Therefore, I don't have much to say. Things seem to be going decently well with my group project, and school is in one of those false lulls, where things aren't due this week, so I don't feel like there's much going on, but in reality I'm supposed to be using the time to study and start lots and lots of things I don't care about right now.
I played handball for six hours on Saturday, which was fun and even more fun because my arm didn't fall off.
I wrote the above yesterday before my group had a miniature crisis that I took care of by dropping this and staying up until midnight, then coming in early today to finish up before class at 8:45. We finished the project this morning a few minutes before it was due. It's amazing how that always seems to happen. We even started this way before I would normally consider starting a project, and things felt like they were in hand throughout. Yet it all came down to last-minute changes. We got another group assignment (same groups) today, so I guess we'll try and do even better this time.
Interestingly, I still feel sort of detached and bitter about things for what seems to be no reason at all. I'd try and blame seasonal affective disorder, but I've actually been less depressed than at lots of other points in my life, so I don't think that's it (law school is keeping me too busy to start obsessing over how meaningless my life is and how lonely I could see myself (a hidden upside you don't think about when choosing this path!))
So here are some things that I've experienced that might be worth sharing:
I've attended two lunch/lectures already this week. The first was by two guys who were integral in drafting some constitutions. FOR COUNTRIES! They wrote constitutions for whole nations! And one of them is a professor here. I don't remember the other's association, but that's still pretty crazy. The professor was responsible for arbitrating and overseeing the constitution for Kosovo, which was difficult because the goal was for it to be multi-ethnic, but obviously the different ethnicities don't see eye to eye. There was a group of Serbs, a group of Turks, and a group of Albanians.
(Just got distracted by Watsky linking a bunch of spoken word poetry on facebook! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtEG86krJRc is one example I liked.)
Anyway, the Serbs wouldn't meet in Kosovo, so when the writing was taking place, the professor was shuttled back and forth to Macedonia. The writers' first instinct was just to copy the US constitution, but they were advised against it because ours is completely inapplicable to current times without all the precedent and legal rulings that have been attached to it and have modified it.
The second guy was involved in stopping the civil war in Sudan! Well, I guess the fighting probably hasn't stopped, but he was initially asked to sit in on talks taking place in Germany between the north and south portions of the country. Both parties would just categorically reject any proposal from the other side, so after four days they gave up on a treaty and started drafting a constitution instead. He said he was probably personally responsible for about 60% of the document! He also said the constitution was a stumbling block for the treaty. I guess now South Sudan is independent though, so maybe it wasn't effective at uniting the two parties. On the plus side, they are basing their new constitution off the one he drafted, so I guess that's something.
Today I listened to a talk that was a "bit" closer to home. That's funny, but you don't know it yet. The talk was on bit-torrent litigation! I'm hilarious. Anyway, what's happening is that people are using bit-torrent to share things illegally. Lawyers in Minnesota are using this to make huge amounts of money. Here's how: they buy the copyrights to pornographic material and wait for it to be shared on bit-torrent sites. Then they threaten all of the people they can find that downloaded it and threaten them with a lawsuit unless they settle. They choose the settlement value to be just less than the minimum cost of litigation. People don't want to litigate because it associates their name with downloading porn, so they usually settle for between three and five thousand dollars. It's estimated that the Minnesota lawyers have made fifteen million dollars. And it's not even illegal from what I can tell! It sort of amounts to blackmail, but if the lawyers pursue litigation at least part of the time, it's probably possible to just keep on doing what they're doing. As far as I'm concerned, these guys are geniuses.
The guy giving the talk was hilarious, too. He's a judge who has dealt with the requests by lawyers for methods of discovering the names associated with IP addresses for people downloading the material. http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/blog/law/2013/05/prenda-law-star-trek-opinion-otis-wright.html?page=all is an article on the topic, but something that's pretty amusing is that a judge in california, while ruling on the topic, used a ton of star trek references! It's actually hilarious, in a groan-worthy sort of way. It sure livened up an otherwise dry ruling, at the very least.
Other than that, I've just been doing the minimum for classes while doing way more than the minimum for our group's stuff. One of our contracts cases was about Clint Eastwood trying to get an ex off his back, so that was sort of amusing. Basically he settled with her on whatever suit she brought, and as a part of that settlement he got her an agreement with his studio. However, he paid the studio back for the agreement, and the studio never took any of her work seriously. It basically just amounted to a purely monetary settlement, so she sued on the contract for bad faith. Interesting stuff.
There are worse ways to waste time than looking at good poets. Here's that guy again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5wbToZkJwY
Watsky recently uploaded a current poem I liked quite a bit, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUmHLDIEBgk
Well, I'm bored. I think I'll do something else for a while and see if I feel any different. Thanks for reading!
October 23, 2013
October 18, 2013
So some things happened this week:
So some things happened this week:
1. I found a group for my civ pro project. All by myself! And then it turned out that I could just have sent my name into a person and have a group assigned. My group met on Wednesday, split into subgroups of two, and then agreed to meet today with a rough outline of what we wanted to do. My partner and I went through the whole thing and laid out what we thought would be the best approach. We went pretty into detail. Then today we met and it turned out that most other people came to conclusions different from ours. That was a surprise, since I thought we had come up with one of the only options. So today I spent about an hour convincing seven of my cohorts to go with what we had already laid out, a process that was actually pretty fun, but sort of frustrating because we had already done all of the work I was advocating we do. Then I came up to the computer lab and put all the work we did into a formal draft of the complaint we are putting together. It looks really good, and as a nice little bonus, I get a ton of credit for doing work for the group!
2. A second plotline. I ate a bunch of free food this week. This is not an elaborate plotline. But it was delicious. On Tuesday I learned about study abroad while eating some pizza.
a. I think I might be interested in applying to study abroad at some point during my legal education. There's a program in Dublin, two in Germany, one in Sweden, and one in France. As well as a couple in South America, which are conducted mostly in Spanish. The one in Dublin would be fantastic because I would be able to play handball. The one in Sweden would be awesome because it's the only one that has any sort of funding attached. The other European ones would be secondary, but still interesting.
On Wednesday, I ate more, but different pizza while listening to an Afghani lady talk about warlords in her country and how the US was an awful country that everyone hated.
b. Malalai Joya said the CIA had started ramping up the opium trade in her country before 9/11 even happened, and that her country should have been allowed to get rid of the Taliban themselves. I felt a bit in over my head when another person from the middle east asked what we should have done when we were attacked. Unfortunately, she asked him to say it again in a different language, and then I lost track of what was going on. She has a book coming out, and she stressed not listening to major news sources. She said her website had the sources she uses to keep up with things while she is touring. People have tried to assassinate her multiple times (I think four). The thing I found most persuasive was when she showed this magazine cover:
The magazine is saying that the country isn't stable enough to leave. But Malalai Joya suggests we ask a different question: What has happened while we were in Afghanistan? The things that we are worried about happening can still happen. She had pictures of four year olds that had been raped, women who set themselves on fire to escape marriage, and some really disturbing statistics to go along with it.
(The pizza was amazing! I don't know what the top piece was, but the front piece had falafel, and the middle piece had potatoes and cheese. The back piece was the best. The sauce was zingy. I'm sure I could find out what it was, but sometimes it's better to not know...)
On Thursday I went back to the study abroad people. This time they had sandwiches.
c. Nothing happened, except they let out the people who had been before early. So I got to eat free food and only had to spend a half hour of time listening to people who liked Sweden.
Today I ate pizza again.
d. I was headed to my normal spot to study, only to find a staff lunch happening. It was a common use area, and a lady told me I could still study if I wanted, and normally I would have left, but the presence of food was too much to pass up. So I bided my time and studied while watching youtube. Sure enough, it ended with leftovers, and I was first at the remainder. Justice! I put in the time and reaped the reward.
3. Handball has also happened.
a. My shoulder has been hurting a bit since the tournament. I haven't been using it. I suited up with one glove on Tuesday. I was still the first one there and the last to leave, and I actually felt like I was improving by the end, which is a thing that hasn't been happening that much recently. My left arm was even sore when I woke up on Wednesday.
I. On a side note, I've investigated various muscle groups and I think what I did was strain my pectoral muscle (or its attachment, or something). There are three grades of strain; the first requires a couple days to feel better, the second 2-6 weeks, and the third is a rupture that requires surgery. Since I am obviously not in mortal pain, I have ruled out the third option, but since it still hurts, I'm afraid it's probably not the second one either. I have my first handball league on Tuesday next week, so I've decided to try a bit with it on Saturday just to see how it feels, and try and gauge things from there. So back to the Midway Y for me tomorrow morning.
II. It feels weird to have an outline format layer with only one element, so here's a second side note about my left arm: It exists! It needs to get better at handball though. Maybe this forced practice will do that. Maybe I should not use my right hand more often!
b. When I went to Mankato last weekend I left something in everyone's vehicles. I left my sleeping bag and water bottle in David's, and my prize for second place was in Jessica's! Of course, I had a full backpack with my books, etc. and the sleeping bag left no room for my last companion:
.JPG)
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Isn't he adorable? I just hope some people saw me biking back with this guy! It was raining, though, so I might have gone unnoticed.
4. I wrote a paper between the hours of 2:00 and 7:59 on Thursday. Unfortunately, those hours occurred before my class at 8:00 that morning, so it might have gone better... I was confused, because even after I felt like I had addressed the issues, there was a lot of space left in the ten page maximum my instructors said people usually struggled to keep within. So I added stuff until the last minute (making the organization worse, but lengthening the end product), and my submission time was 7:59:32, which I think is pretty nifty. But since my class starts at 8:00, I was a couple minutes late to that. We exchanged copies for editing with another person during class, and I was relieved/annoyed to learn that the reason some people run out of room is that they include every single fact. And not even just the facts of the case we are arguing! Of all the cases that establish precedent! So unless there's something I'm missing, I think my approach is pretty valid. I just gave the citations of the relevant cases and highlighted why they specifically applied to the case at hand. That took up way less room than giving background on the cases we were supposed to be using to give background on our case. So maybe there's a line to walk between the two approaches, but I'm fine erring on the side of brevity for now.
5. Conclusion.
a. I have outlines on the brain after writing that draft of my complaint.
b. I'm not focusing on this entry anymore. I should have free time again soon, so thanks for reading!
1. I found a group for my civ pro project. All by myself! And then it turned out that I could just have sent my name into a person and have a group assigned. My group met on Wednesday, split into subgroups of two, and then agreed to meet today with a rough outline of what we wanted to do. My partner and I went through the whole thing and laid out what we thought would be the best approach. We went pretty into detail. Then today we met and it turned out that most other people came to conclusions different from ours. That was a surprise, since I thought we had come up with one of the only options. So today I spent about an hour convincing seven of my cohorts to go with what we had already laid out, a process that was actually pretty fun, but sort of frustrating because we had already done all of the work I was advocating we do. Then I came up to the computer lab and put all the work we did into a formal draft of the complaint we are putting together. It looks really good, and as a nice little bonus, I get a ton of credit for doing work for the group!
2. A second plotline. I ate a bunch of free food this week. This is not an elaborate plotline. But it was delicious. On Tuesday I learned about study abroad while eating some pizza.
a. I think I might be interested in applying to study abroad at some point during my legal education. There's a program in Dublin, two in Germany, one in Sweden, and one in France. As well as a couple in South America, which are conducted mostly in Spanish. The one in Dublin would be fantastic because I would be able to play handball. The one in Sweden would be awesome because it's the only one that has any sort of funding attached. The other European ones would be secondary, but still interesting.
On Wednesday, I ate more, but different pizza while listening to an Afghani lady talk about warlords in her country and how the US was an awful country that everyone hated.
b. Malalai Joya said the CIA had started ramping up the opium trade in her country before 9/11 even happened, and that her country should have been allowed to get rid of the Taliban themselves. I felt a bit in over my head when another person from the middle east asked what we should have done when we were attacked. Unfortunately, she asked him to say it again in a different language, and then I lost track of what was going on. She has a book coming out, and she stressed not listening to major news sources. She said her website had the sources she uses to keep up with things while she is touring. People have tried to assassinate her multiple times (I think four). The thing I found most persuasive was when she showed this magazine cover:
On Thursday I went back to the study abroad people. This time they had sandwiches.
c. Nothing happened, except they let out the people who had been before early. So I got to eat free food and only had to spend a half hour of time listening to people who liked Sweden.
Today I ate pizza again.
d. I was headed to my normal spot to study, only to find a staff lunch happening. It was a common use area, and a lady told me I could still study if I wanted, and normally I would have left, but the presence of food was too much to pass up. So I bided my time and studied while watching youtube. Sure enough, it ended with leftovers, and I was first at the remainder. Justice! I put in the time and reaped the reward.
3. Handball has also happened.
a. My shoulder has been hurting a bit since the tournament. I haven't been using it. I suited up with one glove on Tuesday. I was still the first one there and the last to leave, and I actually felt like I was improving by the end, which is a thing that hasn't been happening that much recently. My left arm was even sore when I woke up on Wednesday.
I. On a side note, I've investigated various muscle groups and I think what I did was strain my pectoral muscle (or its attachment, or something). There are three grades of strain; the first requires a couple days to feel better, the second 2-6 weeks, and the third is a rupture that requires surgery. Since I am obviously not in mortal pain, I have ruled out the third option, but since it still hurts, I'm afraid it's probably not the second one either. I have my first handball league on Tuesday next week, so I've decided to try a bit with it on Saturday just to see how it feels, and try and gauge things from there. So back to the Midway Y for me tomorrow morning.
II. It feels weird to have an outline format layer with only one element, so here's a second side note about my left arm: It exists! It needs to get better at handball though. Maybe this forced practice will do that. Maybe I should not use my right hand more often!
b. When I went to Mankato last weekend I left something in everyone's vehicles. I left my sleeping bag and water bottle in David's, and my prize for second place was in Jessica's! Of course, I had a full backpack with my books, etc. and the sleeping bag left no room for my last companion:
.JPG)
.JPG)
Isn't he adorable? I just hope some people saw me biking back with this guy! It was raining, though, so I might have gone unnoticed.
4. I wrote a paper between the hours of 2:00 and 7:59 on Thursday. Unfortunately, those hours occurred before my class at 8:00 that morning, so it might have gone better... I was confused, because even after I felt like I had addressed the issues, there was a lot of space left in the ten page maximum my instructors said people usually struggled to keep within. So I added stuff until the last minute (making the organization worse, but lengthening the end product), and my submission time was 7:59:32, which I think is pretty nifty. But since my class starts at 8:00, I was a couple minutes late to that. We exchanged copies for editing with another person during class, and I was relieved/annoyed to learn that the reason some people run out of room is that they include every single fact. And not even just the facts of the case we are arguing! Of all the cases that establish precedent! So unless there's something I'm missing, I think my approach is pretty valid. I just gave the citations of the relevant cases and highlighted why they specifically applied to the case at hand. That took up way less room than giving background on the cases we were supposed to be using to give background on our case. So maybe there's a line to walk between the two approaches, but I'm fine erring on the side of brevity for now.
5. Conclusion.
a. I have outlines on the brain after writing that draft of my complaint.
b. I'm not focusing on this entry anymore. I should have free time again soon, so thanks for reading!
October 14, 2013
Just some things
So I haven't gotten my results back for my quiz because I want to be productive while that's still hanging over my head as a potentiality rather than getting it and either feeling depressed or happy and using those emotions as an excuse to not work. So no news on that front yet. I have a writing assignment due Thursday, so I need to get to some of that tonight (at least the research bit).
I played some bad handball on Thursday as a bit of a warmup for the tournament on Friday. It was sort of weird because only four or five people showed up, and we all had excuses not to play, so it was slow going. Then came the tournament, and I was feeling really good. My shoulder felt a bit better than it had the night before even. I crushed my car-mate 21-6, 21-3 or so, even with a few more hand-errors than I was comfortable with (he couldn't really punish my mistakes, and I play him regularly enough to not have to worry). I avoided pizza on Friday night, woke up starving and ate too much in the morning. I beat my second round opponent (Mike Gustafson) 21-17 (or was it 21-19?), 21-8, and was feeling apprehensive about the finals against Tyler Stoffel. I lost to him last year. We have very similar styles, so it usually comes down to who gets the last diving amazing shot. Well, that person was me. I destroyed him the first game, 21-4 or 21-2 or so, and I was feeling unstoppable. Sure, my shoulder was feeling pretty bad, but I was totally going to press through. At 17-4 or whatever it was in the first game there was a sharp pain on the inside part of my shoulder (sort of by my armpit) while I served. It got a lot worse in the second game, to the point where I was hitting shots left-handed I would normally take right-handed, and I couldn't really hit the ball hard. I was losing, so I gave away the last five or six points and was ready to just give it up in the tiebreaker. That plan backfired, but not before I thought my shoulder was trashed beyond repair. So I wound up with second place, which was actually the more adorable of the two prizes (little statue things), but pretty inexcusable from a playing perspective.
