Mountain Goats and the Economy

By CL * Other CL Posts

The video below is an interview between Stephen Colbert and John Darnielle, the singer/writer/main guy in The Mountain Goats, of which two parts caught my attention. The first was the "suicidal pride" (in Colbert's words) of mountain goats, in that many die attempting to jump across ravines that are significantly wider than they can jump. The second was Darnielle's discussion about finding hope in times of absolute desolation because, basically, there's nowhere to go but up.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
John Darnielle
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

The day after that interview aired, I received in the mail a copy of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's Summer of Fear (which is pretty awesome and you should buy it). The song Trap Door (embedded below) is an interesting counterpoint to Darnielle's statement above: it basically argues that things can always get worse; there's "a trapdoor in every rock bottom."



Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Trap Door from LaundroMatinee on Vimeo.

Thinking about these ideas, I thought back to my freshman year of college, when I broke my arm shortly after my birthday. I had a cast up to my elbow and was unable to write at all, and unable to type, eat, or do just about anything else at a normal speed. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a huge deal - I had no permanent injury or scar, and I didn't have any midterms or finals while the cast was on - but it still would have annoyed most people. After I had had it on for a few weeks, one of my friends pointed out that I seemed to be enjoying the experience, and wondered what was wrong with me.

I responded by saying that it was an opportunity to temporarily see things from a new perspective, and try something that I (hopefully) would never have to do again. In hindsight, I have no idea why it would be desirable to experience one-armed life. But the "new experience" thing, coupled with the fact that I really wasn't suffering very much, was enough to make me (sort of) enjoy it.

More generally, this got me thinking of a fairly simple model of personality profiles. In it, there are two basic states of reality: better than average, and worse than average. In each of these states, you can believe that (and act as though) the state will continue indefinitely, or you can believe that it will soon revert to the mean.

Putting it this way is a little bit different from the old glass half empty/glass half full dichotomy, in that, viewed this way, there are four possible personalities:

1. The Mountain Goat

This is the eternal optimist. Like the band's lyrics, they are comfortable with the knowledge that after a certain point, things can't get any worse and must get better. Like the animal, they can get overconfident and take excessive risks, which don't always end well. For an example, think of a typical eight-year-old...and be thankful that I didn't make a "kid" pun about it.

2. The Trapdoor

These people are the worriers. If things are going badly, they can probably get worse. If things are going well, they're bound to get worse. Lots of old people seem to think this way, which is hopefully not an inevitable result of the aging process.

3. Momentum-Conservers

The conservation of momentum is a physical law, as unavoidable as it is dependable. Some people extend that to their lives in general - if things are going badly, they're bound to get worse, and if they're going well, there's no way that's going to stop. It would be easy to say that these people have no perspective on things, or that they're just stupid. I'm not strongly inclined to disagree with either statement. A nicer way to put it may be that they give themselves too much credit when things are good and too much blame when things are bad, and as a result they think their current trajectory must continue. This profile fits the typical teenager pretty well.

4. Mean-Reverters

These people think things are going to revert to the mean sooner or later - if things are going badly, they're going to get better; if things are going very well, that's going to slow down at some point. I'm probably one of these, and if I thought there was a stronger argument that most middle-aged people think like this, I could have rewritten this whole post as an age-based thing.

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Unfortunately, the American economy seems to be driven by Momentum-Conservers, and we'd be much better off if the opposite were true and it were driven by Mean-Reverters.

During the internet bubble, day traders and professional analysts/stockpickers were amazed at how talented they were (and conveniently ignored the fact that everyone else was doing just as well as they were); many kept doubling their bets until everything started crashing. During the housing bubble, builders and brokers ceaselessly sped up construction until demand - clearly a factor outside their control - slowed, then they were left with acres of unsellable and/or unfinished inventory. In the run-up to the credit crunch, traders bundled mortgages together and somehow thought they could increase the expected return of a set of mortgages by combining them in a different way (note from anyone with a decent knowledge of statistics: you can't); their faith in their own mathematical skill was not enough to beat the laws of probability. In the last year or so, we've seen the flipside of this momentum-conserving belief: excessive pessimism when things aren't going well, and a feeling of hopelessness regarding the economy's short and long-term prospects.

