employee of the month?

since when do you get to use lethal force to protect your boss’s toothpaste?

empire state of mind

big city; big dreams

every morning when i exit the subway at west fourth street there’s a man at the top of the station’s stairs who passes out a free newspaper so poorly written that all i can bring myself to read are the headlines and AP wire stories.  he is a large man with an aged face.  he moves with difficulty, but also energy, and greets every commuter with the same phrase in a loud, cheerful voice: “new york, new york! big city! big dreams!”  this exchange almost never fails to make me smile.  i take the paper and thank him and continue walking to class, and i look at the people walking down the sidewalks, and i look into the shops and restaurants, and i feel more like a new yorker than probably at any other time.  yes, i am that sentimental.

my roommate made an excellent point over the holidays.  other than family, she’s the longest-running roommate i’ve ever had.  i can’t believe it’s been a year and a half since i moved to new york.  in some ways, it seems like it was just yesterday that jimmy and i were driving that uhaul all night long up i-95.  just yesterday when i was dragging two suitcases through harlem looking for my craigslist sublet.  but in other, perhaps more profound, ways it feels like i’ve lived here forever.  my dad claims i’ll never come back.  i claim he’s wrong.  but really, neither of us knows.

these streets will make you feel brand new; big lights will inspire you

new york can be a total bitch of a place to live.  the buildings are huge–enormous manifestations of america’s power and wealth. yet the interiors are mostly small, cramped, depressing places.  at 6′2, the art of getting in and out of the corner grocer, while wearing a backpack, without bumping into someone or knocking over any displays, is a well-choreographed and skillful dance.  the scarcity of space is what imbues it with value.  i have a hard time studying in my apartment because i desperately need the separation between “home” and “work,” which is why i spent almost all of the semester down in the underbelly of vanderbilt library.  there they have the largest tables in new york that i know of, where you can spread your books, papers, and laptop, and get. things. accomplished.  i call it the “bunker” because it gives the whole enterprise a sense of purpose and captures the warlike quality of attacking and mastering the law.  it also seems to accurately describe the notion that the world continues at its frenzied pace above, while the students are sheltered from those goings-on with the cases and treatises that demand attention below.

how do you like law school?

it’s a question i get very often, and i never feel as though i have a satisfactory answer.  without a doubt going to law school was one of the best decisions i ever made.  (although i haven’t seen my grades yet, so maybe that will change in a few weeks?)  i have absolutely enjoyed every moment so far.   the law is like a giant puzzle, especially this first semester where you just jump in (or, where you are mercilessly thrown in, depending on your perspective) and don’t have the faintest clue what in the hell is going on.  it’s exciting to fit the pieces together one by one until it starts to make some modicum of sense.  i learned so much in the last four months–easily as much as i learned in all four years of undergrad–and that’s only one semester’s worth.  i can’t wait for what the next three years will bring.  everyone says, “yeah but wasn’t it really hard and too much work?”  it’s true.  it’s a lot of work and it can be physically and emotionally exhausting at times.  my health suffered at two distinct points in the semester.   i sometimes describe it like pulling off a band-aid on a daily basis–you know it’s going to hurt, but you do it anyway. there’s a pay-off at the end of reading a case for the third time, after you’ve been pulling out your hair, but finally something clicks (you never know what), and suddenly you’ve got it.  that kind of satisfaction is rare in life, yet it’s a common occurrence when reading cardozo’s cryptology.

concrete jungle where dreams are made of

i am extremely thankful for all of the friends and family i was able to see during the holidays.  i saw three of my housemates from senior year in a different state each.  it’s weird to me how much we’ve changed since graduation.   change isn’t the right word though.  i feel like we’re the same people, our priorities and focuses are just so different.  we really did have it so easy in chapel hill, where our biggest worries were what we were going to put on the grill that night, where we were going to watch the basketball game, and how we were going to get home from the bars.  maybe maturity is the word.  we’re all much more mature than we were a year and a half ago?  i don’t know.  maybe we haven’t changed a damn bit, but nostalgia and longing have infected my memory, and in reality, we’re all–it’s all–the same.

