Dear America,

Please shut the hell up about health care if you don't know anything about it, and I'm pretty sure you don't.  Obama is trying to HELP you and you have the gall to fight him. 

You have Stockholm syndrome with the current health care system.  It would be comical if it weren't so tragic.

Also, in general, just sit down and let him do his job.  He is smarter than you.  Yes, even you.  I know it is difficult to imagine an intelligent president after the last eight years, but it's true.  I am confident he is smarter than me, and I have a huge ego, so... y'know.

I'm not saying blind faith is in order, but when you question his policies, you should just assume that you are the one who is wrong and try to clarify, then go from there.

Sincerely,
Me.

I don't really like the flow of this, but I am posting it anyway.  I haven't been writing as much the last few years (aside from legal writing) so if there are any readers left, please bear with me as I try to find my voice again while job-hunting.
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I'm fairly confident there are very few women out there who really want their guy to be prettier than them. 

This recent societal swing toward men getting their eyebrows waxed, putting 'product' in their hair and wearing $100 jeans is really just a marketing ploy aimed at self conscious straight men and maybe gay men as well (I'm just assuming one or both of them wants to be the trophy-boyfriend?). 

The truly unfortunate part is that is has become so widespread and accepted, that consumerism has shaped society rather than society shaping consumption.  Let's try to step back and look at this objectively for a second:

Women are self conscious about their appearance already.  That may sound sexist, but can anyone honestly disagree?  So why would a woman want to add to it by having someone to compete with on a regular basis?  If your boyfriend wears expensive clothing, has a perfect tan, perfectly white teeth and perfectly coiffed hair, then any girl standing next to him better look just as good, otherwise she will feel like she is being judged even harsher than normal (and she is probably right, unfortunately).** 

I doubt any girl wants to set the bar that high.  Even the ones that pride themselves on their appearance still stop shaving their legs regularly after 3 months of dating (if the guy is lucky).  So why would a girl want to date that kind of guy?  Put those two types of people together, and it would just be a downward spiral of self-consciousness and need for reassurance.  That's probably why those types of people cheat so regularly (all the ones I know, at least), because it feeds into their need for approval.  My basic point is that the stereotypical metrosexual (god, I hate that term) is not something any girl wants for more than a fleeting fantasy.

I'm not saying a guy can't shower regularly, shave his unibrow, or trim his nose hairs.  There is a line however, between taking care of yourself and making yourself pretty.  That line is somewhere between spending 30 extra minutes a week in the bathroom and 30 extra minutes every time you leave the house.

What I hate the most about marketing/advertising is that it preys on weaknesses and creates an artificial need for things that no one actually needs.  It turns luxurious amenities of life into necessities that people probably can't afford.  So now there's a huge pool of twenty-something guys out there spending as much money on looking good as their female counterparts, because marketing made them believe that guys need to be pretty to get girls and having a string of self-destructive relationships.  Good job Madison Avenue, you just doubled your demographic (almost).  All it cost was the definition of the word "man."

If only they knew how wrong they were.  How many short, fat, hairy, balding, (or all four) men have I seen with women who appear to be way out of their league, myself included.  The only thing a guy needs is self-confidence.  What these products and this behavior gives is not confidence, it's a mask of narcissism that temporarily puffs up your ego, fooling you into thinking you are confident.  It's not real though, because you wouldn't have it if you walked out of the house without that image. 

**I recognize that a lot of what I am saying about women is overbroad.  There are also women who don't care about their appearance as much, but they are probably rolling their eyes at these types of guys anyway and wouldn't date them, so I don't need to discuss that aspect.

I don't even know what to do right now.

I have a stack of 4x6 notecards about 5 inches high, tiny writing from top to bottom on each, so that's like 300ish flashcards, maybe 400.  I've memorized about 90% of the material on them where I can recite it backwards and forward and that list bit is such minutia that if a question is asking me about it, it will have to be so explicit it will trigger my memory.

The thought of going through those cards again actually makes me physically nauseous.  Fear makes me think I should be doing SOMETHING to prepare, but I feel like I'm ready.  Then I feel like I'm overconfident and will probably fail because maybe I should have 800 notecards instead... but just about everything we learned in the bar prep course is on those notecards.  The only stuff I didn't bother making cards for was what I was sure I knew cold.

God-forbid I fail, I don't even know what I can do differently next time.

T-minus 3 days till it starts (and 6 days until it is over).

