A Snail in Ginger Ale

Baby's Day Out

2009-12-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

It has been pointed out to me recently that if my last post here were a child, then that child would be one year and 20 days old right now. However, if that child was given as much attention as this blog was given since 22 November 2008, then that child really would not be one year and 20 days old - that child would be well and truly mort-o at this stage. So lets all take a moment to be truly thankful that blogs are not babies.............aaaand done? OK, back to your day.

And All That Jazz...

2008-11-22T04:30:00.001-08:00

Yesterday evening, I was a jazz virgin. Last night I popped that cherry by going to see my first ever live jazz gig with two of my good PhD friends. But I didn't start off paddling in the shallow end with some up tempo ragtime. No no. I jumped straight into the diving pool and tried to doggy paddle my way through experimental, progressive Scandinavian and Japanese jazz 'music'.

I should have known what was coming my way when I was given a pair of yellow earplugs at the door. Earplugs at a gig, could they be for cereal, we thought. They were super cereal as we found out...'Some people may be disturbed by the high frequencies of tonight's show' we were told...Big deal, thought I, I've served my time as a budding badass in the moshpits of death before some of the loudest, most ear-bleed inducing bands around. What could I possibly need earplugs for in quaint old Nun's Island Theatre while listening to a bit of cool jazz of a Friday evening?!

Well. I'll never again scoff at the idea of wearing earplugs at a concert when I'm told to! The opening set by The Thing sounded to me as if chaos and random had had a baby who was being slowly run over by a New York fire truck driven by bloodthirsty penguins desperate to feast on a gaggle of noisy obnoxious punk-rock swans inside the engine of a jet plane. But after the initial disorientation of not being able to find a beat, or even some related sound waves from which I could make out the ghost of a tune, I got used to it.

Then entered the japanese jazz act. Who sat at DJ decks. And who made a noise that can only be described as something the girl from The Ring would hear before the Blair Witch put her in the corner of her forest cabin to rip out her guts - via her eardrums - through the sheer force of electro-magnetic static energy. No prizes for guessing that this was where the earplugs were supposed to come in handy. But I didn't use them. What rookie rockstar would be seen dead at a concert wearing earplugs, right?! So I suffered the sounds and was happy to find that my brain hadn't turned to frothy grey liquid dripping out of all my facial emergency exits at the interval.

In the second half of the show, the Scandinavian jazzists and the Japanese jazzist joined forces to make a quartet of jazzists. They consisted of drums (with chains and gongs on top of the drum skins), double bass (played by grabbing, banging, thumping and shaking the strings), electric guitar (played with an iron file, a U-shaped ground bolt, some nails and an ordinary pick) and saxophone (which really did sound like Tommy Tiernan's donkey-who-had-eaten-a-sheet-of-ground-plastic impression). Now, I don't know whether the scar tissue that had taken the place of my eardrums since the first half had anything to do with this, but I really actually began to enjoy the second half of the show. Not only do I think I solved the Mystery of the Missing Melody, but I'm also 99% positive I caught a slight homage to rhythm at some points too. Surprisingly, I was kind of left wanting more when the whole thing was over!!!

Afterwards, I ended up in a reggae club, which was way too easy to listen to after the evening I'd had. There was nothing challenging about that experience at all! No fight between by sense of logic and order and the other part of my brain that tells me just to let go, man, be cool! One thing's for sure though, those jazz musicians last night were more hardcore than even the most satanic metal bands, and their instruments are tougher and more determined than Rocky Balboa. Last night's jazz music sounded completely accidental at first, but it was definitely all planned out skillfully I could tell by the end!

My only fear is that normal, ordinary jazz will be too easy for me now! Killer...Ya win some, ya lose some, eh!

Resurrecting the Bar

2008-11-05T03:07:00.000-08:00

So I applied to re-sit the New York Bar Exam last Saturday. But I haven't really started studying yet. I mean, I'm watching LOADS of awesome lawyer shows these days instead, so that counts for something, right?! When I'm sitting in the Javit's Centre, with fingers frozen into the pen-holding position and a brain full of nonsense MCQ skills, I'm certain my passing grade will come from some or all of the TV I've been watching!

About 8 weeks ago, my medical student flatmate decided to make himself a large pot of pasta. Then he forgot to wash it. About 7 weeks ago, he realised the krusty kompound on the inside of the pot wasnt going to come off by itself, so he filled the pot with hot water and some washing up liquid and left it to unstick. About 5 weeks ago, I noticed that the pot hadn't moved yet, so I lifted the lid, and the goddman toxic waste inside was so putrid and full of bacteria that it almost stepped out of the pot and shook my hand. I slammed the lid down back on top of the pot, but if I'd taken the time to ask it what the hell it was, it could probably have replied to me in perfect English that it reckoned it was going to turn nuclear any day now, and once it had corroded the pot in which it was being kept prisoner, it was going to destroy the world. Or at least my kitchen counter. The people at CERN don't need to fix their large hadron collider to figure out the origins of life...I'm pretty sure there's at least 2 and a half litre of primordial soup here in Galway full of the answers to the mysteries of the universe.

After this morning's victory for Obama and change and 'Yes We Can', I was inspidered to finally take action. Although I've been mentioning to my flatmate for weeks now to get rid of it, that obviously hasn't happened and I was beginning to feel like a nag.

So I put the pot in his fridge, because...I can...

