Deadly Snakes

I've been kind of stressed b/c of workload adjustments and so I've been listening to more music lately. When I get stressed I like to go play with my records. I was thinking about writing up some of my favorite bands I've rediscovered in the last few days but that would take a lot of time and I didn't exactly keep track. Then I thought I should see what the top 25 songs I play on my mp3 player are and post about that but that seemed like a lot of work so I'm just going to write about one song.
The Deadly Snakes are out of Toronto. They have three records I know about, two on In The Red and one on Sympathy for the Record Industry. The first one, Love Undone, is classic fuzzed out garage rock. That's no surprise b/c of their close connection with Greg Oblivian. Somewhere between that first record and their second they toured the south. Apparently they got a hold of some great gospel records and it had a huge impact on their sound. It's the most pronounced in their latest record, Ode To Joy, but it is clearly developing on their second record, I'm Not Your Soldier Anymore.
On that second record, which caught me totally off guard when it came out, was a song called "Trigger". This song has been one of my favorite songs for the last couple of years. It has maintained a presence on my turntable and anywhere else I could play it. When the mood catches you you can listen to it over and over.
The song's overall mood hangs like a hangover of remorse. The horns stumble along trying to keep up. I imagine the Memphis Horns after a bad drunk and a bar fight trying to catch their breath when their ribs have been bruised. The lyrics tell the story of someone who regrets what they've done and can't comprehend why they did it. He didn't start out wanting to do anything wrong, he just got carried away. You can feel the guilt banging out of the drums and piano while the bass line retraces the circles of his guilty steps. At the bridge you can feel him banging his head against the wall as the guitar leads the rest of the band into the kind of low key crescendo you get when your too crudo to get out of bed. I love this song. Go order their records off of In The Red.

Neat

This is pretty weird. Make sure you check out picture 7. I think I want one of these more than I wanted the one with the wine rack. Also I've added The Hot Librarian over in the side bar.

The Library

Let me start off by explaining that there are two libraries. There's the real library, which is the one at school, and there is the fun library, which is the public library. The fun library severly wronged me this week. I've got a crap load of work to do and my hold on Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 7 became available. That has destroyed my productivity. The high point is that this is the last season of Buffy and so once I finish these DVDs I will be forever free of this accursed show.
The fun library, hereinafter simply "the library", somehow sensed the wrong it had done me and decided to atone. I usually walk to the library on Sundays. I get a cup of coffee at the Powells on Hawthorne, stop in at Jackpot records and harass the poor clerk about some Japanese import CD I want them to special order me, browse the cook books at Powell's cookbook store, and wander around until I get to the library. Once there I dig through the DVDs and longingly look at the new books.
A couple weeks ago I saw a very beautiful woman studying while I was browsing the cookbooks, btw if anyone has any suggestions I'm looking for a good cookbook on crockpots. She looks a little punk rock, maybe rockabilly, with tattoos and piercings and Chuck Taylors. Last week she was there again and so I looked at what she was studying, chemistry and anatomy. I thought that looks promising, kind of punk and smart enough to be going to school, maybe med school or nursing school. I decided to come back this week and bring some homework and maybe try to strike up a conversation without being creepy.
I got a better look at what she was studying and it turns out that she is in school for mortuary sciences. I had done a little research on various regulations regarding education ciriculum over this summer and I knew one of about 20 schools in the U.S. was here in Portland. So I asked her if she went to the school and started up a conversation. It was a little creepy, but that seems to be right up her alley. I think it went well and all is well with the library's karmic balance.
Now the question dawns on me, Is the fact that I'm kind of turned on because she goes to mortician school mean I'm maladjusted? It's not that I think the corpses are hot, it's that I think she's going to dance to her own beat. I kind of assume that most morticians are men and this seems like a very self confident kind of thing to study.
Occasionally I see polls or studies that show that men are attracted to women in certain professions. I always thought they were bullshit. If your hot I'm interested, and if your new wave I'm single, who cares where you work. But now I know certain professions are more attractive than others.
Now I'm off, I've got to hit the record store to see if I can find a Console CD before Iron Chef America. I'm not sure who I'm rooting for. This Ming Tsai guy sells a bunch of crap at Target. If he's obnoxious or Target gets mentioned I'm rooting for Flay again. Rock On.

