random question blah blah #rqod

sometimes i look at the 4 or 5 prematurely grey hairs i've gotten over the last three years and i wonder what the point of it all is. so i ask you guys, was all the stress and the sleepless nights and the weight gain really worth it? what do you guys think?

drewniverse shorts: when your lady wants to cut her hair...

when your lady wants to cut her hair, she'll make her case:

and you, being a good guy, will listen:


she'll say it's for







because shes bored




and you'll say, "but you'll get bored with it cut",


becuse you know her and it's not that she wants the cut JUST because "it's cute", it's that it's new. and she'll say, "then i'll grow it back"

perfectly reasoned

and you'll see, "i wouldn't like it" because you think she looks fine how she is

or you'll flat out say

and she'll begrudgingly concede the point

and you'll feel bad because no matter what she does you'll be fine with it.  and all you want is for her to be happy

shut up in my bones

bones are important, man.

stay with me. have you ever really thought about them? beyond them being hard or hurting a lot if they break i mean. have you? bones are why you have a form!! they hold you up and let you walk and stuff. they do other stuff, too. they enable you to eat and start digestion (teeth are bones, too, you know) they hold your muscles in place so you can, like, have mobility. they make stuff taste better (the difference between unctuous and flavorful stock and blah di blah broth? stock is made with the bones of the beastie). even bugs have bones (they call them "exoskeletons" because they wear them on the outside because bugs have no shame). and the most important thing bones do?

star in noir style mysteries?

no, they make blood! thought it was the heart that did that? wrong again Bob! the heart is like the head of person city's blood distribution ring. it moves the product through the veins and what not, but it has a supplier, and the supplier lives in the bones. that would be the marrow. see, if the heart is Frank Lucas, and the blood is blue magic, then the marrow is the vietnamese general that grew the opium it was made of.

And that would make Richie Roberts a heart attack (get it? because he was the arresting officer?!)

the bone marrow is very important. it's what makes bone in food taste good, and it's what gives stock it's oomph. also it's wht gives your body blood, and  more importantly, white blood cells. without white blood cells the body can't fight infection, and if you can;t fight infection, you can't, like, live through stuff. you need to be able to live through stuff. i mean it! how terrible would it be if everytime you got a sniffle you had to fear for your life? that's how important bones are, they give you the ability to live your life and live through the stuff that wants to take your life from the inside. 

and the cool thing is we all have that superpower!

.....

ok, so i lied. most of us have that superpower, but there are those of us who don't. there are people in this world that for one reason or another lose the ability to produce new healthy blood cells to fight off infections that might do us in. and you know what? as superheroes, it is our duty to help those who cannot help themselves. we have to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use their own. that's what wolverine would do. remember that scene in the first [read: the good] X-men movie? when rogue was latched into Magneto's "turn-all-the-people-into-mutants-but-it'll-kill-the-person-acting-as-the-battery-so-i'll-trap-a-teenager-who-can-steal-powers-into-it-in-my-place-because-the-nazi's-killed-my-mom" machine and died as a result, wolverine went and did the one thing he knew could save her: touched her so she could steal his healing power to come back to life. 

shown: life giving. not shown: what it looks like (fuckin)

that's what we are: a bunch of wolverine's. we all have a healing factor shut up in our bones. and we need to be willing to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use there's. that's why i encourage everyone who is able to sign up to the National Marrow Donor Program as a bone marrow donor. it costs you nothing but a cheek swab and it could save someone's life, man. you could be somebody's personal wolverine!

not a butt cheek swab, you perv....

look, i know it's a scary proposition. donating a piece of you to somebody else, somebody you've never met no less, doesn't sound appealing. it sounds painful and invasive. i know man. when i signed up i had the same thoughts. but you know what outweighed all of my fears? the idea that just maybe one day there would be a part of me out there saving the next michael jackson, or the next bill gates. somebody might have leukemia and need a marrow transplant and that may be the person that cures AIDS or cancer. somebody might need chemo and require a transplant to repair their immune system afterwards, and that person may go on to invent time travel, or may negotiate peace in the middle east. hell, you may just save somebody's mom or dad, brother or sister, son or daughter, and they may go on to just lead a normal life. and that? that's worth more than any fear i had. that outweighs all of it.

