I won't stand to be disparaged.

This is kinda old, but that's how I roll.

So I voted in MA, yay for me. Ballots always strike me as funny. As if they have just been so severely micro-managed, when in fact, they should be as simple as they can possibly be. But 1800 people had their say and instead, something totally confusing and useless was created. I understood how to mark it, but jesus...

So each candidate's name had two little black marks next to it (quite a ways to the side, actually) and you had to connect the two marks, which made it into an arrow, pointing at your candidate. And no "all democrat" easy-access box for us like they do in Texas. I had to mark each one. (I survived, it's okay.) Was checking the box or circling the name just too complicated?

November has been off to a decent start. I got to see Kat Edmonson last week, and she is doing wonderfully, it seems.



She played a bunch of new songs (well, new for her, I'm sure The Ink Spots would beg to differ with me), so that was exciting. She didn't play all night like at the Elephant Room, needless to say, but it was still a good 90 minutes or so. (Cute new haircut, too!)

I also get to pick classes for next semester pretty soon. I nearly forgot about "professional responsibility," which is this thing that really accompanies the bar. It's just what it sounds like. And riveting, I'm sure. But other than that, I'm hoping to take a seminar class on the death penalty (similar class and format to my international human rights class I'm taking now, only, you know, the death penalty), appellate writing and advocacy (similar to the competition I did at the beginning of this year), an international practice class I'm required to take since I did the international internship last summer, and basic federal income tax. I know, but honestly? Taking it satisfies a requirement and more importantly? The woman who teaches it guest lectured in my business class and SHE IS HYSTERICAL. If I was ever going to take and survive a tax class? THIS IS IT. And? She is and owns up to being HORRIBLE AT MATH. Win, win, win, there's hope for me yet.

AND they want us to start registering for bar classes already. O_o

I'm thinking, by the way, that I will be returning to Texas! Given my area of "specialty" (can you really call it that?), it may have to be Austin and we'll see if it's even possible. How much international law really goes down in TX, anyway? So as you can imagine, I'm trying to get some immigration law and clinics under my belt while I can...

I have one more trial tomorrow and then I get a mini-break, I think. Which is grand because I desperately need to get my outline finished for my corporate responsibility paper. And the 2nd Circuit just handed down that LOVELY Shell decision, which is so fucking depressing. Yes, the Nuremberg trials were all about going after individuals, but it seems wrong to pretend that "abstract entities"--at the time, they were talking about States--also refers to corporations therefore you can't hold corporations responsible. Can I get a contemporary interpretation, PLEASE? So a corporation that has overseas subsidiaries can't be held liable for those subsidiaries' tortious acts? Good job. 2nd Circuit FAIL.

So I have spent a large part of the past few days reading about colossal shit-stain corporations that include Unocal, Coca-cola, Shell, and Pfizer. Some of them are almost funny--as in, hey, man, we're totally just passive investors, we REALLY HATED to see all that bad shit go down, but like, we were just profitting from human rights violations, we didn't, like, DO IT OURSELVES. Oh sigh.

So I had a break last night and watched Back to the Future since I was IM'ing with DM and they re-released the movie for a night in Mexico to coincide with the date to which Marty goes back in time.



Here in the US, they just released the Blu-Ray on Oct 26 (the day he goes back to Nov. 5, 1955) and re-released it in theaters for a couple non-sensical days. So I got nostalgic and gave it a re-watched. WOW, I hadn't seen the new DVD, and so much of the background REALLY pops out at you--by which I mean, 80s 80s 80s.



(His NIKES! The old Pepsi cans, especially that can of PEPSI FREE by the bed! The CLOTHES AND FURNITURE!) The product placements, mostly unintentional (hmm, maybe not unintentional, but not endorsed probably), the sheer charm of the age, the film actually has a TON of background detail. MAGIC for me.

But that was my break. I have had #s 3 and 4 of The Walking Dead for like 3 weeks now and have finally been able to read 75% of them this weekend. Hopefully I'll polish them off by Monday so I can give them back to L. (And get the next 2!) To be fair, L has been holding onto my South African paperback of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, so I'm not too worried...