retiring?

So it's been pointed out to me that I have a tendency of over simplifying things, then taking the simplified items and over complicating them.

It's an interesting notion and one that I really can't argue with. That being said, I've decided tonight that I will retire from this blog....

ahahahaha. Just kidding. You know I wouldn't really do that. Nevertheless, I do think I've been known to go a little bit away from the point of this thing (namely, to discuss my life, make funny jokes, and give my pride a nice preening).

That being said, tomorrow I shall attempt to make amends. I can't tonight. I'm too tired.

No, really. It's like an hour after my bed time.

Oh, ok. One rule, but then bedtime!

This one I re-use and borrow from the captain of the rock pile himself.

HTGBWET 27.5b: Don't put it on a pedestal.

You might ask what "it" is, and I can't really answer that one. "It" can be a million different things. The important factor, though, is that putting anything or anyone on a pedestal is really more than is deserved or even wanted. Pedestals are reserved for ideals, and there is no point is attempting to force a person into an ideal.

In the end, everyone ends up either hurt, frustrated, or generally pissed off. And sometimes with screwed up knees!

That last one is only if you have no idea what "figurative" means.

More internet quotes

Alrighty, so it's time for another edition of "stupid quotes from the internet." This marks the second edition of this feature, and I think we should all give a little salute in honor of it.

Um. Anyway, on to the ridiculousness.

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot...who calls you back when you hang up on him, will stay awake just to watch you sleep. Wait for the boy who kisses your forehead...who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats...who holds your hand in front of his friends...who thinks you're just as pretty without makeup...one who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares about you...the one who turns to his friends and says "that's her."

As far as I can tell, this is actually a really great description of of a man who honestly does love a girl.

Of course, that man is the girl's father.

....

Read it again. It makes WAY more sense than any other male.

....

Did you read it again? Good. Now, to be fair, this isn't nearly as bad as the last one. I mean, I suppose a boyfriend could probably fall under all these categories, but WAKE UP. These are all things that every single guy on earth knows. They are classic, nearly trademarked examples of things guys say to get their lady friends into bed.

Classic Guy: No honey, I really think you look beautiful, maybe even more now that you aren't wearing any make-up. You look so wonderful and natural.

Classic Girl (thinking): He loves me!

Classic Guy (thinking): SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX.


Get it? These are all obvious examples of "ways" to see if the guy you are interested in is "safe," and they are all stupid for being so obvious. Here's how you know a guy is safe.

He argues with you, because he feels comfortable around you. He gives you a high-five when you've really accomplished something. He listens to you complain about life, but either doesn't offer very much support, or tries to "fix it."

I know, these things lack any sort of romance, but what are you honestly looking for? Romance, a relationship, or sex?

Because that list has everything to do with the first and the last, and nothing to do with the second.

Edit (6/27 11:26PM): Lisa asked the following in the comments section....

Lisa: so does that mean that relationship and romance don't go together?

to which I replied....

Pretty much.

Just kidding...

You know, it's an interesting question. I think to make that assumption, you'd also have to say that sex and relationships don't go together, which is clearly wrong.

No. I would say that romance, sex, and relationships are three independent but interconnected things. This means that we can interact with any one, without necessarily meaning to interact with the other two. However, being the creatures we are, we tend to assume that, because they are all connected, interacting on one level includes interacting on one or both of the other levels.

Thus, in this example, men are using Romance to interact with Sex, while women are making the assumption that the Romance involved is meant to interact with Relationship.

One could arguably make the claim that not all men use Romance to lead to Sex and that not all women assume Romance is meant for a Relationship, but I think those cases are rare and/or limited to married or older couples.

Wait. Check that. I think men who aren't at least a little bit trying for sex using Romance are rare. I don't know where I stand on women assuming romance is a relationship builder. In fact, I think it's very likely that there are a great deal of women who are just as much horn-dogs as any men out there.

The only difference is that being "slutty" is considered immoral for women in modern America, so it is necessary to hide behind pretty ideas.

