The more time I have to think the less I think that thinking is such a good idea. Seeing as how I am still currently lacking a job, and I have to cert, and I have 2 cases pending with one that may or may not go to trial, my brain seems to have decided that it would be a fantastic time to ponder my existance. Yes, apparently my brain has determined that it is it's own entity, and it is going to do as it pleases, despite the part that realizes this is a truly bad idea. Why? Simple. You just can't logic somethings out. No matter how hard I try, there are just some things you have to let run their course, and whatever happens, happens. Of course, me being of the slightly controling nature cannot possibly allow this to occur. Instead, I spend my time trying to logic things out into simple and finite little catagories, where everything is labeled and organized. Alas, I will never succeed in this task, and while I cannot totally convince the rebelling part of my brain of this fact, I have gotten it to concede on a few points. An unhappy truce, but a truce none the less.

On a different note, I was home this weekend. I brought my friend Heather with me, as she has never been to upstate NY, and likely will not have a chance to do so anytime soon, as she will be heading back to texas soon. So we hung out with my friends for an evening, and Heather got into a rousing debate with my dad about politics. And I got to show my friend my cute little village (which I have decided is in fact really cute. Just boring when you are in your 20s and single.) It was very very relaxing, and did my weary mind a lot of good just to be home, where everything is familar, and my stresses are no where nearby. Makes the rest of the semester MUCH more tollerable. :-)

Chaos.

I just had one of those kinda of surreal days where you get to the end, look back and go, "Huh?"

Crashed at like 5-6 this morning, after working all night on some documents for an upcoming trial. Come to find out later I did them wrong. Gonna be a long night tonight.

Woke up later this morning in a panic when I heard my alarm going off. Thought "OMG I am late!" Then relaxed, cuz I do that a lot in the morning when I go to bed late. Open my eyes. Yeah, it was 12:30 and I am supposed to be at school at 12:45. Hah! Glad I showered at 3 this morning. 7.5 minutes later I am dressed and out the door, after nearly taking out my roomie who was trying to make lunch! OY.

Get to school by one, luckly I was just late for my lunch, and not for a client meeting. Lunch was good, a little rushed, since I was late and all, but I had sushi, so it was all good in the end. Patent was good (again! I LOVE this class! My prof is great and a lot of the cases are technical in nature, which I am just eating up. I miss science.) Managed to take a ton of notes today, apparently I was really focused or something. Forensic Mental Health was kinda neat, actually. Sometimes it feels like we take things a bit slow, but today we were talking about confidentiality and what doctors and psychotherapists have to tell patients for informed consent. Got into a nice banter with the prof. I was actually kinda into it, and I got a couple of other people in the debate as well. Gotta love when you can get into a class enough to care about an issue (which, in the law, can be tough. It is rather dry at times.)

Grabbed my case file (god, that thing is heavy!) and dragged it home with me. And here I sit, singing to indigo girls and kelly clarkson, and trying to figure out how I can go to bed guilt free without re-writing this motion again. (I can't, I realize, so I will be up late tonight again.)

My life amuses me. Bet it bores you, huh?

I was reading an article the other day online, and I came across this one. Seeing as how this is becoming an issue again (this time in my home state o'NY) I figured it was worth sharing this with the masses.

Those wacky Canadians

While the United States bans same-sex marriage state by state, the Canadian supreme court has endorsed marriage equality for all. Canadians also enjoy less violent crime and better education. Could it be they're smarter than us?

By Karel Charles Bouley II

On Tuesday, December 7, New York State supreme court justice Joseph Teresi ruled that same-sex couples do not have a basic right to marry in New York and thus their constitutional rights had not been violated by being denied such rights. Two days later, on December 9, Canada’s highest court said that the government can redefine marriage to include same-sex couples and paved the way for the country to make nationwide what 86% of its provinces have already done: allow same-sex couples to marry.

Those wacky Canadians.

As I sit pondering the ramifications of these two diverse events, CNN blares in the background about 25-year-old Nathan Gale, who leapt on to the stage during a concert by the rock band Damageplan on December 8, gun blazing, killing four people including the band’s guitarist, wounding two until he himself was taken out by a lone policeman. I think about the fact that Canada has no Second Amendment and thus only 22% of Canadians own guns as opposed to 49% of Americans (according to Slate, http://slate.msn.com/id/2109300) and handguns and assault rifles are completely prohibited. Canada’s violent crime rate is one tenth that of the United States.

