Irish cooking

I'm housesitting for someone in a couple weeks and I thought it would be cool to have my friends over, cook a Irish dinner, drink some Jameson's, listen to the Pogues, and maybe watch The Replacements. So, I can invite people over, I can pick up Jameson's, I've got plenty of Pogues, and I can find a copy of the Replacements. What I can't do is cook Irish food, mostly because I don't know what the Irish eat besides corned beef and cabbage and potatoes.
I checked a Irish cookbook out from the library. I wasn't going to make fun of it for Elena's sake, but I can't help it. It is literally 54 pages long. Most of that is the introduction. The first thoughts that hit me were the obvious ones. "I guess there's only so many ways to cook a potato and boil brisket." and "I thought I got a gourmet Irish cookbook, not the potato famine cookbook."
Now that I've looked through the cookbook I have to say that those jokes would be marginally funny if they weren't true. Almost all the rest of the recipes are for potatoes, cabbage, boiled meat. I'm going to have work my brain to make colcanon a little fancier, and it looks like boiled meat is a must. Adding color will also be a bit of a challenge. I thought things would be greener, but even the salads were blanched.
So after my little rant making fun of the Irish food my friend said "If the Spanish hadn't shown up Mexican cookbooks would be a 50 page book on cooking beans and corn, and most of that would be an introduction explaining how much the Spanish could have helped."
And I said, "Shoot, if the Spanish hadn't shown up the Irish would have never got the potatoes, this would have been a four page cook book, counting the introduction. At least we would have had beans man."
I realized you have to feel kind of bad for a culture when the guys that only have beans, potatoes, and corn are rocking your world on the local ingredients list. Although now that I think about it, I've lived off of beans and corn tortillas before and it's not that bad with some salsa or the occasional avocado...
which the Irish don't have either.

Busy

I've had a crazy weekend. I feel kind of wiped out and now I have to go to school again. Spring break is almost here, maybe I'll get some rest then. I talked to my tattoo guy and I'll probably be getting my piece done right around then.
Part of why I've been busy is because of work. One of the cool things about where I work is that they do some policy stuff. The state legislature is meeting soon and there's been lots of hearings. It's cool because my research may influence the way a bill gets written or amended. It may even influence if makes it out of committee after my boss has testified at the hearing.
I went to the Sage Francis show on Friday (after going to work, driving to Seattle, going to a reception, and driving back from Seattle). I think he's talented but it got me thinking about politics in music. I generally don't like it. Anytime you have to put politics into a format that will fit in song lyrics it generally becomes sloganeering. It makes everything simplistic and black and white. That tendency is part of why I hate this president and his administration so much. I hate feeling like I'm getting preached at. It doesn't matter which side is doing it. I think preaching is what led me to be an atheist. In music it gets ridiculous b/c you have to force "the message" into the meter and rhyme of the song. It feels artificial. 7 Seconds is a great case in point.
I think the stuff I'm doing now has more of an impact and actually changes things more than any song ever could. But I have to recognize that the reason I care about a lot of things is because that's what my favorite music was singing about. As cheesy as 7 Seconds could be, I always loved circle dancing and singing along with all the Oohs and Ahhs. It's kind of a chicken and the egg thing. Revolutionary fervor doesn't really change anything. Without revolutionary fervor everything is stagnate and nobody is motivated to change anything. The reason I have the ethical bent I do and value the things I do is because that's what the revolutionaries, I'm not talking about 7 Seconds here, were pushing for. I've distilled that down to something that will actually be effective and diluted it so that it's palatable to the mass of people.

I found this game today. It is the Devil.

Morimoto's Defeat

Morimoto lost to that Canadian chef. I was talking about it to my friend G. We, or at least I, came to the conclusion that he will have difficult time adjusting to the American palate. The judges were pretty unanimous that his dishes lacked a strong crab flavor. American's aren't accustomed to the more subtle variations of Japanese cuisine. Morimoto needs to take that into account and ramp his dishes up a bit. I hope he turns around b/c his record is going to take a beating until he gets used to cooking for Americans.
Also this site has a bunch of stills from Revenge of the Sith. There are spoilers. I didn't read b/c I didn't want to learn too much of the story. And I went through the pictures fairly quickly b/c I only wanted a faint impression. I still got excited. It looks so pretty but I know it's gonna suck. Damn you Lucas.
I checked and I guess I've been doing this blog for about a year. My stats still say I've only done 142 posts. It's said that for the last three months though.