The lesson in all this is that more temperance is needed: people shouldn't rush to throw all their assets at whatever sector of the economy is doing well (either by investing their life savings in tech stocks or by buying a house they can't afford) and companies and banks shouldn't overleverage* themselves just because they've done well recently.

*It's a little ironic that someone who went to law school - a choice, despite being made by many risk-averse people, that generally brings huge amounts of student loan debt in return for the promise of an unresaonably high salary - is advocating against excessive leverage.

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As a side note, Daniel Kahneman and Noah Tversky's prospect theory - which is a foundation of behavioral economics and won them a Nobel Prize in economics - is centered on the idea that, from their current vantage point, people overweigh the risk of any loss and underweigh the possibility of any gain. This would mostly correspond to a trap door viewpoint above, though they go into much more detail and explain it (and its implications) much better than I could.

Gatorade G2: Cynical Genius

By CL * Other CL Posts

Back in high school, when I had cross-country or track races most weeks, I would usually bring along a bottle or two of Gatorade. It was more or less the only hydration/energy option back then, and it had one serious drawback for me: I found the taste way too sugary, so I would bring one full bottle and one empty bottle and end up with two bottles of 50% watered down Gatorade.

More recently, we've seen a rise in competitor sports drinks as well as an increased scrutiny in the nutritional aspects (specifically, high calorie counts) of soft drinks. This led to a proliferation of low-calorie alternatives to all sorts of drinks, in addition to the traditional light beers and diet sodas.

As a result, every sports-drink manufacturer has brought out some sort of low-calorie alternative. Powerade Zero is the most aggressive of these, offering zero calories (and making me wonder how exactly they fit any nutritional value in there). Vitamin Water 10 also turns in a strong effort with, as the name would imply, 10 calories per serving (though the typical small bottle somehow contains 2.5 servings). Judging from the flavor, these seem to be new creations, either with new flavors or with an alternative sweetener substituting for sugar.

Gatorade, however, seems to have chosen a different tactic. Their low-calorie option is Gatorade G2, which has half the calories of regular gatorade and is identical - in color and flavor - to my 50% water/50% Gatorade concoction from high school. (I haven't tried all the flavors, but I've had the grape on many occasions and the orange at least a few times, and they both fit this pattern).

They really do seem to have taken the regular formula, cut it in half with water, and promoted it as a low-calorie alternative. This is either sheer genius or offensively condescending; either way, I salute Gatorade for not putting much effort into trying to fool us.

Reading is Pretty Necessary

By CL * Other CL Posts

Over the course of the summer - as I spent day after day doing nothing but learn and review the law in preparation for the bar exam - I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would rather be doing. One of the more mundane but better ideas I had was to go back to my favorite books and reread them.

In law school, I spent very little time reading for pleasure. I had a few phases of bringing non-law books on the subway, and I would always work in some poetry, but I read an average of two books a year in that time. So I have a small stack, heavy on the Johnson and Banville, to get through.

Now, rereading all these books, I've realized the real extent to which all that law reading has affected my ability to express myself. I had gotten to the point where I could barely put together a coherent non-IRACed paragraph, in conversation or in print. Everything I read before this exercise fell into one of the following categories, and as a result I could not think or communicate outside of them:

-legal cases and articles
-news headlines
-short-form conversation: emails and gchats
-blog posts in the "quote an article and say something sarcastic" mold

Which is all well and good, but doesn't give you much in the way of interesting conversation. All these huge casebooks and throwaway jokes, with nothing in between, had caused a slow ossification in my ability to discuss things, to explain things, and to think analytically or creatively (outside the legal context). And having the bluebook rules constantly floating in the back of my head all of 2L year didn't help.

So now that I'm reading actual books, I'm regaining some ability to communicate clearly. This is all fairly obvious: reading more --> a greater ability to write and talk. But it's easy to forget, and it slips away very slowly. The point being: even if it's just on the subway on the way to work, I'm going to make it a point to read part of an "actual book" as often as possible from here on out.

Capturing a Fat Part of the Long Tail

By CL * Other CL Posts

Much has been written in the last few years about the Long Tail: the idea that a large and growing part of the economy consists of selling small quantities of many niche items to the few enthusiasts that desperately want them. It has been applied, in various ways, to many sectors of the economy, and I think it's interesting to see how it applies to one in particular.

