Insomniatic introspection (imminently omit-able)

I didn't sleep last night. I took an oddly-timed nap at from 4:00 to 8:00 and then I didn't start my homework until almost midnight. Interestingly, the last time I was going to do laundry, I thought I would just game the system and get change from a soda machine. The soda machine in my building doesn't have any quarters in it. So when it refused to give me any money back at all, I reluctantly purchased a Mountain Dew. So at midnight I drank a can of Mountain Dew. Around 10:00 am I started feeling tired. Apparently not drinking any soda for a long time really makes me susceptible to caffeine! This will undoubtedly come in handy soon, as I have a bunch of stuff looming. Right now, though, it means I am sleep-deprived and in one of my weirdly disconnected phases. I can acknowledge things that should be important, and just sort of pass over them. I did manage to do my contracts reading for tomorrow, but it took me three crosswords' worth of distractions to get through the forty pages of reading. It's better than not getting it done at all, of course, and there's nothing to say that I wouldn't have been distracted had I been feeling normal, but when I don't feel like myself I am always quick to try and analyze what's going on.

I think I've been having trouble deciding which times are the times I feel like myself recently. There's the version of myself that forgets I'm unhappy and alone, and it's easy to get caught up in that feeling, but if I always revert back to my "normal" acknowledgment of emptiness, is that the real me? Or is this supposed to be a process of converting myself into the person who can ignore their underlying feeling of substantial lacking? I'm used to both feelings at this point, and it really just comes down to which one I feel like indulging. Or which one the people around me will let me indulge. It's basically impossible for me to feel like things are inadequate when I'm talking to Sarah, for example. There's just always some sarcastic remark, funny anecdote, or poignant reminiscence occurring that doesn't let me focus on the big picture. Something a bit strange happened on Saturday, though. We talked for more than four hours, and it got to the point where I noticed I was "waking up" from the feeling at intervals. I would be joking along, or fully engaged, and then something small would trigger and I would just go quiet as I thought about how the conversation was such a temporary thing.

The parallel to my little obsession with death is obvious. I've had countless conversations (both with myself and others) about how I can't stop thinking about it, being overwhelmed, and ultimately unhappy because of the sheer futility of it all. It's the exact same thing as waking up from the happiness of being involved in a conversation, except the thing I'm waking up from is life! Putting things in a bigger perspective is troubling no matter what level, it seems. Taking a step back from the conversation makes me realize the fact that I don't have occasion to talk in depth and with no holds barred very often. It's broken up into weird facets. I can talk about everything, as long as I spread it out among the appropriate people. I can commiserate with Greg about our lack of girlfriends, I can talk upbeat with handball people and make sexual innuendos with John, John, Brian, and Dane. I can make clever jokes with casual law school acquaintances, but none of it is as wholesome as being able to just say whatever comes to mind. I get to talk about almost as much with my mom, of course, which is an amazing outlet that I use all to frequently. Sarah has basically called me out for still being attached, but it always comes down to who you share the most experience with. Who knows enough to understand so you don't have to re-explain everything to give a background before launching into whatever it is that needs talking about. And she's amazing enough that she always seems to pick up the phone. I'm a lucky kid. (An almost 25 year-old kid.) Anyway, the conversations always go the same way, with an acknowledgment that there's no benefit to focusing on death, since there's nothing I can do about it, and no way to know about it either. So why do it? My usual response is, because it's obviously important. It's almost like I'm the first human again. We are all the first human when it comes to this, since we all know exactly as much as every person before us. We are all in the original position of not knowing what will happen when we die. So we have choices; we can believe something without justification, we can admit we know nothing and put it out of our mind, or we can keep banging our heads against the wall and hope someday it cracks. And I know it's futile, but I also know that for thousands of years, people either thought they knew how matter worked, admitted they didn't know how matter work, or kept chipping away. And there's still a fundamental gap in our knowledge about that area too. But when I know something is important, I can't just let it go. I can leave it for a while, and hope that when I come back to it I have a fresh angle, but the mere fact that it is the most important thing I can think of ensures I will be drawn back. That metaphorical moth to the flame. And, ironically enough, death is waiting for me when I get close enough to touch my flame too, since that's the only way to know anything, after all.

It gives life an interesting cyclical rhythm. I thought it was seasonal, since I'd heard so much about SAD and it sounded convenient, but it hasn't been drawing me that much recently. I think it's still so much easier to get frustrated about the smaller (still big) things in life than it is to get caught up in that overwhelming abyss, that as long as I have enough to do, when I'm done for the day my brain turns first to my worldly troubles, and by the time it might normally get around to the meaninglessness of all of it, I'm either on to the next thing, writing to sort out my brain (since life's troubles seem imminently more solvable (whether or not that's actually true is more doubtful)), or asleep.

It turns out I owe my sister an apology. I guess it wasn't common knowledge she and Kurt were able to secure spots to worlds, and because I wrote about it, things happened not according to plan. So that sucks, and I wish I had had more context. I was just happy and wanted to congratulate her, but I should have erred on the side of personal message rather than a public medium, I suppose. So I'm sorry, Sarah! I'm still happy for you though!

It turns out I have a mouse in my apartment. I'm trying to ascertain the viability of training it, while simultaneously trying to figure out what I actually should do about it. I mean, it obviously got in without using the door, so there's likely a way out I don't know about. So should I just assume it will realize there are probably apartments with more food than mine (since my cupboards are currently empty), should I attempt to trap it (not kill it), or should I just bite the bullet and go for the swift execution? I can't stop thinking about the mouse in The Green Mile whenever I see it, so I can't really bring myself to go for the death route. But I also don't have a spool for it to push or a motorcycle for it to ride, so I don't know about the training either. What I do know is that my apartment probably isn't big enough for the two of us. I mean, I have a hard enough time squeezing myself into my closet. The mouse chose poorly.

I found a neat nutrition/exercise guide called "The Truth About Six Pack Abs" I've always been way more attracted to abs and desiring of nice abs than any other body part, so the title grabbed me, but it turns out (as I already basically knew) that the key to abs isn't working your abs. It's getting your body fat below 10%. At least for guys. Girls only have to shoot for 18-20% before their abs start showing through nicely, but they store more fat in their hips and thighs and stuff, so I guess they have their own problems. I read all of it between yesterday and today, and it lined up pretty well with what I was already doing, except that it had a few more details about types of food and eating schedules than I was currently using. It also included a few good body-weight exercises I plan on adopting, as well as some full-body lifts I haven't tried. So maybe the next time I go shopping (soon) I'll try and buy things that will help conform to the six small meals a day schedule. I'm not sure I really have time to keep track of all that right now, though. I mean, I technically do, but I know my studying schedule, my handball schedule, and my tendency to stay here in the computer lab at odd times will be working in contradiction to the strict schedule thing. I think it would be way easier if I had a nine to five job, but then I'd be miserable because I had a nine to five job, so I'll take the trade-off.