Polysics!

Generally, when a guy in a red jumpsuit stands in front of me with his feet set far apart and his crotch thrust aggressively forward I try not to make eye contact. When that is unavoidable and he then announces that he will ROCK! my world I get worried and try to cross the street.
Tonight no such thing happened. A big grin spread across my face as Hayashi perched on the monitor and threw down his gauntlet. I accepted the challenge and had my world rocked. The Polysics tore the place apart. They left the 45 minute set rule violated and gasping on the floor as they marched forward with the audience pogoing.
The musicianship was amazing, they played so fast and tightly in sunglasses that were much too dark to see through that they must have been possessed by some devolved primordial new wave spirit. The energy level in the place was like a two year old ripped on sweettarts and pixie sticks. The best cover of "My Sharona" that has ever been played was ripped out at breakneck new wave synth pop speed.
Imagine Devo left some bizarrely demutated Mutato offspring behind after a tour of Japan. Imagine that spawn growing up eating only twinkie cream filling, jelly beans and nutrasweet. Then the Sino-Synth-Spazoids discovered rock n roll.
You need to go see them if they're touring in your town. If not you need to buy their records. I'm exhausted. Must sleep.

Iron Chef plus random gummy thoughts

Does anyone know anything about this Rob Feenie challenger? I think he's going to get spanked by Morimoto.

The coffee at school is really bad. It's usually scalded so I hate to pay to drink it. The other day I was at work and I had just finished my coffee. I wasn't quite ready for another cup but I had to go to school. I thought "I should just buy the coffee here b/c it's better. I'm going to want more coffee in a half an hour anyway. I'm going to be pissed if I have to buy the crap at school and if I get a good parking space I'm not going to give it up just to go get a cup of coffee."
I didn't want any coffee right then and it felt wasteful to buy any. It stressed me out. I am developing coffee anxieties.

FMV is Fred Meyers' no name brand. The FMV bacon is about a third the price of Fred Meyers' bacon. It is about ten times better. I put bacon up their with stuff like tattoos, dental work, and sushi. It's not exactly the sort of thing you want to be bargain shopping for. It freaks me out that the slices are thicker, meatier, and just plain better. It's kind of like Kroger's chorizo. The cheap Kroger's brand chorizo is better than any of the other name brand ones. I guess the wise thing is to just enjoy it and not to ask too many questions. Interesting coincidence, blogger spell check suggests grocer for Kroger.

I went to get measured for my tattoo on Friday. When I took off my shirt my artist winced and said "ouh, hairy". Man I feel hot now.

My Voice Sounds Sweet Cuz It Hazta

I got called on in Biz Ass (Business Administration) the other day. I hadn’t read. Prof. Biz Ass goes in alphabetical order. We were on C’s the class before, middle C’s (like Mr. Clark middle C’s). I’m a Gonzalez, I reckoned there were two weeks until I got called on.
I want to start out saying I usually read. I like the edited little cases in the casebook. They’re cute after the 60 page multiple dissents and an extra concurrence stuff I generally read. (A quick aside, most of the Supreme Court cases have a short syllabus before the case starts. The syllabus explains what the court decided and their reasoning. Why can’t the court just write the opinion in the syllabus? Why do they have to make this 50 page rambling hazy opinion when some asshat can explain it all in 4 pages?) I had planned on reading for Biz Ass in the 30-minute break I have between work and class. Prof. Biz Ass had been giving us 10 page readings so I figured I could knock it out before class. This assignment was about 40 pages. I realized I was screwed so I read for my next class and didn’t worry about it, I’m a G and we were on C’s.
I go to class and plop my stuff down and load up the crossword. I talk to Mr. L and ask him if he read, was it interesting, anything I should keep in mind during the lecture? He says he didn’t read because he expected a short reading and he didn’t leave enough time for the long reading. I said “Small world, I bet I can finish the yahoo crossword puzzle before the girl three rows up can.” and sat down to get started.
Prof. Biz Ass starts the lecture, interesting stuff. We get to the first case and he starts calling names. We go from Chen to Davis and no one is there. I look up, there are a lot of empty seats today. Finally he gets to a classmate that’s there. They start on the case and I think “I better read the last case just on the off chance no one else is here.”
I start cruising through the case, while taking notes, and trying to beat the girl three rows up at the crossword. He starts calling people for the next case. We go from D to Gonzalez. I’ve read about four pages of the case.
I know nothing about the case except that it involves a law firm, some public policy stuff that’s similar to employment wrongful discharge, and it’s from Texas. I happened to live in Texas at the time of this case and there was a bunch of juicy gossip about it. I lay out some basic public policy issues, really broadly and then talk about the gossip. Prof. Biz Ass throws me a couple softball questions and then asks if there were any other interesting matters I could relate for the class. I talk about campaign donations, Alberto Gonzalez, and Karl Rove.
I’m a freakin’ champ. I received several compliments on my ability to liven up Biz Ass, and although it was obvious I hadn’t read it was much better than when the gunners make comments.

