Previously Unpublished

I HAD to post this (I’ve calmed down a little now that I’ve eaten…what was I thinking, I’m a 2L now, for godsakes):

Work of pure genius, The Beer Belly. (Make sure to read the Tips & Tricks section.)

Baseball games this summer will be so awesome.

-jd

You know things are starting to get bad when I purposely miss one of the last three epsidoes of The West Wing. Moreover, I’ll miss tomorrow night too since I have a class commitment. It’s okay though, according to the review on discussion boards, the episode actually didn’t have anyone from the old crew. So although I would have watched anyway…”oh law school, not again.” To quote the cartoon I published in the latest edition of the paper.

-jd

(I’m going to hate this office in a few more days.)

So, I have apparently forgotten how to write a paper. I used to be a master at this, but after 5 years, I have apparently lost my way.

Maybe I need sleep. The problem is that today was the last day I budgeted to do this. I was going to spend a couple hours brushing it up in a week or so, but at this point, I probably need another day to make it great.

I basically just realized that I need actual arguments in my paper. I’ve just eclipsed the 30 page high water mark and I sort of just have background summaries of the law involved. Actually what put me over are three really broad concepts I came up with on the way back from Subway.

So yeah, I’m not really sure what I was thinking as I spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sort of wallowing through all these books I checked out. Oh well. It’ll happen, now it’s just a judgment call of how much longer I want to put off studying for Copyright and Wills and Trusts.

-jd

I love John Rawls. I think I can now pull off my very against-the-grain thesis. Either that, or the professor will think I’m as unfocused and hodge-podged as the posts on this blog.

In a somewhat related vein, I related the story of the Paper and Panda Express to my haircutter. He will now be on the lookout for a girl who likes take-out.

Twice during the haircut, the women next to me gave “pause” during my conversation with my haircutter. First, when I was talking about personal injury law (she probably knows someone who thinks they were completely screwed by a money-grubbing lawyer) and second when the haircutter was telling me about keeping Playboys on hand for his straight customers. I then volunteered that growing up, our family had a very nice, but off-kilter hairdresser who lived in the hills and had nude black and white photos taped to the door of her little bathroom at her studio. My first brush with porn. My fellow patron looked disdainful. Might also have been the apparent resemblance I have to Eminem.

-jd

“You will soon be honored by someone you respect…in bed.”

Honored, huh? Sorry, I can’t resist: Is it oxymoronic to equate honored with sucking?

-jd

Police just checked in again. I’m okay.

I went. It took 30 minutes. The guy gave me spicy shrimp and veggies even after I explicitly asked it it was hot. I don’t like the Panda hot spices. Oh well, I’ll deal. I mean, I got my Panda - every finals/deadline period needs at least one night of takeout late at night in an office.

I’ll save my philosophy of life musing from on the way home for later. It involved the freeway system in my city being like a palm meant for reading. There is one area in particular where the main thoroughfare near my apartment goes over a major interstate and you always stop on a light overlooking it and I love the way the cars go back and forth, day or night. Plus it usually smells pretty good…usually because half the time I am coming from the direction that stops over the freeway, I have food with me.

-jd

Why? - What does Panda Express have to do with girlfriends? The lack of sex on at least a semi-regular basis, after ordering takeout on a Saturday night? Affection and companionship and playing the fortune cookie game and then acting it out (See: link, then under “fortune cookie etiquette”)? Someone to watch kung fu with on channel 39 after taking her out to the Panda Express restaurant for dinner (Some chains are better than others)?

Well, yes to all of the above, but that’s typical and not really a post-worthy subject for anyone. No, more importantly, I have a craving for chinese food and Panda Express in particular and yet going to get it would take at least 20 minutes out of my time to study (putting aside the fact that writing this blog entry took at least ten incluing time to find the links). Going to get takeout when one half of a couple is working on a very important paper is part of what people in a relationship do for each other. The best example is the husband/boyfriend (I’m so contemporary) going out to get whatever the wife/girlfriend (still contemporary, but would have been interesting if I had just put girlfriend) craves when they are pregnant. Now, the significant other doesn’t have to be with child, it’s just a nice thing to do-for/demand-from the other person.

