Monday, November 29, 2010

Curse you, Southwest

No more Mondays this semester. Phew. Last long day is done. You hear me? Done. One of my professors is an ex-State Department official. My mother asked me whether there was any discussion of Wikileaks publishing classified diplomatic cables. No, of course not because it won't be on the final and it could potentially be interesting. There is no place in school for such things. One day back is all it took to regain that cynicism apparently.

Not cool, Wikileaks. Not cool at all.

At the moment Southwest is my enemy. Last night my flight was delayed two hours. In addition to getting back to my apartment later than I'd like, public transportation back to DC shuts down pretty early on Sunday nights which meant that there was a distinct possibility that getting home would have been a real problem. Luckily Reza and Enoch drove me back from the airport, so I am in their debt. My initial reaction to the two hour delay was anger (go figure), but Ronya happened to be in the same terminal at the same time. So we commenced one of my favorite activities: drinking at the airport. Maybe it is the intoxicating smell of jet fuel or the profound calm that comes from watching so many tense people mulling about, but beer at the airport is just about the best thing ever.

How is it that Kanye West can be both so good and so dumb at the same time?

Today at lunch there was a conversation which occurs occasionally, the one where a New Yorker trumpets the accomplishments of his or her city and declares every other place to be irrelevant. For once another New Yorker combated this notion. Apparently he is aware that just because you can get a delicious bagel at 4am does not negate the fact that a homeless man has peed on everything in the city at one point.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

So here I am in beautiful, desolate New Paltz for Thanksgiving with the family. As with last year, this was "the family's" decision. I'm along for the ride at this resort-y thing. I've already seen Alan Alda here. He was trying not to crash his car into mine as we passed each other on a particularly narrow stretch of road. That is not a euphemism for anything, by the way, I really saw Alan Alda - from MASH, West Wing...uhhh he played Jack's father on 30 Rock last season. Also, his iTunes library shows up on the shared list. (Now I am entering into stalking territory, but how could I not be curious?) It contains lots of classical music, the audiobook of his book, and voice notes from his iPhone. Happily, I cannot access his voice notes so I am left to imagine what they sound like: "Alan Alda, this is Alan Alda. Please remember to buy a quart of milk at Stop & Shop tomorrow. Thank you, Alan Alda."

My cousin told me a fantastic story. Her friend goes to Brown along with Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. Emma Watson was in a big lecture class. One day she got called on by the professor and answered a question correctly. Someone in the back of the room souted out "Ten points for Gryffindor!"
That was clearly planned out. The kid thought he was so clever; and he was right because that's hilarious.

Why does this blog post seem like it could be in Us Weekly? I think that's all the celebrity gossip I've got.

Dear North Korea, could you please NOT do that anymore? Kthanksbye. 143.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am thankful for your friendship. And here on this blog, for your readership. I am also thankful for goat cheese and pumpkin pie, though not together.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Incoherence, Begin

Oh man my head hurts. Where's the advil at? That's my bad, hasn't happened in a while. Posting something also hasn't happened in a while, so I'm doing that...as you can clearly see. Alright, where to begin? Apparently being hungover makes me narrate just about everything I'm thinking, and makes me think just about as fast as I can type, which is pretty fast if I do say so myself. I am an excellent typo. Whoops, I meant typist (insert laugh here).

Monday was an important day. While sitting in Administrative Law, I made the conscious decision not to beat myself to death with the casebook to escape the misery of learning about retroactive application of informal rulemaking. Just reading that sentence you can clearly see why this was a conscious decision. Also, I spent an hour of my Foreign Relations Law class unsuccessfully trying to download the new Girl Talk album. Apparently it was way too much for the school internet to handle, but when I got home it downloaded just fine. I have never been happier to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to go to this school. But the album is good. I am a huge fan of mixing Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecelia" with "Get Low" by Lil' John. Never were there more disparate songs put together. Except maybe in other Girl Talk songs.

Honey is an under-appreciated sweetener.

