Avert Your Eyes

I awoke this morning and did my usual routine while listening to the painters outside spray-painting the side of my building. They've been at this for a couple weeks and frankly, I'm quite sick of them. I know I'm being unfair, but when I'm going to my dryer to get a clean t-shirt after my shower, I don't like to turn around and see the painters looking at me over my 7 foot tall privacy fence. Did I mention it was right after my shower? It was like I had stepped into a Ben Stiller movie and that's not a very fun place to be.

Anyway, they're painting what was normal, neutral-colored brick with this weird tri-color scheme in an attempt (I'm guessing) to look fresh and "with it". Most of the buildings have a cream top, a white stripe in the middle and green bottom. And yet I walked outside this morning to find my own building's walls a delightful shade of vomit.

VOMIT. Seriously, it looks like what my dog regularly throws up when he's eaten too many bits of disgusting trash off of the sidewalk. I'm hoping that this is just the base coat, but it cannot be gone soon enough. (Although even as I type this, they're hovering outside my window, painting more vomit on the walls. I'm dressed this time though.)

I know they're trying to update the place with the new owners and all, but it's like my apartment complex is having a mid-life crisis. And I'm the kid, embarrassed at the things that it's doing to itself in order to look cool and young again. Couldn't it just have bought a red sports car and gotten a 19 year old secretary to prance around in a miniskirt and do other, non-family-oriented things?

Escapism

Ah, the days after Thanksgiving - when everyone pretends they didn't know Christmas was coming for the last 11 months and they freak out, flocking to the malls. Mass consumerism is the essence of this time of year. That and something about the birth of some child or other?

But most importantly, holiday movies. It's hard to wade through the dreck that comes out each year, so I'll tell you what this humble blogger wants to see (i.e. what I believe will be worth the time).

1. The Golden Compass

I've wanted to see this movie since before I knew there was a movie being made. The Golden Compass is the first of a trilogy of books by Phillip Pullman and, precious few novels aside, is one of the most deeply complex and compelling books I've ever read along with its sequels. Seriously. If you haven't read the trilogy (dubbed altogether as the "His Dark Materials" trilogy), you are missing out on genius. It's like Harry Potter, only more engrossing, better written and has a touch of reality that you can feel, despite witches and talking bears and souls that live outside the body. It's more like the Chronicles of Narnia than anything else, now that I think about it. It's so fantastic that I won't ruin any of it for you.

Anyway, the point is that if they mess this movie up, I will literally cry. And I don't cry.

2. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Not one for the kids, folks, if the title hadn't already tipped you off. Yes, it's a musical (it might be worth the price just to see Johnny Depp singing), but when did that stop Sweet Charity from being depressing as hell? Or Les Miserables? Or lots of others that I can't think of at the moment? Well, take all that depressing stuff from those musicals altogether and go about twenty yards farther and then down into a big black hole of murder and despair. Most full-blown operas don't have this much death and destruction.

But it has Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman (as the bad guy... err, the badder bad guy) and it's directed by Tim Burton. And it's about a demon barber with an old-time straight edge razor. What more could you ask for at Christmas?

3. I Am Legend

Unlike the above two movies, I don't know more than what they've told me in trailers about this one. But apparently there are zombies. And not the zombies that turn what was a horror flick into pure gore (surely you can see the difference?) but more like Shaun of the Dead zombies - tasteful. (Perhaps that's the wrong word...)

Also, Will Smith is in it and I'm just not tired of his one character - the charming, grimly funny hero - yet. I'm not tired of Harrison Ford's rugged smart-ass character either, so this shouldn't be surprising.

Three movies is actually quite low for my typical holiday movie season. It seems the writers' strike is working retroactively (Alien v. Predator: Requiem??? Are you kidding me?) but I can struggle through. For now the time being though, it's back to the grind.

Sleep and Stuffing

Thanksgiving is usually such a trying time for me. Usually, family descends upon Dallas 9 times out of 10, making my mother a nervous wreck while I get increasingly lackadaisical. ("Who cares that the curtain aren't clean, Mom? She's your mother - she knows what a terrible housekeeper you are... Why are you looking at me like that? What do you MEAN I have to vacuum the entire house???") But this year, not even my in-laws will be in town, which is fan-dabby-tabulous in my opinion. Not that I don't love them... I just don't like being around them when there's food involved. It's like I'm being fattened up to go to slaughter. Truly. But I suppose that's what I get for marrying into a restaurant family.

