compacts clause

i am at school doing a few things, including sitting around and wasting time doing this. i have begun my summer job working as a research assistant for one of the profs i had last semester. i don't actually need to be at school to do most of the work, it seems, but i stopped by today in hopes of catching the prof i am working for. i wanted to ask him about registration, which closes today. he, of course, is not here. that's okay. the school is a strange place in the off-season. there are still a lot of people around. massive groups of asians. i have heard the front desk clerk expound upon the virtues of her lunch, a salad, at least four times. i have almost memorized the elements of the salad. lots of people just filtering through, too, some profs, some students, who knows what else. overall, not near as unbearable as it normally is. or maybe it just seems that way because i haven't been in for a couple of weeks. also on the good side is that the school no longer smells like a subway garbage can that someone puked in. i don't know if i mentioned this, but during the exam period the whole damn law building smelled awful due to repeated flooding related to problems with the heating and cooling system. fuckin' sweet is what that was. fortunately none of the rooms i took my exams in were egregiously foul; i walked past the room where people who were handwriting took the exams and about lost my lunch. strangely, i kind of appreciate the fact that this massive flaw in the structure developed at a totally inopportune time. it gives flavor to my law school experience. i bet you very few people i will meet from other schools will be able to relate similar terrible problems. go us.
anyway, like i said, i'm supposedly doing research. i know other people who are more or less doing the same thing. except all of them have like gone to these bullshit training sessions and have filled out some stupid paperwork and yeah. i am sort of concerned about the prospects of getting paid as i have not gone through any of this. i anticipate speaking with my hiring prof about this. on the other hand, i will be thrilled if i get to dodge the training session, because it is a lesson for people who do not know how to use a library. i know how to use a library. i wish i had a large library named after me so i could threaten people by truly claiming that i have a library and i am not afraid to use it.
my research seems to be pretty obscure. my top result for one of the things i am looking into, this agreement between some states and the province of manitoba, was a pdf of a memo that some senator sent to my prof when my prof worked in the state department a few years back. i don't know if he quit before he got an answer for this dude or what, but what the prof is asking me to do is pretty much what he got asked to do in this memo. not exactly, but kind of. the point is, i don't know how much i'm gonna be able to tell this guy that he doesn't alreay know, but i will try my best. my best includes sitting around and typing this. i don't know if i am on the clock or what or how people keep track or anything. whatever, i've sifted through a lot of bullshit already and i've had enough for the moment.
i am also waiting (oh man here comes the salad speech again, i should have remembered my headphones) to maybe hear back from another prof i emailed about this class he is teaching next semester. i kind of want to hear what he has to say before i click the final registration button. what do you know, after fighting with the always-problematic wireless for a moment, i got a reply. however, the reply says he forwarded the email i sent him to the other person he's teaching the class with and now i'm going to wait for the other guy to get back to him so he can get back to me again. got that? it was real important. i originally was just gonna try and register for it and see what happened, but judging by the tone of the reply it is probably a good thing i didn't. my special dispensation is pending, and probably will be while i write the rest of this post because this is pretty much what i am going to do while i wait. i've been meaning to update anyway. anyway, the class is a colloquium and there are only like 36 seats, so i probably won't get in anyway; i'm pretty low on the registration ladder. on the other hand, so many people here are so job-focused that they might not be interested in talking about law and human behavior from the viewpoints of various disciplines. sounds like fun to me.
god, here i am out of school for the summer and yet all i have to talk about is school. it just never stops. i have done other things, sort of. i went down to jam on the river on sunday because it was free due to some sort of scheduling problem and cancellations. it was good people watching but it was overall just kind of strange. i didn't go all day, just at the end. the whole thing was sponsored by captain morgan, which is pretty tacky and lame, but someone had to pony up the bucks. they had some pretty bizarre promotional stuff going on, including some dude made to look like captain jack sparrow moreso than the captain morgan on the bottle. that would be a strange job. they used the same lettering as bonnaroo, which makes me stop and be like, what? silly people, silly place. it was kind of cool to be right next to the water. the music wasn't bad but it could have been better. lotus is okay, but the first day was the flaming lips and the disco biscuits. i would pay 20 or 25 bucks to see either of those bands on their own at a venue, but not 45 to see them both at once in what amounted to a parking lot (first day was someplace different than second day). poor festival marketing on their part. i wonder if anyone has worked out the mechanics of the most profitable summer music festivals. i'm sure someone has; rothbury is definitely a clear channel event. i would be curious to hear the conclusions on what makes a successful festival though. there are so many every summer now, it is kind of unbelievable. some people and many bands actually call memorial day to labor day "festival season". it wasn't always like this, was it? was i just unaware? most of the big ones on the circuit have celebrated their tenth birthday, but i don't think any big ones are much older than that. i got a flier for a totally half-ass festival when i was leaving jam on the river, some place on the PA/OH border. they had nothing. no bands i had ever heard of on the actual bill (except one who gave me their cd at that TLG show) . i'm guessing most of it is pittsburgh or cleveland area bands. i don't know. the weird thing was that there was also a drum and bass/deejay stage and i had actually heard of a good chunk of those performers. strange to have a secondary stage (in a cave, too) with better-known acts than the primary stage. in summation, i am not going to that bullshit.
in other news, most of my friends from school have left for rome for the summer to take classes. i wish i was there, but it was not so practical. i am at peace with this. the upshot is that one of my friends has left his ps3 with me while he is gone, so i will be playing the shit out of gta4 for the next six weeks. i am looking forward to this. i was looking forward to it, anyway, when i tried to make it actually work. nothing doing. fortunately, someone else found the answer to my problem. the console was freaked because i was feeding it through a vcr, which it regards as a 6 year old might regard a record. turned out i had to just keep holding to power button down after i turned it on. of course. why wouldn't holding the power button down for an extra fifteen seconds reset the defaults? whatever, it works now, and part of the reason i hauled my ass all the way to school was to resist the temptation to keep playing it while i should be accomplishing a couple of other things. like typing this and downloading music while nominally stalled from accomplishing anything else as i wait and constantly refresh my inbox and achewood, which hasn't updated in like forty-eight hours and is threatening to send me into withdrawal.
last friday i neglected to check myself. consequently, i wrecked myself. pretty bad. i was actually carrying the remnants of a case, and therefore had strange hand positioning that led to some really strange back of the hand injuries. the real problem is my knee. not a real problem, like it was the day after, but it does not look so great. i'm just glad that it works; i couldn't walk so hot the day after. these things happen. but i am back at it. possibly related to this fall is the continuing decline of my venerable crocs. i think they might have to be retired to household use only, and i should probably get real-people sandals as well. i might do that on my way home from here, if i ever make it out. two hours until the registration deadline, will i get this email before then? will the day be saved or will the world end? the suspense is killing me. i should probably go have a cig.

