Saturday, June 30, 2012

Strippers and Grandma

My sainted grandmother, who I never recall in my early life ever saying anything about the attractiveness of men, she was a grandma after all!, later in life developed a huge, inexplicable crush on...Matthew McConaughey. Yeah, I don't really get it either. But she LOVED him. She was in the hospital at the end and you'd say something about him, or her other long time crush, her cardiologist, and she'd light right up.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Vegas, Snark, Random Thoughts

I realized that I sounded like a horribly ungrateful brat after the last post so I wanted to rectify some of that.

I know that I'm incredibly lucky to have spent three nights in an exceptional hotel being utterly irresponsible while most of the rest of the world was at work in the middle of the week. I got to my room at the Bellagio and thought, "You put a small kitchen in and I'd be totally content living here."

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Cesspool of Humanity

I got home from Vegas Thursday. I don't want to go back for a very very very long time, if ever.

I'm still so freaking exhausted.

Since what happens there, mercifully, stays there, some thoughts and highlights, while I work on pretending that the lowlights never ever happened and try to Eternal Sunshine them from my brain.

Here's the thing with Vegas: You want it to be super fun. You have all these expectations of the fun time that you will have and what you will do. At least I did. I wanted to make up for a couple awful memories from when I was there a year ago. But ya know what? It's just kind of an awful place and the pressure makes it more awful because it can't meet your expectations and there are girls who can't weigh 70lbs teetering around unattractively in $2k stilettos but they're getting all the attention which just makes you (me) and your (my) fragile ego feel worse.

It felt like when I was little and my mom would seethe through gritted teeth, "We're going to have FUN, goddamnit!" You knew from that point on that there was no possible way you were gonna have fun.

Monday, June 18, 2012

LOL Momz (on golf)

My mom spent Thursday and Saturday working at the U.S. Open. Through a scheduling fluke, the powers that be put my mother, who knows next to nothing about golf, at the 18th green. She was the last cop stationed before the players hiked up the stairs to go to the clubhouse from 10 a.m. 'til 8 p.m. on those two days.

This led to many many hysterical interactions and my mother pushing the limits of my golf knowledge. But mostly it involved her saying absurd mom things. I couldn't resist sharing some of my mom's observations from her time there.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Sh*t White People Eat

When I was at the vaunted Olympic Club on Monday, I kept saying that I wanted to go into the clubhouse and order a white wine spritzer and relax on the patio. Beth finally asked, "Do people still drink those?" I have no idea, but it seems like the kind of drink a woman who frequents a country club would drink. And then I'd have a TaB. (True story: law firm I worked at during college had TaB in the vending machine. Every secretary, and they sure as shit were still secretaries, no admin assistant crap, to a woman (yes, all women), drank it. That shit is straight up white girl fuel.)

It got me thinking about other shit white people eat, which brought to mind this hysterical, and completely accurate, article from a couple years ago in the Hairpin about artichoke dip. (My family adds diced jalapeno and Tony's to ours. We like a bit of heat. We're dangerous.)

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

First You Have to Kill All the Golfers


Beth IMed me at around 12:30 yesterday. "Hey! I have tickets to the U.S. Open practice round for like right now, do you want to go?" After determining whether she just meant "go" or "go with her" (I'm incredibly literal), I fought my general introverted tendencies, considered that my plan for the day was to go to the gym and make dinner, looked out the window at a picture perfect San Francisco day, a rarity for June, and said, "Absolutely, I'm in."

Sprots

I've decided the DSM-IV should have a section on sports addiction for someone like me who suddenly finds herself inside on gorgeous SF days because the UEFA match between Ireland and Croatia just can't be missed.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Objects of Desire

Today we're talking about hot dudes. Yeah, I know...

Actually, we're not doing one of those posts where I just talk about how hot dudes are. It was going to be one of those posts but something happened along the way and it got more complicated than that.