But who can say?

DONE

DONE!

That's right. No epilogue, but I don't know if I want one. Everything else, though, is DONE! My first freaking real, honest to goodness story is in the mother f'ing can!

Of course, there's still editing and all of the terrors involved in the that. Also, there's the "making sure it all makes any kind of sense," but I'm not too concerned. 9 months in, and I've finished the "writing" part.

Who's the man?

a tortious update

You know I'm back, I'm back, you know it. WHOOO!

Well, so it's monday, and it turns out I lied. I won't know until Wednesday how I did in Torts. I swear they said monday, but I may have had other things on my mind while they were talking. Like the final.

In other news, I've decided that the first play I want to produce when I start producing community theater (bet you didn't know that was an eventual plan) is Rent. And I want to play Collins. Or Mark. Or Roger, if the girl who plays Mimi is totally hot. Of course, that remains in the distant future, so I suppose we'll see what's happening before we get to that. Generally speaking, I think it'd be a great play to do after my 15 year acting hiatus.

Also, I want to apologize for getting everyone's hopes up. I did not finish my story last week. Stupid finals! However, I have high hopes for this week. Cross your fingers.

Torts Final

If any of you have come to know my blogging habits by now, you should have a pretty working idea that when I say I'm not going to blog anymore, I'm almost certainly going to blog twice as much.

To that effect, hiya! Today I got to sleep in, because it's stop-day in my little summer school world, which means I didn't wake up until 8:30am!!! That's like 2 hours after I normally wake up. What a wonderful world this is.

Today I intend to watch the US destroy Ghana, Italy beat Czech Republic, and... um... flowers bloom?

OK. You got me. I don't have a third thing to watch. After watching US, I'm probably going to be studying all day long and/or until my eyes begin to bleed. Then, when I've wiped the blood away, I'm going to go back to studying.

See, yesterday I took my first law school final, but I wouldn't call it a REAL law school final. I'm not sure how many other places have this, but at KU we have a class called Lawyering, in which we first get introduced to the library, Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, Bluebooking (weird way to say writing citations), memo and brief writing, etc.

Yesterday I had my final in that class, but, based upon the material alone, it obviously wasn't a real law school final. For one thing, there was no substantive material. We walked around law, rather than talking about it. For another, I never saw the sentences, "Bill hit Jenny with a bat by accident. What legal recourses does Jenny have?" So, I mean, obviously this isn't real law.

Which means even though I felt yesterday's final went really well, I'm still in a great position to be freaking out about tomorrow's final.

Oh, and here is a site that I linked to once before, but will link to again in my one week series "How to get babes without even trying: Finals Edition" (HTGBWETFE) Obsessive Law Student.

If anyone can make a good anagram of that, I'll give them like all of my earnings for this month from the ads at the top of this page.

a brief interlude

As a mild concession to all of my many millions of readers both national and international, I've decided to let you know that I may or may not post much this week. I have a final tomorrow and a final of friday. As such, i'm only willing to give out a big "we'll see."

In the mean time, why not watch a few strong bad emails?

Edit (6/21 3:12PM): Ah, Kay. We all care, 'cause we're carebears! C'mon carebears. Stare!

You'r an old man, Nathan Brown

First, before I get into it, Be With You by Mr. Big is a pretty good song.

In other news, I'm not sure when it happened, but I seem to have turned into an old man. Instead of going out tonight, I decided to go home and go to sleep, because I have to wake up at 6:30, like normal, tomorrow. Seriously, how much of a wuss am I? Honestly, this isn't the first time I've turned down going out this summer, either. I've also skipped 3 of the 4 get together my fellow law students have organized and didn't hang around long at the one I did attend.

Honestly, I'm not doing great on the social front. I don't get how other people are finding it so easy, either. Waking up at 6:30 sucks. Maybe it's easier if you actually live in lawrence.

Beyond that, not much is happening. I haven't worked on my story since I last wrote. Whenever it felt like a good time, I was too tired to actually do anything. Maybe this weekend.

