Riiiight.

I found this on my brother's blog, so I did a scan on my own...

Apparently my blog is:



Right.

Note: The appearance of the word "Gay" was noted by the blog-rater website and counted towards this grade.

Apologia.

I'm a little exhausted, so my writing is going to be particularly uninspired, unrevised, and basically dry and explanatory.

...I haven't really had a good chance to post anything in the last week, although, for the first time, I will have to say it's been fairly eventful...at least in a "living in a crazy-ass new city" sorta way...

Let's begin with some observations...

Hong Kong has one striking similarity to the US. It's filled with Mexicans....sorta. It's extremely bizarre to interact with the service industry and wander the streets of Hong Kong, because it feels intensely familiar to the US in the sense that there seems to be a burgeoning, ever present group of Filipinos and Vietnamese women. They are the waitresses in the restaurants, the clerks in the lower end stores, they wear different clothes, and they are noticeably darker in skin ton. On several occasions, I unconsciously identified people I saw on the streets as Mexican or Hispanic...when I realized I was in friggin' Asia, and it made no sense for huge numbers of Hispanic folk to come over here. All I will say, is that the dynamics of brown skinned southern brethren working and living amongst a more light skinned northern bunch is so familiar and so similar to the US that I am constantly surprised.

The one really interesting outgrowth from this population is something like a Sunday picnic for all of these women. Every Sunday, all day, in every shaded area (in covered walkways, in large covered plazas, on stairs underneath the trees, under bridges), there are huge congregations of Filipino women eating tons of awesome looking food, gabbing away, giving each other makeovers, playing cards, or whatever else consumes a lazy Sunday afternoon. Here's a shot I found on the net (because I feel somewhat shameful taking pictures of this phenomenon)...but looking at the picture, I can tell it is the HSBC building, exactly the spot I walked by today. This is what it looks like (times about 30).
To be honest, I find the whole thing to be really wonderful. I know it's the typical American reaction to see ethnic community bonding and partaking in exchange, food, and the pleasure of company as exotic and wonderful...but I really do think it seems like a great phenomenon and great way of life...even if the truth is that each of these people aspires to own their own car, house, and air-conditioner so they can sit at home alone and watch their flat screens. In any case...nice. (It was explained to me that since they are mostly in-house maids and the like, that they essentially have no place to live on Sundays...so they simply go outside and congregate in public because there's nowhere else to go.)

Another observation, which I've probably made several times...is that Hong Kong is fucking HILLY. This is the hilliest, steepest, most treacherously unflat city I have ever seen in my entire life. It is as if the curvature of the Great Wall of China (likely comparison, eh?) in all its mountainess steepness and brutally steep slopes were crammed together as the streets of a 10 square mile city. Besides my typical bitching...I find it insane how much uphill walking I have to do these days. (Buns of Steel eat your heart out.) What that means, in addition to the 99% humidity and 100 degree weather...is that I'm sweating ALL the time. The humidity makes the weather here far more brutal than it ever was in India...

So onto what's been going on....

Monday Night:
The firm took us to a barbecue seafood joint for the welcome party. Nothing spectacular, but it was a nice little get together where I overate, and then overdrank. At 9:30, I promptly came home to my apartment and dialled into the conference call for the deal I'm working on. 5 minutes into the conference call with a super high ranking NYC partner and several HK lawyers, I fucking fell asleep from the mass volume of beer I had consumed the few hours earlier. Now I don't know if I snored, or if I was asked any questions, or even how long I was out. Needless to say, the heartracing panic of waking up drunk in the middle of my first conference call was not good.

Tuesday:
I woke up early to join in the second conference call at 9:30...and I stayed awake the whole hour!!!

And luckily, Tuesday was a holiday. It was Dragon boat day! So the three of us summer associates took a bus down to Stanley Beach and watched the Dragon Boats race! The races, although incredibly Asian looking, are actually done in large part by large groups of white people racing with their respective corporate groups. So banks v. banks v. corporations v. consulting groups. In other words, white v. white v. white v. asian. Here's a shot of that...

Work:
Office work has consisted of hours of poring over the world's most boring prospectus and making markups and editorial changes in pencil. (Note: Chinese English, although often technically correct, fucking blows.) I tried to stab my pencil into my eye.

Actually...I'm getting way too tired now to write anything interesting, so I'm going to cut to the chase.

