Teacher's Pet

I'm a few weeks into this new semester with my First Amendment class at the law school down the street and reader, let me tell you: teaching a class is so weird in These Uncertain Unprecedented Times We're All In This Together.

My university made the decision to require that around 60% of all classes be offered exclusively online this semester. The rest of the classes are taught both in person and over Zoom (for anyone who has symptoms or is otherwise uncomfortable meeting in a group).

The school has some really strict measures in place to keep in-person classes as safe as possible. For example, there is only one class in the building at a time. They also have seats blocked off so students have to sit 6 or more feet apart. Everyone has to wear masks. Everyone is supposed to wipe down their areas before and after. Everyone is supposed to leave the building as soon as class ends.

The school asked me if I was comfortable teaching in person and I said I was because I don't believe in science I'M KIDDING DON'T EMAIL ME. I thought the measures sounded good enough that I wouldn't feel at great risk. Also, I haven't left my house since The Year Of Our Lord Eleventy and I'm starting to lose my mind greatly so I thought it would probably be good for me to have two events a week where I see 14 other humans.

But oh boy. Let me tell you something. It is a challenge to teach to a large mostly-empty room of spread-out people, in a mask, and simultaneously minding the Zoom screen of students at home. 

When did we get old?

I started teaching a class at the law school down the street from my house last fall. It's a First Amendment class. We read a bunch of cases from the Supreme Court and then we discuss them together. I really loved teaching it last year. I felt like I was getting together twice a week to hang out with my peers and debate some really fascinating issues. 

But y'all.

I don't know. I guess I still think of myself as being the same age as the average law student. 

We were talking about the Newdow case, which is the Pledge of Allegiance case from 2004 where everyone was fighting about kids saying the Pledge at school and the words "under God," etc. We were discussing this idea that a lot of people have argued over the years in First Amendment/religion cases that some things are just so steeped in tradition and so ceremonial that they aren't really a religious act anymore. Nobody really thinks, for example, they are engaging in a religious act when they use money, even though the money says "in God we trust" on it.

So we were talking about this argument in the context of the Pledge--that people never really thought about the words "under God" when they were saying the Pledge before this case/debate happened in 2004. And I was trying to make the point that ironically, this case actually flipped that around because we all started talking about it. I said something like, "if your experience was like mine, before 2004 you probably never really thought about those words at all. Now, every time a group at a rodeo says the Pledge they almost militantly yell that part. So this case actually weakened that argument that the words are only ceremonial."

Auto Signature

I was in the middle of my third year of law school when a professor with whom I did some work noticed that her secretary had been sending emails out with an auto tag line after her name. I know that doing this is possible. I communicate with people professionally whose emails have some inspirational quote automatically inserted at the end in a font very inconsistent with the body of the message. I've just never quite figured out how to do it myself, which is how so many of you have received pathetic email responses from the Stranger account that don't even include any brainlessly life-changing catch phrases.

The professor was sitting at her computer, reviewing some message the secretary had sent to a large group of law professors across the United States when I suddenly heard her gasp and say "how long has this been going on!?"

She said it like there had been an affair of some sort, and this caught my attention and intrigue.

I asked about it. The professor told me to come over to her computer screen.

At the bottom of the secretary's email and in large bright pink font appeared the message:

THOSE WHO KNOW GOD DON'T NEED ANSWERS THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW GOD DON'T DESERVE THEM

The Tenth Circuit

Some time ago I took on this interesting case with a partner at my firm. It's an Eighth Amendment case (the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment).

A year ago I successfully argued a part of the case and after the judge issued his ruling, the State of Utah decided to appeal the decision. When something is appealed from federal court in Utah, it gets heard by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is located in Denver.

I was happy to go to Denver to argue the case, and I did that this week. It has actually been a dream of mine for a long time to get to argue in front of that court.

Normal people dream about becoming a famous musician or meeting Oprah or getting hit by a car owned by a very wealthy person and being injured badly enough to never have to work again but not badly enough that life is miserable. I dream about standing in front of a panel of judges and indignantly saying something like, "WELL THEN I GUESS THIS ISN'T EVEN AMERICA ANYMORE."

