this type of shit calls for bay and thyme...

in case you somehow missed this recent mts, you probably shouldn't have. i was gonna post it but i put in the html thing from the site and it doesn't fit right on the blog, so link it is. pretty money comic if you ask me, up there with the failure to protect the neck one, which is probably still my favorite.
and that is the only notable news i have. naw, not quite, but nothing earth shattering. let me see, i've done some really good porch sitting. that is indeed a pastime i am rather fond of. they had the flea market again, but there weren't as many places with vast record selections this time. that is not to say that there still weren't way more records i wanted than i could afford, but it is to say that i didn't get anything i went to find. i really wanted after the gold rush, and some wannabe hipster (spell check does not mark either of those two words) fuck pulled it out of one of the two remaining boxes i hadn't pawed through after flipping through thousands of lps. and he handed it to his even more wannabe friend and advised him to pick it up. i was displeased. the good news is that the stand with the best records was actually just a field operation of the record store like five or six blocks away, and i bet they have at least one more copy back there, i just have to go. still. i thought about seeing if the dude would trade me for the original press t-rex electric warrior i found, but even my relatively minimal experience with record supplies led me to believe i should just hold what i had. ah well. i also failed to find a copy of ANY steely dan album i wanted. i couldn't even find any of the ones i had. what gives? i really need the royal scam. get along, kid charlamagne. in addition to the t-rex, i scored nice copies of john wesley harding (now playing), american beauty, obscured by clouds (can finally retire my other beat-to-shit copy), and allmans live at the fillmore east, which has that excellent side of whipping post. all this for thirty bucks or so, more or less a successful experience.
i got some brief legal observing in the other day. strange little event undoubtedly inspired by that improv group everyone is going on about who did the thing at grand central and the cell phone symphony. this was along the lines of the grand central thing, having people freeze and stuff, but kind of on a small scale. also, 30th street station in philly is not really comparable to grand station. but they still had like 30-35 people participating. mostly older women, nice folks. at 530 everyone stopped mid-motion for five minutes, and at the strike of 535 they all started chanting "stop funding war". it was kind of funny; there were about five cops in the big room we were in and only one of them noticed the freeze, and he only went and talked to this guy filming and had him stop. once the chant started, they garnered more attention (and a little applause from the uninvolved) and a "move along now" from the cops. no real conflict, i imagine the officers didn't mind having something to do for a couple minutes and talk about for a while. beats dealing with the recent rash of random subway platform assaults by groups of teens anyway.
today i read over sixty pages of case law on affirmative action in education. the interesting thing when dealing with a few cases on the topic decided by courts of slowly changing makeup is the predictability of the results and arguments advanced. onerous as it is to feel the repetitious nature of similar cases, it gives a really definite impression of how the jurisprudence develops and applies even within the SCOTUS world of arcane distinctions and pick-and-choose stare decisis. so if you have any questions about the university of michigan's admission schemes for undergrad and law school, let me know. cases on such contentious subjects also produce markedly fractured opinions, so i get to read a majority or a plurality, and then a couple concurrences, and a dissent or two. the real development of the day is that i actually almost agreed with thomas, the bane of my con law reading. that guy has to write separately for absolutely every damn case. i would have to do some serious digging to find a majority opinion by him that wasn't a unanimous ruling. anyway, he actually took the majority to serious task for once instead of just going on and on about the intent of the framers. good change for me, i'm sure no one else cares.
the damn wings are fucking up right now. the nhl playoffs are the most arduous of any sport i know of, and have provided me with compelling entertainment, but sometimes it is just too much. theoretically, a team could play as many games in the playoffs as it does in an entire third of the regular season. pretty wild. anyway, i hope they get it together. the idea is to play closer to a sixth of a season in the playoffs than a third. at least the tigers are starting to get their shit together.
what else... watched rain man for the first time the other night. i did not regret it. somewhat unbelievable, but hey, it is a movie after all. tom cruise is such an asshole. dustin hoffman really did do a bang-up job in that; he wasn't in charge of the plot flaws. not a bad flick for a night in, i was staying home to save money for the flea market. money money money. never stops.
i got a call from a friend today letting me know his son was born the other night. good to hear from him, and i'm glad for him and his wife, but man, that is way more money than i care to think about. my buddy is currently taking the bus to his job, two hours each way. the grass might not always be greener on the other side of the fence after all, but it is at least different. no one wins; we all have our own shit to deal with. right now my shit involves going to bed, i guess.