Though I agree with the overall premise of this article (Nancy wound up with the right person, and Steve was actually a pretty good kid, considering), I disagree with the reasoning on 2 points: 1) that Steve is a better choice than Jonathon, or 2) that Nancy's choice being right had even a single thing to do with either of the teenage male leads.
I'm a little abhorred with the tone of the article toward Jonathan. Yes, he was a creeper. Yes he has some real issues to work out. But I got the sense the author showed a real bias in regard to her analysis of the nature of the world's that the two teenage male leads grew up in as it related to their actions throughout the season. In a nutshell, the author seems to be arguing that because Steve is a normal, well-adjusted upper middle class teen, that he shows any decency makes him good. But Jonathan's NOT a normal, well-adjusted upper middle class teen, so despite the fact that he shows any decency he's bad.
Like I said, I agree with the premise, and Nancy's story arc is a refreshing twist on the sixteen candles teen girl coming-of-age narrative (every action she takes is definitively her own choice, and every challenge placed before her gets dealt with on her terms). However, I think she misses the mark on why Nancy wound up with the right guy. It's not because Steve is a nice normal boy at the end of the day, but because Nancy decided she wanted to be with him. It's because she exercised agency in choosing to have (or not have) a boyfriend, not because Steve > Jonathon.
And just to tie a bow on that first paragraph, I reject the author's skin-deep analysis of the two male teens for one reason: it over values the idea of normalcy. Neither Steve nor Jonathon is better than the other based on their actions toward Nancy. Jonathon's are "weirder" because voyeurism isn't seen as an acceptable hobby, but Steve also violates Nancy's space by climbing to her room uninvited, fully intending to make a pass at her. And both -- eventually -- grow to respect her boundaries. Jonathon actually has a less problematic moralizing moment, as he questions her sexual explorations privately to her face, while Steve is a party to her public shaming. Long story short, Steve and Jonathon have an equal amount of teenage boy awfulness. Steve's is just more.... socially accepted.
Ok, I'm done for now, but "Stranger Things" is one of those shows that will require a part 2. So, you know. Stay tuned...
so i've spent a good portion of the past week talking to voters and candidates, and i've learned something important. what i've learned is that regardless of what most people's beliefs, politics, pet issues and party affiliation, most people are decent, upstanding citizens. for the most part my interactions with the voting public and the candidates for office has been pleasant or at least reasonably non-vitriolic.
now, this is america, and people in america have the right to belive whatever stupid thing they want, because 'murica. but when people don't know facts, when they vote some unimportant pet issue over their needs, an they do so based on the tripe they hear from false prophets and agenda spouting talking heads, i gotta draw the line. see, the drewniverse isn't just about enriching people's lives, it's about fighting ignorance for the good of the drewninites!
so the good (no pun intended) people at NIKE finally caved to the incessant ranting and raving by incessant ranter and raver and professional full grown baby Kanye West and made the Air Yeezy II "Red October" available to the public: a sudden and surprising phenomenon which lasted all of about 11 minutes. see, the shoes which yeezy had spent the better part of 2013 shouting about incoherently at radio and tv interviewers had achieved a status that every product not designed for McDonald's style mass production lusts for: they had become a white whale. an urban legend. a unicorn. a sort of holy grail for every sneakerhead, taste maker, and twitter teenage millionaire to fawn over. they were to the shoe canoodler what, say, "Nintendo World Championships '91" is to the retrogamer, or Action Comics #1 is to the comic collector: a piece of fandomonium trumped up by the real thing i want to talk about here: artificial scarcity.
which makes the Red October worse than action comics #1 as unlike the Yeezy, it was printed in 1938 with ink made from black people and whale infant blubber.
what artificial scarcity does is take something that's is actually common/easy to produce/super inexpensive and by withholding large quantities of it (like OPEC does with oil) or only making a relatively small number of product (like holofoil pokemon cards) drive up the price, or, as is the case with this particular shoe spike peoples desire by making it unavailable for no reason whatsoever. like the McRib. NIKE clearly did this with the red october. let's look at the case a little more closely.
artists depiction of the red october
NIKE collabs with YEEZY on the air YEEZY. they only make about 3000 pairs and sell them at $225. they make like $800,000 on them (according to kanye) (they couldn't have made more than $675,000 because that's how math works). BIG SUCCESS! YAY! COCAINE SHOWERS FOR EVERYONE! the resale value on the air Yeezy tops $1000. so because of the success and obvious demand demonstrated by the resale value, NIKE commissions the air YEEZY 2 and sells them for $245. however they (strangely) push back the release schedule for the shoe's signature colorway, the "Red October". YEEZY then does what he does best: complain about all the success he isn't having!
that's what he's best known for right? all the not success? right?