penn christmas

it is that time of the year. we've all witnessed the mounds of debris that accumulate following the end of the school year in the face of looming move-out-by dates. but i have seen nothing in this league. this isn't just grab some functional shit and hold a garage sale material; there are several things worth taking and keeping, including a bunch of shit that has literally never been used. i personally kept it to a minimum because i could easily imagine myself thinking things useful and deciding upon move-out that they are not so useful as to be moved. we spent very nearly all our time in front of one house with fifty feet of curb covered in crap, in some cases the general connotation of crap, and other cases the bad connotation kind of crap. thankfully no literal crap. strangely, one of the girls who lived at the house responsible for the pile and a friend of hers came out and poked around a little with us. they were chatting about how wasteful the whole thing is, which confused me as it was presumably partially their shit. turned out it belonged almost exclusively to other already-gone roommates. in any event, they were really nice and let us in to see if we could find anything else we might want. some things are better gotten from directly inside a house than off the curb on a day when it rained heavily in the morning and afternoon. we helped them clear out the fridges (yes, plural) and gave us most of the beer leftovers, few cans of bud/coors light, whatever it was free. i kept some ethernet cable, an extension cord, a wine key, and a flask. the flask is like new; probably used once. my buddy found it inside a bag inside of something else. you do have to sift to find the good stuff.
i wasn't interested in accumulating large items or additional kitchenware (TONS of it), but other people made some serious scores. one dude had a poker table, one of the nice ones with all the notches and stuff. he wound up with a set of what appeared to be almost never used golf clubs in a nice bag from the basement of this same house. not that i'm gonna golf, but that shit is worth a bunch of money. same guy also wound up with a hookah, also in the basement. one passerby enthusiastically seized on a bag of women's lacrosse goalkeeper equipment. at this point i was just standing around so i struck up a conversation with the guy. he explained that this was precisely what he had been looking for: padding he could vacuum re-mold. of course. he did not say what he was going to re-mold it into, and i should have asked. somebody else picked around everything for a long time and took only partially empty spice containers. overall, most of what was left around were household essentials, and the heart of the situation is that people decide they would rather purchase the same things over again in some form than move these things with them, for whatever reason. also a disturbing amount of books. that being said, we still did quite well. i helped haul a never-opened package that was a metal shelving unit from ikea, twenty liquor glasses (mostly margarita; now we have no choice but to have a margarita party - tough life out here), a never-used air mattress with auto-pump, a lava lamp in fine condition, a working cell phone with charger (discovered in the following manner: cell phone charger? fuck that, won't work with any phone we knew for sure, twenty minutes later find the cell phone, spend the next half hour finding the charger back), two ziplock bags full of change (these people were literally throwing money away, yes there were quarters), six miro prints in a nice informative laminated sleeve (in synchronicity (marked! fuck you spell check) news, the wikipedia link for the artist refers to steely dan at one point, and i'm currently playing countdown to ecstasy), some other random shit like garlic and shallots and flashlights and a shower clock, and a nifty collapsible handcart to help schlep it all of the few blocks back.
did finally manage to make it through finals at the end of last week if anyone wondered. went pretty well. the foodery did indeed pose the most perplexing situation on friday. it went well, and i am currently enjoying one of the selections, rock art's double esb. pretty good, not unlike a big ipa or a smaller double ipa, 80 ibus and 8 percent abv. only real difference is in the hops, not typical of american ipas. still have a double simcoe ipa in the fridge, looking forward to that.
the kensington kinetic sculpture thing was on saturday and we made it down there. the kinetic sculpture thing had nothing on baltimore, but the race was part of a larger artsy festival thing, which was alright. some serious hipster-watching time. some pretty decent art too, and also some ridiculous stuff for sale for too much money. got to see some parts of the city i hadn't before, and that would have been enough for me anyway. philadelphia brewing company was there, but unfortunately i didn't have any cash; there was also some aromatic food making me wish i had sold my books back earlier. when i did sell them i went to dock street, so all was not lost. anyway, the "race" was a fun thing to do on the first day of nothing to do in some time. it was also my sister's birthday and we went to a bar i enjoyed despite its suspicious location in old city. hoptimus prime on tap is an argument in its favor, but the lack of an unbearable douchebag quotient was most key. a good time was had by all.
i also found out that i did get that research assistant job with my property prof. knowing i have something is a huge load off, especially down to the wire like it was; found out minutes before my last exam. unfortunately i haven't heard back on details since responding to the offer, but i'm sure the guy is busy trying to grade some exams and raise some kids. in any event, i'm looking forward to it, and that is a pleasant change of pace from the cloud of uncertainty about what to do this summer. almost even looking forward to fall semester now that i get to choose a few classes. i spent i good chunk of today trying to get that figured out. one thing i really want to take has these bizarre prerequisite requirements which are basically that you took all the first-year courses and then like one of eight possible other things. i think that is bullshit; if any one of eight classes can qualify, how important can that background be? not important enough to keep me out of this colloquium is the answer to that. law and human behavior is the topic, and i can't think of a whole lot that i would rather study at law school.
technology update: i am getting a new phone. this one still fucks up constantly. it gets better sometimes and then just sucks again when i need it not to do so. i hate how reliant i am on the thing, but it has nonetheless become something i expect will work constantly and it bothers me when it does not. as for the computer, things seem to be going well. i can now just shut the screen and let it hibernate again; for a while i had to shut it down fully or it would start to drain the battery while claiming to be using ac power. unfortunately, i tried to use the computer in a somewhat clumsy state the other evening (mondays at the mill creek, i have returned) and something went wrong with the power supply. i tried to remedy the situation, one thing led to another, and the end result was that one of the prongs for the outlet part of the thing broke off. dismayed, i decided to deal with it in the morning. this morning i recalled when i originally took the computer in to the store. i brought my power supply just in case, and the guy told me i needed a new power supply and so on. he also told me i had to take my old one back with me, stating that it was my trash, not theirs. trash it might be, but fortunately the separable part of the power supply goes from the transformer to the wall, and that chunk from the old one combined with the main part of the new one has me in good shape. lucked out big time on that one.
tomorrow i still do not have any real work to do. i will try to clean some i think. if it is nice out i will probably make the trek to get another bag of outrageously priced cat food. maybe do a little grocery shopping. also hoping to get my first crack at grand theft auto 4. i don't care what anybody has to say about it, good or bad, i just want to play it. i am pretty sure it will rule. i haven't played regular video games in a while, so we'll see how it goes. not a bad agenda to have.

technolo-hah

screw you, technology. fuck you. turnabout is fair play, after all. i'm sure most of you recall my recent delightful adventures surrounding the untimely demise of the power supply to my laptop. these things happen, i understand. but it just keeps getting better all the time. a couple days ago, my half-ass wireless provider announced that it would become no-ass, a.k.a. no longer provide residential wireless service. thanks, folks. maybe blowing all your money on an advertising campaign centered around bus stops for like six months wasn't the best call. on the other hand, it is probably not all their fault. this is, after all, "comcast country". they've got the building to prove it now. anyway, i've got a little less than a month before they stop offering service. i guess this relieves any worries i might have had about getting out of any possible service contract i might have agreed to (although my education has also informed me of several other possible defenses). however that all turns out, the old adage about things in threes held together here: my phone is now also fucking with me. the screen does not turn on when i open the phone, and none of the buttons are responsive. the end result is that i cannot call or text anyone. i apparently can receive phone calls, although i only got one and i expected another. i don't even know how i actually answered the one; the call time on it registered a zero and the phone may or may not have technically picked up when i opened it in response to the call. in any event, i am somewhat less than pleased.
in better news, school is over for the year at noon tomorrow. i couldn't have made it through this with a lot of support from all over, and i appreciate it. it has been one hell of a bullshit ride. hopefully things will close out alright tomorrow; signs point to yes. this is a pretty chilled out exam compared to the others; i get to bring a lot of shit in. the only thing is that we can bring in all the cases, and i am not going to. there was no book, but rather a copy-center supplement that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pages and cost fifty bucks. i declined to purchase it, as none of the cases were edited and i can access all of them on lexis, which i did all semester long. i am by no means a perfect environmental steward, but the idea of printing 500 pages for one day where i would use something like one percent of them seemed pretty horrific. it also would have been a pain in the ass to print it all out. i typed up a synopsis for each case as part of my review, and hopefully that will be sufficient. we'll find out soon enough, i guess.
i'm just ready to be done at this point, and i'm glad that feeling didn't crop up so early this semester. last time, i was ready to be done from day one, and by the time exams rolled around i was sleep-walking through every day just ticking down the hours until i got to go back to some things and people i knew and loved in a place where i could feel comfortable as myself. people change constantly on their own in an organic way, but sometimes there is a marked discontinuity in one's life and the resultant identity crisis is a little more unbearable. in the immortal words of t-rex (the comic dinosaur, not the band), the ravages of puberty leave no-one unscathed. that is one thing everyone has to go through, but i think it is comparable to some extreme changes people go through at other points in their lives. not that i've done any growing up recently, but i do know that when i came here i had a lot of problems just making it through each day and i don't feel that way anymore.
i've been doing a little more simple cookery lately, and i do enjoy that. nothing wild because that would require a couple investments i cannot afford to make right now. but i was fixated on making a couple things recently. for some reason i really really wanted veggie tacos. for like a couple days, until i just had to do it. i almost relented and made real ones but i couldn't find the frozen ground turkey i always use, so veggie it would be. there is some boxed dry mix i used to get and use back home, but i couldn't find it out here, so i went with one of those fake beef things that looks like the frozen ground turkey, all in that tube thing. textured soy protein or whatever, beats tofu in my book. they turned out great. today i made a heady delish pizza with pesto, six cheese blend that did not have enough fontina, and capicola (prosciutto HOLY SHIT I SPELLED IT RIGHT is too expensive). that's alright, i love capicola. i left it in just a touch longer than i would have liked, but it turned out just fine. i have way too much cheese, but garlic bread was on sale so hopefully i can work it to throw the cheese on the bread at the right time in cooking so as to fully toast the bread without burning the cheese. the mixture of frozen and refrigerated goods is tricky business, for me anyway. i've got some tomato sauce that has to go, and bread with red sauce is a fine meal in my book, so no complaints about all that.
the never-ending quest for good music continues, as always, with moderate success. you know, ups and downs, strikes and gutters. some dude gave me a fairly professional cd at the show last week (hey! i'm missing a show right now!). i figured i'd check it out; the last time someone at a show gave me a cd of a band i didn't know anything about it was back forty (i'm listening to an old one of theirs right now - opening for smokestack, the ann arbor band that couldn't miss but did). it was considerably less professional, but the content was far superior to what i wound up with last week. some band called the big dirty, mediocre funk-rock semi-jazzy fusion thing. vocals are thankfully minimal, as they are totally atrocious. if they want to get rid of these cds, they should probably keep giving them away. fortunately, the archive has provided me with some more than listenable material. the current new pick is SeepeopleS. i thought it was a pretty dumb name, but they have a bit of a buzz going on their behalf these days, so i figured i would check them out. i'm satisfied. what they do isn't the most original thing i've ever heard, but i think they do what they do well. contemporary neo-psychedelic indie rock/pop. easy to pick out the massive radiohead/flaming lips/perry ferrel influence, but there is some other stuff going on there too. i can dig it, worth checking out if you are a fan of the influences as it is somewhat derivative. in my book, that doesn't damn a band when they pick a certain part of the breadth of someone else's work and go deeper, which is what these guys do. the guy sounds great with a ton of vocal effects going, but without them he veers into trite nasal indie bullshit sound. the musicianship is unimpeachable, however, especially the drumming, which is not usually something that jumps out at me. the band overall has a nice big sound with massive sonic waves cresting and crashing, mostly courtesy of the keyboard work. worth a try if you're looking for something along those lines.
i realize some people have a freshly functional record player to revel in, but i am surprised no one has had anything to say about the owlandbear link from the other day. there is some seriously good music on that site, and something for just about everyone that you'd have a hell of a time finding anywhere else. if you didn't look, maybe you should, i'm just sayin'. and while you're looking, also check that foodery link to witness the sheer selection. choosing will hopefully be the most difficult thing about tomorrow.

