Molten Boron

February 10, 2008

Grar.

Nothing much new to report, except that,

1. I still hate Weezer, and
2. After a visit to a friend's house in which Weezer was playing, I now have the bridge from Buddy Holly stuck in my head.

I'm not sure what I can do to dislodge it. Maybe listen to Funky Town or Total Eclipse of the Heart.

UPDATE: Also of note: Scientific experiments have determined that beginning a recipe by roasting a dozen white peppercorns, then adding in four diced jalapeno peppers, then adding hefty amounts of ground black pepper, white pepper, and cayenne, then serving it over rice that has been prepared with curry powder and more cayenne, is highly correlated with spiciness in the end dish.

Posted by Zach at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2008

WOO! MY W-2 FINALLY CAME!

Tax return filing party at Zach's house!

Posted by Zach at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2007

News

To those of you whom I pestered for career advice over the last few weeks:

Today I officially accepted the government job.

To those of you whom I did not pester for career advice over the last few weeks:

Today I officially accepted a government job.

That is all.

Posted by Zach at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2007

Uh Oh

Today I have interviews with attorneys from the SEC and the IRS.

I might be in a little trouble. . .

Posted by Zach at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

Dewey, Cheatham, Howe, and Weinstein.

I just got an e-mail from the chairman of my law firm. Apparently, the big international law firm that I'm planning to work for next Fall will soon be merging with another big international law firm to form a huge international law firm. The gargantuan two-headed giant that will soon be my employer will have roughly 1,200 attorneys worldwide and annual gross revenues of around a billion dollars. I am both excited an anxious about it; excited that this will give me more exposure to interesting new practice groups, anxious that the process of merging two giant New York offices over the next few years will not be fun.

I'd prefer not to mention the name of my firm, the firm we're merging with, or the new name for the joint firm, just to keep my Google profile low. Nonetheless, I will say that, should this merger go through successfully, I will be working at a firm named after the Republican governor of New York who famously did not defeat Truman in 1948.

Posted by Zach at 02:17 AM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2007

Patents Pending

For some reason I'm signed up to take Patents this Fall. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. I don't have a technical background, so I can't take the patent bar. I can't recall ever having any particularly strong interest in patents. Yet, there it is, right on my schedule, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 11-12:20. I even put it at number 5 on my course request list, with Copyright as an alternate. But I'm actually interested in copyright law, and Copyright doesn't conflict with any classes I want to take more. I'm signed up for a seminar on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which requires students to be enrolled concurrently in an intellectual property class, but Copyright would have been both more interesting to me and a more natural fit for the seminar.

So, the question again: Why did I request Patents? It's a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a sorting algorithm.

Posted by Zach at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2007

This, Perhaps, Is The Reason That I Am Perpetually Single

Tonight I met a neat woman and managed to ask for and receive her phone number. These are all very rare events for me.

As I was walking back to the subway from the enconter, my first thought was, "This is SO going on my blog!"

Posted by Zach at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2007

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

I was wandering around Chelsea today and came upon an interesting pair of stores. The first was Revolution Books, a big anti-capitalist bookselling collective. The windows were covered in quotations from Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Mao, and other communist leaders and thinkers. The front door was draped with banners bearing Marxist slogans.

Next door to them was a trendy office furniture store.

Along similar lines, there's a yuppie supermarket near me that stores their vegetarian/vegan fake meat products like tempeh and seitan right next to their foie gras. What's interesting is that they're literally right next to one another an both come in similar tubs, which makes it very easy to imagine an inattentive shopper buying one of them and being quite displeased when they got home.

The same grocery store also keeps their onions and their potatoes next to each other in an alcove. I'm led to understand that this causes both to rot faster, though I wouldn't be surprised if this bit of kitchen wisdom is apocryphal.

Posted by Zach at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2007

Prelude to a Summons

For some reason, I haven't been getting any mail this week. None of the usual catalogs I never requested, none of the usual liberal charities that The Nation sold my address to for forty pieces of silver, nothing.

But I got mail today: A New York County Juror Qualification Questionnaire. Apparently this is the prelude to a summons to jury duty; since I am a US citizen, a resident of New York County, at least 18 years old, can understand and communicate in English, have never been convicted of a felony, and have not served as a juror within the last 4 years I meet all the qualifications to be called to pass judgment upon my fellow citizens.

I feel the chances of my actually serving are pretty slim, considering that I'm a law student and lawyers tend to prefer not to have jurors who are too educated in the law. There are good reasons for this. Lawyers want to be able to control the jury. They want the jurors to focus on the relevant facts and apply the law as it is given. What they don't want is a smart-ass know-it-all law student pointing out some silly inconsistency in one side's case and making a big deal out of it, or introducing nuances and alternative interpretations of the law other than the ones given by the judge. They don't want jurors who will play the judge and try the case themselves in the deliberating room. It's not that legally educated jurors are more likely to convict or acquit, it's that legally educatd jurors are less likely to follow instructions and act like a juror.

But there is the possibility I will serve. I've had law professor who served on juries, and if anyone's likely to pervert the course of jury deliberations it's a law professor.

And in related news, Japan is going to be using juries for criminal trials starting next year. This is in marked contrast to much of the rest of the world, which gives regular citizens little, if any, role in the judicial process. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

Posted by Zach at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2007

Subconscious

Last night I dreamed that while tossing in my sleep I ripped a hole in my sheets with my big toe.

This morning I woke up to discover that I had not, in fact, ripped a hole in my sheets.

I submit that my psyche is a milquetoast.

Posted by Zach at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

Bad Luck

It looks like my family picked a crappy week to vacation at Lake Tahoe.

Posted by Zach at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2007

No Justice, No Peace

My time at the Justice Department is at an end. Today I turned in my security badge, said my goodbyes, and left One St. Andrews Plaza for the last time in what will likely be a long while. I've really enjoyed my time at the US Attorney's office and have been melancholy the whole afternoon.

Since I no longer work at Justice, and since all of the matters I worked on, handily, have wrapped up to a significant degree, I can speak a little bit about what I've been doing the last six weeks.

My first task upon arriving at Justice was to work on some research to bolster the case for extradition of a large arms dealer and terrorist financier. I had only minimal involvement in that matter, as another intern took over for me after the first day.

The biggest thing I worked on was the trial of M. "H." S.-E., a Colombian cocain baron who was extradited about a year ago. According to the Government's opening statement, backed up by S.-E.'s own words, H. was responsible for importing between 5 and 7 tons of cocaine from Colombia into the US and laundering between 10 and 12 million dollars of drug proceeds back. Every week. I got to see the entire trial start to finish and helped with drafting a few of the pre-trial motions, as well as assisting with research during the trial. The trial took only a week, thanks to our extremely speedy judge, and H. S. was convicted on all three counts with which he was charged.

The other major matter I worked on was a huge appellate brief. You remember that big embassy bombing that happened in Africa back in 1998? Well, the Department of Justice tried and convicted a bunch of the parties involved. The parties appealed, and a couple of weeks ago the reply brief came due. I was involved in cite-checking portions of it. Cite-checking is the process of reading through a legal document and meticulously checking all of the citations to ensure that they're formatted correctly and properly represent the source that they're citing. It's a slow and not very fun process, but it's worthwhile as you wind up finding a lot of errors that could, if they were allowed to remain in the brief, make the Government look bad. "That's dumb!" you are saying to yourselves, "There are probably, like, a dozen people on the entire planet who actually care about proper citation format in legal documents!" This is true. Unfortunately, those dozen people who care about proper citation are the people who become clerks and judges on appellate courts. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, "You may not care about the proper formatting of your legal citations and their fidelity to the sources cited, but the proper formatting of your legal citations and their fiedllity to the sources cited cares about you!" If I recall correctly, the final brief we submitted was a little over 800 pages. That's a lot of citations to check.

I also helped out a bit, in a peripheral way, on some other matters. I listened to a recording of a wire tap and checked it against our transcript of it to ensure the transcript's accuracy, and I helped with some random research and drafting issues that cropped up.

I really enjoyed my time with Justice, but that's behind me now. Monday I begin work at The Firm. Hopefully Big Law will prove as interesting and satisfying as government work.

Posted by Zach at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2007

An E-Mail to Amazon

To Whom It May Concern:

I recently ordered Season Three of The Wire and requested Standard Shipping. My package was shipped yesterday via A1 Courier and, according to your tracking information, was delivered at 5:40 PM the same day.

I am not sure to whom my package was delivered, but I can say with certainty that it was not me.

At 5:40 PM yesterday I was still at work. My roommate moved out a month ago and noone has moved in to replace him, so nobody within my apartment could have received it for me. My building has no doorman, so it could not have been left with one. There was no package left in front of the building, within the vestibule, in the vicinity of the building's mailboxes, in front of my apartment's door, nor, to my knowledge, anywhere within the public spaces of the building. There was no note left on the door to my apartment or my building. I have received no telephone calls from the courier regarding my package.

Your courier, apparently, believes his job to have been successfully completed. Considering that neither I nor anyone acting on my behalf is in possession of the package I ordered, I must respectfully beg to differ.

Sincerely,

Molten Boron.

Posted by Zach at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2007

Doing the Job

As you know, Bob, I'm not aloud to tell anyone anything about my job that they can't read in the daily news.

And that's that.

Posted by Zach at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2007

Comments That Do Not Make You Popular

From the Justice Summer Intern Happy Hour yesterday:

Male Intern: ...You're assuming that when my roommate's girlfriend gets mad at my roommate, she's acting on logic. That's a bad assumption to make about girls.

Female Paralegal: Oh, you did not just go there! If you're going to complain about girls, it gives me the right to complain about guys. I can complain for hours about the stupid things guys do. Like, how come, when two guys have a problem with one another, they can sit right next to each other and never talk about it?

Male Intern: Well, far be it from me to explain how guys think. How about you, Molten Boron?

Me: Actually, I'm really not a fan of gender essentialism.

Male Intern: . . .

Female Paralegal: . . .

Me: . . . I think I'll go get another beer now.

Posted by Zach at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007

Blargle

I am back in New York after spending Memorial Day in San Diego.

I took a red eye flight back to the East Coast last night on which I did not get even the slightest bit of sleep.

I arrived at in New York at 5 AM. I arrived at work, straight from the airport, at 7 AM. Work starts at 9, but there wasn't much point to going home then turning around and going back to work.

Despite my head-start, work was rather heavy today. Heavy to the point where I just got home a couple of minutes ago, at 11 o'clock. With the expectation of doing another couple of hours work tonight before getting a little sleep, then getting to work tomorrow by 9 so that I can race to meet an 11 o'clock deadline.

As of right now, I have been awake for 36 hours straight.

I am not, to say the least, a *Happy Camper*.

Posted by Zach at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2007

Feral

I met a kitty on my way to the farmer's market this afternoon. She had brown, white, and silver splotches, mostly brown on top and white on the bottom. She was hanging out nervously outside the Greek restaurant mid-way up my block.

Anytime someone approached she would skitter away and watch them suspiciously, either from a stoop or one of the little alcoves between front doors, the kind that lead to basement apartments. I walked up quietly and paused about six feet away, squatted down, and rubbed my index and middle fingers together rapidly, the universal human-kitty sign for "Come over here and I'll give you a proper scratching."

After a few seconds she approached, sniffed my fingers, and then submitted to a nice petting. Somebody came out of the Greek restaurant and she dashed off to a nearby stoop. I approached again and, after she was sure the interloper was a safe distance away, she came back for more petting. The scenario repeated itself a couple of times. Eventually she took an odd interest in the underside of a car and went to investigate. A couple of minute later she returned.

After about fifteen minutes of this she spotted a pigeon in the road. She left me and quietly snuck up on it. She got quite close and then pounced, but the pigeon managed to get away. A passerby who saw asked if it was my cat. I replied that it wasn't, I'd just found her here, and I didn't know if anyone owned her or not. He said he couldn't help me.

I spent most of the time quietly contemplating what, if anything, I should do about the cat. I really, really wanted to take her home with me. I couldn't decide if she was feral or not. On the one hand, she seemed relatively friendly, at least towards me. On the other, she was so skittish when people approached that it made me wonder. Back on the first hand, she seemed fairly muscular and well-fed. At the same time, one of her ears was missing the tip, and the other had a small chunk torn out of it. Her fur had a lot of grit in it, but that isn't decisive; if she was any sort of outdoor cat, of course she'd have a lot of schmutz on her. Needless to say she didn't have a collar, or else there wouldn't even be a question.

I thought about taking her home and putting up signs to see if anyone had lost her. Then, if noone replied, I could keep her secretly in my apartment, in violation of the "No Pets" clause in my lease. I need to move out at the end of next year, anyway; in the worst-case scenario my landlord would find out and I'd have to move a bit earlier. A hassle, certainly, but an inevitable one. My roommate's moving out by the end of the month, so I needn't have worried about his potential objections. Still, my apartment really isn't ready for a cat right now. I've got stuff everywhere, I've no cat food, no litter box, no toys for it. And, if it was feral, I'm not sure it'd be too pleased with the arrangement. Being friendly enough to come over for a petting is one thing. Being tolerant of getting hauled into an apartment and confined there is something entirely different.

I had just about decided that it would be best to leave her there when a crack of thunder caused her to race into the Greek restaurant. This confirmed my suspicion that she was the restaurant's cat; I first saw her in front of the restaurant, and I noticed that she tended to favor the restaurant's alcove when strangers walked by. I sighed and kept walking to the farmer's market, where I got some rhubarb to theoretically turn into a pie.

I still wish that I had a cat. Stupid "No Pets" clause.

Posted by Zach at 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2007

Loose Lips Sink Ships

I am manifestly not allowed to talk about what happens at work. If this wasn't made obvious to me by the three sternly-worded non-disclosure agreements I was given to sign when I first walked in the door on Tuesday, it was rendered in crystal when I got a tour of the office from Justice's law librarian.

In the back of the library is a small break room. It has a table, a few chairs, a microwave, refrigerator, coffee machine, water cooler, a closet, and a bulletin board adorned with press releases. It's fairly spartan but for a single poster which, by dint of its loneliness, drew my eye when I entered. It's a picture of a cup of coffee with a group of four smiling, people of a variety of races juxtaposed below it, clearly having a good time chatting while enjoying their caffeine-intake. Reflected in the coffee is a War Room-style map of the the world. The banner headline on the poster reads "A lot of information can spill over one of these." At the bottom it contines, "Make sure your conversations are secure to the last drop."

"Heh. That's cute." I said, indicating the poster.

The librarian gave me a stern look. "We take operational security very seriously around here."

"... As do I, of course. I just... think it's a nice poster."

I would go into more detail about the extraordinary measures we have to take to maintain operational security, but I'm not certain operational security permits me to discuss those measures. In fact, I'm not even sure I'm allowed to discuss the coffee poster.

I think they need to get a new poster about the hazards to operational security presented by blogging.

Posted by Zach at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2007

Update

It turns out that, for some reason, I have been assigned duties at Justice in my four lowest-ranked units. I think the assigning secretary might have read my form incorrectly. At this point, it's too late to change anything as I've already got jobs in those units. Also, I'm finding them surprisingly fun, vague moral/political compunctions aside. So I suppose I'll be sticking with it and seeing what happens. Bonus: I may get to go to trial on two cases in the coming 6 weeks, which would mean that I would get a neat experience but have to work long, long, long hours. There have already been hints dropped that I should plan on working this weekend.

On the dress code front, my fears have been realized and I'll be wearing a suit every day this summer. This is doubly unfortunate, as I discovered this morning that I've put on a little weight since the last time I did much suit-wearing and, as such, my suits are tight and uncomfortable. I'm going to need to start jogging again if I'm to make this summer at all bearable.

Posted by Zach at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2007

First Day of Work: Justice Department Edition

A friend once told me that the first week of a new job inevitably suck. Why, then, did I decide to take two jobs this summer?

My first job begins today, working at the Justice Department. My day began auspiciously with me being woken up at 6 AM by my apartment's carbon monoxide alarm. It hadn't been activated by actual carbon monoxide; it was merely informing me that its batteries were near expiration. The alarm has been designed with security features to prevent tampering by tenants, so I have to get maintenance to replace the batteries. This is problematic, since that requires filing a formal maintenance request which will be acted upon any time between three days from now and never. I put on sweatpants and an undershirt and trudged downstairs to fill out the necessary paperwork to get the battery changed. There I learned, much to my delight, that even with the door closed and my apartment being on the third floor the alarm's beeping can be heard quite clearly from the building's lobby. If I'm lucky, this may annoy one of the maintenance workers in my building into fixing my problem.

Justice wants me to wear a suit for the first day. For some reason they are playing hide-the-ball with the summer dress code; I've been told that I need a suit for the first day and that my unit head will tell me what the summer dress code is for the rest of the summer at orientation. I've a sinking suspicion that the answer is going to be "Surprise! It's still suits!"

Now I have to pick out a pair of underpants for today, ideally lucky ones. I have a pair of heart-print boxer shorts that I previously wore when I took the LSATs. I got a good score, but now in retrospect I'm not sure if that's indicative of good luck or bad. My inclination is to go with my Nintendo Logo boxershorts; they seem to be trending upwards these days. Maybe their good luck will rub off on me.

Posted by Zach at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2007

God Damn Your Modern Conveniences! Damn Them to Hell!

I bank with USAA. It is a small bank, but there are those who love it. I generally consider myself to be among them. It has its inconveniences; the fact that it's based in Texas and has no branch offices means that all checks I receive have to be mailed, so no quick check cashing. It has no ATMs, so I theoretically have to pay fees whenever I withdraw money. But USAA membership has its perks. One of them is that, because it has no ATMs, USAA reimburses me for the ATM fees I pay at the end of every month. There's an upward limit on how much they'll reimburse so I do occasionally pay fees, but otherwise it makes getting money very convenient. Plus, USAA is only open to members of the armed services and their families. Thanks to their public service ethos they're notably less likely to screw their members over for an extra nickel of interest than are most banks. I'm generally very pleased with them.

I just wish they would let me into my bank account.

When I signed up with USAA, I received a USAA Member Number. It's an 8-digit number, nothing too onerous to remember. I've been using the same number for the last 7 years. I don't have to look it up; it's long been ingrained in my memory. At the start of this year, USAA's online services decided to implement a new Online ID system. Rather than forcing members to recall 8 semi-random digits, members could now establish easy-to-remember usernames. Now you can log-in with that instead of your member number.

Did I say "can"? It would actually be more accurate to say "must."

Needless to say, I have now forgotten my easy-to-remember and convenient online username. But I'll remember my account number to my grave.

Posted by Zach at 05:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

Summertime

No Amish. Too exhausted, plus I need to go back and actually read the case to refresh my memory.

Instead, I am officially declaring that today was the first day of summer, based on my subjective impression that it was the first day that felt lie summer. It was overcast and a bit muggy in the morning, but skies were clear and sunny the rest of the day. Slightly hot, but not so hot as to get uncomfortable (that won't come until later in the summer). The trees on the medians and in the park have shed their blossoms and are now a verdant green. I spent a couple of hours today just walking around, and another couple of hours just sitting on one of the par benches the city puts on the medians at every intersection on Broadway north of Columbus Circle. You don't really realize what a lovely place Manhattan can be until you sit and stare at it for awhile on a bright sunny day.

Posted by Zach at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2007

Busybusybusy

Sadly, too busy for a real entry today; I've been doing a semester's worth of back-studying for tomorrow's Criminal Procedure exam. I have, however, done a bit of housekeeping that I should have done months ago; I finally re-built my blogroll and I added a link to my e-mail address, both tasks I've been putting off since I moved the page from Typepad.

I promise an interesting (according to certain definitions of the word) post tomorrow. Here's a hint: It may involve anthropology. And the Amish!

Posted by Zach at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2007

Muh?

Someone just called me from the 510 area code, MIdway-3 exchange. The Caller ID was "ST OF CAUCBERKE." I assume the BERKE is Berkeley. And, actually, the UC before it is probably UC. Oh, and ST of CA is probably State of California. I could have told you that from the 510 area code and 643 exchange.

So did anyone who reads this call me from a UC Berkeley phone number around 8:08 this evening (5:08 Pacific Time)? I hope I don't have an overdue library book or something. Or else maybe the alumni association has finally tracked me down.

Posted by Zach at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2007

Tax Freedom Day

No, not the bogus publicity stunt put on by the Tax Foundation. It's the day I officially finished Federal Income Taxation! As of 6 PM this evening, I submitted my final and said my farewells to §162, §212, §274, even §7872. Oh, §1231, how I'll miss your hotchpots and sub-hotchpots.

To be honest, I actually quite enjoyed Tax. I found it far more interesting than one would reasonably expect. I've signed up to do some tax work at the firm this summer, so we'll see if my interest holds.

And to celebrate my Tax Freedom Day, here's a picture of my dinner: Morrocan vegetable stew served over couscous!

Posted by Zach at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2007

Interpretation and Analysis of Statements Financial

At 3,865 words, my Financial Statements Analysis final is now officially done! Woo! The subject company wasn't quite as interesting as I'd hoped (I was crossing my fingers for Nintendo, but I suppose it being a japanese company would have made that hard) but it was fairly entertaining nonetheless. I actually quite enjoyed the class and feel I've gained a mildly useful skill out of it. Or at least a very boring party trick.

Interesting side note: If you search for "Officially" on Google, the first page you get is entitled "What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex." Oh, internet, it's comforting to know that you're just as chock full of sex and dorkery as ever. You'll never let me down!

Posted by Zach at 04:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2007

My Time is Not Very Valuable

I spent over $409.50 on New York City and State Sales Taxes last year. I know this because I spent about two and a half hours tonight painstakingly sorting through all of my receipts and adding up the sales tax on those receipts generated in 2006.

As you know, Bob, the Federal Government allows you to deduct state taxes paid from your income. The IRS gives you a choice: either deduct your state's income tax or its sales tax. For most people this means deducting income taxes. State income taxes are easy to calculate and usually larger than sales taxes paid. Looking at the numbers, though, I realized 1. that I would not be paying any state income tax after various credits and deductions were applied, and 2. I had paid a lot of state sales tax over the year. Never mind the fact that I would just wind up taking the Standard Deduction anyway, the moment I realized that I could calculate my state sales tax I was determined to do so.

This was all made possible because, as you may know, I'm a little neurotic about receipts. Which is to say, I never throw them away. Ever. I have all my receipts dating back to the hamburger I ordered the day my dad dropped me off at college in 2001. Now, at last, they could be put to good use. I had to separate the 2006 receipts from the other years, and I had to remove from the 2006 pile those receipts where I didn't pay sales tax (principally ATM withdrawal receipts and receipts from supermarkets and clothing stores, which don't charge sales tax in New York City. With some exceptions). Then I added them all up, set them aside in a new file folder labelled "Receipts - 2006 - Tax" and filed them away with my other receipts. Then I entered the number in the e-file form, learned that I had $410 of itemized deductions compared to the $3,300 standard deduction, and just took the standard one. It didn't matter either way, since I didn't make enough to be taxed in any case, but I liked the extra cushioning the standard deduction provided.

I knew all along that I'd end up taking the standard deduction. So why'd I do it? Well, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when all you have is a giant box of receipts, you start looking for reasons to put them to good use. In a way, computing my total sales tax felt like justification for all the years of pack-rattery. "Who's laughing now, IRS?" I could say. "Bring on the audits! I've got a paper trail three feet deep justifying every penny of my state sales tax deduction!"

It was also nostalgic. Everything that happened in the year 2006 that had some sort of purchase associated with it is recorded in those receipts. My purchase of a Junta at Games of Berkeley reminded me of my trip out to San Francisco to interview with Cooley Godward and see Dianna. A receipt from a drug store in Hyde Park recalled my trip to Chicago to visit Pam. I had two Nintendo World receipts to memorialize my two long waits in line to buy Wiis for myself and my sisters last Winter.

I even discovered a weird coincidence: I found a receipt to a Europa Cafe on 5th Avenue. I had bought a snapple there on an exruciatingly aweful date last August. On the back I found a name and a phone number. Both belonged to a girl I had met at a vegan brunch the weekend after the terrible date. I eventually called that number and a good date came out of it. It didn't lead anywhere, but it was a lot of fun. I just thought it was amusing that the two dates were tied together by that slip of paper.

In a way, my receipts are like a historical record of my life, and probably one of the more accurate ones you're likely to find. I would wager that a box containing a lifetime record of a person's purchases would tell a lot more about that person than any journal they may have written. I'm creating a dream reference for some future historian.

Now the work is done and the taxes are filed. I'll bet I had more fun going through those receipts that I had the entire rest of this weekend. Which either tells you something about how much I like receipts or how wild a life I live outside of receipts. Or both.

Posted by Zach at 03:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2007

See You On the Other Side!

Having found a sort-of solution to the external hard drive issue (quick version: Throw money at the problem!) and having struggled to find non-corrupted versions of all the files in my music collection, I've now backed up what I think are all my essential files and I'm ready to format the laptop's hard drive and re-install Windows. If I'm not back in 6 hours, avenge my laptop's death.

UPDATE: Whew! I seem to be up and running at some minimal level of functionality again. Still need to install a lot of drivers and programs, but I do at least have an OS + internet access + access to an external harddrive, which should be all I need to bootstrap back to where I was a few hours ago.

Posted by Zach at 05:17 AM | Comments (2)

February 11, 2007

Telephobia

Since everyone I read is jumping on the bandwagon, it seems worth pointing out that I've been hating phones for years. I am, as it were, an OG phone hater.

I hate calling people because I'm always worried that I'm interupting something important or otherwise harassing them at a bad time. Yes, I realize they could just tell me they're busy and hang up, but I know that if I get a call from someone I'm always too polite to get them off the phone unless I really urgently can't talk. I'm always worried that if I call someone and they claim to be not busy they are still, secretly, annoyed at the call and too polite to say anything.

I hate receiving calls because I don't have adequate time to prepare myself. I'm minding my own business, playing a video game, reading, watching television, doing homework, when suddenly with a piercing shriek I am thrust head-long into an unanticipated conversation. I find myself at the wrong end of the element of surprise. This is why, when you first get me on the phone, I will tend to stammer a lot; I have been thrust out of bed into battlefield conditions and am still trying to get my wits about me.

