Regarding Hillary.

Hillary Clinton was on the radio with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, making a media round on the eve of the Republican National Convention. For some reason or another, I’ve never taken the time to listen/see/pay attention to a Hillary interview despite the fact that she’s been a national figure for over 12 years now. 3 things struck me. In order of realization—(1) Hillary is very, very sharp; (2) Why does conventional wisdom prop John Kerry up as “the candidate most likely to be elected” but conversely forecast Hillary as “unelectable”; and (3) is mainstream America still so allergic to modern feminism that it could not accept a President with boobs and a penis? God. I feel bad for this woman. It must really yank her chain to see George W. Bush in the oval office. Being the junior senator from NY has its perks, but let’s apply a broader sense of perspective. Hillary has been eating shit for the past thirty years.

First, her husband’s a philanderer. That’s ok, I guess. You win some, you lose some. But this is just the start. Next, Hillary went to Yale law school (Yale!), but somehow ended up in Little Rock, Arkansas for what are supposed to be the best years of your life (late-twenties to menopause). This is not so bad when your husband makes his living as the Attorney General of Arkansas or Governor of Arkansas, and you’re just some stupid bitch that wants to live in the guvnah’s mansion. But alas, Hillary isn’t a stupid fucking bitch and if she wanted a mansion, it’s likely that she could have acquired the means to obtain one on her own. Then, your husband somehow transitions from governor of Arkansas to leader of the free world. I’m sure that this was a very happy occasion for Hillary. But the second she takes the national stage, everyone starts lining up to kick her in the balls for endeavoring to do something more than smile, meet-and-greet, and tell everyone what a great person her husband is. Finally, on the tail end of what will be viewed as a prosperous, but historically unremarkable presidency, your husband gets caught with a fat girl and this sets into motion his impeachment, a 20th century first. And since you don't publicly freak the fuck out, the country concludes that you are a cold, unfeeling bitch. Yes, Hillary is beloved by many Americans. But she’s also reviled by a fair share of us and this is undeserved. I really don’t understand it.

My name is not Roger.

I saw my ex-girlfriend this past weekend at a club, where the 2-3 degrees of separation that had been maintained between us for the past three years fell apart in a collision of mutual friends/acquaintances. I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been. We did not speak, and I may have come across as rude. That was not my intent--I wasn’t angry, or even annoyed. I just didn’t think that it would be constructive to speak to her while hammered, because I’m stupid when drunk. I’m also prone to fits of anger (which are rare, but vitriolic) and although I didn’t feel particularly peeved at that moment, there was certainly room for growth. But I mostly didn’t talk to her because there really wasn’t anything to say. Instead, I gamely attempted to dance (briefly) and sit on a couch (more successfully, and for a much longer amount of time). I also provided legal advice on a NJ landlord-tenant dispute. This advice chiefly consisted of, “YEAH! YEAH! THAT’S BULLSHIT MAN! YOUR PARENTS SHOULD GET AN ATTORNEY!” Lastly, I introduced myself to George Ho for the third fucking time--for someone that’s presumably intelligent and always sober when we meet, Mr. Ho has a hard time remembering names. But most of the night was spent in a funk. This was so for three reasons.

First, seeing my ex-girlfriend made me feel very old. Don’t get me wrong. In many respects, I am a young twenty-eight. I don’t have kids, or a wife, which puts me among a shrinking minority among my age-group at my firm. I can also be an infant--if I ever get around to giving someone an angry dragon, I think I would laugh very hard. But seeing this person again lent a different perspective. When I was with her, I was still in school. That’s the stage of your life when you don’t know exactly who you are, but you do know who you would like to be: i.e., doing this, owning that, and with her. Well. I’m a lawyer, I have stuff, and I’m with someone who’s not too shabby. If I had ambition, I would trade those goals for new ones. But I don’t, and as a result, even though I’ve been quite happy recently, that happiness remains foundationally suspect. This was not a problem when I was twenty-four, and still dreaming of greener pastures.

Another thing that I enjoyed about being young is the potential for personal growth. Even if illusory (b/c people don’t change), it’s comforting--whatever personal foibles I have, I’ll outgrow it. But I never did. And at twenty-eight, I’m fairly certain that I am whoever I was meant to be. The factual circumstances will change (wife, kids, professional accomplishment), but whatever it is that’s essentially me will stay the same. This was an unhappy realization--knowing that there will always be some part of me that is godless, avaricious, and selfish--and sort of surreal, given the context surrounding my epiphany (drunk and in the dark, enveloped by sound and surrounded by a horde of similarly intoxicated, oversexed bourgeoisie).

Second, seeing her brought back a lot of bad memories. Not all related to her, of course. But our break-up was acrimonious and presaged the worst year of my life. Initially, drugs and relationship trauma do not mix. Next, I can’t express how worthless one can feel after graduating from a purportedly elite law school with no job in hand and a big fat load of student loans on one’s back. This coincided with the unanticipated end of my father’s career, which bothered me more than my own unemployment. With time, these things rectified themselves. But I don’t like thinking about them because (1) I’m a fatalist; (2) in my experience, happiness is cyclical; and (3) I’ve just enjoyed a long period of happiness which, in light of recent events, shows signs of flagging.