one about religion...

or about washing your car... actually it's about opening a pair of curtains. this is how bruce dickinson introduces "revelations" on live after death, and it has always cracked me up. actually listening to the studio cut off piece of mind right now, but i was reminded, one of those classic pieces of banter that doesn't quite make sense. my favorite bruce intro, though, is definitely for the rime (not marked - rock on spell check, let that old school stuff slide) of the ancient mariner: "the moral of this story is this is what not to do if a bird shits on you". if you know the poem but not the adaptation i highly suggest you avail yourself; you'll be surprised at the faithfulness maiden has to the original. in any event, this is a great album and i'm glad i threw it on, just one great track after another. next thing you know i'll go back to actually introducing myself as metal.
so i guess tonight is friday. overall it doesn't so much feel like it. more like a sunday night, as i have a lot of work to look forward in the next couple of days. i am absolutely exhausted. on the other hand, some friday is maintained by the fact that i have given myself the night off, more or less.
i guess i sort of gave myself the night off last night too, although not as much of that night was off. i had spent the last few days destroying my brain with constitutional law, trying to recall all i had done through the semester, memorize case names and holdings. like i said before, there was a ton of shit to cover. i spent most of yesterday trying to compose my one side of one printed page of notes i was allowed to bring in. i went with eight point font and the slimmest margins the printer would let me have, something in the neighborhood of .16 inches or something. i thought that was extreme enough, but you should have seen the shit some other people brought in. all rigged up with with like four columns, some serious gnat's ass condensed fonts, like 5.5 point. one dude had managed to fit in something about all ninety nine cases we were technically assigned. the concern, though, for most people was the almost equal amount of cases the prof mentioned in passing in class, which he explicitly said we should also know. a lot to freak out about. so i did my best to cover as much ground as possible. people get so ridiculous about these things, a buzz was going around that one of the three essays was going to be about executive power and the war on terrorism and military tribunals. of course, even though everyone was so sure it would be on there, it wasn't. i hope those motherfuckers spent all their time on it; it was one of the few things i left off my one page of notes. look, just because a recent past exam or two had it on there, it doesn't follow that it will be on this one. if anything, i would think that makes it less likely. profs put old exams on file so that students can see the sort of questions they ask, not so students know what questions will be on the exam. on the other hand, like i said, i tried to cover an awful lot of ground over the past few days. almost all for naught. the purview of the exam was shockingly narrow; all three questions dealt with fundamental liberties under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to some extent. fortunately, this was something i understood pretty well and had included some good points on in my notes. i really feel like i rocked the first question, which was actually half and not a third of the grade, so that's good. the other two questions were alright too, just not as clear cut as the first one. overall, i feel good about it, probably even better than any exam at law school thus far.
and it's a good thing too, because as i mentioned i kind of took last night off. as threatened, i went to that tea leaf green show rather than spend the dying hours of last night trying to cram more shit into my brain. damn, did i ever make the right call. it is a good feeling. nothing i would have done last night would have left me any better off during the exam than i was. i went into the show kind of nervous, though, and not just about my possible misuse of time. no, i was worried about the show, and, naturally, the set list. my buddy who has seen considerably more shows at this venue than i have made extensive claims of curfew limitations, possibly as early as eleven. plus, their most recent show was in delaware and it was only one set. although it was a short show, it featured a few nuggets i had reason to believe would probably not surface two shows in a row. however, they had not played what is probably my favorite cut and certainly one of their more enduring and popular tracks in a few days, so i was hopeful for that if nothing else. so curfew concerns and all i went in. the opening band was pretty cool, bunch of veteran musicians. six people, probably in their sixties, although it is hard to tell. being a longtime touring musician (especially coming out of the sixties and inhabiting the fringes of what is now the "jam" world), i feel, takes a certain toll that makes one look perhaps older than one is. one dude in this band was like neil young status haggard, and a couple others weren't too far off. regardless, it was awesome to see people like that having an absolute ball doing what they do, and presumably have been doing for decades. one dude played a phenomenal pedal steel, which is a sound i will not tire of in the foreseeable future. skilled and entertaining as they were, they were not the band i showed up to see, and given curfew concerns i grew anxious as they went about fifteen minutes over their allotment (i know because they said so). i figured if time constraints were real, the equipment change-out would be expedient, but no, still the customary half-hour or so. i couldn't wait for the main event to get rolling. and then it did. and it was pretty excellent; i know i was psyched. even with a favorite band, though, everyone has some songs they dig more than others. the ones that fall into my ideal category were not dominating the set, but it was still great, and actually gave me more appreciation of the songs that don't fit into my top twenty five for the band. the way things were proceeding, i was pretty sure they were moving toward winding things up, and eagerly awaited the inimitable "sex in the 70s", the aforementioned crown jewel of the repertoire, but to no avail. at the end of the set the band broke out the old companion song to one that hasn't taken a vacation from recent shows, and that was a nice treat, but it looked to be about all and i staked my hopes on the encore as i nervously glanced at the time on my phone. as they finished up the breakout tune and the guitarist approached the mic, i expected the perfunctory thank you and have a good night, but instead heard the magic words "stick around, we'll be right back". two sets it was going to be after all, no curfew kibosh. i was so jazzed i could hardly stand it, and when they went back on there was not one millisecond of disappointment, and a lot more of what i had been hoping to hear. i particularly reveled in the sentiment of one of my particular favorites, "piss it away", given my present circumstances (even though the choice is mine/i make the wrong one every time). it was about all i could ask for, and when we got about as deep as we were gonna go, they launched into the one i had been betting on and waiting for. perfect way to close it out, i figured, and started to wonder about the encore. to my great delight, however, i had gotten out in front of things; the set had some gas in the tank and they made a slick transition into one of their older super funky quasi-disco numbers that once upon a time had been a common lead-in to the song they had just played. it sizzled like the crowd, total throw-down at the hoedown. but it was the encore that finally and conclusively melted my face. two tracks i hadn't dared hold out hope for, both delivered in blistering fashion. but that wasn't all, they sealed the deal with a great tongue-in-cheek thrash number called death cake (i used to be a love muffin... now i am a... DEATH CAKE! death cake motherfucker!). at that point i wasn't sure if i had made the right decision or not in foregoing study time, but i did know without a doubt that i had one of the best times i might ever have. the exam going good in the morning was the icing on, well, on the death cake, i guess. things gotta work out right sometimes, and this was perfect timing for just such an instance.
i am currently auditioning magic hat's newest seasonal. when i saw the label, i was initially confused but then recalled a visit to the website which specified the scheme i had not seen in practice: the same name for a beer that changes four times a year. there is a small part of the label that specifies the season, but always in the overall form of odd notion [season]. apparently the marketing folks at magic hat think it is cool to call four different beers the same thing, presumably as part of the broader goals of furthering specific branding and tapping into the market of people who will always try a new beer. i for one appreciate breweries doing seasonal things, as beer is quite easy to fit to some specific times of the year, and there is a fine tradition of doing so. on the other hand, i dislike the sacrifice of creativity in the name of marketing. i enjoy this beer and will have lots of great things to say about it in a moment, but these alleged seasonals are never very drastic, mostly just middle of the road stuff, albeit quite well done. the summer version is malty as all get out, a little syrupy for summer, but surprisingly roasty at first quickly moving to a lingering sweetness with a fruit juice sort of aftertaste. not as overdone as the apricot in number nine, and not as cloying, and somehow almost as sweet. i wouldn't be surprised if the recipes were mostly similar apart from what seems like some medium belgian in this one and the actual fruit flavor in no. 9. if not the malt bill, then almost certainly the yeast. flavorful and pleasant, but not in a specifically summery (not marked) way. the juxtaposition of the initial roastiness and relatively viscous body to the light, acidic sweetness after it is what makes this a worthwhile brew to check out. good beer, but i'm glad i bought a single and not a six pack, and that to me is the biggest indictment of its claim to summer. my personal favorite summertime beer is still the kolsch that goose island makes. i wonder i f i will be able to find that out here. whether i do or not, i'm sure there will be some other options available that i am as yet unfamiliar with. the foodery beckons. click the link that simply says 'beer' and it will be immediately apparent why. one more week...
also, this post was not about religion. i guess that is the punchline?