The sports apparel industry has long been active in the United States (and several ATC contributors have some experience in the field). It has many sectors and styles: replica uniforms consistently sell well, throwbacks had a brief but intense period of popularity, and superstars and hobbyists alike want to maximize their potential with performance-enhancing shoes and training gear.

No startup company is going to knock off Nike, Reebok, adidas, or any of the other huge companies which have firmly established themselves in all corners of the market. But two young companies have made huge strides in the last few years by carefully defining their target consumer, then gaining their trust and faith by making it clear that they weren't interested in anyone else: Under Armour and UNDRCRWN.

Under Armour was founded in 1996 by a former college football player, and rose in popularity as athletes of gradually greater stature experienced and attested to the quality of their training gear. They consciously avoided going for true mainstream appeal, going so far as to "[restrict] sales to sporting goods stores, military-base exchanges and sports- and military-oriented outlets." This focus on the hardcore athlete (real or imagined) paid off; when combined with the intense imagery of their advertisements, it gave Under Armour an authenticity that Nike - too busy collaborating with Cole Haan and selling golf umbrellas - could never enjoy.

Taking precisely the opposite tack is UNDRCRWN, maker of my current favorite t-shirt. Their motto, "There Are More People In The Stands Than In The Game," reflects this idea perfectly - as much as weekend warriors may want to play like their heroes, they spend much more time watching them than they do emulating them. And they need something to wear while doing so. They've collaborated with musicians (including Asher Roth and Mos Def), dabbled in political commentary, and made all this even more clear a few months ago when they debuted the "We'd Rather Look Good Than Play Good" shirt, questionable grammar notwithstanding.

(In discussing this post, Ned pointed out a third company that falls in with these two: lululemon. I don't know much about their overall strategy, but in contrast to the two mentioned above - who operate online and through specialty retailers - they seem to have franchise stores that sell their own line of yoga-related sportswear. They've been growing fast and they seem popular; my one problem with them is that I looked at their sizing chart shortly after getting measured for a suit a few years ago and discovered that by their standards I was small in some measurements, medium in others, and extra-large in others. I'm not sure whether that means that I'm malformed or that they're overly precise.)

I'm sure this isn't news to anyone who pays attention to the sportswear industry, and if there aren't a handful of b-school case studies on each of these companies then there should be. But as a casual observer, and one who believes that ATC's readership is comprised of people who aren't experts in the field but might find it interesting, I thought it worthy of a post. The sportswear industry is dominated by a few huge be-everything-to-everybody companies, but there is plenty of room for small, specialized and focused competitors.

Quite Possibly the Best Music Being Made Today

By CL * Other CL Posts

I spend a great deal of time using public transportation or walking, and 95% of that time is spent with my iPod turned on. I tend to keep the volume at a moderate level, not least because I don't want the entire subway car to know I'm listening to R. Kelly's "I Like the Crotch on You." There's one exception; one artist that always causes me to jack up the volume to obnoxiously loud levels: The Very Best.

The Very Best makes the happiest, easiest-to-listen-to music on earth. It's a partnership between Esau Mwamwaya, a Malawian singer, and Radioclit, a London-based production duo. The backstory is entertaining but irrelevant; your task right now is to watch the video below, then download the mixtape for free. Give it a chance. You have nothing to lose.



I wasn't expecting the album to be released until October 6th - which would have allowed me to post this in time for you to try the mixtape before the album's release - but as it turns out, October 6th is the physical release date. It was released online last week, and can be streamed and bought here. So stream it, and buy it.

That's really all I have to say. I was going to make this longer. I was going to describe the music itself, which is not just afropop but Africanized western pop; half of the mixtape consists of covers of pop songs. I was going to talk about how I was overjoyed at my discover of the mixtape last year, and sent it to my college roommate, only to find out that Green Owl - the label he works for - already represented the group. But I'd rather keep it short and let the music speak for itself.

So, to reiterate: this may be the best pure music being made today. The mixtape was in my top three albums last year, and the upcoming album has already secured a spot in this year's top three. Enjoy.

The Oakland Raiders: The NFL's Lost Dynasty of the Turn of the Millennium

By CL * Other CL Posts

I became a Raiders fan in the late 1980s, back when Bo Jackson was making football, baseball, and video game history. He's still my favorite athlete of all time, but this post isn't about him. It's about the Oakland Raiders, and their run of dominance in the beginning of this decade that should have brought multiple Super Bowl championships.

