Why Do Things Happen

Eight years ago, things were not as simple. We were poor, childless, and I was a thirty something law student. Now, we have two kids and one more coming in June. I am a licensed, non-practicing attorney. What will the future hold? Something terrible? Something wonderous? Who the heck knows? All I know is that this place has no one watching, so I can say what I want and no one is there to view it. A bit liberating. At least until my kids find this place.

Hello Again Wonky World

Yeah! Day two of blogging and not a single non-American or non-Russian search bot has even graced its presence. That's cool. This blog don't need no haters anyhow.

I Return

Hey Bitches,

It's been about 8 years. I am a lawyer who doesn't practice and I have accrued over half a million dollars in debt chasing this convoluted Amurican dream. What have you all been up to?

Dizzying Highs Terrifying Lows

Stuck in the man cave all evening, working through the last 40 pages of reading for a last class. I also got an internship researching certain kinds of murder that stem from repressed sexual tensions. Totally unpaid, but so far very rewarding.

My good days are officially over. I have a final project due in less than a week and a presentation to go with it. After that, a four day cram session for two exams the week after. I am rocking out to Alabama's Roll On and thinking about my family. I don't know when I will see them again, but I am certain that it won't be this year.

The in-laws came into town for Thanksgiving. I got absolutely nothing done over the long break and am now scrambling to catch up to two weeks behind everything. I did manage to help put together a 1000 piece puzzle. The wife went to Mass with an 80 year-old woman from work. All I need is early onset Alzheimer's and I can officially enter my twilight years. Maybe the seasonal effective disorder will help speed along the process.

In other news, it is fucking cold out. The sun goes down at 4:00 PM. I am living in a vibrant city full of art and culture, but all I want to do is go home and go to bed until Spring. This is living. I have sat through several presentations at school in the hopes of a free lunch. In my decision to choose the legal profession, there is the idea that networking is critical to a successful career. That, and the ability to work an 80 hour week for 51 weeks a year and not develop a debilitating drug habit. What in the fuck was I thinking. I live like a nursing home resident and study like a neurotic teenager with overbearing parents. Ugh.

On a positive note, I have been having some of the weirdest, most vivid dreams of my entire life, which brings me back to a story from my youth. I remember specifically that once a year, every year, I would have a dream recounting my adventures from the entire year. This happened from the age of eight to about twelve, then puberty hit and I am sure the sudden discovery of masturbation destroyed that section of my subconscious that kept these dreams rolling. But I digress. At eleven, I began writing my dreams down. The journal has long since ended up on a burn pile along with the fifty volumes of shitty Bukowski tribute poetry that made me think I was special in high school and the first three years of college. Anyway, writing the dreams down helped me remember the dreams to this day (I should really be writing about the dream I had where Hitler conquered a small town in western Missouri in 1974, then started the first successful wholesale chain store dealing specifically in Japanese tentacle porn... too soon. Too soon.).

Anyhow, at 11, I had my dream of the events of the year. Freddy Krueger was chasing me through a convention center. Booths were set up displaying key events of the past year. That prick bully who screamed like a four year old girl when I bloodied my own nose in front of him and flung three red drops on his whiter-than-white catholic school uniform shirt laughed from his booth as Krueger disemboweled him. My dog Moses looked up at me from a display of my parent's old living room, audibly farted, and laid on his side as I ran by. Krueger was stopped by the funk. I saw Einstein sitting on a silver throne, holding a glowing crystal I assumed was an atom. He said something to me that I don't remember, but I was put at ease. I woke up. I was standing in the hallway. Apparently, I had become a sleepwalker.

I remember this because a couple of weeks ago I was watching television late into the night. A channel on the rabbit ears plays movies from the 70s and 80s and is the only thing on that isn't an infommercial after 1:00 AM. A movie called the Dungeonmaster was on, starring the guy who played Bull on Night Court as Satan. It sucked, but it was better than a perpetual loop of Snuggie commercials. Anyway, about halfway through the movie, there was a scene where the hero and his love interest were trapped in a wax museum of history's vilest abominations. There was a werewolf, Jack the Ripper, an African, and... Einstein. Sitting in a chair. Holding a glowing crystal. The hero threw the crystal at the animated werewolf and Jack the Ripper, as tribal spears whipped overhead.