land of pleasant living

not that the living has been all pleasant, or entirely unpleasant. although i am unsure if i am actually within the bounds of the land of pleasant living. i've been a fan of the phrase for a while, but only recently had it properly contextualized. like a surprising number of things in clutch tunes, this was a reference to something geographically specific, namely the label on the notorious national bohemian beer. the beer is a totally decent cheap beer, quite pabst-like, and somewhere in the neighborhood of ten dollars a case. something to be said for that. in any event, i'm sure the label has said that for a long time, and it was made in baltimore for a long time, but is now made in milwaukee, unsurprisingly. as a matter of fact, heileman makes it, along with such hits as carling black label and old style.
oh, but i was not in maryland to gather knowledge about clutch references or merely to purchase natty bo (i only recently discovered the beer is called national bohemian and not that), rather, i did indeed attend the kinetic sculpture race. it covered a lot more time and ground than i thought it would, and it was an awful lot of fun. day started off gray and cold but got really excellent just after noon or so. seeing an enormous pink poodle sculpture piloted in and out of a harbor by people dressed as marie antoinette is surreal in one of the finest ways possible. one of my favorite sculptures involved a giant blue wombat, but the best part was that the people piloting all played instruments while doing so, even in the water. had a small drum kit mounted and everyone else played some kind of a horn, couple saxophones and trombones, a trumpet, good stuff. the water was probably the most fun to watch, but i really enjoyed the next leg too, which was in this park that has a wikipedia page it turns out is not worth linking. anyway, the park has quite a hill, is huge, had something to do with a civil war battle, and most importantly has a sixty foot pagoda built at the top of the hill. and yes, you can go in and up to the top, and the view is amazing. and yet, somehow, that isn't where the one picture on that wikipedia page is taken from. yeah, i guess a camera is a decent thing to have and they're cheap now and such, but it is too late now. the good news is that plenty of other people do, and the official recap of this year's race includes some really awesome pictures.
so it turns out that baltimore is really quite close, especially with traffic on a cold, damp saturday morning. but i don't really know how much i want to go back soon except maybe to visit the really cool museum that puts the race on. granted, i saw a limited part of the city, mostly the inner harbor area, but i was pretty underwhelmed. everything looks like it got put up in the last twenty years or so, i kind of expected a more historical feel. i'm sure there is plenty of that too. and if i really wanted, i could probably also easily find locations approximated on the wire. only the view from the pagoda convinced me that the place is a for real city. i guess they went from about 950k people in 1950ish to about 650k by the 90s. ouch. and yet their benches proudly proclaim their current motto: baltimore - the best city in america. that is some bold shit. and honestly, i don't think some big ass business is gonna move to your city because all your benches talk about how awesome your city is. on the other hand, there is a lot of construction going on in the center part of the city, and population is starting to rise again, so they must be doing something right. i think mostly it's that the city had a huge harbor history that dissipated, but now that it has once again become fashionable to live downtown in a big city, they have some opportunity. being a harbor, they had a ton of abandoned warehouses to tear down and build over and got to skip a good portion of the painful gentrification process. but hey, i'm no urban planning expert.
i also ate in a waffle house for the first time on the way back. the food and service were both shitty, which seemed appropriate. it was a very small one and in kind of a nowhere town not too far from the MD/DE border. the most remarkable thing was the jukebox, which contained about an eighth or so of selections that were songs about waffle house, by waffle house. i wasn't really listening to what was playing while it was on, but it started skipping and this guy got up from the counter (which accounted for about 50% of the seating) and jostled it pretty violently, successfully shutting it up. he was kind of an interesting character: probably a couple years younger than me, 30 years younger than all the other people who conducted themselves as regulars, stuck in an in-between town with a mall, long hair lip ring slayer shirt bondage pants. but he was really pleased about smacking the jukebox and getting it to shut up. sort of like an inverse fonz.
the next day i had a good time in the name of cats. some friends held a backyard benefit for city kitties, a local organization that takes care of strays and gets them foster homes and such. good cause, good people, good times.
unfortunately all of these good things are happening in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death known as finals time. i finally had my first one tuesday. i was getting tired of waiting for them to start, but alternatively i should really wish for all the time possible given that i have an outrageous amount of material to cover. my next one is con law on friday and i think i read six or seven hundred pages of small point text for that this semester; a whole lot of shit to know. and the prof is real scholarly and is bound to have some pretty high expectations. also, he talked about as many cases we weren't assigned as ones we were, and i have no idea how much of that is expected. i will find out with brutality all too soon. even though it is going to be intense, i figured i really wasn't going to do myself that much good with the last four hours of thursday night, and so i am still going to go see tea leaf green. i am psyched.
my first exam was all rooted in one hypothetical factual scenario, which was really quite funny. involved this guy from delaware who had eaten tons of food for his whole life, so much that he had trouble getting ahead. then he discovers competitive eating and wins a couple local events when he finds out about a big time event on the PA border where the food is his favorite of all time, ham and cheese croissants. big prize of 50k, plus every participant gets five free hams, as the event was naturally sponsored by the Happy Ham Corporation. so this guy really wants to gear up for the event, but he can't afford enough sandwiches to train, so he gets a sponsorship with a NJ deli. so he's practicing constantly by eating tons of ham and cheese croissants. one day, his training is derailed by a new flavor of ham, honey hickory, which disgusts him and he can't eat. he's freaking out and he calls the happy ham corporation to ask what ham will be used at the competition and they tell him original, so he's all set. the day arrives, and he's ready to rock, and then he smells it: the dreaded honey hickory ham. he tries to compete but he just gets nauseated and falls way behind. he knows he can't win and he gets super pissed and starts screaming at the CEO of happy ham, pelts him with sandwiches and ethnic epithets. so i had to explain why the case could be in federal court in PA first of all. then it was on to a question of if convicted assault, did the dude forfeit his free hams based on a participation contract demanding contestants comport themselves with dignity and honor (no clear answer on that, actually, hard to say), and all sorts of good stuff like that. so yeah, law school...
speaking of food, i had some incredibly dank dinner last night. i wish i could say that i made it, but i did not. fried artichoke ravioli with one of the most serious sauces i have ever encountered. check it out: sauteed onions and mushrooms, quart of whole milk, pint of heavy cream, probably around six ounces of gorgonzola, half a bottle of cheap champagne, and four pears sliced up all thin, and some requisite low-key things like salt, pepper, and of course a little old bay. but damn. it was so delicious. the champagne and pears lightened things up nicely; it wasn't too rich but instead perfectly savory. man, i am making my mouth water.
i have recently discovered a fairly remarkable repository of live music, leaning much more toward the hip than the hippie. i know some of you all would get excited about some of it, and other things everyone can get excited about. everything from neil young and tom waits to califone, band of horses, and bonnie prince billy. and many more. also the wilco archive is bigger than everything else put together (80 gigs or so vs. 76 - lots of tunes here folks). i think just about everybody could find something to treasure from this trove. and for all you slackers, guess what - you don't even need bit torrent. everything is lossless too. there are a few attractive-looking studio sessions on there as well (including dylan's '65 BBC sessions), if you're not much for the live thing, but just about every band i've heard of on the list there is respected as a live performer.
shit. i have so much to do tomorrow. doable (not marked) though, just have to memorize a couple hundred years of constitutional jurisprudence is all. preferably by 7 pm or so. this also means getting up on time. i hate doing that. but tomorrow i get to wake up early and review what i learned about executive power and the war on terror. definitely the way to start your day, like spilling coffee: painful, upsetting, and jarring.

