Supreme Courtin'

So last week, we were supposed to go see an oral argument.  To do this, we were supposed to be at the steps of the Supreme Court by 6AM to line up.  My idiot ass cannot get out of bed, and thus I missed this incredible experience in favor of two extra hours of sleep (this is the second time I've done that this semester, the first being this breakfast at the Department of Labor where I could've met Secretary Hilda Solis, except I'm an idiot).

BUT. There was vague vague redemption.  Our class met Justice Alito.  He was weird.

The Supreme Court building is amazing, easily the most impressive building in DC (which is, if you haven't noticed, comprised almost entirely of impressive buildings).  It has a huge patio area, huge grand staircase leading up to this HUGE column front.  Across the top, it reads "EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW" in huge block letters. Also, according to Asst. to the Solicitor General Melissa Arbus-Sherry (Tufts/WSP grad...she gave oral argument the day we were supposed to watch it, and when she came to speak to us, our Professor cried when he told her how proud he was to see her argue in front of Supreme Court) there is actually for real a basketball court inside the Supreme Court.  New life goal: play on this court.  Whether that means working in Supreme Court in some respect or breaking in at night. Hopefully the more legal of those two options.

Terrible cell phone shot.

Anyway, Justice Samuel Alito, appointed in in 2006 following the departure of Sandra Day O'Connor, is described on Wikipedia as "a conservative judge with a libertarian streak." Honestly, he's a brilliant guy (as much as conservatives can be brilliant), but he had the social skills of Mark Zuckerberg during The Social Network.  Or this guy:

The problem with this photo is that you expect that this nerdy boy is the kind of guy who will want to jizz his intelligence all over you by continually inundating you with obscure knowledge about things you probably don't care about. Alito is probably what this boy looks like after 40 years of being picked on, avoiding eye contact and only speaking about the things he finds most interesting unless you ask him a really specific question.  You ask him what he thinks about the declining number of cases being taken by Supreme Court, he says "uh, I don't really know why, but I don't think we could do any more than that."  Ask him about his opinion in the Doe v. Groody case, and he'll go on for twenty years about why he chose to rule on a Fourth Amendment basis, as opposed to Clarence Thomas choosing the same ruling a different way. 

Anyway, he spoke and answered questions for maybe 20 minutes. Here's our class photo with him:

WSP plus Alito (in the middle)

Also, my friend Jane from class told me later that as we were walking into the Lawyer's Lounge, where we sat with Alito, she saw Justice Kagan stroll on by.  No posse, just the lady herself.  Nobody noticed.  This morning, when I woke up at 5AM (because my roommate was leaving for New York and dried her hair with the lights on forever), I read her whole Wikipedia article. She's a badass.  I wish she were more a little more liberal.  Jane says it's "disgusting that she hasn't come out yet."  I wish she would come out too, but maybe she just really isn't gay.

But I mean, come on, she probably is.

Also, this morning, read all of Sonia Sotomayor's Wikipedia article.  Just saying, they spent a lot more time proving that Justice Sotomayor was smart in this entry than they did in Justice Kagan's.  They both went to Princeton and graduated summa cum laude, but there's mad detail about Sotomayor.  They even told us she was valedictorian of her elementary school class.  Come on now. But also, in general, Sotomayor's is way longer, which is potentially just because she was way more in the public eye. 

Willst du mich verarschen?

On Thursday, I went to Germany.  It looked a lot like the 123 basement.

The German Embassy (there is a house attached behind this, which is where we were)

One Thursday every month, the German Embassy has a Happy Hour, which a bunch of the German WSP students found out when they went looking for a decent Oktoberfest substitute.  Anyway, Katharina's friend Timo (who's 27 and looks very much like a grown man, but is also one of the nicest guys I've met here) took her last month.  This week was the last time the Germans plan to drink it out for a while because their embassy is moving locations, so it seemed like an awesome time to take up the opportunity.  This worked out nicely also because Katharina's friend Alex came to visit/travel around the US, so he was staying with us and looking for things to do in DC.  Anyhow, all of our names got put on a list, so we took a cab and headed out (the cab driver, world-traveler that he was, was extremely unimpressed by my nationality, so he ignored me mostly).