Thursday I exercised three times. I ran, played catch with Reza, and played basketball with Jason. The latter two were unforeseen offers to do fun things, so I rolled with them. But my body was clearly not ready for that level of physical activity. My back and shoulder have been reprimanding me for the last two days. I often think poorly of professional athletes who are too tired to do things, like pitch again within a few days. But for real, I am in no position to talk. Granted, I am not a professional athlete so it is not my job to do these athletic activities. But basketball, for example, requires lots of movement. And I am terrible at it.
Here's a thing I do not like: being the shortest person in a pickup basketball game. I am not that short, I'm average. But apparently basketball attracts tall people. Who woulda thought? I also did not play basketball growing up, so I don't have the same basic skill that someone who played in high school does. Being bad at pickup basketball made me really defensive about my choice of sport; I wanted to say to people "Yeah well if you find some swords we can see what is what." I really do not ever have the same chance to demonstrate my fencing prowess in a pickup game. There's no pickup fencing at the YMCA last time I checked.

I got a flu vaccine. Now I cannot fly.

Alright, time to attempt to work. This will not end well today.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Adams Morgan sucks

Last night I declined a Four Loko and did not cave when peer pressure was applied. I have read multiple news pieces about how destructive a drink it is and how people should be very careful using it, so I think rises below the level of prudent to drink it. Thus I had no problem recalling my Dare training from 5th grade and just saying no. I had a sip of someone else's - it was absolutely disgusting. It tasted like an alcoholic, foul melted Icee that you would get at AMC Theaters. How you could be excited to drink that is beyond me. It also didn't help the case of Four Loko that a few of the girls who were drinking it kept talking about how they had heard it made people poop their pants so they kept making poop accident jokes. Let's all sign up for this beverage.
After playing flip cup at the bar (classiest bar ever!) for free (a redeeming quality to the evening), Damien and I went to McDonald's in Adams Morgan. It was around 11 PM and a police officer walked into the store. Apparently he had a shift there, and this was a necessary use of his time. Really, it was. First he had to wake up a homeless woman who had been sleeping at a table and ask her to leave as long as she wasn't buying anything. Damien was initially appalled by her presence, but had a change of heart and gave her $5 so she could keep buying food and stay in the McDonalds. (Damien absolutely wins good samaritan of the night; he later on stopped a robbery/assault happening on his street and gave chase to the robber. Damien's street is maybe not a haven of tranquility.) Then 5 minutes after the cop took up his post at McDonalds, at 11 pm might I remind you, he had to break up a fight between two groups of kids who walked in and started talking trash to each other. Within a minute of the altercation beginning there were six police officers in McDonalds. So there is a police action going one while I am sitting there eating my McDouble. That is about the last store I want to return to the next time I need french fries. I hope the rest of that officer's shift went easier, but somehow I doubt that it did. And that's why Adams Morgan sucks on weekends.

Another thing that sucks is when men have to pay a cover but ladies get in for free. I do not appreciate that, and I do not appreciate the demeanor with which women enter such establishments while the men in the group are stopped by a bouncer to shell out money. Oh, this was also in Adams Morgan. Did I mention that Adams Morgan sucks? Remember equal rights-the key word there is equal.
Of course I later surmised the reason that ladies were free. The upstairs was a lesbian club. There was so much flannel!

A brief note to myself: next time don't eat that empanada. You'll regret it almost immediately.

Friday night I saw Gavi's brother do standup. I had not been to a comedy show in a long time, so it was quite refreshing. Gavi's brother was very good and there were a few more comedians who had quality sets. Of course there was one guy who I could not stand. Right from his first joke I knew it was going to be bad. He had a voice like an annoying Gilbert Gottfried and relied on profanity as bigotry as crutches. "I'm generally a progressive guy, but I'm starting to hate gay people..." is not a good way to begin a joke. If that's your intro, that joke had better be fantastic. It was not; I was unhappy.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Administrative Law Is A Huge Waste of Time

