i am at school doing a few things, including sitting around and wasting time doing this. i have begun my summer job working as a research assistant for one of the profs i had last semester. i don't actually need to be at school to do most of the work, it seems, but i stopped by today in hopes of catching the prof i am working for. i wanted to ask him about registration, which closes today. he, of course, is not here. that's okay. the school is a strange place in the off-season. there are still a lot of people around. massive groups of asians. i have heard the front desk clerk expound upon the virtues of her lunch, a salad, at least four times. i have almost memorized the elements of the salad. lots of people just filtering through, too, some profs, some students, who knows what else. overall, not near as unbearable as it normally is. or maybe it just seems that way because i haven't been in for a couple of weeks. also on the good side is that the school no longer smells like a subway garbage can that someone puked in. i don't know if i mentioned this, but during the exam period the whole damn law building smelled awful due to repeated flooding related to problems with the heating and cooling system. fuckin' sweet is what that was. fortunately none of the rooms i took my exams in were egregiously foul; i walked past the room where people who were handwriting took the exams and about lost my lunch. strangely, i kind of appreciate the fact that this massive flaw in the structure developed at a totally inopportune time. it gives flavor to my law school experience. i bet you very few people i will meet from other schools will be able to relate similar terrible problems. go us.
anyway, like i said, i'm supposedly doing research. i know other people who are more or less doing the same thing. except all of them have like gone to these bullshit training sessions and have filled out some stupid paperwork and yeah. i am sort of concerned about the prospects of getting paid as i have not gone through any of this. i anticipate speaking with my hiring prof about this. on the other hand, i will be thrilled if i get to dodge the training session, because it is a lesson for people who do not know how to use a library. i know how to use a library. i wish i had a large library named after me so i could threaten people by truly claiming that i have a library and i am not afraid to use it.
my research seems to be pretty obscure. my top result for one of the things i am looking into, this agreement between some states and the province of manitoba, was a pdf of a memo that some senator sent to my prof when my prof worked in the state department a few years back. i don't know if he quit before he got an answer for this dude or what, but what the prof is asking me to do is pretty much what he got asked to do in this memo. not exactly, but kind of. the point is, i don't know how much i'm gonna be able to tell this guy that he doesn't alreay know, but i will try my best. my best includes sitting around and typing this. i don't know if i am on the clock or what or how people keep track or anything. whatever, i've sifted through a lot of bullshit already and i've had enough for the moment.
i am also waiting (oh man here comes the salad speech again, i should have remembered my headphones) to maybe hear back from another prof i emailed about this class he is teaching next semester. i kind of want to hear what he has to say before i click the final registration button. what do you know, after fighting with the always-problematic wireless for a moment, i got a reply. however, the reply says he forwarded the email i sent him to the other person he's teaching the class with and now i'm going to wait for the other guy to get back to him so he can get back to me again. got that? it was real important. i originally was just gonna try and register for it and see what happened, but judging by the tone of the reply it is probably a good thing i didn't. my special dispensation is pending, and probably will be while i write the rest of this post because this is pretty much what i am going to do while i wait. i've been meaning to update anyway. anyway, the class is a colloquium and there are only like 36 seats, so i probably won't get in anyway; i'm pretty low on the registration ladder. on the other hand, so many people here are so job-focused that they might not be interested in talking about law and human behavior from the viewpoints of various disciplines. sounds like fun to me.
god, here i am out of school for the summer and yet all i have to talk about is school. it just never stops. i have done other things, sort of. i went down to jam on the river on sunday because it was free due to some sort of scheduling problem and cancellations. it was good people watching but it was overall just kind of strange. i didn't go all day, just at the end. the whole thing was sponsored by captain morgan, which is pretty tacky and lame, but someone had to pony up the bucks. they had some pretty bizarre promotional stuff going on, including some dude made to look like captain jack sparrow moreso than the captain morgan on the bottle. that would be a strange job. they used the same lettering as bonnaroo, which makes me stop and be like, what? silly people, silly place. it was kind of cool to be right next to the water. the music wasn't bad but it could have been better. lotus is okay, but the first day was the flaming lips and the disco biscuits. i would pay 20 or 25 bucks to see either of those bands on their own at a venue, but not 45 to see them both at once in what amounted to a parking lot (first day was someplace different than second day). poor festival marketing on their part. i wonder if anyone has worked out the mechanics of the most profitable summer music festivals. i'm sure someone has; rothbury is definitely a clear channel event. i would be curious to hear the conclusions on what makes a successful festival though. there are so many every summer now, it is kind of unbelievable. some people and many bands actually call memorial day to labor day "festival season". it wasn't always like this, was it? was i just unaware? most of the big ones on the circuit have celebrated their tenth birthday, but i don't think any big ones are much older than that. i got a flier for a totally half-ass festival when i was leaving jam on the river, some place on the PA/OH border. they had nothing. no bands i had ever heard of on the actual bill (except one who gave me their cd at that TLG show) . i'm guessing most of it is pittsburgh or cleveland area bands. i don't know. the weird thing was that there was also a drum and bass/deejay stage and i had actually heard of a good chunk of those performers. strange to have a secondary stage (in a cave, too) with better-known acts than the primary stage. in summation, i am not going to that bullshit.
in other news, most of my friends from school have left for rome for the summer to take classes. i wish i was there, but it was not so practical. i am at peace with this. the upshot is that one of my friends has left his ps3 with me while he is gone, so i will be playing the shit out of gta4 for the next six weeks. i am looking forward to this. i was looking forward to it, anyway, when i tried to make it actually work. nothing doing. fortunately, someone else found the answer to my problem. the console was freaked because i was feeding it through a vcr, which it regards as a 6 year old might regard a record. turned out i had to just keep holding to power button down after i turned it on. of course. why wouldn't holding the power button down for an extra fifteen seconds reset the defaults? whatever, it works now, and part of the reason i hauled my ass all the way to school was to resist the temptation to keep playing it while i should be accomplishing a couple of other things. like typing this and downloading music while nominally stalled from accomplishing anything else as i wait and constantly refresh my inbox and achewood, which hasn't updated in like forty-eight hours and is threatening to send me into withdrawal.
last friday i neglected to check myself. consequently, i wrecked myself. pretty bad. i was actually carrying the remnants of a case, and therefore had strange hand positioning that led to some really strange back of the hand injuries. the real problem is my knee. not a real problem, like it was the day after, but it does not look so great. i'm just glad that it works; i couldn't walk so hot the day after. these things happen. but i am back at it. possibly related to this fall is the continuing decline of my venerable crocs. i think they might have to be retired to household use only, and i should probably get real-people sandals as well. i might do that on my way home from here, if i ever make it out. two hours until the registration deadline, will i get this email before then? will the day be saved or will the world end? the suspense is killing me. i should probably go have a cig.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
penn christmas
it is that time of the year. we've all witnessed the mounds of debris that accumulate following the end of the school year in the face of looming move-out-by dates. but i have seen nothing in this league. this isn't just grab some functional shit and hold a garage sale material; there are several things worth taking and keeping, including a bunch of shit that has literally never been used. i personally kept it to a minimum because i could easily imagine myself thinking things useful and deciding upon move-out that they are not so useful as to be moved. we spent very nearly all our time in front of one house with fifty feet of curb covered in crap, in some cases the general connotation of crap, and other cases the bad connotation kind of crap. thankfully no literal crap. strangely, one of the girls who lived at the house responsible for the pile and a friend of hers came out and poked around a little with us. they were chatting about how wasteful the whole thing is, which confused me as it was presumably partially their shit. turned out it belonged almost exclusively to other already-gone roommates. in any event, they were really nice and let us in to see if we could find anything else we might want. some things are better gotten from directly inside a house than off the curb on a day when it rained heavily in the morning and afternoon. we helped them clear out the fridges (yes, plural) and gave us most of the beer leftovers, few cans of bud/coors light, whatever it was free. i kept some ethernet cable, an extension cord, a wine key, and a flask. the flask is like new; probably used once. my buddy found it inside a bag inside of something else. you do have to sift to find the good stuff.