I went into the tournament with a new mindset, sort of. I've decided I want to be good on a national level. I've been thinking that in the back of my head for a while, but I decided at this tournament to keep things in perspective I would repeat that to myself when I stepped on the court and when I felt myself getting caught up in the moment. That's too easy to do in a one-on-one sport I think, getting caught up in the moment. It becomes a battle into which I invest more than I should. I get so caught up in whether or not I should be losing that I don't remove myself enough to analyze and adjust, or even just relax and focus. So my opponent hit a lucky shot, or a call didn't go my way... Focusing on that isn't worth it, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. So I felt like that match was completely out of my control, but looking back, I don't know if that was actually true. I mean, probably it was, but now I can't help but think that a world-class player might have found a way to win. They always say that's what distinguishes the champions. They find a way to win even on their off days. I was having an "on day," or so I thought, so maybe I just wasn't ready for the abrupt transition. I don't know. So I left in a hurry, disappointed, but armed (not a great word for it, perhaps) with an excuse that I actually believed. My shoulder still hurts a lot, by the way, so at least I can still believe things were out of my control.
I watched YouTube videos while I took notes for my class during my break. This was my first time checking my subscriptions on there in a long time, but this guy seems to be running pretty parallel to me recently, so I figured I'd highlight some of his videos. First, a few months ago he was scared of producing things. I sympathized, because I've always thought I wanted to write seriously, and he seemed to sum up a lot of what I was thinking while I went about not writing. Then I logged in today and this was there waiting for me! I actually couldn't believe it. So that's my segue into the rest of my weekend.
I drove back with Jessica instead of David and his dad because her car-mate had abandoned her to get back with an earlier car and she was leaving right away. And she never talks, so I wanted to get to know her. Unsurprisingly, we filled up two hours of driving with pretty meaningless conversation. It was more of a struggle than I was anticipating, and I wasn't even anticipating it to be easy (since she didn't talk normally). It was that classic awkward silence punctuated by random questions blurted out that led to a couple minutes (maximum) of talking. It was perfectly reminiscent of my experiences driving to and from frisbee tournaments whenever I was responsible for keeping the driver awake and I didn't already know them. So that wasn't quite awesome. Then she got a call from Kristina at Mat's (where she was going after) and I was invited to go along. So, spur of the moment, I went. It was a combination of wanting to avoid school work and wondering what it was people were doing all the time. See, I had already written off my day as taken up by handball, and I was seeking solace for my loss and ready to make my excuses known to the world at large. Basically, I just wasn't looking forward to another night of procrastinating by myself. So I went to a pretty chill party time. There weren't that many people there, so I don't know if it even counted as a party, but I was surprised there were non-handball people there. I was even more surprised that they turned out to be pretty fun/funny to hang out with. Not initially of course. I spent the first hour or so wondering what I was doing. But I also got free apples, so that was good enough, since I was out of food at my place anyway. Then I was enlisted to play "beer" pong (played with water in this case (I assume because beer is messy when spilled (spills happen a lot))). It turns out, I am excellent at this game! I played with Jessica because we were the two people who had just arrived and neither one of us was talking to anybody. She made three or four cups in our two games. We were playing with eight cups instead of the full ten, and neither one of the games was particularly close. Also, people kept telling me random rules that I probably should have known. Apparently I was "heating up" and "on fire" (things you have to yell when you make shots consecutively). Also, our opponents kept having us rearrange the cups (grouping them closer together to increase the likelihood of a missed shot still going in), but I didn't know what the protocol was for that, so I kept shooting at one cup at a time spread out on the table. I guess being sober is probably just like cheating at this game.
Anyway, after two games of being undefeated I retired. I think that should probably be my entire career. Perfect record at "beer" pong. Never drank. Awesome.
One guy went upstairs and passed out, one couple left, leaving a small group of people fighting about whose turn it was to DJ. I avoided it successfully the entire night. My excuses ranged from ignoring requests for me to get up and choose a song to saying I couldn't because my shoulder hurt too much. At least drunk people don't really stick to their guns about that sort of thing very well. So the people I knew from handball were fun to hang out with because I already knew them (Kristina is funny and outgoing, Mat is sort of a nerd, Jessica is nice, if too shy to actually say much, and Alex is pretty great comic relief (whether he knows it or not)), and the other people were hilarious due to their level of intoxication. One guy I just couldn't make my mind up about was sitting in a chair in the corner when we walked in and didn't move from the chair for a solid three hours. He just kept making hilarious faces in response to things. He made mocking faces behind peoples' backs when they said stupid things, made awesome grinning faces in response to funny things, and cracked out a joke whenever I was least expecting it. So I was slowly deciding he was secretly the funniest thing at the party. Then he got up to go do a shot in the kitchen and could barely walk. He had apparently had more alcohol than anybody really knew, which I'm not sure how to factor into my opinion. He kept being absolutely hilarious though.
Alex is an engineering guy who I got the feeling felt almost as out of place as I did. He compensated the opposite way I do though. He chimed in awkwardly when people were talking, while I said nothing instead. He drank a lot to fit in while I drank nothing. He embraced the laughs of people who might not have been laughing quite with him as much as at him, while I joined in on the laughter (to be fair, listening to him try to brag about not knowing what was in his flask was pretty funny.). I didn't actually see any harm in it, since I was confident at least five of the eight of us weren't going to be remembering anything anyway. But then it turned out he had exceeded his limits a bit. This was made evident when they tried to put him to bed. You see, it turned out that I was stranded, since Jessica was drinking and not going to be driving home, Alex was completely gone, and the other people weren't going my direction. So Alex, Jessica and I crashed on various pieces of furniture, while the guy from the chair in the corner joined guy passed out upstairs in the guest facilities. All in all, pretty standard fare. I know I've certainly gotten used to sleeping wherever is convenient. I went upstairs to use the bathroom, and when I got back downstairs there was a bit of a different smell in the air. Oh, and a lot of yelling and scrambling. Apparently Alex spontaneously combusted, ruining at least half of a room. I kept out of it, since there really wasn't much I could do to resolve the conflicts over what to do with the ruined items. So I slept instead.
I woke up, got a ride back, and played some frisbee. Yup, that wasn't the right thing to do for my shoulder, but don't worry; I've been practicing playing frisbee left-handed for years now in my free time, and it's paying off in spades. I didn't throw right-handed a single time in our 17-5 (or something) victory in the semifinals! And I even had an almost full-field throw around my mark for a score that hit my receiver in stride. Granted, I missed a catch because I couldn't quite get my arm extended vertically over my head and threw one or two into the ground, but hey, it all worked out. Then it was time for the finals. We were losing 4-5 with not a lot of time to go in the first half. (I'm setting the scene. It's intense.) The other team had come out playing an actual offensive set, the first of our teams to do so. They ran handler motions, made strike cuts, and eventually even drew up a set play to throw deep right away to whichever person was being guarded by one of our two girls. Things were serious. In retaliation, I made an in cut, caught the open throw, and turned upfield. Sure enough, one of my guys had a step or two on his man, so I threw a forehand, shoulder be damned. It was completed, and the whistle for half blew soon after. So we went into half down a break (starting on D with the score tied). We came out with defensive assignments of our own, and scored four straight. I think I threw three forehands for scores. Then my shoulder hurt, and I switched to cutting. Greg was in fine form as well, coming down with one of the forehands I threw over at least four other people (one of them his own teammate who looked likely to catch it until Greg elevated over him and ripped it away). He then bombed it seventy-five yards to me on the next point. That guy's got skills. We won 12-10, and I am an intramural champion for the first time. I don't need my mom's broomball championship shirt hand-me-downs anymore! I am finally a man! (I think that's how the rite of passage goes...)
Topic change: pornography searches!
The number one porn search term in the southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Maryland is "ebony." In the middle east, homosexual porn is sought out with way more frequency than in other places. So obviously telling people what not to do is a great way of stamping out the things you hate. Or, you know, the opposite of that. Just thought that was interesting.
Topic change: gun control!
I went to a moderated debate on Friday (which came with free lunch, because law school is cool like that), where one guy was a statistics-oriented logical speaker and the other guy was a passionate litigator with lots of courtroom experience. The topic was (you may have guessed) whether gun control helps stop what we want it to stop. The guy with the stats was on the pro-gun side of things. And he was awesome! He went first in the debate, and he opened right up with: here are the statistics on how many guns we have in America vs everywhere else in the world. You know what, we are totally winning the guns-per-household race. Except, wait a second... Let's take a closer look. See this little dot on the graph? That's Israel. Who's been to Israel? (One guy raises his hand.) And do you think there are more or less than 7 guns per hundred people? Did you know that in many countries the statistic is completely useless because it charts private gun ownership, and technically the government owns the guns in those countries? I know I didn't. So in Switzerland of all places, men of certain ages were required to have a gun in the house. But that wasn't in the statistic because the people weren't in charge of buying their guns. They were just handed out! Same goes for a few other countries.
He then preempted his opponent's statistics and explained thoroughly why they were incorrect. It turns out that statistics that compare murder rates between places with gun control vs. guns all over the place aren't actually accurate. It you look at any area that has banned guns before the ban and after the ban, not a single one has had crime rates decrease. Even gun-specific crimes. Unless you count pure gun-deaths. Because those do go down, as his opponent was quick to point out. Of course that point would have been a lot more persuasive if it weren't the case (and hadn't already been shown by the guy ten minutes ago) that the overwhelming majority of these are suicides, which people can do in a different manner.
So then the other guy, the litigator relying on emotions of the jury, the sentimental stories of the people he's seen hurt by guns, the call for guns to be taken off the street, took the stage. And he did absolutely nothing to address the points made by the first guy, which is a huge problem with writing a speech and sticking to it. Sure enough, he tried to quote more impotent facts, like "if you have a gun, the most likely person you are going to kill is yourself, followed by a loved one, followed by a criminal." If you thought this might also be a statistic dependent on the gun-suicide correlation, congratulations! You are a winner! Indeed, and beyond that, the statistic obviously doesn't go into the major reason people carry guns in the first place: to deter crimes from happening in the first place. There was just no persuasive power to this guys sentimental stories when he just kept playing into the first guy's hands. It was actually head-shakingly bad.
I am anti-gun. I am not pro-anti-gun-law. Let me explain the distinction. I believe the world would be way better without guns. Guns suck. They take killing and make it impersonal, when it is the most personal thing you can do (except maybe for having sex). Ending someone's life shouldn't be easy. That being said, because guns do exist, I think gun control legislation is pointless and potentially harmful. As the speaker said, when the pass gun control legislation, who turns in their guns? It's not the people who are planning on committing crimes with their guns, that's for sure. So all of a sudden the people who had guns for personal safety don't have them anymore, and what's worse, the people who still have their guns have a better chance of not being shot when they break into somebody's house at random. So I'll never own a gun (probably), but I also won't tell people not to own a gun.
If you're curious, the guy's name was John Lott, and he has written a book called "More Guns, Less Crime."
Also, because I watched my YouTube videos in order starting from the earliest ones I missed, I didn't even get around to mentioning this one, which obviously applies to me. Because, you know, I really hate the idea of dying.
It's like that crack in my swiss cheese
The swiss cheese looked perfect
package smoothly sliding
from its glossy skin
the way it never does with cheddar
which you have to wedge out
from the bottom
like the last bit of toothpaste,
only to ram back in, slivers remaining
on the plastic's edges
as it refused to go quietly.
But this block of swiss was pristine,
no holes even,
just solid goodness, I thought
until I sliced
and it yielded, cleaved from itself
and I realized
that it fell away twice, the imperceptible
crack,
two thirds down, split each piece
in two.
This happened this morning, and I'm hoping the metaphor speaks for itself. Take whatever you want out of it, or don't even bother! Just wanted to jot it down before I forgot. But now it's on to legal writing. Then maybe another night of battling with my clogged sink. If it's still winning tomorrow I'll try and chronicle what will no doubt have been an epic struggle. So far it has conquered all of the liquid plumber I bought, but I'm mounting onslaught number two.
Thanks for reading!
I played some bad handball on Thursday as a bit of a warmup for the tournament on Friday. It was sort of weird because only four or five people showed up, and we all had excuses not to play, so it was slow going. Then came the tournament, and I was feeling really good. My shoulder felt a bit better than it had the night before even. I crushed my car-mate 21-6, 21-3 or so, even with a few more hand-errors than I was comfortable with (he couldn't really punish my mistakes, and I play him regularly enough to not have to worry). I avoided pizza on Friday night, woke up starving and ate too much in the morning. I beat my second round opponent (Mike Gustafson) 21-17 (or was it 21-19?), 21-8, and was feeling apprehensive about the finals against Tyler Stoffel. I lost to him last year. We have very similar styles, so it usually comes down to who gets the last diving amazing shot. Well, that person was me. I destroyed him the first game, 21-4 or 21-2 or so, and I was feeling unstoppable. Sure, my shoulder was feeling pretty bad, but I was totally going to press through. At 17-4 or whatever it was in the first game there was a sharp pain on the inside part of my shoulder (sort of by my armpit) while I served. It got a lot worse in the second game, to the point where I was hitting shots left-handed I would normally take right-handed, and I couldn't really hit the ball hard. I was losing, so I gave away the last five or six points and was ready to just give it up in the tiebreaker. That plan backfired, but not before I thought my shoulder was trashed beyond repair. So I wound up with second place, which was actually the more adorable of the two prizes (little statue things), but pretty inexcusable from a playing perspective.
I went into the tournament with a new mindset, sort of. I've decided I want to be good on a national level. I've been thinking that in the back of my head for a while, but I decided at this tournament to keep things in perspective I would repeat that to myself when I stepped on the court and when I felt myself getting caught up in the moment. That's too easy to do in a one-on-one sport I think, getting caught up in the moment. It becomes a battle into which I invest more than I should. I get so caught up in whether or not I should be losing that I don't remove myself enough to analyze and adjust, or even just relax and focus. So my opponent hit a lucky shot, or a call didn't go my way... Focusing on that isn't worth it, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. So I felt like that match was completely out of my control, but looking back, I don't know if that was actually true. I mean, probably it was, but now I can't help but think that a world-class player might have found a way to win. They always say that's what distinguishes the champions. They find a way to win even on their off days. I was having an "on day," or so I thought, so maybe I just wasn't ready for the abrupt transition. I don't know. So I left in a hurry, disappointed, but armed (not a great word for it, perhaps) with an excuse that I actually believed. My shoulder still hurts a lot, by the way, so at least I can still believe things were out of my control.
I watched YouTube videos while I took notes for my class during my break. This was my first time checking my subscriptions on there in a long time, but this guy seems to be running pretty parallel to me recently, so I figured I'd highlight some of his videos. First, a few months ago he was scared of producing things. I sympathized, because I've always thought I wanted to write seriously, and he seemed to sum up a lot of what I was thinking while I went about not writing. Then I logged in today and this was there waiting for me! I actually couldn't believe it. So that's my segue into the rest of my weekend.