Saturday was a fantastic day. We all got up early as balls and set off for a long hike on Dragon's Back.
Before this trip, I had no idea that Hong Kong was this beautiful, tropical, lush mountainous island. I always imagined it as a concrete jungle with glitzy skyscrapers. Not so.
(Those are the two other summers) So we set off on a 2 hour hike through this beautiful mountain terrain, surrounded by the oceans on all sides, sun beating down on our necks. Actually, as the picture below demonstrates, the sun was so vicious and hot that I didn't let the sun touch my neck. (I do sorta like the enormous mountain man look I have going though)

We trekked all the way until we hit a little beachside town called Shek-O. We found a Thai and Chinese seafood hole in the wall, gorged ourselves on fresh fish, shrimp, veggies, several enormous Tsingtao beers, and very refreshing Coca-Colas. Here's a shot of the aftermath of the meal. That's the other summer Patrick.

There we basically lazed around on the beach, swam in the clear green waters surrounded by green peaks, and rocky outcrops far out in the ocean...and completely had the chance to unwind and relax. (Actually, I ended up wandering out into the ocean by myself after they passed out asleep on the beach.)

After all of that, we were soaked, covered in sand, salty, disgusting, smelly, out of clothes, sore, severely sunburned, and exhausted. But content. So what did we do?

We went to Jolly Foot...to get foot massages. For an hour.

Then afterwards, in a strange twist of fate, we ended up with people who appeared to be the Paris and Nicole of Hong Kong, and ended up in super exclusive hidden clubs hounded by the paparazzi. (It really had nothing to do with us. I barely spoke to the girls, and thought the clubs were overpriced, overlame, and underwhelming in every respect except the lavishness of the decore. That basically means the people sucked.)

'Tis All. I'm tired. I'm going to bed

Day 1: Hong Kong Corporate Confidential.

(Is it just me, or is life a constant barrage of new experiences and situations requiring constant adaptation and readjustment?...)

The first day in the HK office was uneventful, but nice. The office is really small, with approximately 18 lawyers (85% Chinese or Chinese descent), and the feeling is much more laid back, much more collegial, and much more informal than in Manhattan. Instead of 15 floors of 500 lawyers encased in elegant offices, there is a single floor in an ugly building.

So my jet lag woke me up promptly at 8 am (apparently I picked up my wakeup call and hung up immediately an hour earlier) and I took the hotel shuttle to work. After a 10 minute, sweltering, sweating, humid, muggy, no good very hot walk, I arrived at the office, wrapped myself in the delicious air conditioning, and promptly sat around for 5 hours passing the time. Other than that, we had a lunch of random pizza and caesar salad (have you ever had lox and cream cheese pizza?), had a lawyer's weekly lunch, and then spent 2 hours falling asleep while proofreading a prospectus for a Chinese company. (Chinese people fucking suck at English. I have never encountered such technical perfection, yet complete unintelligibility in single, multi-clause, multi-modifier, molto confusing sentence.)

Actually, I'm not even going to go on and describe the rest of my day. It's too boring. Even for me to recount. So...I went to dinner, I got full, I drank beer, I sat in on an hour long conference call from the cell phone they gave me (I actually fell asleep drunk on my couch at some point during the conference call when the head partner began discussing issues of corporate taxation in determining acquisition structures...and I'm not entirely sure how long I was gone...but I don't think they caught on.)


So...tomorrow is the huge dragon boat festival in Hong Kong...and I will go promptly after I attend a conference call in the morning with Beijing and New York (huff on fingernails and buff them on my lapel. diffidently.) And hopefully I'll update then.

Hong Kong.

So I have arrived in Hong Kong...

Let's start at the top...The story is very snooty. Because the circumstances under which I have been operating have been inherently snooty. And lavish. And absurd. And thus, I will discuss them as such. Because that's just the way it is...bitch.

I believe this picture serves my purposes well. Aside from the Aristocratic
bearing of this fine gent, he's got a gesture on his
hand that makes it all somehow bearable.

So on Thursday afternoon, after getting slammed with work from the M&A partner I've been working closely with, the summer supervisor gives me a ring and asks if, by chance, I would like another assignment. Eager to try something new, but not knowing how the fuck I am supposed to get my work done before the end of the day Thursday...I hesitantly say yes, and take on a brand new capital markets assignment. And thus, the "don't come in on Friday before your flight" turns into a "Shit, it's friday, my flight is in 4 hours, and I have 3 assignments to complete."