i don't really know how to close this one out, so i'll just leave you with this image that pretty much says it all.

any questions, bub?

average cat

play the vid for a little background music while reading

i was going to write a blog today about CISPA -- a bill that recently passed in the house that allows corporations to harvest and trade your personal online information such as passwords and search history with the federal government -- but shit happens. school type shit. let me explain.

life is filled with things. terrible first line, i know, but it's true. there are good things, bad things, neutral things, scary and exciting things. there are cold things and warm. hard things and soft. you get the picture right?

this. this is the picture

for those extraordinary drewninites it must seem that the pleasant things greatly outweigh the other, more sobering things. for every crying baby there are ten yippy puppies and shit. ten. and even among the more realistic of you exceptional MFers that realize that the good and the bad must be even in number, the warm flowery things have the caloric density compared to the icky things of chocolate to lettuce. chocolate to lettuce.

what do you do when life gives you lettuce? make chocolate lettuce cake

i haven't forgotten about you curmudgeonly drewninites either. those who swear that everything bad in life happens to them and only them. well let me assure you that it doesn't. even those charmed bastards i spoke to above go through rainy days in their life. hell, Mary j. Blige made a career singing about all the bad things she went through, and she's one of the most celebrated singers in the history of singing! look, you sad sacks, the sun shines on all of us, and it'll shine on you, too, if you step outta the shade for a minute.

me? i'm just an average cat. slightly above average height, slightly above average IQ, but average looks, average fitness level, and below average scholarship. i get a lot of good things but every time i start to feel a little good about myself, every time i get a little chocolate high, life throws me some lettuce to balance that shit right out.

eat ya veggies, NYUGGA!

which brings me to the reason i decided this was my topic today: a bruhva got a little of that life chocolate last week. i was admitted into the community & economic development clinic for the fall. its a big deal b/c only 8 slots are available, you have to interview for it (and it's a short interview: 15 minutes. not a lot of time to sell yourself), then you have to get picked over all the other applicants and have your name submitted for university so you can register for it. well, all that went off without  hitch, so yay!

YAY!

needless to say i was feeling myself a little bit. life saw me feeling myself and realized that i was on a chocolate high. life always has a way of keeping things at an even keel, and in my case it came in the form of a grade. i got a stupid C on my last assignment. a C. and then prof had the audacity to sit in front of the class and pat himself on the back for the overall improvement each student made in their writing. explain then why, if my writing is so improved, did i earn a solid B on my last assignment? i put no more effort into that one than i did into this one. hell, on this one i even went beyond the call of duty to make sure i included legal arguments only barely hinted at in the fact pattern. so why isn't my grade at least the same as it was on the last one?

the moral of this story isn't that some professor's are full of it, though. it ain't even that i'm just an average cat. the moral is that you can't have life just one way. there is no perfect existence where only the good things happen. life gives us the opportunity to experience all the things, good or bad or otherwise. yes, i'm miffed that i didn't get a better grade, and it is radicchio bitter, but that doesn't mean i don't get to eat that law clinic chocolate, too. and just being in the law clinic doesn't excuse me from eating the lettuce. you can't have life just one way. there's gonna be sweet chocolate and bitter lettuce. but if you gotta eat what life serves you, it might as well be cake.

5 minute break

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?

It was all a dream... Right?