I drove back with Jessica instead of David and his dad because her car-mate had abandoned her to get back with an earlier car and she was leaving right away. And she never talks, so I wanted to get to know her. Unsurprisingly, we filled up two hours of driving with pretty meaningless conversation. It was more of a struggle than I was anticipating, and I wasn't even anticipating it to be easy (since she didn't talk normally). It was that classic awkward silence punctuated by random questions blurted out that led to a couple minutes (maximum) of talking. It was perfectly reminiscent of my experiences driving to and from frisbee tournaments whenever I was responsible for keeping the driver awake and I didn't already know them. So that wasn't quite awesome. Then she got a call from Kristina at Mat's (where she was going after) and I was invited to go along. So, spur of the moment, I went. It was a combination of wanting to avoid school work and wondering what it was people were doing all the time. See, I had already written off my day as taken up by handball, and I was seeking solace for my loss and ready to make my excuses known to the world at large. Basically, I just wasn't looking forward to another night of procrastinating by myself. So I went to a pretty chill party time. There weren't that many people there, so I don't know if it even counted as a party, but I was surprised there were non-handball people there. I was even more surprised that they turned out to be pretty fun/funny to hang out with. Not initially of course. I spent the first hour or so wondering what I was doing. But I also got free apples, so that was good enough, since I was out of food at my place anyway. Then I was enlisted to play "beer" pong (played with water in this case (I assume because beer is messy when spilled (spills happen a lot))). It turns out, I am excellent at this game! I played with Jessica because we were the two people who had just arrived and neither one of us was talking to anybody. She made three or four cups in our two games. We were playing with eight cups instead of the full ten, and neither one of the games was particularly close. Also, people kept telling me random rules that I probably should have known. Apparently I was "heating up" and "on fire" (things you have to yell when you make shots consecutively). Also, our opponents kept having us rearrange the cups (grouping them closer together to increase the likelihood of a missed shot still going in), but I didn't know what the protocol was for that, so I kept shooting at one cup at a time spread out on the table. I guess being sober is probably just like cheating at this game.
Anyway, after two games of being undefeated I retired. I think that should probably be my entire career. Perfect record at "beer" pong. Never drank. Awesome.
One guy went upstairs and passed out, one couple left, leaving a small group of people fighting about whose turn it was to DJ. I avoided it successfully the entire night. My excuses ranged from ignoring requests for me to get up and choose a song to saying I couldn't because my shoulder hurt too much. At least drunk people don't really stick to their guns about that sort of thing very well. So the people I knew from handball were fun to hang out with because I already knew them (Kristina is funny and outgoing, Mat is sort of a nerd, Jessica is nice, if too shy to actually say much, and Alex is pretty great comic relief (whether he knows it or not)), and the other people were hilarious due to their level of intoxication. One guy I just couldn't make my mind up about was sitting in a chair in the corner when we walked in and didn't move from the chair for a solid three hours. He just kept making hilarious faces in response to things. He made mocking faces behind peoples' backs when they said stupid things, made awesome grinning faces in response to funny things, and cracked out a joke whenever I was least expecting it. So I was slowly deciding he was secretly the funniest thing at the party. Then he got up to go do a shot in the kitchen and could barely walk. He had apparently had more alcohol than anybody really knew, which I'm not sure how to factor into my opinion. He kept being absolutely hilarious though.
Alex is an engineering guy who I got the feeling felt almost as out of place as I did. He compensated the opposite way I do though. He chimed in awkwardly when people were talking, while I said nothing instead. He drank a lot to fit in while I drank nothing. He embraced the laughs of people who might not have been laughing quite with him as much as at him, while I joined in on the laughter (to be fair, listening to him try to brag about not knowing what was in his flask was pretty funny.). I didn't actually see any harm in it, since I was confident at least five of the eight of us weren't going to be remembering anything anyway. But then it turned out he had exceeded his limits a bit. This was made evident when they tried to put him to bed. You see, it turned out that I was stranded, since Jessica was drinking and not going to be driving home, Alex was completely gone, and the other people weren't going my direction. So Alex, Jessica and I crashed on various pieces of furniture, while the guy from the chair in the corner joined guy passed out upstairs in the guest facilities. All in all, pretty standard fare. I know I've certainly gotten used to sleeping wherever is convenient. I went upstairs to use the bathroom, and when I got back downstairs there was a bit of a different smell in the air. Oh, and a lot of yelling and scrambling. Apparently Alex spontaneously combusted, ruining at least half of a room. I kept out of it, since there really wasn't much I could do to resolve the conflicts over what to do with the ruined items. So I slept instead.
I woke up, got a ride back, and played some frisbee. Yup, that wasn't the right thing to do for my shoulder, but don't worry; I've been practicing playing frisbee left-handed for years now in my free time, and it's paying off in spades. I didn't throw right-handed a single time in our 17-5 (or something) victory in the semifinals! And I even had an almost full-field throw around my mark for a score that hit my receiver in stride. Granted, I missed a catch because I couldn't quite get my arm extended vertically over my head and threw one or two into the ground, but hey, it all worked out. Then it was time for the finals. We were losing 4-5 with not a lot of time to go in the first half. (I'm setting the scene. It's intense.) The other team had come out playing an actual offensive set, the first of our teams to do so. They ran handler motions, made strike cuts, and eventually even drew up a set play to throw deep right away to whichever person was being guarded by one of our two girls. Things were serious. In retaliation, I made an in cut, caught the open throw, and turned upfield. Sure enough, one of my guys had a step or two on his man, so I threw a forehand, shoulder be damned. It was completed, and the whistle for half blew soon after. So we went into half down a break (starting on D with the score tied). We came out with defensive assignments of our own, and scored four straight. I think I threw three forehands for scores. Then my shoulder hurt, and I switched to cutting. Greg was in fine form as well, coming down with one of the forehands I threw over at least four other people (one of them his own teammate who looked likely to catch it until Greg elevated over him and ripped it away). He then bombed it seventy-five yards to me on the next point. That guy's got skills. We won 12-10, and I am an intramural champion for the first time. I don't need my mom's broomball championship shirt hand-me-downs anymore! I am finally a man! (I think that's how the rite of passage goes...)
Topic change: pornography searches!
The number one porn search term in the southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Maryland is "ebony." In the middle east, homosexual porn is sought out with way more frequency than in other places. So obviously telling people what not to do is a great way of stamping out the things you hate. Or, you know, the opposite of that. Just thought that was interesting.
Topic change: gun control!
I went to a moderated debate on Friday (which came with free lunch, because law school is cool like that), where one guy was a statistics-oriented logical speaker and the other guy was a passionate litigator with lots of courtroom experience. The topic was (you may have guessed) whether gun control helps stop what we want it to stop. The guy with the stats was on the pro-gun side of things. And he was awesome! He went first in the debate, and he opened right up with: here are the statistics on how many guns we have in America vs everywhere else in the world. You know what, we are totally winning the guns-per-household race. Except, wait a second... Let's take a closer look. See this little dot on the graph? That's Israel. Who's been to Israel? (One guy raises his hand.) And do you think there are more or less than 7 guns per hundred people? Did you know that in many countries the statistic is completely useless because it charts private gun ownership, and technically the government owns the guns in those countries? I know I didn't. So in Switzerland of all places, men of certain ages were required to have a gun in the house. But that wasn't in the statistic because the people weren't in charge of buying their guns. They were just handed out! Same goes for a few other countries.
He then preempted his opponent's statistics and explained thoroughly why they were incorrect. It turns out that statistics that compare murder rates between places with gun control vs. guns all over the place aren't actually accurate. It you look at any area that has banned guns before the ban and after the ban, not a single one has had crime rates decrease. Even gun-specific crimes. Unless you count pure gun-deaths. Because those do go down, as his opponent was quick to point out. Of course that point would have been a lot more persuasive if it weren't the case (and hadn't already been shown by the guy ten minutes ago) that the overwhelming majority of these are suicides, which people can do in a different manner.
So then the other guy, the litigator relying on emotions of the jury, the sentimental stories of the people he's seen hurt by guns, the call for guns to be taken off the street, took the stage. And he did absolutely nothing to address the points made by the first guy, which is a huge problem with writing a speech and sticking to it. Sure enough, he tried to quote more impotent facts, like "if you have a gun, the most likely person you are going to kill is yourself, followed by a loved one, followed by a criminal." If you thought this might also be a statistic dependent on the gun-suicide correlation, congratulations! You are a winner! Indeed, and beyond that, the statistic obviously doesn't go into the major reason people carry guns in the first place: to deter crimes from happening in the first place. There was just no persuasive power to this guys sentimental stories when he just kept playing into the first guy's hands. It was actually head-shakingly bad.
I am anti-gun. I am not pro-anti-gun-law. Let me explain the distinction. I believe the world would be way better without guns. Guns suck. They take killing and make it impersonal, when it is the most personal thing you can do (except maybe for having sex). Ending someone's life shouldn't be easy. That being said, because guns do exist, I think gun control legislation is pointless and potentially harmful. As the speaker said, when the pass gun control legislation, who turns in their guns? It's not the people who are planning on committing crimes with their guns, that's for sure. So all of a sudden the people who had guns for personal safety don't have them anymore, and what's worse, the people who still have their guns have a better chance of not being shot when they break into somebody's house at random. So I'll never own a gun (probably), but I also won't tell people not to own a gun.
If you're curious, the guy's name was John Lott, and he has written a book called "More Guns, Less Crime."
Also, because I watched my YouTube videos in order starting from the earliest ones I missed, I didn't even get around to mentioning this one, which obviously applies to me. Because, you know, I really hate the idea of dying.
It's like that crack in my swiss cheese
The swiss cheese looked perfect
package smoothly sliding
from its glossy skin
the way it never does with cheddar
which you have to wedge out
from the bottom
like the last bit of toothpaste,
only to ram back in, slivers remaining
on the plastic's edges
as it refused to go quietly.
But this block of swiss was pristine,
no holes even,
just solid goodness, I thought
until I sliced
and it yielded, cleaved from itself
and I realized
that it fell away twice, the imperceptible
crack,
two thirds down, split each piece
in two.
This happened this morning, and I'm hoping the metaphor speaks for itself. Take whatever you want out of it, or don't even bother! Just wanted to jot it down before I forgot. But now it's on to legal writing. Then maybe another night of battling with my clogged sink. If it's still winning tomorrow I'll try and chronicle what will no doubt have been an epic struggle. So far it has conquered all of the liquid plumber I bought, but I'm mounting onslaught number two.
Thanks for reading!
October 9, 2013
Quick post
I'm rewarding myself for actually being productive by letting myself post a bit here before leaving and actually sleeping (a rather strange concept for a Wednesday night).
I played a few games of handball on Monday, then played another three or so hours on Tuesday, so this week (since Sunday) I already have about ten hours of court time in. I have a tournament this weekend too, so from Sunday to Sunday I might get the equivalent of a part-time job's hours of handball in! Turns out I probably could have gotten a job to put myself through law school. But this is way more fun, so hey, I'll just try and appreciate it.
I made biscuits yet again on Tuesday morning, and it turns out one disadvantage to them being perfectly well-done and not sticking to the pan is that sometimes when you tilt the pan to get it out of you oven racks (which for some reason have a lip on the front which prevents you from simply sliding them out), the biscuits wind up on the oven rack instead of the pan. And because they are delightfully crumbly, you panic and burn your arm trying to extract them before they fall apart and ruin everything. Then, of course, is the ideal time to realize you can just slide the pan back in on the bottom shelf to catch the pieces while extracting what you can without undue hurry. I went out with my "teammates" after handball as promised, and it was about the most anti-climactic thing ever. It was trivia night at a bar/pizza place, and it consisted of sitting around while only talking to the person directly across from me and directly to my right while they asked me silly questions. Luckily, I've gotten pretty used to bantering with these people, so at least it wasn't just question, answer, awkward silence. But it also didn't strike me as a particularly stellar use of my time. I showed an inordinate amount of enthusiasm at all their interests, and luckily I know enough about a variety of topics I can feign interest in just about anything. Zombie apocalypse? Check. Starcraft? Check. Decent books? Check. Pre-requisites for science degrees and AP credits? Check. Obscure fantasy authors and video games? You bet. Antique furniture? Well, that was pushing it a bit, but I think I covered adequately.
About the only thing I like about question-sessions is that I make sure I answer everything honestly and directly. I didn't always do that, but in college it was one thing I really admired about a particular frisbee teammate I had, and I've tried to adopt it for myself. Not to mention it's fun to see people taken aback slightly when you actually just give them a direct statement during what might otherwise be an awkward topic of conversation. I figure I have relatively few regrets (see whatever post it was where I talked about my decision-making process), and rather than treat myself as a mystery, I might as well just let them make up their minds about me based on whatever information they deem relevant by asking me for.
The handball group was bigger than usual (I gather) because a person I've never even met is moving to Texas and it was his last day in town. We had like four tables pushed together, so it wasn't like I could even talk to everyone there. Not that that was a huge loss, but that, combined with the place being virtually empty except for our one, big group, made the experience pretty atypical. It was certainly better than the last time I went to a bar, though, in that it didn't seem like anyone's goal was to get drunk. Sure, one guy had enough to start being a bit rowdy, but it wasn't like they were on a mission of intoxication like the frisbee people when I accompanied them. And people actually showed an interest in me, which was pretty refreshing. The frisbee people either felt awkward because I don't drink or just didn't really care I was there, but these folks at least took an interest. I had someone talking to me almost the whole time, while in Ames I resorted to looking blankly at my phone so people wouldn't think I wasn't so pathetic that I didn't have anything at all to do. Maybe it's just that people who play handball respect me because I'm good at that, while the frisbee folks had their group independent of me and didn't find a reason I should fit in. I'm just spit-balling. Either way, it wasn't a good enough use of my time to do it every week or anything, but at least it's reassuring to know that they'll make an effort and I won't be that weird guy not drinking, just watching and hoping the person I came with wants me to be there at some point.
As far as interesting cases go, in Torts we are talking about causation, a topic I have a real problem with philosophically. So I have to restrain myself from taking things out of a legal context when the courts are talking about what caused an injury. They adopt a "but for" definition of causation, which means that someone didn't cause an injury unless that injury wouldn't have happened "but for" the action of the person. So if someone got hit by a brick, then I'm responsible only if the brick would have otherwise not hit them had I not acted. Luckily, the courts still look at things given the totality of the circumstances, so even when they adopt what seems like a hard rule, they can rule however they want in the end. Causation seems to be disputed a lot when it comes to cancer, since two of the three or four cases we've talked about have had to do with that. I guess it's just that people still aren't sure about what does cause cancer, so those cases are necessarily hard enough to make interesting cases. In one case a person got injured by a window falling on him, which was certainly the fault of a hotel. Then he got cancer in the exact spot of the injury, and tried to recoup damages. The theory was that because healing flesh is more prone to be affected by radiation, the hotel's negligence led to the cancer. Now, in a "but-for" scenario, this actually makes a decent amount of sense, because if the hotel hadn't caused the injury it is likely he wouldn't have gotten cancer. But there's also the fact that if he would have protected his healing wound from radiation (we assume the cancer was caused by sun exposure or something), then he also wouldn't have gotten cancer. So it's probably more his fault than the hotel's. But in the case of a fire that wiped out a construction yard, even though the yard was going to be destroyed by a different oncoming forest fire, the people responsible for the fire were held responsible. In that case, the construction yard would have been wiped out anyway, so I'm not sure I agree that the people should have been found causally responsible. I don't disagree they should be punished for their negligent behavior, though, so I guess the court's interest in justice (preventing bad behavior in the future) trumps almost everything else.
I really do have to get going. This was a bit more time than I wanted to spend typing. I'm going to try and be more poetic after my quiz on Friday, but if it goes poorly brace yourself for some emotional poetry! Also, I'll be heading straight from class to my tournament, so that might not get up very promptly. And then I have a group project (though I am currently group-less (surprise!)), so we'll see. And another paper for legal writing due next week I haven't really done much for. One thing at a time! Thanks for reading!
I played a few games of handball on Monday, then played another three or so hours on Tuesday, so this week (since Sunday) I already have about ten hours of court time in. I have a tournament this weekend too, so from Sunday to Sunday I might get the equivalent of a part-time job's hours of handball in! Turns out I probably could have gotten a job to put myself through law school. But this is way more fun, so hey, I'll just try and appreciate it.
