The Holidays.

I'll give you a list of my holiday season to spare you the long rant. There should be some things that might mean some glimmer to each or all of you.

Love. Fried chicken. Bojangle's biscuits. Steak and Shake. New T-shirts (no Toque las llamas!) Beer and more beer. Guitar hero. Awakening. Remorse. An ENTIRE huge jar of macadamia nuts all by myself. Regret. Heartbreak. Chinese buffets (twice). Younger overweight cousins playing video games for 10 hours straight. Playing Freebird on Guitar Hero, on Medium, and rocking it like yo grandma's chair. H&M scarves and hats. Pot stickers. More love. Family. Bitching about old friends. Rediscovering the joys of playing music. Introducing someone else to just jamming with a band at 3 am, drunk, high, and retarded. Friendship. An entire box of CVS cookies. God of War 2 (sorry, SJB, my cousins were getting antsy). Fear. Football on Monday, on Sunday, then on Monday again, then on Saturday and Sunday again. Realization. Taking family pictures. Forgiving. Noticing how my cousins look nothing like my brother and I. Sitting on massage chairs. Waiting. Wonton soup. Longing. Falling asleep as my father goes to work at 7am. Shame. Morning dehydration. Old friendships rekindled. New friendships broken. Phone calls from Durham. Growing up.

Hickory smoked thick cut bacon double cheeseburgers with a strawberry shortcake chaser at 3 am with old friends. Watching the Raiders getting stomped two weekends in a row, and resisting the urge to text a virtual smirk to the resident jooboy. Cooking the uberwhite turkey, stuffing, potatos (suck it Quayle), and ham. Confessions. Explaining the significance of the Pats-Giants game to family members. Playing Klonoa 2 again (joy!) Pondering the wisdom of my recently long locks. Watching "How I met Your Mother." Heineken, Miller Lite, Harp, Michelob Lite, Beck's Premier Lite, Grolsch, Newcastle, Labatt, Bass, Guinness, Bud Light, Franziskaner Dark Hefe weissen, and a single glass of red wine with Christmas dinner.

Phones snapped in half. Phones replaced. Gifts given, gifts received. Boredom. Excitement. Anxiety. Coming in from a smoke to find someone you would never expect dancing with a redneck chick in a bar called "crocs." Laughing. Groaning. Crying. Smiling. Hoping. Eating. Eating. Eating. Eating. Drinking. Drinking. Drinking. Drinking. New Books (On Beauty). Old Books (The Sorceress of Darshiva). Missing. Sobriety. Intoxication. Invisible letters. Spiderman 3.

Just two short weeks. What the laziest two weeks can produce is astounding.

I love you all (or at least most of you), and I hope we'll be in contact soon. And I hope that your Holidays were as simultaneously empty and full as mine.

...And be goddamned grateful I didn't do a summary of the year. So suck it.

Happy HOliday Goodness.

For some reason, I have a massive aversion to the computer whenever I come to greenville. I don't like checking email, I don't respond to email, I don't even read the news for these 2 weeks. I just hate sitting in this computer room.

So, as usual, I'm going to be M.I.A. (Whoop whoop!) for the next coupla weeks.

Hopefully I'll be in touch with you over the break for some sort of obligatory "hey! how are you! merry christmas!" sorta schpiel...if not, you should call me.

4 Rawjer.

RS, this is for you. Hitch on Huck. (Hitch being Christopher Hitchens. Not the Will Smith date doctor guy.)

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

heh. heh. heh.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

Quick sum up of my Sunday.

6:30 am. Woke up after falling asleep at 3 am.

6:45 am. Looked out the window and, uh, noticed there was a fucking BLIZZARD going on.

7:30 am. Packed up an extra pair of jeans, extra pair of socks, extra pair of shoes, and stuffed them into my book bag which suffered a ruptured zipper the night before, and does not keep snow out. Packed an extra messenger bag. Inside: a laptop computer, covered with a plastic bag, slipped inside a laptop sleeve, with another plastic bag over that. (No, seriously, it was a nor'easter. A nor'easter is essentially a winter hurricane.)

7:31 am. Left my apartment, and began walking in freshly fallen new snow. Knee deep powder, wearing ankle socks and low top shoes. Because the wind, snow, and ice were so powerful, I had to hold an umbrella horizontally in FRONT of me, to prevent being sandblasted to death. Remember, huge winter coat, hat, scarf, a full book bag, AND a messenger bag in front, fighting an actual fucking blizzard. A 7 minute walk to the T-station took 25.

7:56 am. Got on the T and promptly started sweating.

8:07 am. Stepped off the T and went into a CVS. Purchases: 3 cans of Red Bull, 1 Odwalla Bar, 1 bottle of Water. Began walking from the station towards campus.

8:20 am. Arrived at campus and went into the library into the sub sub basement, took off my coat, took off my scarf, took off my hat, dropped my two book bags, put the CVS bag on the desk, shook off the snow, and sat down in my chair gasping, stopping only to notice that my dress shirt (which was under my sweater), appeared to be soaked through with sweat. My jeans were soaked up to mid-thigh, my shoes would gurgle with each step, and I had an 8 hour exam in what has commonly been referred to as "the hardest class at HLS."

8:22 am. Went into a bathroom, peeled off my sopping clothes, changed into dry clothes, shoes, and socks and ran towards another building to pick up the exam question.

8:30 am. Picked up my exam, and headed back to my cubby.

8:31 am. Took a piss.

(Took exam. Drank 3 Red Bulls, ate an Odwalla bar.)

4:30 pm. Turned in the exam.

5:00 pm. Went outside to discover that it was 35 degrees, and RAINING.

5:01 am. Had to fight the urge to grab random passerbys and scream "THIS! THIS! THIS IS WHY I FUCKING HATE BOSTON!"

5:02 pm. Stepped in an ankle deep puddle of slush.

5:03 pm. Stepped in a knee deep puddle of dirty water.

5:05 pm. Stepped in a calf deep puddle of slush.

5:06, 5:07, 5:08, 5:09, 5:10: Continued to step in large slushy lakes that pooled in such a way that it was impossible to go around them, because of chest high dirty snow piles on the left, buildings on the right, and a 30 foot wide pool of water in front.

5:11 pm. Drank beer, ate deep fried pickle spears dipped in ranch dressing, and ate small mini hamburgers with other classmates in celebration of the fucking END OF FEDERAL COURTS!!

6:00 pm. Fell asleep in the restaurant.

6:10 pm. Got up and headed off for home with a buddy of mine, who wanted more beer.

6:11. 6:12, 6:13, 6:14, 6:15....6:25 pm. Stepped into large puddles of water.

6:30 - 11:30. Drank beer, ate pizza, and ended up watching "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" Marathon with my buddy Tyler, instead of playing Wii as we had planned.

11:30 pm. Fell asleep on the couch. During which Tyler left, and I had no idea.

3:30 am. Woke up on the couch with all the lights on, and beer bottle in my hand. Ahh...I hate law school...and love the end of it.

it is done!

....more about the disastrous day later.

