Smarter

Claiming Ignorance as Hard-Won Bounty

2012-01-29T12:48:00.005-05:00

Surely every season sees days of grey that blot memory of life-giving light. Yet this grey feels more ominous, more complete, more awful, more intentional than a mere southern squall line or western front. This is no front, but the vanguard of the heavenly host riding to finish what so blithely we began.

From dead bat-choked cave, field of uranium, silo, from unmarked grave issue dark warriors obeying our every command. Deny it we must, but call them we did.

24-inch titanium alloy. Longer lasting mascara.

2012-01-28T22:59:00.003-05:00

Keep your responsible investing schemes and your 501(c)(3)s, Priuses, compost, and grass-fed beef in your 401-k tax deferred superfund, fully vested in a halflife, dollar for dollar, up to 33% APR. Keep it.

Dial up your sleep number, program your coffeemaker, set the cruise control, keep it in the black, produce.

Get better ideas faster easier. Free time to sculpt yourself into tumescent Rococo twirls, twists, bulges.

Soak in the chemical bath, fight fibromyalgia, schizoaffective panic disorder, carpal tunnel vision, succumb to input addiction.

Hot Diggity

2011-11-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

Guilt, Greed and Good Intentions

2011-11-11T10:49:00.005-05:00

I am in the process of trying to find a new(er) home for my yellow lab puppy Eowyn. I have wanted a dog since I can remember. For years it was impossible because of my city digs and erratic schedule. Then, once I started working regular hours, my landlord wouldn't allow it. Now, with a place in the country and the passing of our ancient cat, I thought "this is the time."

I filled out an application with the local humane society. I was approved and they began to work with me to try to find a dog that would be a good match. The biggest obstacle was that I am away for 10 hours a day, which is a lot for a dog. Mrs. Beckett, a teacher, works longer hours than me, leaving earlier, returning later.

Then a coworker showed me a pic on her cell phone of a gorgeous little yellow lab pup. My coworker's friend's god daughter was trying to find someone to adopt her. I was all over it. Perfect! Labs are good-tempered, smart, good with children, good with animals, considered far and wide one of the best family dog breeds.

Mrs. Beckett was cool to the idea. She has never owned a dog and was worried about the effect on our cat. But I knew also that she loved dogs when she got a chance to be with them and that she would probably melt when she saw a pic. Indeed, she did give in to me. We picked up the puppy last saturday. She was scared and low key that day, not all that rambunctious.

My plan for the pup was to let her roam the lower level of the house while we were at work, leaving wee-wee pads for her until her bladder was developed enough to handle the day. It wasn't much of a plan, but I had faith I'd figure it out. That night, she fell asleep and I carried her up to her crate in our bedroom.

Sunday was the Eowyn show. I tried to give her as much attention as possible, knowing that I would be leaving her all day Monday.

Monday I woke up an hour earlier than I normally do to take her out and give her some play time. She went out for a pee and was back asleep in short order. When I got home all was well, she had used the pads and had destroyed nothing.

Tuesday (which state workers get off), I took her to the vet. He asked if I was crating her and I told him that I couldn't do it during the day because of the amount of time she was left alone. He didn't like this at all and asked why I would get a puppy and, ashamed, I said "I didn't think it through." He suggested I remove the partition in the crate that only allows her room to lie down to give her the ability to sleep on one end and mess on the other.

"Isn't that cruel?" I asked? "What's cruel?" he said, "you decided to get a puppy when you wouldn't be home."

So I started looking for someone to come in during the day. I contacted a pro who would cost 360 a month to come for an hour once a day. I put an ad on craigslist. Then I talked to a neighbor who agreed to come once a day for $150 a month.

Problem solved! Except Eowyn has been wearing me out. I cannot keep up with her needs. Part of the deal with Mrs. Beckett is that I am responsible for the dog, not her, and we've already had some friction with me needing her to watch her while I do something else. Yesterday, Eowyn was up and very active from when I got home at 5:20 to around 11:00. She rested for about an hour in the middle. This has got to be because she is getting too little stimulation during the day. She just does not have enough activity while I am gone, even with the efforts of my neighbor, who took her out twice yesterday.

I talked to a trainer who said the current arrangement will not meet Eowyn's needs. She said if I got someone to come 2x a day, say once at 11 and once at 2, for 45 minutes or an hour each, this would be doing right by the pup.

Indeed, she is already showing signs of separation anxiety. Yesterday, when I tried to put her in the crate for a few minutes so I could make dinner, she went ballistic, which is out of character for her. And she can't tolerate me being out of her sight. To make matters worse, I find myself unreasonably angry with her. Tire out already, will you! I want to spend some time with my wife! Why would you pee on the floor?!! Again?!! Of course, she's a puppy, and she's acting like one.

You might be thinking, "well what did you think having a puppy would be like?" and all I can say is that (1) my heart sometimes moves faster than my head, and (2) contemplated labor is never as difficult as actually doing the work. I am exhausted and both Mrs. B and I are emotionally worn out. I can't spend four or five hours a night with this dog.

And she is a lovely lady. She came to us knowing "sit," and it did not take her long to learn "down." I've also been working with her on "give it." She loves to fetch and shake the life out of her toys. She loves a good tummy rub. She likes best to sleep next to me on the couch, as she is right now. She sleeps through the night in her crate and will not come out until I get her, even though I leave the door open at night. When we first got her she hated the leash and collar and would not walk. Now she will happily walk far and wide.

I feel like a monster. I try to tell myself we've been good foster parents, that another situation will be better for her. She needs more attention than I can give her. I always looked on people who didn't train their pets properly or gave them up with condescension and disdain. "Don't get a dog if you can't handle one. Sure a puppy's cute, but that wears off once you have to take care of it. Morons. I would never get a dog unless I was prepared to take care of it properly." Maybe others aren't as inept and I am not as masterful as I like to whisper to myself.

Mrs. B burst into tears this morning at the thought of giving Eowyn up. I keep second guessing myself. Even now that the word has gone out and it's a matter of time before someone comes forward to care for this little lady, I think, this can work. It will get better. We can do this, right Eowyn? If I change my mind again, Mrs. B. might just(ifiably?) kill me for building this rollercoaster and strapping us all into it.

Schizophrenia and Nothingness

2011-11-02T21:13:00.003-04:00

Earlier, I was listening to a Buddhist priest of a Japanese sect talk about the overlap of Shinto and Tendai Buddhism. He mentioned the practice of praying to one's ancestors (I think this is Shinto, but practiced by a fair number of Japanese Buddhists). A member of the audience asked whether the priest himself did this. The priest confirmed that he did, but in response to some incredulity by the questioner explained that it was a form of contemplation -- a way to address a problem by invoking the wisdom of elders. Or something like that.

Then he said, "It's not that you expect to hear a voice responding to you saying, 'Tell your son the exam answers are A, C, and 28.' If you hear voices in Japan or the United States, you're schizophrenic."

It made me squirm. His answer was a little bit defensive and a fairly natural. "Sure I pray, but that doesn't make me crazy." Crazy, as we all know, means hearing voices. First, point of information, some people hear voices and are not schizophrenic. Some people hear voices and are not mentally ill.

But what really needled me was that in the world of shamans that shinto and perhaps buddhism arose from (according to this same priest), there was no schizophrenia. The shamans communed with the supernatural. Some people could walk both this and the spirit world.

I had a client who told me he was schizophrenic in that he understood why he was diagnosed that way. He considered himself to be in communication with another realm of being and believed that this power of his made it very difficult for him to function in this world. He saw that he was crazy by objective measurement. So he accepted the antipsychotics. But he described himself as a creative schizophrenic and further conversation with him revealed that he did see things other people could not see. Beings in the room, lights, etc.

I wished for him that he could have been born in a time when his difference was not seen by society as a loathesome disease, but a gift. We treat him as if he is possessed by a demon that can only be exorcised by a cocktail of poisonous magical pills.

Once, while I was talking to him, he stopped talking mid-sentence and closed his eyes. I waited as he stood in front of me, a look of peace on his face. I waited for what seemed like minutes as the chaos of the psychiatric ward swirled around me. And then he opened his eyes and continued the conversation. I asked him "what happened there"? He smiled blissfully and said he couldn't really explain it and then said "I think I was levitating." He looked a little unsteady on his feet and explained that it took a lot out of him.

He was in fairly good shape. There are others whose personalities seem to have been shattered and mashed back together with malice. Incoherence, rage without apparent provocation ("Hello" "Fuck you. Get the fuck away from me."), uncontrollable weeping, hypersexuality / sexual preoccupation (Guess what? I'm pregnant. And it's yours!), debilitating delusions (the toilet is angry with me, so I can't use it). The person may have the constituent parts of a personality, but it is wildly out of whack. Sometimes they can tell you about who they once were. Sometimes they really were.

The severe mental illness I'm describing seems like a sort of mind death or at least mind crippling. It illustrates just how illusory the "self" really is. "I'm a nice person" or "I'm an executive" or "I am Joe Smith" might be true right now, but there is no guarantee that they will be true tomorrow.

Which brings me back to my shenpa when the priest made light of hearing voices. This hit me hard because I identify with my schizophrenic clients. They fight battles you cannot imagine. They face the perilous choice of a lifetime of debilitating drugs or a life battling both the voices and the medical establishment, with no clear path to healing. They stagger or fight through the worst slums of this world and the mind. They are often caked with suffering. I identify with the hopelessness, cynicism, outrage, and avoidance they demonstrate.

And I identify with them because I fear mind death. I fear I will lose my self.

So the priest's joke disturbed me because it reminded me of the inevitability of my death. It was as if someone failed to pay the proper respect to my ancestors.

Peace Alights Instantly

2011-10-21T16:42:00.003-04:00

Cat cries.
Motorcycle roars.
Crow croaks on.
Jet tears the sky,
Dropping fathoms of resounding waves.

. . .

Even enforest, fled from concrete and metal work, klaxons blurt emergency.

Once my heart trembled to the dream of the love you give.
Now (is it heart, soul, mind?), it is ineffably stricken.
Its dull cry boundless, point snapped, object dissolved.

Not for your love (though I treasure it).
Not for God (I can't quite believe it).
Not for control, I protest with balled fist.

. . .

Even today, aimless in stifling New England mist,
I may mount a minor summit.

enough, frail fraulein

2011-10-21T16:13:00.003-04:00

October falls to November
Almost try again
The Coarser vows in December

Ramparts in winter; in fall surrender

Lest you forget:
Deer beside blacktop
lunatic on platform
Grass in gutters
Babies wrapped tight

Pine Sol Shining on and on

2011-10-09T00:30:00.003-04:00

I hate cleaning. I clean about as regularly as I post to this site. Unlike those saintly fools who delight in cleaning and fancy nothing more than mopping the floors and scouring the grout, I spend my cleaning hours in a time sink in which my frustration ebbs and flows but never quite dissolves.

I wait for a day when I have something to do that I want to do even less than clean.

I begin with a mixture of faint hope and grim determination like I am sojourning from Rivendell with the Fellowship.

For weeks I have fooled myself into thinking "it's not too bad in here." Wipe down the counter, stack the mail in a pile once every couple weeks, a real clean won't be too bad.

So I begin by telling myself without much conviction that I will be done in an hourish. But as I proceed I realize what squalor I have been living in. After an hour passes and I have just managed to vacuum the rugs, I understand that this task will not be completed today or, indeed, likely ever.

What is the stuff on the floor that I have to scrape off with a knife? When did I let that drip on the floor and blithely leave it there? Is the wood turning black along the baseboard? Is it in the grain? Can I even get that out? And where does all this hair come from? Why does every pass of the sponge come back with a strand of hair? ARE WE GOING BALD IN HERE?

It seems as I clean that, impossibly, everything is getting dirtier. I am sliding down the hill I set out to climb.

This is how I find myself windexing the glass windows of the cabinets at 12:30 in the morning. As I typed that I looked up at the recently windexed glass and saw that it was all streaky, and so had to get up and DO IT AGAIN.

Do you know how much time I spent mopping the floor? I must be the most inefficient, incompetent floor mopper in the history of OCD.

(On a side note, I have never found a mop that I really like. They all seem to push the water around without doing much scrubbing. I need a mop that grinds dirt off the floor like a belt sander.)

I don't have time for this shit. How do people with kids not suffocate under their own detritus? I didn't clean the whole house. I vacuumed 2 rugs, cleaned the kitchen counters, mopped the downstairs floors, and cleaned the downstairs windows, and it was like four fucking hours. I have yet to clean either bathroom, straighten up all the papers and crap that are inevitably covering every flat surface in the house, clean the wood floor upstairs, clean the upstairs windows and then jump out one of them.

It feels like a super-human effort to keep the place at non-toxic. I used to sort of accept that I was a slob. But being a slob sucks. Living in filth is uncomfortable and a bit embarrassing. Like we're not fully capable of handling simple grown up tasks like keeping the windowsills from turning black.

I just got up to get a glass of seltzer and on that little 10-foot journey to the fridge I noticed that I had forgotten to clean the side door window. When I opened the fridge, I looked down and realized that there was crap on the floor that I had missed during my cleaning session because I hadn't opened the fridge door while I was cleaning. What WAS I thinking? I actually managed to ignore the crud on the floor (which is how the floor gets to be such a shitshow to clean in the first place), and windexed the damned side door window.

Now that the inside of the window is nice and clean, I can see so much better all the filth coating the outside of it.