One thing I do want to incorporate is to drink more tea. The author said green, oolong, and white tea all have good effects on the metabolism, and I think I can incorporate that without too much trouble. Plus, I've always heard green tea was good for me, so I might as well start. Granted, I don't really care for the taste, but I don't hate it either. The only problem is that it will make me miss all the people who used to make tea all the time! Again, probably a decent trade-off. So I need to buy tea.

I spent the past hour watching highlights of soccer goals. Here they are in case you're as in need of staying awake as I was:

Ronaldinho bicycle kicks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7odTNguD4Zo

Ronaldinho best goals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Arb7XPG-jw

Lionel Messi 50 best goals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEhniGlFDtA

Christiano Ronaldo 50 best goals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoDb4t9N3c8

Compilation of soccer tricks (heavily featuring Ronaldinho)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxOeyJ8EWZY

I've also been looping Watsky's song "Sloppy Seconds" in my free minutes between class. I really love the opening two verses:

[Verse 1]
Fuck you if you love a car for its paint job
Love you if you love a car for the road trips
Show me the miles and your arms and the pink scar
Where the doctor had to pull out all the bone chips
Cause you were pressing on the gas just a bit hard
Right in the moment where the road curved a bit sharp
And when you woke up
Somebody was unclipping your seat belt
And pulling you from the open window of your flipped car

[Hook]
Cold pizza, tie-dye shirts
Broken hearts, give'm here, give'm here
Hand me downs, give me give me leftovers
Give me give me sloppy seconds
Give em here, give em here
I don't care where you've been
How many miles, I still love you (2x)

[Verse 2]
Show me someone who says they got no baggage
I'll show you somebody whose got no story
Nothing gory means no glory, but baby please don't bore me
We won't know until we get there
The who, or the what, or the when where
My favorite sweater was a present that I got a couple presidents ago
And I promised that I would rock it till it's thread bare
Bet on it
Every single person gotta couple skeletons
So pretty soon, in this room
It'll just be me and you when we clear out all the elephants
Me and you and the elements

We all have our pitfalls
Beer's flat, the cabs have been called
And everybody and their momma can hear the drama that's happening behind these thin walls.

Song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCEsveSK5to

Well, it's late enough that if I go to bed I will probably get enough sleep to get through the night, so I'm going to head home. Thanks for reading!

Most of the rest of stuff

I have no idea how to organize this stuff. Luckily, this blog has never been that organized.

So it turns out I've been walking into this place called Mondale Hall every day clueless as to this guy's actual story. I knew from orientation he was instrumental in the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, which was pretty cool. But it turns out he was also vice president of the United States?! And subsequently a candidate for president? He was the first vice president to have an office in the White House, and he really expanded the role the VP played. Of course, as far as I'm concerned that means he multiplied zero by a number, since I have yet to hear of a VP doing anything of consequence. But still, presidential candidate! There's probably a lot more that I have no clue about too, but I'll leave those for another time. You'll learn as I do, and I'm not interested enough to look anything up. It will be a fun, gradual process!

I know nobody reading this will care about this, but I watched a really cool youtube documentary on the game Super Smash Brothers, so I wanted to include a link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tgWH-qXpv8&list=FLbkYrBZ7Ymm4y63jhEIAjFA&index=4

It's an interesting probe into the social atmosphere of another sort of obscure scene. It's the same as anything, really. Handball, frisbee, magic, juggling, starcraft, etc. There are people out there who take things incredibly seriously, and their quest to be the best in their niche is inspiring to me. Walk up to anyone and try and talk about this stuff and your first ten minutes are spend dispelling stereotypes (that usually exist for a decent reason) before you can actually get to anything interesting. But those "in the know" automatically have a connection that allows them to talk for hours at a time! I love that these facets of our culture exist. It really makes you think that there's a spot in society for anyone who takes the time to carve one out.

Tomorrow I have a thing my professor calls Contracts-Fest. It's technically optional, but it starts at 8:00 am, goes until the last person is satisfied with their knowledge, and includes food. And she said she'd be talking about areas to focus on for the final. So it's optional in the same way its optional to not jump off a bridge. I'm okay with the idea, actually; it's just odd that this sort of thing happens at all. But I was thinking taking a tiny break from the sheer amount of handball I've been playing might be nice before the tournament next weekend anyway. Maybe I'm just getting a bit burnt out and taking things for granted on the court. So I'll spend tomorrow sequestered with my section learning about contracts!

Speaking of contracts, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts jumped in and grabbed jurisdiction over a case recently that I found interesting. A woman couldn't have kids with her husband, so they contracted with another woman to have her artificially inseminated with his genetic material. The contract provided for three payments totaling $10,000. If at any point she backed out, she would have to give the money back. Sure enough, a few days before she delivered she decided she wanted to keep the kid, despite being chosen on the grounds that she had already had a family, expressed no interest in having any more kids for herself, and was in need of the money. Perhaps predictably, the court ruled that she had every right to rule the contract void. But what I find thought-provoking is that the court paralleled this contract to an adoption contract wherever it could. In those practices, a mom has four days after giving birth to changer her mind about putting a child up for adoption. They also made a big deal about the fact that she was technically the biological mother in that her DNA was used in the creation of the child. So it leaves the door open for cases where a fertilized egg is implanted, for instance. The court seemed really wary about endorsing what amounted to the sale of a child, but I am tempted to say that this amounts to more of a service than a sale of a person. It deprives two parents of a kid they were counting on, had made appropriate arrangements for, and all because this woman is making this decision at what is probably the most-influenced time of the process.

Another thing I said I'd talk about in my conclusion yesterday is this guy I met through my group project. We work together really well when it comes to outlining cases and thinking through issues, so when I needed a place to store my backpack while we went into a courtroom setting (where such items aren't allowed), I turned to him for use of his locker. On our way there, I asked him about a book he said he published. He casually said he used his lobbying groups resources to get it printed. I had some follow-up questions. Here's a list of what I learned:

He emailed the Chinese government while still in high school with some suggestions for expanding religious freedom.
China responded by asking when his delegation would be able to visit.
He got together a group and went to China, meeting with the head of the religious department.
His group turned into a non-profit lobbying group.
At some point he wrote two books, one of which was a political thriller.
He published it using his connections, and at some point the lobbying stopped happening.
His senior year of college, a professor left and he was asked to fill in.
He re-wrote the curriculum, including his political thriller as a textbook.
Now he's in law school.