For now, done :)

EXACTLY what I needed on the day of my 8 hour take-home exam.

...a fucking BLIZZARD.

This is going to be a very long day.

My God

I am fucking MISERABLE right now.

Hm.

Without reservation, I am about to head into two of the most mind-bogglingly complex law school exams of my career less prepared and more fundamentally and microscopically confused than anytime over the past 2 years.

It's a little upsetting, but I'm also not sure I care anymore...

Fatter. Pastier. Less Productive.

On November 14 I arrived in the library as soon as class ended and stayed until the library kicked us out at 2am.

I did that everyday until November 22nd.

Then came four days off...

And then every. single. day. since. that...I have been on the exact same schedule. Except yesterday, when I was up til 5am.

...I remain 9 days behind my studying schedule...

That's why I ain't got shit to say. I'm tarred.

(if you caught the reference, thumbs up. If you did not, totally weak. If your question is "what reference"....seriously....?)

Narcissism: What I do Instead of Exams.

....Though not really, since I don't have much to be vain about as exams soften up my muscles and add layers of sadness and softness to my frame....

Anyway, anyone who has encountered a Mac has noticed the ONE good thing about them, which is that little PhotoBooth thingy. So instead of delving deeper into the implications of Federal Common Law, I decided to take some pictures using the provided effects. This is me. On No Sleep. No Haircut. No Sun. Too much ice. Too many long bike rides in the freezing win. Too many cigarettes. Too much Federal Courts. Too much secured transactions. Too little time....and trying to figure out how to make four consecutive shots look different, and invariably just looking in four directions.

This is the depressing setting where I'm actually sitting...in the sub basement of the library. Sub basement again indicating that I am actually one level BELOW the basement where there are not desks, and the ceiling is a series of exposed pipes and jagged metal utility fixtures.


Black and White and Four Stupid Faces spontaneously generated between flashes.

This setting is called Pop Art.

This one is called colored pencil. I like the bottom left one because it looks like I'm wearing a helmet. But I'm totally not. I need a haircut.


I've decided to start posting the music I'm listening to...since I can just get them from YouTube.
This is "Bamboo Banga" by M.I.A. My favorite part begins around 1:45 where "M.I.A. is comin back with Powa Powa! (Powa Powa!)" (yes, she does sound Bjorkish there.)

Again and Again.

Yes. Another random shooting.

...made better by the fact that THIS Court has decided to grant certiorari on the D.C. gun control law to finally fix the boundaries of the Second Amendment...

...Lucky for all of us who are concerned with being able to continue breathing and living without having my very existence subject to the tiniest of whims of any jackass, the Roberts Court decided to take the case on a typically narrow, technical jurisdictional ground that has no precedential value...

“Whether the [DC gun control statutes] violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

...oh wait. Not at all.

Current Playlist

Some mix of these songs and artists tend to be all I've been listening to in the past week. When did I stop listening to rock? Where did all the loud guitars go? I do suggest, however, at least checking out M.I.A...I can't explain it, but her music is like a drug. Just keep comin back to it, even though the first time was a bit disorienting....So good. SO GOOD.

1) Bamboo Banga, Boyz, Jimmy - M.I.A.
2) Give a Little Love, Breakin Up - Rilo Kiley
3) Polite Dance Song, How Deep is Your Love - Bird and the Bee
4) The Crane Wife Pts 1&2, Sons and Daughters - The Decemberists
5) The Blower's Daughter, Cannonball - Damien Rice
6) You Are What You Love - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
7) Over the Ice, Everday - The Field

Most Accurate Description Ever.

Halfway through reading a Supreme Court case determining the priority of a federal tax lien v. a state judgment lien with respect to the after-acquired property of the debtor...I started drifting off into the internet. (surprised? And yes. I literally stopped in mid-sentence in the middle of the case.) And, I started reading a Slate piece about Mike Huckabee and about how his famous weight loss and his prominence for said weight loss would prove to be a distraction in his Presidency. (ie. we would judge him by his weight. etc.)

I actually think these pictures of Huck are endearing.
Especially the bottom two. Fat guy eating and Fat guy being fat.
How could you NOT like this guy? (uh...except for what he believes.)

Anyhow, the article starts to delve into the other candidates, and I thought the description of Mitt Romney was so perfect and casually delivered that it deserved sharing.

In the unlikely event that Barack Obama put on some pounds, his team could just say he's trying to quit smoking. John Edwards has already laid the groundwork by pointing out that he has given up Diet Coke. As a cyborg who can morph into any form, Romney doesn't have to worry. But if Huckabee starts to balloon, he's no longer a fresh face; he's another flip-flopping phony diet doctor.

HAHAHAHAHA. I love it.

Associations.

So everyone has their own distinct associations between certain sensory impressions and moments and places in their life. The sense impressions are always involuntary and lying somewhere between the conscious and subconscious. For example:

When I hear Joanna Newsom, I immediately think of riding the T to my clinical and being cold and exhausted on the subway.

When I smell guava, I get sharply jerked back to being in my apartment in Bangalore with the French girl who was too scared to eat anything but fruit.

When I smell coconut oil, I am immediately overcome with the presence of AIDS. (When I massaged patients in the afternoons, I used coconut oil.) (oh, and uh...Think of AIDS today, it's World AIDS Day. You don't get a legitimate AIDS Post from me.)

When I hear "What's Simple is True" by Jewel, I am back with Ashley Kolaya my first girlfriend in high school in the winter time in Christmas in 1998.

When I hear Staralfur by Sigur Ros, I'm back in my bedroom in Durham, sitting next to Jon Ross witnessing absurdities compiling absurdities and spiraling into conflicting contradictory...you get the picture.

...And now...today, I noticed that the new (but very strange choice of) air freshener in all of the public toilets in Harvard...an unmistakable, very real smell...of freshly baking chocolate cookies.

Gross. Whichever direction this association runs is not good.

I was listening to NPR today...

Why is it that the most vocal and adamant about the principle of self-reliance are often, if not mostly, those who have grown up under circumstances requiring no self-reliance? How many rags-to-riches Republicans do you know? Or more tellingly, how many riches-to-riches Republicans do you know that cry out for self-reliance?

South Carolina Young Republicans, with broken bootstraps
from the harsh travails of self-reliance.

The immediate rejoinder points the equal alienation of northeastern, wealthy arm-chair liberals who also know little about the struggles of the poor.

And the obvious resulting question is, what's with all the rich people deciding what to do about the poor?


Note: I'm not actually denying the crucial need for a culture and politics fundamentally grounded in self-reliance and accountability. I DO find it ridiculous though, how the demographics do seem to map onto such beliefs. (Any poor, uneducated libertarians out there?) I also get irritated, when during an NPR segment about families with two full-time jobs who are unable to avoid heat for their homes, a caller decides to go on a long diatribe about how he is self-reliant and that, essentially, all poverty and want is the failure of individual responsibility.

Fat Kid Friday.

