took the long road home

i never considered my new digs to be a move to the tropics, and hey, it is not. but on the other hand, i cannot recall the last time i voluntarily took a thirty-odd block walk in january. i don't have any reference as to whether this is a mild winter for the city; i guess i could ask around. but there has not really been anything i would classify as a proper snowfall. i did miss a few weeks in the middle of winter though, and didn't really bother to check and see what the weather was like while i was not around. the point is that the walk, as usual, was a good thing. really helped to clear the head. i was in a pretty foul mood leaving school today.
things started out with me walking into a rumor mill dedicated solely to producing the single rumor (very specialized operation, you see) that our only class today was canceled. while i find it annoying to hear people toss around any idea that has no basis i am aware of, this goes double when i am unshakably certain that there is no basis. no email, no sign on the classroom door, nothing. to make matters worse, a full four people who never talk to me stopped to ask if i had heard class was canceled, 'cause, you know, they heard it from somebody, and heard some other people talking about it. after the fourth one the only thing that could have pissed me off more was if they had against all odds been correct. fortunately, they were not. unfortunately, i had spent a good amount of time yesterday preparing the three cases for today, and we spent the first third of class on a case i thought we had wrapped up at the previous session, and the rest of the time went towards considering only the first of the three assigned for today, approached in a way inconsistent with and unrewarding towards how i had studied the case for the most part. also, about halfway through, i noticed that a large portion of the class was all dressed up "professional" like. big interview day today! the overheard sentiment was that if you didn't have your ducks in a row and your panties in a bunch today, you're just shit out of luck, because this is the one day where anyone who is going to get a good job for the summer is going to start down that road. kiss my fucking ass, my only regret is that i didn't bring a bottle of shiraz to placate me and spill on your $800 suit. have i mentioned my distaste for my peers? two of them who also don't normally speak to me stopped by to express their frustration that their unofficial transcripts did not yet bear demarcation indicating their distinguished class participation. what ever will they do if they don't have it when every law firm within ten miles from their home interviews them? they did, after all, compile a list and mail a career services-approved resume to each and every one of them. i would really hate to see their rampant douchebaggery go unrewarded. a friend and i conferred and decided that if we were hiring associates, we would see their note and be fully aware that they were one of THOSE PEOPLE who can't shut the fuck up and emits a cloud of smug every time they speak, whether they are making an irrelevant and asinine contribution or answering the boringly obvious questions we're subjected to on a daily basis, and thus not hire them. the thing is, the kind of people who get to be in charge of hiring at law firms are probably were the exact same motherfucker when they were in law school, and are thrilled to take in an eager protege. after all, the only real purpose law school grades (and thus the majority of the entire process of "legal education" itself) serve is to identify the people who are most willing to ask how high when told to jump, the sort who will unquestioningly eat sleep and breathe whatever they are told to do. and honestly, they'll fit in the best at the big firm with the fat salary. have fun with your mercedes and your meaningless lifetime. the world is a better place now that you swung that contract between those two multinational corporations, i know i was hoping the rich could maybe get a little richer. usually i try not to throw around generalizations and take on a fuck you you're so corporate attitude, because the world is a nuanced place, but sitting here knowing that my life will be just fine and i have tons of options while i watch all these other people scurry around trying to find all the right hoops and jump through them gracelessly fills me with nothing but disgust and derision, because i have a front row seat. i bear witness toward something more mindless than watching last night's episode of a network sitcom on a cell phone in an escalade stuck in highway traffic while sipping starbucks listening to top forty on a speaker system as underutilized as marvin in hitch hiker's. so yeah, i kind of didn't mind the walk. it was sunny, if a little brisk.
the walk was actually was precipitated by the sacrifice of my free transfer to go get coffee with a compatriot i don't spend enough time with (due in some part to my apprehension about getting to where she lives - shady south philly). she and i had a pretty good talk, and her approach to things is really inspiring. i find it immensely comforting that someone who always seems to be pretty with it in class and leads a pretty righteous and socially responsible lifestyle (she does a lot for food not bombs, and is generally what i would call a good person) hasn't made any more inroads into the employment bullshit than i have, but has tons of ideas about what to do instead. she also shares my deep-seated distaste for the public interest clique and their insufferable self-righteousness in spite of their palpable lack of results. they just congratulate themselves and each other for not making a bunch of money while doing something nominally responsible. neither she nor i know how we're going to work any of this crap out, but i walked away feeling like hey, fuck 'em. no one but you can stop you from doing what you want to do about it. that just leaves a personal translation to be desired, but step one was knowing that it was possible.
so, other than law school, oh wait, i spent all day on it. the nice thing about this semester is that things are mostly more discrete and concrete. criminal law was impossible to pin down, despite being well-taught. it is subject to innumerable mutations across state lines and over time. torts was hopelessly bad, owing to materials and really lousy teaching. contracts was the only thing that really went well, because of defined focus and an atmosphere lacking the abject terror that permeated the criminal classroom. now, constitutional law has a direct reference point for everything, property is incredibly integrated, ip is covering something i care about, and civ pro at least, well, that kind of sucks i guess, but we'll see where it goes. the only enduring thorn in my side is legal writing. prof is an asshole, always setting you up to knock you down (two drafts in: okay, here's what you people SHOULD be doing, nevermind what i told you was right before) , just plain rude and unhelpful at turns, and focused more than anything else on the elephant in the room of my life known as "real job". the most annoying aspect is that it is all being filtered through what one unproven commodity (my so-called educator) thinks it should mean. she's not exactly a published authority on the subject, but that does not prevent her from exerting a lasting impact on students' perceptions and prospects. the whole crapshoot is easily revealed by talking to people with other profs. although, at the end of the day, i guess no one is really going to be able to give an acceptable justification for things being the way they are in legal practice. why do we do it this way? tradition. why should we follow tradition? it is what judges expect. why do they expect it? that is the way they learned it; the way it has been done before, also called tradition. i want to call it a tautology, but i guess the extra step just makes it circular. but i guess my response is just as bad: don't go to law school. why? it sucks and is a giant crock of shit. why? because it is law school. the difference is that what i have to say is helpful in some way. if you were thinking about law school. cause i know you were, given the glowing endorsements you've read here. it is cheaper and just as effective to get trashed at your favorite watering hole and telling people to go fuck themselves without knowing why you're advising such a course of action.
i'm sorry if you read this. it was kind of self-indulgent, but it was all i had, and i wanted to write something to keep me occupied. what is a blog if not an opportunity for venting and distraction?