That was quite a list!

On November 15 the Make-A-Wish foundation is turning San Francisco into Gotham City for a day so a 5-year-old can be batman for a day. I wish I could go. It sounds like a blast, and knowing it's for a good cause adds that extra element of appeal.

This article was all over facebook for a day or two around last weekend. And by "all over facebook" I mean that I saw it twice, and considering my low number of friends, I assume that means everyone saw it at some point: http://sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/

Now, I found myself taking both sides of the issue, so I figured it was worth writing about. In case you didn't read it, it is basically all summed up by this quote: "You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family...for your future children... Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married."

Now, on the surface there are two immediate reactions. Of course, my immediate reaction was "that's ridiculous. Of course you have to think about yourself when you decide who you want to spend the rest of your life with. If you're only thinking about making them happy, then you're doing yourself a disservice. You have a responsibility to yourself to be happy also." Of course, anyone who knows me is completely unsurprised by this reaction. Knowing how prolific this article was getting, I wanted to know what the comments said. After all, if it were being spread and then people were disagreeing with it, I wanted to know. Right now the comments have been hijacked into a discussion about the origins of the concept of marriage and whether or not it's a religious thing, but I took some pictures using my phone so I could write at my leisure later. Here's a quote:

"Wow... After reading just a handful of responses this article received, I now truly see how much the devil has corrupted society's view on marriage, love, and lust! The reason the divorce rate is so high is not because of out-dated ideals on what marriage is...but rather the new idea of what marriage is. Of what love is. Marriage used to be something people went into knowing it was a lifetime commitment. Now, people go into it with the philosophy that if it doesn't work - oh well.Just split up and try again. Maybe two or three times will be the charm. That they will magically find their "perfect" match if they just keep trying. There is not "perfect" match. No one and only soulmate. Relationships take work that people just aren't willing to put in anymore. Or they are only willing to work at it a little, and if that doesn't work - well, it must not have been "meant to be." So wrong...!!! The other part is that because people no longer know what love is. Love is UNselfish. Love is NOT lust. You do not "fall in love" the first time you see someone. You don't even fall in love during the first month. True love is something that happens over time. My husband and I have been together for 19 years, married 13...and we didn't truly begin to understand how to love each other until about 5 years into the marriage. Love is not the butterflies in your stomach, can't stop thinking about him/her, want to spend every minute together feeling you get in the beginning of a relationship. That is simply lust...Love is so much more than that."

Oddly, I found myself relating to this idea as well. Then I realized that none of that concerned the thing I originally had a problem with. So the two views aren't really inconsistent. You can be in a relationship not just for the other person and still be committed to an "older version."

I'm posting this unfinished so I can talk to Sarah S. I'll get back to it probably. But if not, there you go.

Thanks for reading!

Judge Joe Brown Visits the University of Minnesota Law School

An amazing thing happened today. Judge Joe Brown visited my school. Now, I am not one easily swayed by celebrity, but this guy was awe inspiring. Unfortunately, this was not for good reasons. The guy who introduced the Judge really focused on his experience as a minority lawyer and his ability to provide insight into the somewhat recent phenomenon of small claims courts. Judge Joe Brown, on the other hand decided to focus on other aspects of the law. And soon enough, other aspects of anything at all. Allow me to illustrate:

The judge started off by really emphasizing that the law was entirely a matter of appealing to a jury. He said that the jury was the standard we had to keep in mind at every step of litigation, and that a major factor that would make or break our careers would be our ability to relate to a jury. He practiced in the South, so his stories on this topic mostly concerned emphasizing church. One case in particular concerned a murder and the prosecution's key witness was, and I quote "a lady of the night, or as I call her, a ho." His key witness was a young man whose story was not very good. Four of the five people tried in the matter were found guilty, and his client was the only one to go free. You know what he did? He had his witness's father show up in court every day in a nice suit, and near the end of the testimony asked him if he could identify that man in the back of the court room, to which his witness responded "of course, that's my dad, pastor 'such-and-such.'" The whole jury was moved right there. In his closing, Brown said he sat in the witness chair and told the jury "This judge is going to give you instructions, and he's going to tell you to think about the witness's demeanor and reliability into account. So who ya gonna believe? The pastor's boy or the ho?" And he won his case.

Another story involved him grabbing all the evidence and walking over to the jury and saying "I'm going to cast this all up into the heavens, and let God keep whatever he wants." Sure enough, it all came back down to earth, and one woman jumped up with an "Amen!" and ended up hanging the jury, getting him his retrial.

What this had to do with being a minority or judge of small claims court, I'm not quite sure, but that's where the vague association with the courtroom ended. What followed was a solid forty-five minutes of rambling rants about the government. His segues were mind-boggling. My notes pick up about ten minutes after his courtroom stories with a series of question marks. It was at this point I realized we weren't getting back to the topic of lawyering any time soon. Under the ruse of issue-spotting, he changed the topic to the Middle East. Something about how as lawyers we would have to learn how to get at what was actually important. He said that England had gone bankrupt paying gold for sugar it wanted for its tea. For some reason, this included an affected British accent. Let me just say, until you've heard Judge Joe Brown's southern black voice give way to a British impersonation, you haven't experienced all life has to offer. Then he went from that to the fact that England's way of recouping economically in its search for tea was to get people addicted to opium, plant opium in Afghanistan, and ensure their subsequent power over the Afghan government by keeping it destabilized.

Naturally, the topic was then transitioned into a discussion of our involvement in Kuwait and Bush's interest in oil. He asked for questions soon after. We were all speechless. I certainly had no idea what I had just witnessed. Not wanting to let a minute go by without hearing himself talk, Judge Brown supplied his own question in the form of "Let me give you first year students some advice. I can do twenty times the research you guys can do in half the time it takes you to do it." He then launched into a description of photocopying certain key pages I didn't bother remembering because, you know, I have this thing called the internet. He concluded this segment with "this gives you more time to be relaxing. You have to be careful who you have an affair with, though." His second solicitation for questions was met with more stunned silence. One of the representatives for the organization that was hosting him raised her hand.