I am so unbelievably confused in my classes that I'm on the verge of breakdown. I simply haven't been preparing for class OR taking notes for a variety of reasons...and these are the two most difficult classes I've ever taken. Sweet. Now I will never get a clerkship. I should have applied this year.

Anyway, in honor of my incipient failure, I declare today Fat Kid Friday.

This one is a classic. Fat Hispanic kid falls in water because of his dickhead friend.


This one begins in awe inspiring form. This kid is CRAZY! And it ends...well...you'll see.


One of my all-time favorites. Fat kid interrupted in the middle of making some embarassing nature video getting shot at by paintballs.


This one is not funny. It's disturbing. Not for any particular reason except for the crystal clear proposition that Janice is a total fucking bitch. Fat girl almost falls out of a ride at an amusement park.

Food Continued.

This is not really a post. And I'm emphatically not on any sort of diet. But seriously, check this shit out...These are totally things I would order two of in a single day. Not cool.

Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing

2,900 calories 182 g fat

(This one we always get when I went to Outback with a group of people...jesus christ.)

Macaroni Grill Spaghetti and Meatballs with Meat Sauce

2,430 calories 128 g fat

(I don't understand.)

Quiznos Classic Italian (large)

1,528 calories 92 g fat

(What I eat before I start looking for another sandwich.)

On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef

1,450 calories 102 g fat 78 g carbs 2,410 mg sodium

(It's a fuckin' taco salad. You're a retard if you're surprised)

Chili's Awesome Blossom

2,710 calories 203 g fat 194 g carbs (correct. awesome. worth it.)

Lonestar 20 oz T-bone

1,540 calories 124 g fat

(see above)

Your Mother, 200 lbs.

Minus 2,000 calories

(see above.)

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

So I begin with a famous quotation from Oscar Wilde. And you might think this heralds something pompous. Something heady. Some fundamental shift in my way of thinking. You would be correct. You would also be correct that the topic and tone of this upcoming post is the reason that Blogs are useless. It's about one of my two favorite topics. And it's not Angus.

Because today, I have decided that in spite of my longstanding support for large, enormous, succulent prehistoric super-sized leaves...
I am starting to support tiny, young, baby greens. (Holy shit, after seeing this picture, I might change my mind. Those leaves are AWESOME!!!)
So now we turn to baby green vegetables. Just look at that baby spinach. It's...almost buttery. I've recently been overcome by how utterly satisfying it is to take a big, fluffy fork loaded with shards of tender, deep green vegetables, and then shoving it all in my mouth and chewing away like the brontosaurus I am. (Ok, fine, jojo, Brachiosaurus.) I can't really describe why. Part of it is because leafy greens don't really seem like food to me. Pizza seems like food. Meat patty seems like food. Large helpings of warm smooth starches and big chunks of protein seem like food. They're created and manufactured for our consumption.

But salad greens seem so different. They're just leaves off plants that, unless I've been fooled, pack massive amounts of nutrients into these tiny organic little sheets. And the baby ones are just so vibrantly green, so flawlessly formed with perfect complexions, flawless veining, and tenderness like your mother's touch. I mean, look at this picture...
Don't tell me you don't want to just swoop down and take huge bites out of fields of this stuff.
(Note: This picture came from a news story about tainted e. coli spinach.) I think my first real exposure to this satisfaction of eating greens came with buying "Live Butter Lettuce." I'm not sure if you've ever seen it before, but some grocery stores carry lettuce with its roots that is still alive when you buy it. When I first opened the thing, I just remember how the surface of the lettuce was so...(goddammit...) alive and fresh, and the texture of it it my finger tips was smooth and cool to the touch, but just the slightest bit tacky. And then I tore it with my fingers, and for some reason THAT was awesome too.

It just seems like we're so far removed from such basic foods, that it seems so strange to be shoveling raw plant leaves into our mouths. It's probably stranger to THINK that it's strange to be eating raw vegetables...but it is sorta primal.

Now I want to make clear: I generally don't like vegetables. I hate ordering steamed vegetables at restaurants. I pick the carrots off my salads. I eat cucumbers but always dread the chore of it. I don't understand why people eat Beets. (Bears eat beets.) I think Romaine lettuce is lifeless, boring, nutritiously devoid crap, I think Iceberg lettuce is even worse, and I generally don't understand Caesar salad, unless it's made very well, and without huge standalone chunks of white lettuce spine fouling up the whole thing. I don't like broccoli, but I like the satisfaction of eating something so clearly bizarre, and undisputably nutritious that at least I can feel some satisfaction that some good will come from it. I don't feel any sense of satisfaction in eating most fruit either. An apple? What sorta satisfaction do you get from THAT? Hey, semi-sore gums from biting into a geometrical shape not meant to be bitten straight into and a flavor that's never all that satisfying. (Note: Mango does rule.) Point? I don't actually like most vegetables. For example, THIS?

...is God's joke on humanity. Pure Suck. It's like seeing what stupid shit you can get fish to eat in those parks with fish food dispenser. After you run out of cat food to throw at the disgusting fish, people invariably turn to rocks, loogies, and wood chips to see what the fish will eat. (Have you never noticed that the areas around those feeding spots are invariably stripped bare of pebbles and loose debris?) God started with steak, moved to broccoli, and then celery. Hence, celery eaters are God's disgusting moron fish that all of God's friends go "EWWWWW GROSS!!!" at.

Although the obsession doesn't run as deep, I do enjoy the occasional salad mix
I'm not sure that I actually like the flavors so much as the wide variety of colors, shapes, and other novelties. I especially like those little spiky seeming fuckers, sorta like the one in the picture above the word "Green." I also get immense satisfaction from eating dandelion greens. Why? Because they're dandelion greens.

This post was by far the most ridiculous thing I've written in awhile...but i'm sorta freaking about secured transactions and I'm scared to open my book...sigh.

Disclaimer: Author has just bought 1 share in Earthbound Organics.

Amtrak: Suck It.

Note: This post was written in several pieces. The first time was after 2 hours of intense boredom. The second time was after 2 hours more. This post is horribly repetitive, long, uninteresting, and reads like the Diary of Anne Frank, except with slightly more intensity and meaningfulness. And it happens to literally be me whining for hours and hours. This is me live blogging one of the least interesting, most boring, most irritating non-events of my life. And this is exactly why blogs rule (fucking suck as self-indulgent uselessness.)

Enjoy!


This life of mine has little to report. Apart from the obvious things that everyone is aware but of which no one speaks, my life has been pretty stressful, albeit it entirely uneventful.

At this very moment, instead of doing something productive, I am sitting on a broken down Amtrak train in the middle of Connecticut. It is 11:11 pm. The train has been broken down for the past 2 hours. The train was operating just fine, mind you, until the internal cabins suffered some sort of failure, meaning that the cabins were a little dim. Sure sure, that was slightly inconvenient. And to remedy this problem, the “engineer” (Yes, that’s how he was described to us), decided that the best solution would be to power down the train, turn off the engine, and attempt to recycle the engine. Whatever the hell that means. The result, as you could surmise, is that once the engine was turned off, the life force was gone. And we sit, broken down, inside of a drafty Amtrak beast, with a large Asian in coach class, feeling forlorn as the cold breeze creeps in under the train doors, and feeling a sense of regret at sitting so near the Café Cart and restrooms, both of which have turned out to be spectacularly annoying during a stranded train situation.

