bored bored bored (even with abortion)

today was no good. no good at all. wednesdays feature my two most boring classes, civ pro and property. both have recently featured, in addition to mind-numbing content, lengthy "discussions" where people give their store-bought opinions with poor articulation. i have plenty of things to be doing, but nothing i feel like doing. or rather, of those things i should be doing, none appeal to me. so it is things i shouldn't be doing instead, like re-reading old achewood strips and adding to my collection of empty forties. as a master of justification, i blame today.
in addition to my classes, today featured me stepping on my pants and adding to a growing rip on three separate occasions. the tear now goes up past the back of my knee, aka these jeans are no longer viable. i mean, i know they can theoretically be repaired or whatever, but that seems unlikely. i do have a different pair, fortunately. still, i can't help but wish i was just back home, with a job, a car, and a meijer. problem fucking solved were that the case. hell, i could also pick up a thirty pack of pbr for like thirteen bucks while i was at meijer. and anything else i might need. i miss meijer, and owning it.
this week has also turned out to be a giant abortion party (i'm naming my next metal band abortion party). con law has gotten to that wonderful time where we get to cover roe and casey and a few others. i've been reading it all week, but tomorrow is when we'll get there in class. i am dreading the potential airing of opinions in class, but the prof is not so much the type for too much of that. i think he will have a lot of really well-reasoned and thoughtful things to say about the jurisprudence itself, and deal with pre-existing opinions in the context of analyzing how certain justices come out in each opinion. these opinions are ridiculously long, most have a leading opinions and then a pair of concurrences, maybe a concur in part and dissent in part, and then two or three dissents. it kind of makes me angry. the good news is, if taught properly, this is an excellent point for demonstrating how the feelings of individual justices always necessarily invade decision making. a simple thought experiment considering the current makeup of the court is enough to see that a decision made now would contain all the same methodologies and accusations from opposing sides, with the utilized claims trading places.
but classroom discussion of abortion just wasn't enough bullshit for me to handle on its own, so i ordered up a double and went to a talk during lunch today. it was billed as a national lawyers guild event, but afterwards i recalled that many law schools have groups dedicated to reproductive rights, but mine doesn't, so the guild just kind of incorporated that concern. fine by me; i imagine the overlap between the two is pretty significant. i feel like i should fit in there. after today, i don't know. it is always disconcerting to show up for something wanting to agree with whatever it is and being unable to do so based on the presentation. that's how i felt when i went to that cop watch thing at lava the other month, and today left me with a similar taste. the speaker was a lobbyist for planned parenthood, and the supposed topic was the status of reproductive rights in PA and the stances of this state's representatives at the state and federal levels. it was a little more comprehensive than that.
in fact, it was just the other side of the coin from all the anti-abortion types. same bullshit, different orientation. a lot like democrat/republican. both sides are full of shit and use the same tactics they decry when the opposition makes use of them. this was painfully obvious when the speaker talked about winning the language war and used pejorative terms to describe the other side in the same way they like to call themselves pro-life. and as lame as all that was, it wasn't as bad as it got, and i could understand where they were coming from. what i found absolutely unforgivable was what i found to be abhorrent gender politics and stale second-wave feminism. initially, i just snickered that all the handouts were pink, the prominently displayed photos of demonstrations with all (white) women in pink shirts saying "this is what a feminist looks like" and placards promoting roe v. wade, which was superseded by casey v. planned parenthood (of SE PA no less) more than fifteen years ago. then the speaker made some offhand derogatory comments about men, and i got to be a little more annoyed. if men are so bad, why do you work for/support an organization that has no purpose but for women fucking men? if they're so bad, don't sleep with them. she spoke as if men's only purpose was to irresponsibly impregnate women (portrayed as powerless without the aid of such organizations as PP). i was waiting for her to suggest that the men in the room had only showed up for free pizza. but what really sealed the deal for me was when the speaker pointed out all the things planned parenthood had given her to hand out. like i said, it was bad enough that everything was pink, but then she pointed out the condoms they were giving away. far from ordinary condoms, these were "designer" condoms. the speaker said "women like designer clothes, designer shoes, so we're giving them designer condoms called 'dress required for entry'... entry into you!". i hardly even know where to begin with that. suffice to say that i found the assumptions about gender troubling to say the least. i won't bore you with the laundry list of inconsistencies, but i will say that the organization fails itself as much as their opposition hurts it. i would like to do PR work for them. i am glad they exist, and i think they do things no one else does but are needed, but god, please bring yourselves into the twenty first century and at least try and contextualize the battle you're trying to fight. the speaker actually suggested that the "anti-choicers" got together and schemed up a plan to fight a war against women on all fronts, dedicated only to controlling womens' lives. uh, if these people got together, it was probably at a place called church, and if they're beating you on a lot of fronts, it is probably because religious conviction, for good or ill, prompts people to stronger feelings and more effort than a mere scientific opinion. also, if someone is militantly "pro-life", they're probably not just committed to running womens' lives, but their ideology probably prescribes lifestyles for all people.
also, the speaker claimed the best and most effective way to promote reproductive rights is to argue with people at the bar. i am smart enough to know that i know very little, but i do know that arguing with people at the bar is one of the biggest wastes of time available to the american public. in my experience, people rarely change deeply held opinions, regardless if they discuss those issues with a close friend or a perfect stranger. arguing with people at bars does not qualify as a grassroots movement in my book.
the truth, as it were, of the matter, is that both sides spend a lot of time arguing about when life starts and what to call a person, but i don't think the metaphorical jury has come back with a verdict for the definition of either life or personhood. we can't know when life begins if we don't know what life is, and we can't agree on what to call a bunch of cells that is not yet what intuitively counts as a person. even if some state passes a referendum saying life begins at conception, it rings hollow if we can't say what life is. and i don't think we can. people are willing to say plants are alive, but few shed tears at the demise of a carrot.
listen to me going on and on about this bullshit. it is just one of those things that is not going to go away anytime soon, but will not possibly matter in the long run. "i don't think we're meant to know that". it all brings me back to stranger in a strange land, which i wrapped up again the other day. grokking (FUCK YEAH NOT MARKED BY SPELL CHECK!!!!!!!) is a great and certainly novel (no pun intended) concept that i find really helpful for a lot of things. i could write a damn dissertation about grokking and the heideggarian project. it actually fills in an important part of the deconstructive analysis. one of my profs used to always except babies and angels from certain things. another one has gone on a huge animal rights kick, but i think the idea of life defined by the concept of grokking really rounds out his analysis from where it is now. actually, that is just what i think; i haven't read much of his current stuff. but i did read the dude's dissertation, which is saying something. those don't get read a whole lot, but it was so close to what he actually got to teach me that it was worth my while.
wow, my computer just told me it was going to give up on automatically checking for software updates. i think that means i've owned it for two years. flew right by. the computer has treated me well over that period of time, regardless of how the rest of my life has gone. i can't believe it has been that long. time flies whether you're having fun or not, i guess. my bell's sticker has completely come off, so i guess i've had it a while. i remember using this puppy to sign up for the lsats and turn in my applications... at the the bar proper. they always knew it was serious when i walked in with the computer. got me a drink or two. more than one can ask out of the average computer. i might have paid a chunk of change for it back then, but i don't feel like it is incapable of handling anything i throw at it. more than i could say for my last desktop two years after i got it.
i got carded for the first time in forever this evening. across the street, no less, where i go all too frequently. two new people at the counter though, and the dude who asked me for id looked like he was younger than me. the funniest part is that he accepted my id and made no note of the fact that it is expired. add that to the long list of things i should be taking care of. i don't get carded a whole lot at least, and i probably could have found someone there to vouch for me anyway. still. it was pretty funny. i can understand though, dude probably just got the job, making sure he doesn't fuck anything up. they've got these weird forms you can fill out here though, like an affidavit almost, where you assert that you represented you were of legal age to a place. hopefully this is nothing i will have to deal with anyway.
today i was shocked that a good friend of mind was unfamiliar with the wiktionary. everyone knows about wikipedia, so i don't understand what the stretch is. on the other hand, i can't recall with certainty when or how i discovered the wiktionary. fascinating commentary on linguistics, but i am sure it is already better documented than my study on spell check and language. superior in selection to urban dictionary, but not superseding. still plenty of things to like about urban dictionary, but better etymology with wiktionary. depends what you want to find, i guess. like everything else.