This is why I don't own a cell phone. It's bad enough having a phone in my room. The idea of having a phone ready to strike at a moment's notice, at any time, day or night, wherever I might be, is utterly horrifying.

Given a choice, I would always, always prefer to transact business through some form of electronic text, be it e-mail for long, thought-out conversations or IM for faster coordinating-future-activities type communication. Talking on the phone is a barbaric relic of the Twentieth Century that we would do well to put behind us.

Posted by Zach at 11:39 PM | Comments (3)

February 10, 2007

My First A+ in Law School...

...And I got it in Anthropology and the Law, a class that will have essentially no impact on my future career and that will impress precisely 0 future employers. I begin to worry that I may have chosen the wrong career path...

Posted by Zach at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2007

And On Another Note...

Is it still possible to buy moustache wax? Because if so, I could totally use some.

Posted by Zach at 04:16 AM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2007

Operation: Cookie Has Been Compromised

The Scene: My apartment. 1 AM. My roommate is spending the night at his girlfriend's. All of the lights are out. I am lying on my bed, snug under the covers, having just fallen asleep.

*BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!*

ME: What the...!?

I throw off the covers and cross the room to my door, tripping over my laptop bag in the process. I turn on the light in the hall.

ME: (Trepidatiously) Who's there?

(Silence)

I make my way to the front door. I peer through the spyhole. Nothing. I wait a few minutes longer. I know I heard something, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there. I lock the second lock and secure the deadbolt, just in case. I decide to head to bed, but head to the bathroom first. While conducting my business I hear movement in the hall of the building, then a door closing. I finish and walk back to the front door. Out the window I see my nextdoor neighbor looking at my door. She hestitates, then rings the doorbell.

*DING DONG!*

I quickly remove the deadbolt, unlock the lock, and throw open the door, attempting to muster all the dignity I can while standing in snowflake boxer shorts.

NEIGHBOR: (In a commanding tone) Alright, turn it off.

ME: Turn what off?

NEIGHBOR: Turn off your television. It is 1 in the morning.

ME: I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I was asleep when I heard a loud knocking and came over to see what it was. My television hasn't been on for hours, see?

I open the door wider to show her the darkened living room and dormant television.

NEIGHBOR: (Uncertainly) Well... I heard SOMEONE'S TV.

ME: Well, it isn't mine!

*SLAM!*

I suppose this is all the more reason to try to make peace with the neighbor, but it's becoming really hard to want to be nice to her.

Posted by Zach at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

My Project for the Weekend

We have a new neighbor.

Well, not really a new neighbor. She's been here since roughly the end of last summer. But she's newer than the old neighbor who moved out before she moved in.

Our neighbor has a job. A real job. She leaves the house at 8:30 every morning and gets home sometime between 5:30 and 6:30. She gets the Wall Street Journal. She has conversations on her cell phone that involve her using the words "Marketing" and "HR" and the phrase, "I'll take care of it when I get in to the office tomorrow."

I do not have a job. I am a student. The earliest class I have starts at 11:15. I have no classes on Fridays. I've been trying to wake up around 8 AM lately, but this is merely an effort on my part to get myself onto a normal person's sleep schedule. I go to bed sometime between midnight and 2 AM on weeknights. On weekends I slip into bad habits and stay up very late, sometimes as late as 7 or 8 in the morning (hence trying to get myself onto a normal person's sleep schedule).

Our television is in the living room, against the western wall. Our neighbor lives on the other side of our western wall. I don't know how her apartment is laid out, but apparently her bedroom is in the position where our living room is. She has placed her bed against her eastern wall, which is our western wall.

This has led to an unfortunate situation: at nights, when she is sleeping, there is no volume at which our television can be set that satisfies the following two conditions: 1. it is loud enough that we can hear it. 2. it is not so loud that it keeps her awake. There are, in fact, volumes that we have set it at such that we are struggling to hear dialogue, only to have our neighbor rap loudly on the wall to indicate her displeasure at the raging cacophany emerging from our apartment. On a number of occasions she has come over and rung our doorbell to give us a lecture that she is a Very Important Person with a Very Important Job and could we please turn our television off?

This has led to a certain... curtness to our relations with her. As an example, I did the laundry the other day and found myself putting my clothes in the wash while she folded her clothes. When she came in and saw me she glared, then ignored me. She finished just before I did and headed to the elevator. I was a few feet behind and she tried to close the elevator before I got into it. She failed. We got to the third floor and had difficulty opening the outer door with her hands full. I helped push the door open and she quickly brushed past, without a word, and went into her apartment.

But, of course, I can't say that my roommate and I haven't been similarly antisocial towards her.

In the interest of accomodation, I recently purchased a new television which has among its features a headphone jack. Coupling that with my headphone cord extension cable, I've resolved most of our problem with noise at night.

I'm thinking, though, that it might be nice to try to confront our sour relationship and try to improve things. In that spirit, I'm planning to bake cookies for our neighbor this weekend. My plan is to take them over, introduce myself, apologize for the noise issues, and generally try to smooth things over.

At best, this could result in friendship and better inter-apartment relations. At worst, she'll react curtly and I will be able to live happily with my cookies and the knowledge that I am the bigger person. I'm not seeing a downside right now.

Posted by Zach at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

Cold

As of right now, Weather Underground predicts that on Friday temperatures in New York City will reach highes of 19 degrees fahrenheit.

Boo.

Posted by Zach at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2007

Double

I've been reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, a novel about programmers working for Microsoft and various high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley in the mid-90s. Considering it was written during the late-90s pre-tech bust, I'm way out of date on this. Still, a fun read.

Coupland has an interesting recurring conceit; when he first introduces us to a character, he gives us that character's dream board for Jeopardy. I liked the idea enough to do it for myself:

Molten Boron's Ideal Jeopardy Board:

Video Game History, 1975-The Present
Quotes from the Collected Works of Matt Groening
Gregory of Tours's History of the Franks
The Life and Times of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
U.S. Presidents
Lyrics to Rush Songs
The Collected Works of Arthur C. Clarke

What would be on your board?

Posted by Zach at 09:17 PM | Comments (4)

January 08, 2007

Molten Boron Goes to Newark Liberty International Airport

School starts for me at 11:15 tomorrow morning. My winter vacation officially has left than half a day left to live. In light of that, I feel it is appropriate to solemnize its passing by recounting its rather inauspicious start.

I was booked on a flight to San Diego out of Newark Liberty International Airport that was scheduled to depart at 7:45. The flight was to occur on December 21st, also the day of my last final, Evidence. The Evidence final went from 10 AM to 1 PM. The Evidence Final also occurred at the end of a vicious gauntlet of five finals, each more harrowing than the last, with breaks of two days between them at most, half a day or less at the least.

In the confusion of finals I made a number of crucial errors the avoidance of which would have made my trip to Newark Liberty far more pleasant. First, I failed to schedule a shuttle ahead of time. In my haughty self-confidence I had decided that $20 was far too much to pay for a trip to the airport when I could get there via public transportation for a mere $7. By the time I began to think that perhaps a shuttle would be worth the price it was too late to call one. Second, I failed to buudget my time to include an allocation to pack and prepare for my trip before my final. While this may have been for the best with respect to my grades, it proved unfortunate when it came time to get ready to leave for the airport. Third, and this is a more general error in judgment, I got very, very little sleep during the final period in general and the night before my evidence exam in particular. By the time my exam was finished I was exhausted and left to pack my bags and get myself to the airport on two hours sleep and the lingering effect of the stimulants I had taken for my ADD that morning.

This may help to explain the frustration I felt and the general lack of clarity in my thinking during the episode that followed.

I arrived home around 2 PM. I had spent half an hour in semi-coherent conversation with fellow law students on such engaging topics as how great it was to be done with school for the semester and exactly how much of a bitch the prior exam had been ("Quite a bit of one, actually" was the general consensus). I arrived home and promptly collapsed onto the couch, where I engaged myself for the next hour and 15 minutes playing through the first Metal Slug game on my Wii. This proved to be the first notable error of my trip home.

I finished and did a mental calculation of how much time it would take to reach Newark Liberty. My flight was to depart at 7:45. It was to start boarding at 7:15. Figure I want to be at the gate no later than that. Add 30 minutes to be on the safe side, so 6:45. Thirty minutes to go through security, 6:15. No need to check bags, and I'd already checked in on-line. I'd be taking a bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but that couldn't take more than half an hour, so 5:45. Fifteen minutes to get from the subway to the ticket office to the bus at the Port Authority, 5:30. And half an hour to take the subway down to 42nd Street, so I should depart at 5:00. Beautiful, I had an hour and forty-five minutes to wrap my Christmas presents for the family, pack, and do some light cleaning before I left. I did so, but kept thinking of little things that needed doing before I left or items to add to my pack. Then I would decide that items needed taking out of my pack in order to accomodate stuff I would be bringing back from San Diego. Then I realized that, really, how could I live without that item, and I'm sure one more bafmodad wouldn't hurt. I left the house, reasonably assured that I had thought of everything, around 5:10.

Around 5:15, I passed the library at the end of the block and remembered that I had checked out some CDs that would be due in the middle of break. Crap! Well, I had made a generous calculation of the time required to get to Newark Liberty, plus there was that extra half-hour of slack time. I ran back to the apartment, got the CDs, turned them in at the library, and was on my way by, I'd guess, 5:25.

The subway ride was uneventful. The Port Authority was not. I arrived about 5:45, a bit behind schedule. I found my way to the New Jersey Transit ticket counter and asked for a round-trip ticket to Newark Liberty. With a grunt the counter worker dispensed two slips of paper with the baffling notation "Interstate 4 Zone Ride 107-PABT Thank You." I tried to ask a question but was told I needed to get out of the way for the next customer. I wandered off in search of a directory, hoping that it would direct me to the New Jersey Transit buses.

It did not. The Port Authority keeps its bus stops in four geographically distinct locations identified only by number. While a given stop is only used by a single bus company, that isn't really the concern of the Port Authority or its directories. The Directory will lead you to one of three Duane Reade drug stores or the Wetzel's Pretzelry, but busses aren't really a priority. I began scouting the different embarkation areas. All four came up blank.

At this point I almost paniced, then reminded myself that panic was unlikely to solve anything. It was then that I noticed a sign reading "Buses to Airport." I followed it to a magical zone not on the directory, where I found a sign pointing to New Jersey Transit buses. I eventually found a staircase labeled 107. "Ah-ha!" I thought. "That's what I'm looking for."

I went upstairs and found a stop labeled 103, one labeled 107L, and a third labeled 107X. No buses, though. I began to get worried. Where was 107 PABT? Well, maybe I could ask the driver when one of the buses arrived. First came the 107L, but I decided that that couldn't be what I was looking for; L stands for Limited, so it must be limited stops. I was drawn to the 107X that arrived just behind it. I waited in line, boarded the bus, and asked just as I was about to insert my ticket "This goes to the airport, right?"

"Nope, this is the Express bus. You want the Local, right behind us."

("Whoops" I thought.)

I made my way as carefully as one can with a backpack and a large black piece of luggage back through the line of annoyed bus passengers behind me. I ran back to the 107L and sat down. It was about 6:15. Surely I would be fine.

The bus sat there. Eventually a rider went up and asked the driver when the bus would be leaving. Not until 6:30, came the answer. No big deal. It shouldn't take too long to get there, not long to get through security, and it wasn't strictly necessary that I arrive right when they began boarding, so long as I got there before they pushed back from the gate. I re-adjusted by goal from "Arrive before they start boarding" to "arrive before they take off at 7:45."

As we began driving and then stopped, thirty seconds later, when confronted by a wall of cars, I suddenly recalled that driving into New Jersey from Manhattan during rush hour on a work day was not the speediest mode of transportation ever devised. This might delay me further. As time wore on my drowsiness overtook me and I very nearly fell asleep. This may, perhaps, explain what happened next.

We were driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, not making any stops. We began passing signs that said "Newark Liberty Exit - 2 miles," "Newark Liberty Exit - 1 Mile," "Newark Liberty - Next Exit." We took the off-ramp. It deposited us at the outskirts of the airport, at the very edge of a large parking lot. We passed a dark, desultory bus stop on the right. A sign loomed above us: "Right Lane - Terminal A. Middle Lane - Terminal B. Left Lane - U Turn to New Jersey Turnpike." Alright, I thought to myself, pay attention now. Look for which terminal services Continental and get off at that stop. The bus abruptly veered left. We got into the left lane and looped around back onto the on-ramp.

"Oh shit!" I thought to myself.

"Oh shit!" I exclaimed, much to the chagrin of my Bible-reading seatmate. The woman in front of me turned around and asked if I had wanted to get off at the airport. Yes, I replied, and asked her where the next stop was as we pulled unto the highway.

"Just get off at the next stop and take the bus going in the other direction."

This made sense. I thanked her, hit the Stop Request button, and waited until we got off the freeway again. I got up and stumbled off of the bus.

I found myself standing about 100 yards from the highway off-ramp under a broken street light. There wasn't an intersection in sight. I was surrounded by warehouses. The streets were paved with broken glass bottles. There was no bus stop on the other side of the street. There were no cabs in sight. There were no pay phones. The sun had set an hour ago and the night was pitch black. At this point, I stopped caring about whether I would make my plane and started caring about whether I would survive the night.

It is also more or less at this point that I decided that panicing was my best possible option, given that none of my other choices seemed to offer any better prospect of success. I started running like in the direction the bus had gone. I stopped when I reached a bridge that I couldn't see over, and decided I would really prefer to see whatever it was I was walking towards. I fell to my knees and shouted for help. It was not forthcoming. I held my head and told myself to calm down. I got up, looked around, and finally noticed the bus stop in the other direction about 50 yards from where I had been dropped off. I crossed the street and waited. Nothing came.

Up until now I was alone, which I decided was a blessing. That ended when I heard a group of young men approaching on foot from the off-ramp. My nerves got the better of me and I decided to walk in the opposite direction. As I did so I got a better angle on the warehouse to my left. It seemed to have an awfully large parking lot for so small a facility. Then I realized that it wasn't a warehouse at all, but a private parking lot servicing the airport. The warehouse-like facility with loading docks was the garage used to service the shuttles.

I ran around the barbed-wire fence that enclosed the lot, into the building, and approached the counter.

"Please can you help me?! I got off at the wrong stop on the bus and I need to get to the airport fast to catch my plane and I'll pay for the service but I just need to get to the airport!"

"Don't worry, you can take the shuttle. It's free!"

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Outside a shuttle was getting ready to depart. The driver tried to keep me out; wait for the next one.

"I can't wait! My plane leaves in, like, 5 minutes and I need to get to the airport now and I can stand please let me on!"

He grudgingly aceded.

The clock in the shuttle said it was 7:20. By 7:25 I was at the airport. 20 minutes to get to my plane. I steeled myself to be that asshole who cuts to the front of the security line because he's late for his plane, but it wasn't necessary. There was no line to show ID and boarding passes, and I had only to get straight into the screening line and begin stripping myself of metal objects. I picked the shortest one, behind a family of three asian people.

Unfortunately, the family I was behind had a less-than-fluent understanding of the English language. They didn't seem to know what could and could not be taken on the flight or through the metal detectors. I took command of the situation by silently alternating between hyperventilating and spasming nervously. I couldn't switch to another line, they were already filling up. I couldn't get in front of the family, because their bags were already in the machine and couldn't be gotten out without causing more delay. I eventually made my way through, tastefully ignoring the snide remark by the woman behind me that I was holding up the line.

It was now 7:40.

Newark's Terminal C, where my flight departed from, has a hub-and-spokes design, with the security check at the hub and the gates on three spokes. I was at the right-most security check on the hub. My flight departed from Gate C135, the gate at the tip of the left-most spoke.

I ran until I was too exhausted to run, slowed to a walk while heaving for air, then summoned the energy for another burst of running. I pushed past people standing on the moving walk way, I narrowly dodged small children wandering in Brownian Motion paths. At last I reached Gate 135, featuring a Flight departing for... San Juan, Puerto Rico. I looked at my ticket. 7:45, San Diego, Gate C135. I ran up to the attendant at the gate. This time I did ignore the line. At this point I was both excited and out of breath. I said something to the effect of:

"I'mterriblysorryforcuttinginlinebutI'msupposed *HEAVE!* tobeonaflighttosandiegoandit'ssupposedtoleavefromherebutit'snothereand *HEAVE!* diditalreadyleaveandPLEASEHELPME!"

"Calm down, there's no rush. Let me check for you."

I noted on the screen that it was now 7:45. I considered telling her that I begged to differ on the question of whether there was a rush or not, but decided against it.

"Your gate has been changed. You're flying out of Gate C90"

"WHERE'S THAT?"

"Calm down! There's no hurry! It's at the end of the right-most spoke. But don't worry, your flight's been delayed. It doesn't leave until 7:55."

"Thank you!" I shouted as I began jogging back the way I'd come.

"There's plenty of time! Don't run!"

I arrived just as the last passengers were boarding. I got at the end of the line and heaved a sign of relief. My nerves were still tightly balled. Just ahead of me a woman was boarding the plane with her young daughter. She was saying to her, in a grating Minnewegian accent, "Are you exciiiiiiiteeeeed? We're gonna get on the plaaaaaaaaane! It's gonna be fuuuuuuuunnnnn!"

I very nearly shouted to her, "If you don't stop talking RIGHT NOW I will PUNCH you in the FUCKING FACE!" I decided, though, that getting thrown off the flight for threatening another passenger would probably not be a wise course of action.

I found my seat and sat down. The woman next to me was rather chagrined that I had chosen to show up at the last minute, depriving her of the opportunity to stretch out into my seat. I didn't care. I sat back and waited for take-off.

It was a long wait. I have mentioned Newark Liberty's hub-and-spokes design. Gate C90 is at the end of the right-most spoke, on the inside. Apparently another plane, as it was taxiing out of the interstice between the rightmost and middle spoke, broke its landing gear. It was stuck on the tarmac, preventing any entrance or exit for planes in that area.

Once the flight was in the air the trip was largely uneventful. I had the opportunity to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (Mini-review: Not as good as I had been led to believe it would be, though I'm willing to allow that the roar of the engines made me miss some of the dialogue, and that, having not seen the first film, I was perhaps not as familiar with the characters and situations as I ought to have been to fully appreciate it) and to re-watch The Devil Wears Prada (Mini-review: This film starts out very promisingly, with a montage of shots of attractive young women donning fashionable underpants. It begins to lose its way, however, as it stops showing underpants and becomes over-concerned with the occupants of said underpants. Once dialogue entered the film it became a lost cause. The screenwriter should have known his limits, or perhaps the limits of the source material, and stuck to underpants.) Miraculously, I stayed awake the entire time.

Fortunately, the trip to the airport was pretty much the lowpoint of the break. At this point, I have flown out of Neward twice and twice have been put in fear for my life because of the journey. I submit to you that this is strong circumstantial evidence that Newark Liberty Airport is not to be trusted, and that people should avoid travelling to it whenever possible.

Posted by Zach at 12:32 AM | Comments (1)

January 06, 2007

Wide Load

My class schedule for this semester is not exactly falling into place right now. As it stands now, thanks to Columbia's baffling course registration system, I am registered for 7 credits (12-15 is the required range) and sitting on 14 wait lists. This is after the initial computerized registration process. I can't actually add or drop classes, nor is there any waitlist movement, until the first day of class. This, I submit to you, is dumb.

I'm currently enrolled in Federal Income Taxation, which meats from 11:15-12:20 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I'm also taking Financial Statement Analysis, which meets Mondays from 2:10 until 5:50. And I'm high on the waitlist for Criminal Adjudication, which I should be able to get into, and which meets Mondays from 6 PM to 9 PM. So I'm in or will be in 10 hours of class per week, of which 7 occur on Monday. Interestingly, one of the seminars I'm waitlisted for meets for 2 hours Tuesday mornings; if I wind up taking that and Criminal Adjudication, I'll meet the 12 credit minimum (okay because of the 15 credits I took last Fall) and I'll have 7 hours of class on Monday, 3 hours on Tuesday, 1 hour on Wednesday, 1 on Thursday, and nothing on Friday. I'm not sure what to think about that, other than that it generates a rather pleasing curve when graphed.

Posted by Zach at 05:25 AM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2006

Anti-enervation

I haven't been sleeping much, lately. Saturday night I got about four hours of sleep. Last night I got two. Tonight I was set to go to bed around 11, then woke up about half an hour later and wound up at a chinese restaurant eating curry noodles. Then I was REALLY going to bed at around 1, but somehow wound up in the living room playing Metal Slug until 5 in the morning. I have to wake up at 9 tomorrow to take another take-home exam, so this is looking like another 4 hour sleep night.

What's weird is that I'm not really tired at all. Well, it does tend to hit me when I wake up in the morning, but after a shower I'm awake and alert and ready to stay up 24 hours if need be. It's quite probable that once finals are done I'll crash and sleep for a week straight, but I sort of wouldn't mind being able to keep this schedule. I kind of hate sleeping, since it feels like I'm wasting my life when I'm asleep. When I'm on a two-hours-a-night schedule I can both get a lot more productive work done and have more leisure time.

Posted by Zach at 04:49 AM | Comments (1)

December 08, 2006

Throw Your Life Away For Justice!

I now have two jobs for next summer! I will be splitting my summer between two employers; the first 8 weeks will be spent with the Justice Department for the Southern District of New York, Criminal Division. The remainder of the summer I'll be interning with LeBeouf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. This will mean significantly less money, but a greater diversity of experience. So, yay!

Posted by Zach at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2006

Done with Classes!

As of 1 PM this afternoon, I am finished with all the lectures for the fall semester of my second year of law school. I am done with class.

Now, all that remains for this semester is to do the actual work that will comprise the entirety of my grades for all my classes.

In a sense, law school is like making people run a marathon, but not starting the clock for each individual runner until the final 100 meters. So the other 26 miles is find and dandy, but the only thing that counts is your performance in the sprint at the end.

Posted by Zach at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2006

Appy Polly Loggies

Sorry for recent unresponsiveness; I was in Chicago all last weekend with infrequent internet access. I got home yesterday afternoon, went straight to class (for which I was late and sat in the back), spent last night reading for today's classes, went to 5 hours of class today, did laundry, bought hornbooks and ran necessary errands around the neighborhood, and am now packing to leave for the airport at 4 AM to fly to Arizona for Thanksgiving, where I will be until Sunday.

While I'm out: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: "It is impossible to understand a piece of music without actually playing it yourself." I once got into a bitter argument with a friend over this. What are your thoughts?

Posted by Zach at 02:15 AM | Comments (3)

November 15, 2006

The North Farce

or

Baby's Got Pack

I'm packing for my trip to Chicago. The plan is to leave tomorrow afternoon, stay there Thursday night and all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, then return to New York Monday morning.

I have been through Midway before, and memories of the long, winding bag-check lines have given me heavy incentive to pack light. Unfortunately, the weather in Chicago is forecast to be fairly cold this weekend; highs in the low 40s, lows in the low 30s. That's on the cusp of snow weather. Since I'm planning to spend the weekend gadding about town, I'll need outerwear if I want to spend more than ten minutes outside. This means hat, earmuffs, scarf, gloves, and jackets light and heavy. I could wear all this to the airport, but New York's weather forcast for tomorrow is clear with highs in the mid-60s. I would look quite the fool trundling about in full winter kit. Still, packing all of my winter gear would probably put the kibosh on any plans to pack light and move fast.

I'll figure some way out of this spot, but I renew my contention that packing is my mortal foe.

Posted by Zach at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2006

Wanted: Cheap Last Minute Costume Suggestions

My roommate's turning our apartment into a den of partying tomorrow night for Halloween, and I suppose I should attend. Given that Mohammed has thus far failed to move to the mountain, I guess tomorrow night the mountain is moving to Mohammed.

This leaves me in need of a costume. Ideas? I'd prefer to cobble something together myself, as costume shops tend to sell stuff that's cheap of make and overpriced. Right now I can fashion a sorta-quasi-half-decent ninja costume out of a black long-sleeve t-shirt, black lounge pants, black socks, black flip-flops, and Ninja Scarf. Still, I feel like I could do better. My other easy option would be The Guy from the Power Grid cover. Any ideas?

Posted by Zach at 01:50 AM | Comments (3)

October 26, 2006

(instantiate die ("cast"))

This afternoon I called LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, LLP, to accept their offer of a summer associateship for next year.

That is all.

Posted by Zach at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2006

Impulse Drives

Tonight I went to Bar Review. For those not familiar with the world of standardized law school humor, law review is the weekly law student excursion to a local bar. This gives law students who spend half of their waking life with people they secretly hate an opportunity to spend a further evening each week with the same people they secretly hate. The most entertaining part is watching people who are so immersed in The Law try to think of non-law things to talk about with their law school students:

"So... Ummm... I hear there's... a sport... that's played this season... How about that team that's doing well?"

"Yeah, the, um, Mets, I think, are going to play the... Ah... Forty-Niners? Is that right?"

"Sounds right."

"Should be a good game... So... How about that Rule Against Perpituities?"

"Oh, man! Don't get me started on the RAP! We had this amazing case where a guy who was 80 years old tried to leave his estate to 'his wife,' and..."

I haven't gone to Bar Review since Legal Methods, the three week boot camp before real classes begin in the first year. There are a number of reasons for this. First, I'm not very social. Second, I hate my fellow law students. Third, why cart myself all the way to the Upper West Side to go to an over-priced, over-crowded trendy bar overpacked with people I hate when I can just go to the gay bar around the corner and get all-night indian food while I'm there?

But I'm trying to be more social lately, and socializing with law students is like training wheels for socializing with real people. So I treked down to 80th street and went to the sports bar that was selected for this week's venue. I managed to stay about 30, maybe 40 minutes.

The problem is that alcohol is a bad thing to give me when I'm trying to be social. As you know, Bob, I am profoundly weak sauce. I get notably tipsy after a single pint of beer. You are, perhaps, expecting that my problem is that I get drunk fast and do or say things that I feel embarrassed about later. You would be wrong. The problem is that my short attention span leads me to grow quickly disinterested in the bar scene. When my impulse control disappears, as it does half-way through my first beer, it isn't long before I'm gone.

