Got Drunk and Wrote A Blog

Stay Free

2011-04-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

I've been frequenting Fresh and Easy lately. They seem to be a pleasant amalgamate of Trader Joe's and Wal-Mart, combining low prices with simple and fresh product. Always good. Anyways, this post is powered by 1.99 bottle of Spanish wine from Fresh and Easy, aptly named Saludas - Tempranillo.

There are some mornings where the sky looks like a road

2010-10-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't provided much in terms of substantive posts lately, whereby lately could be pretty much loosely defined as the past four years of my life.

I am now an attorney licensed to practice law in the golden state of California. Sometimes I find it odd that little ol me can step into a courtroom and defend your liberties. It's intimidating. I wonder if I am smart enough sometimes. Most the time, actually. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I still listen to emo rock music, and like high school-ish movies.

Then again, sometimes I'm reminded that none of that really matters. I remember all the time I spent in the library my first year. Hours and hours, it seemed. Moving on to my second year, which seemed equally as bad as the first. And finally third year. Moreover, the marathon three month study session preparing for the bar. And passing it.

I think I'm ready. Capable. Competent. This is doable. More than that, actually. More than that.

A new taking back sunday song

2010-06-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

As one of the commenters on youtube stated, "My ears have been raped by awesomeness."

An updated version of ellieisomgsohawt, aka I'm not gay, I just wish I was.

Various tweets after the Lakers win the NBA Championship

2010-06-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

BQRMagic
Re: FT disparity: Lakers 2nd in NBA in FT Rate defense, Celtics 25th. Finals results tend to bear that out. Nothing fishy.

johnschuhmann
And the +/- leader for the series? Ron Artest: +40.

ChrisMannixSI
Kobe Bryant on what this title means to him: "It means I have one more than Shaq."

KevinDing
Kobe: "I’ve got one more than Shaq, and you can take that to the bank."

LakersReporter
Get ready for this Kobe quote: "I got one more than Shaq. You can take that to the bank. I don't forget anything."

TrueHoop
Hundreds of street signs torn down. Metal poles littered everywhere. A crowd with a Garnett jersey chanting "burn that s---."

blazersblog
Sheed waited outside the refs' locker room after the game? Classic.

DuranLA
Rasheed Wallace outside of the refs locker room. Security telling him they're not coming out. Shed says "just wanna talk"

THE_REAL_SHAQ

@THE_REAL_SHAQ Congratulations Kobe, u deserve it. U played great. Enjoy it man enjoy it. I know what ur sayin "Shaq how my ass taste"

The ship stays it's course

2010-06-16T23:38:00.001-07:00

2010-06-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Anderson, down at The Volokh Conspiracy, offers a pretty apt analysis of the current job market for law graduates. What follows is a pretty liberal chunk of his analysis:

Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha has a blistering post on law professors failing to take note — or anyway do anything about — the collapse of the job market for students at non-elite law schools in light of the size of law school tuition. The complaint of the proliferating blogs and other sites from frustrated attorney job-seekers is that

non-elite law schools are selling a fraudulent bill of goods. Law schools advertise deceptively high rates of employment and misleading income figures. Many graduates can’t get jobs. Many graduates end up as temp attorneys working for $15 to $20 dollars an hour on two week gigs, with no benefits. The luckier graduates land jobs in government or small firms for maybe $45,000, with limited prospects for improvement. A handful of lottery winners score big firm jobs.

And for the opportunity to enter a saturated legal market with long odds against them, the tens of thousands newly minted lawyers who graduate each year from non-elite schools will have paid around $150,000 in tuition and living expenses, and given up three years of income. Many leave law school with well over $100,000 in non-dischargeable debt, obligated to pay $1,000 a month for thirty years.

This dismal situation was not created by the current recession—which merely spread the pain up the chain into the lower reaches of elite schools. This has been going on for years.

Like many of the other professors reading this, I am pretty well immersed in the problems, given that I teach at a mid-tier law school ... former research assistants, for example, lacking any real employment prospects. I hold frequent discussions with students both present, just graduated, and several years out trying to figure out what to do, every single week — and I don’t have any very good suggestions. One of the difficulties for my students is that, as a mid-tier DC school, federal government positions have been a traditional route for them. But as job pressures have mounted in private firm jobs in NY and DC, more and more elite law school grads have been pursuing those opportunities and as far as I can tell, crowding out my students.

