On running...and kicking...and punching...and moving.

Soo.

I kickbox now.

It is the most amazing thing that I've ever done. It's hard, but it's straightforward. It's like physical origami - the actual thing you're doing is simple to understand, but the execution is ridiculously difficult.

Block from the outside in. Parry from the inside out. Four steps to every kick. Pivot the foot that's not kicking. Keep your hands up. Don't lean in to a punch. The front hand is the speed hand - the back hand is the power hand. Shuffle forward, shuffle back.

I also run now.

Something else that is incredibly simple. Walk. Then go faster. Then go fast enough that both feet are off the ground at some point in each stride. Don't stop. Until you're back home. Then stop.

I'd stretch, but I'm not that into not being injured.

I did my second 5k today. I was too sick to do it, but I already paid the entry fee. Therefore, I threw up. Somewhat distressingly, my time for 5k-where-I-was-sick-and-threw-up-next-to-someone's-honda is 6 second shorter than my time for 5k-while-healthy-and-not-vomiting.

I also just moved.

Something that seems incredibly simple - find all stuff in apartment, shove into containers, convey to new place, remove from containers - and is in fact incredibly complicated.

Find stuff. Identify stuff. Sort stuff which is meaningful from stuff which is actually retained trash. Sort stuff again into stuff which should occupy new apartment, and stuff that should be shoved into the basement of new apartment. Identify analogous locations for all stuff once conveyed...very, very difficult. Exhausting.

If moving were somebody, I'd punch it, and kick it, and then run away from it - if it ever threatened me again. But, unfortunately, it's a process, not a person. Processes cannot be punched in the kidneys, and running away from moving is actually just making the affirmative decision to either become homeless or never, ever, ever move. Which is hard when one isn't a homeowner.

That's all.

No real point.

Seriously, though - if you ever get the chance, try kickboxing. No matter who you are. No matter what you ordinarily like to do. It's like...1.2 times as fun as making cookies. And that - is my highest endorsement.

Yes, I'm a stereotype.

Which stereotype?

Well. Basically this one: Yes. Goddamnit. It's come to this.

I mean, I worked for Starbucks for three years. And I went to Bennington. And I spent a term working in legal services. And now I'm going into debt to become a lawthing.

But I think about it.

And you know what? I worked really fucking hard to look this fucking generic. Although I did go to Bennington, I'd like it to be known: I got kicked out.

You want to know what's hard? Getting kicked out of a school with no grades, no homework, no organized structure or requirements of any kind. It took a lot of moping, generally pathological passivity, and a resolute refusal to apply myself to anything but the continuous association and disassociation of inappropriate quasi-sex partners. When I look back, I'm astounded that I was able to make such a consummate wreck of those years without the aid of a respectable substance abuse problem.

You know what's even harder?After being booted from said liberal-arts fairyland, looking at your debt, and your relatively low level of skills, and your transcript...to say "Shit, yeah- I'll try again." But, you know, I did. And I chose, after a while, a school that was happy to take me, as long as my checks cleared. And I found a job that gave me health insurance, even dental. So starbucks. And when I found myself, suddenly and almost inexplicably, graduating from college...I decided to go to law school. And it was hard. And it IS hard. Not the work; the lifestyle. The expectations. The presumption of passion and dedication. The uncomfortable chairs.

And I've taken out a great deal of loans to indulge the manifestations of my stereotypy: a one-bedroom apartment; ikea furniture; occasional bacon. And I've been lucky enough to acquire a lovely boyfriend who, through endurance, patience, intelligence, and kindness- amuses and refreshes me and fulfills my baser needs .

I don't mean to write a love letter to myself, about the heroic way I mitigated the effects of my own self-indulgent blue period. I don't want to solicit boundless praise for acting like a responsible adult when faced with unforeseen, yet ordinary circumstances...

My point is more simple. Some of us are born stereotypes; some achieve stereotypicality, and others have it thrust upon them. And, goddamnit, when you've been staring impotently at an administrative law final for going on ten hours, any achievement seems worth trumpeting.

A Vitamin-Enriched Pork Rinds Solution

As, I think, I've explained before, a "Vitamin-Enriched Pork Rinds" solution is a situation where you've correctly identified that there IS a problem, and you've tried to find a solution to that problem- but the chosen solution only reveals a deep misunderstanding of the problem you're facing.

For example: Certain people only have access to snack food and overpriced processed food from convenience stores, because they live in so-called "food deserts," where there are no grocery stores nearby which offer fresh produce, meat, and dairy. Therefore, these people are often more likely to suffer from malnutrition than people who have access to grocery stores. There is a problem here. Vitamin-Enriched Pork Rinds are not THE solution, to THE problem, but they might be thought of as A solution, to A problem. They also, in this situation, help avoid any discussion of any larger forces which have caused the immediately apparent problem.

