Working For Themis

Sleeping comfortably on the souls of exploited children

2008-11-27T09:41:00.003-05:00

So the family has gathered at my brother's place in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. It's a lovely condo in scenic (smack between the Interstate and the airport) Greensboro. I'm also told there is a Navy test field somewhere nearby.

So as I was settling in to sleep last night on the futon in my brother's room (mom and dad having already occupied the spare room and the couch being ever so slightly too short), I comment on how very very comfortable the pillows were, and asked him where he got them. By way of reply, he simply told me that his company (for those of you who are unaware, my brother works here) gave him a $25 gift card for thanksgiving.

I was suddenly overcome with a horrible suspicion, and demanded to know where the pillows had come from.

"Wal-Mart" he said mischievously, knowing my aversion to that particular den of evil.

I would have thought the screams of countless exploited children would have kept me up, but turns out they are remarkably soothing.

New favorite word

2008-11-19T10:53:00.005-05:00

dil·a·to·ry (ˈdi-lə-ˌtȯr-ē)

adj.

1. Intended to delay.

2. Tending to postpone or delay: dilatory in his work habits.

This is why I love being a lawyer, we have a word for everything.

Oh right

2008-11-10T22:30:00.002-05:00

Yeah, and I totally kicked the crap out of the Maryland Bar exam.

You may now refer to me as Erik Snyder, Esq.

Fear me.

Things you never want the Court to say to opposing counsel

2008-11-10T13:08:00.004-05:00

So as some of you no doubt know, I'm working on this case against a certain reporter who printed some totally untrue things about our client that subsequently ruined his career. The reporter most likely did so (knowingly or not) at the behest of one or more highly-placed government agent(s) who, lacking any legal means of retaliating against our client, decided to smear him in the press and then escape liability by hiding behind their "confidential source" status.

Anyway, we've been litigating this for a while and, after more than a year's worth of delaying tactics, the now very annoyed judge made the following comment in an order denying the reporter's most recent attempt to avoid giving up his source:

"The court is aware of other factors which might later be considered if the court were presented with a motion for sanctions or contempt. Specifically... [list of things the reporter did wrong]. If these apparent circumstances were to be later borne out as fact, and perhaps joined by others of a similar vein in a battle over fees and costs, they could be interpreted as a strategy of dissembling and “sandbagging” which, as such, would not bode well for Respondent and/or his attorney."

Word to the wise. When you've annoyed a judge so much that he actually invites the opposing party to file a motion for contempt and sanctions, and then actually lists specific things that he "might consider" in such a motion... yeah, you've screwed up big time.

YES WE DID!

2008-11-05T21:59:00.004-05:00

I'm still exhausted from yesterday. The day started at 1:00am with a trip down to southeastern VA to do poll watching, then standing in the rain for 13 hours watching said poll, then driving back TO THE BIGGEST SPONTANEOUS PARTY I'VE EVER SEEN. There were gobs of people all over town singing and cheering and dancing and celebrating in the streets. Completely amazing. I'll post more later, but for now I'll leave you with this:

I need help

2008-10-31T11:06:00.000-04:00

So I was in a fender-bender on the way to work this morning. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the lady in the Beamer who turned left into my lane and t-boned my driver's side door had the fender-bender... I had a driver's side door bender.

So anyway, as I'm walking over to exchange insurance information with her, I notice that she's got a Virginia license plate. So what do I do? Do I get all angry and yell at her for running into me?

Nope.

I introduced myself as an Obama organizer, asked her if she's registered to vote and if she's had a chance to get out to the polls to vote early for Obama.

She promised she would.

What do you call 200 washington lawyers sitting in a room?

2008-10-28T22:23:00.004-04:00

I call it approximately 1/20th of the poll monitors that Obama will have working for him in Virginia on election day.

That's right, we've signed up 4000 lawyers to make sure there are no shenanigans on election day in Virginia. That's enough to put two attorneys at just about every single polling location in the entire state. In fact, we've signed up enough local lawyers to actually have one inside each polling station to make sure everything runs smoothly. And that's not even counting the other Obama volunteers who will be helping out by shuttling people to and from the polls, reminding people to bring ID (though one of my jobs is assisting people who forget by explaining they can vote without it), giving people estimated wait times, and anything else to make sure things go as efficiently as possible. Heck, we've even got people tasked with bringing extra sweatshirts and jackets so that people who show up wearing campaign paraphernelia (from either campaign) can vote without stripping (VA law says no campaign stuff in the polls). We are leaving nothing to chance.

And again, this is happening everywhere. The scale of what he's put together is nothing short of astounding. It gives me chills just thinking about it. Every single voter in every single polling location in every single swing state in the whole freakin country is going to cast their ballot under the watchful eyes of Obama volunteers.

The Republicans are NOT going to steal this one.

IT'S ALIVE!

2008-10-27T00:35:00.007-04:00

Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been over two years since my last post. I have neglected my readers for far too long, but I am repentant and I shall mend my slothful ways and provide cheap entertainment to the masses once again.

Yes, that's right, I am a fiery Phoenix rising from the ashes, breathing new life into my blog and...

OH GOD I'M ON FIRE! PUT ME OUT! PUT ME OUT! I SWEAR I'LL NEVER USE A TRITE PHOENIX METAPHOR AGAIN!

AAAAAA!

...

Right, so now that I've got that out of my system, down to business. I've been encouraged to start posting on this blog thing again and, now that I'm officially graduated and no longer spending all of my free time studying and working and stuff, I suppose I actually sort of have time to do this.

That, and now that several of my friends have moved away, I have fewer people to bitch at, so feel the need to spread the love. :-)

Anyway, to briefly summarize my life since my last post:

1. I graduated law school, with honors even.
2. I now work for that really cool firm where I interned during my first summer.
3. I've taken the Maryland bar, but do not yet have my results.
4. I'm a volunteer coordinator for Obama's campaign in Manassas, VA.

So there are probably a million and a half things for me to talk about (this is me after all), but what occupies most of my attention these days is the election. It's 8 days away AND WE ARE GOING TO CRUSH MCCAIN!

No really, we're talking landslide, uncontestable mandate, broad-spectrum discrediting of republican ideology, and the initiation of a new order that shall forever change the face of America! GOBAMA! *commence speaking in tongues*

But seriously. I've been volunteering for about two months now and Obama's ground campaign is nothing short of incredible. In Manassas alone, we're getting more than 200 volunteers and having face-to-face contact with over 3000 registered voters per weekend. There's only about 40,000 people in Manassas, and maybe 22,000 registered voters. Figure that 60% of them are either ours or undecided and we're talking about reaching close to 25% of our potential voters each weekend.

Think about it, just one field office can attract and coordinate 200+ volunteers and reach out to 3000 voters, and Obama has 50 field offices in Virginia alone, and many are getting more volunteers than us. Conservatively, we figure we're reaching over 200,000 voters every weekend, and even more during the week. And the same thing is happening EVERYWHERE. In every population center, in every swing state in the whole damn country. That's tens, if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers, friends and neighbors reaching out to their communities and convincing those around them to get to the polls and vote for Obama. This is the great unsung story of this campaign, and this is why McCain never stood a chance.

Because he's got nothing. I don't know what happened to the field organization that propelled Bush to a second term, but McCain's ground campaign is virtually nonexistent. I make a point of driving past the McCain office every weekend, usually more than once, and I have yet to see more than three people in it. The good people over at www.fivethirtyeight.com have been going from city to city for weeks and report that the same is true wherever they go. Obama offices overflowing with volunteers and McCain offices empty or closed.

