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8 . 2 9 . 0 6 Two weeks into the semester and its more or less business as usual. Still getting back into the hang of lugging these big case books around and reading the fine print and footnotes in legalese. I have a hunch that these courses are more along my interest set, which should make it go more smoothly, but then again it is law school afterall. Reading up in criminal law brings back some things I picked up from previous work and course study, of course actually learning all of this material and concepts again this time in the legal context is a lot more complicated. I really think sometimes they find the most difficult way to teach something and then go forward with it. I'm also getting the standard acronyms down again, BARD, CCE, POE, 3P burdens, P/D, etc. For some reason questions of due process and the social implications of crime and punishment are more interesting to read about, even going through the sometimes dry legal analysis of elements isn't too bad. I'm still getting a feel for Con law, I can't help but compare to Downs back in Madison, he had a somewhat different take on Marbury v. Madison and Bush v. Gore. Of course with any instructor comes his academic interests and focuses. We ended up talking a lot about first amendment rights to free speech and university politics. I wonder what ever happened to that segregated fee controversy whether it ever got resolved. I'd like to say that having a law prof explain it in terms of civil procedure and original jurisdiction gives it a new angle, makes you wonder how things would've turned out if some of the powers at the time had played their cards differently. I think the historical element of Con Law is what I'm drawn to at this point. It forces you to look around at some of the cases that are being decided right now in the courts on constitutional rights and issues. It is worth mentioning that maybe the elitist and special status of the court that has been adopted since Marbury has discouraged Americans from keeping as involved with constitutional issues as they had if the court maintained a more populist existance in interpreting law. Not to say that things weren't elitist already back then. At least it seemed like the population, fresh off of a revolutionary war and post-conlict chaos were much more invested in their rights as citizens. 8 . 2 3 . 0 6 Done with my first two days of classes, with the lower credit load I've actually met all my professors and been initiated into all my classes for the semester already. Looking forward to starting off the second year, I think I'm more engaged in the classes this year based on the coure topics despite theme being assigned. More youtube distractions - live performance from Tenor Saw circa 1986, and a funky video from Tanja about shoes. According to youtube, a lot of the other videos I posted earlier have since been taken down due to copyright infringement. Again I find this kind of counterintuitive in that I would've never heard of any of these groups had they not been featured on youtube. I also was finally convinced to my first itunes purchases by a couple of Hifana tracks. I suppose eventually the big record companies will again bring out their cadre of IP attorneys and take youtube to court. In maybe a couple years from now they might win a ruling or two, and it'll be reported in the news. Meanwhile youtube will continue to allow copyrighted material to be posted, and another form of media sharing is bound to pop up. In the long run I don't think it'll help their record sales much, just prolong their transition to digital music as a format. One of these days they are going to have to wake up and see the marketing and promotional potential that digital media sharing technology has for their industry. There'll be a lot of happy IP lawyers in the upcoming years, thats for sure. 8 . 2 0 . 0 6 Classes start up tomorrow and I'm wrapping up some paperwork from my summer between the first and second years as an evening division law student. Also going back to work after taking some much needed annual leave. Tried to get the apartment in a cleaned up state, invested in some new shelving and rearranged some of the furniture I think the little adjustments make a big difference in the bigger scheme of things. What we lack in horizontal space is made up for in pretty high ceilings. The shelving I bought today makes better use of that empty space for sure. Still trying to get one last book for my con law class, it was a new edition that was supposed to be ready earlier this month but the publisher still hasn't delivered it to the bookstore. I'm sure there are a lot of us disgruntled evening students out there grumbling being that we dont' have much free time to hunt down a book that was supposed to be there already. Even amazon doesn't have it listed as an incoming title. Oh well. Actually read up on one of my books for my required seminar class on Catholic Social Thought and Jurisprudence during the plane ride home and back. Some parts I found very interesting, other parts stuck me as very weak arguements, I almost began thinking that the writer hadn't done a very good job at proofing his argument for logical errors. I almost thought that I could come up with a better religious arguement even though I am not Catholic. Then again I suppose from a non-Catholic I may be missing a thing or two written between the lines, then again maybe its something lost in the translation from Italian to English. While I'm at it studying this for class, I wonder if there are any good Buddhist books on law and society out there. Maybe more in the area of Alternative Dispute Resolution section. 8 . 1 8 . 