i wasn't interested in accumulating large items or additional kitchenware (TONS of it), but other people made some serious scores. one dude had a poker table, one of the nice ones with all the notches and stuff. he wound up with a set of what appeared to be almost never used golf clubs in a nice bag from the basement of this same house. not that i'm gonna golf, but that shit is worth a bunch of money. same guy also wound up with a hookah, also in the basement. one passerby enthusiastically seized on a bag of women's lacrosse goalkeeper equipment. at this point i was just standing around so i struck up a conversation with the guy. he explained that this was precisely what he had been looking for: padding he could vacuum re-mold. of course. he did not say what he was going to re-mold it into, and i should have asked. somebody else picked around everything for a long time and took only partially empty spice containers. overall, most of what was left around were household essentials, and the heart of the situation is that people decide they would rather purchase the same things over again in some form than move these things with them, for whatever reason. also a disturbing amount of books. that being said, we still did quite well. i helped haul a never-opened package that was a metal shelving unit from ikea, twenty liquor glasses (mostly margarita; now we have no choice but to have a margarita party - tough life out here), a never-used air mattress with auto-pump, a lava lamp in fine condition, a working cell phone with charger (discovered in the following manner: cell phone charger? fuck that, won't work with any phone we knew for sure, twenty minutes later find the cell phone, spend the next half hour finding the charger back), two ziplock bags full of change (these people were literally throwing money away, yes there were quarters), six miro prints in a nice informative laminated sleeve (in synchronicity (marked! fuck you spell check) news, the wikipedia link for the artist refers to steely dan at one point, and i'm currently playing countdown to ecstasy), some other random shit like garlic and shallots and flashlights and a shower clock, and a nifty collapsible handcart to help schlep it all of the few blocks back.
did finally manage to make it through finals at the end of last week if anyone wondered. went pretty well. the foodery did indeed pose the most perplexing situation on friday. it went well, and i am currently enjoying one of the selections, rock art's double esb. pretty good, not unlike a big ipa or a smaller double ipa, 80 ibus and 8 percent abv. only real difference is in the hops, not typical of american ipas. still have a double simcoe ipa in the fridge, looking forward to that.
the kensington kinetic sculpture thing was on saturday and we made it down there. the kinetic sculpture thing had nothing on baltimore, but the race was part of a larger artsy festival thing, which was alright. some serious hipster-watching time. some pretty decent art too, and also some ridiculous stuff for sale for too much money. got to see some parts of the city i hadn't before, and that would have been enough for me anyway. philadelphia brewing company was there, but unfortunately i didn't have any cash; there was also some aromatic food making me wish i had sold my books back earlier. when i did sell them i went to dock street, so all was not lost. anyway, the "race" was a fun thing to do on the first day of nothing to do in some time. it was also my sister's birthday and we went to a bar i enjoyed despite its suspicious location in old city. hoptimus prime on tap is an argument in its favor, but the lack of an unbearable douchebag quotient was most key. a good time was had by all.
i also found out that i did get that research assistant job with my property prof. knowing i have something is a huge load off, especially down to the wire like it was; found out minutes before my last exam. unfortunately i haven't heard back on details since responding to the offer, but i'm sure the guy is busy trying to grade some exams and raise some kids. in any event, i'm looking forward to it, and that is a pleasant change of pace from the cloud of uncertainty about what to do this summer. almost even looking forward to fall semester now that i get to choose a few classes. i spent i good chunk of today trying to get that figured out. one thing i really want to take has these bizarre prerequisite requirements which are basically that you took all the first-year courses and then like one of eight possible other things. i think that is bullshit; if any one of eight classes can qualify, how important can that background be? not important enough to keep me out of this colloquium is the answer to that. law and human behavior is the topic, and i can't think of a whole lot that i would rather study at law school.
technology update: i am getting a new phone. this one still fucks up constantly. it gets better sometimes and then just sucks again when i need it not to do so. i hate how reliant i am on the thing, but it has nonetheless become something i expect will work constantly and it bothers me when it does not. as for the computer, things seem to be going well. i can now just shut the screen and let it hibernate again; for a while i had to shut it down fully or it would start to drain the battery while claiming to be using ac power. unfortunately, i tried to use the computer in a somewhat clumsy state the other evening (mondays at the mill creek, i have returned) and something went wrong with the power supply. i tried to remedy the situation, one thing led to another, and the end result was that one of the prongs for the outlet part of the thing broke off. dismayed, i decided to deal with it in the morning. this morning i recalled when i originally took the computer in to the store. i brought my power supply just in case, and the guy told me i needed a new power supply and so on. he also told me i had to take my old one back with me, stating that it was my trash, not theirs. trash it might be, but fortunately the separable part of the power supply goes from the transformer to the wall, and that chunk from the old one combined with the main part of the new one has me in good shape. lucked out big time on that one.
tomorrow i still do not have any real work to do. i will try to clean some i think. if it is nice out i will probably make the trek to get another bag of outrageously priced cat food. maybe do a little grocery shopping. also hoping to get my first crack at grand theft auto 4. i don't care what anybody has to say about it, good or bad, i just want to play it. i am pretty sure it will rule. i haven't played regular video games in a while, so we'll see how it goes. not a bad agenda to have.
i wasn't interested in accumulating large items or additional kitchenware (TONS of it), but other people made some serious scores. one dude had a poker table, one of the nice ones with all the notches and stuff. he wound up with a set of what appeared to be almost never used golf clubs in a nice bag from the basement of this same house. not that i'm gonna golf, but that shit is worth a bunch of money. same guy also wound up with a hookah, also in the basement. one passerby enthusiastically seized on a bag of women's lacrosse goalkeeper equipment. at this point i was just standing around so i struck up a conversation with the guy. he explained that this was precisely what he had been looking for: padding he could vacuum re-mold. of course. he did not say what he was going to re-mold it into, and i should have asked. somebody else picked around everything for a long time and took only partially empty spice containers. overall, most of what was left around were household essentials, and the heart of the situation is that people decide they would rather purchase the same things over again in some form than move these things with them, for whatever reason. also a disturbing amount of books. that being said, we still did quite well. i helped haul a never-opened package that was a metal shelving unit from ikea, twenty liquor glasses (mostly margarita; now we have no choice but to have a margarita party - tough life out here), a never-used air mattress with auto-pump, a lava lamp in fine condition, a working cell phone with charger (discovered in the following manner: cell phone charger? fuck that, won't work with any phone we knew for sure, twenty minutes later find the cell phone, spend the next half hour finding the charger back), two ziplock bags full of change (these people were literally throwing money away, yes there were quarters), six miro prints in a nice informative laminated sleeve (in synchronicity (marked! fuck you spell check) news, the wikipedia link for the artist refers to steely dan at one point, and i'm currently playing countdown to ecstasy), some other random shit like garlic and shallots and flashlights and a shower clock, and a nifty collapsible handcart to help schlep it all of the few blocks back.