The end of this brief story, of course, is that I'm awesome. And I finished. And got to the airport in a black luxury car in my pinstripe suit to board my 16 hour business class flight to Hong Kong. So I checked in, went upstairs to the first class lounge, ate about 15 mini sandwiches, lounged on a beach chair sipping a free Heineken and reading the Times when I realize I don't have my cell phone. The cell phone I did have while I was in the car on the way to the airport....Jesus Fucking Christ. (Long story short, I call up my omni-competent assistant, and I believe that it's been taken care of...but I'm really not sure.)

Anyhow, I want to take a moment to describe Business class on an Asian Airline (Cathay Pacific). So the seats are huge. They are each fully encased and fully enclosed in the back, so when you lean back...the person behind you doesn't actually have the seat invade their space.

Then, the seat slides down mechanically in its own little cubby, and becomes almost horizontal. And there's tons of leg room so that a 6'2" Chinaman is able to extend his legs fully for the first time in his life in an airplane. With the pink silken pillow, 'tis bliss to be flying.

Then comes the movie selection....of which, I shamefully admit, I overindulged. If you're going to be sitting on a plane for 16 hours, it's no time for class. It's no time for thinking. It's no time for anything except the guilty pleasures. So out of the 60 movies on demand to choose from, I chose: Ghost Rider. Letters from Iwo Jima. Shooter. And...yes...Because I Said So. (Which none of you have heard of, because it is the Diane Keaton Mandy Moore vehicle. Even as low as my standards go, it was not good...) And then I watched 5 straight episodes of Sex and the City (for some reason the nudity wasn't blocked), the Office, and Scrubs.

And then came the meal. A 4 course meal brought out cart by cart. The first course, a Mesclun salad, a roll, and braised carmelized scallops on an avocado puree. The second course, either steak, chicken, or pasta. The third course, a choice of fruit, cheeses, and olives. The fourth course, tiramisu and coffee....and thus the flight was over. And so soon!

Hong Kong. It's fucking muggy man. It's like 100 degrees, and you could eat the humidity with a spoon. (I've decided that cliches are awesome. Especially if you just slightly modify them.)
I did learn a few things.

1) I had no idea Hong Kong was tropical. I believe it's further south than Delhi. that's not good.

2) Hong Kong is actually like...a Mountain. It's extremely hilly, and the mountain is always in the background...covered in tropical foliage.
3) Hong Kong is a very dense dense city. Full of white people.

So...we were picked up at the airport by those funny little people holding up signs, and we got into the car and jetted off to our hotel/apartment.


This is where I'm staying.

These pictures do not include the kitchen or the second flat screen located in the bedroom.

And then I actually went out into Hong Kong.

Verdict?

Eh. It was ok. The first place I went was about 40% white people. Which...all of you should know how I would react to. The second place was just boring.

So the actual Hong Kong Saga has not begun. I will go to work early tomorrow morning and see how my first real day goes. So...until then....

I continue...

So things have been pretty uneventful to be honest...

My time at work isn't bad. I actually find a lot of the work very interesting in its own perverse sort of short-sighted, money money money attitude. I don't say this in a spiteful or hateful way as to suggest any evil greed or republicanism (you like how comfortably I just toss that into the same string of descriptors as evil greed?) (note: I didn't say conservative. I said republican.) Anyhow, I think I just see a general human shortsightedness where it is nearly impossible to look at the transactions we are involved in, and see the very human and systemic consequences down the great chain of economic being. I mean, when you take a shit, can you really tell me where goes, what other human being has to touch it, which sewage plant processes it, and which person drinks the purified water squeezed back out of it? (Yes. It's the water cycle.)

The life is deceptively nice, though. The people will never be my best friends. I will not likely find a soulmate in the crowd. But they are friendly. They are personable. And they are not evil. Just a little detached. Or with different priorities. My work has involved white collar defense for hedge funds, pulling together an enormous outline for a partner's presentation on an extremely cutting edge legal issue amongst investment banks and hedge funds, and another domestic violence pro bono divorce case. Although I haven't really gone to a whole lot of absurd restaurants (except for a banquet at the Rainbow Room), I think it's been a fairly positive experience.

The next step, of course, beginning this Friday, is a 4 week rotation in Hong Kong. Isn't that fucking crazy? I feel like since I will no longer be spending all my evenings doing things with AHJ, I will have more time to update and speak as to my experience there.