A vitamin-enriched pork rinds solution often has an element of denial.

Here's one.

A doctor on the Cape has been arrested in connection with the death of a patient as a result of general anesthesia, which was administered during an abortion. This is a vitamin-enriched pork rinds situation. Even if the facts alleged in the indictment are true; that the doctor administered general anesthesia without proper monitoring equipment, and as a result, the patient's resuscitation was delayed, and as a result, the patient died - then the apparent problem (bad doctor) and the apparent solution (arrest the doctor), are actually a single, small aspect of a much larger problem:

This was a doctor doing a medical procedure under general anesthesia in an office. Why? Because when necessary medical procedures are so politicized and stigmatized that doctors, medical personnel, and hospitals, are under pressure not to provide or participate in them- the procedures become dangerous. They're performed under different circumstances; they're performed by a different population of professionals. When you take a medical procedure outside of the mainstream- people will be hurt. People will be exploited. And blaming the doctors will not solve the problem.

Dear Cary Tennis,

You have been trolled.

Love,

The internet.

And yes, I am aware that Mr. Tennis seems to doubt the validity of the letter. But you can't wink and smirk at a dolphin fucker, secure in your advice-columnist seat. The first rule of maintaining the balance between the aspirational, journalistic internet from the powerful, trolly, furries and anime porn internet. You can't beat it, AND you can't join it.

Why?

Well, because the number of people who are able to make a living from the journalism and commentary internet is, approximately, five. And their resources are limited by their involvement in, you know, life- and their professionalism. Whereas, the number of people who are able to find some personal fulfillment, in some horrid-fly-torturing-shit-photographing way- is, approximately, fifty bajillion. And those fifty bajillion don't do it for a paycheck. They do it for love. You can never beat them. They're like the viet cong, if the viet cong had to stop every seven minutes to masturbate. They're legion, they're well-motivated, and they're on their home turf.

God help us.

Saw Wall-e this weekend.

Movie was good; a little slow paced, not as beautiful as the rat-chef movie- the Chaplin angle, which has been much talked up, could have been fleshed out more. The animation was...incredible. It was entirely possible, until the squidgy globey humans came into the movie, to forget that it was animated at all.

All-in-all, a charming movie. Except that it's entirely the most cynical children's movie I've ever seen; it's like the concept came together in the exuberance and consumption of the up-sizing budget gourmet, mc-mansionizing years of 2003-2006- while the details were finalized during the "we're old and fat and no, seriously, we don't have anything to show for it" late days of 2007. Of course, I think that IS the timeline for the movie. But the thing is- it's a kid's movie, and all the anxieties about encroaching human uselessness through a combination of efficiency and consumption- weren't veiled at all.

Humans, in Wall-E's future, are people who are born into, and die on, a space-bound cruise ship, where no one has a job, people just fill time, and our bones have receded into a general bodily mush after centuries of microgravity and the absence of any actual labor. They are ferried around without walking. They exist only to entertain themselves, go from one activity to the next, slurp all food from giant soda cups at an infinite buffet. Everything they encounter is round and safe and pre-screened and dull.

Essentially, Wall-e's human race has universally achieved the idleness of american middle-class children - the exact audience for this move.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I'll be 26.

My plans: Gym, citation seminar, work, school, cake with parents. Other than work, it's identical to the very busy birthday of an over-scheduled four year old.

I suppose you're supposed to reflect on how time passes when you turn 25, but I was just too damned busy. The last birthday I had time to really reflect on was 23; before that, 19. I'm always a little late.

I really can't think about where I am, or what I thought it would be to be 26. I definitely thought I'd have lived in more than three cities; I thought I'd be in some fantastic, creative, unconventional career- instead, I've discovered that really turns me on is a career which requires pantyhose, waking up early, predictability, and good behavior: tax law. Or, just the law, period. There are white-tee-shirt lawyers out there, and certainly tons of fake-indian-tunic-and-crinkly pants lawyers- but I know I'm not going to be one of them. I'll be lucky to be a no-stockings-required-in-august lawyer. I really pictured barefoot-and-typing, not extra shoes under the desk...

But no regrets.

No regrets.

Except I never really learned what shade of lipstick actually looks good on me. And I never traveled to Europe on my own, or went to a nude beach, or made homemade donuts. There are a few other things I'd like to do before I hit the 2-7, but they're totally private.

Chinese nipples.