Bug and Man

2011-09-15T22:23:00.005-04:00

After deciding not to, my squeamishness overcame my scruples and I washed a big black bug down the drain (making me less fit, happy, and productive). Though I caused its death (somewhat against my own will), as it struggled and then went under, it could not have had any conception that it was murdered by a more powerful being (to the extent that it has any "conception" as we think of it at all). At first I thought perhaps, just as I was a sort of God to this bug, smiting it capriciously, perhaps a God exists beyond our human consciousness. Then I realized that this thought made little sense. I think, rather, what the bug demonstrates, is that there may be power/force beyond our conception. It is error I think to then assume that this unknown is, in fact, a lot like us. (I really like Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" and "His Master's Voice" because they challenge our assumption that an alien being will be like us. Instead, he imagines that even the most basic communication may be impossible. They may well be so "alien" that we can't even quite understand how to describe them or whether they're "alive" or "think.")

It's easy to see that over time, God's realm has shifted as our understanding of the world has increased. So too has our conception of God changed as our conceptions of ourselves have changed. Old Jehovah was kind of a capricious king. He acted like a human. He was irrational, pissy, played tricks and jokes on people seemingly because he was way stronger than them, and demanded blind obedience to the death. (Which makes him a lot like the Greeks' and Romans' primitive gods.)

God has evolved to become more civilized. He understands who you are. He is love. He cares about your feelings. He is not into dominance for its own sake. He just wants righteousness to prevail the world over.

Forgive me this gross oversimplification. I write only of the Christian God and ignore the fact that there are myriad interpretations of God's personality. But I'd wager volumes have been written tracking how the persona of the Christian God has shifted along with culture, just as many surely have spoken of how God appears to be a projection of humanity's hopes and fears into the void.

Post Dump

2011-09-06T18:30:00.002-04:00

Greetings, Loyal Readers!

And if you are reading this, you are either a spambot or very loyal indeed. In the immortal words of Jim Anchower, "I know it's been a long time since I rapped at you," but I got a new job and that's been mighty draining.

After years of sporadic posting, I let my little flower wilt on the vine. Or nearly. Today is post-dump day, where I let loose posts of months past that had been sitting in draft form, waiting for their chance to fulfill their meager destiny.

I promise nothing in the way of more regular posting or improved content. As the banner states, this blog is inchoate. Its parts do not make sense together. It has no real theme or reason for being. Is it a public diary? Sometimes. Is it a forum for cultural criticism? Sometimes? A literary endeavor? It tries here and there.

Take this then, oh loyal ones, as a token in earnest of my renewed attention to this little folly of a blog.

My goal henceforth is to censor less and write more. Too often have I demurred from posting my feelings because, well who the hell cares about my feelings? Well it may well be that no one does, but if that is indeed the case, I may safely leave it to your discretion to decline to read any posts that remind you too much of a fifth grade diary.

So, hola amigos!

80 MPH

2011-05-31T21:25:00.006-04:00

brilliant, morning sharp,
doe's plush ruff flat against concrete crash wall
her feathery fur still warm

He did not answer the question she posed

2011-05-24T22:36:00.002-04:00

Closer she crept
The bulbs of her thighs perched on the stems of her calf, balanced on the balls of her feet
She poured her hand onto his shoulder
Splayed black bright strands over his chest

He made no visible move

Outside nothing changed
No sound sustained
Two feet of snow lingered under depthless blue and searchlight moon

He gathered her hair into his fist

Decision Redux

2011-03-13T00:12:00.003-05:00

In court I ran up against a bully. He's accustomed to pushing people around. He hates doing real work. He hates being challenged. When I stood up to him, he told the organization I was associated with that I was doing them a disservice. I'll be seeing him again at a hearing. If he shows. I think he knows he's beat and won't show.

I just said in an interview that it's best not to let it get personal between attorneys, but this guy makes my blood boil. I have to not show that in front of client or court.

. . .

I'm going have to make a really big decision this week. Unless I won't. But I think I will, because I nailed the interview.

The job is like being a public defender for people put in mental institutions or forced to take medicine against their will. So most of my clients would be mentally ill.

If I get an offer, I will have a very small window (like 24 hours maybe) during which I can accept.

I have two more interviews in the next 10 days, but I will probably have to decide on this job before either of those interviews. The other interviews are for public defense jobs. One in NYC. One in rural middle of nowhere. The job representing mentally ill folks is in a small city.

I will have to be really sure I want a traditional public defender job to turn this one down before even going on a first interview for the rural or NYC job.

I liked the people I interviewed with. I think I'd like the work. A lot of courtroom work. But I think I need more information.

What will my typical workday look like?
Good answer: You're in court all morning, starting at 9. In the afternoon, you meet the brother of one of your clients to try to develop information that could get your client released from an institution. After that, you come back to the office and write a motion to enjoin a psychiatric facility from keeping another client under continuous sedation. You go home at 5.

Wrong answer: You'll be in the psych ward almost every day. The wailing never stops, but you'll get used to it. There are hearing rooms in the hospital. That's where you'll be trying your cases. They're really just for show. You'll get back to the office around 4:30. You'll need to work until 6:00 or so to keep up with paperwork. How much work you put into your cases beyond that is up to you.

What kind of training do you offer?
Good answer: Full trial academy type training and continuing practical education. Mentoring.
Wrong answer: Learn as you go; you'll pick it up.

Head-to-head matchups:

Highest quality of life* = small city
Lowest quality of life = NYC
+2 small city
-2 NYC

Most exciting job = NYC
Least exciting job = rural
+2 NYC
-2 rural

Best for my resume = NYC
Worst for my resume = rural/small city
+.5 NYC
-.5 rural
-.5 small city

Best for internal advancement = small city
Worst for internal advancement = rural
+.5 small city
-.5 rural

Best job security = small city
Worst job security = ?
+.5 small city

Best benefits = small city
Worst benefits = ?**
+.5 small city
-.5 NYC
-.5 rural

Best pay = small city
Worst pay = NYC****
+.5 small city
-.5 NYC

Office size:
Big: NYC
Small: rural
Smallest: small city
+.25 small city

Only offer on the table:
+.25 small city

And it's a big win on arbitrarily awarded points for small city!

Just a few weeks ago, I agonized over how to decide whether to take a job; how could I know the right path to take? I never had to choose. No offer. I agonized too early. Here I am again. Agonizing too early again? No. I have to be ready if it happens.

If it happens, and if I say "yes," things are going to get extra hectic here. I'd be in the new job in a few weeks.

Thoughts?

* Quality of life for the purposes of this highly scientific analysis includes quality and size of housing we're likely to live in; proximity to services, arts, entertainment, and hiking; likelihood of strangers saying "hello"; likelihood of seeing an eagle v. likelihood of seeing a wallet-sized cockroach; crime rate; etc.
** The mental health public defense job has great benefits. They're good enough that I's sure they're better than the rural or NYC option, even though I don't know what their benefits are.
***The rural and city salary are probably about equal in dollars, but the cost of living in NYC is so much higher that the same money would be worth a lot more in a rural area.

When the Hoover Dies

2011-03-01T00:11:00.004-05:00

What will happen when California can no longer rely on the Hoover Dam? How quickly will our standard of life fall when severe rationing/rolling blackouts cripple the state's economy? Do we have the ability anymore to undertake so massive a project? Will we ever be able to create work on such a scale again? Or are we in imperial decline where we have lost both the will and the knowledge to achieve as the generations that preceded us?

The last great leap in infrastructure followed the Great Depression. We have been through a long economic crisis and infrastructure improvement has been a talking point, but a Hoover Dam-type project is out of the question. We can't even agree on high-speed rail. The political discourse is almost totally irrational and preoccupied with perception. Our bridges are failing. Our oil is limited. Our supposed leaders sold their votes to their party bosses and corporate donors long ago.

I'm Going to Be in Court Tomorrow

2011-02-17T21:31:00.003-05:00

I'm a little of nervous.

Snow

2011-01-23T20:49:00.003-05:00

How Does One Make a Good Choice with Limited Information

2011-01-19T21:53:00.002-05:00

I may have an opportunity for a job about an hour and a half from where I live now. It's a good job for me. It's secure, it involves litigation, and it's public service. I think I would really like this job. That's all well and good. But I don't KNOW that I'll like it. I can't know that. And unlike my present employment, it's a permanent gig. In a remote city. It's a serious commitment. What if I take it, hate it, and can't find anything else? What if I end up stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way out? This FEELS like the kind of place I could stay for the rest of my career. That's awesome in the fullest sense of the word -- as in it is amazing to behold and makes me cower.

It boils down to having to decide whether to take the job based on impressions from my interviews and online research. But I can't know the future or whether my wife will be able to find a job in a new city. I know I'm happy where we live now, but if I take this job, we will have to move sooner or later.

So, to the title of the post: decision-making with limited information. It's like buying a used car (something I may be doing very soon). You can check it out, you can drive it, you can have it inspected by a mechanic. But you can't know whether water damage is eating away at the electrics or the timing belt will snap next week. You can't know that your mechanic did a good inspection. You can't know that you won't wreck the car the day after you buy it. All you can do is put the hours into checking buyers' guides and finding a mechanic with a good reputation and a car and seller that "feel" right. And in the end, that's what makes or breaks it: the feel. Do I trust the guy? Does the car feel good to drive?

This seems unsatisfactory to me. I should come to grips with the uncertainty inherent in all decision-making. I should remember that, just as I make a choice to take a job, I can make a choice to leave a job.

I hemmed and hawed about this a couple years back and took the right job. Can I do it again? Should I just be grateful that I have a choice at all?

1 per day

2010-11-15T23:06:00.002-05:00

There's a simplicity movement afoot. Inundated with information and the ceaseless drumbeat of consumerism, a contingent is choosing to live with less and to reject the premise that our status as consumers defines us. For example, there is the 100 thing challenge, which I've seen on various blogs. Here's one example.

There's also this Transition movement, which started in the UK and has spread. From my shallow knowledge, it seems to start from the premise that we are headed for leaner times. It's like a progressive alternative to the survival shelter mindset. Like some more conservative folks, they think the current system of food and energy delivery will collapse and posit that, if we scale back our consumption now and begin to increase "resiliency" in our communities, we may be able to transition more smoothly into the post-oil guzzling world. Local sustainability is the goal. So instead of each person with the resources available building a bunker, members of the community come together to create/encourage initiatives like sustainable agriculture, basic repair and mechanical skill classes, and awareness projects.

In the spirit of living with less, I've determined to do with less myself. I'm going to give/throw away one item per day for an entire year. It will be really easy to start, but I imagine, at 100 or 200, it's going to start to get really tough. Now, I'm going to count things like individual articles of clothing, but I'll have to figure out how to handle books: maybe 5 or 10 books will equal one "thing." Hopefully, by doing this, I will be able to live with a bit less clutter, but also think about my relationship to all the things around me that I think are part of my identity.

Compassion for Prisoners

2010-10-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

The accepted attitude toward prisoners seems to be disgust, disdain, even hatred. Compassion for prisoners is seen as contemptible, sinful, an affront to the law abiding and the victims of crimes. But prisoners deserve compassion and respect no less than any other person. I don't mean that a prisoner's crimes deserve respect. Rather, prisoners deserve the respect owed all human beings, the respect owed to siblings whose situation is far worse than ours for reasons impossible to fully grasp. Our compassion is compelled by empathy and the chance of redemption. For the sake of argument, I am assuming that all prisoners are actually guilty of the crimes for which they are imprisoned.

Empathy
There but for the grace of "god" go I.
We all have evil impulses. We all are capable of crime. We all are capable of violence and deception. True, most of us manage to control the more destructive impulses, but, given a different set of circumstances, who can honestly say "I would never steal or rob or intentionally injure another"? I believe no one can. It is impossible to ever know under what set of circumstances a person commits a crime. Social, familial, chemical influences all may lead up to a fateful decision. Who can say that his or her moral high ground is anything but an accident of education, wealth, or opportunity? Also, every one of us has at some point done something regrettably, even criminally stupid. Maybe through inebriation, jealousy, ambition, shame, or recklessness. Many of us who have never been convicted of crimes have driven drunk, thrown a punch, taken a drug, or stolen money or goods. And even the unrepentant criminal is already in a hell of sorts. A person who does evil deeds may be crippled emotionally or mentally. So that guy in solitary serving 20 years for forcible rape is your brother. Do not foresake him because you loathe his crime. Love him and remember that he is lost and that, at his core, he is the same as you.

Redemption
I once was lost . . .
Without compassion, we will treat prisoners as less valuable than we the free; as a debased class of not-quite humans. By doing so, we essentially turn our collective backs on them, and say "you may not be admitted into the fullness of society again." Thus, after serving their sentences, many onetime prisoners find themselves living at the fringes of society. Admittedly, a good number of former prisoners are retuning to high-crime areas and situations that encourage further anti-social behavior. But by treating prisoners as degenerate, useless, lowlife, we encourage anti-social behavior. We set up a good guys v. the convicts dichotomy, and the criminal understands that his family are the fellow lawbreakers. As long as there are laws to control undesirable behavior, there will be lawbreakers and these lawbreakers, by breaking a social contract, are put away from society. But we should not then confirm the criminal's hypothesis that he and society are at odds, that he and society just can't get along. Instead, we should work to redeem them, show them that the societal contract is one worth keeping.

I'm not saying that, with a smile and a handshake, a child molester will become a productive member of society. But unless we continue to reach out to that molester and figure out how to reform/redeem/rehabilitate him, we will be left in fear of evil, as if it is somehow external to us, and we will have lost the chance to redeem the evil within ourselves.

So the next time someone starts complaining about how we "coddle" prisoners by allowing them to exercise and watch television, remember that, even if we must put them out of our societal embrace, we need not deny their humanity or impose cruelty for its own sake. Jesus offered compassion and love to criminals. So did Buddha. You should too.

