Sometimes I just forget...

...About all of the interesting and beautiful things in the world...

Prompted by an article about this building by Frank Gehry in the NY Times...
...I decided to take a little internet tour of other buildings by Frank Gehry.

Dancing House - Prague
Same building...
The Guggenheim
Gehry Tower - Hanover (Germany? Delaware? Micronesia? Dunno. Hanover.)
That's just awesome.
Weisman Art Something or Other.

And then there's one of my favorites: The Stata Center

Clearly the fact that it is less than 5 minutes away from me tips the scales on why this is my favorite. The craziest thing is that I have driven by this building several times...and each time I have always been stunned, surprised, and skating on the razor's edge of being the architect for a 10 car pileup...as I crane my neck to see the building outside of the passenger window of my car. Stupid. But always fulfilling. I think it's time to get out of my car and really take a look sometime.

I can't wait to have a few free moments to roam around Boston exploring the architecture. I've totally forgotten that living in a city allows such little pleasures.

Incidentally, this will be the building I will be working in this summer. (Not cool.)
A hearty dose of acid should make it just right.

Where do we find hope?

I am conflicted, as I believe lots of people are, about the situation in Iraq and what our position should be. I only wanted to post this news snippet I ran across while looking through the tabloids known as CNN.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi insurgents used two children as a cover to get through a checkpoint in Baghdad and then blew up the car while the kids were still inside, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

Two adults jumped from the car, leaving the children in the back. Moments later, the car exploded, witnesses said.

The car went through a checkpoint Sunday and parked by a market across the street from a school, said Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The two children and three bystanders died in the blast, and seven others were hurt, Pentagon officials said.

The attack raises concerns that insurgents are trying a new tactic: using children to throw off troops, Barbero said.

"Children in the back seat lower suspicion. We let it move through," he said.

Unimaginable. I can't imagine how to even begin coping with these mentalities.

I called it first!

Just to let you know, I have decided that the name of my first dog is going to be........

Butterstick.
No. Clearly not that kind. This kind.

For those of you who have no idea why I have a picture of a baby panda that I have referred to as Butterstick, you should look here. (I'd also like to add that you totally missed out.) For those of you who recognize this lovely name, it may seem somewhat random, somewhat lame...and not really that great.

...And you would be right. Because as a name, Butterstick really just doesn't cut it. I admit it. It tries too hard to be kooky. It is not funny. It is not cute. It is too self-aware and considers itself witty...yadda yadda yadda.

Except, although the name of the puppy would officially be Butterstick, I would not call him Butterstick. All problems of the lame name would be obviated when I decide to call a pup, much like the one below...


Butters.


Say it with me. Butters.

Need I explain the brilliance and perfection I have achieved?

I dare you to tell me that the doubly awesome benefits of naming a dog Butterstick, and then getting to call him Butters is not the best thing ever. I fucking DARE YOU.

And yes. I like beagles. Except that I'm allergic.

Facts to Support What We've Always Known.

I haven't posted in a long time...mainly because I've been absolutely exhausted...and because it didn't seem like anyone was reading anything, so I just decided to take a quick break. In any case, I just thought I should post this article...because I just think it is the perfect embodiment of what has been abundantly clear. It is Andrew Sullivan, but is published in the Sunday Times from the UK, and not from his blog.

You know the drill by now. America is a schizoid country, split between red and blue, divided into traditional families and countercultural radicals. The Republicans represent the old school, the Democrats the postSixties libertines.

It’s a helpful stereotype — “I’m in Kansas, they must all hate gays” — but like all stereotypes, it doesn’t quite fit reality. In Kansas many people don’t hate gays; many Kansans are gay; and even the antigay ones can be really nice, especially when you’re lost and need directions. And there are some flaming lefties I know whose mouths go dry and whose knees wobble at the thought of going into a gay bar.

But you see the inadequacy of the rubric most clearly in the presidential race. Look at the Democrats. Of the three frontrunners all have intact, lifelong marriages, with children. If they were Republicans the religious right would love them.

Barack Obama has been married for 15 years and has two daughters; Hillary Clinton . . . well, whatever you say about her she has stuck with her cheating husband for years while he has continued to humiliate her. John Edwards is perhaps the most admirable of them all. He has been married for 30 years to Elizabeth, a remarkable and accomplished woman. They have had five children, but their 16-year-old son was killed in a car accident in 1996.

Most couples never survive the death of a child. The Edwards family did — and went on to have two more, Emma Claire and Jack. The latter is now seven years old.

All three Democrats speak candidly about religious faith. They hail from Hawaii, Illinois and South Carolina respectively. So much for the clichés.

Now take a look at the party of “traditional values” and the religious right. Republican warhorse John McCain’s first wife Carol stayed loyal to her husband during the Vietnam war when he was abroad, imprisoned and tortured. She also, however, had a car accident, put on weight and needed crutches to get around.

