Who you are when nobody is watching

dylan says:

Now the Baracki Boy decides in time to dump the Wright to save his own political career
another deceitful black who will lie to win back white votes
you've lost mine you ignorant black boy!!!
...
who is this ignorant black scum OBAMA kidding??

He just found out his spiritual mentor for twenty years is a nut job??

You are despicable Obama

You & your big butted fat lipped wife who hates America should go back to Kenya & look for all the other kids your dead beat dad had & take care of them instead of running for president

YOU ARE ONE UGLY HUMAN BEING!!!

Sound familiar?

You are Charlie Pace

My eyes generally glaze over when I see that someone has updated their blog with one of these things; yet, I couldn't resist. Hooray for the return of Lost!

Which Lost Character Are You?

More on Lost.

The prozac buzz

I have a new date to look forward to: May 9th.

That's the day that Young@Heart comes to Richmond, according to Fox Searchlight's website for the movie. T and I saw the preview for the movie on Saturday, when we went to see Bajo La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon). Young@Heart is a documentary about a choir of elderly men and women who sing rock and roll cover songs. The trailer looks amazing!

On another musical note, I heard a song on my way to work this morning that I waited 4 years to hear.

Back when I lived on Charlotte Street, my roommate TL told me about a country song she'd heard on the radio that made her cry. According to her description, the song's narrator described growing up along a red dirt road, where he and his girlfriend got pregnant, decided to have an abortion, and then broke up shortly thereafter.

This description confused me when I heard the song I was sure she was talking about, "Red Dirt Road". The lyrics were nice enough, but pretty uninspiring and certainly not tear-inducing:

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
It's where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
I learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers
I've learned; I've come to know
That there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road

For four years, every time I heard that song on country radio, and it's a pretty ubiquitous song, I've wondered about how TL got a storyline about abortion from the song, and how the couple broke up, if in the song he sings, "I lost Mary, but I got her back again."

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I heard another song, for the first time, called "Red Rag Top" and I realized I'd been wrong all along. I'm writing about this song now because I heard it again on the radio on the way to work today and, like TL, I was pretty moved both times I heard it.

So, here are the lyrics, and you can Limewire or iTunes it for yourself to decide if you like it or not:

I was twenty and she was eighteen,
We were just as wild as we were green,
in the ways of the world
She picked me up in that red rag top,
We were free of the folks and hiding from the cops,
On a summer night runnin’ all the red lights
We parked way out in a clearin’in a grove and the night
Was hot as a coal burnin’ stove,
We were cookin’ the gas we were had to last

In the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop...

Well the very first time her mother met me,
Her green eyed girl was a mother to be for 2 weeks
I was out of a job and she was in school,
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets
In the morning light,
But on the way home that night

On the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop..
Lovin’ me

We took one more trip around the sun,
It was all make believe in the end,
No I can’t say where she is today,
I can’t remember who I was, back then
Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins,
And there’s no such thing as what might’ve
Been, that’s a waste of time; drive you outta your mind
I was stopped at a red light just yesterday beside a young girl
In a cabriolet and her eyes
Were green
I was in an old scene

I was back in that red rag top
On the day she stopped
Loving me

How to pay for law school... advice, etc.

I'm including some law school advice that I have gleaned from various internet resources, noteably FrugalLawStudent.com. This post is mainly for my own reference / benefit, but feel free to use it as you see fit!

From the Frugal Law Student blog:
- What to do with those loan refunds - aka, How to handle a big check without spending it all in three weeks.
- Everything I need to know about personal finance I learned from Carlton Banks - aka, Why the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is still relevant, 16 years since you stopped regularly watching the re-runs.
- Students turning to private loans to fund education - aka, Slow down! You better read the fine print before agreeing to take any money from those schools...

More:
- 10 Things I Now Know at 40 That I Wish I Knew at 20 (Dough Roller)
- 15 More Free Things to do During a Money-Free Weekend (The Simple Dollar)
- In Debt From Day One: A tale of caution! (Christian Science Monitor)

The rodeo

It's been a while since I posted. My mind is a-swirl with the noise of a thousand questions, formulas, anxious predictions. Many are too personal to divulge on a public blog. None are of crisis proportions. All involve the direction in which I am attempting to steer this bulky ship that is my life. Austin? Philadelphia? Chicago? Richmond? Law school? 10 years of debt? 20 years of debt? Savings? Family? House? Car? Bus? Obama? Clinton? Kitchen sink?

