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.

Relief

I really have been meaning to update more frequently, but sometimes there just are not enough hours in the day. Though too many hours at night. Last night I dreamed that I was asleep when two people broke into my apartment through the balcony. It turned out they were lawyers and I talked and ate with them rather than reacting as if they were normal burglars. Then I woke up in a panic. Why? I don't know. But I hate burglars. It's a semi-irrational fear of mine, next to snakes and sharks. At least Indiana Jones has my back regarding the snakes.

The largest stress of this year so far in law school is mercifully behind me. I am overjoyed and relieved. A huge weight has been lifted. I wish everyone else the best of luck. Now all I have to do is choose a note topic. I've discovered that some other jerks did what I wanted to do first. Way to go, people who preempted me. And I met with a professor who pretty much shot down my two other ideas. So that was a fun little meeting where I am pretty sure I came off as hugely cynical and anti-human rights. I'd call that a success and look forward to my grade at the end of the semester.

Yesterday during my Con Law class there was a sorority event going on outside in the quad. Apparently the event was "Yell for Two Hours," and was conveniently timed to coincide with my professor's lecture about Lawrence v. Texas, a case about homosexual sodomy and more generally gay rights. In the midst of the lecture and after a particularly loud cheer from the sororities outside, my professor responded by saying "That's right, go sodomy!" Now that's how you enliven a class.

Yesterday I saw a man biking home from work in a suit, with a bow tie undone hanging around his collar. I don't know why, but I thought it was hilarious. Maybe it's because I then pictured Tucker Carlson on a racing bike. I bet he wears a bow tie at all times: cooking, swimming, and moonwalking.

Come on Fhqwhgads. Everybody to the limit.

Tonight I went to the Nationals/Phillies game. The Nationals lost, don't worry. It was the last home game of the season, and the foresight that I will miss baseball greatly in the off season spurred my decision. Also, they really want people to come to the ballpark. They were doing half price student tickets, they gave out free ski hats to the first 20,000 people, they had a fireworks show, and they handed out lots of other paraphernalia from the field which I did not get thrown to me because I am not a seven year old child. It was nice; Nationals Park is a fun place. But my real takeaway from the game was this: Philadelphia fans are awful. They are merciless in the face of pathetic opposition. They are boisterous, inappropriately drunk in a bad way, and bordering on cold-hearted. When you are winning by 6 runs in the bottom of the ninth and the home town fans are applauding a local player who had a great year and might not be back next year (Adam Dunn), it really is not necessary to boo the home town fans. That's just poor sportsmanship. And the $3 cap I bought outside the stadium has bad craftsmanship - shockingly.

I like Stevie Wonder a lot, but some of his songs surprise me with how bad they are.

Maybe Not the Best

Con Law final was today. It was less than pleasant. I read through the prompt for question 1, which was an EPA regulation. Then I pretty much blinked back tears. What is this saying??? Then I took a deep breath and read it again. Then again. Then I started writing. Never a good sign that I spent like half an hour reading. There just weren't a lot of issues to spot in the issue spotter. More than half of the stuff I studied was not on the test. Makes me feel like I wasted my time. I'm also afraid that I messed up one of the parts a little bit - which is a bigger deal because there were so few issues. Dammit. The second part, a policy question, went better. But who really knows? That's probably even more subjective. Overall, not the best that ever happened.
The only solace is that everyone felt badly about it. My friend Sarah did actually cry during the test. There's no crying in finals. Pull it together. Afterward everyone headed to the bar. I went with a few people and had a beer. They all also had wings on special. A few months ago I swore to be more careful around chicken wings. Luckily tonight I finally followed through on that! Tracy complained about her stomach later on. Mine was fine. Tortellini that I cooked - much better for my stomach. Then back to school for some property studying. Tomorrow is all-Property day. Very exciting.

Before the exam I remembered something and I'm so happy I did. I remember that This Is Sparta!!! Then the test kicked me into a big pit. Oops.

I truly wish there was something else to report. But not much happens in the library.

