Keeping the Faith, For Now

The initiative I talked about in this post, which removed religious books from prisons that were not on a pre-approved list, has been suspended. Apparently, conservatives and liberals alike called for a stop to this ridiculousness. I hope it sticks.

But it also makes me a bit happier because, for whatever their reasons, two opposite sides came together for something that is correct and good. So it can be done! Imagine that.

Savor the Moment... Before A Car Hits You

I make no secret of the fact that I dislike Waco. I'm a city girl through and through and I miss real shopping, real restaurants and movie theaters built after 1985. Yes, I can get almost anything I need in Waco, but I miss a lot of my vapid, pointless wants, like any trip to Crate & Barrel turns out. (I don't NEED a compressed bamboo cutting board - but do I have one? Yes, yes I do.)

But there's one moment where I feel at home in Waco outside of the confines of law school. That moment? When I cross the street to go into my bank.

I bank at Bank of America and if you know Waco, you know that the one here is actually in an attractive building across the square (I call it "square" because it sounds better than "parking lot") from the sole beauty of Waco, the courthouse. It has a little brick walkway to lead people from the "square" to the bank itself. Sometimes cars stop for you and let you walk across the little two lane road. When I do cross, as I did today, I feel like I'm in one of those quaint little towns that has a population of 124 and where trees turn colors in the fall and there's a phone tree to tell you when school has a snow-day instead of having to listen to the morning news. Apparently, I have some tiny-town girl inside of my city girl facade. And so I enjoy my moments of walking into the bank and think that maybe I should move to some tiny little Pennsylvania or Vermont town and be one of two or three lawyers handling stuff like wills for the apple farmer down the street and representing the only "criminal" in town, the village drunk. And I want it to be called a "village", because that sounds nice.

Then I snap out of it and laugh a little to myself.

Dark, Seething Confusion

While roving around iTunes, my giftcard ready in my hot little hand thanks to generous interviewers, I noticed something. Nickelback's "Rockstar" is one of the top music video, song and ringtone downloads right now. Irritation (and a bit of nostalgia, as anyone would have that's heard Prof CivPro's opinion on the topic) welled up within me. Not only is this song kind of old, as I remember hearing it months back, but I also remember thinking how much I HATED it. Ugh. I don't get it. Are they being ironic? Are they saying that they DON'T do all that Hollywood, hypocritial crap that they spew in the lyrics? Or are they saying they do and they're laughing in our stunned faces? Either way, it IRKS me to the extreme. Nickelback has cemented itself into a category previously inhabited only by Creed - Bands That Make Fear for the Future of the Human Race.

Hi, I'm the Freak That Wants YOUR Dog Safe

I've had an emotional roller-coaster of a day. It began with me running into Tax at 8:01 this morning, 8 minutes after I woke up and while thinking, "Good Lord, this must be how Britney Spears feels EVERY DAY. Unwashed, unkempt and still with product in her hair from yesterday. Also, everyone staring at you."

Then came my brief explosion of irritation at the end of T&E, which had little to do with T&E and everything to do with insane and annoying people.* Have you ever noticed how insane and annoying people come in pairs though?

Let me back up to say that yesterday before class, I come out of my apartment and find a tiny little dachshund sniffing around my door. Charlie goes ballistic and wants to play with the little girl who is 1/3 of his weight. I decide to take her to the office, as there is NO tag and NO ONE calling for her, although I'm sure I've seen her around. The girl in the office says that she knows who the puppy belongs to. Cue the momentary sadness that I don't get to keep the sweet little girl, but also the happiness that I helped find someone's lost pet.

Back to today and when I step out to take Charlie to do "his puppy thing", as my mother calls it. The little dachshund is back! And she's found my upstairs neighbor, who I quickly barrage with the tale of yesterday. She points me to the apartment where she thinks she's seen the dog. I take the dachshund (who is now sniffing around the fence which does no good job of keeping her from the busy road) to the apartment. Some gormless little undergrad looks at the dog, looks at me like I'm a crazy person myself and then "remembers" it's his roomie's dog. Said roomie comes down the path moments later on crutches.

"Oh thanks," she says.

"I've found her sniffing around my apartment twice in two days," I answer.

"Yeah. Did you let her out?" she asks the gormless undergrad.

"No. I dunno."

She turns to me. "Yeah, I can't take her out on a leash because I'm on crutches."

"Right," I say. "Well, I was just worried. I mean, she was wandering alone, way over there."

"Oh, well. Okay, thanks." She takes the puppy and shuffles back inside, both her and the gormless undergrad giving me suspicious glances over the shoulder.