"Chinese nipples" is STILL the search term that brings the most people to my blog, thus proving that the internet is, after all, just a machine that exchanges credit card numbers for a tingly feeling in the down-there.

Of course, there are other things that bring people to the internet. Searching for a doctor to prescribe ritalin, viagra, or phenteramine without an actual visit, diagnosis, or screening. There's also the bottomless human appetite for fear-mongering- topics like which foods, activities and household pets may put you at risk for cancer, date rape, autism, fibromyalgia, telemarketing, and organ theft are immortal. After sex, drugs and fear, there's only one last thing left for the internet:

fat. baby. animals.

Don't believe me? This video has been viewed more than three million times. Three million.

That's five times the population of vermont.



I just don't get the internet. But I sure do love fat baby animals.

Weird little case.

In Providence's Federal Hill neighborhood, there's a building my boyfriend and I call "Crack School," which I've now learned is actually the Grove Street School...

It's abandoned, long-term, hard-core abandoned. More than that, it's half torn down.

It turns out that the reason it's been left, for a year, half-torn down- is because the city is trying to prevent the building from being pulled down. In fact, the city wants the owner of the building to re-build the parts that have been torn down. (Registration Required).

That's not the weird part; well, it's a little weird to imagine that a city would demand that a long-abandoned building, half-rubble, be restored to its former condition- but that's Providence. That's New England city politics. Court battles are fought over minor infractions against city procedures; offenses against minor fiefdoms within the bureaucracy are never forgotten. It's not unheard of, in my town, for example, for someone to be denied a liquor license over something their father said to a city counselor fifteen years before they were born. It's not impossible that the owner of the building here outbid someone's cousin for the lot, and will thus never obtain any benefit from the fair city of providence ever again.

The weird part is the way that the owner of the building has attempted to get the permit to finish demolishing crack school. The building owner went to court for a writ of mandemus, an order which requires a public official to perform a non-discretionary function. In this case, the building owner wanted the trial court judge to issue an order requiring a building official to issue a demolition permit.

These writs are strictly common-law, older than our nation, and very rarely used. They're rarely used because in most cases, a really good argument can be made that the given public official's function IS discretionary, and therefore political, and therefore, to issue a court order requiring action would violate separation of powers.

So this is weird. And it's a desperate little move from the property owner's lawyer, and it's even weirder that the lower court judge granted the owner's request and issued the writ of mandemus- essentially ruling that even though demolition permits require assessment of many factors, and demolition permits are not an entitlement, because it's city practice to issue demolition permits in cases like these, then the function was no longer discretionary, but compulsory.

A very, very weird ruling- but, as they say, hard cases make bad law. You've got to wonder what's really going on here. And I bet the Rhode Island Supreme Court was wondering that, too...and that's why they have forced mediation on the parties. By forcing mediation, the parties may be able to agree to tear down Crack School before it gets hit by lightning again, or before anyone tries to climb around in there, and gets killed, or before anyone sues anyone for creating a public nuisance- and the Rhode Island Supreme Court is able to avoid ruling on the lower court's definition of "non-discretionary function."

More photos of Crack School/ the Grove Street School are at the Rhode Islander's flickr photostream .

More

Ethical Quandary.

So last week, I was in a weird position.

A fellow student asked for help with some legal research; nothing too involved, and nothing relating to classwork. Essentially, it involved figuring out the requirements to make a motion, what papers needed to be filed along with the motion, what the standards were for the motion being granted. No big deal.

Except that this motion involved an aspect of Massachusetts law that is in dire need of reform. And it wasn't just an academic exercise; this classmate was doing the research for an attorney that she was working for outside of school.

So I pointed my classmate to a legal encyclopedia, figuring that pointing someone in the general direction of pre-existing answers is so remote from actually giving someone an answer, or rendering material help to the outside attorney's actual clients...that my feelings about the law on this topic were not only irrelevant, but kinda self-indulgent, too. It's not as if Mass Practice is some kind of secret weapon; it takes up several shelves in the library, and is often considered the most-consulted secondary source in the state. So I told my classmate about my ethical problems with the law, and I helped her anyway.

Then my classmate couldn't quite find the answers in the encyclopedia.

So she asked for a bit more help. I actually found the relevant passages, and the forms, and noted what the relevant law was on the topic. And, again, it would be self-indulgent to imply that the research help I did was anything irreplicable- the research took me about- two and a half minutes.

But, did I do the right thing?

If people are against things, say, laws creating tax shelters, or the old-timey laws that protected married women's property from creditors, for ethical reasons - is it ethical to help others take advantage of them? How removed can the help be before you're compromising yourself? Can you render help to someone who wouldn't have the authority to make the decision to not exploit this law, or this regulation? My fellow student didn't have the choice between using this law, and counseling a client to use another ... she had the choice between completing the work assigned to her, and not completing it. The attorney would have probably groaned, picked up the same volume I did, and came to the same result.