We’re currently awaiting the arrival of a “Rescue Engine” which, if I understand correctly, will pulls us the rest of the way. What this means for me, is that I will spend 10 hours on a train on this fine Black Friday instead of eating leftovers, doing homework, or even sitting in the warmth and comfort of my own home. Without even light enough to do my homework. For shame. (Fortunately, there was beer in the café cart, so Sam Adams is keeping me company, helping me pass the time.)

Now, if I could smoke a cigarette, things would be slightly better. But since contracting a respiratory infection of some sort, I have been over 48 hours without a cigarette, and think it’s probably a bad idea. (Now, you may be asking why, if I can stop smoking for 48 hours, why I don’t just quit. Answer? Four words: It’s awesome. Shut up.)

Since it appears I have all the time in the world I can fill you in on some of the boring inanity that my legal life is comprised of.

1) My brother has acquired “Rock Star,”
(….ah crap, I just saw a train go past us…sigh….)
…a video game where you actually play guitar, bass, and drums with electronic versions. Here’s a picture. Anyway, turns out I’m awesome. Not at the game…but at life. But also at the game. Or at least, I can play Hard versions of some songs.
ME  Awesome.

2) Thanksgiving was good.

3) Your mother was better.

4) I have nothing else to report. Peace out.

Edit: It is now 11:40 pm. We were just informed we were going to move the train forward. And then, in this next forward area, we are going to REPLACE one of the engines on the train…because…..as it turns out, they just realized that 1) The rescue engine couldn’t attach to the front of the train, and 2) If it Did, we still wouldn’t have power. It seems to me that either of these problems was perfectly foreseeable before sitting on the track for over 2 hours.

Edit 2: It is now 1:17 a.m. We haven’t moved. It has gotten much colder. Things are much much worse. So now, that is has become a full-blown event, I’m going to lay the situation for you…

I went to Thanksgiving with a bit of a chest cold. I had just managed to dodge a rapidly emerging sore throat, and felt it spread into my upper lungs. I was also exhausted. So exhausted that I passed out on the floor of the Thanksgiving get together and had my picture taken with a shoe in front of my face. (See Facebook.) Anyhow, I feel worn, torn, and feel constantly on the verge of catastrophic illness. (mistake #1)

So I get up feeling much better this Friday morning, a morning which also brought a 20+ degree drop in temperature. I went through the day in typical manner, slightly dreading the 8 hour train ride in coach I was to embark upon later in the afternoon, but I wasn’t all that worried. I mean, the train was supposed to arrive at 11:50 pm, and the subway stopped running at 12:15, so I didn’t have anything to stress out about, right? I could work on the train for a nice 8 hours, sleep a little, take the last subway out, and walk home to a warm apartment full of beer, and freshly made Chinese food from my mother.
So I started packing things up, and I decided I didn’t really need to charge my phone overnight. I mean, why bother, right? (mistake #2)

So I begin packing up my stuff, and my mother tells me to wear my sweater. I say, “no, why?” and wear my long sleeve t-shirt. (mistake #3). I carefully move my computer gear out to the main room in my bro’s apartment in order to pack it up properly, and, as it turns out, I forget to put the power adapter in my bag. (mistake #4)

And so I get on the train…and I sit on the cabin right next to the Café Car (mistake #5), and next to the main toilets (mistake #6)…

4:32 -The train ride begins. It’s boring, and once on the train, I realize I don’t have my power adapter, and stare wistfully at the power outlets next to me in the train. A sense of longing comes over me. I want my AC adapter.

4:33 - I get over it. And I open up my secured transactions book and read for 4 hours, falling asleep for 3 hours. I manage to eat two Chinese pineapple cakes in the next 4 hours.

8:33 - It’s smooth sailing all the way past New York, past New Haven, and I’m on my way home. At some point in the midst of Connecticut, the train’s internal power seems to go out. Now I’d like to note that this power goes out on trains like, 20 times per trip. This time it just didn’t come on. So what does this mean? This means, you can’t plug in your computers or phones (see mistake #2 and counterfactual mistake #4). It also means that the cabin lights are slightly dimmer. No biggie. There’s really no need for either of these amenities. It’s a train. It’s 9:30 pm. It’s not a big deal. The train is clearly running just fine, and it just seems to be an internal wiring problem. The train is running JUST FINE.

9:30 - For this tiny little problem, they tell us that the Engineer wants to shut the whole engine down and recycle it, and fix the internal power problem.

9:35 - The train shuts down. We are told this process will take 5 to 10 minutes. I start to get mildly anxious about catching the subway back. But I reassure myself, 5 or 10 minutes will allow me to barely catch the last subway car, save 50 bucks, and the hassle of fighting hundreds of people for a midnight cab. No electricity means low light, no heat, and annoying teenage girls behind me.

10:30 - Silence. I go and buy a beer. The bathrooms are constantly in use with jackasses leaving the bathroom doors wide open after use. I can smell the blue. The deep lovely blue of train toilet water. Over the last hour, over 100 people have visited the café car for beer and food. Each trip opens the cabin door to the outside temperatures and lets in a breeze that whips around my ankles. It’s cold. The temperature is dropping. My feet take on that clammy wet feeling they get when it’s cold.

11:00 - We are informed that the Engineer, who is on the phone by the way, and not on the train, cannot get the train started again. A rescue engine is on its way from New Haven. That will take an hour. Another 100+ people thought café car was a good idea letting in another 100+ bursts of cold draft into the train. My beer runs out. I consider getting another, but it seems a mite excessive to start pounding beers on the train.

11:40 - The Rescue Engine arrives. Whoops. Apparently it can’t attach to the train, thus it cannot pull us. And, even if it did, we still would not have heat. This sounds to me like sending a crane to pick up the ocean…and realizing that you can’t use a fucking crane to pick up the ocean….but only after you got there and noticed that THIS, does not pick up Ocean. It remains cold. I want beer. I get concerned about starving, and eat a pineapple cake. (translated: me want food.)

11:41 - We are informed that the new plan is to await a brand new replacement engine which will be swapped out with the old Engine. That way the train will be back to normal. It is colder than it was a minute ago, my cough is getting worse, my nose is running, and I want beer.

11:50 - Our original ETA passes by. And smirks. That fucking bastard.

12:15 - The New Engine Arrives! Huzzah! I eat a taro cake in celebration.

12:35 - The lights flicker and turn on! The New Engine Lives! Heat begins to fill the cabin. Hope springs etern…

12:37 - …the lights turn off. The whiplash I give myself when my head sinks forward in disgust and disappointment will give rise to articles in medical journals about me being the first person to survive a neck whipping equal to that of a medieval hanging. I’m cold. I suck it up and go to get another beer. NONE LEFT! NO MORE ALCOHOL.

