I fixed what was wrong with my blog.  Now to see if I can update the Forgotten Realms and Mystara blogs without breaking them…

It’s an interesting time of the quarter in Northeastern.  It’s that dreaded time just after the quarter starts and just before the quarter ends when we’re all busy frolicking like mad bunnies back and forth in the ultimate hope that we might find ourselves an internship for the next quarter.  And, of course, for those of us who didn’t go through the summer associate program (I am an idiot, have I mentioned that lately?, and all for some kind of funky system of loyalty) we’re all scrambling about hoping to get a job – that is, an internship that could lead to a job.

So there’s a hundred some odd people scrambling to get one of like twenty or thirty jobs.  It’s nerve-wracking, because by this point, even though it’s not “competition”, per se, everyone is so closely tied together in terms of potential that you can feel the vice of disappointment falling down on you as you tick off those employers you hoped to hear from.  I’ve been lucky so far – only my top #1 employer has come back (and no interview, of course), with the others coming in at #10 – no interview- and number 8 – interview, on Friday, for which I am excited, but I somehow doubt I’ll get the gig.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-Billy S.

The words of that soliloquy are engraved upon the back of my head, sparking synapses in my brain of memories I thought long lost.  Such were the words of my ill-tempered and badly mannered youth – or to say as John Lennon said:

I used to get mad at my school
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool

It was quoted – not Lennon, dolt – by a friend today in her own blog.  And it sparked something, more than memory.  Some shadow of something living, something long forgotten, lined within the confines of my twisted shell.  Some mischievous spirit of blue, armed with a harp, that caused me to grin.

Life is but a walking shadow.

I haven’t written much in a while.  Yes, I know.  It’s not you – it’s me.  Totally me.  I try to write, really I do.  I love you guys, inasmuch as anyone can love anything virtually.  (Ew, no, not that way.  Although now that you mention it…)  The problem is of course I’m in a good place in life.  I’m not in a great place, otherwise I’d be bursting with happiness and be able to write about it.  I’m also not in a bad place, otherwise I’d be depressed and needing to use this as my escape.  Instead I’m okay – I’m good.

I’m at peace.  Requisat en pace.  Stick a fork in me – I’m done.

Which doesn’t lead to me needing to write half as often.  But I’m going to – I pledge, again, yes, yes, once a day.  At least, even if it’s to tell you about some new cool site I found.  (Speaking of – GAMER ALERT! If you haven’t taken a look at the Star Craft 2 video gameplay demo?  Oh my God stop right now and go see it.  It’s 20 minutes long and like a half gig, but dammit it’s a moral imperative.  Can we say squee?  We can.  Oh good.)

But tonight – tonight I have something to say.   Ahem.

A poor player that struts and his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.

What is the meaning of life?  I’m twenty… three?  Three, yes.  Twenty three now, and while I can’t say I’ve found it, I like to think I’ve come to terms with it.  See, there’s two issues with life: one is learning the lesson – by which I mean you understand that life sucks.  Naturally this leads to the corollary: life is pain.  Pain is suffering, etc.  Life is suffering.

Of course it is.  Life is blood – life is motion, animas.  Life is feeling – and the ultimate expression of feeling is pain.  All things in life can be measured by pain.  We are happy, we are sad, we are lustful, we are withdrawn, we are angered.  All experiences can be boiled down to pain.  You can’t really say that about any other basic experience or emotion, because they’re all comingled with the ultimate evolutionary imperative: Pain.

Most of the 20th century was geared towards making life less painful.  Heck, much of human existence is geared towards making life less painful.  Pain is your warning gateway towards death.  We’re so obsessed with beating death away with a stick that we’ve taken to beating pain away with a stick – metaphorical as it may be.  Drugs, escapes, money, comfort, family, sex.  Whatever.  It’s all a synonym for Vicodin.

But that misses the point of the lesson.  Most people learn that lesson in their developmental years – I’m convinced now, they further I grow detached from adolescence (and I was fairly detached from it to begin with), that its entire evolutionary point, aside the obvious, is to drive home the fact that life is pain.  But that’s obvious – and it misses the point.

The second step is understanding the lesson.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Shakespeare did a good job of laying out the basic foundation of the lesson.  He understood it, I think, havin read his plays and poetry.  He knew the lesson, having learned it, but more importantly, he understood the lesson.  And he could put it into words, which is a heck of a lot better than I can do.  A year or two ago, maybe… maybe I could have told you what the lesson actually was.  See, I think I knew it then, I just didn’t really understand it.  I hadn’t come to grips with it – hadn’t wrapped my mind around it.