On his return McCain did not stay faithful, met another woman, Cindy, and divorced his first wife. His children are a diverse group: he adopted two kids from his first wife’s first marriage, has a daughter with his first wife, has three children with his second wife, and adopted a seventh from an orphanage in Bangladesh. His first wife still loves him, his second wife adores him and his Brady Bunch-style family has apparently worked out fine. But it’s a little complicated, contemporary and has a pale shade of blue.

Rudy Giuliani is a New Yorker and his family life reads like an episode of Sex and the City. He has three wives under his belt, several rather public affairs, a nasty break-up with his second wife Donna Hanover and is somewhat estranged from his son.

He informed his second wife that he was divorcing her and marrying Judith Nathan at a press conference. It wasn’t the first time he had embarrassed her. “I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together,” his second wife once said. “For several years it was difficult to participate in Rudy’s public life because of his relationship with one staff member.” She was referring to Giuliani’s relationship with yet another woman.

Giuliani’s website doesn’t mention his children or his former wives. Not much of this has yet sunk in with Republican primary voters now ranking him as their favourite. We’ll see what happens when it does.

Newt Gingrich married his first wife Jackie when he was 19. She was loyal, faithful and helped put him through graduate school. He still dumped her later on and had the class to file for divorce while she was in hospital recovering from cancer surgery. LH Carter, his former campaign treasurer, recalls Gingrich saying of Jackie: “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the president. And besides, she has cancer.” He refused to pay alimony or child support.

His second marriage lasted almost two decades, but it broke up while he was having an affair with a staffer 23 years younger than him, to whom he is now married. He was having the affair while coordinating impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. He recently confessed to James Dobson, a leader of the religious right, that: “There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them . . . I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I’m . . . not proud of.” I’m not judging any of these men. We are all human and we all fall short of our own standards. But the sharp discrepancy between the party of “family values” and the actual messy, complicated lives that many leading Republicans have led makes for some unmissable ironies. Political liberals are often quite conservative in their private and family lives; and many political conservatives have chequered or lively pasts. The contrast between moral Bushites and immoral Clintonites is a distorting one.

The Republicans do have one clear squeaky-clean candidate. He’s Mitt Romney, who married his high-school sweetheart and has five sons with the fantastically wholesome names of Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. The boys have so far produced 10 grandchildren. If Romney gets the nomination, the convention family scene will look like an outtake from the Osmonds.

But that, of course, is the problem. Romney is a Mormon, and his family values are not rooted in evangelical Christianity or even Roman Catholicism. For the faithful Republican base, their hero stands athwart a slightly troubling pedestal.

My own view is that none of this matters much. Unless you have someone with a pathological sex addiction like the last president, most American leaders’ private lives don’t affect their political judgment. Sadly the crude way in which Republicans targeted Bill Clinton for sexual misbehaviour and in which Karl Rove appealed to evangelical voters through the biography of George W Bush made the personal more political.

What we’re seeing now is an adjustment back to a better balance. The Republican base has been forced to recall that a leader matters not because of his private foibles and indiscretions, but because of the policies he supports and the character of his public conduct.

Republicans once understood this before the polarised age of Bush and Clinton. Their icon Ronald Reagan was, after all, a divorced man who almost never went to church. And in the messy details of McCain’s, Giuliani’s and Gingrich’s lives, Republicans are mercifully relearning that the morality card can backfire if played too crudely.

Maybe they’ll be a little less reluctant to rush to judgment in future. That’s progress, it seems to me, and a little more grown up and humane. Heaven knows, of course, if it will last.

Hey. You're Fucking Annoying.

This is just a brief little note to a certain group of annoying people in Law School:

Loud Typers.

All you fuckers who type really loud for no reason whatsoever...stop it. You're fucking annoying.
I will destroy you.

This is not the America we need.

Obama 2008.

You now know my position and my candidate.

Without a doubt, many discussions will follow. Let me just say I finally feel some sense of optimism about our political future. For the first time. In a very long time.


Fact of the Day: Instead of taking an assured clerkship at the Supreme Court, since all Harvard Law Review Presidents have a straight path to the Court, Obama declined in order to return to Chicago to begin his career and public service as a community organizer. Minor, but incredible.

When the days are dark, a beam will shine through...

Bjork's new album, VOLTA, will be released May 7th this year!

And it sounds exactly the way it should be:

"Because I'd done two or three projects in a row that were quite serious, maybe I just needed to get that out of my system or something. So all I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Childhood Memories.

