hello again all my friends and classmates.
as if you don't have enough to worry about as you study for exams, i need to inform you about one other legal concept you need to know.
for those of you in torts, you've surely learned a thing or two about IIED and NIED. to those two i'd like to add a third category which i've discovered recently: SIED (self-infliction of emotional distress).
SIED is a particularly insidious breed of auto-tortious conduct. here's how i know that i've become a victim:
there's something wrong with me now where i am only able to sleep for an hour or two at a time. i get into bed, completely exhausted after hours of reading, and all i can think about are exams. i basically lay there and fret, tossing and turning and gnashing my teeth. when i do sleep, i dream of the exams.
these dreams are extremely messed up, disturbing and disconcerting.
one night i dreamed that i was taking my exam in a bed, and trying to use the headboard as a desk. it was a very awkward way to write. what made it really fucked up was that the entire headboard was filled with this image of pitler's face, and it had this hugely wicked and clownish smile, that sort of mocked me as i tried to write at an impossible angle on the headboard. the mouth then started sort of drooling on my exam paper as it laughed at me, and my pen started tracing these swishy, spitty ink lines as it moved through the drool.
i finally woke up feeling horrible. i know that this is weird, but the one i had last night was ten times worse.
i won't go into all of the grisly details, but in a nutshell, i was sitting at my usual spot in sebok's classroom, frantically typing my exam. all around me, you guys were doing the same thing. it was very realistic because the correct people were sitting in the correct places in my dream. i distinctly remember looking around at a few people's exams... specifically, i remember looking at the exam of that tall, smart guy who looks sort of like john kerry, and seeing how he had already written seven or eight pages, while i was still on my first.
ok, so far, normal anxiety dream, right? not quite.
i felt this like really strong breeze from the windows behind me, and suddenly this incredible snowstrom started blowing around the classroom. i clearly remember using my fingers to squeegee off my laptop screen.
then, i was really shivering uncontrollably, to the point where i couldn't even type, and i realized that i was freezing not just because of the snowstorm, but because i was completely naked. this terrified me, but still, the shock of finding myself naked was fleeting when i realized that i was not even sitting on my chair, but was instead somehow
sitting on a toilet in the middle of the room, and even worse, my bowels were very much in motion.
so there i was, freezing buck naked taking a dump amidst an indoor snowstorm, while all around me you guys typed away confidently.
paging doctor freud!
so anyway, these are my SIED symptoms. if any of you are experiencing something similar, please do share.
***
well, i've got a lot of stuff to share with you guys, so i'm going to switch to bullet-point mode to help to move this thing along.
- what's this i hear that we can get out of robyn's class next semester by taking some sort of international research class? in fact, i've heard about this about eight times this week. anyway, i'm not going anywhere. i'm staying with professor schneider come hell or high water.
- we had our last real class with professor pitler today (aside from friday's review session). i have to admit that the classes have been really interesting lately. while i didn't learn a ton while i was in his class, i learned a lot outside of it, so i guess that's not too shabby. really all i can say about pitler is that he's not the teacher of the year, but he's a super nice guy with a great, sometimes acerbic sense of humor. overall, i'm glad that i got to ride along on the P-funk railroad during my first semester of law school. here's to you, professor pitler... thanks for the memories.
- we also had our last class with professor hunter today, although she didn't teach it. (as a side note, i have to say to the members of section 8: you all are some smart mofo's. i thought that section 9 was where it was at, but you guys pretty much answered every question that woman asked... rock on, section 8!) i'm really going to miss professor hunter... those lemon wedges in her icewater, her awesome suits, the way she always finished the syllabus each week, and most of all, her dry-as-toast sense of humor. she was always good for one or two good one-liners each week. on tuesday, it was when she referred to Owen Fiss' "Against Settlement" as "one of the great classics of civil procedure literature which, believe it or not, is not an oxymoron." so it is with a heavy heart that i bid goodbye to professor hunter, a woman who truly taught us well.
- in other news... and on a lighter note... your old buddy menlove has successfully gotten his weaselly little hands on a copy of our class schedule for next semester. how did menlove do this, you may ask? menlove accomplished this feat by combining his skills of breaking and entering, computer hacking, bribery, stealth, cunnilingus, as well as various other forms of subterfuge. will menlove share this information with his eager readers, you may ask? yes he will, but he left the info at school, so tune in tomorrow to get our schedule. why does menlove keep referring to himself in the third person, you may ask? because he is a sociopathic megalomaniac whose id is completely divorced from his ego.