I made biscuits yet again on Tuesday morning, and it turns out one disadvantage to them being perfectly well-done and not sticking to the pan is that sometimes when you tilt the pan to get it out of you oven racks (which for some reason have a lip on the front which prevents you from simply sliding them out), the biscuits wind up on the oven rack instead of the pan. And because they are delightfully crumbly, you panic and burn your arm trying to extract them before they fall apart and ruin everything. Then, of course, is the ideal time to realize you can just slide the pan back in on the bottom shelf to catch the pieces while extracting what you can without undue hurry. I went out with my "teammates" after handball as promised, and it was about the most anti-climactic thing ever. It was trivia night at a bar/pizza place, and it consisted of sitting around while only talking to the person directly across from me and directly to my right while they asked me silly questions. Luckily, I've gotten pretty used to bantering with these people, so at least it wasn't just question, answer, awkward silence. But it also didn't strike me as a particularly stellar use of my time. I showed an inordinate amount of enthusiasm at all their interests, and luckily I know enough about a variety of topics I can feign interest in just about anything. Zombie apocalypse? Check. Starcraft? Check. Decent books? Check. Pre-requisites for science degrees and AP credits? Check. Obscure fantasy authors and video games? You bet. Antique furniture? Well, that was pushing it a bit, but I think I covered adequately.
About the only thing I like about question-sessions is that I make sure I answer everything honestly and directly. I didn't always do that, but in college it was one thing I really admired about a particular frisbee teammate I had, and I've tried to adopt it for myself. Not to mention it's fun to see people taken aback slightly when you actually just give them a direct statement during what might otherwise be an awkward topic of conversation. I figure I have relatively few regrets (see whatever post it was where I talked about my decision-making process), and rather than treat myself as a mystery, I might as well just let them make up their minds about me based on whatever information they deem relevant by asking me for.
The handball group was bigger than usual (I gather) because a person I've never even met is moving to Texas and it was his last day in town. We had like four tables pushed together, so it wasn't like I could even talk to everyone there. Not that that was a huge loss, but that, combined with the place being virtually empty except for our one, big group, made the experience pretty atypical. It was certainly better than the last time I went to a bar, though, in that it didn't seem like anyone's goal was to get drunk. Sure, one guy had enough to start being a bit rowdy, but it wasn't like they were on a mission of intoxication like the frisbee people when I accompanied them. And people actually showed an interest in me, which was pretty refreshing. The frisbee people either felt awkward because I don't drink or just didn't really care I was there, but these folks at least took an interest. I had someone talking to me almost the whole time, while in Ames I resorted to looking blankly at my phone so people wouldn't think I wasn't so pathetic that I didn't have anything at all to do. Maybe it's just that people who play handball respect me because I'm good at that, while the frisbee folks had their group independent of me and didn't find a reason I should fit in. I'm just spit-balling. Either way, it wasn't a good enough use of my time to do it every week or anything, but at least it's reassuring to know that they'll make an effort and I won't be that weird guy not drinking, just watching and hoping the person I came with wants me to be there at some point.
As far as interesting cases go, in Torts we are talking about causation, a topic I have a real problem with philosophically. So I have to restrain myself from taking things out of a legal context when the courts are talking about what caused an injury. They adopt a "but for" definition of causation, which means that someone didn't cause an injury unless that injury wouldn't have happened "but for" the action of the person. So if someone got hit by a brick, then I'm responsible only if the brick would have otherwise not hit them had I not acted. Luckily, the courts still look at things given the totality of the circumstances, so even when they adopt what seems like a hard rule, they can rule however they want in the end. Causation seems to be disputed a lot when it comes to cancer, since two of the three or four cases we've talked about have had to do with that. I guess it's just that people still aren't sure about what does cause cancer, so those cases are necessarily hard enough to make interesting cases. In one case a person got injured by a window falling on him, which was certainly the fault of a hotel. Then he got cancer in the exact spot of the injury, and tried to recoup damages. The theory was that because healing flesh is more prone to be affected by radiation, the hotel's negligence led to the cancer. Now, in a "but-for" scenario, this actually makes a decent amount of sense, because if the hotel hadn't caused the injury it is likely he wouldn't have gotten cancer. But there's also the fact that if he would have protected his healing wound from radiation (we assume the cancer was caused by sun exposure or something), then he also wouldn't have gotten cancer. So it's probably more his fault than the hotel's. But in the case of a fire that wiped out a construction yard, even though the yard was going to be destroyed by a different oncoming forest fire, the people responsible for the fire were held responsible. In that case, the construction yard would have been wiped out anyway, so I'm not sure I agree that the people should have been found causally responsible. I don't disagree they should be punished for their negligent behavior, though, so I guess the court's interest in justice (preventing bad behavior in the future) trumps almost everything else.
I really do have to get going. This was a bit more time than I wanted to spend typing. I'm going to try and be more poetic after my quiz on Friday, but if it goes poorly brace yourself for some emotional poetry! Also, I'll be heading straight from class to my tournament, so that might not get up very promptly. And then I have a group project (though I am currently group-less (surprise!)), so we'll see. And another paper for legal writing due next week I haven't really done much for. One thing at a time! Thanks for reading!
October 7, 2013
My weekend, complete with complaints (self-reflection free of charge)!
So... I'm really bad at studying. I picked up the review materials, and all I could think was "I already know these things." Of course the difference between "knowing" and "having memorized" is the difference between getting a decent grade and a terrible grade, so that's obviously not good enough. I thought the days of rote memorization were over! (Insert more complaining here.)
What's that? More self-observations that obviously can't hold water because my perspective can't be separated sufficiently to provide any semblance of objectivity? You bet!
So, as most of these sections seem to start, I was talking with someone who doesn't like to see their name in my blog when somehow the subject of my annoying characteristics came up. After exhausting the standards (too removed and calculating, ultra-defensive, etc.), something a bit surprising came up. Apparently I am frustrating when I am nice, especially to my significant others. I didn't know what to say. I mean, I had noticed that trend, but I assumed it was just odd reactions on their part. How could they get mad at me for trying to do things for them? This theory was put forward, and it makes some sense, but I obviously can't say anything conclusive as I am far too close to the situation to be unbiased: I am a self-reliant, stoic-seeming sort of person. People in a relationship with me know this, and (according to my source) this makes them think I expect that of them. So when I do things for them (and they think I expect them to do things for themselves), that means I am saying they can't do something for themselves. So it becomes a sort of condescension. A "I am self-reliant, so you must be self-reliant, but here, let me do that for you since you obviously need help" sort of thing. I have been rebuked a fair number of times when trying to do little things like that, and it always puzzled me. The story about giving unwanted bicycling cautions springs to mind yet again, but so does a time in Toronto where I offered to throw away some trash and was harshly cut off with "I can do that myself!" Years and years ago the same thing happened with my first girlfriend, when I went out of my way to buy her a smoothie when I knew she had a bad day. She refused it, and got even more upset that I was trying to cheer her up. When I planned an elaborate valentines day it only got worse, and things ended soon after. It's nice to have a theory to work from at the very least, whether it's 100% accurate or not.
I had some time to think about this (I always seem to have time to think about these sorts of things. Sleep is overrated.) and I tried to figure out why I do things for other people at all. I mean, it's not like I think chivalry is even a good thing in and of itself! I don't think there's any inherent reason men should open doors for women, any reason we should pay for things, or whatever the stereotypical gentleman does (carry boomboxes back to dorm rooms, etc.). But when I was first starting a relationship, I was clueless. I didn't know what my role was, and I knew it made her smile when I did little things like that. So from then on, whenever an opportunity presented itself, I did the following little thought exercise: I asked myself if whatever it was would really be difficult for me to do. If the answer was no, then I just did it. So I open doors for people, even though I don't really think there's any reason to do so. Next, if it was something slightly inconvenient, I briefly weighed whatever it was against the probability of making the person happy while factoring in how much I cared about the person. (So if there was a moderate chance of making a person happy that I cared about, I would do something more inconvenient for myself than if there was a sure chance of making someone happy I cared less about.) So I bought things for people. I paid for things when I could, because I liked knowing they would appreciate it, and thought it far outweighed the inconvenience, even though I still didn't think it was my job or even something a person has to do even if they were trying to be a good person. I think being a good person goes way beyond things like that, and chivalry is uncalled for. But I did it anyway because it didn't really cost me anything I cared about relative to the effect I anticipated it having.
I don't know if this makes a lot of sense. If it does, perhaps it goes even more to explaining why people in a relationship with me start to resent me doing things for them, because if they know I'm just doing it because I expect them to appreciate it, it puts pressure back on them to acknowledge it or feel like they are slighting me in some way. Now, obviously I would say that is unnecessary, that as long as it makes them happier, it doesn't matter that they explicitly thank me, but I do recall many times where I used little things I did as examples for how I was putting effort into the relationship, when the whole premise was that I did those things because it didn't cost me hardly anything compared to the positive outcome that resulted. But when doing things stops even leading to positive outcomes, starts annoying the person I'm doing them for, then I am in for trouble. Not to say that's why my last relationship ended. I still don't have that figured out to my satisfaction. But it sure is interesting how other perspectives can spark crazy paradigm-altering realizations. Not that there's anything I can really do now. I'm not even sure if I would want to change. But that's a thing that would have to be discussed, I suppose, with whoever I had reason to discuss it with. For now, it's just another observation/fact/whatchamacallit to store away and reference if it becomes relevant.
This post picks up Friday, when I was planning on grocery shopping but missed my opportunity when the store closed earlier than I thought. So I was faced with the options of either biking a few more miles out of my way in the cold and rain, going home and eating nothing, or going home and eating peanut butter, or breaking my diet. So I went home and ate a bunch of cheese-stuffed pasta. It was delicious. Unfortunately, it was also the start of a slippery slope. I woke up early and went to the store so I could make breakfast. I had been looking for a good time to break a hundred dollar bill, but every time I go it feels like I'm in line with people who are using food stamps and stuff, not to mention the fact that there are always interesting-looking characters loitering outside. So I figured if I went early in the morning maybe there wouldn't be a crowd. This was sort of accurate, but the other side-effect of going early in the morning is that there isn't enough change in the drawer for a hundred, so the lady had to call her manager from the back to make change, which then made a line form behind me, which then meant all sorts of people were watching as she handed me a bunch of cash. I know I'm paranoid, and that there probably wasn't anything to be worried about in the first place, but it was still a bit of a relief to hear her do the exact same thing for the person two places behind me in line. It's sort of like when I'm biking on a busy road and I'm not sure the cars are going to be looking out for bicycles. I always feel better after I pass someone, because my brain goes "well, at least if they're going to hit a biker, it will probably be him before me, and if they see him, they'll at least be aware there's a possibility of seeing me later." So obviously nothing happened and I biked back to my apartment with my food where I made more egg and cheese biscuits. Those things are addictive, but I always make sure I have honey and strawberry preserves on the last biscuit. Who needs dessert when you can put that combination in your mouth? I killed time, because I was supposed to go to Midway where I'll be playing league at 11:30. Then a guy texted me at 10:30 saying there wasn't anyone to play and asked if I could make it. I said I was on my way, and then immediately went the wrong way. See, the location of the YMCA was a mystery, but I knew it was across the river on University, so I set out the way I normally go to class. That was somehow the opposite way I was supposed to go, so my route wound up being very circuitous. As a bonus, I now know where a few more of the major bike paths go. The network is pretty fantastic. If I want to take the most direct route between my place and Midway I can just bike down the major street (bike lane for most of it) near my house, and then turn onto University after I cross the river. But if I want to take bike paths I have that option too. Or if I start off the wrong way and have to double back there is a really nice one, where I found some skiers:
.JPG)
This is one aspect of my phone that I think is pretty awesome. You can access the camera at any time, and to take a picture you can just point the phone at the target and click the volume control on the headphones! So you don't have to worry about stabilizing the camera while also pressing the screen of the camera. You can just point and take pictures as fast as possible and hope one turns out! I did the same thing with some rowers I saw while I was biking over Mississippi river bridge in heavy traffic. I couldn't point the camera and also use my other hand to hit the camera button while directing its lens over my shoulder, but I sure could point it in the general direction with one hand and spam the volume control shutter button and cross my fingers. Of course, the rowers were still pretty far away, but if you know what you're looking for, you can pick them out:
.JPG)
I made it to handball only about five minutes later than I should have if I had gone the right way. I proceeded to play from 11:00 until 3:30. If all it takes to get better is spending a lot of time on the court, then I will be great at this sport in no time! Unfortunately, for the last hour I sure didn't feel like I was getting better. I just felt lazy, like my footwork was off and because I knew I could win without fixing it, I didn't bother. I really hope that doesn't become a bad habit... But anyway, there wasn't really anyone there close to my skill level, which I half-expected, but it was probably good to establish myself as a person who actually exists before just starting to play for them. So I played two games of cutthroat, two games of doubles, another game of cutthroat, and then sat out when old people wanted to play doubles (they offered, but I declined, not wanting to warp the game into something crazy where the objective is just not to hit it to me). Then I played doubles with those same old guys when no better option presented itself. While I was sitting out a lawyer (one of many) came up to me and opened with "I heard you're going to law school; what do I need to do to talk you out of that?" I was surprised, and then realized: "Oh, don't worry, I'm on scholarship, so I'm not stupid." He seemed relieved. I got the feeling he had a whole speech prepared about how I didn't really need a law degree to do the things I wanted to do. But it turns out I'm incredibly lucky, so it's all good.
Most people had left the building at that point, but there was still a father-son duo looking for doubles, so I stuck around and played with whoever else didn't mind. That lasted three more games with two more partners, and that was the part where I stopped really caring and just hit whatever from whatever position. Sloppy. Then I biked home, and since I had biked the wrong way there, I was surprised to realize my route took me right past some amazing restaurants. And it's not even like I know what good restaurants around here are. I've been to like three total, but the best pizza I've had was at a place on this route, and I came incredibly close to stopping. I told myself I didn't need to spend money on that when I had just bought groceries, but in reality I should have just stopped. I was starving, it sounded amazing, and I don't really eat pizza because it's usually after 5:00 by the time I would want it, or it looks really greasy. I'm stopping next time, and that's that.
I went home intent on studying. Or rather, I went home resigned to studying. As mentioned above, that didn't work out. Instead, I alternated between falling asleep out of boredom and looking over notes wondering why I needed to memorize things I felt I already knew conceptually. Then I told myself I would just do a good job the next day.
The next day, as surprising as this may seem, was not any more appealing than the previous. Plus, it was raining and cold out. This would have been a great reason to stay inside and study, but there was frisbee to be played, so I departed on bike and arrived already damp. It stayed decently tolerable for the first half and a bit of the second, and then it actually started raining and things got even sloppier than my handball. Plus, my arm was quite tired from handball the day before, and while I know throwing is almost all wrist, I just couldn't get it to go more than fifty yards without turning over and blading down into my receiver. We won 16 or 17-3. Also, one guy on my team decided he could just throw it to me whenever he wanted and I would catch it, which was pretty freaking awesome. I would be covered and he'd just put it up anyway, and because I was playing against people who didn't quite know what was going on, I got some pretty sweet highlight reel catches. There's nothing to build a short guy's self-esteem like skying taller players at frisbee, no matter how bad they are.
I returned home drenched and ambivalent about studying. Also, while I knew to be cautious about the fruit at Aldi, it hit home again recently when I bought pears. They were on the green side, I admit. I figured they'd ripen eventually and it would be fine. I had bananas too, so I'd eat those first and by the time they were gone the pears would be ready. Nope! The pears started turning fuzzy WHILE STILL GREEN. Stupid pears. So I am eating crunchy pears. Crunchy, moldy pears. Delightful.
When I write or study I like to listen to classical music. It keeps me focused, blocks out distractions, and doesn't distract me like music with lyrics does. Interestingly, though I know almost nothing about classical music, I do know what I don't like. I don't like violin concertos. Do you know how many violin concertos there are? Too many. Way too many. As far as I can tell, it's violin concertos all the way down. (Turtles got nothin' on violin concertos (extra points for recognizing the reference).) But I do have a couple of composers I like. It's even gotten to the point where I can recognize them most of the time! The guy I made a pandora station of a while ago is Edouard Lalo. Unfortunately, you know what else he composed other than sweet orchestral arrangements that get me pumped up and ready to write? You guessed it. Stupid violin solos/concertos/garbage.
That's all for tonight. I have to eat and read some, and maybe even study for that quiz. Thanks for reading!
PS: I also passed this guy:
I'm not trying to knock him. I think he's awesome. Just wanted to share because it made me grin. Later!
Oh crap, I forgot some stuff!