ain't no time to stash the gumbo

salutations, interwebs. my communiques have been waylaid by a couldn't-put-it-down novel, which is really what my free time needed. the only problem is that when i read a novel this good, i really don't look forward to it ending. after one gets comfortable in an artificial world, the real one feels that much colder when one is forced back into it. strangely enough, this book included an unimportant list of something an incidental character was hauling out of a car he was trading to more central figures of the story, and this list included only a book that happened to be the last book that i felt strongly about, namely the manifesto known as "stranger in a strange land". a passing reference, but no doubt a tribute to an author who had exhibited a marked influence on the writer whose work i was actually reading at the time. indeed, the whole thing had a heinlein meets douglas adams quality to it. something of the transcendent quality, enough to admit no distractions of life's daily problems when one is engaged with the work. one of the few that truly deserving of the mythopoeic mantle too often tossed around. oh, yeah, the book is "american gods" by neil gaiman. i could link to something about it, but you're really better off just reading the damn thing. it'll go quick and you won't be the least bit sorry you checked it out. i guess if you have that i read books networking thing you could track it down on there, but on the other hand i believe i've told you all you should really have to know about it at this point (on a side note, megan, i didn't get the notion with the queen cd, figured it was coming but it didn't, you must be referring to another gaiman work, let me know what it was and read this if you haven't). overall, it left me with the feeling that i would be happier or somehow better off if my life consisted of reading a lot more books i chose on my own while working for a living. if that is what you are doing, cheers. i'm jealous.
i've had some occasions to consider the structure of my life in similar ways recently. a friend of mine who i met here recently moved all the way across the country to semi-rural oregon. this guy has done a fair amount of bouncing, hither and thither. well-accomplished squatter with skills to pay the bills, like basic carpentry. not that he has much in the way of bills; in fact i wonder if he has ever paid rent. not in a bad way, just musing on whether he has found a better way. i find the notion that one can navigate the twenty-first century in a rambling romanticist manner comforting in a way. but once again, i find myself a little jealous. they say the grass is always greener, but something like this gives me pause to wonder if perception is not the only thing at work. i spent one month in the netherlands, collecting college credit, looking at churches, and sliding by on the myriad connections of my school and goodwill and financial support of relatives. he spent four months there, trading small-batch homegrown for vast quantities of industrial crops, hanging out with a girlfriend and participating in planned squat takeovers of abandoned property, remaining for the legally required time while other organizers brought him food, beer, cigarettes, and other supplies, eventually providing the table, bed, and two chairs required to seal the property takeover. i might have learned a little more about the language and the culture writ large, but he at least took home gezellig, even if he couldn't pronounce it. right now he is on his way across the whole of the country in a pickup he paid for fairly rigged up like a collapsed covered wagon for the journey, probably seeing friends in chicago, recharging via partying. i mostly doubt that i am cut out for that kind of life, but it lends a spark to the imagination that i imagine joining the circus held for some several decades back, or perhaps being a mercenary or pirate centuries before that. i don't really know what i think about it all, but it is definitely something to consider. like anything else, we gaze from our own vantage point and take from it what we wish to see.
after all, it can only be a reference point. i sit here, nominally a student, with the existential angst that is usually reserved for my previous tenure as a philosophical undergraduate. i'm not a square peg going into a round hole, no, its a round peg into the square slot: it is not meant to be, but it can be accomplished with enough force. for all the value i put into my contemplations and deep-seated opinions about the world, with all my skepticism and desire to find my own way, i cannot help but crave the stability of a comfortable middle class lifestyle. ironically, i find myself at my present juncture based on that unshakable longing for what i perceive as an overarching comfort coupled with those very same notions about doing my own thing, manifested here by skipping dodge. i just had to do it, it all seemed like such a good deal. give em all the finger, but set out for something substantially similar at the end of the day. the sum of all this found me today reading about the supreme court's review of a federal law about possessing firearms at or near schools of all stripes. like many cases worthy of casebook canonization, the decision was a narrow five-four. the majority thought it was too much for washington to claim it had the right to pass what looks like a police-power criminal statute predicated on the idea that regulation of guns in educational areas falls under the commerce clause of the constitution, which grants congress the power to regulate commerce among the several states, and to foreign nations, and the indian tribes. the claim was that guns in and around schools harm education, and damage to education translates to an inadequate workforce, which assuredly is deeply connected to interstate commerce in our modern mobile economy, according to both congress and the dissent. it made me mad enough to spit. the post hoc ergo propter hoc monster (conveniently linked for non latin/logic/look it up types - i just like to say and write the phrase) was pissing on my leg and telling me it was raining, as they say. wait, nobody says that. nobody. the point is, i think the problems keeping people who deal with guns at their schools from getting good jobs are the same problems responsible for guns being at school in the first place, rather than the guns themselves or the people who wind up carrying them to school. we're not talking about columbine, we're talking about unions and centrals all over the country. i'm just offended that none of the nine most deferred-to justices even went there in their sundry opinions.
but that isn't even the half of it in the readings these days. i spent most of saturday really upset after reading a property opinion recounting and justifying the takeover of native lands in america. being pissed and depressed about it doesn't do anything, really, but i just could not shake the horror and injustice for a while. from almost ten million to about two hundred thousand over the course of only a hundred and fifty years or so. just wiped them out, piece by piece, parcel by parcel. all so i could live a comfortable life and study and thereby perpetuate the theoretical fictions our forebears utilized to perpetrate something that i had never properly regarded as so unspeakably heinous. on the other hand, it wasn't just for me. no, it was the foundation for the long, cruel building process of a nation inhering the enslavement and mistreatment of so many individuals and families. guilt hardly begins to describe it, and this is not or at least should not be something i or anyone else should feel because of the christian reformed church, or catholicism or anything of the sort. no, this is the sort of thing the majority of modern day americans can and should find repugnant for a number of reasons, chiefly because we would rail against an analogous process in this day and age. your human rights sticker does not make it alright, but nothing ever will. i don't think anything along these lines made it into the state of the union address this evening, but that is hardly the fault of our current figurehead, even though he did mention something about economic prosperity guaranteed by sticking to the philosophy this country was founded upon. it is not as if he wrote any of the speech anyway. same for whatever asshole next year, and the year after, and four years after, and so forth.
uplifted yet? i'm working on a career transition to motivational speaking.
let's talk about something else. music, perhaps. right now i am listening to a scintillating instrumental, nothing too drawn out, just enough to create a feeling. from a sterling quality uncle tupelo (all you too cool for wilco kids know they're still way better than son volt) show. the song is called sandusky, and the beauty of the tune belies the feeling of the locale. i was around the area for once, not counting youthful excursions to the finest amusement park around, and damn was that place a bummer. in other music news, the two newest live music archive back 40 downloads feature a recently penned number i thoroughly enjoy, an aptly titled newgrass tune called "play a little music and drink a little booze". great bluesy break two thirds or so into the track, along the same lines as lake erie but a more accomplished song and trading the reggae segment for something a little more classic. other than that, i just want dekking-ja to know how awesome steely dan is.
oooh, and in actually reported music-related news, the beatles are un-banned from israel. to be honest, i didn't know they got shut down there way back in '65. go figure. of course they would have corrupted the zionist youth and prevented national success against egypt and company. the whole thing just seems kind of surreal, state representatives meeting with john lennon's sister. also covered by the bbc today: marijuana vending machines in california. i don't know what to think anymore. mostly, i am amused by the fact that every other time the substance has come up in bbc coverage, it is always ALWAYS referred to simply as cannabis, anywhere else in the world. but today, in california, it was "the drug marijuana". maybe illegal was appended to the front of it; i cannot recall. but they're right, vending machines. finally, some credence for the middle school joke and confusion about pop machine/pot machine. with the rigmarole surrounding it all, i don't understand why they don't just treat it like any other prescription. more frightening, the article mentioned in passing how the developer behind the technology is naturally expecting more and more prescriptions to be distributed through vending machines. we're even phasing out pharmacists? is no occupation sacred? the whole thing is too much, kind of like the "marijuana" graphic included in the news page. looked like some pretty raw and rude clippings. perhaps to differentiate from the "yellow card civil offence" cannabis brits know and are comfortable with from the crazy shit those cowboy americans are up to. whatever the media says, they dig our style too dude, got that whole cowboy thing goin' on. lebowski was on the big screen here tonight too, costumes encouraged. i couldn't make it; six bucks or so i didn't have plus the temptation to spend more i didn't have on caucasians. finally enjoying the requisite loan problems endemic to pursuers of higher education. hopefully wrap that up in a week or so, ideally before i choose starving over peanut butter sandwiches.
that's about all for now i reckon, but as this has been a somewhat thoughtful and meditative post, i feel the need for a truncated lyrical addendum:
even the mole people they got to get religion; they gonna join that underground church.