Two Unrelated Things

2010-07-24T18:13:00.002-04:00

Behind drywall and stud reclines the Brahman,
Brown men in knit caps tend the lawn,
Wizened woman in yoga pants guards the lane,
In gleaming black carriage, the scion
discreetly is delivered to the commons.

---------------------------------------------------------

I saw this on a church sign today:
"God doesn't believe in atheists. Therefore they don't exist.

I imagine the writer thought this a pretty biting riposte to the atheists, but I disagree with it as logic, rhetoric, and theology.

Seriously

2010-07-17T01:47:00.002-04:00

I'm a delinquent poster among delinquent posters. I actually have a post written in long hand that I've been meaning to post for a couple months now. In the mean time, I will simply say: the police state is coming in America. It will be a corporate-consumer model. Debtors' prison will be prominent, as will familial debt (i.e., your sister owes Target $20,000, and she is in jail for failing to pay, making the debt yours). The more we watch, the more we buy, the more we build our own prisons.

Politician as Brand

2010-06-02T22:58:00.001-04:00

According to the NY Times, a politician recently said: "The latest episodes 'are indicative of a culture that embraces the politics-as-usual mentality that the American people are sick and tired of.' I love how they try to manipulate our perception of events while acting like they're working as our spokespeople and agents.

Should I Do It?

2010-04-28T22:34:00.003-04:00

My present job is a 2-year contract that expires next August. I work for an appellate court, and I like it, but I'm ready for some more trench-level action. I wouldn't have guessed I'd be at this point so soon, but I am considering going solo instead of trying to find a compatible employer.

The plus side is that I get to call all the shots.
The minus side is that I have to call all the shots.

My biggest worry is whether I'll be able to generate enough revenue to make a living. I'm attracted to the legal aspect of being solo, but unenthusiastic about running a small business on which my family's well being depends.

Thoughts? Advice?

UPDATE: I am leaning away from this option now. I am not anxious to do the administrative work that would be a huge part of a solo practice. I would like some trial training. And if I do 8.5 more years of public service work, my federal loans will be forgiven. Of course, if the job market continues this way, I may go solo out of necessity.

Green Vomit Day

2010-03-13T13:20:00.003-05:00

I drove into work today and noticed a suspicious number of people wearing green. I then drove by a couple of awnings set up on the side of the road, their occupants standing beside coolers. City Hall is flying the Irish flag. Ah! It must be St. Patrick's Day. That was at 11:30. It's now 1:30, and as I sit in my office, I hear hoots, whistles and screams from drunken semi-adults down the hill where a bunch of crappy bars and the parade route coincide. I don't really understand this holiday. Its sole purpose for non-Hibernians appears to be drinking. I can't imagine the parade is going to be any good (and I wonder if it's anti-gay like the NYC parade). What I want to ask the noontime revelers is:

Is there something stopping you from mainlining beer through a funnel, pounding car bombs, and blasting air horns the other 364 days of the year? On the other hand, what is it, aside from a the drunken Irish stereotype, about this day that makes you think it's okay to spend all weekend painting the town in green bodily fluids?

Of course, many of the dissolute youth out there probably spend every weekend painting the inside of frathouses with bodily fluids, and this is the one day they won't be arrested for doing it in public (though I am sure arrests will be high today). Whatever the reasons, St. Patrick's day, normally a shitshow, is especially shitty in a college town.

Maybe I just don't want to hear all that "whoohoo"ing while I am sitting here at my desk analyzing the law (and writing blog posts).

When I Get to the Promised Land, I'm Gonna Shake the Eye's Hand

2010-01-26T20:23:00.005-05:00

Two thoughts in ascending length order:

1. People often bemoan "political correctness." It's changing our language. It's forcing people to use "they" as a singular pronoun. One change has been underappreciated. "Fireman" has become the much awesomer "firefighter." (Shockingly, spellcheck is dubious of "awesomer." Pish, it's perfectly cromulent.)

2. Earlier today, I was discussing music with a friend. We have similar, but not identical tastes. For instance, we disagree as to which bands we think are truly great. The discussion centered around Modest Mouse's "The Moon and Antarctica" (which I think is a meditation on mortality and religion). He didn't hate it, but didn't hear the greatness in it that I (and many others) do.

He suggested that their approach was to take a fairly simple song and build it up in layers. This may be true. I hadn't thought about it. I mostly was cognizant of the album's beauty and nuanced lyrics. I'm a fairly articulate person, but in trying to explain why I thought they were great, I was left fumbling, grasping. They're brilliant. Stunning. These are conclusions, not reasons, but they're nearly all I've got. They're inventive. Okay. But I can't really say how they're more inventive than, say Nickelback. I know they are, but . . . I can say that they have unconventional song structures (true?). They often switch up the rhythm and volume in a song. They create a rich, full sound through excellent production. Their songs are dramatic and often involve a high peak or crescendo. But all these things are doubtless true of bands I think are crap. So maybe I can praise them in a seemingly sensible way, but really, I'm at a loss.

So how do we talk about art in a useful way? We can talk formalistically, of emotional impact, of lyrics and melody (in music), of creativity, and of skill. But none of these is wholly satisfying. All approaches fail to make effable the ineffable. Two musicians could render the same song: one may make me weep and tremble and the other leave me indifferent, despite their playing the same notes. Art is a way we connect with each other on a spiritual level. So, perhaps, the reason I can't truly get at why I love one band over another is that no one can describe God. No one can appreciate him/her/it in all her/its/his aspects. To repeat an adage that is the punchline of a movie recommended to me by another friend (and frequent commenter here), there's no accounting for taste.

"sonorous nutshells rattling inwardly"

2010-01-09T12:35:00.004-05:00

The Problem of Atheism

2009-12-16T19:09:00.004-05:00

I am an atheist because I don't know what else to believe. When I was a Christian, a wavering of my faith anguished me. Now that the waver has long since phased into collapse, the old anguish is born again in new form. Instead of thinking "what if there is no God?," I think, "what can I believe in?" God is the answer for questions that defy answer. The question why eventually must end with the answer, because God. Without God as the answer to the unanswerable why, the question lingers. That there is no truly satisfactory answer despite millennia of inquiry suggests that perhaps the question becomes meaningless when applied to the fundamentals of existence.

When God is the answer, you can organize your life around basic principles like "Be nice to others (because God sez so)." Without the answer, you have an intuitive sense that good is good, reinforced/denounced by societies. And assuming the question is without meaning, what question should I be asking?

This metaproblem leads to more localized problems. I have especially been troubled by aspects of my godlessness in art and vocation. My next posts will explore these areas.

I Don't Even Know How to Begin to Understand

2009-11-18T19:46:00.003-05:00

what it's like to wake up and think "I wonder if this is the day I die".

I sometimes forget the magnitude of the Iraq war. At least 100,000 civilian, over 4,000 US military, almost 10,000 US-aligned Iraq military deaths. That's around 50 violent deaths a day since 2003. And that doesn't take into account the war we're preparing to escalate in Afghanistan.

Google Maps Found My Chinese Restaurant

2009-11-04T21:12:00.002-05:00

Two points about Google Maps:

1. I used Google Maps to find a Chinese Restaurant the other day. This would not be a remarkable feat were it not for the fact that I used street view. Google searching wasn't working to find the place, which I knew was across the street from another business. So I found the address of that business, found it on Google Maps, and used street view. I swiveled the camera around and was able to see the restaurant's sign. I then Googled that and was able to view a menu and get the number from that search. The process I just described is the sort of mundane thing many people use the Internet for every day. Every once in a while, though, I am amazed at the power at my fingertips. I can type an address and look at a 360-degree picture of the street. Astonishing. Magical.

2. If you didn't notice the other day, stories abounded about how google is releasing a Google Maps navigation application for smart phones. It killed the Garmin and TomTom stock prices. Apparently, google is going to make money off this deal because it now owns all its own maps (I understand why this would save them money, but not how this app is supposed to make them money). By tracing nearly every street in the nation to produce street view, Google committed the brute force necessary to create their own maps. The closest analog I can think of in terms of coverage and manpower is the census. Is Google as powerful as the federal bureaucracy?

from 2001

2009-09-24T19:08:00.001-04:00

I was tired of the same old everyday, day to day, repeat junk. Tired of staring out and seeing what I saw all the time. Same black and glistening streets. Same Lexi and Volkswagens and Explorers intrepidly crowding me. I was tired of looking up, waiting for buildings to crash onto me, of drinking and drinking and being taken along, pretending not to be bothered. I was drinking the metally water from its protected source. Placid and cool, but not refreshing. I was smoking and each puff wore me down, made me think of more, of the next one to buy--of my struggle to consume and desire and need and need and not just let be and be. I had it all worked out of me. Whatever spark to fire the flame of fury or feeling or fortitude or risk. No dangling. Not vulnerable.

I used to skateboard. I was fearless, until I hurt myself. I used to snowboard. I was fearless, until I hurt myself. I used to believe.

My name is Random Spillwater. I'm a bastard of a bastard; the child of a motherless son. I'm a fatherless one. Mom was a telemarketer. She had a thing with her supervisor, Chuck. I don't like to think too much about Chuck and his white kingdom of cubicles, plastic and wires. Leering at the girls in headsets sitting in front of green-flickering computers. Leering at mom like a plague rat.

I spent my childhood playing video games, watching TV, and eating macaroni and cheese. No baseball, no soccer, no kites, no frisbee, no fishing. Children didn't talk to me and I didn't talk to them, but I had fantasies. Dervishes and diversions. I didn't hit the game-winning home run or kiss the girl (still waiting), but I talked to everyone. I said the right thing--to make people laugh, to raise the spirits of the sick, to excite the jealousy of those less well endowed. These were the dreams of Random the Orator. Hear him expostulate on subjects great and small. A meager grain of rice becomes a bumper crop of repartee.

The universe itself dissected, didacted, and resolved in the hollow of my mouth. I sing the stars to sleep and Oh, if someone had listened.

What a way to live. In silence always jabbering a commentary, every moment, every moment running on without break. Now the outside crushes in instead of the inside straining out. I had creases at 20, and my hair was shocked with white at 25. I lost the last believer yesterday. Everyone loses today.

Look at me, the small, angry man. I am everywhere; a cliche. Powerless of my own volition. Without belief in volition. Another whiner. Yet another dissatisfied, internally choked and knotted, socially backward log in the jam in the ol' river o life.

Love What You Do

2009-09-01T18:51:00.002-04:00

Conventional wisdom holds that if you love what you do, work will never feel like work. I don't know about that: every job is bound to include responsibilities that feel monotonous or burdensome.

Nevertheless, so far so good with my new job. Often several hours pass without me checking the time. The work is challenging and worthwhile. While I've had acting jobs I loved, I've never had a job like this before: great work, great social benefit, great pay.

That Damned Caveman

2009-08-14T23:53:00.002-04:00

Will those stupid GEICO commercials never end. They were lame before the ill-fated sitcom. At this point, they're endless repetitions of the same setup and payoff. Uptight caveman starts to relax, lets down his guard, and then sees the GEICO slogan, which crushes his spirit so that he has to stop doing whatever pleasant thing he was doing. So . . . GEICO ruins lives? Maybe the message is supposed to be that only overly sensitive buzz-kill types dislike GEICO.

Also, while I'm complaining about things I can't control: Interwebs is not clever or funny. Stop writing it, people. The meme was over long ago, when clueless people like me were still nonplussed by it.

No One Knows

2009-08-02T23:30:00.004-04:00

This I know: no one knows. I support better healthcare. That's easy. I support universal coverage. Another easy one. After that, I have no clue. We are overprescribed/Europe is underprescribed. We have cruel deficiencies that punish the poor/the Europeans have to wait years for their procedures. If you have insurance, it's fairly easy to see a specialist/in European systems, seeing a specialist means more waiting.

In order to cover the poor, must those with the best coverage disgorge some of their coverage? If we went to a single payer system, this is what would happen. Less healthcare for the well off, and more for the poor. That's socialism right there (*everyone gasps*). And that's never going to happen here. For one, the political will is not there. For two, bringing those with no medical insurance into the fold need not mean the end of Mr. Monopoly seeing a specialist every time he has a tickle in his ear.

Obama's plan, as I (I am sure poorly) understand it, tries to fill most of the coverage gaps while ostensibly allowing everyone to keep the insurance they already have. I guess that's a political necessity, but I'm not sure it's s a viable solution. If there is a public option that employers can choose that is cheaper than private, then companies will go public. Remember when HMOs came into fashion? Most of us working folk ended up with HMO insurance although technically, we all (our employers) had a choice as to what type of health insurance to purchase. I suppose the competition could drive the private insurers to offer more reasonable plans, but it also seems possible the private insurers would be obsolete.

What seems most likely is that we will end up with a two-tier system that is an incremental improvement on the present lack thereof. Professionals who demand premium perks will still get premium health coverage through their employers. So too will members of unions still powerful enough (and in industries still viable enough) to demand premium coverage.

It's true that those in the lower end of the earning spectrum will not be able to see a specialist. But they can't do it now. Crappy government insurance is presumably better than a trip to the emergency room. Those in the upper echelon will continue to enjoy the quality of care they already have. As long as we have rich people willing to pay, the service will be there for them.

So it seems to me that the present plan may decrease the quality of coverage for a portion of working people who receive coverage through their employers. But if the competition drives costs down, it could put more money in the workers' pockets' and keep their employers' financially healthier. Perhaps more small businesses would be able to provide healthcare as a benefit and more people will be covered overall. So while the individual quality might drop for some working people, the overall quality would spike dramatically by virtue of so many people going from uninsured to insured.

So we have a compromise healthcare bill. Of course. It's the only thing we could have. Obama is a law professor who comes out of the Chicago political machine. He knows how sausages are made. He knows the legislation game. It doesn't mean he'll win the game, but he seems to have a much better chance of succeeding than Clinton did.

