I don't have my Didion here (The Year of Magical Thinking), but I know there's a brilliant, simple, clean line about the truest relationship between two (involved) people being like a lifelong conversation.

I learned of one ending some time ago and never had the opportunity to clarify why until earlier today. Maybe the conversation never really started. It was clear there was love and that it was real and that once its lifeline had been cut both parties were left empty and in the depths of something dark, but for now it could never be clear that that alone could really be enough. I know that one of the people dearest to me must have hurt, in that raw, flesh throbbing, gutteral moan kind of way, but this knowledge is in hindsight and reacting to history and not the present. Might it not have hurt at all?

But I know it did, and it does; I can see it in the distracted look in the face, the glassy, hollow stare and the short breathless pang. The other does really deserve to wake up beside someone who will find them exciting, and the person themself deserves to feel a rush - at the expense of such a clean but unnatural cut?

"The males of some bird species exhibit the equivalent of graying hair. As they age, the ultraviolet reflectance of parts of their plumage begins to vary. Birds have ultraviolet-sensitive vision, so females begin to see the males differently, which can affect their choice of mate."

I mean...shit. It took a science times article to report this? This is true of humans too...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/arts/14clay.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=5a940ed1d3e5d6a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Now why on earth would this man have to struggle to house his mother's phenomenal collection of black history memorabilia chronicling the African American experience? BECAUSE YOU BASTARD GET RICH QUICK RAP STARS HAVE NO TRUE APPRECIATION FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN POPULARLY EXPLOIT.

Sure, P Diddy/Puff Daddy/Sean Combs and friends would have you believe that their struggles represent the true modern black experience - it sells records to spin tales of police brutality in eights (and no, I do not doubt for a minute that it indeed is a widespread problem,) however the fact of the matter remains that Bad Boy entertainment and its dashing president and founder represents nothing but the self absorbed myopic view of new money revelling in its own importance.

Allan Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Sean Combs, Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons
- all of these "moguls" (I refuse to remove the quotation marks) have the potential to catch the Oprah bug and give back to the community they so cleverly exploited to make their gains. I don't know of an awful lot of white people willing to beg, steal, or borrow to spend $90 on BabyPhat.

Instead, they blow money on White Parties and leave these first edition Langston Hughes languishing in a garage.

Christmas in the city is a fucking pain in the ass. Tourists flood the damn streets with their necks permanently craned upward looking at all the lights (yes, Saks has lights. No, they are not different from last year - you'd know if you'd lived here), blocking pedestrian traffic. It makes trying to buy anything on Fifth a fucking nightmare. Fat people should not wear puffy down jackets; they make them take up more space and they simply make them look more like a beached whale. I hate tourists.

There are a lot of things going on right now, and at the same time, none at all.
I forgot a skate in my apartment for practice and had to get a rental for my right foot. My right foot still hates me.
Boy promised that he and I would go skating at the Rock. Prometheus was getting lonely. Besides, I have to subsidize SG's rent.
I am 3 chapters behind (or so) on Law and Economics readings
I am probably 4 sections behind on constitutional law readings
I have 3 papers to write, none of which have even been mildly conceived. They are due soon.
My separated shoulder is doing nicely. I brutalized it yesterday in practice. Doing slapshots.
I am happy.

I spent most of the night reading about partial birth abortions and brain scrambling, and reinforcing knowing that Scalia is a brilliant mind but crazy. Stenberg v Carhart and its revisitation this morning in Washington. I will hunt out those briefs and read them at some point, when I have enough time to. Roe v Wade seems so distant and really so decisive and unremarkable - South Dakota came to its senses yesterday.

safety in numbers, for some.

I spent the other half of the night remembering things.
"Do you want a ride home?"
"No thanks, I'll grab a taxi. I need to...decompress."
"Wanna talk about it?...Or not"
"I was a freshman, he was a 3rd year law student, we were on a date. I told nobody. I blamed myself. Not anymore."

I have to wake up in four hours to wish him luck but I still won't go to bed. I want his stress to end, if only temporarily (stress never really comes to an end, does it?), I want him to be happy and to understand and accept wherever the wind may take him is at least half my burden as well. To be like Aurelius in times like this tries even the most patient. "Whatever happens, happens rightly" you say, you say but then the force holding the words together and giving them their meaning melts away slowly, like ocean beating away at a shoreline, you are left standing in a pile of nothing, grains washed away despite your best efforts to build. I've seen some magnificent sand castles.

Attar, Conference of the Birds.
To love is to share everything, though it cut you from ear to ear you say
And I'm not cut right now, I don't think.
Mr Chief Justice and may it please the court, article 705a) of the bankrupcy act grants bankrupcy court the inheret right to prevent abuse.
I stood beside Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the picture. I hope it came out well.

I sleep now, so I can wish him luck in three and a half hours.

A prayer has been half answered, I suppose. Next year, I will be doing what humans have been doing since the dawn of time. I will trade some things for other things and be happy. I will laze in bed on Sunday mornings with my baby, reading the New York Times listening to the smooth crooning of The Genius. I will stuff my money under a proverbial mattress someday, and someday trade it all again for a rock to call my own.
Just not in the Superdome.

This is the first time thoughts of Fiji have ever framed themselves so completely and ordered themselves so neatly in my mind. I was trying to sleep. My eyes closed and Fiji came back.
It's been two years to the day that I've returned from Fiji, dying to get back to American soil and wishing that I'd never gone in the first place. I hardly even remembered what I'd brought back from the island: a fiji rugby pencil case that I gave to Ted, a pair of black pearl earrings for my mother, and a black wooden bowl carved from a solid piece of wood for my dad. And rocks. lots and lots of rocks. So many of the black jagged kind that were pulled up from the ocean floor and none of the tame kind that washed up from the ocean onto the beaches of the resort in the town between Suva and Nadi.

This is the first time I've thought about the island of Fiji. The first time memories of the boat have come to me without me first going to them. I remember so much of my first impressions of the island, the warm heat that startled me coming out of the airport at 5AM, the bumpy, jarring ride from the Suva airport to the city center. The hill on which the motel 6 was perched and the Korean restaurant halfway down the hill, a 5 minute walk past the mitsubishi car dealership. It was the second arrival that I don't remember as well, the one after 6 exhaustive weeks aboard the Kilo.

I remember the landsickness and its ever so slight worsening as the Kilo came to a stop at the docks. I remember running ashore to check into the Holiday Inn in Suva, the only sealed hotel in Suva itself. The first shower in over a month where the shower didn't move and the soap need not be pinned down. The dinner that night (and the nights after that) were fabulous. The real egg ceasar and some other dish that was nowhere near as memorable as the ceasar, the smoky, oaky, hearty smell of the wine cork. I remember the malibu and pineapple, the Midori sours, the Jonny Walker black on rocks, the drunken gyrating of thirty of us to Chumbawumba. The morning after at 7:30am hailing a taxi for King's Wharf, clearing the boat and loading shipping container(s) and boxing things still unboxed from the day before. My anger at having been the only one who showed up at 7:30 so I stole away with Ted Kane to the Fiji National Museum where I nearly bought a ceremonial cannibal's fork.