he goes on the breakfast club in ny "why they won't release the red octobers?". he goes on sway in the morning "WHY THEY WON'Y RELEASE THE RED OCTOBERS?! YOU AIN'T GOT THE ANSWER SWAY!" he goes to england. ENGLAND! "i'm trying to be the next louis vuitton... of shoes, but NIKE won't release the red octobers". this creates a buzz in the fashion world. "why won;t nike release the red octobers? how do they look? where can i buy them? when will they be available?" are all questions you were likely to hear if you perused the sneakerhead sites over the past year. what this does is create a ground swell of deman for a shoe that Nike knew they would not have pressed more than a few thousand of. with millions of people demanding them and only thousands pressed (for pennies, btw) they could charge a factory direct price of $245. that's a brand new XBOX 360 with kinect and watch_dogs!
i DO have a birthday coming up...
and the final piece to the false scarcity puzzle? have a cool person seen in it. like macklemore at nye!now all the stans are drooling on their eminem cds and hair bleach, b/c the unicorn is real and maybe, just maybe the great unicorn masters will let them stroke it's mane for a few minutes (you don't wanna know what it did with the horn...). then suddenly a tweet announces that they are available, and 11 minutes later artificial scarcity proves it effectiveness again. (hell they were on ebay and hour later and going for upwards of $16,000,000.00!!!!!!!!!!)
above: macklemore just despising all the fame and success rap has brought him.
i guess the greater point i'm trying to make is i heard the rib sandwich was coming back on tuesday!!!!!! sign a bruhva up for that!!!!!!!!!!
"And
then there's Leroy Smith. Now you guys think that's a myth. Leroy
Smith was a guy when I got cut he made the team - on the Varsity team
- and he's here tonight. He's still the same 6'7" guy - he's not
any bigger - probably his game is about the same. But he started the
whole process with me, because when he made the team and I didn't, I
wanted to prove not just to Leroy Smith, not just to myself, but to
the coach that picked Leroy over me, I wanted to make sure you
understood - you made a mistake dude."
-michael jordan
can't sleep. need to. gotta drive tomorrow. but i think this is one of those times where the thing i need to do is being overshadowed. i have come to a realization this late at night/early in the morning: i need motivation of a certain very specific nature, and to be honest, it's kinda hard to talk about. which is why i've decided in my infinite wisdom to tell it to the drewniverse.
i must admit, i am not confident my writing is more as gooder than it used to was, so don't not make with that bad talking about it.
what motivates you? money? praise? the respect of your peers? maybe it's just the knowledge that you did whatever it is you set out to do. perhaps the promise of a better tomorrow fuels your drive. well, cousin, none of that pretty shit works for me. i tell myself i'm gonna earn a nice salary and nothing. just nothing. i don't care about money. i never believe people are being totally honest when i receive any sort of praise. and even if they are, praise makes me physically uncomfortable. and what in the blue hell is respect anyway? you can't rightly quantify it. there ain't a unit by which you can gauge the amount of respect you get. "hey Shiz, you wanna go out tonight?" "sorry Keef, i'm about 7 centarethas short on respect today. i gotta hit the gym and turn in early" is a conversation you've never heard. ever. and even if you think you got it, you can never be sure that it's genuine. i mean, what guarantee do you have that niggas have the same opinion of you when you're out of earshot? none. nada. sorry but your peers? they're the most likely to form negative opinions about you because they see you all the time. they know the crust of you. they see you at your worst in the most high stress situations of your respective lives. eff the respect you think you have. i've heard more foul shit about people from the ones who they see on an academic and professional level in the past year than i ever have. you know what i don't hear a ton of? respect. next please. and tomorrow isn't promised so that doesn't motivate me. trust me i've tried. i wake up on a daily basis with the promise that i'm going to better myself that day and go to bed every night vowing not to repeat the same mistakes the next day. guess what happens the next day. no, guess. if you said the same old bull, congratulations, you get a cookie.
so what motivates the masked warrior? i warn you, this is gonna sound really shitty. like really shitty. it may even cause your opinion of me to change, but dammit, i think i can handle the shift. if not i can always remove the mask and walk around in anonymity. my motivation is simple: spite. that's it, really. i don't want to be rich or respected or even "happy" whatever that is. what drives me is the desire to throw my successes in the face of whoever i perceive to have doubted or misunderestimated, misjudged or undermined my talents and abilities. and hell, it worked for michael jordan, who attributes his drive to win in no small part to the collection of grudges and emotional wounds both real and perceived he amassed through his career (he even thanked leroy smith, the kid he was left off his high school roster for, albeit [half]jokingly, in his hall of fame induction speech). look, i don't hold grudges. my christianity kicks in really hard in that department, so i can't help but forgive. but i never forget. you dare to tell me something, act in a way, hell, even hint at a suggestion that you're better than me, that you don't think i have what it takes, that i'm not good enough? congratulations, you just became the target of my vitriol filled success missile.
i write my success in korean. keep reading to find out why....
