snow day 2?
i love having crushes on boys.
i hate having crushes on boys.

homework has been really out of control lately. i've spent all day doing nothing but, but have not even finished the assignemtn for one class. i remember in college i would be assigned a book to read a night. whether i finished the assignment is irrelevant. but now i'm getting 20 pages for one class and it takes me all freaking day. ARGH!

i could seriously use another snow day to catch up.

sisterhood
I have always seriously disliked women who had no respect for other women's boyfriends and husbands. there are 6 billion people in the world, and yet, some women have to go for their friend's husbands or boyfriends or even their crushes. This I hate. Why?

Because right now, there are several women in my life, including myself, whose inner emotional states are completely fucked because of men. fuck and chuck. or just unrequited love. or just general angst about men and relationships. seriously strong and independent women have been felled by some stupid dude. life is hard enough trying to deal with men on your own. why can't women just respect each other and stay out of each other's ways?

of course, i may take it a little too far, to the point where i have a hard time talking to someone's boyfriend b/c i don't want it to be construed as flirting. (because sometimes it seems as if i'm incapable of anything but flirting.) and then at the other end, i nearly killed a girl. it was my birthday party, i had just told the girl that i had hooked up with this guy, there was some weirdness. and what does she do? proceed to spend the whole night all over him.

crazy shit.

my point here is that why can't women just respect each other? i know we compete, but really, it's asinine.

so is moot court. blah.

meandering
i'm not totally sure what's going on. i seem to have reached a new level of contentment in my life, but my life is being turned upside down. my habits are changing (i'm not finishing my homework). my friends are changing. my lifestyle and attitude are changing. yes, i'm content. but i'm not sure i'm happy. i never know if i'm happy. the only time i feel happy is when i'm genuinely laughing. maybe i'm just enjoying the novelty of the newness of everything. and underneath it all, i'm just a little worn down. the february blahs.

but things are good. i'm volunteering two days a week at an environmental place downtown. i'm doing taekwondo (mostly). i'm swimming. i'm going out. i'm making new friends (and a new crush i think!). saturday morning i woke up at someone else's house. nothing sexual or dirty. we just had a little drunken sleepover. it's been a long time since i've gotten so drunk i didn't get home. maybe it should have been longer still. but whatever.

i lost my ipod though. two weeks ago. it fell out of my pocket somewhere. i'm really thinking about getting a new one. maybe one of those new 4GB minis unveiled today, that would cost me about $170 with my student discount. maybe an ipod shuffle, b/c it's only $99. i don't know. i gave up shopping for lent, but this seems like a necessity, ranking up there with groceries. not having music is driving me crazy. b/c i can't read on the train in the morning b/c i'm carrying too much stuff. so i have nothing to keep me sane. oh well.

anyways, this is just a post i wanted to get up because i haven't written in a while. this semester is blowing by. spring break is in two weeks. and after that, our MOOT COURT oral arguments! bah! public speaking!

see! law CAN be funny!
From decision Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corporation, Inc. 147 F.Supp.2d 668 (S.D. Texas 2001)

