"In vacant or in pensive mood..." I am: Bekah; 24; Law Student / Favorite Things: Carbs (so there!), Johnny Damon, Smiling at babies, Grilled cheese, Comfortable silence / Favorite Supreme Court Justice: Brennan / Favorite Wilson: Owen by an inch / Today's Special: Song: Elliott Smith, "Bled White"; Quote: "You know, there's like a butt-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bowstaff." Please love me: mmbekah@yahoo.com

 
Thanksgiving Day Race Relations

This morning I ran the 5 mile Turkey Day Race with my dad, who is in town for the holidays. (I should make it clear that my dad is an actual runner who used to race quite frequently. His PR for a 5 mile race is 27 minutes. Twenty. Seven. Minutes. That's what you might call obscenely speedy. So needless to say I didn't really run the race with him, so much as in his dust). It was actually very cold this morning and made for great race weather. I was the 91st woman, with a time of 42:38. My dad ran it in 35:42--not bad for an old dude, huh?

The best part of the race was my celebrity encounter. I was running along in mile two, not pushing it too hard, and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw Morris Bart. For those of you who aren't from around here, Morris Bart is the lawyer who holds the license to the phrase "one call that's all" for this particular area. He has no fees or expenses unless he collects for you. He got Joe Bob $500,000 for the stubbed toe he suffered while robbing your aunt Mae's house. Anyway, I saw him run up next to me and immediately said, "Oh no no...I'm a 3L in law school--I can't let you beat me!" He just laughed and we chatted for about five minutes about where I was from and what kind of law I was interested in, and then he sped up and was gone. He was actually quite nice. Good runner too.


posted by Bekah at 12:01 PM :: |

 
What I Thought About this Morning on the Drive to Campus to Drop off J's Time Sheets at the Student Employment Office Because He Forgot to Drop them off Before he Left to go home for Thanksgiving and I Am Nice

…I can’t believe I forgot where I parked my car last night after class. Legitimately forgot. I mean, I actually got to the spot where I thought my car was parked and panicked because I just knew it had been stolen and I was standing there for an entire minute before I put it together. Man. It’s not even exam time yet...Maybe I need to take some vitamins or something. Garlique perhaps. Wait, isn't that like Beano? So Echinacea then…or the Flintstones vitamins. Or did they stop selling those in the 80’s? Are the Flintstones even on TV anymore? I can’t remember ever watching the show really, but I definitely took the vitamins because I remember liking the orange ones best….Orange flavored things have a storied history with me. I liked those orange vitamins, but then I went through a period where I hated orange juice, but now I like it, even the pulp, if it's not too chunky....and I think I always liked the orange tootsie roll pops...Hey, nice blinker, ass. Thanks for the warning there. And nice W sticker, too...figures...Yeah, I am really liking this posthumous Elliott Smith album. Track 7 is good. And 3. Some really atmospheric stuff. Poignant. More so because of that article I read that said the coroner ended up ruling his cause of death inconclusive...Everyone just assumed suicide because he was a sad person but there were two stab wounds and although they say that suicide by stabbing often involves hesitation wounds, the angle of these wounds was inconclusive. Creepy…Ugh, why won’t that image of the U2 iPod commercial get out of my head…I don’t get U2 worshippers. I want all of these people to clear their minds and really think about “Vertigo.” The song is mindnumbing. Trite, boring, and loud…I don’t get it. Oh, and they were really gross on SNL the other night—Old Bono gyrating awkwardly and shaking his greasy hair—this is Rock and Roll? Still, they were probably the highlight of the show because it really is almost impossible to watch SNL now. It’s completely reduced to the “let’s take one thing that isn’t funny and do it 50 times in a row” motif...not effective...and Horatio Sanz is still not funny, only fat, and while fatness can sometimes be paired with comedic talent, it is never, ever, indicative of it on its own…oh, and to make things worse, U2 and Macintosh are forming the evilest of the evil corporate conglomerates known to man and it is terrifying…personalized U2 iPods? The world is ending…but I feel guilty because I really want an iPod anyway, just not the U2 one because that is fascist...you know, I think I should have read Madame Bovary at this point in my life, but I haven't…I wonder if it's any good…I don’t read enough. I am stupid, and getting stupider by the day. I can’t have intelligent conversations with people anymore, about Chaucer or Heidegger or Mary Kate's latest struggles and heartaches...Law school is sucking my will to live…I think Tom Wolfe looks a lot like Mr. Burns...I wonder if that's on purpose...not on purpose like Tom Wolfe is trying to look like Mr. Burns...but maybe on purpose like Matt Groening has something against Bonfire of the Vanities...another book I haven't read all the way through...and...yes, it is in fact raining now just in time for me to get out of the car...