Anyway, we got there, rang a doorbell, gave our names, bought drink tickets (in Germany, the drinking age is 18, chuh), and walked downstairs.

I wish I had photos of this.  If Zeta tried even remotely to clean up their basement, and if they kept the lights up (this would also prevent unwanted groping, but also probably cockblock a lot of boys because they'd have to show at least some social skill to get girls), and if the music were a little classier, this basement would be exactly the same. There was a built-in bar whipping out beers to people crowded around the bar (told you, samesies), except the beer came in bottles, and there was no Natty present.  They had three options for beer:  Becks, Pilsner-something-German-that-was-not-delicious, and Corona. Tons of Corona.  Turns out Germans love Corona.  Mexcellent.

Anyway, it was a pretty interesting experience.  There were people of pretty much all ages present.  Also, they did have a really beautiful garden and an equally beautiful patio, where people were crammed together smoking cigarettes as fast as possible. This chubby man standing behind us was red-faced because he'd been laughing so boisterously (if there were any word more applicable then "boisterous," I'd use it). There was, in fact, a man who looked a lot like Hitler (sans mustache).  I told Katharina, who rolled her eyes because Hitler jokes probably get old, but then I showed her this man, and it got too real.

About an hour after we get there, rumor spreads that they're going to close the bar soon.  Between the three of us, we have 2 $10 tickets, and beers are $2, and having had only one beer, we panic about potentially having wasted $14.  So we go back to the bar, and collect our remaining seven beers, which they give us all at once without question. These all go in Katharina's bag.  We are mature.

It's 2º outside, but we go out to this patio again, and crowd around this space heater.  Somehow, we meet these other kids, who are American grad students from California, and we start talking.  A girl named Michelle Chen is also from LA, so we start talking, and she takes some pictures of the rest of the night (which I would have if I could find her on Facebook, which I've thus far been unable to do.  Turns out that Michelle Chen is a popular name). A 20 foot Asian guy named Danny whips out a deck of cards and tries to initiate some sort of drinking game, which brings scorn from on-looking Germans.  Instead, he shows us magic tricks.  Alex and Michelle are blown away. The rest of us think that organizing the deck for 20 minutes before a trick is a little sketchy. 

I just realized that this post has neither pictures nor parallel grammar structure.  I thought about putting in a picture of Corona and a picture of Hitler, but come on, way too obvious.

Anyway, that was most of the night.  Our American grad students went to Dupont to a real people bar, but in America I'm still a minor, so I had to pass. We struggled to get a cab back, but eventually one drove by and he drove us home, where we played this drinking game where you need to maintain rhythm to finish the one beer we had left.  I lost. And that's my German Embassy story. 

The Update

All is well.  My research paper has been kicking my ass, but I finally got the day off tomorrow for Veterans Day to catch my breath.  Here's some updates.

• 4 days, 20 pages.  Yowzah.
• One of the guys at the dinning hall told me last month that I'm gaining too much weight, and now he always gives me my plate back with half of it covered in vegetables (which would be okay if the vegetables here were real food).  However, I've figured out that if I wear gym shorts to the gym, he'll think I've been working out, and let me eat french fries without too much harassment.  The other day he told me I'd look good either way.  Thanks, bud.
• I can do Monday and Tuesday New York Times crossword puzzles pretty consistently now.  Wednesday-Fridays are a gamble. 
• There are officially holes in all of my shoes.
• It was cold here for less than a week.  Now, it's gone back up to 60º on the reg.

Boring post. Mostly I just wanted to share the thing about my friend at the dining hall.  Hope all is well with you all!

I Saw The Social Network Last Night...

...and it gave me a panic attack. I think it was too real.

I haven't flipped out like that in a while.  I was starting to stress about my research paper earlier in the day (my first draft of my 35-60 page paper is due on Tuesday...the one I only have 10 shoddy pages written for...), and so I thought maybe I'd try to just chill out about it and go to the movies with Katharina.  So, we met up after work, went to Dunks, and went to get our tickets and sit down.  She got a medium Coke at the snack bar -- it was the size of a helmet.  Or maybe a small child. I don't know how we got that Coke into the movie theater without a forklift.