Man, how am I supposed to become a decent lawyer standing up for the rights of the penniless oppressed and the voiceless environment etc. etc. when I can't even get my own flatmate (once again, 9 months away from being a medical doctor) to get rid of a large pot of toxic waste that shouldn't even exist in the first place!...Here's hoping the next episode of Raising the Bar deals with these kinds of issues because I definitely wont find help in my year-old BarBri books for this kind problem!

Sunday Roach

2008-06-29T06:08:00.001-07:00

So I found a cockroach in my apartment last night. That was only the third cockroach I'd ever seen in my life (apart from certain small roles they got in some films and TV shows that I've had the pleasure to watch). The other two real life cockroaches I spotted were on my walk back to the apartment last night, funnily enough! Anyway, their on-screen cameos dont do them justice...they are HUGE, UGLY and FAST!

Now, I'm used to killing spiders, but cockroaches are totally different...they're like proper animals and you get the impression that you cant just step on them or bang them with a rolled up newspaper to get rid of them. So I got creative and grabbed one of the platic cups I use for flippy cup that are stacked high beside my front door, with the intention of trapping it under the glass and somehow humanely drowning it in the toilet. But the cockroach was too goddamn big to fit under the glass and it scuttled under the armchair and then just vanished.

So I quickly left the apartment to consider my options. I came up with nothing, so I returned just to find out where the cockroach was (hopefully not anywhere near my bed) and to seal off all entraces to my bedroom so that I could figure things out in the morning. But when I opened the door, in the shadows of the wall to my bedroom door I could see the dark, shiny, oval thing creeping and feeling its way around, so I ran towards it and a high speed chase followed. It wanted to go under my suitcase...but I picked the bag up, removing the cockroach's only option for cover. It then tried to go left into my bathroom but I cut it off with some nifty footwork. Then it tried to fool me by running in jagged circles around the place and keeping close to the edge of the wall.

But I just took a deep breath, prepared myself, took aim and....stomped my foot down on its scummy little backside. But no blood came out, only gloopy white goo. Gross. The spit of Satan himself was keeping this cockroach alive. Cleaning up the scene of the crime wasn't so pleasant, but at least the thing is in cockroach heaven now (which happens to be my idea of hell)and I am once again the supreme ruler (and in fact, only living thing) in my apartment shaped kingdom!

Flippy Cup Forever

2008-06-06T02:16:00.000-07:00

So it's day 12 of 10 and I have yet to sleep for more than 3 drunken hours at night. Not that I'm complaining, it's just beginning to really interfere with my ability to act sober and awake.

They say that outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. I wish I were inside a dog right now, then I would have an excuse not to read and therefore would only have to think for work. Although y'know if Ace Ventura sure was warm in that Rhino, maybe a dog might not be the wisest choice of animal to skive off work in. I've got to put some more thought into this idea. It needs some modifications, but I think one day it could go global.

Of course I'm blameless in all of this madness. The responsibility for my situation lies squarely on the shoulders of the inventors of flippy cup. I didn't think I could find a drinking game better than bollox, but really, this one's shot right to the top of my list.

Nearly Never Won the Race...He Failed the Bar Exam Instead

2008-05-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

To pass the New York Bar exam, candidates have to get 665 points out of 1000.

I got 660.

Let me rephrase: the passing percentage is 66.5%, I scored 66%.

Those 5 lousy points make me simultaneously elated and completely depressed that I was more or less on target. I was hoping that there'd be an enormous difference between my score and the passing grade just to make the whole failing experience worthwhile. And at least if you fail by loads, you can never be tormented with the thought that maybe you could have actually passed. I rang my sister to tell her the 'good' news and all she had to say to me was "Ah come on, I was up all night praying you'd fail by loads. I've exams to be studying for myself you know, that was such a waste of my time"...beep beep beep...

The impatient side of my brain is still in talks with the 'I Never Want to Do the Bar Exam Again' side of my brain, so watch this space to see if I'll be appearing at a NY test centre near YOU in this Summer...

Failing the Bar Exam and Other Such Pastimes

2008-05-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

So I found out a few hours ago that I didn't pass the New York bar exam. I sat it two months ago and have been uttering silent prayers, voodoo chants and sacrificing virginal goats on mountaintops daily ever since to increase my chances of passing. In all honesty, I think I knew I wasn't going to be successful this time around but I still hoped that the universe would intervene on my behalf and fluke me a pass just because I'm a really nice person.

This is the first exam that I've ever failed in my entire life and, you know, I thought I'd feel worse. Of course I'm a little disappointed, but I reckon everything happens for a reason and sure anyway, life goes on. I'm going to beat myself up for not knowing that little Timmy's step-Dad actually should have had to pay child support even though Timmy's ho-bag mother had flung herself back into the arms of Timmy's lame-ass birth father and was receiving money from him for Timmy's welfare too.

Originally I was comforting myself with the very on point comments of JFK Jr.,when he failed the bar exam: "it's obviously not a test of legal genius". I agree. But my sister sent me a message earlier that basically sums everything up preeety well: "Everyone who passes the bar first time are nerdy loser freaks. All the cool eccentrics have never passed the stupid exam (Dave Grohl, St. Patrick, Tom Hanks). Plus think of all the fun we had at Christmas when you should have been studying but were happily filling your new MP3 player with killer tunes and playing with the dog - you can never take back those memories. Besides, you passed the ethics exam. That's the most important thing. You're officially a very good person. I'm proud to be your sister :)"

I'm taking this fail as a sign from the universe that I should slow down a bit and not try to do so many things at once. I'm only young. I've plenty of time to do everything I need or want to get done. This is probably the reason why I failed the exam... but it better not be though...I was kinda hoping I'd be winning the lotto to balance things out.