This is irrelevant as always, but did you all take part in the Book It program when you were a kid? The little purple buttons, and the free pan pizzas for reading books, and all that jazz? I get the strongest whiff of nostalgia just thinking about how excited I was by the ability to earn free personal pan pizzas...and how I would go up to the counter to get my free pepperoni pizza (as a 6 year old bowl-cutted kid), and how proud I was. (You know, back before the day before I would become horribly cynical about everything corporate and franchised and commodified. And thus become the wretch I am now.)
Anyhow, it appears that the anti-corporate forces have come out in sharp criticism of the program. I don't know if kids feel the same way about the program as I did, or whether this contributes to crass commercialism and obesity...but for some reason this makes me sad. Not because of the program itself, but just thinking back on Book It! and the complete and utter loss of innocence I feel about the whole thing. Back when stores were just stores, and restaurants were just restaurants, and there was no need to conceive of the Pizza Hut 2 blocks from my house as anything but The Pizza Hut. The place to go after soccer games, or for special treats, or the place where I'd earn my free pizza.

Or how McDonald's wasn't some evil "Fast-Food Nation" corporation, but the restaurant with food that my brother and I so desperately wanted as toddlers that we pestered my mother to such an extent that she begged the cashier to give us Happy Meals, and that she would send them a check as soon as she got home, because she didn't have the cash on her. (They did, by the way.) Or the place where we would excitedly go to for someone's birthday party. Or even the place where our elementary school would take us on field trips, and we would get free hamburgers. (that was, by the way, the first time I ever had a Hamburger, in the white wrapper. Before that, it was all cheeseburgers...in the yellow. I mean, seriously, why would you NOT want the cheese?) When graduating to a Quarter Pounder, or a Big Mac was some sort of benchmark for getting to be a big boy?

Has corporate and commercial culture changed so much that the commodification and sterility has actually gotten more apparent and has become apparent to everyone? Or did I just grow up and finally learn see what was always there, having just lost my innocence? Or did I just become some sort of awful high-brow snob that sees fast-food chains in a very different way than many other people, who still view these places much like I did...so that I'm now the elitist outsider?

I have to admit, I dislike all three possibilities.


Or does this have to do with the fact that my parents exposed us to a LOT of fast-food and microwave dinners as children?...and that having Asian parents never placed any filter on how we saw these restaurants and stores?

Quick Poll.

Jew. Apparently.

This is completely unrelated to my feigned anti-semitism...but I have an actual, legitimate question that I am actually curious about:

For non-Jewish people, at what age did you realize that the Jews were a "separate" group?

To give this question some additional contour, I spent my entire childhood and most of my adolescence (Ohio, Michigan, South Carolina) with the impression that Jews were simply another subcategory of whiteness. For me, "white" encompassed all races of European descent and Jews. During my childhood, I could identify Italians, I could identify Albanians (because I grew up near Detroit), and I could identify other groups, but it was not until I was probably 17 or 18 that I was able to recognize that there was a distinct Jewish subgroup that was distinguishable from the big stew of Europeans...whether through appearance, last name, or whatever. (I am not delving into the issue of whether Jewish is ethnic, religious, social, etc. etc. blah blah blah.)

Jew. Easily.

Maybe the explanation wasn't helpful...but I feel like you'll have an answer for the question if you ever had a similar experience. So really. Let me know. I am truly curious that it took me 18 years to recognize the significance...and I wonder if that's why I am so casual in downplaying Jewishness and cavalier in my feigned anti-semitism.

Ah, China.

So, of course, the news story of the day is that the Chinese market took a sharp nosedive in response to the government's concern that all the immense speculation going on in the Chinese stock market is going to result in an economic meltdown. The Chinese gov't made some policy change, though I forgot what it was. (as I understand it, everybody and their grandmother is involved in the Chinese stock markets...with people taking out second mortgages and high interest bank loans, and then investing it all in the stock market...which if you follow the chain reactions, leads to massive economic catastrophe if the confidence bursts...because, after all, confidence is 95% of the value of money, right?)

Anyhow, a dive in the Chinese marketplace now means a massive nosedive in the US, European, and Japanese marketplaces...which are the big'uns.

I really don't understand enough about the state of the economy to comment or make predictions...but my totally uninformed gut instinct over the past year has been that the market has been far too exuberant and far too bullish. I can't quite tie all the threads together, but the slow disintegration of the public markets in favor of private equity deals in excess of 45 billion dollars, the rise and peak of (what I consider free radical) hedge funds, the never-ending stream of mergers and acquisitions, the fact that Google stock was valued at around 465 bucks a share with a market capitalization a little more than a third of GE (I don't get it.), massive global instability, two emerging rogue nuclear powers, a failed war, and instability in the energy sector don't seem to add up to "Super Fantastic Economy Time!"

This isn't to say that I have any idea what I'm talking about, or that I make any particular predictions as much as to say that my ever-deepening pool of pessimism and doubt make me feel like a recession wouldn't surprise me in the least.

That being said, what happens to all of us corporate Wall Street lawyers? They're certainly not concerned about the careers of first-year associates...I bet they're fretting over those payraises now!

(This was an exceptionally useless post. I know. Just thought I'd post something.)

