I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass
or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hid the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, tough Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

It's National Poetry Month, or near the end of it, so I submit one of my favorite poems from one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins.

Pinup

The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,
and as you look closer you notice that this month's
is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing
a straw hat and very short blue shorts,
her shirt tied in a knot just below her breasts.
Nor is it the one in the admiral's cap, bending
forward, resting her hands on a wharf piling,
glancing over the tiny anchors on her shoulders.
No, this is March, the month of great winds,
so appropriately it is the one walking her dog
along a city sidewalk on a very blustery day.
One hand is busy keeping her hat down on her head
and the other is grasping the little dog's leash,
so of course there is no hand left to push down
her dress which is billowing up around her waist
exposing her long stockinged legs and yes the secret
apparatus of her garter belt. Needless to say,
in the confusion of wind and excited dog
the leash has wrapped itself around her ankles
several times giving her a rather bridled
and helpless appearance which is added to
by the impossibly high heels she is teetering on.
You would like to come to her rescue,
gather up the little dog in your arms,
untangle the leash, lead her to safety,
and receive her bottomless gratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can't be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes
you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar
just enough to reveal a glimpse of what
the future holds in store: ah,
the red polka dot umbrella of April and her
upturned palm extended coyly into the rain.

I've decided that gmail is officially cool. It's superfast and well designed. Although the program is still in beta, Google is allowing each person who presently has an account (which you can get if you sign up for a Blogger blog here.) to invite two friends to the service, who, presumably, will invite two friends, and two more, and so on, until the gmail community becomes exactly that, a community. Not a bad way to market a "beta" product, if you ask me. Well, Mat's got a great post asking his friends to prove to him why they deserve one of his precious two invitations. I've already given one of mine to Jim, and because I'm unimaginative I'll give my other one out to the first asker, as long as I know and like you and you know what gmail is. (Actually, that rules you out, Jim) Come and get it! (Better hurry--these bad boys are going on e-Bay for $50)

Pardon my whining, but my brain is full. See Far Side Cartoon, Gary Larsen, 143 Far Side Gallery 16 (1998). I have been studying for days, methodically stuffing legal theory into every crack and crevice in my caffeine-buzzing cerebellum for hours on end, often feeling more confused as I learn and relearn, classify and nomenclate. (word? I don’t care.) My cup, in the view of this court, runneth over. As I was reading Farnsworth’s analysis of Posner’s analysis of the Restatement’s (Second) analysis of force majeure clauses, my brain seized up like a Volkswagen bus on the Autobahn with a cracked oilpan. I pushed back from the desk and had to take several deep breaths. Let the information flow…

All of which is to say, that I look forward hourly to this summer. I miss my family. I miss my old friends. I miss wearing shorts and actually perspiring (people in Ohio sweat on only two days—June 21, the summer solstice, and April 15, tax day). I miss hearing ‘y’all’ and fixin’ and I miss the desire to find out what a new book has to say.

You see, I love books. Everything about ‘em. There is nothing in this world that a good book, well-written and strategically placed, can’t solve, placate or expand. But this abstract definition of what constitutes a book has been shaken to the core. Now my books, at least the ones I must read, incite minor pangs of fear and loathing. To continue on the cartoon metaphor, I refer to Calvin and Hobbes: “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.” The Indispensible Calvin and Hobbes, 123 Something 09, (199?).

This ain’t fun. This ain’t curiosity. Alain de Botton summed up the notion of curiosity for me in his book The Art of Travel a couple of years ago:

''Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions. In childhood, we ask, 'Why is there good and evil?' 'How does nature work?' 'Why am I me?' If circumstances and temperament allow, we then build on these questions during adulthood, our curiosity encompassing more and more of the world until at some point we may reach that elusive stage where we are bored by nothing.''

No, this goes beyond curiosity. This involves focus and desire, resistance to boredom and frequent preemptive strikes on the impulsive demons of our nature. One has to simply become a machine through which a large amount of information is streamed, organized, and rejuvenated by imagination. All that said, with all due respect to Mr. Botton, there is precious little on this spinning blue globe that I would cherish more than a prolonged period of nothing right now. Well, perhaps a hammock. And a fishing pole. And.. as crazy as it sounds … a good book. One nobody, and I mean nobody, is making me read. Luckily, I saved some room in my brain for dessert.

Blog Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials

This one is from my Torts reading, and pretty much sums up the sometimes frustrating nature of learning the rules of law:

". . . this rule is now primarily important as a preamble to the catalog of its exceptions."

The problem: ozone-high urban heat zones. The solution: paint your roof white.