And I remember the pineapples. The tuna sashimi, the roti and the Korean food. The waterfront park with the hustlers and the internet cafes. I stole away to the internet cafes as much as possible that week. The burn of love made me find as much contact as much as possible- that week, I went to as many internet cafes as possible hoping for a brief overlap of time where I could talk to him. Finding out I'd won a scholarship while being some 10 thousand miles away. The hundreds of stores that I went into, seemingly every store in downtown Suva only to really find nothing unique; nothing Fijian, and nothing worth taking home.

The drive from Suva to Nadi, in a rented SUV and the stop in a resort called "hideaway resort" with a makeshift rocky beach, a pool, volleyball courts and bures as "rooms." I can't remember what I ate that night there, nor the morning after, either. Getting back into the car for the several hour drive to Nadi, stopping in a town more desolate than the airport itself and then deciding the airport was really the best place to go. Spending hour upon hour in the airport getting bored with nothing left to do but eat airport food, waiting waiting waiting to go home and be reuinted in New York and in love.

There is something so appealing right now about Stamford and the Superdome.

You were always waiting to be picked to play the game, but when your name was called, you found a place to hide - when you knew that I was always on your side.

And everything was easy then, so sweet and innocent. My demons and my angels reappeared. They were only traces of the man you'd thought I'd be, too afraid to hear the words I'd always feared, leaving you with only questions all these years

Is there some place far away, some place where all is clear, easy to start over with the ones you hold so dear, or are you left to wonder all alone, eternally: "this isn't how it's really meant to be, no it isn't how it's really meant to be..."

Well they say that love is in the air, never is it clear how to pull it close and make it stay. Butterflies are free to fly and so they fly away, and I'm left to carry on and wonder why - even through it all, I'm always on your side.

No reason in particular; I get all emotional this first week on the pill.

9.13.2006

Ridiculous night. Another one soon. Just not on a Wednesday.

Saks "Want It" charity night + Drinks at Bar57 + Red Carpet Wednesdays @ PM - Wurth Calendar 2007 release party = feeling like unholy shit in the morning + cramming like hell for Con Law seminar + bombing Chinese quiz.

Fucking Awesome.

I am in the clear. I am in the clear. I am in the clear.

I went back to the church that E took me to, today. Some to hang out with her, some to hear the singing again and some to listen to what the priest had to say.

And it was hot. It was a million degrees inside. It got even hotter when everyone started singing. But that was okay, because the sermon today was given the lofty title of "The meaning of virtue."

It was basically about this scribe who runs up to the big man and asks what the greatest of all (Jewish) laws/commandments is. The big man responds that the Schema (Deuteronomy 6:4, for all you Goy Torah buffs) - "Hear, O Israel...love God with all your soul..." - is the greatest, and that if one truly understands and obeys the Schema, what will follow is that you will in turn be compelled to love life and everything on Earth.

It's a logic which claims that if you really ARE trying to seek this relationship with God, and you are successful, you will have nothing left but love for fellow man and protozoa. Love through action, not empty word. Which means that you can't be half-assing life and living to the fullest and still be loving. And that is the greatest commandment. No garbage about pre-marital sex, sex for enjoyment's sake, failing to prothestize, not contributing to the tithe, drinking soda, etc being wrong. Those are assumed human extentions of the "ultimate law" which is: live and love fully.

It almost sounds like you're getting off with a slap on the wrist. You can do anything you want and still be in the good books? No. It doesn't work like that. You don't get to lie to yourself, and you don't get to lie to God about living to the fullest. Expecting something in return is the great qualifier. You can't truly be pouring yourself into something with abandon if you expect something in return. You aren't being truly charitable if you're counting on the tax write-off. You aren't maximizing your gifts if you cruise through and get an A but really don't give a shit whether it could have been a B or a D. You're certainly not scoring points for the afterlife if you're having sex to keep somebody in your life. That isn't living fully, that's marginally better than existing. No cheating, because Big Man knows.

So if another psycho christian lectures me about living in sin, I'll know that what I do is the opposite of that for the most part. Some of those assumed human extentions don't really apply to me because I'm finally in the position where I do things and don't expect anything back from them - for now. Which is a nice way of saying that I'm fulfilled in my own way and that I'm in the clear (perhaps not in the good books) with the dudes upstairs.

Tiffany: 1 , PsychoChristianFreaksWhoTellMeI'mGoingToHell: 0

This is cheeseball week on my blog. I guess that's okay. I could post about how I am slowly taking over New York , about how apparently I am the most attractive person in my laundromat (a story for another day), but I won't. Instead, I got a text message from somebody today whom I haven't seen in over a year, but who I consider a very close friend.

You were my eyes when I coudln't see
Saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith because you believed

It's very safe to say that I am who I am because of this person more than anyone else; it was she who taught me how to be happy, how to recover from disappointments, how to let go of anger and pain, and how to hit a field hockey ball.

Say goodbye
To not knowing how to cry
You taught me that
And I'll remember the strength that you gave me
Now that I'm standing on my own
I'll remember the way that you saved me

I have a habit of lionizing our relationship. I think I have to, though; it's the only way my memory will let me see the past, the only way my entire history makes sense to me, and the only way I understand myself now. I can't be objective about any of my own past, but here are my thoughts, as I believe them.

I was a mess as a kid. I was a mess all the way up through junior year of high school, practically. I've never really suffered from self esteem problems, never had any issues with my sense of self, but I have harbored a roiling hate for the world and almost all things in it. I guess that was my "mess." A lot of things caused this anger, and I'm not going to go into them. I was fed a steady stream of accelerant throughout my time and I used it. It was my right to use it, of course, and I used it every chance I could. I burned through people, things, and toward the end of it all, myself.

It ultimately took someone I couldn't burn through - somebody stronger than I and equally experienced in destroying things - to stop my train from derailing. It was a laborious process. From enduring physical abuse to putting up with my heckling and attention-getting schemes to restraining my destructive intentions and cleaning up my destructive actions, she put up with it all and when I was finished burning, she picked up my destroyed and exhausted self and then led me out of the hole I'd dug myself into, always watching out of the corner of her eye to make sure I was still there, still following.

I was taught how to be happy. By a person who had finally found it herself, through much trial and error, feeling her way through the darkness. She stepped back into it four years later to find me in it and lead me out. And now, I'd like to think we're both out of it. We threw the shovels out of our lives and stopped digging. She started climbing and I'm still finding my footing.

