Modern Quill

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 11:40 PM PDT

Now that I’m waiting to bring the TDLB to a close, I need to determine: What is next for Asterism?

I have a quick couple of to-do lists:

More give-and-take blogging. I need to update my Google Reader and work more on reply pieces.

101 in 1001. I know that this is something of a large movement, but Chere at Teasingly Diverse was the first one I had ever seen. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get to 101 measurable goals (I’m a pretty simple guy), but if I do, I’m certainly going to use this space.

Writing. LSAT practice took a huge (rather, all-devouring) bite out of writing. Time to get back to it, with a serious attempt at a novel. I found that the TDLB was a great help in getting me to practice, and I hope blogging about writing will a. sharpen my writing and b. keep me motivated.

To that end, I’m doing the unthinkable: installing Mediawiki at Jamiegorton.com for use as a catch-all, ubiquitous capture engine. You see, I really like Literature and Latte’s Scrivner, but it’s tethered to my Mac laptop. Google Docs isn’t, but gdocs isn’t very reference friendly. All in all, Mediawiki is very powerful and also an epic fail when it comes to user-friendliness. I will blog the madness.

Finally, a blog redesign. I like the main page, but I deplore this theme’s single-story pages. Once I get the main page to handle Wordpress’s custom fields and get_themeta() handling to do what I want, I’ll simply port that out to the single story pages. Heh, everyone hosted at wordpress.com: you don’t know what you’re missing. Heh.

On that note, congratulations to my mate Andy for joining the crew at Big Heavy World.

30-Day LSAT Blog - 27, 28, 29, 30

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 07:13 PM PDT

Day 27 was terrible. While I earlier said that it was a nice, easy shift that would give me plenty of time to study, it just didn’t work out like that. As a matter of fact, it was the exact opposite of that. On Day 27 I paid a $600 tune-up.

Now, I love my car. I really do. I bought it from my mechanic, who took great care of it and kept it in nice shape. But it’s still a 13-year old American car. So in February my tranny dropped out on what was already one of the Worst Days Evar. I was stranded in Vermont and I needed the car, and I sure wasn’t going to buy a Vermont used car with all the new, unique, and exciting problems that come with it. So I bit the bullet and rang up a $2000 tranny rebuild.

Now, in May, I have sunk an additional $1,300 into the car. When I went to get it inspected, my mechanic (this is a new mechanic, the man who sold me the car now works in IT) offered me this nugget of wisdom: “It looks like you parked in an ocean.” New brakes and drums. Then, for my “tune-up” he comes out with a twisted shard of metal in his hand.

“This was your fuel line. You shoulda seen your brake line. It was worse.”

Great. If he told me I needed to drop another $600 into the car, I would have walked away. But, because of my father’s arrangement with the mechanic, he felt as though he could do up to $1,000 in work without my authorization.

Then I go to work and realize that easy cake shift was actually Food Stamp Day. New Hampshire pays out the food stamp benefits on the fifth, which was a Friday this month. Whenever I say “Food stamp day,” people generally look at me like I’m committing an act of economic hate. It simply goes like this: imagine a Friday in a grocery store. Now double it.

At the end of the day I get chewed out by the store director due to an exchange with a customer about a fraudulent coupon.

So I didn’t really sleep on Day 27.

⁂

Day 28 was a 9 hour shift at work, so no studying happened. I basically rocked myself back and forth in a chair and told myself it was going to be alright. Thankfully, Rachael swung by and we watched an episode of (of all things) Boston Legal. She hates William Shatner—that might be the largest issue in our relationship. No studying.

⁂

On Day 29 I lounged around the house and didn’t do much of anything, until I finally had to pack my belongings and get ready for the LSAT. I threw some clothes in a bag, prepared my Ziploc bag, grabbed my toiletries and a pillow and jumped in my car. But first I bought the full album of Lady GaGa’s The Fame and synced my iPod. Kate Perry’s “Waking up in Vegas” and “Hot N Cold” also made it.

I drove up to the half-way point between my house and the test center: Burlington, VT where my good friends are subletting an apartment. I tried to stay calm, and I’ll tell you what: being with the group of friends I was with really helped. I lived with these kids all year at school, and any downtime I had during the academic year was spent with them. I slept on their couch.

⁂

On Day 30 I went border hopping. I became terribly lost when, for whatever reason, I hit a patch of highway on the island of Montreal where the exits ran backwards. I saw Exit 2 go flying by, and I panicked, took it (I was supposed to take Exit 1), freaked out, and hopped on the 10-East to cross the bridge again. I wound up at Wal-Mart Broussard where no one would even remotely entertain my request for directions.

All my life I have heard one bit of conventional wisdom: If you are in Montreal, where everyone speaks two languages, if you at least attempt French they will respect you and generally be pleasant, pleased that you made the effort. This is pure fiction. I took two semesters of French for Morons in school and my exchange went like this:

>> Je regret, pardon-moi. Savez-vouz le Dix-Ouest?

Wal-Mart cashier looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language, which, to be honest, I am.

<< Le DIX Ouest? She asked, her voice dripping in incredulity and Frenchness.

>> Oui.

<< Non.

This is a lie on her part, because everyone knows the way to 10 West. Wal-Mart Broussard is directly next to the Bell Center (where the Cannadiens play), which is right next to the highway.

At this point a supervisor comes over, takes the high road, and just assumes I speak fluent French. I clearly don’t. She rattles off a rapidfire, tongue-clicking explosion of language. I pick out only one word: “sortie.” I attempt to sketch a map, but she cuts me off.

Ultimately I just ask, “C’est simple, ca?” and she agreed, probably still lying to me. I drove aimlessly until I spotted what looked surprisingly like an on-ramp. It wasn’t an on-ramp. So I followed that for a while, teasingly running parallel to the highway, until I drove through an abandoned gas station and caught the on-ramp.

I still made it to the testing site with ninety minutes to spare. But long story short, don’t take the LSAT in another country.

Don’t.

Especially if that country happens to be in Europe. Don’t be fooled, Quebec violates physics. You see, “Quebec” is French for “Quantum.” That’s because you are geographically in North America, but you are also simultaneously, on a vibrating-string-level, in Europe. And of course, nothing terrifies a 21-year old American male more than Europe.

I think some Canadians understand what I’m saying here. I had a chat with Sarah, who sat in front of me. She was supremely annoyed that the Toronto test center was full, although she did attend McGill. She told me that she didn’t speak a lick of French and was supremely annoyed about the new customs laws, because her boyfriend lives in Virginia:

“I think it’s so stupid that I need a passport to leave or enter Canada. I mean, America and Canada are completely the same.”

I almost blurted out, “Yeah, you know you’re the 51st state,” but I kept my mouth shut. Although we did reach an international accord: Canadian television blows.

>> The only thing I know about Canada is what I learned from watching Da Vinci’s Inquest. And that is ‘Canadians don’t like TV shows that make sense.’

<< Yeah, I watch Vermont TV when I’m at home because I don’t speak French.

That cracked me up. No one watches Vermont TV. Vermonters don’t watch Vermont TV because Vermonters don’t believe in TV.

The other thing that cracked me up was the LSAC’s “one gallon Ziploc bag” policy. No one knew how much “one gallon” looks like in Ziploc terms, nor is it printed on their boxes. They thought the LSAC was from Mars, which isn’t that far from accurate. I burst their bubbles by displaying mine. Most others just used shopping bags.

That is all I have to say about the LSAT. If you want to talk about dinosaurs, scientific humanists, or nonfat food labels, go to TLS.

I will conclude the TDLSB when I get my score.

Jamie Gorton . com mirror

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Modern Quill

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