Good thing they offer free refills.

Anyway, the movie was really excellent.  I'm sure you've all heard the basic synopsis, but it tells the story of how Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire in the world.  His character is completely unlikeable, so consumed by his obsession with his own success that he really badly mistreats anyone who ever tried to be a part of his life.  It's absolutely worth seeing.

The problem for me was that something about Zuckerberg struck me as far too relatable.  At the beginning of the movie, he's out with his then-girlfriend, completely verbally abusing her, and right before she storms out, the camera zooms straight in on her face, and she says this:

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." 

 Zuckerberg only further spirals away from humanity from that point on, and by the end of the movie, I kind of felt like I was just as despicable as he was.  Not really for any real rational reason at all.

We happened to leave the theater to get the Metro right as the Capitals/Bruins game let out at the Verizon Center, and so all of a sudden we were surrounded by HUGE crowds of people.  I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I all of a sudden I flipped out.  I remember watching everyone move around me, and the more I stayed still and the more they moved, the more uncomfortable and confined I felt.  I started getting bizarrely tense and hostile, totally snapped at my girlfriend, and all of a sudden, I need to get out. I boned out like I've never boned out before, speed walking along a really dangerously close edge of the train tracks.  Some chick in a Capitals jersey bumped me a little, and I totally panicked about falling down into the tracks.  Anyway, I made it to the exit, paid, left the Metro station and took off down the street.  It took maybe two or three blocks before I think Katharina completely caught up with me.

Anyway, it was really weird.  It took me a while to completely calm down.  The rest of the night was weird too.

TODAY THOUGH, I went to Urban Outfitters (every time I go there, I think "fucking hipsters" in my head every time I see a new article of clothing or stupid kitschy book that I secretly want to buy) and bought some pants without a hole in the crotch and a moderately cute skirt I wont be able to wear until it's summer again (or maybe when I'm home for thanksgiving?).  Since then, I've been sitting in Starbucks slowly stealing better and better seats.  Now I'm by a window three stories up near downtown.  This is the view from the window:

Sorry this picture isn't good.  But city lights are cool, even if they're not New York City lights (which apparently is the only city that really exists)

And With Newly Restored Sanity, I Give You This Post

Before I post anything, I need to plug this election.  GO VOTE.  You must! Here's why:

• If you're persuaded by politics, Republicans are all over this election.  Really awful, anti-gay, borderline racist ones. If they win control of house, it will be even more impossible than it has been in the past to pass major policy (any policy?) through House. 
• This election is being used as a referendum on President Obama, who I think is doing a far better job in office than any of the potential GOP candidates would do. Plus, he's done some cool stuff. 
• Prop 19. 
• Arizona's immigration law is NOT OKAY. Having a Congress who supports that effort really infringes on the civil rights of the 48 million (read: 16 percent of the US population) Latinos living in the United States.
• Most of the GOP candidates really oppose gay rights, some oppose gay rights to LIFE. 

Anyway, I'm angry.  I hope you are too.  Also, not to mention healthcare, education, foreign policy, and the other issues that hang in limbo right now.  Be a good American, hit up your local polling place, and cast a ballot. 

On an entirely contradictory note, I went to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" this Saturday.  The event, designed to be a hilarious response to Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally for Tea Partiers earlier this year, was intended for "people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat," urging America to "simmer down."  Having witnessed the nightmare that was Restoring Honor, I had planned to go to the Stewart Colbert rally long long ago to stick it to the Tea Party to tell them to quit "treading on" my civil rights.  

