Law Students

Zoo Pictures: Da Bears (Ditka Reference, Not Slang)

Posted on February 19, 2009
CUTE OVERLOAD!!

weekend report

Posted on February 17, 2009
We eschewed the cheesy Valentine's day trappings (and crowded restaurants and pricey prix fixe) in favor of having friends come to visit for a really fun and relaxing weekend. I made many delicious three course things, and have many recipes to blog. Let me just say that wild creamy mushroom soup is like nothing out of a can...

random roundup

Posted on February 17, 2009
1. This makes me want to link to every Jones Day lawyer in America, except that I'm risk averse and don't want to be sued.2. What it takes to be a liberal. I qualify!3. Does this mean that I can't say "I drink my Haterade" anymore?4. NYT discovers that college students have a sense of entitlement about grades, study finds that students correlate effort exerted with grade deserved...

the principle of the thing, movie edition

Posted on February 13, 2009
I never said that I was principled or consistent, but here goes:Much as I like fashion and much as I have been known to shop on occasion and much as I like Isla Fischer, I refuse to see "Confessions of a Shopaholic," because it fills me with feminist rage and it makes me want to break stuff...

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Torn like an old sheet?

Posted on February 11, 2009
Belle,Oh sweet JESUS, why did I read that Elle essay linked in the Traister piece? It makes cesareans sound like fun. My entire body is doubled over in sympathy. But isn't that sort of visceral reaction just what Purves was aiming for? The whole point of the female gross-out confessional is to puncture our composure and drill down into the fears and insecurities we mostly suppress...

G.R.O.S.S. Girls

Posted on February 10, 2009
Click to enlarge:Amber,What did you think of this column by Rebecca Traister on the cult of gross-out confessionalism among the writers at Jezebel?Moe Tkacik wrote about the time she accidentally left a tampon in for 10 days. She described how, on the advice of her editor, she squatted on the floor and started rooting around for the source of the acrid discharge that had been plaguing her for days of sex and drugs and drunkenness...

what on earth is a "date" movie?!

Posted on February 09, 2009
Amber,Apart from finding mutually agreeable viewing fare, I don't get why "date movies" have to be any different from "movies you would like to see in general." In fact, marketed-as-date-movies are guaranteed to be craptastic, since they will be terrible romantic comedies...

You think you're chocolate when you're chewing gum?

Posted on February 07, 2009
Belle,Viewing love as something beyond your control, something inflicted upon you, does seem like a cop-out. Unless you believe in Cupid's arrow, or a Godfather-style "thunderbolt," or that inhaling pheromones has effects comparable to PCP or some other strong drug, love is something you create out of your perceptions of a person...

take responsibility for your relationships!

Posted on February 04, 2009
Amber,To answer your last question: merely pathetic.While I agree with the author that social relationships can be divided into levels of intimacy and cohesion, I completely disagree with the valuation process. It completely ignores the more complex realities of social interaction...

'roid rage! grrr!

Posted on February 02, 2009
I got steroid injections in both wrists today. Apparently, my doctor (who also helped to design this keyboard and this mouse!) thinks that hand therapy exercises are not useful for carpal tunnel syndrome. So I am getting three rounds of injections. So, we'll see if this works, or if it's surgery...

Why romantic relationships are intrinsically valuable

Posted on February 01, 2009
Belle,At first I didn't have words to describe just how skin-crawlingly horrible I found this post to be.The basic idea is that romantic relationships are only instrumentally valuable, whereas strong friendships are intrinsically valuable, where "intrinsically valuable things are those that make us happy (rather than happiness itself being the intrinsically valuable thing), and instrumentally valuable things are those that we only value insofar as they give us access to those things that in themselves make us happy...

trash talking my nerd injury

Posted on January 29, 2009
This is what I look like with my hands in wrist-stabilizing splints:This is the unsympathetic trash-talking I got from TD:"You look like Edward Scissorhands...but less cool."(upon discussing the ADA, my support of employer accommodation of disability, what is the statutory definition of a disability as some condition that substantially limits major life activities, and how carpal tunnel doesn't really count, or at least does not necessarily count):"You should own your gimpitude...

Ledbetter Equal Pay Act Signed by President Obama

Posted on January 29, 2009
Story here. Most awesome Whitehouse.gov blog report here, with President Obama's remarks:Equal pay is by no means just a women's issue -- it's a family issue. It's about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition and child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves; that's the difference between affording the mortgage -- or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor bills -- or not...

what's up with that?

Posted on January 27, 2009
I have frequently experienced that phenomenon of really loving a movie/musical artist/painting, and then, later, upon reflection, totally hating it and everything it stood for. This is not necessarily induced by reading external reviews by snarky critics--sometimes, it's just a creeping sensation of "I thought I liked this, but I was duped...

random roundup

Posted on January 26, 2009
1. After a week of hardly typing at all and doing hand exercises all day, I am really behind in work but my hands only hurt when I am typing rather than constantly in a dull with flashes of nerve pain way. Improvement! Sort of. No pain = good, no work = bad...