"Can you tell us a bit about the role of the small claims courts and your experience there?" You know, that thing we thought we were paying you to come do in the first place? He started almost on topic by giving us the story of how the small claims court came to exist in the United States. After filling us in about that, he said "lots of idiots file stupid claims in small claims. It was my job to beat them down." He then ranted about the quality of the education system. The reason we have so many idiots filling up his court is because of these stupid standardized tests that teachers have to teach to. I don't necessarily disagree, but oh boy was that ever not what the question was asking! After emphasizing his role as the man in charge of the courtroom, he told a story about how Hollywood wanted to take over, but because he was a judge he retained control of the program. They apparently invited a high-ranking judicial figure to try and intimidate him, but that lady was a girl he recruited to attend his alma mater and subsequently dated, so they just kissed on the mouth in greeting and Hollywood's plan failed. At this point there were multiple people just laughing uncontrollably, while the rest of us just looked around with various degrees of skepticism and confusion on our faces. And then his time was up and we left. What a weird experience.

Thanks for reading! I realized this was long enough to be a post of its own, so I'll get on with the rest of my life stuff immediately.

A bunch of boring stuff, unless you think my daily activity is interesting

It's been a long time since I posted, huh? I think that's more a consequence of the weather than anything else, to be honest. I find myself thinking, "Well, I could stick around and blog and watch tv, or I could get home before it gets cold and rainy." I usually choose dry and warm. But today the forecast is free of precipitation, and it's already cold, so there's nothing to lose by staying.

Where to start? I guess it's been more than a week? So on Wednesday nothing really happened. I pulled an all-nighter to finish my paper for legal writing. So not much to say there. Thursday I got to play Andy! I lost the first game 21-7, but I made some adjustments and got 17 in the second game. I'm curious if he was trying his hardest, because if he was, I think I could fit in pretty well with the top players if I surrounded myself with them and really devoted myself to getting better. That was encouraging. Events which have transpired since then have been a bit less so, but we'll get to that.

Friday? I don't really remember Friday. I know I met with my group to work on our project, but the rest was pretty mundane. Saturday I had to decide between biking and not body pumping or getting a ride and doing another round of the class. So I went with the ride. It was much better when I didn't use way too much weight on the bicep segment. I played for a while, and since there are only four courts at Midway, I got a lot of doubles practice in. It was good, since I feel like that's definitely a weak area for me, and I'm playing open doubles in Milwaukee soon. I will need more experience playing with my partner (we both prefer the front court), but I'm looking forward to some fast-paced action.

Sunday I didn't do anything. Apparently what I should have been doing was outlining for my classes, writing papers before they were due, and getting a jump on studying. Instead, I napped, wrote a bit of bad poetry, and watched a bunch of Magic: the Gathering on my phone. Luckily, with all the napping, I woke up really early Monday and got all my reading done before class. Then I did a brilliant thing that may have been for the first time: I checked the weather! It turned out there was a storm-ish looking thing headed my way, so I went to class forty-five minutes early and kept reading. By the time I left, the rain had passed. Planning and foresight! Who knew!? Monday was a good day for food also. My section had a meet-up with our orientation advisers for a check in before the last push toward finals. For the fourth time, I was told that I should really be started doing all the things I haven't been doing. Everyone is emphasizing doing all these advanced study things, but I am as yet unpersuaded. I still feel like I have an adequate grasp on the material from studying it the first time, and the tests are open-note! I don't know. I just really hate stressing out about stuff like this. And every time I start to feel comfortable, a professor or previous student jumps up and says things are awful and I need to do a bunch of stuff. But the point is, they had free quiznos. And because our section had a way higher RSVP rate than others (we have a pretty unique rapport with each other, it feels like), they ordered pizza. So I ate quiznos and pizza, then found more pizza waiting outside leftover from other sections. Then I went to the cafe and waited until they put out the leftovers. I don't know why more people don't hang out there. I mean, there's always a few, but every time my group meets and they put out free food, we all make remarks about how we should go there every day. I guess I'm the only one who's serious about it? I guess I shouldn't complain; more for me, right?

Tuesday I played league again! We won, and I won, and I played terribly. It was actually very frustrating. Not more frustrating than losing, of course, but I felt like I wasn't playing good handball. Just in general. My left hand has reverted back to its submissive role after showing decent improvement while my shoulder was hurt. My serve is underwhelming, and my footwork is lazy. Then, when I left, it was snowing heavily. I was ready to brave the elements, and I called my mom to aid in distracting me from the misery of my wet, cold, slippery bike ride. Only, it turned out I left the YMCA going the wrong way. I had done this before, and I had committed certain landmarks to memory to avoid doing it again. Unfortunately, I misremembered that I was supposed to bike past the Arby's while leaving rather than arriving. Also, there is a weird divide because a train goes down the middle of the street, so to get across one has to turn around a couple times. These are all silly excuses I'm putting forward to illustrate why I biked two or three miles in the wrong direction. Eventually I realized I hadn't gone under an underpass like I should have, made an about-face, and biked the now-six or -seven miles back to my apartment. I owe a great debt to my mother for staying on the line while baking her cookies and talking with me through my misery. At one point I hit a patch of snow-covered leaves and slid out, but luckily I was traveling so slow due to the conditions and lack of fenders that I was able to stick my foot out and sort of push along in a skateboard-like maneuver and stay upright. I was pretty proud of myself.

The roads were pretty much clear by Wednesday morning. So I was biking to class, and while I was going over a bridge I looked back to change lanes when my back tire slid out. I went down. I was not very proud of myself. So it turns out the warnings that bridges freeze before roads is entirely accurate. I wish I had found a more appropriate way to perform this research. So after bouncing off my butt for a while, I made it to class and took stock of my injuries. My knee has a slight hole in it, my butt has a huge bout of road rash, and my elbow is bruised and a bit skinned, along with miscellaneous bits of shin and ankle that were caught in the crossfire. Luckily I got more pizza at lunch. I had to learn to get this pizza though. The lecture was about terrorism and how the government has been expanding its capability of prosecuting suspects. It's now acceptable for the government to put you away for more than 20 years for aiding terrorists. They put a guy away just for offering to provide medical services in the future to the Taliban. So he hadn't actually done anything, but his mere offer was enough for them to find him guilty. One of the cases being tried by the attorney visiting concerned her clients helping terrorists use email. Nothing crazy, just how to save a draft so you could read it later (or someone else with your information could read it later without having to hit send). She wondered out loud about humanitarian efforts in conflict countries. At some point it approaches a certainty that those people will have provided aid to a terrorist. It may even be that their aid gives people enough freedom that they can leave their day to day existence behind and actually join a terrorist organization! I grabbed a muffin and a bear claw as I left from the bakery. Another day I didn't need to provide my own food.