This has been easily the most interesting week in Con Law so far. Admittedly that is a pretty low bar, like being the most delicious corn muffin. We have been talking about free speech. Monday we discussed profanity and you could tell my professor was looking forward to teaching the class. He dropped about 40 F-bombs during class, along with a bunch of other curse words that were entirely unnecessary but he just had to get off his chest. Tuesday we talked about libelous speech and he read the magazine Us Weekly to the class, including a description of a country star who has 3 pet raccoons (prompting the kid next to me to mutter "hick"...he wasn't the only one). Today we were talking about obscenity and my professor said "The court says that obscenity is worthless speech. Nickelback is worthless speech, why can't we ban that?" Thank you! That's what I've been campaigning for a while. Why not throw Five for Fighting in there too while we're at it.

Does anyone else want to spray out all of the Pam just to see how much olive oil is in it?

My brief visit to Boston was a good way to break the regular weekly cycle. I finally purchased an object of longstanding desire: a fleece-lined hoodie which became affordable thanks to student discounts on top of other discounts. Shaked couldn't get one because she isn't built like a linebacker and they didn't have smalls. I also ate myself into a Guatemalan food and candy coma with Ron and Shaked before seeing Robert Downey Jr. punch a small child in the stomach (in a movie, not in person - that would have been a much better story). I (with Shaked) prohibited Ethan from bringing a large stuffed unicorn out on a Friday night, pet my cats, and debated my mother about the utility of teachers unions. Overall, what I'd expect from a much-needed visit.

There is a New York Times story about the Onion news stories about Joe Biden. That's meta. Also, hilarious that they generated that much attention. The best part is that the Times tried to get an interview with Biden for their article. It was laughingly denied.

I'm Brian Fellows.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Too Tired, if this is incoherent I apologize

Apparently I have no time to update. I've been busy procrastinating. In fact, I just read an article in the New Yorker about procrastination in order to procrastinate doing work. How's that for meta? Then it just made me feel really bad about myself - it still didn't really motivate me to do the work that I should be doing.

BDP and Emma came in last Friday for the Rally to Restore Sanity, which was a smashing success to the tune of 200,000+ people. The signs were pretty great. For some reason my personal favorite was a counter to "The Rent Is too Damn High" which said "The Rent Is Proportional to Supply and Demand." But there were tons of great ones. The rally itself was amusing and fun. I have never been in a crowd that large before. The general tenor of the crowd was very civil, perhaps surprisingly so. There was no pushing and shoving, only cooperation and humor. It was all quite...sane. The performances themselves were varied, I'm sad that Kid Rock only did some crappy song that no one's ever heard before instead of doing that crappy song that everyone's heard. The Roots were great, Ozzy Osbourne was there (!!), and Stewart and Colbert were good times. There's probably more to that, but it's all too much to write down now. The only downside is that I got a sunburn on half of my face. I was standing in the sun for like 5 hours, I am fair-skinned, and I did not anticipate a need for sunblock (it being October 30th and all, not July 30th).

Halloween night ended well - with Ben Sandler at Ben's Chili Bowl (note: Ben's Chili Bowl is in no way associated with Ben Sandler, they both just happen to be named Ben. Sandler is in no way that I am aware of responsible for the ownership of Ben's Chili Bowl). That came after a really weird house party that I am still unclear as to why I was in attendance. I'm going to blame Alena because she's an easy target, not having a blog of her own to respond with and likely not even reading this one. Sucka.

While I'm mentioning people, I should say that the night before the rally I had the pleasure of seeing Caitlin and Molly. They are like Sister Sister with a few large differences...like they are not twins and do not have a television show. Other than that no differences come to mind (I am colorblind!). Sorry, I am really tired. I just wanted to update so it doesn't go a week with no news and my loyal readers (ha! what a joke) are not concerned that I have been picked up and shipped to Gitmo.

No political commentary about the election presently - I am too angry. Except to say that the state of Kentucky has elected a man who believes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be unconstitutional. Let's all reflect on that.