I think the biggest question is: where is the funding coming from? New taxes. I support more taxes to achieve 100% coverage, but most people don't. We are a nation that demands reward without sacrifice. And, from the richest to the poorest, we want others to do well, so long as it doesn't impair us in the least.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: no one knows. We can know the basic premises and we can understand the basic contours of proposed reform, but the legislation is so complex, as is the universe it attempts to redress, that a layperson cannot begin to understand what the truth of the matter is. We are forced to rely on experts, pundits, and politicians, who overestimate their expertise, twist facts to meet their agendas, and lie outright for money and power.

So I am left with this (weak) conclusion: we need coverage for the poor in this nation. I am willing to swollow the bloat and inefficiency that must come with it, as part of a higher tax burden, and perhaps even lowered quality of my personal coverage, because this nay be the only chance for some time that any legislation, no matter how flawed, has a chance to pass. I also don't see how to overcome the insurance lobby and staunch opposition from free-marketeers without leaving private insurers largely intact. I don't see a better way in this political climate.

I hope that the present wrangling over the bill will improve it, though it seems to me that the more time the money has to pound away at the bill, the weaker it will get. I just hope something happens, and that the something that happens is even slightly better than the nothing so many have now.

Hurt Locker

2009-08-02T22:45:00.002-04:00

In my last post, I praised Funny People. By all means, see Funny People. But see Hurt Locker first. It follows a US military bomb disarming team. Nearly every second is tense. Set in 2004 Iraq, it maintains the tension and suspense of an old-fashioned thriller or horror movie. Unlike a horror movie, the stakes are so real and the characters so finely drawn that every near-death experience is emotionally draining. Despite being obvious fiction, it has the ring of truth. It's a tough but rewarding 2:20 that left me emotionally raw, with an unstable lower lip, and a heart that kept pounding some time after the credits had rolled. It is punishing viewing, but well worth the pain. Not only is it one of the best war movies I've seen, it's one of the best movies I've seen in some time, and up there with the finest I have ever seen.

It's easy to forget that we've been in Iraq for six years now, and that every day, soldiers and civilians risk their lives. I know I often prefer not to think about it. I forget how lucky I am that I get to sit here in an easy chair with my laptop while war blooms around the world and people live in various hells created by avarice and fear.

. . .

Two days in a row I've posted now. Perhaps I'll get back up to a once a week average or something like it.

The Other Side

2009-08-01T19:24:00.002-04:00

The bar exam is over. Three years of law school followed by three months of intensive bar review, and for the first time in a long time, there is nothing law-related to make me anxious. I get two weeks off before I start a job I am actually excited to have. It's a blessing to have a job right out of school, and even more of a blessing to have a job I am excited to do.

So I have hundreds of flashcards and binders full of outlines that I would like to throw away, but I'll hang on to them for just a bit longer. Like until November when I find out whether I passed the bar exam. I feel confident that I did pass, but I'll hang on to my study materials nonetheless.

Honestly, the summer was not too bad until the last three weeks leading up to the test. I knew from previous takers that working furiously from day one was not necessary. I did a few hours of homework most days, and then, from July 10th or so forward, I studied almost all day every day. I knew I would pass, but failure would be such a burden that I had plenty of incentive to work. I don't think I would get fired if I failed once, but it wouldn't look good; and even worse, I'd have to study and take it again with seriously dented confidence. It was not intellectually difficult, but more of a grind. The volume of information one needs to be familiar with is great, even though one need not have great depth of knowledge, and even though a comparatively small amount is tested on each exam. I spent a whole lot of time learning about corporations, which I didn't take in law school, and it didn't show up on the exam at all.

Did it seem awful sometimes? Sure. But being in a position to take the bar exam is a privilege, and the work required is not so onerous compared to, say, working on a factory floor. I tried to remind myself each morning that I was lucky to be able to spend the day studying.

If I was lucky then, I am smack in the lap of luxury now.

Mrs. Beckett and I even got to see a movie yesterday: Funny People. It was only $15 for the two of us with a matinee price. Ah, small town living. In NYC, you can never get the matinee price on the day the movie premiers.

The movie is darker than the trailers would lead one to believe, and it's a little long (over two hours), but it's worth seeing. The NY Times review (written by the most pretentious of the Times' reviewers) is not kind to the film, but the review is misguided. For one, it claims that Adam Sandler is overmatched by the part. On the contrary, I'd say that Sandler lives the part. He is right on target throughout.

So far, Sandler has acquitted himself well as a "serious" actor. He is excellent in Punch Drunk Love (a movie many people think is a disaster, but that I love), and is just as compelling playing a very different character in Funny People. In both films, it is clear he is coming from a very true place in himself. He knows awkward and anxious, and he knows celebrity self-loathing, and he's not afraid to bare his shame and darkness onscreen. That is truth in acting.

Eric Bana is pitch-perfect as well.

Funny People is not a great movie, but it's a very good movie, and the stand-up sequences are simply great (though there were a few too many dick jokes for Mrs. Beckett's taste). The plot keeps going places you don't expect, and doesn't settle for easy tie-ups, even as it also doesn't end as cruelly as it might.

. . .

La Misma, thank you for reminding me about this little blog. It's very nice to have a reader. I will get in touch with Glen. We have not communicated in some time, but I'll see how he's doing and if he'd like to contribute again.

Law School Is Over

2009-05-19T01:17:00.002-04:00

Three years of classes and exams and near constant anxiety expired today.

A great burden has lifted.

It will take some time to truly recover.

Gum in Urinals

2009-04-24T02:35:00.002-04:00

I hate seeing gum or other trash in urinals. It means that some poor maintenance person has to come and fish it out. Sure, people who clean public bathrooms wear gloves and generally clean up after people, but are you really so lazy and self centered that you are willing to add cleaning your trash out of the urinal to their list of unpleasant duties? Huh, urinal gum-spitting guy? The cleaner might have to change those cakes once a week, but you really want him to have to stick his hand in there today, don't ya?

Almost as bad are people who piss on toilet seats. How hard is it to lift the lid you savages? Push the lid up with your foot if you're scared of bathroom cooties.

Art

2009-04-09T13:10:00.004-04:00

For a while I confused art with profound feeling. I could not appreciate the planning, trial, and error that must go into making a successful work. I had the temperament and sensitivity to be an artist, but not the dedication.

It's not just a matter of time. It's a willingness to sit in hard feelings, to feel uncomfortable. It's a willingness to risk it all in order to see more clearly. It's a state of being that is as much dream as reality, and as much future and past as present. Three dimensions are rendered in two. All of complex reality is merged into word or image.

Infinite Universes

2009-03-20T01:16:00.005-04:00

If there are infinite universes, will my consciousness go forever? At a minimum, I will live my full possible life.

If there are infinite universes, do I have infinite consciousnesses or just one consciousness with infinite aspects?

There are infinite universes and infinite consciousness within the known universe.

I hope there's a universe in which I have the power of flight. And one in which I play professional baseball.

Time and Trial

2009-02-28T00:11:00.007-05:00

I had a class last night for which the topic was time management. All work and no play takes all the fun out of work. The pace will not relent, so I have to do the best I can to stay calm when madness spins about me.

I have a trial starting in a week. But I still don't know what I'll be arguing, because my young clients don't know what they want.

Of course they don't know. Two strangers just rolled into their house today and said: so, there's a trial coming up and if the judge finds that your parent did something wrong, you could get put in foster care. If the judge says your parent didn't do anything wrong, it goes back to the way it was before: you don't go to therapy anymore, and there's no more order of protection for your parent not to hit you.

How could we have even expected the kids to have a ready answer to that kind of question? We phrased it much less confusingly than the example above (I hope).

We'll probably have to interview the kids again before the trial, even though it's very disruptive for the family.

I honestly don't know if I could bear doing this kind of work on a daily basis. Someone needs to do it. Someone, like me, whose heart breaks for his clients, will probably be the most dedicated advocate for the kids. But someone like me, who might be haunted by his cases 24/7, is especially susceptible to burnout. I have 3 cases right now. Legal Aid children's attorneys have as many as 150 cases at a time.

A Couple Thoughts to Extend This Study Break

2008-11-20T19:47:00.003-05:00

It's amazing how well impending finals motivate me to clean my apartment. It wasn't enough to wash the dishes or change the cat litter. No, I had to break down the cardboard, and unpack all our books from boxes, where they had been sitting since June 1st. We are moving again in six months, so it's unclear how pressing the need was to unpack those books. Oh, and I had to sort some mail. I mean, having a messy study area keeps a guy from really bearing down and focusing focusing focusing.

Fear is a powerful motivator. I have a job, and I have done well at finals for four straight semesters. Motivation thus a bit lower this time 'round.

A thought struck me the other morning: why did I stop practicing religion as soon as I decided it was fake, yet continue to consume pornography? Both require one to willingly suspend disbelief in order to create a bubble of warmth in the cold void.

Things Are Looking Up

2008-11-12T02:03:00.004-05:00

New President. It's been a long time since I felt like our president could do some good for the nation and the world.

New Job. I will be serving a 2-year clerkship starting next year. Normally, law clerks do research and help draft judicial decisions. My job will be more focused on recommending whether the appeal should be heard at all.

New city. Moving from New York City to a smaller city. Looking forward to more time with Mrs. Beckett, more time outdoors, less time spent in traffic, lower expenses, and more snow.

Still Waiting

2008-10-23T22:40:00.003-04:00

I have always felt there was something I would become. At some, point, I would awake into the life I was meant to live. But days and years have passed and I have not had my great awakening. I have become clearer, smarter, more focused, less self-destructive. But I am not changing the world. I still want to change the world. I still believe in the power of my insight, and my ability to help. I am a good teacher. I am a good thinker, and a good writer. I am empathic.

Within a year, I will be a lawyer. And, if nothing changes, I will be working at a law firm. Not because it is my dream, but because it is where my life is going right now. I have to be patient now. I am still in school. I am still learning. I am still building my skill as a thinker, writer, and advocate.

And I am still waiting for my life to start, even as I understand that this day, these moments are my life. They are all there is.

This time must have my care and focus. Every moment is another opportunity to awake into the life I am supposed to live because my life is the life I am supposed to live. I think this is akin to the weak anthropic principle. I have seen it rendered many ways. I attempt to render it thus: the possible conditions that can lead to the present state are necessarily unique. It's why deduction is possible. I have seen something; therefore, the universe of what could have happened is limited. Imagine, for example, that you see a wilted flower. That wilted flower can only have been produced by a limited set of occurrences, e.g., the life and death of the flower. Moreso, that flower could not be, were you not there to see it.

Just so, I now am. I could not be otherwise. My very existence removes a whole world of possibility from existence. My existence prevents my father from having been killed in Vietnam. That I never have played professional baseball prevents me from having been a professional baseball player. Thus the future affects the past as much as the past affects the future. It is a way of stating an obvious imperative that's easy to overlook.

Related: There is no meaning independent of the listener. There is no reality independent of consciousness.

Perhaps I should not be twisting astro- into metaphysics. But how else to know whether they go together?

photo: (c)2007 Derek Ramsey, grabbed from this page.

High Anxiety

2008-09-26T00:01:00.002-04:00

Do you live your life in a state of high anxiety? Do you feel like a motor drives you from one task to the next? Do you constantly worry what others think of you? Do you have trouble relaxing? Do you feel like you're running toward a goal that keeps moving further away? DO you sleep erratically? Do you always feel like your world is about to collapse around you?

If so, you may be suffering from panic disorder, law school, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and/or manic-depression linked to the need to please others in order to maintain a sense of self worth.

Self-medication is not advised.

Today

2008-09-19T23:19:00.002-04:00

Police Chasing a Dog or Police and Dog Chasing a Person?

2008-09-17T22:56:00.004-04:00

So I just got out of bed to make a trip to the bathroom and to have a light snack. As I sat at the desk in front of the window in our cozy garret apartment, I noticed police lights up the street. I then noticed movement and heard some shouting. Then I saw a couple of policeman jogging up the street. In front of them appeared to be a giant dog. A huge dog. The size of a small horse. A mastiff or some such. One of the policemen had some sort of chain. Someone yelled "back it up, back it up," and behind the dog/police parade appeared one unmarked police car with a dashboard light coming up our narrow winding street in reverse. After that came at least three more police cars.

I went downstairs and outside to investigate, where my landlord and the tenants below us were assembled, gawking at the receding lights. Sadly, I was the only one to have seen the dog. Less sadly, the thought that a horse-sized dog was loose unnerved the girl who lives below us. Her boyfriend theorized that they were looking for a claw-hammer murderer/rapist. I doubt they could have had any object but the capture of a giant dog.

It is always possible that they were actually chasing some felon (perhaps a claw-hammer murderer/rapist), that the dog was a police dog, and that the cops running behind the dog were simply holding his chain. For this to be true, my estimate of the dog's size would have to have been way off. Police, so far as I know, do not employ horse-sized dogs. It's possible I erred, though, given that I watched the action take place on a dimly lit street maybe thirty feet away.

Nevertheless, I lean toward it having been police chasing a dog. They were running down the middle of the street. Why would a fugitive or a dog chasing a fugitive do that? Anyone who's seen Cops knows that fugitives go for backyards. They want to hide. Also, I never saw a person running in front of the dog; just a dog trotting (seemingly nonchalantly) in front of the cops. Finally, I was immediately struck by the size of the thing. For a moment I really did wonder whether it was a horse.

Regardless, it was more than I bargained for when I got up to piss and eat some crackers.

Welfare

2008-09-17T09:23:00.002-04:00

Dear Conservatives,
If you support the bailout of failed financial firms, stop your sniveling about assistance to the indigent.