Those wacky Canadians.

I start to ponder why Canadians aren’t worried about the moral decay and sure decline into a Gomorrah-esque society that surely will follow their country allowing gays and lesbians to marry but lose my train of thought when a MacReporter headline pops through on my desktop that the jury decided Scott Peterson will be put to death for the murder of his pregnant wife Laci and their “unborn son.” I think about Peterson’s conviction of first- and second-degree murder, a conviction based in pure emotion and no fact whatsoever. There was no smoking gun in the Peterson case, no eyewitness, no murder weapon, no DNA evidence, just a high-profile lawyer and a man who cheated on his wife, all in a circus posing as a trial. A manslaughter conviction at best, but no, as juror after juror got dismissed during deliberations a final verdict came out based in sensationalism and not justice. So now those 12 people decided Peterson—who never confessed, whose fingerprints were not found on any weapon, who was never seen with Laci or her body the day of the murder—should die.
I’m reminded that Canada abolished capital punishment in the 1970s and hasn’t seen an execution since 1962, the year of my birth.

Those wacky Canadians.

As I turn back to same-sex marriage, I’m forced to accept that the ban in 49 of the 50 United States—or at least the lack of legalization—is based in religious views, and that this democracy is moving closer and closer to a theocracy every day. I don’t want to accept it, but how can I deny it as the Ten Commandments monument that was banned in an Alabama courthouse is now halfway through its national tour of 15 states on the back of a flatbed truck? Yes, like Britney Spears and Incubus, the monument is on tour, with devotees in Louisiana spouting phrases like “Vote the Bible” and “Let the values of the men who founded this country rule,” according to a Shreveport Times story on the monument’s visit. Maybe those people are forgetting that the values of the men who founded this country included legal slavery and the limitation of the right to vote to white male citizens who owned land. But maybe they’re not forgetting that at all.
I think of the Conservative Party of Canada, moving to remove references to God in the nation’s Preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, replacing religious references with “democratic parliamentary institutions.” As we move to institutionalize God and the Christian faith in the United States, to codify it in our laws, Canadians move to keep government and religion separate.

Those wacky Canadians.

The fight for same-sex marriage in the United States is enough to make a grown gay man nauseous. Should that nausea become clinical and need to be treated, I’m reminded that in the United States—even if my state has voted to accept medicinal marijuana as a treatment for such nausea—the federal government under the guidance of George Bush and John Ashcroft is doing everything it can to make the Supreme Court say, “No! You cannot have pot as a legal drug for those whose doctors say need it.” Not so in Canada, a country that has again loosened its stance toward medicinal marijuana and may be well on its way to decriminalizing the drug all together.

Those wacky Canadians.

How did this happen? How did our neighbors to the north seem to get it right and we, the land of the “free” and home of the “brave” seem to go so far astray from the freedom from religion that our founding fathers had in mind? Could the cold of the north produce some sort of calming effect? I mean truly, we like to think of ourselves as mentally superior to the rest of the world, and yet it would appear that we are falling behind socially and academically.

Think about it. In a recent study of developed nations’ math skills by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 28th out of 40 nations. Canada ranked seventh. For reading skills, Canada was third, the United States 18th. For science, Canada ranked 11th, the United States 14th. Let’s face it, we’re not too bright.
And socially, we’re moving back to the dark ages.

It would be humorous, it could be funny, if it weren’t hurting so many of us in so many ways. We’re raising a nation of academic idiots who seem to be relying more on the words of a 2000- to 3000-year-old book of stories for life guidance than textbooks, and it’s not serving us well.
It’s not that Canadians are better, they’re just smarter. It’s a hard truth, but one borne out by statistics. And people who use their brains to rule, instead of their emotions and religion, appear to get it right when it comes to truly caring for their people.

Our founding fathers never considered this. They concentrated on the land of the free, the home of the brave, nowhere did they say the land of the educated, the home of the enlightened. We constantly throw science to the background for what we believe to be the truth, instead of what can be proved. It’s odd that a country founded by men of science, including great thinkers like Benjamin Franklin, a land designed by Freemasons, has become a theocratic land of consumers who buy more than they produce and who learn more about sensational news stories or 2000-year-old fables than practical things like how to spell, read, write, and balance their checkbooks.
Almost every social debate in this country would end if we relied on dispassionate, analytical, or more factual logic when trying to examine the problem. Same-sex marriage would be looked at for what it is, a matter of contractual law, not some social ill. Marriage is a civil contract with rules and rights governed by state and federal institutions. It’s a legal institution, not a social one, and should be handled by lawyers, not priests.
But that makes too much sense.