12:50 - We are forlornly informed that the brand new engine the put it simply died. They don’t know why. The plan is now to have another train come from New Haven, pull us back to New Haven, strap on (heh, strap on) diesel engines onto the train and THEN depart for Boston. My internal calculations tell me this will get me home no earlier than 4 am even if I caught a cab immediately upon my return.

1:15 - We’re told there are three plans now, working all at the same time. Plan 1, we will be towed back to New Haven where the trains will be repaired. Plan 2, the diesel engines will be brought out to us. Plan 3, I forget. In any case, the plans don’t make any sense.

1:20 - My computer battery begins to drain dangerously, since I won’t have my adapter until Monday, and I will need the computer to have power for things like, oh, exam studying? Transferring crucial files? Not blogging on the fucking train. (See mistake #4). My constant text messaging with my brother and a few others, which I have to this point used to keep me occupied, has dwindled my cell phone battery dangerously. (See mistake #2). And I’m fucking cold, bored, and hating the idea that this is going to last until late into the morning and that my plans for Saturday are now completely fucked.

1:37 - The backwards tow to New Haven begins
1:38 - The backwards tow to New Haven abruptly ends.
1:39 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again…….and stops. Head explodes.
1:41 - The backwards tow to New Haven starts again. I am now wearing a full winter coat, my awesome black hat, a scarf, and I have consumed 3 pineapple cakes, 1 taro cake, 1 sam adams, 1 mini bottle of water (seriously, why do these exist?) 1 cracker, 1 oatmeal cookie, and some sort of dried fruit mix that I ate after holding the package under the light of my cell phone and scrutinizing the ingredients for the word “peanuts.”

1:42 - I whip out the Macbook and start to blog about this. And that brings me up to now…

1:52 - I type the words “I type the words ‘I type the words’”. Yes. I did just do that. And now I’m bored. Luckily I still have 6 pineapple cakes left. But I want beer. And I want a cigarette I can’t smoke. And I want sleep I can’t have. And an AC adapter, and a stronger phone battery. Everyone else is asleep. I hate that. I hate being the only one awake on the plane. Or in this case, on the train. But it always fucking happens. Everyone falls asleep happily for 10 hours, while I sit there glumly, silently, in the dark, thinking about whether it is ok to turn on my super bright reading light. Except today, there’s no power, so I can’t.

2:00 - We have arrived in New Haven. Now we await the Strap-Ons. Or more appropriately, I await the Strap Ons while the rest of the happy fucks slumber the misery away. My feet are cold. I haven’t taken my contacts out in 40 hours.

2:04 - HA!! The intercom lady wakes everyone up with a peal of feedback through the PA system and announces that they are “tying on some diesels.” (translated: Lubing up the Strap-Ons.)

2:05 - I experience a sense of smug satisfaction that I’ve been coughing my respiratory plague into a closed and sealed tube with no air circulation for the last 4 hours. Pasiant Zero! (Pasiant = Patient + Asian). I’ve unleashed Asian Dude Flu unto this foul world.

2:10 - Step outside to stretch out. It’s fucking cold. Stewardess looks at me, suspiciously says “are you a passenger sir?” My brimmed black hat hobo look apparently doesn’t inspire confidence. Because, there are, in fact, Asian hoodlums who wait around train stations at 2 am in the off chance this happens. And then who stand there looking miserable.

2:15 - Still cold. And I want chap stick.

2:16 - I found Chapstick. Thank the lord for small miracles.

2:23 -I take some solace in the realization that somewhere, on this train, the odds are that someone got some sort of food poisoning from eating massive amounts of undercooked poultry or underheated stuffing from inside an undercooked bird (Stuffing is Evil!) or suffers from some sort of IBS that they are totally and utterly in hell right now. (The water for the toilets no longer runs.) My thoughts go out to you.

2:26 - I have a thought. I think it would have been very easy for me to have become VERY upset about this whole situation. To be totally indignant about this. To feel burning anger and injustice. But, I sorta haven’t. I have maintained a total Zen-like calm this whole time. Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been absolutely fucking MISERABLE this whole time. Because I have been…

2:28 - Lights come on!!!

2:28 - …fucking miserable. Cold, tired, hungry, far from home, and bored out of my fucking mind. And too goddamned tall to sleep in these seats laying down.

2:30 - The train crawls forward out of New Haven. My calculations get us back to Boston sometime in the morning, probably by 5:30. That means I might actually make the Subway! …for the first train of the morning…I’m totally suing.

3:10 - I fall asleep, laying down on a seat approximately 3 feet across. Note that that I am 6'2".

5:10 – We arrive at Boston South Station. Finally. I stumble out into the very cold weather and stumble down to the Subway stop.

5:22 – No train yet. Argh.

5:32 – 22 minute wait for a subway car? I am going to fucking kill some.

5:33 – Yay!

6:05 – Stumble into my warm apartment. Ahhh…..

6:06 – Turn on Sportscenter, cracked a beer, sat on couch.

24: season hell.

This episode takes place between Sunday and Monday. (So it's really 24, but fuck you.)

.......Boop...beep....boop....beep.........

1) 10:00 - 6:00 pm Sunday. Ate a sandwich at noon. Sat in the journals office working on a final vet for a piece about to go out to the printers for our first set of proofs.

2) 6:01 - 6:30. Had a cup of hot chocolate and a small piece of cake. (not my idea. but totally awesome.)

3) 6:30p.m.-2:00 a.m. Sat in the library and slaved over this research paper. (seriously, it has ruined my life.)

4) 2:00a.m.-5:00a.m. For undisclosed, but highly legitimate reasons, I ended up drinking 64 ozs of beer from 3-5 am and did no work. Note, I had not eaten since the small sliver of cake at 6:10 or so.

5) 10:00 a.m. Monday: Slept through an extremely important secured transactions lecture.

..........Boop...beep....boop....beep........

Um...

I was recently sent this video by someone who understands my adoration for awkwardness, and things that are funny. See, e.g., Samwell, What What (In the Butt), YouTube (last visited 10 seconds ago). (I'm locked in the journal office reviewing an article about mercenaries before publication, sue me.)

Anyhow...here is the video. It's...Something. I don't know what. I just sat there, stunned, watching it...not quite sure what to think. Does she think it's funny? Or...what? I...uh...



Uh. My favorite part is around 1:48.

Edit: I changed my mind. The volume was too low when I first heard it. The video is actually adorable, in a very sad way. But funny nonetheless.

Beowulf.

Does anyone else just feel mildly embarrassed and cringe slightly every time they see a Beowulf trailer? The same sort of feeling when you watch your friends get up in front of large groups of people and say something cringe worthy? Its not like I know anyone in the movie, but whenever I hear the guy yell "I am beowulf!" to cheesy metal soundtracks, I get embarrassed for him.

Ignore the Gay...

...and simply be charitable.

As I mention too often, I am embarking on a mission of not really cutting my hair until after my Post-bar trip when I return to the Street of Walls in a pressed, charcoal, corporate suit and my day job that will keep me working late into the nights.