shenanigans

well it has been a while but it was nearly about to be a whole lot longer. yesterday featured a computer crisis of sorts. it started at school when i went in for a review session; computer would be all plugged in and then somehow nonetheless lose all power. i figured something wasn't plugged in right, messed around for a minute, and it was fine. went home and it kept doing the same thing, getting progressively more and more touchy. i made the mistake of letting all the power run out before i grabbed everything i needed off of it. fortunately, i was able to get it to charge up by pinning the notebook against myself and firmly pressing the ac power connector thing into the jack. problematic, but i managed to run the power up to about 20% of the battery; enough time to get things off it should i need to. given the nature of the problem, i was reasonably certain that the power supply was the offending piece in the puzzle. i wasn't happy about the prospect of buying one, but better to buy a power supply than have to send my computer off for four weeks to get repaired while i kind of need it to study for/take my exams. so buy a power supply it was.
or it was supposed to be. i walked to a nearby computer refurbishing sort of place and explained my situation. the clerk took my laptop and immediately stuck a small screwdriver in the ac jack and wiggled it around, claiming the jack was loose and that was my problem, not the power supply. i wanted to plug a different power supply in to see if it would work, but they were not having it. the original clerk handed off to someone who seemed more in charge and he repeated the process with a pen instead of the screwdriver. told me it would have to bee opened up, very costly he said. well, shit. i wasn't about to shell out for all that cause the computer has a warranty that would cover it. at least i had charged it up, i figured, can always get what i need even if i have to send it off someplace and try and find a way to make due during a time where making due is not an ideal approach; something more is required. but i didn't have a lot of options. i went back home and called the circuit city number on my warranty, which was about as far from helpful as could even be imagined. every path through the automatic routing left me with some other 800 number. the hell with it, i figured. the warranty type lists it as 'walk in' so no matter what i find out, i obviously need to walk into a circuit city someplace at some point. so find a circuit city i was. luckily i do have some driving friends out here, and they were good enough to get me way out to the northeast of the city where the closest circuit city was.
after some minor traffic/directional confusion (the roads up there are all fuckin' slanty, you know, like lake drive in gun rue, no perpendicular intersections at all) we found the place. i busted out the computer again and made my case, this time explaining i believed the problem was with the jack as i had been told. the clerk, who did a good job, immediately rustled up the appropriate jack adapter to test for power over a the power supply he had at the desk. much to my delight, the lights came on - it was the power supply after all. that is the good news. the bad news is that yeah, the jack is kind of loose, but it is sure as hell working for now. also, i still had to buy a new power supply for the time being. the warranty actually covered my power supply though, so they are ordering me a new one, and when it comes in i get that one for free and i can allegedly return the one i had to drop $130 on. this is a good thing. so fingers crossed that the jack doesn't wind up failing me in the middle of an exam. i think i'll be alright. even if that did happen, the exam set-up is designed to handle it i think. i don't know. and i hope i don't find out, really.
so i am home and so is my dear computer. i felt excruciatingly crippled while it was not working. i didn't even know what to do with myself while i killed time waiting for my ride. played some records and some wii, so i guess i got by. but i do realize how dependent on this thing i am. so it goes. in addition for all the enjoyment it provides me, it is also the site of the ongoing battle of the procedure known as civil. that is my first exam. the upside is that we didn't cover half the amount of material we probably did in say con law, but what we did do in civ pro is disgustingly arcane and dry. super dry. dry like trying to eat a dozen saltines in under a minute with no water. apt analogy in that both rapid saltine consumption and civ pro are serious choking hazards. i should check the inside cover of my textbook, i bet it has a warning about not being left near children. warning - book is not a toy. although mine kind of looks like it was used as a soccer ball at some point. note to self - a used book costs the same no matter how used it is or is not. i have probably seen the last of used books for my tenure in legal education though; maybe a couple for the small number of big classes i wind up in, but i hope to mostly be in classes small enough that no one has bothered publishing a book for them. some of them will probably have skinny books that get reprinted every year though, and those will indeed be costly. so much to look forward to.
in other news, i am done with drum. had it, totally. they changed the cut of the tobacco a while ago, and it is my personal belief (rooted in sufficient experience) that not only does it not hand-roll as well, but it also causes it to dry out quicker. as some of you may know, shortly after pouch tobacco dries, it inevitably gets pulverized into tobacco powder. not an advisable source of nicotine. so fuck you drum. you chased me away with your fifty as opposed to sixty papers and pandering to the machine-roll crowd. today, though, i didn't even have any halfzware options (language note - halfzware is dutch and means "half-heavy"). not even (shudder) bali. so i went with samson bright blend, which is essentially, i dunno, quarter heavy? reminds me of american spirit roll in aroma, but is dissimilar in a superior manner to other aspects of said roll. no updates for a week or two, and this is what i have to tell you. i bet it is really tough to get a job as a tobacconist these days. probably you have to be a cigar person, and i'll pass on that business. one of the guys i know from drexel law did that for a few years, maybe i will ask him about employment projections in the tobacco sector.
i am hoping to make it to baltimore this weekend for the kinetic sculpture race. originally i had hoped to go down early and catch hot buttered rum, a pretty good SF bluegrass band. people we know play in an exceptionally entertaining band called hoots and hellmouth (gah i feel dirty linking to myspace), and they are opening and could possibly get us guest list spots. this, however, was before i lost a day's worth of study time to the whole ordeal with the power supply, so we shall see. mostly now i am hoping to make it down there at all, and i suspect that i will, for good or ill. i will of course let y'all know how it turns out. it is things like that where i really wish i had a camera, because guaranteed there is gonna be some cool stuff to see. i'm sure plenty of other people feel the same and have cameras though, so the event will be more than adequately documented. philly is trying to start their own up in kensington this year, and i would like to see that as well and compare the two. also want to get to kensington to check out yards or philadelphia brewing company; i can never remember how that split worked out and who wound up where with what building and who is brewing what on the other's premises. anyway, should be a good time. i believe it is also my sister's birthday then. also, the first day after my last exam. yes, good times in the works. now to make it from here to there.
i did manage to squeeze in quite an evening's entertainment this past friday as well. for all the things i like about my go-to watering hole, i usually do not intentionally go there to see a band. this was the exception. phish cover band i had heard good things about. say what you will, but i certainly had a hell of a time. i have heard quite a few bands play there, and the sound has never been better. they were pretty tight and really focused, did a great job executing some of the trickier moments in what they played. i guess it was the bass player's first real show with them, but the dude could have fooled me. not overbearing, but always solid and audible in the mix. last friday was also my last day of class, so the show was really towards the end of what served as plenty of a self-congratulatory afternoon. for all of that, i could probably give you a set list from memory. just can't help myself sometimes.
my employment prospects have recently improved from none at all to something i would like to do that i might actually get to do. just a research assistant gig for one of my profs, but i really like the stuff he works on and we had a pretty good talk the other day. sounds like he would actually have plenty of work for me to do, which is also a plus since some research assistant jobs at law schools do not involve quite so scholarly a professor. i was glad our discussion went well though because i have not gone out of my way to make waves in property, which is what i have him for. on the other hand, i have had the answer whenever he calls on me, so that bodes well. he is always trying to pull something, asking me when he catches me yawning or looking otherwise possibly disengaged. no man, i'm there, i'm just not going to waste everyone's time with what i think. we have plenty of other people doing that already. oh, and check this shit out. a couple of other people naturally put in an app of some sort with this professor for this gig. one of them happens to be that voice-like-nails-on-a-chalkboard harpy who has plagued my education all year. here is the best part though: that bitch ALREADY HAS a fucking research assistant job with another prof. i know because one of my friends also already has a similar job, and they all had some orientation thing recently, which is how i found out yet another factor in this broad's rampant douchebaggery. this really takes the cake. my friend shows me an email send to the listserv for the people who have these sorts of jobs this summer, and sticking out of the list like some lighthouse of annoyance is this chick's email address in all caps. i shit you not. all caps. no one else puts one capital in their whole address. i just keep telling myself that other law schools i could have gone to probably have even more of her. what the hell, people.
speaking of which, one more thing. this story is one of those things that is so egregious one cannot help but have a few things to say. i have to say, thanks bureaucracy (man did i have tough time spelling that). way to suck like you are supposed to. nothing is ever anyone's fault. sorry ma'am, i have orders -- i could lose my job. and i can't lose my job, so you are losing your kid. if you still didn't read the story, you should. it is about a professor at u of m who bought his seven year old a mike's hard lemonade at a baseball game because he didn't know there was such a product as lemonade with alcohol. it gets better from there. always does.
straw is still really freaked out about some fireworks that went off like twenty minutes ago, and so i am going to call it good here and try to soothe him. i can't blame him; they caught me just as off-guard.