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.

kharma

so this is what i get, huh? this is me now? all those things i did and this is how you get me? this kharma thing is a real vindictive bitch. you know, i've done my dirt. i've broken my hearts, hell, we all have. but the one time i try to do the really for real right thing and not love these hoes, this. this? really, this? i mean i've never actually BEEN the good guy before. i always have had at least 1 other one on the side. always! and i don't think i ever made any pretenses that i didn't have other ones. in high school it was "uhh, yeah. there are other girls. i'm 16, whadya want me to do, marry you NOW? meh, i'm just tryna have fun". in college it was, "nah, i don't really believe in the whole 'boyfriend/girlfriend' thing. it's all just a big fallacy anyway. just an arbitrary label society makes us wear so we don't have to tell our parents 'i want you to meet the person i'm putting penis inside/giving up my va jay jay to this semester'. it's a big joke! the only real titles are 'fiance' and 'spouse', so i hope you don't espect me to miss out on all this random college yum yum because we both like trainspotting and UGK. i'm only 19 so, hey, i'm just having fun". even after graduation when i finally gave in to the idea of having a girlfriend who wasn't just an excuse to make sexy time, it was, "i'm done playing around with scattered ass girls. but i ain't for the dating just to have somethinf tip. you can have that one. i'm cool with mine. man this single life is the shit, what with the no naggin questions, and the 'who was that bitch i seen you with' questions. now i can weed these girls out and find the good ones and keep them to myself. i mean, i'm 22: time to build the strong team so i can have fun" but now, for once in my life it's, "i look around and don't see anybody that's worth the risk of losing her. she must be special. i'm 24, and her and i are fun together". but this hatin ass hater kharma... she hit me with the okie doke. she got me. i got got. i guess that's the fate of all of us wannabe players masquerading as good guys our whole lives. when you finally start to live the part, finally actually do the good guy thing thinking you got kharma figured out, you turn around to look for her intent on gloating about how she missed you, how she didn't get you, and then you finally see her and ...

 

cold mother ffffffuuuuu-

10 minute break pt 2: the redux

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"

alert level juris

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?

10 minute break

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... 

i'm done, ta ta for now

the shining

all work and no play make drew a dull boy
all work and no play make drew a dull boy
all
all work
all work and
all work and no
all work and no play
all work and no play make
all work and no play make drew
all work and no play make drew a
all work and no play make drew a dull
all work and no play make drew a dull boy
yob llud a werd ekam ylap on dna krow lla
all work and no mlay pake drew a bull doy

yeah, i'm feeling like jack right now. not in that, i'm gonna axe someone to death (hey, like harrison v taylor!) "here's johnny!" kinda way, but in that "all this work is driving me to the brink of insanity" kinda way. stay posted guys...

kame.. .ha... mE... HADOUKEN!!!!!!!!

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...

also, mario fireballs

fear no tears

tis i, the one and only tenderizer of the ronies, luscious. sorry i've been away so long. i had an urgent engagement with two fine tahitian ladies on a beach in bora bora (don't ask questions) and completely lost track of myself. anyway, i feel like i owe y'all something. something real nice and retro, you know, as a gift for havin to wait so long for my return. so with no further ado, i give you a little tears for fears! now if you'll excuse me, Nanihi and Miri aren't gonna massage oil onto themselves...

DARK's prayer (for those being taunted by the light)

dear lord,
for years i have walked in near constant darkness. the hardships of doubt and despair, rejection and refusal, the trial and error, self denial and indulgence in the uneasy comfort my tribulation brought me. there was a sort of honor in the single man's fight for actualization. Lord, the revelry, the relishing in it -- tempering my resolve to brilliant cut and flame polished, my steadfastness to a singularity's denseness-- i felt pride in my fight. lord, i knew, because you told me that if i walked 1000 miles toward my goal, you's carry 1000000 more. i, even during those sleepless nights where the doubt would gently rock me to wake every second tock, even when the days were wed and afternoons were breakfast fed, never once left your path. you told me to walk, lord, and i did. and i was rewarded! oh, the bounty was poured from on high: love and happiness from the one you smelted for me, and my goal, the one you sent my mother when i was young, was beset in my path. i could taste victories, luscious and wholesome, in the air, and i relaxed.

lord, the pains i went through to do everything the right way. i made the grades, i made the scores, i wandered through my desert for my 40 years. why, lord, must i be forsaken? why must my goal be thrust even further from me? the lusciousness has left the air. there is only the stench of what should have been. but lord, if your will is for me to bear this cross for a while longer, then i will walk these next 1000 miles with my head held high. if it is your will, i will walk until the air becomes luscious again

