The Definition of Lazy

As part of the strange Leviathan-like rules and policies that form the structure of corporate life, I am required to tape the receipts associated with my expense report to a blank piece of paper and submit them with the report. Unfortunately, I don't have a tape dispenser (or, more importantly, any tape). The last time, I used staples and got a snarky call from Expense Report Lady. Since she does the payin' I don't want to get on her bad side, so I really need the tape. But neither of my cube neighbors have tape. One has a dispenser but no tape (too many business trips?). The other may have tape but she's on the phone and I don't want to go rooting around on her desk while she's actually there. So I just put the expense report on one side and go back to looking for apartments on craigslist.

With all seriousness due to the occasion...

Graduation was a lot like law school - kind of a whirlwind, I drank too much and the whole thing left me feeling confused and overwhelmed.

Our graduation speaker was Samantha Power, a human right journalist and current fellow in the office of one of my favorite people, Sen. Barak Obama. I really enjoyed her speech but since it came from my political perspective, I was uncomfortable because I knew most of the other students wished she'd been sent to Gitmo. You could hear low growls every time there was a disparaging comment about Dubya. Unfortunately, like many academics, she never questioned that her audience agreed that U.S. foreign policy is on the wrong path. Not everyone agrees that the Iraq war has gone "horribly awry" or that U.S. foreign policy is "short-sighted." These reactions overwhelmed the core message of her speech, that we should ask, "Why can't we?"

This is the problem I have with academics who share my political views, but not my reality. If the graduates of a law school in California don't agree with you, what kind of reaction do you think you'd get to these statements from mainstream America? Ask your average Wal-Mart shopper in Des Moines if they think that the "grey-haired men" who craft U.S. policy "blew the pre-war planning" and you'll get run over by their SUV in the parking lot. And why not? They don't need to be told what to think by the Democratic think tanks feeding straight from ivy league schools. This to me, is why Clinton was successful where Kerry was not. Clinton was relevant to the average American. He made the Des Moines Wal-Mart shopper feel good about a foreign policy that recognizes humanitarian needs and multilateralism. Clinton made a successful argument that globalization applies to politics as well as economics. He didn't talk down to Americans, the way Kerry did, pretending to be "an average Joe" where he clearly was not. We'll never escape from Dubya et al's "He tried to kill mah daddy," bomb-first, ask questions later, approach to world domination unless the Democrats stop being arrogant and start getting real.

Decide for yourself, a transcript of her speech is here.

Red Letter Weekend

On the scale of good weekends, this one ranked pretty high.

On Friday night, NG and I checked our bar results and to our absolute, complete and total amazement, we both passed. In fact, as it turns out, pretty much everyone we studied with passed. I had thoroughly convinced myself that I would be spending June and July locked in my apartment studying, and now it feels like someone has pulled back the shades and light is finally coming in.

Part of why we were so convinced we failed is because it is simply ludicrous that the State Bar would give us a license to practice law! What? I'm the person who forgets to bring shoes to the gym! I shouldn't be allowed to give legal advice!

Aloha from the sharks

If there’s one way to avoid thinking about the bar results being published, it’s spending the week before traveling. Five days, four airports and three states later, I’m so exhausted that even anxiety can’t keep me awake. First was a very short three days in Honolulu, then I had about 4 hours in California to get from Oakland Airport to home. Then I unpacked my bag from “tropical vacation” and re-packed for “business trip” and zipped over to San Jose Airport.

J was a great host in Oahu and spent the whole weekend playing tour guide. We went straight to the heart of Waikiki from the airport on Thursday night. I had that strange feeling of just getting off a plane in a different time zone and a different place. The humidity and the jet lag made me feel like I was swimming through the city. The sounds seems amplified and the colors all run into each other. I felt like I was staring at everything.

J is not one to take the well-beaten tourist path, and so on Saturday morning we went out on a boat and got in a cage surrounded by sharks. You can see I’m doing my best not to have a full-scale underwater melt-down.