As usual, I don't really have internet, and as a result tend to respond neither to emails or blog posts...especially because I don't want to do it from work.

But all of this ignores the TRUE driving force behind this post....The Monster Pig.


FUCK! Gives me the willies.

Two Assholes

Today was a day of Assholes. No personal interactions mind you, but just observations about assholes.

Asshole Number 1: The Asshole who decided he was too “intelligent” and “well-educated” (yes, he actually said that) to be isolated for carrying drug resistant tuberculosis around the world on several airplanes in several countries. If the news article I read was correct, he actually refused to stay in Italy after knowing he had drug resistant TB by flying to Prague and then to Canada, and then drove back into the US. That’s an awfully Herculean effort just to be an asshole.

I’m not entirely clear whether his TB is dormant or not, which is a good thing because it would then be less infectious…but drug resistant TB is no fucking joke….ridiculous. Although…I will say his chances of dying are fairly high.

Judging by this picture and the fact that he’s a personal injury lawyer is enough to proclaim him ASSHOLE. (There is a bizarre anti-world conspiracy feeling to this whole uncle works for the CDC doing TB stuff thing though…)

Asshole(s) Number 2: I spent my morning in a divorce training pro bono session at a major midtown law firm in a room with 50 or 60 other summer associates from other law firms and I’ve decided that Blackberry’s annoy me. Or at least summer associates at law firms who compulsively check their Blackberry’s during a presentation training us to represent battered women in their divorces. I can’t exactly pin down what is so assholey about it…but it almost seems like these people seem to believe that the possession of a Blackberry makes them more important and indispensable to the Street. Nay, to the world!

Anyhow, I know I check text messages a lot. And I know that a Blackberry is going to be a major part of my life in the future…but if I ever get out of hand with it, and adopt an air of an asshole with it…you have my permission and my request to simply give me a weary deadpan and simply say “Asshole.” And every time I try to explain why I have to check it, please interrupt whatever I’m saying with a simple word: “asshole.” (I’ll probably still have to check it, but still say it.)

Oh, while surfing for a picture of super durfwad Asshole number 1, I found asshole number 3:

Samir Patel misspelled a word in fifth round of the national spelling bee. His mother appealed. “Based on subtle differences in how the word’s final syllable can be pronounced.”

…Jesus.

…And finally, I’d like to point out the existence of what appears to be, incredibly, a Reversal of Perpetual Assholism. I haven’t seen the details (caveat emptor), but apparently Bush has called for 30 billion for Global AIDS, as well as a Kyoto-like curbing of greenhouse emissions. (Environmentalists are still bitching, of course, but at least it means our President isn’t completely, absolutely, 100%, undeniably, supremely fucking crazy. Just almost completely so.)

‘Tis All. I was in the office until 8 pm working on a project I have no business doing…and that’s all I really have to report about work.

New York

Well I’ve been AWOL (not that there is anyone who would have noticed of course)…but the reality is that in the midst of all the ridiculous infrastructure, skyscrapers, wifi hotspots, and thousands of computers….I actually don’t have internet….which will explain why I haven’t really responded to emails, posted comments, posted on the blog, paid my credit card bills, or anything else of that nature.

That being said, I am 6 days into my life at BigLaw, BigLaw being Wall Street, corporate, grey suits, and the overt pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. The firm itself is beautiful. The artwork on the walls is (generally) tasteful, the woodwork and carpeting is lavish, the offices have huge peering into the majestic views of…the sides of other buildings…and the people are actually quite friendly, intelligent, and easy to be around. So far I’ve been paid a ridiculous salary to read the Wall Street Journal, check my email incessantly, and complain to my two officemates about how I don’t have any work to do. The summer gig seems to be a long summer of “self-discovery” about what type of corporate lawyer you want to be, and a long schmoozefest attempting to convince you that life at a law firm is as nice as it would seem in the ideal. That means 3 hour lunches twice a week, at the restaurants people without corporate accounts tend to not eat at, and summer events like Trapeze School (HELLLLL YEAH) and meeting the Mets and playing ball against the Mets organization on the field at Shea Stadium (I would be excited if I wasn’t such a woman.)