CAN'T STAND IT

the transition back to reality has been harsh, as predicted. i also wrote a long email to a cousin to answer the question of why i went to law school, which really gave me an opportunity to answer that question full-on. complex and not uplifting. i'm sure it is redeemable somehow. specifics to be named later. i can't believe it is only tuesday. the good news from the law school front is that this guy is telling it how it is. sad but true. i really feel like he gives a voice to the way i feel about some things. this article is where he really gets to be spot on. it is almost like the shit i complain about on this blog was drained of inebriation and the passion of the moment articulated in an acceptable format. such is the irony of cls, always articulated through the proper channels. but just about anything can be criticized as not radical enough in some aspect or another, and hence bound to be co-opted by the proverbial man. i guess cls has been more or less effectively put down, mostly through mischaracterization of some of its tenets. also, reputable or not, it was pretty well known, and i decided i was way off when i said that my philosophy of law prof was unfamiliar. no, he hadn't heard of this other shit i busted out, which i also learned about through debate. pierre schlag on normativity. given the dude's name and theory, i always assumed he was just some leftist intellectual in france, but he is actually a con law prof at colorado. i really want to go back and give that stuff a look again, i may or may not still have some on an sdi cd in my case.
i met a guy who went to colorado law today. well, i've known him sort of for a while. he is in my "elective" and talks a lot. at first this annoyed me, but i reflected that i could actually be this guy. he happens to be in a wheelchair, and if i was, i think i would be more scholarly. he did two years at boulder and then got paralyzed from the waist down. four years later, he's starting over at temple. dude has a pretty decent story. and he is much better to actually have a conversation with than listen to in class. but that goes for just about anyone i go to school with.
i am listening to hunky dory. this led to my discovery that the lyric in changes is "strange fascinations fascinating me". i could never understand that one; we were talking about it at school today. for a while, it sounded to me like strange fascination with el bulli, which would be anachronistic in addition to bizarre, but that is what i heard. as if i haven't changed enough lyrics on that album (wine may change me...). i also gave a closer listen to "kooks". almost leaves me embarrassed for bowie somehow. on the one hand it is kind of poignant, but on the other hand it is sort of too personal for the record. i do like the bit about him not being very good at beating up other people's dads though.
the cats are being silly, per usual. runnin around and rasslin. jack's favorite toy right now is a piece of paper. i wave it at him while he shreds it up, and when i get tired of it and drop it he sits on it squarely. straw does not like the noise shaken paper makes, so he hides and watches from the hallway. i think they might even be prettier and littler than they were yesterday, no matter what science or metaphysics might say. it is like they are rapidly approaching zero on an exponential curve where prettiness and littleness (both unmarked by spell check) are absolute at the value of zero. they get littler and prettier every day, seeming to be tangential with the axis and yet somehow not there, as they demonstrate constantly. those rascals. or, the epithet preferred at logan: "raucous beasts".
i have not been sleeping all that well. for the past couple of nights i have had strange and terrifying super lucid dreams within dreams. i will "wake up" and see all sorts of bizarre things in my room and then slam back into sleep. i can think of no logical explanation for why this is happening. on the one hand, it is really really interesting, but it leaves me pretty tired at school and has thus perpetuated my diet coke habit. i actually had a discussion with the guy who runs the truck i always get it at. he said coca cola had raised the price per case at the distributor; it is now something like twenty bucks for a case of twenty ouncers (not a word according to spell check). i told him i wouldn't settle for diet pepsi, and he said that everyone he had asked had said the same thing. he drinks the full flavor, and has similar feelings. very keen on the fact that it was taste loyalty and not brand loyalty.
speaking of full flavor and taste loyalty, camel CHANGED MY FUCKING SMOKES. the takeover is not yet complete, and i may buy a carton or two someplace. changing the packaging is annoying enough, but changing the blend is unforgivable. i should have seen it coming, i guess. they've already done it to filters and lights. pack and blend at the same time. some asshole in marketing thought it would be a good idea to call it "the classic -- remastered". fuck that person. did they not see what happened with george lucas? did they miss that episode of south park? have they never heard the story of "new coke"? i understand that camel relies on hooking young people to smoke, but why change things for people you've already secured in the fold? you got all the new ones with the stupid ass signature blends. there is no need to alienate the committed. simply bad business. i am considering drafting a letter. something along the lines of the one to spartan foods about the eight ingredients required for the recipe suggestion on the side of a box of mac and cheese. but the point here is even stronger. i feel like vincent vega talking about a car getting keyed. you do not change a man's cigarettes. i'm switching to red apples.