you don't even have to mean any harm by it. hell you can even like and honestly respect me, but if i get that twinge of doubt from you, better believe i'm grabbing whatever brass ring you thought my arms were to short to reach. hell i might grab the harder to get brass ring just because, fuck you! you don't tell me what i'm not capable of! don't believe me? i once went on a three game win streak against a close friend of mine who was more talented than me because he said i couldn't beat him... in a game of pickup basketball. and you know what? he's still better than me, but he would never be able to say it again. he got real mad and wound up throwing the ball away, but still...
hell you don't even have to suggest it! if i think you might be perceived by other people as better then me, that someone else might doubt my abilities next to yours, even if the thought never entered your mind, too bad, i got a missile for you, too. ask Devin Roundtree. who is that? just the guy who was making straight A's in my department back in undergrad. i made it my personal mission, even though he was a cool guy who had never personally given me reason to believe he doubted my ability as a student, to never let him get an A that i didn't match. two year later, i go from academic probation to graduate with honors and you know what? my last three semesters in school i was a straight A student. and every waking moment i vowed he wouldn't be better than me.
even in video games! if a friend of mine beats me in a PvP game whether its a tourney fighter or a sports game or RTS, whatever, i'm prone to make them play me until i win. i've come to blows over this.
artists depiction
and it takes every bit of reasoning in my body to not start training for the octagon. not because i'm into the idea of getting face punched and armbarred for fun, either. here;s why. i'm a 12 year old red belt in Tae Kwon Do when it comes to my 12 year old attention that TKD would be an Olympic sport starting in 2000. that was all i needed to hear to run to my instructor and inform him of my intention to train for the 04 Olympics because, you know, i'd be the shit by then. at this time i was fully prepared to make this sport my whole life. i told my folks that i was going to korea to study at the Tae Kwon Do university in Seoul. all i wanted in life was to be great at TKD. you know wat my instructor says? "IF.... IF you can beat Sam, i'll prep you for the Olympics in 04" my 12 year old world was shattered. no more TKD university. no more Olympics. no more serious TKD. why? because my 12 ear old brain didn t recognize the challenge. see, sam was in his mid teens, and the closest i'd come to beating him with my 12 year old ability was not getting my ass handed to me. i could SORTA hang with him, but i wasn't in mid teen form at 12, i'd not even started t grow into my body yet! (i was already about 5'6" and over 200 pounds). i got my black belt, but all my fire was gone. and today, 1.5 degrees and a teenager older all i want to do is shove that if in mr. kempka's face SO HARD by bludgeoning grown men until they say uncle. and twist their limbs outta socket for every fight i should've been more into. and it takes every bit of civility and higher learning in me to not do that.
and you know what the fucked up part about kempka's "if" was? i stood almost head and shoulders over everyone else. i could beat his brother, who was my age. i wasn't allowed to face most people 1 on 1. the adults would strategize to face me last on sparring days in hopes that id be worn out. you know, from ass kicking.when he needed a hitman to humble somebody who thought they were too good for the discipline side of martial arts training, he didn't sic sam on em. it was me! i was the hitter! i was the one who humbled that ass. if only he'd said "WHEN you beat sam" instead of "IF you beat sam" the little orientation speech we got when we first got to hofstra might have included "... and Olympic athlete" and i would've quietly fist pumped to myself.... and now i really wanna fight....
... like this. this is how i wanna fight
OK so what am i writing all this for? other than the fact that this was swelling my melon and keeping me awake i gotta admit something, and it's a thing i've only just come to fully accept. the simple truth is i've developed a far to structurally sound wall of fuck it around my vitriol center and thus no fuel has been able to reach my motivation ducts. it was a combination of too many good things and a few devastatingly hurtful instances happening in quick succession. the same minor slights that got me in law school (too a little too long on those recommendation letters, didn't ya,professors??) and fueled my pre law school weight loss (i know you can't recognize the sexiness, college girl. you don;t have to say it. i'll show you how sexy i can be [side note: yeah, so my desire t not fall into the diet related health pitfalls my uncles, pops and grandfather did was the reason. the girl was the catalyst]) no longer seemed to work for me. nothing did.
recently, the mortar that held the fuck it Wall together evaporated and the vitriol has started to seep through. and with the mortar now up in the clouds, something punched a hole in the brick. for the first time in almost a year and a half i felt the twinge again. hopefully it wasn't just an apparition. i NEED a new Leroy Smith. my old one's are broken.
i was thinking the other day about law school and what evil i must have committed in some past life to have been put in it i was immediately reminded of a conversation i had with a mentor last summer: "if you love it, then you're in the right field, but if not it may not be worth the effort". i'm paraphrasing, of course. he did not say it wouldn't be worth the effort, but i can't help but wonder if i'm actually supposed to be in law school right now. like cosmically. is this my lot in life? who knows. all i know is that this isn't what i expected it to be, and i don't know if i want to be here. but then there's the side of me who doesn't know how to quit. doesn't even know the meaning of the word quit. so i guess i have to go with that side. it's too late to change my mind at this point, and i don't want to go through life wondering what could have been. so, yeah, get the degree. but what happens after that?
