Cursed With Ambition

Titles of Discarded Post Ideas of the Last 5 Minutes

1. The Best One Liners of Brady Anders ("One Shot, One Kill" "Fat Jake" "Cro Mag Rendered Her Useless")
2. The Theme Songs of 1L, 2L and 3L
3. My Legal Practice Area Decision
4. Mary Elizondo, Will You Marry Me? (No, seriously. Will you?)
5. I Want to be Able to Run Sub-Five Minute Miles Again
6. The Irreversible Effects of Hard Living Realized
7. Fuck Nicotine
8. Damn My Brother's Kid is Cute
9. My Ex-Girlfriends (With a short description of each one and of the relationship and why it ended.)
10. Mermaids!!

Things I Think Are Funny That Probably Make Me Weird

The phrase, "kicked my own ass." As in "I could kick my own ass at tic-tac-toe." - taken from today's Buffalo Wings & Vodka. Or, "Why did I get so wasted in front of the hot neighbor?! I could kick my own ass!!"

Similarly, "Fuck me!" Like, "Fuck me for not starting to write this paper sooner."

I will always think the word "turd" or "terd" is funny. It seems a little funnier when spelled with an 'e'. Similarly "terd rustler." (Imagine a cattle rustler except that instead of riding horses and shouting around cows they're doing it around turds.)

One time when I was in 5th or 6th grade we were at softball practice when someone hit a high fly ball, straight up over the infield. This one kid, his name was Larry Royer (little kids named Larry are kind of funny to begin with), got under the ball to catch it. When the ball came down it completely missed his open glove and hit him right in the nose. His nose immediately started gushing blood. Some of the other kids (not me) half carried him to a bench and laid him on it and I was looking over the crowd of kids at Larry, whose face was covered in blood and he was moaning. I started laughing. I couldn't help it. I don't know what was funny about it. Every time I think about it I start laughing. I am laughing right now. Sidenote: I almost got the shit beat out of me for this because Larry's friends were pissed off that I was laughing. Plus too, the coach of the team was this humongous dike-ish nun named Sister Serena (no shit) and if looks could kill I'd be dead after she looked at me when she noticed me laughing about the fact that Larry's face looked like it had exploded.

When someone says, "Looked me in my eye," or, "hit him in his eye." That shit cracks me up. I would say, "Looked me in THE eye," or, "hit him in THE eye." You can take for granted that if a dude got looked or hit in an eye, that eye would be his own.

The summer after I graduated from high school I worked for Brown and Root Construction at a Union Carbide plant as a welder's helper. I could say a lot about that job, but I've got to relay just this one story. One day I had to drill like a million fucking holes in a huge piece of diamond plate. Diamond plate is a 1/4" steel plate and is called diamond plate because it has raised areas on it for traction that look like diamonds. You've probably seen it on truck tool boxes. Anyway, I was using this drill that had an electromagnet on it to hold it in place while you put pressure on the drill bit. The thing was like a portable drill press and probably weighed about fifty pounds or so. While I drilled I had to apply this cutting oil, which lubed the bit and kept it from getting too hot or dulling too quickly. Well, when the cutting oil hit the hot bit it would burn or steam and the smoke would rise. I breathed in a shit load of that smoke or steam over the course of several hours (it was seriously like a million holes). After about an hour of this shit I started giggling for no reason. I do that every now and then anyway (usually when I think of the phrase "fuck me" or the word "terd"), so I didn't think it was all that weird. But then I started giggling a lot more. I would start the drill, add the oil, breathe the smoke, giggle like a motherfucker. Nobody in the shop seemed to notice, but I'm sure if they did they would have thought I was crazy. I didn't realize until a couple of years later that I was actually getting high from the fumes of the cutting oil. Now when I think of that story I laugh. Kind of a two-for-one. I cringe to think how many brain cells I lost that day.

One time my dad said, "Fuck the cripples!" I laugh about that a lot. He might've been bitching about the number of handicap spots in a parking lot, but it doesn't really matter.

(It seems like I have a lot more of these but they happen spontaneously and I can't pool them together all at once, which is probably a good thing. I might choke if I thought about all of them at once.)

March Madness Retrospective

Both of the bracket pools I was in are over. Nobody in either one has any picks remaining in the semis or finals. In one of the pools not a single person in eight had a single correct team in the Final Four, which either says that we just don't keep up with NCAA basketball enough, we're dumb, we have lives enriched by other things like jobs and school or this year's tournament was all fucked up.