extra sour cream

i know i said that a bunch last night, but i'm not entirely sure why. well, the fact that it was an excellent party where many beers were consumed explains some, but not all. the party was an appropriate culmination of a somewhat extended birthday celebration featuring none other than mando b nasty. get outta here, boston! he called me on friday afternoon while i was journeying to the vet for cat food, and by the time i made it home, went to the bar with law school folks for a while, cleared up some minor directional points and walked to the distributor to provide for a night of revelry, he was here. worked out pretty great. he was on his way back from hiking near the virginia/west virginia border. apparently he canoed that stretch when he did the whole a.t. the other year and went back to walk so no one can accuse him of cheating. glad he stopped in on his way back.
after he got here and we had some beers, i realized i hadn't eaten anything since the sandwich mentioned in the previous post. coming from the train, mando was pretty hungry too, and offered to cook up some goodness. he set up his stove (modified beer can burning denatured alcohol) on my kitchen floor and got to business. we generously fed three hungry men with the following all mixed together: one pouch each of roasted garlic and southwestern mashed potatoes, a bunch of jack, some cheddar, green peppers, some other spicy pepper, a packet of tuna, and a few leftover pepperonis. it was both excellent and delicious or, if you prefer, "heady scrump".
on saturday we mostly just walked around philly for quite a while. we met up for a while with mando's sister, who is actually doing a semester at temple. we went to the bell with her and a friend of hers. everyone was really disappointed at the size of the bell, and i think chuck said the same thing when he was here. its tough to reach back and think about what i thought at first, but i don't remember being disappointed with its size. i think i probably imagined it bigger, but the first time i went was really an experience. the security was a lot tighter and i went through the building slowly and read a bunch about the bell before i saw it. mostly it was just made real for me, regardless of size.
our route took us pretty much in a loop from my place into town along south street, and then up through old city. we went back on the boulevard so he could run up the art museum stairs. lots of great pics resulted, and hopefully they will make it to his facebook at some time. lots of tomfoolery around the game pieces in front of whatever that municipal building is. also many good shots involving statutes, from shoe-shining to tit-grabbing to high-fiving. the high five one is probably my favorite, i look forward to seeing it again.
we managed to get mando a cheesesteak, and between that and seeing his sister, his only philly objectives were pretty much accomplished. this left us free for what was truly an ideal party. four or so bands played, lots of beer both good and bad, and a broad mix of people. i thought i would know most people from the neighborhood, but there were people from all over. one of the bands was from las vegas and somehow also portland oregon. they've been telling everyone they're from portland maine while they're on the east coast because they think being from portland oregon invites stereotyping. i don't know how often geographic location is an accurate description of sound, but whatever. they are touring in a chevy cobalt with four people and all their gear, which really impressed me. they insist that it really isn't too cramped. i'm glad i'm not doing it.
mando brough his ukulele along to the party, and although it was selected for trail use because it is so lightweight, it was certainly a hit. a party with bands usually has an abnormally high proportion of musicians, and this was no exception, so a lot of people took turns playing around with the thing. mando played it with one of the bands for a while too, but that band already had quite a collection of instruments going. i am not even sure how many people were playing or who was officially in the band, but there were like eight instruments going at some points. actually sounded pretty cool.
i thought there would be a lot of leftover beer because the party was big but not huge, and people kept bringing more. but we partied until it was all gone, even the hidden stash sierra nevada case that disappeared five minutes after being unveiled to the party at large. i still had a deuce from the foodery, the place i got that sandwich at. bear republic hop rod rye. oh hell yeah. it was so good. like a bigger, less-sweet red's rye. the rye still managed to come through pretty well, but it was all about the hops. would have been nice to be able to use a glass and get the full aroma, but the party necessitated small sacrifice. the nice thing was that walking around a party with it (not leaving it with the general stash) for a while and then drink it slowly allowed some temperature variation. extremes of frontloaded and aftertaste with a nice spectrum between. when really hoppy beers are served really cold, the bitterness abates a little and the armoa jumps up and gets you and the floral and fruity character of the hops dominates. after it warms up, its all just bitterness, but with more flavor. enough about that. this lecture from the man who brought that deuce and about twelve carling black labels to this party.
so yeah, we had a blast. but my weekend was far from over, as this afternoon was lamb-o-rama '08 at my sister's place. a lot of great food, and a whole lot of lamb, which was excellent. yet another good time, almost more than i could handle. but i made it. i wanted to bring a bottle of wine but state run stores were all closed for easter, and that is the only way to get a bottle of wine here. so i brought cheese instead, which was well -received along with the rest of an excellent cheese plate that i did not bring. i went with some sheep's milk gouda, can't remember who made it. but it was smooth and rich but not assertive or overpowering. the plate included an excellent manchego, some suitably sharp cheddar, a funky blue, and some strange ricotta thing. but it was all about the lamb. i am still totally full almost eight hours later. given this most excellent birthday celebration -> (this symbol is the best way i can think of to describe the relationship of the transition/interweaving of the two) weekend, it will be a harsh transition back to the everyday tomorrow morning. thanks again to all the well-wishers who noted my quarter-century anniversary.
p.s. i recently remembered to check the google ads at the bottom of the page on this blog. pretty funny stuff sometimes.

i just ate a big ole sandwich

it is true. i did. and it was awesome. in my neighborhood, there are many stickers with this phrase and a picture on them. the picture looks like a man who has indeed just eaten a big ol sandwich. my sandwich had smoked turkey, smoked bacon, jack cheese, onion, tomato, delightfully spicy chipotle mayo on grilled sourdough. i enjoyed this with a deuce of green flash imperial ipa. truly a most excellent lunch, fit for a birthday. i still had to go back to class, which is where i am now. i have a bear republic hop rod rye decue in my bag, and i would really like to be drinking it in this class. and smoking a cigarette. be all like, hey, i can smoke, its my birthday. i'm old enough that it means nothing to me now, so it might as well be an excuse for something. right now all it means is that my license is expired. fuck you, twenty five.
last night was pretty cool; i really liked the bar. dark walls with cool shit painted on 'em. one of those places that has dollar bills stuck on the ceiling and shit. the whole bar reminded me of a really really cool basement of a modestly sized house. i was there a lot later than i planned but it was a good time. the music was excellent. i've never seen a deejay at a bar, because back home those bars were the sort that i vigorously avoided. but this was pretty excellent. it was actually at a place i knew, i just didn't know i knew it. i had been past many times, but never in. it was most things i wanted out of a bar. the music was excellent and i had plenty of fun.
"an alien may be sued in any district" is what i just read in the statute we are talking about. i should probably get back to that.

