We Ride Bikes

Lucky...

Okay just to keep everyone in on whats been goin on....not a lot. School has been occupying most of my time lately. I had a test last thursday, it was a beating as per usual. I have a test on wednesday night....two next week and one the week after, so I am going to be playing catch up until then. So not a terribly eventful weekend, but, and I hesitate to tell this story, as I would not want to "jinx" myself or anything but its a pretty good story nonetheless.

Things tend to, for the most part, on a pretty large scale, work out in my favor. Now thats not to say that I am lucky by any stretch of the imagination. Now my brother would probably give you a long theory on how luck is neither good nor bad and you either have it or you dont, well not to discount that but he is REALLY lucky, so he has no idea what its like for...well...the rest of us? To put into other terms, in the blackjack hand of life, my brother gets dealt an ace, king, while I on the other hand will push. Its not great, but in the end, pushing is winning. So back to me and my life, I ran into the grocery store saturday night to buy Meredith (what turned out to be the wrong) Zicam. She was not feeling well, and wanted some cold remedy and I of course didnt look, just grabbed and went. Anyway, so I am checking out at the self checkout, which I hate, but at that time, they didnt give me much of a choice. I paid with the cash that I had made that night and left. --Flash forward-- Next morning I am leaving for work and I realize that I cannot find my wallet. It is not in any of the 4-5 places that I "normally" put it. So I go ahead to work without it and ask Meredith and Ang to keep an eye out for it. All day I am mentally retracing my steps, and the only reasonable conclusion must be that it is in Ang's car because I didnt remember taking it out of my pocket at the grocery store because the cash I used hadnt been in my wallet, as I had just taken it from the other poor saps that wait tables at Spaghetti. So all day in the back of mind is this growing uncertainty of where my wallet is...Ang tells me it wasnt in her car, Meredith says she didnt see it anywhere before she left for work....so after work I swing by Albertson's just in case I lost it in the store or the parking lot etc....I ask the Manager on Duty and without thinking twice she said "Oh yeah, It's in the safe. You left it at the self checkout register last night, I'll be right back." So friends the moral of the story is.....Keep your ID picture UP TO DATE so that if you lose your wallet they can recognize you easily.

Its 8 in the morning and I have been up since 630 I guess I will study until school at 1230...remind me to tell you the story about the freak at richland college....that was creepy...

Mock LSAT or LSAT Mockery

Its been a while I realize...but it has been an eventful week. Last week I took a practice LSAT. For those not in the know it is the law school admission test. I actually did rather well. So I am about 99% sure that with any luck I will be attending law school come fall of 2005. I have spent the past week looking at schools online and determining what kind of law I would like to practice, if at all? and which schools offer programs that will enable me to learn the kinds of things about the law that I would like to learn? The really interesting things like constituional law, labor law, and civil liberty law etc etc etc. are out there but I may have to settle on personal injury....so I am looking for a new nickname...there's JIM ADLER THE TEXAS HAMMER, and LONGCAR THE STRONGARM....surely there's something out there for me...

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well, I am going to try and get Meredith out to the store tonight...we have been out of groceries for weeks, I could go by myself, but there wouldnt be anyone to keep me in check, so I would end up playing with all the toys and completely for get why I am there. I have to go back to my stupid job now....Spaghetti warehouse is awful. The food is bland, the service is terrible, the atmosphere is non-existent, and lately the only saving grace has been the John Mayer song on our tape, and the fact that I can occasionally get paid to read for school. But at the rate I am being paid, I am not sure who is screwing whom...

Oh but I did get a Jesus tract from one of my tables, and you know what?....Jesus loves me. So I got that going for me, which is nice...

TV and the beginning

Ok first of all the past year notwithstanding....I have watched a lot of television in my lifetime and let me just say that The West Wing is probably the best television show to ever air. The acting, character dynamics, the plot, script, direction, premise etc. etc. etc. It's just an all around brilliant show. Ang and I have been getting a head start on the West Wing marathon at the Real World house. Great stuff.

Secondly, I am taking a mock LSAT tomorrow at like 9 am. I have never seen an LSAT nor do I really want to. But I think if I walk in there and take it cold I will have a good measure for how far I need to go and how far I think I may be able to come. So here's hoping....