i read the news today, oh boy

news, that is, of the haircut! and oh boy, indeed. great stuff. definitely dig the packaging/presentation as well, very cool. news of the haircut is a great title, but if i was gonna pull one line out of the whole package it might be sweet jesus on a lazy susan. it is not as good of a title, but damn if i don't love it. if anyone is confused, news of the haircut is peter berghoef's (witte piet under my links) latest publication. mr. berghoef is royalty of holland mi, proprietor of the berghoefer bavarian resort, and inaugural poet laureate of my country. he may or may not whup everyone's ass at scrabble tonight. stooges!?
yesterday was a beautiful day. a beautiful day to get sunburned. i observed a rather large-scale free mumia rally. it was by far the best-attended event i have observed, which is kind of cool and kind of strange. naturally, it was also the most diverse. all ages, all races, lots of different organizations represented (lgbt for freeing mumia included). also the best rhythm section i've ever seen at something like this. things went slowly, but without a serious hitch. i was kind of nervous about the rig they had set up for sound: at the front of the march was a pickup with a pa and speakers, which was too much to for the vehicle to power on its own, so they had a generator. the generator, however, was gasoline powered and in the back of a minivan behind the pickup, so there was an extension cord from the generator to the pa in the truck. it all worked out in the end. there was a small counter-demonstrating contingent, but they had as many police for as them for a line between the demonstrators and their counterparts. everyone was well-behaved for the most part; officers hauled one or two people off to the side with harsh reprimands; people who had caught the march along its route and were hassling participants. the officers were interested in keeping the peace, and they did a good job. really commendable work considering they were assigned to guard people demanding the release of a person many of them probably believed murdered one of their co-workers. it takes a lot of patience to guard people who are berating you and your work over loudspeakers. probably the most extreme freedom of speech i have witnessed: talking shit on the founding fathers over the pa in front of independence hall. anyway, we were out there a long time, and i have some hilarious sunburn. my face is ok because of the neon green baseball hats we wear, but my neck is another story. my head looks like it was poorly photoshopped onto my body. there is also a funny break in the burn down my spine where my ponytail was.
i read a fantastic graphic novel the other day called three fingers. i blew through it pretty quick, but i might read it again and spend more time looking at the artwork. it is set in a universe akin to the one in roger rabbit, where the toons are actual beings who act in pictures. but this is way darker. everything is told sort of obliquely, to avoid copyright infringement, but you can tell what the idea is supposed to be. mickey mouse = ricky rat, and so forth. the basic gist is that ricky rat was the first successful toon film actor, and he had three fingers from a birth defect. when he gets big, other toons try to get in on the act, but none are nowhere near as successful. the superstitious toon community chalks it up to ricky's having three fingers, and toons begin to get fingers amputated in an effort to bring good luck. it seems to work, as after the practice starts other toons begin to gain comperable fame, but only those with three fingers. the whole novel is set forth in sort of a documentary fashion set decades down the line, with different figures weighing in on whether the film studios invented/encouraged/condoned the practice. pretty friggin excellent overall.
i also indulged in a film the other night, which was also quite entertaining. quirky movie called fido. set in like 50s america after a massive zombie war. the idea is at some point an electronic collar was developed that quells the natural zombie appetite for human flesh and now zombies are used for manual labor and kept as servants/house pets. pretty well put together flick, only one questionable plot point, but very entertaining and intriguing stuff altogether. i don't think it was even more than 90 minutes long, but they got enough characters in to offer a few perspectives on what the movie was trying to get at. set design and makeup were top notch. given that i hadn't ever heard of it, it still must have had a pretty decent budget. i don't know if anyone famous was in it, because i am bad at knowing those sorts of things. in any event, it is a good movie to watch because it is both thought-provoking and amusing. i am a sucker for excursions into contemporary conceptions of 50s era america/americana. some seriously bangin' tunes on the soundtrack that i was unfamiliar with too, which is always a bonus.
earlier in the weekend, i experienced something for the first time in several years: being at a party the cops put the kibosh on. it really didn't seem likely for most of the party, but on the other hand i got there kind of early. i didn't really meet anyone, but there were several people who i already knew there. the party was mostly work-based, and so the vast majority of people who showed up knew each other and probably didn't plan on branching out much. in any event, it was a pretty good time. good music, good company, good amount of beer, even if the beer itself is not overwhelming on its own. nothing wrong with it either, though. we took our own carling black label, but there was a healthy amount of pabst in the fridge as well. i also ate lightly salted potato chips for the first time. i don't recall ever seeing those back home, but every brand out here definitely includes lightly-salted in its line. they're not all bad, mostly just taste more like whatever oil they are cooked in. anyway, the cops showed up at some point, and were there for so long that there were two separate occasions where i fully believed they had left but in reality they had not. the good news is that no one was ticketed for anything as far as i am aware. really, though, even after everyone got there (i think a lot of people got out of work at midnight or so) it wasn't all that wild and crazy. the small back porch was completely packed, but it still couldn't have been all that loud. i guess it only takes one noise complaint sometimes. this party featured a boston terrier, for which i was thankful. damn was she excited. much to my surprise while attempting to locate the restroom, two more boston terriers had also shown up. i like to think that they were friends of the dog and the dog invited them; none of the humans brought the other two along. because hey, if dogs can pull that off, my cats should be more than capable of the same.

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

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

rule against perpetuities

a word as questionable as "perpetuities" is typically indicative of something bound to be a pain in the ass. suggestions from the prof and the text that this is indeed the case pretty much seals the deal. however, the difficulty was really overstated. yes, it is dense and antiquated, but it is really more of a bullshit hassle than it is impenetrable. the real annoyance is the dozen-odd categories of interests. fee simple subject to open. vested remainder. possibility of reverter. and so on. the only good part about all that is the prof teaches in reference to what he calls the plane of time. makes sense, but he talks about people getting pushed off of the plane of time, and that cracks me up. the notion of snakes on a plane of time really got me going. coming this summer, starring my property prof and samuel l. jackson.
another humorous moment from class: a different prof has recently had occasion to refer to wanton negligence, a specific legal concept. but he pronounces it like wonton. wonton negligence, something we should all do our best to avoid. my friend was walking out of the room for something when he said it, and while she was gone i leaned over and typed "wonton negligence" in her notes. she came back and caused a minor disruption. it was pretty funny. but don't worry, law school still sucks ass and i still hate it. we laugh because it hurts.
over the weekend i finally made it to the famed italian market for the first time. more properly, it should be called the multi-ethnic market; the only italian thing about it was the names of all the butcher shops. saw some pretty crazy shit hanging in those windows, such as a score of whole skinned rabbits. lots of odd fish chunks. suspicious sausages. it was fun to walk around, and they have a lot of things for very cheap. like seriously cheap. we stopped into dibruno bros. because it was there, and damn if i didn't have some of the best cheese ever. one was this estate cheddar where every ingredient was from some big old-school pastoral farm in rural england. the other was a stilton that couldn't be called a stilton because of some law saying a cheese cannot be called stilton if made with raw milk. so it was called stichelton or something, which is supposedly a more accurate historical moniker. in any event, that one was out of this world. it owned my palate for like twenty minutes after a meager bite, so delicious and lingering. pretty damn bold. i didn't pick up anything due to sheer sticker shock. granted, the shit was amazing, but i cannot as yet handle paying for cheese somewhere in the over thirty dollars a pound range. hopefully someday. but damn if it isn't worth every penny.
other recent experiences have featured my preferred dive. i had a notion to make it in there at some point on friday, but at nearly one a.m. i still hadn't made it down there. no matter, we still went and made the most of it, probably more than was necessary. i've never envied anyone whose job it was to get people out of a bar at close, but apparently no one at this bar has that job. no one even asked us to leave. we still had plenty of beer since we got served somewhere near the vicinity of closing. didn't make it out until three or so, but no one seemed put out about it. excellent. last night was my first realization of a special i believed to be apocryphal. the legendary ten dollars for all you can eat wings and all you can drink beer for two hours. bargains galore. made the most of that too, although i almost wish i hadn't. didn't overdo the wings because i didn't get any until i had kicked back a few foamy pints. i couldn't pass up a deal like this. it wouldn't be true to my heritage. all in all, a good time. that bar has been nothing but good to me since i showed up, and i remain appreciative.
shit, have i mentioned i can see again? i have new glasses and they are excellent. to the casual observer, they are not a notable departure from my previous pair. that is alright by me, because i liked those just fine. but there are differences, and i feel these are more structurally sound, and that is certainly a good thing. the first day i had them, i was almost content to do almost nothing but look around and be able to recognize things again. don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, ya know.
i have continued to listen to music i haven't heard or have written off previously, but have switched from the stack of records to stuff on the archive. i won't bore you with all the details, but i was not grossly mistaken about the vast majority of bands i had written off. the one i was the most sure about not liking was the one i actually liked the best. i hadn't heard all that much of their stuff before, but i still think they have one of the dumbest names for a band i have ever heard: perpetual groove. that is almost as bad as improvised freedom. but they're pretty good, leaning to the typical livetronica of most current "jam bands" but with a definite steely dan influence, which adds a nice adjustment. what i've been enjoying the most, though, was an extra download i made of the front guy solo acoustic. i have been doing a lot of that kind of stuff recently, digging on the jeff tweedy solo, trevor from tea leaf, and now this. i don't know if that means i'm getting old or turning into a pansy or what, but i like that stripped down sound sometimes. from metal to solo acoustic in six years.