A Day for Honesty.

As I have indicated in the past, I have become a real mess over the past few months. I'm not sure when it started exactly (my guess is September 6, 2006), but I gave up on everything.

I would eat whatever I wanted, whenever the hell I wanted, and I did not exercise at all. Every night, immediately before I would go to bed, I would finish off an entire bag of something - oatmeal cookies, tortilla chips, potato chips, mom's biscotti, or something. I would honestly eat until my jaw hurt. And I would keep going, generally.

I smoked each time I stepped outside, before each class, after each class, on the walk to school, on the walk home from school, after each meal, when I woke up, and when I went to sleep, and with every coffee.

And I began to drink every night. I had to be out the door by 7:30 everyday, and I'm simply not a morning person, so I needed to find a way to put myself to sleep by midnight or 1. Red wine was the answer. A glass in the night would do, I'm Asian right? But one glass became two. And then two glasses became half a bottle a night. And a few nights, I realized I had emptied off a whole bottle. On a Tuesday evening no less. On every evening, actually. But, somehow I found the ability to draw a line at half a bottle a night. Such a feat of discipline!

Here's the trail of evidence

I also lost control of who I was. I lost the ability to make conversation. I lost my passion for anything. I stopped calling the children. I lost having my own dreams and ambitions. I lost my ability to have faith in myself, feeling it all being devoured by a growing sense of self-loathing and insecurity. I became distant, alienated, isolated, and friendless. My life was so alien to me. I had always worried that I wouldn't make friends. I had always worried about being isolated. But somehow, it always worked out.

Not my favorite place

It didn't work out here. These are the last 6 months I didn't talk about.

I say this because I felt like I had hit rock bottom, and have now very determinedly begun to dig my way back to the surface and don't plan on sinking again. So wish me luck...

...and maybe someday when I finally get there, I will grow wings.

My Afternoon.

I spent 30 minutes laughing out loud, on my bed, alone, in the middle of the afternoon as I got sucked into these comics. God. So funny. I'm sure half of you have already seen these, but god-damn. Funny. Otherwise, my day was boring.












So Good.

Today is Picture Day!

Thanks to Sarah, for referring me to this strip many moons ago.... (click to read.)

Thanks to the NYTimes, for being better than CNN...

Thanks to the grave solemnity of a little Asian boy at Pearl Harbor...




And finally...I'd like to thank...

!!!!JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT'S A BIG RABBIT!!!!



His name is Robert. I shit you not. Goodnight.



(read this if you want the depressing, and horrifying reason this picture exists in the news.)

Memories.

I recently stumbled across one of the band's shows we had recorded...After announcing my drunkenness to the crowd:

Me: This song is called Breathe. It's about breathing. (Blocher and three people laugh.)

...melodic, long, slow building intro begins...and is interrupted by loud Darth Vader noises made into the microphone....

Me: "It's about breathing, think about it." (Blocher laughs again.)

Haubenreich: Jay, you're a fucking idiot.

Band Practice

...Song begins, and after a few verses, the music is suddenly punctuated by an interjection...

Me: Bucky Sucks!

...The song ends...

Me: Ahl be honest, Ah have no idea what's going on right now but ah hope yer lahkin it.

...30 seconds of retuning guitars passes...

Haubenreich: You're a towel!

...a song later, I crack an enormous "Mama joke" followed by a loud chorus of "Ohhhh!!!"...

Loyal Moshers

Me: This next song is brand new... it's gay as hell, but we like it. It's called Index.

Haubenreich: Hey, shut up! I wrote it. (someone in the crowd yells "Jailee!")

Me: No you didn't.

Haubenreich: I did too, Goddammi...

Me: (interrupting) JaiLee! (silence and confusion, followed by Blocher laughter.)

Included because it's Glorious.

...God I miss being in a band.

Yes. the Shirts are pointing correctly.

Oh, I would also like to submit my all-time favorite overheard and recorded comment from one of our shows at the Chi Psi frathouse at State....in the midst of blaring guitars, vocals, bass, and drums...the voice of a frat boy emerges: "I have a small penis, but a big full heart." Awwww.

(Haub: FYI, this features you singing "Heat of the Moment" Nickelback-style...concluded by a booming "ASIA!")

Haubenreich Wins!!

Note: There will be gratuitous pictures of Bjork all over this post. For those of you in the know, you realize these would only represent 1/100,000th of what I actually have. For those of you with me during college, you realize that I actually own posters of most of these pictures. And you probably felt creeped out by them.......you were wrong then, and you're wrong now.

Aside from the fact that I left my Playstation 2 (and 15 games?) with you before leaving for India, with an unconditional promise that you would return it to me...you win simply because you asked about Bjork. The magnificence of the question warrants an entire post in response. Not because it's going to be interesting, but because I don't think I have anything else to say today, except that I did power squats with 450 pounds today.
And that makes me awesome.