Kobe, and Labor Day

Couple of things today....Kobe Bryant....now I'm not here to discuss guilt or innocence because that SHOULD be left to a jury of his peers and I am a fundamental believer in the rights of the accused and that they are to be protected. However, I do not feel that the rights of the accused and the rights of the survivor/victim etc are mutually exclusive. It has taken almost thirty years to get all 50 states to pass legislation protecting the salacious details or histories of survivors of sexual assaults from being discussed or brought up in court. And now that legislation is not enough to protect the private details of her life and/or sexual past or history. The argument that her sexual history is pertinent as it goes to her state of mind is immaterial in my opinion and irrelevant. What we are talking about is her state of mind at the moment, and one is not dependent upon the other. If I roll a die the number to roll is completely independent of the number I rolled previously, yesterday or two weeks ago. Our actions are not solely dependent upon each other. In most cases it is illegal to discuss prior behavior of the accused unless it goes to credibility, but the victim is not protected from this same shelter of intimate details? Does that seem right to you? I just cannot understand how we as living breathing individual actors who know scant details about the lives of both the survivor and the accused can claim to know what happened or judge the outcome. I think that her sexual history should not be available for anyone's scrutiny. You know estimates are that only 40% of all survivors report the attack.....and we as a society are not making it any easier for them to do so in the future. I know that when it comes down to it, my sexual history is mine, and no should be able to scrutinize it or examine it but me. Who gets do control the details of our lives if not ourselves? Why is her life available for the public but not his? Why do we as a culture embrace the rhetoric but reject the action? We tell our sons and daughters to treat everyone as we would want to be treated, but when it comes down to it, we entrench ourselves in the positions of hero vs. attention grubbing whore. Do I think he did it......? At this point, does it even matter? What matters is that the American Justice system lost and our Culture of Rape continues its victorious march into the 21st Century.

On a lighter note I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and since tomorrow is Labor Day, I want everyone to remember:

If you can
Read & Write,
Turn on a light
Escape a fire,
Retire
Get healthier,
Grow wealthier
See movies,
Buy Groceries
Drive a car,
Eat veggies galore
Take a plane or train,
Work without pain
Read the news,
Have a wonderful snooze
Thank a Union Worker.

A night of Free!

I just wanted to drop a line to say that we, ANG meredith n myself are about to go have some dinner courtesy of the UTD democrats...Then we are off to a free screening of Farenheit 9/11 courtesy of Texas State Senator Royce West (D-Dallas). So it is going to be a fun-filled evening I am sure.

Talk to you soon...

Planning (?)

Today...another interesting day....went to school...didnt really learn much in my campaigns and elections class or my law and medicine class. Ang and I did drive to Oak Cliff today. Of course Ang and the roommates are all scurred, but seeing as how I lived Boyz N Da Hood, I wasnt nervous.

I did some stuff at school today, I am going to meet with Dr. Kane to talk to her about possibly attending grad school to study sociology. I am looking forward to her input, she is very nice and I think she will hop on the straight talk express with me (with or without John McCain) and talk to me about what I want to do (no idea!) what I want to study (I have a small idea) where I want to go to school (like the election anywhere but texas). I signed up for a profile with the Career Center, got my on-campus email (finally) which is important because the school will not accept nor will they send emails to any email but the on-campus one....bitches.....I also signed up for a free online GRE tutoring....did 100 vocab words and got 80 of them right, which for me....well we will say its...uh....good.

Then went to my comparative politics class, it was actually very interesting....parties and such....then I talked to the utd dems vice president Emily Beer....we did some good talkin, I have this idea that there should be meetings for the membership and meetings for the exec board. they should be as often as possible without burning the membership out, but often enough to find out who the die hards are. I also have an idea to find out who we have available in the membership and come up with study hours. Basically everyone shows up, we study and if you are taking a class that I have taken, and I can help, then so be it. We have several seniors, several grad students and several freshmen and several in between. So I think that that would be a good way to give back to the membership since we are asking so much of them (volunteering for candidates and all kinds of stuff). Plus we get to know each other. I think that we should look at it as more than a political organization and social club, and utilize the resources available to us. Then I think maybe we could play like a republicans vs. democrats basketball or dodgeball game as a fundraiser....who knows....I'm just thinkin out loud here. Oh and I did agree to chair the labor committee for the utd dems, so i may be doing double duty (he-he I said double doodie) with the committee thing.....ok its late going to bed.....and remember "my shit ALWAYS works sometimes...."