did finally manage to make it through finals at the end of last week if anyone wondered. went pretty well. the foodery did indeed pose the most perplexing situation on friday. it went well, and i am currently enjoying one of the selections, rock art's double esb. pretty good, not unlike a big ipa or a smaller double ipa, 80 ibus and 8 percent abv. only real difference is in the hops, not typical of american ipas. still have a double simcoe ipa in the fridge, looking forward to that.
the kensington kinetic sculpture thing was on saturday and we made it down there. the kinetic sculpture thing had nothing on baltimore, but the race was part of a larger artsy festival thing, which was alright. some serious hipster-watching time. some pretty decent art too, and also some ridiculous stuff for sale for too much money. got to see some parts of the city i hadn't before, and that would have been enough for me anyway. philadelphia brewing company was there, but unfortunately i didn't have any cash; there was also some aromatic food making me wish i had sold my books back earlier. when i did sell them i went to dock street, so all was not lost. anyway, the "race" was a fun thing to do on the first day of nothing to do in some time. it was also my sister's birthday and we went to a bar i enjoyed despite its suspicious location in old city. hoptimus prime on tap is an argument in its favor, but the lack of an unbearable douchebag quotient was most key. a good time was had by all.
i also found out that i did get that research assistant job with my property prof. knowing i have something is a huge load off, especially down to the wire like it was; found out minutes before my last exam. unfortunately i haven't heard back on details since responding to the offer, but i'm sure the guy is busy trying to grade some exams and raise some kids. in any event, i'm looking forward to it, and that is a pleasant change of pace from the cloud of uncertainty about what to do this summer. almost even looking forward to fall semester now that i get to choose a few classes. i spent i good chunk of today trying to get that figured out. one thing i really want to take has these bizarre prerequisite requirements which are basically that you took all the first-year courses and then like one of eight possible other things. i think that is bullshit; if any one of eight classes can qualify, how important can that background be? not important enough to keep me out of this colloquium is the answer to that. law and human behavior is the topic, and i can't think of a whole lot that i would rather study at law school.
technology update: i am getting a new phone. this one still fucks up constantly. it gets better sometimes and then just sucks again when i need it not to do so. i hate how reliant i am on the thing, but it has nonetheless become something i expect will work constantly and it bothers me when it does not. as for the computer, things seem to be going well. i can now just shut the screen and let it hibernate again; for a while i had to shut it down fully or it would start to drain the battery while claiming to be using ac power. unfortunately, i tried to use the computer in a somewhat clumsy state the other evening (mondays at the mill creek, i have returned) and something went wrong with the power supply. i tried to remedy the situation, one thing led to another, and the end result was that one of the prongs for the outlet part of the thing broke off. dismayed, i decided to deal with it in the morning. this morning i recalled when i originally took the computer in to the store. i brought my power supply just in case, and the guy told me i needed a new power supply and so on. he also told me i had to take my old one back with me, stating that it was my trash, not theirs. trash it might be, but fortunately the separable part of the power supply goes from the transformer to the wall, and that chunk from the old one combined with the main part of the new one has me in good shape. lucked out big time on that one.
tomorrow i still do not have any real work to do. i will try to clean some i think. if it is nice out i will probably make the trek to get another bag of outrageously priced cat food. maybe do a little grocery shopping. also hoping to get my first crack at grand theft auto 4. i don't care what anybody has to say about it, good or bad, i just want to play it. i am pretty sure it will rule. i haven't played regular video games in a while, so we'll see how it goes. not a bad agenda to have.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
technolo-hah
screw you, technology. fuck you. turnabout is fair play, after all. i'm sure most of you recall my recent delightful adventures surrounding the untimely demise of the power supply to my laptop. these things happen, i understand. but it just keeps getting better all the time. a couple days ago, my half-ass wireless provider announced that it would become no-ass, a.k.a. no longer provide residential wireless service. thanks, folks. maybe blowing all your money on an advertising campaign centered around bus stops for like six months wasn't the best call. on the other hand, it is probably not all their fault. this is, after all, "comcast country". they've got the building to prove it now. anyway, i've got a little less than a month before they stop offering service. i guess this relieves any worries i might have had about getting out of any possible service contract i might have agreed to (although my education has also informed me of several other possible defenses). however that all turns out, the old adage about things in threes held together here: my phone is now also fucking with me. the screen does not turn on when i open the phone, and none of the buttons are responsive. the end result is that i cannot call or text anyone. i apparently can receive phone calls, although i only got one and i expected another. i don't even know how i actually answered the one; the call time on it registered a zero and the phone may or may not have technically picked up when i opened it in response to the call. in any event, i am somewhat less than pleased.
in better news, school is over for the year at noon tomorrow. i couldn't have made it through this with a lot of support from all over, and i appreciate it. it has been one hell of a bullshit ride. hopefully things will close out alright tomorrow; signs point to yes. this is a pretty chilled out exam compared to the others; i get to bring a lot of shit in. the only thing is that we can bring in all the cases, and i am not going to. there was no book, but rather a copy-center supplement that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pages and cost fifty bucks. i declined to purchase it, as none of the cases were edited and i can access all of them on lexis, which i did all semester long. i am by no means a perfect environmental steward, but the idea of printing 500 pages for one day where i would use something like one percent of them seemed pretty horrific. it also would have been a pain in the ass to print it all out. i typed up a synopsis for each case as part of my review, and hopefully that will be sufficient. we'll find out soon enough, i guess.
i'm just ready to be done at this point, and i'm glad that feeling didn't crop up so early this semester. last time, i was ready to be done from day one, and by the time exams rolled around i was sleep-walking through every day just ticking down the hours until i got to go back to some things and people i knew and loved in a place where i could feel comfortable as myself. people change constantly on their own in an organic way, but sometimes there is a marked discontinuity in one's life and the resultant identity crisis is a little more unbearable. in the immortal words of t-rex (the comic dinosaur, not the band), the ravages of puberty leave no-one unscathed. that is one thing everyone has to go through, but i think it is comparable to some extreme changes people go through at other points in their lives. not that i've done any growing up recently, but i do know that when i came here i had a lot of problems just making it through each day and i don't feel that way anymore.
i've been doing a little more simple cookery lately, and i do enjoy that. nothing wild because that would require a couple investments i cannot afford to make right now. but i was fixated on making a couple things recently. for some reason i really really wanted veggie tacos. for like a couple days, until i just had to do it. i almost relented and made real ones but i couldn't find the frozen ground turkey i always use, so veggie it would be. there is some boxed dry mix i used to get and use back home, but i couldn't find it out here, so i went with one of those fake beef things that looks like the frozen ground turkey, all in that tube thing. textured soy protein or whatever, beats tofu in my book. they turned out great. today i made a heady delish pizza with pesto, six cheese blend that did not have enough fontina, and capicola (prosciutto HOLY SHIT I SPELLED IT RIGHT is too expensive). that's alright, i love capicola. i left it in just a touch longer than i would have liked, but it turned out just fine. i have way too much cheese, but garlic bread was on sale so hopefully i can work it to throw the cheese on the bread at the right time in cooking so as to fully toast the bread without burning the cheese. the mixture of frozen and refrigerated goods is tricky business, for me anyway. i've got some tomato sauce that has to go, and bread with red sauce is a fine meal in my book, so no complaints about all that.