Ok, you get the idea. I'm excited and am convinced that we're going to win and we're going to win big.

Yes we can.

Yes we will.

And so it ends

2006-09-07T13:16:00.000-04:00

Yeah yeah, like with most projects, this blog thing has fallen by the wayside. Rather than string the 5 or 6 of you who actually read this blog along any more, I think I will just end the suspense and declare this little endeavor officially closed. Maybe I'll start it up again later, but probably not for a long while. For now, you will have to content yourselves with contacting me via AIM, googletalk, email, and those other, more personal, conversation methods.

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read.

~Erik

The FBI is creepy

2006-07-07T17:19:00.001-04:00

Yeah, so for everyone's reference, whenever I promise to fill you in on something later, you can almost certainly rest assured that I will do no such thing.

So this week I've been working on a case against the FBI. I just spent most of the week reading several hundred pages of sword testimony (ok, I meant to type "sworn testimony", but I tried to correct it twice and somehow the typo remains, so I guess I'll leave it and assume my subconscious is trying to tell me something...) by high-ranking FBI Special Agents, Supervising Special Agents, Supervising Agents in Charge, and other overly-acronymed people and have come to some rather troubling conclusions.

The evidence seems to show that the FBI is an almost completely unified group who zealously retaliate against anyone or anything that threatens to expose or even acknowledge that the slightest wrongdoing has occurred. Everyone even remotely associated with the FBI seems to unconditionally support whatever "official" position on any matter that the FBI puts forth, including covering up gross misconduct or negligence, in order to preserve the FBI's all-importat "image."

I have come up with a few possible explanations for this phenomenon (any of which might wind up getting argued in Court).

The first is that the FBI is almost entirely composed of very excitable people who rigidly adhere to a set of unwritten rules that can basically be boiled down to "don't do anything that might make the FBI look bad" and "if you or someone you know does do something that could make us look bad, for pity's sake don't tell anyone."

Another possiblity is that each Agent is fitted with a mind-control device, though this scenario would not be objectively distinguishable from the first one.

Finally, (and perhaps most likely) is that the FBI induces atmosphere of absolute obedience because it either replaces all of its human staff with android-duplicates and is run by a cadre of shape-shifting aliens bent on inefficiently fighting crime.

Wee.

Congress is insufficiently air conditioned

2006-06-30T16:39:00.000-04:00

So I spent most of yesterday sitting in the Rayburn Congressional office building listening to the partner that I'm working for this summer lecture the 10 members of the House Committee on Government Reform who showed up to hear him talk. It was a pretty impressive display, one that left the poor sap from the Cato Institute (who had the misfortune to be on the same panel as my boss) looking pretty stupid.

The topic was the recent Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which frankly was poorly thought out and generally foolish, which is not something that one can often get away with saying about the Supreme Court. It is not uncommon to disagree with the Supreme Court, since that is mostly a question of one well-reasoned interpretation of the law beating out another well-reasoned interpretation. It is something entirely different to accuse the Court of not thinking things through and basing their opinion on flawed legal reasoning.

Hrm, I will explain this in some depth a little later. For now, just smile and nod and be happy that I am enjoying my job. :-)

Something new

2006-06-19T17:12:00.000-04:00

Ok, so very quickly:
I'm working here this summer and it is a fantastic job. I'm doing real lawyer work and working on the side of truth, justice, and stickin it to the man... which at present means writing vaugely threatening letters to very powerful people and then (because they don't take the hint) writing motions for the Court to show them just how much these very powerful people and their minions are in fact subject to the same rules as everyone else.

Oh, and the senior partner that I am working for thinks my writing is "excellent." Screw you Legal Rhetoric! (that's our research and writing class).

Other than that, I'm taking a class in criminal procedure (if a cop ever asks to search you or your home, remember that you can always say NO... though it's not always the best idea to piss off a cop; oh and never throw away evidence of a crime and then leave the garbage bag on the curb, the police can search that without a warrant) and doing my best to relax.

Yes, I have gotten my grades. No, we are not going to talk about them.

----

Ye gods, I've completely lost track of where I am on my journey to Rivendell. Last thing I knew I was 255 miles along and somewhere in the thickets on the south side of the Great East Road. Where am I now? Who knows? There's nothing but wilderness for 100 miles!

Hrm, well I can say with certainty that I've walked at least a mile every day since starting work, and I went and did some actual hiking through the wilderness (complete with 30+ pound pack, walking stick, and sprained ankle) two weekends back that was about 6 miles (maybe I should count that double since my roleplaying was so good... wait, nevermind, forget I said anything) so we're gonna call it 25 miles, curse a few times, and start trudging again. Yay, 280 miles.

I outline, therefore I am

2006-05-03T22:55:00.001-04:00

Ok, so classes are over, all my papers are turned in (you'll note that I said "turned in" as opposed to "finished" which is not to say that I turned in papers that were incomplete, but let's just say the editing process was not as thorough as I would have liked), but I feel like I've forgotten something...

Oh right, EXAMS.

That's right folks, we're in the home stretch here. My first year of law school is almost over; all that stands between me and a glorious summer of indentured servitude (err, I mean a glorious summer of unpaid interning) are the rest of my exams. This whole exam extravaganza actually started yesterday when I took the first and shortest of my five exams, which involved two hours and fifteen minutes of... well, writing madly about Civil Procedure. The four I have remaining are Property Law (4 hour test), Criminal Law (3 hour test), Constitutional Law (somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of tests), and Drink Until I Forget Everything I've Learned About Law (stamina test)... none of which should be quite as bad as the first.

Anyway, like so many of my previous posts, this one is being written as yet another way to avoid doing what I SHOULD be doing, which at the moment is studying for my property exam (which begins in just under 32 hours). Right, so I thought I would take a moment to comment on the most common way that we law students prepare for our exams: we OUTLINE *evocative onomatopoeia*. We take an entire semester's worth of cases and notes (which for property is about 80 single-spaced pages, but I'm kind of a light note-taker) and condense them down into something more useful and accessible... or at least shorter. The theory here is that the process of going over each subject and case, figuring out which bits are most important, coherantly condensing those bits, and retyping it into a new document will refamiliarize you with the information. Funny thing is that it actually works.

Of course, there is a great deal of variety in how people outline *evocative onomatopoeia*. There are those who write them throughout the semester, setting aside time each week and slowly building a beautiful and elegant summary of each subject while it is still fresh in their minds and then further condensing and refining their understanding until what remains is no longer a mere summary but rather a synergistic work of art between creator and creation; a harmonious blend of mnemonic cues and graceful, color-coded and earmarked organization. Then there are those who spend the whole semester cradled in sloth's gentle embrace; skimming through the material, writing half-assed briefs and taking half-assed notes that are just detailed enough to allow them to give a moderately intelligent answer if called upon by the professor, who then frantically piece together chickenscratched margin notes with the half-finished sentences in their class notes in a vain attempt to figure out exactly what the hell they were supposed to have learned over the past four months. For 50 points, who can guess which category I fall into? [*Answer below]

Anyway, I should probably get back to it. There should be more posts once I get out of school. Really.