Dear Drewniverse,
I feel like I can share this with you because I just left my first privacy in the digital age class, and am confident that sharing this won't get me arrested like idiotic, drunk 12-year-olds in Oklahoma. I had a really weird dream like a week ago in which I cut my hand -- the right one above the pinky knuckle -- on a barbell. This shouldn't have bothered me, but as with all injuries, I was compelled to survey the damage. The wound's appearance was quite odd. It was a sort of circular, fairly deep wound, at least for the back of a hand. But inside wasn't the normal fleshy stuff you'd expect: there was this red layer on top of which was a sort of nylon polymer looking mesh with a node in the center. I touched the node and was able to move it around a bit. It was kinda like if an orange bag was made of suet and was holding a wet nerf ball also made of suet.
this. it felt like nylon made of this
It was mesmerizing. I kept going back to it. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I kept waiting for it to bleed so I didn't have to face the sad truth that I was turning into a bag of beef by-product made citrus. But it wouldn't bleed. It was there for the rest of the dream just not bleeding and looking horrible. I remember at one point in the dream I began to shout at the wound, " DAMN IT, JUST BLEED ALREADY! BLEED AND GET IT OVER WITH!!" and then I woke up. Ever since I've found myself peeking at my right pinky knuckle from time to time, you know, just in case.
Had this dream last night that my dad and I were at our old house (all my "home" dreams use my childhood home as the setting). The crazy, in-your-dreams, part was that we are insurgents at war with some invading alien threat that had taken over a neighboring island (mind you to get to the closest island to my childhood home you gotta drive 4+ hours to the coast. so there's that) so we're at home putting together our guerrilla war kit -- just the essentials: missiles and rockets, launch codes, tactical computer, and cookout tent because, you know, it might rain -- when my big sis shows up to go to the cookout, oh yeah, there was a cookout at some undisclosed location that the rest of the fam was going to. This is an important plot point. so she shows up to go to the cookout, but she unintentionally blocks my car with hers! I'm all, "hey, tryna blow up some aliens, here". so she moves the car. But another car blocks me in! We wind up switching cars. My dad and I are driving, and I assume we've already completed our mini shock and awe mission because we're in my college town. Also it's no longer my dad, but my roommate and we're looking for food. so we stop at this taco bell, and before going in a notice that my folks' car is across the street at this other restaurant. "Eff taco bell" I think to myself as I head over to the restaurant. Once inside, my peeps behaved add if they hadn't Seen me in a while, suggesting either that my mission ran afoul and pops and I had to make ourselves scarce for awhile, or reality had stated to creep in and I'd just been in school (considering roomie was there, the latter is most likely). after not eating and going outside it became apparent that I was now for no reason in this vacation town that I made up in my head. Also it was much earlier than it had been when I went into the restaurant. Just before waking, the dream jump cut to this childhood "memory" (it was only a memory for dream me) of this time when my neighborhood in the vacation city, because you always stay in a neighborhood when you vacation, flooded with crystal clear water and the adults and big kids all rode jet skis everywhere. The memory was brought on by the fact that the rain from the beginning of the dream caused the ground to flood with crystal clear water, and ironically we all started riding on jet skis. the moral of this story is don't watch " Starship Troopers" before bed.
A man vacationing in Rio De Janeiro was walking down a street one sleepy afternoon. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the man. His thinning hair and grey stubble suggest that he was maybe pushing 60, and if you were unconvinced by that, his St. John's bay polo and khaki shorts surely would do the trick. The man was likely retired or at the very least not far from it. I imagine this man is a professional. This trip is his reward, a gift from him to him for silk the hard years he gave his firm or the company, department or bureau. Maybe he was being forced out to make room for the young hot shot and this trip was his way of coping with t the reality that he wasn't wanted anymore
"How dare they! Who do they think they are? How could they kick me to the curb for some milk-breathed thunder cat? After all the pounds of flesh I gave for them?" I imagine going through the events of the inevitably, his eyes, one soaking with ambition, a shadow behind overpriced sunglasses. Another reminder of what he was losing. despite taking in All of the beauty Rio had to offer over the first four days and five nights of his five day six night vacation (I assume, being that his flight was international, he arrived at night) he still felt betrayed and angry at the turn of events at the job. Nobody likes rejection, and after the decades he devoted to his work, this rejection was the ultimate betrayal.
