Lawyer, Heroes, WEWY, Davids

Read: The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii), The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32

I found a hardcover copy of Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer in the bargain stack at Barnes & Noble, which was the excuse I'd been waiting for to look into this titan of the mystery genre. Interestingly enough, I had acquired the audiobook version of the book about a year ago, but had never gotten around to listening to it. After reading the first few chapters in print, I finished it off with the audio version.

Connelly has the genre down cold; his straightforward prose is the kind of writing I'd hope to produce if I ever tackle a book in that vein. Moreover, as far as my law student knowledge goes, he seems to have the legal jargon and experience of a criminal defense attorney down pretty cold. I found myself craving more--and discovered that a sequel, bringing Lawyer's Michael Haller and Connelly's mainstay protagonist, Harry Bosch, together. Proving that it never rains but it pours, the release date is Oct. 14--the same day the third Mistborn novel will be released.

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I managed to play No More Heroes for a few more hours last week, raising my assassin ranking from 10th to 9th and trading in my beam katana for a new model. It's a great game with an irrepressibly cool style, for a great price--so if you have a Wii and $30 in your pocket, there's really no excuse not to buy it.

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The World Ends With You (Subarashii Kono Sekai, or "This Wonderful World" in Japanese) is Square Enix's non-FF entry into the DS market, with character designs from the designer of Kingdom Hearts, and a unique "pin"-based fighting system that has players potentially controlling two characters at once--the main on the touchscreen with touch controls, and the partner on the top screen with the keypads. Add a hip-hop/J-pop soundtrack and Square Enix's usual brand of plotline insanity, and you end up with a game that may be among the best on the DS. Playing the entire game through could take more than 20 hours--perhaps even more than 30 if played for completion. The control scheme takes some getting used to, but it's a must buy for any Square Enix fan, or any gamer who likes games that force you out of the usual box.

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I usually ignore a season of American Idol after I've had a good laugh at the (un)talent showcased during the audition episodes. I don't subscribe to the judges taking pot shots at people for their appearance or social awkwardness, but I have no qualms about laughing my ass off at tone-deaf delusionals who are utterly convinced that theirs is a talent for the ages, and attempt to prove it by puffing up their egos to, quoting the Doctor, the exact size of Belgium. Occasionally a member of the top 10 catches my fancy to the point where I occasionally tune in to monitor their progress as the finalists are whittled down.

David Cook won my unwavering audience with his rendition of "Hello," which I still find to be his finest performance. Any singer who can take on a well-known song like that and utterly own it--blowing Lionel Richie's original rendition not only out of the water, but into outer space--earns my interest, and I was pleased to see him consistently prove that he has what it takes to be a great performing artist--a great voice and a great ear for music--with or without the American Idol crown.

David Archuletta impressed me as well, having as good (or better) a voice as Cook and proving, with his late-round triumphs in song selection, that he may have the better ear too. That Archuletta is only 17--a full eight years younger than Cook--only makes his accomplishments even more praiseworthy. But Archuletta is, for lack of a better term, a love songster, and no matter how well he sings his genre of songs, Cook will always win more style points for his rocker stylings.

*SPOILER: For those hoping to enjoy the American Idol Finale, please do not read any further until you have witnessed the results.*

Cowell was mostly right the night before: Archuletta dominated the final performance show, consistently out-picking and out-performing Cook in each of the three rounds. (In my opinion, though, the second round went to Cook for doing more with his song than Archuletta did with his.) But it seems that, in crowning Cook the winner of season 7, America agrees with my appraisal of the genres.

Rock beats love songs every time.

Wii, Mistborn, Revisions, NaNoWriMo

Read: Mistborn & The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii)
Redrafting: Chapter 3 of 32

In the latest demonstration of the fact that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the luckiest member of my family, my mom won a Nintendo Wii at a school raffle last week. And, in a demonstration of the fact that it is good to have said luckier family members, that Wii is now a fixture in my room. (The living room TV has no AV ports to spare. Mine, as luck would have it, does.)

I inaugurated the Wii with the one exclusive game that I've had my eye on for quite some time: No More Heroes, by Ubisoft. It's an action game with some interesting gameplay mechanics, a semi-otaku main character, and major style points for presentation. It also is one of the few games for Nintendo's hardware to sport a MA-17 rating.

Top all that off with the fact that it was on sale at Gamestop for $29.99, and you end up with quite a nice deal.