When I told Rebecca that I was going to be doing this argument, she immediately invited herself, bought a plane ticket from Mississippi (where she lives right now I swear don'tevenask), and turned our text chain into a paper chain every 24 hours to count down the days until we could meet up in Denver.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

I found out that the best way to get Matt to do something is to text him and act as though he already committed to that thing. So just a minute ago I texted him, "what are you doing tonight after you come and tile the hearth of my fireplace?" And he responded that he didn't have plans after that, that he found the tile he wants me to use, and that I should meet him at some store at 5:30. And I honestly don't know if he really thinks he had agreed to do this previously or if he's just humoring me. But I'm going to conduct the rest of my life this way because it's possible that this is working.

I'm starting today's Pictures & Distractions with a video of my awesome 13-year-old niece and me at music night this week, wherein I hope her mother doesn't realize that I'm making her sing songs with mildly suggestive lyrics.

The Perfect Storm

Rebecca got married on Friday and Saturday. Notice I said Friday AND Saturday. I say this, because this person who told me she just wanted to elope had a TWO-DAY wedding. I'm going to spare you my rant about how this should be illegal and how it is most definitely offensive to the Constitution, the Magna Carta, AND most of Aristotle's books on botany.

Whether or not a two-day wedding should be illegal (it should), the important thing is that it was extremely inconvenient for me. And I'm what matters here.

I've been referring to this weekend for some time as "The Perfect Storm" because in addition to Rebecca's TWO-DAY wedding where I swear to you there was a tree-planting ceremony, East Indian dancing, a wedding picnic, Chinese origami, singing in Hebrew, a ukulele-led march to a meadow, and a freaking tepee, I also had a two-day law firm retreat in the mountains, AND a two-day law school 5-year reunion.

BECAUSE IT HAS SOMEHOW BEEN MORE THAN 5 YEARS SINCE I FINISHED LAW SCHOOL OMG YOU PEOPLE ARE GETTING SO OLD.

Unfortunately, the events geographically spanned about 1 hour, which made it really difficult to bounce back and forth between all three things, which I somehow managed to do. Looking back I think I may have been using one of those plot-destroying Hermione time-turners from Harry Potter III.

The Thing About Guns

Chanting that "guns don't kill people" and that "people kill people" has never made a lot of sense to me. I mean, I get it. The person shouting it is probably trying to demonstrate in some way that guns are not the problem and so guns shouldn't be regulated. These are inanimate objects. Why should we blame the inanimate object? We should instead blame the person controlling the inanimate object.

Of course, nobody supporting gun control advocates for blaming guns instead of the people who wield them. And really, the propriety of theoretical "blaming" of the inanimate object is a pointless debate. Inanimate objects don't have a conscience, so they aren't going to feel bad if we point the finger at them.

How people in this country do not see that nearly unfettered access to a very dangerous thing is problematic is something I cannot understand. How there are so many people in my own home country who get upset at any suggestion that we ought to consider making it even slightly more difficult for crazy and evil people to take weapons to public places and murder our children baffles me. How these people have developed enough of a critical mass in my home country to actually have longstanding control over the debate feels like a nonsensical nightmare to me.

This is What Friendship Looks Like

I got to spend a great deal of time with Corey in New York City over the weekend. Corey is one of the closest friends I've ever had. I can't call her my best friend here because Lee will freak the hell out and accuse me of calling too many people my best friend and for not including him in that.

I'M PLAYING HARD TO GET, LEE.

Corey is the smartest person I've ever met in my life. Her brain works at levels I can't comprehend. She is also extremely charismatic and the most strong-willed person I've ever known. Because of this, she sort of always finds a way to get exactly what she wants in life and I am totally convinced that one day she will be ruler of the Earth so I'm trying to stay as close to her as possible.

Corey and I met in law school. A few weeks after law school began in 2008, we competed against each other in a mock negotiation competition. We had never seen one another before setting foot in that room and for the next hour we yelled at each other so condescendingly that the moderator had to intervene.

We immediately became frienemies. We recognized that we had nearly identical personalities and senses of humor, but we were both so stubborn that it seemed impossible for us to live peaceably.

A Young Lawyer

I rolled into my house sometime late in the evening last night to get some rest. As usual, it took me three or four times longer than I anticipated to get ready for bed. No matter how tired I am and no matter how many or few distractions there are, it always somehow seems to take so much longer to get ready for bed.

I climbed under the covers, telling my Siri command to "wake me up in three hours." It responded, "your alarm is now set for three-thirty A.M."

Three-thirty. A.M.

I didn't really realize how ridiculous this schedule was until I heard the words come out of the i-phone. But I dozed off before I could dwell on it for too long.