*record scratch noises*

tonight i am going to this guy's show. partly because he is a friend of mine, partly because it is at someplace i have never been, but mostly because i actually think he's really good. i never really gave a whole lot of thought to deejays and what they do mostly because i have little to no interest in dancing. and most remixes i heard tended to annoy me. but it is possible to do some pretty cool stuff, apparently. lots of people i have met here are deejays of varying skill and experience. i have not gone to a party without someone spinning for most of the time since i got here, i don't think. it definitely changes what kind of records people buy, but what fascinates me is how many different directions it can go in. on the other hand, there is an awful lot of music out there with a lot of variance, so if you're just manipulating music, the palate starts out pretty diverse. in my opinion, when it is done well, there is no reason to disparage deejays the way some people do. looking at things honestly, all music draws heavily on what came before in the natural way of things. well, whatever. tonight should be fun: there will be lots of people i know, there is no cover, and drinks are allegedly cheap. i'm trying not to spend much money, but i am bad at being at a place and doing nothing for two minutes, let alone two hours. also, no smoking in bars here, so that leaves me with one less distraction. we'll see how it goes.
in other music news, i just keep getting more and more into tea leaf green, that band i saw way back when i first moved to this apartment. they have a lot of good shit on archive.org and my download speeds at school have been ridiculously fast, so i've built up quite a collection. one appealing thing is the enormous catalogue they draw from. they've been around less than a decade and have already written like 120 songs. pretty prolific, especially for a band that gets lumped in with all the other supposed "jam" acts. also, they occasionally play acoustic shows as coffee bean brown, and that serves as an excellent change of pace for a band whose style includes a generous helping of synthesizer and organ, not to mention effects-laden guitar. so i've been enjoying a bit of that; not difficult to do when everyone is such a great musician and the lead vocalist has one of the best voices in the business. if anyone is curious, i can point you in the right direction for some good recordings. also, wilco fans past and present, there is a torrent for a '97 lounge ax show of jeff tweedy and bob egan that just got upped on etree today. looks pretty promising.
today i went to a talk by the 122nd person exonerated from death row in the united states. harold wilson is his name, and he has a story to tell. it is not a feel-good tale of fun and excitement. it is awesome that dna evidence cleared him, but how he got to where he was in the first place is pretty outraging. the asshole who prosecuted him is best known for a training film for new philly prosecutors where he instructs them to avoid selecting black jurors in death penalty cases. the bloody coat in evidence, which somehow appeared in his mothers basement (mysterious to this day), was much too small. but they never let him try it on at trial. his bloody sneakers? the "blood" turned out to be hot chocolate stains. the parade of bullshit just kind of kept going. the guy became a public speaker because he had something to say, not because he was the best public speaker in the world, but i found him effective. the one thing that gives me pause is that he was speaking as an anti-death penalty advocate, which is great and makes sense. however, the real problem for him was that he was wrongly convicted. this country has killed plenty of people wrongly, i'm sure, but i think most of the people we wrongly convict aren't sentenced to death. the speaker did 17 years, which is a travesty that can never be made right, but what about someone who does 50 without being sentenced to death? who is there for the wrongfully convicted who aren't on death row? being put to death is arguably the worst thing that can happen, but the dehumanizing experience of spending decades institutionalized could be arguably worse. this is why suicide is commonly attempted in prison. so, plenty of great things to think about there.
i accidentally started reading stranger in a strange land again. i honestly didn't mean to. i picked it up the other night when i couldn't sleep and went through the first fifty pages or whatever. there was no turning back. i am always surprised when i re-read a novel at how different the experience is. different things stand out, i feel differently about different characters. fascinating commentary on the interaction between the reader and the text. lots of deleuze and heidegger in there. i wanted to do a phenomenological evaluation of that sort of theory through the lens of the dead and/or phish, where the same was always different, with ascriptions to time and place and other contextual factors. it made great sense to me and i thought i had the makings of a really good paper, but my professor said that someone considering graduate study should not force a prof who would probably be writing a letter of recommendation to tell admissions committees that this student wrote an important senior paper on hippie music. he then credited both bands and mentioned that everyone in phish had a phd in performance for their respective instruments. i told him no, but he was sure. i was right. so instead i wrote a paper on derrida's "force of law", which wound up steering me toward law school. i was still under the delusion that legal eduction included a somewhat academic aspect. anyway, back to undergrad, where i got my phish kick by writing a mythology paper about the gamehendge saga and the feats of hercules. in the spring, i wrote what i still think is the best thing i've ever done by a long shot, a paper on perspectivism in nietszsche. maybe that was the fall... in any event, it was a hell of a lot better than the derrida paper was, and probably would have been sufficient to get me in someplace decent. but write the derrida paper i did, which played an undeniable role in landing me in my current predicament. who knows, i probably would have hated grad school too, but i don't think i could hate it as much as i hate law school. hard to say, really, because it brings us back to the original point that experience is dictated in large part by context while drawing on all prior experience. i think all i really wanted to say was that i am not upset that i am reading a book i love less than six months after i already re-read it because some things are different every time. so i am going to do that for a little while longer and then go to the show.

meat

ohhhhhhhhh man. that's most of what i have said since lunch today. it was pretty damn fabulous. my sister took me up in honor of my upcoming birthday. the only problem was that i had to go back to school afterwards. we went to fogo de chao, a brazillian steakhouse. the idea is pretty much that you have a coaster type thing with a green side and a red side. if the green side is up, one of the dozens of men walking around with some kind of meat on a sword/skewer will ask you if you want what he has. they hold off if the coaster thing is on the red side. basically, this is the best way ever to eat a ton of good meats, and so i did. lamb chop, pork medallion, top and bottom sirloin, beef ribs, ribeye, filet mignon, bacon-wrapped and regular, also bacon-wrapped chicken, some sort of garlic steak, probably a couple of other things. a serious assortment. surprisingly, i have not napped. more importantly, i did eat a bunch of really good stuff. the experience itself was overall pretty excellent.
also excellent was going back to school and being like, hey, i just ate at fogo de chao and having everyone be like ohhhhhhhh shit. pleasing mix of happy-for-me and jealousy. one of my buddies got so excited that he was basically trying to talk me into going back soon, perhaps this evening. not going to happen, but it would be fun to go again for some otherwise somewhat notable occasion. i might be hungry enough again sometime this summer, or at least some time where i will be rushed to the comfiest bed of all time immediately after i decide i have had enough. while i certainly had plenty of time to enjoy myself today and did indeed do so, it would also be good to have plenty of time to sit around. i'm sure they want people to move along at some point and all that, but another thirty/forty minutes wouldn't have bothered them i don't think. the service was pretty excellent. if your green side is up and you do not have a plateful of meat, someone will come up and ask if they should direct the nearest sword-bearer ("gaucho" they call them, but i'm pretty sure that is more like a south american cowboy) to your table or if they need to find one with a certain type of meat you're waiting for. eager to avoid a possible tragic underserving of meat.
i thought for sure that the still-full stomach combined with reading civ pro would put me out, but not quite. but damn is that shit boring. property is almost is bad, and those are the two i have tomorrow. the current poll was put up during property on monday. i was in class and we were once again doing this really big waste of time thing where assholes i could give a fuck about go on about their opinions. look, i appreciate the attempt to encourage critical discussion of the material in class, but on the other hand, none of these people says anything real profound. mostly trite and annoying. i guess i could chip in my own two cents, but i usually don't have anything revolutionary to say about, say, restrictive covenants. i can give you arguments for both sides on anything, but hopefully anyone can. no need to check if people can do that every time we have class. also, if i did have anything good to say, i don't think anyone would be real interested in hearing it. man, i really fucking hate having class with seventy other people. totally not my style.
anyway, while people were going on about nothin about nothin about oil i started thinking about barn animal noises. brought me way back. cow says moo, sheep says baa (not marked), three singing pigs go la la la. i'm pretty sure "moo" was my first "word". i do not, however, know why i decided it should be a poll. i had a good idea for one, but i promptly forgot it. maybe i can rustle up another decent one at some point. also, look for mountain dew skoal (not marked! wiktionary says it is a toast, kind of like "cheers") at a gas station near you. especially meijer gas stations, since i own that shit.