So here we go. The difficulty here will be avoiding the fact that Bjork remixes everyone of her songs at least 20 times...so I just have to hope you can get the right version. BUT...you could just ask me and I'll send them all to you. Since Bjork covers every range and mood, I'm not really sure what kind of music you want. My own preference is for her intense, lush, and over-the-top stuff...and the minimalist stuff. I'm just going to throw you an easy list and hope it sticks...it may just end up being a list of singles.

1) So Broken (Joga single) (the flamenco guitar accompaniment song...a can't miss)
2) Hyperballad (Post) (upbeat, energetic, in a major key)
3) Joga (Homogenic) (awesome.)
4) Bachelorette (Homogenic) (intense, over-the-top, huge production values)
5) Luktar Gvendur (Gling Glo) (her jazz band) (loungey jazz)
6) Gloomy Sunday (best cover EVER) (Just awesome)
7) Army of Me (Homogenic) (energetic, intense electronic driven)
8) All is Full of Love (Strings remix b-side) (good.)
9) Pagan Poetry (Vespertine) (experimental)
10) New World (Dancer in the Dark Soundtrack) (intense strings based)
11) I Remember You (Venus as a Boy soundtrack) (harp-based jazz cover, low key)
12) Amphibian (Stigmata Soundtrack) (low key)
13) Unravel (Homogenic) (cello and voice. awesome.)
14) Hunter (Homogenic) (I think you must know this one)
15) Cocoon (Vespertine) (sensual, low key)
16) Unison (Vespertine) (one of my favorites)
17) Oceania (Medulla) (I left off most Medulla songs, this one's probably the most accessible)
18) Isobel (Post) (just pretty good)
19) Generous Palmstroke (Hidden Place single)
20) Play Dead (Greatest Hits) (most mainstream pop-sounding song from a movie soundtrack)

If you wanted more happy, energetic songs in a major key...
21) Human Behaviour (Debut)
22) Venus as a Boy (Debut)
23) It's in Our Hands (It's in Our Hands single)
24) It's Oh So Quiet (Post) (This is the big-band happy happy song)
25) Big Time Sensuality (Debut)

Sarah? Any contribution or ideas? Approve? Disapprove?


Coincidentally, it was only three days ago that I embarked on one of my cyclical Bjork re-immersions...I've spent all my recent time buried in Joanna Newsom, Damien Rice, Ozma (who apparently have reunited), Muse and Tool...and I needed a break. Two things of note: Apparently the Pumpkins release their new album on 7/7/07, and Bjork has a new album slated for sometime this year as well. All very good news.

So, Haubenbobber, why do you ask?

Quick Law Student Solicitation.

Has anyone taken Evidence? If so, what study guides suck and which ones are good? I don't feel like emailing everyone and asking, so I'm doing it here.



It's also wintering like a bitch here.

It's been awhile...but all the same....

Just another sign of how remarkably stupid gun-rights activists are...some guy in his 20s wearing a trench coat and a backpack walked into a Utah shopping center with a 12 gauge shotgun and fired off about 20 rounds. 5 people who thought it would be a nice day to go shopping and have dinner are dead.

More? Some guy in Philly tied up 5 of his employees, shot four of them, and then killed himself.

Justify this to me. Please.

The Story of the Penny.

I really love articles like this one, where an author takes a common, everyday object we never consider, and tell glorious, exciting stories about their past and the rise and fall of passions over them. I think there was a fantastic book about Salt that came out several years ago, or a book like "The Orchid Thief"...today, an article about the Penny. Just thought I'd share. Good stuff.

Federalist...but not in a bad way.

I've been mulling this over for a very long time, well, at least a year, and I have come to a decision. I am a Federalist, though clearly not in such a manner as to be considered as aligned with the Federalist Society.

I think I have come to the conclusion that federalism is a necessary, important, and fruitful structure for government. Thus, from today forward (at least until I change my mind again, or encounter someone who irritates me into squabbling with him/her, which could very well be tomorrow), I believe that a Federal structure is the right way to go.

This is clearly uninteresting and insignificant to anyone else, but I thought I would share

Reality Check.

If you read this post and thought it was boring, uninteresting, self-indulgent, desultory, or petty...it's your fault. Because I'm telling you now. It's all of those things.


To those of you who knew me before this transition into law school, do you think that I have changed? (I want you actually answer this question. Though I know you won't. Ass.)

Every year of my life since I was 18 years old has been beset with radical changes in perspective. The color and shape of the universe keeps changing. Just a quick sketch:

1. In the 2000 election, I was not able to identify any differences between Democrats and Republicans.
2. I began the 2001 sophomore year in misery, hating myself and my life, entirely too introspective and bogged down in self-pity and self-loathing.
3. In 2002, I left the Western world for the first time in my life and was startled by China, a place where everyone looks like me, where people share the same blood. A place which awakened me to the fact that I really didn't belong anywhere.
4. In 2003, I decided to try certain drugs.
5. In 2004, I left for India, having never met an HIV+ person, an untouchable, or an orphan. Terrified.
6. In 2005, I tried law school.
7. In 2006, I began losing the battle to law school.

