weezer!

Being in SoCal has turned me into a white surfer boy. My favorite car right now is the new Ford Mustang (it's schweeet!), and I believe life would be much more comfortable if I wore long boardshorts everyday. I used to when I was ten -- why not now? Part of this transformation is my taste in music: KROQ here is so good that I can name more songs by Incubus than by 50 Cent. To celebrate my manhood, does anyone want to go to Lollapalooza with me? I haven't been to a concert in ages, and the lineup includes the Killers, Digable Planets, Cake, Billy Idol... and Weezer!! C'mon, let's relive the 90s!

good he is

My last Civil Procedure class was today, and it was very sad. Somewhere at the beginning of the year, I sat in that classroom and marveled at being a new law student. I daydreamed (or day-nightmared) about the year ahead and couldn't contemplate the end. But the end was today, the beginning seems blurry and the future right now scares me.

My sadness, though, was less about 1L sentimentality and more about my professor. Only one other teacher in my life has been as invested in me as a student and a person, and that was when I was fourteen years old. I think of my professor as Yoda: he's a plain, unassuming, little man. Underneath the mild exterior, though, is a tough teacher who pushes his students. He has generations of students who learned his techniques and manners of thinking, including several faculty members and over thirty years of alumni. Every time I meet someone who was in his class one, two, ten, fifteen years ago, they say how honored they feel to have had him.

I feel the same way. He's talked with me for over an hour past office hours to explain personal jurisdiction. He offered to do research on public interest organizations for my summer job. He encouraged me to explore my options for next year and even suggested some schools. I'm grateful that I had the chance to sit in his class, watch him draw pictures, listen to his jokes, suffer through his moods, and learn from the master. Whether I stay or go next year, I will be hard-pressed to find another teacher of this caliber again.

my voyeuristic side

A couple of months ago, I came across a website comprised of postcards from anonymous people sharing their secrets. An artist distributed blank postcards to strangers in DC and asked them to send the cards back with secrets never before shared. He also encouraged them to be creative. These directions combined to produce some intense but moving cards. He puts up new cards every Sunday, which I've come to look forward to. I debated whether to share this site only because some of these cards are very depressing/scary/potentially offensive/weird. But since we all harbor some secrets, I decided to share. www.postsecret.com

For anonymous introspections with less drama, check out jeffharris.org.

patience

After a middle-aged man in a new black convertible Mercedes Benz honks at me and cuts me off, the best feeling is pulling up right beside him at the red light and letting out a big fat grin. Even better is the satisfaction from passing the frowning man, whose weaving landed him right behind a slow landscaping truck. Don't mess with the little Asian girl in the Toyota.

my eyes hurt

I appreciate the normal use of capitalization in all correspondence, especially email.

ALL CAPS -- ESPECIALLY WHEN A SLIGHTLY CONDESCENDING PROFESSOR IS ANSWERING QUESTIONS -- MAKES ME FEEL UNPLEASANT. (PLUS IT'S HARD TO READ.) I REALIZE HE IS TRYING TO DISTINGUISH HIS ANSWERS FROM MY QUESTIONS, BUT I'M SMART. I CAN FIGURE OUT WHEN MY QUESTIONS END AND HIS ANSWERS BEGIN WITHOUT FEELING LIKE I'M BEING CHASTISED. I THINK I'LL JUST GO TO OFFICE HOURS FROM NOW ON BECAUSE THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR MY PRESENT DELICATE STATE OF MIND.

whIle I'm On thE sUbjEct, thIs mAkEs mE wAnt tO hUrl mY (or is it 'my'??) cOmpUtEr AcrOss thE rOOm And sEt It On fIrE.

this is much less offensive to me, but it should be limited to very informal emails. i once got an email like this from an attorney at one of the most well-known asian-american non-profits in the country. to top it off, he signed, "thx." who does that?

small

I was probably seven years old when the Pope visited Los Angeles. He celebrated mass at the Coliseum, and I remember freaking out after seeing my parish deacon, who was assisting with the service, on tv. Only one degree of separation existed between the Pope and me, and the world seemed very small.

Watching the world's reaction to the Pope's death makes me feel the same way today. Granted, I don't know these people mourning on TV and my relationship with the Catholic Church is much more tenuous than seventeen years ago. Nevertheless, I feel like part of something tangible. Part of this comes from never before witnessing reactions on such a global scale. I'm used to seeing reactions from first-world countries, like England or France or Germany. When I do see other countries, it's usually because those countries actually suffered the tragedies, such as Indonesia or Thailand. With the Pope's death, however, I see pictures from people all over the world of all sorts of religions. At a time when we politicize a family dispute over a woman's death, this unity simply amazes me. Even my father -- who rests his butt on the pews while kneeling in church -- 'shed tears' this weekend.

My reaction to the Pope's death was less dramatic. He's been sick for a while, and I've expected his death for a while. I disagree with some major principles of the church and have yet to find a way to reconcile them. I am unsettled by a two-thousand-year history without women leaders. Yet despite these fundamental differences, I can't help but feel sad by the Pope's passing.

With the death of Terri Schiavo and the Pope, I've been thinking a lot about heaven and souls. I was taught in grade school that when you're in heaven, it's like having your mind without your body. That seems to assume, then, that your soul is what you think. Which makes me wonder: If you're in a persistent vegetative state, what does your soul do for fifteen years? Does God have a special place for popes? When you're in heaven, do you finally see how small the world really is?