So I foreshadowed my dietary difficulties earlier in the post and then forgot to mention the fact that I went to a lunch meeting today where they served unlimited pasta with chicken and pesto and/or tomato sauce with sausage. I had three helpings, which by itself is more than I should have had, and then they offered dessert. I haven't had trouble declining dessert recently, but this time they said it came with the opportunity to score more points (redeemable for amazon gift cards), so I needed at least the sticker on the packaging. So I got some cookies and then I realized the points they were offering were just the same as the points offered via promotional emails, but by then it was too late. I ate the cookies, and boy how I've missed sugar! Usually I fall asleep in torts (or close to it), but I felt awake for the whole thing. Maybe that's where the dessert idea came from. There's that inevitable post-meal crash, but the temporary sugar jolt gets you over the hump just long enough so that the only crash you get is the one coming down off the sugar (perhaps less?) I don't know. All I know is that I got paid around $15 in amazon gift cards to eat pasta for 45 minutes today. My plan was then to go home and nap, but Brian texted me to play handball, so I did that on a too-full stomach instead. Tomorrow is another lunch meeting, and then handball again, and then I promised the handball people I'd go out with them... So I guess there's that. And now I have homework. So I guess there's that too. Thanks again!
What's that? More self-observations that obviously can't hold water because my perspective can't be separated sufficiently to provide any semblance of objectivity? You bet!
So, as most of these sections seem to start, I was talking with someone who doesn't like to see their name in my blog when somehow the subject of my annoying characteristics came up. After exhausting the standards (too removed and calculating, ultra-defensive, etc.), something a bit surprising came up. Apparently I am frustrating when I am nice, especially to my significant others. I didn't know what to say. I mean, I had noticed that trend, but I assumed it was just odd reactions on their part. How could they get mad at me for trying to do things for them? This theory was put forward, and it makes some sense, but I obviously can't say anything conclusive as I am far too close to the situation to be unbiased: I am a self-reliant, stoic-seeming sort of person. People in a relationship with me know this, and (according to my source) this makes them think I expect that of them. So when I do things for them (and they think I expect them to do things for themselves), that means I am saying they can't do something for themselves. So it becomes a sort of condescension. A "I am self-reliant, so you must be self-reliant, but here, let me do that for you since you obviously need help" sort of thing. I have been rebuked a fair number of times when trying to do little things like that, and it always puzzled me. The story about giving unwanted bicycling cautions springs to mind yet again, but so does a time in Toronto where I offered to throw away some trash and was harshly cut off with "I can do that myself!" Years and years ago the same thing happened with my first girlfriend, when I went out of my way to buy her a smoothie when I knew she had a bad day. She refused it, and got even more upset that I was trying to cheer her up. When I planned an elaborate valentines day it only got worse, and things ended soon after. It's nice to have a theory to work from at the very least, whether it's 100% accurate or not.
I had some time to think about this (I always seem to have time to think about these sorts of things. Sleep is overrated.) and I tried to figure out why I do things for other people at all. I mean, it's not like I think chivalry is even a good thing in and of itself! I don't think there's any inherent reason men should open doors for women, any reason we should pay for things, or whatever the stereotypical gentleman does (carry boomboxes back to dorm rooms, etc.). But when I was first starting a relationship, I was clueless. I didn't know what my role was, and I knew it made her smile when I did little things like that. So from then on, whenever an opportunity presented itself, I did the following little thought exercise: I asked myself if whatever it was would really be difficult for me to do. If the answer was no, then I just did it. So I open doors for people, even though I don't really think there's any reason to do so. Next, if it was something slightly inconvenient, I briefly weighed whatever it was against the probability of making the person happy while factoring in how much I cared about the person. (So if there was a moderate chance of making a person happy that I cared about, I would do something more inconvenient for myself than if there was a sure chance of making someone happy I cared less about.) So I bought things for people. I paid for things when I could, because I liked knowing they would appreciate it, and thought it far outweighed the inconvenience, even though I still didn't think it was my job or even something a person has to do even if they were trying to be a good person. I think being a good person goes way beyond things like that, and chivalry is uncalled for. But I did it anyway because it didn't really cost me anything I cared about relative to the effect I anticipated it having.
I don't know if this makes a lot of sense. If it does, perhaps it goes even more to explaining why people in a relationship with me start to resent me doing things for them, because if they know I'm just doing it because I expect them to appreciate it, it puts pressure back on them to acknowledge it or feel like they are slighting me in some way. Now, obviously I would say that is unnecessary, that as long as it makes them happier, it doesn't matter that they explicitly thank me, but I do recall many times where I used little things I did as examples for how I was putting effort into the relationship, when the whole premise was that I did those things because it didn't cost me hardly anything compared to the positive outcome that resulted. But when doing things stops even leading to positive outcomes, starts annoying the person I'm doing them for, then I am in for trouble. Not to say that's why my last relationship ended. I still don't have that figured out to my satisfaction. But it sure is interesting how other perspectives can spark crazy paradigm-altering realizations. Not that there's anything I can really do now. I'm not even sure if I would want to change. But that's a thing that would have to be discussed, I suppose, with whoever I had reason to discuss it with. For now, it's just another observation/fact/whatchamacallit to store away and reference if it becomes relevant.
This post picks up Friday, when I was planning on grocery shopping but missed my opportunity when the store closed earlier than I thought. So I was faced with the options of either biking a few more miles out of my way in the cold and rain, going home and eating nothing, or going home and eating peanut butter, or breaking my diet. So I went home and ate a bunch of cheese-stuffed pasta. It was delicious. Unfortunately, it was also the start of a slippery slope. I woke up early and went to the store so I could make breakfast. I had been looking for a good time to break a hundred dollar bill, but every time I go it feels like I'm in line with people who are using food stamps and stuff, not to mention the fact that there are always interesting-looking characters loitering outside. So I figured if I went early in the morning maybe there wouldn't be a crowd. This was sort of accurate, but the other side-effect of going early in the morning is that there isn't enough change in the drawer for a hundred, so the lady had to call her manager from the back to make change, which then made a line form behind me, which then meant all sorts of people were watching as she handed me a bunch of cash. I know I'm paranoid, and that there probably wasn't anything to be worried about in the first place, but it was still a bit of a relief to hear her do the exact same thing for the person two places behind me in line. It's sort of like when I'm biking on a busy road and I'm not sure the cars are going to be looking out for bicycles. I always feel better after I pass someone, because my brain goes "well, at least if they're going to hit a biker, it will probably be him before me, and if they see him, they'll at least be aware there's a possibility of seeing me later." So obviously nothing happened and I biked back to my apartment with my food where I made more egg and cheese biscuits. Those things are addictive, but I always make sure I have honey and strawberry preserves on the last biscuit. Who needs dessert when you can put that combination in your mouth? I killed time, because I was supposed to go to Midway where I'll be playing league at 11:30. Then a guy texted me at 10:30 saying there wasn't anyone to play and asked if I could make it. I said I was on my way, and then immediately went the wrong way. See, the location of the YMCA was a mystery, but I knew it was across the river on University, so I set out the way I normally go to class. That was somehow the opposite way I was supposed to go, so my route wound up being very circuitous. As a bonus, I now know where a few more of the major bike paths go. The network is pretty fantastic. If I want to take the most direct route between my place and Midway I can just bike down the major street (bike lane for most of it) near my house, and then turn onto University after I cross the river. But if I want to take bike paths I have that option too. Or if I start off the wrong way and have to double back there is a really nice one, where I found some skiers:
.JPG)
This is one aspect of my phone that I think is pretty awesome. You can access the camera at any time, and to take a picture you can just point the phone at the target and click the volume control on the headphones! So you don't have to worry about stabilizing the camera while also pressing the screen of the camera. You can just point and take pictures as fast as possible and hope one turns out! I did the same thing with some rowers I saw while I was biking over Mississippi river bridge in heavy traffic. I couldn't point the camera and also use my other hand to hit the camera button while directing its lens over my shoulder, but I sure could point it in the general direction with one hand and spam the volume control shutter button and cross my fingers. Of course, the rowers were still pretty far away, but if you know what you're looking for, you can pick them out:
.JPG)
Most people had left the building at that point, but there was still a father-son duo looking for doubles, so I stuck around and played with whoever else didn't mind. That lasted three more games with two more partners, and that was the part where I stopped really caring and just hit whatever from whatever position. Sloppy. Then I biked home, and since I had biked the wrong way there, I was surprised to realize my route took me right past some amazing restaurants. And it's not even like I know what good restaurants around here are. I've been to like three total, but the best pizza I've had was at a place on this route, and I came incredibly close to stopping. I told myself I didn't need to spend money on that when I had just bought groceries, but in reality I should have just stopped. I was starving, it sounded amazing, and I don't really eat pizza because it's usually after 5:00 by the time I would want it, or it looks really greasy. I'm stopping next time, and that's that.
I went home intent on studying. Or rather, I went home resigned to studying. As mentioned above, that didn't work out. Instead, I alternated between falling asleep out of boredom and looking over notes wondering why I needed to memorize things I felt I already knew conceptually. Then I told myself I would just do a good job the next day.
The next day, as surprising as this may seem, was not any more appealing than the previous. Plus, it was raining and cold out. This would have been a great reason to stay inside and study, but there was frisbee to be played, so I departed on bike and arrived already damp. It stayed decently tolerable for the first half and a bit of the second, and then it actually started raining and things got even sloppier than my handball. Plus, my arm was quite tired from handball the day before, and while I know throwing is almost all wrist, I just couldn't get it to go more than fifty yards without turning over and blading down into my receiver. We won 16 or 17-3. Also, one guy on my team decided he could just throw it to me whenever he wanted and I would catch it, which was pretty freaking awesome. I would be covered and he'd just put it up anyway, and because I was playing against people who didn't quite know what was going on, I got some pretty sweet highlight reel catches. There's nothing to build a short guy's self-esteem like skying taller players at frisbee, no matter how bad they are.
I returned home drenched and ambivalent about studying. Also, while I knew to be cautious about the fruit at Aldi, it hit home again recently when I bought pears. They were on the green side, I admit. I figured they'd ripen eventually and it would be fine. I had bananas too, so I'd eat those first and by the time they were gone the pears would be ready. Nope! The pears started turning fuzzy WHILE STILL GREEN. Stupid pears. So I am eating crunchy pears. Crunchy, moldy pears. Delightful.
When I write or study I like to listen to classical music. It keeps me focused, blocks out distractions, and doesn't distract me like music with lyrics does. Interestingly, though I know almost nothing about classical music, I do know what I don't like. I don't like violin concertos. Do you know how many violin concertos there are? Too many. Way too many. As far as I can tell, it's violin concertos all the way down. (Turtles got nothin' on violin concertos (extra points for recognizing the reference).) But I do have a couple of composers I like. It's even gotten to the point where I can recognize them most of the time! The guy I made a pandora station of a while ago is Edouard Lalo. Unfortunately, you know what else he composed other than sweet orchestral arrangements that get me pumped up and ready to write? You guessed it. Stupid violin solos/concertos/garbage.
That's all for tonight. I have to eat and read some, and maybe even study for that quiz. Thanks for reading!
PS: I also passed this guy:
Oh crap, I forgot some stuff!
So I foreshadowed my dietary difficulties earlier in the post and then forgot to mention the fact that I went to a lunch meeting today where they served unlimited pasta with chicken and pesto and/or tomato sauce with sausage. I had three helpings, which by itself is more than I should have had, and then they offered dessert. I haven't had trouble declining dessert recently, but this time they said it came with the opportunity to score more points (redeemable for amazon gift cards), so I needed at least the sticker on the packaging. So I got some cookies and then I realized the points they were offering were just the same as the points offered via promotional emails, but by then it was too late. I ate the cookies, and boy how I've missed sugar! Usually I fall asleep in torts (or close to it), but I felt awake for the whole thing. Maybe that's where the dessert idea came from. There's that inevitable post-meal crash, but the temporary sugar jolt gets you over the hump just long enough so that the only crash you get is the one coming down off the sugar (perhaps less?) I don't know. All I know is that I got paid around $15 in amazon gift cards to eat pasta for 45 minutes today. My plan was then to go home and nap, but Brian texted me to play handball, so I did that on a too-full stomach instead. Tomorrow is another lunch meeting, and then handball again, and then I promised the handball people I'd go out with them... So I guess there's that. And now I have homework. So I guess there's that too. Thanks again!
October 4, 2013
Some stuff and some pictures
Desperation breeds creativity.
I am almost never desperate. I think I've gotten to the point where I don't stress that much over things (yes, this statement is too general and there are plenty of exceptions; let's keep it in context), and this has led to this problem where I don't feel like I'm brimming with creativity. I usually just assume things will work out. I also think it contributes to my procrastination. That feeling of desperation, that knowledge that I have to think on the fly and be correct the first time is quite appealing. This weekend will be a test for me, I think, because I have resolved to read sections of the USC until my eyes bleed. I have my second quiz on Friday for Civil Procedure, and now that I know it's all memorization and not based on theory or case law, I will prepare accordingly. It's annoying that I am still being tested on things in this manner, but I suppose when it comes to procedural guidelines, there might not be a much better way. It doesn't really matter why the guidelines exist so much as it matters that you know all the applicable laws and the ways they interact. There are so many ways to get a case thrown out of court! It's crazy.
So after I play handball on Saturday, that's my plan. I'm going to curl up with a nice book (a really bad book) and a nice glass of cocoa (orange juice) and wile away the day (try as hard as possible to not use my phone every five minutes to distract myself). I've actually been doing that a bit recently, though. On my way back from Fargo I only had my civil procedure book, my phone, and my iPad for entertainment, and my phone was low on batteries. Then I remembered that when I was in Toronto I had a lot of time on my hands without internet. Fascinatingly enough, there are these things called "fiction books" that people have been using for entertainment for quite some time, and I still had the next book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series that I hadn't finished on my iPad. So I read. And you know what, it was great. It's almost like I used to do that all the time of my own volition for a reason.
The only interesting thing that has happened in Civil Procedure recently is that one of the defendants in a case was... Valley West Mall! From West Des Moines, Iowa. In the 70's. Unfortunately the case itself was really boring again, but at least I'll remember it. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it so you can be as bored as I am! So the mall told a jewelry store they wouldn't allow any more than three jewelry stores in the mall. Then they were about to let a fourth jewelry store in the mall. Then the original jewelry store sued Valley West. Valley West tried to use a rule 19 defense, saying that the first jewelry store had to also sue the last jewelry store because of a technicality. Then the court said that that technicality didn't apply, because it would be stupid for them to also have to sue that last jewelry store (which would have gotten the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds). The rule basically says that you have to sue everyone involved in a particular matter at the same time. Because Valley West losing this case would have direct consequences on their contract with the last jewelry store, they tried to claim that party was essential to the case. The court told them that it was none of the court's business that they had been irresponsible in entering into two stupid contracts at once. So Valley West Mall relied on a technicality as their sole means of defense and lost when that didn't work. Silly Iowans...
I'm watching Day[9] play a video game called Mirror's Edge while I write this. It's a game where you play a parkour runner and you die really easily (which means realistically (which makes it very distinct from most video games)). It looks fun, but it's also sort of distracting when he's falling off buildings all the time.
I made biscuits for breakfast on Wednesday!
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They were delicious. The box said to leave them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, and I just opened the oven and they were perfectly done. And came off the pan perfectly! No spatula or anything required! They crumble really easily, but I managed to cut some in half and make egg and cheese sandwiches (last picture). (I took that picture before desecrating it with sriracha.) So I had two and a half biscuits with eggs and cheese, half of one with butter, and one with strawberry preserves and honey. Then I packed two with butter for lunch, and ate the last when I got back from school. An entire (almost) day's worth of food! They are so versatile too! They go with any dish, and about any topping. It's cool to be able to put rich food on them or sweet stuff, or just whatever. For instance, this morning I made them again due to lack of other options, and I put maple syrup on them. I figured it was still just pancake mix in a different form, and sure enough: delicious.
While we're on the subject of food, I guess I'll mention that I am completely out of it. All that's left is pasta and biscuit/pancake mix. Yesterday I ate the last of my tuna and, well, basically everything else. And peanut butter. Just plain peanut butter. Which I was eating with a fork, obviously.