In California, you can’t rent much more than a bicycle without having to sign a waiver and watch a safety video. In Hawaii, things are a little more informal. For example, the safety lecture was basically this: “Here’s where the lifejackets are. If anyone gets eaten by a shark or the boat starts to sink, use this radio to call the Coast Guard. The more panicked you sound, the quicker they’ll get here.” Then you get in the water with the sharks. For extra effect, they’ll chum it up for you.

I had suspected this wasn’t an ecologically-sensitive practice but I didn’t find out until I got home that shark feeding has actually been banned in state waters. I guess this is why they were so intent on telling us that we were three miles out (and therefore outside state jurisdiction). J has spent enough in a boat to be able to look at the coastline and say, “No way this is three miles.”

I don't feel guilty for going on the trip, though. Watching the sharks live is mesmerizing. They are so graceful and powerful that it gave me a completely new appreciation from them.

Solution to teen pregnancy

Everything I always suspected about labor is true (no, not unions! having babies!). The Internet says so.

This should be required reading for all teens. I bet the teen birth rate would plummet!

Living Without Dignity Since Top Gun

My God! Who ARE these people? And why do they do this? Did they actually take a day off work to go camp out in front a movie premiere that they aren't going to, in order to hold up a sign directed at a person they will never meet, who probably won't read it anyway? Even the 33 year-old virgins playing Dungeons & Dragons think this is a waste of time.

Cinco de Mayo!

Perhaps a little too much fun was had on Friday night, although I never tire of watching my colleagues N and D shake their maracas.

The local hip hop radio station was "in da house" at El Palomar, our usual Friday night watering hole. There was an interesting mix of the post-work Santa Cruz crowd putting their fingers in their ears to block out Nelly, plus folks who were there to drop it like it was hot. The first time the DJ from the radio station yelled into the mic, "Who's gettin drunk TONIGHTTTTTT!?!" there was a stunned silence from the crowd who looked back at her as if to say, "Well, I was going to enjoy a couple drinks, but I think drunk is a pretty strong term....are you implying I have a substance abuse problem?" The Friday crowd at the Palomar would much rather celebrate Cinco de Mayo by toasting Pancho Villa and buying fair trade Oaxacan coffee than supporting complete inebriation with a rowdy bar battle cry. However, a couple of pitchers later, our table would have jumped up and shouted "Woooo!" to any question the DJ yelled out to the crowd.

We sampled a new tequila called AsomBroso, which tastes a little overly sweet, sort of like the Malibu Rum version of tequila. In case you are unclear on the consequences of drinking too much tequila, it comes in phallic shaped bottles. It helped that they gave us thong underwear along with the tequila - is this my marketing demographic? Thongs and phallic glass bottles? Suddenly 29 feels a lot younger.

Good Reading

Spending yesterday lying in bed in a medicated haze (who pulls a muscle on their rib cage? Really!) I was able to finish the book my boss lent me, A Dirty Job, which is the latest Christopher Moore. It's the best kind of summer reading because it features all of the best features of beach books, wrapped into one: humor, sex, explosions, and a battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of the world. Delicious, especially with a Vicodin and a warm day by the pool.

Here's the synopsis:

"Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant -- you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male.

But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child.

Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie -- exhausted from the birth -- turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird. . . .

People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it."

The Final Countdown

T-minus 16 days until the bar results come out and I've made myself so anxious about it that I'm in a permanent state of mild nausea. Since I still haven't lost the 10lbs I put on while studying for the bar, I feel both fat and nauseas, which makes me realize must be what pregnancy is like. Maybe those pregnant women taking the bar were onto something. Get the weight gain and the nausea over with at the same time!

I keep trying to focus on what Barbri instructor "Ira" said: "Even if you fail the bar, you can walk around the block and find ten people who'd trade places with you." While I had to doubt Ira's choice of shaded aviator-style glasses, he has a point about keeping it in perspective. If failing the bar is the worst thing that happens to me this year I still have a lot of blessings. So if I get on the pity party bandwagon, tell me to take walk around the children's ward at Stanford hospital. And I think I have problems?