just don't tell 'em that you know me

back at it again today, it being school and here, i guess. the five on, three off day schedule is still as jarring as it was back at work. yesterday was my first MLK day off, ever. am i a bad person for not doing a service project? no, i am probably a bad person for some more cogent reasons. moving to a place not overwhelmingly white has provided me with more opportunity to reflect on "race" and all subtopics. i think that is a good thing. on the other hand, i have mixed feelings about the notion that the day calls for service projects. from one standpoint, i dig the notion that the day is not to celebrate a problem that we as a nation solved, but a chance to take part in an ongoing effort. alternatively, there seems to be some implication that the day is for people who need "us" to help "them". kind of like the whole aid to africa thing. i dunno, just a feeling of baudrillard (man i cannot spell french shit, somehow got that one right. yeah, i totally checked) disaster porn. merits of the argument aside, that was always a debate favorite, probably most run by teams who had the file but not the understanding. that itself forms a strange metaphor for the way the day was approached by schools i have previously attended.
all that aside, the day after was set aside on our academic calender as another somewhat dubious occasion: the posting of grades. well, really, the alleged posting of grades. half of mine were not in by the "final deadline" and none were in by the "original deadline" which was like four days ago. this is probably one reason why these people teach and don't practice. real life lawyer shit cannot pass deadlines, like for real, that just cannot happen. they won't let it. anyway, i have not failed anything. this was the first time in my life where that was a serious concern. everything is just so different. and they do their damndest to scare the hell out of you and make you realize that this is a thing that could happen. and it is not entirely far-fetched. knowing some of my classmates, i would actually be a little disheartened if some of them did not fail something, given their earlier indications of having no idea what was going on.
despite that looming specter, it was business as usual in the classroom. my time off did not really recharge me for the same bullshit all over again. one class today seemed overly simplistic. the other one was interesting for reasons that will not be on the exam. as i think i mentioned before, constitutional law gives rise to many in-depth historical discussions, and the prof really knows his shit when it comes to that. unfortunately, and this is also probably repeat, i cannot stand reading jurisprudence more than fifty years old. modern court reporting/stenography is an oft-overlooked blessing to everyone who comes in contact with the legal system in any way. the old stuff is typically real dodgy as to the actual facts leading to the lawsuit, and is written in a terribly verbose manner. i encountered a sentence with seven commas and a semicolon today. also, remember, these people are judges, and such types work with a peculiar lexicon. i could go on, but the point is that shit is a serious pain in the ass to read because it is so difficult to focus on for reasons listed. the reason that this bothers me more than any equally dense reading i've done (19th century philosophy translated from german, anyone? followed up by contemporary continental thought of any nationality) is that what they are trying to say in the opinions can be stated in a much more readable manner, whereas other difficult to read language owes to the complexity of the idea it is trying to get across and often painfully self-aware of language. the old opinions sometimes seem to be difficult for the sake of being difficult, and i feel that is a near-universal annoyance to everyone. other times, my brain just makes things worse: i totally read about the native population of a pacific island in the middle of nowhere paying their taxes in "rats, mice, and other objects". i couldn't decide if it was stranger that they would pay tribute in this way, or that the colonial power would accept it. i also had a brief though about animals not being objects. turns out they were paying in mats, rice, and other objects. just when things were getting appealingly odd.
perhaps in an attempt to counteract the difficult to read with a diametric opposition, or maybe just because i, like most people, crave distraction and amusement, i have been getting into more web comics. i know that this is a dangerous road to tread upon, or at least i believe it to be such. kind of like getting into an anime series is dangerous. there are innumerable web comics out there and most of them are probably not very good, but i have been consistently entertained by the few i have read for a while that people i am friends with in real life (serves as an important distinction to just going out there and reading whatever) that i have given a shot to a couple more referred to on the achewood boards. so far, so good. i went through the archives for xkcd recently, and they were mercifully brief compared to the others i have caught up on. oh, yeah, they were mostly pretty good too. some really funny, some puzzling in more than one sense, some over my head. i do not know enough about physics and computer programming to get all the jokes, but thankfully those themes are far from omnipresent in the strip. it is not like penny arcade where you have to be a for reals gamer for life to get what are undoubtedly hilarious jokes. overall, the comic usually tries and succeeds at geekily intelligent humor. i liked it enough that i will probably check it when it updates. married to the sea/tfd/natalie dee spoiled me with those daily updates. i am also getting into dinosaur comics, but cannot yet fully explain the appeal. i suspect you may hear more about it later. or not, but you should probably give it a shot too. achewood still takes the cake in my view, so i will take this opportunity to once more plug it for those of you who still haven't seen the light. is so good. is so funny.
i was going through one of the spin-off blogs for achewood that i haven't read while i was killing time during a break and took notice of the google ads you can put on your blogger account. diss my internet knowledge if you must, but for some reason i hadn't previously realized that the spiders try to fit the ads to the blog. i have no interest or hope for making money from a blog, least of all this one, but i must admit i really wonder what kinds of ads would go with this blog, or your blogs. although i did mention disaster porn theory in this post, and that would probably fuck things up for a while, no pun intended. i was also reminded about using labels for this post. i would still limit to the suggested scooters, fall, and vacation. albuquerque, sushi, and the smashing pumpkins are also fair game, since they were in the "how to use labels" (man i am all about the quotation marks tonight) tutorial. they never seemed to attract anything good or bad though, so i suppose it is mostly a matter of personal amusement. yeah, i still think it is kind of funny.
so while i was reading this particular blog the other day, i also came across a mention of sierra nevada, and i have lusted after one of their pale ales every moment since. it has been a little while, and it just sounded like it would hit the spot. but when i went to go buy it, there, right next to it was sierra nevada esb, which i was unaware existed and may very well be a recent addition to their arsenal. so i got one of each and even though i wanted the pale really bad, i just couldn't resist the urge to try something new. years of trying to develop as broad as possible knowledge of beers of the world has made this an irrepressible impulse of mine. so here i am, drinking the esb, and i probably won't even open the pale tonight. oh well. maybe putting it off will make it even better. but for now, not much to complain about with the esb. there is one thing. upon closer inspection of the label, the text underneath the graphic reads "early spring beer". i had a moment of apprehension, as if i had purchased something i had not meant to. ordinarily, esb is supposed to stand for extra special bitter. this is a gradation of the family of beers known as bitter, which, despite the name, really are not particularly bitter, doubly so to modern american craft beer aficionados who regularly rock our palettes with barrels of high alpha pacific northwest cascade hops and the like. the idea is that there was bitter, for a time the standard english beer, mild, lower alcohol, suitable for quaffing a couple quarts after a day in the coal mine. special bitter has more alcohol and hops, and extra special bitter is another notch up from that. the good news is that despite the label (which really annoys me for some reason, imagine some fuckers putting "internationally prized ale" on a bottle of ipa), this is that precise style of beer, fairly adjusted to the current american craft brewing standards. alcohol just under six, classy and classic maris otter malt base and old school british hops for the base, with some american counterparts to top it off. i wouldn't want an uncompromising historical imitation from sierra nevada anyway. poured with a great head, those folks are well known to have that bit literally down to a science. the aroma was very pleasant, and not overwhelmed by the hops, and much the same can be said of the taste. eminently drinkable, i almost feel like it should be consumed someplace that can rightly be called a pub, and nowhere else. that being said, the carbonation out of the bottle is ideal for the style, a happy medium between the effervescent canned corporate brew and the nearly still quality of some heavier beers; enough to facilitate drinking, not so much as to slow anything down. nice color too, some varieties of the style come out too amber in flavor in appearance. overall, a good beer, solid on all sides, nothing to scream about, because then too many people might find out and it won't be there when you want it. speaking of which, the style has never been seasonal, and i will be annoyed if i discover that they called it early spring beer because they're only gonna run it for a quarter. but not really upset, because although this is a very good beer, i live at a time and place where i have the luxury of selecting from several fine varieties of a micro style. i sympathize for the proto-revolutionaries who had to make due on hard-to-find imports back in the 80s. may american craft brewing never fail again!

no worries

straw is doing well. ideally he'll be home tomorrow. for now, i am going to drink old crow bourbon (no, seriously, that is what it is called) and watch face/off because it is silly. the two-disc set i received for christmas is, according to the sleeve "exploding with all-new special features". Sneaky dvd making terrorists and their IEDs.

needle in your d

not easy being a tiny baby kitten sometimes. the vet called to update me and say they removed the blockage and catheterized him. jack is starting to wonder where he is. or maybe i just project that on to him. not anthropomorphizing one's pets' thoughts and actions is tough. probably only accurate if you're a nihilist. at least for my kitties, who avowedly believe in nothing. except maybe getting petted and jumping on laps at inopportune times. enough cat drama until tomorrow.
i had a bitch of a time concentrating on my reading tonight. and also getting this post to not be in times new roman, blogger sometimes just cannot resist that font. the reading might have been problematic mostly because late eighteenth and early nineteenth century judicial opinions are not the easiest things to read. not exactly mystery novels, although there is certainly an element of mystery to them. such is the stuff of constitutional law. its a rough night when civil procedure reading is the best the homework has to offer. both books are used, and whatever the previous owner was up to in the civpro book is more interesting. handwriting is almost illegible, book is beat to shit. turns out the book was previously used by my twin who writes in books more. no, then i would be able to understand what they were up to. i really like trying to scrutinize the shorthand and highlight selection and color choices. man, i am in the wrong field.
i'm listening to billy joel again. partly because it sounded like a good idea, partly because it was still on the record player. there is this line in piano man, "microphone smells like a beer". when i was a kid, i found that lyric unbelievably hilarious. i still do not know quite why. the other lyric i remember getting a huge kick out of as a child is in paul simon's gumboots (whoa, that is totally an acceptable word for spell check) off of graceland, "believing i had supernatural powers, i slammed into a brick wall". so for all of you psych hacks out there, let me know precisely what it is that is wrong with my brain.
speaking of psych backgrounds, dekking-JA, you are officially bad at the internet. i found airfare under 250 with like one google and one click while i was reading homework and doing shit in four other tabs on firefox. you sounded like you were having a good time tonight. thanks for calling, it did cheer me up. but you're still bad at the internet. if you don't step it up, i am totally calling calvin and telling them that you have to re-take RIT. and DCM. and any other bullshit core class known by a set of initials. you had better get some new dip and whippits.
the wings finally got it back together tonight. good to know some things are looking up. they had dropped three straight previously, drawing all sorts of scrutiny from the over-reporting world of sports. people who are too cool for sports have it all wrong. sports need not be approached with a white baseball hat and a bud lite (man, i wish spell check would mark lite). there is an immense mine of information, and i am a sucker for observing things that have broad cultural appeal. and i just plain like hockey, which doesn't really have the broadest appeal of all sports. but i like to reflect on the media coverage sports get versus non-american news in the mainstream media. it is also a lowest common denominator of conversation, which can lead to thought-provoking conversations about how much certain people know about it all. whatever. the point is zetterberg beat luongo in a shootout, and that is a classy win.
but this is not a blog for sports, even if i'll go there. no, this has become for mostly bitching about law school and rambling self-indulgently about music which may or may not be self-indulgent. but the rambling will be. no one wants to hear about brent mydland's cheesiest (acceptable spelling) synth licks. but if you just can't look away, at least you will have learned something about which you may not care a whole lot about. that is the point of the internet, after all. so if you want to check out some extreme (extremely what? so many things. much like the mountain dew i purchased in a bizarre move today) 80s keyboard technology, hit me up for the 6/30/85 soundboard. i'm sure you all will. one of the funny things about music is how extremely subjective it is. in my experience when people who know each other fairly well have one another listen to music they're sure everyone must love, the results are fairly well mixed between hit and miss. in fact, this is the reason for the vast american sonic landscape over the years; especially now people are eager for a realm of the personal, and music has a unique and effective way of filling such a void. this also goes to explain how bands get serious followings: if a band is identified as defining a aspect of one's personality, people will bond with others who exemplify that same trait in the same manner, namely obsessing over certain music. yeah, i just used a ; and then a :. brings us back to early american jurisprudence... no. not tonight. i'm all set, as they used to say. expect more cat drama updates tomorrow, i guess.

that's what love will make you do

today featured the bane of my academic existence, namely, missing class. you would think with all the complaining i do that i would be just as happy not to be there. not true. the things that bother me are not so much doing the reading and going to class to talk about it. still kinda dig that; one of the reasons i stuck around i guess. but if i had to miss one, the writing class i kind of not a favorite so today was a good day to have to miss something. missed constitutional though, which is kind of a bummer, but i'm right back at that tomorrow.i could have missed ip in the morning but that meets less frequently than con and the prof is amazing. anyway, i had to miss class and take a long walk in the wettest of snow to bring straw in. it is a good thing i did. they diagnosed him pretty quick with a blockage in his urinary tract; his bladder is apparently like the size of a softball. not good for a tiny baby kitten like him (side note, he weighed in at 13 and a half pounds, i always wondered). the bad news is that such blockage requires first, removal, and then a catheter draining his bladder over the course of like two days. bummer. as you may have surmised, this thing is not cheap. fortunately i have parents who care deeply and understand how important my kitties are, and so i will not have to sell one of my own kidneys to take care of whatever is wrong with the cat's kidneys. the vet people were really awesome and understanding while we tried to work out the financial stuff. they offered a few options, and it was clear that they were genuinely concerned with him being treated asap, even if it was not by them. both the front desk and the actual vet people were really professional, even though some of the up front people wouldn't pass a "looks professional" test in some circles. i would rather deal with people like this than someone stuffy in "business casual" appearance. hit trader joe's on the way back too (after planning in my head about transferring to the el and going to a different place on the way home - totally forgot this was on the way) and it is the same way there. really great people at a business one can feel decent about patronizing, and holy shit, tattoos and piercings, longhairs and beards, and yet they still do their job well. who knew? maybe a few years down the road people will be forced to get over that shit. maybe not. who knows? if the people who don't like it were smarter, they would realize that the more it is accepted the less allure it has to many of the people who are all about it. when i left the store, my trolley showed up immediately. that was sweet. so for all the stress related to today, i'm feeling reasonably peaceful for the time being. now i'm going to go wreck it with homework.