Usually, I'm fretting about shopping for eleventy billion people in the space of 3 weeks (I need to ship things to my far-flung relatives). But as of last year, I decided that the best gift is a gift that goes away and doesn't clutter up the shelves, i.e. food. There are a lot of great catalogs full of stuff that my aunts will call me up to complain about because they were just SO good but SO bad for them. This is a sign of success, my friends.

And usually, I'm gearing up for exams. Except I'm on the quarter system now and this time I'm not even fretting too much about my last round of tests.

All in all, it's going to be a good holiday for me. I hope it is for you too.

Oh, I do know one thing I'm going to get:

A new puppy bed.

Grizzly Bear? Brown Bear? AK-47 Bear?

Cash Advance Loans

Prof. Osler has linked us to a site which tests the readability of a blog. This blog scored a decent "high school" level. I thought it amusing considering that today in our first Con Law class (in which I sit front row, section I'm-Going-to-Get-Picked-On-A-Lot-Aren't-I?), I could not stop giggling for about 5 solid minutes.

Really, was I the only one in a class of some 100-odd people that had that bit from Family Guy running through their heads about the 2nd Amendment? -

"Do you think the language in the Second Amendment is clear enough? You know, about the right to bear arms?"
"Of course it's clear. Every American has the right to hang a pair of bear arms on their wall. How can that possibly be misconstrued?"

... Well, I thought it was funny. I'm going to go run it through again to see if this post lowered me down to "Pre-K" level.

Como Se Dice, "Important Fact"?

My mother called me today, just as I was fighting the urge to put down my Negotiable Instruments outline and pick up my Wii controller. She was coming back from the court house and jury duty. She had called to complain to me about how boring the process was and how much she disliked the lawyers for both sides. I asked (half-jokingly) if they were Baylor lawyers, and she said, "I don't know. But when they told us who the lawyers had picked, one of them stood up and started talking to the judge. I had to lean over and ask the woman next to me what the man was saying. She said that he was telling the judge that he couldn't understand much English. None of the lawyers had asked that. Don't you think that's an important thing to ask?"

So I'm guessing no, they weren't Baylor lawyers.

Exam Week Begins

I always take a little bit to recover from an exam, especially one that lasts 4 hours and that has questions ranging from "Charlie could have taken this for me" to "I want my mommy". I know it's meant to keep us on our toes and it damn sure worked. On the whole though, I didn't leave the exam cursing at anyone, not even myself, so that's a success in my mind.

Still, exam week is tortuous and when you've plunged into it, it's hard to keep yourself going at full steam for that entire time (as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this post instead of finishing my Negotiable Instruments outline). I find myself thinking about what I plan to do when I'm done, which gives me hope but also threatens to distract me entirely. And there's always the dreaded pit of despair when you just stop caring.

All this is very hard to explain to non-law school people. They often think of law school exams as akin to what they remember from undergrad. I remember undergrad too and except for classes like Neuro-psychology (which was also available to bio majors, which all slept during class as the psych majors like me sweated over which each neurotransmitter did and why and how and what dopamine's favorite color was and why it was in a fight with serotonin over the affections of acetylcholine and was glycine the love child of epinephrine??? Answers next week on "As the Brain Turns"), it was all otherwise as easy as pie.

On the other hand, other law school people should know exactly how horrible this week is, and - this is where I'm going to get preachy - should stay quiet in the freaking hallways and not shout about how you want candy and how you ALWAYS forget your ethernet cord when there is obviously an open door in front of you with 60 people taking an exam! We saw you look at us. Why did you keep talking, girl-who-shall-remain-nameless-BUT-I-KNOW-WHO-YOU-ARE???

That wasn't the intended point of this post, but there it is. See, GWSRNBIKWYA? You didn't just distract me from my exam, you distracted me from my entire point!

... Oh yes. Pace yourself. And stay calm. And remember that it'll all be over soon. *Deep breath*