Law Student Compulsive Disorder

I'm pretty good about checking my grades. I do it a reasonable amount of times a week, yes a week. I kind of hit my area in law school and I don't venture too far either way of that area. I don't need to check b/c I already have a pretty good idea of what I got.
This semester I was worried about prop trans, but after that turned out alright I didn't think about grades until yesterday. I checked and I only have one more grade up. What the hell I took those exams over a month ago. I know they were bad and I sure as hell wouldn't want to read them but I figured b/c I'm a 2L they'd be done faster than last year. There's got to be someone who needed their grades for graduation.
So this has had an adverse impact on me. Now I just want to know if any grades are up. I don't really care which ones or what they are. I just want to be done so I can move on to the next semester and make sure the last one is totally behind me. If this drags into February I'm going to end up being one of those poor bastards that are clicking on their grades every five minutes.
You can see it in the 1Ls. Anytime there's a rumor that a grade got posted they all going running back to their lap tops.

Link Clearing House

Alright, Scalia has dropped down to a 5.1 rating on hot or not. That's only hotter than 45% of the men on Hot or Not.
I'm a fan of Crispin Hellion Glover. He's got a trailer up for his new movie on his site. Let's just call it artistic and hope we don't get nightmares. If anyone is lucky enough to see it at Sundance you have to let me know what it's like.
These guys beat me to cool John Stewart T-shirts. Whenever I get off my ass and learn photoshop I'm sure mine will be better. Check out the Arcade Fire links while your there.
I found out today that one of the things that law librarians, god bless them, look forward to every year is tax protestors. They say every spring a pack of them show up at the library and want to find "that one Supreme Court case that says we ain't got to pay no taxes because pay for work isn't wages". We should make a festival of this or something to honor our reference librarians. I think we should go to our local law libraries with gifts of baked goods, cafe mochas and tax forms and sing "Beer for Breakfast" by The Replacements to the reference librarians. If anyone has better ideas I'd like to know them. Maybe we could bring magnetic poetry that consists mostly of Boolean search terms.
I've been thinking about the way the media uses the terms "This president" and "Al Queda official" lately. The "This president" term really bothers me. It implies a lot that I don't think is legitimate. I don't know a whole lot of Wittgenstein but does this seem like a loaded term to anyone else. To me it implies that he's somehow unique among presidents, possibly in his obligations to abide by law or tell the truth. It seems to me to try and put his decision making and motivation beyond question. "Al Queda official" bothers me because I think it implies Al Queda has more structure than it actually does. This is akin to Bush's claim that we have 90%, or whatever number he used, of Al Queda's leadership in custody. How do you determine what an Al Queda official is, what the size of the Al Queda leadership is, and which terrorist cells fall under the Al Queda umbrella? I don't think these questions have very clear answers and statements like "Al Queda official" is sloppy.
Last here's the artwork for my new tattoo. I'll obviously be cleaned up more. It's going to be a chest piece.

Hepness

Today I out loud and in front of people made a comment exposing knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I try never to do that but it happened and I got laughed at. I also downloaded the song from the end of Return of the Jedi where all the ewoks sing off of Rusty Spell's MP3 Blog. I think today I blew my cool. It's gone. I think I would have to do something amazing, like roadie for Joan Jett (I'd be her "Roadie of Love"), to reestablish my cred at this point.
The Atlantic Monthly has a column on the health of various presidents. These guys as a group need to take better care of their asses. Hemorrhoids was a blessing for these guys. It was creepy and a quintessential example of too much information.

Somehow I'm behind...