Lastly, love feels cheap when you can be in a room with someone that you formerly loved very much, and realize that you don’t even know them.

Napa addendum.

Root beer floats and fried chicken are very tasty when it's hot out and you're wasted.

Spit bucket, please.

After over a year of informally living with my girlfriend, our golden era of co-habitation came to a grinding halt yesterday, when I returned from California and she did not. Today has been strange. I forgot to take my keys in the morning, because I had normally left them for Claire (she and I both lacked the competence or will to find a locksmith capable of making a copy). I worked through lunch, because I wasn't going to be meeting Claire. And I'm still here at work (not working, of course), because I don't really have anything better to do. While I initially found this pathetic, it became less so after I took the time to consider all of the phases of my life that were palpably crappier than the life I live now. Then I felt better.

On a lighter note, I now understand why wineries offer spit buckets as a convenience to their visitors. In Napa, flights come in six ounce denominations. This did not seem like much booze to me. But after four wineries, I was ripped. To make matters worse, Claire and I had gone on a Monday and given the lack of traffic, we had to make one-on-one small talk with the people pouring my wine. This proved difficult at Calistoga, our fourth winery of the day, where I spent most of our visit sporting my concentration grimace--furrowed brow, grinding of teeth--in an attempt to understand the conversational interplay between Claire and winery man.

Fun things you find on Westlaw.

Williams v. Attorney General of Alabama, 2004 WL 1681149 (11th Cir. 2004)—“Civil liberties group, on behalf of various individual users and vendors of sexual devices, brought action challenging constitutionality of Alabama statute prohibiting commercial distribution of any device primarily used for stimulation of human genitals.” Unfortunately, the ACLU lost. According to the 11th Circuit (covering GA, FLA, ALA, and other purportedly red states), the right to use vibrators, dildos, anal beads, or artificial vaginas is not “one of those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” This is an understatement. But let’s not forget that up until last year, sex between consenting but unmarried adults (straight, gay, group, “sodomy”—bestiality and child rape are excluded by definition) was not a fundamental right accorded by the U.S. Constitution either. Meaning that had your state chose to do so, it could have criminalized all the sex that you have had in your life (none of you are married, so this is a safe presumption). Anyhow. Reasonable minds may differ on whether sexual privacy encompasses the privilege of using sex toys. I'm personally ambivalent. Sex toys have their place in the world, but let's not get carried away here. More significantly, this was a stupid piece of public interest litigation. While I’m no fan of running into federal court and asking a judge to tinker with the Constitution in order to achieve some policy result that the legislative branch would never accept (Bush fondly calls this “legislating from the bench”—he says this so much that you’d think he was trained monkey), I understand why civil libertarians were so heartened by the Lawrence decision. Gay adoption could have eventually piggy-backed that ruling and if I were gay, that would be important to me. But the stupid ACLU injured the cause when it litigated this case and ultimately obtained an adverse ruling by one federal court of appeal which severely restricted the meaning of Lawrence. And for what? Vibrators, dildos, anal beads, or artificial vaginas, that’s what.

Regarding Sex and the City.

I hate Carrie. I really do. Everytime I see her on Sex and the City--a show that I do enjoy--I suppress my urge to spit. Claire thinks I hate women. That may well be true, if Carrie is even remotely representative of the gender as a whole. But getting to the point. Miranda may be homely, relative to her fictional pals. But give me a man trapped in a woman's body any day. And yes, I apprehend the freudian undertones of that statement.

Ninja, please.

http://www.realultimatepower.net/

Stupid is as stupid does.

So I finally made someone look bad. I've been with my present firm for slightly more than 11 months now and throughout that timeframe, I've grown accustomed to being the village idiot of my practice group (of three). Much of that is because I am only two years removed from law school, while the remainder of the group are partners who have practiced for a combined four decades. But I would not be entirely truthful if I did not admit that a small--bordering on insignificant--portion of my village idiot status may be the result of my intellectual deficiencies. I have a shitty memory. I really do. Party trick: tell me something about yourself the next time I see you. Make sure it's uninteresting, because if not, I may rally what brain cells I have around that fact, and actually succeed in remembering it. Otherwise, wait a few hours, then ask me to recount your tidbit--I won't be able to. For more consistent results, add alcohol. This is a common occurrence at work. As a junior associate, my responsibilities in a given case aren't very sexy--I don't do the majority of the brief writing and I certainly won't be handling argument in court. But I am responsible for having a thorough recollection of the record. With thousands of pages of trial testimony in your typical case, my shitty memory and I are especially ill-suited for that task. But in any case, today I made someone look bad. Maxim for the day--no matter how stoopid you think you are, every dummy has his moment in the sun.