My childhood was a sham of shitty movies.

I still sleepwalk.

But only when I am hammered.

Then I piss on random things.

Last time was a couple of weeks ago when I crashed at a law school buddy's apartment. Half in the carpeted hallway, half on the hardwood kitchen floor. On the other side of the apartment from his bathroom. If I had crashed at home that night, I would have made my own toilet with the precision of a spitting cobra lancing a Cheerio.

At least I've got that going for me.

Goody Gumdrops

Things are going much, much better right now. As in, this moment of time and space, this little, brief speck of dust on God's floor that he always sees when his is dropping a deuce of new universes into the grand scheme of things.

I gave a presentation in public and did not die, although my hands did not stop shaking uncontrollably until twenty minutes after I was finished. I am shy when I am sober, what can I say. I also got a project back and was expecting a terrible grade. I got the highest grade for the project that I have ever received since I started this abortion of learning called law school. It was uplifting.

Friday, I have an interview for an unpaid internship. I am interested in working for the place, even unpaid, but I have a feeling that all I will be doing is looking up murder statistics on federal websites. Does that really require an interview? Still, it's a resume builder.

I signed up for classes for the Spring. I only have to go to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The pisser is that I am in class from 9:00 to 7:00. Two one-hour breaks interspersed through the day, but still, that's a lot of time on the kiester.

Miss the family. Want to buy a dog and just take my banjo and hit the road. The wife has already said no to that plan, so I am going to work on income tax homework until I stop daydreaming about a hobo pack and a pocketful of shattered dreams.

Loves.

Goose Egg

No one comes around here anymore. It is slightly liberating, but a little drab knowing that not even the little G+ogle spiders aren't looking into this little corner of the ether anymore. I digress. I have been awake since 9:00 AM Sunday morning. I was working on a project for school that is due on Friday, when I randomly checked my syllabi for Tuesday and found out I had a project due today at 4:00 that I had not even looked at.

It is done and I am a big knot of nervous energy. I once went 4 days without sleeping. That was well before you couldn't buy ephedrine over the counter at every gas station and coffee houses were open 24-7. It's a wonder I got out of high school and community college with most of my teeth.

I have to read about 80 pages of crap for tomorrow morning and I have a 500 word essay on the power of networking due in two hours. The stress... oh God, the thigh slapping, razor blade in the crook of your knee stress... it might be getting to me now.

This weekend, I studied. I need to study harder, longer, faster, and better. And get some sleep.

Project due in 2 hours.

Project due on Friday.

Project due a week from next Monday.

Midterms sprinkled in.

I do not want to be a lawyer. If I have to put up with this shit as a student, what in the hell will the workplace be like?

Loves.

Today

On this date, 63 years ago, my father and personal hero, graced this earth with his presence. He is probably sleeping in the soft whir of air conditioning as I write this.

On this date, 7 years ago, the paperwork for my DUI was processed by the court. I read over the clerk documents with more clarity today. Thanks law school. As I read, I am once again disheartened by my choice to go to law school. What I would do instead is a complete mystery. I know for certain that I do not want to hold the power to remove someone's liberty from them. I am not sure if I can protect a stranger from having their liberty taken. Given my performance in class over the last year and a half, it is doubtful I can do anything for someone else.

The nights are getting long up here in the great white north. The days are already less than 12 hours. If I wake up with the sun, I am running 40 minutes late. If I go to bed before the sun comes up, I have forgotten to do something. This is no life. Friday, I learn how to roll on the banjo. After that, at least 3o minutes a day, right when I get home. The only excuse would be if I got home after 7. Don't want to disturb the neighbors.

Happy Birthday, Papa. I hope today is beautiful.

As for me, I'll be at the library if you need me.

I have Officially Outlived Jesus

Well, then, officially, I have now become older than Jesus. Not that I am going to get half the things done in my lifetime than he did, but still, it's all about perspective.