Will we ever be that for each other again? No; we have other people now, other people who watch (over) us and keep the demons at bay. And the thought struck me that I'll never be able to repay the tremendous favor. That I was helped but I can't help in return. And I can't help anyone else, either. I don't have whatever strength is necessary to step back into the dark. Maybe that's why I'm still trying to find my footing.

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=25#respond

Okay, the stupidity of some of these commentators (if I can even credit them with that title) astounds me. My personal favorite is the moron "Ann," comment #43 who put a stop payment on a check after she had what admittedly sounds like a less than emergency situation root canal done. You fucking idiot put a stop payment on a check? of COURSE you're going to get dragged into court, and furthermore, you DESERVE to be dragged into court for such idiocy. One wonders why people like you are allowed to breed. At the very least you should not open your mouth about your act of extreme stupidity. Jesus.

And to respond with my own opinion on the subject. As you may all know, I spent the last 8 weeks of my summer suffering through clinical rotations (an eye opening experience in many respects, I'll concede) through a variety of areas of medicine and various types of practices (academic, private, clinic, etc.) and I feel sufficiently well educated on this topic to put in 4 cents instead of two.

Firstly: physicians are not mechanics. Surgeons are probably closer to mechanics but really, would you trust a mechanic to ressect your disseased kidney? I didn't think so. So shut the fuck up about physicians being mechanics; most of the ignorant fools who wrote their comments have no idea a) how long it takes to become a doctor b) the standard of knowledge that a freshly certified doctor is made to achieve and c) the behind-the-scenes process that accompanies a diagnosis. Every job has a level of craftsmanship and medicine is really no different; in fact, medicine requires a helluva lot MORE craftsmanship than the average asshole posting on the Times blog can appreciate.

Secondly: I acknowledge that a lot of doctors are influenced highly by financial incentives. The reimbursement system in medicine is procedurally based. Doctor does something, doctor gets check weeks later from insurance company/medicare/medicaid. So if the doctor just sees you but does not poke you, he or she cannot charge you for having poked you. That is illegal. However, according to this article, and yes, I know that it IS in fact true, a lot of doctors insist on poking you so they can charge you or your insurance company for poking you. That is unethical, but not illegal. The problem isn't isolated to Elyria, Ohio and it certainly isn't the best thing for anybody involved.

Thirdly: A significant part of why these doctors feel pressure to make "more" money is because of the overhead that an individual doctor in private practice has to undertake in order to be in business and deal with insurance companies. Insurance companies do NOT always pay (in fact, they often do not pay and try to get away with not paying as often as possible) and that means a doctor must hire, in addition to medical assistants, staff whose job it is primarily to phone jockey each insurance company and badger them for procedural reimbursement. And then there's the office rent. And then there's the malpractice insurance. Eesh. No wonder many doctors in Manhattan refuse to accept any kind of insurance; it's just a pain to deal with and it pushes costs up for everyone. Now this course of action is obviously not possible for all doctors, but it's a solution nonetheless.

So, with these three seemingly conflicting problems, what is to be done? Where do you find a decent doctor who a) isn't trying to rip you off/put your health in jeopardy for silly book-padding procedures, and b) who doesn't treat you like a piece of meat trying to shove you out the door as quickly as possible so that they can fit more billable "consultation" hours in?

A: The faculty practice doctors at academic institutions.

I witnessed firsthand that the doctors in the faculty practice at medical schools and their affiliated hospitals not only had time to spend with their patients, but they also did not attempt to foist useless procedures that cost insurance vast sums of money. Because they were a part of the faculty practice, (it was explicitly explained to me by several such doctors), they were given a salary, benefits which included malpractice insurance, office space and staff, and the opportunity to pursue research and keep abreast of new developments (in fact, they were required to do the latter). The bonus: only the better (dare I say even best) residents (pre-board certified MDs) get to become faculty at an academic institution (med school), so you've already gotten the self-selected better doctors out there.

Let's not forget that for every stellar doctor at the top of their class, there were 10 or 11 assholes who barely scraped by. Keep that in mind when shopping for a doctor, and don't hold doctors (or any other professionals) to ridiculous overblown standards. There are shitty mechanics and shitty lawyers all the same who are out to make a fast buck. Don't be offended by the fact that the law of averages holds true for doctors as well. Above all, don't be like asshole #43 who is so stupid, she doesn't even know what was wrong with what she did.

Alberto. You've really outdone yourself playing lackey to one of the more 'bold' administrations in recent times. Careful now lest you peg yourself to be one of those Attorney Generals that Rehnquist trashed in his book. Oh? What's this... You've already done that?

"[the President] has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself."

Say what? Care to repeat that? Shame! Your law school professors are wishing they'd never given you the gentleman's C in the first place. If they knew what haberdashery you were up to they would never haven given you a degree for fear you would reflect on their fine teaching. There are a lot of things "Congress shall make no law" for but here you're even saying that Congress doesn't need to make laws! Oh hell, let's do away with the constitution as well - I mean, North korea doesn't need one and it's done fine so far.

I know you're just trying to do your job (aren't we all?), so if you come up with some better arguments in favor of the eavesdropping program, maybe just maybe we'll let this big snafu slide. maybe.

"The truth is that Toronto isn’t exactly edgy. It is a city that feels as if it is peopled by lifelong scouts and girl guides. When you visit Toronto and yet another person insists on you taking a seat on a tram, you have to wonder how any place so polite can seriously be considered trendy?"

Take a hint, hippies.

I happened upon a picture of somebody today, someone I haven't seen in over two years. The memories flooded back and washed over me while I sat there. I rifled through the emails of distress I sent friends, read and reread the replies, now a full two and a half years old. I caught myself, an hour later, playing Gwen Stefani's "Cool" on loop, sitting passively in a chair, with eyes unfocused and breath shallow.

Look how all the kids have grown, oh
We have changed but we're still the same
After all that we've been through

It's all a ghostly memory now, a dream. I don't even think I have any special attachment anymore, just a knowledge that there was something and at one point in time it was important and even all encompassing. I keep thinking about loose phrases in Diane Ackerman's "An Alchemy of Mind," ones about how the human mind is so plastic and so selectively forgetful that it enables you to distill the sensation of certain moments while reinventing the sensations of others.

Do I really remember anything to do with him now? Is what I'm remembering actually accurate? It's impossible to answer any questions of this nature, I know. And so I've done a fantastic job of moving on, as I'm sure he also has.

