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.