I am always conflicted talking about the attractiveness of men. As a lower case f feminist (while I hold some feminist ideals, I kinda fail at holding a banner and being all FEMINIST. I hate to quote Drake but "oh yeah, that's right, I'm doing me", so causes and having a "feminist ideology" and being pissed off about everything ever as indicated by the Jezebel comments section isn't really for me.), the female gaze is no better than the male gaze. I feel guilty distilling men down to just their looks, the way it is so often done to females. I'd say it should be equal opportunity, but really it shouldn't be done at all. Except is appreciating beauty such a bad thing? And I realize that we are all more than just our looks or any one feature or characteristic. All special snowflakes! Sorry, I don't mean to be trite. I really do believe each person is complex and not defined by any one aspect.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Introvert

It's a lot of self analysis stuff and since that always feels incredibly indulgent and not all that interesting, and yet super important on a personal level, to write about, I'm burying it after the jump to force you click if you want to read.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Lawyerin'

I get a seemingly endless stream of emails from the ABA, most of which languish in my in box or I delete without a second thought. Tonight, however, one came through and the subject caught my attention:

Law Grad Pays $114K Debt with Sack of Cash

So I clicked on the link to see what kind of absurdity lay within.


A 2009 University of Toronto law graduate apparently made enough money at a venture capitalist firm to pay off his remaining $114,000 law school debt with just one payment—and he did it with cash.
Alex Kenjeev tells the Business Insider he was trying to be funny rather than make a point. "It was stressful enough to carry such a big debt load,” he said. “I thought it would be worth getting a few laughs out of it.”
Kenjeev says the process was cumbersome, and the banks didn’t share his sense of humor. At first, the Royal Bank of Canada balked at Kenjeev’s request to withdraw the money, then required him to wait three days, he tells the Business Insider. When the money was released, he stuffed it in a canvas bag and walked two blocks to pay off his loan at Scotiabank.
It took two-and-a-half hours for tellers to count the money and complete the transaction. "I didn't really realize how much of a hassle I'd cause for everybody,” he said.

My brain immediately started doing that exploding thing. Oh you've motherfucking got to be kidding me! You paid your ENTIRE debt off and thought it'd be so funny if you did so in cash? This kid deserves to be punched in the face. Repeatedly.

A vast majority of us law grads who made the unwise decision to get overly educated are carrying a similar debt burden. One that we struggle to pay and that will affect us far into our futures and a lot of the decisions about what we would like to be doing with our life. This kid was lucky enough, and yes, likely worked hard enough (in goddamn venture capitalism) to not be under such a similar strain and he made a JOKE out of it?

All I got to say to that is: !@#$%^&*(!@#$%^&*

Actually, I've got more: I prescribe to the Hank Aaron school of, "Act like you've been there before." Hank didn't watch his home runs because it's show boaty and awful but he also thought you should act like you've been there before. And that you'll be there again. I'm not one for gloating, show off behavior. I find it abhorrent and for all my flaws, braggadocio is not one of them. (Which is why I have a hard time marketing myself and getting a job and blah blah but that's another story...) The watching of home runs is why I couldn't stand Barry Bonds and his ten second admiration of every goddamn one he ever hit (and he's a pretty awful human being but that's also a whole different rant).

What this kid did is the lawyer equivalent of watching his home run. You had the means, you did something pretty exceptional, you got a bit lucky and then you took it just a little too far. So yeah, a punch in the face seems deserved.

In other weird lawyer news: as mentioned, I get like 800 ABA emails a day. One of the areas of interest I have checked off is International Law. I like international law, I'm actually pretty good at it based solely on class work, and I find the problems that it presents interesting because it has far more of a global impact than just a US-centric take. Additionally, counter terrorism is an area of interest, I did quite the presentation on the topic in my International Law class and considering we're still fighting a billion dollar war that has to do with it, a pressing issue.

All that is preface for the fact that I got an email from the ABA about a counter terrorism roundtable. It was also "complimentary". Sounds interesting, I still like learning stuff, so, again, it was immediately opened instead of taking up space in my in box.

The body of the email was in the always laughable comic sans. I shit you not. An email touting a discussion on the issues of counter terrorism was in comic sans. Because death and destruction caused by non-government organizations and how to combat them is HI-LARIOUS!

And I'm the one out of work? Geezus h...