the never-ending quest for good music continues, as always, with moderate success. you know, ups and downs, strikes and gutters. some dude gave me a fairly professional cd at the show last week (hey! i'm missing a show right now!). i figured i'd check it out; the last time someone at a show gave me a cd of a band i didn't know anything about it was back forty (i'm listening to an old one of theirs right now - opening for smokestack, the ann arbor band that couldn't miss but did). it was considerably less professional, but the content was far superior to what i wound up with last week. some band called the big dirty, mediocre funk-rock semi-jazzy fusion thing. vocals are thankfully minimal, as they are totally atrocious. if they want to get rid of these cds, they should probably keep giving them away. fortunately, the archive has provided me with some more than listenable material. the current new pick is SeepeopleS. i thought it was a pretty dumb name, but they have a bit of a buzz going on their behalf these days, so i figured i would check them out. i'm satisfied. what they do isn't the most original thing i've ever heard, but i think they do what they do well. contemporary neo-psychedelic indie rock/pop. easy to pick out the massive radiohead/flaming lips/perry ferrel influence, but there is some other stuff going on there too. i can dig it, worth checking out if you are a fan of the influences as it is somewhat derivative. in my book, that doesn't damn a band when they pick a certain part of the breadth of someone else's work and go deeper, which is what these guys do. the guy sounds great with a ton of vocal effects going, but without them he veers into trite nasal indie bullshit sound. the musicianship is unimpeachable, however, especially the drumming, which is not usually something that jumps out at me. the band overall has a nice big sound with massive sonic waves cresting and crashing, mostly courtesy of the keyboard work. worth a try if you're looking for something along those lines.
i realize some people have a freshly functional record player to revel in, but i am surprised no one has had anything to say about the owlandbear link from the other day. there is some seriously good music on that site, and something for just about everyone that you'd have a hell of a time finding anywhere else. if you didn't look, maybe you should, i'm just sayin'. and while you're looking, also check that foodery link to witness the sheer selection. choosing will hopefully be the most difficult thing about tomorrow.
in better news, school is over for the year at noon tomorrow. i couldn't have made it through this with a lot of support from all over, and i appreciate it. it has been one hell of a bullshit ride. hopefully things will close out alright tomorrow; signs point to yes. this is a pretty chilled out exam compared to the others; i get to bring a lot of shit in. the only thing is that we can bring in all the cases, and i am not going to. there was no book, but rather a copy-center supplement that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pages and cost fifty bucks. i declined to purchase it, as none of the cases were edited and i can access all of them on lexis, which i did all semester long. i am by no means a perfect environmental steward, but the idea of printing 500 pages for one day where i would use something like one percent of them seemed pretty horrific. it also would have been a pain in the ass to print it all out. i typed up a synopsis for each case as part of my review, and hopefully that will be sufficient. we'll find out soon enough, i guess.
i'm just ready to be done at this point, and i'm glad that feeling didn't crop up so early this semester. last time, i was ready to be done from day one, and by the time exams rolled around i was sleep-walking through every day just ticking down the hours until i got to go back to some things and people i knew and loved in a place where i could feel comfortable as myself. people change constantly on their own in an organic way, but sometimes there is a marked discontinuity in one's life and the resultant identity crisis is a little more unbearable. in the immortal words of t-rex (the comic dinosaur, not the band), the ravages of puberty leave no-one unscathed. that is one thing everyone has to go through, but i think it is comparable to some extreme changes people go through at other points in their lives. not that i've done any growing up recently, but i do know that when i came here i had a lot of problems just making it through each day and i don't feel that way anymore.
i've been doing a little more simple cookery lately, and i do enjoy that. nothing wild because that would require a couple investments i cannot afford to make right now. but i was fixated on making a couple things recently. for some reason i really really wanted veggie tacos. for like a couple days, until i just had to do it. i almost relented and made real ones but i couldn't find the frozen ground turkey i always use, so veggie it would be. there is some boxed dry mix i used to get and use back home, but i couldn't find it out here, so i went with one of those fake beef things that looks like the frozen ground turkey, all in that tube thing. textured soy protein or whatever, beats tofu in my book. they turned out great. today i made a heady delish pizza with pesto, six cheese blend that did not have enough fontina, and capicola (prosciutto HOLY SHIT I SPELLED IT RIGHT is too expensive). that's alright, i love capicola. i left it in just a touch longer than i would have liked, but it turned out just fine. i have way too much cheese, but garlic bread was on sale so hopefully i can work it to throw the cheese on the bread at the right time in cooking so as to fully toast the bread without burning the cheese. the mixture of frozen and refrigerated goods is tricky business, for me anyway. i've got some tomato sauce that has to go, and bread with red sauce is a fine meal in my book, so no complaints about all that.
the never-ending quest for good music continues, as always, with moderate success. you know, ups and downs, strikes and gutters. some dude gave me a fairly professional cd at the show last week (hey! i'm missing a show right now!). i figured i'd check it out; the last time someone at a show gave me a cd of a band i didn't know anything about it was back forty (i'm listening to an old one of theirs right now - opening for smokestack, the ann arbor band that couldn't miss but did). it was considerably less professional, but the content was far superior to what i wound up with last week. some band called the big dirty, mediocre funk-rock semi-jazzy fusion thing. vocals are thankfully minimal, as they are totally atrocious. if they want to get rid of these cds, they should probably keep giving them away. fortunately, the archive has provided me with some more than listenable material. the current new pick is SeepeopleS. i thought it was a pretty dumb name, but they have a bit of a buzz going on their behalf these days, so i figured i would check them out. i'm satisfied. what they do isn't the most original thing i've ever heard, but i think they do what they do well. contemporary neo-psychedelic indie rock/pop. easy to pick out the massive radiohead/flaming lips/perry ferrel influence, but there is some other stuff going on there too. i can dig it, worth checking out if you are a fan of the influences as it is somewhat derivative. in my book, that doesn't damn a band when they pick a certain part of the breadth of someone else's work and go deeper, which is what these guys do. the guy sounds great with a ton of vocal effects going, but without them he veers into trite nasal indie bullshit sound. the musicianship is unimpeachable, however, especially the drumming, which is not usually something that jumps out at me. the band overall has a nice big sound with massive sonic waves cresting and crashing, mostly courtesy of the keyboard work. worth a try if you're looking for something along those lines.
i realize some people have a freshly functional record player to revel in, but i am surprised no one has had anything to say about the owlandbear link from the other day. there is some seriously good music on that site, and something for just about everyone that you'd have a hell of a time finding anywhere else. if you didn't look, maybe you should, i'm just sayin'. and while you're looking, also check that foodery link to witness the sheer selection. choosing will hopefully be the most difficult thing about tomorrow.