This isn't the early-1990s Buffalo Bills, who dominated the AFC for four years before running into bad kicking (SB XXV) and dominant teams (the next three years). The Raiders, in three consecutive years, played extremely well in the regular season and (if applicable) earlier playoff games, before losing to the eventual Super Bowl champions in increasingly painful and creative ways.

(Despite these losses and the Raiders' general futility since then, few people have a sense of the Raiders as a tragic or suffering team. Everyone sees them as a mess, and a team in disarray, but not one that sinks to the depths of certain other teams. They don't have the Lions' clean 0-16, or the longevity of the Cubs' or Clippers' failure, or the whiny "look at us, our suffering is more profound than yours" fanbase of the pre-2004 Red Sox. Maybe it's because they're in Oakland as opposed to their old L.A. home or another larger market; maybe if Raider fans were more literary - or literate? - it would be written and talked about more. Maybe it's because a run like this isn't that out of the ordinary; they were very good (but not great) for a while and very bad (but not historically bad) for a while. Anyway...)

In 2000, their rushing attack led the NFL but the unquestioned team leader was All-Pro/Pro-Bowl QB Rich Gannon. The defense held up its end of the bargain, as this was back when Charles Woodson was good. Having won the division and steamrolled the Dolphins in their first playoff game, the Raiders hosted the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship game.

And what happened in that game? Early in the second quarter, Ravens DT/whale Tony Siragusa bodyslammed Gannon, injuring Gannon's shoulder. Thankfully, it's not available on Youtube, but Gannon couldn't quite recover and the offense would only manage 3 points. The Ravens, obviously, went on to win the Super Bowl.

In 2001, the Raiders added legend Jerry Rice and won another division championship. They may not have been as dominant as the year before, but the way they lost was more painful. They travelled to Foxborough to play the Patriots in the Divisional Round of the playoffs.

This was the "Tuck Rule" game. Out of deference to my own emotional wellbeing, I'll let Wikipedia tell the story:

The game was played in a heavy snowstorm, and late in the fourth quarter an apparent fumble by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was recovered by Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert. The recovery would have led to a Raiders victory, however the play was reviewed and determined to be an incomplete pass (it was ruled that Brady had pump faked and then "tucked" the ball into his body, which, by rule, cannot result in a fumble). The Patriots retained possession of the ball, and drove for a game-tying field goal. The game went into overtime and the Patriots won, 16–13.

I don't know what to say about the Tuck Rule. Some referees say it was correctly applied here, some say not. There were efforts to change the rule after this game; nothing came of them. The Patriots, obviously, went on to win the Super Bowl.

Having run into one fat bastard and one badly-written or badly-applied rule, the Raiders stormed through the 2002 regular season. 11-5, division title, league-leading offense, top seed in the playoffs, and Rich Gannon was the NFL MVP. They breezed through the playoffs and were ready for the Super Bowl, in which they would face the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Of course, in the offseason, they had traded Jon Gruden, the coach who had made them such a dominant team, and relied on Bill Callahan to lead them. (Sidenote: As a fan of both Nebraska and the Raiders, I do not like him. He should not be confused with this Bill Callahan, who produced one of the best albums of this year, or this Bill Callahan, who produced and wrote one of my all-time favorite TV shows.) Being the evil genius that he is, Callahan elected not to change anything about the offense before the Super Bowl. Who was the opposing coach in the Super Bowl? Jon Gruden.

Now I'm no NFL coach, but if I was about to coach a Super Bowl team against the coach who had devised my entire offensive system, including the signals the players use on the field to indicate what play they are about to run...I would change the system before the game. I would, at the least, mix a few of the formations up. But not Bill Callahan! Tampa Bay intercepted Rich Gannon, who had thrown 10 INTs all year, a ridiculous five times, and three of them were returned for touchdowns. Tampa Bay's defensive players said they had seen every play used by the Raiders at some point in their practices. The Bucs, obviously, went on to win the Super Bowl.

(Incidentally, that Super Bowl is notable for two other reasons: Barret Robbins's disappearance, which turned out to be a pretty awful story, and a sudden reduction in the metaphorical consistency of a song by the Mountain Goats.)

That three-year run of playoff losses that should not have been, all of which came at the hands of the eventual Super Bowl champion, was painful. What have the Raiders been up to since then?