Suffice it to say, every single year sucked me deeper and deeper into trying to tease out the chaos into something that made sense, and every year there was a major shift, a re-alignment, a new understanding, and a deeper reflection on my own past understandings. (This is part of my suspicion about people who have very very strong and set ideological beliefs at this age. If a month goes by where an belief you hold does not gets obliterated, pushed aside, refuted, compromised, or at least seriously challenged by some experience or understanding...then I don't think you're paying attention. Or have accepted the primacy of faith over understanding. Which, I guess, is fine.)

The larger question is whether I really have changed or not. For example, I am abundantly, painfully, and bitterly aware that I have moments of pompousness, arrogance, and condescension. A quarter of the time I don't mean it at all, half of the time I'm not even aware it's happening (which, I guess is the most dangerous part), and the other quarter of the time I'm probably doing it on purpose because I'm being annoyed. Has it always been this way? I distinctly remember a moment in 10th grade, when one of my friends told me that Billy Baugh thought I "talked down" to him. It was the first time I had ever heard that, and I was devastated that I hadn't realized people thought such things of me. Anyone?

I remember being proud of who I used to be. I don't remember being ashamed of myself. I don't remember living in a complicated amalgam of an inferiority complex infused with the God complex infused with so much alcohol and cigarettes.

I remember, sitting in a Waffle House with Nic Turza when I was 16, and he must have been 18. It was after one of the band's shows at Ground Zero, and we just wanted to grab some food. And Nic was someone I had always admired, who I believed was one of the most brilliant and competent people I had ever known, but still had an incredibly developed sense of integrity and purpose. I imagine he had little or no respect for me, this being a guy who yelled and screamed at me the first time I ever met him. (apparently I ruined the ending of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and movie spoilers were a major pet peeve.)

And we talked, and somehow we ended up on our goals in life. When he asked what I wanted, I said that the only thing I wanted, and ever would want, is to have a decent life. To make enough money to provide for two kids and give them what was given me. To have a loving wife that I loved. To have a stable, contented family life. That's it, that's all, and what else could we want? (I'm paraphrasing a much more eloquent delivery I'm sure). And I remember Nik was surprised, and I remember that I was surprised at him being surprised. I had not the slightest iota of an aspiration for greatness. What I said that night must have moved him though, because he went home that night and wrote what I had said onto his wall in black marker.

Who cares? Who knows. Is that how you would think of me?

Interesting Note.

I don't have too much to comment upon with respect to the exact figures and the implications, since I'm not terribly aware of where the money is being allocated, though if bias and memory serves me right, it is, very very broadly speaking, shifting from domestic programs to the military budget...

I just wanted to note this simple set of facts about modern conservatism:

February 28, 2001: “In his first address to Congress, Bush likened his $ 1.9 trillion budget to a family budget...”

February 5, 2002: “President Bush yesterday proposed a $ 2.13 trillion budget for next year...”

February 4, 2003: “President Bush announced a $ 2.23 trillion budget for fiscal 2004 yesterday...”

February 3, 2004: “President Bush sent Congress a $2.4 trillion spending plan yesterday...”

February 13, 2005: “President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget...”

February 5, 2006: “President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget tomorrow...”

Today: “President Bush took aim yesterday at domestic spending as part of a plan to balance the budget in five years without raising taxes while increasing funding for the Iraq war and permanently expanding the military. With the $2.9 trillion budget he submitted to Congress...”

If you're keeping score at home, $1.9 trillion to $2.9 trillion is an increase of more than 52 percent.

Nice.

Stupid.

When did useless college literature analysis begin to seep into journalism?

So you probably recognize these photos...
Here's the New York Times:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.

Awful.


P.S. - I'm working on my first case!

(See Reaction Below)

What is this reaction to? THIS.



Hot Jesus. Which one of you may I dub "Pants Man?"


(As usual, discovered on the Daily Dish)

If anyone ever wants to do some research...

I've been reading about the death penalty in my Evidence course, something which I have always opposed for a variety of reasons, though I have never felt it to be a burning issue that consumed me and interested me like some other issues.

One bit of empirical evidence interests me though, in general, about the criminal justice system, which is whether there is a disproportionate incidence of "recidivism" amongst populations who have been exonerated by evidence presented after conviction. (I use quotation marks, since I assume recidivism requires an actual first violation...which isn't technically true if you've been exonerated.)