Friday, May 09, 2008
one about religion...
or about washing your car... actually it's about opening a pair of curtains. this is how bruce dickinson introduces "revelations" on live after death, and it has always cracked me up. actually listening to the studio cut off piece of mind right now, but i was reminded, one of those classic pieces of banter that doesn't quite make sense. my favorite bruce intro, though, is definitely for the rime (not marked - rock on spell check, let that old school stuff slide) of the ancient mariner: "the moral of this story is this is what not to do if a bird shits on you". if you know the poem but not the adaptation i highly suggest you avail yourself; you'll be surprised at the faithfulness maiden has to the original. in any event, this is a great album and i'm glad i threw it on, just one great track after another. next thing you know i'll go back to actually introducing myself as metal.
so i guess tonight is friday. overall it doesn't so much feel like it. more like a sunday night, as i have a lot of work to look forward in the next couple of days. i am absolutely exhausted. on the other hand, some friday is maintained by the fact that i have given myself the night off, more or less.
i guess i sort of gave myself the night off last night too, although not as much of that night was off. i had spent the last few days destroying my brain with constitutional law, trying to recall all i had done through the semester, memorize case names and holdings. like i said before, there was a ton of shit to cover. i spent most of yesterday trying to compose my one side of one printed page of notes i was allowed to bring in. i went with eight point font and the slimmest margins the printer would let me have, something in the neighborhood of .16 inches or something. i thought that was extreme enough, but you should have seen the shit some other people brought in. all rigged up with with like four columns, some serious gnat's ass condensed fonts, like 5.5 point. one dude had managed to fit in something about all ninety nine cases we were technically assigned. the concern, though, for most people was the almost equal amount of cases the prof mentioned in passing in class, which he explicitly said we should also know. a lot to freak out about. so i did my best to cover as much ground as possible. people get so ridiculous about these things, a buzz was going around that one of the three essays was going to be about executive power and the war on terrorism and military tribunals. of course, even though everyone was so sure it would be on there, it wasn't. i hope those motherfuckers spent all their time on it; it was one of the few things i left off my one page of notes. look, just because a recent past exam or two had it on there, it doesn't follow that it will be on this one. if anything, i would think that makes it less likely. profs put old exams on file so that students can see the sort of questions they ask, not so students know what questions will be on the exam. on the other hand, like i said, i tried to cover an awful lot of ground over the past few days. almost all for naught. the purview of the exam was shockingly narrow; all three questions dealt with fundamental liberties under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to some extent. fortunately, this was something i understood pretty well and had included some good points on in my notes. i really feel like i rocked the first question, which was actually half and not a third of the grade, so that's good. the other two questions were alright too, just not as clear cut as the first one. overall, i feel good about it, probably even better than any exam at law school thus far.
and it's a good thing too, because as i mentioned i kind of took last night off. as threatened, i went to that tea leaf green show rather than spend the dying hours of last night trying to cram more shit into my brain. damn, did i ever make the right call. it is a good feeling. nothing i would have done last night would have left me any better off during the exam than i was. i went into the show kind of nervous, though, and not just about my possible misuse of time. no, i was worried about the show, and, naturally, the set list. my buddy who has seen considerably more shows at this venue than i have made extensive claims of curfew limitations, possibly as early as eleven. plus, their most recent show was in delaware and it was only one set. although it was a short show, it featured a few nuggets i had reason to believe would probably not surface two shows in a row. however, they had not played what is probably my favorite cut and certainly one of their more enduring and popular tracks in a few days, so i was hopeful for that if nothing else. so curfew concerns and all i went in. the opening band was pretty cool, bunch of veteran musicians. six people, probably in their sixties, although it is hard to tell. being a longtime touring musician (especially coming out of the sixties and inhabiting the fringes of what is now the "jam" world), i feel, takes a certain toll that makes one look perhaps older than one is. one dude in this band was like neil young status haggard, and a couple others weren't too far off. regardless, it was awesome to see people like that having an absolute ball doing what they do, and presumably have been doing for decades. one dude played a phenomenal pedal steel, which is a sound i will not tire of in the foreseeable future. skilled and entertaining as they were, they were not the band i showed up to see, and given curfew concerns i grew anxious as they went about fifteen minutes over their allotment (i know because they said so). i figured if time constraints were real, the equipment change-out would be expedient, but no, still the customary half-hour or so. i couldn't wait for the main event to get rolling. and then it did. and it was pretty excellent; i know i was psyched. even with a favorite band, though, everyone has some songs they dig more than others. the ones that fall into my ideal category were not dominating the set, but it was still great, and actually gave me more appreciation of the songs that don't fit into my top twenty five for the band. the way things were proceeding, i was pretty sure they were moving toward winding things up, and eagerly awaited the inimitable "sex in the 70s", the aforementioned crown jewel of the repertoire, but to no avail. at the end of the set the band broke out the old companion song to one that hasn't taken a vacation from recent shows, and that was a nice treat, but it looked to be about all and i staked my hopes on the encore as i nervously glanced at the time on my phone. as they finished up the breakout tune and the guitarist approached the mic, i expected the perfunctory thank you and have a good night, but instead heard the magic words "stick around, we'll be right back". two sets it was going to be after all, no curfew kibosh. i was so jazzed i could hardly stand it, and when they went back on there was not one millisecond of disappointment, and a lot more of what i had been hoping to hear. i particularly reveled in the sentiment of one of my particular favorites, "piss it away", given my present circumstances (even though the choice is mine/i make the wrong one every time). it was about all i could ask for, and when we got about as deep as we were gonna go, they launched into the one i had been betting on and waiting for. perfect way to close it out, i figured, and started to wonder about the encore. to my great delight, however, i had gotten out in front of things; the set had some gas in the tank and they made a slick transition into one of their older super funky quasi-disco numbers that once upon a time had been a common lead-in to the song they had just played. it sizzled like the crowd, total throw-down at the hoedown. but it was the encore that finally and conclusively melted my face. two tracks i hadn't dared hold out hope for, both delivered in blistering fashion. but that wasn't all, they sealed the deal with a great tongue-in-cheek thrash number called death cake (i used to be a love muffin... now i am a... DEATH CAKE! death cake motherfucker!). at that point i wasn't sure if i had made the right decision or not in foregoing study time, but i did know without a doubt that i had one of the best times i might ever have. the exam going good in the morning was the icing on, well, on the death cake, i guess. things gotta work out right sometimes, and this was perfect timing for just such an instance.
i am currently auditioning magic hat's newest seasonal. when i saw the label, i was initially confused but then recalled a visit to the website which specified the scheme i had not seen in practice: the same name for a beer that changes four times a year. there is a small part of the label that specifies the season, but always in the overall form of odd notion [season]. apparently the marketing folks at magic hat think it is cool to call four different beers the same thing, presumably as part of the broader goals of furthering specific branding and tapping into the market of people who will always try a new beer. i for one appreciate breweries doing seasonal things, as beer is quite easy to fit to some specific times of the year, and there is a fine tradition of doing so. on the other hand, i dislike the sacrifice of creativity in the name of marketing. i enjoy this beer and will have lots of great things to say about it in a moment, but these alleged seasonals are never very drastic, mostly just middle of the road stuff, albeit quite well done. the summer version is malty as all get out, a little syrupy for summer, but surprisingly roasty at first quickly moving to a lingering sweetness with a fruit juice sort of aftertaste. not as overdone as the apricot in number nine, and not as cloying, and somehow almost as sweet. i wouldn't be surprised if the recipes were mostly similar apart from what seems like some medium belgian in this one and the actual fruit flavor in no. 9. if not the malt bill, then almost certainly the yeast. flavorful and pleasant, but not in a specifically summery (not marked) way. the juxtaposition of the initial roastiness and relatively viscous body to the light, acidic sweetness after it is what makes this a worthwhile brew to check out. good beer, but i'm glad i bought a single and not a six pack, and that to me is the biggest indictment of its claim to summer. my personal favorite summertime beer is still the kolsch that goose island makes. i wonder i f i will be able to find that out here. whether i do or not, i'm sure there will be some other options available that i am as yet unfamiliar with. the foodery beckons. click the link that simply says 'beer' and it will be immediately apparent why. one more week...