Anyhow, the fact is, that my hair is now entering massive dildo asian fro phase (or as AT&T/Cingular would term it, Massdilasiaphroase) and I sorta want to make some sort of modification to it so that I can allow it to keep growing without looking like I have a massdilasiaphroase. (Mark my words, this word will survive this post and one day into the OED.)

Anyhow, as possibilities into the future, or maybe just for stasis, I have picked a few pictures of haircuts. They are all the same guy, so you don't get distracted making fun of Asian faces...so I'd like to get your opinion on which or NONE I should start considering. And yes, I am aware that all of the pictures i have chosen are of one asian dude. but...lets be real, right?

...and as request. Please ignore the gay.


This first one is the closest to what I have now. Though I'm not at all sure how he got asian hair to have texture beyond "straightblack". I think I like this one.
Lets not pretend this next one is anything but absurd. I merely want to demonstrate the limited options I have as this race.

This one is possible, but I think a little too short.
Finally, here's my favorite.
P.S. I am also disappointed by how typing the word "Asian" into Google Image search, even for variants on the phrase "Asian Haircut" invariably brings up waves of porn and naked Asian chicks. What the hell (white) guys?

Magazine upon Magazine.

Shitty Still, so I'm posting.

So during a week when I was home this summer, my mother gave me a little piece of paper from her airline telling her that she had a few thousand miles left that were on the verge of expiration. On the other side of the paper were all those lovely magazines you can subscribe to, which, to be honest, is kinda exciting...

First thing I noticed? Wall Street Journal? Every Day? For a YEAR?!
....No. I was 300 miles short.

The Economist?
...Not availabe.

How about Penthouse then?
...Right.

That left me with a smorgasbord of supercrap: Maxim, FHM, Blender, Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, People, National Enquirer, Men's Health, GQ, Cosmo, Vogue, Mademoiselle, etc.

So given that she had tons of miles and nowhere to put them, I just did some math and got a bunch of subscriptions, which I subsequently forgot about.
...Until recently.

An avalanche of crappy embarrassing magazines has arrived at my doorstep. In isolation, I think any of these magazines might be acceptable, but coming in bundles of 3, all together, seems excessive, desperate, and lame. For example, upon arriving home from school at 11pm one day (yes, life rules), I noticed a huge wad of magazines stuffed into, and falling out of my mailbox. Men's Health, GQ, and something called Best Life? (There's no WAY I signed up for Best Life, fuckin Bon Jovi is on the cover of this months, although I'm still wondering if I in fact subscribed to GQ.) To add to the loveliness of it, it turns out they were also shipping back issues. So I had TWO Men's Health magazines, and TWO Best Lifes.

So there were 5 magazines overflowing my tiny little mailbox happily signaling to the world that I 1) am fat and out of shape, 2) am not successful with women, 3) cannot manage my finances in order to have my "best life" (shakes head), 4) need fashion help, 5) like reading about male role models for 20-somethings, and 6) might just have a gay hankering for pretty men with Rock Hard Abs!, and 7) that I subscribed to SEVERAL magazines to fix all of these problems. Because I'm a fucking moron.

The next question is what to do with all of them. I am simply not comfortable having a 3 foot stack of "how to be man" magazines sitting on my coffee table next to my two video game consoles and just a few feet away from my ever present display of alcoholism perched atop my kitchen cabinets.

Anyway got a shitty life and need a magazine's assistance?

More importantly, this is not why I posted this time. It turns out I did subscribe to one fairly respectable magazine, The Atlantic, which featured a story by Andrew Sullivan about Barack Obama. For those of you who've known me for at least a few months, you know both that I read and (generally) respect Andrew Sullivan, and that I (though increasingly lukewarm) support Obama's candidacy. If you want to read it, it's here. It's not spectacular, but it envisions American politics as a remnant of the Baby Boomer generation and their half-century of culture wars and fucked-up mentalities...and the argues that Obama is the necessary break. I just thought I'd drop a few bits from the article, in case your classes are boring you to death:

On Hillary:

As a liberal, she has spent years in a defensive crouch against triumphant post-Reagan conservatism. The mau-mauing that greeted her health-care plan and the endless nightmares of her husband’s scandals drove her deeper into her political bunker. Her liberalism is warped by what you might call a Political Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Reagan spooked people on the left, especially those, like Clinton, who were interested primarily in winning power. She has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives. And so the less-adept ones seem deceptive, and the more-practiced ones, like Clinton, exhibit the plastic-ness and inauthenticity that still plague her candidacy. She’s hiding her true feelings. We know it, she knows we know it, and there is no way out of it.

On Obama v. Clinton

The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do...

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

On Religion (and Bush.)

This struggle to embrace modernity without abandoning faith falls on one of the fault lines in the modern world. It is arguably the critical fault line, the tectonic rift that is advancing the bloody borders of Islam and the increasingly sectarian boundaries of American politics...

You cannot confront the complex challenges of domestic or foreign policy today unless you understand this gulf and its seriousness. You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps. This, surely, is where Bush has failed most profoundly. By aligning himself with the most extreme and basic of religious orientations, he has lost many moderate believers and alienated the secular and agnostic in the West. If you cannot bring the agnostics along in a campaign against religious terrorism, you have a problem.

That last section was meaningless, except the last sentence, which is AWESOME.

Anyhow, I certainly doubt this was informative for any of you. Reading what I just posted, I think none of it was particularly interesting, and I apologize.

...But not really.

Why I watch football.

Edit: Shit. I posted the wrong clip. The correct clip, with slo-mo is now available. Take the time. It's incredible.

So in light of recent events in my light, I came home and spent the entire day in front of the TV on a Monday night with the television on ESPN. The date, was October 22. The game, was the Colts one-time appearance on Monday Night Football. The talk all day was the same hyped-out drivel about Pats-Colts, Pats-Colts and Tom Brady's ridiculous numbers for the season...leaving me aware that the entire football season was going to be about the Pats and Colts.

But I digress. On my first dedicated night of football watching for the year, I stared at the screen, watched the complexities of the game and tried to grasp the intricacies of the strategies, and sort of glazed over as the camera turned to the fans. And then it happened.

It took me a second to realize that this wasn't a simple D-Fence prop. It took me another second to realize that it was something else. That...this was truly the coolest football fan in history. That I was destined to be a football fan, forever. And then in conversation, I was told that the clip was up on YouTube. And here it is, in all its glory.

Masterful. The Slow-Motion is key. Notice how poised and controlled he is all the way from start to finish. He sees his moment. He doesn't lose his shit. He doesn't get excited. His eyes don't even look to the prop. He doesn't give away a thing. And then beauty itself is born.

Asians: Part 7,562,3945

I cannot but be dismayed at my interactions with Asians this semester, and, as my facebook status update indicates, they are driving me batshit crazy at every turn.