hurts me too

straw is going to the vet tomorrow. he does not want to go on his own, and thus i must bring him there. not looking forward to it, but i really want him to be okay. he is not feeling so premium. all lethargic and obviously pained to move. even the medical world of pets is fraught with bullshit. i fully expect the vet to be appalled that he has no medical records to transfer to them, excepting getting neutered like four years ago. listen, the cats and i have been to the doctor an equal amount of times since i've had them. i refuse to be guilted on this one. all that aside, the logistics of the whole ordeal are nothing to look forward to. i managed to borrow a cat carrier from my neighbor, so that is one thing dealt with. the real concern is how to get this cat so some place like thirty blocks away. cab is kind of cost prohibitive. this situation is yet another reason why i should already have a car share account. i'm kind of wary of taking the cat on the trolley, but its really the only thing that makes good financial sense. i can't really articulate why i'm uncomfortable with it, but i just don't want to upset the poor thing while he's already not feeling well. i also feel a little iffy about being the dude with the howling feline in a box on public transport, but in reality, fuck it. like i don't deal with assholes having annoying loud conversations on cell phones and blasting shitty music out of crappy headphones every day. i don't ten dollar feel bad for you listening to my cat complain about riding with you all. not on the way there, not on the way back. the posting inside the vehicle bans animals except in "approved containers". this has gotta count. i will be pissed if i am missing class only to have a legal debate with a septa employee. this whole thing is a frustration i do not need right now. people always talk about taking health for granted, but here i was taking my cat's health for granted, and now it is a thing. in the end, i will be glad to see him back to normal though. hopefully i will be happy enough to assuage the bummer of budgeting concerns.
have i mentioned lately that i hate law school and the life i have governed by it? yes? good, just wanted to make sure. no updates; it is still a pain in the ass leading to nothing better. seriously, i wouldn't give a shit about the whole thing if i wanted to be a lawyer. therein lies the rub.
let's talk about something else. i had one of the most serious slices of pizza i've ever encountered this evening. if ever one slice was all i needed, this was it. just a plain sicilian slice from across the road, but man was it good. took a while to even eat the thing. don't think i could have done another one, so it is a good thing i didn't overshoot it. this was enough to restore my faith in pizza, as i had made the mistake of taking advantage of the notorious free pizza at so many lunchtime talks at school. seriously, there has to be another pizza place in the area they could order from. the ubiquitous pies are the worst pizza i have ever had, including the pizza product in the high school cafeteria, boxed chef boy-ar-dee, and the infamous hot 'n' ready. well, wait. the law school pizza is only the second worst. the worst ever was a pizza we bought at one of those canadian highway convenience islands on the way back from coventry. god that was awful. we seriously didn't even eat half of it, despite being seriously hungry. everything was wrong with it; but the raw doughy-ness of the crust elevated/lowered it to worst pizza ever status. but the pizza at school is worse than late night pizza mister pizza (no, really, those five words were the name, and they had some wicked bad pie). it is greasy as hell, the cheese tastes ersatz, the crust smacks of starch, the sauce is inadequate in quantity and substance, and the toppings are all somehow not quite right, like the pepperoni doesn't come out the color or flavor pepperoni should, onion chunks are unnecessarily large, green olives are always bad and come on the veggie and the supreme, and the mushrooms are like brined or something. i usually just go for plain, but the problems that has have just been noted. there is nothing good to be said about that pizza other than that it is eaten at no additional cost beyond tuition. all that being said, come on. pizza does not have to be bad, and in fact has no excuse to be bad. it is pizza, for christ's sake, it should bring tastiness and joy, not lubrication and regret. is this so much to ask?
seeing all the zs above i thought about scrabble (not marked! didn't know that was a word), or more accurately scrabulous. oddly enough, yesterday, between covering intellectual property material and glancing at my scrabulous tab, i wondered how they were pulling this off legally speaking. the board is the spitting image, and the name is even a take off on the original. c'mon. then today, sure enough, news about how the kibosh has been put on the whole thing. what were they thinking? nothing probably. if i remember correctly, the application was an independently designed add-on the site itself later incorporated. dial one eight hundred sue yer ass. probably they'll just get an injunction for facebook not to do it any more, only money changing hands is going from business entities to lawyers. some jackass just got fat paid to throw out a bunch of WHEREASes and THEREFOREs. maybe even a WHEREFORE or two. weak, but if one must be a lawyer, i suppose that is really one of the more palatable options in my view.
the rest of this post has been canceled due to a phone call that was more encouraging than just whining. i'll be back.

pabst brown pacifier

please alert me to any job postings for professional chilling the fuck out. i am currently striving to do so after what you may infer from the previous post has not been an entirely pleasurable day. feet up, forty, cig, billy joel. i need some good novels to read. something not too heavy. a buddy has a bunch of pratchett for me, and i think that will do the trick. i need something to get away. i'm already screaming at my text books, and we're two days in. i somehow got wides lights instead of wides filters. being wides, they don't leave me as wanting as regular lights, and the filters were admittedly getting a little harsh, but these have a habit of dropping their cherry. not cool. also had to correct the clerk on some pricing for my brew, i feel like a dick, but i'm not going to unquestioningly overpay by like three bucks. he didn't seem too miffed; i was right after all. like hell i don't know how much beer costs, despite the general refusal in this city to price mark fucking anything at those kinds of places.
in any event, i have made it through the trying portion of another day. one at a time. the civ pro reading was the worst: no real cases, just a poorly worded and presented rehash of things i already knew/learned last semester. that is the one prof i have yet to meet. my ip prof seems pretty sweet, another academic badass. dude has some degree with FOUR LETTERS that i've never heard of. but you know shit is serious when there are four letters involved with the abbreviation of a degree. something about public international law and treaties and such. right on. i could look up what the fuck it actually is, but no. i prefer the mystique. my constitutional law class today was a welcome history lecture, really. after class i got into a discussion about how it had not been a law class at all really, and how that was kind of nice. my friend commented that the material demanded an historical introduction, which is certainly true, but i responded with how struck i was that any and all legal classes demand the same sort of grounding really, since it is a fiction to approach such things in a vacuum. to be fair, most classes to make passing references to matters of historical influence. unfortunately they are usually hopelessly dry and stultified, significantly dimming the light they could shed on the formation of modern law. in all honesty, i've come to realize that what i really wanted to do was study law in a grad school setting as opposed to a professional school. i love learning about the law, but all of it here is tainted with career concerns. i "suffer" from a chronic failure to approach things "professionally". ah, quotes around individual words. see, i really do belong in grad school. of course, such is fraught with its own host of irrepressible bullshit, but it is at least a different set of bullshit, and we may never know if i am better equipped to handle said set, since some set is inevitable. such is life.
so american idol is kicking off here tonight. the funniest part about that is that is the probably the most recognizable reference to where i am that i have made here in some time. paranoia. whatever, good luck turning up my shit on a google with my real name and so forth. not gonna happen. anyway, they wouldn't let me on. something about how i look like bo bice (sp?) after his career went nowhere. i know i actually don't look anything like that douche, but some lady back at the plasma place was convinced that i looked like a ringer. i didn't even know who the hell the guy was when she kept telling me this. some of my more mainstream media savvy co-workers filled me in, and i was mostly just confused. so yeah, that turned out pretty weak. that was the best american idol joke i had folks. a while back i caught a mad tv parody of that guy, don't know how or why i was watching that shit, but i was glad to see him lampooned. i am also glad that lampooned is a recognized verb. good word all around. even if i can't make an easy joke (i know there is a good one lurking in there somewhere) i can at least bust out with some solid vocabulary. unlike whoever had my civ pro book before me, motherfucker defines the most mundane words in the margin and highlights like a retarded manatee, assuming retarded manatees highlight only verbs and the occasional poorly structured and generally meaningless phrases. there, maybe someone laughed at that. better than the other attempt at least. anything is funnier than me bitching about school, unless you've got that sense of humor which delights in my self-imposed plight. i am pretty sure i know everyone who reads this drivel and am also pretty sure that y'all feel good enough about me not to give me the nelson point-and-laugh for fucking up and trying to do what seemed like a good idea at the time (don't they all?).
tonight is the night where trash goes out. this is good, because since i got back all umpteen barrels we have for this modest rowhouse have been stuffed with packing supplies and containers since new people moved in somewhere downstairs. i don't have anything rotting or anything, but it will be nice to clear a little space with shit from last semester i decidedly will never refer back to. there are other things from last semester that i think i would still rather burn than throw away though. if my rage yet smolders, thus too shall the materials inspiring such fervor. huh, while typing all that i slipped into some serious british spelling habits. some words just look better with the u in them, coincidentally including smoulder and fervour. i'm not even sure the brits do the u in fervor, but whatever. i'm starting my own language and we will.
it's that time again. that time where i talk about music and you scroll to see if there is something else to read about. tonight, i am here to tell you that bruce hornsby is fuckin sweet. the lasting appeal of the way it is testifies to the man's pop sensibilities, but my god, the chops. i'm tellin ya, the dude has serious musician credibility. and he can actually sing, the bane of most serious musicians. plus, he plays squeezebox. what more do you want. but back to singing for more musical rambling. i've lately been mesmerized by the pipes on trevor from tea leaf once again. while vocals are something to come by anywhere in the music world, they are perhaps exceptionally scarce in the jam realm. this man has it together. if you're ever so inclined, this whole show is a pretty good example of how they roll. right now, the band is taking votes from all over the country as to where they should play a particular gig. i like the idea that a band will play a show wherever the most people want them to play it. not bad for a group of minor means. if my crc background taught me one thing, though, it is that if you're gonna talk about something, it should come in threes. so tonights final musical prop goes to my morning jacket. jim evokes a certain type of dylan, and i think that is why i find the whole thing undeniable. also, anyone who talks on hippie music fests should contemplate how awesome it would have been to be at the langerado show in 06. is so good. so there is your three for the post. and there wasn't even any steely dan. or lyrics posting. nothing will ever live up to posting the words to lily rosemary and the jack of hearts, as they are quite possibly the best ever, but right now i'm fighting temptation to include new madrid. oh, jeff. dekking-ha, may you get new madrid and not i'm the man who loves you at that show. still salivating over the tapes, gonna have to clear out some hard drive space. dude, you need to start loving chicago. remember when you got to live in a big city but it was still the midwest and there were people you knew from before, and you could drive home easily, and they had some place where you got to be an expert on dank brew and kaas for a living? yeah, that wasn't all bad. mostly alright, really. if you honestly don't dig it, we can always trade. law school is awesome. really. you should give it a shot. it'll be straight; nobody's gonna look at your eyes.
right now, i am mostly missing my old car. not my most recent car, no, my old car. my old school car. my great aunt's car. gun metal gray. they don't call it a celebrity for nothin. over break, donnie and i had some good reminiscing about all that, and even watching it get towed over the course of a couple hours. good times. an associate of mine recently claimed that there is an all "good times" t.v. network on cable. can anyone confirm or disconfirm? whoa, spell check is not having disconfirm. i'm willing to go out on a limb and say that regardless of what spell check has to say, any word used in lebowski dialog counts. doubly so in my new language. dammit, dialog also seems like it wants a u. i am on a total u kick right now. once, in high school, i designed a platform for running for president that featured supporting an increase in the use of the letters k and w. i like to think that such a platform would win out in this year's running of the... man, i can't even think of anything derogatory enough that would fit well in that sentence. anyway, with the power of a couple of solid letters on my side, i'm better than all those fuckers. politics is its own cartoon; i don't see how people make a living making caricatures of it all. john stewart and co. are the only people making an honest living off of politics.
that's all folks. tthings aren't going to get much better, in terms of this post, politics, or salt 'n' vinegar chips, like someone used to say. no, i just said that. and that's all i've got to say. bad at endings,
meddle