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I had really mixed feelings about the rally on Saturday.  Let me run you down on the situation:

I've never exactly been to a rally like that, so I didn't know to anticipate the crowds (or what they would do to the DC Metro system).  There was already a crowd at the turnstiles at the Metro.  We walked all the way down to where the first car sits, and it still took us nearly 20 minutes and three trains to get on.  The experience was something like this (but underground):

By some force of God, we managed to get seats on the train.  We got off at Union Station, got weird-tasting bagels from ABP, and followed the masses down to the rally grounds.  Nobody seemed to know where to go, so everyone was just moving at random like some kind of massive idiotic amoeba.  Everyone was trying to find a good view; a dude next to us brought stilts, and there were a ton of kids climbing trees.  There were a couple girls who really struggled to get into the trees, so the crowds tried to cheer them on (or make fun of them?).  Needless to say, they never got up in the trees, and they got booed when they climbed down.

Anyway, because both Stewart and Colbert had appealed to rally-goers to bring signs to endorse sane and rational ideals, we saw a lot of really good ones while we were walking in. 

We ended up standing behind a lot of really tall people and directly to the left of the second jumbotron, so we were kind of close, but positioned in a place that made it impossible to see anything.  The guy next to us kindly offered to let Katharina climb on his back to take photos, but it didn't help a whole lot.  Right after we got there, The Roots and JOHN LEGEND started playing, which was totally cool.  They were the backup band for the rest of the event.

In fact, potentially the best part of the event was that they had a LOT of awesome random musical performances to play into Stewart and Colbert's banter.  Yusef Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) played about 2 minutes of "Peace Train," which was quickly cut off my Ozzy Osbourne playing "Crazy Train," which was epic.  They duked it out for a while, and then the OJs came on and played "Love Train" for good measure. 

Yusef and Colbert

Most of the event was like a giant episode of the Colbert Report.  Stephen entered the event like a Chilean miner from his "fear bunker," he and Stewart sang a song about why America is the greatest country in the world (most of it sarcasm, obviously), and they awarded medals to people in society who demonstrated the greatest "reasonableness" and "fear."  But at the end of all the banter, Stewart made an actually kind of honest speech,  a speech I've posted here and have mixed feelings about.

A lot of what he said rang really true.  We live in a time where policy gets so lost in political rhetoric.  Politicians are constantly telling us what they think we want to hear, and fighting each other by drawing on more and more extreme differences.  I think, in a lot of places in politics, Stewart is right: we're not nearing the end of the world, and we need to fight for common decency and compromise, not a win for our team.

Here's the thing.  Throughout the rally, both Stewart and Colbert tried to play the non-partisan moderate, so they talked a lot about we use the word "racist" too liberally.  And they really glorified free speech, something that I absolutely believe in but I think has definite limits (in light of all the suicides of gay youth and how I feel about hate speech in general).  I still haven't sorted out how I feel about the message he sent, or the message I think people took away from the rally.

Also, here's a video similar to the one made about the Glenn Beck Rally, that probably points to the general stupidity of bandwagon rallygoers, regardless of political orientation:



Anyway, I'm off to grab some Z-Burger.  Typical.  Better post soon!

Just a Nice Day in America

Whhaaaaattt?

I know. Bizarre.  This is a side of the east coast I don't know. Beautiful weather?  I'm wearing sweatshirts and closed-toed shoes just because I don't know what else to do. It does rain randomly, which I'm really not prepared for at all (my refusal to buy rainboots has been an issue since maybe the 9th grade), which is obnoxious, but it hasn't been a serious problem thus far.

Anyway, so I'm sitting outdoors for the second day in a row at present.  Yesterday I went to the National Mall with my roommate, which is a typical touristy thing to do, but it was such a beautiful day, and it just seemed like the most logical place to be outside.

You can kind of see the cross in the mall.  Also, this is my only Google Imaged photo, the rest Katharina took (and I helped!) and are real photos that I sort of have the rights to!

I'm sure most of you know what the National Mall is, but just to recap, essentially the center of DC is built up around 5 major buildings: the Capitol Building, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Washington Monument at center.  Feminist-types have pointed out that the way these are arranged forms a cross, and at the center of the cross stands a huge phallic symbol, but the most important thing to note about the mall is just that it's this big, well kept lawn, around which there are huge symbols of America that draw thousands of tourists daily.

