Has your refrigerator door ever been left ajar overnight?
Even if you didn't mean to, it can happen, especially during the ever-crucial hours I will dub the "Post-Midnight Chowdown". People aren't with it, it's 2 a.m., and they just want a piece of ham or something.
Well, it remains a mystery as to who the true perpetrator was, but this occurred in my abode recently. I returned from a rousing, stimulating day of Property and Constitutional Law. I open the door, and I was thwacked in the face.
The place emitted a noxious stench of warm cheese, rotten eggs, liquified butter, and other miscellaneous unpleasant scents. My unsalted butter had melted, leaking all over the fridge and the floor, and a left-over yogurt parfait had congealed almost completely. My apartment comrade and I, we tried Febreeze, scented candles, window-cracking and Indian Cheese dances (ok, only I did the dancing), and only through a combination of these efforts over a period lasting hours was the monstrous miasma mutilated.
That malodorous plague left us, but what did it take away? And I don't speak of my $10 double-cream brie (though I do miss its rich flavor and delightfully gooey texture).
It took away my trust in the refrigerator, or rather, my ability to close it. It's going to be a while before I'll be able to look at a refrigerator only once, because who would risk having something that foul, that invasive to your existence creep in again? "Did I close the veggie drawer all the way?", "Is this damn thing really shut?", "Do they make extra-super-resilient butter?". These are questions that will coarse through my mind every time I lay eyes on that contraption for a solid week or two.
I don't want to have that relationship with my refrigerator. I'd strongly prefer to just go with it, to get my string cheese and Diet Ginger Ale and return to my affairs. One has to look back though, at least for a while. I'd like to tell myself that it's not my fault OR the refrigerator's fault, that sometimes the door is left open, all your stuff goes bad, and it does not bear anything on either party. And maybe that is the truth.
Scariest about all of this, though, is that there is no guarantee this won't happen again . Unless I stop buying brie, yogurt and other perishable items, that is. But dammit, some of the best foodstuffs are perishables. I would be committing a grand disservice upon myself if I stopped eating things I loved to eat just because some freak thing might happen and it'll all get moldy and stinky. It's no way to live, folks.
So, buy all the cheese you want friends, put it in your fridge and fear not the possibility that you will return to a stench.
For how indeed can we truly appreciate the fragrance of a rose if you have not smelt the stinky cheese?
09 February 2010
11 January 2010
Meet the New Semester...
So, after a relaxing period of not-nearly-enough days, pagan gift rituals (kidding, they're not pagan...), the arbitrary celestial event that coincides with a New Year, and a few other stuffs, I find myself in a peculiarly similar position to where I found myself not 5 months ago.
More legal doctrine to learn, more petty (and not-so-petty) human squabbles to read about, more opportunities to plug strange appliances into the library outlets, more gin to put away. Occasionally. The familiarity of the faces that surround me is a comforting perk, though.
I find that I play way more air-guitar (or the appropriate air instrument...I was at a loss as to how to play an air Pocket Calculator the other day) than I used to. I have a few of theories about this:
1. I appreciate music more than I used to, and express it more physically as an outlet to the stress associated with being a student of the law.
2. I'm unintentionally over-caffeinating myself during the day, resulting in me torching the excess energy by pretending I'm Eddie Van Halen on EVERY SONG I hear. MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY
3. I'm going insane.
I've always sort of danced around, but it's gotten way out of control lately. It's fun, anyway.
Also, I hate to be a contrarian, but some of the fundamental precepts of our judicial system are built on a rather precarious interpretation of the 1789 Judicary Act. Everyone is always holy-rolling about Marbury vs. Madison, but Justice Marshall was pretty much vomiting all over the opinion for most of the text. I like judicial review and all....but jeez. I do like the guy as a writer, though. Most prose I've read in 19th-century judicial opinions is vacuous drivel; his isn't, really, at least in terms of comprehension.
Well, that made no sense. See you in 1-5 months.
More legal doctrine to learn, more petty (and not-so-petty) human squabbles to read about, more opportunities to plug strange appliances into the library outlets, more gin to put away. Occasionally. The familiarity of the faces that surround me is a comforting perk, though.
I find that I play way more air-guitar (or the appropriate air instrument...I was at a loss as to how to play an air Pocket Calculator the other day) than I used to. I have a few of theories about this:
1. I appreciate music more than I used to, and express it more physically as an outlet to the stress associated with being a student of the law.