I woke up before the alarm ever sounded. About an hour earlier than I had anticipated. And it was the kind of waking up that I knew was going to be long-lasting. I wouldn't fall asleep again. Not for a while, anyway. Too much running through my mind. Too much anxiety.

2014

Each year when I sit down to write the New Year wrap-up post, I begin the process by reviewing what I wrote the year before. It gets me in the mood to reflect. And it's always fascinating to me to review the emotions I expressed the prior year.

One of the best things about writing this blog, and writing so regularly, is that it's a really effective way for me to preserve my states of being and to track the evolution that comes with growing up. As I sat and read the 2013 post, the flood of 2013's emotions came back to me.

That was a hard year. In many ways, my very hardest. And when I reached its conclusion, I remember thinking that it was a miracle that I survived it. I know those words sound dramatic. But for me, at that time, they didn't even begin to capture how torn apart my soul felt after everything I had experienced in Palau and its aftermath.

I knew that 2014 was going to be a different story. It had to be. Because I felt like I began it at rock bottom. And true rock bottom is a firm boundary, comforting in its limits that at least appear to mean that things can't get worse.

Eli and 1,000 Women

So I'm a lawyer and as a lawyer there are a bunch of requirements I have to meet every year in order to be able to keep practicing law. These include attending eleventy million legal training classes and submitting certificates of completion with the state bar.

As the year has been winding down and as I've realized that I have not been so diligent at finding opportunities to attend these classes, I started to frantically look for available classes about a month ago.

You guys. I was too busy earlier this year. Because TV. And laying on the floor eating candy.

I mentioned this to my friend Annie at work, who as usual was so on the ball that she basically had every single legal education opportunity memorized, categorized in her mind alphabetically, and was probably asked to speak at half of them. She told me that she was going to a great weekend conference in Park City in October and that I should "totally sign up and come too!!!"

The Elevator Almost Killed Us

The other day I saw what Annie looks like when she thinks she's about to die. Annie is my close friend at work who I caught wearing a Ring Pop last week.

I asked her if she wanted to head down the street to grab a mid-morning treat. We hopped onto the elevator and began our descent.

Annie was regaling me with stories of her baby or some court hearing or something else. I wasn't really listening because I was distracted by her gnawing on the candy necklace hanging around her neck.

Then, suddenly, somewhere around the thirteenth floor, the power went out and the elevator came to a screeching halt. The lights were out and the elevator became so dark that you almost couldn't see the hand in front of your face.

And Annie Quinn Wilson, super mom, afraid of nothing, defender of the universe, SCREAMED.

"Sam" Diego

I abandoned you for a few days and now everyone is mad at me and nobody is even telling me how good my hair looks right this second. AND THIS IS THE HARDEST TRIAL I'VE EVER EXPERIENCED.

My childhood best friend, Sam, AKA "POTTY MOUTH," finished his orthodontics residency and has started his practice after eleventy million years in school. In celebration that he has finally crawled out of the hole into which he went when he began dental school, a small group of us met in San Diego to crash on the beach for four days.

FAQs

Good morning, dear strangers. A while back I decided it was time to stick an FAQs section on Stranger. So I'm finally doing that. You can find the tab above. I know. It's like I'm trying to set a world record on having the most tabs possible. I have also included the FAQs in this post, for the truly lazy. I receive quite a few emails and comments on blog posts (which I love reading) and many of them ask a lot of the same questions. Since I don't want you to spend all your time asking these kinds of things and not have enough time to write about your Queen of Colors sighting, I post the answers conveniently for you here.

Q: What the crap did I just read?

A: I started this blog in 2007 on a whim. I gave the title no thought, and probably would pick a different one if I could go back. Before I started blogging, I was writing about the strange experiences I was having and emailing them to members of my family almost daily. Then I heard about blogging (I'm always about 10 years behind on all things) and it seemed like a more practical way to share stories and archive them than through the hotmail account I had created when I was 16. So one Saturday morning I up and created this blog and it has largely remained what it was in the very beginning: an exaggerated account of my daily life. The good, the bad, and the Queen of Colors. Only, hopefully, now the spelling and grammar is a little better.

In Which My Life Takes A Sharp Turn

Several months ago, sort of on a whim, I applied for a job in a country called Palau. Palau is an island nation in Micronesia, 500 trillion miles away from where I currently live. Why did I apply to work there?