also, this post was not about religion. i guess that is the punchline?
so i guess tonight is friday. overall it doesn't so much feel like it. more like a sunday night, as i have a lot of work to look forward in the next couple of days. i am absolutely exhausted. on the other hand, some friday is maintained by the fact that i have given myself the night off, more or less.
i guess i sort of gave myself the night off last night too, although not as much of that night was off. i had spent the last few days destroying my brain with constitutional law, trying to recall all i had done through the semester, memorize case names and holdings. like i said before, there was a ton of shit to cover. i spent most of yesterday trying to compose my one side of one printed page of notes i was allowed to bring in. i went with eight point font and the slimmest margins the printer would let me have, something in the neighborhood of .16 inches or something. i thought that was extreme enough, but you should have seen the shit some other people brought in. all rigged up with with like four columns, some serious gnat's ass condensed fonts, like 5.5 point. one dude had managed to fit in something about all ninety nine cases we were technically assigned. the concern, though, for most people was the almost equal amount of cases the prof mentioned in passing in class, which he explicitly said we should also know. a lot to freak out about. so i did my best to cover as much ground as possible. people get so ridiculous about these things, a buzz was going around that one of the three essays was going to be about executive power and the war on terrorism and military tribunals. of course, even though everyone was so sure it would be on there, it wasn't. i hope those motherfuckers spent all their time on it; it was one of the few things i left off my one page of notes. look, just because a recent past exam or two had it on there, it doesn't follow that it will be on this one. if anything, i would think that makes it less likely. profs put old exams on file so that students can see the sort of questions they ask, not so students know what questions will be on the exam. on the other hand, like i said, i tried to cover an awful lot of ground over the past few days. almost all for naught. the purview of the exam was shockingly narrow; all three questions dealt with fundamental liberties under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to some extent. fortunately, this was something i understood pretty well and had included some good points on in my notes. i really feel like i rocked the first question, which was actually half and not a third of the grade, so that's good. the other two questions were alright too, just not as clear cut as the first one. overall, i feel good about it, probably even better than any exam at law school thus far.
and it's a good thing too, because as i mentioned i kind of took last night off. as threatened, i went to that tea leaf green show rather than spend the dying hours of last night trying to cram more shit into my brain. damn, did i ever make the right call. it is a good feeling. nothing i would have done last night would have left me any better off during the exam than i was. i went into the show kind of nervous, though, and not just about my possible misuse of time. no, i was worried about the show, and, naturally, the set list. my buddy who has seen considerably more shows at this venue than i have made extensive claims of curfew limitations, possibly as early as eleven. plus, their most recent show was in delaware and it was only one set. although it was a short show, it featured a few nuggets i had reason to believe would probably not surface two shows in a row. however, they had not played what is probably my favorite cut and certainly one of their more enduring and popular tracks in a few days, so i was hopeful for that if nothing else. so curfew concerns and all i went in. the opening band was pretty cool, bunch of veteran musicians. six people, probably in their sixties, although it is hard to tell. being a longtime touring musician (especially coming out of the sixties and inhabiting the fringes of what is now the "jam" world), i feel, takes a certain toll that makes one look perhaps older than one is. one dude in this band was like neil young status haggard, and a couple others weren't too far off. regardless, it was awesome to see people like that having an absolute ball doing what they do, and presumably have been doing for decades. one dude played a phenomenal pedal steel, which is a sound i will not tire of in the foreseeable future. skilled and entertaining as they were, they were not the band i showed up to see, and given curfew concerns i grew anxious as they went about fifteen minutes over their allotment (i know because they said so). i figured if time constraints were real, the equipment change-out would be expedient, but no, still the customary half-hour or so. i couldn't wait for the main event to get rolling. and then it did. and it was pretty excellent; i know i was psyched. even with a favorite band, though, everyone has some songs they dig more than others. the ones that fall into my ideal category were not dominating the set, but it was still great, and actually gave me more appreciation of the songs that don't fit into my top twenty five for the band. the way things were proceeding, i was pretty sure they were moving toward winding things up, and eagerly awaited the inimitable "sex in the 70s", the aforementioned crown jewel of the repertoire, but to no avail. at the end of the set the band broke out the old companion song to one that hasn't taken a vacation from recent shows, and that was a nice treat, but it looked to be about all and i staked my hopes on the encore as i nervously glanced at the time on my phone. as they finished up the breakout tune and the guitarist approached the mic, i expected the perfunctory thank you and have a good night, but instead heard the magic words "stick around, we'll be right back". two sets it was going to be after all, no curfew kibosh. i was so jazzed i could hardly stand it, and when they went back on there was not one millisecond of disappointment, and a lot more of what i had been hoping to hear. i particularly reveled in the sentiment of one of my particular favorites, "piss it away", given my present circumstances (even though the choice is mine/i make the wrong one every time). it was about all i could ask for, and when we got about as deep as we were gonna go, they launched into the one i had been betting on and waiting for. perfect way to close it out, i figured, and started to wonder about the encore. to my great delight, however, i had gotten out in front of things; the set had some gas in the tank and they made a slick transition into one of their older super funky quasi-disco numbers that once upon a time had been a common lead-in to the song they had just played. it sizzled like the crowd, total throw-down at the hoedown. but it was the encore that finally and conclusively melted my face. two tracks i hadn't dared hold out hope for, both delivered in blistering fashion. but that wasn't all, they sealed the deal with a great tongue-in-cheek thrash number called death cake (i used to be a love muffin... now i am a... DEATH CAKE! death cake motherfucker!). at that point i wasn't sure if i had made the right decision or not in foregoing study time, but i did know without a doubt that i had one of the best times i might ever have. the exam going good in the morning was the icing on, well, on the death cake, i guess. things gotta work out right sometimes, and this was perfect timing for just such an instance.
i am currently auditioning magic hat's newest seasonal. when i saw the label, i was initially confused but then recalled a visit to the website which specified the scheme i had not seen in practice: the same name for a beer that changes four times a year. there is a small part of the label that specifies the season, but always in the overall form of odd notion [season]. apparently the marketing folks at magic hat think it is cool to call four different beers the same thing, presumably as part of the broader goals of furthering specific branding and tapping into the market of people who will always try a new beer. i for one appreciate breweries doing seasonal things, as beer is quite easy to fit to some specific times of the year, and there is a fine tradition of doing so. on the other hand, i dislike the sacrifice of creativity in the name of marketing. i enjoy this beer and will have lots of great things to say about it in a moment, but these alleged seasonals are never very drastic, mostly just middle of the road stuff, albeit quite well done. the summer version is malty as all get out, a little syrupy for summer, but surprisingly roasty at first quickly moving to a lingering sweetness with a fruit juice sort of aftertaste. not as overdone as the apricot in number nine, and not as cloying, and somehow almost as sweet. i wouldn't be surprised if the recipes were mostly similar apart from what seems like some medium belgian in this one and the actual fruit flavor in no. 9. if not the malt bill, then almost certainly the yeast. flavorful and pleasant, but not in a specifically summery (not marked) way. the juxtaposition of the initial roastiness and relatively viscous body to the light, acidic sweetness after it is what makes this a worthwhile brew to check out. good beer, but i'm glad i bought a single and not a six pack, and that to me is the biggest indictment of its claim to summer. my personal favorite summertime beer is still the kolsch that goose island makes. i wonder i f i will be able to find that out here. whether i do or not, i'm sure there will be some other options available that i am as yet unfamiliar with. the foodery beckons. click the link that simply says 'beer' and it will be immediately apparent why. one more week...
also, this post was not about religion. i guess that is the punchline?