Amen

not 1, not 3! but 2! a DIUU tale about red tape

*UPDATE: uhhh, yeah, so about 8 hours after i wrote this, the HR department called me to schedule my orientation. so with that said, enjoy this now meaningless rant! also, I GOT A JOB!!!!!*

one of the big reasons a north carolina university will not have it's name emblazoned across the topm of my law school diploma is that i have become fed up with entrusting any part of my success or failure in other peoples hands. each school i applied to in my home state gave me the same answer: impressive application, but LSAC didn't send in letters from recommendors, so thanks for coming, and we'd really really like to admit you but we're gonna call your application incomplete. REALLY!

same thing is going on with this job i'm going for. oh, i applied for, interviewed for, and was ESSENTIALLY HIRED BY the interviewers. well, i figured i had my bases covered. needed to recommendations, got 3. three. but, they needed one from my former boss, so i call her up, and guess what? she says she'll write me a nice one! so i keep checking in, and she informs me that she's done it and everything. only problem is, the hr department, (they requested her recommendation) doesn't have a completed one from her, they say, so guess what? I CAN'T START THE JOB THAT I EARNED THROUGH MY OWN MERITS BECAUSE SOME EFFN RED TAPE BS CAN'T GET SORTED OUT! ain't life grand?

peachy

failure: a tale of HIM

" ...the pressures gone. now i can go on with the rest of the semester, chill up here for the summer, walk and still be on schedule (the one i made for myself [someones law school by 2010 fall]). mama wont like it, but in the end it may be best. it means i get to see some things through that i may not have bee able to before. it also means that i wont be sitting in Charlotte or Durham with no gig and nothing to do for those summer months. and who knows, maybe penny and busko can work a little magic and make something outta nothing. we'll see. i've got this strange since of optimism that wasn't there a week ago when no one was mad at me..."

on 2/4/09 i wrote that in a blog post about my anxiety and optimism over the changing phases of my life. i was this close to graduation, had a plan of action, and was determined to make them all work for me in the next year. what could go wrong, right?

as it turns out, that adage about best laid plans is even more spot on than you think. allow me to update you on the two years that followed.

despite the minor set back of having to come back for classes over the summer, i was determined to finish strong, which given my track record at the time meant that all i really had to do was stay true to the course I'd been on. 3 straight 4.0 semesters to that point had to mean i was doing something right. well, if you know me then you know i was embroiled in a common relationship conundrum at that point (i like that word 'conundrum'), needless to say, i was distracted. but i could still wing it in my classes. as the semester wore on, the knowledge that graduation was an impossibility set in. certain classes (i.e. the ones that had no effect on my graduation or my interest in law school) became chores to me. my mother can attest to how well i take to chores, but since she's not here let me tell you how i take to chores like a shark takes to the desert. work just didn't get done to my standards in these classes. and for no real appreciable reason. i finished the semester with a 3.0, just enough to knock me from magna cum laude to simply 'with honors'.

lets back track for a sec and talk about something i usually like to keep secret: this was also the time when i had my big STD scare. we all have one scare or another, but this was MY scare. this was the one that was NOT supposed to happen me. so i get tested. negative. few weeks pass and I'm still feeling a little genitally compromised, so i go and get another test, a more comprehensive one. the difference is this time i have to wait two week for the results. so I'm going through these two weeks as if I'm waiting to hear from the governor. an air of "dead man walking" followed me from class to class, studied with me, cooked my meals, and rocked me to sleep each 3 o'clock-in-the-morning. the big day comes and i get the phone call. "you're results are here. come into the office to get them." this was devastating. ME, the guy who always, ALWAYS uses protection. the guy who is so selective with who he cavorts with. how could i possibly have contracted something so terrible that i have to walk all the way to the office to get? what seemed like a year later i was in the office. the doctor walked in with that "mmmm hmmmm" look that black ladies get when they feel superior to you (the doctor was a black lady). "OK, Mr. HIM, we have your results. you tested negative for.." and she proceeded to list all the horrible heebie jeebies you could imagine. i felt the power being sapped from my legs as she said, "you're all clear". supported by the steadfast examiners table i declared, "so i don't have anything?" in what turned out to be more of a question than a declaration. "not that we found" i hate the way doctors answer questions.because that mustard seed of doubt would grow, never allowing me to be satisfied with her "all clear" proclamation. i recomposed myself and walked out of that office, a clean man.

