today against the ducks was unforgivable, if not that than at least unspeakably frustrating. SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW. sorry. hockey and all, i know you all care a lot about that. to those non-sporting types, i say that the need for a meaningless distraction has become unavoidable and downright indispensable in these times. we all like to think that we have some value-less proxy we can use as a silo for so many emotions we have no opportunity to express in fullness within the friendly confines of our daily dealings, but i find sport to be a vast and welcome repository for these things. a lot of us like the underdog (pleasantly unmarked, curious about the etymology, ironically willing to bet on history rooted in actual dog fights), but forget the giants, city beat united in the manchester derby today. no championship of any kind was involved, but i really wish there was a way to measure how many people gave a fuck about this regular season premiership contest between two historical rivals compared to those who watched the super bowl with a vested interest the other week. the beautiful game has global appeal. i would also like to know how much money changed hands for each event. a few people probably garnered some good cash in both cases. i would almost be willing to bet that on the bookie's level today was more of a shock than a week ago. tough to say though, i am no odds maker, although that is an occupation i would be interested in learning more about.
odds makers are also still projecting hillary for this year's overall election. goes to show you what they know. data over instinct, every time. who knows how it will shake down in the end? not me. although i almost wish it was. i think it would be pretty cool to be involved with that sort of thing, whether i was the boy changing the numbers on some big board display, or the shady character making the books, or a politics addict sweating over the larger meaning while still maintaining a rigorous gambling habit. i find economics more intriguing by the day, but there ain't no economics like black-market economics 'cuz black-market economics don't stop? no, they're the best because they are more tapped into the real people with day-to-day worries and cares and addictions. they offer a more accurate and meaningful portrait of the populace. i wonder how much academic study is devoted to those sorts of things. maybe not enough. maybe that is my niche. maybe not. maybe i need to grab another undergraduate degree. maybe that would be a waste of money. maybe i'd learn twice as much at half the price. i can't say for sure, but i bet there is a way to bet on it. i hope so anyway.
these days are still troublesome to me, and occasionally i deal with it better than other times. i guess that is a fairly vacuous (whoa, spelling) statement; mostly the story of everyone's life given a minimum of introspection. for me, i was not dealing real well this past week. too much drinking to cope, which is sad. drinking should be a celebration and communal and rewarding, not a psychological mechanism. so skews the supremacy of "schooling". i felt pretty good about it at the time, however. the good man at the restaurant and beer provider across the street sent someone to procure my omnipresent order of two pbr forties. a young man who looked exactly like someone i knew in the sense that i knew who they were in terms of what they did, but not as a human being, was talking to the guy running the show about some pamphlets he had. i was casually observing the dude, but became a little more intrigued when the man behind the counter smiled and accepted the stack of proffered booklets. turned out they were issues of some sort of poetic compilation. when my beers arrived, the man/manager enthusiastically informed me i was free to take one, free of charge (i don't think anyone was paying, but he was happy to tell me i could have it). i took it home with the beer, and decided to try and pair them in experience as they held together in acquisition. worked out rather well. the booklet was something called the idiom. i found it to be rather engaging and the content to be surprisingly by-and-large worthwhile. i immediately thought of my preferred originator of grotesque parody, who produces work in keeping with but notably superior to things of this nature. actually, a lot of the content was in the same league, a lot better than i expected it to be, with an excellent variety and some strikingly compelling imagery. a few heavy hitters in the tangible paper product. however, the progenitor of some content was named as this blog, which contains an inordinate amount of drivel compared with the publication i received. this mostly serves the notion that whoever is editing knows what they are up to, and i find that comforting. many contributors have credentials beyond 'some people i know let me post poems i wrote on their semi-obscure generic blog location'. all this being said, i feel that the above-mentioned originator wouldn't be out of place in something like this, and need only follow previous linkage to find his place in it all should he so desire. it would be good to see, because i was pretty sure that the poetry that flooded my mental space after drinking copious amounts of cheap beer and reading the more base offerings constituted a comparable product. this was something i could do, but even if i could do it as adequately as some of the more amateurish participants, i wouldn't have the feeling and conviction they do. bravo, i say. even if i think you are shitty at what you do, at least you love doing it so much that you seek to identify yourself as someone who does these sorts of things. if you do these things well, and come from outside the established milieu, you should be justly embraced. c'mon peter, didn't you always used to say you wished you could be published in a rag serving as backup toilet paper in the dingy bars of central jersey? i could have sworn that was your catchphrase. but i hope people do check this out. a digestible regional phenomenon, if nothing else.
in fact, because i don't think much of my readership, vast and diverse though you may be (yeah, right), cannot acquire the fairly respectable physical product, i would like to relate a couple of things. no, i am not going to get written permission about it. stepping on the little guy, that is how i roll. until it becomes my job to defend them in copyright litigation, anyway. at this point, i think these folks would probably be satisfied that i link some shit from the post at least. so, people may have already heard of this first thing, but i hadn't, and i think it is pretty cool. this guy daniel zimmerman invented a poetry form called isotopes (i feel like i've seen the text for the link elsewhere; i could be wrong). the way it works is that you start with a word square, a four by four grid of letters that make words if you read it left to right and up to down, like this (except lined up way better so as you can actually see the words)
TIME
IDOL
DENS
EASE
the dude plugs them into this anagram server to get lines to make poems out of. pretty nifty. the guy's listing in the rag is pretty legitimate; i guess one can still make a name for oneself as a poet of sorts after a fashion these days. i find that comforting.
the other thing from this publication i wanted to highlight was a well-told story. in fact, i'm just going to reproduce it here, word for word, because i can and i feel like it. the dude shows up in the publication as HeMightBeWalter, which is probably what he uses on that blog i referred to earlier, but you can check him out in depth here, and this is what he wrote that made it in, with my own interjections in the brackets:
I feel the need to warn you all. Warn you about a crazy new fab [sic, i think he meant fad, so much for me giving props to the editor] sweeping the greater Ocean Count area. Pube Jointing. Iknow what you are thing, so stop it. This is Serious!!!