back in the saddle

school doesn't seem as bad as it did before the break. it is worse. kicking things off with legal writing just puts things on the wrong foot. the theme of today's class was the aforementioned oral argument, and the point was that the prof was free to adjust grades for the actual brief up or down completely at her discretion based on oral arguments. no one wins or anything, the point is just that she can boost people she likes and drop people she doesn't. reductions are theoretically tied to failure to behave professionally, which is of course not defined. so far all i know is that the syllabus stipulation that "extremely sloppy dress" would result in a markdown has morphed into "suits are mandatory". this is literally what happened. the only other thing specifically noted as unprofessional so far is saying anything about your opponent's brief. because in practice, we all know lawyers would never disparage their opposition. never. and that is what this exercise is all about: preparing us for practice. since we will all undoubtedly write appellate briefs and make oral arguments for them. look, if you want people to do it because you want them to know what it is like, fine. but when you start making arbitrary distinctions as to what makes it into the simulation, i start to get annoyed. the whole thing is such a goddamned farce, but with strange subjective teeth. if one is deemed "unprofessional", an a paper can quickly become a failure. i don't think she'd give me an a in the first place (i didn't go talk to her every day), whatever i get will definitely become an f if i go through with the hot pants thing. so, i will not be afforded an opportunity to appropriately expose the whole sham for what it is. instead, i will grumble quietly with my classmates, most of whom will profess to be annoyed at the empty exercise and proceed to take it as seriously as anything else they have ever encountered. conversation about the flaws of law school is constricted and ineffective, and i believe this is by design. the only way to really get people to listen these days requires not only playing the game to the hilt, but doing a better job of that than almost everyone else even when you do not believe in it. i just do not have that in me. mocking my education in a limited semi-formal atmosphere is a little more my speed, but i don't have the balls to pay the high price for the low payoff. so i am just gonna sit alone and type here and be unhappy with my life. after all, i'm spending a ton of money so i can do just that for the rest of my life. great move. remember that the law is always indeterminate and always political and this is so that power stays where it is. questions? call me.
on a lighter note, many many excellent photos of the ides of march march are available here. in fact, there are many excellent pictures there, including some stuff of my neighborhood. thanks for doing a great job with the documentation! they're sort of in reverse order, which really doesn't matter, but if you start on like page four those are the earliest ones, and you can go backwards from there. either way, there is plenty there to get a good idea of what exactly was going on, except without chanting. to recreate the effect, recruit anyone in the area of your computer to repeatedly cry out a warning to beware the ides of march march. if you see me, tell me to beware porches on the ides of march. i'm still pretty sore.
not a whole lot else to report. while i was doing laundry the other day, i noticed a girl with a metallica backpack. not like a backpack with some metallica shit on it, no, it was manufactured with plenty of embroidery and printing, all metallica stuff. she did not look like it would have been her backpack: too not metal to have it for its own sake, not cool enough to have it for sheer irony judging by her clothing and laundry. also, she was coloring the whole time. in a coloring book. totally old school. had quite the box of crayons, too, the really big one. she colored inside the lines and talked on a pink razr phone the whole time. this is why i do not need to take any form of personal distraction with me when i do laundry; the people watching is usually pretty prime. consider yourself updated.

beware the ides of march march

well, i guess you don't really have to worry about it again for just shy of a year. yesterday was fairly eventful, but in those small times i was unbearably bored. i guess i have to do something, but i wish that was not going back to law school. maybe spend my time doing something where i make money instead of just spend it. but law school it is for now, hopefully i will be more eager to cram my life full of it than before the break, but i kind of doubt it. i re-read whatever i have for tomorrow; it came back pretty quick.
i didn't do a lot of law school stuff over the break because i managed to fill a lot of my time with actual things to do, for good or ill. as i mentioned, yesterday opened with a trip to beautiful, historic lancaster pa. i am not being sarcastic, although the billing the original noting gave the town (same thing) came off a little tongue-in-cheek. really nice place, really peaceful event, really helpful officer of the law. dude was a classic good cop. had a motorcycle. pissed that he is being forced into mandatory retirement in a couple months. i guarantee i wouldn't fuck with the guy even ten years from now. rode by the brewery but couldn't find it back on the way out of town, unfortunately. but our trip took us through or past many of the more notoriously named municipalities of the state: blue ball, intercourse, wagontown (stopped for a beer there after a long search for one) and of course bird-in-hand.
the trip actually got off on a bit of a bad foot, as the driver managed to get a ticket during the thirty seconds we checked the inside of a building for latecomers. parked at 901, ticked marked 903. the attendant truly showed up out of nowhere. after all, we were too people who were on our way to act in an exclusively observant manner.
when we were almost back to the city, my phone rang, a friend asking me something about some sort of parade. i was supposed to meet some people in a strange walkway between a movie theater/restaurant/bar and a rotunda (the rotunda, in fact). it was on my way back home from where i got dropped off. en route, ben saw me and after a few moments of confusion i figured out someone had indeed just yelled my name at me. so we got there a little early; only one other person was already there.
i had no idea what to expect. we all talked for a while, but not a whole lot of information had come to light on what was exactly going to go down. i had heard talk for a few weeks, something about a banner, a parade, and an assassination of julius caeser. i wasn't clear on whether it was related to saint patrick's day (thankfully, far from it, although there were three rollerbladers with segments of a snake like a split up version resembling one of those chinese dragons in parades) or how big it was supposed to be.
when everyone was assembled, we numbered about twenty, including a couple of people shooting still and video. almost everybody was dressed in some striking manner, a lot of face paint (i saw a lot of painted faces that day between the march and the protest which included a small troupe of leftist clowns from some university). the variety and particularities of everything are quite difficult to describe, but the good news is that i'm sure pictures and perhaps even film will show up on the the interwebs and duly linked from here. enough people looking and behaving strangely enough to attract attention, but not so many as to cause an offensive/possibly illegal disturbance. there was already enough going on in the area we were in: some "irish" bars get together and literally bus people around to different bars all day. i think if i found out how much bud lite (not marked!) was consumed, i would literally vomit on the the information source. rampant douchebaggery.
made the whole thing subversive in a different way. the occasion was the ides of march, and it was a march, see. the ides of march... march. so we chanted "beware the ides of march march" for most of the time while we wandered along our ten or so block amble. also "no explanation!" at some points. the journey took us through some clusters of green t-shirt and bead folks who were alternately hostile, excitable, or so hammered they were too busy doing their own thing.
unfortunately, i was not dressed silly, because i was coming back from lancaster, and i had not been there as either a liberal (the one who got mike time remarked he had "had it up to my big red nose this war and this administration!") or any other sort of clown. i just got a little bit of the surprisingly adequate arsenal of weaponry. at the end of the line, caeser was indeed stabbed, and that was that. good times, look forward to the pictures.
the march itself and the ides of march both provided an independent good-as-any reason for a party. it was a lot of fun. knew a lot of people, met a lot of people, good mix, good music. for a while a band played, mandolin, guitar (acoustic), squeezebox and flute is their usual lineup. but this time my friend played fiddle with them, to fantastic results. unfortunately there was also an accident wherein my face was damaged. i'll be alright; could have been much worse. really close to an eye, which is a weird place to get scraped up. overall, though, a good time. friendly argument with some guy whose phone number, despite my vocal skepticism, really did only contain three digits through the whole sequence of ten. met some fellow dinosaur comics afficianados. someone had a bottle of everclear. i did not involve myself with that. and yet, i still somehow have minor scrapings in strange places. life isn't all bad, really.