Even if it turns out that increased regulation across a variety of areas — for good reasons or bad, that’s not my point here — whether financial regulation, health care, etc., means increased employment opportunities for lawyers both in government and out over the longer term, it seems to me that returns to law are going to be less than before.

2010-06-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

While discussing his inability to follow the path towards piety, 20th century American Catholic writer Thomas Merton once wrote "But I believe that the desire to please you, does in fact please you."

I hope so.

I wonder what ponzi stands for....

2010-05-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

Borrowers bow down before their lenders. Borrowers give up control of their own lives when they take on debt as their time and effort go toward paying for the past rather than investing for the future. Borrowing is a weakness, a crushing weight, a debilitating pile of paper detailing a life of servitude in exchange for a borrower's entitlements.

Of course, most borrowers don't see it that way. They feel powerful. Borrowers believe they are rich because someone was willing to loan them money. The more money people borrow, the stronger they feel and the weaker they get. Ponzi Schemes of debt are the highest form of borrower sophistication and financial management. These structures take borrowers to the heights of borrower power and the depths of borrower weakness.

A brief snippit, reachable here, from the always wonderful Irvine Housing Blog

The Hammer Speaks

2010-05-21T23:51:00.001-07:00

"Why so hard?" the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. "After all, are we not close kin?"

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?

Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?

And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?

And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me?

For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax.

Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze -- harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.

This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard!

2010-05-15T22:16:00.001-07:00

Passed the California Bar Exam.

How do you like them apples?

...

2010-05-04T10:06:00.001-07:00

Shahzad, 30, was due to appear in federal court later on Tuesday to face charges of “driving a car bomb into Times Square on the evening of May 1,” officials said. Had the bomb detonated, many people could have died, experts said.

Read: So fucking fucked.

NYC Subway v. LA Metro

2010-04-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

Predatory Lending

2010-04-23T19:47:00.001-07:00

On one level you have the borrowers who are demanding credit. On the other side of the spectrum, you have cash. Huge amounts of cash flooding into the US from the overseas (but not necessarily). Too much cash looking to fund. There are only so many corporate bonds, credit worthy mortgage borrowers, et al. The cash placement push. Trillions of dollars from overseas.

The cash is available and all the banks are offering this money very, very cheaply. Cash was offered to originating lenders, who in turn employ (affiliate) themselves with brokers. Brokers are supposed to be acting on behalf of the borrowers. The problem is they were only looking after themselves by getting huge fees from originating all these deals.

You'd think that since they were responsible for the loan, they would be picky as to who they were lending to. However, here, we had the secondary market driving the market. Originally, the brokers were liable on a recourse theory. Here, there was insulation. There was a difference between the lending institution and their employees. Management was looking out for the best interest of their financing company.

The mortgages were pooled, and sold to these structured investment vehicles (SIV's) or Special Purpose Entities (SPE's). This SPE would issue bonds. Mortgage backed bonds (CDO's). The problem was the pool was garbage (subprime!). In order to induce the bondholders, the bondholders want good collateral. The rating agencies would then rate these bonds as AAA. They got that through greed. Moody's et al were getting fee's from the bond issuers. If Moody's started to choke and splutter, the bond issuer would go to a different rating agency.

Loan to value ratio. How much will you lend me on the million dollars? Typically 600k. You want it to be conservative.

The bond holders and their underwriters had indentured trustees. The bond holders were people who were really risk aversive, so they wanted insurance. They went to big banks, but they didn't want to insure them. Instead they sold them credit default swaps, on the strength of the AAA rating.

They also hedged their credit default swaps. They would turn to another company and say, if this bond goes into default, will you do a credit default swap. That hedge is cheaper than the actual premium they're getting. They're leveraging. For putting out no money, they get net income out of it b/c the value of the hedge is less than the income to them.

There was a daisy chain of credit default swaps or guaranties.

There were about 7 trillion of these running around and 50 trillion in credit swaps running around. The risk of the default was amplified through all of this.

12:56

2010-04-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

For my own writing, I like to watch the boxing matches, watch how the left jab is used, the overhand right, the left hook, the uppercut, the counter punch. I like to watch them dig in, come off the canvas. There is something to be learned, something to be applied to the art of writing, the way of writing. You have just one chance and then it's gone. There are only pages left, you might as well make them smoke.