After having a minor meltdown today, I decided to take the evening off from studying (don't worry, I still managed to get in 11 solid hours before losing it, as opposed to the standard 14) and was pleasantly surprised that it coincided with Obama's news conference [mostly] about health care reform.

I've made no secret of my love of Obama, but my single biggest fear is that people didn't really listen to the whole thing.  There was just so much information packed into every answer he gave, it may have been too much for the average person to follow closely.  He is a great speaker, though admittedly he did tend to take a big step back before answering each question.  He gave broad background statements before answering, but I'm pretty sure this was just framing and filler while he formulated the answers, because once he did, his points were so well organized and thorough, answering 2-, 3- and 4-part questions in full.  It was like he beautifully outlined each answer in his head before giving it, as long as you didn't get lost in the first few sentences.

Ok, enough ass-kissing on the form, on to the substance...

I like everything about the plan.  People are too short-sighted, especially when it comes to politics.  It is so much easier to do nothing than it is to change.  It's so much easier to pick apart someone else's ideas than it is to come up with your own.  It's so much easier to justify inaction than it is to motivate.

If nothing else, there is one aspect that is undeniably useful.  When Obama was running for president, I heard a lot of people who were afraid of him being a socialist and fearing universal health care.  The way he described health care tonight was as capitalist as it gets, it's all about competition:

If you (individuals OR companies) can choose to buy into the government health care plan, or private insurance, it will make things better.
Let's say the government plan is only like 80% as good as private insurance, but less than half the price.  You would be a fool to pay more than double the cost for that extra 20% (unless you're just irrational because Fox "News" keeps running scare-tactic stories about swine flu, etc. etc.)

So, a significant number of people flock to the government plan.  Not everyone, because there are too many hypochondriac's out there who would be like a deer in headlights without that extra 20%.  Insurance companies will have no choice but to sit up and take notice and will be forced to rework their system so that they are more competitive with the government.  They won't reduce the quality of the care, because that's their edge over the government plan, but they will make it more efficient to reduce costs.

Now in the end, you have a choice between a cheap, reasonably effective government plan, or private plans that are a lot cheaper than they are now, but are still better than the government plan.  Everyone wins.  Nut-jobs can still have their private health care for a lot less money, and the government can still cover everyone else, because they aren't in it for the money and don't care about maximizing profit.  They don't need to grow and make money, as long as there are enough people in the government system to make it worthwhile, all the rest can go private.

There were a lot of things he said that were encouraging and sounded promising, a lot of the proposed changes would be great, in my opinion, but they are still theory at this point.  At the most basic level, this is definitely headed in the right direction.

In fact, the only real disappointment was when it was immediately followed by "America's Got Talent."  I vomited a little in my mouth at the thought of comparing what I just watched to what was coming on and then decided to write this instead.

To make myself feel like all this stress might be worthwhile, I decided to be a little self indulgent before bed and look at some expensive things that I may or may not be able to afford some day (if I ever get a job and pay off my loans).

I spent about 3 minutes on each of the BMW website, the Mercedes website and the Infiniti website before I got bored and stopped... I just wasn't interested.

Have I just completely lost all imagination lately that I can't even lead a rich fantasy life?  Then again, I've never really been much into flashy things that are more expensive than they are practical. 

My complete ambivalence is probably a combination of both.

Whenever possible, I try to put all the legal theory we're learning into practical applications in my head to learn it.  Scenarios involving A and B, or D and V are just not as memorable as putting names and faces to things.

This week is Trusts and Wills, which is an interesting topic (to me, but not to most).  Having a huge family tree is helpful in visualizing how money would flow from intestacy (dying without a will).  It's less enjoyable to imagine family members dying, or as is more often the case, my own death first, then others as it gets farther and farther out.

Of course, the biggest fiction of all this applied learning is the idea that there is any money to pass if I died right now.

Unlike Wills, It was kind of fun during criminal law and criminal procedure.  I won't say who I was envisioning as the defendant most of the time, but the scenarios usually involved something like "If [friend] called me in the middle of the night and said this..." or "If I was with [friend] and we got pulled over..."

Even in Agency/Partnership day, when we went over LLC's, (which, oddly enough, isn't covered in corporations) I thought about the failed 5-year plan, and the future likelihood of being part of an LLC that manages property(ies).