Oliver!

NEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUVVVVVVVVVVIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!

Edit: BTW, I know it's hard to believe, but I'm a big supporter of the German team. Things were tense. They kept almost scoring. I kept almost leaping out of my chair. When the ball hit the cross bar twice in two seconds, I actually fell off the couch.

And then.... Neuville with the goal! At that point, I was resigned to a zero point game. I was about to give the Polish goaltender his due.

Whew. Seriously, awesome.

GPH

Germany 0 : Poland 0. Halfway. AWESOME game. Seriously. It's ten til 3. Watch the second half. If it's anything like the first, you'll be rooted to your seat.

close

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this recently, but my story is SO SO SO close to being DONE! I am incredibly excited. I wrote another 4 or 5 pages today, which puts me possibly within 10!

Um. Yeah, that's about it. School's going well, though this is a remarkably busy week for me.

Hearts in Atlantis (A time, a place, a thing)

So I just finished reading Kyle/That Other Guy's most recent post, and I highly recommend it for any of you out there who wonder why any American would be interested in the World Cup, or, as they say in Germany, die Weltmeisterschaft. Don't worry, it isn't a big, long article about how soccer is awesome. It's more of a thoughtful note on the startling way an event and a time can have a profound effect upon our lives.

It may have been coincidental that I enjoyed an unrelated but equally as significant experience in my life that summer, but who can say? What I'm interested in is your stories. I want to hear about 'that time' when you suddenly realized that nothing would be the same. Perhaps it was the moment you realized you were an adult now. Perhaps it was the summer you and a group of friends developed an amazing fascination with the card game Hearts (not my favorite stephen king book).

Whatever it is, my guess is that it should be linked with something. Kyle's time was linked with Friedel (the awesome bald goalkeeper whose matchup w/ Oli Kahn was a thing of beauty). My time is irrevocably linked with a summer in the mountains of bavaria.

Anyone? (BTW, this journey MUST have happened at least a year ago. Otherwise, it's too close and cannot yet be counted yet)

Nerding it out: Old School

Wow, I just re-read my most recent post, and I've got to say, "Holy cowzinski, batman, welcome to trite-sville!"

So today I'm going to talk about something totally different. That's right, folks, it's time for another episode of HTGBWET!

I would like to talk to you about the "nerd-cool" look. This is a tricky thing to pull off, when attempting to get a babe. For example, glasses/no glasses; tattered jeans/no tattered jeans; death metal t-shirt/no death metal t-shirt. In reality, the nerd-cool look is often a matter of opinion, taste, and personality. However, I do have a few simple pointers that should get you a long way.

First: hair gel. Yes, it's true that there are many looks out there that don't require the hair gel, and even when you are doing the nerd thing, if you are a red head, hair gel is totally unnecessary, but for the rest of us, if your goal is - first and foremost - babes, then you're gonna need the jelly.

What you do w/ you hair after you gel it up is your decision. Try not to look too much like a douche, but otherwise go wild. I personally enjoy the hair combed forward and then slightly up look, but I'm definitely conservative in this respect.

Second: glasses w/ big, black rims. Get them. If you can see 20/20, screw off.

Third: Facial hair. Having recently departed from the beard/goatee thing, I can say that people going for the official nerd look should not have one of these. Stubble is acceptable, anything else puts you into another category (e.g. mountain man).

Fourth: Be ridiculously skinny. Sadly, part of being a hip nerd in the modern era is being so skinny that you can't possible do what all true nerds do: specifically, eat pizza and doritos all the time while playing on your computer. It isn't fair, but it's the nature of the world.

Luckily, there are tried and true methods to go from fat to gnat in a VERY brief amount of time. I recommend cracking yourself out, or going on a speed binge and vacuuming your living room for a week while the refrigerator tries to eat you.

Choose life!




Finally, fifth: Canvas shoes. Converse. Not high tops. Seriously. Guaranteed gold.