i also got to see some of my best friends from high school.  christmas day night we christened my mom’s new lakehouse and broke in the basement’s bar.  there were even spilled drinks to consummate the occasion.  stories were told–airborne civics and broken arms and spring breaks of yesteryear and dancing while inebriated and burned down porches and epic house party failures.  to the only outsider present, we must have seemed like total and absolute degenerates, and i still apologize on all our behalf.  i swear we’re actually decent people.

and that’s not even mentioning new years eve and last night’s dinner party where i got to see some unc friends i didn’t make until after graduation, and some that i made as early as freshman year.  syd said it best re: carolina when we were seniors: never again will we live in a single place where so many of our friends live in a five-mile radius.  i had to travel hundreds of miles to see everyone over the holidays.   it was a sad and poignant realization when syd said what she said, and thinking about it now makes me want to cry, so i’ll quit digging before you’re all covered in inescapable layers of my sentiment.

* * *

while i was home, a friend posed this hypothetical to me: “if someone could ask you one question that would tell the most about yourself, what would it be?”

it only took me five seconds

why did you stop writing?

my answer in that moment was typically self-righteous.  i quoted the old testament where it says when you become a man you put away childish things.  i’ve always considered writing (at least the kind i do here on my blog) to be self-regarding, self-effacing, and, well, vain.  “i should not talk so much about myself if there were anyone else i knew as well,” as thoreau said.  childish though it may be, writing has always been my vain thing, my release, my way of “coping.”  eventually, i think i found other ways of coping with the world’s abject cruelty, so i wrote less, turning to those outlets more.  in the last six months, i’ve had by far the lowest output since i was about 16 years old when i first started blogging. the most i ever wrote was probably sophomore year of college, where i wrote to the detriment of other things.  i would blow off class, friends, social commitments–basically everything, in order to get in a few extra hours of writing.  i was a dork in the non-affectionate sense of the word.

turning my thoughts into narrative used to come naturally, but tonight it has felt more like a chore.  i haven’t done it in so long. when i started working last year, i blogged less because i was spending 80 hours a week at work, and that would have been ample enough material (”characters even for shakespeare”), but i was clearly not about to publish anything about that on the internet. in fact, when i was offered the job, my boss told me she saw my blog and asked me very specifically never to put anything about work on there. it would have gone without saying, and i certainly obliged.

there was a time when i fancied myself a writer, and i treated this blog as an experimental space to try to find my “voice.” i posted any halfway decent (read: terrible) piece of fiction i was working on before i finally realized that i should be sending them to journals to try to get them published. countless hours and a small fortune in postage later, i had a little something to show for it, but the effort was too great compared to school, work, and all the other obligations of “real life” (as opposed to “writerly life”) that were pressing down. i do wish that i had more time to write. both my parents are really excited for me to be in law school, for me to become a lawyer, but both, independently, have expressed that they hope some day i get a chance to focus on my writing. they know how happy it makes me. i think that’s what’s so hard for some people to understand about my decision to come to law school.  how could i give up writing when i love it so much?  the simple answer is that i love the law too.  media law sophomore year with dr. packer ignited it, where we studied reporter’s privilege and the first amendment and copyright and libel and open meetings laws.  and why shouldn’t i have more than one love in my life?  vocational love certainly doesn’t have to be monogamous like marital love.  besides, the first amendment is the intersection between journalism (writing) and the law (free speech!),  so it makes total sense that this would be the connection between my two amores.

in consideration of the above-mentioned ramblings, and in light of the new decade, i resolve to find more socially appropriate observations and insights that are safe to share on the blog.  in a world where people get fired for tweeting and potential employers use fake profiles to facebook friend job candidates, it’s going to be hard.  as twain said, nothing is more often opened by mistake than the mouth.  but i’m not ready to let go of this space just yet.  i don’t think i’ve outgrown it, so hopefully i can make it grow up a little with me.

“But every once in a while, New York gives you a free pass. She throws you a string of days that makes you feel unstoppable, turning you into some pinball that glides across the span of the board—through all the flashing lights and beeping sounds—without hitting a single bumper.”

paris hilton hates free speech

because fair use is a standard and not a rule, i don’t know how anyone can say there’s not a chilling effect when what should be a fairly straightforward parody is subjected to expensive litigation:

Lawyers for Hallmark Cards Inc. asked the full 9th Circuit to rehear a decision last month allowing Paris Hilton to move forward with a publicity-rights claim over the use of her image and catchphrase, “that’s hot,” in a birthday card.

full story here.

petition for rehearing en banc here.

disney buys marvel

and thus a little piece of my childhood is tainted.