1. It never gets cold there.
2. It never gets cold there.
3. It never gets cold there.

The position is court counsel for the Supreme Court of Palau for one year. Over the next several months after applying I corresponded with the court, believing it was unlikely that I was ever going to actually land the position and haul my little-old-self to the other side of the planet.

And then they rejected me. I got a polite email explaining that I was not selected for an interview, so I spent the remainder of that day with good friends eating ice cream and making the expected rejection as dramatic as possible.

As a part of my coping, I found incredibly cheap tickets to Mexico City and planned the trip. As fate would have it, Palau changed its mind about me shortly thereafter and asked me to be in LA for an interview on [wait for it] the same week I was supposed to be in southern Mexico.

2011

2011 was good to me. It was also my strangest year to date, which is how I measure success. I believe that if I'm living my life the way I should, the best year of my life will always be the last one that I lived. "Best year" doesn't mean that all of my hopes and dreams have come true. And a year where all of my hopes and dreams have come true wouldn't necessarily be my best, but perhaps just be my most unexpected one. Best year for me doesn't mean that everything was peachy. And in fact, for a best year to happen, things probably can't be all peachy. That's because a best year is one full of personal growth and change, variety, accomplishment on both a macro and micro-level, and an endless string of bizarre experiences to relay to you. And by that standard, 2011 has easily been my best year to date.

The Lost Journal Series: Part V

Welcome back. Enjoy Part V tonight. Again, anything in [brackets] is tonight's commentary.


February 19, 1996 (age 11):


Today was President's day so we didn't have school so we could celebrate all of the presidents. Except my dad said that we don't celebrate the bad ones like Bil Klinton. [Bob has never been one to hide his feelings about politics]. I was going to play football today but it kept raining and I didn't want to get hurt because Jr. Jazz.

The Lost Journal Series: Part IV

Tonight I bring you Part IV in my ongoing series. Tonight's entries take you through the end of 1995 and into 1996 with additional commentary in [brackets].


[Before I start on the journal entries tonight, I would like to first mention that at the top of every single page up through page 49, the word "dog" is written in pencil. The reason for this is that sometime in early 1996 I imagined that the best way to get Bob and Cathie to allow a dog in the house was to convince them that I longed for one so badly that it was on my mind literally every single day of my young life. This, I believed, would tug at the heart strings of any loving parent (and I believed Bob and Cathie fit the bill) and would encourage, nay, force them to grant me my wishes. I also operated under the delusion that my parents would likely pick up my journal at one point and read it (because, as you have seen, I was writing some pretty important things at this time that they undoubtedly would have been dying to read) and so I assumed that they would see that "dog" had been written at the top of every page and this would necessarily cause them to believe that the only humane thing to do was to get a dog to appease the wishes of the boy who wanted it badly enough that he actually took the effort to note it briefly on a regular basis in the same place he shared his most intimate thoughts. The problem(s) with this? While I hoped it would appear to be the case, I did not actually write "dog" at the top of the page each time I wrote an entry. Rather, I took a pencil, went back to page one, and flipped through the journal, writing the word on each page, well beyond any entry up to that point (I thought it would be more efficient to do it this way). So, while each entry is done in a different pen color and with ever rapidly evolving child-handwriting, the word "dog" is consistently written in the same rushed sloppy manner, (getting ever so sloppier as my hand started to hurt during the later pages) and with the same faint pencil. And it was written beyond the pages I had actually used up to that point].


November 28, 1995 (age 11):


Christmas is coming and I'm really excited!!! Christmas comes every single year. [Glad we cleared that up]. A little while ago I was on an airplane ride with my uncle, Jared, and another kid my uncle took. [My uncle is a pilot, fyi]. First we learned about planes, then we went flying and Jared almost threw up. [I'm positive this isn't true but it's clear that in 1995 I was looking for any reason to criticize Jared in my journal]. I will probably be a pilot when I'm older unless I decide to be a lawyer, like in the court rooms instead. I think I could get the judge to do whatever I tell him because I could just explain to him what is right all the time and he would have to listen. And I would ask people questions and they would all say the right things. [I have since learned that things don't exactly work this way]. We're going on a field trip tomorrow and my mom gets to go. I hope she doesn't try to kiss me on the cheek! [For the record, this was a valid concern. Cathie's cheek-kissing only happened in public, was done solely for embarrassment purposes, and continued to take place with some regularity through at least 2007]. I started Jr. Jazz today! This is my second year! I can tell that I'm going to be a lot better this year. [Sadly, still no, kid].