I went out to breakfast this morning with the wife, wearing a sweater I pulled out of storage for the occasion. She gave me a New Orleans Saints jersey for my birthday, which is the equivalent of giving a deer a t-shirt with a target logo painted on it during hunting season. Still, it will be nice couture to wear while studying in the man cave.

Breakfast was at a little neighborhood diner down the street from us. We got there after 6:00 AM, so the place was packed. We got a tiny table about six inches away from a nice foursome who kept talking of old times, their favorite beers, and the amounts of particulate matter that accrues in a garage/woodshop of the course of a day of sanding. It looked a lot like this:





I didn't pay that much attention to their conversation, as I am wont to try to respect other people's privacy, but every time I closed my eyes (there was a college party next door last night, so sleep was a precious commodity), all I could picture in my mind was this:

The wife is tired of moving. I think one more move out of state will be all it takes. Somewhere they do not practice regional diction. Ah, the Midwest.

The Voice on the Phone

Passed away today of a heart attack. Funny that his baby got her start as a scream queen. Now she gets big sacks of money schlepping goo that makes your poop more predictable. Of all the movies he had anything to do with, this was the only one it saw. I remember my brother said that he would never have children because of this movie.

He has two beautiful daughters. I checked the older one for tattoos and birth marks, but the second one has been to wily to sneak a peek under her hairline. I'll start to worry when neighborhood pets start disappearing.

Never Getting Through This

Well, then. I have officially been locked in the new and improved man cave for the last hour doing absolutely nothing about the homework I have to do for "professional responsibility" class tomorrow. To remedy this, I include a picture of an image from page 14 of a Google search for "random insensitive funny."

I chose this one (and went through 13 pages of weird images that are guaranteed to make some happy, some horribly offended, and some wonder why man ass is allowed through Google's safe search features) because I have had this plaguing memory that has been poking through from my subconscious and into my waking general malaise of college life as a 30+ year-old, totally entitled, white guy.

Anyhoo, on to the memory. I am not sure exactly how old I was, or even the year, but I know that I was too young to spell (because at the time, Papa and Neenee thought it was cute to spell things out instead of just saying the word in front of a precocious child with no concept of spelling but a vast vocabulary filled with gems like "poopy" and "existential fingerbang") and it was probably sometime during the Carter administration.

It was sometime at night and I was piled into the back of the parents' harvest gold Country Squire station wagon:

Oh the awesome power.

My parents were chatting idly about something or other, spelling words out whenever I piped up in the back, probably in an effort to piss me off and then send me into a quiet, brooding mood reminiscent of that kid from the Shining whenever he let his stink finger do the talking (I had the same haircut at the time). In what seemed like the eternal ride home up Route 45 from my grandparent's house, I laid my head back and contemplated opening the car door and flinging myself out into the weeds speeding by. I touched the door handle and then became preoccupied with how the handle actually opened the door (hey, I was probably younger than 2 years-old and hadn't yet discovered fire, so shit like that was fascinating). I followed the handle into the door with my tiny hand and pressed on the foam insulation where handle met the inside of the door.

I then had a memory inside of this one, that of the urgency of finding food without teeth. I don't know why, but for some reason, that soft, pliant insulation reminded me of pressing harder on a surface for a little more sustenance. Lest this memory fade forever, replaced by black letter rules that all essentially tell me not to have sex with a client, I submit it, humbly, to this digital ether, in a little tiny corner much like my mind, that no one reads and few intentionally stumble upon.

Back to it, then. May Tom Waits play me out to a better understanding of ethical behavior....

Sands keep on Sifting Down

So, I attended a little swaray held over the weekend by one of my new young college friends. I spent most Saturday in the library getting ready for Monday, then off to celebrate with a case of Guinness and some camaraderie.

Sunday morning, I awoke feeling of death and surrounded by the torn husks of a nearly empty White Castle crave case. My memory of the evening was sharp, and disappointing. Last alcoholic beverage consumed by me was around 3:00 AM on Sunday morning. I was the oldest person there, the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Putting my several faux paus aside, I watched the local football team lose horrendously to an indifferent opposition. They had given millions of dollars to a man who had exceeded his shelf life by almost a decade. I really felt for the guy as he threw interception after interception.