Of course there'd be tons of variables to juggle (is murder generally a crime which is conducive to repeat offenses? The association between arrest rates and other variables like race, geography, prior criminal history etc.? Do people who have spent 9 years on death row have altered psychologies upon release? and on and on), but I would be curious to see if the numbers come closer to well-documented recidivism, or the general population. There are obviously 9 million conclusions that can be drawn from such evidence, ranging from the effects of being subjected to the criminal justice system, the nature of individuals arrested and convicted, the efficacy of criminal justice procedures in determining the "truth" etc...but I just thought I'd take a break from my reading and type down this random thought. I, of course, have no interest in following this up...but feel like it's an interesting question.

Also wanted to lay out an interesting quote from the noted conservative George Will, which isn't the basis for my views, but I found interesting nonetheless:
"Capital punishment is a government program, so skepticism is in order."

Oh oh oh yeah! One more thing...

Coolest Aquarium Ever.
As can be expected, I believe, I have nothing to say about the Super Bowl, and decided not to go to any of the parties being held by really excited people, because I will invariably laugh when the commentator says "tight end" or something, and be asked to leave. And it's just not that exciting to me. I will watch the game though.

Things I Like...and I'm an idiot.

Today was clinic orientation day. I had to be up for an 8:15 bus from Campus to the legal services center in Jamaica Plain...a low-income "ethnically diverse" area outside Boston. As usual, I woke up at 8:03. Noting that the bike ride takes 6 minutes, the all-too-familiar panic took over, and I was up, ready, and out the door at 8:09 on my bike. Unfortunately, last night ended with an ugly snowfall, whereupon the snow neither melted nor remained frozen. In other words, slush slushed from the slushy heavens. I say this because it means that the roads were completely frozen over in that rocky, foot-printy, tire-tracky, jagged slipperiness. Which goes great with a thin tired road bike. Lovely.

Anyhow, I happened to make it to campus at 8:17, relieved as hell, when the parking lot where the buses should have been was completely empty. Not a soul. As I pulled into campus, I began to panic that yet again my sleeping problems had fucked me over, and I made an unwise turn on a lake of ice, resulting in a rapid loss of traction, a panicky scramble for salvation, and a calamitous clatter as I, my bike, and my fat ass crashed to the ice and slid into a wall. I quickly scrambled to my feet, and then fell again. After locking my bike up, I made a panicked phone call to one of my buddies in the clinic, asking him where they were. His response?

Now? What? It's 7:20. I'm a douchebag with fat fingers who can't set his alarm without jamming down the time set button.

Otherwise, clinic orientation was interesting. It appears that I will be serving as an attorney for divorces, child-support, alimony, domestic violence, restraining orders, child custody, and all sorts of other family law. Apparently this entails independent interviewing, building case theories, doing paperwork, filing motions, restraining orders, subpoenas, and arguing the case in front of judges for hearings etc...in short, actually being a family law attorney. It's exciting, but a little terrifying to suddenly have to handle all the aspects of the law in someone's actual life. Not policy, or appeals, or corporate gains and losses, but someone's kid, or escaping an abuser's wrath. Yikes. Thank god I'll have some supervision!

As for what I like, I just wanted to say:

--Joanna Newsom's Album, "Ys" is fucking incredible. I bet most of you would hate the shit out of it, but I simply can't get enough. It is by far one of the best albums I have heard in a very long time.
--I also like Damien Rice's new album "9"
--"Before Sunrise" was great, although in my opinion a bit of a slow starter with more than a hint of lameness...even though ultimately I was touched by the movie, and a few choice exchanges. However, I just thought "Before Sunset" was incredible. I can't entirely explain why, nor am I interested in trying to unravel it, but I really felt so drawn in and invested in the movie...you know, the types of movies where you spend the next few hours after it searching all over the internet for any scraps people have written about the movie, or speculations on it, or looking up the actors etc. Good stuff.
--Also, has anyone else seen "Idiocracy"? The movie was pretty shitty all around, but the introduction of the movie developing the idea that in modern society idiots, morons, and degenerates reproduce more,earlier, and "worse," while intelligent and educated folks have much fewer children (if at all), leading to an increasing de-evolution and dumbing down of humanity...was really interesting. And I'm not actually sure why it would be wrong.
--I also love your mother.

Can't access the Blog for some reason...

But it appears I can access this "new post" page, so I'm just going to post my response to Rawjer's comment about repealing the the 17th Amendment here. My apologies.(though, as you can tell by the length of the post, I find it fascinating). Rawjer's post is in the post about "What I believe." (By the way, for you non-law students, and I guess even you law students, has the crap I've been talking about been unbearable to read, and you just sorta skip over it?)

And now back to my response to Super Jewboy:

Actually, I was referring to your use of the phrase "vox populi" which made it sound like you thought the 17th Amendment made things LESS populist, when in fact it makes things much MORE populist and nationalist, rather than federal. That was all I was saying...didn't you basically say something to the effect that the 17th Amendment makes gov't less responsive to the will of the people?