December 15, 1995 (age 11):


I went to school today. It was o.k. I'm really excited for Christmas. We have a train and a vilige [village] under the Christmas tree. It hasn't snowed yet and I want it to. [That's it. This journal does not belong to me]. I went to piano lessons today also. I didn't do very good. [Is it because you didn't practice? Yes]. I [and the journal entry ends here after that one lone word. Although there is a drawing at the bottom of the page that appears to be a bed that has been scribbled out. No explanation for this].


January 10, 1996 (age 11):


Last week it was Utah's birthday! It turned 100. We had a big assembly at school and we sang a song about Utah. [My close friends know that if you catch me on a good day, I am usually willing to perform this song with the hand actions in their entirety. Most people who were children in Utah in 1996 still seem to remember at least fragments of the song which has since become the official state song). As a preview to hold you over until you next see me in person, I'll just tell you that it involves marching, enthusiastic swaying, big hand gestures, and contains lines such as: "Utah! People working together! Utah! What a great place to be!" and "This is the PLACE!" I remember spending an embarrassing amount of time in school learning the choreography to this. (Ours didn't look exactly like this, but you get the idea)]. I'm reading a book called "My Brother Sam is Dead." It's a really good book. I have over 350 rubber bands tied together. [This thing went everywhere with me for the better part of one year until it was mysteriously lost. I still have my suspicions that Bob and Cathie had something to do with its disappearance. Maybe it ended up "running away" like Gigi (my baby blanket) did in 1991. I'm not sure whether I should be more embarrassed that I believed that story or that Bob and Cathie actually had to make it up because I was still carrying my baby blanket around at age 7]. I'm almost done with my life. [I read this several times before figuring out what I was talking about. And no, this isn't a suicide note. Life was a goal/level/state-of-being(?) in Boy Scouts and apparently in 1996, I had almost achieved it].




That's all for tonight folks. Tune in next time for more insights into my 11 year old mind, including the continuation of the dog story.


~It Just Gets Stranger

The Bar

The bar exam happened yesterday and the day before that. While full of entertaining procedures, I have to say that the test seemed to be run very well. We started early on Tuesday morning as all 500 or so of us spread out on plastic tables in a giant room while proctors wandered up and down the aisles checking on whether any of us had brought things into the room from the long list of prohibited items, which included anything not necessary to stay alive for up to 7 hours. Interestingly, the list of prohibited items seemed pretty unnecessary as the examiners provided an exhaustive list of acceptable items (which, I think, literally included only four things) that could cross the sacred threshold into test-haven. Nonetheless, the list of prohibited items included a range of things that I can only imagine somehow have the potential of concealing cheating, creating chaos, or aiding violence. I mention violence because "weapons" were actually on this list, which was unfortunate for anyone who had hoped to bring with them their lucky machete. Based on the 3,000 stern warnings we had received via email prior to the first exam day, I sort of expected to see TSA at the doors with full friskings and "nude" machines. Instead we were all mostly on the honor system, but a much more bizarre version of the honor system than any that I have ever experienced. Rather than try to explain to you the rules of this honor system, I'll provide an example of it: one friend of mine was asked to pat herself down in front of the doorman before entering the room, presumably because he wasn't comfortable patting her down himself. I never was quite sure what he expected from the self-pat down, however, and I also didn't hear whether he asked afterward if she discovered any prohibited items on herself during the quick investigation. But I wished that she had told him that during the course of her protective frisk she discovered that she was attempting to smuggle a shotgun into the testing area and thus should be immediately apprehended (this while simultaneously running away screaming, "you'll never catch me!").

The exam went without any real drama on Tuesday, although I did hear from multiple sources that someone had thrown up into a sink in the men's bathroom during the morning. Nobody knew who had done it but the talk of the lunch break was that the puke was bright orange, which I unfortunately heard about from half a dozen or so people who all seemed to be completely mesmerized by the abnormal color.