geel jas

say it with me now. geel jas. sounds like hail yass, a bizarre approximation (today is a day of approximation: pi day) of hell yes. but it really means yellow jacket in dutch. it took me an alarming amount of time to notify my sister of this fact, given her yellow jacket. the original popularity of the phrase (in my life, at least) draws from the wolf's striking garment of the same type. the wolf called me the other day from california, where he is apparently changing light bulbs in target stores for the next several months. right now he is in l.a., which is a tough geographic/municipal concept for me. it is one of those places that is so big that it sort of includes things that have other names, but i am unclear as to what extent places nominally separate from los angeles are somehow integrated with it. anyway, the wolf was enthusiastic about acquiring a ralph's card and looking forward to perhaps visiting some lebowski landmarks, especially the bowling alley.
it occurred to me that i knew nothing about the bowling alley they used, so i did a little digging. unsurprisingly, the imdb trivia page for the movie had my answer (along with some other pretty decent trivia that would have stumped me - bunny's license plate!?). if you don't want to sort through it all, let me just say they TORE IT DOWN and there is now an elementary school on that piece of land. most people, including myself, are loathe to disparage new schools for kids, but this situation is surely a shame. on the other hand, one day some of those kids will grow up and get into the movie (i believe it will transcend generations) and be like hey, see that bowling alley? i went to elementary school there. well, not at the alley, but on that land. and hopefully whoever they are telling will be suitably impressed. i still kind of can't believe it is not there though, but i guess its nonexistence is also somehow appropriate. i didn't find out until after i was done talking to the wolf, and i am afraid he will be quite disappointed. i wanted to leave him a message and tell him that we had received some terrible news and i was in seclusion in the west wing, but his voice mail has been full so that no one can leave a message for about one month less than he has owned that phone. it will be more difficult to break the news in person, but i guess i can still use that line.
i would much rather be changing light bulbs in california, i think. not that things have been particularly bad here, it is spring break after all. more on that later. but even while i'm on break, it is always on my mind. this is a major difference between going to school and having a bullshit job: relatively minor hourly waged jobs are easy to forget about when you're not there. law school makes me feel bad about not doing much for it while i'm supposed to be on vacation from it. seems to be no getting away from it, but i guess a lot of people i go to school with have a good forty years of never getting away from thinking about the law for a sustained period of time to look forward to.
i've been thinking the most (but not doing too much, don't worry) about the one specific thing a prof instructed us not to think about over the break. i finished writing the brief last week and i think it went alright. dude's brief got a little dinged up by staples. i had to go through three staplers to find one that worked just right; the prof already mentioned she was going to be anal about stapling. three down the left side, not so short that their hold is questionable (most traditional staplers) or so long that sharp parts stick up (most big-stack staplers). i did my best, and that was the very last thing i had to do, so i was ready to have it over with regardless.
anyway, so the brief is done but i have to do oral arguments for it, which was the one thing i was not supposed to think about. it is on a sunday, which is weak, and with a vague but possibly grade-influencing dressing requirement. that is about as frustrating as any of the rest of the class i guess, so it is appropriate. i was talking about suits last night, and how i actually really like to wear them, but i just want to wear one depending on whether or not i feel like it at the time. i dislike their ubiquitous presence in some contexts. i fee like this is one of those times where it will not technically be required but absolutely every male will have one. except maybe me. i didn't bring one with me, which was kind of stupid, and i have turned down offers from my parents to get me a new one before. i do, however, live near a pretty good-sized second-hand store that might have something i dig. we shall see.
i am arguing against someone i do not know, which came as a surprise to me. i only found out a couple of weeks ago by accident that there was another legal writing section doing the same basic assignment. i haven't exactly gone to a whole lot of trouble to learn people's names, especially full names, and so when i glanced at the schedule and recognized a couple of pairings, i assumed i was arguing against someone who i recognized but whose last name i did not know. turns out most people are arguing against people from the other class, but ours is bigger and so a couple people who actually know each other have to argue against one another. i think i might be a little more comfortable with that, but it is hard to say. i do know there are plenty of people in my class i am sure i don't want to argue with, and since i don't know the girl i'm facing i don't have to worry about necessarily dealing with her anytime soon in another context.
like i said i've been thinking about it a lot, and today i was considering actually replacing 'brief' with 'hot pants' during argumentation, especially when answering the judges' questions. performative (marked! fuck you, spell check!) critical legal studies in the most appropriate forum. i have not encountered any direct reference to cls in law school, and i am disappointed but not really surprised. high school debate taught me about a couple sort of obscure things. cls had its time, but it was kind of a while ago and limited by some not entirely unfounded criticisms. however, talking about hot pants instead of briefs is about as good as trashing gets in my opinion. i talked about cls for a presentation back in the day for my philosophy of law class. it was either that or something else that cls led me to, but the prof had not heard of it. mostly because it is not all that reputable. the point is, it is as good and probably better than any defense of the status quo. hot pants exposes the indeterminacy of both language in and about the law, along with opening supposedly at-best arbitrary structures for examination to reveal inherent power dynamics. go hot pants. the sinister part in all this is that i will probably not actually show up and say hot pants (it would be difficult to remember to always do it) because i am successfully disciplined to some degree by grades due to the relationship between them and attracting potential employment. also, law school is such an anti-academic environment that i think it would fail to generate meaningful conversation. most people would just kind of think it was weird and be happy that i would probably wind up wolding down the low left end of the curve for that class.
now i'm definitely thinking about it too much. it is a beautiful day here. i already went for a small walk for drum and cold cuts, and i wished i hadn't worn more than a t-shirt and jeans. maybe even the crocs. unfortunately, my left achilles is sore. probably screwed it up having a good time at some point over the past week of brief finishing/spring break. otherwise i probably would have walked further because it is so fantastic. the good news is that i am not so injured that i am prevented from walking up the street to enjoy a good beer on a great porch on a fantastic afternoon, so i am going to go do that. but i can't post yet because the internet is not working, so i'll just take a break.
well it clouded up and got cold about half an hour after i sat down on the porch, but it was still pretty excellent while it lasted. it was still nice enough to walk up to the distributor and pick up a case. splitting a rack of sly fox pale ale cans. i remember having it pretty early on in the festival and being suitably impressed. hopefully the context didn't overshadow the beer, but i am confident it will be quite good. i am thoroughly taken in by the pro-can propaganda (portability, freshness, etc.); and it seems more appropriate to me for things like pales and pilsners. plenty of styles where it wouldn't be appropriate as the mild aging from bottles has a pleasing effect on the brew, but i hope to see more microbreweries make use of canning. more on this beer after it sits in the fridge for a few. cans, you know, chill quicker. i expected them to be a little cheaper, but this place's prices aren't that great on some things. still a pretty good deal because i got to split the case, so i got to commit to less and i still get good cheap beer that'll last a week or so. i never appreciated the utility of being able to purchase beer conveniently and at a generally reasonable price in six-pack or twelve-pack form. i can still get those things, but not at a reasonable price, and only easily by happenstance.