Dear Libs,
If you support welfare programs, please spare the world your outrage that the feds would bail out financial firms.

Dear Everyone,
I am aware that corporate and personal welfare are two different things. But both are premised on the idea that our government should protect us economically, even when we are partly to blame. The differences lie mainly in how "us" is defined. Unfortunately, the indigent do not have the same voice or power as corporate America. Example: Bankruptcy. Tough on consumers; cushy for corporations.

Also, Dunkin Donuts on Lefferts Blvd. in Kew Gardens has consistently tasty coffee. Much better than at the Metropolitan Ave. Kew Gardens location, at which it is consistently burnt.

Win for Life

2008-09-13T23:39:00.002-04:00

I've seen a lot of a certain lottery commercial recently. A balding guy grins maniacally while talking the viewers through his shit-eating-grin-inducing life. He's won Win For Life, so he gets a million dollars a year for life. Thus, he shows us how he rows a treadmill (next to his accountant) and drinks wheatgrass (next to his personal trainer). He is doing these healthy things, he explains, in order to live as long as possible, so as to keep the money pouring in for as long as possible.

For a while, I didn't pay much attention to this commercial. But it annoyed me a bit more than other commercials. Tonight I realized why I find the commercial so unnerving. The lottery-winning man is grimacing because his life is gruesome. He is attempting to smile, (because the the thought of money still excites him), despite the harrowing prospect of year upon year of life bent on nothing but its own extension.

His family would keep him alive at all costs, unless those costs got too close to one million a year.

Life of the Mind

2008-07-31T22:46:00.003-04:00

So the law firm I worked at this summer offered me a job today. An honest to goodness, 160,000-a-year-to-start-corporate-servant job. I would be a courtesan to the moneyed elite.

When I was maybe 8 or 10, when I was in first, maybe second grade, a friend of the family who I idolized told me corporate lawyer was a great job. He said that was where the money was. He said corporate lawyers were rich. I thought rich equaled unassailably happy, so for awhile, when grownups asked my little self what I wanted to be, I said corporate lawyer.

Before that it was fireman, and then missionary bush pilot, then, after corporate lawyer, astronaut and Air Force fighter pilot. By the time I was in high school I realized that me and most of society were not a good fit. Between that realization and the deep pain I felt within me, artist seemed like the natural choice.

So visual artist, then actor. To survive, I became a proofreader, including legal proofreading, and after years of underusing my brain and longing for more challenge I decided on law school so that I could make a daily difference in people's lives. I wanted to be a public defender, or maybe work for the ACLU. So I went to a less prestigious school than I could have in order to minimize my debt.

I have done very well in law school. That success got me this job, which payed me $80/hr, $3,100/wk, for 11 weeks this summer. This summer has provided me with a direct path to worldly wealth and success.

I don't want it. I like a lot of law work, but I don't like the work I did this summer. I like that I got good training and became a better thinker and writer, but I need a client that I care about. I need a person, not a corporation, to help. I am applying for clerkships. If I get a position with a judge for a couple years, it will delay the decision for a while.

You may be reading this wondering, he doesn't want to do the job, what is the problem? You may also be reading this wondering why I am so conflicted about a job that could set me up financially for life. I don't want to work 80 hours a week, but I don't want to be broke. I want to be able to raise children and not subject them to poverty. On the other hand, I don't want to be "The Cat's in the Cradle" dad and never see my kids.

I will be taking the bar exam in one year. If I accept the job with this law firm, they will pay for me to study for the bar. And of course, once I take the bar and start work, I will have the money to buy a house. How strong the golden handcuffs become would be a function of what kind of house I buy, what kind of suits I decide to wear. If I don't take this job, I will have to drop one more loan on top of the rest in order to study for the bar.

I have struggled since entering law school with how to live within a culture to which I am deeply opposed without assimilating the values of that culture. It's tough. I want to accept, be accepted, fit in, and not live in constant dissonance. Put another way, were I to take this job, in two years would I still be indifferent to the Hamptons and Cape Cod?

I know I should turn this job down. But it's hard for me to say "no" to people who want me. And it's also hard to say no to a solid offer of a good job that could help me build a safety net for me and my family when I will have to wait until the New Year to know whether I can get the job I want. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This is a very long post, but this is a very weird, difficult time.

Meaning What

2008-07-18T01:18:00.003-04:00

Maybe you know what I meant, maybe I know. We can agree that it was an accident, right?

I take the strips of paper from shredded documents. I stare at the parts of letters and form them into words like these.

Summer Love

2008-06-27T00:07:00.003-04:00

I apologize, as all periodic bloggers must, for my long absence. Law school is on hiatus while I work for the man. I am working for an international law firm. A firm that is called a midsized firm. Something like 250 attorneys worldwide. And attendant staff. But why count them? I just got back from a recruiting event. A scavenger hunt in the Village, topped off by a boozy dinner at a nice restaurant, and a cab home to Queens.

While many of my classmates wonder why they have been unable to find work for the summer, while many of them work for low pay, while all over the world people starve despite being desperate to work, some of us make $3,100 a week. Apparently, my work is billed at $250/hr. And I am not even at a "top" law firm. Those summer associates by and large do no work at all. I do a fair amount of work. And I am learning a lot. The problem is that doing this work at all is contrary to my politics.

I thought it would be easier to take the money and run. The idea was that I would use this lucrative summer of working for the man to pay off my final year of law school and work in the public interest. But a year here could by a house, and pay off my loans, and, and, and suddenly I am at a corporate firm, and forty years old, and thinking, a few more years, and I'll make partner, and I'll really be able to make a difference.

Meanwhile I'll own real estate in the area and in Vermont and have close friendships with corporate overlords. I can see from here how easy it is to become what I loathe.

I got lucky enough to be assigned a pro bono case (meaning the client gets free legal representation), and the client is a self-entitled professional student. The kind of person who always gets off while the homeless person whose threats are clearly the products of insane delusions gets five years.

Of Decedents

2008-04-29T01:12:00.006-04:00

Part I.

The thing that sucks about the Sean Bell trial is that either the prosecutor brought a case they shouldn't have, or they or the judge did a bad job. Either the cops shouldn't have been up on those charges at all, or justice was not served. The defense lawyers sounded pretty good at riling up the prosecution witnesses and getting them to contradict themselves. But the prosecutor should have been prepared for it. He should have known the weaknesses of his witnesses.

I was flat-out wrong about the possibility of rioting. The paramiitary police presence in this town had something to do with it, as did the fact that a couple of the police were black. Instead of being a case that symbolized out of control police driven by hatred of blacks, it was a story about out of control police who just screwed up royally.

Part II.

So I spent three hours, from 6:30-9:30, dealing with decedents, trustees, grantors, right of election, the rule against perpetuities, ademption, abatement, per stirpes distributions, essay questions, multiple choice questions, a monitored bathroom break.

Here's the way this excruciating process works. You spend a whole semester learning new concepts, statutes, and cases, attempting to assimilate large and complex doctrines in a day or two. So one thing piles on top of another, on top of another. If you seek out the professor, or read more deeply into a topic, you can alleviate what confuses you, but that puts you at risk of falling behind, since it's more all the time. All the while, you have to collect all this information with an eye to assimilating it all at the end of the semester. You make outlines, or flashcards, or charts, or you reread your notes. And as the semester goes on, and the number of things you failed to fully grasp accumulates, the final exam looms larger and larger. And, finally, after you are exhausted from a semester of reading cases and sitting through alternately challenging and brain-deadening classes, and writing papers, and editing footnotes for a journal, and writing briefs and doing oral arguments for moot court, it's time to study for exams. Just when you are burnt out enough to fall down and sleep all summer, time to study for finals. So you break out your notes and outlines, and study aids, and you tell yourself "this isn't going to be that bad," and at first you feel okay about it. But the more you study, the more you realize the gaping holes in your knowledge. You realize that this is a memorization contest that you can't win. And the pressure builds every day as the final gets closer. A bad grade, and your scholarship could be in danger, or you won't be able to apply for a clerkship, or you won't do well enough to graduate cum laude. One grade gains an outsized importance, and the pressure is ever-increasing, because you have no clue what the test is going to be about. So you go into the test that stands as your grade for the entire semester, and you wait and wait for it to start, and try to make small talk to pass the time, and then it starts. And your heart is pounding, and then there's a question you don't know. You're totally thrown. Can't remember it. Stuff you know, or think you know, and you just can't be sure of the answer. One after another of 120 multiple choice questions, and none of them are easy, because you have to look for tricks in all of them. You have to apply an exception to an exception to a rule, and hope you did it right and mark your little T or F in the bubble.

Then you read essay 1, and think, wow, I think I know how to do this, and you start through it, and then realize it's not quite what you thought. This is something you've never even contemplated before, and now you have to do a correct analysis of it applying a set of tools that you barely know how to use alone, let alone in harmony. It's like asking a person who's learned to play recorder, triangle and base drum to conduct a symphony. Subtlety? You'll be lucky if you nail all the obvious stuff. You're sure that there are issues layered into the problem that you can't see, but you don't really have time, because you only get 45 minutes per essay. So about 2 hours into this thing, you're heartrate is still through the roof, your mouth is dry, and you can barely force yourself to do the last essay. So you bang through it, feeling less worried about whether what you're writing is wrong anymore, because it's too late now, you just have to go with what you have. 15 minutes to go and you try to recheck your 15 or so multiple choice that confused you. You generally come out the same way. Fret and change one or two. You have no idea what just happened in the past three hours, and then it's over. They call time. And then someone asks you a question and you know you missed at least one big issue. And you start thinking about the test, and what you did wrong, and how much you were unsure about. You look around at a roomfull of ashen faces. People say things like, "the professor could have just beat the shit out of me, and saved me this agony." You go home thinking, "maybe I really blew it. What if I get a C? A C-? Is it even possible for me to get an A?"

And then, then, then, you have to shut out that experience within 12 hours or so, because you have another beating ahead in just a few days, and you can't let the demoralizing experience of one exam ruin those that follow it. You need confidence in these things. And after all the testing is done, after every poor law student has attempted to spew back an entire semester's learning in three or four three-hour sessions, the month-long grade watch starts. Some people will move to the top of the class. Some will get Fs. Some will get A+s. Some will lose their scholarship money. For many, it won't make a very big difference. But every day, multiple times a day, you'll be checking to see if any new grades are up. You might even start checking before finals are over.

By the time all grades are in, work for the next year has already started. Moot court, fellowship applications, clerkship applications.

And then it starts again.

I know you reading this will think: he's just got to relax. One grade isn't that important. And you are right, but if you were in this place, it would happen, to you, too. It happens to everyone here. It's intentionally stressful to the point that finals are traumatic experiences. I really do remember certain awful finals moments with absolute clarity.

The school looks like a prison, and around finals, it becomes one in the short term.

Part III
I swear, Hillary Clinton must have made a deal with the devil. It explains everything.

Part IV
And the Elliot Spitzer thing was only a month ago, but now all the press can talk about is miley cyrus doing a sexually suggestive picture for Vanity Fair. Apparently, people were angry that Vanity Fair photographed her as an underage sex object. Isn't that what she was before? The picture may well go too far, but how does it go any further than her image as it stood?

So it's okay to have her dressed like a stripper in a schoolgirl outfit why? Because she's actually young enough to be a schoolgirl? That's okay, but the Vanity Fair Shoot is not.

Underage girls are constantly being tarted as sex objects.

But the one picture that causes outrage is one in which she is undeniably naked beneath that sheet, as opposed to undeniably naked under scant clothing. It must be that putting her on the bed under the sheet acknowledged without artifice that she is a sex object, which shoved the Disney Channel parents' faces into the awful truth: Miley Cyrus is a sex symbol. Countless creepy men and adolescent boys drool over her, and countless young girls try to replicate her precocious sexual alure.

Vanity Fair didn't cause the problem. It took a picture of it.

What a Surprise

2008-04-25T09:55:00.005-04:00

Our justice system fails again. The Sean Bell killers walk.

The charges were politically calculated. They tried to take the middle road. No murder charges so the cops don't get too pissed. Manslaughter charges that won't stick to try to placate the masses. One has to wonder how much the prosecutors really wanted a conviction. The judge said the prosecution witnesses were not credible, while the defense witnesses were. A bunch of black dudes from a strip club is found less credible than a group of police officers brought up on criminal charges whose testimony is self serving.

What makes the most sense of what we know from that night? An undercover officer with gun drawn approached a car full of guys who had just had a confronation. They try to get away, and bump the cop with their car. The cop panics and fires (he claims he incorrectly thought they had a gun, and was terrified of being shot). The whole swarm of them panic and fire. So the cops' defense is, when it boils down to it: we were incompetent, but not criminally so. They were there to run a prostitution sting, and found themselves in a situation they could not handle.

I don't know the ins and outs of the trial. The judge's decision may well be correct. But people will not accept that police who behaved insanely, firing 50 times (one even emptied his clip and reloaded), can be innocent of all charges.

Will there be riots? I am located not far from the courthouse, and I hear helicopters circling above. No justice, no peace?

Are You Named Dylan or Julian?

2008-04-06T21:48:00.003-04:00

Then, chances are, you are one of the guys above, or your parents live in Park Slope.

2008-04-04T14:10:00.001-04:00

More of the Same

2008-04-02T23:50:00.002-04:00

April already? Really? Winter just started. Hell, it was just Thanksgiving.

The trees budded. It's light out at 8:00. It's bright out, but still cold.

I've never before felt I wanted to hold back time like now. The summer will be by, another fall, and I will expect the calendars to read 1999.

I feel 21. Not like I did when I was 21; then I scarcely felt.