Thus, this evening I arrived, scouted around a bit, then went to the bar. I found a friend I hadn't talked to for a few months and we chatted for a while (her father's the mayor of a large town in the South. He recently won his primary, so things are good in that regard). We had beers. We parted afterwards. I found a friend from the board game club. We shook hands. I was alone again. I looked around.

It is more or less at this point that my Id said to my Ego "Hey, I've got an idea: Let's go home and play Megaman!" Had I not drunk that beer, my Superego would have replied, "No, we have to stay here and socialize. It's for our own good. We need to learn how to talk to people informally and have fun in an extroverted fashion." Thanks to the pint of beer in me, my Superego instead replied, "Hey! Megaman! Fuck yeah!" I didn't realize I had screwed up my master plan for the evening until I was sitting on my couch at home in sweatpants, fighting for everlasting peace.

I don't have a snappy ending to this story, so I'll instead relate a conversation I had earlier today with the school's Director of Student Services! She posted a couple of weeks ago on the law school discussion board that she had some CDs she was selling dirt-cheap. I took her up on the offer, and went into her office today.

Director: Well, I've got this Sleater-Kinney CD that I found. I already have a copy of this, so you can have it for $5.

Me: Oh, cool!

Director: I'll throw in this CD by the Doves and this one by Beth Orton. I just cleaned out my office last week and found these under a pile of papers. I didn't even remember I had them. But I already bought myself replacement copies, so they're yours.

Me: Oh, thanks! I guess some things you lose, some things you give away...

Posted by Zach at 11:58 PM | Comments (5)

October 08, 2006

Punctilious

A recent conversation I had with my sister, Kelsey:

Me: So I'm taking an on-line matchmaking personality test thingee. In one part of the test, they give a number of character traits and ask whether you find them attractive, unattractive, or acceptable.
Kelsey: Alright.
Me: One of the traits they ask about is Punctuality. "OMG PUNCTUALITY IS TEH SEXAY! IT MAKES ME SO HOT!!!"
Kelsey: Heheh. Though actually, punctuality is important for me.
Me: Me too. I'm going to put attractive.
Kelsey: I would, too.
Me: "Kiss me, you punctual boy!"
Kelsey: Yay, punctuality!
Me: Woo!
*High fives!*
Me: Alright, "Is always on the go."
Kelsey: Attractive.
Me: Really? You seem like such a slothful person. I would think you'd want a similarly low-energy mate.
Kelsey: Nah, I'd need him to go and do stuff for me. You know, pick stuff up, get me food, that sort of thing.

Posted by Zach at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2006

Ink

I have a tattoo! I got it whilst visiting Dianna in the Bay Area.

My piece was done by Rocio of Black and Blue Tattoo in San Francisco. The experience was delightful; the shop was clean and inviting, and Rocio produced the exact tattoo I imagined when I drew my painfully artless sketches.

I also credit Dianna for doing yeoman's work in making this happen. She kicked my butt to get the design done and to call the shop to talk with Rocio about the design, she arranged the appointment, and she ran my sketches and reference art over to the shop so that Rocio would have time to prepare my sketch before the session.

My one complaint about having at tattoo is that, now that I have one, it makes the rest of my skin look so boring in comparison.

Posted by Zach at 09:49 PM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2006

Hung by the Chimney with Care

Several weeks ago in Evidence we were discussing case out of California. The case was from the mid-1960s and involved a young woman who had been brutally murdered. Underneath her body were found the bottom halves of a pair of silk stockings, recently worn. Her legs, when she was found, were bare. Interviews with people who had seen her earlier in the day revealed that she had been wearing a pair of stockings similar to the ones found underneath her.

The investigation eventually led to a young man. The police obtained a warrant to search his apartment. Inside his dresser drawer were found the tops of several pairs of silk stockings, the bottoms having been torn off. Three more pairs of stocking tops were found hanging from the curtain rod in the bathroom. The man was arrested. Forensic examination revealed that none of the stocking tops in the man's possession matched the stocking bottoms found under the victim; the stocking tops did not physically tie the man to the murder.

The question posed to the class was whether the stocking tops could nonetheless be presented as evidence at trial. Students were called upon and, in the professor's usual aggressive style, arguments for both sides were coaxed out of them.

One of the basic principles of evidence is the balance between relevance and prejudice. A crime or a cause of action has elements that need to be proven. Relevance is a measure of how much a piece of evidence tends to prove (or, in the case of the defense, disprove) one of the elements. Prejudice is a measure of how much a piece of evidence will sway a jury to vote one way or another for reasons unrelated to the elements at issue in a trial. The tricky part comes when a piece of evidence is both relevant and prejudicial. There the question of whether to allow the evidence turns on whether its probative value is outweighed by its tendency to sway the jury for the wrong reasons.

So: The stocking tops. They're not a direct physical link to the crime scene. So they're not strongly relevant. They're still fairly relevant, though. We can be fairly sure that the killer was someone who collects stocking tops. The defendant collects stocking tops. That's pretty good circumstantial evidence in favor of guilt. You probably couldn't convict solely on the basis of the stocking tops, but it would help the prosecution's case.

After extracting this analysis from a succession of students, the professor turned to the next person on his list.

"So, Mr. Blank, you're representing the defendant. How do you keep these *stocking tops* out?" (Wherever I put the words "stocking tops" in quotes, imagine the professor rapidly switching from a bombastic mode to a tip-toey, exaggeratedly salacious tone)

"Ummm... I guess I would argue... that they're prejudicial?"

"Very good! And what's so prejudicial about *stocking tops*!" (Here the professor raises his eyebrows suggestively)

"Ahhh... They... don't really tie the defendant to the crime scene?"

"No, no, that's about relevance. I want to know about prejudice? Why would *stocking tops* be prejudicial?"

"Well, they'd make the jury think they were more significant than they are."

"Maybe I haven't made prejudice clear. Prejudice is about making the jury convict for reasons unrelated to the crime. So, I ask again, what's so prejudicial about *stocking tops*? Why would *stocking tops* make the Jury dislike the defendant?"

"Well....Ummm......"

"BECAUSE HE'S A PERVERT!!!"

At this point I got a little bit nervous.

"NORMAL men don't collect STOCKING TOPS! They don't even collect STOCKING TOPS in CaliFORnia! Show of hands! What men here are from CaliFORnia?"

I nervously raised a hand to about shoulder-height from my seat in the back row. The professor called on a guy in the middle benches.

"You're from CaliFORnia? Tell me: Do YOU collect STOCKING TOPS?"

"No, sir."

"See? They don't even do that in CaliFORnia! You want to win this case, you have to keep those stocking tops out! You have to argue that if the jury catches one sight of those stocking tops, they'll instantly convict your client for being a pervert without looking at the murder trial!"

I am, in retrospect, glad that I didn't get called on. Had that happened, the dialogue would have gone a tad differently:

"You're from CaliFORnia? Tell me: Do YOU collect STOCKING TOPS?"

"Just the tops? No, I don't collect just the tops of stockings."

Posted by Zach at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2006

Every Time I Think That I am Becoming a Mature Person, I Find Myself in a Bookstore Snickering at the Name of Honore de Balzac

I have my google homepage set to provide me with the headlines of the most recent three posts at Simply Recipes, a food blog. Simply Recipes periodically features Shopping Alerts, designed to direct the readers' attentions to notably good deals on kitchen appliances and cookware.

For the last couple of days, this has meant that every time I open my browser, I am greeted with an alert that I can currently get a Mario Batali Dutch Oven at a deep discount.

I'm not sure there's any amount of money that I would pay in order to receive a dutch oven from Mario Batali. In fact, I would bet that few are anxious to avail themselves of Mario Batali's generous offer. Perhaps this is why Mr. Batali's dutch ovens are now being sold at a cut rate.

Posted by Zach at 02:02 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2006

And Now I'm Off On Another Amazing Adventure!

Sorry for my taciturnity lately. EIP was a bit exhausting, and since then I've moved rapidly from worrying about not getting any callbacks, to scheduling callbacks, to worrying that I have too many callbacks, to frantically preparing for callbacks.

And so: I leave in an hour for La Guardia Airport, from which I will fly to Washington D.C. for my first callback, with Debevoise & Plimpton's DC office. I will be spending the night at the Hay-Adams Hotel, interviewing from 10 AM until about noon, going out to lunch with some of the D&P lawyers, then flying back tomorrow evening. All of this is being paid for by Debevoise, including the various cab fares and meals. So, hooray for Debevoise!

Thus: I will be out of town, and away from internet access, until tomorrow evening. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Posted by Zach at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2006

Shedule

My Fall class schedule, which just came down the pipe yesterday:

Criminal Investigations
Evidence
Corporations
Anthropology and the Law
Professional Responsibility

It's a heavy load (15 points), and I may drop something (probably Professional Responsibility). If I do so, I'll probably add a lighter class, like a one- or two-point seminar, to replace it, if I can find one that I can get into.

In the meantime, though, I'm generally quite happy. I really wanted Criminal Investigations, as I'm interested in Criminal Procedure and our Criminal Investigations professor was just appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, so this may be my last chance to take a class with her. Evidence and Corporations tend to be hard to get into, and are both major prerequisite courses. Anthro should be fun and different from other law classes I've taken. And Professional Responsibility... well, I don't know about Professional Responsibility. It's a requirement to graduate, but Columbia offers a one-week intensive Professional Responsibility class at the end of summer that I might take next year. Other than that, they offer some interesting specialized semester-long PR courses (lie Reponsibility in Tax Law or Responsibility in Non-Profit Practice). So, if I find out I'm really interested in some specialized field, it might be worthwhile to take one of the niche PR courses. Otherwise, I can free up credits to take classes I'm more interested in by taking the intensive course next year.

Now if only I could find a seminar that's both unpopular and that I'd be interested in taking...

Posted by Zach at 01:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 10, 2006

By Popular Request...

An Update.

Work ends tomorrow, which is fun insofar as I'll be able to enjoy a bit of time off, but not-so-fun insofar as that time off will come to a crashing halt five days later when the Early Interview Program begins. During EIP, I will be interviewing with at least 29 employers (not counting any interviews I may add between now and then, or pick up during the program) over the course of five days. This includes a marathon batch of nine interviews two Mondays from now, which will be followed by eight further interviews on Tuesday. The prospect does not, to say the least, make me a *Happy Camper*. On the plus side, I got nearly every interview that I requested, so I at least have a nice selection of firms and such.

I'm also going to the dentist tomorrow afternoon, which is less fun, to have some cavities filled. Well, not really cavities. Pseudo-cavities. Softnesses that the dentist worries may become cavities if not properly filled. She feels it would be wisest to fill them now on general principle. That principle being that just about everything should be filled at all times, just in case.

I also might or might not have a date tomorrow night, depending on the breaks. If not tomorrow, then definitely on Monday or Tuesday, so I've got that going for me.

And now I should probably get back to researching firms to decide which ones to add to and drop from my interview schedule.

Posted by Zach at 09:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 28, 2006

I Keep Getting Older, They Stay the Same Age

So I ended up going out tonight, which I think is a triumph in and of itself. And I went to a bar, a socializing venue! And I socialized. Not at the bar, though. But I checked everything off my goals list tonight: Going out and Socializing.

I started by going to the video store around the corner. Maybe I'll meet someone looking at a movie I like. I could comment on it, we could talk, and I'd build from there. Sadly, no. Nobody in the store except for a pair talking to one another in a serious tone that indicated something bad had happened to one of them. Not a great time for hitting-upon.

I headed out, crossed the street, and made my way to Casbah Rouge, a hookah bar. Too smokey. I decided to go to The Heights. I entered, sat down, ordered a beer, and surveyed the area. A lot of couples at tables. A lot of guys. No girls by themselves. Nuts. I decided to wait it out. Worked through my beer surprisingly fast. Nothing. I went up to the roof. Here it was more crowded, but it looked like everyone was in one big party, and they were all middle-aged. No dice. So I left and went back to Casbah Rouge. Went inside this time. A quite survey revealed nothing too interesting, but for a trio of girls at a table. I didn't like the idea of three-on-one odds, so I decided to leave.

Well, I had been to some bars, done some drinking. Maybe it's time to call it an evening. I decided I'd grab some noodles, rent Red Dwarf Series One, which I can't stop thinking about since I mentioned it in my last post, and call it an evening. I went to Ollie's. There was a youngish girl in line in front of me. Ordered pork dumplings, among other things. I placed my order and sat at the counter to wait. She sat next to me. I decided that this was my opportunity to socialize.

"So, you a student around here?"
"Sort of."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I'm in this program, Columbia/Barnard thing."
"Oh, interesting."
"Yeah, it's a summer school program."
"Oh. So where do you go to school, then?"
"Well, I'm from Chicago. I'm in High School, but next year I'll be a senior."
"Ah. I see."

The conversation continued until I got my food. We discussed, among other things, her courses (she took classes in Architecture and Art History), college applications (she envied the UC schools' joint application), and being in New York (she liked it). They called number four, I grabbed my curried noodles, and left. Picked up Red Dwarf on the way home, and now I'm here, blogging about my evening.

It could have been better. It didn't exceed my wildest expectations. But I did go out, I got a feel for going to bars, I got a tad more comfortable with that environment. And I talked to a total stranger and had a nice, if brief, conversation about the sort of pleasantries that you talk about when making chit-chat. All in all, I feel good about it. At least now I've gotten my foot out the door.

Posted by Zach at 11:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 11, 2006

Chipper

I'm currently hot and sweaty and tired and happy. I've discovered (or rather, re-discovered) something about myself: Walking around town and doing things makes me feel happy and fulfilled, even if I'm tired. Coming home and napping or screwing around on the internet for hours on end makes me miserable. I should remember this in the future.

Posted by Zach at 11:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 07, 2006

Notes from Tahoe

Three nights ago I dreamed I was a bicycle-riding pizza delivery boy in New York City.  It took me three days to deliver my first order.

Two nights ago I dreamed I was taking a law school test.  Pretty standard, though notably absent was the usual angst that comes with test-taking dreams.

Last night I dreamed I was at work, trying to eat a steak for lunch off of a paper plate.  I was trying to eat it with a plastic spoon. 

Not particularly interesting, and no real analysis.  Just that I've been remembering dreams unusually well since I came on vacation. 

Not getting much reading done, but I am getting a lot of music listening done, and that's what's been really interesting me of late.  I've been doing the Classical Music 101 regimen, and I'm sort of ambivalent about it. 

I'm not sure how much I'm getting out of it, instruction-wise.  To the author's credit, he very much de-emphasizes facts and figures and rational analysis of music.  The focus instead is on listening to music and absorbing it.  He'll throw out things to notice as you listen, with the idea being that if you have your attention drawn to a phenomenon or technique, then spend some time consciously looking for it, you'll gradually start noticing it on an unconscious level, thereby deepening your non-rational appreciation of a piece of music.

I like this approach in theory.  In practice, the instructions for listening to a given piece vary between "too vague to be useful" ("Listen to this piece and see if you can notice its eloquent quality") and too specific for me to handle at my level ("Listen to the first movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, followed by the first movement of Schubert's Ninth Symphony.  How are they similar, and different, in stylistic, instrumental, and emotional technique?  How do they compare in terms of energy, speed, and dynamics?")  My response, as a result, is either question-begging in the first case ("I thought the piece you told me to search for the eloquence in was eloquent") or betray a general lost feeling ("I think...  Beethoven had more trumpets...").  In either case, I'm not sure how well the Plotkin instructions are actually deepening my understanding of the music.

At the same time, I'm quite enjoying it.  Plotkin does provide a lot of neat information, and he brings a lot of enthusiasm to the subject.  It's a fun book to read.  Even if the method isn't quite working, it's an enjoyable program.  And I suppose, since it's supposed to be developing subconscious listening skills, even if I am developing it's not the sort of thig I'd notice. 

But this is sort of beside the point, because regardless of whether Plotkin's specific contributions are helping, just listening to the music has been a lot of fun.  To start, it's been introducing me to a lot of music I hadn't listened to before.  I'd never really listened to Schubert before, probably for no better reason than that I found his name boring.  But now I've listened to and enjoyed two of his symphonies, and am interested in exploring more of his works.  The other interesting thing has been the emphasis on sitting and listening to the whole piece, start to finish, without doing anything else.  Usually how I work is to put music on while doing something else.  In terms of getting a feel for the music, this works well for loud and bombastic pieces that draw my attention from whatever it is I'm doing, but leads me to ignore more subtle music.  This is a somewhat basic revelation, but you notice a lot more when you just sit and concentrate on the music.  This drives me crazy on some of the longer pieces, but it also means I'm enjoying softer pieces I haven't taken notice of before.

Other than that, I'm about 100 pages into <i>Accelerando</i> and it has yet to grip me.  Interesting enough as I'm reading it, but I've yet to get myself to read more than one chapter in a sitting.  I've been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls DVDs (the second season, I think).  I've forced some board games on my family and gotten semi-positive reactions from YINSH and Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. I've been eating more and walking less, but that's pretty typical for Tahoe.  And I've been seeing lots of avians that you don't see in New York (Bluebirds, robins, woodpeckers, ducks, geese).  I saw Superman Returns and The Devil Wears Prada (Joint review for both: Eh.)

And that's about that.  Further bulletins as events warrant.

Posted by Zach at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 12, 2006

Property Final

Only 4 hours until the end of the first year of law school! The mandatory part of it, anyway. Woo!

Posted by Zach at 09:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Survey

Sex just before bed the night before a stressful, thinking-and-knowledge-intensive four-hour final: Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Posted by Zach at 01:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 08, 2006

Officer's Corps Examination, Property Law Subject Test. Candidate: Molten Boron

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I hereby certify that the preceding examination answer is entirely my original work, that I consulted no outside materials in preparing it other than those permitted by the examination regulations, and that it was produced during the examination period.

Molten Boronary A. Slorpe 5/12/06

Posted by Zach at 11:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 01, 2006

Finals Schedule

For those interested, my Finals Schedule:

Criminal Law: Tuesday, May 2, 10AM-2PM.

Constitutional Law: Take-Home Exam, Pick-up between 10 AM and 4 PM Thursday, May 4, Drop-off 24 hours later on Friday, May 5.

Rule of Law: Wednesday, May 10, 10AM-2PM

Property Law: Friday, May 12, 10AM-2PM

Writing Competition: Pick up packet sometime Friday after the Property Final, entry due Friday, May 19 before 5 PM.

Posted by Zach at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Grar

Exactly what I don't need on the last day before my first final. I checked out a tape of a class yesterday to watch on-site. I returned to the desk, but the desk attendant had stepped out. I waited patiently. One of the reference librarians noticed and came over to ask what was going on. I told her I was returning the tape. She told me to just leave it on the desk and she'd make sure the counter attendant checked it in when he returned.

I just got an e-mail telling me that my tape is now 24 hours overdue, and since it's on course reserve that means a $1/hour fine. Now I have to go in to the library and sort this out, when I had been planning on staying inside and studying all day. Blar.

UPDATE: Alright, it's resolved. They actually had the tape and had put it on the shelf, but hadn't checked it back in properly. Annoying, insofar as it was their fault, but also a relief, insofar as I would probably be in a lot of trouble if someone had walked by yesterday and snagged the tape off the circulation desk.

Posted by Zach at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 29, 2006

Study Hole

Finals of Doom. No time for complete sentences. Will post again no later than ... May 12? May 19, to be safe.

Posted by Zach at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 21, 2006

Assorted Notes

Today was the last day of classes. Only four finals and a writing competition stand between me and the end of the first year of law school. Yay! Except for the finals and writing competition part.

I've been elected the new president of the Columbia Strategic Simulations Society, which sounds impressive until you realize that "Columbia Strategic Simulations Society" is a fancy name for Board Game Club and I was elected by acclamation (that is, nobody else ran for the position). Anyhow, I'm handling the club meeting tonight, our last of the year, and I'll be bringing the games. Here's the game list for the evening:

Twilight Imperium, 3rd Edition
The Settlers of Catan
Tsuro
YINSH
Domaine
Santiago
Puerto Rico
Ticket to Ride: Europe
The Traders of Genoa
Louis XIV
Blue Moon
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
Powergrid
Ra
Carcassonne (With The Count of Carcassonne Expansion)
Entdecker

Hopefully that'll be enough variety, in terms both of play depth and number of players, to keep everyone entertained for a few hours.

A final note, tomorrow is apparently Blog Against Heteronormativity Day. I'd certainly like to participate, though I'm not sure if I have much unique or interesting to add to the subject. Still, I'll try to think of something useful to say. I also thought there might be some readers who'd be interested in the war of internet screeds against heteronormativity.

Posted by Zach at 04:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 18, 2006

Driven to Madness

It's ten to midnight and I'm hungry.

Well, not really hungry in the technical sense of craving sustenance. I'm plenty full from dinner. What I need is sugar, and it's driving me mad. I pace into the kitchen every five minute to see if any chocolate had magically manifested itself in my cupboards since the last time I checked. But no. The craving gnaws at my brain. Surely SOMETHING will satisfy my lust for succrose? I've jelly, but the only thing I have to put it on is brown rice bread, which turns every dish in which you incorporate it into pure hatred. I have cereal, but no soy milk. I have instant pudding, but, again, no soy milk. At every turn I am thwarted. I just finished my raisins last night. There's no more fruit left. There isn't a sweet snack in the entire fracking apartment!

What time is it? Five to midnight. Shit. The bakery down the street will be closed. I could run to the grocery store up Broadway a few blocks, they're open 24 hours. I could also get something more instantly gratifying at the drugstore in the opposite direction. But should I? It's so late; is it wise to be walking the streets alone past midnight on a Tuesday in search of candy bars? Moreover, what kind of a person would that make me, leaving my comfortable apartment after all sensible people have gone to bed, looking for a sugar fix? The witching hour is upon me and still me desire burns.

I can stand it no longer; I am going out. When I return, if I return, I will come bearing the nefarious fruits of my dark debaucheries. Oo, maybe a Twix...

Posted by Zach at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 16, 2006

My Date with the Judge

I have a great Criminal Law professor. He's smart, funny, engaging, a fantastic teacher, and an incredibly deep thinker on the subject. He's also a federal judge, appointed by Clinton in his last year in office. Classes are from eight to nine in the morning, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Immediately after class he heads downtown, dons his robes, and judges. Each week about ten students are put on-call, meaning he'll call on them to discuss the cases we read for each lecture. In turn, each Friday he invites all the students who were on call that week to join him for lunch at the federal courthouse downtown. We're also invited to hang around in the audience to observe the proceedings in his courtroom, hearings, sentencings, trials, etc.

I was, as I have mentioned, on call in class this last week, and I decided to take Judge Lynch up on his invitation. I headed downtown after Con Law and entered his courtroom around noon. They were in the middle of proceedings on a hearing, and it was quite an interesting case. It concerned a man who'd been sentenced about two years ago for violating a deportation. He'd apparently been here illegally, was caught on a fairly minor drug offense, and was deported. He then came back and was caught again. In the United States, there's nothing criminal about being here when you're not entitled to be; we just pack you up and send you home. Once you get deported, however, it is illegal for you to come back in violation of your deportation, and if you return you face criminal penalties.

This fellow had been sentenced a couple of years ago by Judge Lynch. Lynch had given the guy the minimum sentence within the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and had indicated when he passed sentence that he'd have loved to give the petitioner less, but that his hands were tied. Within a year of the sentence, however, the Supreme Court held in the case of Blakely v. Washington that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were an unconstitutional violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, and therefore should be taken only as guidelines by a judge, and not as binding. Unfortunately for the man before the court yesterday, the deadline for an appeal had long passed.

So instead he filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Habea Corpus means roughly "holding of the body." It's a declaration that the prisoner believes the government has imprisoned him unlawfully and a request that some alledgedly defective aspect of the process and imprisonment be judicially inspected. In this case, the prisoner, who can't speak English, insisted that the had requested that his Legal Aid lawyer file an appeal. The lawyer, for whatever reason, didn't do so. At the time (pre-Blakely) the lawyer felt he had no grounds for an appeal, and would have advised the prisoner of this; the concern is that something was lost in translation and that, while the prisoner had requested an appeal, the lawyer never got the message.

When I arrived the Legal Aid lawyer was being examined. The prisoner himself had been examined earlier, and his sister, who was involved as a go-between in filing some of the various petitions, had been examined before that. According to the Legal Aid lawyer's record of the prisoner's case, there had been no plan for an appeal; normally he writes APPEAL in big letters across the front when a prisoner requests an appeal, in addition to checking a box on the form. Neither was on this form. So if the prisoner requested an appeal, the lawyer never heard it. Nonetheless, the lawyer had no specific recollection of the prisoner's case; it's important to bear in mind that, according to the lawyer's testimony, he's handling over 60 cases at a time in all areas of criminal and immigration law, so it's difficult to extract a specific recollection about one case nearly two years ago.

After the lawyer was examined and the two sides gave their summary arguments (punctuated with questions from the judge), Judge Lynch entered his verdict. The petition was denied, and the petitioner was to be returned to prison to serve out the remainder of his five-year sentence. Judge Lynch gave his reasoning from the bench, and he elaborated upon it some more in discussions at lunch. Weighing on the side of the petitioner, the story as presented seemed plausible. The petitioner was dealing with a foreign legal system, he had to work through a translator, and it seemed possible that he had requested an appeal and it had gotten lost in the shuffle. While he was leaning toward denying the petition before the hearing, the judge was nonetheless prepared to be persuaded otherwise, and was trying to formulate a way of granting the petition without making the Legal Aid lawyer look bad, since the judge had heard him argue before and felt him an upstanding member of the legal community. Two big factors weighed against the petitioner, however. First, granting the writ was unlikely to do very much. Second Circuit precedent is that anyone sentenced under the pre-Blakely scheme of using the Federal Sentencing Guidelines has to be re-sentenced using the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. This is to stave off a wave of habeas petitions for re-sentencing now that the guidelines aren't binding. The best the petitioner could hope for was a reduction in the sentence of about 3 months, based on a fuzzy factor within the guidelines. The other major factor was that the petitioner had presented two accounts that, without going into the details, were wildly inconsistent with one another. A very strong argument for a violation was made in the sworn affi davit that went along with the Habeas petition, while at the hearing the petitioner told a completely different, much milder, though still possibly persuasive, story. The judge felt that the difference was beyond a simple mistranslation between the jailhouse lawyer and the petitioner, and that this counted heavily against the petitioner's credibility. This proved fatal in a case in which, really, the petitioner's say-so is the only evidence we have of whether he requested an appeal or not.