2. I'm unintentionally over-caffeinating myself during the day, resulting in me torching the excess energy by pretending I'm Eddie Van Halen on EVERY SONG I hear. MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY
3. I'm going insane.
I've always sort of danced around, but it's gotten way out of control lately. It's fun, anyway.
Also, I hate to be a contrarian, but some of the fundamental precepts of our judicial system are built on a rather precarious interpretation of the 1789 Judicary Act. Everyone is always holy-rolling about Marbury vs. Madison, but Justice Marshall was pretty much vomiting all over the opinion for most of the text. I like judicial review and all....but jeez. I do like the guy as a writer, though. Most prose I've read in 19th-century judicial opinions is vacuous drivel; his isn't, really, at least in terms of comprehension.
Well, that made no sense. See you in 1-5 months.
01 October 2009
Oh, Oh, Oh! Totus Floreo!
October has a pretty useless name.
Evidently, it used to be the eighth month, Octo being the root meaning "eight", back when we hadn't quite invented the wonders that are January and February. Thank goodness we (humanity) got around to that, who knows where we would be if these two completely, genuinely fantastic months were never imagined. Think of it! If there were no January...WAIT. Nothing of consequence at all would happen. But what of February, surely our comrade cannot disappear without a cosmic misalignment of insurmountable gravity! OH WAIT February is completely useless too.
So, we're left with a misnamed month. For ALL ETERNITY. IRONICALLY, January, one of those throwaway months that the Romans didn't quite get around to inventing right away, has one of the more interesting and more thought-provoking original stories. You see, Janus was the god of the doorway in Roman mythology, the gatekeeper. January, thus, becomes the gate-keeping month of the new year. Much, much cooler than a misnamed misfit of a month, of whom the only distinguishing characteristic seems to be that various horticulture begins to rapidly wither and die, and there's a day at the end of the month where public (female) nudity and eating massive amounts of product with massive amounts of high fructose corn syrup is appropriate.
OCTO=EIGHT.
Perhaps we should call this linguistic nightmare "Dectober". But wait, hold on one moment. Could it be that December....YES. Don't tell me! YES. The prefix "Dec" means TEN. Check your calendars lads and lassies, December is the TWELFTH month of the "modern" calendar.
Is nobody else offended by this? Am I shouting eternally, soundlessly into a void into which no one else will command their spirits, their collective will? As luck will have it, I will one day perish, and will no longer be alive to be offended by this cavalcade of ceaseless suffering. I'm glad that this will be at a soonish period, because I don't want to be around when they add even more months, because you know they will. They'll have to, Winter will end because humanity as deemed it appropriate to choke the planet with hydrochlorofluorocarbons and the like. The winter months will become irrelevant, and Humans will try to comfort themselves by adding new, less season-dependent months.
Evidently, it used to be the eighth month, Octo being the root meaning "eight", back when we hadn't quite invented the wonders that are January and February. Thank goodness we (humanity) got around to that, who knows where we would be if these two completely, genuinely fantastic months were never imagined. Think of it! If there were no January...WAIT. Nothing of consequence at all would happen. But what of February, surely our comrade cannot disappear without a cosmic misalignment of insurmountable gravity! OH WAIT February is completely useless too.
So, we're left with a misnamed month. For ALL ETERNITY. IRONICALLY, January, one of those throwaway months that the Romans didn't quite get around to inventing right away, has one of the more interesting and more thought-provoking original stories. You see, Janus was the god of the doorway in Roman mythology, the gatekeeper. January, thus, becomes the gate-keeping month of the new year. Much, much cooler than a misnamed misfit of a month, of whom the only distinguishing characteristic seems to be that various horticulture begins to rapidly wither and die, and there's a day at the end of the month where public (female) nudity and eating massive amounts of product with massive amounts of high fructose corn syrup is appropriate.
OCTO=EIGHT.
Perhaps we should call this linguistic nightmare "Dectober". But wait, hold on one moment. Could it be that December....YES. Don't tell me! YES. The prefix "Dec" means TEN. Check your calendars lads and lassies, December is the TWELFTH month of the "modern" calendar.
Is nobody else offended by this? Am I shouting eternally, soundlessly into a void into which no one else will command their spirits, their collective will? As luck will have it, I will one day perish, and will no longer be alive to be offended by this cavalcade of ceaseless suffering. I'm glad that this will be at a soonish period, because I don't want to be around when they add even more months, because you know they will. They'll have to, Winter will end because humanity as deemed it appropriate to choke the planet with hydrochlorofluorocarbons and the like. The winter months will become irrelevant, and Humans will try to comfort themselves by adding new, less season-dependent months.