The downside to all this visualization is that sometimes it can get distracting if applied to too-real situations, like will disputes (or lack thereof).  Steeped in dispute resolution doctrine, by default I am not litigious, but it's different when it is more personal.   Knowing what I know now and knowing what few facts I knew about the will, it would've been a pretty easy case to dispute, even though I can objectively say it wouldn't have been worth it.  Thinking about it renewed some unfortunate feelings though.  So for a while I was taking notes without really processing them. 

Luckily(?), I'll be pouring over those notes for the next few weeks more than I care to describe here, so they weren't lost on me.

Among the radio stations I have programmed is an oldies station.  On the way home after a long day of studying, "You make me wanna shout" came on for the short ride home.

At first I thought about how cheesy it was, but I was literally too mentally exhausted to care enough to change the station when the ride home is only about 8 minutes. 

The song reminds me of weddings, the prom, or any other DJ-ed event, and by the end of it, I was smiling, thinking of happier times.

it's my birthday, so I get to reflect a little, now that I'm an old man. 

This blog was started on my 25th birthday, just before I quit my job to go travel throughout Europe with the woman I thought I was going to marry and one of my closest friends who I don't talk to anymore.

A lot has happened since then.  Between the traveling, losing a lot of weight, taking care of Keira, losing two different women that I thought I would spend my life with at two different times (most readers won't know exactly what I am talking about, and you're not meant to, so don't ask) and the many life-changing and outlook changing aspects of law school that I have had to endure, I am very, very different than I was four years ago.  Better in some ways, worse in some ways and just plain different in other ways.  It has been a fairly tumultuous four years.

As I look around at most people my age I have no choice but to benchmark my life against others.  I look at what I have accomplished and what my immediate future looks like and there is plenty of doubt and trepidation, mostly surrounding my economic prospects.  Coming out of school with no job lined up and student loan debt larger than most mortgages is not exactly a stable and reassuring way to reenter life after taking 4 years off from reality.  Strangely enough though, there is hope for the long term and some reassurances that I will be happy as a lawyer, as long as I do it in the way that is right for me.  Though that may mean an extremely modest existence by any standard, but especially compared the lawyer sterotype.  After all, it's only money, right?

The excerpt below was sent by one of my professors who is obsessed with former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. It was  very reassuring to read, especially the first few lines of Jackson's writing.  It really reinforces the fact that I don't belong in a large, or even medium firm.  What I enjoy the most and what I am best at is dealing with people and being a generalist.  I need to work directly with clients and I need to do a little of everything.  That is how I will be happiest and most successful. 

From the email:

In Spring 1931, a time of deep economic distress, the student editors of the Jamestown (New York) High School yearbook commissioned a series of special essays for publication in their annual, The Red and Green. The students recruited leading men of the community to write about “vocations of the world today….” [among others] Jamestown’s leading lawyer, thirty-nine year old Robert H. Jackson, wrote this about careers in the law:

The most important decision the President regularly makes, Obama appoints Sonia Sotomayor to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Finals, etc.

Exams end May 18th
Bar Prep starts May 26th
Bar exam is the last week in July.

See you in August.

My Securities Regulation professor, one of my favorite professors, was on Bill Moyers Journal

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04242009/watch.html

You will probably not enjoy the clip unless you are interested in the subject matter, which I am.

For those of you on Facebook, I was doing liveupdates with my pictures every day or so. For the rest of you who are not on facebook, click the picture below for the complete album:

I was quoted several times in a article in the Cardozo Law School student newspaper.  They are undergoing a dean search, like St. John's, but our process is much more student-friendly.  My portion of the article painted a very nice picture of St. John's being a better place than higher-ranked Cardozo.

Click Here, then scroll down below the calendar.

The flight in was pretty good. I ended up with a bulkhead seat, but four screaming babies and three small children crawling around. In the end, I'll still take it, for the legroom. I still didn't sleep a wink on the eight hour flight, but at least I wasn't immensely uncomfortable.

As usual with my trips to Europe, we arrive in the early morning and can't check into our hotel until the afternoon (9am and 2pm this time). So we dropped our bags off and just started walking around the city. It was 70 degrees and sunny with a light breeze. We walked like 3 miles around, had lunch and a few beers at an outdoor fair and just killed time until we could check in. When we did, I had been awake for about 24 straight hours. After about an hour nap, it was time to go to the welcome reception and afterparty. At this point it was all adrenaline, instinct and red wine. It was fun, but an early night. So, we've been walking around Vienna a lot, seeing a lot of sights and taking pictures.. they'll make their way onto here eventually.