Abortion is a medical procedure, not a social debate. It’s a procedure between a doctor and a patient governed by certain unchangeable medical rules and guidelines. It’s clinical, not theological. The same for stem-cell research.
Medical marijuana—again, a medical issue, not a social one.

But we don’t have the brains to wrap around such concepts because our leaders like us dumb. Those who are educated, who are enlightened, are called liberals, or worse, un-American. Those who use logic instead of religion to decide “social” issues are pagans, atheists, no matter their religious affiliation.

Let’s face it, we’re a bunch of idiots and now the rest of the world knows it. We’ve elected a president twice who has no command of the English language. We’ve made second-class citizens of so many because they go against “good Christian beliefs.” We stand in judgment of the rest of the world in so many ways, and feel free to invade other nations and set up governments we like, and yet most of us can barely do long division or spell without help from a computer program.

Money and power do not make a country great. Sure, we’ve got that. Big guns and better weapons don’t make a country strong. We’ve allowed our leaders to make us believe that our only job as Americans is to consume and pay for programs like the missile defense system—a system which, on December 15, failed in an $85-million blunder. Doesn’t take rocket science to know that this program doesn’t work. But we’ll keep pressing on with it.

We used to be a country of some of the greatest thinkers on the planet—the greatest philosophers, greatest scientists, greatest adventurers. We were a country of people like Howard Hughes who challenged the skies, of scientists finding the cures, and of people who believed that elevation came through education, not through prayer.

Canadians aren’t better than Americans, just smarter. Literally, smarter. When we get our heads out of a book of fables and go back to educating ourselves in all disciplines, social policy will change. Because any thinking person could look at the United States right now and shake their head with disillusionment and disgust. In fact, most are doing just that.

Jesus is not coming back in our lifetime. I’m willing to bet my life on it. So stop preparing for his second coming and start preparing the way for the next generation of Americans to inherit something worth getting. Start educating ourselves and our youth in more than Ten Commandments and Old Testament ramblings about men lying with other men, and stop debating when life begins from a biblical instead of scientific standpoint.

In other words, America, wise up. Our neighbors to the north are making us look like we arrived in North America on the short yellow bus. When it comes to social issues, let’s deal in facts from educated standpoints, not emotions from theocratic ramblings. Because it’s not too hard to conquer a nation of idiots, and if any of you actually have read a history book, you’d know that no empire, not one, lasts forever. Ask the Romans. Our position as a superpower will slip long before any deity returns to Earth. And it will happen while we concentrate on who can marry whom, what they’re smoking while doing it, or when, exactly, a fertilized egg becomes a human—all while fighting for the right to hold an assault weapon.

Believe it or not, those are the least of our nation’s worries. But most of us are obviously too dumb to know it.

Those wacky Americans.

Karel is a talk-show host on KGO AM 810 in San Francisco on Saturdays and Sundays from 7 to 10 p.m. He can also be heard on the Web at www.kgo.com. His book of essays, You Can’t Say That, has just been published. Find out more about Karel or order the book at www.karelchannel.com. You can e-mail Karel at comments@karelchannel.com.

As most of you know, today is the super bowl. A David and Goilith battle, I am told, with my "hometown" boys, the New England Patriots being the Goilith to the David of the Philly Eagles. And, as boston is currently my home, this leads to much excitement in the homestead. After all, not only would it be wonderful if the Pats won again (third year, I think?) but that would be TWO Boston champions in one year (yes, I know they are the new england patriots, and not the boston patriots, but let's be realistic, what other city is big enough to claim them in new england? Providence? Concord? Bangor? Right, point proven.)

But as this is another Boston team doing well, I get to recieve my multitudes of warnings as to my behavior and decorum during this most esteemed of days. I get an e-mail from the Dean of the law school, reminding all of us good little law students to stay away from the inevitable riot that will occur at Kenmore Square in the even of a Patriots win. I, along with the 30,000 other students at BU, get an "invitation" to watch the game on the big screen at the stadium at BU, so I can have an evening of non-alcoholic revelery, to cheer for the Patriots without joining the drunken masses. But my favorite e-mail was the university wide one, enlightening me of the punishments students recieved for the LAST set of drunken stupidity that washed over Boston (yes, the Red Sox, silly...) I was warned of my impending explusion, and potential criminal sanctions if I partook in the flipping of cars, or setting of fires, or general mayhem that will inevitably occur everytime you stick too many 18-22 year olds in close proximity to each other with alcohol and something to cheer for. Because in the end, it is not like the majority of the people that are rioting are the "True" fans of the Patriots (or the Red Sox). They are college kids, who came here for school and latched on to the "We hate Yankees, we love Red Sox because they give us an excuse to get drunk with my friends" craze every year.