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
land of pleasant living
not that the living has been all pleasant, or entirely unpleasant. although i am unsure if i am actually within the bounds of the land of pleasant living. i've been a fan of the phrase for a while, but only recently had it properly contextualized. like a surprising number of things in clutch tunes, this was a reference to something geographically specific, namely the label on the notorious national bohemian beer. the beer is a totally decent cheap beer, quite pabst-like, and somewhere in the neighborhood of ten dollars a case. something to be said for that. in any event, i'm sure the label has said that for a long time, and it was made in baltimore for a long time, but is now made in milwaukee, unsurprisingly. as a matter of fact, heileman makes it, along with such hits as carling black label and old style.
oh, but i was not in maryland to gather knowledge about clutch references or merely to purchase natty bo (i only recently discovered the beer is called national bohemian and not that), rather, i did indeed attend the kinetic sculpture race. it covered a lot more time and ground than i thought it would, and it was an awful lot of fun. day started off gray and cold but got really excellent just after noon or so. seeing an enormous pink poodle sculpture piloted in and out of a harbor by people dressed as marie antoinette is surreal in one of the finest ways possible. one of my favorite sculptures involved a giant blue wombat, but the best part was that the people piloting all played instruments while doing so, even in the water. had a small drum kit mounted and everyone else played some kind of a horn, couple saxophones and trombones, a trumpet, good stuff. the water was probably the most fun to watch, but i really enjoyed the next leg too, which was in this park that has a wikipedia page it turns out is not worth linking. anyway, the park has quite a hill, is huge, had something to do with a civil war battle, and most importantly has a sixty foot pagoda built at the top of the hill. and yes, you can go in and up to the top, and the view is amazing. and yet, somehow, that isn't where the one picture on that wikipedia page is taken from. yeah, i guess a camera is a decent thing to have and they're cheap now and such, but it is too late now. the good news is that plenty of other people do, and the official recap of this year's race includes some really awesome pictures.
so it turns out that baltimore is really quite close, especially with traffic on a cold, damp saturday morning. but i don't really know how much i want to go back soon except maybe to visit the really cool museum that puts the race on. granted, i saw a limited part of the city, mostly the inner harbor area, but i was pretty underwhelmed. everything looks like it got put up in the last twenty years or so, i kind of expected a more historical feel. i'm sure there is plenty of that too. and if i really wanted, i could probably also easily find locations approximated on the wire. only the view from the pagoda convinced me that the place is a for real city. i guess they went from about 950k people in 1950ish to about 650k by the 90s. ouch. and yet their benches proudly proclaim their current motto: baltimore - the best city in america. that is some bold shit. and honestly, i don't think some big ass business is gonna move to your city because all your benches talk about how awesome your city is. on the other hand, there is a lot of construction going on in the center part of the city, and population is starting to rise again, so they must be doing something right. i think mostly it's that the city had a huge harbor history that dissipated, but now that it has once again become fashionable to live downtown in a big city, they have some opportunity. being a harbor, they had a ton of abandoned warehouses to tear down and build over and got to skip a good portion of the painful gentrification process. but hey, i'm no urban planning expert.
i also ate in a waffle house for the first time on the way back. the food and service were both shitty, which seemed appropriate. it was a very small one and in kind of a nowhere town not too far from the MD/DE border. the most remarkable thing was the jukebox, which contained about an eighth or so of selections that were songs about waffle house, by waffle house. i wasn't really listening to what was playing while it was on, but it started skipping and this guy got up from the counter (which accounted for about 50% of the seating) and jostled it pretty violently, successfully shutting it up. he was kind of an interesting character: probably a couple years younger than me, 30 years younger than all the other people who conducted themselves as regulars, stuck in an in-between town with a mall, long hair lip ring slayer shirt bondage pants. but he was really pleased about smacking the jukebox and getting it to shut up. sort of like an inverse fonz.
the next day i had a good time in the name of cats. some friends held a backyard benefit for city kitties, a local organization that takes care of strays and gets them foster homes and such. good cause, good people, good times.
unfortunately all of these good things are happening in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death known as finals time. i finally had my first one tuesday. i was getting tired of waiting for them to start, but alternatively i should really wish for all the time possible given that i have an outrageous amount of material to cover. my next one is con law on friday and i think i read six or seven hundred pages of small point text for that this semester; a whole lot of shit to know. and the prof is real scholarly and is bound to have some pretty high expectations. also, he talked about as many cases we weren't assigned as ones we were, and i have no idea how much of that is expected. i will find out with brutality all too soon. even though it is going to be intense, i figured i really wasn't going to do myself that much good with the last four hours of thursday night, and so i am still going to go see tea leaf green. i am psyched.
my first exam was all rooted in one hypothetical factual scenario, which was really quite funny. involved this guy from delaware who had eaten tons of food for his whole life, so much that he had trouble getting ahead. then he discovers competitive eating and wins a couple local events when he finds out about a big time event on the PA border where the food is his favorite of all time, ham and cheese croissants. big prize of 50k, plus every participant gets five free hams, as the event was naturally sponsored by the Happy Ham Corporation. so this guy really wants to gear up for the event, but he can't afford enough sandwiches to train, so he gets a sponsorship with a NJ deli. so he's practicing constantly by eating tons of ham and cheese croissants. one day, his training is derailed by a new flavor of ham, honey hickory, which disgusts him and he can't eat. he's freaking out and he calls the happy ham corporation to ask what ham will be used at the competition and they tell him original, so he's all set. the day arrives, and he's ready to rock, and then he smells it: the dreaded honey hickory ham. he tries to compete but he just gets nauseated and falls way behind. he knows he can't win and he gets super pissed and starts screaming at the CEO of happy ham, pelts him with sandwiches and ethnic epithets. so i had to explain why the case could be in federal court in PA first of all. then it was on to a question of if convicted assault, did the dude forfeit his free hams based on a participation contract demanding contestants comport themselves with dignity and honor (no clear answer on that, actually, hard to say), and all sorts of good stuff like that. so yeah, law school...
speaking of food, i had some incredibly dank dinner last night. i wish i could say that i made it, but i did not. fried artichoke ravioli with one of the most serious sauces i have ever encountered. check it out: sauteed onions and mushrooms, quart of whole milk, pint of heavy cream, probably around six ounces of gorgonzola, half a bottle of cheap champagne, and four pears sliced up all thin, and some requisite low-key things like salt, pepper, and of course a little old bay. but damn. it was so delicious. the champagne and pears lightened things up nicely; it wasn't too rich but instead perfectly savory. man, i am making my mouth water.
i have recently discovered a fairly remarkable repository of live music, leaning much more toward the hip than the hippie. i know some of you all would get excited about some of it, and other things everyone can get excited about. everything from neil young and tom waits to califone, band of horses, and bonnie prince billy. and many more. also the wilco archive is bigger than everything else put together (80 gigs or so vs. 76 - lots of tunes here folks). i think just about everybody could find something to treasure from this trove. and for all you slackers, guess what - you don't even need bit torrent. everything is lossless too. there are a few attractive-looking studio sessions on there as well (including dylan's '65 BBC sessions), if you're not much for the live thing, but just about every band i've heard of on the list there is respected as a live performer.