fuck this shit

so in keeping with the idea to try and give law school a more open minded go round this semester, i went to a presentation about summer internships at the aclu. the meeting featured the same asshole i can't stand who i know from other things i've gone to, so that kind of set the tone. basically, nothing changes; they're all just a bunch of lawyers, aka a bunch of pricks. even if what they do is something i would consider positive overall, this does not enhance my desire to either work with these people or do the work that they do. which brings us to the larger summer job picture, and it is bleak. everyone wants 1ls for legal research and writing, the bane of my scholastic experience. also, this is all people get to do when they start out with real legal jobs. oh, hooray. fuck lawyers, and fuck lawyering. the more i find out, the less i want to do with it. and yet here i am. so much for trying to learn something for the sake of knowing it, or being able to work it into an acceptable career. law school: the worst decision ever. also on the horizon: what is sure to be a rousing meeting with career services. i'm sure they know how people should write and design resumes such that they secure summer work. the problem is my allergy to resumes and legal work. why the fuck did i come back? nothing better to do. fear of being perceived as having failed. felt like it was what i was supposed to do. the first year is the worst, huh? i am having a really difficult time imagining what the possible difference between the first and second year could be that would make one universally regarded as shitty and the other being generally acceptable. perhaps the notion is that people get to go out and do legal work and find having a job in the field encouraging. this is not something i anticipate happening to me at all. being able to choose classes next year is not going to be enough to radically alter things on its own. law classes are still going to be law classes, profs will still be profs, etc. right now, i want to scream incredibly loud and beat the shit out of a managing partner at some important law firm i haven't heard of and will continue to fail to give a shit about. lexis summaries include not just counsels' names, but what firm they work for and where that firm is located. this makes me retch. what can i say? i guess i just hate america, freedom, you name it. more than anything, i'm upset with myself for getting me into this mess in the first place.

exile on broad street

well, i'm back. back in the city, back to law school, back on the blog. thanks to everyone back home for making the trip more than worth my while. despite my claim of no expectations for my journey home, there were some that inevitably persisted, none of which were frustrated. however, i can't resist the opportunity to complain nonetheless: it all made it shittier to leave again. sure, i like this place, but is not home, and it would take a long time for it to be that way. i got rained on the whole walk from the train station to the apartment, which was not an encouraging sign. it has been nice to see everyone here again, but the unavoidable lack of history along with a host of other things makes it different. i was so bored my first night back. yes, there may be more to do here, but fewer people to do whatever with, and not enough money to do it anyway.
today marked the resumption of my personal hellish trip down the demented oregon trail known as law school. i was not excited. i had somehow quickly forgotten while away exactly how much i despise the whole ordeal. i had all these plans to come back with a good attitude and be a go-getter this semester, but that is already beginning to seem highly unlikely. i expect more of the same ups and downs for the most part, and that was pretty much what today was. started with the legal writing class (continued from last semester) with the same prof and the same pile of bullshit to work on, but with a great speech about how we were all going to get shitty grades when they finally arrive next week or whenever. the prof advised us to go talk to our profs to find out what exactly we were doing wrong (or, heaven forbid, right). the thing is, almost everyone submitted their exams electronically and grading was anonymous. i'd be kind of surprised if profs kept graded exams lying around and i don't think they hand them back to you, but i guess i could be wrong. either way, this is not something i am personally likely to follow through on. law profs seemed to be convinced that everyone's problem is that they do not "get it" (they could be right about this) as opposed to they get it, but they did a bad job for any other number of reasons. if people out there really don't understand how to logically write a fucking exam response, the curve should treat me well. unfortunately i doubt this is the case. so after this entirely uninspiring start to the day, i at least had a new class with a new prof and i am a sucker for the first day of class when everything seems exciting and the theory of how the class will run has not been savaged by the realities of the classroom experience. the prof is a total academic badass and i am into the sort of work he publishes on, so that is cool. in this moment of optimism i am actually contemplating trying to get to know a prof as a one-of-seventy student. that shit still throws me off a little i think; i certainly don't run my mouth like i did at undergrad. maybe i've just changed. probably some of both. which is oddly enough one of the major writing tricks i picked up in undergrad: lay out a few possible answers, synthesize, repeat. it makes you look smart. homework tonight followed a similar pattern. i started with reading the constitution, and i swear that shit got longer than when i had to do that last time. maybe things just being inside a law text makes them more laborious to read. that damn book is somewhere in the neighborhood of four inches thick, and not cool. the other reading contained the phrase "Giggle Bunny evidence," and that sort of thing always makes my night. enough school.
the cats are being weird and that always disconcerts me. straw has spent most of his time sleeping in his hiding place, but when he was up and about he kept squatting over things like he was going to pee on them, but not actually doing so. this is stressful. jackie has been scampering all over the place, making strange loud noises and generally tearing up whatever he can. gatos muy loco. hopefully they shape up and act right.
in an effort to revitalize my good feelings toward the city, i went out and about the other day on a mission to some record store a friend was checking out because they were going out of business and everything was half off. sounded like a pretty good idea to look into, so we did. unfortunately in the early stages of execution the plan was delayed by a cat knocking a whole coffee into my open bag, still full of everything i could fit into it to take here from home. bummer. anyway, we are looking around for the place and i see the sign out front, but the windows are displaying sundry electronics and clothing and a large sign proclaiming that they are purchasers of gold. hmmm. so i guess the building had two businesses of the same name which were separate. either way, the music portion was indeed closing, but if the business were unrelated the appropriateness of the record selection for people who would be shopping downstairs was surprising. there was a great depth of music, but not so much the breadth. i just don't know that much about hip-hop/rap. i know some, but a very white boy some. just the big names and the ones white people listen to who seem to enjoy all-around credibility, i.e. talib kwali. which is not to say they didn't have some cool stuff. the whole place was odd, located basically in center city, so a good mix of people in there, enough to where i wasn't the geekiest looking white guy. the dude i went with loved it though, so that was cool for him. he had some solid scores, including the newest sage francis album, which i probably would have gotten if i had found it. he also found that kriss kross album, which could not be passed up at half off (the fuckers wanted like 17 bucks or something regularly - and it was used!), and a bunch of other stuff he liked, and one he bought for the cover, which i had admittedly studied. odd takeoff on that really ugly 80s baltimore orioles logo. one guy who i presume was an employee spent most of his time in this deejay booth type thing in one corner, spinning absolute shit. but in this pile of crap, he played one song that really stuck out and made the whole experience that much more confusing. it is difficult to convey music in writing, especially poorly done rap, but the basic idea was an entire track all about doing heroin and how awesome it is. while this is not an entirely novel idea to music, it is usually approached through veiled reference and not outright endorsed. while i don't think they ever said heroin, it was pretty straightforward: the hook went something like "first i hit the weed, then i popped the pills, sniffed the cocaine but now i got the real deal oh boy, that boy, my boy, oh boy, that boy, oh boy, he ride with me in the chevy cause he's my motherfuckin boy, oh boy, that boy". the verses detailed the pleasures and differing effects of brown boy and white boy, and overall i would say perhaps a full third of all words were "boy". never got why that was the slang, but i guess that's how slang works. overall, just bizarre in my view. on the other hand, people rapped favorably about crack twenty-odd years ago.
while the journey to this record store didn't provide me with a wealth of new music, i did manage to scare up some stuff while i was back home. mostly i've been grooving on this reconstruction show. they were only around for like 8 months in 79, but damn are they good. mostly they are a jazzier iteration of the jerry garcia band, but i feel like john kahn and merl saunders got more of a say in this one, plus they've got a saxophone and a trombone. it pisses me off how people shut down when they hear "garcia" like it is automatically going to be some dumb hippie bullshit. the man was a great musician who played with lots of talented people and was a master of multiple idioms blessed and cursed by his part in the dead. but whatever, i am not going to rant about him here and now. i played a wilco show tonight that really hit the spot. the synth on "i'm always in love" is superb, heavier in the mix than it usually is, and that is my favorite aspect of one of the few songs that almost always cheers me up. i hate to skip songs when i'm listening to a whole show, but i think i will always skip "i'm the man who loves you". i fucking hate that song. everything about it. the progression is annoying and the lyrics are some of the most vacuous jeff has ever written. oh, and they always play it. yeah, i'll always skip it.
man, i've got to get it together. i don't even feel like this was a worthwhile post and i'm not going to prolong it. i feel like i just should have written "Giggle Bunny evidence" and left it at that. maybe i'm just rusty. i'll try again some time soon.