Last night my phone rang (It didn't actually ring, it vibrated. I was in a public area and I think it's incredibly tacky if your phone makes a noise in public. You bother ever other person in that area when your phone goes off in some ten minute ring tone of the fucking Peanuts Theme Song. I understand the difficulty of feeling the vibration when the phone is in a purse or back pack and I don't have a solution to that yet, maybe pick a decent ring tone.) while I was doing laundry.
Bone: What are you doing?
El Pocho Abogado: I'm cleaning my chonies, what's up?
B:Are you going to Bar Review tonight? (Bar review is where a bunch of law students go down to the bar and get loaded and act like assholes.)
EPA: No, I've got a bunch of stuff to do. It's only the fourth day of the semester and I'm behind.
B: You're not going?
EPA: I've got to get this stuff done, I've got a bunch of cover letters to write too. This shit's all due tomorrow and I have to put in a long day at work.
B: Catch up this weekend.
EPA: I've got stuff to do all weekend. I've got to get this done so I know what's going on in class and have a job this summer.
B: Everyone's going. You're not going?
EPA: No, if I fall behind now the end of the semester will be too crazy. I'll be trying to find a job, learn all my classes, write two papers, and study for finals.
B: Are you sure you're not going?
EPA: Yeah I'm going. I can't sit at home while everyone is having fun. Besides what if someone does something embarrassing and I have to hear about it second hand. But I tried, you heard it. Didn't my voice sound sincere for both of those two minutes before I caved into peer pressure?
B: I could really here the sincerity. It was a kind of "I'm a serious law student, this is important to my future" kind of sincerity.
EPA: That's exactly what I was trying to convey. I've got to fold these jeans and then I'll be there.

Now I'm trying to finish my cover letters in the next twenty minutes so I can make it to work by noon and put in six hours so I don't have to go back on Sunday. Man, I am a freakin' shining example to future generations of law students.

4 days

Somehow I'm behind. Schools only been in session for four days and I'm behind. I need more time. I've got a ton of crap due tomorrow too. I'm going to go do laundry and try and get some reading done.
BTW y'all are a bad influence on me. I went and talked to my tattoo guy today and set up an appointment for a consultation. I've got some art work but we need to get some measurements and stuff done. I might see if I can scan the artwork at school and then I'll post it. If I get the work done I think Cindy should get an Ipod.
I had vanilla ice cream and figs in syrup for desert. I really need to go to the grocery store. Rock on.

Life is Flush

Today was a great day. First I was able to get every class I wanted to add. Second, I got another free textbook so I only had to buy one book this semester. Third I got to see a whole bunch of my friends. Fourth, I got my student loan check. Fifth and most important I got my Prop Trans grade back.
I was certain I failed Prop Trans. My final was miserable. I actually read a chapter of my text book and part of a supplement in the final. It was the shortest final I've ever written, a miserable five pages reeking of incompetence. I was humiliated taking that final. So when I got on campus today word was going around that even though grades aren't posted Prof. Prop Trans left the graded finals buy his door. I waited until after my last class, because I'm such a weenie boy coward I couldn't look at that red F until my day was over, and then picked up my final. It turns out I didn't fail at all. I actually kind of did all right. The rest of the class really must have screwed that final for the curve to work out the way it did. I'm a cowboy. I slapped a saddle on that sumbitch and rode the boy out.
I got my student loan check. It was bigger than I thought it would be by a lot. My first inclination is that someone somewhere screwed up. I'm going to check it out tomorrow, if no one screwed up I'll have extra money for tuition next year. Woohoo. My second inclination is that I have enough money that I could still pay a chunk of tuition and get a tattoo. I've got the art work all ready to go and I bumped into my artist the other day. I must be strong and fight the urge. Student loans aren't an appropriate way to finance my tattoos, especially when it's a challenge to pay rent most of the time. No tattoos, no tattoos.
Iron Chef freakin' rocked. I'm not a big fan of Bobby Flay, but it was the premier so I knew he would win. I'm glad they picked Rick Bayless. I don't like his cookbooks, Diana Kennedy's are much better. But based on that alone it still would have been hard for me to root for Flay over him. Thank god he had stupid facial hair. He had this wispy crap ass flavor savor thing going on that made it easy to totally root for Flay. Screw you Bayless, maybe you should have brought your daughter along (Bayless recently wrote a cookbook in which his daughter is a prominent figure, thus the taunt[thus I'm big freakin' geek]).
I think it will be more interesting in some respects than the Japanese version b/c I don't think Americans have as uniform a palate as the Japanese, it may not be as developed but there's a lot more variance. This will make it harder for the Iron Chefs to beat out foreign chefs. Also I think the new show will be willing to use less traditional ingredients. Buffalo is hard to cook with b/c it's so lean, it's less tender than beef, and I think that kind of imagination is going to flourish on this show. Also, Alton Brown's little video set up is sweet. The only thing I wish they did more like the Japanese version is give updates on the ingredients more often.
Anyway I'm out for the night. If you have a good reason why I shouldn't use my student loans to get a tattoo you should probably let me know. Rock on.

