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.