god, can we have another snow day?

weariness
i am weary.

i am weary of law school and studying and the constant pressure which is partly self-induced and partly externally induced.

i am weary of social interactions and insecurity, which is partly self-induced and partly externally induced.

i am weary of this world. i am weary of bush and this god-forsaken war and the innocent people who die every day. i am weary of bush and his bullshit, trying to play the race card and saying that privatizing social security will help african american males because they die younger and are thus unable to take advantage of social security. that sounds to me like a serious disjoinder in reasoning. WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT HEALTH CARE OR SOCIETY -- THE THINGS THAT ARE FUNDAMENTALLY CAUSING AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES TO DIE YOUNGER -- THAN TO THROW MONEY AT THEM?

I am so tired of Bush's faith. He's such an idiot. You show me where in the bible it says that you should throw money at people to make them feel better, to fix problems? Where does it say that compassion and love and justice equal money? In what twisted universe does Bush live? Maybe he should learn to read, and then read the bible, the book on which he purportedly bases his faith.

i am so weary. i just want to withdraw from life, put my head down, and just plow through the next two years. and then the next two years after that until we can hopefully put a rationale, non-hypocritical person into office to lead this country.

vocab lesson 2

donnybrook: up-roar, free-for-all

Jim Wallis
From Jim Wallis' book "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it WRong and the Left Doesn't Get It"

The most popular presentations of religion in our time (especially in the media) almost completely ignore the biblical vision of social justice and, even worse, dismiss such concerns as merely "left wing."

Neither religious nor secular fundamentalism can save us, but a new spiritual revival that ignites deep social conscience could transform our society.

From the Boston Globe Interview

When you say you care about the poor, or want to protect the environment, or challenge a nation's decision to go to war, they say you're "left wing" - even though those convictions come right out of the Bible. I care about poverty because the Bible requires an evangelical Christian like me to care about poverty.

Now, there are other issues where I dissent from the left pretty strongly. I talk a whole lot about the importance of family and marriage, and the breakdown of family life being a critical issue -- especially for poverty. Now, I don't blame gays and lesbians for the breakdown fo the family. I once got [Dobson's] Focus on the Family to admit that it's [happening] because of heterosexual dysfunction. You can be pro-family and pro-gays and gay rights at the same time.

And abortion is a serious moral issue, and pro-life and pro-choice must come together to try to dramatically reduce this terrible abortion rate by focusing on teenage pregnancy and adoption reform, and supporting lower-income women economically. There is so much that we can do for solutions, not just symbolic litmus tests on the right and the left.

JIM WALLIS WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!

the post to negate the last post-post
today was a good day. i had a message on my answering machine about an internship, even tho' i only applied to volunteer. (apply, you ask? me too.) and it's tuesday, and we didn't have classes yesterday because of snow, so that was nice. i haven't had a snow day since i was 17. i didn't even have snow days last year, living in jersey. i had to drive my bitty car around a town full of hills, albeit short ones, and teach classes of two students. the kids of parents who have giant suv's who thought they could brave the weather. anyways, after lunch, someone told me that we could get grades. so off i went, showed my ID, got my little envelope, opened it, and apparently stepped through into an alternate universe.

dude, i did really well on my civ pro exam. this was the class that i ahd resigned myself to not doing well. because instead of learning real law, we learned legal reasoning. we were given a rule on the midterm that we hadn't studied, much less even heard of. and even in my best dreams, i didn't do so well on my civ pro midterm.

it's nice that this midterm counted for 40% of 6 credits. really, it was a good day.

overload
it's four a.m. it's blizzarding outside. this weather disturbance has already earned a name, a catchy label, to make the local news reports sexy: THE BLIZZARD OF 2005. ok, it isn't that sexy. but it's 4 a.m., the snow is falling hard, and i'm finishing up the rough draft of my moot court brief. i'm supposed to meet with my classmates tomorrow and put the whole thing together. i wonder if the T can run in 30 inches of snow. i don't see how when it can barely manage on a perfectly nice, sunny, spring day.

these last two weeks have been incredibly difficult. i'm realizing that the school is really just pouring it on us. i've barely been able to keep up, and the only reason i can is by going to be at 2am every school night. that's how long it takes me to do my reading and work nominally on my brief. and then, to pour lemon juice on the wound, we got our grades on friday.