But before I do, there is one other thing that I should probably mention. Some of you already know this, but for those of you who don't: I officially have a girlfriend. We've only been seeing each other for about a month, so a truely objective long-term projection is not yet possible (why yes, I have spent the whole day reading legalese, why do you ask?), but it has been an extremely nice month and I think I can reasonably say that the signs are very good. I'm not going to say too much in this oh so public forum (not that there are more than 20 of you out there who read this thing), but let's just say that she at least seems completely sane (dating me notwithstanding), that we have a terrifying amount in common, spend a lot of time laughing, and really get on quite well together. I always look forward to spending time with her and the whole thing just feels... well... comfortable. And I mean the "mmm, this feels nice and I'm completely at ease being myself" sort of comfortable as opposed to the boring "maintain the status quo" variety.

Oh, and last but not least, here's the latest installment of "how far behind is Erik now?" Well, I've managed to flee from a bunch of really pissy Nazgul, have crossed the Great East Road, and am wandering through the thickets on the south side. I've come 255 miles since I started keeping track back in January, which means that I just might make it to Rivendell before the end of the summer.

[*Answer from above: actually I fall somewhere in between. I read pretty thoroughly and take pretty good notes, but I don't so much as think about outlining before the second to last week of class.]

Four out of five ain't bad

2006-04-15T17:42:00.000-04:00

So I got all the classes that I wanted, but did not get the professor I wanted for criminal procedure. So I suppose it is more like 4.5/5. So next year I'll be taking:

- Adv. Constitutional Law Teaching Fellowship (3 credits) - (see the Marshall-Brennan program described below)
- National Security Law in the Age of Terrorism (3 credits) - Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, enemy combatants, etc.
- Criminal Procedure (3 credits)
- Lobbying/Legislative Process (2 credits)
- Legal History (3 credits)
= 14 credits

The "standard load" here is 14 credits. We are required to take at least 12, but cannot take more than 16 without special permission. I was actually really torn between IP law (the substantive class that will make me $$, but is offered every semester) and National Security Law in the Age of Terrorism (which may never be offered again, but has little practical value).

Yeah, no contest. ;-)

Oh, and I'm now almost to Weathertop. I've come 232 miles since I started keeping track back in January, averaging about 2.4 miles/day. Not what I had planned, but not bad. All I have to do is walk about 9 miles/day every day for the rest of the semester and I'll make it to Rivendell before the semester is over.

Right, and I'm going to update my blog consistently and frequently.

Oh the drama!

2006-04-13T16:36:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm not actually dead, just have been insanely busy of late ("of late" being the last six weeks or so). The trials and tribulations that I have endured since spring break are more or less summarized below. And yes, there are pictures.

As for right now, I'm sitting in the library (yeah, I know, big surprise), waiting to register for classes, and obsessive-compulsively updating the current-enrollment figures for the classes that I want to take. In particular, I'm fretting about Criminal Procedure, which is the one class that I am required to take next semester. Legend has it that Professor Davis is far and away the best criminal procedure teacher in the school, and consequently, enrollment in the five sections (with a max of 95/section) is currently: 93, 11, 8, 15, 8. Guess which section Davis teaches... yeah, two spots left.

Not getting into Davis' class would be inconvenient, but not devastating. My second-choice is one of the 8s, so I suspect there will be adequate room for me when my turn rolls around.

Oh wait, I haven't explained how the registration process here works have I? Well, each graduating class is divided up into 10 groups by the last digit of their student ID numbers and then put into a lottery for time slots. My slot starts at 5:00 this afternoon and so at 5:00.01, the 45 or so students whose ID numbers end in 7 will frantically vie for position in the registration queue. The issue is probably moot for the other four classes I want to take, but it would sure be nice to have one of those two magic spots in Davis' crim pro class. We shall see.

**Update: The last two spots in Davis' class are gone. So much for the drama.

Ok, milage. Bloody hell. It's been three weeks and I've walked to school damn near every day except *furrows brow, counts on fingers* four... but I've also walked to the store three times and taken the long road to the Metro at least four times... hmm... ok, we're going to err on the side of caution and call it 57 miles. Yikes. Nearly to the foot of the Weather Hills. Hey! I'm almost half way to Rivendell! Total distance: 227 miles.

The Giant Post of Doom!

2006-04-13T16:34:00.000-04:00

Ok, this is going to take a while to write, so please be patient. As a demonstration of just how far I have fallen and been consumed by law school, I present you with an outline of this post (hey, at least it's not highlighted):

I. The T-Shirt
II. The Oral Argument *maniacal laughter*
III. The Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*
IV. The Event
V. The Marshall-Brennan Program
VI. More on the campaign trail
VII. A promising development

Yeah, ok, I don't have the inclination or the energy to write proper posts, so you'll have to make do with these massively summarized accounts.

I. The T-Shirt

So all of us first-year students get organized into sections according to our position in the alphabet. Section 4, my section, consists of letters R-Z, with one "L" thrown in for flavor. Anyway, we decided that since we spend pretty much all of our time with one another, we should make a section shirt. This is my submission:

RES IPSA LOQUITUR

Yeah, it's an inside joke, but I'm really proud of how their expressions turned out so I thought I would share. Yeah, I drew those myself, and yeah, photoshop helped cover up the eraser marks and clean up the smudges. ;-)

II. The Oral Argument *maniacal laughter*
Yeah, so in addition to submitting our Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*, we also have to argue the case in front of a panel of "judges" (two prof's and a TA). Not surprisingly, this went a good deal better than the brief itself, as I am rather more articulate with verbal communication than I am with written.

III. The Appellate Brief *horrifying screams*
Yeah, I really got nothin t' say about this. It was a beast, it consumed a few weeks of my life, it is done.

IV. The Event
So I got to meet Jim Hightower at a fundraiser. I also got to serve lemonade.

V. The Marshall-Brennan Program
I'm gonna teach constitutional law to a class of high school students next year. I'll be teaching with Julie and it will be OUR class, meaning we're not filling in for some teacher or giving guest presentations, we're teaching a proper class to a room full of highschoolers.

Should be a breeze.

VI. More on the campaign trail
I honestly don't remember what I was going to write here, so in lieu of a post, here's a disturbingly accurate commentary on the nature of law, by one of my favorite philosophers.

And here's a really funny, and yet disturbingly insightful, picture of Bush:

VII. An interesting development
Oh, and as a side note, I'm kinda dating some girl. More on this as it develops. :-)

Spring Break and Pictures!

2006-04-13T15:40:00.000-04:00

LOOK AT THE SHINY PICTURES! SEE THEM! AREN'T THEY SHINY?

New Orleans is still in rough shape. See that dark line running through the center of the doors? That's the high water mark and you can still see it on buildings all over town.

Here's a fun picture. Can you tell where the high water line was?
Sheesh, and I thought the water in Africa was bad.

This is the neighborhood where we stayed in New Orleans. The piles of rubble represent houses where people have returned and are rebuilding. However, I'd guess that less than 20% of the houses in the 5 or 6 block neighborhood around where we stayed had even started rebuilding, most people still had not returned.

Wait for it...

2006-03-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

So did any of you hear what Bush did recently? He was getting worried about the increasing reports of Bird Flu cases in Africa, Asia and Europe. He knew it was only a matter of time before this perilous virus would reach America and cause a catastrophe even bigger than 9/11. As commander in chief, it is his duty to protect America from all threats and as such he has decided to pre-emptively strike at this menace before it can reach American shores.