Leopard print tunics to tulle skirts

Posted on January 25, 2009
Dear Belle,My extremely tardy response makes forgiving your arguable ball-dropping completely necessary---not that there was anything to forgive! Your poor hands are to be well-treated, even if that means a reduction in blogging. I was just playing catchup from the inauguration madness and whiling away the hours in good IRL company instead of writing...

state of the belle: pretty, patriotic, articulate, and in pain

Posted on January 20, 2009
A very nice weekend: a romantic getaway on Saturday to Sunday to nearby scenic destination. On Saturday, at this delicious chain burger establishment, TD and I were discussing TARP and EESA and the stretching of the statutory language to re-label pretty much everything as a toxic asset and the proper role of government, etc...

that funny looking kid who smelled even funnier

Posted on January 16, 2009
Dear Amber,I totally dropped the ball on our epistolary blogging with end-of-year projects, the holidays, and now carpal tunnel. (Update: new $80 Microsoft Wireless Ergonomic 7000 is worth it, even if the keys are stiff, and I am thinking of getting those wrist splint things...

anyone lived in a pretty how town

Posted on January 14, 2009
(poem here)I love being back in my liberal college town with the bookstores and restaurants and little markets and my one bedroom apartment. And while we tried (unsuccessfully--no wind) to fly a kite last weekend, and may do some more outdoorsy things this weekend, it's been mostly staying at home and working from home...

anton ego cooks!

Posted on January 14, 2009
I really enjoyed Ratatouille. I love food and cooking, and I like talking animals (but I hate talking babies in the sense of Look Who's Talking or those weird advertisements). I secretly like French things, even though bad experiences with certain French international classmates make me publicly disavow this with militant Francophobia...

random roundup

Posted on January 12, 2009
My right hand still hurts, but I am improving by using my mouse with my left hand and typing like one of those people who can't touch type in the way the typing class in 7th grade taught us with your index fingers on the "F" and "J" and as if pecking the board didn't look stupid...

you can't spell "carpal tunnel" without "crap"

Posted on January 08, 2009
I do not want to type much these days. Ouch. I think I should use the school's physical therapy. You know how your hand cramps and it zings all the way to your elbow and it stiffens and you can hardly hold a pen? Yeah, like that. I'm also just feeling general blog exhaustion...

she & him

Posted on January 06, 2009
Karl introduced me to this awesome band, which consists of my girlcrush Zoeey Deschanel (I loved her in All the Real Girls...and probably no other movie) and M. Ward, chill indie dude singer.Don't you just love the upbeat '60s sound and Mary Tyler Moore-ishness? I am somewhat tempted to cut bangs, but I am more lazy than I am stylish (high maintenance = not Belle), and moreover I am not an indie rock girl (see also Jenny Lewis, Cat Power, Leslie Feist, etc...

anomie belle

Posted on January 05, 2009
Anomie. Via Wicked Anomie, check out my evil and much cooler twin, Anomie Belle!:About Anomie Bellean·o·mie [an-uh-me] n social unrest or normlessness; malaise, alienation and purposelessness.belle [bel] n a popular and charming woman; especially: a woman whose charm and beauty make her a favorite...

orange county, yugoslavia

Posted on January 03, 2009
Some places are described as having "no there, there." Well, there's none here either, and I'd still rather be there. My brain is addled by too much family time, too many movies (my parents put a plasma TV in my room to bribe me into coming home more often and for longer), too much sunlight, too many episodes of Spongebob and something terrible called "Drake and Josh...

"it's ok to be smart"

Posted on January 03, 2009
My niece got these as a present. I hate anti-intellectualism. Since when was it not OK to be smart?

darn you nick and matt

Posted on January 01, 2009
What a thing to do on new year's eve (now the first day of the new year!). I read through an old box of letters before throwing them out (and then deciding that some of them can't be thrown away). All because Nick and Matt said that letters should be kept or at least re-read before chucking...

obligatory blagojevich post, with questions

Posted on January 01, 2009
Why on earth didn't Illinois call for a special election?! Republicans are blaming the Democrats for blocking this. True?I was telling TD that the legal opinions appear to be all over the place on whether the Senate can refuse to confirm Burris. Volokh says no, some guy at some other school quoted in the NYT says no, Balkin, Tushnet and Amar say yes, and so now I don't know what's the right interpretation of Powell v...

happy new year to you too

Posted on January 01, 2009
Ok, that's it, next year I'm flying back early and having a real NYE, like the one I've never had, with TD at some party where I wear a hot dress (my fantasies are tacky and cliche and so the dress involves sequins) and kiss him at midnight just like in the movies...

how to cook and work at the same time

Posted on December 31, 2008
(This is my kitchen. Note that the dining table right next to the stove can double as a desk, so you can work and watch the stove at the same time. Missing is my beautifully organized spice jar drawer.)In response to Anna's comments in the previous post (this started off as a comment, but I wrote too much):I read while I cook...

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