2003: 4-12 (last in the division)
2004: 5-11 (last in the division)
2005: 4-12 (last in the division)
2006: 2-14 (last in the division)
2007: 4-12 (last in the division)
2008: 5-11 (not last!)

It's been a rough few years, and it hasn't gotten much better. A few weeks ago, head coach Tom Cable punched an assistant coach, breaking his jaw. The night Ned left New York, I had a conversation with the bouncer at the bar we were hanging out at - who also happens to be a Raider fan; you'd be surprised where you run into them - that concluded with the determination that the Raiders are doomed to futility until Al Davis dies. Unless he's already dead, in which case the Raiders are doomed to futility until a court rules that zombies are not legal persons and thus incapable of owning and running football teams.

And that's pretty much that. From a near-dynasty that produced zero actual championships, to being so deeply mired in failure that your best hope is the death of the team's owner.

I'm also a Nets fan, and they've had a somewhat similar trajectory (NBA Finals in 2001-02 and 2002-03, haven't come close since), but writing about the Raiders and Nets in successive posts would not be good for me or you. My next post will focus on a much happier topic.

I Would Probably Be Better Off Just Linking to Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

By CL * Other CL Posts

Gail Collins wrote a column last weekend focusing on her Woodstock memories (to summarize: things went wrong, she didn't get to much music, she still had fun). At one point she writes:

The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should really try to do it — unless it involves being unethical or a two-plane connection. You might not enjoy it while it’s going on, but somewhere down the line the anecdotes will always come in handy.

I think this is a great point (even if it's not entirely original), so I decided to expand on it, incompletely and inadequately, here. Because really, everyone knows that it's true, on some level. But what people don't seem to realize is that it goes beyond the relatively inconsequential decisions; it's true at almost every level, including major life decisions.

(This isn't to say that you should do what you don't want to do, or ignore risks. It's just that people discount too many options just because they're not commonly done, and when they go out on a limb just a bit, it ends up being worthwhile.)

It is most obvious on the micro level. I spent the last ten days in Chicago, and in the days after Lollapalooza I woke up each morning with a plan to pick a direction and walk in it until I found something interesting. I was rewarded with fighter jets overhead (which, in fairness, was more due to lucky timing than anything else), the record store from High Fidelity (the movie, obviously, not the book; I didn't walk to London), an appearance by LeBron James promoting a documentary about his high school team, and a field in the middle of the city with several horses in it. The same goes for getting adventurous with food: it's low-risk, low-reward; even if it works out badly you haven't lost much and it could be a good story.

Getting a bit more macro is more educational - decisions that could have some downside, such as being a waste of time and money. I have a group of close college friends that has become geographically dispersed, so we make efforts to take trips to various cities from time to time. Usually, these are popular destinations: Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans. Our best trip, however, was one of the first: Omaha.

It was my idea, and I'm proud of it. I had gone to school right outside of Omaha and had attended the College World Series a few times, and knew how much fun it was. I suggested it to the group, and the response was lukewarm at best. There was even an email chain shortly before the trip titled (paraphrasing) "are we really doing this?" But after three days, a handful of new friendships, several friendship-testing incidents, an epic battle between a sharpie and an unnamed friend's face, and about two innings of baseball actually watched, all involved considered it a huge success.

So even at the macro level, this "going off the beaten path is worth it" idea is fairly obvious. Here comes the point of this post, and the part that goes beyond the quote above: when it comes to major life decisions, if you're inclined to do something most people wouldn't do, you absolutely should do it.

My first and smaller example of this is the law firm at which I'll be working in a few months. My school's on-campus interview program had a fairly simple signup process: we each had 35 slots to use on the 100+ firms and locations that were conducting interviews. I knew I wanted to focus on New York and DC (I know, this part isn't very adventurous) and I wanted a firm I could be at least somewhat happy at. I went through the Vault guide and knocked out all the firms that seemed a bit too unfriendly, or intense, or whose descriptions sounded a bit desperate (certain code words made themselves obvious after reading a few firm profiles). Having knocked out the prestigious undesirables, I was left with fewer firms than there were bidding slots, including several firms I knew nothing about: their Vault profiles were thin, their web presences minimal, and their associate ranks to small to have produced enough former employees to give reliable information on any non-obvious downsides. I ended up having a great experience with the firm that I knew the least about, both in the interviews and as a summer associate, and would rather work there than anywhere else.