1) On the law journal, two of the article editors (who happen to be Asian girls) are driving their co-editors crazy. They behave meekly, they won't make decisions, they don't take responsibility for their actions, and they're causing all of the responsibility to fall squarely on the shoulders of their co-White Girl editors. We're getting complaints daily about their constantly disappointing performance, and I've already made several mentions about instituting a no-asian-girl policy for promotions. One of them, however, seems to be ok. And, of course, my co-executive editor is an Asian female, and she's great. But, still.

2) I am working on projects with actual Asian men. The first project is writing a chapter on the Chinese financial system for a professor's textbook, on which have been staffed two Chinese LLMs. Both highly accomplished individuals who work for the People's Bank of China, the China Securities Regulation Commission, and the Agricultural Bank of China. These are actual Asians. From Asia. And they are driving me crazy.

Besides being kneejerk super reactionary defenders of China when anyone deigns to suggest that reality and the facts prevailing in the Chinese economic and political system are as they are and that the facts indicate that China is still in developing stages and is in fact NOT a utopian society where lemurs fetch your daily wank job handmaid on emerald dragonboats and the regulatory system hums along in utter perfection in a manner far surpassing those of the most sophisticated economies in the world, they cannot seem to grasp that not every forum is the place to argue about or justify why China is in the state that it is. (long sentence. wow.) They've been drinking the Red Kool-aid with such enthusiasm that it terrifies me to imagine what work product I'm going to get back from them when I have to finally pull this whole chapter together. I delegated this work to 3 other people, and yet I've written 85% of the chapter myself, receive continual confusion about the whole process, and constantly get challenges on the parameters I have given them to work within.

This is not to say that I don't listen, nor is it to suggest that the parameters I have laid out are perfect. It is more to establish the fact that more than anyone else in the world, foreign students have a bizarre tendency to "fight the hypothetical" so to speak, and simply refuse to accept what is being asked of them. For example, if someone were to ask you, would you save a drowning old man or an infant from the ocean, you would generally understand that my question is not logistical. I am asking you a philosophical question about your values, how they are expressed, and what choice you will make. For some reason, when these sorts of questions are asked to these students, the responses invariably include questions like:

"Well, how deep is the water? What if there is a sandbar underneath the old man? Does the baby know how to swim? How long until low tide? Is there a motor boat around? What color is the water? Is this a world where God directly intervenes and could just like, save them both? Can I see if Seman is around?(Sea Man!)"

Anyhow, you can just tell I spent like 1 hour with the ex-deputy director of the People's Bank of China who drove me up the fucking wall...and now, apparently, he's on my "team" for this project which can only end in humiliation, shame, and absolutely ass-wrenching stress.

(I typed in "FOB" to try find some Asian pictures to supplement this post, but all i came up with was pictures of Fall Out Boy, which annoyed me even more....so no."

Did it.

My computer has been going nuts (ie. erasing all of my bookmarks and clearing all of my internet history randomly, not recognizing the existence of a battery, lagging and freaking out.)

So I bought a Mac.

And I don't know how to use it. I'm constantly stressed out by the thing. Is this going to get easier? Is there somewhere that explains very basic concepts? (Like what replaces the concept of a right click?)

Picture of the Day.

Discuss.

Reinhold Niebuhr.

Have any of you read any Reinhold Niebuhr? Ever since reading this piece sometime last year, I have been somewhat interested in reading some of his works....but never quite got the juices going enough to dive in. I found all of the things he said in the article, which I seriously suggest you take a look at, to be spot-on and rich, and I wondered if I should pull myself away from the practical aspects of law and policy, and dive into a richer intellectual history. I know he's a theologian first, which sort of sets me on edge about this whole thing, which is why I wanted to see...if by sheer chance...any of you had spent any time in his works.

Thanks. Peace Out. Now time to bury my misery in the non-stop, you couldn't possibly believe how busy and frantic I am, workaholic life that I've created for myself despite the fact that I hate work.

Angus.

Yes. Once again, for those of you who have known me for the past 12 years, I am once again talking about Angus - the movie about the fat kid who punches Dawson's stupid Steve face and gets the girl. I bring this up, only because I was taking a procrastination break in the library (you might think I am using this term incorrectly, since the grammar would imply that I was taking a break from procrastination. But you're wrong. I did.) ...and during this procrastination break, I was going through IMDB typing in all of the obscure old movies that radically shaped my childhood (Airborne, The Skateboard Kid II, The Peanut Butter Solution, Kid Colter, The Dog Who Stopped the War...among others...) ...and as usual I ended up on Angus. And then I went to the message boards at the bottom, and I found this posting, which I found particularly interesting and familiar. (The first sentence is particularly familiar.)

I talked with a friend today and he laughed at me because I said that Angus was one of my favourite movies...he thinks it's stupid. I can live with that, but there's one thing I'd like to know. The thing is: he was one of those rather popular guys at school, had many friends, never had problems with girls, he was never an outsider. I, however, was. Is it because of this that I am able to identify with Angus and that I love this movie? Does he think that it's stupid because he never had to go through all this?

Note: I was 12 or 13 when Angus came out. That puts me squarely in chubby Michigan Asian with braces and greasy slicked back hair with an undercut/bowl through South Carolina skater kid with middle part bowl and undercut (nicknamed Ning Chink).

The Answer is yes. Fuck all you Dawsons out there.


D

Update.

Things have been shitty for the last week so I didn't really feel like posting anything, so I'll just give you a quick update.

1) I accepted my offer at the law firm today. I will now be a BigLaw corporate associate, altering my life path in a variety of ways.

2) Boston is cold as balls. I needed to get out of the city and spend some (more) time by myself, so I rented a Subaru Outback station wagon and drove up to New Hampshire's White Mountains with a book on tape. The weather was incredibly shitty with temperatures in the 50s on a grey, rainy, foggy day. The mountains were hidden in a shroud of low clouds and fog. I didn't even see the mountains. Just the white clouds that enveloped the entire view. Then I drove home.

3) I spent my entire fall break in the library working on my research assistant paper, and got next to nothing done despite 5-7 hours a day of sitting alone in an empty library.

4) I started watching football. I lack any particular team loyalties, given my lack of geographical permanence. (Bengals? Lions? Panthers? Rams? Patriots?) As a result, just for the sheer joy of watching football being played well, I've basically been watching the Pats and the Colts in their run up to this weekend's SuperGame. Man.

5) I got Metroid 3: Corruption for the Wii, and my buddy is addicted to the game. So I spent some of my break alternating between drinking beer and watching video games, and playing them myself.

6) And yes, the BoSox won the fucking World Series. Thank god it took place late at night on Sunday, in Colorado, and that I was able to avoid massive throngs of annoying people. I don't mind the exuberance and excitement of local sports (ie. I think it would be great if the Pats, Boston College, and the Celtics all lived up to grand expectations)....but I find Sox fans to be particularly annoying people. So all my wishing and hoping that the Rockies would rip a hole in the Sox and lose the other in the wash was for naught. I actually decided that since I don't watch baseball and have no baseball loyalties, I will define my baseball fanhood as an anti-Sox fan rather than as an allegiance to any team. Suck it Boston.

.....

