Every time I go in there, I swear it will be my last, but I’m hoping that yesterday really was the last. I spent no less than 20 minutes looking for a lunch box for Tyler and finally resorted to asking an associate for help (granted, I should have done that from the start). The pittance of a “selection” (there was none) was limited to one kid’s style (a Spanish language design) and those insulated lunch sack type things. Neither of which were of any interest to Tyler. To salvage the trip, I hunted down a replacement spatula and melon baller and proceeded to one of the “fast” self-check lanes. The people in front of us seeing that we only had 2 items offered to let us go first (as soon as the family in front of them finished buying 7 bags of de-icing salt and other sundries with coupons requiring store assistance). After waiting for what seemed like 10 minutes in the line for the salt people to get done, I quickly scanned the kitchen tools only to find out that the credit card reader was out of service and I would have to ask for “assistance” to check out. There was no “call for help” button on the self-check terminal and the scene in the store at that moment was nothing short of chaotic. I said fuck that, canceled the purchase, and left the items somewhere (I can’t really recall) as I quickly exited that bastion of bad chi with Tyler in tow. Cheap bastards, I won’t be darkening your door anytime soon if I can help it.
Tag: Rants
Tuned Out
Am I so tuned out to popular culture that I apparently missed the watershed event of the year this last week (I think it was last week). I’ve come across at least two grown adults who write about having watched the Britney/Kevin/Chaotic debut episode, and it’s made me wonder if I somehow missed the boat. Why wasn’t I tuned in to the wave? Why didn’t I plan an entire evening around watching the first episode of the latest “reality” show starring the incomparable Britney? Perhaps because I could care less. Her kind of self-prostitution to the public is just distasteful to me. As time goes on, it’s becoming clear that she’s less interested in being a singer, or even just a “performer”, than being the focus of attention – anyone’s attention – any kind of attention. Voyeuristic perverse attention is better than no attention at all, or so it would seem. This little screed is all I’m willing to give her.
Why I Left Law School
I am writing to you today to communicate the happening of and the reasons for a great decision in my life. I have withdrawn myself from the University of Colorado School of Law for a year, or perhaps longer, to give myself a proper perspective to judge the merits of the possibility of continuing the pursuit of “the law” as a lawyer. The quote above has been most instructive to me and my heart when I consider the matter. With every day that passed I was loosing the sense of purpose with which I began my law school career, and with every passing day I gained insight into a profession that became increasingly distasteful to me. Whatever redeemable value the law had for me when I began is all but gone at this moment. Without a valid higher purpose I cannot justify my further involvement with “work that is destructive to human happiness.” These reasons, perhaps, may not be understood fully by anyone who has not been in law school, but I do not wish such a punishment on any one of you. I ask for your faithful understanding, but not your pity. I am a happier man now that a great burden of conscience is lifted from me and I am able to set about finding my life’s true work — be it the law or something else entirely.
“The critical points are that those working in a structure have some part in creating it — that it be useful and meaningful in their lives — and that structure never become ‘just the way it is,’ but only limited vehicles for the expression of use and meaning. When they outlive either their use or their meaning, structures ought to be dissolved. The sad truth is that today, far too many have little, if any, input on the structures they work with; they experience their work as neither useful nor meaningful, but ‘just the way it is.'” [2]
“The half truths of one generation tend at times to perpetuate themselves in the law as the whole truth of another, when constant repetition brings it about that qualifications, taken once for granted, are disregarded or forgotten.” [3]
or put into layman’s terms:
“In all other professions anything in the nature of a discovery is greeted with applause or at least accorded the compliment of jealousy. Not so in the law! No lawyer ever yet arose before a bench of judges to say: ‘Your Honors, it is my privilege to lay before you an entirely new idea!’ No lawyer, even if he has an idea, ever has the temerity to disclose the fact. Should he do so he would instantly be hailed as a lunatic. Instead, he arises, coughs deprecatingly, and murmurs: ‘As your Honors are well aware, this point was definitely settled in Snooks vs. Mooks, 1 King Alfred, 639, which has been followed ever since by as long line of authorities with which you are all perfectly familiar.’
“Whereupon his opponent gets up and says: ‘My learned brother has entirely misconstrued Snooks vs. Mooks, which was overruled several hundred years ago by the dictum of Lord Chief Justice Squabble in Bellow vs. Bawl and has not the slightest application. The controlling authority here is Shadrach vs. Abednego, 91 Babylonian Reports, 273.’
“Of course it is much easier to make Snooks, Mooks, Shadrach, and Abednego work for us than to use our own brains, but we as lawyers pay the penalty by being forced to suppress, at much personal discomfort, whatever originality we may have been born with. Bernard Shaw would make a great lawyer — but no judge would listen to him. We have all labored under the curse of vicarious solemnity for a thousand years. Is it surprising that we often appear inhuman when we have lost by attrition at least half our human qualities?” [4]
And so I leave the law, for the time being, to find myself, and in myself I will find happiness, and happiness is the best thing that I can wish for all of you, and that I do.
I remain,
in your service,
Wade
[2] Laurence G. Boldt
[3] Justice Benjamin Cardozo
[4] Arthur Train
[5] George Bernard Shaw.
—
R.W.H.
“…to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” e.e.c.