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Yesterday at handball there was a new guy. He was pretty athletic-looking and asked for a game. Everyone was getting ready to leave to watch hockey, so I said I'd stick around (a good excuse not to go out? don't mind if I do!) and give him a game. He said it was his last day of working out before the twin cities marathon this weekend. I tried not to win too easily, and found myself down 10-2 or something after not paying much attention. I served five or six aces in a row to put myself back in it and wound up winning 21-17 after trading points most of the rest of the time. He got out of the court and immediately laid down and made a show of catching his breath. I had been there for five hours at this point (granted, there are a lot of breaks between matches when people are feeling lazy (they are generally feeling lazy)). I asked why he didn't come more often and he cited his participation in break dance club, parkour, some sort of martial art, and the marathon, as well as night class. Quite a list. He's like 6'3" or taller, so I know one person I don't want to ever fight ever. He reminds me of this time a freshman showed up to our frisbee practice and was obviously just completely ripped. He was terrible at frisbee, but he was a shoe-in for if frisbee ever spontaneously morphed into a gladiator competition. This prompted a debate about our best seven players if we ever had to throw a gladiator line on the field. Frisbee was fun. Anyway, this new handball guy basically just is our gladiator line for handball. Luckily, handball players in general are a collection of people who would make terrible gladiators.
I am almost never desperate. I think I've gotten to the point where I don't stress that much over things (yes, this statement is too general and there are plenty of exceptions; let's keep it in context), and this has led to this problem where I don't feel like I'm brimming with creativity. I usually just assume things will work out. I also think it contributes to my procrastination. That feeling of desperation, that knowledge that I have to think on the fly and be correct the first time is quite appealing. This weekend will be a test for me, I think, because I have resolved to read sections of the USC until my eyes bleed. I have my second quiz on Friday for Civil Procedure, and now that I know it's all memorization and not based on theory or case law, I will prepare accordingly. It's annoying that I am still being tested on things in this manner, but I suppose when it comes to procedural guidelines, there might not be a much better way. It doesn't really matter why the guidelines exist so much as it matters that you know all the applicable laws and the ways they interact. There are so many ways to get a case thrown out of court! It's crazy.
So after I play handball on Saturday, that's my plan. I'm going to curl up with a nice book (a really bad book) and a nice glass of cocoa (orange juice) and wile away the day (try as hard as possible to not use my phone every five minutes to distract myself). I've actually been doing that a bit recently, though. On my way back from Fargo I only had my civil procedure book, my phone, and my iPad for entertainment, and my phone was low on batteries. Then I remembered that when I was in Toronto I had a lot of time on my hands without internet. Fascinatingly enough, there are these things called "fiction books" that people have been using for entertainment for quite some time, and I still had the next book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series that I hadn't finished on my iPad. So I read. And you know what, it was great. It's almost like I used to do that all the time of my own volition for a reason.
The only interesting thing that has happened in Civil Procedure recently is that one of the defendants in a case was... Valley West Mall! From West Des Moines, Iowa. In the 70's. Unfortunately the case itself was really boring again, but at least I'll remember it. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it so you can be as bored as I am! So the mall told a jewelry store they wouldn't allow any more than three jewelry stores in the mall. Then they were about to let a fourth jewelry store in the mall. Then the original jewelry store sued Valley West. Valley West tried to use a rule 19 defense, saying that the first jewelry store had to also sue the last jewelry store because of a technicality. Then the court said that that technicality didn't apply, because it would be stupid for them to also have to sue that last jewelry store (which would have gotten the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds). The rule basically says that you have to sue everyone involved in a particular matter at the same time. Because Valley West losing this case would have direct consequences on their contract with the last jewelry store, they tried to claim that party was essential to the case. The court told them that it was none of the court's business that they had been irresponsible in entering into two stupid contracts at once. So Valley West Mall relied on a technicality as their sole means of defense and lost when that didn't work. Silly Iowans...
I'm watching Day[9] play a video game called Mirror's Edge while I write this. It's a game where you play a parkour runner and you die really easily (which means realistically (which makes it very distinct from most video games)). It looks fun, but it's also sort of distracting when he's falling off buildings all the time.
I made biscuits for breakfast on Wednesday!
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They were delicious. The box said to leave them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, and I just opened the oven and they were perfectly done. And came off the pan perfectly! No spatula or anything required! They crumble really easily, but I managed to cut some in half and make egg and cheese sandwiches (last picture). (I took that picture before desecrating it with sriracha.) So I had two and a half biscuits with eggs and cheese, half of one with butter, and one with strawberry preserves and honey. Then I packed two with butter for lunch, and ate the last when I got back from school. An entire (almost) day's worth of food! They are so versatile too! They go with any dish, and about any topping. It's cool to be able to put rich food on them or sweet stuff, or just whatever. For instance, this morning I made them again due to lack of other options, and I put maple syrup on them. I figured it was still just pancake mix in a different form, and sure enough: delicious.
While we're on the subject of food, I guess I'll mention that I am completely out of it. All that's left is pasta and biscuit/pancake mix. Yesterday I ate the last of my tuna and, well, basically everything else. And peanut butter. Just plain peanut butter. Which I was eating with a fork, obviously.
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Yesterday at handball there was a new guy. He was pretty athletic-looking and asked for a game. Everyone was getting ready to leave to watch hockey, so I said I'd stick around (a good excuse not to go out? don't mind if I do!) and give him a game. He said it was his last day of working out before the twin cities marathon this weekend. I tried not to win too easily, and found myself down 10-2 or something after not paying much attention. I served five or six aces in a row to put myself back in it and wound up winning 21-17 after trading points most of the rest of the time. He got out of the court and immediately laid down and made a show of catching his breath. I had been there for five hours at this point (granted, there are a lot of breaks between matches when people are feeling lazy (they are generally feeling lazy)). I asked why he didn't come more often and he cited his participation in break dance club, parkour, some sort of martial art, and the marathon, as well as night class. Quite a list. He's like 6'3" or taller, so I know one person I don't want to ever fight ever. He reminds me of this time a freshman showed up to our frisbee practice and was obviously just completely ripped. He was terrible at frisbee, but he was a shoe-in for if frisbee ever spontaneously morphed into a gladiator competition. This prompted a debate about our best seven players if we ever had to throw a gladiator line on the field. Frisbee was fun. Anyway, this new handball guy basically just is our gladiator line for handball. Luckily, handball players in general are a collection of people who would make terrible gladiators.
While I'm still thinking about handball, I figured I'd mention a nice little side effect of being good at something: I can wear whatever I want without people making fun of me! Nobody picks on the guy who just beat the other guy 21-2, 21-4 or whatever, even if his clothes don't fit. So with that in mind, this is what I wore to Fargo:
A women's large Great Britain frisbee jersey and Japanese shorts. I felt so foreign! And you can't see, but my shoes are also blue, and my socks are white and red. Just for good measure. I even brought along two pullovers, my grey one and my colorbiotics longsleeve warmup. The cycling warmup is actually awesome for handball because I can listen to music without having something flopping around in my pocket against my legs (because the pockets are in the back of cycling gear (for those who think I talk too much about sports and can't follow along (Sarah))). And that is white and red. So I was either a baller, or a huge jock-looking jerk...
I got to talk to Sarah for a decent chunk of time today finally, which was fantastic. And while I was doing that (since I can't really focus on typing and talking at the same time), I uploaded the pictures here. Then I got bored and got on facebook and unfriended a bunch of people I never talk to anymore. I dropped from 130-ish friends back down into double digits. It's weird which people you don't actually keep in contact with. And also weird which ones I still consider close enough that I might have to contact them again at some point. And which ones post interesting things to facebook enough that I don't want to unfriend them even though we obviously aren't friends anymore (or never were). Those were my basic criteria. It basically fell into the obvious groups of frisbee, handball, and magic, with a very few remnants of high school (and even fewer when you realize that most of those are also subsumed into the other categories). I remember that a lot of these people I added a while ago because I wanted to post a blog entry on my facebook and I wanted to get some more people to read it, and those were some people that were suggested by facebook that I actually didn't mind talking to, but now that this is basically just my journal, there's not really a reason to push for readership. I guess I could post my poetry blog up there every once in a while if I think I've written anything good...
Well, I have to post this and go grocery shopping, because unless I want a dinner of only peanut butter, I am in desperate need of food. Then tomorrow morning I will get my first look at the club I'm playing league for later this month! I'll try and get another something posted here about the weekend (and another poem), but hopefully I'm forcing myself to learn civil procedure for some non-negligible amount of time. Thanks for reading!
October 2, 2013
I don't really have anything to say
I was going to go home because I didn't really have anything to say. Then it turned out I forgot my keys in the computer, so now I'm here anyway, so I feel like I might as well post. But I still don't really have anything to say...
There are light switches on the end of every book shelf in our library.
My commute is one constitutional conversation long.
The characters on Bones keep saying VIN number. This is incredibly frustrating. It's a vehicle identification number number! Like ATM machines, HIV virus, PIN numbers, and other examples of RAS syndrome (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome).
In contracts we are talking more about enforcing promises, and in torts we are establishing the fact that being a doctor is the worst idea ever. We must have talked about at least five malpractice cases recently, and doctors just don't have it easy where the law is concerned. For example, doctors are sued for mistakes all the time, but what makes them liable in a tort is their failure to meet a standard established by others in their profession behaving reasonably. This seems reasonable, right? But in this case where a young-ish lady had glaucoma, her doctors didn't perform the necessary test to figure that out because in their profession that test wasn't required for people less than 40 years old. So they didn't do it, and then she sued them. The court found they were still guilty because the test is painless, so doing it incurs no risk to the patient. So even though they were operating at the standard that was nationally accepted, they were still found guilty because the court decided to increase that standard (seemingly arbitrarily).
This is also a problem for me because it's not as though there is no reason at all to refrain from performing the test. I'm sure the test costs something to perform, and the incidence rate of glaucoma in young people is minuscule, so unless every other young person agrees they want to have this test performed and to pay for it, I'm not sure asserting these doctors did anything wrong. If the court said they should have realized the necessity for the test from symptoms presented or something along those lines, I could see how that would point to negligent behavior, but what they said in their ruling was they "had a choice between finding for an innocent victim of glaucoma or specialized doctors," and they couldn't bring themselves to rule against a victim they knew was innocent, so they went the other direction.
There is an interesting note in my book with which I am sympathetic as well. It basically questions how we justifiably blame doctors. Firstly, the fact that you can't even find them guilty except for negligence is telling. It is just assumed that you can't sue a doctor for intentionally harming patients. By the very nature of their profession they are trying to help, so negligence is the only way to go about taking them to court. Taking this one step further, is it perhaps incorrect to hold them negligent in most situations? In order for negligence to be viable, you must prove a person had a duty, they breached that duty, and that there is a causal relationship between the breach of duty and the harm that resulted. But the book points out that this causation can be questioned, because is it really the doctor that is causing the harm, or is it the disease (or whatever their problem is), which is certainly not the fault of the doctor. The patient wouldn't be in the situation, obviously, if there wasn't something already wrong with them, and we are already willing to stipulate that doctors only want to help. Maybe court cases are actually good at sorting this out, generally, but, like my professor said, "we don't deal with the easy cases." So I suppose my perception could be warped by the stuff to which I'm exposed.
Another topic we are dealing with is what standard to apply when talking about a reasonable expert in a profession. Obviously we want to compare doctors to doctors, but what about cases where doctors just don't have the same access to technology, resources, or other necessary equipment? Do we hold the hospitals liable for not having enough funds, because a person could die for lack of a machine for sure. Originally the courts applied a standard of care that looked at people in similar positions, so a rural doctor would only be judged by his performance relative to other rural doctors. However, this presented major problems in that rural doctors could then get away with anything by just all deciding not to do a particular thing. Or by not testifying against each other if something went wrong. So now we use a national standard, which seems appropriate, but again, if we hold Hicksburg Community Hospital to the same level as Mayo Clinic, we are probably doing something wrong. It's a tough line to draw. Luckily, the court is supposed to look at the totality of the circumstances, and these "rules" can be explained by judges in ways that are supposed to uphold fairness, but that's not a perfect system by any means.
Well, I've watched all the new TV shows, and I am hungry. And I need to read a bit more stuff. And while I could perhaps do that here, for some reason it goes faster when I'm not in front of a computer. Until I get out my phone, of course.
I'm surprised at how little I miss a TV. I only really miss watching football (and probably other sporting events in other seasons), but it's really not a huge loss. I guess you just adapt to whatever you have. I am glad I found this computer lab though.
I played handball tonight, though it was mostly just for fun, since I was never really challenged. I can't wait for league to start later this month so I can be guaranteed a solid match at least once a week. It's pretty cool that I'm incredibly confident playing any of the people at the University though, since when I got here I readily acknowledged they were better than my previous competition, and now I'm beating them with scores similar to what I was winning with in Ames. I beat David 21-3 today, for example, and he's not a bad player by any means. I think I also adapt well to my opponent once I play them a few times, though, so it doesn't really help when you go into a match blind. Hopefully I can just get enough experience among different players here that I'll always have an analogous style to draw upon when I'm thinking about what will work against a brand new opponent.
Music Interrupted
I was expecting your call
while the rapper in my ear
rhymed seamless rhythm
quick and smooth
then halted.
And so did my breath
catch
my pulse
pause
as I snatched, possessive
and began to answer
already forming words
trembling
tongue-tipped
teetering.
I was ready to gush
ready to pour out
exuberance
over the slightest hint
overflowing the bowl
as your pittance
your single cornflake
doused in milk
dissolved
and dipped
over the edge
drained down the sink
as my words fell fruitless
filled excuseless
and meant all the less for it.
And then the rapper
resumed
his hitch a glitch
and I thanked the shoddy
spotty internet
for showing me my sham.
There are light switches on the end of every book shelf in our library.
My commute is one constitutional conversation long.
The characters on Bones keep saying VIN number. This is incredibly frustrating. It's a vehicle identification number number! Like ATM machines, HIV virus, PIN numbers, and other examples of RAS syndrome (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome).
In contracts we are talking more about enforcing promises, and in torts we are establishing the fact that being a doctor is the worst idea ever. We must have talked about at least five malpractice cases recently, and doctors just don't have it easy where the law is concerned. For example, doctors are sued for mistakes all the time, but what makes them liable in a tort is their failure to meet a standard established by others in their profession behaving reasonably. This seems reasonable, right? But in this case where a young-ish lady had glaucoma, her doctors didn't perform the necessary test to figure that out because in their profession that test wasn't required for people less than 40 years old. So they didn't do it, and then she sued them. The court found they were still guilty because the test is painless, so doing it incurs no risk to the patient. So even though they were operating at the standard that was nationally accepted, they were still found guilty because the court decided to increase that standard (seemingly arbitrarily).
This is also a problem for me because it's not as though there is no reason at all to refrain from performing the test. I'm sure the test costs something to perform, and the incidence rate of glaucoma in young people is minuscule, so unless every other young person agrees they want to have this test performed and to pay for it, I'm not sure asserting these doctors did anything wrong. If the court said they should have realized the necessity for the test from symptoms presented or something along those lines, I could see how that would point to negligent behavior, but what they said in their ruling was they "had a choice between finding for an innocent victim of glaucoma or specialized doctors," and they couldn't bring themselves to rule against a victim they knew was innocent, so they went the other direction.
There is an interesting note in my book with which I am sympathetic as well. It basically questions how we justifiably blame doctors. Firstly, the fact that you can't even find them guilty except for negligence is telling. It is just assumed that you can't sue a doctor for intentionally harming patients. By the very nature of their profession they are trying to help, so negligence is the only way to go about taking them to court. Taking this one step further, is it perhaps incorrect to hold them negligent in most situations? In order for negligence to be viable, you must prove a person had a duty, they breached that duty, and that there is a causal relationship between the breach of duty and the harm that resulted. But the book points out that this causation can be questioned, because is it really the doctor that is causing the harm, or is it the disease (or whatever their problem is), which is certainly not the fault of the doctor. The patient wouldn't be in the situation, obviously, if there wasn't something already wrong with them, and we are already willing to stipulate that doctors only want to help. Maybe court cases are actually good at sorting this out, generally, but, like my professor said, "we don't deal with the easy cases." So I suppose my perception could be warped by the stuff to which I'm exposed.