I think I’ve grown to like New York a lot more than I thought I would. The honest truth is that I’ve always been anti-big city more or less because I have been too insecure, scared, and frankly intimidated by big cities, especially places like New York which is the biggest of big cities – the rich Wall Street investment bankers, super trendy hipsters, punk rockers, hippies, movie stars, super models, sex and the city, and all of the other things that I’m too lame to be immersed in. But now that I’m here, all of those aspects of the city are really the lamer parts of the city. There’s a large contingent of middle class white kids feigning poverty and authenticity in clothes from goodwill and studded chokers, small tee-shirts and slim fit jeans…a lot of Greek Duke University-types bringing Carrie Bradshaw’s New York to life merely by trying so hard to live it that they actually create it…and plenty and plenty of people who simply aren’t attractive at all. In short, it’s just a really busy city with lots and lots and lots of people doing lots and lots and lots of things. So I like it.

This is definitely not to say that I am or ever will be a New Yorker by any standards. I don’t fit in here, I’m sort of ambivalent to a lot of the bullshit that New York and New Yorkers seem to carry around, and I don’t think I really will be for a very long time…but for the time being, I can see myself here and think things will be OK.

Anyhow, I think it’s about time to go to bed…and I feel like after this first post I’ll be posting more. Let me know where you are, how you are, what you’re up to and if you’re gonna come to the city!

I wrote this two days ago...but forgot to post it.

Well that was just plain fun…

After a night of scrubbing, sweeping, drinking Belhavens and watching “The Prestige” and “10 Items or Less” (Both movies which I highly recommend), I went to bed and woke up at 8 to finish up the move-out.

So I packed up all my crap, did some final laundry, ran some errands, and arrived back in my apartment to find that the young gay couple who were taking my apartment had let themselves in, believing that I had already left. And after getting them all set up, I said goodbye to my apartment for the summer and hopped in my car at 2 pm.

…And so I was off, for a surprise visit back to South Carolina. I admit there’s really no reason to drive 1000 miles with gas prices over 3 dollars a gallon, simply to fly back to New York 24 hours after my arrival…but I felt like it would be fun. A way to unwind, relax, and to see my parents, since I don’t really speak to them all that much.

So off I went, with 10 new CDs and a long robusto Cohiba cigar. 5 of them were Barack Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”, read by the Senator himself, and 5 of them were “Heat” by Bill Buford…a fantastic book about a cook’s life in the kitchen of a major Italian restaurant in Manhattan which dives into the life history and character of Mario Batali, explores the experience of working as a cook in his restaurant, and eventually takes the author on multiple trips to Italy to learn the old ways of butchering, handmade pasta-making, and the history of Italian cuisine. A splendid book really.

And here I am at 3am somewhere north of Durham, having covered 700 miles, 2 gatorades, 1 Aquifina, 1 Quiznos sub, 3 cigarettes, 1 cigar, finished “Heat”, listened to 4 of 5 cds of Obama’s book, told 6 lies to my mother about where I am and what my plans were, and one cup of coffee.

Good day.

(I also change my mind about Bird and the Bee. I actually DO like the cd. Or most of it.)

Kirk Cameron

Kirk Cameron is an absolute basketcase...

If you don't recall, Kirk Cameron played Mike Sever on 'Growing Pains' in the 80's. These days, he is marauding as a fundamentalist Christian nutjob who tries to evangelize us heathen folk by starring in such movies as "Left Behind" "Left Behind II" and "Left Behind III." (The latter two aren't the real names)
If somehow you have escaped awareness of what the "Left Behind" series is, it's essentially a fundamentalist interpretation of the Rapture and the return of the Anti-Christ...which revels in the massacre of non-believers and places the head of the UN as the Anti-Christ. (By the way, given that these are some of the best-selling books of our time...it's terrifying to realize that increasing numbers of Americans have embraced the series as an accurate assessment of how things will generally turn out.) I'd also like to note that this is just the next logical step in the line of brilliant scholarship that produced works such as this (as some of you may remember):

Two things to note: First, the exclamation point. "Gorbachev!"
Second, the author is from Greenville, South Carolina.

In addition, I would like to point out that there is now a Left Behind videogame.More importantly, I'd like to point out that the premise of the game has been the focus of some controversy. Why?
Because one of the major premises of the game appears to be this: Non-christians must either be converted or killed.

Jesus would be proud.