in the meantime, let's go back to pi day for a second. it is a pretty excellent concept when you think about it. pi, that is, not necessarily the day approximating it. one of those things that shows up an awful lot of places and seems a little more credible and uncanny than the golden ratio. also, this poem to remember twenty digits of the approximation amuses me:
Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
In sacred truth and rigid spelling
Numerical sprites elucidate
For me the lexicon's full weight
each word's letters are the number, see. 3.14159, etc. thanks, someone from england commenting on the bbc news piece. i don't feel bad about not specifically citing someone who is using a screen name to post something they were probably taught in high school or whatever the equivalent is. probably the best thing i have seen come out of having pi day is this. just cracks me up. also makes me look forward to july.
the sly fox is pretty excellent. i could have left it to get a little colder, but i am not disappointed about opening it. comes across the palate kind of viscous for a pale, full on american with the hops though, my kind of a pale. poured it into a glass and i almost regret it. oh well, i've got a few more, i will be glad to compare the experience soon. nothing too crazy going on here, and i don't think there has to be for a good solid pale like this. well-balanced, right up there with yards and founders. with the added bonus of the can. i can dig it. hehe. i am ready for something straightforward like this after the magic hat variety pack.
i didn't do a whole lot in terms of beer week events, but it has certainly been a beer-y enough week for me. chuck visited, and so we hit a couple of the real good spots, made it to both monk's and eulogy. eulogy had bell's hopslam on tap, which is fantastic. i liked it a lot better than i remembered. i don't know if they've changed something about it or if it is really that much better on tap or what, but whatever the reason, it really hit the spot. the best aroma of all time. like if there was such a thing as a hops jolly rancher, it would smell kinda like this beer. also had bear republic's red rocket, which is a scotch ale. i found it passable but unremarkable, wholly unworthy of its reputation as a wild and crazy beer. i was willing to give bear republic another go, though, and my first pick at monk's was a racer 5, their ipa. pretty incredible, enough to make me a believer in the columbus hop i had written off as a bastardized bittering agent. another perfectly balanced beer, which is becoming more and more of a well-practiced science as more and more brewers just keep getting more and more experience. real keeper. next beer was called hop it or something, from a dutch brewer i was unfamiliar with and whose name i cannot recall. supposedly inspired by the brewer's experience with american double ipas, it was a decidedly lowlands interpretation. sort of worked out to be a relatively hoppy but otherwise extremely proper belgian witbier, although the closest approximation i can think of might be the one that unibrou makes. interesting, but didn't have the hops or body i hoped for, but expectations aside, a pretty good beer. certainly unique. i was really wowed by the close-out, cantillon geuze. oh man. they were possibly out when my sister ordered one before me, but no, there was one more, and even enough for me to get one of my own. perhaps my favorite geuze so far. so funky. only george clinton himself could have turned up the funk more. totally delicious.
came at the right time, too, after dinner. my meal was bar none the hottest wings i have ever encountered. if i am going to get wings, i will always go for whatever is supposed to be the hottest. sometimes i am let down, sometimes i am impressed, but never have i come so close to questioning my ability to handle the heat. they were so damn hot. the nice thing was that they were four actual real chicken wings, not just pieces of wings sold as "wings". but they were so hot. it wasn't like they were even in a sauce, more like smeared with some paste made out of a little water and mostly crushed chilies. i don't know what kind, just that they were so fuckin hot. i am almost starting to flush and sweat just remembering the intensity. totally worth it though. i'm still probably going to get mussels when i go back next time. but they were good, and i feel like my search for the hottest wings anywhere has ended, and this will forever be the measure all future spicy foods are compared to in my mind.
oh yeah, i also had a lot of fun doing things with my brother other than indulging my palette. he helped us win a few bucks at quizzo, which featured an allegedly impossible bonus round question my sister and i yelled out the answer to at the same time. after the regular game, the dude running things asks questions and people just yell out the answer to win dollar store prizes. he was all, no one can get this one, in the netherlands, who is santa claus' helper or something along those lines, and before he was even finished we both yelled zwarte piet! and the dude was like huh? and so we yelled it again, and he was still confused, but my sister figured he wanted black piet, and she was right. pretty funny though, good family moment. chuck and i went to see the sixers, and that was a lot mroe fun than i thought it would be, discounting the annoying chick from boston sitting next to me. the game went by really quick, but it was fun. we saw the flyers, and that was even better. sports events are almost universally better to see live, and that doesn't get a lot of argument. but even if it is more fun to be there and more enjoyable over all, something shouldn't be harder to follow on tv. this was my first live nhl game, and damned if it isn't twice as easy to follow the play in person. they run way too many cameras for that shit. we went to the art museum, and chuck ran up the stairs all rocky style. that was pretty money to see. we did the mutter museum of medical oddities as well, which was still fun, but not as rewarding on the return trip as the art museum predictably was. part of the appeal the mutter has though is that you haven't seen these things before, i think, whereas the art museum deals with things that are a little more timeless in some ways. in fact, i liked some of the stuff i had already seen so much that i still went again even though there are a couple parts i still have to go to. all the more reason to go back. my favorite things are the complete rooms, where the whole thing is designed in a specific style or, in the best cases, actually is a literal room from whatever time and place. big fan of all the stuff from india, and the temple room is by far the coolest, although the abbey courtyard is also a big draw for me. so much good stuff, and the effect of a whole room is really helpful. i am hard pressed to think of something bad to say about the art museum. i guess i was a little underwhelmed with the one video installation. it was a guy from the shoulders or lower down do the ground while he walked around and dragged a drumstick along railings and tapped various metal things he passed. it hung together well enough and they timed it up to do some nifty things, but its best effect was really merely being heard throughout other parts of the wing. the footage itself wasn't anything to speak of, and i'm sure it wasn't the focus, but whatever. i was actually kind of hoping for something a little stranger i guess. i like contemporary art because it makes me think about all sorts of things whenever i see it. certainly a different experience from looking at some sweet northern renaissance engravings, which i enjoy just as much but in an entirely different way. people can stereotype and deride a lot of contemporary art and artists for plenty of reasons i can understand, but it just seems like the wrong way to approach it. let's face it, plenty of people involved with art have probably always kind of been dicks about it, this is nothing new. it is also certainly not new for art to be totally noisome to society writ large. sorry about all that, my siblings were willing to give that branch a pass this time around more or less so i had to go on about it for a minute in some way.
i have just discovered that i have to be waiting in front of a building about a dozen blocks away at nine tomorrow morning. i have some serious mixed feelings about that. i am going to lancaster, and i always like to go someplace new, wherever it might be. but i have to catch a ride, which beats the train for price, but has its own drawbacks. i will be observing, so i had better find my notebook and hope it isn't too damaged from the festival the other week where i was certainly participating as opposed to just observing. good thing my beer notations will never possibly play a role in anyone else's trial. i don't anticipate having a whole lot to do tomorrow, but you never know. i'll find out all too soon.