Another topic we are dealing with is what standard to apply when talking about a reasonable expert in a profession. Obviously we want to compare doctors to doctors, but what about cases where doctors just don't have the same access to technology, resources, or other necessary equipment? Do we hold the hospitals liable for not having enough funds, because a person could die for lack of a machine for sure. Originally the courts applied a standard of care that looked at people in similar positions, so a rural doctor would only be judged by his performance relative to other rural doctors. However, this presented major problems in that rural doctors could then get away with anything by just all deciding not to do a particular thing. Or by not testifying against each other if something went wrong. So now we use a national standard, which seems appropriate, but again, if we hold Hicksburg Community Hospital to the same level as Mayo Clinic, we are probably doing something wrong. It's a tough line to draw. Luckily, the court is supposed to look at the totality of the circumstances, and these "rules" can be explained by judges in ways that are supposed to uphold fairness, but that's not a perfect system by any means.
Well, I've watched all the new TV shows, and I am hungry. And I need to read a bit more stuff. And while I could perhaps do that here, for some reason it goes faster when I'm not in front of a computer. Until I get out my phone, of course.
I'm surprised at how little I miss a TV. I only really miss watching football (and probably other sporting events in other seasons), but it's really not a huge loss. I guess you just adapt to whatever you have. I am glad I found this computer lab though.
I played handball tonight, though it was mostly just for fun, since I was never really challenged. I can't wait for league to start later this month so I can be guaranteed a solid match at least once a week. It's pretty cool that I'm incredibly confident playing any of the people at the University though, since when I got here I readily acknowledged they were better than my previous competition, and now I'm beating them with scores similar to what I was winning with in Ames. I beat David 21-3 today, for example, and he's not a bad player by any means. I think I also adapt well to my opponent once I play them a few times, though, so it doesn't really help when you go into a match blind. Hopefully I can just get enough experience among different players here that I'll always have an analogous style to draw upon when I'm thinking about what will work against a brand new opponent.
Music Interrupted
I was expecting your call
while the rapper in my ear
rhymed seamless rhythm
quick and smooth
then halted.
And so did my breath
catch
my pulse
pause
as I snatched, possessive
and began to answer
already forming words
trembling
tongue-tipped
teetering.
I was ready to gush
ready to pour out
exuberance
over the slightest hint
overflowing the bowl
as your pittance
your single cornflake
doused in milk
dissolved
and dipped
over the edge
drained down the sink
as my words fell fruitless
filled excuseless
and meant all the less for it.
And then the rapper
resumed
his hitch a glitch
and I thanked the shoddy
spotty internet
for showing me my sham.
September 30, 2013
A long time ago in a galaxy as close as possible to this one (And by a long time ago I mean last week, which is a long time ago if you're a short-lived insect or something. Probably. Unless that's not how time is perceived. Because there's nothing to say that just because a thing lives less time that it perceives it as passing at a different rate. Although it certainly feels as though life passes more quickly as we get older (seasons seem to go by instead of individual months these days)), I fell asleep at 7:00 or 8:00. I had set my alarm for four hours in the future, because I wanted to be awake for Sarah's call from California to hear about her big tests, and I needed to do my laundry before my tournament. I woke up about ten hours later. I'm blaming iOS 7, the new download that made my phone ugly and is obviously conspiring against my alarm. I really need to start looking into these downloads! At least there are good features on this one, like a one-touch access to my flashlight, clock, calculator, volume, wireless, bluetooth, orientation lock, etc. But the display is sort of gross. Anyway, I made a pancake (with a moderate degree of success, still multiple pieces after flipping, but done to the point of deliciousness, and only two or three pieces instead of a million), and got my laundry done. It turned out that the washing machines were much smaller than I'm used to (I wonder if they're trying to make money off of that idea), so I did two loads simultaneously. Then I pulled out all of my stuff that dries quickly on its own and threw the rest in the drier. Then there was a lot of space in the drier. So I threw the rest in too! What a good deal. Two loads of laundry for the price of one drying cycle. Then it came out and it was all a bit damp. So I hauled it all back to my room, turned my fan on, and laid it out all over my bed, drawer handles, baskets, boxes, refrigerator, cupboards, sink, etc. I was particularly proud of one mechanism I devised whereby I looped the drawstring for my shorts through the handle of the refrigerator so it would hang at a different height than the stuff already on there, then stuck a fork through the drawstring to hold it in place, then stuck a pair of underwear on the fork. MacGyver's got nothing on me.
Then I did homework for a couple of hours (briefing cases for constitutional law and wishing I were dead rather than reading civil procedure). Because I was up for so long before class I actually didn't have any trouble staying awake. It was pretty cool. And then when I got back I ate a bunch and slept in the car on the way to the tournament. Oh, and I guess I haven't mentioned that I also played handball on Thursday. I lost a game to Brian, then beat him 21-0. It was pretty epic. He didn't even bother playing a tiebreaker. Then I played with the rest of the players (nobody else was very good, but I played for fun and made sure not to injure myself before my tournament) and called it a night a bit earlier than usual. Then the weekend happened, which I've already talked about. Then today happened, which was pretty typical except I had to decide between staying here and going to a lecture, staying here and not going to a lecture, going home and coming back, going home and studying, or some other options that probably existed. I opted to go home, but then realized I needed to mail my entry for next weekend in, so I wound up leaving so I could get that in the mail before 5:00. I got to eat dinner though, so I arrived set and ready to blog for hours. Then House of Cards got distracting (a guy actually died as the result of politics (and murder, I suppose (probably mostly died of murder))), and it took me a long time to write that last post. And now I'm just cleaning out the notes I've made in my phone since I last posted. With that in mind, here's a machine-gun style account of a few of them:
I bought pork chops the other day. I don't usually buy pork because for some reason the idea of eating pigs is less appealing than the idea of eating cows and chickens. Then it turned out I don't like pork chops. It also turns out they are amazing with asian plum sauce. Go figure. So pork exists only insofar as there is plum sauce in my book. (Hot dogs aren't pork, for the record. They are a category all their own, and they are alternatingly delicious and repulsive. But when I'm in the mood for one, it's fantastic.)
I had a choice between pickle varieties a while ago. There were the classic "Kosher Dills," which I habitually grabbed and put in the receptacle. Then, I saw them. For the exact same PPO (price per ounce, for the less obsessively frugal (and less obsessively acronymistic)), I could purchase Polish Dills. I could not resist. I simply had to know what mystery these pickles held inside their bumpy, yet crispy exteriors. What were the Jewish people afraid of? Or were they simply impolite? My interest was piqued. (Spoiler alert: there is absolutely no difference.)
I was talking to Greg about our backgrounds coming into law. He's from the hard sciences (biomedical engineering), and I'm from the opposite. He said it was annoying how vague things seemed with the law, how there wasn't a right answer, and that frustrated him somewhat. I, on the other hand, find it a relief. The clarity is a fantastic change of pace from philosophy. The judges writing the opinions actively want you to know what they are saying! In philosophy it was a guessing game half the time to even get at the point, much less the conclusion (if there was one). And in philosophy you don't even need to be making "a point." You can simply be making an observation about something in a different way than is conventional, showing a new viewpoint but not drawing conclusions for it/from it yet. In law, they have to give a verdict. There is a reason they use to support their verdict, and they need to be sure they set a clear precedent. So while each side may have a compelling argument, at least there is an outcome! I think that's why I'm finding this so easy (except for civil procedure, which is nothing like philosophy). I walk past my section-mates at least once a day on my way to the library computer lab. They have their own table staked out in the library and there's always at least five of them (though which five varies (except for Elliot)) if not ten studying. Some of them wave, and I come in here for hours, but I haven't cracked a book really. I do almost all my reading either right before class or between classes.Then again, I did bomb that quiz... It's one of those things where you wonder if you should be reevaluating.
In Fargo there was an entire, huge warehouse building that looked sort of weird. Then we drove alongside it and in huge letters it said "CURLING CLUB." There is an entire club for that. In Fargo. I can't decide whether or not to be surprised.
Also in Fargo, there was a Roosevelt Elementary made of old brick walls. It was actually a bit nostalgia-invoking, especially considering the last time I was by my old elementary the play structure had been torn down and the fence had been moved and it didn't look like a place kids should ever want to go.
South Wind
My inhalations deepen
the addictive, fulsome smell
cannot be teased, experienced halfway
after crossing the highway
trading the exhaust of a too-close car
for the mellow yeastiness
of new-brown bread
delivered from the oven
with the care of an obstetrician
cradling its crackled crust
and overwhelmed by its freshness.
I can taste its sweetness
the southern breeze,
which when strong enough,
wings wondrous smells
fresh from the ovens,
released from swinging entrances
one succoring, wheaty, exhalation at a time.
Persistent, refreshing, yet insecure,
at the whim of the wind.
Which can switch back from bread
to bearing the stench of downtown's honking
hideousness
like the bread itself
laced with the smell of honey
departed downtown-bound
in big white trucks
yet whose syrupy reminder molds
on my microwave
uneaten, now inedible.
fresh from the mother = oven, easy analogy
second stanza:
focuses on sounds, assonance to mimic wind
experience of being intrigued by the new discovery, fickleness of attraction = direction of wind
Third stanza:
reality check, wind does change, bread shipped elsewhere
I bike back from school every day, and when the wind is out of the south, the bakery smells absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, this amazing smell is also identical to the smell of the bread Rebecca used to make, so it's this crazy association game my nose gets to play every time the wind blows a particular direction. So I wrote the poem as a rough analogy for a few things. It's funny, because bread does go bad in my possession because I don't actually eat it for any of my meals. Breakfast is cold cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, or eggs, lunch is pasta or salad or sometimes a sandwich, but most often skipped, and dinner has no carbs (usually meat and fruit/veggies). So I eat a couple of slices of bread a week. So the bread is both a person and the relationship in the poem. The newly-spawned intrigue of getting to know someone, the insecurity of not knowing what's coming, but the deliciousness of anticipation, and the eventual death as it rots away in my possession. Needs work, but hey, it's one less note in my phone. Thanks for reading!
Then I did homework for a couple of hours (briefing cases for constitutional law and wishing I were dead rather than reading civil procedure). Because I was up for so long before class I actually didn't have any trouble staying awake. It was pretty cool. And then when I got back I ate a bunch and slept in the car on the way to the tournament. Oh, and I guess I haven't mentioned that I also played handball on Thursday. I lost a game to Brian, then beat him 21-0. It was pretty epic. He didn't even bother playing a tiebreaker. Then I played with the rest of the players (nobody else was very good, but I played for fun and made sure not to injure myself before my tournament) and called it a night a bit earlier than usual. Then the weekend happened, which I've already talked about. Then today happened, which was pretty typical except I had to decide between staying here and going to a lecture, staying here and not going to a lecture, going home and coming back, going home and studying, or some other options that probably existed. I opted to go home, but then realized I needed to mail my entry for next weekend in, so I wound up leaving so I could get that in the mail before 5:00. I got to eat dinner though, so I arrived set and ready to blog for hours. Then House of Cards got distracting (a guy actually died as the result of politics (and murder, I suppose (probably mostly died of murder))), and it took me a long time to write that last post. And now I'm just cleaning out the notes I've made in my phone since I last posted. With that in mind, here's a machine-gun style account of a few of them:
I bought pork chops the other day. I don't usually buy pork because for some reason the idea of eating pigs is less appealing than the idea of eating cows and chickens. Then it turned out I don't like pork chops. It also turns out they are amazing with asian plum sauce. Go figure. So pork exists only insofar as there is plum sauce in my book. (Hot dogs aren't pork, for the record. They are a category all their own, and they are alternatingly delicious and repulsive. But when I'm in the mood for one, it's fantastic.)
I had a choice between pickle varieties a while ago. There were the classic "Kosher Dills," which I habitually grabbed and put in the receptacle. Then, I saw them. For the exact same PPO (price per ounce, for the less obsessively frugal (and less obsessively acronymistic)), I could purchase Polish Dills. I could not resist. I simply had to know what mystery these pickles held inside their bumpy, yet crispy exteriors. What were the Jewish people afraid of? Or were they simply impolite? My interest was piqued. (Spoiler alert: there is absolutely no difference.)
I was talking to Greg about our backgrounds coming into law. He's from the hard sciences (biomedical engineering), and I'm from the opposite. He said it was annoying how vague things seemed with the law, how there wasn't a right answer, and that frustrated him somewhat. I, on the other hand, find it a relief. The clarity is a fantastic change of pace from philosophy. The judges writing the opinions actively want you to know what they are saying! In philosophy it was a guessing game half the time to even get at the point, much less the conclusion (if there was one). And in philosophy you don't even need to be making "a point." You can simply be making an observation about something in a different way than is conventional, showing a new viewpoint but not drawing conclusions for it/from it yet. In law, they have to give a verdict. There is a reason they use to support their verdict, and they need to be sure they set a clear precedent. So while each side may have a compelling argument, at least there is an outcome! I think that's why I'm finding this so easy (except for civil procedure, which is nothing like philosophy). I walk past my section-mates at least once a day on my way to the library computer lab. They have their own table staked out in the library and there's always at least five of them (though which five varies (except for Elliot)) if not ten studying. Some of them wave, and I come in here for hours, but I haven't cracked a book really. I do almost all my reading either right before class or between classes.Then again, I did bomb that quiz... It's one of those things where you wonder if you should be reevaluating.
In Fargo there was an entire, huge warehouse building that looked sort of weird. Then we drove alongside it and in huge letters it said "CURLING CLUB." There is an entire club for that. In Fargo. I can't decide whether or not to be surprised.
Also in Fargo, there was a Roosevelt Elementary made of old brick walls. It was actually a bit nostalgia-invoking, especially considering the last time I was by my old elementary the play structure had been torn down and the fence had been moved and it didn't look like a place kids should ever want to go.
South Wind
My inhalations deepen
the addictive, fulsome smell
cannot be teased, experienced halfway
after crossing the highway
trading the exhaust of a too-close car
for the mellow yeastiness
of new-brown bread
delivered from the oven
with the care of an obstetrician
cradling its crackled crust
and overwhelmed by its freshness.
I can taste its sweetness
the southern breeze,
which when strong enough,
wings wondrous smells
fresh from the ovens,
released from swinging entrances
one succoring, wheaty, exhalation at a time.
Persistent, refreshing, yet insecure,
at the whim of the wind.
Which can switch back from bread
to bearing the stench of downtown's honking
hideousness
like the bread itself
laced with the smell of honey
departed downtown-bound
in big white trucks
yet whose syrupy reminder molds
on my microwave
uneaten, now inedible.
Some explanation for you and so when I go back and edit I can remember what I was going for:
First stanza:
New-brown bread = new born childfresh from the mother = oven, easy analogy
second stanza:
focuses on sounds, assonance to mimic wind
experience of being intrigued by the new discovery, fickleness of attraction = direction of wind
Third stanza:
reality check, wind does change, bread shipped elsewhere
I bike back from school every day, and when the wind is out of the south, the bakery smells absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, this amazing smell is also identical to the smell of the bread Rebecca used to make, so it's this crazy association game my nose gets to play every time the wind blows a particular direction. So I wrote the poem as a rough analogy for a few things. It's funny, because bread does go bad in my possession because I don't actually eat it for any of my meals. Breakfast is cold cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, or eggs, lunch is pasta or salad or sometimes a sandwich, but most often skipped, and dinner has no carbs (usually meat and fruit/veggies). So I eat a couple of slices of bread a week. So the bread is both a person and the relationship in the poem. The newly-spawned intrigue of getting to know someone, the insecurity of not knowing what's coming, but the deliciousness of anticipation, and the eventual death as it rots away in my possession. Needs work, but hey, it's one less note in my phone. Thanks for reading!
The disappointing weekend that still turned out okay
So I went to Fargo on Friday, got out of the car, warmed up for ten minutes, and proceeded to lose in embarrassing fashion to the second seed of the tournament. I need to learn my lesson. Games were to 17, I wasn't familiar with the courts, my opponent cheated, and I'm sure there are more excuses I could come up with, but the truth is, as usual in the case of individual sports, I lost because I didn't play as well as I should have. I made error after error, and it sucked a lot. That was one thing, but the worst thing was the fact that my opponent told me I was playing well, and lots of people were impressed with my shoddy performance. It was almost unbearable. Mat and I played doubles later that night (scheduled for 10:30, but we started a bit before that), and I was able to take out my frustration pretty successfully on our opponents. In the first game we played pretty strictly on our sides (him on the left, me on the right), and we won 17-11 or so. The in the second game I took over and basically hit every shot. We went up 5-0 right away, then 14-0 on my next time serving, and won 17-1 in rather spectacular fashion. My strategy was to park myself at the front and hit everything I could get to. It turns out I can get to a lot. It was like they thought I was getting lucky, because they just kept driving it at me, and I kept reflex-volleying it into the corners. "Surely he won't hit this one." Well I did. And don't call that person Shirley. In one of the last points Mat hit a pass shot down the wall I was on, so I jumped over the ball, then the guy right behind me killed it in the opposite corner, but I had started diving as soon as I hit the ground and got there. The guy just shook his head and glanced back at where I was (last he knew), a bit skeptical.