Semester: Take 2

Today was the first day of classes of the second semester. I'm actually excited for Constitutional Law. The professor is a visiting faculty member from Duke. He has a Ph.D. in Theology and a southern accent. A number of my classmates said he was difficult to understand. I think they are being elitists and need to open themselves up to respecting different types of people. When pressed their complaint was actually that he speaks too softly. I have no adequate retort. Maybe listen harder? Grow bigger ears? The professor also insists that we not use computers during class. It's going to be hard to gchat without a computer. I'm actually a fan of this policy. It's going to force me to pay attention to a subject that I'm interested in. As weird as it sounds, there was actually a chance I wouldn't do that. The perils of law school.

Another peril of law school will be going to my LRW class tomorrow (now formally called "Introduction to Advocacy," which makes it sound like I don't know how to advocate a position - if you know me, then you know this is not true. I am an excellent advocate of anger, refer to the following). The peril in going to the class mostly entails sitting quietly, feigning interest rather than throwing the projector through the white board and attempting to incite violent overthrow of my professor's tyrannical rule. Seriously, he sucks. The class is the one thing in his life he has control over; he certainly doesn't have control over his work or personal life what with being a fifth year associate. It's all he has man. Please, take out the fact that you are at the whim of your managing partner 24 hours a day on a class of first year law students, that would be great.

There are a ton of things that happened over break. Too many to recount all of them. But Mostly I saw a ton of people, which was really nice. I'm not sure if there was any day that I only hung out with one person. And even with that I still did not get to see everyone I wanted to see, or see some people (if not everyone) as much as I would have liked.

New Years Eve was spent in Boston. Me, Jonah, Jessie, Caitlin, Molly, and Eli got a hotel room. Other people, including BDP (yay) and Nelson (boo...big time) came by. I have no idea how everyone got there. The hotel was in the South End, where, despite being from Boston, I have spent barely any time. Plus driving on New Years Eve isn't exactly the greatest idea. We slightly trashed the hotel room. Molly spilled something gross on the closet door, Jonah almost jammed the window, someone almost broke the bathtub, etc. The next morning there was a good deal to clean up - mostly taken care of by me and Caitlin. After pregaming at the hotel, we went to a club nearby. (Sidenote: I hate clubs. They are sketchy, expensive, and loud. Any place that date rape seems prevalent I just can't get behind. The club was clearly the girls idea. Something along the lines of needing to dance. I've never said "I just need to dance" in my life.) The club was close, and we were all a little warm on the inside, so we wisely did not bring our coats on the way to the club. It was late December (and then early January) in Boston, so it was clearly freezing. The five minute walk included getting slightly lost, so that was bad enough. Then we picked up our pre-ordered tickets from the bouncer and were told to wait on line to get in. Wait on line?? We have tickets! So did everyone else in line, it turned out. We were probably on line for a solid seven minutes, but that was seven minutes of awfulness. Why didn't we bring our coats again? Oh right, because we are idiots. By the time we got to the front of the line I had never been happier to get into a club. Of course that faded quickly when I had to save Jessie from sketchy guys three times in the first five minutes. What do you expect? Clubs suck.

Another highlight of break involved getting Matt Brown drunk. If I had a super power, it would be the power of peer pressure. And I certainly used it on Saturday night against Matt Brown. The best part was that it was planned out with Keara and Matt Francis beforehand, and then executed perfectly. In fairness, I am not the one who brought out the bottle of tequila. The fact that it was tequila was just an added bonus. But techniques such as bringing a lime and salt for easy use worked perfectly. I hope Matt Brown had a good time. We did sing songs for him! (Matt Brown, you don't have to put on the red light.) And we got some choice quotes. ("There are only so many nights in a day.") Leah laughed until she cried when Matt Brown fell off a chair. Whoopsies. We also spent a lot of time singing that Miley Cyrus song...again. But now, after hearing it enough times, I sort of know the words. That's a little embarrassing, but not more than her (or, to be more accurate, whoever wrote the song for her) attempt to rhyme "crazy" with "famous" or the line "the butterflies fly away." I've mentioned how dumb that line is to a lot of people and just about every girl has responded, "You know, like the butterflies in her stomach." Yes, I know. But it doesn't make that a better lyric.