i do this; i be he

ready to get this show on the mofo road. at least i'm going to be more on point for this last exam: when i was awakened by a power saw nearby this morning, i didn't cuss and wonder why someone was doing something noisy before i was up, i immediately ran through the significant points of a case dealing with power tools. this was succinctly followed by thinking no, i'm wrong, there is a power saw running making the noise. this is more like a different case because it is not pneumatic tools causing arthritis. then i thought about how strange it was that law school had taken over even my semi-conscious mind and how i used pneumatic tools when i worked in that factory for like a month or whatever. i honestly don't know which is worse, but neither proved to be very inspiring.
i am currently sitting around at my sister's place, not focusing on studying. i came over to print my big ass outline and borrow a bag from ben, and realized i should also do early check-in for my flight. however, i was under the impression that i could do that within 48 hours, as opposed to the 24 the website is presently insisting on. so i've just kind of been chilling for a couple hours, another forty minutes to go or something, but i'm not gonna leave and come back. it isn't that far of a walk, of course, but it is cold and there is nothing i would be doing at home that i can't do/haven't been doing here except for dealing with a shitty internet connection instead of basking in the glorious functionality of this one. although my bit torrents are still moving like molasses... oh well. oo, i am also looking forward to taking a vacuum cleaner home with me, they apparently have an extra here. so in a while i will be that guy walking down a sidewalk with a laptop bag, empty suitcase, and a vacuum cleaner. i expect it to look pretty sweet. in my mind i just thought of myself in stride looking like that behind the beatles on the cover of abbey road.
i just got an email about a law book sale coming up in january. great, another thing i will need to spend money i don't have on, nice to be reminded. the best part is that they are calling it a "law book faire", that's right, with the old school spelling. first, there is nothing festive about an organized market for text books. it is just as boring as the regular book store, which does not claim to be a book shoppe. second, where do they get off using that e on the end of fair? just being in the northeast is not enough to append extraneous es. i guess it could have been worse. they could have used "fayre". i'm not going unless guinevere shows up and sings me a request to bring her there.
as much as i am looking forward to going home, i'm also trying to brace myself for disappointment. this is not a dig on anyone else, it is simply a realization that i have perhaps placed too high an expectation on the experience. i left there because i wasn't happy with it most of the time, and it probably won't be that different. this is the same reason law school has been such a disappointment: i pinned too high of hopes on it for changing things. one can shift scenery and some significant settings, but the real problems don't just go away on their own. sad but true. all too true.
i was glad to see dekkinga scored tickets for that big wilco run in chicago, but unfortunately i was not in his shoes in terms of awareness that 2008 dates had been announced, and so the show here was sold out before i even knew it was going to happen. the consolation prize is that tapes from when wilco plays at home are usually fantastic sources, and the threat of serious set list variability has me quite excited about the series. i haven't been to a show in ages. new clutch dates just came out and they are playing NOWHERE CLOSE. absolute bullshit; they used to play the trocadero like every fucking tour. until i moved here. i'll at least get to see the hippo on new years when i go home. at the new founders, where you cannot smoke. absolute bollocks. might go see la famiglia if i'm feeling frisky, will probably go see covert operations because i'm self destructive. well, we've almost reached the magic 24 hours before flight time, and i guess i've written enough optimistic and uplifting things for one post. gonna go home and try to stay on task with the outline from heaven via hell. torts: it's what's for dinner. but not in cake form.

better all the time

once, word crashed on me and i lost everything i did one day. that day was today. even though the program autosaves constantly, i somehow cannot recover any of it. just tried to undo one autoformat and boom, program freaked. awesome. i guess it doesn't erase what i learned by typing things out, but it would have been nice to have been able to go back and look at it as intended. i am reminded of a favorite catchphrase of mine from a couple years ago: "GOD DAMMIT!"

freakin out

i'm not feeling real great about tomrrow's exam. i have had a terrible time trying to stay focused on studying, and there is just so much detail that i really worry about being able to pull together what the prof is looking for. i certainly have not lived up to his lofty standard of virtual enslavement to law school, and i have a sinking feeling that this test is designed to expose precisely that. shouldn't be too tough to do that to me early tomorrow morning. we'll see. i'm fine with here are the facts, this is the law, how should things shake down, but i'm not so good on here are the facts, tell me about three different jurisdictions' positions on this particular crime and the model penal code provision chapter and verse, tell me how it will shake down in each, and then tell me which one is the best and why. i can do all that except busing out word for word statutes. there's a hell of a lot of those things out there. laws change all the time, and lawyers presumably look up plenty of shit every time the write a brief or whatever. so i really don't see how expecting people to regurgitate snippets of law is an enterprise which actually teaches people about the law write large or how to be a better lawyer. cases are not won or lost based on memorization skills as far as i am aware. all that being said, memorization has been a strong point for me, and if this were an ordinary format test with fill in the blank, short answer and the like, i would feel differently. but it is gonna be more along the lines of three big ass essays, which kind of changes the dynamic. the tension is between focusing on the bigger picture and getting down and dirty in the details, because one particular word in one applicable statute can mean the difference between an acquittal and a death sentence. no one is going to kill me based on how i perform on the exam, but the prospect is still pretty daunting. daunting enough that i am typing this up rather than attempting to engage the material. at this point i have two dead reference books on top of my criminal law text, so i should probably get back to it for a while.