so i smacked him in the face and downed another carling

it isn't quite the same thing as the real deal (although i doubt it could be that different), but black label is becoming my new cheap beer. maybe. i don't know. pbr holds a place in my heart, always has, always will. but black label ain't bad and the price is certainly reasonable. also, i get to haul 24 cans around instead of 30 at a time. doesn't seem like it should make that much of a difference, but hey, you walk a few blocks with a thirty pack and see how it goes. i guess we've all probably carried roughly that amount at some point though. well, whatever, hooray black label. way to be cheap.
the only better deal i got this week was on this stack of records sitting next to me. you guessed it, they were free. i know a few people with too many records. this bunch looks pretty decent, and he didn't make me take all he wanted to get rid of, so i had some choice. i mostly have things i've heard of or have heard before, with a couple other things thrown in for fun, just because they looked interesting. i forget the whole story about this vinyl, but i remember that my friend somehow obtained roughly a pickup bed's worth of assorted stuff from some dude a couple years ago. mostly dead-related. no dead records in my part of the haul, of course; that isn't the sort of thing people give away. several records, however, on which members of the dead play. also, keith and donna's album that came out when round records was still going. has a picture of their baby on the front, and it is one of the most unhappy looking babies i have seen who is not crying. i am curious to hear it and all the other stuff; i only have one record i've actually ever listened to before that i don't have a copy of (csny 4-way street; glad i never bothered to pay for it now). since i have been listening to tea leaf green almost exclusively for like two weeks (have i mentioned they're really good? yeah? good.), i think i might switch things up and spend tonight listening to this stack, probably 15-20 albums in there. i'm not doing a whole lot else... carling and free records it is. come along for the ride; i'm sure you want to read what i think about a bunch of old albums someone was willing to part with for no compensation. features include a very questionable-looking roger mcguinn solo record and an inherently suspicious ray manzarek album. can you tell i'm bored?
starting out with a david bromberg record called wanted dead or alive. i had heard of the dude, but i don't remember what i had even heard. this is one of those record that has like four people from the dead playing on a bunch of it. i grabbed like three bromberg albums in the bunch, so hopefully it turns out alright. if not, shit, i didn't pay for it. so far, it is alright. music is good, but the dude has a weird voice. hard to describe. first song was kind of bouncy an upbeat, but this next one is straight up blues and the voice is a lot better when he isn't so much trying to sing. the blues requires more in the way of highly emotive speaking than singing in my opinion. either way, the cover combined with the words to the first few tracks reveals a distinct humor element. i can appreciate it when it is done like this - where the music is no joke but some words are kinda silly. this is why zappa and primus kick ass but tenacious d can kiss my ass. i am supportive of music having an element of comedy, but not so much the other way around. just not my thing, with the possible exception of dennis leary's "i'm an asshole". anyway, i just managed to look up bromberg's wikipedia, and it turns out he's from philly. far out. currently living in delaware, something we can all aspire to. decent guitar playing in my book (jerry plays on most of the record, but he is so easy to pick out i know who is playing what), style is seriously eclectic. translation: this is a record i enjoy listening to, but will not often be the right record at the right time. nothing better than when that works out. but overall i like it, and i'm glad it isn't terrible, cause i have like three of the dude's albums now. lots of instruments on most tracks, really well arranged. one of the records is live and i'm curious how many people play on that. right now the arrangements on these blues tracks remind me of goodnight ladies on transformer. nice minimalist reading of statesboro blues on here with a bunch of other shit worked in. crazy version of kansas city, very big band yet still bluesy. this is a record i will put on again sometime.
time for this ray manzarek business. i heard a different solo album of his while my friend was giving me all of these records, and it was totally over the top. operatic vocals, very proto-electronica at the time. this one so far sounds like he just wanted to keep playing the music the doors did, but he gets to be jim. oh, and not be in a band with jim. the opener is like some sort of a rock and roll samba. some cool percussion. i guess i can kind of dig it. i thought this one would be equally ridiculous given the album art and the fact that it is called 'the golden scarab'. and yes, all visible skin on mr. manzarek is painted gold on the cover. as things progress, it is definitely extremely doors-esque but doesn't sound like anything they would have actually played. or maybe it just seems like that because jim was so distinctive in writing and voice combined with a little synthesizer technology development. i think the song that is playing now actually was a really old doors song that never made it to record for them.
as mentioned, these record reviews are brought to you by carling black label beer. confusing thing about this beer: carling is like the budweiser of britain, so that is the immediate association. in two places on this can, it says "carling canada" and has a big maple leaf. however, lower on the can, it says product of the u.s.a.. strange, but cheap. i like that. it should be up there in use with strange, but true. gotta find a way to work it in a little more.
the manzarek record has quickly degenerated into mediocre cheese. if the music and songwriting were better, okay, if things got way cheesier, okay, but this is just lukewarm and uninteresting. enough of that shit. i'm not going to throw the record out, but i'm not gonna put it on again real soon i do not think.
time to check out this keith and donna record. too much donna from the get go, i wish she would just take it easy. she's touring with the zen tricksters these days. if they played close, i might go. the bass is really good, i wonder who is playing. john kahn; i should have guessed. looks like he only plays on this track though, that is too bad. shit, this reminds me some guy gave me a jerry band disc today. i should play that later too. we'll get there. i have a feeling that this whole record is gonna be a little too much donna. keith sure as shit shouldn't sing. his piano is hardly even audible thus far, which is too bad because he could still play pretty damn well in 75 when this came out. things are getting a little better on the album, sounds like apocryphal janice joplin with way better keyboard work. the baby on the sleeve is named zion. seriously, who the hell names their kid zion? who does that?
time for another carling black label ad. this beer is brewed by g. heileman brewery, who you may know from such hits as old style. they are one of the milwaukee breweries that got by alright and managed to swallow up other regional brand naming rights.
hah! i was about to give keith a bunch of credit and suggest that he should have played more organ instead of piano all the damn time. turns out it was merl saunders on the organ for that track. i guess he should have played more organ in the dead too, only problem is he wasn't ever in the band. for all the praise heads heap on the 70s, i think the band would have been way better, and admittedly way different, if merl was in the hot seat for a spell. that isn't a job you can really recommend to anyone though. i hope bruce hornsby and tom constanten say a prayer of thanks and supplication every day of their lives. the curse is so strong that it killed off the keys dude from dark star orchestra.
surprisingly, the album itself is pretty much exactly what i expected. nothing blows me away, but it is all pretty decent music. i was hoping for a little more cheese on this record, a la keith's "let me sing your blues away" off wake of the flood. working in a little sax now, but nothing as outrageous as that track. most of the songs are things the dead could conceivably have played with the godchauxs in the band, but ones i'm glad they never did. just filler. nothing bad, but nothing good either.
gonna give this roger mcguinn thing a go. looks like he mostly plays other peoples' music on this one, but the guitar and vocals are absolutely unmistakable. something to be said for that. the man does what he does. makes me interested in hearing the one byrds album i picked up, the notorious byrds brothers. we'll see about that sometime.
man, all these records i was skeptical about but willing to give a shot make me look forward to the flea market in the park across the street. next weekend, i believe, is the first one of the year. can't wait. wish i had a little more money to throw around, but i'm sure i'll make a good pickup or two.
man, mcguinn can do dylan like few can. i've heard a ton of people do knockin on heaven's door, but this is somehow just so right. i feel like zimmy would put some kind of stamp of approval on this. bitchin pedal steel, and someone is playing perfect rhythm section piano. and god, that guitar. any time you have someone with an immediately distinctive tone, you are probably dealing with a worthwhile guitarist.
the following announcement has been paid for by carling black label beer: my cats are super fuckin pretty and little.
whoa, the music just took a turn for the soulful. works out alright. rocking, but a nonstop gentle country caress from mcguinn's guitar, all the while approaching a genre not immediately congruous with what normally goes on for the man. the result is very late beatles; something that could have made it onto let it be (it isn't like that record couldn't use a little help here and there). now things are just straight folksy byrds style. i didn't need more of this, if i wanted the byrds i would probably put on one of the umpteen (not marked) byrds albums i already have. some silly string arrangement on this, and it is just unnecessary and overdone. someone probably told mcguinn that, and whoever it was probably got fired. the album cover has roger leaning on a wall of recording equipment, looking very pleased with himself/coked out, and the lettering is that definite 70s conception of the future style. at least the guy can play and sing, even if his writing is hit or miss. well, i guess he didn't write a bunch of this, so i have to critique is song selection, and whatever just played was a poor choice.
now he is actually showing a little maturation in his guitar playing. i love how the guy plays, but it is always kind of the same stuff more or less. this track features his neil young guitar (thankfully not vocal) impersonation, and it sounds great. stuff neil himself could be proud of. i was discussing neil young with a buddy today, and damn if the dude isn't one of the all-time greats. makes me want to throw some on, but i'm gonna play at least one more new record before that i think. might actually play the second record of four way street, they do a pretty psychedelic southern man, and i wonder what cowgirl in the sand sounds like; it is actually kind of short compared to the version i am most familiar with.
alright, one more new record i'm gonna talk about for tonight. gonna make it the brewer and shipley album with one toke over the line on it, see if they have anything else to offer as a pretty typical folk duo at the height of psychedlic scene exploitation. these dudes look ridiculous. but i do love one toke over the line, and it sounds fabulous on vinyl. the guy i got it from didn't know they did this song, but i did tell him. he seemed a little regretful, so i offered to give this one back, but he let me keep it. we'll see if it is worthwhile. one toke is the lead track with good reason. what is not to like? my old mp3 of the song is off the fear and loathing soundtrack, and the beginning is the monologue listing all of the drugs in the case, and wasn't a bad addition at all. the rest of the tracks proceed apace; the whole thing is like simon and garfunkel for people who were too cool for simon and garfunkel. or maybe people who had taken a vow to not listen to simon and garfunkel for like ten years. this album is as good as any other album i've bought for just one song i knew and loved.
but that's enough for now. if you didn't really read anything that's cool. i'm mostly just amusing myself as best i can. lots of things i should do, but nothing i want to do. this was a fine alternative. listened to some decent tunes, but probably nothing i'm going to push on anybody. i'll probably wind up playing more tlg before i go to bed. just can't shake that addiction. they're playing here again, during my exam period. i think i will probably go anyway.

blinded

but not by the light. or anything poetic at all. no, i broke my glasses. on sunday. i am rapidly losing patience with not being able to see a damn thing. it is not easy to work on a computer or read fine print all day like this. i did, however, get what i considered a good deal at this place. it was more engaging than i thought a place for optical needs could really be. they were all helpful and the selection was outrageous. a lot of things i thought i wanted (octagonal frames anyone?) that made me look even stranger than i actually am. in any case, i look forward (oops. inadvertent pun.) to getting new glasses.
fortunately, i am at a point where i don't use them for reading textbooks half the time anyway. managed to handle a good bit of property law this evening. i always thought i was interested in the history of the law and how it had developed, but after reading thirty dense pages about transfer of property over time under feudalism., i have been forced to reconsider. the best part was, after you learned something, it turned out that law no longer applied anywhere except like maine and new hampshire. over and over. actually, it usually applied nowhere anymore. my main takeaway lesson here is some ridiculous terminology to throw around. fee simple absolute is a big one. i wonder if absolut vodka has ever incorporated that in one of their many witty advertisements. doubtful. they prefer to really stretch the concept. i would also like to know how long this has been their campaign, but i can't expect all you grey goose drinkin' types to keep track.
i have more or less made it through the winter with almost no liquor, mostly because i don't prefer it and because it is such a hassle to get. and also a waste of money. liquor never seems to last as long as it theoretically should. whatever, it is not something i missed too much. and now the weather is turning nice and i do love seasonal beer in the spring and summer. drank a beer on a porch today, perfect weather for it. even opened a window when i got home, and the cats are really excited about that. i'm excited about that because fresh air over forty eight or so degrees has been a long time coming. but i am still more excited about the prospect of restored vision.