I don't know. Maybe I AM a freak for wanting the dachshund to live another day. But when I care about your dog more than you do, I can't help but be the freak. Even now, I'm looking outside the window every 5 seconds to see if the dachshund has returned. And yes, I WILL come back to your place and knock on the door, despite the crazy looks, if she does return. Maybe you'll get it after awhile. I'm not PETA. I'm not going to smear red paint on your fur coat. But at the risk of sounding like a mother, you got the dog and now it's your responsibility! Please, PLEASE, take it seriously. My heart just can't take it if you don't.

*Note that it's no one at BLS. Or anyone affiliated. Or anyone remotely familiar with BLS. Or, just to be clear, anyone at law firms that might be interviewing at BLS.

Because I Need To Laugh

I heart Lewis Black. I once met him - he's not nearly this angry in real life. He humored me as I stuttered and as the girl next to me slurred drunkenly. (I take comfort in the fact that I was not as embarrassing as her.)

Anyway, if you haven't seen Lewis Black before, (a) you should and (b) be warned that he has a foul mouth and insults everyone. Believe it or not, this is one of the tamer segments I found and actually a bit that I saw him perform in Austin 2 years ago.

I think he's hilarious. I hope you do too and get a little laugh on a slow, sad Monday.

Keeping the Faith?

I don't talk about religion much. Despite what my mother and my church attendance record might say however, I have deeply held beliefs that affect my life in many ways. It is an important facet of the lives of a large part of the world and I'm sure that includes many people in the highest positions of our government.

So why is the Federal Bureau of Prisons taking religion away from inmates?

I understand not allowing prisoners to get their own personal copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook, but to cut religious texts to a paltry 150 titles per religion? Does Robert H. Schuller's "Hours of Power" really represent a great threat to the federal prisons? Are they afraid the prisoners will rise as one and start belting out gospel music? Frankly, if I were a prisoner, I would rather do that than read one of the 9 C.S. Lewis titles that are permitted. Narnia is lyrically fabulous; "The Pilgrim's Regress" should be used instead of anesthesia.

But correct me if I'm wrong - religion tends to promote peace and tolerance as a rule. Any religious text that promotes ideas of violence and extremism, I would argue, it not religious text at all but propaganda. And we all know exactly what kind of text the Bureau REALLY thinks is dangerous. So be honest, Bureau of Prisons, and ban texts that incite violence and extremism. At least then you aren't impinging unnecessarily on the rights of those who want to read true Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religious books. You're making the same mistake so many make these days - associating an entire religion(s) with the few psychos who want to use the said religion as a mask for their said psychosis.

Mostly Babble

So I've been agonizing about what my first post of the new school year should be. I thought about writing about everything from the fact that the lack of Prof CivPro has made this year's 1Ls entirely too comfortable to the 'finally!' moment of Britney Spears getting investigated by CPS (again). In the end, I decided that I wasn't actually that picky, just uninspired to write anything. Now that it's the 2nd week of school, I just look lazy. So be it. Now your expectations are lowered to an acceptable level.

I really only have one bit of news anyway - that my husband has got a new job at Best Buy with the Geek Squad. (So fitting, that name.) This might not be entirely impressive to you, except for the fact that he's been delivering pizzas for the last 10 months, while his Computer Science degree hangs above my desk in all of its useless glory. In Waco, you see, computer people like Jon have 2 options - complete mediocrity, usually in a job that has nothing to do with their expertise (see: delivering pizzas) or they can pull out their PhD in astrophysics and go work at the aerospace engineering firm just outside of Waco. And Jon doesn't have a secret PhD in astrophysics. Unless he's hiding something, in which case I think a secret degree is probably the least of my worries. So in all, Jon is pleased with his job, which doesn't quite fit either of these usual 2 options.

But that's not my point. The point is that while applying to Best Buy online, Jon came across this question in the personality test, which I can only assume was created by a psychology major, because those are my people and I know their work:

"You get angry when the court system lets guilty people go free. Do you: Strongly Agree? Agree? Disagree? Strongly Disagree?"

There are so many problems with this question that my brain literally screeched to a halt for several minutes. The fact that it chafes against my growing bias towards the defense is the least of them. But I had to wonder - is this how people see the court system? My own childhood was full of detective and cop shows - I knew "innocent until proven guilty" before my ABCs and I'm not kidding. (My parents never thought I really comprehended what was going on in those mystery shows they watched every Tuesday night, but truthfully, this is probably where I formed my complete non-surprise at the perversions of human nature. Also, I was allowed to watch Purple Rain at age 4.)

But it was surprising, especially knowing that this questionnaire was probably edited a thousand times by a dozen people, who are presumably people with college degrees and 2 brain cells to rub together. I would have expected better. Or perhaps BLS has already warped me and I should have expected nothing.