looking back

"badass sunset" should be a cocktail of some sort, an answer to the tequila sunrise. although tequila is sort of badass in the first place. "badass sunset" sounds more like a drink that leads to passed out rather than pissed off. my most prolific foray into drink-inventing thus far has been the rather unappealing and hence unpopular "bird flu", which i believe contained barenjager, 151, orange juice, and sprite, maybe something else with booze in it too. let's just say i'm open to suggestions regarding the content of a potential badass sunset.
yesterday, i had my first for reals exam. it was contracts, but unfortunately it did not involve linoleum rugs in any way. all in all i feel pretty good about it, wound up hitting the word limit on the nose, not that it matters much. didn't quite use all four hours, and i don't really feel bad about it. i'm more concerned about the next one, which is limited to three hours. these aren't ordinary "do i know it or not" kind of questions; more like, what all am i supposed to talk about here, and how much. the upshot of the memo/exam crunch has been to take my mind off of the extremely troubling meta concerns i have about going to law school/being a lawyer. this respite was rudely interrupted by an email from a friend and classmate who will not drop out but noted that the link he sent me made him want to. i'm not the person who needs encouragement about dropping out. this link wasn't all that disturbing when viewed in a vacuum, but it was enough to throw my mind back into a mode of serious skepticism and doubt. the link included a distribution graph of salaries for lawyers and there really are mostly two choices: making less than a decent factory wage by working your ass off within reasonable hours doing something noble and never being able to escape your crippling debt or get a job with a big firm where you make an assload of money and never have any time to enjoy it while in the meantime getting caught up in firm culture and kissing unfathomable amounts of ass. this is the last thing i needed to be reminded of right about now. i was kinda of cruising along, thinking well, i can probably deal with this law school bullshit, and i could probably be some kind of lawyer maybe. nope. doesn't work like that.
yesterday also afforded me the opportunity to enjoy a nice barley wine down at the local brewpub. it really hit the spot, but the beer itself didn't go anywhere remarkable, kind of dominated by a grape flavor. it was also only like a month and a half past brewed date; perhaps it would improve with a little more age. i also enjoyed a rye ipa which, while refreshing, mostly made me look forward to sipping red's rye in a week or so. these folks over here could use a lesson in hop schedule, and probably hop bill in general. seemed like this place probably went with the more economic high-alpha stuff and kind of skimped on the aromatics. for a second i thought spell check marked that, but no, i had originally just typed it wrong. anyway, it was like they thought simcoes could cover all the bases based on their versatility. news, people: this does not work; just makes it seem like you're brewing for people who don't know better. of course i can't really bitch at this point: my current beer experience is rooted in seeing what pouring from a forty to a pint glass does for pbr. mostly i just can't believe how clear it is; never looks like this at mulligan's. i mean, i know they've probably never cleaned the damn lines, but it is a little disconcerting to know so much shit gets in there that it comes out an opaque pale gold rather than looking like severely diluted apple juice. i have also discovered that pabst is probably better when you don't get the aroma. it smells on clothes that got spilled on the night before. this is something of which i am painfully aware.
the vast majority of time since my previous serious post last week has been spent on the clumsy, painful, grinding process of attempted studying. although it was not all for naught with contracts; something in the process helped me along. on saturday, though, i did kill off a good chunk of the day going to the casino protest to observe. i got down there pretty early, hoping to poke around the area as i had not been up that way. the particular part of the neighborhood i was in did not have a whole lot to look at, however, mostly little-utilized warehouse space and the like. lots of little chunks of trolley track and obvious places where it had been paved over. they're gonna regret doing that one day. i took the el to get there, and for the first time i was actually elevated on the el, and that was kind of a neat view out the window, racing along next to the expressway. i went to where we were supposed to meet, which was not too long of a walk from the el stop. the weather was alright at first, but it just seemed to get colder and more windy, which was probably more perception based on standing outside for a few hours in a row. anyway, when i got there, the only people were one of the chief organizers and some guy. in a little while a few more of the movers and shakers behind the event showed up. from what i heard, the game plan had been kind of open until the very moment people got there, so it was neat to hear them decide how things were going to go down. i guess the original hope (and future plan) was to actually go sit-in on the site of the proposed casino. however, the developers and investors behind the project had asserted that they would utilize legal authority to arrest any people who went on the land and charde them with a third degree misdemeanor or something like that. the long in the short of it was anyone who got cuffed was not going anywhere until monday morning when they could be arraigned, and i don't think anyone had made weekend plans to sit in the lockup. thus, no one actually went on the property, and things were pretty low key, not counting the overwhelming amount of cops they had around. better safe than sorry from their standpoint i guess, but they had like 60 cops. probably only like 50 protesters made it down that day. the observers got there so early that for a while there was roughly one of us for every protester. i guess drexel gives people pro bono credit for doing this, so almost all the people there were drexel folk. i was the lone representative for my school, which is supposedly a model of NLG activity. there was the NLG observer chair dude, who is pretty cool, and one NLG dude who is pretty righteous who always does these things. wish i could say i felt the same way about other NLG folks i've met; most of them have been, well, lawyers in the pejorative sense of the term. oh and the cool rutgers girl was there too. the fact that she was present did not present me with a whole lot more to say to her, however. not that it matters; dating people in serious grad study pursuits is not always so easy, and if both parties are up to such, well, good luck i guess. not something i am going to chase after at this juncture. anyway, although my presence at the thing didn't wind up being too important, the experience was not a total loss. i got to talk to strangers, which is a hobby (whoops typed hoppy instead of hobby at first, still dreaming about red's rye) of mine. i talked to a very inspiring and active person who showed up in a powered wheelchair thing. her speech was a little difficult to understand at times, especially with traffic, but she didn't mind if you said you didn't catch it. she had some pretty cool stories about blocking offending bus drivers and various protests. another person was a lifetime resident of the area they want to put the casino in. he had a ton to say, but i was most interested in what he had to say about this boat. there is a river boat moored where the people were protesting, and it is one sorry sight. all listing off to one side, windows all smashed out, generally looking dilapidated as hell. looks like something out of a stephen king novel, a la abandoned amusement park. the dude told me it had been there and looking like that since he was twelve, which he roughly calculated to date to the early to mid seventies. i just can't believe something like that has sat someplace like that for so long. well, i guess this is believable, but something about it really struck me for whatever reason. the guy had a real cool perspective on all the various shit we talked about, someone who knows what they think and knows why but is pretty sure they've got it all right. at any rate, i was not unhappy i had the experience. if nothing else, the observing gig always provides a veritable feast in the food for thought category, lots of real life sociology and psychology things, and philosophy is always a given.
the only other recent highlight i may have missed was a good meal. got some goat the other night in some kind of "west indies" sauce. lots of rice and beans. some fried plantains. shit was delicious. i talked to the dude at the place about it to build some good will, and he got real excited. apparently goat is definitely his favorite meat: some people think it is not good meat, but it is the best. i asked him about where they get it, and he gave me the regional breakdown for where to get goat. at like half the places, you pick a goat. like a live goat that is there and you see and you say i would like this goat, or more precisely, i would like this goat butchered for me, and that is how you get your goat meat. sounds like quite an adventure. i thought that this was my first time enjoying goat, but my sister (who shared this dish with me; only way to order it is as a massive platter thing) informed me we had gotten it before when we went out for ethiopian once. all i knew was that the food then was delicious and i was not in a hurry to wonder what it was. if you have not had the pleasure, i would say that goat is really pretty close to beef. more like beef than it is like, say, lamb.
in music news, go ahead... ask me about brent mydland. feel free, any time. i have some things to say about all that. in fact, i have a lot of things to say about that. and if ya wanna know ya just got ta ask.
this is going to be one long week waiting for things to wrap up. i already don't give a fuck about my last exam. well, that is not really true, but i give a minimal fuck about it, minimal enough that i would just as soon take it the day after the next one and have it over. that class was a hopeless clusterfuck of cloudy terminology and poorly articulated theory, but i kicked the shit out of the practice exam and the real one is apparently open book. not that the book was great, but it will provide plenty of fodder to yammer on about in a manner which conveys that yes, i went to class and i have as good of an idea about what was supposed to be taught as anyone. unfortunately i have like five days where i will feel like i'm supposed to study but will be wholly unable to accomplish anything meaningful of the sort. that will probably call for more pabst. and general time killing, so this is the place you will want to look if you're up to more of the same. if you are or will be in west michigan, think of something fun and memorable we can do over the break. i'll be there, man.

badass sunset

well, if it had to get dark, this was a pretty sweet way to go about it. dark purple clouds with neon pink underbellies, wispy grey clouds off in the further parts of the sky that range from baby blue to whitish grey. fiery orange base silhouetting the massive dome of some nearby house of worship in the foreground. slowly dissipating jet trail cutting across the whole scene which is itself slipping away. choose your own metaphor.
and all that while axis: bold as love was on, with its excellent color-based lyrics. some hendrix tunes just never get the love they deserve. corollary: some get way too fucking much. seriously, i think i could go at least five years without hearing his version of watchtower. he did like a rolling stone way better anyway. that dude really dug dylan. like anyone should really. speaking of which, i still haven't seen i'm not there and probably won't catch it in the theater. this is the least of my losses resulting from educational commitments. the only element of my life which has not been rendered lossy (wow, spell check does not mark that) is my audio files. hooray for flac. i swear sometimes it sounds better than cds played through the exact same equipment. this does not change the fact that at this very moment a number of my classmates are studying more effectively while listening to 64 kbps mp3s played through the earbuds that came with their ipod. i know itunes uses some fucked up audio format that isn't that bad to listen to, but i also know that most people haven't filled their ipods exclusively via itunes. the feds know you didn't, and they are coming to get you. do not ask me what to do when they get you. i'm ass deep in criminal defenses as i write, and i will probably drown in them before i get the call. also, it would be against rules of professional conduct for me to give advice. this is a thing i have learned. it will not be on this exam, whereas myriad nuanced and incredibly detailed aspects of criminal law i have yet to fully penetrate (sorry, working on the rape materials right now) are more likely to be the order of the day in, uh, less than two days. shit.

fuck auto format

caffeine + nicotine = some progress. but the auto format function of word cuts both ways. sometimes it is really nice and other times it fucks my shit up so bad i spend more time trying to make things appear to have some semblance of organization than i do writing things down. why don't i just turn it off? one, i don't remember where that function is, and i am not about to ask a damn animated paper clip how to find it and two, sometimes it works well. why so inconsistent? remember when word was made by microsoft and how it still is? that's why. can't bitch too much since my beloved diet coke is sort of doing the same thing, fueling my progress while causing the distraction of having to get up and piss like every half hour. the sun is already on its way down, meaning it is past four. by five i will have to study under the dreaded overhead light as the pleasing lamp does not give enough light from its location. life is just not fair.

another hour

and i have accomplished nothing more. half was due to eating, the other half was due to not wanting to disturb the cat on my lap. he seemed so happy and comfortable. i think they will miss me. they have not offered to take my exams to get me to stay around though. i now plan to waste ten minutes or so choosing music. i also just noticed that my computer was running on battery power because i set the plug next to the power strip instead of actually plugging it in. this is going swimmingly. i got sick of my computer asking to restart for updates and reset it. without saving the notes i've been making while studying. i've made so little recent progress that word recovered the whole document. mixed blessing. moving forward with a big glass of diet coke and some '73 dead. most of those shows are longer than three hours with more than 25 cuts, and they don't even have drums and space segments (no mickey). i'll say it again, '73 was a great year for the dead. and 2003 was a great year for doritos.

bad at studying

too much effort for too little payoff day after day after day.
i want to get drunk.
it is about noon.
thanks, four-hour exams.

when am i going to post again?