posted by Bekah at 10:49 AM :: |

 
Apology to the Haiku Gods

First let me just say for the record that I was not really trying to compose legitimate poetry about the MPRE. I used the words "poop" and "trench foot" for God's sake. But, to appease the Haiku devotees out there, I will submit this brief statement of evaluation referring to each of Michael Dylan Welch's (what a poetry-drenched name!) 10 tips for writing Haiku:

1. I was wrong to use only the "Western convention" of 3 lines, 5-7-5 separated, 17-syllable formation. It's what I remembered from 4th grade. I think the ones I wrote then were probably better, though equally stifled, choppy, and Westernized I'm sure.

2. I didn't include a reference to the "season or time of year" in any of the "poems," so that's bad. Although they are all about MPRE time, so maybe that counts.

3. Only four out of five of my "poems" were written in the present tense. I now know that, for the sake of immediacy, haiku should always be in the present tense. Thus, the fourth one should read:

A pencil gently taps in autumn
as my brain
explodes

4. I think I might have gotten this one: I wrote about common, everyday events within the context of the MPRE. I never attempted to answer any questions about the meaning of life. But then I never raised any questions about it either. This is a failing.

5. I wrote all of these poems by channeling my personal experience. My personal experience with the MPRE. It doesn't get more viscerally personal than THAT.

6. This rule requires one to present what causes one's emotions, rather than to present the emotions themselves. Let's see...is trench foot an emotion, or the cause of an emotion? How about judges pooping? Hmm. No dice.

7. Haiku are supposed to be made up of two images together creating "harmony or contrast." Ethics and trench foot. Love and poop. Pencils and exploding brains. That's all I've got.

8. A continuation of the previous rule--one image should be in one line, and the other image in two lines (not three separate images). See above, I guess. This is getting a little deep for me right now.

9. No titles or rhyming. Check.

10. No awkward and unnatural line breaks. Yeah, I did some of that. Choppy, unnatural, even unfortunate run-ins with semicolons and question marks.

So, in conclusion, I must admit that none of the five "poems" I wrote is really a haiku. If I had to venture a guess as to which ones might pass for the most haiku-ish of the horrendously bad haiku below, I'd have to say:

Poem #1: Haiku-ish. No punctuation. Some imagery. Contrast. One of the better attempts.
Poem #2: As noted above, love and poop are two images that create an undeniable contrast in one's mind. Although not seasonal, the flow of this haiku is somewhere between distressed and disturbed--a much better effort than some of the others. What is more natural than judges pooping? Haiku-ish.
Poem #3: No imagery, no flow. Just a question that I've often asked myself split up in three lines. Not haiku-ish.
Poem #4: Would probably be somewhat haiku-ish if written in present tense to reflect the immediacy of the exploding brain in nature. See revised #4 above.
Poem #5: Also, just a random 17 syllable musing of mine. No imagery, seasonal emotion, contrast, or flow. Not haiku-ish.

Final Thought: It just occurred to me that the Law of Haiku may be too rigid in its application. As with Trademark Law, there is no real room for parody, or joking around, or being generally flippant. Any joking haiku-ish things are judged against the same strict statutory requirements as real haiku. This seems a little bit unfair, and a little bit dogmatic. Perhaps if the letter of the law will not pardon me, the Bard Review Board will come up with a remedy in equity?


posted by Bekah at 8:00 PM :: |