After a bit of further conversation about the judge's legal career and advice for future lawyers, we returned to the courtroom. The judge had one further proceeding on the docket for the afternoon: A sentencing. A young man, age twenty, was being sentenced for gun running and armed robbery. He had pled guilty to the crimes, and the defense and prosecution presented evidence for why the sentence should be as low as possible. The defense, naturally, did the brunt of the work in this regard. They argued that he had had a troubled childhood which led him to crime, but that he had the support of his grandmother and a home to return to and rebuild his life after prison (increasing the likelihood that he could become a productive member of society). Evidence was submitted of his intelligence and his promise; he had held a number of jobs, including as a clerk at a large Manhattan law firm, and letters had been submitted from several prominent members of the community attesting to his good character. The defendant was remorseful, it was his first offense, and he had pled guilty and cooperated with prosecution. The prosecution added that his testimony had led them to some others involved in the gun running. Both argued that, while the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were not binding, the judge ought nonetheless to grant the minimum sentence within those guidelines.

The judge passed sentence. It's certainly true that the Federal Sentencing Guidlines aren't binding, but this doesn't work in the defendant's favor in this case. A peculiar quirk of the Federal Guidelines meant that, thanks to the grouping of offenses, the range of sentences for Armed Robbery + Gun Running were exactly the same as the range of sentences for Armed Robbery alone. The defendant was thus, in theory, getting Gun Running for free. But judges are no longer bound by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and Judge Lynch has a zero tolerance policy towards gun running. The state of New York takes a very hostile attitude towards guns, and the defendant knew that from growing up here. Moreover, he knew that the guns he ran from Georgia were cheap guns of the kind used in violent street crime. These were not, said Judge Lynch, being used to shoot folks on Park Avenue; these guns were being used in the very neighborhood that the defendant had grown up in. Moreover, the defendant knew exactly who he was selling the guns to and to what purpose they were being put, particularly since he had put one of those guns to that purpose himself. The judge felt that a sentence that only looked at the defendant's armed robbery would fail to account for all the violent crimes that will be the indirect result of his gun running. It is only because of all of the mitigating factors mentioned by the defense and prosecution that the judge had decided not to impose a sentence above the maximum under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The defendant was sentenced to 65 months in prison, which I believe was the maximum sentence advised by the guidelines.

All in all, quite an interesting day. Unfortunately, Judge Lynch's commitment to the Federal Government prevents him from teaching many classes at the law school, though apparently he teaches an upper-division seminar on sentencing (that's nearly impossible to get into). Still, I think it's worth trying, and I think I may take some future afternoons off to sit in Lynch's audience.

Oh, interesting side note: Lynch apparently attained some degree of fame a little while ago when he was the judge in the Lil Kim trial. He's responsible for sentencing her for perjury.

Posted by Zach at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Variation on a Theme

We're all familiar with the common recurrent nightmare of having a college test for which you haven't studied or attended class all semester. Last night I had a frighteningly realistic variant on it. I dreamt I was attending the last lecture of a class I'm taking right now, Constitutional Law. It was taught by my professor. He wrapped up his lecture, then suddenly told us to boot up our exam software. His TAs began passing out exams. "Since you're all here right now," he said, and since you all have the same schedules and this is the absolute last lecture for anyone this semester, I've decided to just give you all the exam right now. You have four hours, answer the question that's asked and no other question."

My heart sank. I've been somewhat slacking, studying-wise, all semester, and had been counting on a week and a half of dead time between the last lecture and the final to prepare myself for the Con Law final. But I couldn't well say that to the professor. Luckily, some fellow student in a similar situation but possessed of more courage than I rose to my aid.

"But wait a minute, Professor! We've been counting on this study period! It's not fair to give us the exam on the spot like this!"

"Ah," replied the professor, "but it is fair! The test is graded on a curve, so your grade isn't dependent on any universal metric of performance, but rather on how well you do in relation to everyone else in the class. So the only way that this could be unfair is if it structurally favors some students over other students. No student has had any prior notice of my decision to move the exam up, so you've all been caught equally by surprise. You've all had the same amount of time to study. It's reasonable to assume that you'll all be putting every moment of time you have into studying over the week and a half until the scheduled exam time, so none of you is likely to gain or lose any advantage over anyone else in that period. Plus you are all presumably fully prepared to handle the test already, having been diligently keeping up with the reading in your preparations for each lecture. Therefore, why not give the exam now? You're all here, you're reasonably prepared (or at least, none of you is more prepared than anyone else), and you'll get it out of the way now and have one fewer exam to worry about. Plus I can then get a head start grading exams and hopefully get your grades posted before the exam period is done."

I don't recall the contents of my phantom exam, but I can't say that the professor's justification mollified me very much. Now I'm starting to think, with one week of lectures left, that it might behoove me to get a leg up preparing for some of my exams. Some of these professors are tricksy sorts...

Posted by Zach at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 12, 2006

On the Holding of Horses

Just a quick note: There are posts I've been meaning to write, comments I've been meaning to leave, and e-mails I've been meaning to respond to, but they'll probably have to wait until Friday night. I'm on call this week in Criminal Law, meaning that I'm on a very small list of people whom the professor will be calling on this week to interrogate about the readings each night. It is, thus, more important than usual that I 1. do the reading and 2. understand the reading at a sufficiently deep level to discuss it lucidly at 8 o'clock in the morning.

It does not help that our professor, after moving through the readings at a languorous pace throughout the rest of the semester, has decided to start catching up this week, the penultimate week of lectures. Thus, we are covering three subjects per class this week, so that means three night's worth of reading to assimilate each night. I am not, needless to say, a *happy camper*. It is *frumple*. We are *dancing*!

Posted by Zach at 09:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 08, 2006

Open Invitation

Hey, so I'm going to be in New York all this summer, working at a non-profit organization in the West Village. My workload should be light compared to when I'm in school, the days will be sunny, and there's plenty of room in my apartment. To that end, I extend an open invitation to all who read this blog: If you'll be visiting the New York City area this summer, please feel free to send me an e-mail (that's zslorpe@gmail.com , once again) and I'll happily put you up for as long as you like. It's a spacious Manhattan apartment, well-situated near two subway lines, and located on the same block as historic Tom's Restaurant (the Seinfeld Cafe). I'm five minutes walk from Columbia University, ten minutes from Central Park, 15-20 minutes by Subway from downtown Manhattan. And the neighborhood itself is both quiet and safe (the second-safest precinct in Manhattan), so you can get a good night's sleep here without a lot of street noise.

Anyhow, anyone's welcome, send an e-mail ahead of time to give me some notice.

Posted by Zach at 01:57 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 04, 2006

Alumnus

The last vestiges of my time as a Berkeley student have been swept away and I can now consider myself a proper alumnus: Fifteen months after I took my last final at Berkeley, Cal's tech services has finally de-activated my UCLink E-mail account. Those who seek electronic audience with me, Molten Boron, Molten Boron to my friends, can no longer reach me at zslorpe@berkeley.edu. Nor can you reach me at zslorpe@uclink.berkeley.edu. Direct all future inquiries to zslorpe@gmail.com. Again, this is for those who are trying to contact Molten Boron. Formerly of Berkeley. Yes, that Molten Boron. The one who's google-bombing his name now. To re-iterate: zslorpe@berkeley.edu and zslorpe@uclink.berkeley.edu : no longer operative. zslorpe@gmail.com is the name of the game now.

Posted by Zach at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arachne

My attention was recently drawn to Matt Holohan's Scary Spider Adventure. I made the foolish mistake of clicking a link to some pictures of nasty Floridian banana spiders in the comments. Eeeeugh. I'm now in full Defcon-1 Spider Alert Mode. I'm pacing about the apartment nervously, inspecting nooks for arachnoid invasion, jumping when I brush my arm against the door out of fear that it might be a spider.

I hate spiders. I can't stand them in any context. Without a diagnosis, I believe I can make a persuasive case that I am a full-on arachnophobe. Many people claim to have a phobia, but are really exaggerating. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. A momentary panic attack when you look over the ledge of a 30 story building isn't a sign of acrophobia; you're expressing a very rational fear of falling from a height that is certain to seal your doom. Having that same panic attack when you stand on a footstool, however, is probably a good indication that you're acrophobic.

I think I'm arachnophobic because I have absolutely no problem with big scary insects. A gross, hairy bug has absolutely no effect on me, and I can inspect one with detached bemusement. But a tiny spider just sets me off. I'll jump, I'll rub myself, I'll be completely unable to relax for hours after I see one. I doubt I'll get any sleep tonight because my mind will create imaginary spiders crawling all over me, or waiting on the ceiling in silence to pounce.

This is another reason why I'm not such a great exemplar of masculinity. Under traditional male gender roles, men are the official killer of bugs, spiders, and other gross things. I'm utterly useless about this. If it's an insect, I take a laissez-faire attitude. "Who cares?" I say, "If you want it dead, kill it yourself. I'll not be your insect executioner. Your insectiocutioner. Heh. That's clever." On the other hand, if we're talking a spider invasion, I have no moral qualms about killing it. In criminal law, there's such a thing as justifiable homicide. One of the justifications, commonly accepted, for homicide is self-defense. Well, it's a well known fact that spiders seek the utter destruction of the human race in general, and me in particular. The very existence of a spider is prima facie evidence of its malicious intent and of the imminent threat that it presents to my life. This belief is entirely reasonable, and I would act on it if I could exert any kind of rational control of my body upon learning that there's a spider about.

But I can't. I was in a shower once and noticed a spider crawling on the curtain. I leaped three feet and climbed up on the corner of the bath to get away from it. After ten minutes there carefully watching it (and craning my neck to look for its sinister cohorts who were no doubt waiting to pounce when I let my guard down) I cautiously made my way to the shower head and turned it on the spider. After knocking it down and pushing it to the drain, I darted from the shower and made my way, speedily yet gingerly and still soaking wet, into the (fortunately unoccupied) living room, where I was safe, if in a somewhat indecent state. I eventually made my way back to the bathroom for a quick hit-and-run operation to grab my towel. After carefull inspection to make sure it was spider free, I dried myself. It took fully half an hour to calm myself down, and I left the bathroom door locked until my roommate came home and took care of the spider, which as it turns out was slightly smaller than the nail on my little finger.

So. Spiders: Can't stand them. I have no problem if the given little arthropod has 6 legs, or 10 legs, or 100 legs, but if it has 8 legs it scares the living fuck out of me. So this means that Hawaii is added to my List of Places I Can Never Go, along with Florida and Iraq.

Posted by Zach at 01:13 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

Die Fliegende Collander

I'm on vacation!  This increase in free time has led to a decrease in blogging.  The implications are as astounding as they are banal.

A few observations from my trip:

Travel, for me, is always an object lesson in my utter failure as a masculine specimen.  Just as I'm not really able to lift a 100 pound box, I'm not really capable of carrying a 50 pound piece of luggage with any degree of grace.   Maneuvering my bag three blocks to the subway, onto the train, off the train, down the stairs to another train, and off of that train to the JFK monorail was an exercise in strategic hoisting and lunging.  By the time I got my bag checked my arm muscles had vanished, replaced with pure, writhing ache.  My arms still hurt now, three days later, and my fingers are red and blistered. 

I got to my gate way early (as always).  The TVs were playing Airport CNN.  Airport CNN is a lot like regular CNN, only the ads have been replaced with Public Service Announcements.  This makes for an interesting viewing experience: It's pure fear, pumped from the monitor without the mitigation of advertisements.  To give you a sense of what it's like:

News Anchor: Up next, we speak to Congressman Charles Dimwittie, who alleges that allowing the Dubai Port Deal to go through will put TERRORISTS IN CHARGE OF OUR PORTS who will use that access to BLOW UP YOUR HOUSE TOMORROW! And later in the hour, our panel of experts will discuss whether blocking the Dubai Port Deal will cause ARABS TO HATE US, AND YOU IN PARTICULAR, which will cause them to COME TO YOUR HOUSE TOMORROW AND BLOW IT UP!  But first, these messages.

Public Service Announcement:  When was the last time you talked to YOUR child about alcohol abuse?  Oh, last night?  I see.  So you didn't think that this morning might be a good time for another talk?  Well, guess what.  Chances are your kid's taking swigs of Jack Daniels right now because of YOUR negligent parenting.  Still glad you decided to eat that sausage biscuit rather than save your child from a life of crippling alcoholism and abuse?  I hope you still remember how good that biscuit tasted when you're watching your child wither away from cirrhosis.  You disgust me.

PSA #2: Have you talked to your child today about methamphetamine abuse?  Better get on it, because right now your child's just set up a meth lab in the basement, and soon it will BLOW UP YOUR HOUSE!

PSA #3: As a cigarrette smoker, you're pretty much the most disgusting human being on the planet.  Really.  For the sake of humanity, just die of heart disease already so we don't have to breathe your disgusting second-hand smoke, which, by the way, is killing your kids.  Plus you'll probably burn down your house with a stray cigarette soon, anyway.

The plane boarded, as planes are wont to do.  I had the pleasure of sitting with chatty neighbors.  As mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of socializing, particularly with strangers, and especially when it means socializing for six hours with no possibility of escape.  Plus the in-flight movie was The Family Freaking Stone.  Ugh.  After twenty minutes discussing the weather, fifteen minutes on how interesting law school must be, and thirty minutes on the minutiae of being a facial therapist at a spa up in Connecticut, I opened the in-flight magazine to escape.  This lead to a ten minute conversation about how boring in-flight magazines are, and who writes for them anyway?  I found myself on the word puzzles page, toward the back.  I figured that working on a puzzle would cause my seatmate to leave me in peace.  I was wrong.  Every two minutes an interuption.  "Well, how's that puzzle going?  You getting any farther?  Is it pretty hard?"  "No, I'm about where I was the last time you asked."  "Oh, is it tough?"  "Not really, no."  "Okay.  ....  So where are you now?" 

As usual, boredom was my ally.  I pulled out my Latin textbook and started studying.  When the inevitable question came, I launched into a passionate explanation of declension.  Twenty minutes later, she never wanted to know about antique grammar again.  For the rest of that flight, Wheelock's Latin was my conversation shield.  Plus, now I know the second declension!

Boarding a plane did not put an end to the media's attempts to terrify my.  While leafing through the aforesaid in-flight magazine I discovered a full-page medical warning about deep-vein thrombosis.  DVT occurs when a large clot forms in the veins of your legs, then disloges and makes its way to your heart, there to cause all sorts of trouble.  The risk factors include sitting down a lot (which I do all the time!) and not changing your leg position (which happens to me by necessity on plane flights!).  I began panicking.  There was no way I'd survive this whole six hour flight; I could feel my leg veins clotting already.  Here I was, about to die, and the last thing I'd hear was this woman telling me about facial peels.  My fear turned out to be unwarranted.  Though, as the conversation wore on, I began silently rooting for the clot.

Oh, a fun Latin phrase from my in-flight lesson: Ira Poetae: The Rage of the Poet.  If this isn't already the name of a video game, it should be. 

A couple of hours into the flight the attendants announced the beginning of food service.  I got excited.  Airline food is one of those things about which I get unreasonably excited, even though I really shouldn't.  It never fails to disappoint, but the prospect of packaged Air Food seems so alluring when it's announced.  It's like Charlie Brown and his football, only with partially-hydrogenated spreadable neon-orange cheese-esque substance.  This time I was doubly excited; I hadn't eaten since that morning at my apartment.  I'd avoided airport food, since it's over-priced even for New York and I figured I'd soon be getting a free airline meal.

This flight's meal, in turn, was doubly disappointing, because it did not exist.  Not for me, anyway.  Apparently, American Airlines now charges for in-flight meals, $4 for a sandwich and $3 for a snack pack.  I was outraged.  Outraged!  I didn't even get a packet of peanuts; those were in the snack pack.  I fumed.  $4 for a sandwich!  $7 for the whole meal!  As I thought about it, though, I realized there was nothing I'd be willing to pay for airline food.  It's airline food!  It's terrible!  And yet its absence has caused me to swear a vendetta against American Airlines that can only be satisfied with blood.  How curious, then, the in-flight meal.  It's so worthless there is no amount I would pay for it, and yet I am outraged when it isn't given to me free. 

One final note: Why is it so cold here?  When I left New York, the weather was sunny and in the mid-60s.  I was out in shirt sleeves and didn't pack a sweater or anything.  I arrive in San Diego and it's pouring rain and in the low 40s.  I didn't come across the country for this!  Why has the weather forsaken me?

Posted by Zach at 01:31 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 05, 2006

Time

I have a few post ideas bubbling, but nothing screams that it needs to be done right now. Things have gotten better as of this week; no more moot court brief to worry about, no Courtroom Advocates Project for a few weeks, no job hunt, no struggles with psychologists. Now I've got one week until spring break and nothing truly pressing to do this weekend.

I spent yesterday learning Latin and going to the bookstore to buy books on Roman history to stimulate my interest in Latin. One odd thing I noticed in Barnes and Noble: There are about 50 books in print right now on Alexander the Great. This seems odd to me; is it the detritus of that one movie on Alexander from a few years ago? Considering the unpopularity of the film, the rush to put out books to capitalize on it seems ill-advised. I suppose he's a popular enough subject that there's been a steady trickle of biographies and analyses throughout the years, and publishers used the occasion of the movie to pull them out of the back catalogue and put them into print again.

Still, though, I'm excited about Latin. I never thought I'd buy a foreign language workbook, of the kind dreaded in High School language classes, of my own free will, nor that I would willingly do the exercises and actually enjoy them. Still, we'll see how long this lasts. The next lesson appears to be on the first declension, so who knows if I'll still like it once I've started declining nouns and adjectives.

I also have time to pick up the banjo again now! I've gotten kinda back up to where I was before I took my four month hiatus, skill-wise. I'm still not very good, but at least I haven't slid backwards too far.

Hopefully somthing interesting soon.

Posted by Zach at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 27, 2006

Kabuki Redux

Yesterday I spent an entire day, from the moment I woke up (roughly 10 AM) until I gave up and went to bed (3 AM) avoiding work on my Moot Court Brief. This work involved editing it from second draft to final draft status, based on a relatively small number of stylistic comments from my editor. This morning I woke up and, before I showered, before I ate breakfast, before I even dressed, I clenched my teeth and got to work on it. I HAD to get it done before I was to meet with my partner to put everything together this afternoon.

I just finished. Editing it took 45 minutes.

I spent 17 hours yesterday avoiding 45 minutes of work. I spent more time writing about Star Control 2 than I did polishing my argument on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

There is a Calvin and Hobbes strip that wholely embodies my work philosophy. I should dig it out of my collection and scan it or something. The gist of it is that Calvin has to do some homework assignment, and he's playing instead. Hobbes asks why he isn't working, and Calvin replies that he has to be in the right frame of mind, "Last-minute panic."

I find this broadly true for me. I absolutely cannot bring myself to work on some assignment until the last clear chance to actually get it done (that is, if an assignment will take 3 hours to do, it's very hard to get me to start working on it until late the night before it's due, and if necessary I will put it off until as late as 5 hours before the deadline). At the same time, years of this sort of nonsense have honed my ability to crank out some fairly high-quality work at the last minute. In a sense, this is enabling my procrastination; other than the torment of the Dead Day Paper Writing Kabuki Dance, there really haven't been any consequences for my lingering ways. Yet.

Posted by Zach at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 25, 2006

Strange Yearnings

I am occasionally seized by ideas for projects and experiments that drive me mad until I can enact them. Some of these ideas are food related, such as the chimera that haunts my fever dreams to this day, Orange Pie. Others are sartorial, like my desire to put together a Doctor Who outfit, complete with 20-foot-long multi-colored scarf (this idea actually came to fruition, leading to an entire year of High School in which I wore said scarf every day. So when I counsel people to walk around in a flight helmet, know that I am not entirely kidding).

Today I woke up with urges mental and musical. First, I would like to memorize the entire Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It's quite long, but people memorized the Aeneid to recite, why shouldn't I be able to memorize the Rime? This desire isn't really new, though; I've wanted to memorize the Rime since I encountered it in its full in college, and before that when I knew it from the flavor text of various Magic: The Gathering cards.

What's new is the musical aspect. Like most of the poems of Emily Dickinson, the Rime is written in Common Meter. As you know, Bob, poems written in Common Meter can be sung to a wide variety of songs, most prominently Yellow Rose of Texas. But there are some other interesting options, too, at very divergent speeds: (Hey!) You Got To Hide Your Love Away (By the Beatles) (Very slow), House of the Rising Sun (Also very slow), Beverly Hillbillies Theme (Very fast), Amazing Grace (Very slow), Auld Lang Syne (Pretty Slow), etc.

But the siren's song for me is the one that strikes me as absolutely thematically perfect: The Theme Song to Gilligan's Island. So now I feel compelled to, first, memorize the Rime, and second, learn to play the Gilligan's Island theme on the banjo. Then I can serenade people with my tale of woe, or sin, punishment and redemption on the high seas, of albatrosses and dead winds and desparation and zombie sailors, all while evoking the primal cultural images of Bob Denver, Mary Ann, and toasters made out of coconuts. It's all very Joseph Campbell Power of Myth.

So if all goes to plan, I should at some point in the near future have a very esoteric party trick.

Posted by Zach at 12:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 17, 2006

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Blogging has been light this week because all of the forces of Hell have converged to rob me of my leisure time and my sanity. On the plus side, this weekend's looking remarkably free. As is, coincidentally, my summer...

Posted by Zach at 09:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 11, 2006

Turkish Benefits

I'm doing my taxes on-line, which is somewhat more complicated than usual because I have to file income taxes for the Federal Government, California, New York State, and New York City. New York City, aparently, requires residents to pay income tax for all income earned in a year in which they spent at least part as a resident of the city, regardless of where the income was earned. So, unless I'm mistaken, if you earn money for 364 days in California, then officially move to New York City on December 31, you have to pay taxes on all of your income for the year to California and then also pay taxes again on that same income to New York City. You also, I believe, have to pay New York City's income tax if you live somewhere else but earn money from working in New York City.

Anyhow, I'm paying taxes. First, a serious question: Is there anywhere I'm supposed to report money from student loans? That is, the big whack of cash I got last august that was immediately shunted into Columbia University's coffers. Do I report that? I ask because, under deductions, I reported all of my tuition expenses, but never reported getting money from loans, so it looks like I paid $20,000 in tuition out of nowhere, with almost no income and nothing removed from my bank account.

Second, an observation: In the Other Income heading for California State Taxes, one of the questions is whether I received Ottoman Turkish Empire settlement payments. What are these? I mean, I don't think I got any, but I wasn't aware that the Ottoman Turks were still around and paying out settlements.

Also, from the New York State form:
Investment Credit
Can you claim an investment credit for one of the following types of qualified property placed in service during 2005?
- Manufacturing and production
- Retail enterprise
- Waste treatment or pollution control
- Research and development
- Rehabilitation of an historic barn
- Qualified film production property"

New York State has an explicit investment credit for historic barn rehabilitation? Lumped in with the waste treatment facility credit?

Huh. Looks like I get free money from New York City; they're giving me $26 for a City of New York School Tax Credit, even though I owe them no taxes and they withheld none of my income. Weird. But I'm not turning it down.

Ah. A couple of cautionary notes to those using the TurboTax software to file their tax return: First, you can file your Federal taxes free, but only if you get to the TurboTax website through a link on the IRS site to free on-line tax preparers. Go to Google and search for Free Tax E-File, then go to the IRS's site. From there, follow the link to TurboTax. If you go to TurboTax's site directly, only pay services will be available.

Second, and more important, TurboTax makes it very easy to file your various state and local taxes. These services are profoundly not free, something you won't dicover until the very end. Only Federal filing is free. If you provide them with information for any state tax returns, whether you decide to file them or not, they will charge you a $50 preparation fee. What's more, they will offer you a choice of either paying their fee with a credit card or simply having it deducted automatically from your return. Unless you don't have a credit card, or are afraid of using your card on-line, you should pay with a card. For the convenience of deducting the preparation fee from your return check, rather than charging your credit card, TurboTax charges a $30 Direct Deposit Fee.

You can file state income taxes free on your state tax administration's website. Filing state taxes with TurboTax made no sense for me; I'd be paying $80 in fees for a $60 refund.

Posted by Zach at 07:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blustery

There's a Blizzard Warning in effect from 7 PM tonight until 4 AM tomorrow. The temperature's 36 right now, expected to drop to 24 overnight. Heavy snow is predicted, along with 25-50 mile per hour winds. Snow is expected to continue through the day tomorrow, with accumulation of around 12 inches (more in some areas) when it's finished. The National Weather Service is recommending that everyone check the supplies in their Snowstorm Survival Kit, to do what's necessary to pack in during the day today, and to stay indoors until the storm blows over.

Also, last night for the first time I felt really, deeply homesick for Berkeley. I miss long walks in sunny, temperate weather and the peculiarly ecclective flora of the East Bay (eucalyptus trees and palm fronds). I find it a lot harder to take a relaxed stroll in New York, because there are always so many people out on the street rushing around. You can't just walk for walking's sake; you need a purpose and a direction. And it doesn't help that the weather's been cold enough lately that you either need to bundle up in three layers of insulative clothing or make only quick 5 minute trips outside before darting back into heated buildings to raise your core temperature.

I can't help but wonder if these two events are related.

Posted by Zach at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 06, 2006

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

David Schizer, Dean of Columbia Law School, just committed an emotional tort against me. I predict years of pain and suffering, for which I demand compensation.

I am, as you may know, doing Moot Court this semester. Minutes ago, I received the following terse e-mail from the Dean (judges omitted for maximum dramatic value):

"Please note that this year's Moot Court final arguments have been scheduled
for Monday, April 10. We are very pleased to have the following
distinguished judges on the panel:

...

The competition will take place in JGH 104 from 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. A
reception will immediately follow in Drapkin Lounge.