I know that doesn't seem like a very off-the-wall thing to do, but trust me: in the context of scared law students at a good school interviewing for jobs, with the first rumblings of the credit crunch being felt (I remember, in my first callback, asking several partners how they thought the firm would be affected, in comparison with others, when things came crashing down), it was not something many of my classmates would have done.

The best example in my life came from the decisions of my parents. Moving to the New York area has been fairly standard for Irish people for the last 150 (give or take a few) years. Moving to Indonesia, in the dying days of a violent 31-year dynasty? Not so much. Following that with a move to Nebraska, a state you know so little about that you assumed it would be just like New York? Again, not a typical move. And yet outside of the direct influence of my family, growing up in these two places - learning from the natives, seeing other values systems and ways of life, making entirely new groups of friends every few years - had more to do with making me who I am today than anything else. For those of you that don't know me, I am a HUGE fan of who I am today, and I say that in an only slightly ironic tone.

Had we not moved to Indonesia, I would not have spent my formative years waking up to the muezzin's call. I would not have had a loris living in my backyard. A sixth-grade trip to Borobudur was the source of two college papers, and my experiences in Indonesia in general were the background of my largest law school project, which singlehandedly supplied 13% of the footnotes published in my academic journal this year. (See, it's not just in blog posts that I overdo the explanatory parentheticals.)

Had we not moved to Nebraska, I would not have spent my high school years surrounded by four hundred acres of corn, in a school run by Benedictine monks. I may not have discovered running, which was a huge part of my life for about a decade. And I certainly wouldn't have found myself, as I did in June at a high school reunion, in an Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan making jokes about center-pivot irrigation.


Obviously this all needs some sort of caveat. Despite the examples above, I'm extremely risk-averse (a risk-averse lawyer? shocking!) and I love routine - I generally don't do something unplanned unless I'm told about it at least two days in advance, lest it disrupt my carefully-arranged workout, blog-reading (yes Ned, and blog-writing) and sleeping schedules. Which is why it's surprising, and maybe more persuasive, that I'm the one making this argument.

In any event, I have a few more months before I start work, and I hope to make some slightly irrational decisions between now and then that turn out to be great stories. There are already a few in the works. If any turn out to be both blog-appropriate and blogworthy, I'll pass them along.


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Sidenote: This is my return from a long, bar-exam-forced break. I'm still adjusting and haven't really worked out my post-bar schedule yet, but I will be posting more often. And in a move which will excite at least two people, the sonnets may soon return.

The End of the Discolored Rainbow

By CL * Other CL Posts



The above graph (click to enlarge) is intended to show the evolution of how I feel about law school. The fact that it's somewhat nonsensical flows from the message it is trying to send: my desire to be at law school is dropping exponentially, while the time I have left at law school is (surprisingly enough) declining linearly.

What does it all mean? For the first two years of my law school career, I really enjoyed it. I had a good work/life balance; I went out a lot without skipping class or missing any reading. I was able to stay sufficiently interested in my subjects that it wasn't much of a drag, and I would gear up for finals every semester by locking myself in a room for most of each day, countered by the occasional concert or night out.

This year? The work side is weighing much more heavily, even if it takes up a similar or smaller portion of my day. I can think of a few reasons for this:

1) Law school is not fun, and that becomes more obvious as three years pass.

2) I'm taking classes this semester that are slightly more bar-exam-oriented (evidence, tax) than the undergrad-major-oriented classes I took previously (law and economics, law and economics seminar, health law (viewed through the lens of law and economics), statistics for lawyers).

3) The economy is awful so half of my friends are taking an involuntary year off before starting work; this makes everyone unhappy and exacerbates the general negativity that pervades law schools nationwide.

This is in stark contrast to my experiences in high school and college. I never really had "senioritis" in either school; I wrapped up my obligations (high school: track, AP tests; college: ...let me get back to you on that) right on time and was ready to move on but also very happy to be there.

What's the difference between law school and earlier educational milestones? We've grown up. Most people graduate high school, lots of people graduate college; each is a recognized accomplishment. As a result, there's a lot of commemoration as you near the end of each, and an implicit deal with teachers and administrators that things should ease off as you approach graduation.