Perhaps the only entertainment of the day that wasn't disgusting was listening to the 30 minutes of instructions from Ms. Thang, explaining to us many things in painstaking detail that people should just be required to know in order to be alive. For example, she told us more than once that the top left corner of the test booklet is the one closest to the staple. We were also informed on multiple occasions that we were not allowed to take our test materials into the bathroom with us (presumably so they wouldn't get orange throw up on them). She repeatedly explained how to do tasks that each of us came out of the womb performing as she instructed us to fill out our personal information on the test materials. After each instruction she asked us to look up at her when we had completed the task so she would know when everyone was ready to move on. This seemed impractical, however, as all 500 of us were spread out so broadly across the room that there was absolutely no way whatsoever this woman could possibly have known when or if all of us were looking up at her. Fortunately we were given half of an eternity to finish each part of this process even though the most time consuming of any of the tasks constituted nothing more than filling in a couple of bubbles on a scantron bubble sheet.

Wednesday was more of the same only instead of typing essays for seven hours, we answered a couple hundred multiple choice questions. And just like that, it was over. There was some awkward clapping when we were finally released before the parking lot cleared out about 4 minutes later. There was no real intense feeling of relief when it all ended. A new sort of panic called "nothing-I-can-do-about-it panic" was immediately born, which perfectly replaced the old panic called "oh-shoot-the-test-is-in-blank-days-and-I-still-don't-understand-the-way-the-world-works panic." Neither is preferable to the other. Although the latter necessarily comes with embarrassment while the former, only the potential for it.

And now the last 24 hours have been a blur as I've attempted to get my affairs in order for a 5-week backpacking trip through eastern and central Europe with a friend (and a few family members, toward the end of it). Due to the bar (and general laziness) absolutely no plans have been made for this trip (stay tuned for some likely enlightening posts). My flight leaves five hours from now (at 8:30AM) and I just started packing. Obviously I'm feeling a great amount of urgency, as is evidenced by a much undeserved blogging break. My time management discipline has been a bit off since the test ended and I don't seem to have direction anymore. What's that saying? Idle hands are something about the devil? A penny saved is a penny earned? It takes one to know one? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth? As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death? Whatever it is, it applies here.

I'm very tired.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Spam in the Final Hours

Well we're in the final days of battle preparation before we stampede into the great unknown. Three years of rigorous academic competition has now led us to the final hurdle for becoming whatever it is we've been trying to become for however long it's been since we started trying to become it. The bar exam starts on Tuesday this week. The bar exam is a magical mechanism by which a bunch of grumpy attorneys test and then grade hundreds of state applicants on their knowledge of 20 or so complicated legal topics, 3 of which may actually be applicable to their future careers. Some have compared it to fraternity hazing. I think though that the analogy fails because the "hazers" standing on the other end can't possibly enjoy watching any of this take place, especially having to waste the rest of their summers away grading garbled nonsense spewn out in 7 hours or so of essay typing as panicked and exhausted career beggars dump all 400,000 things they've crammed or attempted to cram into their brains, in no particular order.

My friends and I are spread broadly across the nation this evening, celebrating Pioneer Day in unison by closing up the books and calling it an early night. Annette Thacker's pony-tail has become permanently affixed to the top of her head by now (a true sign of panic) and Corey Boyd's apartment looks like a den of schizophrenics with papers strewn about containing diagrams and phrases written in giant squiggly handwriting as Boyd walks through it speaking somehow even faster than she normally speaks. I've seen or communicated with both of these super-humans and wondered if I could possibly have any claim in passing the bar exam if these two seem at all concerned. In any event I feel the bond in the air as 150 of my closest friends, once again, feel the same thing at the same time, the same way we have all felt the same things so many times before. Gosh I love my battalion.

This week as I began to study one morning I noticed that an old friend was logged onto Facebook. I clicked on his picture and attempted to instant message him, starting out by calling him an offensive-in-some-circles word that had sort of a special meaning to us over the years. Instantly I realized that I had in fact clicked on the wrong picture and instead had clicked on a person who is older, conservative, professional, and absolutely would not think what I had said was funny. In my 3 seconds of absolute panic, I immediately began typing: "heeeey, :) I just won a free ipod!!! This is ToToAlLy LEGIT man!!!! :)-"

Yup. That's right. I pretended to be spam. It apparently worked as I got a message from him a little later saying: "Eli, I think your facebook got hacked! I'm so sorry! I just got a really weird message from you. You may need to change you password." Deception, successful. Soul, less.

Ironically this was the day I visited the prison and subsequently vowed to never ever do anything wrong ever again, including parading myself as spam online to avoid consequences of my carelessness.

Anyway, off to the bar. Please send all positive vibes my way. I would also appreciate sacrificing firstborns if you've got one to spare.

~It Just Gets Stranger