The list goes on.

Maybe the ship analogy wasn't a very good one. T is the sea-faring expert, so let me stick to what I know: life is feeling like one those mechanical bulls you see at the state fair, kicking into high gear as I clutch my arms around it's fake neck. Some grizzled-looking cowboy is grinning from behind the controls, shouting, "Hang on tight, now!" Kind of fun, kind of terrifying, but mostly just fast and dizzying.

You have an older brother?

Yes. Yes, I do. But I don't really see him. And here's part of the reason why...

Coddling Will Kill

If you coddle, and cooperate with, and are cozy with unBelieving “family” (whether they are religious, or not—but still part of the world system), without reservation, without qualification, without speaking to them about their souls regularly in spite of social protocol, you are deeply hurting them and yourself. If you “join in the reindeer games” and just blindly DO the “family” stuff, at holidays and other times, do the chatty phone calls, photographs of the children, and hang out with pagans—you are no better than a drug dealer. You are giving a drug fix to a junkie. If you allow them to continue to build their lives, like the animal kingdom does, around physical realm, flesh and blood things to get their “highs”, you are defying the teachings of the Master, to your own detriment. Beyond that, you are contributing to your physical family’s destruction by giving them the substitute for True Family, and True Life—JESUS and HIS FAMILY, the CHURCH. It is not “love” to overlook things that Jesus has called fatal. “Keeping peace” (which truthfully is more likely to be either cowardice, or lack of relationship with Jesus on your part) is not “loving them” when you are allowing them to die without a real, consecrated walk with Jesus. Those that love the world are always “enemies of God”—and you allowed it to go on! Shame on you, if you have done this, in order to “avoid conflict” or to pad your own insecurities and fleshly desires for worldly affections.
Let me repeat a key point here. You must grasp this. Perhaps these “family members” are “churched,” but not truly living for Jesus. By Jesus’ Words, they cannot be saved unless they deny their very selves, take up their crosses daily, and radically follow after Him. Jesus was clear. They cannot be saved, unless they will do this, from the heart, and fall deeply in love with Him (instead of themselves, the world, and the things of this world, such as physical family, jobs, hobbies, etc.). Unless they ARE living for Jesus, heart-soul-mind-and-strength, they are NOT your family. That is IF you believe what Jesus articulated in the Scriptures written above. And if you don’t believe Him and want to live this way, then you should go be with and enjoy the company of, and bond with your unregenerate “family members.” Can you feel comfortable with them and depend on unbelievers? Do you have no deep groanings and difficulty laughing at their jokes? Can you hang out with them during endless carnal or shallow discussions, indulging shamelessly in their pagan feasts and gift giving and “family” bonding “drug” parties? If you can do these things, then you should question your own intimacy with God.
“How can two walk together unless they are in agreement?”
“Come out from among them and be separate,” says the Lord. “And then I will be your God and you will be My people.”
“If you love Me, you will keep My commands.”
“Bad company corrupts good character.”
Can you be good company to the unregenerate—with nothing at stake, nothing challenged, nothing changing...just partying with them on their level? (Maybe YOU don’t curse or drink as they do, but you are clearly “one of them” by how you distribute your affections and allow your children to be handled and entrusted.) If you can be “chatty” with them in a relaxed and familiar or intimate way, you are in serious trouble. If you can live with them, visit with them, travel with them, eat with them, “party” with them socially in an unchecked, unhindered, relaxed way, there is a very serious problem. If you enjoy all of that and “bond” with them without deep grief in your heart, you are probably one of their species as well. Unsaved. And you are only more deeply sealing their destiny without Jesus by giving them the “drugs” of “fleshly family” that they crave which is dulling them to the only REAL source of Life: Jesus of Nazareth and HIS Family.