But this is where it starts.

You read Macbeth and you think: Damn.  You read a lot of Shakespeare’s tragedies and you think “damn”, really.  That’s why they’re classics.  Grim words.  And yet, in the end, it all works out.

Oh, yeah, sure, everyone’s dead – at least everyone that matters, and probably the rest of them are pretty sad.  But it’s what had to happen.  Because the main characters didn’t get it.  Hamlet?  “To be or not to be?”  Didn’t get it – had to ask the question, didn’t know the answer.

I don’t know the answer.  But I know where I started to look.  Another man, another great man.

He wrote this:  “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”  Pretty circular isn’t it?  How can something that has no intrinsic value give itself value?  It’s bootstrapping on zero.

And yet it’s true.

Fatalistic?  Maybe.  But I’ve never been one to put faith into something blindly, and I know that at the end of the day, it’s what you do not what you say that counts against you.   That’s really all I had to say today.  It’s my response to Shakespeare – to Macbeth, I should say.  ‘Cause I think Billy S. got it.  He couldn’t have written Hamlet if he didn’t.

Oh – that man?  The wise man who wrote what I just quoted?  Who else?

The Whedon, of course.

Tried to update to the latest version of Wordpress, again foolishly trusting the idiotic Fantastico automatic updater, and it managed to wreck a little havoc with the database.  There’s a few problems I have to figure out but nothing apparently too serious that I can’t work my way around them.

It really is true that litigation is drama. Thus, the obvious corollary, trial practice class is drama class.

Needless to say, I’m having a blast. Well, perhaps it did need to be said, never having taken a drama class in my entire life. Me, Lonna and David (three members of our four person pod – yes, we’re pod people,) are like the East German judges, who sit in our huddled corner of the room and critique people’s failure to object to questions.

But it’s a tough job – it’s not just a drama class, because it’s not just about learning how to say your lines. You really have to learn how to improvise. So it’s actually a lot like an improv class – except you’re not learning how to be funny, you’re just learning how to get your information where you need to go.

I did make a goof I considered both humorous enough and stupid enough to relate today. I was doing a direct examination of a witness with a faulty memory, so I had to introduce into evidence a document that would supplement his testimony as a previously recorded statement of past recollection. (A technical title for document that I wrote that says what I want to say.)

“Mr. Jenkins” – a fake name for a fake witness of course – “can you tell me the make and model of all of the cars in the lot you saw that day?”

“Uh, no, not really, I don’t remember.”

“Is there anything that could jog your memory?”

“Maybe if I saw my report again but that’s a lot of information.”

Now I had previously shown him the report and had gotten marked for ID, but that’s only half the battle. The real rub here is that he, once again, can’t remember his testimony, so he has to go through into the document to see if he can recall what the information is. Of course – I’m asking him for the make, model, and license plate of a baker’s dozen separate automobiles he saw for less than an hour two years ago. He won’t remember what that is just by reading the report, so I have to get the report into evidence.

“Mr. Jenkins, who wrote that report?”

“I did.”

“When did you write it?”

“The day I inspected the vehicles.”

“And has the report been altered in any way.”

He reads it. “No it has not.”

“Your honor I move to enter the report into evidence.”

“Does the defense counsel object?”

Defense stands, objects wearily, having no real clue what he’s doing. He searches for his objection, eyes flicking from side to side. I want to tell him that his objection is hearsay – which it is. But I don’t, obviously. The professor, no longer playing the judge, says “Well, what do you think, out of character, the problem here is?”

My opposite just stares. He’s looking at his book like it will scream the answer at him.

“Was the evidence properly authorized?”

I blink. Didn’t I? He said he wrote it – check. He said he wrote it based on his observations of the day of the inspection – check. He said the document hadn’t been altered – check. What was I missing? The whole room is in the same state. They’re flipping through the trial techniques book, looking to see what I overlooked. I’m wracking my brains – why can’t I get this document admitted to refresh his memory?

The witness turns to the judge: “Uhm, I haven’t forgotten what it is I’m supposed to forget yet.”

I laugh. “Man,” I admit, “I’m an idiot. Ok, let’s try that again.”

We did.

Well, in hindsight, that’s not a very funny story, because it requires a lot of explanation. But I found it amusing enough.