But the fact of the matter remains that we have not spoken since that day in May, some years ago, and are unlikely to ever do so again. I imagine that if we see each other ever again, it will be like the Gwen Stefani "Cool" music video, where memories constantly strike and recoil, threatening to unravel the delicate cordial front that each of us would have to maintain. The magic was that every single bit of it was dramatic; it was the flash-in-a-pan whirlwind of sensory overload and when that was over, it was replaced by the deep, churning pull of of a maelstrom. It would have been fitting if it had shattered spectacularly in an instant - the rockstar dying in a car crash, but instead, it succumbed quite unspectacularly to nagging doubts and their erosive powers.

It fell "as a tree falls" - the description given by Antoine de St. Exupery of the death of the Little Prince seems most fitting here - it collapsed in all its majesty and the dust it kicked up took quite a while to settle. So settle it has, and gone it is. It was wonderful while it lasted, and it is perhaps more wonderful now that it's gone.

I didn't have time to post about this earlier and anyway, I was too tired most of today to think about anything like this, but now I have time to distill my thoughts into something lucid, cogent.

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For the break that would make it okay
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction,
oh beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

So I went for a ride with a friend on Sunday, we'll call her E. E and I headed out along small winding roads out to Piermont, NJ, out on 505 and back on 9W, up a few less than pleasant climbs but otherwise a relatively easy workout. Having exhausted my water bottle before the longest climb (ass.) and having toasted my legs in both the climbs and schlepping Class Ring up and down the stairs on the north side of the GW bridge (about seven flights of stairs in total, people), I decided I needed water before heading back to my own apartment. E, of course, invited me into her place and I proceeded to kill her Brita while we talked about nothing and changed a few tubes and tires. We talked about all sorts of junk: music, living in tiny apartments, rotations and the like. Eventually we got on the topic of things that we had to do with the rest of the day. I had nothing in particular except to feed myself, and she had to dump off a massive pile of dirty scrubs and exchange them for new ones. She also had to go to church.

I think it was at that point that a lot of points of her personality clicked for me, that made me understand what kind of person she was and what motivated her to be the kind of person she was. Let me start by saying she is good at a whole lot of things. Maybe it's already too obvious who it is already, so I will not list all the things she is good at. The floodgates opened, kinda. I volunteered that I attempted spirituality in freshman year when i went with quite a bit of regularity (!) to the Episcopalian service at St. Paul's, mostly for the sermons and for the reverend. She countered by asking me what it was in particular I liked about those sermons. I didn't know what it was. I think it was probably some combination of being intelligent and presupposing intelligence of the listener. They reminded me of the sermons at MemChurch at Harvs. So she said that I would potentially be interested in going to church with her. She invited me to join her.

I rode home, bonking along the way and got in the door and shoved as many whole tomatoes in my mouth as I could. I didn't stop eating until my jaw was tired. Tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, chicken, ice cream, a popsicle. Finally, I was done and I thought about it more and more; what was it about being 'asked' to go to a church - a presbyterian one at that - that made me entertain the thought seriously?

So i went. I ran out the door at 6:30, worried I'd be late. I wated 15 minutes for a train and cursed, arriving just on time and probably stressing my "host," E, out somewhat. I met some people. And then bam, into the church.

The singing was incredible. Of course I sat there mutely humming along, but everyone around me was full out singing. Let me tell you, even I was moved. These people had enough of a relationship with their God to impact me. Then the sermon came. There was talk of model homes, and how "we" had to be model homes for the type of life that we already knew we were supposed to live. Specifically things like sex and being preoccupied in material goods and other such characteristics that we weren't supposed to be exhibiting. Oops. I guess that makes me bad. I am, as it were, living "as if the afterlife did not exist."

So I thought about it. I thought about where I was relative to what this God - presumably my "official" God- wanted and demanded of me and I compared it to that of E. Now I know that I'd fallen off the bandwagon quite a while back. I was certifiably a "bad" person because (and I freely acknowledge this) I choose to do things that according to this God, are wrong. I choose to have sex (I'm not married) with the man I love, I choose to be an asshole to the starving and underserved, I choose to diregard almost all canonical dogma. Most days I feel I'm better off for it. Maybe Sunday I started having doubts.

I looked at E, who is significantly less of an asshole than I am (she even puts up with them and tolerates dating them), who has developed all of her gifts and is a remarkable person, and realize perhaps that following all the rules isn't so bad. Of course, there are disaster examples of those who follow all the rules. There are people who I don't envy who I'm so glad I'm completely unlike. But there are outstanding people I know who have all their ducks in a row, who have by and large followed the rules (okay, so breaking a few is excusable, i'm told, so long as you're sorry) and I am wondering if the acceptance of these rules in some sort of Faustian gamble is what I need to push me to a higher level of understanding within myself and a higher level of achievement and personal satisfaction.

I know God doesn't work like that. I know that God is ultimately displeased with the mere idea of a value-added exchange but I can't wrap my head around that. It's more than a leap of faith that I'd have to take, and it's more than just allowing this Catholic guilt to pressure me into accepting something. It's like Camus' "The Fall" (which, btw, was referred to in the sermon) - this may be the beginning of my own fall perhaps only to be remedied with the promise of an "eternal life" and ultimately in being hardballed into all of the rules that a "good" individual accepts.

But my reasons for having sex and indulging in material hedonistic pleasures are my own. They don't involve any guilt, there is no heady ideology which motivates them and I participate knowing full well they aren't everyone's cup of tea. I'm responsible when I screw around and I'm responsible when I'm an asshole; I am still a bad person. Reconciling this with the potential for being "bad" because my reasons are not divinely inspired is obviously the issue at hand.

Marriage can't be the golden yardstick for sexual contact; the definition of marriage over centuries has been constantly in flux - for a while, marriage didn't even constitute a relationship with someone you loved. Charity can't be the golden yardstick for renouncing material goods; non-profits have existed for only so long and even the most efficient charity gives only a percentage of its "earnings." So what are these rules based in? Intent? Can I intend to marry someone and because of societal restrictions as of yet be unable to and get away with sex? Can I intend that all of my money go to a worthy cause without taking responsibility for whether it does or not? Does that mean I've followed enough rules to make myself privy to the "riches" that one who follows these religous rules is entitled to?

I live well. I eat well, I have never slept on anything but down pillows with a down duvet. I love my man very much. I also screw him, and it means a lot to me, every time. I am generally considerate of other people's feelings and I give to charity sometimes but more often not. Still, I am guilty.