David Schizer"

I just turned in my Moot Court brief today. It's a matter of statutory interpretation that asks the judge to depart from the plain meaning of a statute (though not necessarily in an unreasonable way; I ask them to use a plausible reading, if not the most natural one). My argument comes largely from policy, custom, and legislative intent. We've been waiting for an announcement on when we'll be doing oral arguments, so it's not unreasonable to think this e-mail's about us. Odd to get this from the Dean, but whatever.

And here are the honorable judges who will be presiding over the moot court arguments, according to Dean Schizer:

Judge Edith B. Clement, a George W. Bush appointee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana.

Judge Pierre N. Leval, a Clinton appointee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City

Justice Antonin Scalia, of the U.S. Supreme Court.

As you might imagine, my heart stopped. My first ever oral argument before the meanest and toughest questioner on the Supreme Court, arguing a case in which I'm arguing for everything he's against.

Needless to say, Dean Schizer's e-mail excluded vital information (as his e-mails tend to). This the final argument for the optional upper-division Honors Moot Court program, which makes sense.

Nonetheless, that won't stop me from having years of nightmares about being a first year law student making an oral argument that I haven't prepared arguing for a policy-based departure from a statute's text before Antonin Scalia. In my underwear.

Posted by Zach at 03:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 24, 2006

Ready for interview....

At least so far as dress is concerned. As far as mental state, I still have a ways to go. Good thing the interview's not for 3 hours.

Posted by Zach at 12:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Too Tired for a Serious Post

If you were a pair of lucky underpants, what color/pattern would you be? Quickly, before I dress for my interview!

Posted by Zach at 01:19 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 19, 2006

Good News/Bad News

A: I bought a new suit on Monday.

B: That's good!

A: I went $200 over-budget on it.

B: That's bad!

A: I also bought a new t-shirt and underpants at American Apparel on Monday.

B: That's good!

A: And froze my ass off getting them after wandering back and forth on Houston for an hour.

B: That's bad!

A: I got in to see a public interest advisor about my resume on Wednesday.

B: That's good!

A: He said the resume can be polished, but the lack of diversity of experience means that it's unlikely it'll get me any interviews.

B: That's bad!

A: I had a practice interview for criminal prosecution-type jobs on Wednesday.

B: That's good!

A: The interviewer told me I sounded like a vigilante who would burn himself out in a couple of years.

B: That's bad!

A: Thanks to a last-minute cancellation, I got an interview with the Manhattan District Attorney's office on Monday for a position with their Summer Internship program.

B: That's good!

A: They'll be working off my terrible, unpolished resume. They want transcripts, which will be incomplete, they want a list of references, whom I haven't notified and can't get in touch with, and they'll want me to show up in a suit, which is still at the department store being tailored. I called today and maybe, if I'm very lucky, I can call tomorrow and convince the head tailor to grossly overcharge me for a rush job, which I will have to either A. pick up tomorrow in the hour gap I have between my last class and the start of Courtroom Advocacy Project training or B. pick up Monday sometime after I see my psychiatrist at 10:00 but before my interview at 12:30. And I'm not sure I could do it either way if the subways break down the way they did today.

B: ... Are you done?

A: Yeah.

B: Stop bitching. You have a shot at your dream internship (That ACTUALLY PAYS. Do you know how rare that is for government/Public Interest 1L summer jobs?) and you're complaining about an incomplete transcript and picking up a suit? Starving children in China would love to be able to eat the suit you're bitching about, or words to that effect. In short: Stop complaining and start feeling guilty about having complained.

A: ... I'm Sorry.

B: That's good! Got anything else?

A: Um.... I finally saw Eraserhead...

B: That's bad!

Posted by Zach at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 09, 2006

Again

Back in New York again. So tired; haven't gotten a night's sleep since Friday. Anyhow, school starts again tomorrow. On the docket this semester: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Law and Philosophy, and Property. Value-added piece of information for non-lawyer-types: Property, here, doesn't really refer to physical stuff. I mean, that's sort of covered, but not really. About 90% of this property course is Land Use/Real Estate Law. Wheeeeeee.

Oh, also this semester: Moot Court. Not Mute Court, sadly.

Posted by Zach at 12:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 04, 2006

Educated Burgers

Last Spring I travelled up the East Coast visiting law schools.  Toward the end of my trip I found myself in New Haven, Connecticut.   I wasn't visiting Yale Law; I hadn't even applied there.  A friend of mine was attending grad school at Yale, and I had planned on dropping in for a visit.  Fortuitously, my plans called for me to be in New Haven on April 4th, which was her birthday.  Less fortuitously, I decided to make my visit a surprise.  I made the plans months in advance, but a creeping doubt eventualy caused me to e-mail her and tell her of my visit a few days before I left.  I found out while on the road that she would be out of town for her birthday.  Nuts.

I had to wake up early that day to make my train.  I fought through rush-hour subway crowds while carrying too much luggage to get to Penn Station, but I got there on time.  I arrived in New Haven, tired and disheveled, around eleven.  I had nothing to do for thirteen hours.  I took my friend's present out of my bag and walked to the Yale campus.

A walk around the school killed about forty-five minutes.  I wandered into the stores near campus and eventually bought a Yale pennant for my sister's collection.  Still about eleven hours to kill.  I decided to stalk my friend at the graduate housing castle.  I would look around and get a feel for where she lived, where she worked, etc.  If she couldn't be there to show me around, I'd give myself the self-guided tour.

A lot of the doors were locked, but there was enough foot traffic to nonchalantly penetrate the building.  I eventually found my way onto an elevator leading to the graduate residences.  A female student joined me.

"What floor?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter," I replied, having unconsciously chosen the creepiest possible response to the query.

I decided to redirect my travels to places I wasn't locked out of.  I eventually found my friend's box in the history department and scrawled a note to her on a flyer.  As I left the castle I realized that I wasn't carrying the penant I had bought for my sister; I ran back to the history department, but someone had already taken it.  Drat.  I went back to the campus store and bought another one.

I was physically exhausted from travel and mentally exhausted from my early wake up.  I was in New Haven, Connecticut.  The most exciting thing I could do in New Haven was leave, and I couldn't do that for ten hours.  My friend's present was too big to fit in her box, so I'd have to mail it to her.  Since she had a P.O. box, this meant paying the full shipping price for the post office to put the package under their counter and stick a slip in her box telling her that the package was behind the counter.  I was shipping her present three feet.  I'd just wasted money on a second penant thanks to my absent-mindedness.  And on top of everything else, I was thirsty. 

I walked into a small fast food place, "The Educated Burger."  As often happens, what started as a narrow and precise mission to get a soda expanded into a full lunch campaign.  I ordered a hamburger, fries, and a large soda.  While they cooked my food, I walked to the nearest booth and set the present down.  It took up most of the table (it was a somewhat large book), but there wasn't a larger table available.  I headed back to the counter to collect my tray.  I noticed that the counter worker hadn't put a lid on my soda.  I looked around for one, but there weren't any out.  Huh.  I'd have to be careful.

I walked gingerly to my table and tried to set my tray down.  The present was too big; there was no room for the tray.  I tried to set the tray down on the exposed table and carefully nudge the present backwards, so as to create room.  I executed my plan poorly.  The soda toppled, spilling sticky sludge onto my present and the floor.

"FUCK!"

No sooner had I said it than my mind was instantly taken off the sweet liquid that was oozing into the pages of my friend's present and gunking up the floor.  I looked around at the faces of the patrons and staff, which were now all turned to me.  My eyes were drawn to the pair of retirees at the next booth, who were staring at me in the way they would stare at a man accused of murdering their children.  "I'm sorry!" I wanted to say.  "I don't usually swear in public!  It's just I'm so tired and angry at myself and annoyed and bored and all I wanted was a soda and now it's gone AND it's ruining my friend's present and it all came to a head and I wasn't thinking and oh God I'm so sorry!"  But I just kept my head down, grabbed a handful of napkins from the counter, and began mopping up my mess. 

I don't remember how the hamburger tasted.  Probably alright.  But as I was sitting there trying to eat it with what remained of my dignity I decided I could never show my face in The Educated Burger again.  Just to be safe, I'll probably avoid New Haven entirely.  After mailing my friend her soggy present (and receiving a stern lecture from the postal clerk about mailing wet packages), I exiled myself to the station and waited nine hours for my train.

Posted by Zach at 03:09 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 02, 2006

End of an Era

Tonight, while revising my resume to apply for summer internships, I finally deleted the last vestiges of my time at the library as a lowly book-shelver.  Gone at last from the "Relevant Skills" heading is the bullet-point "Speedy and accurate organization of books and files."  For many years I clung to this last bit of my identity as a Shelf Monkey.  Because, damnit, job listings always say they want Detail Oriented applicants, and darned if I didn't have empirical proof of my detail orientation!  But no; now that I've moved on to legal jobs the resume buzzwords have changed.  Now my potential employers want Excellent Research and Writing skills, and my ability to organize books is awkward and extraneous.  But I still feel compelled to include a bullet point saying that I "Could make two trucks in an hour.  Really!  You can time me!"

It should also be pointed out that, despite dozens of submissions of the Speedy and Accurate Organization resume, the only job offer it ever got me was for a position flipping burgers at Nation's Giant Hamburgers.  So Detail Orientation wasn't really working for me to begin with.

Posted by Zach at 03:58 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 22, 2005

Nightmare

I had a nightmare last night.  It was the summer and I was working as a summer intern for a district attorney's office in a small town somewhere.  I was involved, for some reason, in the investigation stage of a big drug arrest.  The Berkeley College Republicans had come to town, for some reason, and had all been arrested in a road checkpoint for possessing cocaine, or heroine, or some white powdery illicity substance.  But they had found a group of undocumented immigrant workers and had accused them of hatching a massive conspiracy to set them up.  So everyone involved was down at the local police office, and the detectives and DAs were going through and interviewing people to try and figure out whom they should arrest and charge. 

Also, because there were so many people, we weren't actually in the police station; they were holding everyone in the local high school gym.  So, for whatever reason, it was decided that we should pass the time with a basketball game, divided into the street-smart team versus the book-smart team.  This meant myself and the College Republicans I would (probably) be helping to prosecute against the immigrants and the police officers.  This is where the nightmare comes in.

You see, I suck at sports.  All sports, every sport.  There is no sport, no matter how trivial the skills involved in it, that I can not find a way to suck horribly at.  Basketball is particularly hated, because it seems to involve way too much testosterone, with all the sweatiness and close contact and such.  Also, the ball is big and hard.  I suck so much at sport that people get mad at me.  They tend to assume that nobody could possibly suck as much as I do.  I tend to argue against sportly activities pretty vehemently beforehand, then insist that I don't want to participate when people are picking teams and such.  Thus, people tend to assume, when I suck, that I'm doing some whiney pissant passive-aggressive "if you're gonna make me play, I'm just gonna not try and make everyone miserable" thing.  But no, really, it's true.  When a baseball flies toward me in the outfield, it instantly and irrevocably activates my reptilian "Flight!" instinct, causing me to run away from it or, alternatively, cringe and try to protect my head.  I don't even know how to begin with tennis.  I can't serve, meaning I can't successfully swing and hit the ball on the service, let alone get it properly over the net, so if I'm serving a game it just consists of me standing in the back of a court and periodically hoisting a ball in the air and swinging wildly until I've officially lost.  If my opponent serves, I don't have any ability to read the ball so I just stand there and watch it whiz past me.  I may feebly extend my racket in the general direction, but usually by the time my brain sends a "Go there!" command the ball has already gone out the back of the court.

Basketball is the worst, though.  Some people can't dunk.  Some can't shoot, or pass.  Others have a basic skill set, but are just overmatched by the other players and get dominated on the court.

I can't dribble.  I try and I lose control of the ball after once bounce.  I can't even hope to do any of the other tasks basketball requires.  Plus, basketball seem to involve way more testosterone than other sports.  There's a lot more sweating and yelling and trash talking and physical contact and such, and I'm somewhat deficient in the testosterone department.

So most of my dream was just a parade of basketball-related embarrasments.  For some reason I was made Center, ostensibly because I was so big (this is patently false; I'm 5'10'', which is, I believe, about average, if not a tad short).  The pain seemed to go on forever; "You can't POSSIBLY suck that much!" and "Nobody on Earth sucks as much as you!" and such.  I tried to make baskets and the ball actually arced backwards after leaving my hands.  And this was all just in the practice session with my own team before the game.   Eventually the team mom intervened and took me out.  We had a team mom, for some reason.  She said I was a great center; after all, I was just so tall!

Posted by Zach at 02:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 20, 2005

Celebratory Poem

In honor of the completion of my first semester of law school, I present a poem:

I met a traveller from an antique land
who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair."
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
the lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias."

Posted by Zach at 03:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In other news...

4 1/2 hours until I'm done(ish) with my first semester of law school!

Posted by Zach at 09:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Sucker-punched

So, Contracts final tomorrow. In just 14 1/2 hours I'll be done with my first semester of law school...

OR WILL I???

The answer, sadly, is no. I just got an e-mail from my Legal Writing TA. Everyone in our section is being required to re-write their memo. Further, the re-writes will be due January 4, towards the end of winter break. So now our semester doesn't really officially end until 5 days before next semester. Further, since we've gotten our commented-upon memos just before the last final, there's no way to re-write them while still at school. So we'll all be doing re-writes over the break. Happy Holidays!

A further point: Our TA chose to send these out the night before (what some consider to be) our hardest final. Nothing like reading an excoriating appraisal of your legal writing and reasoning ability just before bedtime the night before a nasty final.

And finally: They just posted our schedules for next semester. I'll have two Friday classes and three 8 AM classes per week. And as an added bonus, I know few people in my section and like fewer. It's not yet winter break and I already can't wait until Summer...

Posted by Zach at 11:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 17, 2005

Pick-up Line

If you were my Contracts outline, I would be doing you right now, on my desk, all night long!

(Credit for this goes to Morgan Chen).

Posted by Zach at 06:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 15, 2005

Sick

And speaking of diseases that probably shouldn't be cured, I'm afflicted once again with my seasonal Book Lust. I can't go through a day without wanting to go to a bookstore and browse and buy, regardless of my financial straits. Yesterday I came home with Susan Faludi's Backlash and a new translation of Kafka's The Trial. Is there any cure for my book-buying frenzies? And, if you don't know a cure, can you recommend any particularly good books to buy next time I succumb and wind up at a store? It can be fiction or non-fiction, any genre or field of study.

Posted by Zach at 08:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 13, 2005

Done!(ish)

I'm finally finished writing my Torts take-home and editing it down to fit in the word limit. I'm done for today; tomorrow I'll go through and edit it more thoroughly for content and clarity (then edit it down again to fit into the word limit). But I'd say it's now 90% finished, and I can relax until the Contracts final in a week. Expect posts soon.

Posted by Zach at 08:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 12, 2005

Projects

Projects for the next week:
1. Do Torts take-home final tonight so I have time for the other stuff.
2. SLOANESTRAVAGANZA!
3. Read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
4. Write about half a dozen blog posts that are currently bouncing around in my head before the built up pressure of them causes my BRAIN TO EXPLODE!
5. Orange Pie!
6. Watch that one movie I got from GreenCine. Eeesh. It's a Russian Science Fiction movie, courtesy of a randomized version of GreenCine's Sci-Fi primer. It's called "The Stalker," and is by Andrei Tartovsky, of Solaris fame. It was apparently done partially as a reply to Kubrick's 2001. I imagine there was an element of Cold War one-upsmanship here. "You call that ponderous and boring? HA! Nobody out-ponders or out-bores a Russian filmmaker!"

I should also maybe study for Contracts or something. And start shooting out resumes in the hopes of finding a job for the Summer. I have recurrent nightmares and feelings of inadequacy regarding job searches, because despite dozens of resumes and cover letters sent out in my life, the only job I've ever gotten from them was with an employer that, though I dearly loved my time with them, essentially hires anyone with a pulse (Stax pride!). If anyone out there knows an attorney who could use a gopher with years of detail-oriented organizing experience to file shit, send their name my way. I'm not picky; the shit could be literal or metaphorical.

Also: I've gotten the prompt for my take-home Torts final, and it's really interesting and complex. This should actually be a fun exam to write. But: While I'd love to turn it into a blog post, I'll have to wait until after Thursday for it. To get the prompt I had to sign all sorts of honor code statements saying that I would not discuss anything regarding the contents of the exam with anyone other than classmates. Interestingly, the professor allows us to discuss the take home exam with other students, but not with people outside the class. I assume this is to prevent you talking to your uncle the federal judge or your cousin the personal injury lawyer, so posting about it on a blog is unlikely to violate the spirit of the rule. Nonetheless, I'd still prefer to avoid any such entanglements.

Posted by Zach at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 09, 2005

Snow!

I am sitting in 103 Jerome Greene Hall. It is 9:03 AM. My final officially begins at 10:00. Pre-test instructions and stuff occur at 9:30. I'm trying to keep myself calm and ready for the test. But none of that matters. This test doesn't matter. Civ Pro doesn't matter. Law School doesn't matter.

Because it's motherfucking snowing outside.

You who are in California have no idea. I walked out and the entire landscape was covered in an (entirely unanticipated) 3-4 inch layer of snow. And the snow is still coming down in a flurry.

I have officially decided that the first thing I'm going to do once I get out of this exam, after taking my stuff home, is to go out and buy that winter coat I've been meaning to get.

Posted by Zach at 09:07 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

December 06, 2005

Slowdown

Sorry for the slowdown in posts lately. As I may have mentioned, finals loom. My biggest final is also my first, this Friday, so I'm pretty focused on that. The weekend should be fairly light. I have a take-home final on Monday that should require almost no studying before-hand (It's a 72 hour take-home with a strict word limit). Then I have one last final, Contracts, a week after. I think I have a pretty good handle on Contracts, so that week should be less study-intensive than this week, the pre-Civ Pro week.

Also, the American Bar Association, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that, in order to give first year law students some time to get their bearings in law school and find their feet, that there should be a mandatory moritorium on contact, in either direction, between students and employers regarding summer employment. In many ways this makes sense; I've appreciated not having to think about jobs, job searching, resumes, etc. these last few months. What doesn't make sense is the temporal extent of the moratorium: The official day when students and employers may begin contacting one another about jobs is December 1, conveniently just as finals are beginning. Naturally, this means most fellowships, scholarships, etc. have their deadlines for application in the first week of December, and most employers expect students to send in their resumes and cover letters as soon after December 1 as possible. I would argue that having the moratorium end right at the start of Finals Season pretty much entirely defeats the point of the moratorium.

So anyhow, I've been studying and applying to things. I'll still try and post a bit, but things'll be light until at least Friday night.

Posted by Zach at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 01, 2005

Psych-stuff

I had two appointments at Columbia Counselling and Psychological Services today, in the morning with my therapist and in the afternoon with my psychiatrist (Whee! A one-two punch of mental health and wellness!)

While I was waiting a tallish man emerged from the corridor containing the therapists offices with the biggest grin I've ever seen. Now that's therapy! I always feel good after a session, but I never feel out-right giddy. Maybe today's session cured him and he's 100% self-actualized.

Then, as he was waiting for the elevator, he tried talking to a girl walking through the waiting room. She gave him barely a nod of acknowledgement, then sat down and ignored him. The smile faded and he twitched a bit. The elevator arrived and he got on, with his head hanging just a little bit. Guess he'll be back next week...

My therapist and psychiatrist were quite late for their respective session, so I spent, all told, about 45 minutes sitting in the waiting room. I didn't like the magazines, so I watched the people there. I noticed there were a lot of attractive women waiting for therapy. The thought occurred: how good an idea is it to date someone you meet in the waiting room at a therapist's office? On the one hand, you know right off the bean that you're dating someone who has problems. On the other hand, you're dating someone who realizes they have problems, acknowledges them, and is trying to fix them. Huh. Plus, obviously, you're in the therapists office too, with your own cornucopia of psychoses. Beggars can't be choosey. This is purely speculative, of course. It takes extraordinary circumstances for me to talk to strangers in a non-socializing setting, and I sat in silence the whole time.

I got home and, being in a therapy-type mood, took a personality disorders test. It turns out, according to The Internet, that I'm avoidant, but have heavy secondary elements of paranoia, dependance, and schizotypalism. Plus I'm at least moderate in every one of the other 6 personality disorders they test. I'm like the personality disorder sampler platter! Only it's the kind with an extra tray of carrot sticks, where carrot sticks represent avoidant tendencies. The carrot sticks of avoision. Who needs professional mental health experts when you have Some Guy on the Internet with Too Much Time on His Hands?

Posted by Zach at 04:09 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

November 22, 2005

Out of Town

I'm leaving town to visit family in Arizona for Thanksgiving. I should still have internet access, but it'll be spotty. Treat this as an open thread and talk amongst yourselves. Or yourself, as the case may be.

Posted by Zach at 02:24 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 17, 2005

Light-headed

For the second time in less than a week, I'm getting strangely light-headed. On both occasions I had been eating well, taken vitamin tablets, and experienced no other symptoms (nausea, cramps, etc.). I've been getting plenty of sleep (8 hours last night and the night before) and haven't been exerting myself too much, nor have I been particularly sluggish. I don't feel tired or lethargic, my head just feels very light. I have a tough time concentrating, I get dizzy easily and periodically stumble when walking or otherwise fall apart when doing something physical. And no, I haven't been drinking. Any ideas what the hell this could be?

Posted by Zach at 05:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 14, 2005

NaDruWriNi

Borrowing a term from Websnark, I declare this evening, in a very localized context, to be National Drunk Writing Night (NaDruWriNi!). This involves getting drunk (check!) and then writing something, anything, and refusing to edit it once it's been posted. Today I: Stayed up non-stop since 9 AM yesterday, took a red-eye flight from San Diego to New York, attended classes, gave blood at noon, and then went out for drinks on Columbia's bill at a local bar. So now I'm drunk and writing. So there you have it.

I have been itching like hell lately, but only in New York. It went away when I flew to San Diego, and now it's back. It didn't start until after I took a shower. Do you suppose it's hard water? Does hard water cause itching? What the hell is hard water? Something to do with having metally stuff in your water, from what I recall. In any case, I have a sneaking suspicion that complaining that my water is hard to my superintendant and demanding she do something about it will result in my getting laughed at and then still having hard water.

You know what are a great set of novels? The Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin. I'm not generally a fantasy fan, but these books are different. They're almost more books of medieval politics than they are fantasy novels. They remind me, in a way, of the early chapters of Dune, when it's largely about politics and house organization and not so much about spirituality and Muad'Dib and the Kwisatz Haderach. It's fantasy without the magic. Except there is magic. Only it's very small, and peripheral. For now. In any case, there's much good to say about them, but it will have to wait until my mental state is more composed.

Which reminds me of Least I Could Do. The author of Least I Could Do is also a George R.R. Martin fan, but man have I come to loathe his strip. I read it daily for the same reason I used to read Mallard Fillmore, because I feel I don't have enough raw hatred in my life and I need to artificially inject more reasons to be hateful. I found the strip a while ago when they advertised on Something Positive. It often has funny gags, but it makes you feel like a bad person for reading it, and it gets old very fast. The plot, in a nutshell: Raine is astoundingly good at getting sex. Raine is surrounded by friends who spend all of their time wishing they could be as amazing as he is at getting sex. There's a certain cleverness in the punchlines much of the time, but the whole thing comes crashing down when you realize that Raine is one gigantic galloping Mary Sue, an avatar for the author who can do no wrong and is everything the author wishes he could be. I also don't like the current artist. The original artist had sort of a cartoonish style with interesting character designs. The current artist seems to possess more raw artistic talent, which he prudently deploys to make all the girls look like they're posing for Playboy centerfolds at all times. He also seems to have mastered only two facial expressions for girls: Come Hither Stare and Googly-Eyed Wild Take. Nyah! Hate it so much!

Finally: Quick poll time! I'm feeling a bit peckish. What should I go out and eat? A. Indian Burrito Things (it's an indian restaurant that serves burritos stuffed with indian food instead of, say, beans and rice) B. Felafel or C. Pizza.

Posted by Zach at 08:09 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 12, 2005

California, Here I... Am

I'm in San Diego.  Right now!  For about a day and a half.  I've officially decided that visiting San Diego for a weekend from New York is profoundly not worth it, particularly if I'm leaving from class on a Friday and returning in time for morning classes on Monday.   It takes about an hour and a half to get to JFK airport by subway, then the wait to board the plain, then a 6 hour flight (which was delayed an hour this time, so 7 hours), then doing it all in reverse when I go back home.  I almost spend more time travelling than I do here. 

On the plus side, I find I appreciate home a lot more when I spend some time away from it.  Note, when I say "home" I mean "Where I live that's not San Diego."  Family's great and all, but I feel a heavy sense of oppression and doom whenever I go to the house in San Diego, even for a short visit.  This time was a new record: The pall descended on me when I was still on the subway in New York.  Usually I don't feel it until I catch the first glimpse of the house.  Ah well.  A short visit will be fun.

Posted by Zach at 04:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 04, 2005

BART Shout-out

Today I found myself on the fourth floor of William and June Warren Hall for a New York Attorney General's Office recruiting session. William and June Warren is shared by the Law School and the Business School. As I was walking out, the word "Berkeley" caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. I backed up to investigate. Ah-ha. It's a pamphlet for the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA program, with which all regular BART riders should be familiar. They don't advertise as much on this end. Either Columbia doesn't care to promote it as much, or subway ads in New York are pitched to a different clientele.

Subway ads work differently in New York than they do in the Bay Area. For one, they're a lot more prevalent in the cars and less so in stations. Station ads are pretty rare, but the ads in the cars line both walls and the ceiling in every available space. The ads also tend to be for TV shows or colleges/ESL training programs.

The other interesting thing is the way ad buys seem to work. It's rare to see a single ad for something on a subway; companies buy entire sides. So you'll walk in and, on the right, the entire wall is ads for Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs. On the left, it's all Manhattan Borough College's business training program. But occasionally you walk in and see a wall that's a hodge-podge, so it's not neccessarily that it's a mandatory selling policy by the MTA. I guess the advertising people have decided that ads are most effective when you buy out a whole wall, like those iPod ads in the Market Street BART stops.