So he bombed the Canary Islands.

Aside from that, I know I owe you stories and pictures about my experience last week in Mississippi and New Orleans and I do have copious amounts of both that I promise to post very soon!

So, now the milage update. It's been quite a while and I've covered quite a lot of distance, though I accrued no actual milage over break. So I've come 31 miles since the last post, putting me between the Chetwood and the Midgwater Marshes. Total distance: 169 miles.

I knew this would happen

2006-03-06T16:57:00.000-05:00

Aaaaaaa! Too much to talk about, not enough time to say it! Aaaaaaaa!

Ok, so life is crazy busy right now. Totally bonkers. It's so busy that I'm in one of the school lounges instead of the library because too many classmates study in the library and that can get distracting. Yeah yeah, we can see how well this plan is working since I'm posting instead of working, but I can only do so much.

So, very fast updates. Two weeks ago I helped to found the Poverty Law Society here on campus, because yeah, I don't have enough to do. This school has a huge human-rights and public interest orientation, but most attention is focused abroad. We've decided that the 37 million or so Americans who live in poverty (and no, that doesn't count college students) deserve some attention too and maybe, if we as a country can figure out how to fix poverty here, we'll be better equipped to do something about it elsewhere.

Just a little note about my little bro's summer plans: he's going to ride his bike from DC all the way to the Pacific (somewhere in the neighborhood of Seattle probably) to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. If you're interested, go read more on his website.

Speaking of coastal cities, I'm off to lovely Gulfport, Mississippi on Saturday to spend my spring break doing Katrina relief work. We'll be spending part of the week doing construction or whatever other physical labor needs doing, and the rest of the week doing something more legally-oriented. Don't worry, I'll post pictures.

Probably.

Oh, and happy Lent everyone! Even though we Protestants are not required to forego any of our pleasures during this season, I still like to get into the spirit of the season by giving something up. No, I'm giving up getting struck by lightning or bitten by Australian death adders, I try to avoid those all year long and would not represent much of a sacrifice now would it? No. This year I've decided to forego something that actually represents a bit of a hardship, so for the duration of Lent I have vowed to give up making fun of Catholics. ;-)

Finally, it's the memo *ominous thunder* time again, but this time I'm posting at the beginning of the project instead of the end. Actually, for this FINAL project, we're not doing a memo at all. This time it's an appellate brief *horrifying screams*. And sorry Westlaw, even though you actually were easier to use this time and gave me some really cool swag, my heart still belongs to LexisNexis. It's alliterative and has two x's and you just can't compete with that.

Yaay.

So that's it, I probably won't have time to post again until after I return from spring break, but check back later this week just in case.

Ok, so I've made some good progress. Cleared the barrow downs, crossed a hedge and dike (it's like a levee you sick bastard), followed the Great East Road for a bit and finally reached Bree! Can't stop now though, pushing right on through. Total milage: 138

Actually, I'm just in it for the money

2006-02-27T15:24:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting here in the lobby of my esteemed legal institution, doing my level best to hock tickets to the Equal Justice Foundation Auction... ok, let's be honest here, my "level best" amounts to occasionally looking up and trying to will people over to the table to support me by spending their money.

So what is the Equal Justice Foundation Auction? Well, the Equal Justice Foundation (EJF) is a public interest organization here at the law school that promotes public interest work by giving out $3000 grants to students who do unpaid, public interest legal work during the summer. The Auction is where the EJF gets most of the funding for said grants. Unfortunately, the good people at EJF don't actually just give these grants away to any unpaid, summer public interest worker. They require all applicants to help, in some small way, to put the Auction together. "Some small way" of course translates into "no less than 10 hours" and so here I sit, trying to hock tickets to fulfill my requirement and qualify for that shiny shiny grant.

So come to the Auction! It'll be fun! Free drinks! Free food! Neat stuff! Wahoo!

Am on my way north again after spending the night in a Barrow Down. It was... cold. Definately not going on my list of "great places to stay." Ah well, at least I got this shiney new sword. Total thus far: 116 miles.

ominous thunder

2006-02-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Ok, so last week was pretty much spent working on the memo *ominous thunder*. What is the memo *ominous thunder*? WELL. The memo *ominous thunder* actually refers to the most current iteration of massive, crazy, insane, 30+% of your grade in legal rhetoric (research and writing) writing assignments. This particular the memo *ominous thunder* was our very first opportunity for creative (persuasive) writing and, like all of the previous iterations of the memo *ominous thunder*, pretty much consumed our lives for the past few weeks.

Naturally, all the real work got done the night before, because each iteration of the memo *ominous thunder* seems to have some sort of built in inhibitor that prevents real understanding of what the assignment’s true purpose until no less than 24 hours before it is due.

You see, this legal writing thing really isn’t that hard. It is highly formulaic and logical, each point following the very simple “conclusion, rule of law, proof of rule, application of rule to the current case, restatement of conclusion” format and honestly is very straightforward. But for some unfathomable reason, it is just terribly difficult to do and however easy it is to explain how to write the memo *ominous thunder*, actually doing it is a whole different story.

the memo *ominous thunder*

Ok, sorry, that was unnecessary.

the memo *ominous thunder*

And that was totally over the top.

the memo *ominous thunder*

Getting old Erik…

the AAAAGH, GET IT OFF ME! OW! HEY! PUT THAT BACK, IT LOOKS IMPORTANT!

...

*ominous silence*

Better.

So what else… umm, actually, I should probably work. I’ll tell you about helping to found a new student group (because, really, I don’t have enough to do) and my brother’s summer plans later.

Ok, got lost several more times, escaped from the tree that tried to eat me, met the overly happy dude in the garish clothes, and am now happily on my way to the Barrow Downs. Great. Y'know, I can't help but feel that this whole thing would be easier if we just stayed on the damn ROAD! But nooooo! We have to avoid the immortal, freakishly strong dudes in the funky cloaks. *sigh*

Ok, I've come 108 miles so far, behind schedule, but making progress.

Stormtroopers? Here? ... Oh no, I've been shot!

2006-02-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else see the irony of VP Darth Cheney shooting someone while out hunting on the Body of Christ? Who the heck names their town Corpus Christi anyway? I really have to wonder if they stopped to think about what those words they probably recited every Sunday in church meant. I mean, what would happen if, one day, the local priest ran out of communion wafers and transubstantiated the whole town?

Ok, enough blasphemous sillyness, I must read.

I got a new button!

2006-02-12T17:25:00.000-05:00

So, for those of you who knew/saw me during 2004, you might recall a particular button that I wore all the time. You know the one: it was blue, it said “Kerry” on it… yeah, that one. Well, as you may recall, the whole Kerry thing didn’t really turn out so well, but fear not for I remain undaunted! I have a NEW button now and while it’s not quite as blue as the last one, I’m definitely more excited about the guy whose name is on it.