When I was 16, I made problems up to see how many I could leave unsolved. They were biting flies that swarmed me. Terror and beauty were no different. Abjection and beauty. Desolation and beauty. I wanted to somehow draw inside me the thousand night lights of the oil refineries along the Turnpike, near Newark Airport. I wanted to draw them past my reflection into the car into my self. That they represented some grand truth I knew certainly.

I wanted simultaneously to be destroyed by wickedness and to defend purity. Even if that sounds trite, it is also true.

I still make up problems. Now I solve the problems too. Each fly is hardier than the next. Each next whisks with it the thrill of maybe being the one that prostrates me.

I remind myself that when I fixate on the past or the future, I miss the present. I hold my breath, I force a deep breath, I imagine popularity or rejection. I hold my breath. If I'm lucky, I'll think, this is right, which it no longer is. Then I force a deep breath. Then I rue.

Stop Trying to Make Sense of Coincidence

2008-04-01T01:27:00.000-04:00

Holy Shit

2008-03-11T00:54:00.004-04:00

I can't believe a powerful politician hired a hooker. I pray none of our trusted leaders have ever used cocaine or driven drunk.

And oh, the painful irony that he painted himself as a reformer. Gadzooks, he may be disingenuous, self-deceiving, self-deifying, or amorally in it for the power, or some combination of the above. Up to now, I thought politicians said what they meant and meant what they said. And what are the implications if his behavior is not limited to the political class? Is it possible that all people are capable of believing one thing and acting contrary to that belief in spite of it?

At the very least, we can count on NY's reputation for clean government and lawfulness being tarnished.

Rilke warned against sarcasm. I believe he said it was for the lazy. I agree, but I am tired.

On a different note, I wonder how many people's first reaction was: "at least he isn't a homo."

Dear MS Word: Fuck You, Die

2008-03-10T21:50:00.003-04:00

How many years has Microsoft been working on Word? Yet, after all this time, they can't design a program that doesn't freeze and crash with regularity. And they feel the need for Word to constantly interfere with your work while you are writing. Self-applying styles? Why not? I mean, why not make your user want to smash his computer to bits in a frenzy over your shitty program? I've got a great idea. How about, when a user cuts and pastes text from other documents, why don't you sometimes impose formatting changes on that text that can be neither seen nor altered by the user. That is a wonderful idea. It is probably fun to imagine your users' tears of frustration and rage. With near 100% market dominance, why produce a functional, nonintrusive interface when you can deliver a bloated piece of shit?

Fuck you Microsoft. Power has made you stupid.

EDIT, 3/11
My more perceptive reader(s) may have inferred that a bad incident involving Word prompted the above tirade. Such an inference is correct. It turned out, I lost no more than 15 minutes of work to the crash. So, now that I am calm, and have had an opportunity for less agitated reflection, I wish to add an addendum.

Microsoft, Word, I am compelled to use you. I understand that you will do all in your power to maintain your market dominance. I understand that you pay a lot of engineers to do things like think up new toolbars to add to your overburdened program, so that you can sell a new release every so often and claim that you have made "upgrades." I also understand that you will never bother to make Word for Mac a quality product, as it is in your best interests to make Mac as unappealing as possible. And sadly, the alternatives to you create compatibility problems and interface issues. So I have to work with you. But I do not have to like you. And I will keep trying to get out of this relationship. Because you are a bad program, Microsoft Word, and I am a good person, who should not have to take your shit.

2008-02-11T21:55:00.001-05:00

It's not all bad.

I complain more than I should about a choice I made, and continue to make. Complaining and acting like evil forces are forcing all this work on me does not help. It makes me feel overburdened and persecuted.

I am too acutely aware of my numbers, of the competitive aspect of it. 18/211, 3.66; 21/232, 3.67; 17/256, 3.74. My ranks and gpas from my first three semesters, in ascending order. I can also tell you that I was top 9% last semester and moved up to top 6.6% this semester. I feel insecure that, despite all the As I've managed, I have yet to get an A+. Am I serious? Yeah. I wish I wasn't. I don't even know why I'm working so hard anymore. I have a great job locked up already. I don't need these kind of grades to get a public defender job. The only reason to obsess over grades and rank is if they represent my own worth. The inadequacy of grades as a reflection of my self worth is evident in that, even with excellent grades, I am wracked by insecurity. Having nothing but A+s and being #1 would not heal my pain.

But I started by writing that it's not all bad. Because it isn't. The competition, the stress, the grades; that shit is bad. But I like trusts & estates. I like mastering concepts and learning to work within a complex web of rules. I like my saturday morning class, where I get to do opening statements and cross examinations, just like a real actor, er, lawyer. I like my con law class, helmed by a crotchety throwback with sideburns and a jacket with elbow pads. He makes us all sit with one seat in between, disallows eating and drinking (even water), does not permit ANY absences, and makes his students handwrite the finals. I like my theater law class, which feels warmly familiar. I get a lot out of that school. So I am trying to appreciate it more and spit bile less. I presume that those within spitting distance will be grateful.

And yeah, that's what the law building looks like.

Here's a haiku I wrote about it.

hulking and ashen,
law school looks like a prison
or a factory

Stifled

2008-01-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while I will read some of my writing from a few years back. It's all from a few years back. I haven't done any creative writing in a couple of years at least. Not a play, not a story. Shit, I can barely keep this thing updated once a month. Before this whole law school nightmare started, even when I wasn't writing, I was still creating. I acted, I directed. I did what inspired me. Now, I do what I am told. I do what must be done to get the degree, and to get the most out of a crappy situation. I even enjoy it. I like the challenge. I have some good friends. But I don't create. I write briefs. I write memos. I write papers. But I don't write. And that really sucks. I have always felt the urge to create art. Art is what has moved me, and excited me; it is what's precious about life. I want to be a part of it and create it.

But I need to do the law school thing right now. I think it was the right thing to do, but it is harder than I could have imagined.

I know I couldn't do it without Mrs. Beckett.

Little Brothers

2008-01-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

Two moments of sadness this past week. First, my little brother by blood, the one I grew up with, suffered the death of his grandmother. She was not my grandmother, and her passing did not move me much, but I feel for him. My grandmother died not too long ago, and I miss her still. The funeral took place in a viewing room at a funeral home. It was open-casket. The priest gave a fairly formulaic speech, did the rites, and then we walked out. The priest did a fairly good job; he didn't seem to know her or the family. That was my Wednesday morning. Thinking of you, little brother.

The other moment just occurred. As I have mentioned here before, I am a mentor with Catholic Charities. My Little is now 13. He is a bright, energetic, sensitive young kid. Everyone remarks on his smile. Anyway, he just called me, and told me in his always-quiet voice that he couldn't hang out tomorrow. We were going to finish putting together the Lego Ferrari I got him for his birthday. It was clear he had been crying and he wouldn't tell me what had happened. And he said he didn't know when he would be able to hang out. He then told me, with a little urgency, that he had to go. I heard his mother saying "Get off the phone," and he sort of whimpered a little. I think I said OK, or bye or something and she yelled at him to get off the phone again.

I wish I could go there and take him out of there, if just for a half hour. I was in his shoes, on the other end of the phone, many times as a kid. I was constantly getting into trouble for which my mother's preferred method of punishment was some sort of deprivation. I would be forbidden to see my friends, or go out, or watch a TV show, or have a snack. So I felt deep empathy for him. I know he is lonely, and that his mother is stretched to the limit. And I think he has been branded as a problem and a troublemaker. If making trouble is how he gets his mother's attention, I know from experience, their conflicts are unlikely to abate any time soon.

I also miss the chance to hang out with him. Playing and putting Legos together and eating pizza is a nice break from law work. And I know it means a lot to him to be treated as specially as we treat him here in the Beckett household. So, I'm thinking of you, too, little brother.

Phew!

2007-12-13T16:29:00.000-05:00

Finals are over. Law school is 1/2 over. I am trying to relax. But I haven't had more than a few days off in a year and a half, and even then, work loomed ominously on the horizon. So I am trying to remember what it's like to spend an unhurried day.

And I can finally take this li'l macbook of mine to the "geniuses" at the Apple store. The high-and-mighty apple customer service refuses to provide customers with estimates of how long a repair will take. So I have been unable to take the heavily used notebook for much needed maintenance. My computer has several problems common to early macbooks: the white faceplate where I rest my wrists while I type and the trackpad have become discolored (from sweat I presume). The case has small cracks around the edges from where the screen contacts the base of the laptop while closed, and, worst of all, the battery has a problem that causes the computer to shut down without warning when there is less than an hour of battery life yet. It forces me to run on AC power almost all the time or risk losing documents. Luckily, autosave and recovery features have become quite good. It also has a problem not common: the hinge is missing a chunk o plastic that broke off when the poor thing was dropped. So if I try to view the screen at a 75 degree angle, it kind of just flops back to 45. On the plus side, the macbook has a motion sensor in it so that it realizes it's falling and shuts down to protect your data. It did what it was supposed to do.

And I get to reinstall Leopord, which is a pretty great OS. Sadly, I had to uninstall it in order to run SJU's exam software.

Anyway, it'll be kind of nice to not even have this thing here. Out of sight out of mind. Time to buy a christmas tree, play some video games, and actually do some reading for pleasure. Maybe I'll finally finish Against the Day.

I'm sure there are some X-mas parties I'm supposed to go to as well. That's not the worst thing in the world.

Reason for Concern?

2007-11-27T00:18:00.000-05:00

I have found myself in agreement with Justices Scalia's and Thomas's dissenting opinions with some frequency. It distresses me a bit because they are politically aligned with an ideology I often disagree with.

My admirations for the dissents' arguments comes from the fact that Thomas & Scalia are originalists: they think the interpretation of the Constitution should be confined to the plain meaning of the language in the document and the framers' intent. It is a much easier position to argue than one that teases contemporary ideas and meanings out of the language of the document, because it has clear guidelines and set parameters. Dissenting opinions are also not as likely to be the product of bargain and compromise as are majority opinions. The writer of the dissent is not constrained by needing to temper the language to satisfy a swing vote. Similarly, it is easier to tear down an argument than it is to build one up.

I also like Scalia's dissents because they are entertaining. I spend enough time reading opinions that a Scalia zinger is a welcome occasional diversion.

It's Hot in Here

2007-11-12T01:59:00.001-05:00

Um . . .

2007-10-24T00:36:00.000-04:00

from NY Times, 10/23/07

Bush to Warn Cuba on Plan for Transition

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.

We don't accept their government at all. We have an embargo against them. What will he be warning Cuba of? His stern disapproval? Will he really "not accept a political transition"? When he speaks strongly to Cuba about democratic reforms, will he pretend he's addressing Fidel & not Raul?

2007-10-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

Do see:
Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson-style storytelling; every frame is perfect and the story keeps you right with it. drawback: overwritten. Anderson's movies usually get better with each viewing, so really liking one 1st time out is a good sign.)

Michael Clayton (Lawyers and agri-business doing bad things together. The least plausible part of the movie, which inolves murder, cancer, nudity in a deposition, and haggard, soulless lawyers and businesspeople, is George Clooney being broke. Hollywood did mess up parts of this movie, but it is worth a watch. Fine acting.)

Don't bother with: Eastern Promises (very overrated, very derivative, crap script; it looked amazing, but didn't add up to much).

CA wildfires rage. Every year. Was it always like this? How long has it been like this? And can we blame it on illegal immigrants?

I Will Not Become One of Them

2007-10-10T00:45:00.000-04:00

This is harder than I thought it would be.

It is not easy to differentiate myself from a culture I'm immersed in. Their values start to seem like normal values. Their worries start to seem like legitimate worries. Fear rules, and fights to the death are encouraged.

But I will not go over to the Dark Side. I am in law school by choice, not by the direction of some cruel dictator. I knew it would be a little like taking medicine. But I didn't realize how strong the tempation would be to convince myself that I like the medicine.

I have been away. For that I am sorry. I will try to come by more often.

Wake Up

2007-09-13T17:03:00.000-04:00

I have told just about anyone who I've spoken to today that I got a mere two hours of sleep. I take a sort of pride in it; maybe as a symbol of how hard I work, or how unorthodox I am. It was work that drove me to it. But what drove me to the work in the first place? I went from the wildly fluctuating pressures of acting to the unremitting pressures of school. Why should I lose sleep over finding sources for footnotes? And why am I so proud of it? The pride can be attributed partly to satisfaction in completing a difficult task. I think I still equate worth with measurable achievement, and praise. Measurable achievement and praise are positive, but it is a mistake to rely on either in order to think well of myself.

Taste the Stupidity

2007-09-03T23:31:00.000-04:00

Has it come to this? Have we become so desensitized that we need a bottle to change color to let us know when it is cold? Coors trumpets this can as an innovation: the only bottle that let's you know when it's cold. Maybe Coors should add little chimes to alert its stupefied customers when they have successfully opened the bottle. And maybe the bottle can change color a second time to let drinkers know that their booze has run dry and that it is once again time to check the next bottle to see if it is cold enough to drink.

They call their technological breakthrough a "cold-activated bottle." All these years, I have been yearning for an activated bottle.

When the most compelling attribute you can come up with to sell your beer is that it is cold, it is a sure sign that you are selling swill.

Pan's Labyrinth

2007-08-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

I had heard good things about Pan's Labyrinth. I had seen a commercial or two a while back suggesting a fantasy. So, when we happened upon it on HBO the other day, we watched it without much expectation. What a gripping film. I was not prepared for how dark it was. Amazing that the same director was also responsible for Hellboy, a mildly entertaining comic book film. If you haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth. Do it now. I am not promising you'll be choked up at the end like I was, but I am promising it is worth seeing. Among other things, it contains the single most disturbing creature I have seen on film.