Along similar lines, it's interesting riding the 4-5-6 line uptown. The 4-5-6 starts in Brooklyn and ends up in the Bronx, passing through the East side of Manhattan in between. In the course of doing that, it passes through the Upper West Side, Manhattan's richest neighborhood, and East Harlem and Spanish Harlem (El Barrio), two of Manhattan's poorest neighborhoods. Moreover, it's a very sudden switch. You get to 96th Street and there are, literally, multi-million dollar townhouses on the South side of the street facing projects on the North side of the street. There's also a massive change in the subway stations. South of 96th Street, catering to the millionaire set, stations are bright and clean and well-manicured. North of 96th Street they haven't been cleaned in years, the tiles on the wall are cracked and broken and it's not uncommon to find big portions of the floor flooded and disgusting.

The trains on the 4-5-6 are somewhat surreal. Elsewhere in Manhattan you get used to the scuzzy old trains which are the MTA's backbone. They're dirty and loud and have bad speaker systems so you have no idea what the conductor's saying. I thought these were the only kinds of train New York had. Then I rode on the 4-5-6. The lighting is bright, the seats are shiny, the interior is immaculate. There's a clear and well-enunciated electronic voice (The kind that's pre-recorded by a real person, unlike the weird Stephen Hawking/Female Stephen Hawking at BART stations) announcing the stop, announcing the next stop, and telling you, in a slightly frightening sing-song, to "Stand clear of the closing doors, please." They have electronic signs announcing the line and the next stop, as well as little maps with lights to show you where along the route you are.

Obviously the 4-5-6 trains are there to please the Upper-West Side set, rather than to meet the minimum standards for the Harlem crowd. I feel like, if they could save a few pennies on it, the MTA would happily switch out trains at 96th street so that the nice uptown trains could be replaced with dingy ones, then turned around and sent on their merry way back downtown through the Upper West Side.

Posted by Zach at 01:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 02, 2005

Ganja

One hand giveth and the other taketh away.

I woke up this morning and stumbled into the bathroom (this time double-checking to make sure my door was unlocked and, just to be safe, not closing it behind me). Huh, what's that smell? I thought. Is there a skunk in here? How would it get up to my apartment? Do they even have a lot of skunks in New York City? Rats, sure, squirrels, but...

And then I remembered that marijuana smells like skunk, to my nose. Ah. So now the scent of roasted vegetables which I used to displace the scent of cheap booze has, in its turn, been replaced with the smell of burning pot. Thanks, roommate!

Posted by Zach at 01:42 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 01, 2005

My life is a bad sitcom

This morning I locked myself, naked, outside of my apartment.

Let me start by saying that the door to my room is terrible. Generally, you have to apply your shoulder to get it to close all the way. It has a lock of the variety that arrests the doorknob, preventing it from turning. This has no effect unless the door is sufficiently closed that the bolt has caught in the recess in the door, which generally requires a conscious effort. I tend to lock my door at nights, just in case. Last night I locked it, but the door was not sufficiently closed for the lock to be effective.

So this morning I woke up and opened the door, having forgotten that the door was locked. I closed the door behind me. It is worth pointing out, here, that the bathroom is immediately across the hall from the door to my room. I tend to wake up and stumble across the hall to the bathroom without bothering to gather up clothes, then dart back to my room when done showering in order to change. So I went into the bathroom, naked, and took a shower, shaved, combed hair, brushed teeth, etc. I had about 15 minutes until class started, and was on schedule to get to class and get a good seat.

I left the bathroom and grabbed my doorknob. *snickt!* The knob wouldn't turn. "Huh?" I thought, followed shortly by "Oh no." I tried wiggling the knob. No dice. I tried forcing the door open. This was very silly. I lack anywhere close to the strength required to force a door open by brute force. After about ten minutes of this I started getting desperate. My room contained my laptop, my books, my keys, my wallet and, most significantly, my clothes. It also contained the only phone in the apartment, preventing me calling maintenance for help. I contemplated going into my roommate's room and crawling out of his window and into mine. Nope, his door's locked.

When you're locked out of your room and naked, with no prospect of getting into your room to be found within your apartment, a lot of thoughts go through your mind. Most of them are "Shit!" or some variant on that theme. Others are "Why the hell did I lock the door?" and "If only I hadn't closed the door behind me this morning." Eventually I calmed down and tried to figure out what to do. I came up blank. I slammed my shoulder into the door a few more times, still to no avail. I decided I probably had to go outside. I slammed my shoulder into the door again. After about ten minutes, I worked up the courage to wrap myself in a towel and creep out of the apartment. Fortunately the apartment's exterior door has a switch that allows you to close the door without it locking. I hit this, then put a doorstop in just in case. I sneaked downstairs. Nothing in the lobby to help me, just a maintenance request form that gets you a reply in a few days. I stared into the vestibule. There's the intercom. I could go out and try finding a button to call maintenance for an emergency, but I couldn't reach the intercom and hold the door open without stretching my leg out far enough to render it rather unlikely that my towel would remain in its proper place about my waist. Further, if the door did close, which seemed likely, I'd be locked naked outside of my whole building. Not a pleasant thought. I couldn't even see what I would press on the intercom to call maintanence, just the individual tenant buttons. I decided to return to my apartment to regroup.

I started to get desperate. I was pacing. Class had started 15 minutes ago. I would be stuck here all day in my towel if I didn't figure something out. I wound up in the living room. There I found my salvation: Last night, as soon as I came home, I set up my Nintendo Entertainment System in the living room, in order to play Castlevania 3 on the big screen, in honor of Halloween. Normally when I come home I immediately empty my pockets onto the bookshelf by the door to my room. Last night I didn't do that; I had immediately set about moving the Nintendo. I didn't think to empty my pockets until I started playing. I had emptied them on the coffee table, then forgotten left them derelict during the night. The upshot: There, on the coffee table, were my keys. I grabbed them, unlocked the door, and giddily got dressed for the day.

Some lessons: 1. Don't lock your room door unless it's really neccessary. 2. Don't close the door behind you in the morning. 3. If you do wind up locked out, your experience will be much more pleasant if you bring some clothes to the bathroom with you. At least some boxer shorts. All of these lessons fall under the umbrella of the overarching lesson: Don't be an idiot.

Posted by Zach at 02:10 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 31, 2005

Etiquette and Protocol

To the pushy fellow in the law school library computer lab around Noon today:

"Excuse me" is a request, not a command.  If someone, for instance, myself, is standing by the printer holding a set of printouts, leafing through them in search of his print job, it is never polite to walk up to him and grab the pages out of his hands to look for your print job.  Saying "excuse me" as you do this does absolutely no work towards making your actions acceptable.  The act of saying "excuse me" is not a universal absolution.  While you seem to have mastered the outward forms of human interaction, I'm sorry to say you still need some work to master its intricacies.  Keep at it, and perhaps some day you'll be fit for human society.

Sincerely,

Molten Boron.

Posted by Zach at 12:28 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

October 30, 2005

Kitty

I am writing this while safely ensconced in my room, hiding from a party not of my own design. The door is locked to prevent intruders, and the lights are out to prevent their knowing of my presence. I would estimate that there are 40 people crammed into our relatively small apartment, and the inflow of new guests seems to be faster than the outflow of leaving guests. But my room is a paradise of free space, a private sanctuary from the ungodly crowd outside my portal. I'm not generally a social person in the best of circumstances, and a crowd of drunken strangers invading my apartment and wrecking up every inch of the common area is not the best of circumstances. I hear now my frat-boy roommate trying to organize something called a "Boat Race." All the more reason to stay in here, where it's dark and safe and (relatively)quiet.

I'm generally uncomfortable in gatherings where I don't know the majority of the people, and at this gathering I can safely say that I don't know anyone (my roommate included) well enough to be at ease with them. I'm also not much of a drinker, and especially not when I don't know the people I'm drinking with. So here I am. I might make an appearance later, when the dregs who don't know when it's time to leave are still hanging out. I can handle a smaller group. But I came back when the party was in full swing and it took me fifteen minutes to move the 20 feet from the entrance to my room; I can't handle that sort of crowd.

So here I am. Today I had a generalized sense of wanting to go do something, and no idea what I wanted to do. So I decided to get on the subway, make some random transfers, and see where I ended up. This plan changed, around the time I boarded the train, to a plan to go to Brooklyn and see what there was to see. I've heard good things about Williamsburg and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and thought I'd check the two neighborhoods out. Then I found myself at the 4th Street/Washington Square Park station, transfering to the A-C line and realized that I'd much rather be there than in Brooklyn, so why bother? Brooklyn will have to wait.

I got back above-ground and immediately headed east, past NYU Law, past Broadway, to the East Village. I visited a video game store I visit a lot there (note I saw visit a lot; I don't actually buy a lot there. They have a great selection of used games and systems (including old computers like Commodore 64s and Acorns and such) but they charge through the nose for them, way more than you'd pay on eBay for the same things. So I never end up buying things there). Then I decided to make it my goal to walk to Alphabet City.

As you know, Bob, New York above Houston street uses a rational system of number streets and avenues. Streets run east-west, avenues run north-south. Streets start at 1st street just above Houston and continue into the 200s in the Bronx. Avenues start on the east side of the Manhattan with 1st Avenue and run upward as you go West. But there's a problem with this; 1st Avenue is the eastern-most avenue for most of Manhattan's length, but the island pooches out further eastward a bit north of Houston. What to name those avenues? Letters, it turns out. Going East past 1st Avenue you come to Avenue A, Avenue B, Avenue C, and then Avenue D. This area of the Village is known as Alphabet City.

Walking along 8th Street, I ran into Dumpling Man. I'd heard of them in the context of a bitter struggle between them and rival East Village dumpling place Plump Dumpling. So I decided to sample their wares. I had half a dozen very tasty seared vegetarian dumplings with Red Monster sauce for about $5. Unfortunatel, I hadn't eaten in a while, so I was still a tad peckish. I started wandering, initially with the idea of finding Plump Dumpling and comparing the two dumpling joints. But what should I find across the street but Crif Dogs, the East Village's famous hot dog place. I went in and had a Vegie Special (Veggie Dog with diced cucumbers, tomatoes, jalapenos, and (in theory) onions. I ordered it without onions) and some tater tots. It was quite tasty, for a veggie dog. The decor was... interesting. There was a heavy sexual bent to the decoration. Innuendo based on hot dogs, condom machines on the wall, Crif Dog thong underpants for sale. Yet, as I sat there, at least three families brought their kids in to eat. I suppose the tastiness of the dogs outweighs the unsavory environment. Or maybe they're just open and honest about raunchy sexuality with their kids.

As I was leaving, I noticed a hand-made sign offering two kitties for adoption. I really wanted to take down the number. I love cats, and my apartment's actually big enough to accomodate them. Unfortunately, my lease says I can't have pets, and being caught with pets is an instant-eviction offense. That having been said, this building definitely has pets in it. Somebody owns an un-spayed kitty whose frustrated screams I hear occasionally in the afternoon, and somebody else keeps two huge huskies that they quite publically walk in and out of the building. I could probably get away with it. But then there's the other concern: For one, I'd have to take both cats, since the sign indicated that they couldn't be separated. I'm not comfortable taking on two cats at once, since I've never had a pet entirely of my own before. Further, I'm barely able to take care of myself, let alone another living thing. I'd really hate to forget to feed it for a few days (which is just the sort of absent-minded thing I'd do) and kill it, because then I'd never forgive myself.

So I passed up the kitties. I then started wandering toward Union Square to take the subway home, and ran into a movie theater. They were showing Wallace and Gromit, so I decided to go ahead and see that, since it came highly recommended. I loved it. It made me hungry, though; if it weren't for this party, I'd have braised some carrots or found something to do with the turnips and parsnips in my fridge.

And then I came home. So that was my day. Ta-da!

NOTE: This post was written around 12:30 this evening, but Typepad was down and I couldn't post it. As of now, the party has ended. The apartment is a disaster, and the whole place reaks of the sickly sweet scent of cheap booze. My room is the only sanctuary of cleanliness remaining. On the plus side, nobody seems to have taken any liberties with the toilet.

Posted by Zach at 03:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 27, 2005

Some dumb thing

See the shirt I'm wearing in this picture? I hate it. I wear it, but it is with a deep and abiding sense of loathing. I wear it because it looks good, it's comfortable, it fits well, and I'm reluctant to throw out any shirts, since they allow me to extend the time between laundry expeditions.

I hate it because of the stupid thing it says on it. I once loved it for its stupid thing, but that love turned to hatred very rapidly.

If you can't read it, it says "TEH" on it. If you type a lot outside of word processors that automatically correct spelling mistakes, you know TEH all too well. It's the word you accidentally type when you mean to say "The," and then you don't catch it until after you've sent your Instant Message and it makes you look like a doofus. I got this shirt at the San Diego Comic Convention. It was being sold by Jeph Jacques, creator/writer/illustrator/entire production process behind Questionable Content. He's a nice guy, and it's a fine comic strip. The "TEH" shirt was one of the first his male lead, Marten, wore. I bear him no ill will for the shirt.

The problem is that this shirt is a conversation magnet. A while ago Dianna mentioned wearing headphones to keep people from starting unwanted conversations with her. This shirt is the anti-headphones. People don't normally come up to talk to me. When I wear this shirt, though, strangers and quasi-strangers will just stop me and ask me to explain what my shirt "means." It means nothing! TEH doesn't stand for anything! I was already sick of being asked what "TEH" meant by the second time it happened and I got the sense of forboding that this would happen every time I wore this stupid shirt. And it has.

Now I have a pavlovian reaction to being asked about it. Even when people I know ask about it I get mad. I'll be having a conversation, smiling and jovial. Then the question, "So... What's with that on your shirt? What does TEH mean?" I'll suddenly get angry and snap at them, "It doesn't mean anything, okay? It's just some dumb thing!"

I should find a way to get the TEH off of this shirt. Or just wear it to events and locations filled with indie hipster-types who will just accept it as a generic piece of ironic clothing and pay it no mind.

Posted by Zach at 03:18 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

October 24, 2005

Good at video games means bad at life

And I'm very good at video games.

I got a Nintendo DS for my birthday and have been playing it in every spare moment I have (and many spare moments I don't have). At this point I have three games for it, Meteos, Wario Ware: Twisted, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows. You may be aware that developers have peculiar naming conventions with respect to games on Nintendo systems; half the games released for the Super Nintendo had the word "Super" before them, e.g. Super Buster Brothers, Super Star Wars, etc. This created confusion for poor Super C, the sequel to Contra, which was for the regular NES. Nintendo 64 games tended to have "64" at the end of the title, creating a strong link in the minds of many gamers between the number "64" and the concept of crap. Game Boy Advance titles have "Advance" in the titles (The name of the system is Game Boy Advance, which, since the "Advance" lacks a D at the end, makes the word a verb, not an adjective. So the name means "Game Boy Move Forward," as opposed to "Game Boy Not Primitive."). Nintendo DS games have the peculiar tendency to feature contorted subtitles that have the initials "DS." Hence: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows and Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits. The most favored D word is "Dual," while the most favored S word is "Strike." Thus: Dig Dug: Digging Strike, Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers and Advance Wars: Dual Strike. If I were naming a DS game, I would use the subtitle "Dipthong Stratagem."

In any case, I've only opened one game thus far, Meteos. I opened it first because it seemed the least interesting of the games, and I like to work up from least-liked to most-liked in these things. Now I can't stop playing it. This surprises me, because it's a puzzle game. I have a mild affinity for non-frenetic puzzle games (Adventures of Lolo, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Klonoa: Empire of Dreams), but a general distaste for the falling blocks school of puzzle games, which seem to have taken over the puzzle genre on console systems. So Meteos surprised me; it's a falling blocks puzzle game that I actually really like, and it makes good use of the DS's unique architecture. I never really got into Tetris, so it's probably the only falling blocks game I've liked since Dr. Mario.

The play all takes place on the bottom touch screen. Blocks of various colors fall from the sky and you can select them with the stylus and shift them around vertically within a column (but not horizontally within a row). The controls work flawlessly, and I've never found myself grabbing the wrong block or having a block that I'm moving get finicky and not go where I want it. It's not something you usually actively notice, but poor controls really make themselves known when they're there, and you can see where the potential for poor controls in a touch screen game are pretty high. So you have blocks falling, and your goal is to arrange them into triplets by color, either horizontally or vertically. When you do this, the matched meteos turn gray and blast off, turning the whole set of meteos stacked on top of them into a sort of rocket. The problem is that they generally don't have enough power to break into orbit; the meteo rocket shoots up, and any meteos that clear the top of the screen are destroyed, but then it stops and slowly drifts back downward. You then have to create more matches within the rocket (or push another rocket into it from below) to give it an extra boost to get off the screen. And, obviously, when the meteos pile up over the top of the screen you lose.

Further, you pick a planet to play on before you start. There are something like 50 planets, and each one has its own unique mix of meteo colors, it's own unique meteos (they come in various designs, from simple blocks to little colored aliens to japanese characters), an entirely unique soundtrack (there are no duplicate sound effects between planets), and its own gravity. On some planets your rockets move upward slowly, then drift back down. On others, they fly straight to the top of the screen, bang the top layer on the atmsophere, then plunge downward. On some world vertical matches immediately clear a whole column, on other worlds they barely get a boost.

In any case, I've been playing this game too much; I just took a nap (I've gotten two hours of sleep in the last 36 hours) and dreamed of meteos. I see meteos when I close my eyes now. On the other hand, this could just be sleep deprivation.

So far I'm really excited about the DS; I haven't even really used the second screen much, or any of the controller buttons, or Pictochat, or the wireless capabilities, or the microphone. But the touch screen is very cool for video games. I imagine it'll allow somewhat deeper gameplay, since the stylus-on-touchscreen works almost like a mouse, but is somewhat more intuitive. I'm also unreasonable excited about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It's a lawyer simulation video game! What sold me on it is that, as part of the game, you cross-examine witnesses. When your opponent is examining witnesses, you have to object if he gets out of line. In order to do this, you must shout "OBJECTION!" into the DS's microphone. I can't wait to get that game and play it on the subway.

Posted by Zach at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2005

I get so much joy out of cleaning and straightening! One day, I'll be the best janitor ever!

So what was the major project for my birthday? Other than getting food in Madison Square Park and picking up a game I wanted, I mostly spent today cleaning. Frankly, this was the most satisfying birthday I've had in a long, long time. I cleaned the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and, most significantly, my room. I also changed the lightbulbs I complained about earlier and swept the floors. All this, and not a word of thanks from my roommate, who nonetheless enjoyed both the light and the cleanliness when he had a gaggle of friends over to watch the World Series tonight! At last, I can shift modes into the put-upon roommate, rather than the mortified offender!

For those interested, I've posted a new gallery of photos I took of my now-clean apartment. I've been meaning to do this for a long time, but, until now, there was at least one room that was so filthy I was too embarrased to share it. Now, at last, everything is clean and tidy!

Posted by Zach at 01:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

Hopeless Bleak Despair

My mental state has shifted into despair, and I couldn't be happier about it.

You see, I tend to shift back and forth between two varieties of hopelessness. I am now firmly ensconced in what I call "Despair." This is the state I find myself in when I have dozens of things I want to do and no time to do any of them; every spare moment is taken up by work that, while I might enjoy it on some level, slowly grinds away at my spirit. It's not that the work is hard, it's just that there's so much of it that I have no time to enjoy myself, even as I see all manner of delightful preoccupations dancing before me. Right now I've become interested in video games (about a dozen are beckoning me at the moment), I need to practice my banjo, I want to start running again, I have movies I want to watch, I have a bookshelf full of half-read books I need to finish (My current project is re-reading Gregory of Tours's History of the Franks, by the way), and to top it off I suddenly really, really, for no practical reason want to learn Latin. But I can't do any of it because of the crushing levels of schoolwork.

But I'm happy to be here, because it's better than the alternative. The alternative is Ennui, which will set in within hours of my last final. Once I have all the free time I need, I will suddenly lose interest in everything. I will spend my time lying around and being completely bored. I'd been under a big cloud of ennui basically from when I finished my last final at Berkeley until about a month ago, when I began the transition back to despair. Two moves and getting settled here helped fight it off, because at least then I had practical things to fill my time with. Nonetheless, I look back at my time just working at the library and see months when I worked at the library 9 to 5, came home and did ... nothing. In a five month span, I read no books, played through no video games, saw a couple of movies with friends, met no new people. There were nights when I sat around at my desk at the library after everyone had gone home and I had clocked out, staring at the computer for hours, because it was a change of pace from going home and doing nothing there. Now I have interest in life again, even if it's a perpetually frustrated interest. I'd rather have too much I want to do and no time to do it than just no interests whatsoever.

So, yay! Despair! Now back to Civil Procedure.

Posted by Zach at 11:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Huh

I woke up this morning to find that my shower is dispensing brown water. Behold! Note that that's not some reflective trick; the water's brown straight out of the shower head. I guess I won't be taking a shower today...

In other news of my apartment, October is the coldest month. This is because the weather has gone south, temperature-wise, but the building management refuses to turn on the boilers for the radiators until November. So while November may see colder temperatures, it also sees their relatively easy abatement through radiators. While I am generally fairly cold-resistant, sustained exposure to colds, as when, for instance, sleeping, still chills me to the core. Time to throw on another comforter, I suppose.

Both of the lights in our hall are out, and have been for about a month now. I've been debating whether to call maintenance. On the one hand, this makes me seem truly impotent, putting in a maintenance request to change a lightbulb. On the other hand, those lights are really high! I can't reach them standing on a chair! So really changing them would require buying a ladder, which is a somewhat hefty investment for a lightbulb. For now, I've taken the middle route of cursing the darkness.

Posted by Zach at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

General Miscellany

Cock Gun!
I was bored in Torts today and was leafing through the files on my laptop. While in the directory for the game Colonization I noticed a sound file called CockGun.wav. This piqued my curiosity. For the next five minutes I was wracked with a desire to turn on my speakers and hear what a Cock Gun sounds like. Then I realized, "Oh. They mean the act of pulling back the hammer on a manually loading gun in preparation to fire it." This caused me to lose interest. I was speculating about some sort of gun that shoots cocks rather than bullets. Or a gun used to shoot at cocks, like an elephant gun, but for cocks. Or maybe a cock that also acts as a gun.

Hot and Crusty
I was walking around today and passed the Hot and Crusty Bagelry. Hot and Crusty is a local chain here in New York. Like many restaurants around here, they had a little area partitioned off on the sidewalk in front of their store with tables and chairs. There was a sign by these chairs reading "Tables are for hot and crusty patrons only." I was tired and considered sitting down, but upon reflection decided that, while I am more resistant to cold than the average person, I was by no means hot at the time. Further, while I am known to be cantankerous on occasions, it doesn't rise to the level of being crusty. I moved along.

Prices
I also, in my travels, passed the Hungarian Bakery, a coffee and pastry shop near my house. It's sort of our local grad student hangout, not unlike Strada in Berkeley. The key difference is that this place is very self-consciously European and Bohemian. As such, they have an elaborate, ornate menu listing all manner of scrumptious fare, and nowhere do they tell you the prices. There are blackboards where the specials and menu items are written in chalk. Each one has a space next to it where the price ought to be, but is conspicuously absent. This means that if you go in and ask, as I did, for a cherry danish, you are likely to be handed that danish and told that you now owe them $4, and you are likely to react, as I did, by saying something along the lines of "You're shitting me!" I realize knowing how much things cost before you buy them is terribly gauche, but you're not getting me back in there again until they actually tell you how much things cost without forcing you to systematically inquire at the counter before deciding on a purchase.

An Open Letter
To Self-Consciously Smart Law Students Everywhere:
I understand you feel a powerful need, perhaps biological, perhaps cultural, to ask painfully detailed, carefully phrased three-part questions that require a full five minutes just to ask and elicit a long response from the professor on subjects only barely tangentially related to the topic at hand. But could you please, please restrict yourself to asking these questions of professors after class, not during class? Given that this does not appear to be possible, could you at least make an effort not to raise your hand enthusiastically to ask this question with only one minute left in the class period, forcing the entire class to sit in lecture an extra ten minutes and listen to you wank yourself verbally? I understand that public auto-eroticism is your peculiar kink, but please have some consideration for others.

Posted by Zach at 06:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

Mutual Mistake

My roommate goes to class in the mornings about an hour and 45 minutes before I do. I am therefore less cautious than I perhaps should be walking around. This morning while I was getting breakfast in the kitchen in my underpants (bright green briefs) I happened to glance out the window and noticed the girl who lives in the apartment across and one level up from me. She was standing in front of the open bathroom window, apparently having just gotten out of the shower, completely naked and staring out the window at me. We stood transfixed for 10-20 seconds, then both calmly walked to our respective windows and closed them. I believe we both learned a valuable lesson today. Again.

Posted by Zach at 10:17 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 08, 2005

Soul Mate

I just looked out my window and noticed a girl in the apartment across-and-slightly-leftward from mine talking quite emphatically. She isn't pacing; just standing in one place addressing someone. She is making exaggerated arm gestures, emphasizing points by motioning with a bottle of beer in her right hand. At one point, she stops and doubles over in laughter before continuing. I've never seen someone so physically engaged in a conversation before, outside The Sims.

Then I shift my angle and discover: She's talking to the corner. Nobody else is there in the room with her, at least not in the direction she's facing. I feel like I should put a sign up in the window introducing myself and asking her to call me.

Posted by Zach at 07:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Bad Roommate

I tend to have a very difficult time living with people. This is because it is exceptionally rare that my roommate and I operate at the same level of consideration. That is to say, either my roommate is sloppy and inconsiderate, in which case I am alternately annoyed and disgusted with him, or he is immaculate and unimpeachable, in which case I am mortified by the slips in my behavior. I'm not terribly bad, I think, but I am slightly lazy about cleaning up. Messes tend to slowly accumulate in my room, and dishes gradually pile up in the sink. I do my chores, but often not with sufficient vim and vigor.