*imagine there is a picture of me and my new button right here, someday there will be, I swear*

If you’ve been following along, you should be able to guess whose button I am now sporting, but in case you haven’t I will give you a hint. This is my constitutional law professor, the same guy who sprung Cindy Sheehan out of jail after the Capitol Police arrested her for wearing a t-shirt in the House chamber during the State of the Union address. Last night was the first big fundraiser of his campaign and I was out directing traffic and collecting donations from people as they walked into this great big coffee shop in Silver Spring (northeast of the District). The event itself was a bunch of local writers and poets (some of whom were law profs, others who were nationally syndicated) who got up and read some of their material, much of which was very enjoyable, but the really impressive thing was the turnout. As most of you (the ones who don’t live under rocks) have probably heard we (being most of the people on the mid-Atlantic coast and most of New England) also had a tiny little snowstorm last night. Now, to be perfectly honest I thought it was fantastic, but I’m also a born and bred Midwesterner whose ancestors were the barbarian tribes that went back to the frozen north after conquering Rome because it’s way to f%*# (for no apparent reason, this post is going to have a PG rating, let’s see how long it lasts) hot in Italy during the summer… which apparently skews my opinion somewhat.

Right, so the impressive thing was, even though the city was more or less shut down, the majority of the populace cowering in their homes where the big, bad snowflakes couldn’t get them, we still got something like 200+ people (my estimate) and raised $20,000+ (actual estimate). We are SO gonna kick ass in September.

Other than that, it’s been a pretty dull week. I went and got sick again (meaning I had that annoying cough and stuffy head thing that everyone else seems to have) and while I never did go to the doctor the last time I got sick, just because these symptoms are pretty much identical to my last illness doesn’t mean anything at all, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. So yeah, I did actually go to the doctor this time and he gave me some wicked strong antibiotics (Doc: “you’ve had this cough for how many weeks?” Me: “err, several, it’s not debilitating, just annoying?” Doc: *sigh* “I’d better prescribe something strong then.” Me: “um, please put down that scalpel.” Doc: “shush, I need some blood to unlock the seal on the ‘special’ cabinet where we keep the really good stuff. Oh, I’ll need a virgin sacrifice too.” Me: “well shit, there goes the PG rating.”), and I feel much better now. Why did I go to the doctor this time you ask? Is there some specific reason my desire to be non-contagious suddenly trumps my aversion to spending three hours at that damn health center?

Maybe.

Aw crap. See, I knew this Old Forest thing was a bad idea. I’m trying to go north. NORTH damn it! But this path keeps going southeast. Stupid trees. How far have I come? 88 miles. How far do I have to go? 370 miles.

*grumble* Stupid elves building their stupid last strongholds against the coming shadow in the stupid mountains instead of on this nice, indefensible plain.

That damn wiretapping fiasco

2006-02-08T06:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, I feel compelled to rant. Not because I still haven't finished my draft, really, I swear.

The president's wiretapping is either illegal, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is unconstitutional. Congress made an explicit declaration of its intent with respect to clandestine wiretapping with the original passage of FISA and then reaffirmed it in the specific context of combatting terrorism with the amendments they made to FISA in the Patriot Act. The Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) does not eclipse FISA because FISA is explicit on this issue whereas the AUMF is not and clear legislative statements trump inferences. If Congress has specifically forbidden the president to act, then the president can legally ignore that prohibition only if it infringes on his exclusive constitutional powers, which I believe would then make FISA itself unconstitutional for daring to infringe upon the exclusive domain of another branch of government.

The president has asserted that FISA "does not apply," but it is not within the power of the president to decide whether or not a law applies to certain circumstances, that is the excusive domain of the court. The president may only assert that congress has overstepped its authority and then deliberately ignore the law, but just because the president says or asserts something does not make it true; only the court can decide when and where the law applies.

So the president's claim then boils down to the constitutionality of FISA with respect to his exclusive powers as Commander in Chief (CiC). If warrantless wiretapping is "inherent" to the CiC, then certainly FISA could not infringe upon that power, but this application of the role of CiC is itself extremely suspect if not outright unconstitutional. The claim that the CiC can suspend the 4th Amendment's protection against against unreasonable searches and seizures, absent the direst of emergencies and immediate dangers to the security of the country, is supported by no law. Given a clear indication of an immanent terrorist attack, the president could certainly claim vast powers to intervene and prevent that event, but trying to assert that the US has been in immediate danger of a terrorist attack, continuously, for FOUR YEARS exceeds all claims of reasonability. FISA grants the president 15 days after a catastrophe to gather whatever information he wants without oversight, and allows him to ask for extensions, but FISA requires that oversight eventually be applied.

Basically, as I see it, this has little to do with legality and everything to do with WILL. Bush has overstepped his powers by asserting a radical interpretation of his power as CiC. This is a huge power grab by the Executive branch. The "debate" is whether or not the Legislative branch will let him get away with it.

What bugs me about the coverage of this fiasco is that few seem to be thinking and commenting about what little we do know. We know that the software used to conduct this surveilance listens to calls to and from certain countries and the US, only recording those calls that set off certain warnings. Traditional wiretapping involves listening in on a known suspect's communications in hopes of finding evidence. This new application listens in on everyone's communications in hopes of finding suspects. What is to prevent this program from being expanded to pure domestic-domestic calls? All that would be required are a few program modifications, nobody need ever know. And without oversight nobody ever will.

Ok, glad to have that off my chest, please feel free to weigh in on this if you are so inclined.

I got a JOB! (or "avoiding my rhetoric assignment")

2006-02-08T01:30:00.000-05:00

"Rhetoric" is what we call our first year legal research and writing course here at WCL. It's only 2 credit hours per semester, but it's easily more stressful and frustrating and any of my 3 or 4 credit courses.

So I've got a paper due a week from Monday and I'm supposed to produce a draft of the first few bits by tomorrow afternoon. It's not really all that bad, it won't take all that long once I get started, but I am finding my motivation at a particularly low ebb right now. Strange that I can effortlessly produce way more than the page limit of the final draft (12 pages) in the form of blog posts, emails, and IM converstaions in a single evening than I can for this paper in two days. Actually, it's not that strange at all.

You see, rhetoric is supposedly especially important for that first year job hunt, but I've already got a job lined up for the summer.

*fanfare*

Yeah, I got a job. I'll be working for Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto who, despite being a private firm, are decidedly NOT evil. They've got a fantastic internship program (unpaid, but then almost all first-year summer jobs are for law students) and so I get to learn the ropes of my new profession in the context of doing work that I actually care about. I'm giddy.

I am on a path in the Old Forest, two miles past the Bonfire Glade. Total to date: 80 miles.

Assorted states

2006-02-04T02:04:00.000-05:00

Ok, ok, I'll post about the damn state of the union already.

Yes I watched it, yes I was appalled, yes I think I might actually know what the hell he meant by "human/animal hybrids," but only because I'm a big geek. Mostly I just drank wine while listening to him shovel shit for 50 minutes. Between my roommate and myself, we counted about 20 instances of "freedom" and 22 of "terror" or "terrorist" which is actually lower than I expected. I'll give him props for his education initiatives if he actually follows through and comes up with a way to teach kids science and math... I'll give him even more props if he can show me that he can do long division without a calculator.

But here's the really cool part about the speech. You heard that Cindy Sheehan got an invite to the speech, but got arrested in the House chamber? She was wearing a t-shirt that said "2245 dead, how many more?" or something to that effect, and the cops hauled her away when she refused to cover it up because there is a very old law that forbids protest within the Capitol building. Without even going into the irony of this prohibition of free speech in the very center of our democracy, her arrest was total crap. T-shirts with suggestive slogans are not a form of protest that is restricted by any law (remember the kid in Detroit who wore the "Bush = terrorist" shirt that won in court?) and it's very suspicious that DC police, who probably deal with more protesters than any other police department in the country, would not know that distinction.