Anyhow...the real purpose of the post was simply to mock Kirk Cameron...which got out of hand as I started down the "Left Behind" pathway...Here's reason 1:


This is a line of argumentation that is perfectly acceptable to large portions of the (voting) population. That is TERRIFYING. And funny.

The second reason is that Kirk Cameron recently went on Nightline to debate the existence of God. Slate wrote up a nice little article about it here....and here's a great little excerpt:

If Nightline wanted to host an enlightening discussion about religion, it would have invited some intelligent believers to mount a defense of faith and to talk about why faith and proof of it are mutually exclusive. Instead, the show served up Cameron goofing on Charles Darwin, apparently the preferred target of dimwitted theists. At one point, Cameron, mocking the theory of evolution, held up a photo-illustration of a duck with the head of crocodile. Seeing this, [the opposing party], stunned, could not help but mutter, "Oh. My. God."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHYEA!!!

Finished with Exams!

Edit: I promptly came home, tore the sleeves of a t-shirt, put on my headphones, and rode around the city on my bike for the next 3 hours running errands (ie. Buying the new Bjork cd, Riding out to MIT to look at the Gehry building.)

Rodrigo y Gabriela.

I can't tell whether or not I'm momentarily drawn in by the novelty and energy, but I gotta say I am definitely impressed and loving Rodrigo y Gabriela and right now. They're ex-thrash metal guitarists from Mexico now producing enormously full sounds with two acoustic guitars...although you wouldn't guess it from looking at them, especially Gabriela. The broken english and timid Spanish doesn't hurt either...

In any case, they're pretty fucking wild...Here's some live clips if you're interested...although the stuff on their myspace page is much higher quality and better to listen to...





And here is some random video where they sit down and explain how they play their parts....CRAZY.


Finally...they have spawned a generation of You-Tubers attempting to play their songs...This one is actually pretty impressive. Ok. I a little deficient...


But better than these two white guys...



......If you made it this far and actually watched even ONE of those clips...You must be pretty interesting. Or at least find this interesting. In which case you should get in touch with me and we should try to see if we can see 'em live. Unless you're a minority.

God People are Funny.

I mean, c'mon! That's just funny.

(KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY A Salt Lake County woman has been arrested, accused of attacking her husband with a hammer on Friday night.

Joel Ricks told authorities that his wife Amy told him she had a surprise for him. He said she blindfolded him and led him into the basement of a Holladay condominium.

The woman then allegedly struck her husband with a hammer multiple times.

The man was able to escape and called 911. Deputies arrested his wife for aggravated assault.

Although another news story off of Fark was about a man who stabbed his 70 year old father to death, and then immediately after managed to kill himself by decapitating himself with a chainsaw. I'm not exactly sure how he managed to do it, but it seems like he managed to completely cut his own head off. (Shudder)

Nature is Crazy.

I'm sure glad I don't live in Ohio anymore....I was terrified of these things as a kid, and I think for damn good reason...

Look at how these things descend from the sky...if I saw that tendril coming down, my eyes would slowly get wider and wider with alarm until I no longer looked chinese.



Or what the hell were THESE guys doing? I bet that car smells like empty bowels and full pants. (I actually haven't heard these videos because I'm in the library, but the YouTube comments indicate that they're morons or something.)

Black People.

(How many white people just did sort of a startled mini political correctness test to see if that title is offensive? Since surely your gut had some sort of reaction...)

Anyhow, this post doesn't really have to do with that. I was just trolling around on the internet and stumbled across this interesting article about black people, college, affirmative action, and all that good stuff. It's confirmatory rather than eye-opening, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Here's some excerpts for the lazies who don't feel like reading the article:

Among students at 28 top U.S. universities, the representation of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin (27 percent) was about twice their representation in the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen...

[Black chick in the article] would like to know why. She asks if her cause has lost its way on U.S. campuses, with the goal of correcting American racial injustices replaced by a softer ideal of diversity — as if any black student will do.

“To white observers, black immigrants seem more polite, less hostile, more solicitous, and ’easier to get along with” the study said. “Native blacks are perceived in precisely the opposite fashion.”

That idea immediately found detractors.

“I can’t speak for white people, but that’s crazy,” said Adoma Adjei-Brenyah, a Columbia University student with college-educated parents from Ghana.

I would offer a snide and breezily caustic remark that paints everyone involved in this debate as stupid or ridiculous...but I think it's actually a really interesting issue to think about...and i'm not sure how I feel about it.