Finally, it's over.
I had my last rotation today, an Office Based Practice rotation with "Manhattan's best Ear Nose Throat (otorhinolaryngology)doctor." It was pretty cool, as far as rotations go. I met two New York executives and...looked up their goddamned noses. One guy has been sniffing so much coke that the cartilage that made up the wall between his nostrils (the septum) was completely chewed away and the bone supporting the bridge of his nose was slowly but surely becoming the consistency of chunky chicken soup. It was rough, to say the least.
But as much as I "enjoyed" this experience, or at least as much as I'd like to say I was glad to have it, I'm glad to say that it's over. I've solidified that it would take some catastrophic, adverse conditions which would force me to actually go to through with this whole "plan" and even moreso, it's now practically out of sight, out of mind. I gave this whole thing an honest shot and now I can walk away from it happy and knowing that this is not the pot of gold for me. It is now trickling out of sight.
Right now, though, an exhaustion is creeping over me, begging me to bring my mind and body into the next universe.

Don't call me in the morning, I have the rest of the week off.

Ran the resevoir loop today, for the first time. Running in the park is a little depressing, owing to the fact that I basically zip through the largest loop in the park in about 20 minutes on a bike. Still, it was good to chat with Joe while running around in the park, and I might actually make that run part of my exercise routine almostmaybesorta.

So I am having a Very Good Year. I have decided that I am looking for throwaway furniture with friends for the next little while...we found these samples of Silk Trading Co. (ABC Carpet and Home's little fabric outpost) paint and I will be hunting out a few tiny pieces of furniture to sand and repaint into a decent color. Good quality wooden furniture, of course...the kind of stuff that's all dinged up from some UES brat having kicked it throughout their useless lifetime but has a lot of life left as a reupholstered spankin' hot chair (or something or other). It is about high time my apartment became a real home.

Also, I bought a merino-cashmere throw today. Hotttttt.

So upon finishing up my orgo test last Thursday and suffering inhumane sleep deprivation all week prior and all weekend since, I have come to the conclusion that I do not belong in medical school.

The clouds in front of my eyes are slowly breaking down and the more I look and think about the situation, the less justifiable it seems to be to me, personally, to study something so marginally personally rewarding as figuring out what is wrong with a patient. It seems to be a lot of years of expensive schooling. It doesn't just *seem* that, it IS that. Four years at fifty thousand dollars a year to be earning another forty five thousand dollars for the five years after that seems to me to be the worst use of the best and most active years of my life that I can come up with, short of cross-stitching my way across America. Whose moronic idea was it to design a 10 year plan which involved coming out and staying broker than they'd started at the beginning?
It may not at all be about money but seeing that the "changing people's lives" aspect is limited at best, I can't come up with any other reasons which seem attractive as of yet.

So it looks like (and it just looks like this right now....It may look very different tomorrow) I will be joining the workforce after I graduate from good ol' Columbia and putting to use this wonderful degree in BS. I haven't even yet decided where or how I plan to get this "job" but I know that ultimately what I want to do is sit in a cave of books somewhere reading and writing papers. But really this is just a nice way of saying i don't quite know what I want to do, because I haven't found a maximally effective use of my skills and years. What I would really like is an academic reference or two willing to say that the work that I've done at college is really good enough to let me read law in England, but I think I've missed the boat on that aspect - I haven't had a seminar in over a year (fucking Columbia core got in my way as did my Sinai requirements) and probably not a whole lot of professors who remember my brilliant contributions anyway. I don't research and I don't want to research and that is a large-ish obstacle to getting a recommendation, it seems.

A part of me still screams that I should be looking into ski bumming for the rest of my life. I opened up a magazine the other day while I was on rotation and there was this big splashy profile on Whistler and the guys who lived there (guys, because it was a guys magazine). There was a pro downhill biker, a ski patroller/DJ, a bona fide ski bum turned videographer for Matchstick Productions and just a whole bunch of other wholly enviable types who graced the pages of "I want to be a man like that" magazine (I forgot the name of it).

Also, reading K's blog makes me itch a little bit. Maybe I'm too comfortable in where I am right now...I have long since stopped clubbing with any semblance of regularity (throwback to the HS days, where I used to do it incessantly), only sometimes go to parties, haven't thrown one in forever, and, it seems, am perfectly okay with it. Most of the time. Reading about psychotic escapades with champagne and clubs and bars and lounges makes me want to pretend that I am single and run amok in cities more exotic than New York with hot twenty-somethings (who are more than likely willing to exploit my asianness) who are spending off their trust funds. I don't know what to do, whether this is serious or not, whether I actually really think that kind of thing would be "fun" at all, but there are parts of my conscience telling me that it could be, given that this time around I am actually legal while attempting all this. It probably would not be all that much fun given I could not be thoroughly ridiculously drunk doing it.

I also have bills to pay, which sucks.

Three pounds heavier and substantially better nourrished than the week previous, I am officially done another week at Sinai. The gustatory offerings this week were courtesy of various sources (Relatives, Pfizer, Stipend, etc) and it would be a shame not to list them out, considering I haven't had enough of a "break" to truly reflect on what I've eaten. Here we go:

Sunday Night: Balthazar's
No appetizer
'Le Balthazar' - a three tiered behemoth containing cold steamed fruits of the sea of all different sorts
The Balthazar strip steak - It is of note that the steak was bullshit because it was TOUGH. obviously cooked far too 'early' relative to my intended consumption time, it probably sat under the heating lamp becoming a piece of leather. Assholes, proper protocol is to THROW OUT the plate once it has sat under the heating lamps for five minutes. Thomas Keller does, so should you.

Monday Night: Lupa
Prosciutto di Parma Grand Reserva, monster portion - absofuckinglutely deliscious. None of the mishandling during the shipping of it to the US (improper fridge temperatures cause condensation within the meat which a) makes it much tougher than it should be and b) makes it considerably saltier in taste than complex. It was perfect, the best I've had. Ever.
Oxtail and Mixed Greens - I'm sure it had a name but the perfectly cooked paper thin oxtail in a tangy port sauce coupled with some good ol' veggies was very good.
Pork shoulder ragu tagliatelle - Fresh, eggy and not drowned in the appropriately spiced sauce. The mushrooms were nice but not necessary.
Pork Ossobuco - Interesting! It was not covered in the gross brown sauce that most places cover the otherwise crispy, thin, tender filet of meat in (traditionally veal), but it was a very nice variation on a theme. The bok choy on the side that it was served with was a little suspect...
Pork Shoulder - Melt in your mouth fatty goodness which I swear was responsible for at least half a pound of weight gain alone. The sweet yet sharp glazing over the crisp outer which hid the fork-tender threads of meat and fat was original and very interesting. I normally don't like sweet meat, but this was fabulous.

Tuesday Night: A break, mercifully.

Wednesday Afternoon: Hokkaido
Shrimp Tempura bento box - everything was of very high quality given the price (9 bucks or so) and really, it was worth listening to a little schpiel on Aricept for. I would write more about it but it was neither terrible nor particularly memorable, so blah.