Alternately, for all you true nerds out there, you could just "bee" yourself, but, seriously, when was the last time anyone actually did that?


Edit (12:31pm 6/12): Kyle is correct. Pasty, pale skin is an essential.

What I learned

So law school starting to become a little more real. I got my first grade yesterday, though it didn't mean much in the short or long run. It was, more than anything, a way to say, "Hey! Pay attention!"

I ask myself, what have I learned so far in law school? I learned that America is not a civil law institution. I learned that Battery and Assault are not the same thing. I learned that for every action there is an exception and for every non-exception, there is still an exception.

I learned that slipping on a banana peel is a startlingly complex concept and that legally stealing land is not uncommon.

Perhaps the most important first issue I've learned, though, is that a grade in law school is completely different than a grade anywhere else. Here, everything is curved. No one cares how well you do. They only care how well you do compared to the rest of the class. And people wonder why law schools are so competitive!

There is very little else to say today. In other news, after taking a long hiatus, I've returned to my story. As far as I can tell, I only have 3 sections left. This means I likely only have about 15 pages left to right. That's pretty exciting.

facial hair

In other news I shaved off my facial hair yesterday. Do you see how sexy I have become? Do you see!

more politics from ohio

A word of warning. After being taken to task for stating partisan information and opinion and not being openminded to both sides of an issue, I feel it is necessary to say that the following political post (along with all future political posts) will likely be partisan in nature. I may present the other side at times, but I wouldn't automatically expect it. I, like pretty much everyone out there, am obviously espousing some position.

So anyway, I recommend everyone read the article whose link Joel posted. It's a pretty good, highly informative article. The only issue I take with it is when it gets into exit polling. It suggests that people who point to exit polling as a clear sign that Ohio was screwed up are wrong, because most people thing exit polls are accurate to within tenths of a percent.

Luckily, I'm not most people. Traditionally, exit polls are accurate to within 3 or 4 points. In theory, this means that the nation could have definitely gone either way (as it clearly did) in the popular vote, because the exit polls suggested that Kerry would only win by 3 points, which puts the US in the too close to call range. However, Kerry was supposed to win Ohio by 6 points. This means he should have won by somewhere between 10 points and 2 points, but he should have definitely won.

The obvious reason this guy thinks it's wrong to point to exit polling as a sign of inaccuracy is because he's looking at the national vote. In the article, the author argues that becoming president by winning Ohio would have been immoral for Kerry to do, just as it was immoral for Bush to become president by winning Florida in 2000.

Kerry clearly should have won Ohio according to exit polls, even taking into account statistical error in polling. But he should only have clearly won the US according to exit polls, if statistical error did not exist. Only people who think exit polls are accurate to within tenths of a percentage would think Kerry should have won the US.

In this way, I guess, the author exposes his own partisan opinion. Specifically, that he does not approve of the electoral college.

Anyway, the rest of the article reads very well and even adds some fun points that I didn't know. For example, our favorite nefarious character, Mr. Blackwell, attempted to make it a rule that any voter registration that was not on 80 weight paper would not be counted. Also, people couldn't mail in their registrations.

He eventually rescinded that first one, because his own office handed out registration forms that were thinner than 80 weight and because such a huge stink was raised about it. The other was debatably illegal, and I'm suddenly blanking on how that was resolved.

However, the story doesn't end there. Blackwell remains a major player in Ohio and the midterms are just around the corner. Plus, in ohio the midterms are a time of electing the governor, a position Mr. Blackwell is running for.

Consider the following paragraphs from an editorial in today's NY Times. (free registration required)

Florida's Legislature, like Ohio's, is controlled by Republicans. Throughout American history both parties have shown a willingness to try to use election law to get results they might otherwise not win at the polls. But right now it is clearly the Republicans who believe they have an interest in keeping the voter base small. Mr. Blackwell and other politicians who insist on making it harder to vote never say, of course, that they are worried that get-out-the-vote drives will bring too many poor and minority voters into the system. They say that they want to reduce fraud. However, there is virtually no evidence that registration drives are leading to fraud at the polls.