So that was fun, but mostly just a venting of frustration. Nothing came close to making up for my poor play off the bat though, so I was still fighting a bit of underlying unhappiness while distracting myself fairly successfully by bantering with my carmates. That is, until I learned that Rebecca would be sharing a car for her ten hour trip back for Thanksgiving with the guy she cheated on me with (twice). I'm not supposed to care about that probably. But I do, obviously. So that's a thing. I watched some magic videos on my phone after the girls turned out the lights and eventually fell asleep to the lulling sounds of obese people cursing their misfortune.
The next morning the four of us went to breakfast, which I skipped in favor of the free food at the tournament site. They had yogurt! So I had a couple bananas and a couple yogurts. I won my singles match 17-0, 17-2. Very few highlights. A mercy killing, basically. Then the tournament had a rarity happen. The matches got ahead of schedule, and we were all left with some free time on our hands, so I challenged the one seed to a game. Neither of us were giving 100% probably, since we were about to play doubles. I lost 19-21, but I felt pretty confident I had figured some stuff out I could use if we ever played for real. It reinforced in my head the fact that we should be the two duking it out in the finals. Mat and I lost our doubles match, but I feel confident in saying it wasn't my fault. The game we won was because Mat finally got back a good number of serves and I took over the front court, but we lost the tiebreak when they managed to get the ball at him more consistently.
At some point Kristina decided she was angry at Mat, which made things awkward for the rest of the trip. Apparently her mood changes about things daily if not more frequently. For instance, when I mentioned I wasn't going out with the group a few weeks ago, she said she didn't drink, and I countered with I didn't eat carbs after 5:00, and she re-raised with the fact she was on a diet like that too. Well, needless to say it has been more than a day since those claims were raised.
We went to a banquet after the matches on Saturday, and it started off pretty cool. There was a tab at the bar, but the fact I wasn't drinking seemed to slow down my tablemates. They got chocolate shakes instead of alcohol, which was actually much more tempting and distracting than alcohol would have been, since while I've never had alcohol, you can bet I've had more than my fair share of chocolate binges. We waited for quite a while for the restaurant to clear out of normal patrons so our banquet thing could get underway. In that time, two guys made their way to our table and started not-so-subtly hitting on the girls. One of them was still under 21, but loved to talk about how much he could drink. Of course, his ideas of interesting topics of conversation were incredibly age-appropriate (which of course means immature), and he was being secretly mocked. Well, not so much secretly as obliviously. Also, the girls kept texting each other about him, a few of which Jessica showed me. Another application of the ubiquity of cellphones, I suppose. Amusing until you wonder what they are saying about you.
The food was terrible. Refried black beans, dry-looking rice, deep-fried doughy pseudo-mexican things, and salad. Nothing I really wanted to eat, but I ate anyway because I wasn't about to go spend money when I had already paid for this stuff with my entry fee. Then there was the raffle. Again, my poverty convinced me I shouldn't partake in what looked like the more fun option. Tickets were pretty cheap and they had a TON of stuff to give away. With every item that went out to the crowd, a brief flurry of bartering took place. Jerseys, t-shirts, towels, and other clothing items were thrown around like confetti, and the obvious trend was that if a person was in college, they were looking to trade anything they got that wasn't alcohol for something that was alcoholic. There were only six or seven things I would have wanted anyway, so it's probably best I didn't buy any tickets, but if I would have gotten a jersey from worlds in Ireland (of which there were two), or this really cool jersey that was a combination of the Irish flag and an american flag/eagle I would have been thrilled. It was pretty awesome looking, and I have no idea where it came from or how to get one. I do take some solace in the fact that I will have an Irish jersey from frisbee worlds at some point in the future. A couple of guys with too much money had bought a ton of tickets and distributed them to those without, so between the three people whose company I was in, there were a total of eight bottles of wine by the end of the night. I even walked away with a new pair of gloves and some R48 handballs (a different brand I've been wanting to try), so I guess it wasn't a bad night. We got back to the hotel and didn't have a corkscrew, which was obviously fine with me. Yet again, my not drinking resulted in a sober night. We still managed to stay up too late, though.
There's a saying in Buddhism that if you meet the Buddha on the road you should kill it/him. This has been taken to mean that if you think you know yourself or that you have achieved enlightenment, you must immediately discard those assumptions and start from scratch. I'm pretty bad at that. I feel like I've been building a huge network of beliefs my entire life, and to admit I don't know anything (though it seems more and more likely that is the case) is a step I'll probably never be able to take, as nice as the theory sounds. This goes back to the thing I said the other day about not really thinking about people as entities of their own. There is a difference between knowing a thing and acting upon it. We all know abstractly that the sun is huge and we are moving around it, but it doesn't stop us from saying the sun comes up in the morning. I doubt we really think about what's actually the case. If we thought about how things actually work rather than how they appear to work or how they function in our lives, then we would be so bogged down (and overwhelmed at the same time) we wouldn't be able to do what we want with our lives. How are we supposed to worry about which pens to buy when just a few thousand miles away an endless vacuum waits to consume us into it's entropic demise? It's like this video If we thought about how insignificant we are, even compared with the scale of humanity, much less the scale of the universe, how could we be expected to keep it all in our heads? I struggle with things like that a lot. Objectively, I know it's pointless, but I can't really stop. So I fall asleep with my phone in my hand and a video playing.
So when it comes to people, I already know on some level I can't understand myself or the simple facts of the world around me, much less the motives driving the person next to me. Again, using objectivity, I know perfectly well they are as complex as I am. They have as many motives (well-reasoned or not, conflicting or not, subconscious or not) as I do, but if I can't even fully comprehend all of my reasons, can't figure out why I can hold two conflicting beliefs and not explode, how can I think of anyone the way they "deserve?" Can anyone? I actually don't think so. I think the best we can do is admit that we can't know. We can predict. I "know" what my friends will do. I "know" how they will react. I know these things based on our shared history, how they have behaved in the past, the things they've told me that motivate them, but "knowing" someone and truly thinking about them in their entirety as a person seem too disparate to put on the same scale. I can act "knowing" it will bring a smile, and be happy I made them happy, but I can't say I did it while treating them as an individual. I did it because I had good reason to think it would elicit a particular response and that would lead to future pleasantness for me in that we would both express pleasantness.
This is getting a bit twisted and repetitive. I think about stuff like this at the oddest times, so there are notes all over my phone about it. I have notes about groceries with little things at the bottom about how I still don't comprehend what I'm doing with my food, how it's still results-based and biased because for all I know I want it to work and am really losing weight due to portion control. I have notes of unfinished (and unstarted) poems that slide headlong into tangents of how the universe responds to us trying to figure it out. How we are chasing the wonder out of the world gradually under the guise of science, and yet it still persists in the oddest ways, with the silly equations not quite balancing, or the discovery that gravity may not be as constant as we thought. And then there are the simpler poems, the notes that are designed to prompt silly little anecdotes. Those will be in the next post.
For now, let me tell you how my weekend still turned out okay (because I wrote the title before the entry this time, and have been full-bore out of control for a while now): I won my consolation match 21-2, 21-9, making some of the best gets and shots I've ever made. I played better than I needed to by far, actually. It turned out that the guy's left hand was actually pretty bad if you got the ball above his waist, but I was too busy killing and re-killing it to figure that out until the end of the match when my shoulder felt like it was coming apart. I had a point where he passed me on my left, I ran back and dug it off the back wall between my legs and immediately started sprinting for the front, where he killed it only to have me dive past him and keep it in play, at which point he missed due entirely to shock. Multiple times I got just my fingertips on the ball and rolled it out. I felt good. And I won a handball for my troubles, which is approximately one handball more than consolation winners usually get. On the drive back I even got a sandwich and a cup of soup. Total spent on the weekend: $10.00. Oh, and $10.00 for gas. Worth it. Mankato tournament in two weeks. No excuses next time. All focus, and I'm going to play a game for real as warm-up. Except they only have four courts. But I'm going to try!
Thanks for reading!
So that was fun, but mostly just a venting of frustration. Nothing came close to making up for my poor play off the bat though, so I was still fighting a bit of underlying unhappiness while distracting myself fairly successfully by bantering with my carmates. That is, until I learned that Rebecca would be sharing a car for her ten hour trip back for Thanksgiving with the guy she cheated on me with (twice). I'm not supposed to care about that probably. But I do, obviously. So that's a thing. I watched some magic videos on my phone after the girls turned out the lights and eventually fell asleep to the lulling sounds of obese people cursing their misfortune.
The next morning the four of us went to breakfast, which I skipped in favor of the free food at the tournament site. They had yogurt! So I had a couple bananas and a couple yogurts. I won my singles match 17-0, 17-2. Very few highlights. A mercy killing, basically. Then the tournament had a rarity happen. The matches got ahead of schedule, and we were all left with some free time on our hands, so I challenged the one seed to a game. Neither of us were giving 100% probably, since we were about to play doubles. I lost 19-21, but I felt pretty confident I had figured some stuff out I could use if we ever played for real. It reinforced in my head the fact that we should be the two duking it out in the finals. Mat and I lost our doubles match, but I feel confident in saying it wasn't my fault. The game we won was because Mat finally got back a good number of serves and I took over the front court, but we lost the tiebreak when they managed to get the ball at him more consistently.
At some point Kristina decided she was angry at Mat, which made things awkward for the rest of the trip. Apparently her mood changes about things daily if not more frequently. For instance, when I mentioned I wasn't going out with the group a few weeks ago, she said she didn't drink, and I countered with I didn't eat carbs after 5:00, and she re-raised with the fact she was on a diet like that too. Well, needless to say it has been more than a day since those claims were raised.
We went to a banquet after the matches on Saturday, and it started off pretty cool. There was a tab at the bar, but the fact I wasn't drinking seemed to slow down my tablemates. They got chocolate shakes instead of alcohol, which was actually much more tempting and distracting than alcohol would have been, since while I've never had alcohol, you can bet I've had more than my fair share of chocolate binges. We waited for quite a while for the restaurant to clear out of normal patrons so our banquet thing could get underway. In that time, two guys made their way to our table and started not-so-subtly hitting on the girls. One of them was still under 21, but loved to talk about how much he could drink. Of course, his ideas of interesting topics of conversation were incredibly age-appropriate (which of course means immature), and he was being secretly mocked. Well, not so much secretly as obliviously. Also, the girls kept texting each other about him, a few of which Jessica showed me. Another application of the ubiquity of cellphones, I suppose. Amusing until you wonder what they are saying about you.
The food was terrible. Refried black beans, dry-looking rice, deep-fried doughy pseudo-mexican things, and salad. Nothing I really wanted to eat, but I ate anyway because I wasn't about to go spend money when I had already paid for this stuff with my entry fee. Then there was the raffle. Again, my poverty convinced me I shouldn't partake in what looked like the more fun option. Tickets were pretty cheap and they had a TON of stuff to give away. With every item that went out to the crowd, a brief flurry of bartering took place. Jerseys, t-shirts, towels, and other clothing items were thrown around like confetti, and the obvious trend was that if a person was in college, they were looking to trade anything they got that wasn't alcohol for something that was alcoholic. There were only six or seven things I would have wanted anyway, so it's probably best I didn't buy any tickets, but if I would have gotten a jersey from worlds in Ireland (of which there were two), or this really cool jersey that was a combination of the Irish flag and an american flag/eagle I would have been thrilled. It was pretty awesome looking, and I have no idea where it came from or how to get one. I do take some solace in the fact that I will have an Irish jersey from frisbee worlds at some point in the future. A couple of guys with too much money had bought a ton of tickets and distributed them to those without, so between the three people whose company I was in, there were a total of eight bottles of wine by the end of the night. I even walked away with a new pair of gloves and some R48 handballs (a different brand I've been wanting to try), so I guess it wasn't a bad night. We got back to the hotel and didn't have a corkscrew, which was obviously fine with me. Yet again, my not drinking resulted in a sober night. We still managed to stay up too late, though.
There's a saying in Buddhism that if you meet the Buddha on the road you should kill it/him. This has been taken to mean that if you think you know yourself or that you have achieved enlightenment, you must immediately discard those assumptions and start from scratch. I'm pretty bad at that. I feel like I've been building a huge network of beliefs my entire life, and to admit I don't know anything (though it seems more and more likely that is the case) is a step I'll probably never be able to take, as nice as the theory sounds. This goes back to the thing I said the other day about not really thinking about people as entities of their own. There is a difference between knowing a thing and acting upon it. We all know abstractly that the sun is huge and we are moving around it, but it doesn't stop us from saying the sun comes up in the morning. I doubt we really think about what's actually the case. If we thought about how things actually work rather than how they appear to work or how they function in our lives, then we would be so bogged down (and overwhelmed at the same time) we wouldn't be able to do what we want with our lives. How are we supposed to worry about which pens to buy when just a few thousand miles away an endless vacuum waits to consume us into it's entropic demise? It's like this video If we thought about how insignificant we are, even compared with the scale of humanity, much less the scale of the universe, how could we be expected to keep it all in our heads? I struggle with things like that a lot. Objectively, I know it's pointless, but I can't really stop. So I fall asleep with my phone in my hand and a video playing.
So when it comes to people, I already know on some level I can't understand myself or the simple facts of the world around me, much less the motives driving the person next to me. Again, using objectivity, I know perfectly well they are as complex as I am. They have as many motives (well-reasoned or not, conflicting or not, subconscious or not) as I do, but if I can't even fully comprehend all of my reasons, can't figure out why I can hold two conflicting beliefs and not explode, how can I think of anyone the way they "deserve?" Can anyone? I actually don't think so. I think the best we can do is admit that we can't know. We can predict. I "know" what my friends will do. I "know" how they will react. I know these things based on our shared history, how they have behaved in the past, the things they've told me that motivate them, but "knowing" someone and truly thinking about them in their entirety as a person seem too disparate to put on the same scale. I can act "knowing" it will bring a smile, and be happy I made them happy, but I can't say I did it while treating them as an individual. I did it because I had good reason to think it would elicit a particular response and that would lead to future pleasantness for me in that we would both express pleasantness.
This is getting a bit twisted and repetitive. I think about stuff like this at the oddest times, so there are notes all over my phone about it. I have notes about groceries with little things at the bottom about how I still don't comprehend what I'm doing with my food, how it's still results-based and biased because for all I know I want it to work and am really losing weight due to portion control. I have notes of unfinished (and unstarted) poems that slide headlong into tangents of how the universe responds to us trying to figure it out. How we are chasing the wonder out of the world gradually under the guise of science, and yet it still persists in the oddest ways, with the silly equations not quite balancing, or the discovery that gravity may not be as constant as we thought. And then there are the simpler poems, the notes that are designed to prompt silly little anecdotes. Those will be in the next post.
For now, let me tell you how my weekend still turned out okay (because I wrote the title before the entry this time, and have been full-bore out of control for a while now): I won my consolation match 21-2, 21-9, making some of the best gets and shots I've ever made. I played better than I needed to by far, actually. It turned out that the guy's left hand was actually pretty bad if you got the ball above his waist, but I was too busy killing and re-killing it to figure that out until the end of the match when my shoulder felt like it was coming apart. I had a point where he passed me on my left, I ran back and dug it off the back wall between my legs and immediately started sprinting for the front, where he killed it only to have me dive past him and keep it in play, at which point he missed due entirely to shock. Multiple times I got just my fingertips on the ball and rolled it out. I felt good. And I won a handball for my troubles, which is approximately one handball more than consolation winners usually get. On the drive back I even got a sandwich and a cup of soup. Total spent on the weekend: $10.00. Oh, and $10.00 for gas. Worth it. Mankato tournament in two weeks. No excuses next time. All focus, and I'm going to play a game for real as warm-up. Except they only have four courts. But I'm going to try!
Thanks for reading!
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