shit. i have so much to do tomorrow. doable (not marked) though, just have to memorize a couple hundred years of constitutional jurisprudence is all. preferably by 7 pm or so. this also means getting up on time. i hate doing that. but tomorrow i get to wake up early and review what i learned about executive power and the war on terror. definitely the way to start your day, like spilling coffee: painful, upsetting, and jarring.
oh, but i was not in maryland to gather knowledge about clutch references or merely to purchase natty bo (i only recently discovered the beer is called national bohemian and not that), rather, i did indeed attend the kinetic sculpture race. it covered a lot more time and ground than i thought it would, and it was an awful lot of fun. day started off gray and cold but got really excellent just after noon or so. seeing an enormous pink poodle sculpture piloted in and out of a harbor by people dressed as marie antoinette is surreal in one of the finest ways possible. one of my favorite sculptures involved a giant blue wombat, but the best part was that the people piloting all played instruments while doing so, even in the water. had a small drum kit mounted and everyone else played some kind of a horn, couple saxophones and trombones, a trumpet, good stuff. the water was probably the most fun to watch, but i really enjoyed the next leg too, which was in this park that has a wikipedia page it turns out is not worth linking. anyway, the park has quite a hill, is huge, had something to do with a civil war battle, and most importantly has a sixty foot pagoda built at the top of the hill. and yes, you can go in and up to the top, and the view is amazing. and yet, somehow, that isn't where the one picture on that wikipedia page is taken from. yeah, i guess a camera is a decent thing to have and they're cheap now and such, but it is too late now. the good news is that plenty of other people do, and the official recap of this year's race includes some really awesome pictures.
so it turns out that baltimore is really quite close, especially with traffic on a cold, damp saturday morning. but i don't really know how much i want to go back soon except maybe to visit the really cool museum that puts the race on. granted, i saw a limited part of the city, mostly the inner harbor area, but i was pretty underwhelmed. everything looks like it got put up in the last twenty years or so, i kind of expected a more historical feel. i'm sure there is plenty of that too. and if i really wanted, i could probably also easily find locations approximated on the wire. only the view from the pagoda convinced me that the place is a for real city. i guess they went from about 950k people in 1950ish to about 650k by the 90s. ouch. and yet their benches proudly proclaim their current motto: baltimore - the best city in america. that is some bold shit. and honestly, i don't think some big ass business is gonna move to your city because all your benches talk about how awesome your city is. on the other hand, there is a lot of construction going on in the center part of the city, and population is starting to rise again, so they must be doing something right. i think mostly it's that the city had a huge harbor history that dissipated, but now that it has once again become fashionable to live downtown in a big city, they have some opportunity. being a harbor, they had a ton of abandoned warehouses to tear down and build over and got to skip a good portion of the painful gentrification process. but hey, i'm no urban planning expert.
i also ate in a waffle house for the first time on the way back. the food and service were both shitty, which seemed appropriate. it was a very small one and in kind of a nowhere town not too far from the MD/DE border. the most remarkable thing was the jukebox, which contained about an eighth or so of selections that were songs about waffle house, by waffle house. i wasn't really listening to what was playing while it was on, but it started skipping and this guy got up from the counter (which accounted for about 50% of the seating) and jostled it pretty violently, successfully shutting it up. he was kind of an interesting character: probably a couple years younger than me, 30 years younger than all the other people who conducted themselves as regulars, stuck in an in-between town with a mall, long hair lip ring slayer shirt bondage pants. but he was really pleased about smacking the jukebox and getting it to shut up. sort of like an inverse fonz.
the next day i had a good time in the name of cats. some friends held a backyard benefit for city kitties, a local organization that takes care of strays and gets them foster homes and such. good cause, good people, good times.
unfortunately all of these good things are happening in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death known as finals time. i finally had my first one tuesday. i was getting tired of waiting for them to start, but alternatively i should really wish for all the time possible given that i have an outrageous amount of material to cover. my next one is con law on friday and i think i read six or seven hundred pages of small point text for that this semester; a whole lot of shit to know. and the prof is real scholarly and is bound to have some pretty high expectations. also, he talked about as many cases we weren't assigned as ones we were, and i have no idea how much of that is expected. i will find out with brutality all too soon. even though it is going to be intense, i figured i really wasn't going to do myself that much good with the last four hours of thursday night, and so i am still going to go see tea leaf green. i am psyched.
my first exam was all rooted in one hypothetical factual scenario, which was really quite funny. involved this guy from delaware who had eaten tons of food for his whole life, so much that he had trouble getting ahead. then he discovers competitive eating and wins a couple local events when he finds out about a big time event on the PA border where the food is his favorite of all time, ham and cheese croissants. big prize of 50k, plus every participant gets five free hams, as the event was naturally sponsored by the Happy Ham Corporation. so this guy really wants to gear up for the event, but he can't afford enough sandwiches to train, so he gets a sponsorship with a NJ deli. so he's practicing constantly by eating tons of ham and cheese croissants. one day, his training is derailed by a new flavor of ham, honey hickory, which disgusts him and he can't eat. he's freaking out and he calls the happy ham corporation to ask what ham will be used at the competition and they tell him original, so he's all set. the day arrives, and he's ready to rock, and then he smells it: the dreaded honey hickory ham. he tries to compete but he just gets nauseated and falls way behind. he knows he can't win and he gets super pissed and starts screaming at the CEO of happy ham, pelts him with sandwiches and ethnic epithets. so i had to explain why the case could be in federal court in PA first of all. then it was on to a question of if convicted assault, did the dude forfeit his free hams based on a participation contract demanding contestants comport themselves with dignity and honor (no clear answer on that, actually, hard to say), and all sorts of good stuff like that. so yeah, law school...
speaking of food, i had some incredibly dank dinner last night. i wish i could say that i made it, but i did not. fried artichoke ravioli with one of the most serious sauces i have ever encountered. check it out: sauteed onions and mushrooms, quart of whole milk, pint of heavy cream, probably around six ounces of gorgonzola, half a bottle of cheap champagne, and four pears sliced up all thin, and some requisite low-key things like salt, pepper, and of course a little old bay. but damn. it was so delicious. the champagne and pears lightened things up nicely; it wasn't too rich but instead perfectly savory. man, i am making my mouth water.
i have recently discovered a fairly remarkable repository of live music, leaning much more toward the hip than the hippie. i know some of you all would get excited about some of it, and other things everyone can get excited about. everything from neil young and tom waits to califone, band of horses, and bonnie prince billy. and many more. also the wilco archive is bigger than everything else put together (80 gigs or so vs. 76 - lots of tunes here folks). i think just about everybody could find something to treasure from this trove. and for all you slackers, guess what - you don't even need bit torrent. everything is lossless too. there are a few attractive-looking studio sessions on there as well (including dylan's '65 BBC sessions), if you're not much for the live thing, but just about every band i've heard of on the list there is respected as a live performer.
shit. i have so much to do tomorrow. doable (not marked) though, just have to memorize a couple hundred years of constitutional jurisprudence is all. preferably by 7 pm or so. this also means getting up on time. i hate doing that. but tomorrow i get to wake up early and review what i learned about executive power and the war on terror. definitely the way to start your day, like spilling coffee: painful, upsetting, and jarring.
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