Sonic (the) Hedgehog

Did you read about the two-faced baby, Lali, born in India a month ago? Unlike some of the other congenital oddities to have made the headlines in recent months, the two-faced baby is not two babies joined together. This is actually one baby, with two faces.

Being the curious researcher that I am (when procrastinating), I looked into the medical condition that the article cited as explanation for Lali's birth defect. It seems that she suffers from craniofacial duplication, otherwise known as diprosopus, Greek for "two-faced." Reading further, I learned that:

[Craniofacial duplication] is the result of a protein called Sonic hedgehog homolog (SHH). Among other things, this governs the width of facial features. In excess it leads to widening of facial features and to duplication of facial structures. The greater the widening, the more of the structures are duplicated, often in a mirror image form.

Did you catch that? The baby has two faces because of Sonic hedgehog homolog. Sonic the Hedgehog, what?

This is amazing. Perhaps you remember the game Sonic the Hedgehog (click here to play), whose crazy, spinning character gave fleeting relevance to the Sega video game system?

This morning, I had the opportunity to ask myself, with a straight face, "Which came first: Sonic the Hedgehog or the Sonic hedgehog homolog?"

Now, reader, I challenge you to embark upon your own research project to determine the answer for yourself.

Thank God for Mead

PHEW! Just in time... Mead's putting out new notebooks designed specifically for grad students!

I was starting to wonder how I would be taking all my copious law student notes without having a laptop...

Good begets treats

I was in the conference room sorting papers -- huh. I was literally pushing papers -- anyway, I was doing this for a while when I decided that I needed to come back to my office for a minute. Can't remember why anymore, even though that was only about 4 minutes ago. Muttering under my breath, I said, "Don't get distracted. Don't get distracted."

So here I am.

And back I go, to paper-pushing.

These days of self-regulating my productivity are intensely damning. Where's my coffee?

Rejected, or fighting stinkin thinkin

So I haven't officially been rejected from any schools yet. But of the nine schools I applied to, I had only received responses from three as of last night.

If LawSchoolNumbers.com is any indication, I am likely to be waitlisted at American University. It appears that their slots are currently full, as literally every person who reported hearing back from them in the last week received a "Waitlist" or a "Rejected" response.

Based on the numbers, and the fact that I really messed up my application, I am about 95% confident that I will not get into UVA.

And for the sheer fact that they were long shots to begin with, I am not holding out any hope for Columbia or Northwestern.

That leaves University of Minnesota, a school to which I have heretofor held no serious inclination to attend, and the University of Richmond, who may or may not let me in, but whose program inspires little excitement.

Compounding all of this is the fact that I waited until close to the deadline on nearly all of these schools, despite being warned emphatically by my guidebook that to do so would be to drastically reduce my odds. In my defense, I was waiting for most of that time on my letters (specifically one) of recommendation to come in. But that does not excuse the fact that I should have completed everything else way ahead of time, instead of sticking to my usual M.O. of procrastinating.

I feel mournful now, in the way that someone who has shot herself in the foot perhaps grieves for her departed big toe. This all could have been prevented with a little more self-discipline and foresight.

But then, what is "this all" that I should have worked to prevent? Getting the cold shoulder by several schools while being warmly accepted and encouraged by two of my favorites? Temple and Texas are nothing to shake a stick at, especially that Texas, for which I had begun to give up hope long before any letters had arrived.

And then again, there is that wonderful DBT mantra, "I did the best I could with what I had been given." My life was not devoted to law school for the entire past year, nor was I entirely certain that this is the path I wanted to take, even as I was applying. So, forgive me, self, if I was not throwing all of my weight and time and energy into law school applications in November or December. Come to think of it, I took my LSATs in December, so.

Okay, I could have gotten them in sooner. I probably should have stuck to my original plan of trying to have them all in by December. But given what I've done and where I've come, I can say I'm okay with what I've got. I just have to remember not to take it all personally (ahh... the fourth of the Four Agreements).

And besides, now I can share my first piece of law school advice for others to disregard, in their own time: Apply as early as you can, and don't wait for all your letters of recommendation to come in before you send in your application! (Yes, turns out you can do that.)