The event that followed [sic again, c'mon people] are all true. The names and locations have been change to protect the innocent.

While attending a small get together at John and Jade's apartment, Samantha had found that she had run out of cigarettes [jesus, learn tense!]. She began trying to "Bum a smoke" from one of the many smokers in attendance. After many a failed attempt, her friend Arthur made mention of an abandoned pack of Camel Menthol Lights on a bookcase. One shake assured her that the pack was empty, but Arthur, under further inspection, found that is [it? this is not tricky people] was in fact not completely empty.

When Arthur opened the pack of cigarettes, he found only two things inside, both resembling cigarettes. Then, Arthur did a double take, realizing that one of the was not exactly a cigarette. More like a "Marijuana cigarette". He pulled it out of the pack. Everyone was excited, especially Samantha, who only expected the pack to be empty [you couldn't write anything better than a regurgitation of previous prose that was already the moral equivalent of beige?]. But something just wasn't right. After a light squeeze, Arthur decided it wasn't the right consistancy [yup, they published that misspelling] that it should be. Something was inside the tightly twisted up paper, but it was not "The Chronic".

To everyones [yeah, no possessive apostrophe] dismay (and to somes [again, this is just sloppy and not artsy] disbelief), Arthur began to rip open the "Joint". As he had suspected, what was inside was not green and fluffy, rather dark brown and curly. He had found hair of the Pubic [make sure to capitalize that] variety. They had been Pube Jointed. Someone had likely shaved their most private of areas and saved the clippings, in hopes of playing the cruelest of practical jokes on some unsuspecting party goers.

This is very serious. It could happen to anyone. Your parents. Your little sister. The guy at the supermarket who cuts your sandwich meats [on further reflection, this is the most likely victim]. It could even happen to you [dude should have bolded and all-capsed that]. Please, before you get "High" inspect your "Doobies". Or else you may wind up smoking on someones Pubies.

So that was the story they included in the publication. It is not a bad or unfunny story to hear, and it could have been told worse. mostly, i am glad that the story is from jersey. i don't really have a lot of first-hand experience with that state, but here, in order to qualify as a resident of the city, i have to make fun of it. if you don't make fun of it, they think you are from there, and will tell you to go back. i am not from there, and i do not want to go there. so i will post this funny story from someone who is from there and felt it necessary to relate an amusing anecdote. whoever he is, he made me laugh, and i hope you appreciated it too. you know what doesn't make me laugh? knocking over all of my peanuts and a bunch of books. this is, of course, what just happened. that is correct, it happened. this contrasts to the notion that it was something that i did or an event in which i was the prime mover. no, nothing like it. this was an unfortunate event tat happened to me wherein i am an innocent.
as always, context is key. right now, i am enjoying a microcosm of that truism. playing an 87 phish show compressed to 128 kbps mp3 (mp3 not marked, kbps is). if i was listening to a show of this quality on a cassette tape no one would complain, in fact, it would probably considered fairly correct. but the fact that i acquired it via download implies that a lossless transfer exists. regardless, it is a fine historical artifact available here. man were they ever a different band then than they were 11 or 12 years later when they would play sets of five or six songs, the majority extending over fifteen minutes. i'm just happy that casual browsing allowed me to acquire some 92 to 94 material (look for 92 st. mike's); truly the golden era of a band that was always trying to hit stride and never knew when it did. that is the strongest parallel between them and the dead, no matter what the savants impugn. all i'm saying is that quinn the eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna wanna dose (gonna and wanna are cool with spell check). phish at hunt's or nectar's makes me think about the back forty at billy's. that band will probably never go anywhere, owing to the members' day jobs more than their musical abilities, but somehow they've outgrown the confines and context i appreciated the most. i think i kind of understand those vermont dickheads who think they have a monopoly on appreciation of a band. back forty at billy's is something i miss as much as having a car and bottle deposits; i can't care anymore but there is a permanent place in my heart for the way i imagine things were, regardless of how addled i willfully render my recollections. what do you know about set break? eleven one oh six, that's all i can tell you if you weren't there.
as long as we're on the topic of nuanced jam band aficionado-ship, i would like to make a confession: i have been listening to and appreciating one of the few dead tunes i have sworn allegiance against. el paso. it is an easy and simple tune, nothing too far from mexicali blues or more accurately me and my uncle, neither of which i've actively crusaded against, although i do have some beef with mexicali. the point is, anyone who knows dead right now is thinking i have lost it. that may be the case. this is like saying victim or the crime was a good song. and hey man, it actually was when brent got in on it big time. so yeah, i've even exceeded the bounds of settled good taste according to deadheads (not marked - sweet!). one time, bobby sang the opening lyric as "patience runs out on the bunny" instead of junkie. the more you know...
i wish i could tel you this post was brought to you by the letter k and the number four, but all i have is the the letters pbr and the phrase 'elevated prime did edit her'. take what you can get sometimes, you know? jij ken? alright, i think i've had enough if you haven't. getting plenty of extreme at this juncture, willing to call it scooters, vacation, fall, and a night at that.