bored bored bored (even with abortion)

today was no good. no good at all. wednesdays feature my two most boring classes, civ pro and property. both have recently featured, in addition to mind-numbing content, lengthy "discussions" where people give their store-bought opinions with poor articulation. i have plenty of things to be doing, but nothing i feel like doing. or rather, of those things i should be doing, none appeal to me. so it is things i shouldn't be doing instead, like re-reading old achewood strips and adding to my collection of empty forties. as a master of justification, i blame today.
in addition to my classes, today featured me stepping on my pants and adding to a growing rip on three separate occasions. the tear now goes up past the back of my knee, aka these jeans are no longer viable. i mean, i know they can theoretically be repaired or whatever, but that seems unlikely. i do have a different pair, fortunately. still, i can't help but wish i was just back home, with a job, a car, and a meijer. problem fucking solved were that the case. hell, i could also pick up a thirty pack of pbr for like thirteen bucks while i was at meijer. and anything else i might need. i miss meijer, and owning it.
this week has also turned out to be a giant abortion party (i'm naming my next metal band abortion party). con law has gotten to that wonderful time where we get to cover roe and casey and a few others. i've been reading it all week, but tomorrow is when we'll get there in class. i am dreading the potential airing of opinions in class, but the prof is not so much the type for too much of that. i think he will have a lot of really well-reasoned and thoughtful things to say about the jurisprudence itself, and deal with pre-existing opinions in the context of analyzing how certain justices come out in each opinion. these opinions are ridiculously long, most have a leading opinions and then a pair of concurrences, maybe a concur in part and dissent in part, and then two or three dissents. it kind of makes me angry. the good news is, if taught properly, this is an excellent point for demonstrating how the feelings of individual justices always necessarily invade decision making. a simple thought experiment considering the current makeup of the court is enough to see that a decision made now would contain all the same methodologies and accusations from opposing sides, with the utilized claims trading places.
but classroom discussion of abortion just wasn't enough bullshit for me to handle on its own, so i ordered up a double and went to a talk during lunch today. it was billed as a national lawyers guild event, but afterwards i recalled that many law schools have groups dedicated to reproductive rights, but mine doesn't, so the guild just kind of incorporated that concern. fine by me; i imagine the overlap between the two is pretty significant. i feel like i should fit in there. after today, i don't know. it is always disconcerting to show up for something wanting to agree with whatever it is and being unable to do so based on the presentation. that's how i felt when i went to that cop watch thing at lava the other month, and today left me with a similar taste. the speaker was a lobbyist for planned parenthood, and the supposed topic was the status of reproductive rights in PA and the stances of this state's representatives at the state and federal levels. it was a little more comprehensive than that.
in fact, it was just the other side of the coin from all the anti-abortion types. same bullshit, different orientation. a lot like democrat/republican. both sides are full of shit and use the same tactics they decry when the opposition makes use of them. this was painfully obvious when the speaker talked about winning the language war and used pejorative terms to describe the other side in the same way they like to call themselves pro-life. and as lame as all that was, it wasn't as bad as it got, and i could understand where they were coming from. what i found absolutely unforgivable was what i found to be abhorrent gender politics and stale second-wave feminism. initially, i just snickered that all the handouts were pink, the prominently displayed photos of demonstrations with all (white) women in pink shirts saying "this is what a feminist looks like" and placards promoting roe v. wade, which was superseded by casey v. planned parenthood (of SE PA no less) more than fifteen years ago. then the speaker made some offhand derogatory comments about men, and i got to be a little more annoyed. if men are so bad, why do you work for/support an organization that has no purpose but for women fucking men? if they're so bad, don't sleep with them. she spoke as if men's only purpose was to irresponsibly impregnate women (portrayed as powerless without the aid of such organizations as PP). i was waiting for her to suggest that the men in the room had only showed up for free pizza. but what really sealed the deal for me was when the speaker pointed out all the things planned parenthood had given her to hand out. like i said, it was bad enough that everything was pink, but then she pointed out the condoms they were giving away. far from ordinary condoms, these were "designer" condoms. the speaker said "women like designer clothes, designer shoes, so we're giving them designer condoms called 'dress required for entry'... entry into you!". i hardly even know where to begin with that. suffice to say that i found the assumptions about gender troubling to say the least. i won't bore you with the laundry list of inconsistencies, but i will say that the organization fails itself as much as their opposition hurts it. i would like to do PR work for them. i am glad they exist, and i think they do things no one else does but are needed, but god, please bring yourselves into the twenty first century and at least try and contextualize the battle you're trying to fight. the speaker actually suggested that the "anti-choicers" got together and schemed up a plan to fight a war against women on all fronts, dedicated only to controlling womens' lives. uh, if these people got together, it was probably at a place called church, and if they're beating you on a lot of fronts, it is probably because religious conviction, for good or ill, prompts people to stronger feelings and more effort than a mere scientific opinion. also, if someone is militantly "pro-life", they're probably not just committed to running womens' lives, but their ideology probably prescribes lifestyles for all people.
also, the speaker claimed the best and most effective way to promote reproductive rights is to argue with people at the bar. i am smart enough to know that i know very little, but i do know that arguing with people at the bar is one of the biggest wastes of time available to the american public. in my experience, people rarely change deeply held opinions, regardless if they discuss those issues with a close friend or a perfect stranger. arguing with people at bars does not qualify as a grassroots movement in my book.
the truth, as it were, of the matter, is that both sides spend a lot of time arguing about when life starts and what to call a person, but i don't think the metaphorical jury has come back with a verdict for the definition of either life or personhood. we can't know when life begins if we don't know what life is, and we can't agree on what to call a bunch of cells that is not yet what intuitively counts as a person. even if some state passes a referendum saying life begins at conception, it rings hollow if we can't say what life is. and i don't think we can. people are willing to say plants are alive, but few shed tears at the demise of a carrot.
listen to me going on and on about this bullshit. it is just one of those things that is not going to go away anytime soon, but will not possibly matter in the long run. "i don't think we're meant to know that". it all brings me back to stranger in a strange land, which i wrapped up again the other day. grokking (FUCK YEAH NOT MARKED BY SPELL CHECK!!!!!!!) is a great and certainly novel (no pun intended) concept that i find really helpful for a lot of things. i could write a damn dissertation about grokking and the heideggarian project. it actually fills in an important part of the deconstructive analysis. one of my profs used to always except babies and angels from certain things. another one has gone on a huge animal rights kick, but i think the idea of life defined by the concept of grokking really rounds out his analysis from where it is now. actually, that is just what i think; i haven't read much of his current stuff. but i did read the dude's dissertation, which is saying something. those don't get read a whole lot, but it was so close to what he actually got to teach me that it was worth my while.
wow, my computer just told me it was going to give up on automatically checking for software updates. i think that means i've owned it for two years. flew right by. the computer has treated me well over that period of time, regardless of how the rest of my life has gone. i can't believe it has been that long. time flies whether you're having fun or not, i guess. my bell's sticker has completely come off, so i guess i've had it a while. i remember using this puppy to sign up for the lsats and turn in my applications... at the the bar proper. they always knew it was serious when i walked in with the computer. got me a drink or two. more than one can ask out of the average computer. i might have paid a chunk of change for it back then, but i don't feel like it is incapable of handling anything i throw at it. more than i could say for my last desktop two years after i got it.
i got carded for the first time in forever this evening. across the street, no less, where i go all too frequently. two new people at the counter though, and the dude who asked me for id looked like he was younger than me. the funniest part is that he accepted my id and made no note of the fact that it is expired. add that to the long list of things i should be taking care of. i don't get carded a whole lot at least, and i probably could have found someone there to vouch for me anyway. still. it was pretty funny. i can understand though, dude probably just got the job, making sure he doesn't fuck anything up. they've got these weird forms you can fill out here though, like an affidavit almost, where you assert that you represented you were of legal age to a place. hopefully this is nothing i will have to deal with anyway.
today i was shocked that a good friend of mind was unfamiliar with the wiktionary. everyone knows about wikipedia, so i don't understand what the stretch is. on the other hand, i can't recall with certainty when or how i discovered the wiktionary. fascinating commentary on linguistics, but i am sure it is already better documented than my study on spell check and language. superior in selection to urban dictionary, but not superseding. still plenty of things to like about urban dictionary, but better etymology with wiktionary. depends what you want to find, i guess. like everything else.