Also Wednesday, instead of going to civil procedure, we attended a live motion for summary judgment argument hosted here at the law school. It was pretty interesting in that we got to see explicitly the exact things we've been studying being argued in real life. Civil Procedure came into play in that it was a motion for summary judgment, they talked about jurisdiction, and they had particular burdens they had to meet. Also, courtroom manner, and other things were probably important. Torts came into play because the plaintiff was arguing about negligence. Whether the seller of an item has a duty to provide safety information to everyone who will use it, or whether they just had to provide that info to the purchaser and they then incurred the duty to inform. Whether the injury that occurred was foreseeable to the manufacturer, and whether the plaintiff assumed the risk when he exercised his decision-making process incredibly poorly. Contracts came into play through the concept of implied warrant of merchantability. So all of my classes were represented. And I knew exactly what these people were talking about! Encouraging indeed. I felt like I could totally do this stuff. And I don't event think I want to stand up and argue in front of people. But it didn't look hard! That's the important part.

Thursday is today. So I'm nearly caught up with the mundanities. My leg had finally scabbed over part way through today, so I didn't have to keep adjusting in my seat to get my shorts to stop sticking to it. My elbow being sore was really annoying because when I take notes I rest it on the table in a way that is no longer tolerable. I grabbed a blueberry crumble pastry and a donut after school from the cafe for free. I ate poor quality pizza while listening to a man talk about the jurisdictional complications of indian reservations. And a good time was had by all. I think I'll write my civil procedure paper on this topic actually, so you might want to brace yourself for more talk about this soon. I'll leave it alone for now though.

I was watching How I Met Your Mother while typing part of this. Near the end a character says that finding the right person is like finding the person who hits the reset switch on all of life, so that doing things again is special just because you're doing it with them. I'm not sure if I've ever felt exactly that way, but I do know that I loved my subsequent trips out west with girlfriends precisely because I loved watching them react to the things I already knew I loved. So it wasn't like I was enjoying the scenery for the scenery. Rather, I was enjoying it for the reaction it produced in the person I cared about. It was like I had something to offer myself, in that I was responsible for their happiness, even though I obviously wasn't responsible for the sights or anything. So it wasn't like the world had been reset, because I wasn't experiencing it for the first time. I was experiencing it through another person, which may have been even better in that those people were even more outwardly enthusiastic than I was.

I don't react that much to things, especially outwardly. I've been exploring this a bit in some writing I'm doing on my own, but the point is that I think I need to be taken by surprise to really genuinely smile these days. I can appreciate something as beautiful or smart, or clever, but unless I'm startled, it doesn't usually produce a physical reaction. So when a six year old grabs my hand and drags me into the handball court, that's awesome and unexpected. When he hugs me and calls me his friend later, I smile, because I am surprised at how easily that term comes at that age. I forget that things can occur in a smaller worldview than an entire lifetime, and to be really caught in a moment is so rare these days that when it happens, it's awesome. But it doesn't happen much, and every day it feels like there's less that can really take me by surprise enough to make that happen. I'm not sure if this sounds weird, but being around people who aren't very smart (or who I don't consider looking to as a source of wit) is perfect in that when they do say something clever, it catches me off guard and I feel a genuine appreciation. Sure, it's a pedantic appreciation, or something not quite perfect, but it's nice. Like when a person makes a joke that is funny by itself, but also funny because it references a conversation from a half hour ago, or from earlier that day. And I was sure they didn't remember that particular detail from earlier, or something.

When my mom mentioned she said something to my dad along the lines of being a bit taken aback that the time he smiled at her the most genuinely was when she made an unlikely putt at disc golf, it brought this to mind. There's a constant appreciation I have for smart things, for practicality, for intelligence, but there's always going to be something genuinely fantastic about the surprising. So when Kristina, Ted, Jessica, Alex, or any other person I don't play seriously at handball hits an amazing shot, I smile. And I smile more about that than I did about being in love. But that doesn't mean the former is anything similar to the same scale as the latter. It's just a different reaction. So I hope my mom doesn't think my dad requires her to be sinking sixty-foot putts to be happy. Because if she started doing it regularly, it would become one of those constant appreciations anyway. A smile would be accorded, sure, and a nod of acknowledgment, but that elusive grin would come later, say if she bounced it in off an obstacle.

I think this also has to do with why relationships are so fantastic when they are starting out. There's just more to be surprised by. This doesn't have to be significant-other style relationships, either. Tera has been playing handball for about a month now. She is ridiculous. She flops around the court, dances in the middle of points, jumps for joy if she hits it to the front wall, and her happiness is infectious precisely because I don't have any idea what's going to prompt the next silly thing. Mention one thing to her and she is ready to try it. And she'll jump in oblivious to what other people are thinking, just because that's what she wants to do at that moment. She tackles her boyfriend without any notice, but also jumps into his lap and kisses him while he is equally unaware. It's all too spontaneous for me to understand, and I find myself smiling around her way more than other people I've gotten a bit more used to. But that's just her personality and how different it is from mine. It will continue to surprise me for longer than the other people I find easier to understand. Her recklessness is refreshing.

My sister is going to Worlds! That is amazing. I'm not even jealous for once. I'm actually just genuinely thrilled she has this opportunity and gets to share it with Kurt. I can't even come up with more appropriate words than amazing. So amazing will just have to do. Have an amazing time, Sarah!

And speaking of Sarahs it's Sarah Schreitmueller's birthday today! Happy birthday, even if it's only for another twenty minutes. And that's your time! You're special day has been over for a while where I am, but hey, take advantage of the last bit.

I actually have a lot more to talk about, but this post has been pretty long already. So I'll try and continue tomorrow. Things to look forward to: I made a friend who accidentally formed a delegation to the Chinese government and then turned that into a nonprofit lobbying group. Also, is it legal to contract to have another person's baby? All this and more here next time. Thanks for reading!

Actually brief post

I'm supposed to be writing my paper, so I'll be (sort of) brief. I played my first game of league handball yesterday! It was against Saint Anthony's Athletic Club, and I was looking forward to playing against Andy Nett. Unfortunately, he switched to doubles sort of last minute, so I played a guy named JJ instead. I won 21-7, 21-20. He served first in the second half and I struggled a bit to adjust. He was up 20-14 by the time I finally figured out a good left-handed return for his lob z-serve. I made some pretty good gets to prevent him from winning, and he was getting pretty worn out by the end. He hit almost exclusively deep pass shots, so that took some adjustment as well. Instead of running up to cover the front for kill shots like I usually do, the better strategy was to hang out right behind him so I could get to either side after he hit the inevitable pass. When we finished I asked if anyone was going to stick around, and everyone declined. Andy said he'd go to the university on Thursday, though. So I get to play him tomorrow.

