May 04, 2010

Thoughts on Montréal

Redemption, alas, is not as easily achieved as it is written about. My lofty goal of approximately a month ago—finish two books for fun prior to the end of my Spring Break—was a calamitous failure. Indeed, even today, I have not managed to complete that second novel. (Choosing a dense and lengthy Russian novel as my second book might have been ill-advised.) The result should not come as much of a surprise to long time readers: woeful inadequacy, all consuming and everlasting, is as much a part of my (necessarily futile) existence as dark hair and emaciation.

Such failures have not, however, stopped me from continuing onward in the meaningless drift toward ultimate demise. The last weekend saw me in Montréal, Canada, and I recount my impressions and experience below.

May 07, 2010

On the Recent and Unhappy Turn to Seriousness in Life

Last night, I was sitting around at home (alone, in the dark, and on the ground, obviously) contemplating the utter futility of human existence instead of out being a forlorn degenerate when a singularly peculiar thought crossed my mind: somewhere along the way, people around me started getting rather serious with their lives. Like, really fucking serious. I am talking about marriage, mortgages, white picket fences, and babies. What? Ew. This observation, moreover, is not merely limited to my friends in Chicago (or those in law school, even); every month these days, it seems, I hear of a new engagement, marriage, baby, or some other colossally momentous life event from all corners of my social network and all across the world. And if my brilliant predictions of yesteryear turn out correct, the onslaught of first divorces and second marriages is, no doubt, only a precious few years away.

When did this happen? When did everyone around me apparently become an adult? When did formerly reviled notions of commitment and family replace the futile pursuits of drinking and debauchery? And why the fuck am I still sitting at home, alone, in the dark, and on the ground contemplating the futility of my (and your) existence? Is it time I turned on the light and bought a chair, so to speak? (Perish the thought!)

May 15, 2010

Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness

There was a time in my life where I would often find myself sitting alone in a dark room in the middle of the night, my face illuminated only by the faint glow of my computer monitor, furiously pounding away on the keyboard, the week-old beard, unkempt hair, and dark circles under my eyes a testament to my hard core ways. After all, I was once a (much reviled) engineer, and more importantly, a code monkey. And though the painful awkwardness, perpetual loneliness, and paralyzing sexual frustration characteristic of my past life as a computer science major have all remained with me, I had thought the days (and nights) of bitter and futile fights with technology were a distant memory. So much the worse, then, that my horrid return to late night keyboard pounding would come as a consequence of something so atrocious I can barely stomach thinking about it even now: installing Windows 7. Excuse me for a second; I am going to be sick.

May 20, 2010

Ruminations About Law and School (Part 1)

It is rather fitting, I think, that the same day that marked the passage of my last law school class was also the one on which I discovered, much to my chagrin, my first gray hair. The last three years, as I have observed repeatedly before, have not been kind, either on my health or my mental disposition. And as the reality begins to set in—I am actually done with law school?—the inevitable question that will follow in the weeks to come is already looming: Was it worth?

But the end of classes is not quite the end of law school. With three finals left to complete, the chances of soul-crushing failure remain as high as ever (indeed, over a lifetime, those chances are necessarily 100 percent), and as such, I will defer the nostalgia and existential angst to another day. The end of classes, however, does provide an opportune moment to reflect on the subject of my endeavors over the past three years, and more importantly, the infuriating aspects thereof. In that vein, in the next two posts, I will discuss aspects of both constitutional and statutory law that simply don't make sense and should be fixed—immediately. (There goes my Senate confirmability—oh wait, too late.)

May 26, 2010

Ruminations About Law and School (Part 2)

Last week, I wrote over 1200 words (I swear I can't piss without dropping a thousand words of gibberish) on a decidedly banal topic—constitutional law. More specifically, I described a few absurdities that have long plagued the Constitution and could easily be fixed. Two finals deep, and with my last final of law school looming, I thought it would be appropriate tonight to author the companion piece to last week's rumination: shit that's wrong with statutory law that could easily be fixed. (I promise, dear readers, that this will be my last foray into substantive legal topics for a long time. Existential angst and despair will return in short order.)