Watching abysmal football made me think about my own career choices. I had a steady job as a state civil servant. It would have been nearly impossible to get fired from it, save riding into work on a stripper's bare back whilst fumbling for vials of cocaine from her sweaty, soulless wisps of over peroxided hair, sans clothing. But I digress.

My job wasn't terrible. I worked for people who were nice enough. The workload was manageable in an 8-5 day and I had a good support network of friends in town. Now I am here, hanging out with 22 year-olds, drinking way to much and spouting my philosophies on life to complete strangers. I am going to school to pursue a career that is iffy at best, provided I do not fall into one of those sinkholes like misappropriating client funds or 'really' developing my borderline alcoholism into a career.

I get at least two emails a day lauding the events happening at school. Networking is key to landing a job in the legal field, they all say. But I wonder, isn't networking the key to landing any kind of job? Do I really want to go another $100K in debt for the possibility of humiliating myself in front of a judge on a daily basis, or worse, spending real time in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for a little slip up that wouldn't make an Illinois politician bat an eye?

I have been telling myself all day, as I stumble through the last effects of a two day hangover and the beginnings of a long week of classes, that everything will work out and life will reward what I have put into it. Then I think, there's some guy working as a file clerk with the same aspirations as me and the same shot at realizing them from the comfort of a desk and union backing.

Meh. I'll change my mind in a week or two and once again be lost in the glamour of uncertain financial future. Right now, the only idea that comes to my mind is "judgment proof". Sounds like a promising career in the making.

That Cancerous Yearning

This morning I went to the discount tobacco place in a nearby sketchy neighborhood to get my reasonably priced tobacco products (seriously, a tin of chewing tobacco is $1.50 cheaper than anywhere else in town). As I alighted from the store with my purchases, I observed a little old lady feebly walk across the street. As she entered the parking lot, her eye caught something on the ground. She picked up a six inch long brown stick about the width of a pinky finger. As I pulled out of the lot, she took a bite out of the stick and I saw, for the first time in a long time, the familiar gray viscera of a certain popular meat product that I used to move case after case of in my father's old warehouse. Pangs of homesickness erupted throughout me. It was not that some random lady picked up some random trash and ate it. It was a fond reminiscence of the countless hours spent moving boxes, the dust caking black in my nostrils and the pain shooting in my back the next day, that hit me the most.

I did not see if she took another bite, but as I made my turn out of the lot, I looked back and there was a wry smile of satisfaction on her face. She snapped into a free slice of road meat. It's the little things...

The Sweet Release of Death

So, my postings are shit, to say the least. I have been extremely busy studying my ass off while accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt in pursuit of a professional degree that will end in my subpar transcript being the lead bearer of my failure in a saturated job market, but I digress.

A few things that I have learned whilst living in this great white north:

1. The sun doesn't shine as harshly as in Lower Alabama.
2. If the majority of your family moves to Lower Alabama, Minnesotans will refer to you as the "sophisticated southern gentleman."
3. No one notices that you pounded 15 Coors lights in an hour solely because happy hour only lasts for 45 minutes before you have to take an hour long shuttle to get home.
4. If you put a New Orleans Saints bumper sticker on your car, you will have a large collection of key scratches on your paint job within 12 hours.
5. Personality is key.
6. Near Beer isn't even close.
7. Liquor stores that sell real beer close at 8:00 PM on weeknights.
8. It really isn't worth scheduling 8 hours of class time on Tuesdays and Thursdays so you can have Fridays off.
9. Marriage is still a wonderful experience, but terrifying when you don't know how to console your wife because she keeps getting screwed over by "Minnesota Nice"
10. Honesty is so much better than being nice.


Anyone have any words of wisdom? Anyone still reading this? Leave a comment. I am so lonely in my mundane life of potential failure or potential success.