i remember when i was younger, especially in college, i didn't care about grades. of course, i was forced to because i didn't work very hard and even when i did work hard, it seemed like all i could eke out were B's. sometime since college, i've become a grade whore. a's a's a's. all i want are a's. if i don't get a's, i feel shitty. my grades made me feel OK. that's all i'm going to say.

in addition to the emotional turmoil of having to look at grades (which i never actually did; my friend looked for me and i haven't looked at them yet -- although maybe last night when i was really drunk i did ...), there's the additional social/emotional turmoil of coming back and interacting with everyone at school. i'm having serious boy-angst issues. and by boy i mean "the" boy. there is so much awkwardness between us. and it comes from both of us. i can feel it. so that's putting me off a bit too.

all of this came to a head last night. i met with a friend at 4:30 for drinks and dinner. we had a great time talking it was so much fun i miss times like that. and then we met up with some other friends for drinks. i don't think i was there for more than an hour or two before i burst into tears and had to leave. seriously. in the middle of a bar. my emotional state is harking back to my teenage years, when i was seriously unstable and my emotions were uncontrollable. it was weird. it is weird.

the best i can explain it is that i'm physically tired from lack of sleep and emotionally tired for all the reasons mentioned above, on top of the usual ones, such as i'm going to die alone, why am i single, why am i fat. the alcohol totally weakened me and made the ugly come out.

thus, i have resolved not to have more than two drinks at a time until my life is a little more in check. because crying in bars is ugly, and so is how i feel the next day.

fashion faux pas
sometimes, i dress myself and think, hmm, if the crew from what not to wear was following me around, this would so make the secret footage.

brief political rant before bed
what the fuck is up with the republicans in washington state? they lose the governor's election by 100-someodd votes and they fucking want to throw a coup and have a revote. wow, they were incredibly silent when the tides ran in their favor. fucking hypocrites. near the top of my list of pet peeves -- hypocrites.

it's never going to happen
i'm never going to get married. i'm going to be single for the rest of my life. usually, i'm okay with this fate. i love my independence and definitely think that if it's meant to happen then it'll happen, and if it's not meant to happen, then i'm better off.

but for some reason, this week, i started getting really down on myself. like i'm going to be one of those people whose body is going to start stinking up the joint before anyone knows i'm dead. and to add fodder to this hopelessness, i read this op-ed article from the nytimes. in brief, it's about how men prefer women who are subordinate, assistants and secretaries, generally women who will fawn over them and depend on them. part of me understands; i have a weird attraction to men with authority over me, who are better at some things than i.

but i'm in law school fer god's sakes!

oh well.

Op-Ed Columnist: Men Just Want Mommy

January 13, 2005
By MAUREEN DOWD

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I
met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted
out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want
to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and
powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was
to tend to them and care for them in some way: their
secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight
attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.

Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy
I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the
moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting,
serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a
half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance
between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days
seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances
between unequals.

In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los
Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who
cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak
English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played
by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking,
overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow
she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial
design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had
to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without
the charm.

The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's
"Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and
sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant,
falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones
into his office. A businessman married to the substantial
Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer
falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak
English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like
to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned
off?)

Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into
selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than
affection.

As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men
would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and
evolution may be to blame."

A new study by psychology researchers at the University of
Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men
going for long-term relationships would rather marry women
in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.

As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study,
summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a
disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer
to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women
with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.

"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are
evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize
the risk of raising offspring that are not their own."
Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in
their attraction to men who might work above or below them.
And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night
stands.

A second study, which was by researchers at four British
universities and reported last week, suggested that smart
men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned
wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a
high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it
is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by
35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for
women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The
more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want
to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk
to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in
relationships with women they don't have to talk to.

I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East
Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed
that women who challenge men are in trouble.

"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I
gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date
women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys
in the service professions. But then I found out that kings
want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be
treated like kings, too."

what the!
who the fuck uses "congeries" and "ukases" in the same paragraph?!

thank god for online dictionaries.

congeries: a collection
ukases: an imperial decree, typically of a tsar

reality check
saturday, i played paper mario on n64 for 10 hours. 10 HOURS! i confess it. the whole time, my crim book was sitting on my desk, open to the last page i'd read. i think i was in denial that school was starting today (monday). for the first hour or two, i could feel the old law school gears grinding in my head. but then after a few hours in the (surprisingly full) library, i felt like i had never left.

i got a hep b vaccine last monday. it was sore for a day or two, and then stopped, and today it really started bothering me again. i know it's not pain caused by an injury or anything else because i have had ZERO amount of physical exertion, besides walking up to my third-floor apartment. and i haven't done much of that either because, like i said, i've been holed up playing nintendo.