He had resigned to walk until the lump welling up inside him passed, even if it meant walking clear across Brazil. After about an hour the man found that he silk hadn't walked the pain away. He glanced up and realized that he didn't know where he was either. This was no longer the tourist friendly hotel district inside the city. No, the man had crossed an invisible barrier. He was somewhere between the gorgeous south american metropolis that failed him and the true city of Rio. He was on a rocky, unpaved road that connected the city to the shanty town that encircles it. As if his problems weren't enough already, he knew that being caught out in the slums could mean a bad night for him. Not knowing how he'd let himself wander off like that, the only logical step was to turn around and make his way back to the city.
So of he went, angrier than when he left. "just great. Some help this was. this whole trip has been a waste." Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a small figure. Were it not for an oddly placed bike he might have missed it, as the figure was the same beige color as the surroundings. It was the figure of a little girl. Her clothes, if you can call the tattered filthy rags she had on clothes, were covered in dirt and her face wasn't much better off. She looked as if the last kindness life offered her was a back hand slap and the next would be a swift exit.
Before the man knew what was happening, he found himself standing next to the girl. I don't know if it was fear or for lack of a Better course, but the girl didn't move. The man's Portuguese was good awful, more like a crude amalgam of Spanish and Italian stereotypes, and for all he knew the poor girl didn't speak English. " are you ok, miss?" He felt like he knew the answer even though she offered no response. One look at her told the story. He hadn't noticed before, but the girl's feet were bare. " what happened to your shoes", the man pointed to her feet. The girl grabbed one arm, like she was holding herself, her weight shifted back and forth. On this unpaved road with no shoes, for some reason this kept going through his mind.
With as little thought as has brought him to this road, the man slipped the sandals from his feet. The girl's hand went to her mouth, a whimper rose from her throat. The whimper turned into tears as the man placed the sandals at her feet. "This road is full of rocks and all kinds of sharp things. You should put those on do you don't get hurt." The man walked away, back toward the beautiful south american metropolis. He wasn't angry anymore.
I imagine the girl stood there for a few minutes crying her eyes out. As the tears subsided, she glanced toward the city to catch a glimpse of the man who showed her the first true kindness she'd ever experienced. But the man was already gone. She looked at the sandals he placed by her. They were far to big, but a vast improvement over her current lack of a pair. She placed her feet in them. "Perfeito", the whimper arose in her throat again.
This is gonna be a really short one. New tablet swag! GOOGLE NEXUS TAB IS THE SQUAD!!! GOOGLE NEXUS TAB SHITS ON YOUR TAB!!! you know who else shits on your tab? MY MOM!!!! *hi-fives Hi-Five Ghost* On the real, though, this new tablet o mine makes me feel all of the things, and guess what it means? it means that I will be blogging more often. Face especially if it means that I can blog by talking. Which I can do now. Because google Nexus tab is the squad!!! Chyea!!!
so, I'm riding down 85 and I notice that the whole highway is on fire! so I totally stop riding down the highway and start sitting on tye highway, because, you know, fire's bad for tires and shit. nothing especially interesting happened, but there were a lot of people getting out of the car on some disaster movie type shit. and the choppers were circling like vultures around an old carcass. I got pics, but the choppers look more like UFOs than actual aircraft. anyway, it's finally moving some, so you know, gotta focus on the road. can't be crashing up fir y'all bitches ... bitches ....
time for a short, "this is something that just happened, and i will need more characters than twitter allows in order to tell the story" type entry. so last night one of money making homies sent me a link to some CPA offer cash flow opportunity. because i trust him i checked the thing out. it was an offer to buy a product called myPCbackup and in return the offering party would set you up with a free affiliate site that would pay you up to 2000% commission. seems almost too good to be true. but i have a problem with these business type opprtunities:
i'm not well vesred enough on how these types of offers are regulated to know how legit the offer is. when guys like bernie madoff can operate for years to the tune of $65billion, and the number of fraudulent financial opportunities are apparently rising let's just say i get a bit skeptical
the whole sales pitch bugs me. every time one of these guys presents one of these opportunities it's the same story: how would you like to spend $X on Y widget and make [exponentially larger return]? well then all you need to do is give us the money and we'll tell you how! oh, and if you get your buddies to give us the money, too, you'll get a piece of everything they make and everything the people they bring in make and on and on until you're the BAUSE of the whole world!
if it was really that easy, literally everyone would be doing it already. i've never seen anybody turn down easy money that was 100% legit. which brings me to
i'm a research doing MFer, and it is almost laughably difficult to find reliable third party research on these opportunities. most search engine front pages wind up flooded with blog posts that don't site sources, articles from websites with links that all seem to go to the offeror you're reseaching, forum threads (which, of course, never have reliable links), and of course the offeror themself. or look like this:
look. a link to the BBB's homepage but not a review. hmm.