Today was our first argument. It was kind of a disaster. Jess and Colette went (Rich and I argue tomorrow) and they spent all day prepping to argue respondent, and when we all got there, there was a mixup and they were arguing claimant. So, they were blindsided. They knew the arguments for claimant (we're all arguing both sides) but they just had been spending so much time on respondents the last 24 hours, it was kind of a mess. I have to say, they did really well all things considered, but objectively it was not good.

Rich and I argue tomorrow, again Monday, then Jess and Colette round us out on Tuesday. After that, 64 teams out of 230 make the first break, and I would not be the least bit surprised if we were NOT one of them. A lot of the teams seem much better prepared than we are (mainly because every other school in the world, including St. John's next year) devotes an entire 2-credit class to this competition, whereas we were just doing it in our spare time (because I have so much of that).

Europe is mostly like I left it, though it feels very, very weird to be here under these circumstances. My German is coming back to me exponentially each day, but is still pretty spotty, and the whole competition (including registration, welcome, etc.) is all in English, not even both, so the immersion factor is limited to waiters and cab drivers. Aside from seeing a few things here in the city, we won't really have much time to be tourists except Wednesday and Thursday. We're talking about a short trip to Prague, Budapest or Bratislava, if we don't advance to the next round. We'll see.

Anyway, this will probably be my only update until we get home on Friday, unless something remarkable happens.

UPDATE: one small thing, not remarkable enough for a separate post: We found a doner imbiss near our hotel, and I forgot how much I loved cheap doner kebab's.

UPDATE2: I also forgot how irritating oblivious American tourists are, including my companions. Stop walking in the bike lane, and if they charge you for packets of ketchup, and soda is more expensive than wine/beer, don't be shocked and indignant when they don't allow free refills.

UPDATE3: Rich and I just did our first argument. Absolutely nailed it. We go again tomorrow afternoon, then Jess and Colette Tuesday morning, then we find out if we advance Tuesday evening. Only 64 out of 230 teams advance beyond round one, then it's like March Madness Brackets from there (which Uconn screwed me on, by the way).

UPDATE4: Rich and I argued our second argument and once again, we rocked out. The judges were all civil law judges, so they didn't like us as much, but we all agreed (four observers plus Rich and I)that by American legal standards, we did well and would not have done a single thing differently. We finally went out to be a bit touristy and celebrate. Lots and lots of celebrating, since Rich and I were done.

UPDATE5: The worst possible thing you can wake up to at 8am, with a serious, debilitating hangover, possibly still drunk, having had only 4 hours of sleep is a phone call from the coach saying "Jess is sick, we may need you to stand in for her this morning." Luckily, she held it together long enough to get through the argument. We find out in a few hours if we made it to the final 64 (out of 233), but it's not looking good. Between Saturday's bomb, a bad split of judges yesterday and today's team of hangovers, I would be surprised if we performed better than 167 teams.

UPDATE6: We did not advance. I knew it was coming, but I was still really disappointed. Only 25% of teams advance, but still. In a giant convention center with nearly 1,000 people, watching the small groups shout joyfully when their school was announced was really emotional. One of the Brazilian teams was so excited, they all linked arms with each other and were dancing and shouting in a circle. It's kind of a "had to be there" thing, but to hear the excitement of the 64 teams that advanced, it was really touching. But it also accentuated the disappointment for the 169 teams that did not advance. Oh well, now we're tourists.

I saw Watchmen yesterday. I won't say much to avoid spoilers for those who haven't seen it but plan on seeing it.

First, I really, really liked it.

Second, the opening credits was one of the best movie sequences I've ever seen.

Third, the music choices were atrocious. It almost ruined the movie for me. Instead of an original score, they used well-known songs and it was incredibly distracting. Known songs ruin most movies, because everyone has their own associations and emotions that go along with them before coming into the movie, so you cannot capture the same mood with these, no matter how cool you may think a given song is.

Fourth, they changed the ending pretty significantly from the book, but they did it well. They captured the essence of what was going on and the author's message, but in a much less cheesy way. I'll be honest, the book's version was kind of cheesy in one aspect. That's really all I can say without giving anything away.

Finally, as much as I really liked it, I would not really recommend it to anyone who hasn't read the graphic novel. It moved very fast, they left a lot of things out, and I can't help but think if I didn't know what was going on already, a lot of the detail would be lost on me. The detail is what really made the graphic novel great, you really felt like you were looking at an alternate version of 1985. If you go see it without having read it, it will probably still be a good movie, but it will be so much better if you've read the book.

