It's not my party and I'll cry if I want to

For those of you wondering if I have given up blogging.

2006-06-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

No. I haven't. Go here: http://www.myspace.com/39855164

And so it begins.

2005-09-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, we're into week three of law school now. My mother wrote me an email informing me this blog will likely get me shot or killed here, or at least preclude me from running for office. I disagree. I also think that law school will soften my extremism to some extent. We shall see.

Speaking of law school, man oh man, is it a busy time! I find myself reading so much I have time for little else. The cases we study are a lot more exciting than I thought law school reading was going to be, however. So it isn't actually all that bad. All of the skill sets required to be a decent law student fit nicely into my generalist background. I think I'm going to have a relatively good time here. The first year is all about studying, and there isn't a lot of room for extracurriculars. Still I'm keeping up with playing sax two nights a week plus gigs, and I'm going to be trying out for the mock trial team this Sunday, since I'm thinking about doing some litigating. I'm also going to start working for the Houston Police Department Crime Laboratory reviewing their DNA cases for entry into the FBI database. My former career is going to net me some decent pocket change, I hope.

Anyway, that's it for now. I have much reading to do.

There's a bad moon on the rise

2005-08-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

So I'm leaving my job in a few days to start school (again). It's exciting. I'm really looking forward to the pursuit of a law degree. Plus, I've been so busy and sleep deprived these past few months, the two weeks off before school are going to be a godsend. Everyone keeps telling me how difficult it's all going to be. I have a feeling I will only begin to appreciate the degree of difficulty when it starts, but overall I have a pretty good feeling about things. I know what it is I want to do (or at least I've narrowed it down to a few possibilities), I have good money making prospects in place in the meantime, and I've got enough going on outside of law school to keep me sane when I need to blow off steam. I got my schedule and orientation itinerary yesterday. I'm in section A, whatever that means. I have an average of about 3 hours of class a day, which means about 9 hours of work a day if you subscribe to the 2:1 prep time to class time ratio theory. It's going to be arduous, but if I can manage to spend basically a work day on campus, I should be able to manage. One piece of advice I've been receiving from everyone is that it's important to read everything assigned the first year. I will subscribe to that pholosophy to the best of my ability.

I had a decent variety band rehearsal last night. We didn't do any jazz standards, which bums me out, but we did run though stuff like "The Tide is High" and some 60s era 12 bar bluesy rock, which gave me the chance to solo a bit. It was fun. With some more discretionary time at my disposal coming up, I'm going to practice a bit more. All the bands I'm in are gradually getting better and better. And they're all getting more gigs, but things aren't picking up as fast as I might like. One date I'm kind of nervous about is New Years Eve. I'm going to have a NYE gig with two bands, and I'm going to be forced to choose which gig to play. I'm probably going to go with the higher payout, but it's going to piss at least one band off.

Well, I'm off to finish writing my last batch of DNA reports. 3 more days until I'm unemployed....

Updates

2005-07-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

So there was a Friday night happy hour with my future law school classmates this past weekend. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of them to be similarly situated -- switching careers as a means of escaping something they really aren't into. I was a little distracted by the fact that I was planning on breaking it off with my date later that evening, but it was a nice introduction to a few of the poeple I'm going to be studying with regardless. It was also nice to see that I am not the oldest man in my class by a long shot. Later on this past weekend, I had a big band gig with the Billie Ledbetter Orchestra. It was fun, although I wish I had more time to practice. I did a solo on "Sweet Home Chicago" that was rather lackluster.

As an update to my minutemen rant of a few days ago, I have joined forces with a local immigrants rights advocacy group. On Saturday we had an organizational meetingn in southwest Houston to address how we might better deal with the impending invasion of our fair city by bigoted xenophobic isolationists. I volunteered to write a letter in response to the first Houston city councilmen to speak out in favor of the minutemen movement, Mark Ellis. He recently sent out a press release outlining his position in favor of de-severing the link between INS and the Houston Police Department. You see, many years prior, HPD was strictly forbidden from taking any steps toward immigration law enforcement. They were disallowed from asking folks for their papers for several reasons. One, that duty far exceeds their responsibility as public safety officers. Two, it impedes their ability to foster public safety because it decreases the likelihood that certain individuals would report crimes. Three, it would stretch an already skeleton crew of a police force to the breaking point (there are about 4,000 members of HPD serving about 2 million houstonians. New York City has more than twice the police coverage per capita). I'm ignoring the philosophical and economic arguements as well. Let's save those for another day.

Sufficed to say, I'm looking forward to leaving the crime lab where I'm currently employed and embarking on a legal career. Thanks to the current administration both locally and nationally, there's going to be a lot of good work to do in the coming years.

Can I rant for a minute, man?