that would be the last time i set foot in a doctors office or hospital.

so i breeze through the summer -- at different institutions-- with what would have been a 3.5 at my school (B+ at UNC, A at UNCC) then get set to take the LSAT. fast forward to September: the date of my exam. i sit at my desk, pencil in hand, back up pencil sharp and ready, back up back up pencil go, emergency back up pencil on standby, then the examiner says go... i freeze up. physically I'm poring over the pages with the same ice cold confident precision of every other test taker. but inside is a civil war. my senses are firing, my emotions are raging, but my mind, my mind just... won't... churn. not a single coherent thought is able to form long enough for me to answer the questions that I'd seen hundreds of times in practice. section 1 becomes section 2 and 3 and i mind won't cooperate with me. after the break however, I'm able to get it together. the questions become familiar again. and forget about the essay portion, because i knocked it out cold! the next part sees me in a similar situation as the waiting period i mentioned before, and after another lifetime i finally receive the email! i open it calmly and read through the brief introduction, your basic professional courtesies. finally, my heart beat becoming more pronounced by the instant, i read the score: "1.." so far so good, "5..." uh-oh... i don't read the rest. it doesn't matter at this point, because it's too low to be the score i wanted. well, i, undeterred by that minor set back, embark on what has turned into a year long saga of applications, essays, trips to lobby for letters of recommendation, cross country flights, open houses, inexplicably email's from top 10 schools, and two count 'em, two acceptance letters (after what felt like 50 "incomplete: missing letter of recommendation" letters, but that's another story).

well, gang, my tale has become quite an epic yarn, so hasta que otra vez adieu and adios.

TO BE CONTINUED...

a DARKdays message for Egypt

(for news coverage check out the gatekeepers page here)

when the people rise up, no one man can stand against them. the people of egypt proved that over the last few weeks as they pushed the long standing "president" Hosni Mubarak out of office. viva la revolucion, yes? well, we here at DIUU have a saying: it ain't always wise to trade yhe devil you know for the devil you don't.i know what you're thinking, "oh DARK avenger, do not tell us that you are against the new found freedom of the egyptian people. how can that be?" now before you snap the mask of my head, i'm only acting as the word of warning for my egyptian brethren. i only act to remind them of the potential pitfalls of this new dawn. as many examples as there are of uprisings leading to representative government (the czech republic, france, south africa, and the USA to name a few) there are more examples of the overthrow of a despot leading to the control of the government by yet another despot. when the tsars were overthrown during russia's revolution they were replaced by the bolsheviks and eventually lenin, two autocrats. the national socialsts (nazis) rose to power in germany promising the greatest freedom and power... to a segment of society with a very particular recessive trait, bringing only repression and death to all who didn't fit they're idea of perfecton. but what should trouble you, my egyptian brothers and sisters, is the history of revolution in the middle east, where you have been such a leveling force historically. when the shah was overthrown in iran, for instance, he was replaced by a committee of clerics who would use figure heads to give the appearance of freedom, while controling the government from the shadow. when iraq revolted in the 60s and 70s, saddam hussein seized power.

i am not the omen of things to come. i am but a messenger, a light in this DARK world. as such, i must now say that i personally commend you, my brothers. i commend you for your decorum and your grace. i commend you for your unity and your singularity of focus. i commend you for refraining from most of the bloodshed that tends to mar so many of these reformative moments in history. your jubilation and drive has touched the world and i wish you the best. i would also like to commend the military for refusing to fire on their own people. here's hoping you keep your word and end emergency rule, giving, finally, the power to the people of the motherland!