Another thing that happened yesterday was that I ate a muffin. A chocolate muffin, to be precise. It was the equivalent of putting some oil on a hill in that it created a disastrous slipper slope. The result of which is that I might be dead by the end of today. You see, at some point between yesterday and today my willpower disappeared. I woke up around 5:00 today and revised a piece of writing for my mom. I'll talk about that some other time. I also made breakfast. I had a bit of leftover pancake, a bowl of cereal, and a banana. A bit later, lunch happened. It was amazing. I ate two full lunches consisting of salad, hummus and pita bread, an Indian chicken dish, an Indian vegetarian dish, rice, and dessert. I went through the line twice. Dessert the first time was triple chocolate cheesecake. The second time, carrot cake. I was helpless. A mere 2-3 hours later I was sitting in the cafe working on my civil procedure group project with a partner when the man from behind the counter set out the first round of food. I immediately grabbed a salad with turkey and bacon on top. Then I went back up and grabbed another salad (this one with fruit and walnuts) and a gluten-free turkey sandwich. That was the first round. The second round I grabbed a banana, a container of chopped pineapple, a raspberry and white chip muffin, and an apple fritter.

I found this comic a while back, and only just looked at it again recently. I thought this one was funny:
http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/comic/646-snake-eyes

Most of the comics are just puns. Right up Sarah S's alley, but not usually my cup of tea. Alright, time to write. Thanks for reading!

I'm so full! OR Embrace the Awkwardness!

The lecture had something to do with Syrian judicial defectors to Turkey and their attempts to set up a court system in liberated sections of Syria. All I knew was that it advertised lots of food. Specifically. As in "Topic sentence. Lots of food." It was not wrong. The advantage to being near the end of the line in a situation like this is that you know you don't have to feel guilty piling the plate as high as you can with as much as it can hold. It was catered by a place called Afro Deli, and the components were pita bread/naan/something, salad, seasoned lamb chunks, and a curried chicken with potatoes, topped with gyro sauce and a green curry sauce. Amazing. And I sort of learned about sort of Syria. But I was so focused on my delicious food I missed a large portion of his speech. The man who was speaking asked to remain anonymous because he might be targeted if his identity was revealed. He was skyped in from Turkey, where he spends much of his time now that he's defected. It was obvious he couldn't really speak English and was just reading off a paper in front of him, painstakingly sounding out word by word. But I did listen after he finished and opened the floor to questions, which was the majority of the time anyway, since his reading only took ten minutes.

One of the questions asked had to do with what he thought of the current efforts to accomplish peace through negotiations and the democratic process. He said he supports the democratic process and is happy the west helped end chemical weapons, but wonders what the West will do about the thousands dead and the crimes being committed every day. If you read my post a bit ago about Malalai Joya, she was adamant we leave Afghanistan alone to manage their own problems. But this guy seemed to be asking for us to do more, so even with my zero understanding of the situation, it seems clear that the decision about whether or not to get involved is basically impossible.

My day Saturday was quite a series of events:

I woke up at 6:30, ate a bowl of oatmeal and two eggs, and left for power pump class a bit before 7:30. John offered me some sort of liquid he said was "not confirmed as illegal" which I turned down. Power pump class started. Every person got a bar, some weights to put on their bar, a step-up box thing, and an exercise mat. The music started, and the person started giving instructions through her microphone. We did a bunch of reps to music of squats, cleans, lunges, bench, bicep curls, overhead press, pushups, clean and press, abs,  dips, tricep extensions, flys, and rows. I just put on whatever weight Dane (another handball player with arms more my size than John's (whose are at least twice my size)) put on, which turned out to be fine until we got to biceps and he put on a good amount of weight. I copied him, and then the music started up again and I quickly realized there was no way I could do this for any length of time. I had to stop a bit early in the first set. Then we went through another set. And part of a third. I looked over to see Dane jerking his back into his motion and I just thought "ah, well that explains why this was such a bad idea." Not only are my biceps not that strong to begin with, but he wasn't sticking to proper form to begin with. Oddly, what hurt the worst were my forearms from trying to get the motion started. So that was uncomfortable, but other than that it was a nice little workout.

The way each set is structured is:
two reps of the motion is slow-motion
a few reps of the motion with a slow start and quick finish (three counts to one count)
a bunch of reps of one rep per count
a few reps with a modified motion
a few cool-down reps

I liked it because it keeps things interesting and activates your muscles a bit differently throughout the set, but it was sort of hard to concentrate on being efficient while also trying to figure out exactly what I was supposed to be doing. For instance, I had never even done a clean and press before, so trying to figure that out while trying to keep time and then keep track of what pace I was supposed to be going was pretty tricky. I dominated at lunges though. That was awesome.

After that we transitioned smoothly into handball, where everyone was pretty lethargic. Except me of course. A lot of times I feel like I actually have too much energy in the handball court. I overrun my shots and get ahead of myself, but lifting beforehand put me exactly into the right pace of play from the beginning. I probably would have gotten tired faster than usual, but that didn't wind up being a factor on this particular day, so I was pleased with the result overall. I played a game of cutthroat, a game of doubles, a game of singles, and then Kristina's mom showed up and I played doubles with her against Kristina and Jessica. Just me and all the ladies. And we were playing with the white ball, which is lighter than usual, so I got to hit lots of show-off trick shots including a couple between-the-legs shots while facing the front wall, (so I hit them on the first bounce with very little reaction time) which is something I've only done a couple times before in total. So that was pretty cool. And now Kristina's mom is undefeated at handball!

Then I played doubles with some old guys, then one on two against some old guys. They joked that I should spot them fifteen points. They only scored three, so I guess I could have done that after all. It was sort of awkward, because I wanted to practice the things I need to work on, but I felt a bit bad about demolishing them with hard shots they won't face in their normal games. They told me not to go easy on them, though, so I did as my alternate title for this post suggests and embraced the awkwardness of beating up on the elderly. After that people were pretty much done. Either tired, old, or just sick of handball for the day. I probably could have stayed and played some games of questionable quality, but I didn't have anything against leaving.

