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........