No number one seeds made it to the Final Four. I don't know when the last time that happened and I'm too lazy to look it up, but it seems exceedingly rare. So it's Florida, LSU, UCLA and George Mason.

George Fucking Mason.

In one of my brackets I had UConn, Duke, BC and Memphis and in the other I had UConn, Duke, BC and UCLA. The only one I got right was UCLA. I finished sixth out of eight in one bracket and by virtue of my UCLA pick I finished third out of twelve in the other and even won fourteen bucks. So now I've got fourteen dollars in a PayPal account that I've got to remember to use.

Some further thoughts about this year's tournament: I regret not sticking by my guns and taking A&M over Syracuse, I wish I wouldn't have put so much stock in Iowa, I should have picked my alma mater (Texas) to go all the way so that I could root for them to win it all without worrying about whether or not it fucked up my brackets, I don't feel bad at all about not picking Bradley even though they prevented me from having a perfect Oakland regional on one of my brackets, if I had done my homework or watched them play in their conference championship game I would have picked Wichita State to have at least beaten Seton Hall if not Tennessee too, the D.C. bracket was all fucked up, I should have picked Oklahoma to lose in the first round just because, I don't regret picking BC to go to the Final Four, I will do this again next year.

So thanks to M. Keating and Tom or Very Metal (whoever is responsible) for inviting me to play - I enjoyed it. (And I won fourteen dollars!!)

If you'll excuse me I'll be catching up on all of the reading I missed while poring over my brackets and watching games I normally wouldn't give a shit about.

Ojo's Prayer

Lord, help me to seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who have found it.

Inverse Bracketology

This is the first year that I've participated in any NCAA Tournament bracket contests.  I entered two of them; one for money, the other for bragging rights.  I got excited about it and actually put in a couple of hours of research into my selections.  So, how am I doing so far?  Let's just say that I've got a great nillo bracket.

I left Houston for POC last Wednesday evening and was without internet or television until Sunday night.  We did go to The Spot (see last post) to watch the Texas-Penn game, which was entirely too close, and we got updates on the tournament during the broadcast.  Earlier in the day, my cousin's girlfriend called every couple of hours with updates.  I groaned louder and louder with each upset that I'd almost picked.  Especially stinging was the A&M-Syracuse tilt where my initial instinct was to go with A&M.  After enduring some shit-talking from Tom about my feelings about that game I pussed out and went with the safe pick in Syracuse.  Then Iowa loses to Northwest State!  I was riding Iowa to the Elite 8.  Every time George Mason won I cried out.  I should have seen those guys coming. 

Anyway, in the money pool I'm currently in fifth place out of twelve.  Not too bad.  In the other one I'm dead last, eighth of eight.  My "potential points" in both brackets ranks high though, so there's still hope.  If BC goes to the Final Four I think I have a shot.

The Bars of Port O' Connor, TX

Madden's - In terms of sheer crowd size it is the town's most popular bar by a longshot. It's your typical tourist town dive bar. Tourist dive bars are cheesy and dirty and Madden's is certainly no exception. The only explanation for why this bar is so popular is that 1) It's the closest to the water and the front beach, and 2) people go there out of habit and lack of other options. If there are hot college-age girls out in POC they can be found at Madden's. This creates a food chain of sorts and partially explains the crowd. There are no redeeming qualities to the building itself - just a plain rectangular box. The interior was improved about three years ago but it's still nothing to write home about. There's a couple of pool tables at one end and a shuffleboard table (albeit a bad one) on the other end, which actually scores major points for the bar in my book. The longnecks are usually cold and the Harper family who runs the joint finds a way to bring in decent live music on a weekly basis. The biggest crappy thing about Madden's is that they were the only game in town for so long that they got cocky and routinely have a cover charge of $5-10 or more, which is utterly ridiculous if you've ever seen the place.

Josie's Cantina - The newest of the POC night spots, Josie's Cantina is attached to Josie's Mexican restaurant. Josie's (the restaurant) is legendary for it's wonderful grease-dripping-off Tex Mex and for the best hangover cure breakfast tacos in the world. The Cantina is really small; it's main drawback. But Eloisa and the rest of the Covarrubias clan have decent decorating sense so the interior is at least interesting and certainly not what you'd expect of a POC dive. Hanging from the ceiling is an old pirogue, purportedly Karankawan, that some family member found in the backwater years ago. The place is usually loud, crowded and smoky but still more sophisticated than any of the other options. The annual Homemade Bikini Contest is behind only the Fourth of July and Poco Bueno in terms of huge events in POC. If you happen to see Anna Hecox there next year, tell her I want to marry her.