Kristina was supposed to be my ride home, but she was feeling sort of awful because her boyfriend was off partying the whole weekend with his high school friends and she was depressed for some reasons I won't go into. So I said I'd hang out with her if she wanted, and we had lunch with her mom before heading over to John's parents' house. Which is close to a mansion. It has a pool, a hot tub, and a dock on a lake/pond. Kristina moped until the three of us (John, Dane, and I) ganged up on her in a desperate effort to cheer her up. We made every offer we could think of and she finally acquiesced to pizza, ping pong, and alcohol. So we had a ping pong tournament. John threatened that he was pretty good, so I was worried my rustiness might result in a loss, but he lost to Kristina in the first round. I beat Dane, which was a good warmup, and then I triumphed over Kristina because I'm too competitive to let the sad person we were trying to cheer up win. By the end I was playing fairly decently (at least compared to how I started), so that was fun. Then they made the mistake of trying to legalize shots off the ceiling/wall. That happens to be something I've practiced, since the ping pong table I grew up on was in a rather closed-in basement. That legalization was short-lived once I started hitting shots that flew perpendicularly across the table next to the net.

Kristina's mom finished whatever errands she was doing (putting new tires on a car?) and asked to meet Kristina at Kristina's house, so we went there. And there I was, hanging out with this mom of this girl I don't even really know. Luckily her mom is pretty cool, but it was still one of those "I guess I just embrace the awkwardness" situations. Also, none of us could think of anything to do. I mean, I looked up things to do in Minneapolis, and still nothing really popped out as a real option. I guess this is a problem wherever you are. It isn't just Iowa! That's sort of a relief. I mean, there are activities, of course, but they require some setup or advance planning. We weren't in a position where we could just go to a museum for instance. I think the reason people say big cities are more interesting than small towns is that they drink alcohol or like to go dancing/clubbing. Because sure, there's probably a better scene for that here, but the movie theaters show the same movies, the theater has the same touring shows (I assume; all I know is that the current one is about a deaf boy growing up and then realizing there is a whole deaf community, which didn't quite make me want to spend money to see it), and the other stuff is pretty similar too. We briefly entertained the idea of bowling, but as Jim Gaffigan says, there are two people who go bowling: the people who really like bowling (aka weirdos), and the people who are like "wouldn't it be hilarious if we went bowling?" We didn't quite fall into either category. Although another of his jokes is that it's a last resort; once you've done everything else, you go bowling. But I guess we just weren't that desperate. Kristina decided to rent a movie. Then on our way to get a movie, Jessica invited Kristina to a Halloween party. She declined, but I brought up the fact that her mom was probably going to go to bed anyway (a fact she had mentioned briefly as we were leaving), so she should go if she wanted. She asked if I would go. I said I would if she wanted to drink, since they'd probably need a driver. So there I was: Ryan Pesch: partygoer.

At least we weren't the only people without costumes. I sat and watched television, which at first was hockey (no clue what's going on, but the team from my state beat the team from the other state, so yay?), but then switched to baseball, which was actually interesting because it was one of the 4-7 watchable baseball games on television in a given year (Get it? Only the world series is watchable. I'm hilarious.) People seemed to be cheering for Boston, but I know people who are die-hard Cardinals fans so I was secretly rooting for them. Boston tied it at 4-4 in the eighth inning, and things were looking pretty intense. Then it ended in one of the more controversial ways I've ever seen a baseball game end (which, granted, isn't particularly impressive considering my weak resume of baseball game-endings). A guy hit the baseball hard at the infield. The second-baseman made an amazing play on the ball. He threw the guy out at home, tagged by the catcher, who then tried for the double play at third. The throw was terrible, though, and the guy sliding into third disrupted things so the baseman didn't make the play. The ball went past. The outfielder grabbed it. The runner got up and started toward home. The third baseman (also on the ground because he attempted to dive for the ball just previously) lifted his legs, tripping the runner. The umpire made a gesture. The runner stumbled his way toward home plate and was not a very fast guy to begin with. The outfielder made an excellent throw and the runner was tagged out at the plate and looked quite foolish. He hung his head and looked very sad. The umpire gestured he was safe. The Boston team was very unhappy. The crowd was very happy. I was very confused. The third baseman was called for obstruction, which I can sort of see, because the way he raised his legs probably isn't the manner one would raise their legs for any purpose other than tripping the runner. If he had been getting up, for example, his legs would have been straight out behind him for pushing him off the ground. But it was a pretty strange way to end the game nonetheless. Plus St. Louis won, so bonus!

Then I spend four hours looking at a wall (embracing the awkwardness?). Or at drunk people carving penises into pumpkins (briefly). Or at the reaction of the guy responsible for the party when he was told they were throwing the pumpkin goop they had scooped out the pumpkins over the edge of the seven-story roof. Or at the guy who brought an ACTUAL SWORD as part of his costume. Apparently he knows people involved in costume departments for films? Anyway, a questionable decision for a drinking occasion. Luckily nothing terrible happened (that I know of). At one point I aided batman in his escape from a creepy guy in a white suit who was chasing him by opening a locked door from the inside and letting him in. On a side note, if you are a girl looking for a halloween costume, apparently the only option open to you is "flapper from the Great Gatsby movie." So I'm sorry if you thought you had any other options. Because you don't. Seven out of eight girls observed at this party were flappers. And the eighth might have been, but she was sort of overweight and her makeup was scary, so I couldn't really make that judgment in good faith. Also, three guys showed up in suits. Luckily, even though I'm sure they all thought they were Gatsby, that's a pretty standard go-to for guys. One audibled to Bruce Wayne and the other to James Bond. See? Easy fix. Halloween is basically cheating for guys. Just put on a suit and voila, you're anyone you want to be!

Kristina didn't drink for a decent part of the night, at which point I considered bailing. We were only four miles from my apartment, so it was a viable option. Then I realized I didn't have my keys. So I would have to go to Kristina's anyway to retrieve those, which turned out fine because she eventually did drink (when she had time to do eight shots is beyond me), and it was good they had a designated driver. So I got them back to Kristina's and had to make the call between crashing there or getting home. I decided to forge my own way, since I wasn't quite exhausted and I had recently talked to Sarah S about her running, putting me in the mood to do some of my own. So I tightened the straps on my backpack as tight as they would go and set off. I made it four miles at a pretty steady pace, then alternated between walking and jogging for the last couple miles after my knees started hurting a bit. I was worried they might be sore, but it turns out they are not. My biceps, on the other hand, are in agony. I can't even straighten my arms without them hurting. Argh.

I went shopping yesterday. That's about all I did yesterday, actually. I made sure I got extra quarters from the cashier, which gave me exactly the right amount to do laundry! I like it when things work out that way. (She could only give out a maximum of a dollar's worth, but my groceries had a total ending in an amount that resulted in an additional three, so it turned out perfectly.) I wrote some more emotional poetry trying to figure out my own brain. It's not even really poetry half the time. I'm just journaling and then it becomes stanzas. Maybe with extensive editing? I don't know. I did like one thing I wrote, but I left it at my apartment, so I can't include it here right now. But here's one that has Pandora's song just now to blame:

She can't sing half as well as Elton John
But I can't skip it because it's "Your Song"
Which used to be an Our Song
And the feeling lingers pleasantly
Suspending momentarily
That disbelief which is reality
And oscillates radically, alternately,
With the fact that, as she is no Elton
We are not an us.