2010-04-20T00:29:00.000-07:00

There is a typewriter to my immediate left. However, it is out of ink. A new ribbon would need to be installed before I could begin to belt out scribbles.

Oddly metaphorical.

2010-04-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER FOR THE PUNCTUATION OF HEART DISEASE

by JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Issue of 2002-06-10
Posted 2002-06-03

c The "silence mark" signifies an absence of language, and there is at least one on every page of the story of my family life. Most often used in the conversations I have with my grandmother about her life in Europe during the war, and in conversations with my father about our family's history of heart disease—we have forty-one heart attacks between us, and counting—the silence mark is a staple of familial punctuation. Note the use of silence in the following brief exchange, when my father called me at college, the morning of his most recent angioplasty:

"Listen," he said, and then surrendered to a long pause, as if the pause were what I was supposed to listen to. "I'm sure everything's gonna be fine, but I just wanted to let you know—"
"I already know," I said.
"c"
"c"
"c"
"c"
"O.K.," he said.
"I'll talk to you tonight," I said, and I could hear, in the receiver, my own heartbeat.
He said, "Yup."

g The "willed silence mark" signifies an intentional silence, the conversational equivalent of building a wall over which you can't climb, through which you can't see, against which you break the bones of your hands and wrists. I often inflict willed silences upon my mother when she asks about my relationships with girls. Perhaps this is because I never have relationships with girls—only relations. It depresses me to think that I've never had sex with anyone who really loved me. Sometimes I wonder if having sex with a girl who doesn't love me is like felling a tree, alone, in a forest: no one hears about it; it didn't happen.

?? The "insistent question mark" de notes one family member's refusal to yield to a willed silence, as in this conversation with my mother:

"Are you dating at all?"
"c"
"But you're seeing people, I'm sure. Right?"
"c"
"I don't get it. Are you ashamed of the girl? Are you ashamed of me?"
"g"
"??"

¡ As it visually suggests, the "unxcla mation point" is the opposite of an exclamation point; it indicates a whisper.

The best example of this usage occurred when I was a boy. My grandmother was driving me to a piano lesson, and the Volvo's wipers only moved the rain around. She turned down the volume of the second side of the seventh tape of the audio version of "Shoah," put her hand on my cheek, and said, "I hope that you never love anyone as much as I love you¡"

Why was she whispering? We were the only ones who could hear.

¡¡ Theoretically, the "extraunxclama tion points" would be used to denote twice an unxclamation point, but in practice any whisper that quiet would not be heard. I take comfort in believing that at least some of the silences in my life were really extraunxclamations.

!! The "extraexclamation points" are simply twice an exclamation point. I've never had a heated argument with any member of my family. We've never yelled at each other, or disagreed with any passion. In fact, I can't even remember a difference of opinion. There are those who would say that this is unhealthy. But, since it is the case, there exists only one instance of extraexclamation points in our family history, and they were uttered by a stranger who was vying with my father for a parking space in front of the National Zoo.

"Give it up, fucker!!" he hollered at my father, in front of my mother, my brothers, and me.

"Well, I'm sorry," my father said, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose, "but I think it's rather obvious that we arrived at this space first. You see, we were approaching from—"

"Give . . . it . . . up . . . fucker!!"

"Well, it's just that I think I'm in the right on this particu—"

"GIVE IT UP, FUCKER!!"

"Give it up, Dad¡" I said, suffering a minor coronary event as my fingers clenched his seat's headrest.

"Je-sus!" the man yelled, pounding his fist against the outside of his car door. "Giveitupfucker!!"

Ultimately, my father gave it up, and we found a spot several blocks away. Before we got out, he pushed in the cigarette lighter, and we waited, in silence, as it got hot. When it popped out, he pushed it back in. "It's never, ever worth it," he said, turning back to us, his hand against his heart.

~ Placed at the end of a sentence, the "pedal point" signifies a thought that dissolves into a suggestive silence. The pedal point is distinguished from the ellipsis and the dash in that the thought it follows is neither incomplete nor interrupted but an outstretched hand. My younger brother uses these a lot with me, probably because he, of all the members of my family, is the one most capable of telling me what he needs to tell me without having to say it. Or, rather, he's the one whose words I'm most convinced I don't need to hear. Very often he will say, "Jonathan~" and I will say, "I know."

A few weeks ago, he was having problems with his heart. A visit to his university's health center to check out some chest pains became a trip to the emergency room became a week in the intensive-care unit. As it turns out, he's been having one long heart attack for the last six years. "It's nowhere near as bad as it sounds," the doctor told my parents, "but it's definitely something we want to take care of."

I called my brother that night and told him that he shouldn't worry. He said, "I know. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about~"

"I know~" I said.

"I know~" he said.

"I~"

"c"

Does my little brother have relationships with girls? I don't know.

Ø Another commonly employed familial punctuation mark, the "low point," is used either in place—or for accentuation at the end—of such phrases as "This is terrible," "This is irremediable," "It couldn't possibly be worse."

"It's good to have somebody, Jonathan. It's necessary."
"c"
"It pains me to think of you alone."
"gØ"
"??Ø"

Interestingly, low points always come in pairs in my family. That is, the acknowledgment of whatever is terrible and irremediable becomes itself something terrible and irremediable—and often worse than the original referent. For example, my sadness makes my mother sadder than the cause of my sadness does. Of course, her sadness then makes me sad. Thus is created a "low-point chain": ØØØØØ . . .·.

d The "snowflake" is used at the end of a unique familial phrase—that is, any sequence of words that has never, in the history of our family life, been assembled as such. For example, "I didn't die in the Holocaust, but all of my siblings did, so where does that leave me?d" Or, "My heart is no good, and I'm afraid of dying, and I'm also afraid of saying I love you.d"

J The "corroboration mark" is more or less what it looks like. But it would be a mistake to think that it simply stands in place of "He agreed," or even "Yes." Witness the subtle usage in this dialogue between my mother and my father:

"Could you add orange juice to the grocery list, but remember to get the kind with reduced acid. Also some cottage cheese. And that bacon-substitute stuff. And a few Yahrzeit candles."
"J"
"The car needs gas. I need tampons."
"J"
"Is Jonathan dating anyone? I'm not prying, but I'm very interested."
"J"

My father has suffered twenty-two heart attacks—more than the rest of us combined. Once, in a moment of frankness after his nineteenth, he told me that his marriage to my mother had been successful because he had become a yes-man early on.

"We've only had one fight," he said. "It was in our first week of marriage. I realized that it's never, ever worth it."

My father and I were pulling weeds one afternoon a few weeks ago. He was disobeying his cardiologist's order not to pull weeds. The problem, the doctor says, is not the physical exertion but the emotional stress that weeding inflicts on my father. He has dreams of weeds sprouting from his body, of having to pull them, at the roots, from his chest. He has also been told not to watch Orioles games and not to think about the current Administration.

As we weeded, my father made a joke about how my older brother, who, barring a fatal heart attack, was to get married in a few weeks, had already become a yes-man. Hearing this felt like having an elephant sit on my chest—my brother, whom I loved more than I loved myself, was surrendering.

"Your grandfather was a yes-man," my father added, on his knees, his fingers pushing into the earth, "and your children will be yes-men."

I've been thinking about that conversation ever since, and I've come to understand—with a straining heart—that I, too, am becoming a yes-man, and that, like my father's and my brother's, my surrender has little to do with the people I say yes to, or with the existence of questions at all. It has to do with a fear of dying, with rehearsal and preparation.

"" The "severed web" is a Barely Tolerable Substitute, whose meaning approximates "I love you," and which can be used in place of "I love you." Other Barely Tolerable Substitutes include, but are not limited to:

Æ|¨, which approximates "I love you."
Oc, which approximates "I love you."
oe, which approximates "I love you."
r(, which approximates "I love you."

I don't know how many Barely Tolerable Substitutes there are, but often it feels as if they were everywhere, as if everything that is spoken and done—every "Yup," "O.K.," and "I already know," every weed pulled from the lawn, every sexual act—were just Barely Tolerable.

:: Unlike the colon, which is used to mark a major division in a sentence, and to indicate that what follows is an elaboration, summation, implication, etc., of what precedes, the "reversible colon" is used when what appears on either side elaborates, summates, implicates, etc., what's on the other side. In other words, the two halves of the sentence explain each other, as in the cases of "Mother::Me," and "Father::Death." Here are some examples of reversible sentences:

My eyes water when I speak about my family::I don't like to speak about my family.
I've never felt loved by anyone outside of my family::my persistent depression.
1938 to 1945::c.
Sex::yes.
My grandmother's sadness::my mother's sadness::my sadness::the sadness that will come after me.
To be Jewish::to be Jewish.
Heart disease::yes.

¨ Familial communication always has to do with failures to communicate. It is common that in the course of a conversation one of the participants will not hear something that the other has said. It is also quite common that one of the participants does not understand what the other has said. Somewhat less common is one participant's saying something whose words the other understands completely but whose meaning is not understood at all. This can happen with very simple sentences, like "I hope that you never love anyone as much as I love you¡"

But, in our best, least depressing moments, we try to understand what we have failed to understand. A "backup" is used: we start again at the beginning, replaying what was missed, making the effort to express ourselves in a different, more direct way:

"It pains me to think of you alone."
"¨"
"It pains me to think of me without any grandchildren to love."

{} A related set of marks, the "should-have brackets," signify words that were not spoken but should have been, as in this dialogue with my father:

"Are you hearing static?"
"{I'm crying into the phone.}"
"Jonathan?"
"c"
"Jonathan~"
"g"
"??"
"I::not myself~"
"{A child's sadness is a parent's sadness.}"
"{A parent's sadness is a child's sadness.}"
"¨"
"I'm probably just tired¡"
"{I never told you this, because I thought it might hurt you, but in my dreams it was you. Not me. You were pulling the weeds from my chest.}"
"{I want to love and be loved.}"
"J"
"J"
"Ø"
"Ø"
"oe"
"J"
"c´c´c"
"Ø"
"Ø"
":°9"
" g + g Æ g "
"J"
"Oc"
"÷''"
"·pv£u¢°ot§l"
"g"
"{I love you.}"
"{I love you, too. So much.}"

Of course, my sense of the should-have is unlikely to be the same as my brothers', or my mother's, or my father's. Sometimes—when I'm in the car, or having sex, or talking to one of them on the phone—I imagine their should-have versions. I sew them together into a new life, leaving out everything that actually happened and was said.

Roll the dice

2010-03-31T00:47:00.001-07:00

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

2010-01-29T19:33:00.001-08:00

Another thing I've realized, he said, is that it's harder for a Jew to die. Forgive me for falling back on the chosen, but there's a certain truth in the old boast. It's harder for us because we expect more; we need more. How irresponsible, how careless it is to die so soon. It's such an unintelligent thing to do. We become doctors to prevent death, lawyers to outlaw it, writers to rage against it. But if you're not Jewish, it's different. (Saul, a young Jewish intellectual in 1946, upon learning he's dying from leukemia)

2010-01-27T17:42:00.001-08:00

From an order today in Becnel v. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Inc., No. 2005–4072 (La. Civ. Dist. Ct.):

This matter is presently set for a jury trial on Monday, February 1, 2010.
Considering the historic victory of the New Orleans Saints, the Court finds that the trial will not be able to proceed as originally scheduled. The Court takes judicial notice that Saintsmania permeates the City of New Orleans. Many prospective jurors for the Parish of Orleans, several attorneys involved in this litigation and Court personnel plan on traveling to the promise[d] land — the Superbowl in Mami, Florida. The Court recognizes that this pilgrimage enhances the chances of the Who Dat Nation to acquire the long sought after Holy Grail — the Vince Lombardi trophy.

THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECEED that the jury trial scheduled for Monday, February 1, 2010 is continued to Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 8:30 a.m.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the parties are to appear in Division “H” on February 1, 2010 for a settlement conference at 10 a.m. in lieu of trial.

2010-01-21T13:25:00.001-08:00

So, Brown wins the Senate seat in Massachusetts, eliminating the possibility of a democratic filibuster. Two days later, Citizens United is handed down from SCOTUS, essentially holding that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures are unconstitutional, and now Obama is directing Congress to get on the ball and legislatively overrule Citizens.

Good day.

2010-01-13T17:17:00.001-08:00

myp2p.eu for links to live online streams.
fbtz.com for torrents of a good selection of matches.

41 days until the California bar.

2010-01-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

http://repo.beyouriphone.com

47 days until the California Bar.

2010-01-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

...