Emo boys and beards

I saw Ted Leo tonight. It was a pretty good show but I think the soundman was high or something. He didn't get a good mix all night. The kick drum was too high and I think that kept him from getting it right. When I saw Arcade Fire there, which I specifically didn't mention b/c I didn't want to arouse your envy, they had similar feedback problems. That leads me to believe it's the positioning of the monitors or some similar stage set up problem.
Can you imagine how much fun I am at a show? "Let's stand ten feet that way." "No that's wrong, you know we're nearly positioned equidistant between the two speakers and twice that distance away. I don't know why were not getting optimum sound."
Anyway both Ted Leo's drummer and his bassist had big beards. I don't know what it is with Emo boys right now and beards, but combined with the retro eighties type fashion they look like evangelical Christians. Seriously, there was a period in the late 70's/ early 80's where the hip look among young fundies was brown corduroy pants, shirt with snaps, and a nasty big old beard. The clothes are pretty much like the station manager on WKRP In Cincinnati wore but with a beard. It's somehow emo to look like a fucking born again.

Entitlement

Lexis was advertising their new contest for the semester. There's the opportunity to win triple lexis points while you're researching. The points will be awarded randomly. I took this to mean that if I have 200 points and won then I would have 600 points.
So I win triple points the other day. I pretty much live on Lexis so it's no surprise. I expect to suddenly have a huge amount of points and start imagining all the cool stuff I could buy. I notice that my points didn't triple. I logged off and back on and still no change in my points. I figure it will take a day to go through or something. When I logged on today I figured out what happened.
When they triple points they only triple the points you earned that day. So instead of 10 points I got 30. That's fine but I was hoping for the bigger point award b/c I still need 1000 points to maintain my elite status. As you all should know, Elite Status means everything to me. If I lost my Elite Status I would be like any other law student. I would no longer belong to the thousands of law students across the country who spend all their free time hooked to the goddamned lexis machine. I would be common, or start using westlaw. Obviously it would be a nightmare. Plus I want a digital camera and I need like 5,000 more points.
One other thing, I bumped into this cute woman in the hallway at work and kind of stayed in her way accidently. Back before law school when I was charming and suave with the ladies, this is before my crippling nerdification brought on by my single minded drive to maintain my elite status, I would have made some kind of witty quip and got her phone number. This time I thought "I should just go back to my cube until she's finished walking around the hall b/c I can't remember where I was going anymore." Law school is killing my cool. I need to get a leather jacket or something.
Last thing, I found out I can use Lexis to search foreign newspapers for reviews of records and bands. I'm finding so much more out about The Elephant Kashimashi and the Polysics. It freaking rocks.

Rules of Evidence? Sure, what do you want to know?