a note from a former life

i'm still in canada and working as a dog sled tour guide here in canmore alberta...good luck with that law school stuff

i really have nothing to say about this. i think it speaks for itself, at least for me.

i am racist
i was out with some friends in nyc last week, and i brought up how i found it odd that some korean people, especially the younger ones, were really into emulating black rap and r&b stars. i said that they pretty much seemed to want to be black, tried to be black, and even used words i thought weren't appropriate for people that were not black. like 'nigga'. i swear. some korean guy was talking to me and he started calling his korean friends 'niggas'. i was sort of offended. and i thought the guy and this whole part of the korean culture was ridiculous.

my friends intelligently pointed out to me that it was a cultural thing. it wasn't so much that these korean people were trying to be black, but they were trying to adopt a culture, and in some ways, that culture was more theirs than strict korean culture. my friend mentioned that she had some friends who grew up in predominantly black parts of town and identified more with black culture than with korean culture.

and i was silenced. i never thought about this, but i think inherent in my ignorance was a racist undertone. some sort of assumption that if korean people were around this black culture, they shouldn't want to adopt it because it's inferior. i think a part of me looks down on black culture/people in some ways.

this is definitely something to be aware of. and it's something i should change. but please forgive me and my racist tendencies. i own up to my own deficiencies, but it's not like i had the best role models. my parents are full fledged racists, and i do my best to not be like them in that regard.

but, on a related note, why do people get so offended when i use certain words, like weird, and stupid and retarded. people take me too literally. i think for me, i say things, i'll say anything, talk about anything. like how on monday, i went to student health services and within ten minutes, i was stuck with a needle for my first hep B vaccine and a very large black woman was poking and prodding me. and i mean the inside of me. ouch. but why should stuff like that be taboo? and just because i call something weird, i'm not judging it. i think my point is, i say things that sound mean or judgmental, but the intent to be mean or judgmental isn't there. it's just a word. like when i call my friend fat, or make fat jokes, i don't really mean it. even if bobby is fat, it doesn't mean i dislike him, or judge him for being fat. it's just a fact. why not be honest about it? but some people are so shocked! i guess this is the old pc debate. i'm not really for pc-ness in my personal life. as long as the intent to be racist or demeaning isn't there, you can say whatever you want. if the word "nigger" can be reclaimed, why can't fag, homo, fat-ass, etc. be reclaimed too?

mail
i got junk mail from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. This is what it said on the outside of the envelope:

You have a big stake in Social Security and Medicare -- like everyone in your generation

Yet you were not one of the nearly 17,181,500 seniors who answered our previous letters.

I think I know why.

I think I do too.

useless day
i went out last night with some law friends who are around. i have no idea how, but i got WASTED. got home, knitted for 10 minutes, brushed my teeth etc and went to bed. and i haven't gotten out of bed all day! this is absolutely my worst hangover ever. well, maybe not as bad as the one after i finished finals. but i've been awful all day. nauseous and wanting to throw up and just useless and limp all day long. i don't know what happened. i used to be a good drinker. i used to be a high functioning hungover type of person. but lately, i've just been felled by my hangovers. i think this is a sure sign that i'm getting old and i need to stop. at least stop drinking with a vengeance. ouch.

law school reconvicted
i'm so glad i'm a student. i miss law school.

i revisited my past on new year's -- i worked at my parents' club. only, instead of downstairs, i worked upstairs, where a promoter was holding a new year's party. the bartenders didn't show. so my mom, this other employee and i played bartender. holy fuck. it started around 9pm, and around 11, after i was pouring drinks non-stop, i almost started crying because i was afraid it was going to be like that all night, until 7am. (because we apparently had a special permit/license to operate until 7am b/c it was new years.) but i bit my lip and bore down and got through it. thankfully, it eased up a bit around 1 a.m. between the three of us, we poured about $6000-$7000. and i had to play cashier/server for the other several thousand dollars of bottle service. it's great that my parents made all this money, but if it were me, i think i'd put up with less profit, if it meant increased sanity. i'm so fucking tired. i finally went to sleep around 7am, and did not even open my eyes until 2:30pm. and i only got up because i was driving back to boston today and wanted to hang out with my parents before they left for work (they are amazing) at 4pm. what a holiday.

now i'm back in boston. so much to do! like that 9foot tall pile of newspapers i have to do something about...