Frozen Tundra of Portland

It was cold yesterday. The whole town iced over and I was stuck inside for most of the day. I actually did my homework. When the cabin fever got too strong I finally went to the video store and grocery store. It was slicker than snot on a brass door knob and colder than a witch's tittie in a brass bra face down in the snow. I fell repeatedly. Falling on frozen ground is no softer than falling on frozen cement and stairs are the worst.
Let me preface this next paragraph with the fact that I like organic food, generally better than it's non organic alternative. The problem I have is with processed organic foods. Salt is not a pesticide, herbicide, genetically modified, or a hormone. Use it. Our whole sense of taste is based around salt and fat. Use those ingredients. You don't have to over do it like canned menudo but you do have to use them.
I bought some organic minestrone soup b/c I thought, "What's better on a cold day than grilled cheese sandwiches and minestrone soup?" I walked over to the Wild Oats from the video store and all they had was organic minestrone soup. I thought it would be nice so I bought a can. It was the blandest minestrone soup I've ever had. I'm tempted to go dig the can out of the recycling so I can name the brand specifically and rail on it. Nasty. I should have just bought the stuff to make minestrone soup.
So school starts tomorrow. I still need to get one textbook and read for two classes. Well see what happens with that because tonight is Iron Chef!!!!

Herbs

I made some pasta last night and I bought basil at the grocery store. It had a wicked strong chemical taste to it. I'm gonna do the indoor herb garden. It will be normal legal herbs, I just say no. So I'll grow some basil, thyme, rosemary, cilantro, parsley and chives, maybe oregano. Not that exciting I know, but I can't afford the power bill for all the grow lights to grow any other kind of herbs.
I'm thinking, along with the John Stewart Army, that I'll start two other groups. First will be the Han Shot First Society. They will be dedicated to having George Lucas committed before he fucks up any more star wars movies. We will try to preserve historical accuracy within the movies, write angry letters about really crappy star wars books, and wear blazer badges. Man, we'll be total chick magnets.
The second group will actually be three fan clubs. Each will be dedicated to a particular Iron Chef. They can trash talk each other, "Batali couldn't julienne a carrot if his life depended on it!", "Morimoto calls that courtbullion?" or "Flay's consome is cloudy!". We could email Alton Brown phrases to pepper his dialogue from old Kung Fu movies, "Batali's whipping stance is unstoppable!". Man between this, star wars, and law jokes I'm a real charmer. The term "pants off" totally applies to my charm.
I somehow ended up on a Christian email list. I got a message the other day saying not to buy violent video games. I guess I've been so warped by the pagan humanist culture that it sounded more like an add than a warning. My favorite phrase was "cesspools of bloodlust". If I had a game system I would buy Grand Theft Auto based on that alone.

