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.

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.

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.

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.

And Another Thing

It got to 78 degrees here and was so humid that the rain storm didn't do anything to make the air feel better. The humidity has kept me awake for three straight nights - it doesn't help that the heat is turned on in my building. It is late October, what is going on here?? This place is not civilized. My New England sensibilities are offended.

Tales From Real Law School:

I spent 3 hours tonight trying to figure out the correct way to cite 3 similar statutes. In the end, I just resigned myself to the fact that there is no rule in the guide that is exactly on point and threw in my best guess. To recap: 3 hours, 3 citations, no correct answer. Tales from real law school.

I met a 1L tonight. She said she loved law school. She asked me and another 2L how we felt about it. We looked at each other and laughed in her face. "Wait until exams," said the 2L next to me. "I just cannot picture having fun learning about subject matter jurisdiction," I added, incredulously. The 1L cocked her head quizzically to the side to tell me that she had no idea what subject matter jurisdiction was. Exactly. That's why you love law school. I encouraged her to keep enjoying it for now, then reassured her that I thought she was crazy.

Underlining. More Underlining.

My blogging has been severely injured by my actually getting down to business and doing work. Doing work makes much of my life consist of staring at some nonsense in a book and underlining things that seem important so that I may promptly forget them. I got frustrated enough with this process the other day that I actually yelled at my Admin casebook. Just me sitting at my desk with no one around shouting "Oh come on! No one cares!"

The only "interesting part" of "doing work" has been cite checking and substantiating sources for an article at the behest of my journal. The process basically requires me to look through the author's sources, check that she didn't just make up her facts, and then correct her citations. It's busy work (but necessary so we don't get slammed for academic integrity issues) and I am beginning to think that this author never actually went to law school based on how badly she managed to screw up the citation style. But that's really not my big qualm. Someone else was responsible for "source collection" - gathering together copies of the sources the author used. I have been assigned 18 citations to check, consisting of 16 sources. 5 of the sources I am supposed to be looking at were collected incorrectly. 5 of 16. Almost one third. Like, they are just blatantly not the source in the citation. Security Resolution 827 was cited; Resolution 857 was collected and given to me. Guys, 2s and 5s look kind of similar, but come on we are in 18th grade. Another mistake was printing out the wrong statute. Just clearly not the correct one - different number, different name, different everything. This was unhelpful to say the least and it requires me to look like a whiny moron when I have to relate the information to my editor. Whoever collected these sources must be joking. I don't have time for this. No time!

Why does ice cream make you thirsty?

I was relating a story about petting a dog on Saturday night after I left a bar. In the middle of talking about the dog I realized that this occurred around 2 am. Why was this lady out walking her dog at 2 am? And why was I still awake with my night not nearly over? Because we all make poor decisions is why. I don't know exactly what her bad decision was, but mine was playing beer dice.