There isn't a worse way of spending a fall break than this...

I'm not done with the last post...BUT.

FYI For ALL VERIZON FOLKS:

I think Verizon has recently decided to give out Verizon customer informations to all of their divisions and affiliates for advertising purposes. The idea seems to be cell phone advertising. I never received a letter about this, but it appears they have been sent out.

You can opt out if you call this number within 30 days.

800-333-9956

No need to thank me. Just doin' my duty. Ok, ok, ok. *Bow*

I want a vote. REALLY.

I just ran across this image. Before any discussion, could you all please just tell me what way you see the dancer spinning? Just a simple clock-wise or counter clockwise will do. (You will have to click on it. This thing has been driving me CRAZY.)

Oh Jesus Christ. Watch This.

Seriously. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.







Edit: This is in supplement to M's comment...Jesus.

Good Reads: Revived!

If you've been following since my earlier posting days over a year ago, you know that I used to post pieces that I had read and that had some significant impact on me. Or at least I thought were pretty awesome. Or at the very least I found meaningful enough that I honestly believed other people should read it too. I sorta stopped doing that, but I just read this random piece in the NY Times and it really left me quite surprised and thoughtful... So, as always, I genuinely and hopefully encourage you to read, but as is the case, I expect you not to.

On Thursday, the novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Moments after the announcement, the literary world embarked on a time-honored post-Nobel tradition: assessing — and sometimes sniffing at — the work of the prizewinner. One of the most pointed criticisms of Ms. Lessing came from Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic, who told The Associated Press, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable.” He went on to add that the prize is “pure political correctness.” Interestingly, Ms. Lessing had some strong thoughts about political correctness, thoughts she expressed in this adapted article, which appeared on the Op-Ed page on June 26, 1992.

Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer
Doris Lessing

WHILE we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness.

The first point: language. It is not a new thought that Communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest.

The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use. “The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation...” Words confined to the left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read whole articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but the writers did not know it. But there is an aspect of this heritage that is much harder to see.

Even five, six years ago, Izvestia, Pravda and a thousand other Communist papers were written in a language that seemed designed to fill up as much space as possible without actually saying anything. Because, of course, it was dangerous to take up positions that might have to be defended. Now all these newspapers have rediscovered the use of language. But the heritage of dead and empty language these days is to be found in academia, and particularly in some areas of sociology and psychology.

A young friend of mine from North Yemen saved up every bit of money he could to travel to Britain to study that branch of sociology that teaches how to spread Western expertise to benighted natives. I asked to see his study material and he showed me a thick tome, written so badly and in such ugly, empty jargon it was hard to follow. There were several hundred pages, and the ideas in it could easily have been put in 10 pages.

Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism — as Swift, for one, tells us — but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had their roots in German academia. And now that has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world.

It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language.

The second point is linked with the first. Powerful ideas affecting our behavior can be visible only in brief sentences, even a phrase — a catch phrase. All writers are asked this question by interviewers: “Do you think a writer should...?” “Ought writers to...?” The question always has to do with a political stance, and note that the assumption behind the words is that all writers should do the same thing, whatever it is. The phrases “Should a writer...?” “Ought writers to...?” have a long history that seems unknown to the people who so casually use them. Another is “commitment,” so much in vogue not long ago. Is so and so a committed writer?

A successor to “commitment” is “raising consciousness.” This is double-edged. The people whose consciousness is being raised may be given information they most desperately lack and need, may be given moral support they need. But the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. “Raising consciousness,” like “commitment,” like “political correctness,” is a continuation of that old bully, the party line.

A very common way of thinking in literary criticism is not seen as a consequence of Communism, but it is. Every writer has the experience of being told that a novel, a story, is “about” something or other. I wrote a story, “The Fifth Child,” which was at once pigeonholed as being about the Palestinian problem, genetic research, feminism, anti-Semitism and so on.

A journalist from France walked into my living room and before she had even sat down said, “Of course ‘The Fifth Child’ is about AIDS.”

An effective conversation stopper, I assure you. But what is interesting is the habit of mind that has to analyze a literary work like this. If you say, “Had I wanted to write about AIDS or the Palestinian problem I would have written a pamphlet,” you tend to get baffled stares. That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary.

The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.

The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

A professor friend describes how when students kept walking out of classes on genetics and boycotting visiting lecturers whose points of view did not coincide with their ideology, he invited them to his study for discussion and for viewing a video of the actual facts. Half a dozen youngsters in their uniform of jeans and T-shirts filed in, sat down, kept silent while he reasoned with them, kept their eyes down while he ran the video and then, as one person, marched out. A demonstration — they might very well have been shocked to hear — which was a mirror of Communist behavior, an acting out, a visual representation of the closed minds of young Communist activists.

Again and again in Britain we see in town councils or in school counselors or headmistresses or headmasters or teachers being hounded by groups and cabals of witch hunters, using the most dirty and often cruel tactics. They claim their victims are racist or in some way reactionary. Again and again an appeal to higher authorities has proved the campaign was unfair.

I am sure that millions of people, the rug of Communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma.

P.S. - Has anyone read anything by her? I'm intrigued...

P.P.S. - This is Harold Bloom. The guy who shat over her Nobel win.

Oh, C'mon!

The Netherlands have banned mushrooms after a mentally ill girl killed herself while taking them.

Well that just sucks.

It's not like I ever planned on doing mushrooms in the future, but I mean...you want the option right? Wanna do a bunch of illegal drugs? Go to Amsterdam!

So Pretty! And Yummy (except actually disgusting like eating feet.)

...dammit.

Sweet Ass!

He's done it! He's done it! Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize!


....Oh. And the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Or UNDSFLKJDY)

This is actually called the Altman Acoustic Panel, but I'm sure it wouldn't mind if we called it UNDSFLKJDY.

So yes. I actually quite thrilled that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the very likely chance that the situation is as dire as we all think it is, I don't think there will be a more monumental contribution made to humanity. Of course, Al Gore's success exists only in negative counterfactual...so if things go well and we successfully ward off climactic pandemonium, half the world will bitch that Global Warming was a hoax. And if things go badly, then well...environmentalists were right (shrug) Now grab your shotgun so we can find off the browns who lost their homes and crops to the simultaneous flooddroughtmonphoon.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how much of an impact this will make on anything. I am expecting some sort of outcry from the conservative ranks about how disreputable the Nobel Prize is, and how the Nobel Prize doesn't understand science. And how the Republican Party does. Not the Nobel Committee. That's going to be great.

Just purely for effect...I surfed over to Fox News Webpage to see what they had to say...and Oh My God....THIS is someone's primary news source?!

The Red boxes all indicate the same "WTF" feeling I get when I look at CNN. The Lime green boxes intrigue me. They aren't being outright Rush Limbaughey with their politics, but they're definitely trying to sow division...and their attack on the Democrats is much more subtle than I would imagined given the ham-anded antics of Bill-bo Douchebaggins O'Reilly and Sean "I'm so awful I don't have a nickname" Hannity. Anyway. Peace.