The Spot - Bar and grill POC style. Large outdoor cabana with washer pits, overhanging palm trees and ocean themed trim all add to the laid back atmosphere that is very conducive to serious beer drinking. The restaurant is good and has a full menu of seafood, steaks, sandwiches and pizza. It's easy to see that the bar area is where the owner's heart is though. Of course, I know the bar owner because he graduated from high school with my dad so The Spot gets bonus points for that. Most nights you can find Clifford in the bar area sipping on bottled beer at the pace he's taken years to perfect. The newly expanded bar area boasts a large TV and more tables, which makes The Spot the best place in town to watch a game. There's one pool table and it's constantly occupied. (I once saw a fight break out near the pool table where the tactics of one of the combatants was to fiercely pull the beard of the other. It remains one of the funniest things I have ever seen.)

Bob's - Sometimes referred to as the "Menopause Palace" because it's where the older crowd hangs out. Locals who don't like mixing with tourists call Bob's home so unless you're from there (or are related to everyone who is) the people can seem unfriendly. Oil rig workers, crew boat captains, Coasties and bait stand workers can all be found tossing back a few at Bob's. They've got a couple of pool tables and a shuffle board table that is slightly better than the one at Madden's. If you're not from POC you WILL get some strange looks when you walk in.

April Bourg's Trailer - THE after hours spot in POC, which is one o'clock on Friday and midnight Saturday instead of the normal two o'clock (something to do with the types of liquor licenses?) April's isn't really a bar but you wouldn't know it sometimes. Now that April is with child I suspect that the Trailer may have seen its last wild night.

Neil Shiffbauer's House - POC's most legendary partier. He's been "that guy" to several generations of POC revelers. Joe's liver's got nothin' on Neil's. This isn't really a bar either but if the regular bars are shut down, April's isn't happening and you can't find anybody anywhere chances are there is a party going on at Neil's.

The Hurricane Junction - On again/off again joint that has a legendary status. In the 70's it was a legitimate end of the line biker bar. It's been hard to tell over the past ten years whether the place is open or not; you just have to drive by to see if the door is open. Convenient to The Fishing Center and Alligator Head, the location is good as is the atmosphere, which I would call "authentic Texas coast dive bar." The Junction pulls it off better than Madden's and would be my favorite bar of them all if it was just open consistently.

Pat's Alley - Okay, Pat's Alley hasn't been open in decades but it was owned by my grandfather so it requires mentioning. Seriously, this place was right on the Intercoastal Waterway and hosted frequent fish fries and shrimp boils. The only thing I've seen of Pat's alley is a matchbook and some barstools, but I imagine it was awesome.

Mermaids - Saving the best for last. Mermaids isn't open yet but I can assure you it will become not only everyone's favorite bar in POC but everyone's favorite bar anywhere. Elevated for a spectacular view of Matagorda and Espiritu Santo bays, the wood paneling and brass make you forget you're not on an eighteeth century frigate. Look around though and you'll see a brand new tournament quality shuffleboard table, top quality steel tip darts equipment, pool tables, the best fresh seafood you can find and the friendliest bartenders on the Texas coast make this place awesome beyond words. And I haven't even described the dancers or the aquarium. Two words: Topless Bitches. You simply must see to believe.