Wednesday Night: Churasscaria Tribeca
Every fucking thing in the restaurant - It was a veritable feast and honestly every single thing in the restaurant was of extremely high quality except the Sushi. But i mean who the hell goes to a Brazilian steak house for Sushi? It was Excellent all around and I will be sure to go there with the boy when he comes back in September. This most definitely rivals even the "best" establishments in the city for steak, and dare I say challenges Peter Luger's (though the two are very different, I admit). Definitely worth the money/person, unlike Nobu, the overpriced junkyard a few blocks away.

Thursday Night: Mark's Restaurant (the Mark Hotel)
Mozarella and Tomato Salad - Nothing special, nothing terrible
Lobster and Crab Squid Ink dyed Raviolo - Good, very good even. Fairly satisfying on the whole, nothing I would pay an excess of what we did ($35 prix fixe) for.
Lemongrass Creme Brule - The Creme Brule was neither crispy nor free from graininess though it DID taste like a hint of lemongrass. Mediocre at best.

And now it is Friday and it is the Sabbath. So i did not go out to eat (no, I don't actually observe the Sabbath, but I thought it was a fitting end to an incredible week).

Adventures with the blender, Part 2:

After wetting my feet with smoothies last week (and killing off the rest of the yoghurt this weekend by doing much of the same), I am off to make the pride of French Summer cuisine: Vichyssoise.

I am armed with a billion leeks and the knowledge that Balthazar's and Lupa are in my very very near future (Monday and Tuesday night). I hope the gaggle of restaurant week people don't ruin my dinner.

I am busy, life is good. I leave you all with one nugget of wisdom:

It is time to starve North Korea out of its Kim Jong misery. STARVE THEM. It should be obvious to everybody by now that whatever "aid" is being provided is being squandered by crazy Kim and his short, impotent missiles, attested to by the throngs of North Koreans dying of starvation. No mercy.

I interrupt my supreme court porning to bring you this little tidbit of wisdom from Abington School District v. Schempp:

(From the opinion of the court, written by Justice Clark)

"When the power, prestige and financial support of the government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to comform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain"

and that is a big big no-no. Furthermore:

"Further, it is no defense to urge that the religious practices here may be relatively minor encroachments on the First Amendment. The breach of neutrality that is today a trickling stream may all too soon become a raging torrent..."

So what that means is:

"...matters of faith cannot be decided by majority vote."

This was in 1963. So really, people, give up the outlawing gay marriage in State law. Amendments to the constitution are a different story, but I'm confident the president cannot get anything past any house of representatives. He just does not have sufficient 2/3 and 3/4 support.

I am about 3/4 of the way through Mount Sinai's Privacy Policy training and I want to shoot myself. If I read the term "PHI - Protected Health Information" once again, heads will roll.

It is official, I have a summer job in addition to being Mount Sinai's bitch: it is called Party Poker.

I am not a gambler. I am not exactly entirely risk averse, I will take a fair gamble, but I like it better when I can skew the odds in my favor, ie when E(pstate1) + E(pstate2) > 0. See, I did learn something in my fucking economics of uncertainty and information class but my professor still screwed me. Anyway, I was approached by this guy who offered to teach me how to play advanced poker and give me money to get me started in exchange for 15% of my rake should I win. I'm humoring him and going for it. What have I got to lose? Not all that much. What have I got to learn? I whole lot, provided I don't get thrown into jail for tax evasion. I will be writing a separate blog about my experience, and will link it on the side. It will replace the New York Times link.

I plan on detailing my learning experience, as well as any successes (or lack of successes) I have while embarking on this journey of seedy online casino gambling. This whole experience will culminate approximately one year from now when Ted and I go to Las Vegas to exercise our new age-of-majority legal status and play for real on a table (hopefully where the buy-in does NOT cost my law school tuition).

Here goes nothing.

France Debates Downloads, With Teenager as Top Expert - New York Times

In response to Aziz, who claims that the internet is a public commons in which those of limited means should freely be able to absorb culture, yes, you are right. To an extent. To claim further that you have the right to violate copyright because of this "nature" of the internet is...wrong.
In his defense, this kid believes that internet service providers should be paying into a general fund which reimburses artists for the relative "popularity" of their songs (implying the artists and record labels would receive a fraction of what they currently stand to make from a service like Itunes or from selling a CD) but that too is a mistaken notion brought on by none other than ridiculous French Socialist culture. Why should those who choose to pay for legal, agreed to means (i assume that Itunes and other song stores are in effect borderless and if it can be accessed in the USA then there is no technological limitation to it being accessed in France) be forced to subsidize those who are proposing to "pay" artists and record labels for their work through a means that not even the artist wants? I elaborate. I have partially borrowed this argument from a fairly eloquent defense of itunes in suing the pants off of the makers of a company that would port itunes usage to Linux: You cannot pay for something unless the receiver has agreed to a specific method of payment.
You cannot get on a bus by throwing two quarters at the driver and declare the right to board the bus; you have in effect, failed to pay for the item regardless of your having reliquished the money because it is not in the form the bus company accepts. Most buses have signs posted stating the driver cannot deposit the fare for you. Similarly for most items in most stores, you cannot simply give the owner of the store something of approximate value of the item you want and walk out of the store with your good. Those are both examples of unacceptable forms of payment.
Similarly, this teenager is proposing the nationwide institution of what would be considered an unacceptable payment form. Knowing the stupidity of the state legislature and the even more pronounced pigheadedness of the idiotic French people, this method will prevail in France and as bald-faced retribution I hope artists refuse to play their concerts in France. What a brilliant thing to do would be is to throw this rat in jail or sue him for punitive damages equivalent to what he has not paid for.

After having just finished exams, I went to SBR multisport to see if I could get my hands on a nifty pair of Assos shorts. I tried them on. Sweet jesus, I am in love with $275 shorts, as a result. AGH. I am hunting around for alternatives to them and have thus far found a pair of one model down for $140 bucks and that exact pair for 180 bucks from some dealer on Ebay. That is a lot of money for shorts. You had to try these things, though; they were crazy and incredible all in one. Enough on the shorts.
It is rainy today, and coupled with the fact that yesterday my riding buddy Greg gave me a "deep tissue massage" to my ailing right leg in Central Park which left me on the pathway screaming bloody murder (all expletives you can think of) with an enormous black man bent over squeezing the crap out of my leg having left these immense dark bruises and extremely sore muscles today, I will not ride. Good god my leg feels like pain. I can believe that I have immense knots in that leg, however...even I can feel them. I will somehow have to get some orthpedic dude to look at them when I'm at Sinai this summer.
My plan for today is to make a wonderful Shepherd's Pie from ingredients gleaned at my local Gristedes(!). I will have a warmmmm dinner out of the oven tonight and I will have something to do for the whole day. I'm thinking i'll use fresh potatoes, butter, cream, chives, creamed corn, ground sirloin, bread crumbs and some other goodies when i can think of them and it will be an incredible shepherd's pie. Off to 'stedes I go.