My current roommate is of the immaculate sort, and this makes me far more uncomfortable than if he were messy. I'd much rather be annoyed but self-righteous, the suffering roommate rather than the offendor. Thus my reaction when I went into the common room yesterday morning and found three half-drunk 40s of Olde English malt liquor, along with assorted plastic cups and crushed beer cans, was not anger but relief. Finally! A crack in the facade! Something to make me feel less guilty about my own transgressions!

And speaking of my transgressions, I've absolutely ruined our refrigerator. You see, I was making braised cabbage. Now, the recipe was for braised cabbage with white wine and nutmeg. I'm out of nutmeg, so I decided, as I tend to decide, to make it a spicy dish. I chopped up a serrano pepper, for flavor, and a habanero, for spice, sauteed them and braised the cabbage in that. And why not add a few cloves of garlic while I'm at it? Also, I was fresh out of white wine, so I figured some white wine vinegar would be just as good. Very well. It came out fine, though rather different, I imagine, than what the author of the recipe envisioned. What I realized, when I tasted it, was that it was not so much braised cabbage as a quick version of kim chee. Well, I like kim chee. I ate about half of it, then decided to put the rest away for later. I'm without tupperware at the moment, must remember to get some next time I'm at the houseware store. So I threw it into a large serving bowl and stuffed it into the fridge. No need to wrap it in serran wrap, I'll probably eat it tomorrow, and it shouldn't dry out too badly by then.

Two days later it's still there; I hadn't anticipated all the eating out I'd be doing with visitors. And now, not surprisingly, the refrigerator smells of sour cabbage and garlic. Which I don't mind, but might raise the roommate's hackles.

UPDATE: Another thing my roommate makes me feel bad about: He's MUCH better at feigning an interest in my activities than I am in his. He sat and watched me play an RPG for an hour tonight. An hour! And it's a well-known fact that console RPGs, regardless of how you feel about actually playing them, are the most boring kind of video game to watch. They're repetitive and consist of long periods of nothing much happening, interspersed with brief periods of bad dialogue. Plus I was at the start of the game, and there wasn't even a real narrative hook yet. Hell, I was bored by what I was doing! But he watched me play in silence for an hour. It puts my vague attempts to ascertain what he does when he's not around me to shame.

Posted by Zach at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 06, 2005

Cold Sweat

(Upon consideration, I've decided to remove this post. It failed to pass the Cocktail Party test: If someone were to tell me the contents of this post at a cocktail party, I would be inclined to make myself scarce, rather than listening to what they had to say next.)

Posted by Zach at 07:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Company

When it rains it pours.

I've spent the last two months wishing someone would visit me in New York; it gets a bit lonely here with all of my friends 3000 miles away. Now I have three people visiting in the next week. Elaine is coming this weekend and we've arranged to meet on Friday. Natalie is coming to interview with Columbia Med in the middle of next week, and hopefully we can get together then. And to top it off, who should I get an e-mail from today but John Thomas, who not only is in New York City but in Morningside Heights. Now I wish I'd taken the time to learn more about the buildings around campus; I get the feeling I'm going to be asked to play tourguide and, whereas I could do it reasonably well by the end of four years at Berkeley, I'm somewhat beyond my depth here.

In other news, I spent fully two hours practicing the banjo today. Curse you, Cotton-Eyed Joe! Soon I will conquer you!

I bought a book by Roger Zelazny at a used book store called "This Immortal." It apparently won a Hugo, so it's got that going for it, but so far it seems unforgivably pulp. Its saving grace is that he elected to name the conquering alien race "The Vegans." Thus it is filled with unintentionally humorous lines like: "Now this-this bootlicking gesture!-having a Commissioner take a Vegan scribbler on a tour any staff guide could conduct! Vegans aren't gods!"

Also, you people should go see Serenity. It's not doing as well in theaters as it should. Orson Scott Card says it's the greatest Science Fiction movie ever made. On the other hand, Card also isn't too keen on gay people, so your mileage with respect to his opinion may vary. Still, I say it's well worth two hours of your time and $10 of your money!

Finally, in more news of stupid word choices drawn from legal terminology in science fiction, I found out today that some years back a fairly popular space strategy game was released called "Pax Imperia 2: Eminent Domain." Eminent Domain is the constitutional doctrine that permits the government to seize private land for public use, provided they give just compensation for it. Words mean things! Stop using them just because they sound cool! That goes double for you, Japan!

Posted by Zach at 12:32 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 05, 2005

Bureaucracy! (The Musical!)

After four years of undergraduate work at Berkeley, and several months at Columbia Law, I have discovered that I am becoming quite the connoiseur of bureaucracy. You would be surprised how many varieties, how many subtle variations, there are to bureacracy. Allow me to demonstrate.

The fundamental goal of bureaucracies, I find, is to prevent those with whom the bureaucracy interfaces, be they students, patrons, customers, or other bureaucracies, from getting what they want out of the system. Each one chooses a unique manner of ensuring frustration.

Berkeley bureaucracies tend to prefer to scare interlopers with a mountain of useless paperwork. When you, for instance, go into the Office of Residency in order to file a Petition for Change of Residency Status, they will give you a pound of forms to fill out, along with a sheet of paper detailing the mighty fuckload of documentation you will have to present alongside that pound of forms in order to back them up. When you return to turn in your ream of papers, they will carefully inspect each sheet for discrepancies. You will have made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. Perhaps you forgot to save a copy of your voter registration card. Perhaps your driver's license was acquired three days too late. Most likely, they will give your mighty fuckload of documentation a cursory glance and declare that, of all the insults, this is not a mighty fuckload of documentation; it is a mere fuckload. How can you possibly expect the Office of Residency to make an informed and judicious decision about the proper state of your residence when given a fuckload of papers so lacking in might? Please apply again next semester, hopefully once you have gained a proper respect for the importance of documenation.

It bears mentioning that they will not actually tell you that your petition for change of residence has been denied. I'm sure that years of experience have taught them that giving people such bad news tends to cause, well, conflicts, and those can be so unpleasant. The best way to handle these things is to just not tell them, let them find out when the next tuition bill comes with a hefty non-resident fee. It also goes without saying that, if upon review of their documentation they should come up lacking, but the deadline for submitting documentation has not yet expired, and they could in theory submit the missing documentation if informed that it is missing, it is not in any way the office's responsibility to inform the applicant of their oversight. After all, if they were sufficiently enthusiastic about the process of becoming an official California resident in the eyes of the University they would be stopping by to check on the status of their application at least once a week. For who among us does not enjoy popping into the Office of Residency and checking on the status of their paperwork of a lovely Spring afternoon?

(You may think that I am joking. I present for your amusement an actual conversation I had. Any embellishments are due only to failure of memory on my part:
"Hello, I'm Molten Boron. I submitted a Petition for Change of Residency two months ago, and was wondering if there's been any action on that."
"Alright, let me go get your file.... Here you are. Your petition isn't complete. Here's a list of all the documentation you're missing."
"Huh. This is done up like a letter. Did you type this just now?"
"No, that's been in your file."
"Huh. Why didn't you send it to me?"
"Our office doesn't send those lettters."
"Interesting. Umm... The date on this letter is a month ago."
"Yes, that's when it was typed up, just after we reviewed your file."
"And it's been sitting in my file, in your office, since then."
"Yes."
"And I can't help noticing all of these forms are due no later than a week from yesterday."
"Yes, that is the deadline for submitting documentation."
"Ah. Well, you see, it seems as though this letter is almost worthless to me now, since there's no way I can gather all of this material in a week. Now, had I gotten this letter a month ago, it might have been useful."
"Well, then, you should have come in to get it a month ago."
"I didn't know that it was here a month ago."
"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do to help you here. Is there anything else you need?"
"No, I suppose not.")

Columbia bureaucracy, I find, is of a highly different character. Berkeley bureaucrats like to give large amounts of pointless paperwork in order to overwhelm their hapless patrons. They then scrutinize this paperwork endlessly to ensure that nobody gets what they want. Their demeanor is standoffish, and their principal conversational tactic is stonewalling. Columbia bureaucrats are quite different. They're very cheerful and helpful, and will tell you exactly where you need to go to get what you want done, which, unfortunately, is not where you are. For every task you would like to accomplish in dealing with Columbia bureaucracy, a very lengthy list of procedural hurdles has been devised, each of which must be cleared in the proper order. I offer as an example the security clearance on my Columbia ID card.

Columbia uses a card swipe system for security. It's pretty convenient, insofar as it means you can access certain buildings after hours. It's also absolutely required to get into some buildings at any hour, such as Lerner Hall, the student union. I moved in two weeks before classes started, and had hoped to get my ID card early, so that I might access things like the library, the gym, and Lerner (swipe required for entrance to all of the above). No dice. ID cards are issued in your registration packet on the day of orientation, and no sooner. Oh well. Orientation rolled around and I got my card. Oddly, though, the various card readers refused to recognize my card when I swiped it. I assumed clearance had not been worked out yet, and let it be. A week passed and I still couldn't access anything with my card. On a friend's advice, I went to the ID office in Kent Hall. There I was informed that I had no security access, and this needed to be changed in my student record. But, alas! it is not within their purview to change my access privileges. To do that I would need to go to the ID Security Office in the basement of Low Library (Which is not, by the way, a library, but rather the main administration building, not unlike Berkeley's Sproul Hall). I went to the ID Security Office and found that it was closed for the day (at 3 o'clock). Drat. I came back the next day to find that the entire office had gone on vacation, but here are 3 e-mail addresses, and one of them surely belongs to someone who can help you. I sent identical e-mails to each and sure enough, three days later, I got a reply. Security had been enabled for campus buildings such as the law library, but if I wanted to get access to the gym I'd need to go talk to the gym's administrative office. I paid them a visit, and in short order they had authorized me for gym use. Then I tried going into Lerner Hall. Card rejected. Huh. I asked the security desk and they said to go back to the ID Office in Kent Hall; they control Lerner access. I did and was told the man was wrong, and that I needed to go to the ID Security office in the basement of Low Library. At this point I became ever so slightly beligerent, and it paid off. I demanded to speak to a supervisor and have the discrepancy sorted out. It turns out that they CAN fix security (for Lerner Hall only) in the Kent Hall ID office, but the person they had working out front hadn't been informed of this fact. It makes the process more kicky and fun! In short order my ID was fixed, and now I can access everything that I ought to be able to access.

This whole post was precipitated by another encounter with Columbia bureaucracy, but since I'm still wrapped up in it I'd rather not explain. I find bureacracy stories are best told after they have reached their bewildering conclusions. Perhaps once I have extricated myself I'll be more inclined to discuss it.

Posted by Zach at 12:04 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 03, 2005

Godless Communists infiltrate Fresh Direct

About a month and a half ago I ordered some groceries from Fresh Direct. Fresh Direct is a really handy grocery delivery company here in New York City, and I recommend them highly, notwithstanding this incident. They came right up to my apartment with my groceries and wheeled them into my kitchen. I tipped the delivery guy and he left. Then I inspected my groceries. About four cardboard boxes full of groceries, far more than I could have carried on my own, and with much less hassle. On top of them was a small bag containing the lone frozen food item I had ordered, a pint of Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide.

Only it wasn't Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide. It was a loaf of Food for Life-brand wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free fruit juice-sweetened brown rice bread. I went on line to determine how to go about fixing an order, but it involved calling them. This was a problem since I didn't have a phone at the time, and wasn't sure if it was plausible to do it from a pay phone. So I gave up and threw the bread in the freezer.

I mention it now because I've run out of real bread and am now going to try to eat it. I took it out of the freezer last night to defrost. After 24 hours it's still very cold and pretty much still frozen at the core; that's disturbing. I just had a slice of toast and it has a disturbing almost-like-bread-but-not-quite quality to it. It's very dense and sort of... gritty? I don't know. It's not very good, but fortunately I have more bread coming tomorrow, so I can probably safely throw it back into the freezer to re-frost.

I'm sure this was just an honest mistake on the part of the Fresh Direct delivery guys; my invoice clearly says "ice cream" and not "Creepy non-bread." And, annoyed as I am at getting the brown rice bread, I would imagine that Mr. No-wheat No-Gluten No-Sugar was infinitely moreso to get the pint of Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide.

Nonetheless, we cannot discount the possibility that the vast Godless Communist conspiracy has infiltrated into our grocery stores, into our delivery vans, into our very freezers, where their cold, gluten-free leninist hearts refuse our most red-blooded American attempts at defrosting them.

Posted by Zach at 09:16 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 28, 2005

Passive Aggression

I'm in the middle of a cold war with the girl who sits next to me in one of my classes.

We met at orientation when we were both ducking out of speeches to go buy books ahead of the rush. We seemed to hit it off pretty well, and had been talking together a lot after class and when we ran into one another at social events. Nothing romantic at all, just similar outlooks on life, it seemed. When the time came to sign up for seats in classes (you have assigned seats in law school so that the professor can call on you by name, but Columbia lets you pick your seat online) I chose a seat next to her in the one class we share, in the far back corner.

Things went relatively well the first few weeks of real classes. Then we had a memo due for Legal Writing. After working on it a lot, she finished and I offered to buy her a drink. She declined, politely. This is where I believe I may have made a big mistake.

You see, afterwards I became paranoid. I've had problems in the past with coming on too strong with people. When I make a new friend, I tend to latch on and not let go until they get really sick of me and would rather not see me anymore. At this point, I became worried that I had crossed an invisible line and she was now tired of me. What could I do to push the pendulum the other way? Clearly the answer was to ignore her. This would demonstrate that my life did not revolve around her, and would prevent me annoying her further. After a detente, we could resume talking and everything would be well again.

She didn't show up to class on Monday. Fine. Ah-ha! A chance to show I'm not obsessive! In the past I'd immediately e-mailed my notes to her when she missed a lecture. Today I would NOT e-mail my notes to her. The professor sends out daily summaries that are better than anything I put together, anyway, so she wouldn't really be the worse for it.

The next day I hadn't done the day's reading, and was poreing over it when she came in. I grunted in reply to her greeting, but didn't acknowledge her further and left class quickly at the end without saying a word. That night I was up until 6 AM finishing my memo (my associate set a later deadline than hers) so the next day I was legitimately barely coherent by 2:45, when class started and I mumbled a hello. By 4 PM I was legitimately in a rush to get home so I could go to sleep. Nonetheless, this seems to have been the straw that broke the dromedary.

All of last week what attempts at conversation I made were instantly rebuffed with curt replies. All this week we have shared, I believe, two words, both of them "Gesundheit." What began, for me, as an attempt to demonstrate pointedly that I was not coming on too strong and was not going to annoy her has now turned into a passive aggressive war of wills. If she's not going to talk to me well, damnit, I'll show her by not talking to her! This leads to an almost comical display when class nears a close; we both begin slowly putting our books away prior to dismissal. When the professor does dismiss, it's a race to see who can get their bags packed and shouldered and get themselves out the door fastest. I believe the idea is that neither of us is talking to the other, but the one who gets out first is the one who officially has snubbed the other, and therefore wins a point in the ongoing war.

In any case, this is all very stupid. I hope one of us gets over it and clears the air between us soon, or it'll be a highly unpleasant rest of the semester. Moreover, I think we do get along well, and it'd be a shame to lose a friendship over something so silly as this. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Posted by Zach at 07:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 27, 2005

Alarmed

I am going to destroy our apartment's fire alarm. Just as soon as I figure out a way of reaching it.

Back in Berkeley I had a very insensitive fire alarm. I had a fire alarm that didn't go off when there was literally a fire in the apartment (it did go off once when I was cooking a steak and the whole apartment was dense with smoke; it wasn't broken, it was just very lazy).

This fire alarm is not insensitive. It has now gone off thrice. It went off when I was frying cucumbers a couple of weeks ago. It went off when I was sauteeing mushrooms to put in a sandwich last week. It went off tonight when I was sauteeing some jalapenos to put in my rice. It should be pointed out that in each of these cases the food in question did not even burn; there might have been the slightest wiff of carbon, but that was enough to set the confounded alarm off.

This problem is compounded by the fact that it is positioned on the ceiling in the hall. The ceiling is about 9 1/2 feet high, which is roughly half a foot higher than my fingertips when I'm standing on a chair. I can't turn the damn thing off when it starts.

I'm going to put in a maintenance request, but my hopes are low. Our building's maintenance requests are all screened through a fast-talking Puerto Rican lady named Julie, whose principal qualification seems to be an exceptional ability to explain why anyone's problem isn't really a problem at all. Locks don't lock? It's easier to get into your apartment now! Besides, you don't really need that deadbolt. It's a safe neighborhood! You wanna call a locksmith, fine, but you'll do it on your own dime. Stove burners don't turn to any heat but High? They're designed to do that! Gets your cooking done faster! You want a lower heat, turn it backwards (to the very sensitive portion between Off and Lite where it's very easy to have the flame go out and still be dispensing gas into the room). Problem solved! You don't like your stove? Too bad! Buy a new one yourself. I'm absolutely certain that she'll tell me that they can't get me a more reasonable fire alarm. And, given that it would require calling a (tall) maintenance person, she'll probably also explain why the fire alarm works better when it's so high that I can't turn it off.

At this point, I do not have a fire alarm. I have a cooking alarm. 75% of the time when I use the stove for something other than boiling water, the cooking alarm goes off. This is useless. I know when I'm cooking. I don't need a shrill, rhythmic tone telling me that I am cooking.

Posted by Zach at 11:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 26, 2005

On Memory

I keep forgetting how old I am. As in, people will ask me how old I am, and I will be unsure and have to count backwards to figure it out. I tend to say 23 more often than not, which is wrong. I'm 22, and will turn 23 in October. How old I am apparently no longer registers as a fact important enough to keep on quick file.

I have a similar problem with remembering people's names. Someone will tell me their name and I will literally have forgotten it before I finish shaking their hand. All of this is not because I have a bad memory; I'm excellent at remembering all sorts of useless trivia and exquisitely boring details about things noone should care about. I'm good with dates, and good with names of dead people, which is why I majored in History. Hence my admonition that if you really want me to remember your name, the only sure way to go about it is to kill yourself. Nobody's taken me up on the offer yet.

Posted by Zach at 09:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pick-up Techniques I Should Not Try

In the course of wasting time on the internet today, I came across an article with advice on picking people up. This is, of course, purely theoretical reading for me, much as I might read an article on bee-keeping. Nonetheless, aside from my general distaste for the subject, the article suggests a technique which I can't imagine myself executing successfully.

They suggest that you keep a selection of useless trivia on-hand and use it to start conversations. You're supposed to mention the trivia, they suggest something like "A goldfish has a three-second attention span," and then transition straight into conversation. I guess the idea is that it distracts the target, gets them thinking, and is somewhat unconventional so that what they're thinking is not "what a lame pick-up line." From there you can begin chatting.

This would completely not work for me. Sure, I have a wide selection of useless trivia readily available (I wasn't MVP of the Varsity Academic League in High School for nothing!) but I would utterly fail in the "transitioning to regular conversation" part. I would start with something like, say, "Hey! Did you know that one of the most influential figures in Medieval history was an imaginary king created by a con artist?" Then, rather than transitioning into conversation, I would embark upon a twenty minute lecture about Prester John. Or however many minutes before she politely excused herself to go feed her goldfish, which by the way did you know has an attention span of only three seconds?

Posted by Zach at 08:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 23, 2005

Lord, what tools these mortals be!

Sorry for my reticence the past few days; I've been busy not studying for my Legal Methods final and, over the past four hours, taking said final. Yesterday I had the day off. This day was designated as a study day for the Legal Methods final. Naturally, this required my elaborate Dead Day Study Avoidance Kabuki Dance.

The first rule is that I can plan nothing fun for these days. Nothing. I must go into them thinking that I will be a good student and spend my time studying. I don't actually believe this, but I must put up the charade, particularly when friends ask what I'm doing.

Ideally, I will stay up late the night before my designated study day. I do this operating on the theory that the study day doesn't begin until I wake up on it, and that once I wake up I must study, and not have fun. Therefore, I am inclined to get as much fun as I possibly can in before my Day of Study begins.

I awaken on my Day of Study very late, probably 10 or 11 in the morning, due to how late I stayed up the night before. I role out of bed and start my computer. This is instinctual; my computer comes on before I do anything else in the morning, even before I silence my ringing alarm clock. I will then eat some sort of breakfast, probably cereal and soy milk. I then reason that, it being part of my waking routine, it is entirely safe for me to check my webcomics. And my frequently visited weblogs. Then of course it's time to go back and check to see if any of the comics that hadn't updated when I checked the first time have updated yet. Then I need to see if anyone's posted anything on the weblogs while I was double checking the comics. Soon it is one in the afternoon.

At this point I feel sluggish. Need to get outside! Sunlight and exercise will invigorate me! Besides, it'll be a working walk. I can collect my thoughts on whatever I'm supposed to be studying and create a plan of attack.

I return. Now I'm hungry again. Make myself a sandwich. Well, I can't study while I eat, might as well turn on the television and see if anything's on. Nothing is, but that doesn't prevent me watching it well after I'm done eating. By now it is 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

I return to the computer to check the on-line syllabus and figure out how to organize my study. Perhaps I even get the browser to the relevant page before I open a second browser and begin checking blogs and web comics again. By 5 or 6, I'm ready to proceed to my next phase: Denial.

At this point I begin thinking, "You know, Molten Boron, you really do know this material pretty well. Do you really NEED to study? Well, you probably should, but do you need to study all that much? This isn't anything at all, 20 minutes, half an hour of work, tops. There's no need to force yourself to do it now." This justifies me in putting on a movie, or perhaps playing a video game for a while. Now it's getting to 7 or 8.

I should cook dinner. Moreover, I should cook an elaborate dinner. It'll be productive! Food helps me not die! Maybe I should start a loaf of bread rising, that'd be a tasty treat tomorrow. Soon it is 9 or 10. Hum. Haven't called my parents in a while. Maybe I should... After an unexpectedly long conversation, it is 10 or 11 at night.

Well, fudge. It's almost bedtime. I've ruined this whole day. Might as well check the websites again...

It is midnight. Technically, the day has ended. Grudgingly, I pull out my notebook, prepare for bed, and lie down with my reading lamp on. I read my class notes, getting groggier as I go. It's a struggle, but I read all 10-20 pages before I triumphantly put my book down. There! A productive day spent studying! Now for a good night's sleep.

It should be obvious that absolutely no worthwhile studying has occurred on this day. It was academically useless. At the same time, I had absolutely no fun this day. The procrastinating activities I did do, which under normal circumstances might be fun, were engaged in a listless way, overshadowed by the knowledge that I really should be studying. All considered, I'd have been more productive actually planning a fun day for my day off rather than pretending to study; I'd have gotten just as much productive done in the 20 minutes before bed, and I might have actually enjoyed myself.

I should also point out that these Days of Studying often have elaborate ground rules, such as "No playing X video game!" or, as yesterday, "No posting to your weblog!" That did not, however, prevent me reading others weblogs, or commenting on my blogs and others's, but damnit, I promised not to post and I didn't post.

So how was the test? Meh. Other people took it a lot more seriously than I did, I think. But, as I've been telling anyone who'll listen, it's a pass/fail course that everyone passes. I'm not sure I submitted what would be an A test on a graded exam, but I'm almost positive I did more than well enough to pass.

Despite the utter unimportance of this exam, though, people were still relentlessly quizzing each other before hand, having panic attacks as they furiously leafed through their casebooks to make sure they knew EXACTLY what the holding was in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defence Council, and, afterwards, undermining each others confidence by asking what they thought, how they answered, how did they incorporate Issue X into the case, oh you didn't use Issue X? That's an interesting approach. Are you sure you could do that? etc.

But now it's done, and I can enjoy my night free of work before I begin my Weekend of Studying for the Torts and Contracts on Monday. Semper fi!

And by the way, a belated good luck to Dianna in submitting her application for re-entry today! Give those bureaucrats hell!

Posted by Zach at 07:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 16, 2005

Things you'd prefer not to see upon looking out the window

One of the neat things about living in a back apartment in the midst of big buildings in New York (or any city, for that matter) is the ability to look out your window and casually spy on people in the back apartments of the building on the street behind you (The flip side, of course, being the ease with which these same people can spy on you, an embarrassing lesson I learned the hard way a few weeks ago). I never realized how true-to-life Rear Window was until I moved here.

A pair of guys just moved into the building across from us and one floor down. On casually glancing out the window, I saw one of them habitating their living room. He was (and, in fact, is still as of this posting) shirtless, somewhat pudgy, and wearing red sweatpants. He's lounging on the couch and reading. He's holding his book in his left hand, and has his right hand shoved down the front of his pants. The book's all text, nothing pornographic, unless it's erotica. There's no movement on the part of his right hand, he's just resting it there. I assume this is his normal relaxed reading position. Maybe he's a former sailor, a captain, perhaps, accustomed to keeping his hand on the rudder at all times. In any case, I believe the lesson here is clear: If you don't want people making voyeuristic blog posts about your unusual activities, close your blinds.

Posted by Zach at 08:41 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

September 15, 2005

Stockholm Syndrome

I'm going to confess something that I've been keeping secret for years. It's not something I'm proud of, and it's quite embarrasing, but nonetheless the desire to talk about it, and in doing so implicate myself, is too great to ignore any longer. So now I rip my shirt off to reveal the letter A which I have scratched into my chest: I own a copy of Bikini Karate Babes .

It all started innocently enough. My roommate had found a link to one of the internet's many goofy videos, and he shared it with me, as were were wont to do with one another. In this case, it was a trailer for a computer game that featured women in bikinis beating each other up. The video was great (note that I am here using the word "great" in its kitschiest possible sense); three minutes of rapid cuts of girls in bikinis punching one another, set to the song "Venus."

I was curious enough to check out their website. I didn't expect much (or, really, anything) from the game, but the website did a half-decent job of selling it. I suspected it was a snow job, but nonetheless thought that maybe they'd put the effort into making a half-decent game. I dithered for about three months after it was released over whether to buy it. On the one hand, I knew, deep down, that it was a big waste of money, and that I would be creating a stain on my soul that I could never wipe clean. On the other hand, it promised to be a treat to my refined taste for crap (As you may know, I'm a big Mystery Science Theater fan and genuinely love poorly-made B Sci-Fi movies). Plus it's a video game! I love video games! And it was relatively cheap ($25, I think). In a moment of weakness, on one of the rare occasions when I had a significant amount of free cash, I placed an order. I instantly regreted it.

