shout outs!

sorry i haven't posted in a while. i've been drunk a lot lately.

here i am, on the verge of graduating, and i don't feel i have anything left to say.

so much has already been said.

but here are a few messages for people i love:

joey: you are something so special. i've seen it since we were kids. don't get mad when other people can't or won't understand you. i'm sorry. i love you.

clint: my constant companion, a vital third of the musketeers. you're my brother, my psychic, my coach. new orleans is a new chapter. congratulations, man, we made it. you are a true achiever. i love you.

lee: our brainwaves follow the same sin curve. thanks for all the long talks about politics, philosophy, and the general state of humanity. oh yeah, and for all the chronic ass bud and aqua teen. terror of the sea rocks my fucking face! i love you.

jason: i live through each breath you take in. wherever your feet wander, i can feel the earth beneath. whatever your eyes see, i see too. show up at my doorstep someday soon. i love you.

kelly: remember that four-eyed geek and that clown-haired nerd that had matching shirts in eighth grade algebra? hehe, dorks. always keep looking. always. keep. looking. i love you.

ann: i wasn't lying when i told you i loved you the first time i saw you, in comp civ first semester. i still love you very much, and a part of me, i think, will always be a little bit in love with you. i'm still one of your biggest fans and most avid readers. i know you won't, but keep in touch. congratulations. good luck. i love you.

meghan: you're knockout, girl, and i mean that like a punch to the face. thanks for all the winedrunk conversations on the nature of god and kissing. i think you're just what i needed. thanks, thanks, thanks. i love you.

breton: you. know. it. i love you.












more later. but now, i gots to go graduate.

things continue to happen . . .

so i guess i'm moving to new orleans in august to study environmental law at tulane and help save the world from evil corporations and the dea?

never. thought. this. would. happen.

there are worse things, though, and it is something to do with my time.

and hey, when i graduate i'll have a law degree.

this is the "personal statement" i sent in when i applied to law school:

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote extensively on the topic of responsibility. For him, responsibility was the fundamental position of humanity – people were responsible for the creation and maintenance of the entire world. The blame for every war, every injustice, every needless death, fell squarely on the shoulders of each and every one of us. In other words, we are all responsible for what happens in the world.

In my short life, I have had the opportunity to witness injustice firsthand. At the age of fifteen, I was fortunate to visit Honduras as a part of a poverty relief effort there. Driving through the streets of Tegucigalpa, the capital city, I saw houses hidden behind fifteen foot concrete walls topped with shards of broken glass and snaky coils of razor wire. Fatigued policemen brandishing machine guns lined the city’s streets. While a certain few members of that society live in fairly modernized cities and enjoy amenities such as electricity and running water, others live in utter squalor, literally in houses made of mud. Even as a teenager I could see that these divisions represented some kind of inequality, a flaw in the order of things.

I quickly learned that these same types of divisions still exist in America today. Working at a summer day camp for underprivileged youth in my hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana for several summers, I was sometimes required to go and pick up children who otherwise would not have had a ride. Some of these children lived in conditions comparable even to those of a Third World country such as Honduras – houses with no doors, empty holes for windows, floors fallen through, vermin abundant. Far too many children are forced to live in such conditions, I thought. No child should ever be forced to live in such conditions.

In the course of one’s life, one discovers certain gifts, certain abilities unique to oneself. What if these gifts enable one to fight against the injustices that mar society? Isn’t one then obligated to act, to make right what one can? Doesn’t the use of those gifts then become a responsibility?

Every law, every contract, every business deal – all of these aspects of life present questions of ethics, questions of responsibility, to all involved. And they all involve lawyers who must make these ethical decisions. I believe I possess gifts, of thought and of speech, which make me a prime candidate for law school. There I believe I could learn skills that would allow me to take up my responsibility in the world, to make right what I can.




and who says philosophy isn't useful?