Withdrawal

So just got back from the grocery store. Needed a few staples, breakfast food. At the Kroger I go to there's a little stand set up by the deli where this Japanese couple makes sushi to go. I've been in the habit of picking some up for dinner fairly often. It's a fairly healthy option, not too expensive and I've developed a taste for it. Plus too, it makes me feel sophisticated when I eat it. Anyway, tonight when I got there the sushi stand was unmanned. They keep the day's prepared trays in the cooler in front of the stand so I picked out what I wanted. Normally there are a couple of cannisters next to the cooler with chopsticks in them but tonight the cannisters were empty. This was later than I usually go so I figured the people who make the sushi just packed up the chopsticks and put them in a cabinet behind the cooler for the night. I looked around for a minute or so to make sure I just wasn't missing the chopsticks before I noticed a woman intently stocking the bread shelves nearby. She had a Kroger uniform on. I stepped toward her and said, "Excuse me. Do you know if y'all have any more chopsticks?" She replied, "Oh, the sushi stand closes at 9." "Oh," I said, "I didn't know that. They normally keep chopsticks out here. Do you know if they have any more?" She says, "The people who work the sushi stand are gone for the night. That's like a totally separate thing." Hmmm, I thought. If it's so separate then why the fuck are there Kroger price tags on the shit? I sized this woman up. She was birdlike - tall and awkward. She had a beak for a nose and an overbite. I decided to let it go while I began searching again all around the sushi stand for chopsticks. I even looked on the ground and in nooks and crannies where some might have fallen. There were none. I really wanted the sushi. I had my mind set on it. And you can't eat that shit with a fork. You just can't. I went back to the bird woman. "Excuse me. I know it's like not your job to mess with the sushi, but there's nobody around and I was wondering if you could look in the cabinets to see if maybe they keep some extras back there." She stands straight up and looks at me. "They keep all the chopsticks they have out in the open. I guess they're out of them. The people who do the sushi are gone. It's like a totally separate thing." At this point I've had it. "Listen you storky bitch. I don't give a damn that the people who do the sushi are gone or that the sushi stand closes at nine or that you just want to stock the fucking bread. I want some sushi and I need some fucking chopsticks. You can't eat sushi with a fork. So you either look in these fucking cabinets where I'm sure there are extra chopsticks or you call a manager so I can explain to him how you're either too lazy or too stupid to help a customer!" She gets in this defiant stance and says, "Well I'm not going to do anything with you talking to me like that." "Fine!" I say. I walked around the sushi cooler and opened the first cabinet door on the end. The cabinet was literally FULL of chopsticks. I pulled one set out, closed the cabinet door and whirled around to show the bird lady. She was looking at the ground and I could tell she was about to cry. I instantly felt a powerful wave of guilt. I dropped the asshole tone and said to her, "Look, I'm sorry. I haven't had a cigarette in a couple of days so I'm sure that nicotine withdrawal has made me irritable. That's not an excuse to treat people like that.... But you know, I'm also frustrated by the 'take as much as you can and give as little as you can' attitude of every employee of every business I go to. I didn't mean to take it out on you. It's not your fault. I mean, everybody's just got to do a little bit more than what they think is being asked of them. You, me, everybody. You know?" She didn't answer. She just turned around and started stocking the rest of the bread.

In (and out) of a Funk

Been in a funk recently. Pretty sure it's just garden variety depression with maybe a little anxiety in the mix. I took the MPRE on Saturday, which is the ethics portion of the bar exam. 60 questions, 2 hours 5 minutes. 10 of the 60 are dummies that aren't graded. The exam covers the Model Rules of Professional Conduct drafted by the American Bar Association. There's also common law stuff on there as well as the Code of Judicial Conduct. We have to take a semester long course on the subjects covered on the MPRE as well. I was stressing the exam, even though it's not hard. But you do have to prepare for it. You can buy or borrow an MPRE prep book from Barbri that gives you everything you need. They recommend reading their long outline covering all subjects. It's about 150 pages long. They also recommend doing the 98 yes/no review questions and at least 2 of the 4 practice exams they provide, which are made up of old MPRE questions. After that they recommend reading their mini outline as the last thing you do. Well, I had intended to do all of that and as of Thursday night I was on schedule. Allbilly wanted me to go have a couple of beers with him in observance of my birthday. I made a deal with myself that if I finished the first practice exam I would go. I finished the practice exam and went to meet Allbilly at Rudz. We drank four pints of beer apiece in about 2-1/2 hours. I drank St. Arnold's Amber. He drank Pilsner Urquel. Four beers over that length of time isn't too bad. I was buzzed but not too bad off. We left the bar at 2 and went home. When I got home I wasn't ready to go to bed so I thought I'd get a beer from the fridge and call MathJames to see if he was still up. The problem was, there was no beer. The only alcohol in the house was some everclear and some vodka. There was also a can of Red Bull in the fridge. So, I called James (he was still up) and proceeded to knock the ass end out of that bottle of vodka. At one point the hot neighbor came to the door and tapped on the glass and asked me to keep it down. At the time I was like, "Oops, sorry." But now I'm like, "Fuck her." That bitch has no right to shush me. Then again, maybe I'm just pissed because she's been coming home during the week at 7am and some guy leaves out the front of the building in the mornings from her place sometimes. She doesn't think I know about it. So somebody's getting to sleep with the hot neighbor and it's not me. Fuck them both. So anyway, I'm not sure what time I retired but I woke up at 12:50 on the couch - I felt like complete and total dogshit. I'd already missed my 9:50 class (that's absence #5 in there, I only get 3 more). I was reasonably certain that I was not going to make it to work either. That was okay though because I had intended to ask off Friday to study for the MPRE anyway but my boss had been out of town so I wasn't able to talk to him about it. I tried to call into the office and let the only other person in the office who would know I wasn't there know that I wouldn't be coming in but the dumbshit receptionist couldn't execute the call transfer. I gave up after two tries. If they try to fuck with me for a "no show, no call" I'm going to call bullshit trump due to ineptitude of their employees. Frankly, I don't really give a shit one way or the other. Well, I felt like such shit all day that I was basically paralyzed with headaches and nausea. I vomited twice. Once at like 6pm and the other time at around 10pm. Both after I tried holding down a popsicle and some Sprite. I spent the entire fucking day on the couch and I never once opened my MPRE study guide. Not once. I did watch the movie Sin City, which was pretty cool. Jessica Alba is fucking money. My plan was to get up early on Saturday, get some breakfast and cram like a motherfucker. This is what I did. I got up at 6:15 and went to Whataburger and had taquitos while reading as fast as I could. I came home and crammed some more until I had to leave. The test started at 9. I got there on time, dealt with the usual administrative fuckups and took the motherfucker. I did not have that great of a feeling about it but I had scored pretty well on the practice tests so we'll see, results come out in five weeks. If I failed it I'll have to take it again in August.