2005-07-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

It's ironic. I grew up in a small town nestled in the Green Mountains of southern Vermont. I went to a four room schoolhouse and had 9 kids in my 6th grade class. That part of our country is rich in early American history. Vestiges of the Revolutionary War can be found in graveyards and town squares from Burlington to Bennington. So as part of my grade school curriculum, we spent a considerable amount of time learning about how the local population contributed to the Revolution. One group we learned about in particular was the Minutemen. These were young men from the Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont areas, typically the youngest and strongest of the militias, whose job it would be to rapidy deploy and be ready to fight the British wherever and whenever they arrived. These descendants of English immigrants whose families had arrived on this land no more than a handful of generations hence, were tasked with meeting the most formidable army the world had seen at that time to defend the economic freedom and political autonomy of the nascent American government. Because of the expediency with which they mustered, they were the first forces to face the red coats in a given battle. Their contribution to the existence of the United States and the freedom from British economics and the now Constitutional monarchy we enjoy is indisputable. At the time, our release from British tyranny meant that people immigrating to this land were going to be given a shot at first class citizenship instead of being subject to an empire that considered them second-rate for not being back in England (and wanted to tax them accordingly). The benevolence of the Minutemen back then directly contributed to the greatness of this nation as well as our historically mandated place in the world as a coveted safe haven for the downtrodden longing for a refuge in which to nurture their ambition. It is with extreme local pride that native Vermonters can declare their ancestors were Minutemen (incidently, that's true for me on several fronts -- my high school basketball team, the Mill River Minutemen, had a stellar record and won the state championship in 1991).

So imagine my surprise when I arrive in Texas less than two years ago and discover this other group calling themselves Minutemen. These of course are officially known as the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. I don't know why they call themselves that. While the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War sought to take advantage of a free society in North America, the modern day minutemen encourage us (and by 'us' I mean American citizens, not necessarily white Republicans) to join them "not because of bias towards people from another country, but rather because you feel your government owes the citizens of the United States protection from people who wish to take advantage of a free society" (used without permission from http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/aboutus.php). According to their website, their intentions are purely noble. They want to keep our country safe by securing our southern border, thus preventing terrorists from entering the country from Mexico. They also want to prevent Mexican drug smugglers from entering the country and tying up our penal system. Furthermore, they claim to want to prevent immigrants from hurting themselves, dying of exposure and whatnot, during the perilous journey north. All three of these proported goals sound great, except for the fact that no evidence has come to light that any terroristic activity is tied to the Mexican border. I'm sorry, my southern brothers and sisters, but there are no worthy targets, symbolic or strategic, in the south, with the exception of the shipping and oil and gas of south Texas, but the vast and unregulated merchant marine fleet would be a much more effective means of gaining access to those areas. I don't see the minutemen clamoring to start a civil branch of the Coast Guard. And sure, drugs are smuggled into this country all the time. Anyone who's been to a cast party or a biker rally knows that. But should we really pin the drug smuggling problem on the folks that are crossing the border on foot? Most of it comes in by car and hidden in shipping containers. Blaming the drug problem on poor brown people on foot is both inaccurate and offensive. So what have we got left? Ah, the altruistic goal of saving the Mexican (or Central American) immigrant from himself or herself. I think the picture below addresses that one better than any argument I could put forth ever would. I took it directly from the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps web site. It is from their photo archive and the file name they gave it was "caught." Not "saved" or "fed and clothed and housed" but caught. No matter how many times I read this group's manifesto, I can't see this movement as anything other than a bunch of neo-fascist racists. The hypocrisy of calling themselves minutemen is an insult to our former revolutionaries, as well as my high school basketball team.

Sans re-election concerns, with the style, grace, and diplomacy of Moussalini on figure skates

2005-07-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to have to address our commander-in-chief's Supreme Court appointment because for a while now, I've been in complete denial about the fact that it's actually happening. Faced with the reality of seeing it all in the headlines, I can't help facing the bitter truth. Does anyone remember Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court? This man was lauded as a Scalia protege. He's still hounded by the left as a traitor to his demographic, opposing the very same programs that helped to get him to where he is today. The senior Bush (41) appointed Thomas not only to placate those that were calling for a minority replacement for Thurgood Marshall, but because his political views were similarly conservative. Fast forwarding to present day, Bush junior (43) doesn't even think enough of the opposition (for lack of a better term) to appoint someone remotely palatable to the middle/left. To ignore the need for balance in the highest court in what appears to be blatent pursuit of the conservative right's agenda is almost as disheartening as the election results were. Then again, why shouldn't he ignore the moderates and the left thinkers? What does Bush have to lose politically at this point?

Hey.

2005-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'm opening my first blog today. I'm a yankee stuck in the heart of Bush country. I'm going to law school and doing music and forensic consulting on the side. I guess this is going to be a potpourri of political, legal, social, and musical ramblings. Plus we'll all get to practice our typing. It'll also be a good way for me to document my law school experience (which starts in almost a month exactly).