life after the cup: to the Americans

i'm sorry y'all. i know i'm usually raspberry red with passion and mango sweet with the juicy life enriching goodness. but i've been raspberry blue lately. see, i called in a few favors and rented out a pent house with lions and tigers in cages lined with ghana jerseys. i had my main man diddy bring all his friends over. i had usher give a live performance. i even shanghi'd the entire russian ballet bruce wayne style.now, for what would i go to such lengths for, you ask? you normally wouldn't risk a perfectly manicured finger for anything last than a major international, multicultural phenomenon! well, if you were paying attention (and if you were, here's a cookie!) you would have picked up on the ghana jersey lined animal cages i mentioned earlier. that would have clued you in to the nature of my extravaganza (if you read the title, here's a dollar! so you can buy yourself a cookie!) i got a baaad case of the us-soccer-lost-to-ghana-again-and-is-now-out-of-the-world-cup-...-again blues. where's little walter when you need him? well, despite the fact that no blues artist ever made a song about soccer (well, there IS this nice zydeco infused nawlins offering)yours truly reclaimed his status as the henny topped lemon drop thanks to the uplifting words in this song, and i think our red, white and blue boys just might take comfort in it, too.

RIP: Spider "Long Legs" Webster 20??-2010

oh, faithful readers, this is a sad day. we have lost one of the silent defenders of our hominid realm against the invading insectoid hoard. as i, DARK, was showering post-training a series of events occurred that circumstantially led to the untimely demise of the great arachnoid hero, Spider "Long Legs" Webster. as i retracted the shower curtain i noticed a small object fall to the shower floor. i realized it was too massive and, well, alive to be a rogue hair, so i searched the area and found our hero fighting valiantly against the barrage of pressurized and artificially heated water plummeting from a source unknown to him. perhaps some vengeful god had marked him for death. perhaps clouds can form indoors and rain on you. how should he know? he's a spider! well despite the tempest surrounding him, he managed to claw his way to apparent safety. i, seeing his will to live, decided to move from his path, because i was unaware what he would've needed to do to live, but i knew what he was gonna do: live. and god help whoever was trying to prevent him from doing it! alas, in my act of self preservation i bumped an old bottle of hippie conditioner. this sent the bottle plummeting. i imagine that at this time, everything was moving in slow motion for Spider: focused and valiant, our hero fights the torrent, his situation seems ever more futile with each passing moment, yet his arachnid resolve growing with each ill-fated swipe of the leg. only now, with survival tantalizingly close does he look up and notice the white and orange monolith to human vanity descending upon him. ever the spider's spider in life, i imagine that at this point he looked down, smiled and said something profound and affirming under his breath, and like bill murray at the end of 'lost in translation', i'm certain it was just right. (under the same circumstances, my offering would have been more like this). our hero Spider Webster, lost his life in a moment of such serendipitous awesome that i had no choice but to immortalize him on this blog. that picture at he beginning of this eulogy of sorts is of his final resting place upon the label of the monolith (kubrickian innit?) my, friends, the awesome sauceness and tragedy of his passing is outshined only by the excellent life he lived. a veteran of the arachno-hornet war, he made his name by webbing and draining over 30 hornets during the famed battle of 2 houses down and 1 street over. he was awarded the spidra medal of valor, the arachnid equivalent to the human medal of honor. after his honorable discharge, he retired to my bathroom, where his awesomeness continued. he has left hundreds of would be pests hollow and digested in his wake thus earning the repuation of being the pestcide with a pulse of the DARKlair. his contributions to my non-bug prblem cannot be overstated and he shall be sorely missed. so rest in peace, Spider "Long Legs" Webster. you're controlling God's pest problem now!

life enriching material from your friends at diuu

i know your big wheel of sex appeal doesn't usually lay down hot buttered goodness on you in such short succession. i know it's even more rare for the deacon of deliciousness to erect two pillars of life enriching eFarfegnugen two days in a row. but baby girls, i have no choice. it's my pleasure to present to you satin wrapped orange dreamsicle, this lace front yakki vid, this sugar coated eye pastry, this, this... oh just watch. men without hats. safety. dance. now if you excuse me, i'm gonna go exfoliate. enjoy!