Been a Long Time Gone

Things are changing again. The wife and I are moving to a bigger, more lascivious apartment. I am doing the packing since I am done with summer school and she has to support my student ass. Oh woe. I was packing up delicate ceramics (my collection of authentic classic literature action figures) and was wrapping them in old coats. I pried my vinyl fubu action coat off of the clothes hangar and felt its heft. I didn't remember it being so heavy.
Being a student, I could smell money in it. I did a pat down of all of the pockets and felt a match book in the secret pocket on the lining. I pulled out the matchbook, which just happened to be wrapped in a five dollar bill along with a condom that expired in January of 2006. I don't remember the last time I wore the coat, but judging from the smells of bar and schenanigans that erupted when I shook the coat out, I probably had a good time.
I am currently jamming out to the Flogging Molly's and trying not to shed a tear for the destroyed brain cells and fuzzy memories of yore.

Uh Huh

So, I was walking by an on-site chair massage place, taking in the scenery, when I swear, from behind the reception desk, a man dressed in denim and black leather, looking like an actor portraying Sam Eliot in a spoof porno of Mask, locked eyes with me. With absolutely no emotion, not a cringe or a squint, he winked. You know, like when dogs wink at you. It was creepy.

Sorry for not posting. Real life is complicated enough without sharing it with the world via pseudo-anonymity.

Conundrum

Things went well today. Swine flu has hit and terrified every living being in school. A global plague is upon us, gloom and doom, etc. Whatever. Class was cancelled today because the Professor had flu like symptoms and stayed home. That is nice, but given that it is just the flu and the majority of people are virile young adults, shouldn't we all just get it, build our immunities, and carry on?

I just got over a head cold, so I am a little bitter. It is the middle of mid term examinations, and I am not totally prepared for them. I inherited a pair of sweatpants that give me the most severe mangina I have ever witnessed. Surprisingly, it's pretty comfortable.

The wife leaves for Denver tomorrow until Friday night. I have a midterm Friday afternoon and I think sometime between the end of the midterm and picking her up at the airport, I might be able to squeeze in a viewing of Zombieland. One can hope for the little decadences, right?

My family is coming up for a quick visit in two weeks, and I have to say that I am little homesick. Going back to whence I came from is now a pickle though, seeing as how most of the family has either moved, or is in the process of moving, to Alabama. I daydream of going home for Christmas, then remember that no family will be there. It makes me sad.

What a downer am I. A bright spark to my week is a Woody Harrelson vehicle. If I was doing lines of coke off a stripper's backside, I'd have the depression trifecta.

It could be worse though. It's cold outside, but the heat in the apartment is free. The wife has put up with me for the last six weeks like a real trooper. I am almost starting to understand the law. Then again, minimum wage factory work looks more and more appealing every day.

Godlike Powers

Last night, the wife and I had our date night. It began with her pulling me out of the leather recliner with the voracity and sound effects of a mother pulling the day old bandaid off of a child's skinned knee. We then went and saw a movie, did some shopping at the Target (because we will never, ever bow down to those cotton pickin' so's and so's at the Wally World), then home for me to retire to the basement with all of her laundry and her to make the bed and watch numb3rs.

We went and saw the movie 9. It was visually stunning. For ninety minutes. If I had just smoked a big fattie behind the theater with my addiction counseling wife before seeing it, it would have been better than even fucking Highlander. unfortunately, I do not smoke fatties and enjoy movies with a plot that can go from asinine to compelling but not the other way around.

Jesus, what kind of balls do you have to have to make a picture more action packed than a Steven Seagal movie but with a less legible plot and dialog?

Apparently, regular balls. But seven more than usual.

So, in a fit of benevolence, I have decided to save all the competents and gentle readers of this blog $8.00. See this movie at your own risk. The only redeeming qualities are the visuals and the creepy post-apocalyptic backdrop. If you find the urge to waste money and 90 minutes of your life, I have a live action substitute that you can probably get through netflix and thus avoid any human contact at all...

Synchronicity

Between classes this afternoon, I was reading a friend's blog about how nothing has really changed in the past few weeks. Great, nothing happening is better than than dam breaking and the village meeting its great reward under a billion gallons of water. I went to class with a little brighter demeanour, but that was all.

