that'll be enough of that shit

elvis said that once. the phrase has broad applications, but the instance i know of where he used it was particularly appropriate and compelling: he had just fired a handgun into the screen of a television. it was because robert goulet was on the television, and elvis did not care for robert goulet. i guess here i am referring to that last post (wish i had the balls to say it was in regards to law school; i can think of nothing i would rather metaphorically spray gunfire at for trespassing on the screen of my life), which got a little out of hand. i won't say it won't happen again, because it is fun to type for a long time while drunk and marvel at the relative paucity of errors. i thought about going back and whittling things down today, but it just didn't seem like a worthwhile proposition. it is what it is. leave it there for the record of the interwebs. that was actually the impetus behind those two little posts below it too. i just kind of thought they were worth jotting down and this seemed like as good a place as any for that.
the pressures of the supposed educational process sometimes require a dramatic refocusing of ones thoughts to things more trivial. forces colluded to generate such a feeling for me yesterday. unfortunately, these reprieves are necessarily temporary. band-aid solutions for a viral malady. nothing could bring that fact into sharper relief than my looming conference regarding my brief. it will happen in about thirteen hours, and i am not looking forward to it. i am really trying to bite the bullet and just jump through whatever hoops this prof has dreamed up, but she keeps moving them. also, her commenting fills me with unbridled rage. the tone is the worst, but oftentimes the content is also unclear. i mean, i get what she is saying, but implementation remains a mystery. the biggest reason i dread our meeting tomorrow is that the things i want to ask the most are as spiteful to her as she is to me. the best case scenario is that i couch my questions in respectful inquiries that invite discrete responses. rather than ask her why she keeps telling us to follow examples and that conflict with things she has specifically said, i'll just ask which way is the "right" one. the bad news is that this is mostly what i did last time, and her response is almost invariably a nails-on-chalkboard nervous laugh with the admonition that this is something i will have to work out for myself. all that does is get us back to square one, where i will do what i thought was right, and if she so chooses, it will be right, but more likely she will decide that it is wrong. the arbitrary nature of her response highlights my concern that i am not being taught to write in a legal context, but rather engaged in some sick attempt at imitation of her own horrendously obscured vision. i tried my best to see her advice with eyes unclouded by hate (i think that is from princess mononoke, i like the phrase), but she makes it pretty tough. i literally scream responses when i read what she writes. the form invites reply; almost all she writes is designed as a condescending question. perhaps i will review the results of our one-on-one in this very space tomorrow. i just hate that two adult people who detest each other (i do believe she doesn't like me, personally, and i know how i feel about her) have to go through some charade with no worthwhile results, but i hate more that the charade has a power dynamic featuring me on the low end.
this instance in particular has pushed me back into a state of having extreme difficulty with everything about law school because i can only think about where it is all headed. and mostly i think that where it is headed is not someplace i even want to go, but i don't know how or where to get off and what i will do then. it is like the time i got on the wrong subway and wound up in chinatown. at least that resolved itself well and quickly and only divested me of the price of an additional token while leaving a long since faded bruise on my ego. the point is, when i get like this i spend too much time dicking around and daydreaming about other things i could be doing with my life. today it was graphic data representation. i love that shit, especially when there's a map involved. the downside is that i spent today studying that murder map i've talked about before. not exactly uplifting. the friends i sit next to said i should probably not spend so much time analyzing it, as it was bound to leave me feeling less than inspired. well, it didn't really bring me down, since when you have personal issues that seem important it is more difficult to get worked up about the myriad depressing things in the larger world. or at least that is how it works for me. so i was really no worse off, and i thought about this cool job my sister had analyzing census data. i think i could get down with that. dekkinga, maybe we can work something out and get a map making operation going. wait, why would you want to do something other than you do now? maybe we could do business maps for your job, tell them what microbrews they should get based on distribution in the area any individual store occupies. distribution of booze is a bitch. if i have to be a lawyer maybe i can write distribution contracts and agreements for booze.
we actually just did a case about booze distribution, and it was one of the cases i could actually get into. it came out of michigan law and made it to the supreme court; granholm was one of the prominently featured parties. the problem was whether they could have a law where in-state wineries could ship directly to consumers but out-of-state wineries had to go through the normal distribution process. the problem with the normal wholesaling scheme is that it is prohibitively expensive for smaller operations, which make up a rapidly expanding percentage of american wineries. the majority held that the law was unconstitutional because it functioned as a protectionist measure favoring in-state commerce, which is a violation of congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. the dissent focused on the twenty first amendment, which not only repealed prohibition but seemed to provide a constitutional basis for states having ultimate authority to regulate booze in and coming into their state. fascinating, i know. trust me, it is a hell of a lot better than most of the stuff i get to read.
mostly, what i read makes me wish i had majored in history. there is a lot to know, and i care about a decent chunk of it. going back to get a bachelor's in history would be pretty silly though. don't think it would do a whole lot for the job prospects. but who knows, museums, a place to work? whatever, i'm pretty sure that no matter what i do i am never going to get a decent job. there just aren't enough to go around; every opening attracts dozens of people who have gone to great lengths to be everything that employer wants. most of them probably lie on their resumes. what other blatant dishonesty gets christened with its own more innocent-sounding name? "padding" indeed. this is not something i will ever do. i don't know how large of a role ethics play in that, but i feel like if someone is going to hire me, i want them to hire me for me, and if that isn't good enough, i guess i'll just keep on not having a decent job ever. i want to say that sooner or later people always get found out, but i know that is not true. that asshole from fema sure got his when katrina hit though. i think most people don't get confronted like that though, because experience requirements that engender a lot of bullshit on resumes are based on the perceived necessity of the requirements in the first place. by and large, i think they are irrelevant. a reasonably competent person can probably operate in a lot of fields without having done the exact same fucking thing for five years someplace else or whatever. all this talk had gotten me back to worrying about summer employment. fuck.