20 September 2009
Dear John To Consciousness
This must be unique to humans.
I have occasioned to experience moments recently where I’m chugging along on a pattern of thoughts; of rational, inconsequential thoughts. And all of the sudden, a deluge of uncertainty, discombobulation and lightness. “Who am I? Is really the same body I inhabited as a child? Where are my thoughts coming from? How can any of this be?”
I suppose it’s a bit more natural for these moments to come at times of profound change. I hesitate to call what I am going through profound: its profundity is limited to a change of address and to the books I read, really. I still plop down in a chair for a few hours a week to be spoken to about something, plop into another chair to make sure I know from what context the something is emerging, and plop down into another chair in between these particular events to either eat, rest, or take in a few episodes of Star Trek which I’ve seen 40 times and yet never seem to age. So, I still sit quite a bit.
But the nature of my sitting, and what it represents I suppose, has undergone a rumbling, numbing sea change. Certain aspects of the knowledge I take in disturb me...not so much the knowledge itself, but how we get that knowledge. It’s all so much rearranging humans as figurines in some sort of dollhouse. You owed this man this duty, but you no longer do; you’re in the backyard. You engaged in this behavior which, though not at all morally or practically harmful, offends our sensibilities for some reason. Time out for you. 20 years from now, we may change our minds: but you are subject to our whims for now.
A perverse part of me wants to be the child doing all the rearranging; vetting and setting the rules would be such fun. I always liked the control of playing with action figures. Spiderman didn’t necessarily have to be Spiderman; I could rename him Erasmus and characterize him as a heavily tattooed postal worker. He could team up with Bucky O’Hare, Napoleon and Commander Dogstar and perhaps stage an invasion of some random Lego fortress, which was a competing private postal service. Or something. I think the law is sort of like this. At the end of the day, you’re either making shit up, or you’re scarfing up the shit people made up 3 days to 300 years ago.
This power, what it all means, it doesn’t usually hit me until I’ve had a moment or two to reflect on it. It’s impossible not to get lost in the verbosity and pretentiousness of it all, but ultimately, it’s quite a monopolistic system. So while my plopping may be the same (though the chairs here are generally provide a bit more lumbar support), it really is infinitely different. So maybe this does explain my disconnectedness from myself; I'm not familiar with this version of myself, the one that knows these things and lives this way, and my cranium's attempt to search the database for older matches has failed.
Ostriches don’t do this, I guarantee it.
I have occasioned to experience moments recently where I’m chugging along on a pattern of thoughts; of rational, inconsequential thoughts. And all of the sudden, a deluge of uncertainty, discombobulation and lightness. “Who am I? Is really the same body I inhabited as a child? Where are my thoughts coming from? How can any of this be?”
I suppose it’s a bit more natural for these moments to come at times of profound change. I hesitate to call what I am going through profound: its profundity is limited to a change of address and to the books I read, really. I still plop down in a chair for a few hours a week to be spoken to about something, plop into another chair to make sure I know from what context the something is emerging, and plop down into another chair in between these particular events to either eat, rest, or take in a few episodes of Star Trek which I’ve seen 40 times and yet never seem to age. So, I still sit quite a bit.
But the nature of my sitting, and what it represents I suppose, has undergone a rumbling, numbing sea change. Certain aspects of the knowledge I take in disturb me...not so much the knowledge itself, but how we get that knowledge. It’s all so much rearranging humans as figurines in some sort of dollhouse. You owed this man this duty, but you no longer do; you’re in the backyard. You engaged in this behavior which, though not at all morally or practically harmful, offends our sensibilities for some reason. Time out for you. 20 years from now, we may change our minds: but you are subject to our whims for now.
A perverse part of me wants to be the child doing all the rearranging; vetting and setting the rules would be such fun. I always liked the control of playing with action figures. Spiderman didn’t necessarily have to be Spiderman; I could rename him Erasmus and characterize him as a heavily tattooed postal worker. He could team up with Bucky O’Hare, Napoleon and Commander Dogstar and perhaps stage an invasion of some random Lego fortress, which was a competing private postal service. Or something. I think the law is sort of like this. At the end of the day, you’re either making shit up, or you’re scarfing up the shit people made up 3 days to 300 years ago.