and ONE MORE THING! all of these offers link to some videowall page with a youngish WASP talking about how great the opportunity is followed by a link to the offer, but with no links to a sevond or third page explaining the opportunity in greater detail. don't expect me to just join you on faith. i need to know exactly how my money is gonna make me money before i give you my money. every legit, researched, regulated and accountable financial person i've dealt with has laid out a detailed plan for how my money would grow BEFORE i let them play with it. and these are people that i know personally, not just some internet video.
to be fair, CNET offers the product as well, and the guy who sent me the link is one of the researched legit guys out there. but what do you think? am i right to be funny with my money, or should i stop being scary? because, as the saying goes, scared money don't make money. stay tuned....
i know this is off topic, but it is the gotdamn jugganaut, bitch!
i cannot put into words the trials and tribulations a first year law student goes through. it is without a doubt the most awesome horrible thing that any person of moderate intelligence can ever put them self through. as i said i can't put it into words, but i can use the words i put it in during the year to make awesome wordle's with! so without further ado: 1L year in wordle form!!!!
**DISCLAIMER: the following is intended for drewninitos, or male drewninites. the drewniverse would like to ask all female drewninites, or drewninitas, to please skip to the end. there's cake and ice cream there. no foolin!**
fellas, i got to talk to y'all for a minute. hey, now, shit dude, i know. we don't really like to talk about real shit a whole helluva lot -- hell, i know i'd rather be writing a blog about beer and football and making sexy time and video games right now-- but i just need to know if i'm alone on this. do y'all have that one fucking guy that you know who you, through no fault of your own, are acquainted with (your friends are his friends and shit) who you just look at and think, "man, i never ever ever want to follow that guy into anything.... anything"? (see? i brought back into the comfort zone. this IS about the vajayjay) for those of you who haven't received your copy of the drewniversal guide to drewniversal vernacular, "follow" in the context of the above sentence means "to put ones P in a va-G for which you are aware of at least one prior user", or in laymen's terms, to have sex with a girl that a guy you know has already had sex with. and don't all of us have that one guy? real talk, bruh! we all got that one dude who no matter how cool he is, we just couldn't bring ourselves to follow into a girl we know he's already done the do with (DGDV: done the do - made sex with) and it's not one thing in particular about the dude that rubs us wrong. it's just from observation. for example, when i was in college i had a friend who i just knew i would never follow, and i mean i didn't care if the girl was freida pinto bad. i aint care if she had a body like blac chyna (natural, too) and a ass to match, if she effed with him she could not eff with drew. we've all been there. maybe you were afraid you might catch something messing with post-that-dude girls. maybe dude had really shitty taste/no standards and you just knew that if he messed with her she probably wasn't within specs. but whatever it was... you just weren't comfortable knowing that he'd already been there. there is a simple solution that will allow you to keep the friendship in tact, if you and dude are cool like that (i'd suggest staying cool with homie if for no other reason than to better keep track of his book [DGDV: book - short for black book]. that guy will always talk about girls he's known in that way). there are steps. did i mention that earlier? well, there are, and here they are:
stay friends. you can't keep track of dude's book if y'all ain't at least cool. no worse feeling than finding out after the fact that your girl once had an encounter with home slice...
pay attention to girls that fall for homie's game for future reference. even if he got game we've already established that we are uncomfortable with going where that guy's gone before
because you've stayed friends, you now know dude's scene. prowl in a different scene (DGDV: prowl: to go out in search of potential sexy time companions).
ALTERNATIVE: play wingman. man law prevents prowling dudes acting as a unit to do anything with the other's targets. well, not first at least.
now that we've established that we all know that one guy, and we've discussed how not to follow that guy we can rest easier. alright, drewninitas, you can come back.
oh yeah, the delicious confections! you have three choices, so enjoy!
after almost 3 months, an IM chat with a fellow law student has led me to the inspiration for my next swagtastic blab fest. as i was discussing with the lovely and talented miss sam bam of lawlessandflawless the finer points of her introductory blog about 90's kid awesomeness (click that there link up there) i was reminded of a rather obscure piece of pop crossover swag frim back when mtv was still cool. it was a show called " Say What?! Karaoke" and Danielle "Topanga Lawerence" Fishel, aka my school boy crush, was rapping to busta rhymes single "Gimme Some More"!
see how impressive that is? anywho, sammie challenged me to produce the video (ok, so she just said she didn't remember that and i set out to prove it happened) but there was one problem: this seems to be the only obscure video the interwebs can't produce! i began to believe i'd just made it up! so i did the next best thing. i asked google if it even happened at all, and got my answer: yes, it even happened at all! according to wiki.answers: "She did the rap during a Celebrity special of MTV's Say What Karaoke". by the rules of the internet, this means that somebody has video of it somewhere! and now, drewninites, i charge you with helping me find it! my bloggers integrity depends on it.