But, in rendering legal services, many of these decisions lie with the client, not the attorney, so the attorney may claim that even they don't have the authority to choose to exploit or not exploit a certain law. They may argue that zealous advocacy actually requires the use of this or that law, regardless of personal ethics.

So it may not be self-indulgent to worry about the ethics of helping someone with something, even if the help rendered is not unique, and even if the person who is helped doesn't have the authority to avoid the controversial tactic.

So what do you think? Does it matter whether or not you're personally going to profit from giving this advice?

Follow your ethics?

Thinking about being a lawthing...

I've got two interviews this week for my next round of internships.

I'd be happy to get either of them; I'd even be delighted to get neither of them. Basically, either internship will pay a great deal of money, but I've applied for some that pay a great deal more.

And by a great deal of money, I mean more money than I have ever been paid, in my life. Not just more per hour, but if I were to get one of these internships, over the length of the internship, I'd make more money than I've made before in my life, total. Period.

These figures have got me thinking: am I worth it? and is the work worth it?

The work of a lawthing is not the hardest work I've ever done; it's not got the worst hours, and it's not the dullest, or thus far, the most distasteful. By and large, it's not just more pleasant, but easier, than the work I did as a barista.

Yes. Easier.

I think everyone would expect more pleasant; after all, being a barista does occasionally involve spills of hot things, cleaning up various goos of various origins, long hours on your feet, customers who can be demanding, demeaning, bitter, and ungrateful...while lawthing work mostly takes place in fairly clean offices, seated on a chair, with periods set aside for eating and staring at things.

But being a lawthing, even a really, really good lawthing, as I have turned out to be- is easier than being a mediocre barista, which is what I was. Being a barista required knowing what was going on, all around me, on multiple levels- predicting what to do in the next fifteen seconds, the next five minutes, and the next four hours. No time for dicking around; any mistake is immediately evident. Well, most mistakes are immediately evident -one time a trainee used the urn-brush to clean the toilets. It would have been nice if that were known sooner. Like, before someone cleaned the coffee urns.

Being a lawthing is like...being a high school student. Deadlines are written down and known in advance. Nothing is turned over without exhaustive checking and re-checking. It's research, writing, interviewing, responding, and minor administrative stuff...nothing but the actual legal reasoning, and to some extent, the writing is in any way difficult. And it's interesting stuff, too.

So at the coffee shop, I made no more than $8.44 an hour, plus tips. None of the internships I have applied for will pay me less than three times that amount. So- was I underpaid at the coffeeshop? Will I be overpaid in the fall?

Last friday-

I killed these.



With this.



I'm so bad-ass.

Gloucester High School.

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All we women, we future ex-wives

There are more women than men in law school right now, and mine is no exception. Some of my classes are seas of women; long-haired, short-haired, stout, curvy, smart, witty, humorless, political, apathetic...basically, a swathe of female humanity from the middle-class cut-throat ambitious to the upper-class post-undergrad founderers...

Future ex-wives.

We female law students, already, most of us, in our mid twenties; likely to graduate in our mid-to-late twenties; we women who have decided to forego our prime dating years, our prime-pop-culture consuming years; we women who, likely, lose most of our patience and half our social skills somewhere between the library and the court clerk's office...

The men that we will someday marry are out there, in other law schools; business schools, graduate programs, jobs- doing, substantially, the same things we are. Learning and unlearning the things that we are learning. And we'll meet them, and find ourselves in them, and develop respect and lovely even relationships...

until we get older. And they get more successful. And we're still equals; but they're offered something better. Something younger. Something softer. Something like we were before law school. Something with the sense of humor that we don't have. Something- someone- who is in middle school right now, or elementary, or a stroller.

I don't blame my future ex-husband for his future second wife. I'm so old already. I'm so tired. I'm brittle, and impatient. My eyebrows go together in the center, all the time. I am intimately aware of what soy does to my digestion. I'm cautious about new food and late nights. I can't afford a single misstep; a morning off can wipe out an entire term's work. I already need a break from me.

But what I hate is that I'm not going to get this young, easy, break-of-a-man- this lithe reward for hard work and a tax bracket greater than 35%...who is fascinated with me. Who wants to listen, and make my life easier. Someone who will love me without knowing me as...personally...and evenly, as I'd be known as a contemporary. Someone who wants to take dance classes and has an almost imperceptible refractory period.

Because, dammit, women don't get 23 year old refresh-men. Too bad.