Ah well. That's not the best part. The reason this story merits a post (like I really need a reason) is because after she got arrested, Sheehan could not get ahold of her lawyer. This in itself isn't that interesting, except that the person she called after giving up on her lawyer turned out to be my constitutional law prof! In his non-law professor life he specializes in first amendment law and apparently has enough notoriety that someone gave Sheehan his number as "the guy" to call when she was in trouble. My prof made a few calls and got her out of jail, and now I get to claim that I'm one degree of separation from Cindy Sheehan... or is it two? I forget, is it zero degrees if you know the person, or if you ARE the person?

This is why I love living in Washington.

Oh, and as another fine example of why I love living in Washington, guess who I got to talk to last night. Bob Woodward. You know, the Woodward of "Woodward and Bernstein" who broke Watergate? Yeah. Not that we had an in-depth exchange or anything, I just got to stand at a mic and ask him a question after he gave a lecture on national security and the Iraq war, but he did tell me that my question was "very well articulated" so I get to brag that I met Bob Woodward and he thinks I'm articulate. Yeah, it's all about spin baby. Maybe I should put that on my resume.

Ok, gotta crash. Sooo much to do this weekend. Apparently there are these "job" thingys that we're supposed to get for the summer and Washington is something of a popular place for law students for some unfathomable reason. Personally I think it's probably the ducks in the reflecting pool.

Right, so where the hell am I now? *looks around* Hmm, I seem to have just gone through some sort of hedge and am now surrounded by trees. Hey! I'm out of the Shire! Which means that I'm... err... in the Old Forest. Aw crap, where the hell did the path go? Damn you entwives and your machinations! Total to date: 75 miles.

Fire! No wait... aww crap

2006-01-31T15:37:00.000-05:00

So was sitting in the library last night (yeah, big surprise there), minding my own business and trying to figure out exactly which flavor of Sanskrit the Bluebook (legal citation manual) is written in (I'm still not sure), when all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. Now, the last time I was in a library during a fire alarm, I was at the University of Michigan studying engineering and observed a somewhat troubleing phenomenon...

nobody moved.

Now, I can understand if this sort of thing happened all the time, but I spent most of that semester living in the library (yeah, not much has changed) and that was the first time it had happened. People just glanced up from their work, confirmed that there was no immediate presence of smoke, and put their heads right back down.

Law students on the other hand apparently have a bit more sense. Yeah, we all took the time to pack up our things (hey, I had to save my work, bookmark the page that seemed to refer to the proper citation, put everything away and put on my headphones), and our exit from the building was more grumbly than timely or orderly, but at least we got off our asses. Now, it could be that engineers simply reason that "someone will come get me if there is real danger," while law students think "ugh, loud noise hurt ears, leave now," but I choose to believe that we're just a little less psychotic.

Anyway, I decided that someone was telling me that it was time to go home - probably the fire alarm, which not only has the traditional loud beeping and flashy lights, but also comes equipped with some ernest-sounding man saying "attention, attention" followed by a disconcertingly cheerful sounding woman who says something like "there has been a fire emergency reported in the building, please make your way to the nearest exit." Sheesh, there are easier ways of getting me to leave a building.

So I made my way outside and looked around for any smoke or people who are on fire, but discovered neither.

Ok, there was that one guy, but I'm pretty sure it was a cigarette accident.

Yeah, so putting my highly evolved sense of curiosity on the back shelf, I decided not to stick around to see what happened next (did you know that mammals, and particularly primates, are the only animals whose curiosity trumps their flight instinct? Any other animal has the good sense to run away when it senses danger, but we super-smart apes just find a spot we think is safe - like up a tree or across the street - and hunker down to watch the show... you'd think behavior like that would be selected against) and started walking home. I gotta admit, every time I glanced back over my shoulder (there's a "Lot's Wife" reference there, but I'm not going to be the one to make it) I felt a little disappointed that there was no smoke pouring from the building. Not that I really WANT the recipient of all my hard-borrowed cash to burn down, but I always feel vaguely cheated when I'm ushed out of a building by an alarm that turns out to be for nothing.

*imagine there is a picture of a burning building here, damn thing won't upload*

Yes, because I know you all stay up late wondering, this is what passes for excitement in my life these days ;-) You just wait until my prof's campaign gets under way and I start having an extracurricular life again. Oh, didn't I mention that yet? I'm volunteering as a deputy precinct chair for my prof's run for the Maryland state senate, I'll be second-in-command for whatever needs doing in one of the 28 precincts in his district, but this won't be getting into full swing for another few weeks. If you're interested, go check it out.

Oh, and the update. It's only been 13 hours, so I've just inched forward a little bit and am wandering through Farmer Maggot's turnip field. Total to date: 62 miles.

God damns... who?

2006-01-31T03:07:00.000-05:00

Ok, a friend sent me this link and I just had to post a comment about it.

*twitch* see, this is the sort of thing that makes me want to ask the mainline church to cut back on sending missionaries to the developing world and instead send them to Kanasas, seems to me like these guys could use a little more "love thy neighbor" in their lives... not that it would work mind you, but it would be a nice gesture. Oh and this is good, according to wiki, the esteemed Fred Phelps is himself a disbarred lawyer who got the boot for filing frivolous lawsuits and intimidation.

*grumble* stupid belief in *grumble* free speech *grumble* stupid ethics *grumble* telling myself that he has the right to say whatever he wants *grumble*

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I can see farmer Maggot's house up ahead. Total to date: 60 miles.

Insult to injury

2006-01-27T13:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, I get it, the school wants to make sure that we get certain pieces of information. So here we are at a workshop that we are required to attend, listening to these guys from the legal research and writing department basically recite to us the stuff that is already covered in the handout that they gave us. Unfortunately, they really take attendance seriously. They've got THREE sign-in sheets circulating around the room, and we have to sign each of them or else they'll assume that we snuck out at some point. In every other aspect we are treated with the utmost respect, after all, we're LAW students. This school is full of some of the smartest and most motivated people in the country and there isn't a single person in the room who is not going to spend a lot of time and effort to put together a good writing sample for prospective employers. Yet they feel the need to confine us in a room and recite the contents of a handout to us by shovelling advice that is obvious even to me, the mostly illiterate engineer. Sure, the school wants to make sure that we understand that this is important... but one of the great fundamental legal concepts that they teach us is that people are responsible for knowing what they have been told. They don't take extra effort to tell us when scholarships or tuition payments are due, or loan applications, or anything else that is, say, important... but oh yes, we must sit there and listen to them read to us.

Ok, I'm done now, the workshop is almost over and it's time to go get some food with dad. Oh yes, dad is in town for a few days, gonna be a good time :-).

… of course, just to add insult to injury, blogger was down when I tried to post this for "scheduled maintenance" (who the hell schedules maintenance on a Wednesday during primetime?), so I couldn't post.

Made good progress the last few days. Dad was in town and we hiked all over downtown and visited the Holocaust Museum, and the Jefferson, FDR and Lincoln Memorials. What struck me most about seeing all of that is how very different the great leaders of the past are from our current "great leader." *sigh* I miss the Enlightenment. Anyway, I'm wandering in the trees and just stopped singing because some dude in black is screaming at me... man these secret service guys are creepy. Total thus far: 54 miles.