Okay, so all that about a Hope Mono Hub laced to an Open Pro was trashed the other night when I snagged a pair of Mavic Ksyrium SSCs (circa 2004) on ebay for 370 bucks. Yes, a pair. Yes, the ones with the fancy as shit black aero spokes. Considering the Hope alone would have cost me around 200 bucks, I am very very pleased with this purchase...furthermore it's not like all 125 pounds of me will be working the SSCs too hard anyway. Fuck yesssssss. Pictures as soon as they get here and mounted. They're even coming with Mavic Open Pro 2s in YELLOW(!)

Cycle racing is probably themost painful sport known to mankind. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm NOT in riding shape (I'm in hockey shape and running shape but not cycling shape) but given that I staved off some fierce competition and did alright, it's probably just that cycle racing by its very nature is ugly, painful and brutal.

our team finished 6 riders heading into the men's A crit and crashed four. Some guy came over to our tent and asked if there were any riders left who could finish a race...Wasserman even crashed the new Guru and rolled the tubular 404...It was Bremer who actually took the biggest crash of the day, bringing Chas with him. Bremer flatted, took Wasserman's 404 (which had already been rolled but no one knew), cornered at full speed, lost the tire, slid 15 feet on his ass and legs (serious road rash), took Chas out who proceeded to fly all 165 pounds of himself at 29miles an hour at....the no parking sign. He took the signpost out with his shoulder. We brought it back as a trophy. Chas took it home and put it in his living room.

Racing is also super hard on your equipment...I have to haul class ring in for a full gear recabling, some new housing and look into getting him a new back wheel...this one is flexing some kind of not so wonderful and consistently coming out of true. The next wheel, I swear, is going to be a Hope mono hub 32 or 28 hole laced to an Open Pro, handbuilt and that's the end of that. Meanwhile, however, it's the piece of shit Shimano wheel (god i wish I'd gone with Campy instead) and a lot of lonely hours

In private, when i am alone and the eggs were really good, I lick the plate. Only when the yolks were really runny do I do that. I came to the realization after I was scraping the yolk off of the "Rue Royal" Gien plate that I have fallen into the habit of eating two breakfasts. Pre-cycling breakfast (usually slogged down at 6am) and Post-cycling, pre-class breakfast. Today is Friday and I just finished breakfast #2 and am just about to head out to squash with a couple of my law school buddies. I head out to penn state today for my first bike race ever (this ought to be interesting). I swear I would be an pro athlete if i could find anything I was good enough at.

I had compiled a list of things I'd wanted to comment on but now I am too lazy. I bought two books today from Ivy Books/Murder Ink: Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" and Diane Ackerman's "An Alchemy of Mind." I'm a huge fan of Ackerman's "A Natural History of the Senses" and "A Natural History of Love" and I'm eager to see what she's whipped up in this book.

Also, I was a foodie a) before I knew I was a foodie, b) It was cool to be one and c) before the word "foodie" fell into common usage. Yesterday I made a superb soup with spinach, chicken stock, milk and a butter/flour roux. No, it was not cream of spinach.

I had compiled a list of things I'd wanted to comment on but now I am too lazy. I bought two books today from Ivy Books/Murder Ink: Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" and Diane Ackerman's "An Alchemy of Mind." I'm a huge fan of Ackerman's "A Natural History of the Senses" and "A Natural History of Love" and I'm eager to see what she's whipped up in this book.

Also, I was a foodie a) before I knew I was a foodie, b) It was cool to be one and c) before the word "foodie" fell into common usage. Yesterday I made a superb soup with spinach, chicken stock, milk and a butter/flour roux. No, it was not cream of spinach.

I know I have a lot of work to do and not enough time to do it between now and Wednesday. But I just want to post a brief note congratulating the Supreme Court on upholding the Solomon Amendment. Basically, law schools which receive federal dollars must grant military recruiters the same recruiting opportunities as private firms notwithstanding the "don't ask don't tell" policy. While the court ruled along the lines of "conduct vs speech," declaring the Solomon Amendment regulates the method which falls into the acceptable course of action on part of a law school while not barring its right to openly denounce the military's treatment of homosexuals, I personally come to the same conclusion via a different a perspective - that of a student. To summarize the argument of the S. Court, however, it is quite simple: you may say what you like but you may not do what you like, in light of the fact that you receive federal dollars. But back to how I personally see this:

Whose right is it for a law school to censor my recruitment opportunities on behalf of a policy which may or may not affect me? You could make the argument that discrimination affects everybody - but that is based upon social mores and not law. Discrimination is unfair, but so is life and so, at times, is the law. Forgetting for a moment the discrimination that homosexuals arguably face when joining the military, does the fact that the silent discrimination of minorities, women and those who do not fit the stereotype of a "conservative WASP ivy league lawyer" prevent private firms from recruiting? The answer in short is no. While it is a stretch to call it legal hair splitting - the difference between silently advancing discrimination/prejudice and openly codifying it (and lawyers make plenty of money arguing these types of minutia) are in essence the same thing. It is almost an absurd case of reverse discrimination (though this argument is based upon social mores rather than law) to restrict military recruting on campuses for this flimsy reason.

That the school wittingly agrees with the government to a contract of allowing recruitment by millitary and government branches in exchange for federal dollars seems to me to be moot and just icing on the cake to why the Solomon Amendment should stand. This alone should make it painfully obvious why a law school which receives these federal funds ought to comply. Being in contract with the government is arguably no different from being in contract with a private party or corporation.

Bravo.

Lionel Tate, why are you alive? Why did you even bother taking the plea in order to take the death penalty off the table? You are a worthless waste of oxygen. Perhaps nobody has ever had the heart to tell you this, but you are W-O-R-T-H-L-E-S-S. You've caused nobody anything but heartache by your very existence (to say nothing of your mother's lunacy for saying she's "hopeful" and that she was "relieved by the plea"), and for that reason alone, you should be dead. Take your own life and stop wasting the resources you so blatantly don't give a damn about. you got away with second degree murder the first time because of a legal glitch and then found it in yourself to go buy a gun with that new lease on life, oh yes, i forgot: after running around with an 8 inch knife like the menace you undoubtedly are. You then proceeded to rob a fucking pizza delivery boy. You felt the need to rob a pizza delivery boy yet you had the money to buy a gun? Please take your own life and spare us the wasted ink in the Times.