Perhaps this is an appropriate song
Her bastardization of his beauty
Can be a "anti-our" a "not-us" song.
As she kicks off the moss,
I can feel a faint buzzing
As through the dead matter landed
On an electric fence,
A disconcerting echo of its deadly force
Faintly flowing through my body
With a vague dissatisfaction.

My group for my next project (same group, different assignment) met just before this in the cafe we usually use. One time two weeks ago the guy set out free expired sandwiches. I took two. They both said gluten-free, and I was like "free food and it's healthy? Could life be any more perfect?" Yes, yes it could. You know what a major component of bread is? Apparently GLUTEN! That stuff was gross. The first sandwich I was like "man, this is dry; it's probably because it's a bit old." And I ate it anyway because I was hungry. For the second I was hungry after 5:00, so I just picked the ingredients off the bread and ate them. I saved the bread though, because I'm a thrifty guy these days (cheapskate). I later used the bread on either side of an egg sandwich. Ruined the whole sandwich! This time, though, the guy put out baked goods. I grabbed the healthiest-looking thing, which turned out to be a sugary raspberry/blueberry thing. A bit stale, but way more dessert-y than anything I've had recently, so it was practically decadent.

Our group adjourned and Greg asked me about Magic: the Gathering. He said he had played with Ian (a fellow section-mate) this weekend with one of his old decks and gotten trounced. I said I played pretty seriously, a fact he didn't quite get until we had talked for a half-hour and things became a bit more apparent.

This reminds me of an interesting point: It turns out I can pass for just about any sort of person. I talked with John's dad about the construction they were doing on their house intelligently (they are scraping paint and refinishing some stuff), talking about my parents' remodel work. I talked nerdy with John and Greg about Magic. I talked with a different John about Science Fiction books. I talked with Kristina about relationships. I talked with some guys about baseball (I can pass if I have to...). I talked with handball people about law school. I talked with Kristina's mom about my diet and how I decided on my eating habits. I talked with John about lifting weights. I talked philosophy in torts today (he posited a hypothetical scenario based on the trolley problem from philosophy). I talk science when people talk about bias. I talked big picture with drunk people who only wanted to hear sweeping reassurances. And none of it really feels real. I feel like I can pass any social conversation/test, but I still end each of them walking away and rolling my eyes at the waste of time it felt like.

Anyway, Torts was fun. The professor seemed impressed, but that was probably because I don't talk much, so he wasn't expecting me to say something smart... We're talking about it more tomorrow, but I'm not that eager for it, since everyone will have looked up the stuff I talked about by then and I won't be unique anymore.

I wasn't going to post

I am in the computer lab, as normal. I am watching the coverage of a magic the gathering tournament. Some guy just came up to me and asked if I played, then followed with "we should play sometime." He said he knows a guy who's really serious about it, but that he himself had only gotten back into it since Innistrad (so about two years ago). I said I started just before that, but that I was pretty serious too. At this point I was pretty sure we were never going to play magic, and that I probably didn't want to anyway, so I mentioned that I played on the pro tour. It wasn't even a subtle mention. I just said, "yeah, I'm pretty serious. I played on the pro tour last summer." The conversation ended soon after. So I decided to start blogging after all, though I had deliberately not started because I felt like I didn't have anything to say.

Nothing really happened this week. I played handball until exhaustion yesterday, and I'm planning on doing so tomorrow, but that's all pretty standard at this point. So I wasn't going to write at all today. I've been writing a bit on my own time, though, waiting for something to emerge worth putting on here, or worth pursuing further. Nothing fruitful has emerged. It's mostly just bad emotional poetry, or journal-esque rambling.

My notes about things to write that I keep in my phone include a few brief topics.

I was in the bathroom today, in a stall I use with relative frequency, when I noticed the following:

Someone had started writing in all the little tile gaps with line phrases! Some of them: Chorus line, hotline, power line, hair line, dance line, perpendicular lines (written at an intersection on both crossing lines, of course). This guy is great. If the automatic flusher on the toilet didn't go off at seemingly random intervals, I'd go back every day to check for updates. But that thing is annoying.

I saw a car I liked while I was at a stoplight. I love pointy corvettes. That was a pretty blah inclusion, but hey.

I posted this picture on facebook with a funny caption. Something to the effect of: Papa Johns: Saving money whenever possible. I thought it was hilarious, but then nobody responded, liked it, etc, so I took it down after a couple hours. I almost never put things on facebook, so I was self-conscious and eventually decided it wasn't worth getting people's hopes up that I might respond or put things on there in the future. I still think it's funny though. The Vikings are terrible. This is like Papa Johns putting out an ad saying: 50% off your pizza when pigs fly. Or taking out an ad for a blank sheet of paper.

This is a huge stack of paper I took from the computer lab. Some idiot printed off hundreds and hundreds of pages of incorrectly-formatted stuff, so now I have tons of scratch paper. This is actually why I've been writing on my own more. I was sitting around thinking about how dissatisfied I was with how little I was doing, and I decided to write instead of whatever else. Nothing good resulted, but that's fine.

This is what I do when I get bored in class. I might go through all that paper, since I'm out of notebook covers.

I bought things today! I had leftover balance in my Paypal account because you can only transfer $500 at a time to your bank without a fee, so it felt like I was spending free money. And everyone likes free money! So I bought new handball shoes, which I need, and a laptop, which may or may not work, off eBay so I have something to take my finals on. Apparently a computer is required after all. And then it turns out I bought another laptop. Mostly by accident. So I guess if one doesn't work, hopefully the other will? Or hopefully I can use the parts from whatever doesn't work to patch something together? I have four sort-of-working laptops now, so there's no way I shouldn't have at least one working well enough to take a test on right? Yup, I'm a piece of work. So let's everyone cross our fingers and hope for the best!

I'm going to an organized workout session before handball tomorrow. It's called "body pump," and it's supposed to be pretty brutal. This powerlifter guy who plays handball told me I should go, and I agreed on the condition he would pick me up. I figure not biking in the cold is worth killing my body for an hour. Plus he said the instructor was attractive, so even if I injure myself, at least I'll be attended to by a pretty face. (I may have let him think this was my reason for attending. He's a bit more of a jock than I am.)

Thanks for reading!

I am feeling bitter

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!

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:

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!

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!