So anyway, we left campus and hopped on a train and got of at Metro Center, which acts as a kind of nice midpoint for the city.  Where we got off, we stumbled in to the USA Science & Engineering Festival, which took over a bunch of streets near the National Mall with mobile science exhibits and other cool interactive science-y things.  We sat down and watched this presentation some guy was giving about energy production and conservation.  We only caught a very little bit of his presentation, but he was trying to explain the problem in a way that everyone could really understand, so he was very dynamic throughout the whole show, kind of similar to a show at a theme park where they try to keep you entertained.

Here's a photo of him talking to himself (via a pre-recorded video on a huge screen)

He was great, but not that great, so we left.  We thought about trying to find a nice place to sit, and so I suggested maybe we could try going to this hotel called Hotel Washington.  This particular hotel has a rooftop bar that had a supposedly great view, and when my mom was in town, we tried at least 2 or 3 times to get up there (but I kept getting carded, story of my LIFE here...). So anyway, we found this hotel and miraculously had no trouble getting up to the rooftop!

Huge letdown. Kind of a boring view, although the view of the Washington Monument was nice (but it's a giant tower, where in this city is the view of the Washington Monument NOT nice?).  I mean, yeah, cool, but not worth four attempts and three rejections to get up there.

Stupid bar.

So after this, we decide to just go to the mall like normal people. But since we were nearby, we went to go see the White House, you know, go say hello to the Obama Family.  Barack keeps texting me to chill, but I've been so busy, so I figured it'd be nice to stop by and say hello.

He seemed a little preoccupied though, so we didn't stay long.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day on the grass at the mall.  Katharina took a bunch of pictures of American flags, I did some research (free Mall wifi, best decision to ever come out of Washington), and we checked out a couple more touristy things like the WWII Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Then, we got a little tired, so we decided to lay down...

All in all, a good day.

Today is a even more low key. I'm just sitting outside my dorm.  At Tufts, there exists this one albino squirrel who hangs out on campus, and when you see him when you're walking around school, you feel good because you know you've just experienced something rare and awesome.  On Tenley Campus (where I live now), there was one black squirrel when I first got here, which I thought was a really funny coincidence because of the Tufts Albino Squirrel.  Now, however, there is an entire family of black squirrels, including one baby one, who just ran by.  Adorable.

Mid-October Updates

Sorry for no posts for so long, I'm actually not really sure what I've been doing that's kept me so busy, but I'm sure it was something important.  Since my last update (I know you were all really excited about my hair cut...):

• I took my midterm exam.  So exciting, I know.  I think it went well.  I spent a fair amount of time killing myself studying.
• I found BOMB Mexican food near work, this place called Taqueria Nacional about two blocks away.  They have really good Yucca Fries, and really awesome cheap tacos.  I may never go to Chipotle again (whaaaaatt???)
• I ate so many chips I thought I was going to vomit once.  I went with my roommate to this restaurant to meet her friend and his girlfriend for drinks on Friday, but since I can't drink, my brilliant solution to the awkwardness was to eat everything in sight.  Clearly this worked well.
• I'm sick. Sucks. My nose is raw, and I'm quickly running out of stolen toilet paper to mitigate the nose-flow.  Also, I now talk like an 80 year old smoker/13 year old puberty boy.

This post comes because I'm supposed to be writing a memo outlining what I would suggest as an effective communications strategy for the President's economic policy.  So I spent all weekend in the Reading Room coughing up a lung and reading the testimony of various economic scholars on the president's economic policy.  I think I get it.  I wonder what percentage of America really doesn't...

So essentially, I'm having a stupid week.

Although, I was realizing today that I'm about 6 weeks into my program, meaning it's about half over.  I'm kind of bummed about this for a lot of reasons, probably mostly because I wish time didn't move so fast, but also because I feel like I'm finally starting to hit my groove.  I'm actually working really hard (whhaaaatttt????) and also really enjoying the things I'm doing and my friends here (I think I maybe actually should buy a camera, because I'm starting to want photographic evidence that I was here).

So this is a really dumb post.  I hope nobody comments on it.  I'll try to do something exciting and with photos this weekend!