I had an interview for a job where I would get to do some criminal defense. It’s something I’m interested in but don’t know a lot about. One of the perks of this job is that there would be the potential to do a trial or two. In Oregon law students who have taken evidence and have a certain number of credit hours can be certified to appear before the court. Imagine a judge calling me "Counsel".
The other really cool thing about this job is the option to do juvenile defense work. When I grow up and pass the bar I would like to do defense work for juveniles who are undocumented. There’s a population of kids who migrated when they were very young, 1 or 2 years old, with their parents and grew up in the U.S. They get into some trouble when they’re 16 and find out they’re undocumented and they’re up for deportation. If the crime was violent there is very little chance that they can get a hearing to stay in the U.S. These are the folks I’d like to use my shiny new law degree to help. This job would provide some important training in that regard.
As I mentioned above one of the things I need to be court certified is the completion of evidence. I started evidence this semester, anticipating that I would be certified and ready to go by this summer. At this point I’ve had about 3 weeks of evidence. Prof. E was sick one day so I think I’ve had a total of 5 classes. We’ve talked about maybe 4 topics in the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE). I know them okay, but I have yet to spend much time really putting them in my brain.
The interview is going pretty much as most interviews go, let me tell you about what we do, tell me about you, why do you want to work here, where do you see yourself, etc. This interview is at a job fair and so each interviewee is only allowed 20 minutes. As I wind down my “I’m committed to community service and blah blah blah” answer the interviewer asks me a question.
“What can you tell me about FRE 611?”
I don’t have the FRE in front of me but I think I can answer this. “It deals with cross examination, and whether leading questions are appropriate or not.”
“When are they appropriate?”
“That depends on a lot of different factors, such as if the parties are adverse or not. Basically it’s governed by the judge’s discretion. I can’t remember the specific rule of the top of my head but I believe it’s 401.”
“How do you determine if the judge has abused his discretion?”
And on it goes. I’m doing okay as we go along, but I would never try to do this without having the FRE in front of me. I’m somewhat fresh on it but still I’m nervous.
We get to the best evidence rules and I start thinking “Crap, 1008 is the last rule we did in class and I haven’t done the reading for next week yet. If this goes much longer I’m screwed. I must stretch the next five rules out until the end of the interview. I must stop talking so fast b/c I’m nervous.”
I check my watch and I have eight minutes left, but the person who interviews after me isn’t around. How long can I possibly talk about the duplication exception. I’m down to the last rule, 1003, and still nobody has come up for the next interview. I start in on a lengthy explanation of FRE 1003 and my mouth is starting to dry up when the next interviewee walked up.
Thank god b/c there wasn’t a whole lot to say after that. So I had a nice pop quiz on evidence. I talked to some other people that interviewed and no one else got the pop quiz. I don’t know what that means.

More music stuff

I was listening to Trash by the New York Dolls the other day...
No that was someone else.
Anyway I was listening to Trash this afternoon and I got the part where he says "How do you call your loverboy?" and I thought, "Doesn't Buck Owens do that in Love Is Strange"?
So I dig out my Buck Owens records and listen to them and sure enough he does. So the next question is "Was Buck Owens listening to the New York Dolls or were they watching Hee Haw in drug induced stupors?" apparently Buck Owens recorded Love Is Strange and released it on We're Gonna Get Together in 1970 and Trash didn't come out until the New York Dolls self titled record in 1973.
So apparently the New York Dolls were listening to Buck Owens. The next question is "Was that on purpose?" The Beatles were fans of Buck Owens and he had some cross over audience b/c he played a little rockabilly and covered songs by Chuck Berry but a bunch of cross dressing heroin addicts in the Bowery seemed like a stretch.
Buck was kind of at the height of his popularity in 1970, he released something like 9 records in the preceding 3 years. He had a slew of number one hits and he had his own television show as well as his part on Hee Haw. He was kind of hard to miss. So I'm putting Buck Owens down as a subconscious influence on the New York Dolls.
As a semi interesting side note, the acoustic red, white, and blue guitar Buck Owens played on Hee Haw was a Mosrite, which is the same brand of guitar the Ramones played. The knock offs you could by at Sears were Gibsons though, so if your hick uncle had a red, white, and blue acoustic guitar in his attic don't get too excited.
I know you all are totally fascinated by this so thanks for listening.

