Regime Change Begins at Home

And he's back. I apologize for the loooong hiatus. Where did October go? Is it just me, or did it just seem to evaporate?

So I had to stop posting a couple of days after Congress voted to give Bush authorization to attack Iraq. I was just so disappointed and angry that the only things I wanted to write here were bad political tirades, so instead I just decided to take a little break. In the meantime, I found a great slogan for the next few days: "Regime Change Begins at Home! Vote!" Get the poster while you still can! I highly recommend you print several copies, put them in your car windows and drive around a lot for the next three days. Then vote yourself, will you?

Another closely related reason for my non-posting period was the big anti-war rally held last Saturday (Oct. 26) in D.C. You see, while others have spent some time coming up with some great names for a war, I'm still hoping that such action is not necessary. And I've also become convinced that we can't rely on "world powers" to make sure Bush doesn't attack—the burden is on us. So I spent many hours in a van caravan with some 50 other people from my community to get to the rally/protest, which I found to be refreshing, exciting, rejuvenating, uplifting, and many other positive superlatives. [1] If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out A.N.S.W.E.R.'s coverage of the protest, which includes links to some major media coverage (at least until the article slides off the front page -- permalinks are good things). There's also Salon's pre-event coverage, on which there is some great commentary here. And finally, don't miss Salon's coverage of the event itself, which also generated some terrific letters. If you read nothing else, read the third letter down (from Abe Ogden). Satire strikes again!

What else has been preventing me from posting? Well, there's that whole "applying to law school" thing, which, frankly, is a pain in the you-know-what. But I think the hardest parts are finally complete. I have three great people writing three great letters, and all of them have given me three solid promises to have the letters in the mail by the end of next week. That will allow my LSDAS file to be complete by the end of Nov., which will allow me to make Georgetown's "early action," deadline, which is a good thing. I also learned that, by some miracle, my LSAT score came out a not-stellar but I think respectable, 167, which I was happy with since it was 3 points higher than my highest practice test. It's a relief to know that my numbers are pretty firmly within the averages of the schools to which I'm applying. And finally, after a couple of late nights, lots of swearing and pacing the house, and too many travels down old lanes of memory that I maybe didn't need to revisit, I've completed a draft of a personal statement that I don't hate. So the ducks are lined up. I just have to shoot them down by completing those application forms, which, incidentally, I can't do at home because the LSDAS software doesn't support Macs. Trust me, it's taking considerable restraint for me to withhold my "the Wintel borg sucks and so does any organization that supports it exclusively" rant, so consider yourselves lucky.

And finally, I haven't been able to post because I 've simply been watching too much TV (I think as a sort of escapist balm to soothe my stressed and anxious brain), which has shown me that it's true: everyone on tv is either a cop, a doctor, a lawyer, or a "perpetrator" or a victim. What a wonderful world. But come on! Can you really tell me you can resist "Girls Club"? But alas, apparently most of you can resist, since the show's already been cancelled. This is truly a loss for humanity.

Footnote:
[1] For those of you who are familiar with the IMF/World Bank protests of late September in D.C., or if you've read Jason Rylander's comments about them, I assure you that the A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-war protest was something completely different. It was dominated by people who believe in non-violent resistance, and it was entirely peaceful and very powerful because of that.

Posted 10:09 AM | law school