various and sundry.

the rain has made its point. i would appreciate it if we could get a few more days of enjoyable spring weather before pollen-storm 2007 begins in earnest.

happiness really is a warm puppy. and on that note, feed your dogs raw food. or, if you don't want to feed raw food for whatever reason [ kashrut, mess, money ], find a suitable primarily natural dog food that uses meat as its first or second ingredient. the dog food recall has really underscored the bond between man and beast - and doesn't your beast deserve the best?

the german chancellor merkel has demanded that the palestinians recognize israel as a state. that's all well and good, and i'm sure the israeli public appreciates the gesture. however, support coming from germany, while strong and again much-appreciated, is undercut by this sense in the arab community that germany is only acting out of deeply-felt guilt. the whole situation has been exacerbated by the iranian hostage crisis.

we need someone like france to take a strong stand for israel. because surely the french can appreciate having the enemy in your midst. and if that fails, the french can always pretend they had no idea of their government's official "stance." they're good at that.

iran - amalek?

this iranian hostage situation is more than a little disturbing, for a host of reasons. primarily, it shows that the iranian government [ i refuse to say his name, may it be erased ] is not as stupid as i'd previously hoped.

assume that britain and america threaten the use of force - iran looks maligned to the great majority of the arab public. assume that britain and america do nothing, go to the united nations for help [ the same as doing nothing only with a patina of legitimacy ], then iran has achieved an even more insidious goal: they've asserted strength in the face of the "western evil."

furthermore, the lone female soldier has ostensibly been releasing anti-war letters from her imprisonment. if she's writing those letters of her own free will, then that's her prerogative, although she probably could have picked better timing and definitely a better medium than letters sent through iranian diplomats. if she's being forced to write those letters, then i can only imagine what else is in store.

i'll add more to this later as things develop. outside input is appreciated - because it takes the combined brainpower of about eighteen people to even begin to piece together the middle eastern dynamic.

deathly hallows.

i promised myself that i wouldn't write more than once a day, because as any teenager knows, when the lectures start coming fast and furious 'round age 16 or so, tuning out is made all the easier.

however - the global impact of the revelation of harry potter's final artistic incarnation has prompted me to write a bit about something that is very near and dear to my heart. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the role of fantasy in the modern world.

if you look at the general trends of astronomically successful and popular fantasy paradigms, you realize one thing very quickly: they were all born out of war, and darkness, and death. lord of the rings was penned in the midst of the second world war. the world of narnia sprung out of the war's immediate aftermath. and now we have harry potter, a series which admittedly began before our current war [ or series of military and civilian deaths; a rose is a rose... ], but which also pointedly has grown darker and more menacing as time passes. the absolutely mind-blowing sales and publishing records, to me at least, point out the inherently human desire to escape into a realm free of scientific restraints, with chinese fireball dragons or unicorns.

people mock escapism and call it childish, or even worse, cowardly. how can it be so when it seems to impart at least a little hope? and furthermore, if these "avenues of escapism" are so problematic, then severe scrutiny needs to be leveled at religion as a whole.

you can't escape escapism. except maybe through a portkey - and even then, you can't escape the irony.

[ by the way, that image is copyrighted to scholastic, inc. please don't cause me any legal trouble or force me to use my pathetic 1L skills to defend myself from a lawsuit. ]

on elitism.

last friday, instead of traipsing on over to the local minyan, i did something some would consider an affront to religion - i went to a free, nine inch nails listening party. for those of you who don't know, and i'll assume that's a large chunk of you well-adjusted folk, nine inch nails is about to release a new album called year zero. it's more or less a dystopic exploration of a post-evangelical revival america - a perfect musical accompaniment to atwood's the handmaid's tale. read it, if you haven't.

it's utterly terrifying.

at any rate, i thought it was an interesting listen. reznor's definitely incorporated a lot of what he learned while on tour with tv on the radio. more blues and jazz influence, for sure, and i don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, as some nin purists are bemoaning on over-glorified boards all over the internet.

this leads me neatly into my problem with elitism. it's just a logical problem with the people i saw at this listening party, really. for all of their red-streaked hair, tusk-like piercings, and completely impractical combat boots, these people are still consumers. they decry consumerism and american politics as "giving into the man," and reznor's album provides them even more fodder for a group-think, packaged response to the current paradigm. not that i'm maligning reznor or calling him a hypocrite; i think, with his viral marketing campaign, he's trying to undermine the major record labels and is doing a fantastic job, frankly. i'm maligning the crowds that flock to his shows with blind adoration reflected in their monochrome wardrobe and canned rhetoric.

tv on the radio probably said it best at the dallas concert this summer: "i bet most of you don't even know why you wear black." and it's true. if tomorrow reznor or ministry or bauhaus or maynard said that pink was the new black, you can bet that there would be a thunderous clamor at your local hot topic for pink combat boots.

it starts. you think you know a guy...

and if you can name that movie, kudos to you. you might be a bigger kid than i am.

of course i started the blog, oh, 27 minutes ago, and already i have something about which to gripe. mind you, that doesn't mean that the entire blog will be consumed with rancorous lectures on the number of curls in the eerie library portrait of elton m. hyder, jr., but you might on occasion see some complaints here and there.

what blind person decorated the library? and furthermore, in a school obsessed with keeping its student body more or less happy, who picked the color scheme? i can think of no more irritating color than sunshine yellow, but that might be because i'm a pessimist. then again, we're in law school. most of us are pessimists, and if we aren't, we're on zoloft.

and if you're walking in flip-flops, just walk. don't sidle down the aisles in an attempt to quiet your shoes. they were named for noise. accept it and move on.

the beginning is the end.

i've more or less become an addict of the blogosphere, and like any addict, i've decided to get in on the game. i'm surprised it didn't happen sooner, really, and all that i can hope is that it doesn't turn out like one of the thousands of law&order episodes in which the addict ends up dead in a gutter or in a bathtub filled with lye. i like to think i've a taste for the obscure kernel of humor in law school - it's kind of like a love of single.malt scotch: difficult to cultivate, absolutely useless, and more or less detrimental to your health.

that said, here's to an adventure. as if you needed any other reason to ignore class.