0 6 Durkheim or some other famous sociologist talked about the sacred and profane when it comes to rite of passage in primative and modern socieities. I'm still coming to grasp with what my most recent trip home was in essence, definitely a rite of passage. Again given the circumstances, I had to improvise and cross this bridge in my own style and fashion. Honestly don't feel that much different now that I'm back, aside from a new nickname, and some new legal documents in my backpack. Life goes on I suppose, although I am getting older and hopefully a little wiser in the ways of the world. More on this later. I had a good but short break from the office and school. The morning I flew out was the same morning of the London security scare. Luckily I had been up all night packing and checked CNN at about 4AM to be able to repack my suitcase in accordance to the new flight travel restrictions. Reagan National was a madhouse that morning, with a long ass line and angry airline employees yelling at TSA employees. After ditching a bottle of water, eye drops, and some revita foodpackets, in the end they failed to notice a bottle of contact solution that I had accidentally left in my backpack. Had some discussions lately about the perceptions of the affluent, liberal youth, namely those that wish to reject the spoils of our capitalist society in its entirety to take on minimum wage jobs when they are easily qualified for something closer to resemble something like a living wage. I suppose it sounds admirable when you're a poor college or graduate student but it doesn't change the fact that the impoverished situation that most students find themselves in is temporary at least, and espeically if you're headed to a steady and otherwise lucrative profession based on your degree, and even more so if you're being subsidized by your parents. This is especially true if you chose a profession or trade that has nothing to do with their degree, and therefore you are as unqualified for it as the College droppout, or HS diploma holder. I can't help but have little sympathy for those that choose an impoverished path in life and then feel like they have a right to complain about it to the world for sympathy. We all have some level of choice in the paths we take in life. Some we have control over, but most of them we have little or no control over. Aside from the class that we are born into as being one path that we have little choice in, it is the one that is most predictive of the amounts of choices that we will have. Simply put, the higher the class, the more choices we are afforded through life, the more time to sit around, brood, and take for granted the things that were given to us by the sweat and hard work of our parents and grandparents. I am eternally critical of the bootstraps Alger Hiss American Dream bullshit that some people toss around. Instead I think that sheer willpower and hard work will only get you so far. While you might be able to eek out an honest living, jumping from lower to upper or even middle class is a lot harder than we have been led to believe. Class lines are drawn so sharply that those who move up in one generation are the exception to the rule. Achieving a basic level of education or technical training is one way to break out of the class mold and move up. A degree is something that nobody can take away from you, once the ink on the paper is dry it is a credential that is forever associated with you. At a minimum it says that you were able to stay focused for the 4, 5, 6 or 10 years that it took you to take the required classes and graduate, a basic level of responsibility that employers do value. Not taking advantage of the opportunities that your degree provides you is almost like throwing it away entirely. If it makes you happy to live simply and scrape by, fine. I'm the last to criticize those who find creative solutions to make do with what they have (I'm the guy that constructed a dining table out of an IKEA footrest, a bunch of old Economics books (Micro AND Macro) and a piece of wood), but don't complain about having trouble making your car payments, the price of gas, or having to eat ramen and not being able to go out with your friends from college because your income is way below what it should be based on your degree. Maybe you picked the wrong major and realized that the job wasn't quite what they told you it was in class. you can apply the same innovative thinking to scrape by the try to salvage the time and money you put into that piece of paper and use it for something anyway, a foot in the door, or a temporary job while you pursue your real calling in life. The powers to be are squabbling over raising the minimum wage which is at the bottom of a 50 year curve. This means that minimum wage is moving farther away from what it costs to live on in this country. If you settle for a job with a minimum wage when you could be earning even marginally more, you are playing a pawn to the very corporate and government powers that you are trying to rebel against. You aren't a rebel afterall, you are a willing tool to the big evil capitalist machine you're raging against and it's agents are laughing at you all the way to the bank. You would be better off being a player in the market and using your creativity and intelligence to make some kind of positive change. Go invent something that restores our humanity or soul, do something that inspires your common man, or just get an honest job, pay taxes and be an active citizen. Just fucking read up on candidates in your district and take a stand at the ballot. Exactly how you do this is up to you to figure out - I'll admit that still figuring some of these details out myself. But for gods sake don't you dare apply for public assistance when you're still wallowing in your own self induced rebellion, especially if you're still leaching off your parents living at home. In this market if you don't pay rent you aren't poor, period. I've come to see that being poor by choice to the point of being dependant on social safety nets such as welfare, disability, or even subsidized student loans by choice isn't really admirable at all, in fact its kind of pathetic. There's plenty of people in the world who don't have the access to education or jobs and need those benefits to survive. If you have the ability to earn more than a living wage but chose not to, you're just a selfish spoiled brat trying to be something that you're not. There has to be a way to reject the evils of our consumer and material culture and still be able to feed and cloth yourself, and obtain basic level health care for yourself and family without selling your soul to the evils of capitalism. There is a middle ground, really. use you're creative one-of-a-kind mind to find it and make it a reality. Went to the DC government recorder's office to