The news that Disney has shelled out $4 billion to buy Marvel comics means, for all purposes, the ownership of America’s beloved cartoon characters is now in the hands of two companies — Disney and Warner Bros.

Of all the issues facing Washington now, superhero rights no doubt fall low on the list, but what will it take for the government to step in with anti-trush legislation and let these animated citizens enjoy the full pleasures of the free market?

i’m pretty sure gawker is being tongue-in-cheek, but i think the article actually raises an interesting point. when private actors amass huge market power, this market power is akin to censorial power. and we’ve already seen, through congress’s hitherto perpetual extension of copyright terms, that these large private actors know how to protect said market power by lobbying hard to get further bestowals from congress. consider that very few works have passed into the public domain since 1923¹, and that virtually no corporate-owned/controlled copyright has passed into the public domain during this time. every time a block of works are about to pass into the public domain, congress gives large media companies a “bail out” and extends the terms². given the first amendment implications of perpetual copyrights, i think the supreme court ought to use a higher standard of review when it looks at copyright statutes passed by congress. they don’t, but i think they should.

eldred v. ashcroft.

1. only those that failed to “opt-in” when you used to have to register/renew your copyright or it expired. now you don’t even have to do that, your copyright is guaranteed without registration from the moment a new work is created, which is nice, but it definitely favors fewer works passing into the public domain unless someone affirmatively waives his/her copyright protection to it [↩]
2. see the “mickey mouse protection act” in 1998 and the copyright act of 1976 [↩]

whenever i think about my law school debt,

i remember that the u.s. has it so much worse:

9 trillion seconds ago was 285,000 years ago—before the Republican Party was even created.
A stack of $1,000 bills to equal $9 trillion would be 611 miles high—higher than the Eiffel Tower.
The US government collected almost exactly $1 trillion in income taxes in 2006. In order for the government to collect enough to pay off $9 trillion, your tax rate would have to rise by 900%—even higher than the current middle class tax rate.
In order to have the league’s payroll add up to $9 trillion, every single player on every single Major League Baseball team would have to be paid nearly $8 billion per year—even more than Derek Jeter is paid.

[via gawker]

more dispatches from the legal apocolypse

the author spent time in the trenches as a contract attorney. some people wondered why i turned down an almost full-ride at gw. this pretty much sums it up:

A few weeks at this place really removes any doubt about what the “practice of law” has devolved into circa 2009: a soulless, money-grubbing scam that is socially toxic, utterly pointless, and rife with insecurity and adolescent pettiness.

full article here.

more proof digital cameras have ruined “experience”

ruined might be too harsh. but the ease of taking pictures on digital cameras and sharing them on the internet has certainly changed “experience,” or at least how we make and categorize memories from our lives.

“Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.”

full story here

internet journalism fail

i think they used to aggregate blogs and then print a bunch of copies to distribute in metropolitan areas. i dont really know. it didnt work though:

Despite a significant personal investment on my part, and the additional support of six or seven credit cards, we were unable to raise the minimum amount of money required to reach the next stage of our development. This was a difficult decision for us, but the financial reality of the situation demanded that we suspend further publication immediately, and indefinitely.

Last year, I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if some of the business model principles that work online were applied to the troubled newspaper industry. The more I thought about it, the more the curiosity got to me. So I registered a domain name, developed an action plan, and started the process of building a new kind of newsprint publication.

full letter here.

sometimes

you just want to wake up and dance:

six flags rules

yesterday jimmy and i rode roller coasters at magic mountain all day.  we rode, in no particular order, viper, tatsu, dejavu, terminator, superman, the riddler, batman, and goliath.  tatsu was by far my favorite.  it was as close to the feeling of flying as i think i’ll ever get:

today, venice beach and grilling out. tomorrow at 6 a.m., leave for the grand canyon. so. incredibly. excited.