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.
...
Defendant begins the descent into Alice's Wonderland by submitting a Motion that relies upon only one legal authority. The Motion cites a Fifth Circuit case which stands for the whopping proposition that a federal court sitting in Texas applies the Texas statutes of limitations to certain state and federal law claims. See Gonzales v. Wyatt, 157 F.3d 1016, 1021 n. 1 (5th Cir.1998). That is all well and good--the Court is quite fond of the Erie doctrine; indeed there is talk of little else around both the Canal and this Court's water cooler. Defendant, however, does not even cite to Erie, but to a mere successor case, and further fails to even begin to analyze why the Court should approach the shores of Erie. Finally, Defendant does not even provide a cite to its desired Texas limitation statute. [FN2] A more bumbling approach is difficult to conceive--but wait folks, There's More!
...
Ultimately, to the Court's dismay after reviewing the opinion, it stands simply for the bombshell proposition that torts committed on navigable waters (in this case an alleged defamation committed by the controversial G. Gordon Liddy aboard a cruise ship at sea) require the application of general maritime rather than state tort law. See Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505, 524 (4th Cir.1999) (What the ...)?! The Court cannot even begin to comprehend why this case was selected for reference. It is almost as if Plaintiff's counsel chose the opinion by throwing long range darts at the Federal Reporter (remarkably enough hitting a nonexistent volume!). And though the Court often gives great heed to dicta from courts as far flung as those of Manitoba, it finds this case unpersuasive. There is nothing in Plaintiff's cited case about ingress or egress between a vessel and a dock, although counsel must have been thinking that Mr. Liddy must have had both ingress and egress from the cruise ship at some docking facility, before uttering his fateful words.
...
Despite the continued shortcomings of Plaintiff's supplemental submission, the Court commends Plaintiff for his vastly improved choice of crayon--Brick Red is much easier on the eyes than Goldenrod, and stands out much better amidst the mustard splotched about Plaintiff's briefing. But at the end of the day, even if you put a calico dress on it and call it Florence, a pig is still a pig.
Now, alas, the Court must return to grownup land. As vaguely alluded to by the parties, the issue in this case turns upon which law--state or maritime--applies to each of Plaintiff's potential claims versus Defendant Phillips.
...
FN3. Take heed and be suitably awed, oh boys and girls--the Court was able to state the issue and its resolution in one paragraph ... despite dozens of pages of gibberish from the parties to the contrary!
...
After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.

At this juncture, Plaintiff retains, albeit seemingly to his befuddlement and/or consternation, a maritime law cause of action versus his alleged Jones Act employer, Defendant Unity Marine Corporation, Inc. However, it is well known around these parts that Unity Marine's lawyer is equally likable and has been writing crisply in ink since the second grade. Some old-timers even spin yarns of an ability to type. The Court cannot speak to the veracity of such loose talk, but out of caution, the Court suggests that Plaintiff's lovable counsel had best upgrade to a nice shiny No. 2 pencil or at least sharpen what's left of the stubs of his crayons for what remains of this heart-stopping, spine-tingling action. [FN4]

FN4. In either case, the Court cautions Plaintiff's counsel not to run with a sharpened writing utensil in hand--he could put his eye out.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

i swear i didn't change anything!!

change
i have no hair!!!! it was so weird washing it today. i knew it was going to require a lot less shampoo, but when i actually put my hands back there, it was like reaching into a void.

i got a lot of compliments at school today. from people i've never spoken to. I guess it's kind of a big deal when you show up with like 12+ inches less of hair. it was this weird bag of loving attention and yet wanting to hide under a hat and turtleneck because the attention was just too much. i wish it would never end.

three people told me that my hair looks so much better now than before. one of them a good friend. i wish someone had told me sooner that my hair was gross.

3.5 years
that's how long i've been growing my hair. tomorrow, 5pm, i get it cut, at half price, because i'm donating to locks of love.

i haven't had a proper hair cut since september 2001, about three days before the world trade center and pentagon attacks. i had a trim two summers ago, but that was just to get the super dead stuff off the ends. you could barely tell i had a cut after that.

but tomorrow, i'm doing it. i find hair cuts are therapeutic. a change is nice if you're feeling in a rut. so haircut it is. and for a good cause.

there he goes again
first, he says, throw money, or at least the idea of money, at african americans and maybe they'll jump on the social security privatization bandwagon.

now, bush wants to throw money at the families of killed soldiers, with the purpose, i am so bold to presume, to bandage their wounds and pains.
From the Boston Globe

President Bush will propose a dramatic increase to $250,000 in government payments to families of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan wars and in future combat zones.

The plan to increase the tax-free "death gratuity," now $12,420, to $100,000 and provide an extra $150,000 in life insurance payouts will be part of the 2006 budget proposal submitted to Congress next week, the Pentagon's personnel chief said in an interview. Veterans groups and many in Congress have been pushing for such increases.

Who's going to vote no to giving more money to the families of killed soldiers? But again, this begs the question -- why not just solve the problem at the root? instead of giving money to african americans because they die younger, fix the health care system, or health education? Instead of throwing money at the families of killed soldiers, STOP SENDING THEM TO THEIR DEATHS IN IRAQ and whatever other axis-of-evil nation bush will choose to invade when he next spins the wheel-o-democracy?!