But there is one clear way that Ohio's election system is corrupt. Decisions about who can vote are being made by a candidate for governor. Mr. Blackwell should hand over responsibility for elections to a decision maker whose only loyalty is to the voters and the law.

You know, this Blackwell fellow may be very good at skirting the edges of illegal, but I can't say that that is a particularly noble trait in a guy running for governor.

In other news, someone besides me was chastised for being boring on this blog! yahoo!

My Title

Recently, my use of the phrase "babe" has come under attack for overt chauvenism. Also, the definition of "people" has recently been brought up, which leads me to an important topic.

What exactly do I mean by my title, "How to get babes without even trying"?

Obviously, the greatest word in contention is the word "babes," and, as such, I feel the need to address the definition of this word.

When I use the term "babes," I may well be using it as a gender neutral term. It is important to note that both men and women can be babes. Consider a recent conversation at law school.

Girl #1: Damn, girl! Who is that fine mo-fo over there?
Girl #2: What? You mean that hotty-bo-botty extra-large boy toy wearing the white, button down shirt featuring a nautical theme?
Girl #1: Hells yes.
Girl #2: Hun, he is out of your league. That babe is none other than your fellow classmate, Nathan from Wichita!
Girl #1: Shit!

Luckily, I happened to overhear this conversation play out among two immensely beautiful women that may only have existed in my head. The point remains, though. Men can just as easily be people as women.

That's right, ladies. I am human. I know: hard to believe, but it's true.

The second phrase in contention is "without even trying." Many (up to as many as 2) of you have pointed out, "But Nathan! Almost every single one of your tips requires a great deal of trying! How can you maintain such a title while operating under such a lie!"

To these people I say, "Stop using exclamation marks while you talk! Same with people who use the letter 'O' without an 'H' at the end. Everyone needs to just calm down."

The fact of the matter is that you are misunderstanding the phrase. You assume that "even" is an adverb proceeding the participle of "trying." You could not be more wrong.

"Trying" is, in fact, a GERUND! That's right. In this case I'm using trying as a noun! Which means that "even" can be an adjective. Which in turn means that I can use the following definition from dictionary.com

trying: 2c: Placid; calm: an even temperament.

Yes! You read that correctly. My blog is all about getting babes without placid trying. In other words, amazingly, my blog is all about getting babes wildly and aggressively.

So rejoice, my friends, for I have not been caught in a grammatical faux pas. I remain steadfast and true, courtesy of our favorite dictionary buddies.

Holla'!

votes, polls, and a new HTGBWET

So I was reading the rolling stone tonight when I came across this article. Read it and keep an eye out for Kenneth Blackwell of Ohio. His actions might be the single greatest travesty of any American in the modern millenium. Sure, Bush lied to put us in a war with a nation that had zero relation to Sept 11, but he, himself, has never gone out of his way to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Americans so that a state might be delivered to one party over another.

Vocab lesson of the day:

Disenfranchise: to deprive of voting rights.

That's right. In america there are very few holy grails. We like money. We like power. And we like the power to vote. Life is pretty good too.

A great deal of evidence exists to suggest that Mr. Blackwell may have openly stolen the vote from a minimum of 30,000 people in one day. That's nearly the population of Hutchinson. And those are only the votes that were openly disenfranchised in one fell swoop. We should not forget fear tactics employeed, disqualifications due to home address foul-ups, outright ballot stuffing, and some pretty wild other factors that managed to put Ohio (along w/ New Mexico and other states) on the map with such outstanding nations as the Republic of Georgia, where Eduard Shevardnadze was forced to step down due to vote tampering.

But don't take my word for it. Read the article, then try your hardest not to get depressed. This is not something we should get depressed about. This is something that should piss us off. And if you don't want to read the article, at least read this pleasant excerpt.

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.''

Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.

And, on a lighter note, HTGBWET rule #24: Babes are people too. That's it. Just remember that. As long as you remember that, you are the path to enlightenment.