Getting too old for this…

2006-01-25T01:09:00.000-05:00

Another legal rhetoric paper, another all nighter and another day with none of the reading I needed to do actually done. The paper is done though. I did better this time around. Usually these things get finished at about 8:30am on the morning that they are due (papers are always due at 9:00am and it takes about 30 minutes to get to school), but today I finished at about 6:00am and actually had time to do this revise and polish thing that I keep hearing about. It was mildly fulfilling, in a whacky, sleep-deprived sort of way. Now, if this added effort actually produces a higher than usual grade, maybe I’ll start doing it more often.

So geez. It’s been a while since I last posted… but then this is a law student’s blog, it says so right up there in the heading line, what do you expect? What have I been doing the last week? Reading and going to class and being sick of course. Last weekend I went with some friends to a fun little thing at the British Embassy (I know a girl who knows a guy who knows a girl that was throwing a “social event”), this past weekend I attempted to hide from the fact that I no longer know how to write. Ah well, it’ll come back.

Tomorrow the law school is sponsoring it’s annual externship fair, so I spent this afternoon rewriting my resume. You know, I had all sorts of great things to fill up a resume, I was a pretty involved guy back in the day… but the last of those days was about four years ago now and many go back even farther. Not sure that employers will be all that impressed that I was on the winning team in the 1999 Lower Michigan Math Challenge. *sigh* Ok, yeah, I have all that stuff I did in Africa which really was pretty damn cool, but do I stick that in the “Experience” section or the “Additional Experience and Activities” section? I wonder how far back I should take my employment history… hmm… I think I can definitely leave off my 1998-99 stint as a “computer lab assistant” at my alma mater.

Anyway, in addition to trying to figure out what exactly I’ve done in the last few years and which bits are relevant (those three months of madness that I spent at Michigan are definitely NOT getting put on there), I’m also helping this pretty girl in my class put her computer back together… yeah I know, they’re totally related. Poor thing has something vicious on there that’s turned off all her security updates and really made a mess of her operating system. Fortunately, I know how to fix it, and no, “fixing” does not include wiping her hard drive, just some good old fashioned geek tricks. Ahh. It’s good for the self-esteem to get some honest to goodness appreciation every now and again. Maybe all those years in tech weren’t wasted after all. ;-)

Oh, and since I was sick last week I didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked, only made it about 15 miles ‘cause it was cold and wet and I was sick and like to whine! Oh, and I was totally hiding from black riders and hangin with the elves. Yeah. So I’m camped at the Woody End. Total thus far: 46 miles.

Con sonar, crazy Ivan!

2006-01-14T16:39:00.000-05:00

*50 points if you can identify the source of this post's title*

I've heard a lot of people comment lately on the frustration they feel because Alito isn't really answering any of the Dems' questions. All we really want to know is whether is an ordinary conservative shill who will cede most of the court's power to the President, or whether he's so terrifyingly conservative that his confirmation must be blocked by a filibuster.

Unfortunately, frustrating as it is, Alito doesn’t actually have to answer a damn thing. Dems can only block his confirmation with a filibuster and if actually answering the Dems’ questions will only increase that likelihood of that filibuster, then Alito has exactly no motivation to do so. Alito knows that all he has to do to get confirmed is sit there and not say anything so outrageous that it would terrify the Dems or alienate a few Republicans. He has no reason to answer the Dems’ questions because the Dems don’t actually matter, so as John Stewart might say, this confirmation hearing is just theater.

I've come quite a long way since my last post, 31.5 miles in all. I am still on the Road, but there's a rider up ahead who looks kinda creepy; he seems to be dressed entirely... in... black.

Well shit.

And now... a poll! or shameless fishing for an ego-boost

2006-01-10T15:09:00.000-05:00

Because I answered "Sure" to question 15 on my friend Kat's blog, here's my own shameless attempt to net some flattery (or if not, hopefully at least entertainingly written abuse).

1. Who are you?
2. Are we friends?
3. When and how did we meet?
4. Have you ever had a crush on me?
5. Would you kiss me?
6. Give me a nickname and explain it.
7. Describe me in one word.
8. What was your first impression?
9. Do you still think that way about me now?
10. What reminds you of me?
11. If you could give me anything what would it be?
12. How well do you know me?
13. When was the last time you saw me?
14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
15. Are you going to put this in your journal and see what I say about you?

I'm 14 miles along on my trek to Rivendell; somewhere in the wilderness near Stock Road.

Global warming is a myth!

2006-01-09T15:55:00.000-05:00

Seriously. Just because it's 61 degrees outside in the middle of January does not mean that local weather patterns are shifting and increasingly freakish weather will soon become the norm. No, everything is perfectly normal, just stop worrying about it and everything will be fine. In fact, we'll go ahead and pass some more tax cuts to help you take your mind off of things.

*grumble*

Ok, I know DC is technically "the South" (though people who are really from the South usually tell me differently), but this isn't Florida folks. It's 61 degrees outside and the forecase calls for temperatures in the 50s and low 60s all week. Madness.

So anyway. It's the first day back from winter break, the first day of my second semester of law school and here I am sitting in the library and not working. Yep, everything's back to normal.

I'm in a birch grove.
Total distance covered in my trek to Rivendell: 12 miles

So far, so good

2006-01-06T23:15:00.000-05:00

See, here's where this blogging thing (yeah, you will have to listen to my introspective musings on the nature of the blogging experience for at least another few weeks, deal with it) gives me pause (or maybe it's the chili... that could be too). My instinct is to treat this like a journal, writing down things like "Woo hoo! I'm not flunking out of law school!" and then follow it up with the one grade that has been posted so far and comment on my satisfaction about getting an A- and my worry that since that was the exam I felt I had done the best on, maybe the other grades will not be so good.

But then I pause. I assume that, eventually, someone might actually read this. Simply writing down what is already bouncing around inside of my skull a'la a journal seems to defeat the purpose of putting said journal online, since the only intended audience is, well, me. Putting something online implies that my intended audience is the internet community, and more specifically my friends. However, that means I'll certainly be censoring some of what I write, especially gossip that I probably should not share with the general public or private thoughts along the lines of "oh GOD *name omitted to protect my ass* looked hot today, I would love to *remainder of sentence also omitted to protect my ass*"). Moreover, if I'm writing for an audience, it would probably be overly presumptuous of me to assume that the day to day details of my life are the least bit interesting, leading me to conclude that I should make these posts somewhat entertaining. So without further ado, I present the most ironic license plate I could find.

Oh, and I've crossed the river and am now in Tookland. Total milage: 5

The road goes ever on and on...

2006-01-06T03:02:00.000-05:00

I could tell you about my visit to the federal courthouse today, but frankly, it wasn't very interesting (though apparently both Scooter and Abramoff will be tried in that building, so perhaps more interesting visits and posts will follow) and I would rather comment on something more entertaining.

So anyway, I'm finally giving in and sorta getting sucked into this blogging thing (yeah, like 4 years behind everyone else, but no matter) and so tried to leave my very first non-political commentary (I tend to leave *well-reasoned* comments on conservative blogs) comment on a friend's blog, only to discover that I apparently must actually maintain a blog on that site in order to post as anything except "anonymous" (if any livejournal users care to enlighten me otherwise, please feel free, otherwise...) Bah! Fie! Fie I say! ... why do I get the feeling that this blog is going to turn into a "posts only appear when Erik gets annoyed by something and feels like sharing?" Maybe it's just my imagination.