In more mundane news, the semester has started and I am splitting time among the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, job interviews for next summer, and the always pressing classwork. Beckett's Labyrinth is not nearly as entertaining as Pan's.

That is all.

Braaaaains

2007-07-31T07:56:00.000-04:00

Here.

I got jumped

2007-07-30T23:14:00.000-04:00

I was just about to walk up to my outside door when a kid that was like five feet tall pushed me. I thought it was weird, and I said "Hey, what you do that for?" The another kid pushed me from behind so I went forward, and then another one punched me. I think it was a girl, but I didn't really see. I tried to run away, but I couldn't. They knocked me down, and then just started grabbing in my pockets and kicking me. They took my wallet, which had my foodstamp card in it. I'm really sore today, like it hurts a little to breathe.

Remember last year when that little girl shot that woman on the Lower East Side. Sje was like 14, and she had a gun, and when the drunk woman said what are you going to do, shoot me?, she did. And the little kid's fatwer was a cop.

Ages

2007-07-30T22:44:00.000-04:00

I am just about to embark on another decade. One day being the same as any other, this day is yet invested with much expectation. I don't know what to make of getting older. Don't know how to understand it. I resist the notion that my youth is something to be mourned, and tighten at the certainty that each day brings me closer to my death.

Every moment is new. My understanding of zen is that pain comes from attachment to moments past and moments future. We can visualize and emotionally relive the future and the past, but cannot control them. The past and future moments that dominate thought are populated by awful choices we cannot unmake, unbearably joyous moments we cannot prolong. We treat the past and present as bars or walls confining us in the present, when in fact the singular continuing moment is boundless.

Pottersville

2007-07-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

I have never seen so many people reading the same book. The closest I've seen was when many folks were reading Motherless Brooklyn on the subway. This is a whole other level, though. On the subway, at work, on the Long Island Railroad, adults not only do not hide their engrossment in children's literature, but flaunt it.

I have staunchly resisted reading the Potter books, as I resist most trends. Generally, I find the taste of the masses to be not only not my taste, but flat-out terrible. (See Chuck & Larry, Beyonce, and Tom Clancy, W., for instance.) I think, though, I will start reading the Potter books, beginning with number one. I have been turned, not by the release of the new book, but by the Goblet of Fire movie, which played on HBO ceaselessly for a while. It's really enjoyable.

Sometimes the masses are right, I guess. (See the Beatles, for instance.)

Teeth

2007-07-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

Things not good for teeth: grinding, sugar, being in my mouth. A tooth in my mouth is as likely as not to be part tooth, part amalgam. One tooth has been tunneled through to kill the nerve and drive a post to anchor a crown. Tomorrow, the dentist will "open up" a decayed area around a big gumline filling. If the nerve is infected, root canal. If not, we save the tooth with more metal.

Also on the schedule: full-mouth debridement. Also called a scaling.

My teeth ache thinking about it.

On the plus side, the beckett household has gone hiking five weeks in a row.

Monolith

2007-07-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

One of the things law school does is cast work at you at such a clip that nearly ceaseless effort becomes normalized. It takes training to be able to work at a high level while exhausted, bored, and anxious. Another thing law school does is make everything a competition. That way, when in our offices in the years to come, staring at a stat-sheet profiling every attorney's billable hours, ranking them first to last, instead of feeling like a second-rate salesmen in a boiler room, chasing the same leads, we'll feel like the best, most worthy human beings among all humanity.

There are some positives. For instance, this.

Did You Stutter?

2007-07-05T23:51:00.000-04:00

I met someone the other day who stuttered. Listening to a stutterer causes me about twice the anxiety as speaking with someone with a lazy eye.

I am gripped by the fear that the speaker is going to give up mid-sentence, mid-word, unable, finally, to utter sound. Every moment almost touches catastrophe. I try to pretend I'm not transfixed by the stutter. The stutterer is complicit in the fiction. I wonder "I wonder if he gets embarrassed every time he stutters."

This means, of course, that I end up trying to be polite while never really understanding what the stutterer was saying.

When I was around 10, I met a stutterer. It must have been the pre-teen version of Sunday school, where, instead of playing "Ring Around the Rosie," and singing "Deep and Wide," we talked about the Bible.

The kid said something like: "I think that D-D-D-David showed that um..."
Me: (in a mock-retarded voice) "Duh-duh-duh-duh."

Then I laughed, and everyone was silent. No one acknowledged it at all. The pretty Sunday school teacher, whom I must have had a pre-sexual crush on, didn't laugh. I must have thought it was a good bet to mock the weakest kid there to try to achieve some status in the little group. That is how it was done by the kids I knew. Often to me, but rarely by me.

I was desperately abashed by the Sunday School teacher's silent rebuke of me--and from the fear that followed the realization that I had horribly misjudged the situation. To this day, I am grateful the whole room didn't turn on me at that point. I don't think I could have taken it.

The Things I Haven't Done Lately

2007-07-02T23:51:00.000-04:00

1. Respond to emails
2. Bake
3. Return phone calls
4. Read (outside legal junk)
5. Meditate
6. Feel totally untroubled
7. Write (outside legal junk)
8. Clean
9. Work out

I admit, two of the above I never did with any frequency, and one of the above, I have no desire to do with any frequency.

I blog now because I have work to do and am not feeling it, as the youth are wont to say.

The neighbors' dog is barking ceaselessly to be let in. It is to the point where one wonders how they can stand it. One of these days, I am going to break down and go up to the roof with a carton of eggs and repaint the back of their house. What stops me is knowing that I could be arrested for such an activity, and the worry that I would break a window or hit the dog by mistake. But the day of retribution draws inexorably closer, I fear.

All our first year results are in: I did not get Law Review, but that's all that did not go as well as I could have wished. The troubling thing (as most things are at FALS) is that I am thinking of working at a law firm next summer. I would much prefer to work at a public interest organization. But one summer could pay for a year of law school. And that much off my debt now could well allow me to do more later. On the other hand, stifling careers are begun such.

Oh, how I go on.

La Misma, I am sorry I did not respond. I liked Robot Secretary and I encourage all of my readers who are not you to watch it at your site, which is linked to on the right of the page.

The picture above was unceremoniously dragged and dropped from "wing's (mostly) food blog", http://www.nimes.wingerz.com/?cat=8, because I liked it. Should word get back to Wing that I have stolen his or her artwork, I will take appropriate measures at that time.

Moving On

2007-06-07T22:20:00.000-04:00

1L gone by, feels like an extended hallucination. So much stress. So little exposure to the world. Now the real world is returning day by day.

I hope at some point my motivation will return to me, though sleeping, watching the Yankees, playing video games and going to work an't the worst life.

Slowly Returning to Normal

2007-05-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

1L is finally done. Not totally and completely. But no more work. Legal writing was back-breaking, finals were intense and exhausting, and the writing competition was 10 days long, working all day every day, and I still had to write the footnote numbers in myself right before I had to hand it in. That was what, yesterday? I started a new job on Monday, at a small public defense firm. That's my part time job. I don't start doing the US Atty thing until Tuesday. We only have 2 grades so far, and they were OK. Not great, not bad. Still have to wait for 3 more and the results of the writing competition. The competition is to get onto a journal. The most desirable is Law Review, for which you need to be in the top 1/3 and write a really good paper. The other journals havel lower standards (and smaller offices). But I am looking forward to law school leaving my mind for a couple months and going in and doing some real work.

Things are looking up: the Yanks took 2 of 3 from the Sox. I am 1/3 done with law school, and I just wrote a 22-page paper, 12 pages of which were endnotes.

All that proofreading experience payed off, maybe.

I look forward to experiencing a bit of the world again. Playing some video games, doing some reading for pleasure, playing basketball, and generally living the good life.

I finally got a disposable camera developed that I shot while my brother & I were on Mt. Washington last summer. What an awesome trip that was. I hope I can get out and do some camping this summer very much.

Holy Shit

2007-05-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

That's the only way I can respond to this little news item:

Teachers Stage Gun Attack on Elementary Kids

Microsoft Attacks

2007-05-14T01:57:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Claims Patent Infringements in Open Source Software

It's so easy to hate Microsoft. It's like hating Starbucks or McDonald's. But they just keep doing things to make me hate them. I haven't been following this closely, but, apparently, Microsoft, losing profit as companies make the switch to open source, has decided that it will not tolerate companies using open source software without paying Microsoft for it. Not that Zerox and their ilk can't defend themselves from Microsoft's lawyers, but I am sure Microsoft's ultimate goal is that every user of open source software must pay a license fee to Microsoft.

I have an idea for you Microsoft: why don't you return to your "core competency" of making operating systems that infringe on Mac's intellectual property rights. Or try and get some idiot to buy the hapless Zune. Just leave OpenOffice alone!

Congestion Pricing

2007-04-23T22:09:00.000-04:00

Once again, finals are bearing down. I take a respite from considering the law of torts to deliver a rare post to my loyal readers. Next Moday is when the nightmare begins again in earnest. That is when I measure my knowledge of contract law against 30-something multiple choice questions and 2 essays. Then torts. Then crim. Then property. My prediction? A, A+, A-, A. I should be so lucky, because it would take a lot of luck as well as knowledge to post such grades. We shall see. All I can do is prepare. I will update as the grades some in in June. I am sure you will await my report with hungry anticipation.

Bloomberg made an earth day speech. A big part of it was his proposal for congestion pricing. London and some other cities already do it. If you travel in Manhattan below a certain street (90-something?) between 6AM and 6PM, you must pay something like eight dollars. They will employ camers that capture plates and use an EZ Pass-like system.

Great. Please do this. I have a car, but anything to encourage mass transit use and decrease congestion is welcome. The city's getting more crowded, and we must reduce auto emissions.

Predictably, the plan has fierce opponents. One borough politician thought it sounded like a secret tax on the poor. Nice try. The poor in NYC don't have cars, and if they do, they already can't afford to drive them into Manhattan to work. Parking is $30/day in midtown. Not many truly poor people can afford $150/week in parking on top of tolls and gas.

I think, rather, the people he's thinking of are his upper-middle class constituents; Those folks who can afford to drive in and pay for parking but for whom the congestion tolls would be a real hardship.

But there are a couple benefits that may make the plan attractive to those who feel they must drive to work: 1. less traffic on their daily commutes. 2. Cheaper parking. If there are fewer cars, parking rates might go down as the garages compete for fewer customers. Thus, the congestion surcharge could conceivable be substantially offset by parking and time savings.

That's all I've got.

A Picture of a Cat: That's All I Got

2007-04-10T02:45:00.000-04:00

A cat even a Mouse can love.

Back Again

2007-04-07T00:30:00.000-04:00

It seems like forever since I wrote. Beckett moved, and he didn't tell me where he moved. I didn't even use a computer for the whole time. I've been out of work for a few months. That means I'm living at home with my mother. I didn't think I'd be here again.

I was lucky I saw Beckett at Boston Market. Otherwise I'd probably feel like I had no one to talk to. It's good to write, I think.

I asked Beckett what he did. He works at an ad agency. I asked him if I could maybe get a job with him. He said he'd talk to the mailroom for me.

Thanks, if you read this, Beckett.

I have two goals: get a job and get a girlfriend. Then I'll be happy.

Lamest Post Ever

2007-03-20T16:37:00.000-04:00

I admit it. This is a very lame post. A rambling update. A placeholder.

First, let me say: there are few things more annoying than other people's cell phone conversations. Their conversations never fail to sound petty, superficial and smallminded. One tough guy nearby just got off his phone, then another chap got right on his. I could sit in the library, but then what oh what would I write about. My cell conversations on the other hand I am confident give pleasure to all lucky enough to overhear them.

I have a Tibetan sounding bowl. Maybe that sentence alone will counter somewhat the tension of the previous paragraph. Just imagine it ringing now.

Ah.

What are the concerns of the day? Well Gonzalez may lose his job over these US Attorney axings, which seems a bit silly, since they are political appointments. The guy who was fired at the behest of a dsigruntled senator: that may have some teeth. Segue warning.

So I got an intenship with the local US Attorney's office for the summer. Odd work for a public defender wannabe, you ask? Well, it's all about the credentials and the experience. They are a top organization, and I'm in school for the education and the connexctions. I also signed up to do a public defense externship for the fall to balance things out.

In other small world news, legal writing is wrapping up for the semester. On track for another A- I think. I'll take it. I'll just add that I pretty much spent 2 weeks busting my ass on a daily basis to earn that A-. That's the world I chose.

The Sean Bell cops were indicted for manslaughter of all things. You would think that one who fires a gun at another is intentionally killing, and thus a murderer if not acting in self defense, but the Queens DA probably thought it would be easier to get manslaughter convictions: for that he must prove that they were trying to inflict serious bodily harm. I bet they get convicted of the even lower Manslaughter-2 reckless killing. I'm not sure what happened when the man was slain, just inetersting to see how politics inevitably shapes the way it plays out.

As I was driving to class yesterday,traffic stopped dead outside the Queens Cty Courthouse. So I looked, and saw none other than Al Sharpton leading a group into the courthouse. I think he had just finished giving a press conference.

That's all I got.

sestina

2007-02-24T11:50:00.000-05:00

Almost no one there to help the push,
near sixteen men unholy strong just watch
a tire just ruptures not a villain's chest.
Some horror day and day and again
see why sometime, although, you know, forget.
It stands to see the fitting of your reason.

Big brightness beams for more than reason
tomorrow night when gallants brave and push,
no rather, new bought know now, now forget
that once was will admired. Tonight just watch
again the friend of gallantry and laugh
til booming fills the hollows of your chest.