I do appreciate how they framed their spokesperson for the African perspective though. Very balanced with no insinuations.

Thoughts? (This sort of bald solicitation for other people's thoughts generally amounts to nothing. I know. Shut up.)

I admit...

...It actually took me about a minute to figure this out. Plus, I was on the phone, so Josh can attest to the fact that I sat there....silent....not quite sure why he thought it was funny.

But...it is funny....




And now for something else that I found interesting...

(This will take you through a guide of how I use modern media too.)

After watching Marie Antoinette (Yes. My quality of life has taken a dive. But it was Sophia Coppola. That has to mean something.), I naturally went onto Wikipedia to read about the real Marie Antoinette. You know, the same shit. To see what she looked like. To see what actually happened. Whether I should replace my understanding of history with Kirsten Dunst...etc.
...and...after being horrified by the unbelievable inhumanity and bloodlust of the French Revolution, I noticed that one of her loyal ladies in waiting was decapitated for refusing to betray her loyalty to the queen...and had her head placed on a pike, and the severed head was paraded in front of Marie Antoinette's window. (Actually, if the ol' Wiki is to be believed, she was gang raped, had her breasts cut off, she was mutilated, possibly had her genitals cut out, and THEN her head was placed on the pike. More reason to hate the French eh?)

As was also natural, I went to look up who played this lady in waiting in the movie on IMDB...remembered who her character was...and then went back to Wikipedia. As if that would enrich my experience, right?

So then I kept reading, and I found out that some lady named Madame Tussaud, made a death mask of this lady, named Princess de Lamballe. And I thought to myself, "what the fuck is a death mask?"

So in the ever handy upper-right corner Google searchbar of Firefox, I typed in Death Mask....and the rest of the night was pretty much lost.

Up until and past the time of photography, apparently, for purposes of identification, or for making statues, or for various other reasons...it was common practice to take a waxen or plaster cast of a dead person's face. This sparked my interest. Because I have always really wondered what old dead people actually looked like. For example, these are all pictures of James Madison.






I find this Profoundly unhelpful. I want to know what he actually looked like! Apparently he was 5'1" and 110 pounds. That is not what I see. So for people like Madison (unfortunately, he doesn't have one), I could actually see what they looked like! So I searched and searched...and had a jolly ol' time...until, well, hours later I did my evidence homework.

Anyhow, here's a few:

This one is obvious, but serves as testament to its accuracy.

This one is not obvious. It's Napoleon.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure will never be the same.....

Quick Question.

I'm totally not trying to be political here...but I have a question:

As someone, who like me, may have grown into political consciousness sometime over the past 6-8 years, are you just shocked at how bad this Administration has been?

i don't mean this in a democratic, or liberal way....but just...as an American citizen. I mean, just on every single level, in every news cycle, in every sense of governing...isn't it just incredible how awful this is? Is this just what it feels like to grow up and see that the world truly is messy, and that there are no easy solutions? or is it as bad intentioned and incompetent as it seems? I could make a 300 page list of awful things that have been done.

I'm actually looking for an answer. shocked? no? Supportive? Is this just what growing up is like?

I've been driven back to music as my most favoritest refuge....

This began as a very short post. And it has evolved into an omnibus of various thoughts...

Music has reclaimed me recently.

I went a few random local shows, and I realized how much I missed it. Then I popped in Ozma's Crossing over the Borderline into my car CD player on full blast on the way to the clinic, and spent 30 minutes remembering how I used to feel about music...the way it sends shocks down my legs so they can't stop bouncing, the way the energy pours back into me, and how it felt to not think about the law, or a career, or fucking Harvard Law School and just make a total fool of myself rocking out to Joanna Newsom at full blast in a predominantly black, low-income neighborhood. (My subwoofer kicks their shitty hip hop's subwoofer's ass. Even if it is only projecting the sound of a harp and harpy.) (That's for you AJ. The harpy bit.)

I go through periodic cycles where I return to certain artists in massive storms of immersion, for example Bjork, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, the Beatles, and the like...but I don't think I've ever actually phased out of music completely until I got into law school. So I've decided to take that back too.

(Incidentally, I've also begun re-reading Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", which always somehow manages to slap me in the face, one way or the other. Good stuff.)

try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms...Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you ecause you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it - but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon your self and hate nothing.

Anyway....