Right, so actually getting down to the point, a friend has pledged to walk from Bag End to Rivendell and beyond, a journey of 458 miles (as seen here)... at the gym. I won't be joining the "nerds on treadmills" team, but it sounds like a really neat idea, so I'll periodically update the approximate milage that I rack up stalking... err, hiking around DC. Hey, I'll even be carrying a "great burden" during most of those miles, sure it'll be a laptop and lawbooks instead of an evil source of ultimate Power... *insert clever comment about how law is actually more evil than the One Ring* Anyway, I'm going to retroactively count my walk to the store and back this evening, so the grand total to date is 1 mile, putting me somewhere on the lane heading west.

Oooo, I'm out the front gate.

Of techno and pushpins

2006-01-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

Current annoyance: my entire house is made of plaster, this makes finally putting up some decorations (dug my old posters out of a box over the holidays) very tiresome.
Current score:
- Pushpins bent into unusable oblivion: 10
- Pushpins successfully pounded into molded-rock wall: 8
- Posters hung: 2

Right, time for a beer.

As for the techno, last Friday I went to The Nation with some friends of mine that had flown in for New Year's. The Nation is a massive club down in southeast DC (Navy Yard stop on the green line) and was awesome. Sure the cover was outrageous and it was full of people much younger than me (though I was certainly not the oldest there), but it also had the best techno I've heard in a long time. Must have danced for almost four solid hours before crawling home. Had it not been for the huge box of cookies that one of my friends gave me for christmas, I probably would have danced off at least 2 pounds. *happily contented and sugar-buzzed gumble* Ahh well. Am definately going to have to go back there though, nothing quite so cathartic as going totally spastic on the dancefloor to a beat so fast that nobody can tell whether or not you're following it.

Pros and cons of being home

2006-01-04T17:27:00.000-05:00

Pretend this was posted on Dec. 28 *damn you spotty stolen internet connection, damn you*

Pros:
- Vastly increased food budget
- Run of mom's "much nicer than mine" kitchen to turn that increased budget into yummy, fat inducing goodness
- Massive numbers of christmas cookies
- Zero expenses
- Almost zero responsibilities
- Sleeping until 11 every day
- Hanging out with my brother
- Hanging out with my parents (yes, these are separate)
- Presents!

Cons:
- Nothing to do except hang out with family (parents moved to Illinois 2 years back, and I know exactly nobody who spends their holidays in Champaign)
- Having a greatly expanded food budget and free run of the kitchen so that my brother and I can eat like pigs and consume far more christmas cookies than is even remotely healthy... oh and the congregation seems to believe that the pastor's family is in danger of starvation due to insuficcient cookie intake, so several families dropped off additional supplies... I must have eaten over 200 cookies so far... this is only bad because I've gained 6 pounds in 8 days. *burp* Oi vay.
- Selective parental incompetence: yeah, sure they're both really smart people, but for some reason they are incapable of doing anything remotely technical, so they wait for me to come home. Sure I can understand why installing a dimmer switch might be a little beyond them, but how hard is it to hook up a stereo or print some pictures? Sheesh.
- That's pretty much it. I love my family and have had a great time over the holidays, but it'll be good to get back to DC.

And just because I feel like filling up more space, here's the grand list of this year's christmas gains:
- Lots of books that I will have no time to read, but love anyway
- Really comfy slippers
- Some new dress clothes, for all those upcoming job interviews *crosses fingers*
- Bunch of stuff that my little bro picked up for me in Asia, like a 2GB flashdrive and season 3 of the West Wing.

Oh look, more cookies!

The Goblet of Explosive Flatulence

2005-12-27T20:57:00.000-05:00

So here I am at my parents' house, sipping a cup of red wine and engaging in our traditional family holiday activity of watching the James Bond marathon on Spike TV; yeah, we're a family composed mostly of men :-P. However, since I've seen "For Your Eyes Only" several times before, I figured I'd take the opportunity to comment on last night's activity: seeing "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Ok. I admit it. I'm a Harry Potter fan. I resisted it all the way up until about the time book four came out, but then I was playing wingman for a buddy of mine at this awful party... well, to make a long story short I found myself hiding on the porch where I found a copy of HP and the Sorcerer's Stone... I only read about 20 pages before my buddy (finally realizing that flight was really the best option) came to ask for a ride home, but that was enough.

Anyway. I think the books are terrific. The writing is fantastic and the stories are, if nothing else, a lot of fun. The movies on the other hand... well I liked the third one a lot, but the others were pretty awful. The most recent one was no exception. Like the first two, number four spent way too much time trying to cover as many scenes from the book as possible and far too little time developing a coherant and entertaining movie. Far better to just take a few really important scenes, do a good job developing them (as opposed to the piss-poor development actually seen in the movie) and let them tell the story instead. It is as though the producers are afraid that rabid mobs of outraged teens and young adults will descend like a fiery rain of blood and death upon their studios if they sacrifice someone's favorite scene. Bah. The only time movies based on books really turn out well is when the book is just a base and the movie is a stand-alone product.

Ok enough. My ability to simultaneously blog and appreciate the subtle nuances of Bond's interaction with the female supporting cast is quite limited.

Law School Exams

2005-12-23T17:18:00.000-05:00

Oi. Exams in law school are something of a bitch, which I'm sure many who read this blog already know. Seriously. You study your ass off for a whole semester, take a few hundred pages of notes, read and brief a few hundred cases spend countless hours making sure that you grok the law in its entirety, but your grade for the class comes down to a single 2-4 hour test. Seems to me that these tests are less an evaluation of how well you understand the material (though you'd better have a good grasp of it or else you'll spend the whole exam just looking stuff up) and more an evaluation of how fast you can compose a broad essay that fits in as many different points of law as possible. Sure the profs tell you that all you really need to do is answer the question, but from what everyone else tells you, doing that is what you do to get the passing grade. Getting the high marks requires you to answer the question AND throw in everything else that is even remotely related.

Then, as my torts prof said, exam grades are entirely artificial and arbitrary. You either write down what the prof wants to see or you don't. The argument/answer itself is not so important so long as the correct topics were mentioned and understanding was demonstrated. I'm sure that the theory goes something like "if the students know the material well enough, the issues will be obvious" but honestly, the sort of time pressure we're put under makes it nigh impossible to address any given point with any sort of real nuance or depth without sacrificing the same on other questions, and (at least for me), knowing the true depth and nuance of the law almost seems a detriment because it is so very easy to get caught up in one explanation and then not have time to adequately address the other points (yeah, sure, the answer is better time management, but that only works if you remember to look at your watch). Anyway, time management aside, I question whether these exams are really an efficient evaluation method. Seems to me that because there simply isn't enough time to really show the prof what one has learned, there probably won't be all that much difference between the exam written by a student who really knows the law in all of its complexity and that of a student who only knows the basics. I dunno, I haven't gotten my grades yet, so I'll stop kvetching for now and get back to you once I've seen how things went.

And so it begins

2005-12-23T15:57:00.000-05:00

One down, five to go.

Welcome to my blog. Now that I am a professional at this whole law school thing (one semester done), I figure I will actually have the time and perhaps even inclination to maintain this little project. My intention is to create a running narrative of my life as a law student and a sounding board as I try to hash out my beliefs on religion, politics, philosphy, italian and tex-mex cooking and how each intersects and overlaps with the others.

I'll start with a series of reflections on the past semester and then work from there.

Welcome and enjoy!