This power, what it all means, it doesn’t usually hit me until I’ve had a moment or two to reflect on it. It’s impossible not to get lost in the verbosity and pretentiousness of it all, but ultimately, it’s quite a monopolistic system. So while my plopping may be the same (though the chairs here are generally provide a bit more lumbar support), it really is infinitely different. So maybe this does explain my disconnectedness from myself; I'm not familiar with this version of myself, the one that knows these things and lives this way, and my cranium's attempt to search the database for older matches has failed.
Ostriches don’t do this, I guarantee it.
07 September 2009
I'm In Love With Destruction
Chipped teeth, lacerated chin, cracked vertebra at a Taco Bell. Collapsing roofs, violent tractor accidents, exploding Audis, and the act of apathetically watching a man scream, flail around and drown..for half an hour.
Perhaps these are events that will fill up a screen in a new John Woo-directed film. Or some other director, I really don't care. I'm a doctor, not a film critic.
But what they truly are is the bizarre, immaculate, undeniably amusing events that have colored my law school reading thus far. If nothing else, case law has illuminated to me the seemingly endless possibilities of human incompetence, indifference and of a particularly profound brand of rancorous stupidity. It is at once depressing, exhilarating and exhausting.
I write this at my home, not at school, and these weeks have been such a whirlwind, such a wonderful shock to my functioning, that I find myself puzzled that any of it has happened at all. This high a volume of new people, new concepts, new surroundings, new lifestyles, new underwear...err....well, it all seems a little surreal right now. As if I've been simply a spectator while someone else performs in my place. But I have memories of it all, so I guess it must have been me.
I'm not used to any of this. And I am reveling in that. Perhaps I'll look back at such a blog entry 1 month, or even 2 weeks, from now and say, "You surely couldn't have been that happy!" But I was, and I am.
Perhaps these are events that will fill up a screen in a new John Woo-directed film. Or some other director, I really don't care. I'm a doctor, not a film critic.
But what they truly are is the bizarre, immaculate, undeniably amusing events that have colored my law school reading thus far. If nothing else, case law has illuminated to me the seemingly endless possibilities of human incompetence, indifference and of a particularly profound brand of rancorous stupidity. It is at once depressing, exhilarating and exhausting.
I write this at my home, not at school, and these weeks have been such a whirlwind, such a wonderful shock to my functioning, that I find myself puzzled that any of it has happened at all. This high a volume of new people, new concepts, new surroundings, new lifestyles, new underwear...err....well, it all seems a little surreal right now. As if I've been simply a spectator while someone else performs in my place. But I have memories of it all, so I guess it must have been me.
I'm not used to any of this. And I am reveling in that. Perhaps I'll look back at such a blog entry 1 month, or even 2 weeks, from now and say, "You surely couldn't have been that happy!" But I was, and I am.
06 July 2009
"Sic Transit Gloria" Means Get Gloria Home Before She Throws Up In Your Car
I always seize the opportunity to use something my grandmother says as a blog title. By always, I of course mean just the one time. But I'm one for one you see, so always is an apt term.
Anyway, my intent is really not to write about the random stuff my grandma (who will soon be an octogenarian, and party's at our house, by the way) says, though I suppose that could be a supplemental blog. Then, I don't even update this one...
What my house will look like the weekend after next.
My intents are as follows:
1. Update you on Three Dimensional Rhombus.
2. Ramble on about totally rational fears.
3. Stop writing at some point.
Ok, let's tackle these one at a time.
3DR: The project initially conceived as a space opera about my cat's love of salmon-flavored glop has (d)evolved into a series of rambling, thematically incoherent sound pieces. This is probably what my brother and I are actually capable of producing.
Here is the best(!) of our glorified auditory chicken scratch, "Cackle of the Disenfranchised Donkey":
Not really sure what we were going for there, but we do play all the instruments.
Credits:
Kevin: bongos, transcendent call of the weasel, production
Jimmy: synth, perpetual wailing of the mist, eternal screeching of the bountiful eggplant, production
So there's that.
Fear:
Ever since I signed on for this law school thing, something has been gnawing on my brain, like some sort of teething child of the damned.
As much as I believe I will excel in law school, given the various skill sets I possess, I also believe that the experience, the demands and the curricula will sap me of any sort of creative or playful desires. I'm not kidding myself: it's going to be a hellish three-year sprint. But I constantly wonder whether or not it will come at the cost of what I perhaps value most about myself: my individuality, my sarcasm, my (benign) cynicism and sarcasm even. The law is, for the most part, rigid, though interpretation does lead to some interesting debates. I am, for the most part, Gumby. A match made in heaven, or in Cleveland?