Law school - being a professional school - has no such deal. We're older, we're about to start real careers (sooner or later), and no one has (or should have) any sympathy for our waning desire to be here. There have been several times in my life where I was hit with the sensation of getting older (realizing that I remembered experiencing the years in which people old enough to vote were born, becoming an uncle, having the ultimately-meaningless birthdays between 21 and 25); this is the most subtle and perhaps most meaningful of them all.

3Ls of the world: we're finally not kids anymore. It's time to get to work.

Around the Sonnets: Taxation, Representation, and Immigration

By CL * Other CL Posts

My will's as effective as Kyle Orton
Green Card: taxes, no vote, long as I live.
Like DC with Eleanor Holmes Norton:
My voice unheard, no representative.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about
A citizen, if I wanted to be
You're keeping all the foreign talent out
It just takes five, I've been here twenty-three.

A common thread runs through our history
Railroads, software, labor, innovation
To keep this going we need H-1Bs
America, built on immigration.

Letting in the talent was always how
You became the best, please don't stop it now.

Around the Sonnets: Today, We're All Tied for First

By CL * Other CL Posts

It's op'ning day and I root for the Cubs.
A thankless task but one I cannot quit;
First Grace and Sandberg and a bunch of schlubs,
Now Soto, Marmol; Hill can't buy a hit.

We joined the century club just last year.
You'd think ten MVPs would hit the mark;
Even Darnielle has made it all too clear
That heartbreak lives at Addison and Clark.

Yes Wrigley's been the site of tragedies
With Bartman, goats; the annual nosedive.
A fandom full of painful memories
No Series games seen since one-nine-four-five.

But through it all a ray of hope is seen;
Zemeckis said it'd be 2015.

Around the Sonnets: Bad Jokes, Rudimentary Rhymes, and Semi-Obscure References with Explanatory Links

By CL * Other CL Posts

I've been remiss; neglecting blogging time,
Don't have so many worthwhile thoughts it seems,
So now I will express myself in rhyme,
Like N-Dub-A but more focused on memes

Less blogger, now more of a sonneteer,
With world events and maybe book reviews
They won't be good; hi, econ major here
This is my first; I hope I find my muse.

I will put up some normal posts as well
But these are quick and also pretty short
Aim low, my standard's Romeo Crennel
With practice, closer to A Girl In Port.

So now you've read it, sonnet one is done
This may flame out or I could have some fun.

************

So...in case the above didn't make this clear, I've decided to start regularly posting sonnets. I wanted to post more often than I have been but I was having trouble finding the time and inspiration to come up with much to write. This is about the third non-prose piece I've written in my life, so I decided to go with a fairly rigid structure - standard Shakespearean, iambic pentameter, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. I plan on putting them up once a week or every other week, and they'll deal with current events or whatever happens to pop into my head.

If this lasts beyond late April, I'll be impressed.

A "Punk In Drublic" By Any Other Name

By CL * Other CL Posts

Two posts in to my blogging career, and I'm already falling back on a music post. It was sparked by my big musical discovery of the week: Get Yr Blood Sucked Out by Viva Voce. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, since apparently the album came out in 2006. I don't know how long it will be in heavy rotation for me, but I'm liking it so far. They're one of those bands whose songs go from quiet intros to soaring crescendoes (with the occasional hand-clapping jaunt thrown in), and it may be the case that I haven't listened to it enough to get tired of all of their songs sort of sounding the same.

Here's how I discovered it. While wading through my usual morass of music blogs (how else am I going to get through a 2-hour Evidence class followed immediately by a 2-hour Private Investment Funds class?), I tend to download the sample songs that fall into one of these categories: 1) bands I already know; 2) bands whose names I keep seeing everywhere, and need to see what all the fuss is about; 3) bands that receive enthusiastic praise from one or two sources; and 4) bands or songs with names I find amusing.

Surprisingly enough, I am rarely disappointed by songs in category 4. I'm often disappointed in the songs I download because one blog described them in glowing terms (category 3) - they tend to be too idiosyncratic. Songs in category 2 are usually there for a reason, and category 1 needs no explanation.

So what did Viva Voce do to catch my eye? They had a song called "We Do Not Fuck Around," with a chorus of "Hey y'all! We do not fuck around!" Obviously, they couldn't get away with this without having good music to back it up, and they do. But that's my point: somehow, the music I download based solely on the name ends up being consistently good.