The game finally arrived 6 weeks later. Fortunately I intercepted it before my roommate got home. It came on 4 CDs and took forever to install. Said CDs had labels that were clearly photocopies and were peeling off, having been attached, poorly, with cheap glue. The install finally finished and I booted it up.

The intro movie, and actually most of the videos in the game, was scripted to convey, as subtly as possible, the following sentiment: "Look, girls! In bikinis! They have breasts! Look! They're shaking them! Now they're pretending to hit each other!" The game has no plot worth speaking of. It takes place, I guess, on an island, though an island with thatch huts, forrests, ancient south-east asian style temples, castles, roman villas, and whatever other backgrounds the designers found in their Windows Images directory. The plot is something about goddesses, I guess, who, for whatever reason, wear bikinis. Power bikinis! The power, we are told at one point, is in the bikini top. What power is never explained clearly. There seems to be some power struggle going on between Venus and Aphrodite (A historico-political metaphor for the ancient conquest of Greece by Rome? Or perhaps a symbolic exploration of the psyche, given that Venus and Aphrodite are the same goddess? Or perhaps the game's designers are just dumb). Whatever plot's going on there isn't well developed, since there's no narration and the actresses never speak. And that's pretty much the most plot you get; all of the other character's videos revolve around them jiggling, or perhaps miming spanking themselves in the least erotic manner possible.

I think it bears pointing out, here, that this is profoundly not a porn game. Really. It honestly seems like it should be, everything about it screams "PORN!", but it's not. It's girls in bikinis, and that's it. The effect of playing this game is not unlike renting a porn video in which the cable guy comes, fixes the cable, and then leaves and the credits role. Only that's a bad simile; it's like if, in order to watch the cable guy fix the cable and leave, you had to first play through 30 hours of the crapiest fighting game every made.

And make no mistake, Bikini Karate Babes is the worst fighting game ever made, if not the worst video game ever made. The controls are clunky, the characters are unbalanced, and the fighters seem like they're in different universes from one another. That is, there's no sense of contact or interaction; One character does a punching motion, and then 5 seconds later the other does a falling down motion. They didn't bother to video the actresses jumping, so when you jump the character just sort of remains in standing position while they fly through the air in the desired direction. There's no grand sense of design and cohesion, but it's hard to expect that when they can't even get the basics right. In short, it seems as though they shortchanged the actual game on the theory that the porn would make up for it. But then they forgot to put the porn in.

All of these remarks are prefatory. I'm curious to know if there's a name for a particular phenomenon. The closest I can come to is Stockholm Syndrome, the tendency for hostages, after long periods of captivity, to grow to idolize and worship their captors as a psychological defense mechanism to cope with being at their mercy. I find there's something similar in product purchases, a sort of coping mechanism that kicks in when you make a purchase that turns out to have been unwise. You try to convince yourself that whatever you've purchased is much better than it is. You focus on what few positive aspects there are while trying to suppress the bad or annoying aspects, but deep down you realize that you screwed up.

Now, that didn't happen to me with respect to Bikini Karate Babes. The badness of it was so toxic that the game never had a chance, and I was able to shrug off the $25 as a learning experience. But if you'd like to see Video Game Stockholm Syndrome in action, have a look at the forums on the Bikini Karate Babes website. There you will find tens of thousands of posts by dozens, perhaps hundreds of users, all praising the game, speculating about the sequel (My God, they're making a sequel!), drooling over the actresses, etc. And bear in mind that it's all rubbish. There is no possible way to think this game is good. Even if you've never played a fighting game in your life, you would hate this game. It has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

So have these people deluded themselves into thinking this fetid garbage is actually good? Or are the forums there like a giant pity-party, everyone putting on big smiles and assuring the makers of this game that, no, it really is very good, really. It was a great try, a really great try.

In any case, I have a copy of this game that I never want to see again. If anyone wants to send me their address, I'll happily pay to send it to you and be rid of it. It does have a certain train-wreck fun to it, I suppose. A source for endless speculation about how anybody could have thought this thing was a good idea.

Posted by Zach at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2005

"We made stars, each, upon fourth reach"

I had an unusually vivid dream last night, though it seems much less interesting now that I'm awake than it was when I was wrapped up in it. For some reason I was the main character in Scrubs, which is quite odd because I've never actually seen Scrubs, merely heard it raved about by a former roommate. For some reason this episode involved the hospital's gym (and by gym I mean middle-school style gymnasium, meaning a large building filled with gym mats and fear). For some reason everyone was playing handball there, with a bunch of fake walls. Several characters, whom I don't know because I don't watch the show, were tasked with taking down one of the walls that had graffiti on it making reference to "China Bears." For some reason taking this down caused all the walls to fall down and then roll around. This caused comic hi-jinks as the walls chaotically carromed about the gym, levelling patients and employees while my compatriots meanwhile drove around in a clown car trying to round them up (largely unsuccessfully). I, meanwhile, sat and watched, making snide comments.

It bears mentioning, at this point, that my character's subplot involved him adopting the character of Lord Cheswick Daventry Thistlebottom IV and creating obscurely obscene victorian captions for newspaper photos, one of which you see in the title to this post.

After the commercial break (My dream had commercial breaks. If those commercials are to be believed, Jose Cuervo now makes rye whiskey, available in cheap delis and liquor stores near you!) we returned and found several of the wayward walls had escaped onto the highway. The boss character was scouting for the walls in one car, while one of the compatriots from earlier was driving a truck onto which they were loaded when aprehended. They found one, and after the boss pulled to a gradual stop, the truck driver stopped by crashing into a large dumpster.

At this point, for some reason, the dream paused while my former roommate gave me a lecture on how brilliant Scrubs is, since at this point they could make any number of inane one-liners, such as the boss saying "Remind me never to let X drive the company truck again!" but they brilliantly chose not to, for the same reason they have no laugh track. My disembodied self rolled its ethereal eyes and the dream resumed. Around this point my character contributed the line of doggerel from this post's title. I could sense myself waking up (my roommate had begun to shower, which is a sign the alarm's about to go off) so my dream quickly skipped ahead to the preview of next episode. My guess is that my snide remarks didn't go over too well, as the preview showed my ears being cut off and my spleen violently removed from my torso.

Posted by Zach at 09:22 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 12, 2005

PSA: Be Kind to Poll Workers

Tomorrow's September 13 of the year following a presidential election. That doesn't mean much to the vast majority of American citizens, but for denizens of New York City, it means it's time for the New York City Primary Elections. As I am wont to do, I registered to vote the day I arrived here, so I believe I should be all set to vote tomorrow. I'm excited, mostly because they apparently use old lever voting machines here, so I get the experience of literally "Pulling the lever" for a candidate.

I believe I must have some sort of voting fetish, because I've voted at every opportunity I've ever had. This includes the 2000 General (I turned 18 on October 22, 2000, so I couldn't vote in the 2000 Primaries), the 2002 California Primary, the 2002 General, the California Recall, the 2004 California Primary, and the 2004 General. I even voted in every ASUC election at Berkeley, and lord knows how pointless those are.

But of all those elections, the 2002 California Primary holds a special place in my heart. Why? Because in that election I not only voted, I served as a poll worker. And the lesson I'd like to impart to you based on my experience is this: Being a poll worker sucks, so please be kind to them.

Start with the pay. Most poll workers, at least in Alameda County, are paid $70 for their services (it's not a volunteer position, despite what some people think). Inspectors are paid about $100, but they're better trained and it's damned hard to get appointed to an inspector position. $70 for a day's work doesn't sound too bad, but consider this: Polls open at 7 AM. Poll workers are expected to arrive an hour early to get set up. Polls close at 8 PM. Between waiting for the last voters to finish, packing everything up, tallying and certifying the vote, and driving the ballots to the local precinct, a poll worker doesn't generally get done until 10 PM. In the middle, they get one half-hour lunch break. So that's 15-16 hours of work for $70, or roughly $4.52 per hour.

Why would anyone take this job, particularly since it means sacrificing a whole day of work? Two reasons leap to mind. The first is love of country and the electoral process. The second is because you really have nothing better to do, no job and no prospects for money. When I worked the polls, all four of us at my polling station were in the latter category. In my case, I didn't have a job and had never had a job. I didn't really know how to go about getting one (and based on my experiences applying for a part-time job after I graduated, I still don't really know how to go about getting one) and $70 seemed like a pretty darn good amount of money for a day's work. My classes were such that I had only one lecture on Tuesday, and I had friends in the class who could give me the gist of it, so there wasn't anything really stopping me.

My election was a primary in an off year, so it wasn't too crowded, but there was a steady trickle of voters, which prevented me from getting any serious reading done. Needless to say, the job gets very boring very fast. This boredom is punctuated by brief vitriolic interactions with patrons, as angry voters discover that they're not on your list and demand to take this clear case of voter disfranchisement all the way to the Supreme Court. Or they're angry about whatever. We had one lady who was a Green Party voter who was angry because the designated Third Party Voting Booth doubled as the disabled voting booth and felt this was the Alameda County Registrar of Voter's way of hinting that third party voters were mentally handicapped. We sat through 15 minutes of ranting about this. At another point we were yelled at by a union poll watcher for being twenty minutes late updating the exterior address list. Now, I'm a big union supporter, but I have serious qualms about the external address list. Thanks to California State law, poll workers are required to post a copy of the address list on the outside of their polling place. The address list gives all the addresses contained in the precinct, along with all the voters registered there. We use the main one to make sure people are whom they say they are. What I really object to is that we're required to update the outdoor list every hour to show who's voted and who hasn't. This is to give union enforcers, of the kind who browbeat us, the ability to monitor who's voted and who hasn't, and thereby go out and drag people to the polls. It's the law, so we have to obey it, but it makes me really uncomfortable.

I tended to be the voice of reason among the poll workers, as I was the only one who had read the thick volume of procedure and could maintain a calm demeanor while explaining to voters the options they had in handling whatever their problem was. Our inspector, ostensibly the leader of our rag-tag band, actually tried to pick a fight with one voter before I intervened and calmed her down.

Then we got to the end of the day and closed everything up. I don't know how this works anymore, what with the touch-screen voting, but when I did it we used punch-cards (and no, the 4000th hanging chad remark wasn't any less funny than the first; it's impossible to get less funny than a hanging chad joke, so it doesn't really matter how many times you hear it) and we had to carefully count every single ballot, twice, and compare that tally to the tally on the official voter log and the address list. Any discrepancies had to be accounted for, and the insinuation was that there would be an investigation to make sure nothing untoward had happened. Then, after we had each attached and signed our own seperate seal, we all had to drive the ballots to the precinct office, all together to make sure none of us got up to any monkey business.

So: Poll working is not fun. Further, in any given precinct, there will be a dozen voters who turn up but can't vote, either because they made a mistake or because somebody at the Registrar of Voters office made a clerical error. If you end up being one of those people who has trouble voting, please don't make a Federal case of it; somebody somewhere probably screwed up, and there is a simple process for handling it and making sure your vote counts. Further, your poll worker will happily explain your options to you. Just remember that, while it is a hassle, it wasn't anything systematic, it's not aimed at you, it was somebody's mistake and the person whose mistake it was is almost certainly not the poll worker. Yelling at them doesn't punish the party in error, it merely makes their shitty day even shittier.

Having said all this, I'm actually glad I worked as a poll worker. It was an interesting experience, it's given me some good stories to tell, and I met some neat people. Also, you get to take an Oath of Office in the morning, with the whole "I, Molten Boron, do solemnly swear to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States and the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic" etc. I'm not sure if the Oath applies to just the day you're a poll worker, or if it's a lifetime commitment, but nonetheless, I wouldn't talk any smack about the California Constitution around me, or there could be trouble. And, if you work a Primary, you get to see which party all your neighbors are registered as. I worked in North Berkeley, and since I had the address list I got to see the geographic distribution of parties in the area. Not surprisingly, it's almost all Democrats, with a smattering of Greens and a few Republicans. During one of my bored moments I did a tally and, at least in our precinct, the Greens outnumbered the Republicans 2-to-1. We had a cute old couple come in that was one registered Democrat and one registered Republican, and they performed some faux-bickering for us. In any case, it may interest you to know that there's an unusually high concentration of Green Party voters on Vine Street. Similarly, a lot of conservatives live on Arch Street, particularly in one building, the address of which I can no longer recall, which housed a gaggle of Republicans, several Constitution Party voters, a Libertarian, and two American Independence Party voters. While walking around later I stumbled on the building and it looked like some sort of religious cult; plain on the outside, you had to walk around back to the entrance. No sign outside, but through the glass doors you could see an ornate interior with lots of crucifixion scenes. I decided it wasn't prudent to investigate further.

Now, I would never do the poll worker thing again now that I've done it, but even knowing what I'd be getting into I think I'd still have made the decision to do it the first time, if that makes sense.

I'll relate one story from my day poll working. My fellow clerk (the lowest-rung on the poll-working hierarchy is the clerk position) was named Curley. He and I had a bond, in that we both were victims of typos by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office. For years I got calls from political groups who got my name from registered voter lists and asked for Zarhary Slorpe (Pronounced, Zar-HAR-y). I tried contacting the Registrar to correct it, but to no avail. Curley, on the other hand, was referred to in his official mailings as "Curlff." I don't even know how you'd pronounce that.

Anyhow, there was a lull in the voting, and Curley went outside for a smoke. I joined him and started making conversation. "Things seem pretty quiet now, no voters in sight." Curley got the thousand-mile stare and just said "Charley's in the trees, man. Charley's in the trees." The image of guerilla voters has stuck with me ever since.

Posted by Zach at 06:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 11, 2005

Arms...like...noodles!

Dianna in comments below reminded me of my last experience with UPS in Berkeley. You see, I had thought my dad was coming to pick me and my stuff up and drive us home to San Diego. Then, a week before my move-out date, I got a call from him telling me he'd rather not, and I should just ship my life down and take a plane. Suddenly I needed to arrange for shipping and get everything sorted and packed and set by the end of the weekend. I tend to like to have everything planned well in advance, and don't handle sudden, drastic changes of plans very well. But I recovered, and after a half hour spent alternately punching the wall in the bathroom and clutching my head, I calmed down and bought some boxes and packing material.

I learned something in packing that weekend: Books are heavy. Similarly, lots of books are very heavy. A medium-sized moving box full of books is about 100 pounds heavy. I also learned something about myself that weekend: Thanks to my sunken chest and string beany arms, I can't really lift a 100 pound box.

Zoom forward to 7 AM Monday, after I'd made arrangements for UPS to come and take my packages. I figured I'd leave them in the vestibule of the building. Nobody was likely to steal them there, mostly because they weigh so much, and it was more convenient than leaving them in my room for the UPS guy to get. So I endeavored to get my boxes downstairs. It bears mentioning, at this point, that my building had no elevator, and I lived on the fourth floor. The other four boxes were relatively easy; with some effort, I could lift them and get them downstairs. The box of books was a different story. I loaded them up onto a small dolley that I'd used for groceries in the past, then strapped it on with a bungee cord. I carefully got it down the first flight of stairs, and everything seemed to be going well.

A third of the way down the second flight of stairs, I accidentally let the dolley flip into an upright position. Gravity and momentum caused the box to fall from the front of the gurney, and soon the bungee cord gave way, snapping off of the box. Recall that it is 7 AM on a Monday morning, and I had been trying to be quiet. It's more or less at this point that I gave up in that endeavor, as the box rolled down the stairs, "BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! CRASH!!" Meanwhile, the strain of carrying the box had bent the poor dolley out of shape (This was a cheap plastic dolley) and it would be no further use to me. I went downstairs and tried pushing my box to the top of the next staircase, then getting below it and slowly inching it down the last flight of stairs. The box was battered, but the books, as it turned out, were fine.

So anyhow, I had a full day of work scheduled, so I left a note for UPS saying I'd be out, but the packages were waiting in the vestibule (Which they could see through the glass building doors) and that they just had to call me at the office phone number and I'd be there within 5 minutes to let them in, hand them the packages, sign them over, and everything.

Around 2 in the afternoon I started getting paranoid that someone might take my boxes (I was in a paranoid mood that week) so I clocked out and ran home to check. The packages were still there, and so was a note attached to my letter: "We do not call! You must be here!"

Well, I didn't want to leave my stuff there for the night, and I sure didn't want to go through the ordeal of that morning again, not to mention hauling everything up three flights of stairs. So I went online and discovered that, for a mere $40, I could schedule another pick-up that day. I resigned myself to not going back to work for the day and scheduled a second visit.

So I went downstairs to await the UPS driver, biding my time by mentally preparing a tirade about all the things that had happened that weekend and that morning and this was just the cherry on the cupcake. Naturally I said none of it; I'm much braver in my head than I am in real life.

So the UPS guy arrived. As it happened, it was a UPS girl. She was gruff and surly, and I was apologetic even though I had not, in fact, done anything wrong. She brought out her dolly and asked me to load my packages on, as I needed to officially hand the packages to her. The first four boxes were easy. Then I came to the book box. I squatted down, gripped it, grunted, groaned, and gradually managed to lift it an inch off the ground. I shifted my grip, and slowly got it onto the dolly, then exhaled and collapsed. At which point she asked "Why the hell would you pack a box so heavy you can't lift it?" To which I meekly replied, "Well... I didn't know it was that heavy when I packed it, it just sort of happened." She'd turned around and started wheeling the dolly out half-way through my mumbled explanation. She got the dolly to the curve and started loading boxes into the truck. When she came to the book box, I offered to help, with the idea that I could hold one half while she held the other. She laughed and said "How on earth can you help me? You can't even lift it!" And that's how the last vestiges of my sense of masculinity were shattered.

They did a good job with the packages, though. Everything was delivered fine, and they were less expensive then USPS.

Posted by Zach at 03:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 09, 2005

A Battle of Wits and Wills

You'll excuse me for being a bit more raw and less polished in this post; it is upon one of the few topics that has the power to make me genuinely livid with rage. That topic is, of course, package delivery.

To put it simply, package delivery to residential customers in the US as carried out by the two major private parcel services, UPS and FedEx, simply does not work. Back in my apartment in Berkeley I would go to great pains to try to get businesses to send me packages through the US Postal Service. Most of the time they refused, apparently because UPS offers great deals to business customers on ground shipping. This makes sense; UPS and FedEx are both primarily targeted at business audiences, and really, from what I've seen, couldn't care less about residential customers, particularly as receivers of packages.

Typically, when someone would send me a package through UPS, I would find out about it when I got one of those yellow slips on the door. This was always a harbinger of doom, because inevitably, no matter which boxes I checked and no matter where I signed my name, I would be greeted by another such slip the next day informing me that they would not leave my package for me, and I'd have to be there to receive it in person. Oh, and by the way, since this is the second attempt, you'll have to be here to receive it tomorrow or it's going back to Weehauken, New Jersey.

This policy, I'm sure, works fantastically for businesses that can afford to hire people whose whole job is to sit and wait for package deliveries. This works less well for residential deliveries, as UPS and FedEx appear to labor under the misapprehension that the vast majority of Americans have no jobs and nothing better to do with their time than sit around all day and wait anxiously by the door in case a package gets delivered. It bears noting, at this point, that the time they mark down as their anticipated next delivery time is never, ever anywhere close to the time they actually show up. And if you do stay home and wait for them all day, they won't show up until 7 o'clock at night.

My worst story in this regard occured a few years ago. A friend had one of her friends send me a package from San Francisco. I came home to a heinous yellow slip. I went onto UPS's website and attempted to set a time for delivery that I would be home. I clicked the wrong button and was informed that the package was now being routed back to the sender. After several angry calls to UPS headquarters and the shipping location, I discovered that in order to get my package I would have to hotfoot it to the UPS store by Pier 39. Needless to say, I was not happy about this, though I would have been much less happy if the package had originated in, say, Peoria, Illinois.

Here in New York, there's a grocery company called Fresh Direct. They're an internet grocery; you pick your items on-line, and they deliver them to your door. Prices are actually quite reasonable for New York, and there's only a $5 delivery fee. You don't get to pick out the fruit and such yourself, but it is damn convenient.

Here's the point: When you're done picking your groceries, they send you to a page that lets you schedule a delivery time. It can be any day in the next week, and any two-hour block on those days between 9 AM and 11 PM. Most people opt for the evening, after they're home from work.

I know they're different business models, I know it's a whole different kettle of fish, but still: If Fresh Direct can deliver between 6 PM and 11 PM, why can't UPS? I know evenings are no good for businesses, but it's the best time for residential deliveries, particularly if your drivers are going to be sticklers about not leaving packages.

Having said all this, I've discovered that UPS and FedEx experiences do differ widely from customer to customer. For me, living in an apartment in Berkeley, it was always a herculean struggle to get my packages, because the drivers would never just leave them. For my parents, living in a house in San Diego, the drivers would never even think of leaving a delivery slip; They drop the package on the doorstep, ring the doorbell, and are driving off before my parents can open the door. At first I thought that the difference was that my parents had a house, whereas I was in an apartment. But now things have been thrown into sharp relief by my experiences in New York.

The UPS guy who handles our neighborhood is super-nice. He comes around 6, rings up, if you're not there he waits for someone to let him in (given the number of tenants this doesn't take more than 10 minutes, usually). He goes all the way up to your apartment, rings your doorbell, and if you're not there leaves the package on your doorstep. He's also friendly and likes to chat. An all-around stand-up guy.

The FedEx guy is a different story. For the last week I've been locked in a bitter battle of wits and wills with him (finally we come to the point of the post!). He tried delivering a package on Saturday, but I was out. He left a note, with no mention of when he'd be back. No delivery Sunday, no delivery Monday, no delivery Tuesday, for some reason. Wednesday I put out the slip with my signature, but a janitor took it down while I was out. I put up a note asking the FedEx driver to please leave my package, signed and everything. I came back after classes to discover he had stopped by not ten minutes after I had left, wrote "No can do" on my note, and left another package slip, again leaving secret the time of his next visit. Yesterday I finally got my package, but only by luck. He made the mistake of coming while I was home eating lunch. He was surly and seemed disgruntled that I was actually getting my package.

So I think the lesson in all of this is that UPS and FedEx have silly rules that don't serve their residential patrons well. However, if you get a good driver, who understands that his job is to make life easy for the customers, things work out all right. On the other hand, if your driver is bureaucratic and officious, who knows no higher purpose than the meticulous enforcement of the rules, getting packages becomes a living hell.

Posted by Zach at 08:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 01, 2005

Unique Experiences

Tonight at a law school bar night I had the unique experience of being lectured at on the subject of SF Bay Area life and transportation by a guy who had visited once, when looking at law schools, and read several pages in a Let's Go! California guide. He even, at one point, flat out told me I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about. This is after I informed him that I've lived in the Bay Area for the last five years.

It's like the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen confronts the blowhard in the line at the movie theater by bringing out Marshall McLuhan, only after McLuhan dresses him down the guy interrupts him and tells him that, frankly, McLuhan doesn't know his own work and should just shut up and listen to him.

Posted by Zach at 11:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

Anthology of Interests

Originally Posted 8/24/05:
In the past month, in anticipation of law school, I made a series of purchases, each one individually justified on the theory that it would give me something to do in law school to take my mind off of work. This turns out to have been silly and stupid; I have free time to pursue maybe one interest half-heartedly, but certainly not all of the pursuits I've lined up.

Among other things: I've purchased tomes on New York history, bought a number of Dickens novels I've been meaning to read, bought about a dozen video games I want to play (each one justified as essential because "this'll be the one I play in Law School."), renewed my Netflix subscription at the three-movies-at-a-time rate, purchased drawing material and instructional books in the hopes of gaining some facility at sketching/drawing, in tandem with the aforesaid started laying down plotlines and gags for a theoretical webcomic that I'd like to start drawing (to blow off steam in law school), purchased a banjo and instructional books on the theory that I would learn to play said banjo and this would help me relax outside of class, and now, as you know, I've started a weblog, ostensibly with the purpose of venting about my law school/New York experiences.

So now I've overcommitted myself and am driving myself crazy. There's no time to do anything, let alone everything, and when there is time for something I can't decide, so I end up screwing around on the internet instead of accomplishing productive relaxation. Which is probably why it's good I started the blog; at least now I can chronicle my failure both to do my school work and to relax satisfactorily.

Posted by Zach at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cleaning

Originally posted 1/29/2005:

Yay! I've cleaned and organized my closet! I've been meaning to do it for a while, and the roommate's moving out provided a perfect opportunity.

Unfortunately, the light in our closet burned out early last week, which was a big problem. My apartment has high ceilings, which is great for bunkbeds, but means I have to stand on a chair with my arms straight up over my head to detach the light fixture. This process involves removing a series of three screws blind, leading me to stand on a chair and comically pirohette as I try to get my fingers around the next screw.

And of course, all of this is impossible if I can't actually get a chair into the closet in the first place because the floor is covered with a thick layer of kipple. Hence a chicken-and-egg problem: I couldn't clean the closet without light, and I couldn't change the lightbulb until the closet was clean.

A note to myself: the back of your closet under a mass of tangled wires is a poor place to store your emergency flashlight. I can't even begin to figure out how I'd have found it if there were a genuine power outage.

I have way too many wires, and junk in general. Cleaning out the closet I found a broken joystick, the box for the joystick that replaced it, a network card, an old video card, 5 seperate phone cords (stupid because I have one phone that lives right next to the jack) and a slew of AC adapters that I have no idea what they were intended to power.

I hate throwing things out, though. I have a strong packrat instinct. I've still got my notebooks from Freshman year of college, as well as all the three-prong to two-prong converters I bought for my first apartment. And receipts. My God, the receipts! I have saved every receipt since I came to college. EVERY SINGLE ONE! Going all the way back to my first Hot Link from Top Dog four years ago. Yes, I save receipts from 50 cent incidental purchases. But I won't throw anything out. Why? Because it might be useful someday! (That, incidentally, should be imagined as being in giant neon rainbow script written 20 miles high)

Other'n that, not much new. Things are falling into place nicely, except for my search for a second job. I snagged a copy of World of Warcraft, which is quite fun. And I'm generally hanging out and enjoying life. Thanks for asking.

Posted by Zach at 10:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack