Well hello, you handsome Bunsnippers!

Pardon my recent reticence. Things have gotten real over here in Law School Land (just around the corner from Lah-Lah Land). The beginning of November marked the beginning of the nervous countdown to the end of my first semester. Only one month left to synthesize all the legal gobbledygook that's been flowing into my brain at the pace of 200 (rather dense) pages per week.

I've been feeling alternating bouts of "I can so make this thing my bitch!" and "Help me, Obiwan Kinobi, you're my only hope!" and "Oh my god, we're all gonna die!"

It's all gonna be fine, though. Really.

Honestly, I kind of expected that by this point in the semester I might be huddled in a corner rocking myself gently while singing incomprehensibly about jurisdiction, res ipsa loquitur, and the statute of frauds, but so far I've managed to keep the crazy to a moderate level.

Still, I can't help thinking about the refrain of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate: "I'm worried about my future!" It would be nice if I could just allow myself to enjoy the academicness of this experience for its own sake, but I've been in the real world, and I know that everything I do here is primarily for the purpose of getting a job offer - preferably before I even graduate. And so with that comes the pressure, of course, to do really well on the exams. But there is a mandatory curve set at 3.0, so most people will get Bs on the exams. That's ok, I'm willing to accept that. I will naturally strive to do the best I can. But, goddammit, I'm worried about my future!

I am really looking forward to the end of this semester, even while I try to slow the hands of time to allow me to adequately prepare for exams. I am getting tired of the sameness of a lot of things. Some classmates are starting to get to me, I feel a strong personality clash with a certain instructor of mine, and I am just looking forward to something new. I'm still enjoying the experience as a whole, though. Have met a handful of people whom I genuinely enjoy, and found a really good beer at my neighborhood pub that tasted like espresso. Ok, that last bit has nothing to do with law school. Except for maybe a remedy to my pain and suffering. Ha!





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I loved it pretty immediately, what do you think?

This song has been on regular iPod rotation this week. I particularly enjoy the rhythm for walking to the bus stop on the way to school. It's a little bit Tears for Fears, little bit Queen, little bit eunuch, and maybe even a little bit The Who.

Wild Beasts - The Devil's Crayon

Do you like your eggs short or long?

Usually I play the critic in language debates, but today, Ian flipped the criticism onto me over the word eggs.

I say "ayggs", long vowel sound.

Ian says "ehggs", short vowel sound.

Normally I would agree that Ian's version is correct, because in general, you will have a short vowel whenever a double consonant follows. But this is how I have always (or oh-weez, as I say), pronounced the word, and so naturally I feel my way is correct.

Ok, ok, I concede. It must be fun to win for once, eh M'Love? But I'm still going to say it my way.

How do you, dear readers, think "eggs" should be pronounced?


Here are further samples of my idiosyncratic pronunciation and understanding of language, from back when I was first learning to read:

• I used to say "enn-velope" instead of "on-velope" (which, you must admit, is understandable).
  

• I thought the T in "often" was silent, and argued as much when my pronunciation was called out by a fellow classmate in about 2nd grade.

• I also used to think there were two distinct words for the two uses of the word "used":

used as the past tense of the verb meaning "to implement"

• Pronounce: youzed

• As in: "I used the Kleenex."

used as an adverb of time when combined with "to" to mean "at one time but not anymore"

• Pronounced: youst

• As in: "I used to go there often."
  

In first grade, I didn't comprehend that these two words were even related, although I didn't know how the second one would have been spelled. When I very first read a sentence like the second variety, I thought there was something missing between the used and the to, such as, for instance the bus.


What are your language idiosyncrasies?


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Happy Columbus Day

When I was a child, Columbus Day was another day off from school. Aside from the fact that I could really go for a bit of a holiday from school right about now (come on, you know you'd appreciate a day off too), I think it's a shame that we stopped observing the date.

I'm sure the break in observance was brainchilded (if I can verbalize a weird noun) during the overcorrective political correctness movement of the 90's. Columbus was a bad man who brought disease and death to the native peoples of this continent. And, on top of that, he didn't even DISCOVER America, despite what they taught when I was a kid.

Yes, yes. True. And Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had slaves, but we don't entirely discount their value to our history, now do we?

Nor should we completely discount the historical significance of Columbus coming to America. Columbus's trips to the Americas were the catalyst of European colonization of the Americas. Maybe if we are to be decent human beings, we ought to wish that colonization never happened, for the sake of the native peoples that arrived here long before the Vikings and the Lamanites made their way to the American continents. But in life, bad things sometimes, nay often, lead to good things. Sure, our history is replete with darkness, but I am here today in part because of the darkness that was the Europeanization of the American continents. And I don't feel bad about celebrating that.


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