I have to admit that this morning, I licked the plate. All that was on it were grape tomatos, Spanish onions, 2 eggs and kosher salt. I knew the eggs weren't warm enough to make the true football-shaped French omelette, so I just made a regular omelette instead over low low heat. I have perfected the art, I think, of not having to use non-stick pans to cook anything without sticking. But back to this omelette so the egg went in after the onions began to sweat and the tomatoes shortly afterwards. And it didn't stick. none of it stuck to the pan. None of it had that unappetizing brown-ness to it (eggs were never meant to be golden brown.). The entire omelette was a sunny deep yellow - and all just cooked. The moistness of the egg never gave way to runniness and the just heated-through tomatoes were a pleasant burst of joy. Oh yes, did I mention the entire omelette was flipped ONCE and folded twice to make a perfect (oh yes perfecttt) omelette. I love cooking.

On the docket tonight: escargot, baby spinach leaves and a rose sauce over penne.

To the assholes who blasted a big hole in the Shiite temple this morning: You are MORONS. You do not realize what you have just done. You have guaranteed that your children and your children's children will be hunted down for generations to come and that Islam will be split forever. And for what? So that your shrivelled testicles can somehow feel "empowered" fighting your cause? Leave fucking monuments (especially ones that belong to your OWN religion) out of it. It was no less wrong when Buddha heads were cut off during the cultural revolution or when the Parthenon statues were destroyed by idiots who marched to "Onward Christian Soldiers." Score one for the home team. How fucking stupid can you be when you blow up your OWN religion's monuments??

That island is looking better and better every minute. Reading the Times leaves me foaming at the mouth more often than not, nowadays. I need to resolve to head blindly to the crossword instead of reading the As. Just the Arts section, please.

I am coming out of hibernation to comment on the "protests" in Muslim countries over the political cartoon of Prophet Mohammad originally printed by a few admittedly mentally feeble individuals in Europe.

The blame, however, mostly falls on the morons who are a) looting local shops, b) killing local people and c) finding an excuse to riot. Yes, I said it. These are fucking protests, idiots, these are RIOTS. I am one of the school which believes that spades should be identified as such and these so called "protests" (as delicately phrased by the ultra left-wing Times) are just an excuse for hoodlums to destroy things. Grow the FUCK up and stop burning your own credibility.

I am sick of the world. I should just go buy one of those islands and read books. I would make forays into the common world to shop for things like Iberian ham and Burberry trenches and Fortnum tea. Then I would shuttle my children off to boarding school and retreat back to the isle for peace and quiet. God this will be a wonderful life.

"This coyness, this reserve, is, I always think, an intrinsic part of being British," he said. "We are understated. We don't do flags on the front lawn."

I was New Yorked once again today. To be "New Yorked" is to be forced into a trying situation (or, in plain and simple terms, get screwed) by the entrenched protocol of New York City. I was New Yorked today by the stationery monopoly which exists around Columbia. Or perhaps the industry monopoly in all the neighborhoods that actually have more of a use for stationery (to the morons who put a Staples in Soho...use your goddamn heads!) in keeping big box giants (read: CHEAP STUFF) out of their neighborhoods. My glorious New Yorking today was the purchase of 2 teensy notebooks for my Chinese class (mandatory, yes, otherwise I would be handing in sheets of loose-leaf) at an exorbitant 3 bucks/piece(!). The hilarious thing too was that I went into 3 "separate" stationery stores looking for these damn books before I found what I was looking for and much to my not-so-surprise, all three stores were owned by the same owner. Eesh. What can I say...I live in a city with sky high rent and life is expensive. 3 dollars a teensy notebook expensive.

I don't know how much more of this I can take. Another engagement!

Congrats, Karen (and this Ian character as well)!

New computer entitled "Fluffier." Mum wanted Fluffy, so naturally, mr IBM dutifully went to mum and now I have fluffier. Fluffier is a puny rendition of fluffy, weighing in at a meagre 4 pounds. Fluffier has a 13 inch screen and has a whole bunch of fairly powerful features and a pretty shitty (typically so) keyboard. He is a Fujitsu superlight LifeBook. He has a metal cover and generally looks like a very Asian machine. Poor thing. Dad would not hear of reincarnating Fluffier into an IBM body because their production has been taken over by "Lenovo PC" which screams, he cries, of Chinaland and all that is wrong with much of its electronics production methods. Thus dad was much more satisified buying Fluffier as he currently stands, born in Japan. Fluffier boasts a pretty big 60Gb appetite, and I will work on once again filling him with MP3s and now with all this extra space, a plethora of junk that I know I don't need, but certainly may want. YEEEEEEHAW.

I am working my way, quite quickly, through Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." I just may be becoming a feminist. Well truthfully speaking that's terribly unlikely, but this is the second book of what can be considered "traditionally feminist" writing that I can say without a doubt I agree with and thoroughly enjoy. Perhaps to be fair I will clarify that this isn't considered "traditionally" femenist. It's a sort of niche femimism which is markedly unique from the psychotic bra-burning-corporate-power-frau types. Anything I write to summarize Woolf's position would be a horrific oversimplification of what she has to say about women and their place in "modern" (circa early 1900s) society, but her tantalizing idea of a room of one's own and a living allowance coupled with the idea of the "Society of Outsiders" presented in "Three Guineas" makes for an interesting thought experiment. These two books are definite gems. I can't say I much enjoyed her fiction (any of it...I've hacked my way through "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway"), but her rapacious wit and razor sharp logic really carry her non-fiction works through. I think I will pick up a couple of other non-fictions, namely "On Being Ill" and both volumes of "The Common Reader." Before more thinking happens, an excerpt from "A Room of One's Own:"

"And I began thinking of all those great men who have for one reason or another admired, sought out, lived with, confided in, made love to, written of, trusted in, and showed what can only be described as some need of or some dependence upon certain persons of the opposite sex....But we should wrong these illustrious men very greatly if we insisted that they got nothing from these alliances but comfort, flattery, and the pleasures of the body. What they got, it is obvious, was something that their own sex was unable to supply."

Perhaps in this day and age, it is all too easy to forget what it is the other sex "supplies." We live in an age of Condoleeza Rice (a highly respectable individual, might I add) -esque women who have clawed their way to the top of the male-created corporate food-chain. I suppose again that it is from this vantage point the "need" for the opposite sex seems diminished if not altogether annihilated. The fact of the matter may indeed be that one sex does not "need" each other in the strictest sense - as evidenced by the increasing number of women turning to sperm banks to start families in lieu of "Mr. Right," and men who are able to adopt unwanted children without a mate - but it takes Woolf's gently arcane politicized writing to alert us to the fact that life is simply "sweeter" with the opposite sex around. In a society where it may seem that we have progressed "beyond" the need for Woolf's calculated defence of a true feminine integrity, we are sternly shown the folly of our own ways by Woolf's strikingly pertinent observations of what one sex does to ignore or belittle the other. You're guilty of it and I'm guilty of it. Fuck this woman was smart. I conclude: Boys. Dumb, but I can't live without them.