If I had a girlfriend, I would go get her Panda Express or even the vastly inferior-tasting Pick-Up Stix. Better yet, I’d wait till after finals and get takeout from P.F. Chang’s but now I’m just day-dreaming, not making a point. Going to P.F. Chang’s would take too long now and really doesn’t help anyone. I’m getting tired of Funyuns really quickly.

-jd

I just got an email from a professor with a sample exam from last year. It was a marathon of a test and not exactly how I thought he would conduct a test. Actually, it is probably better for me that he formats that way he does, it is sort of like the non-multiple choice part of our evidence final and I somehow managed a respectable grade in that class despite going in with an almost below-passing average (possibly even after the curve, but it was hard to tell) on my multiple choice quizzes. Regardless, given that two weeks from yesterday at 4 PM I will have taken my two in-class exam and have written a 30 page seminar paper, I sort of had a small panic attack (small compared to say, this time last year, and crim law.)

To solve the problem and to make me feel better much in the way chocolate seems to make a lot of people feel better after a break-up (not me, it’s all about listening to The Beach Boys, and funnily enough, a Dave Matthews Band song called Warehouse), I went to buy more commercial outlines. As I’ve long held, you can always sell these back on Amazon.com for a couple bucks less, but you can never regain face after you puke in front of your former sectionmates. Well, the bookstore closed at noon because they are doing inventory. I almost went right through the glass door and I think I pulled something because I expected the damn thing to give, but it was locked.

Inventory. Who does inventory at the end of April? Moreover, who does it during finals when people need to buy study guides and candy and highlighters and water and candy? Stupid bookstore, I really wanted to take advantage of not having to turn the Wills and Trusts outline back in until Monday if I wanted a refund (if it proved useless, since I do have a nice outline by Jack already.) It’s just the principle of it all. I used to work at a bookstore as an undergrad and we always defaulted to the needs of the students, when we weren’t talking about sex, drugs, and sex in the backroom. What is wrong with these people?

Oh well, I still got the procrastinate-on-my-paper time in by walking over to the bookstore in the first place.

-jd

I am pretty damn good at making breakfast. I’m not sure why, but I can go all out with eggs, hash browns, toast, all the appropriate beverages, omelettes, pancakes, eggs benedict - just all sorts of things and they usually look pretty good. And that’s a good thing because when someone stays over, they are impressed the next morning with the follow-up. Moreover, I like going out to breakfast to meet friends or whatever. Anyway, all this makes it ironic that I rarely eat breakfast on a daily basis.

That changes during the finals study period. I’ll make breakfast and spend the half hour or so it takes to pull it all together. Granted, the day of the test, if in the morning I won’t eat anything because it is too daunting on my stomach. But you can bet when I have a paper to write, I’ll take my sweet time making the eggs look pretty and the toast well-buttered and the box scores checked.

Amazingly, I woke up this morning with a paragraph of my paper written, sources included. It was pretty cool. Too bad I need about 50 paragraphs total. Off to the office.

-jd

I just devoured a bag of Funyuns. I haven’t had Funyuns in years, but I used to love them in middle school. I think for me it’s sort of a mix between how great onion rings are, and my early fascination with the dehydrated food that astronauts get to eat. (See also: why I became a boy scout - okay I also liked the scoutmaster’s daughter.)

Anyway, I’ve set up shop in the newspaper office and things couldn’t be better, except for having to finish this paper. I’ve given myself a deadline of tomorrow at 5 pm. After that, I won’t touch it again until sometime next week before it is due. I really like my topic and there are a lot of places it could go, but at this point it is clear that I need to hone in on specifics and stop going on wild tangents. Anyway, I’ve got an unlimited snack supply in the lobby, the fan blowing, the police just checked in to make sure the office wasn’t being robbed, and all the baseball games are over so I can stop checking scores.

I wouldn’t be opposed to wanton, deprived 1L girls invading the office to seek “advice” on finals, but short of that, I’ll push through till midnight.

-jd