For the one or two of you who may actually care, I've decided to post Bjork's two performances on SNL from some recent episode, in tribute to my return to this wonderful little world. At this point, slightly more accessible than Medulla, but still probably less accessible than Homogenic or Post. Of course, this doesn't say much...since the first time I bought a Bjork CD on a whim, I hated it so much and got so fed up that I threw it across the room. (It was 6 months later when I found it under the couch...It must have burned a groove into my mind because I felt the melodies and emotions settle into comfortable and ecstatic corners, and the rest is history.)

I did, however, forget how incredibly weird Bjork is on stage. And how she simply simply cannot dance. In fact being so bad that you could almost say she dances well.






And for those of you who find this too inaccessible, or too boring to even consider clicking...or who would like a little more of a classic Bjork experience, here's her video for Bachelorette: a Fractal illustrated into life, a mirror's reflection of a mirror.



Or we could just go with a solid, universally loved song...accompanied by two Bjork robots making out. It's really quite incredible. Albeit incredibly bizarre.




And finally, this is the song that has hypnotized me for the past few weeks. I can't figure out why, though I don't think the song really hits til after 2:30. Though I certainly recommend that if you want to listen to it, you do NOT watch the video. Completely kills it. In fact, just don't look at it. It's just plain silly. In fact it's humiliating to associate myself with this video.



Cheers!

My music rotation since Monday:
--Imogen Heap
--Damien Rice
--Joanna Newsom
--Coheed and Cambria
--Jack's Mannequin
--The bird and the bee
--Inara George
--Muse
--The Everyday Visuals
--Rodrigo Y Gabriela
--Regina Spektor

Please make suggestions! I'm on my way to tracking down Pere Ubu and Silversun Pickups. I love the fact that all of these artists, with a few exceptions, are easily accessible in small concert venues at almost a non-stop rate. That's the good stuff.

And as you can guess from the length of this unnecessary post....exams are around the corner....Good luck to you law students!

I'm verbose, but not eloquent.

I have several reasons for supporting Obama. Primary reasons include intellectual honesty, the embrace of community and individual ideals, the non-dogmatic willingness for dialogue and working towards a solution instead of believing that solutions are readily available and anointed by God...but also because I feel like we are witnessing a moment in history that signals the decline of the United States. The moment was not September 11, but September 12: The day the Bush Presidency was given the carte blanche. The beginning of the decline of pluralism, of a democratic morality, of national decency and integrity, and of the legitimacy of US leadership and influence.

Instead of trying to explain it myself, Andrew Sullivan (a very prominent conservative / libertarian) has put it much better.

But this much we can already say: Obama brings something no one else does to this moment. By replacing one of the most globally despised and domestically divisive presidents in American history with a young leader half-Kansan and half-Kenyan, America would be saying something to the world: Bush-Cheney is not who we are. America is not what it has come to appear to be. This country is among the most culturally and racially and religiously diverse on the planet. America has long been a powerful and vital beacon for human rights - not, as recently, the avatar of torture, rendition and executive tyranny. The simple existence of Obama as a new president in a new century would in itself enhance America's soft power immeasurably, just as a clear decision to leave Iraq would provide much greater leverage for diplomacy and military force in a whole variety of new ways. Obama would mean the rebranding of America, after a disastrous eight years....

This is the reason for his ascendancy. This is what the American people sense and the world awaits. This is what the Islamists fear. That last alone is reason to feel hope. Money quote [from Obama]:

We must [lead] not in the spirit of a patron, but the spirit of a partner – a partner that is mindful of its own imperfections. Extending an outstretched hand to these states must ultimately be more than just a matter of expedience or even charity. It must be about recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people. And it’s about showing the world that America stands for something – that we can still lead...

[I]f the next President can restore the American people's trust – if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility – then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again.

They will be ready to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. That we are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city.

That is not who we are.

OH. MY. GOD.

Yes. An impression of Janice.

And if you understood that reference, you're as big of a loser as me. Or at least a woman.

Anyhow, This is the crazies.

Let me just say that I am very uncomfortable with this. And if you don't feel like clicking on the link and going to the article, let me just post this quotation:

"We think the clinics will be a great opportunity for our business. But most importantly, they are going to provide something our customers and communities desperately need -- affordable access at the local level to quality health care," said Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott in a statement.

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

Fantastic!!!!!!

This is one of the Daily Show's best moments I've seen in a very long time: HAHAHAHAHA