I felt really bad about myself for jeopardizing something that was really fucking important. If I don't pass the MPRE I don't get a fucking law license. I still can't believe I would sabotage myself like that. Every now and then I think this alter ego comes out who tries to fuck up my life. Either that or I'm just a fucking dumbass.

So there's that. Then, there's a bunch of other shit. I've been talking to this chick who works as a secretary in the Beaumont office of our law firm. She seemed pretty cool, she had a cute East Texas accent, she had sent me some pictures and she was attractive. We've been trying to figure out a good time for us to actually meet face to face and go out on a date. The MPRE fucked it up some because she was coming to Houston Friday to see Pat Green at the Houston Rodeo but I wasn't going to be able to go because of the exam the next day. (As it turned out, the only reason I couldn't meet up was because I was fucking green and laying on my couch.) The weekend before she was going to come up but decided at the last minute not to because of the drive. Anyway, Saturday was supposed the be the night. I was done with the MPRE and she was either going to come here or I was going to drive there. Well, I called her when I got out of the MPRE at around 11:45. We tried to set plans. She said she was willing to drive here. I told her I would feel guilty if she drove to Houston. We couldn't decide which way it was going to be. Truth be told, I greatly preferred she come here, not only because I didn't want to fucking drive an hour and a half one way to get there but also because Beaumont fucking sucks. At least compared to Houston. I mean, by some standards Houston sucks. But at least I know good restaurants and bars here. Anyway, we agreed that I would go home, get something to eat, take a nap and call her later when we would decide once and for all what we were going to do. Well, I ate and fell asleep watching basketball. I woke up around 4 and called her shortly after I woke up. She proceeds to tell me that since I didn't call her that she made other plans. WTF? I was pissed. Long story short we won't be going out. Did I leave any doubt that one of two things was going to happen - that I would drive to her or she would drive to me. That issue was the only one in question. What wasn't in question was whether we were going out that night. She panicked. Whatever. I'm over it now but I was pretty fucking pissed off about it at the time. So the bottom line is that I lost an opportunity with a female, which also went into the funk stew.

What else? Oh, I'm supposed to be writing a 30 page research paper that I've done virtually nothing on that is starting to really stress me out. In fact, Sunday, today, I was supposed to have busted ass on the paper. Didn't happen. There's all kinds of job related bullshit that I'm not even going into. Both present and future job shit. Physically, I feel like an extra from Schindler's list. That's coming to a screeching-ass halt though. I'm living at the fucking gym and on the running trails from now on. I'm curing this funk with extreme physical exertion that hopefully will culminate in me looking and feeling better. In fact I just got back from the gym and the running trail at Memorial park where I tried to run off the effects of 10,000 cigarettes in an hour. Not pleasant, but a start. There's a bunch of other minor bullshit that is fucking with me right now too but I'm tired of writing this. Besides, it's already too long and I'll probably just look at it tomorrow and delete it.

Fuck.

32

I was born at 1:14pm on March 9, 1974 in Austin, Texas. Today I turn 32 years old.

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