ps, i cant in good conscience do a topanga rapping blog and leave you with no topanga clips so hears, the boy meets world karaoke contest:
good sleep is a myth. you never really get it. i've never gotten "good" sleep. the only sleep i've ever gotten is "whatever i could afford at the time" sleep, or "not quite enough" sleep, or "i didn't get any" sleep. yesterday, i got sleep. twice. and it was adequate, but none of it was "good". i woke up feeling refreshed, but sluggish once, and terrible from wings and beer the second time. every time i wake up i feel cheated; either i feel like the sleep was just about to get good, or that dream was getting to the big payoff and now it's gone forever. sleep and i have a very complicated relationship. sleep never let's me have it when it would be beneficial, like at night, or when i have a few hours and could use a nap. but when i don't want it sleep just HAS to get at me NOW. it's usually in an inappropriate situation: i can always find a way to fall asleep in class, or fall asleep in church, or even once behind the wheel of my car (in the neighborhood and i woke up before i hit anything... well, before i hit anything head on). it also has to get at me at times i'd rather be doing other things. when i wanna watch that movie at 10:30 sleep wants to meet up at 10:25. or when i'm at that basketball game and it's getting good, like it's really close in the third so you know the fourth is gonna be exciting, sleep wants to show me pictures of it's cat, or weave a basket or some eff''n thing. and sometimes those inappropriate sleeps are the best feeling sleeps. but you can't even enjoy those because of how wrong you know it is.
long story short is that no sleep, even the good feeling ones, are "good". well, at least for me.
this is the point in my career where i start to think i might have been better suited choosing a different path in life.
i really like taking my break to write about shit that's on my mind rather than spending hard earned bucks on shitty kiosk food.
all my professors this year that i didn't have last year seem to really believe in their knowledge of the law, and don't get me wrong, they're really smart, but damn. you don't have to make a brother feel like an a-hole for not quite being there yet.
part of me wants to grow my fro back. i know i won;t be able to wear one again until i prove myself as a serious legal mind, so while i'm a silly 1L-2L i want to do it one last time.... also i wanna beat Ashley's fro
paying attention in class is for squares. like pants!
i figure that with my health, advances in modern medicine, and my future high income, it's not unrealistic to believe i could live to be 245-300 years.
there's this wicked awesome looking fan made Pokemon game that appears to run on the SFIII engine. if you're not creaming your pants 1) clearly you're not a nerd, and thus should reevaluate your life, and/or 2) you lack the vision to truly understand the gravity of that proclamation. let me spell it out: imagine you took the most bad-ass fighting monsters on Nintendo's roster (that are bipedal) and instead of having to wait your turn to throw an attack, you just had them go at it in a 1-on-1 no holds barred two round match. if that doesn't do it for you, just watch this. see.? wow...
was ithe only one that watched the pro bowl and thought: "wow. this is really really bad"
you ever get that feeling that through no real misstep, no real slip up, no real fault of your own, you made a really big mistake? that's how i feel right now. i feel like i did most everything right: i graduated high school in the top 10% of my class, graduated with honors from college, started working right away, then i got into post graduate education. whoopee, right? well there's a problem: i went to law school. and I'm starting to feel like it was a fool's decision more and more.
don't get me wrong, it's a great opportunity to do fulfilling work and make a a lot of money, (but volunteers can do fulfilling work, and the lotto is also a good opportunity to make a lot of money and they won't put you almost $200k in the hole). but that really is only true for those who don't have to pay their way through with loans (remember that $200k hole?). for people like me it's more like i gotta hope i do well enough to put myself in position to rub elbows with the right people, because, let's face it, the only people who get jobs that payout enough to cover the cost of school are the ones who schmooze the best.
the top students in the class don't necessarily get the best jobs, the self promoters do. that's logical fallacy of law school number 1. logical fallacy number 2 is that law school = future success and financial windfall. that's what attracted me to it in the first place. the idea that i could do something where i could help people and make bread doing it was all i needed to know. law school was for me. the third logical fallacy of law school is what i just mentioned: the fulfilling work. yes, there are Gloria Allred types out there who advocate for causes they believe in and earn a nice living doing it (not to mention a reputation), but to be fair, it's usually only the full-ride kids who can justify "doing it for the love, not the money" type jobs. the rest of us federal and bank loan students have to get gigs that can cover those loans. we are the soulless bloodsuckers who give lawyers a bad name, but we only do so out of necessity. it's the way the system is set up. these law schools have to provide us with an immense pool of resources just to learn us the law and how to use it. in order to fund all that, especially for private schools (like mine), they charge us ridiculously high tuition. in my case when you add on fees, I'll be paying around $60k/year. 6-0. if my applications hadn't been sabotaged, (but that's another blog) I'd be in state at a state school and I'd be paying $13-$24k/year.