rockin' OOT

that's right, with an overdone canadian accent, 'cause that's how we do it. i was moving even slower than normal on this hot pants (no longer brief - hot pants). then i put on some BOC. great double live album called terrestrial alien or something else nonsensical like that. all i know is progress has improved except for occasional air drumming. great blend of classic rock and early early metal. the first side opens with a song featuring call-and-response between the band and the audience where the crowd yells "dominance!" and the vocalist replies "submission!". the next tune talks about cities in flame with rock and roll, and in the one after that the lyrics repeatedly permit everyone to refer to the lead singer as "doctor music". what more do you want?

beer festival, karnes?

i guess going to a beer festival is kind of the mother of all beer runs. predictably, it was a damn good time. innumerable selections i had never seen, and plenty of solid standby brewers with the occasional odd batch. i realized early on i would have to make a lot of choices. i'm bad at choices, but this was about as easy as it could get. no way to lose. the only "problem" was getting too many generous pours. it seems nice, but when you really just want to try 2 oz. of something, a double dose on an already full stomach is a little much. one of the best beers i had was actually my kickoff sample. southampton publick house. french style called biere de mars i had not previously been acquainted with. not too surprisingly, the translation is beer of march. i preferred it vastly to most of the "spring" beers i've had, mostly decent bocks (just not my thing usually) and a few normal styles simply market as spring-seasonal. i went in looking for hops, and i hit a few real good ones. one vermont place i hadn't heard of before the festival, rock art brewery had a brew called vermonster that i particularly enjoyed, just what i was looking for at the time, double ipa. dude servin' it up was in some sort of vintage naval uniform and had the longest beard i have ever seen. lots of interesting looking people at the event, and plenty of people who seemed confused, but mostly people seeming tipsy. this place represented for milwaukee with a solid ipa and an anniversary (20th!? i never saw these guys back home) belgian strong. both big and balanced. arcadia was even there, and i got to grab a hopmouth. you can see where i might think i wound up going too heavy on the hops even for me. i was rewarded for my perseverance later in the evening when i tracked down the green flash table. true west coast ipa. sometimes nothing is better. they were only pouring bottles, but the aroma was still incredible. nothing but pacific northwest hops as far as i could tell at that point. the server told me "the search is over," which is a great slogan but a little presumptuous, given the ambiguity. however, if he meant the most west coast of all ipas, then i would really have to agree. other than my hop gluttony, i had a lot of mediocre belgian styles. on the other hand, my palate got a little tore up. a price i'm willing to pay if i can still select from a couple dozen beers so bitter i can still taste anything from that selection after having a couple of them. on the other hand, there were also a couple others that do not have the excuse of some minute delicacies that still failed to pass muster, before, during, and after all the international bitterness unit blowout. i had tried three purported rye beers, all of which disappointed. i don't know what founders did, but that was my primary reference and i expected some serious rye. letdown. but they were beers i tried, and now i know. these are some of the many highlights. i cannot recommend the experience enough. from the opportunity to gain a spectrum of experience across a particular style to being in a giant room full of people (kind of felt like a busy train station, long and with really really high ceilings, but like if EVERYONE had been drinking) who eventually do the beer fest wave of raising your glass and yelling whoooo with all the enthusiasm of people who are pretty much a) beer geeks in heaven b) people who think beer fest is a great movie and thought it would be sweet to get as hammered as possible at this thing or c) people who went along to fit in and necessarily co-operate. almost, but not quite, too much fun to handle.
i finally got a hold of a couple of wilco's residency shows. first night and the last night are all i have so far. next one i get will probably be an '01 show. from detroit, no less.anyway, i got to listen to tweedy bitch and moan about how bad "i thought i held you" is. the funny part is that he must have always thought so, and yet he put it on the record. wilco had never ever in any form played that song on stage. the only wilcobase entry was from some radio live in-studio shit. he literally calls it dog shit before they play it on the last night. he sings it halfheartedly and in a borderline mocking tone, but the band plays it really well and he does make note of that. the thing i've enjoyed the most about hearing cuts that aren't in normal circulation is the inherent diversity of the set lists. this version of the band does an amazing job of demonstrating the deceptive continuity of records that all have a different style. most of all they're having fun, and it makes for some fun listening. the horns are really the perfect touch on some things, i can almost even listen to 'i'm the man who loves you'. almost. i like rapidly approaching zero things about that song. but they really pull some things together, especially a couple of the new tunes. it really does make 'walken' sound like a little feat song; one of the trib's reviews mentioned that. the recordings are as pristine as i hoped. wilco in chicago is pretty much a foregone conclusion: it is gonna sound sweet. the band and the tapers both know the venues there so well. but sound is nothing without playing well, and much of this was ideal.
i don't really have a whole lot else to report; i've been spending a lot of time on the inevitable brief. i'm getting there, but progress is painfully slow. it happens so slowly and painstakingly. no flow to the process, terminally boring at points. i'm happy with where i am mostly. a lot better than i was off with this much time left on the memo last semester. tomorrow will mostly be the assemblage of information in obscure formatting. totally a pain in the ass nobody needs. but the court cannot do without it, and so we have to do it this way this time even though jurisdictions vary greatly. the ultimate in hoop-jumping. well, whatever. i'm sure i'll manage. i also need to find blue card stock for the front and back covers. of six copies of the same thing that i have to turn in. awesome. the battle against word has been going well. i am sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but i got the goddam tabs to be where i needed throughout the whole document. i save so compulsively now. waiting for another word processing terrorist to bomb a few more paragraphs.
as you may have noticed, this blog has finished determining why, and the answer is that's just the way it is. i personally voted for something else, just so i could complain about whatever won. if i would have needed to modify the poll for some reason, i could have done that too i guess (and i have reason to believe someone else manipulated it as some sort of statistical joke). but really, that's just the way it is deserves to be the answer because it was the only one with a well-known theme song. an excellent theme song. another poll is hardly worthwhile once we've answered the ultimate question, but we'll see. that answer was sort of a fallacy...