It's a long shot, but law school very well might transform me into some sort of android...thingie.
Anyway, I'll try to update more often. Here's a monkey to be sorry for me.
Anyway, my intent is really not to write about the random stuff my grandma (who will soon be an octogenarian, and party's at our house, by the way) says, though I suppose that could be a supplemental blog. Then, I don't even update this one...
What my house will look like the weekend after next.
My intents are as follows:
1. Update you on Three Dimensional Rhombus.
2. Ramble on about totally rational fears.
3. Stop writing at some point.
Ok, let's tackle these one at a time.
3DR: The project initially conceived as a space opera about my cat's love of salmon-flavored glop has (d)evolved into a series of rambling, thematically incoherent sound pieces. This is probably what my brother and I are actually capable of producing.
Here is the best(!) of our glorified auditory chicken scratch, "Cackle of the Disenfranchised Donkey":
Not really sure what we were going for there, but we do play all the instruments.
Credits:
Kevin: bongos, transcendent call of the weasel, production
Jimmy: synth, perpetual wailing of the mist, eternal screeching of the bountiful eggplant, production
So there's that.
Fear:
Ever since I signed on for this law school thing, something has been gnawing on my brain, like some sort of teething child of the damned.
As much as I believe I will excel in law school, given the various skill sets I possess, I also believe that the experience, the demands and the curricula will sap me of any sort of creative or playful desires. I'm not kidding myself: it's going to be a hellish three-year sprint. But I constantly wonder whether or not it will come at the cost of what I perhaps value most about myself: my individuality, my sarcasm, my (benign) cynicism and sarcasm even. The law is, for the most part, rigid, though interpretation does lead to some interesting debates. I am, for the most part, Gumby. A match made in heaven, or in Cleveland?
It's a long shot, but law school very well might transform me into some sort of android...thingie.
Anyway, I'll try to update more often. Here's a monkey to be sorry for me.
06 June 2009
Rehearsals Have Commenced!
Alright, so maybe rehearsals is far too generous a term. "Creative sessions" is probably more accurate...if you drop the term "creative" from the phrase.
Regardless, Three Dimensional Rhombus got off the ground today with some borderline illegal jams that ranged from this weird mix of funk and Japanese folk music to Latin disco with church bells. It was going pretty well until one of the cats walked across my feet while I was playing a particularly emotional music box solo and I threw a Christian Bale hissy fit and destroyed the basement.
The sessions were documented with the following photos. No material was recorded, I only dropped my soprano sax twice (once on my foot) and we took two breaks for pretzels and Juicy Juice.
Kevin seems perturbed. What's the matter, is the arpeggio button sticking?
Yeah, ok, so it's on a pool table. Bob Dylan didn't even move out of the sewer until his fouth album was released.
Blurry, perhaps. But a genuine double-keyboard moment is too precious to pass up. I think at this point my dad asked if one of the cats was hacking up a hairball.
LOOK HOW ARTSY THIS SHOT IS WE MUST BE MAKING GREAT MUSIC RIGHT.
Note to self: Rock Band microphone probably not most effective recording device.
I hope you enjoyed this not-at-all-staged look at our not-at-all-completely-hopeless pursuit of a space rock opera about cat food. More pictures available here.
Regardless, Three Dimensional Rhombus got off the ground today with some borderline illegal jams that ranged from this weird mix of funk and Japanese folk music to Latin disco with church bells. It was going pretty well until one of the cats walked across my feet while I was playing a particularly emotional music box solo and I threw a Christian Bale hissy fit and destroyed the basement.
The sessions were documented with the following photos. No material was recorded, I only dropped my soprano sax twice (once on my foot) and we took two breaks for pretzels and Juicy Juice.
Kevin seems perturbed. What's the matter, is the arpeggio button sticking?
Yeah, ok, so it's on a pool table. Bob Dylan didn't even move out of the sewer until his fouth album was released.
Blurry, perhaps. But a genuine double-keyboard moment is too precious to pass up. I think at this point my dad asked if one of the cats was hacking up a hairball.
LOOK HOW ARTSY THIS SHOT IS WE MUST BE MAKING GREAT MUSIC RIGHT.
Note to self: Rock Band microphone probably not most effective recording device.
I hope you enjoyed this not-at-all-staged look at our not-at-all-completely-hopeless pursuit of a space rock opera about cat food. More pictures available here.
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