Alive and Kicking

Hi. Sorry for the silence at ai. The trusty ai production iBook is now winging its way to Houston for repair -- most likely it will receive a new hard drive and return to me within a few days as good as new. Meanwhile, I'm getting by w/L's trusty Dell Inspiron, which is older than my iBook and is still working w/out problems, so chalk one up to the evil empire. ;-) (Note: When I first started using this machine to surf the web a week or so ago it was crashing 3-5 times/day. I downloaded the Mozilla Firebird browser and quit using Explorer and guess what? No more crashes. Chalk one up for open source!)

Andbutso, the lack of my very own dear computer has meant many things, one of which is no ai posts, though it appears the world has not stopped turning while I:

• Drove a 17-foot U-Haul tornado (which is what it sounded like from inside the cab) halfway -- ok, a third of the way -- across the country towing L's car and all our worldly belongings. L drove some, too. Scratch "truck driver" from the list of things I might possibly want to do for a living in my imaginary romantic future. Not fun.


• Unpacked (mostly).


• Learned that driving anywhere w/in the D.C. metro area takes at least one hour, usually three. Hooray for the Metro! Every time I ride the train I'm fascinated anew by the wonder of public transportation. It works so damn well it's almost a miracle!


• Saw "Gigantic," the huge documentary about They Might Be Giants. We saw it at the new AFI Silver Theatre, to which we happily live quite close. We'll be seeing lots of cool indie films here maybe. Yay!


• Saw Illegal Art, an exhibition of "art that uses copyrighted or trademarked material without permission." Check out the Visuals page for some samples. Don't miss the story of Kembrew McLeod, the University of Iowa professor who trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression" and is now apparently suing AT&T for using that phrase in its advertising. Ironies abound. Kieran Dwyer's "Consumer Whore" Starbucks satire is also notable, especially since Starbucks has gone to so much effort to make sure no one sees it. (More on that story here and at Dwyer's site.) Link to the anti-logo and tell all your friends! And hey, "Illegal Art" is heading to San Francisco soon, so if you're there, I recommend it.


• Saw one of Sam Shepard's many great American dramas, "A Lie of the Mind." We also saw "True West" at another DC theatre while visiting sometime last year, so seeing Shepard in DC is becoming something of a tradition.


• Played Texas Hold-Em w/L.'s sister and friends. Lots of lawyers and political activists in the mix, which made for interesting conversation, much of which I mostly stayed out of for fear of outing myself as the leftist radical I think I am. See, strategically I'm thinking I need to try to get along w/people who love Scalia and think the way Yubbledew was placed in office was fair and legitimate. I'm going to be working w/people like this for the foreseeable future, right? So I need to learn to find a way to do that, it seems, without constant battling and flaring tempers. But L. asked a great question after we left: "When does thinking strategically slip into selling out?" Ah yes, it's the question of law school, isn't it? Because law school is a strategic move for me -- it's an attempt to do something from within "the system," rather than from the fringes (academia) where it seemed all I'd ever be able to do was bitch and moan. (No offense to current academics -- that was just how I came to see my future and it has nothing to do w/what you're doing and going to do.) When does strategy become strategery?


• Saw "Coupling" Disc 1 via our brand new NetFlix subscription. Hilarious. The setups for the jokes are often long and layered, leading to huge, belly-laugh payoffs at the end of each episode.

So you see, it's really just all about the entertainment here in summerland. I should be getting a job or something, but, well, I'm well-fed and protected from the rain, so it's kind of hard to be bothered. Perhaps the motivation will strike soon. I moan that all the good jobs are unpaid, but I'm fully aware that's no excuse for sitting on my ass gorging myself on the copious produce of the various segments of the U.S. entertainment industries. I mean, if I'm not going to be getting paid for the next two months, I might as well see if I can help someone out in some way, right?

But until that happens, perhaps I'll just help Unbrand America to make up for some of my consumer guilt. And then, of course, there are all those books I was going to read. After reading Brush With the Law, it's pretty hard to fight the "screw it, I'll worry about it later" attitude w/regard to law school prep. Maybe I'll just ride my bike.

Posted June 10, 2003 11:19 AM | life generally