Class was, as usual, informative and wholly overwhelming. So it goes with new material. Stay positive. I am going to school to gain the tools and knowledge to actually make a difference in this world. I know, the world needs ditch diggers too, and without them we would be waist deep in our own shit, but no one remembers Diamitus Shitterius, the first guy to start digging the Cloaca Maxima. People think of the Romans and it gives them a warm fuzzy to think about all the neat inventions they made that allow us our modern basic conveniences of toilets, fresh water, and hedonism.

I got on the bus for the ride home with several points of contract law going through my head and colliding with each other in a scene reminiscent of Scanners. I instinctively said "Good Afternoon" to the shuttle driver, and plopped down in the back of the bus. The seat was warmer than my posterior. I had sat directly in a seat occupied by someone not a minute before me.

I immediately inhaled deeply through my nose. For some reason, I relate the heat of a freshly vacated seat to the ghosts of farts past being released upon disturbance. If there is such a haunting, it usually stinks and I get blamed, or at least judged. Why I inhale in expectation of the event, I can only think that maybe if I filter the air around me via my nose and lungs, the fallout from a previous occupants transgressions will be lessened. It's purely a selfish way to preserve my dignity.

But I digress.

The point is, barring a fart from the past, that I am taking the heat from some stranger for no other reason than I randomly chose to sit there. It's a feeling that is creepy in one respect, but mildly reassuring in another. By existing and sitting, someone before me helped me keep warm by transplanting their heat to a seat that I quickly occupied. Even passively, people help other people out. I find that comforting.

Terms of Art

The top (and only) three Google searches that will lead you here:

Facebook Goddess

Wookie bush

Children sad brush

Guess which one was a search from Germany?

Things are heating up for me. The initial shock has passed and reduced itself to major panic in the classroom. Lethargy holds sway when I come home, bordered by sudden fits of productivity about every hour or so. Only 93 more weeks of actual classroom time. That's less than two years....

Vivid Dreams of Protean Venues

So, the wife made a red curry dish last night that, while delicious at the time, has left my cinnamon ring a vermilion shade of burning. Maybe that was the cause of such vivid dreams last night. What do I remember?

I remember it being a get together with my two best friends. We were going out for drinks and then to a French movie that we had all seen before. Something totally frilly and un-macho, but really, really good. Probably the French version of Say Anything or somesuch. Regardless, we started the evening at the first incarnation of a bar that we used to frequent.

When you dream of familiar places and spaces, do these turn into a whole new landscape while still retaining their familiarity? They do with me. The weird thing is is that they are always consistent. I have a warped mirror world in my dreams, at once familiar, but so totally alien as to make me wonder about past lives and my subconscious affinity for hair metal.

Anyhow, the bar was uneventful. It was the beginning of a going away party for me (ah subconscious, are you finally accepting the move?), but I had to pay for everyone. I went across the street to an ATM to pay the bar tab, and was assaulted by an old woman on a pub crawl. She kept berating me with questions about where to go next. I finally sent her to a martini bar. I knew I was running late, so I skipped out on paying the tab and went to the theater.

My friends were already inside, so I got a ticket, was assaulted by a trio straight from the J Crew catalog with their asshole knobs turned all the way to eleven. After spending forty dollars on Milk Duds, I found my seat, meeting vague people from my past as I walked down the aisles of the theater.

Suddenly, a Springer worthy fight broke out during the trailer for a Stomp the Yard esque movie. A man no taller than my knee slowly walked up to me as the theater erupted into a full scale riot all around me. He was slow, deliberate, and looked exactly like R.L. Burnside in miniature. I threw up my hands in defeat as he slowly pulled a butterfly knife the size of his leg out of his jacket pocket. My fight or flight instinct kicked into fight and I pulled a chair off the floor and beat him relentlessly. Then the movie came on.

The riot ended instantly, Burnside disappeared and I sat in the dark, bored and wondering if I should buy more Milk Dudes. I woke soon after.

Weird, huh? Well, enough time wasted. I have to read another 100 pages before Monday. Best get started.