I think I'll begin with the argument about the "distinct advantage" in electing Senators differently, first by laying groundwork, and then making the point.

There's a dramatic difference from Madisonian conception of the system of checks and balances and the actual system which evolved. Madison viewed the separation of powers and checks and balances from an institutional standpoint, whereby the branches check each other through self-interest and pursuit of power and aggrandizement for their respective branches, that is, their interests lie in their institutional power. Thus, Congress has interest in Congressional power, and the Executive has interest in Executive power. The analogy or shift was from British mixed regime theory, whereby the King, the Lords, and the Commons, by the very nature of their composition of their constituencies, had inherent interests that checked each other. Lords have different interests than Kings, and Kings different interests from Commons etc, so each group naturally had its own interests that were embedded into English society, and thus served as a good framework for channeling self-interest.

America didn't have Lords and Commons and a King. They didn't have embedded societal interests that could be so fortuitously blended into a mixed regime. So Madison conceived of a system where the institutions themselves give rise to institutional interests which will check each other. It doesn't matter what your background is if you're the President...as your interest will be assumed to be in making the Presidency more powerful...which will cause you to check the Congress. This is not how things are today. This Madisonian approach, while still alive and actively debated today, was vastly cut back and diminished by the introduction of the Supremacy Clause and Judicial Review (which the debates show only 2 of 55 convention delegates rejected), which allowed the court to adjudicate the divisions of power between the branches, that is, relegated what Madison saw as a distinctly political power struggle, into a system guided by the rule of law administered by the Judiciary. Rule of Law, not political struggle. This is most clearly illustrated by the Convention's outright rejection(four times!) of Madison's attempt to institute a co-executive/judiciary mode of political judicial review, which was ultimately replaced by judiciary judicial review.

The point of all of that nonsense? Madison's system is not the one that survived. In fact, the system of Framer's intent is not the system that emerged and we cannot view our current situation solely through their eyes. The mutation? Political parties. The system we see has to be re-understood in light of the emergence of such an enormously significant political development, and not from a long-past perspective. The existence of political parties is not accounted for in the original system, and thus we have to view the Constitutional system in its evolution to accomodate political parties, not in its pre-political party condition. (I guarantee you're thinking of Madison's "faction" analysis from Federalist 10 and Federalist 51 as a discussion of political parties, but it is not. His analysis of factions is a retrospective look at the excesses of majoritarian democracy, not prospective views on political parties. (If you want, I can go into a much deeper discussion about what he means by faction.) Madison is referring to precisely the same problem Gerry is referring to in the quotation you noted about the people being led astray, that is, the excesses of democracy.) The Framers created a much better system than they had intended, not because they foresaw all of the problems, but because the system was able to adapt to massive shocks and revisions.

More relevant to your analysis is that Madison's (and yours) conception of bicameralism is not relevant in an era of political parties. Besides the fact that Madison's institutional view of political power struggle is far less applicable in reality than in theory, political parties kill the utility of an internal legislative check. In both houses, it is clear that it does not matter how they are elected, it matters more which party they are affiliated with. Thus, changing the composition of the electorate makes absolutely no difference in checks and balances. In the past 6 years, had the Senate been elected by states as a republican majority, the results would have been the same.

In addition, in regards to campaign finance, I believe that with the decline in campaign finance there would be an increase of corruption. I believe it is easier to corrupt 51% of 300 state legislators with promises, gifts, money, and favors than it is to corrupt an electorate of 30 million. If you are concerned about special interests infecting campaign finance, I believe special interests will have a much more direct route to office. More specifically, I think it would be quite easy for the most powerful and influential people in any state to have an easy ticket to DC. That is, the Senate would be even more aristocratic than it already is. To drive this point home, making the Senate more aristocratic, more elite, and more distant from the voting population was one of the specific rationales given for electing the Senate from state legislatures. The Framers WANTED an aristocratic Senate. Do we?

Also, I believe the Senate is by no means a clone of the House. The KEY aspect of bicameralism, unanimously agreed upon in the Convention, is a difference in the sizes of the house. Larger houses are more prone to demagoguery and the passions of the mob, while smaller houses are better for deliberation, but more open to corruption. These conclusions are relevant today, as the House is much much more lock-step and non-deliberative, while the Senate is more deliberative and manageable with 335 less people. But more importantly, both houses are dominated by backroom wheeling, dealing, negotiations, and party affiliations. NOT by actual deliberation. So why bother with repealing the 17th Amendment? What can be achieved in changing the composition of the two houses that cannot be accomplished by the fact that the HR is elected out of districts and the Senate by the whole state?

The utility of federalism is a wholly different issue that I don't think I'm going to tackle here. I do believe that there is great benefit and great necessity for federalism. But I also am acutely aware that federalism was the powder keg ignited by Lincoln's election which precipitated into the Civil War.