I did this as a joke of course, but apparently I am now an ordained minister. The Universal Life Church in Modesto, California (where else?) offers free online ordination to anyone who wants it. They claim to be a recognized denomination, which makes the ordination legitimate. Now I can:
-- perform marriages
-- perform funerals, baptisms, last rites, or any other legal ceremony except circumcision
--start my own church
--absolve others of their sins

Again, I did this as a joke, but all the same, what exactly confers legal authority to perform a marriage? Can this be real? Obviously my ability to absolve anyone of their sins is a dubious claim at best, but I wonder if this has any legal legitimacy. Seems a little research is in order. The Reverend will have an answer soon.

Here's a picture of one of the new bad guys in Star Wars: Episode III. Cool, I suppose, but his name is DARTH GRIEVOUS. How heavy-handed is that? Why not just call him "Dark Evil Sinister Guy"? Same thing with Darth Maul--it gave the character away. The cool thing about Darth Vader was that it sounded sinister, only suggesting he was evil rather than coming out and saying it. Ah, for the good ol days.

Well, I didn't take the cake, but I got a few bites out of it. It was a tough round and everybody was in top form. Turns out that the dean of the law school, Professor Crago, who was one of my judges, taught a Corporations class for ten years--when I tried to explain the legal difference between a person and a corporation, he was all over me like white on rice. Erin Bumbalough took the prize--she's an adorable little thang from Tennessee with a southern accent that melts tin--so I don't feel so bad. Plus, she rocked it. I'm just glad the contest is over, so I can get back to my actual studies.

This one's from Harper:
"Everyone in a car while I am on a bike is an asshole."
Indeed.

Not to boast, but I rocked the house last night. Yesterday was the semifinal round of the Daniel S. Guy Appellate Advocacy Competition, an oral argument contest here at the school pitting we mouthy classmates against each other before three judges. And I won. Four of us were chosen to be on the Moot Court Board of Advocates, which means we get a good shot at being on the moot court team, and we get to be judges ourselves in the competition next year. I was in the zone:

Judge: "Counsel, what is the purpose of the statutory limit of three thousand dollars in the small claims court? What if it were three hundred thousand dollars? How would that amount change the equation here?"

Me: "Your honor, the three thousand dollar limit speaks to the very heart of the matter. First of all, we would have to change the name to 'the large claims court' . . ."

The whole bench broke out laughing. Oh yeahh.

While I hate spam like any rational human, I'm occasionally tricked into reading it, foolishly believing it to be an actual message from some girl named Elena Laurine or whatever who knows me. Not that I do this often, but I am gullible enough to have noticed a small trend. Whoever sends this stuff out either has a phrase generator or somebody's got a great job. To wit:
Dear noisily hornbill monetary jaquima asperity depilation kharkov phonetics grappling jars boyhood lahar ,

Um, what?

leading dryadella adelgid supremely neoliberal . oppugnancy gisarme penitence bindery cognate bhutan eggshaped . distance agnostic ordnance ultimacy moralist fruitwood gambusia stuccco trimmer distort mump spero orbignya arecidae pipra

It gets my attention, but I'm just not going to buy anything from anybody who puts the words "oppugnancy" and "spero" in their ads. What are these people thinking? What am I thinking? Why the hell am I writing about spam? Dang, they got me.

Very cool idea: mp3 recording headphones. You listen to your favorite LP or tape while recording it onto the 128mb memory card inside the phones.

Each rhyme you make takes a minute off your life, apparently. Also in the news: stereotypes don't exist.

Official study: Poets Die Young

Ahem. Horseshit.

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey - don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride..." And we... kill those people.

"We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." Just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great."

- Bill Hicks

It looks like some of the articles I wrote for the paper are still floating around the web:
When war is a game
A super waste of money (scroll down)
Israeli activist promotes peace

"The memory of man runneth not to the contrary." If I can work that one into a conversation, somebody, somewhere owes me some cash.

Well I signed up for Gmail. My new address is mcdcrook@gmail.com. Woohoo. The best part:

"You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 1000 MB."

Sometimes I just love metafilter. I mean, where else can you ask a question like this:

"I've always kind of wondered this. I don't know if it's a metaphysical question, an evolution question or just a childish question, but why exactly are there fruit trees? Has anyone seen a definitive answer to this. Does it seem weird that a tree would produce fruit just so animals can come and steal it? Do fruit trees benefit from producing fruit (like I understand how the leaves come into play)? I feel like a little kid asking this, but does anyone got [sic] an answer?"

and get as interesting and amusing a discussion as this?

If you ever need to send a LARGE file by email and hate splitting it up into small yahoo portions, try You Send It. It's a free service that lets you email files up to 1 GB to anyone. Not too shabby.

Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic about Google's new Gmail too, but I'll probably give it a try. Of course, these stories bother me somewhat, but then again, I don't really have a whole lot of secrets to keep. It doesn't really bother me either that my emails will generate content-specific ads -- as long as I don't have to click on them. They may even be helpful. As the computerworld article notes, Many e-mail systems already scan message content in an effort to block spam. I already feel like most of my financial life is being closely monitored and targeted by commercial interests, so this isn't surprising to me. Mat Honan's got a good post on these ads Google serves up.
I do wonder, however, if this email-scanning technology could be used to spy on internet users, such as filtering out words like "Osama," "jihad," "terror," whatever (not that many terrorists probably refer to them selves as such). That would definitely harsh my gig. When I refer to that last Stereolab concert as "the bomb," I don't want commandos knocking down my library cubicle.

Hey folks, I missed it this year, but my man Tony Diliberto just hosted TrocaFest, an outdoor gear swap meet and music/fun festival. I hope you got to go. If not, check out the site and make plans to be there next year. From the sound of it, everyone had a blast. If you've never been up to the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina for GAF, or the 'Guest Appreciation Festival,' these sorts of events are quite a lot of fun, an outdoors swap-gathering meets late-night campfire hoedown/chill. Hippies strictly optional. A great chance to meet cool folks, plan your next paddling trip and haggle over a pair of Tevas. Bring your guitar, and I'll see you at Trocafest in '05.

Aha! Have you ever wondered exactly what happens when you have a moment of insight? Or why the heck you didn't when you should have? Well these scientists claim to have an answer. I'm just wondering when they'll figure out ways to induce insight. Well, legally.

"It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling. Recent behavioral studies indicate distinct patterns of performance and suggest differential hemispheric involvement for insight and noninsight solutions. Subjects solved verbal problems, and after each correct solution indicated whether they solved with or without insight."

Lord, save me from noninsight.
via metafilter

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Blackened the USSR
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I Want To Choke Your Band
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Today's word: spectator

"Walkers, cyclists, and other trail advocates have joined forces around an audacious project, a 2,600 mile traffic-free path linking East Coast cities from Maine to Florida. Launched only 10 years ago, this vision for an urban alternative to the highly popular Appalachian Trail is quickly becoming a reality."

This is one of the coolest projects I've heard about in a while. While the Appalachian Trail is an incredible, beautiful hiking trail, it is also isolated and very rugged in many places. Considering its close proximity to 1/2 to 2/3 of the nation's population, the AT is used infrequently. But perhaps that's a good thing. Well, cue the East Coast Greenway Alliance, a small group of folks who want to provide a large-scale American experience to the majority who don't like sleeping in tents and eating gorp all day. The idea is to connect the large amount of unused greenways in our urban areas, like waterfront esplanades, park paths, abandoned railroads, canal towpaths, and parkway corridors to create a unique traveling experience that is 80% off-road, yet accessible to cyclists and people in wheelchairs alike. A very, very cool idea.

Having hiked the AT, I can testify to the extraordinary benefit such a path would provide. During my six-month trek from Georgia to Maine, I had the best times when I was actually out of the woods, visiting small mountain villages for goceries or picking up mail. It was the people I met; the crazy Navl Seal named "Beef," the fellow who used to do gardening work for Andy Griffith, the little old lady who baked me a pie. I think we travel everywhere so quickly these days that we lose the sense of adventure that walking brings, slowing the pace of our lives down to an essentially human level. When you travel slowly, you see more. You meet people. You have time to think about things. In short, it is living life deeply and deliberately. The health benefits hardly need mentioning.

So lend a hand. They primarily need donations now, but in the future I imagine some actual trail building will be necessary, and certainly lots of trail maintenance. I think it would be fun to be in charge of a mile-long section of the path in my town, keeping it clean and well-marked, etc. What a great way to meet folks. Let's pitch in, shall we?

This is great. In a series of ads for American Express, Seinfeld hangs out around town with Superman. The cartoon Superman. They're less like ads than short skits, and they're hilarious. Also be sure and check out the interview with Seinfeld and Superman on the Today show. My favorite from the skit (they're sitting in a diner chatting):

SM: I thought we were going bicycling today, Jerry?

JS: Um, nah, it's not real fun bicycling with you.

SM: (confused) Why not?

JS: (looks at him for a moment) It's just not.

Here we go again. This seems totally ridiculous to me. What is this going to solve? Our school just hosted a discussion on slavery reparations, with prominent voices from opposing camps represented, and at the end of the day, nobody had an answer. Who is going to get this money? How can anyone focus blame on these corporations for profiting from slave labor, when in actuality an entire culture and economy benefitted from it? And where do the reparations stop once these are allowed? My Irish ancestors were treated brutally by British imperialist forces for years, so where's my check? I hope the judge has the sense to throw this suit out and fine those responsible on grounds of frivolouslessness. I agree that something should be done to atone for our past errors, but this is clearly the wrong way.