Resonant full the flouncing of her chest;
we of no care and no why and no reason.
The day must stand be still be smooth again
sometimes, somehow still now, no rush, no push—
old hum electric. The sound is now click watch,
the old always want life the young still know.

Do please be passive you may need not know,
but flick the irritation from your chest.
Here ample sentries keep the keenest watch;
let fallow fall the fields, the folds of reason,
because the moment has been lost to push.
Amore the room abuzzes, more redoubled again.

The difference may be taken out again
and several few be shown the pieces so they know
the flashing button is the one to always push,
regardless of the rattling hollows of your chest;
regardless, wanting necessity or reason,
we never will be found without to watch.

If we perform an act or more you'll watch
and lick your lips and salivate again
without resort to wickedness of reason.
Will you pretend there is no way to know
your sensitivities creep close below your chest?
—undone, unclasped, embarrassedly push

Almost sixteen there, no one was to push;
near holy flattened back, bent, forced to watch
a brand way hot stitched steaming on her chest.
All moments may bear visitors again.
Evading horror's probably honorable. You know
you radiate bliss, you know you are the reason.

Thank You, NeoOffice

2007-02-16T10:07:00.000-05:00

Finally!

I am one of those who refuses to buy Word. Having found Open Office several years ago for my PC, I have been unable to justify the expense since. Open Office is an open source, free office suite that has most of the functions of Word, and allows you to read and create word documents, so your unenlightened colleagues can share information with you.

Unfortunately, open office on the mac OS with Intel chips runs off something called X11. As far as I understand, this provides a bridge between the old macs and new, so that a program can. Unfortunately, it was limited: it would not print or find print drivers, so I had to create pdfs every time I wanted to print. It had drawing problems and was crash prone.

Finally, however, I found NeoOffice. Based on Open Office source code, it runs natively in mac OSX aqua. Which means I have the word processing I've dreamed of for my macbook. Glory, glory, all hail NeoOffice.

Silence

2007-02-10T00:55:00.000-05:00

I had a few readers. Now they've gone and left me. Because I never update this thing. And when I do, my posts are all about how taxing law school is.

I will speak to the void, if it must be so.

Had a bunch of interviews today and yesterday; even the summer internship scene is competitive.

I'll give a quick rundown of my top picks:
1. Federal Defender for the Eastern District
2. Public Defenders of the District of Columbia
3. Legal Aid
4. Orleans Defender
5. South Brooklyn Legal Services
6. Queens Legal Services
7. NJ Legal Services

I have an interview w/ an Appellate Term judge at the end of the month, but i hope to have an offer by then.

I want to go back to New Orleans and continue the work I started over winter break. The problem is I don't relish spending the summer away from kith and kin, especially in sweatbox Narlins. It would be both incredible and awful. DC is also far away; but not quite so far. The DC Defenders are renowned as the best in the nation.

All the interviews were a result of the Public Interest Law Career Center Job Fair at NYU. Pretty cool. They also had maybe 100 informational tables where you could take a seat, talk to a person from an organization and give em a resume. One of the most interesting I saw was the Southern District Pro Se Office. I didn't even know there was such an office. It makes sense: pro se motions need to be screened. It's the office's job to assist people representing themselves and screen their filings to make sure jurisdiction is proper, etc. Interns reserach and write. Pretty interesting stuff, but not much direct client interaction, if any.

Anyhow, emusic is the best.

Just downloaded the new Bonnie Prince Billy, some Johnny Cash, Decemberists, Beethoven, and Surfjan Stevens.

Anyone on emusic? We can add each other as friends. Not on emusic? If you join, let me know first, so you can say I sent you and I can get free songs!

I enjoy this little game of pretending that there are multiple viewers of this blog.

Hello, World

2007-02-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

I have such short windows of free time anymore.

I desire more.
I hope it doesn't stay like this forever.

I'm trying to write a sestina. The structure is crazy:

stanza 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6
stanza 2: 6 1 5 2 4 3
stanza 3: 3 6 4 1 2 5
stanza 4: 5 3 2 6 1 4
stanza 5: 4 5 1 3 6 2
stanza 6: 2 4 6 5 3 1
stanza 7: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Sorry I've been out of touch.

A new

2007-01-09T23:47:00.000-05:00

Semester has begun. I only have half my grades. 3.7 so far. Still waiting on 5 credits' worth. The above is my present petty concern. Below is what matters.

Just got back from New Orleans.

It is still an absolute disaster down there. The 9th ward looks like a war zone. 4 PM. Saturday afternoon. Not a person in the streets. House after boarded-up, sagging, crumbling, water-logged house. Every so often, a FEMA trailer parked on a lawn or in a driveway.

There is construction here and there, but even in the center of town, where there was minimal storm damage, the vacancy rate for businesses is staggering. Movie theaters, souvenir stores, sneaker shops, restaurants, hotels, all closed. If you never leave the french quarter, you might guess that the rebuilding is done and the city is back.

And then there's the Louisianna justice system. What a clusterfuck. I'll just list a few of the practices and let you imagine what kind of Kafakaesque situation has resulted: The Sherrif runs the prisons. The sherrif's dept. gets $35 for every person in prison per night. The court does not keep the court records. Those records are kept by the sherrif. A large part of the public defender's budget comes from a per-case stipend. Public defenders get $20 for every conviction. The courts get a cut of bail bonds, thus encouraging high bonds. It is common to look at a court record and see the notation: "Defendant in custody, did not appear." What that means is the sherrif's dep't tasked with delivering the prisoner for his court date, didn't bother. The official court records include months-long gaps in which it's anyone's guess what happened. After Katrina, during which the prisoners were trapped in their cells with water levels rising, the prisoners were moved all over the state and out of state. It has taken until now for the system, and those working doggedly outside the system, to find these people, and where proper, get them released. Orleans parish jails people for misdemeanors. Although this puts a severe burden on the courts and the overwhelmed public defenders, it puts more $$$ in the sherrif's pocket.

The moral: don't get arrested in New Orleans.

A Roundhouse Kick to the Mind

2006-12-09T01:04:00.000-05:00

And that's one down, three to go folks. I took the night off tonight, but I have a lot to do over the weekend. Two finals in 4 days. Barely any time in between. It's going to be a long week. The one day off until the grand-pop of them all: torts.

Every time I think about the test today I get nervous. And it's already over. The pressure leading into that thing was nuts.

And the car broke down on the way to the test (luckily it started again). And a fire alarm went off in the middle of the exam. Both were examples of that phenomenon where your brain attempts to deny reality. Where you actually say to yourself: "This can't be happening." I've had that feeling when I've gotten into a car accident or when I broke a window when I was a kid.

My civ pro prof, when asked about how in-depth any discussion should go, is fond of saying: "don't you want to fire every arrow in your quiver?" (Answer: Yes. Into you.)

I fired every arrow; I just hope I was firing at the right target.

Joon Bee

2006-12-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

The first of many tests comes tomorrow, when I take my first final: my karate yellow belt test (yellow belt is the lowest class). What a way to start it off! I have a page of korean tae-kwon-do terminology I'm pretty shaky with, and the combat combinations and forms, which I am pretty good with. I should receive the belt.

Friday is when I face down civil procedure, and I have 3 hours to prove to the professor that I have mastered the course. Three days later: property. Two days after that: contracts. Then, with a nice five day break: torts.

That will leave a nice week and half or so before X-mas to get my resumes out for summer work... Then I fly to New Orleans for relief work.

But I get ahead of myself. Tomorrow is not friday or January or the summer. Tomorrow is tomorrow.

Tomorrow also happens to be the day I take the car to the dealer to have what looks like a major problem diagnosed. I feel strangely calm about it. Maybe the stressors are so insistent and ever-present that one more major stress barely makes a dent. I like to think that it is the result of stress management. After all, I know the law and I am prepared. I will do well on the exams or I won't. I will be able to afford the car repair or I won't.

Ooh, and then ever once in a while a wave of anxiety hits! The secret (for me) is to allow it to be there. To be alright with it, and to form an uneasy truce with it as a fairly natural outgrowth of heavy pressure and a part of my personality. No need to fight it. It's going to happen regardless, and better to be aware of it than repress it I think.

Joon bee means prepare/ready, BTW.

In Sight

2006-11-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

It seems like last week that I started classes at this crazy law school place. Now there is one month till finals, and the tension is beginning to mount. Clearly I have some sort of attraction to high-stress living. First theater, now this.

One month to go means reviewing is becoming far more important than the current reading. It means people are beginning to measure themselves against each other. Not in the manner that took place the frst couple weeks: how do I stack up overall. Now it takes place in the much more limited context of: How much do you know. It's a disconcerting place to be in. Because the amount of material is almost endless. And the professors act like you're just fucking around and not even putting forth any effort if you aren't up on every detail. So it's hard not to feel under the gun sometimes. Pretty soon we're going to have to apply what we've taught ourselves in 3-hour essay tests that will determine our grades for the entire semester. Right. Brilliant.

The Havel fest is up and running and I have barely told anyone about it. My classmates keep threatening to show up. I wish they would.

I ran a 5k this past sunday. My legs are still sore. I looked back through this blog's archives and found that my time on sunday was almost identical to what I ran months ago in the Lincoln Tunnel Challenge. The difference is that the latest race, in Van Cortland Park was on amuch tougher, more hilly course. It felt good to get out there and do it. I've agreed to participate in a team race in a couple weeks. Maybe by then I won't be sore anymore.

Oh. I got a grade. Sort of. On my memorandum of law, which in final form is worth 40% of the grade, I got a 39 out of 40. So I think I have a decent grade locked up in Legal Writing, but there's no way to tell for sure what will come of it because the numbers are forced into a curve.

Poker tomorrow night. It'll be good for me to get my mind off things and focus on the bigger picture, like coming to terms with uncertainty and the gravity of avarice.

Havel Heaven

2006-11-05T01:36:00.000-05:00

One would think Havel Heaven would be in the Czech Republic, but, in fact, it's right here in NYC, at the Ohio Theater and Brick Theater, in SoHo and Williamsburg, respectively.

Even Kathleen Turner's doing a performance for the fest. I have no idea what it is or if it's good, but she's famous, ergo, it's awesome.

In some seriousness, I was at the opening of Largo Desolato last night, and it is wicked clever and every second has been invested with meaning. The play was written by Havel after an imprisonment and long bout of writer's block. When the dam burst, Largo came bursting forth. The translation is from Tom Stoppard, arguably the greatest living English-language playwright. Havel and Stoppard are a great match, and big ideas vie for control of the stage with patent absurdity.

I swear I would be this geeked about it even if I weren't part of the creative team. But I am and I am damned proud of this one. If you are in the area, you should come see it. If you are not in the area, well, I suppose you'll have to make do as best you can.

Largo Desolato at Untitled Theater Co. #61's Havel Festival.

Suck on that Noam.

Bottomlessness, endlessness.

2006-10-21T23:09:00.000-04:00

The things that most frighten me are also things I badly want. No choice is ever the final choice.

Time Out

2006-10-16T23:13:00.000-04:00

I have become that dreaded person who leaves his blog fallow for month-long stretches. It feels like it hasn't been too long since last I posted, but I'm sure it has.

Update: legal writing is a real ass-kicker. Take everything you've ever learned about writing and forget it. Pretend you're writing again for the first time. Accept the rigidity and simplification. 1-2-3, a-b-c. That's all. Too much byzantine thought and language flops onto the page when I write, so it's a real struggle. 'Salright; I 'm starting to get it right, and I think I'll end up ahead of the curve in the class. (Gotta keep that scholarship!)

Then there are the rest of my classes. Hard to believe that so much time has passed already. Similarly hard to believe there's still so much time left in this semester, year, school.

Football fans may be excited that they can watch football now. Yankee fans should likewise be excited about being able to watch football.

Being the natural athletes that we all are, my classmates and I have started a running football game every friday, after that maze of subject matter jurisdiction, the erie doctrine and permissive cross-claims that is called civil procedure. Thank God it's only 1 semester. The class, not the games. We're actually improving as players, managing to execute some plays successfully. In week 2 I had 2 TD catches and last week I had 1. Sweet. Still waiting on my first INT, but I'll try to report on it here ASAP. After the first two games, I was sore for days afterwards, but after game 3, I barely felt it the next day. So my muscles must be adjusting.

Rutgers football is undefeated, BTW, ranked 19th in the nation. WTF?

Oh, yeah, and I'm taking karate w/ the school's karate club. It just happens to fit my sked. Kyah!

smarter, but

2006-09-28T00:41:00.000-04:00

this law school gig is making me smarter, fo sho, but it's also making me a whole lot more tense. and tired. i am consistently punchy. as in, i am very tired and not thinking as clearly as i would like, and i also want to punch things.

this post is a prime example: you can attribute my failure to capitalize any letters two ways. 1. holding down the shift key is just too much effort. 2. it is an act of passive aggression; i suspect most people get slightly annoyed when they read text that is completely capsless. or maybe that's just me. and that leads to a third possibility: that it is an act of sado masochism.

i would venture all three have some validity.

elder rage

2006-09-16T01:41:00.000-04:00

Whence this anti-elderly aggression? Today, an elderly man pulls up beside me, zooming up behind the stopped car next to me, then jamming on his brakes. He powers down his window, and waits eagerly as I fiddle for the controls. I don't know what he's going to say, but I know I won't like it.

He tells me: "Turn on your lights. It's raining." He is a bit agitated. I roll my eyes and turn the lights on. He says: "It's the law!" I say "okay. Then, as he's rolling up his window, I blurt "Thanks, you old coot." His window is almost all the way up, and he waves me off, as if to say "No need to thank me. I'm just doing my job."

If he heard me, he pretended he didn't. At least part of me had hoped to provoke him further.