but I'm getting away from the real issue with law school: the real job market. when i graduate there will be hundreds of jobs available. hundreds of jobs with thousands of applicants. and each applicant without a scarlet "H" or navy "Y" on their diploma is already at a disadvantage. among the jobs that don't hire exclusively from the ivy, you have to deal with the other of the several top 40 schools in the greater NY area. once those jobs get filled, it's time to push for job as a PD or ADA which will earn you between $40k and $100k/year, which sounds good until you consider cost of living in NY. what $400/mth would get me in Durham I'd be paying $1000+ for up here. now scale that up to a home suitable for a person with a law degree. now add on price of gas, food, doctor bills, repairs -- oh yeah, and the $2,000+ you'll be paying in loans each month... get it? unsustainable. then there are the clerk positions that you could get as a 1L-2L in law school. that's what the next bit of us have to look forward to. now let's consider my unique situation: I'm not only going to have to glad-hand my way into a decent gig, but I'm going to have to do so while convincing a firm in NC that my NY education will translate to NC law. and that's if I'm lucky enough to find a job at all... did i mention that there's a very real possibility that i could go through law school and do everything right and intern over the summers and STILL wind up jobless and in debt? because that's true, too.
so I'm starting to not feel very good about my life choices. but, hey, there's always the JD-MBA route...
so tell me, what do you think about your path in life?
and don't get me started on cody lambert. a middle american surfer? Crawl much, bu-uuuuddy? (please don't roundhouse kick my face in the balls) which brings me to my question: will smith, carlton banks (fuck you, he had swag), and obviously clarissa darling withstanding, was there a swaggier mo fo ever on tv ever than dwayne wayne?
part 2: who among the big four was the swaggiest?
dwayne?
will?
carlton?
or clarissa?
**PS: i purposefully left the lisa turtle's and blossoms and hillary banks's of the world out of consideration. i tried to make this the all dudes edition, but clarissa is just too swaggy to deny**
just gonna stream my consciousness for a minute...
sick and tired of not being a serious law student, but for whatever reason i cant seem to make myself do right. there are just to many distractions. for instance, last night i opened my book at 10 PM and didn't start reading until 11... AM. in the morning. because i just had to watch like two netflix movies about wrestling and two animes. for no real reason. this is my problem. i literally will find any reason at all to not read. and get this: i haven't written my own brief in about a month. i've been downloading them or doing the "book brief" and that's when i do right. i need to make a change, because, you know, i gottta become a judge one day.
i think i have an image problem. i got really upset the other day because icalled my gf's cat a "fat crap", and she responded in jest, "YOU'RE a fat crap". i knew she didn't mean it seriously, but it bugged the crap outta me. i literally changed my plans from "do laundry and read, then go to sleep" to "eff this laundry, i need to go to the gym RIGHT NOW!" and that's what i did. got a real good cardio session in, too. didn't talk to her for almost 24 hours after that, and when i did, it was a really tense convo. i felt bad about it...
had a dream that i got into a fight with my dad, and the only reason we didn't come to blows was because my dad's "other side" talked sense into me, then my brother told me to come outside so he could tell me some bit of news that i can't remember right now.
in my opinion, these occupy wall street protesters are misplacing their anger. why get upset at wall street for doing what they're paid to do? or even better, why get mad at wall street for playing by the rules that they've been allowed to play by? if you ask me, all the energy and effort of the "occupy [wherever the biggest scapegoat is]" movement would be better spent on pennsylvania avenue than wall street, because it's our policies that have given big corporation the freedom to fuck us over for financial gain. you can't get mad at the dog for grabbing your bone if the dog's caregiver never rolls up a newspaper on it for doing so.
sometimes it's really hard. to. listen.. to.... professor...... frye...... becausehisspeechpatternisreallyfunny... right? right? right? right?
maybe it's me, but for some reason the "puking my guts out" pumpkin just flies in the face of all that is good and holy about halloween...
So yesterday I got blown up. Not in that slang, "they keep blowing me up", kinda way. I mean going up in flames, towering inferno blown up. I mean goodness gracious great ball of fire. I mean intense heat and concussive pressure blown up. I'm saying it was literal.
Now I don't wanna put to much on it -- this isn't one of those post near-death experience posts -- but it does make me think. It didn't scare me. You know, beyond the initial 'hadouken! Duck!!' reaction.
it's quite a reaction.
But there was no lingering sense that I had been in real danger. There wasn't a Richard Pryor, "when that fire hit yo' ass" moment of clarity. I laughed it off picked up my phone (I'd dropped it on account of the yoga flame in my face) and went on to cook a meal and a quite good one @ that. A day later you'd never know anything went down. But I have had time to reflect, and this is what I've come to: that cold have been a lot worse. I could have been burned, the grill could have literally exploded instead of just producing a fireball (the red one. That Ken threw in Turbo by pressing HP. It set the other guy on fire.), this post could be from a hospital bed instead of my bathroom, or worse I could be gone. So what do I do oh this pseudo second chance? Iunno, y'all. I don't know. Stay posted, drewninites...