Potted Plants

I was thinking of starting an indoor herb garden. Wouldn't that be great. One more thing to do instead of what I'm supposed to be doing.
As is kind of obvious from the last post, I couldn't spell my way out of a wet paper sack with scissors in my hand. Usually spell check takes care of that. Since the spell check isn't in Spanish I run into trouble. I have problems with Hu and Ju words, sometimes Gu also, S and Zs, and V and B. So if you catch a spelling error I guess I should give you a nickel or something. You can put my spelling errors up on Ebay and I'll pay pal you the nickel I guess.
I would post more about Star Wars but I don't really have anything to say about it until the new movie comes out or I break down and see the Holy Trilogy in the new DVD format. I'm still working myself up to that though. I think it will happen before spring break, most likely when I have some big project due. I guess I could get into my whole "She made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs" theory. I don't know jack about physics so it's mostly just blowin' smoke.
If you want advice about law school stuff email me. I'm happy to tell you what I know, but everyone has different things they value and desire. My advice is only good for people who share my values and desires. Most of mine are in some kind of conflict with general law school culture so I'm not always the best person to ask. If you want certain kinds of answers I'm a good person to talk to, if you want other kinds of answers I'm not much help. It's the Sartre thing.
Now the most important question, why 32 minutes? The perfect rock n roll set is between 32 and 37 minutes if it's in the non stop Ramones style with no talking. That rarely happens so if you're out at a club the perfect set is around 45 minutes. Basically the set should contain between 12 and 15 songs that are in between 2 minutes and 2 minutes 45 seconds long. Ideally it will start out with an instrumental song but there aren't that many bands who are competent enough to write a compelling instrumental so you can let that one slide. There should be a mix of fast songs with an occasional slower song mixed in as rest for the drummer. It should above all be long enough that the listener can feel involved, but short enough that they want to hear it again. I need such a CD b/c it looks like there won't be a good show until February.
I am very excited for Iron Chef America this Sunday. Is there an Iron Chef IRC channel?

El Juevon

I'm number one on Google for El Juevon. That's pretty cool. I hope this stays up until after the job fair b/c it sure couldn't hurt.

Getting Organized

My plan over break was to become an organizational master. My work space would be perfect, I would never forget to pay a bill, and I would never again return from the grocery store and realize I forgot to get the damn thing I went for in the first place. To do this, to become master of my time, I bought a cheap paper back book. It's called Getting Things Done.
I started reading the book in earnest on my flight back to Texas. I got to the part where it said I needed a labeler to be organized. I thought "Awesome, I can buy a labeler. That's within my powers. Surely I can become organized if all I need to do is buy some office supplies and read the last 100 pages of this book!"
I still have yet to read the last hundred pages of this book, or the book I started right after that, or another book I picked up, as well as a magazine I started. I labeled some stuff, but it was mostly blank spice jars in the kitchen. I've got a system so I don't need to label them, but now I don't need a system because they're labeled. The beauty of that is that I made use of an organizational tool to make my life easier, just like the book promised, and I justified buying my labeler.
I've also organized my music files. They got screwed up in a software upgrade. That took almost all of yesterday. I've organized my file system for my free video coupons from Hollywood video. I've organized my email box, my big cook book, and my dresser. Doesn't it sound like I've made good use of the book?
Well I haven't. The point was to get organized for school so I didn't spend so much time procrastinating. I have done jack shit for school. I was supposed to be working on my A paper. I'm supposed to have picked a seminar topic. I haven't even registered for my classes yet. I'm trying to do it by the skinniness of the text book. I got my first set of emails for a couple classes that I may drop giving me homework and I haven't done one thing to make this next semester easier.
I'm going to finish my music files tonight and then I'm going to organize my desk, and then maybe register for classes.
BTW Scalia is rated at a 6.8 on Hot or Not. He's hotter than 64% of the men rated and 37 people have rated him. I'm kind of surprised. I use that picture on My Space and I don't get near that reaction.

Hot or Not?

Well, I can't say that I've been all that productive. I've read two non school books and done some stuff for work. That's about it.
Probably my biggest achievement is that I put a picture of Scalia up on hot or not. Here's the link. I might put Stevens up later and let the two of them duke it out.
I've been going to the library to get some stuff done and let me tell you, only the really cool people hang out at the library after 10pm on their vacation. When the reference librarian comes around and asks "Are you going to leave? We're closing." you can feel the respect and awe vibes ebbing off her voice.
You might think the subtext is something like "You know real people have friends to go out and drink and party with. They do that partying somewhere that's not here." but what she's really saying is "Wow, you're so dedicated I wish I could have a Lexis party with you."
I some how snagged la gripa. I blame the airport. So it's lots of canela and whiskey tea until I stop sounding like Tom Waits. If I were Irish I could probably do a good Shane MacGowan impersonation.
I'm also trying to make the perfect 32 minute playlist. If you have suggestions let me know.