Lindsay Lohan is Street Trash

Okay, that's not true. Me and my friends are street trash, or at least used to be. She's just a shit wipe. Over on Copy, Right? there's a medley( A short digression, medleys are fucking stupid. Who doesn't think so? There's been like two good medleys ever. The Circle Jerks medley of all the carpenter songs doesn't even rank as listenable. The only medleys I've ever heard that sounded decent occurred at live shows on the far side of last call and I was too beer stupid to know any better. [Coincidentally this is also when most of my worst music purchases have occurred.] I can only think of one good medley and it doesn't really count. When the Ramones played live and would blast through 8 songs by only singing a verse and one refrain of the chorus nonstop, that was cool. It's only kind of a medley... Actually I just looked it up in the dictionary [3 : a musical composition made up of a series of songs or short pieces ] and apparently that technically is a medley. Anyway the Queers also, this is around '96, used to do a decent one, and those are the only cool ones I can think of. The important thing to get out of this is that medleys generally suck, ohh and Tom Waits does a cool one too. Medleys suck.) by Lindsay Lohan of three songs.
That is bad enough in and off itself, however it gets worse. Two of the songs she trashes, Changes and Livin' For The City, are classics way beyond any talent she might think she has when surrounded in the fanciest 2 bazillion track recording studio in L.A. And worse yet Livin' For The City is a protest song about the inequality and racism in America. Fuckin' A, it makes me want to spell America with a K. If jerk offs like her are going to cover good songs like these, and do it without a trace of reverence or respect for the original intent ( I wonder if she even begins to understand the original purpose of the song, not that it's that fucking difficult.) of the song writer, in this instance Stevie Wonder, then to hell with her. See if I ever watch Mean Girls 2. It ain't gonna happen. Not on video on dollar day, not even on basic cable at 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon.
As for Livin' For The City, The Dirtbombs and Ike & Tina Turner both do excellent covers but you really can't beat the original. Just for the record (Does that have an acronym? Like BTW.) I didn't swear a lot to be "edgy". I was going for "pissed off by some dumb privileged teeny bop ditz coping attitude like she knows something".
I'm angry. I'm going to the pub to read evidence.

One more thing about Lexis

Lexis has these contests where if you're one of the first fifty people to send an email showing fifty searches you're entered in a raffle for points or whatever. I happen to be a huge geek who pretty much always has fifty searches that are no older than two hours in my history. So I got home last night around 2 AM and there's an email in my box from the Lexis rep saying, send us your history etc. I sent an email. How lame is it that at 2 AM on a Friday night I'm entering Lexis contests. I should approach them and say "I know and you know I'm your bitch. I'm getting this kick ass tattoo and if you fund my chest I'll let you ink my back." They could take me around and I could do training sessions with my shirt off or something. It could supplant my hope of being one of the ethnic models for the Westlaw brochures.
My blog got linked off some website at school or something, not exactly sure what happened. Anyway some people read it and told me about it and now my friend Miss V.H. tells me that I'm self censoring and losing my edge. I didn't think I had much of an edge before. So I'm thinking about how I can be more "edgy". I used the Fbomb in my last post, that probably doesn't really cut it as edgy anymore. I could get a transgendered law student to coblog or a stripper. That crap is popular with the kids. I was going to look around the web and see if I could find some HTML spinners and put some rims on my blog but that's not really my style. I was going to call my blog an "E-Zine", but apparently that lost its edge in the mid nineties. So if anyone has any clues about what constitutes edgy let me know. And if I win the Lexis raffle I'll use my bonus points in a very hip and unselfcensored way. Maybe I'll get the naked chef cookbooks or something.

Winding Down

I'm catching up on work and getting a handle on my schedule. All my grades are up and I'm getting used to the flow of the semester. I'm on top of the Tao and things are shaping up. However, there were some stumbling blocks. The only reason I'm mentioning this is as helpful advice, not because I would ever do something this stupid.
If you're doing research for your boss and it's going really well you might want to stop and go ask if you're in the right jurisdiction. Say the state has really awesome standards on some constitutional issue and your first lexis search pulls up three cases that are on point, do you really think this was what your attorney wanted you researching? He could have done that himself. You probably didn't luck out "just this once".
Do not keep researching for five hours and write a really "awesome memo that totally fucking nails this issue." It's time to go walk down the hall and clarify what you are looking for and in which jurisdiction. If you get new guidance and start pulling up old Admin. Law Judges' opinions that contradict each other and the CFRs you're probably now on the right track.
If you're really blessed there will be one case in the 11th Circuit that makes absolutely no sense. B/c this is a case of first impression in your Circuit and the only authority is ass backwards you'll get research all the cool secondary sources; legislative history, administrative law cases, agency opinions, and the least convincing weapon in your arsenal, The Law Review Article. (Man can you feel that sarcasm, hopefully none of my profs. are reading this.)
Follow the Tao, be the water. Unfortunately if you're a law student that water tends to be hammering against a sheer granite cliff.