In the end, I do not blame these kids. Most of the Boston schools are generally not known for their athletics (exception given to the hockey teams, but many americans just do not appreciate a good hockey game.) We don't have college football to go root for en masse, painted strange colors (BC, you are not in boston, you do not count.) So the college masses latch onto what they can cheer for, the Red Sox and the Pats. For this I say "Hurrah young college kids. Enjoy the drunken nights and hangover mornings. Cheer for your teams till you lose your voice. Beware of the evil cops who will spoil your fun."

"But most of all, don't flip over my car."

You ever had one of those days where you wake up, and you have figured out the world. You have made a plan. You have organized your life and you finally know where you are going. You get dressed, wearing your favorite shirt and your most comfy jeans and you head out for a bright new day. The sun is shining, there’s a smile on your face and a spring in your step. You are ready to take the world by storm.

You walk down the street. “Hello!” you say, with a smile and a wave. And people wave back, some even smile. “Good morning to you” you say with a grin, and you mean it to, for today is the first day of the rest of your life, and nothing can keep you down.

You turn the corner and trip on the curve. “Ha!” you say, with a triumphant smile “I didn’t fall. In fact, it hardly slowed me down at all.” You bustle on your way, cheery and with glee. For today you have taken control of your life. And nothing can get in your way.

You get to the corner, and wait for bus. A few clouds roll in, and the gets covered up. But that doesn’t stop you, no siree bob. Because you’ve got that sunshine inside of your head, and nothing can take them away. Things will work out, dispite all the stress. Because you’ve taken control of your life.

As you wait for the bus, a few raindrops fall. “No problem,” you think, grin still alit. “I can duck under the awning, and wait the rain out.” Because rain sometimes falls, and storms sometimes come, and everything is dark and grey. But you’ve got a plan, and things will go right, and that’s all you need today.

The bus soon appears, and you wave your hand. But it passes you by, waving “catch the next one.” Sighing, you put that grin back on your face. “I’ll be a little late, but that’s ok. My day is still happy, and I’ll get there at some point.” You head back to your awning, but it’s all full of folks. “That’s ok too, the rain will stop soon.”

Another bus appears, and you head to the curb. Arm out waving, the bus starts to turn. Right into a puddle, right next to you. A wave of mud, rain and who knows what splashes all over you. You look down at the mud, you look up at the rain. You look at the clouds, and the soggy wet street. You are not in control. You do not own this day. Your step is not springy, your smile is not glowing. You are cold, you are wet, and your plan washed away. You probably should just pack it in for the day.

But from deep down inside, there is a little tickle. That grows and grows and soon it’s a giggle. A chuckle, a snicker and soon it’s a laugh. A great big full bellied boisterous laugh. Because you’ve conquered this day. It can’t get you down. So what if your plans have been turned all around. You’re young and alive. You can dance you can sing. You have no worldly idea what the future will bring.

Some days really rot, no matter what you do. Some days you feel lower then a big piece of poo. But tomorrow will come, and you’ll start again. And who knows, maybe this time things will work out in the end. But you gotta laugh at yourself, even if you get dirty. Cuz at the end of your life, when you’re on your way out, you can look back and say “I may not have done everything on my list. But I laughed, and I sang and I grinned the whole time. And in the end, it was worth it.”

For the first time since school started, I feel like I have a grasp on my life. Not a big grasp, but I can see a semblance of order to my life. I am developing a plan. It is not a big plan, it does not have a lot of details, but it gives me something to hang on to. Something to focus on. And now, finally, I have found some ability on focusing enough to get things done. I have 2 trials to work on, class work to do, many cases to brief, and a cert paper to outline, research and write. Oh yeah, and get a job (yah bum!) But I made a list, I'm checkin' it twice, and finally getting something done!

Now, if I could get rid of this general feeling of nervousness and nausea, I'll be alllllllll set.