It's funny and sad that a satirical news show often does a better job of reporting than the 'real' news.

This is an interview of Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, by Jon Stewart. They are discussing the current financial crisis (read: depression), but the angle that Stewart takes as a lot more to do with calling out the "news" networks on their reporting being more entertainment than news.

Any reasonably intelligent person who has watched Fox News for more than 5 minutes cannot legitimately argue that it isn't a gray area between news and entertainment. While Fox may be the most egregious, they certainly aren't the only culprit. All news stations, including local news, have some degree of entertainment built in. Even (especially) the Daily Show.

Anyway, the interview is about 20 minutes and it's in 3 parts. Part 1 is a nice warm up, part two is the bulk of the interview and the real heart of it. Part three is just kind of closing thoughts. It's really worth watching though because Stewart makes a lot of good points about CNBC's indirect role in the financial crisis. He does wax philosophical about the hubris and recklessness of the financial industry in general, but the real reason I'm sharing this is the discussion about the media's role.

http://blog.indecisionforever.com/2009/03/13/jon-stewart-and-jim-cramer-the-extended-daily-show-interview/

Y'know, I complain a lot about how little I get out of being President. All the Journal heads and other organizations get academic credit for the work they do, and SBA Presidents at some other schools get stipends or scholarships. That all changed last week.

Last Thursday we had our annual Coffee House Talent Show. There were about 10 performers, mostly music, some standup comedy. Among the performers were two friends who wrote a song about me. The song was so awesome, I don't even care about not getting credit anymore. I have my own Irish Drinking song.

A brief history: One day a visiting professor that everyone hated (see last Spring's post about the most ridiculous exam I've ever taken) made a snide comment about the SBA. I wasn't even paying attention (as was the nature of his class), but I immediately got about a thousand instant messages of support from the 120 person class. One of my friends was so outraged, he wrote a song titled "Heroes are Born in Danbury," which I heard for the first time at Coffee House last week. I only recorded 3 minutes of it, but there was less than a minute that I missed:



The chorus in case you can't understand:

So raise your glass for Peter Ryan,
Our leader, bleeding the colors of the flag,
Back on off Professor Weiner,
Cause there's a lot of heart in Peter, me lad.

They also Performed this song, which is about Greg's girlfriend, who doesn't like his snoring. It has nothing to do with me, but I liked it a lot:

I must miss creative writing.

I am currently writing a 30 page paper on the Troubled Assets Relief Program and I keep accidentally breaking character from a dry, boring securities law student.  I am making overly dramatic statements like "the list of institutions that are two big to fail continued to shrink as one by one, they failed."  I also said something about the term "troubled assets" just being a way to reference investment bankers ineptitude without making them feel bad while waiting on the breadline.  I may have thrown the term "Orwellian Dystopia" in there too.

I think it's time to take a break.

Ten years ago, if you told me I would be taking an acute interest in basketball strategy, I would have thought you were crazy.

Then again, If you told the 18 year old me where my life was headed in the next ten years, this would be the least of the reasons I would think you were crazy.

Anyway, every Thursday a bunch of us have been playing basketball after class.  It's fun, it's exercise and it's a great way to start the weekend (no one has Friday classes in third year).

We are not professionals by any means, and in fact, most of us aren't even passable.  It's still fun though because we're pretty evenly matched with a few exceptions. Stepping back for a second though, I really should be much better at basketball than I am... at least by law student standards. 

I am always the tallest guy on the court by at least 3 inches (except for Jay), sometimes by 7 or more inches.  I also have about 100lbs on most of the guys who play, so I can set solid picks (pics? I don't know how to spell this, I've never written about sports).  I can palm the ball if the ball has good grips (some of the gym balls are pretty worn).  I can just about touch the rim when I jump.    I can sprint pretty fast for a guy my size, even if I can't do it constantly for an hour.  There is really no reason why I shouldn't be good if I put in a little conscious effort on learning how to play instead of just going out there with trial and error.

So, I am taking an active interest in getting better at basketball.  I've been watching it on TV in the weeks leading up to the NCAA Tournament, and I'm sure I'll watch more when that starts.  I've also enlisted Jay as a tutor, because TV-based theory will only take you so far.  Next week we're going for a little one on one session.

Now, if the legal profession continues to spiral downward, I can make ends meet hustling games in Queens, a-la Woody Harrelson in White Men Can't Jump.  And I will make Jim call me 'hoops.'