Other recent examples include Kittens Ablaze, Air France ("Collapsing At Your Doorstep"), Black Milk, Ida Maria ("I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked"), Kid Cudi (the whole Man in the Moon mixtape, but "Embrace the Martian" first caught my eye), Los Campesinos! ("This Is How You Spell 'HAHAHA, I've Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux Romantics,'" among other titles), and Throw Me The Statue. The first band I ever discovered on the internet - The Mountain Goats - was a product of the same process, though I don't remember which song it was in particular (my money's on No Children, for the record). And of course NOFX, as referenced in the title of this post, would be included, though my love of them predates the internet.

This doesn't apply to all my music discoveries. Some last year's best (Charles Hamilton, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Wale) have names that didn't do much for me; if the "good name = good song" thing held, Fall Out Boy would be my favorite band of all time.

But there are two lessons here. One is that my musical tastes may be a bit shallow, possibly because I'm usually doing something else while I listen to music. Or maybe I like the generally playful nature of bands willing to put such titles on their songs and albums. On a related note, I like bad puns.

The other lesson is a bit more profound, and goes beyond "bands should try to give their songs interesting titles." The whole Long Tail phenomenon has been discussed ad infinitum (and this point has probably been made elsewhere), but the point to me is that even if there are bands (authors, educators, preachers, lifestyle gurus) that appeal to every taste, they must be found by their consumers. This can happen through better searching on the part of the consumer (be it through a more extensive search or a more efficient search), or by better advertising on the part of the product, including through naming choices. The only side of that that's controlled by the artist/producer is the naming choice, so they should really put a little more effort into it.

Contributor Bio: CL

Between this bio and my pseudonym (which is my initials...OR IS IT?), no one who knows me will have much trouble figuring out who I am. But at least pseudonymity makes it hard to google me.

Let's see...I was born in Ireland, as was my entire (immediate and extended) family. We subsequently moved to Belgium, Connecticut, Indonesia, and Nebraska, in that order. I went to college with a few other ATC contributors and majored in economics, and as of the founding of the blog I'm in my third year of law school.

The third year of law school is essentially a reward for the first two years of law school, and one last chance to enjoy yourself before life as a lawyer (it is the Mardi Gras to a legal career's Lent, for all of you Catholics out there). As a result, I've had a great deal of free time this year, which I've spent attending concerts, watching comedy series that are no longer on the air, arguing about inconsequential things, and downloading music.

With my posts on Around the Couch, I'm hoping to avoid writing excessively about the things I think about most - the fortunes of my sports teams (all of which seem to have declined severely in the last five years) and whatever blog-discovered band I'm currently obsessed with - so that people who aren't me may be interested in reading my posts. Wish me luck.

PSA: It's Y'all, not Ya'll

By CL * Other CL Posts

When I moved to the Midwest, there was a bit of a culture shock. My family had never really experienced the strip mall/main street side of America, and I remember staring slack-jawed at the sights as we rolled down Lincoln's O Street the night we arrived. "Look, there's a Long John Silver's! And a Target!" Very exotic.

The differences between Nebraska and the places we lived previously were extensive. One local custom which I slowly adopted was the natives' habit of adding "all" as a modifier after...well, everything. "What are you all doing?" "Who all is going to be there?" And so on.

You know what else they have in Nebraska? Good grammar. One rather basic grammatical construction is the contraction. As a refresher, contractions involve the use of an apostrophe to represent omitted letters when two words are combined. For instance:

Can + not = can't

I + will = I'll

There + is = there's

I could go on. This brings me to the main point of this post: "you all" is a valid grammatical construction, but if contracted it must be written as "y'all," not "ya'll." The letters you're taking out are the O and U from "you," so the apostrophe must go between the Y and the A. It's not that hard.

Yes, I bothered to write an entire blog post about this. Why am I so worked up about it?

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=y%27all&word2=ya%27ll

A Googlefight shows that "ya'll" returns almost FOUR TIMES AS MANY results as "y'all." (For the uninitiated: the Googlefight website allows you to compare the number of results returned by Google for two different search terms. It should be a good proxy for the popularity of each term in general internet usage.)

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all these people are contracting "yak shall" or "yams stall," "Yard mall" or "Yankees pull" - somehow I don't think that's the case.

Please, help me combat this scourge. The internet is filled with grammatical mistakes, but if we start small we can both reduce them and be condescending about it. And that, in the end, is every grammar-corrector's two-headed goal.

Thank you.