- just one last bullet point. fyi, the cd-rom containing the "module" for tomorrow's torts class does not contain any video games, just sixty pages of pretty dense reading.
i'm all out of bullets, and just about done with tonight's entry, except that i want to respond to some of the great comments left after my "careena collins" entry...
(1) i'm delighted (and insulted, but mostly delighted) as i continue to discover that a good deal of my readers are stoned when they post. all i can say is, share the wealth, baby! or in other words, "puff puff give, puff puff give, you're fucking up the rotation"... or in other words, "scuse me brotha, what we call drugs at the 74th street baptist chuch... we call it sinny siiiiiin sin. Well round heah... between normandy and weston, we call this heah a lil twenny twen twen...n*gga!"
enough of that foolishness... (i'm sure most of you have no idea what i'm talking about, so i'll proceed...)
(2) someone needs to email theobald, and get the poor guy off already.
(3) upon further review, i realized that demian posted his feedback with his real name. takes some balls to do that, even though it's not really a big deal.
(4)(a) on the romance tip, in response to that column, one anonymous reader said: "Menlove, have you made a move on your lady friend or are you replacing her with porn?" well, i haven't really made a move, but things are starting to cook a little bit between me and my fabulous classmate, whom for the sake of anonymity i'll be referring to as "princess strawberry margarita."
so i was actually talking with this lovely creature between classes earlier this week, and tried to send out some feelers to see if she'd be amenable to the idea of getting some menlovin'. i'm not exactly the smoothest character when it comes to the ladies, but what i said was something along the lines of "so what do you like to do in the three hours you're not studying each week?" it came out all cheesy like a horrible one-liner, but i was trying to come off as interested without being too obvious. so princess strawberry margarita paused for a beat as if she was measuring her words, and said to me (i'm pretty sure she said this with the tiniest hint of a come-hither smile, unless i'm totally deluding myself), "well, i pretty much just hang out or try to explore the city. i don't know too many people, so i'm usually up for whatever." (emphasis obviously added!)
so it think that this was a pretty good sign... or maybe it's totally not. i could very well just be setting myself up for a huge letdown, reading signals that aren't even being broadcast. for all i know, she's got a boyfriend. or a girlfriend. i'm basically clueless about women. i find them to be slightly less comprehensible than the con law text book.
if any of the ladies in the class can give help me to decipher these lines, it would help me out a ton.
(i should also note that i brought up menlovian in conversation once with princess strawberry margarita, and she told me that she "hadn't read it in months"... so as strange as this sounds, i think that this is a safe place to talk about her!!!)
(4)(b) the anonymous poster went on to say, "I have heard that inter-section hooking up is frowned upon, but there are two guys in my section who are the primary reasons I still show up to class. Do you have any advice?"
well yes, i do. and i must say that i like this "dear abby" vibe all of a sudden.
who exactly is doing all of this frowning on (i assume you meant "intra")-section dating? i don't see what the problem is.
"but we're scared, menlove! what if she says no! what if he rejects me and the whole class finds out? what if we hook up and even the professors find out? how can i date someone is see constantly in every class? it just won't work, menlove! waaah waaah waaaah!!!"
i don't want to hear that noise. that's all bullshit.
think about it. how could you NOT try to make something happen? when else in your life will you be surrounded by so many smart, successful, driven, and attractive people? most of us actually are single, and if you don't get in there and mix it up a little bit, you'd better bet your ass that someone else will.
there's no place for all of those worries. the embarassment of rejection is so temporary, so fleeting, that it is ultimately meaningless compared to a lifetime of wondering, "what if i'd only had the balls to ask him / her out?"
just think how quickly this semester has blown by. most of these people won't be in your classes next year anyway. and after you graduate, you'll never see the majority of them again.
so again, i say that i don't see what the problem is. as long as you comport yourself like an adult, are honest and open, do nothing to sully your reputation, and try not to cause any IIED / NIED, there won't be a bit of shame in your game.
therefore, my advice to anonymous is that you should ask out one of the two hotties in your section a.s.a.p. don't wait another day. i know that this is the worst possible time to do it, with all the pressure of exams or whatever, but - i'm going to get a bit zen on your ass here - the worst time is always the best time.
shit, one of them is probably theobald, so you'll undoubtedly be cruising careena-style in no time at all.
so let's all pitch some woo. get out there, and see what happens. the worst case scenario is that you get rejected, and at least you can focus your attention on more deserving parties. and the best case is that you'll make a new friend, or maybe get your rocks off, or maybe even get married and live happily ever after.
the end.
-menlove