sometime shortly after i stop becoming more depressed and boring with every passing day. ha ha ha. i've honestly tried to post a couple of times and i've been pretty unhappy with the attempts, which is why they are not here. things are pretty sad when blogging seems like too much work. well, sometimes that is the issue, and other times it seems like i am incapable of typing anything even the generous perusers of this backwater blog would not feel cheated to have read. the past several surgeons general have been derelict in their duty by failing to make public warnings about the possible harmful side effects of legal education; the whole ordeal has harmed my brain. studies show this, man.
classes ended yesterday, leaving me with little more than fumes left in the proverbial tank. when i was running my mouth about going back to school and leaving the widely disparaged world of wage labor, i often fielded questions about the difficulty of transitioning from work to education. i wrote that shit off writ large; i felt like school was something i had a long background in and would be more than happy to return to the friendly confines thereof. i was sort of wrong, of course. law school is a horse of a different color. magenta, i believe. but the peculiarities of law school extend beyond pedagogy to the scope of swallowing one's life wholesale. that is something else i had counted on. not that i have been able to bring myself to attack law school with the same zealous unabating (marked, what the hell?) fervor some of my contemporaries display. but i have spent a lot more time on this bullshit than i recall ever spending simply on school, and also significantly more time just worrying when not working. in short, school work never followed me home the way it does these days, and the end result is exhaustion.
which brings up the sore and unavoidable subject of finals. yes, they're coming, like they have been for an awful long time. so i'm going to have to dig real deep in the pocket and try and scrape together some brainpower (not marked as one word), motivation, and focus to make it through this most critical pass in hellish unnecessary and entirely avoidable mountain range known as law school. today was most unproductive, and i really feel more bored than bad about it. oh well, that time was killed earlier today, with a vengeance (who knew how to spell that? be honest). the point is, as is my wont, i perpetually disregarded advice about progressive outlining. you know, authorities at law school are constantly telling you about all this bullshit you're supposed to be doing to avoid being unequivocally fucked, but the problem is these are the same people who repeat mantras about making time for things which are not law school. the two approaches simply cannot be reconciled. given that much, i'll take the one where law school doesn't take up every minute of existence.
one last complaint about the way law school is run: yesterday marked the seventy-fourth anniversary of the enactment of the twenty-first amendment, repealing the eighteenth and worst. this fact failed to find its way into either class i had, however. in a profession where drinking is at least approved if not outright encouraged and which is supposedly concerned with the fucking law, you would think someone would have brought celebratory beer. despite this lack, both classes concluded with rounds of applause for the profs though, which was fairly odd. they were both quite good, really. i will say that other classes have ended, none of which finished with appreciative clapping. *cough cough terriblefuckingtortsclasswithineffectiveunhelpfulprof cough*
but what was that i was saying about getting more boring every day? maybe i shouldn't talk about law school. the other day i had the distinct pleasure of viewing r. kelly's "trapped in the closet" chapters one through twenty with my sister and some of her folks. i cannot recall the last time i encountered such a source of entertainment where i walked away mostly just thinking that i had been adequately entertained and not much more. not that scholarly questions are irrelevant to the whole piece, in fact i had many, but damn was it a good time. if you are unfamiliar, you should avail yourself somehow. i know that netflix can help. one of my facorite moments was the lead-in to the second act where eventually multiple r. kelly figures appear in outrageous white suits harmonizing the phrase "oh shit" while retelling the story to that point. to improve the experience further, one of my sister's friends brought over some gourmet chocolate. now, i'm not real huge on chocolate, but it can really hit the spot sometimes. here's the thing: this chocolate was no ordinary chocolate. the credibility of this bar did not come from its cocoa percentage or national pedigree or anything. no, this was a chocolate beyond all chocolates, a previously unthought (fuck that marking) culinary concept. this, friends, was bacon chocolate. actual chocolate bar with actual bacon in it. yeah, that's what we thought too. could be really good or really terrible. it was really good. like i could not have possibly imagined it being. this was unquestionably my best chocolate related experience of all time, and certainly helped to heighten what was my best r. kelly related experience of all time. that dude has a serious midwestern (also marked, whatever) accent. more serious than i have ever contemplated. overall, i guess i'd have to say my mind was blown. look at that, i can use the passive voice without getting bitched at. if you bitch at me for using the passive voice, i sentence you to two semesters of legal writing. that'll learn ya. learn ya real good. legal writing is like bizarro writing: if you're bad at the real thing but you're smart, you'll probably be good at legal writing. if you're good at real writing, whether you're smart or dumb, fuck you. legal people apparently hate people who know how to write like human beings.
wasn't i going to move on from yammering about that shit? oh yeah, i was also talking about how it swallows everything in my life. that causes these things to happen. well, one of my favorite distractions from it lately has been reading this really really nice dead book i have. mostly appealing to the dead fan, of course, but actually a beautiful collage of all sorts of historically meaningful photos, thing is all set out time line style, national news events included. lots of great stuff, despite the purported dead focus. not that such was a problem for me. oddly, my favorite part to read is the small bit about the very last tour in summer of 95. i don't really know why that is. perhaps just that so many things go wrong and the entire experience was basically just shit, which is how i feel about my position sometimes. i don't know. i like the fact that a book about a band is forthcoming about the painful experiences and mostly forthcoming about the problems, although they leave out some things like portable toilets (with occupants) getting turned over by gate crashers at like half the shows that tour. but the book still includes most of the big stuff. the band constantly played with about TWENTY THOUSAND ticketless motherfuckers outside every gig, creating quite the incubator for problems. even the first show, way up in vermont, had so many riotous fools that they had to open the gates to avoid a disaster. the band didn't even play well. they go down to jersey and jerry sits out for whole songs. they go to upstate (not marked) new york and a bunch of fans and cops get hurt in the ruckus. they go to d.c. and lighting strikes. literally. three people. the weather is shitty for a bunch of the tour. they go to the palace of auburn hills and things actually go alright. imagine that, detroit being the bright spot of your ginormous stadium tour. the band goes to pittsburgh and gets poured on again, but they play like four songs with rain in the title to coincide. pretty cool, but not as good as the band actually playing well. they cut back to deer creek in indiana, where some asshole phones in a death threat against jerry. they still play, but with the lights all on, and in the middle of the first set, the band shows a little humor and plays dire wolf, where the chorus goes "don't murder me, i beg of you, don't murder me, please, don't murder me". about this time, as many as five thousand people crash the gates, and people inside help them get in. ugly scene. the cops don't like it, and refuse to act as security for the next night, and the band has to cancel the show. they go down to missouri and play with the house lights on again. show goes ok, but the rain keeps coming down and a bunch of people cram onto some cabin porch and the whole building collapses, injuring like 100. then they made it to chicago, and if you care about any of this you know enough about the last shows already. the last one is a fine show in my book, say what you will. the best part is after the tour is over and jerry is getting on the bus, he says he had a great time and wishes the tour didn't have to end. little did he know it was over for good. ah, the dead. they were the band for a lot of times and a lot of places. mostly america, so america, in the best sense of the term.
speaking of which, i'm about to get back into a little more america via another legal observing gig, hopefully. the big stink in town recently has been about this casino they're supposed to put in fishtown. the state supreme court recently told the city government they were not allowed to drag their feet anymore and had to hand over the permits. the neighborhood is not pleased. there is some general disapproval thing going on saturday and people who are not authorized to hang out on the premises of what will become said casino will do just that. has the potential to be a little more volatile than the peace chain thing i did before. mostly i'm looking forward to seeing a little bit of the city i have not been to yet, and hoping things go alright. as long as it doesn't rain on me all day again, it should all be alright. may have a few more notes to jot down than last time though; this isn't the sort of happening that has a permit and such. legal observing is a great crucible for immersing oneself in the actuality of legal happening though. personal sympathies aside, one must track the facts as they happen as best as can be. stranger in a strange land (still haven't read it? fuck is wrong with you?) has a pretty good legal observer concept in the form of a "fair witness". just another fictional job i would love to have. fuckin' jobs. either i can't have 'em or they aren't real, or if real are fairly impractical. aquarium owner!?!?
so somewhere in all this mess, christmas is still supposed to happen. i phoned my mother earlier to attempt to articulate a minimal list of potential gifts she had asked for. unfortunately she either did not hear or did not understand my lead-in to this part of the conversation and proceeded to let me know what other family members might want as presents. this led to a fairly awkward juncture where i really did not know what to say, because i am probably not funded well enough to get anyone anything more than a dollar deuce or maybe their favorite item from a fast food value menu (this was all offset by a previous conversation with my father wherein he spoke of avoiding calories so he could save them for taking me out for lunches with heady brews and dank food; bad nutrition science, great logic, appraised via ourcome). the worst part is that i could not manage to artfully transition from that explanation to answering the original query from a separate talk about what i might want from those who may be better funded and disposed to give me uh, something. well, whatever. the saddest thing is that i will not be at all disappointed upon receiving gifts of socks and underwear. i need that shit. you might be getting old if something that was used as a device of terror to motivate you to compile a christmas list in your teenage years is now a perfectly acceptable suggestion. but it has gotten tougher to work up a list as legos lost their appeal. what now? septa tokens? do the state-run wine and spirits shoppes sell gift certificates? they probably have gift cards which only function properly at the nicer outlets not located near to my apartment.
well, for all of my complaints, i must say i'm alright overall for the moment. sometimes things work out suitably. it is not impossible to have a good day. it just takes a lot of bad ones to put things into perspective sometimes. other times it just takes something you've been missing that you know full well could improve everything all at once to come back into play. right now i want to check back into my blog and find that link to the website for jsnack connoisseurs and join in a community that feels like i do about the herr's kettle cooked sour cream and onion potato chips i'm eating right now (hint: i feel pretty good about them). the world is a crazy place with no good answers, but i feel like junk food must fit in there some place important. if it doesn't, that would only further negative perceptions about the national way of life. this is not something anyone needs at this point. like this post getting longer. i missed you too. and not editing posts, fucking school.