record a deed for a client. I couldn't help but notice how rude the staff there was. This comes from someone from a state famous for inefficiency and laziness, so I'll just say that this was pretty bad. I say this in that I was expecting to get some attitude when I went there, its just the nature of the beast. Its just that normally when people are rude they usually back off if you maintain a polite composure and treat them with respect. In this case it didn't seem to make a difference at all. I suppose if I had to work in a cooped up office all day for several years I might come to think everyone that comes in front of me is a fucking idiot who didn't bring the right forms and know the right acronyms and number codes. then again maybe not. God I hope not. As it turns out I was missing an essential bureaucratic form to complete the transaction and make the record official, so I will have to go back to the client, get a signature in the presense of a notary public, and then come back to try again at filing it and making the piece of paper legal, real deal. 8 . 9 . 0 6 So I ship out tomorrow for my short-lived summer vacation, I say short-lived in that I'm still tying up some loose ends on my summer law class and knowingly I'll have a long short list of tasks to pick up as soon as I get back to the office. Meanwhile, year "2E" is looming to start up in roughly two weeks. I think I pretty much decided to take the lower credit load and reclaim some weekend downtime from here on out, even if it means taking summer school for the remaining 3 years. I think it'll be worth it in the long run, have to keep up with some other commitments and not lose sight of the important things in life. Like sleep, for one. As always, I am curious to see what turn life will take next. Early this morning I had a lapse of Deja vu, first time in a while, occaisionally I would have a moment of thought when a certain moment seemed strikingly familar to me, as if it came to me once in a dream a long time ago. The strange thing was that it would come in the form of mundane and normal life, washing the dishes, listening to the TV in the background, and remembering the exact words of the announcer, the cheesy commercial jingle and flying bacon strips through the air. I have come to interpret moments like these as some kind of subconsious reassurance that I am one the right path, almost as if my dreams were tapping into some kind of script that had been paved before me, one of many different realities and possibilities. Kind of like a cosmic choose-your-own adventure (its the closest analogy I can think of right now), although the path is never determined or set in stone of course, I still have the power to choose my own path. I would notice that the dejavu moments would build and build coming up to a big event or crossroads in life, usually a big decision, or rite of passage and once I crossed it, the dejavu would subside and sometimes totally disappear. Very vivid dreams lately. I think in the past week or so I have had a conversation with every one of my ex-girlfriends with the exception of a couple, reinstilling some of the emotional drama and hectic moments I've had in the past years since junior high. Some dreams were more obviously symbolic than others, which was somewhat amusing being that some of the ones I seem to have dug up from my unconscious I honestly haven't really thought about in years. Some of them were still pretty pissed off at me, some were sad that we had lost touch, and others were wicked in insisting that I still wanted them back. I think at one point I was going to respond "In your dreams" but the the lucid dream state irony would've been too much even for me. I suppose I've had my share of relationships, spanning a wide specturm of dysfunctional, co-dependent, psychotic, bittersweet, platonic, sibling-like, flirtatious, and those that I never pursued for whatever reason there was. Usually because of circumstances and the point of life each of us were at, maybe due to some kind of karma in a past life, or the roads I had chosen in this life. It's been a little over 2 years in the District, 2 years of full time work (with benefits) and 1 year of Night school, I'd say that while quite a bit has changed, some things in my own persona and overall demeanor haven't changed at all. Looking forward to this next crossroads that has been triggering the dejavu whatever it might be, especially if it is what I think it is coming up down the road. 8 . 2 . 0 6 Enjoying a rare flex day which I had originally planned on being a study day, but given the record breaking temperatures outside I'm debating on whether or not to brave the elements and head into the school. its already 98 or something with heat indexes pushing 107, not expected to subside at least until 10:00pm tonight. Have to say that I am fortunate for living in a nice cool basement with central AC, it makes life a lot more bearable, especially when you read all the reports of people coming down with heat stroke, and others dropping dead. Been extremely busy these past couple of weeks, it dawned on me recently that I haven't had any amount of a summer vacation, something that might come and bite me in the ass later as school starts up again. Just last night I thought about moving my class schedule around to make it more manageable, being that I took summer school I could feasibly lower my credit load so that I would reserve two whole evenings for reading, and have classes two nights a week. One observation I have had about going to law school at night is the grueling schedules, especially with a full time job and other commitments. Still can't get over the fact that I was taking 11 credits last semester, just 1 credit short of the minimum load for a full time, day student. That seems kind of crazy to have that much to cover in a single semester almost entirely on the evenings and weekends. A bit amazed that I was able to pull it off and not go totally fucking insane. Looks like I survived alright, and learned quite a bit in the process. One of these days I'll get around to writing about more of the experiences and observations, might be a worthwhile long term project. I still need to work on converting this site into a blog format, its become a work in progress. |