Not that I've been able to play much of it this week.

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Instead, I picked up Mistborn from where I dropped it (read: lost it) in my room about two years ago. It was the second book by the precocious Brandon Sanderson, a new power in the Fantasy industry whose debut novel Elantris impressed me mightily. While Elantris was a stand-alone novel, Mistborn was heralded as the first in a trilogy, which I looked forward to, especially since my first novel is essentially part of what may end up as a tetralogy or quintology. Sanderson has a strong grasp of character and plot, but what impressed me the most was his ability to create a tightly woven milieu with its own internal logic and cohesion. Since the beginning, my weakest attribute as a writer has been setting, in which milieu plays an integral part, especially in speculative fiction. Studying at the feet of masters has been one of the greatest sources of improvement for me, so reading Sanderson's latest works have been a wonderful crash course on the subject.

Of course, I never read a novel for didactic quality alone.

His novels are also just plain fun. The plots are fresh and largely unpredictable (a positive aspect for me, since I can generally predict the plot of any given hour-long TV drama within the first 20 minutes), but nevertheless inevitable in a way that satisfies the reader. He can turn a phrase when he wants to, but he doesn't have quite so lyrical a grasp of language as some of the others I turn to for a good read.

In any event, I finished Mistborn over the weekend, and then, realizing from the copyright that it had been published in 2006, wondered if the second book in the series had already been released.

It had. In 2007.

So I rushed down to Borders (Barnes and Noble didn't have any copies; the paperback is due out in June 3) and grabbed a copy (when it comes to a really good book, who can wait for Amazon.com's free shipping?), and read it in just about a day. Which, in retrospect, was a bad thing, since the third and final book in the trilogy isn't due for release until October 14th.

Rationing was never my strong suit.

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But, on the bright side, a strong influx of good narrative prose often gets the creative juices flowing on my part, so I've broken through the "revising" part of my redraft and have started working on the substantive, well, redrafting--that is, throwing out crap chapters and rewriting them from scratch. In the process of writing the first draft, I knew that the initial chapters would need some serious attention in the redrafting stage, but I ignored the whinny voice in my head because my goal was to have a completed (read: crap) draft come hell or high water. Now that I've got that, it's time to get a completed (read: passable) redraft for possible first reader feedback. (Possible, because if I still feel that the redraft isn't up to snuff, then it'll face a redraft of its own.)

I've also set the tentative goal of having the redraft of the novel completed by the end of summer, or at least before November, which is the traditional NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Lunatic wordsmith that I am, I've decided to draft at least the first 50,000 words of the second novel in the series as my part of the NaNoWriMo frenzy. (There are numerous sound industry arguments against writing the sequel to a novel that has yet to--and, therefore, likely will not--be published. To those arguments, I say: I have to do what I have to do, and if that means writing out a multi-book story arc to its conclusion before moving on to another, perhaps more marketable stand-alone, then so be it. Besides, one of my goals as a writer is to never publish a novel that requires the reader to be familiar with my previous work. I seek--and only time will tell if I can be consistent on this count--to have every book in a series work as a stand-alone novel in its own right, even if some of these "stand alones" may end up with something of a cliffhanger ending.)

And yes, my NaNoWriMo participation will take place during my 3L year at law school. If nothing else, law school drills time management and multitasking into your brain like few other graduate schools, so I don't think I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Well, that's enough blogging for one week. Back to the redraft.

Barely an Admiral

Gleaned this test from the podcast "Make It So." My score was 939 (or 93.9% correct)--what's yours?

2YS, Teaching, Fountain, Iron

Reading: The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch, with Jeffrey Zaslow
Watching: To Rabu Ru #1 (To Love Ru, pronounced "tora-buru" which sounds like the Japanese pronunciation of "trouble")

I have a ritual that I like to go through when it comes to academic papers. I like to front load the work, and that way have a polished draft ready for professorial consumption at least a day or two in advance of the actual due date.

Why?

Because at our core, we're all show boaters, in our own little way. Some are more overt at it than others. Me, I subscribe to the precept that the loudest voice isn't necessarily the one with the biggest impact. Like the old proverb, it isn't the howling winds or pouring rain that defines strength amidst a hurricane; it's the tiny leaf unmoved by the storm. Turning in a paper 24-48 hours before it's due is just my way of saying to myself (and OK--a subliminal message to the professor) that I'm confident in the work I've done, and that I recognize when a work is as done as it can be. Running backs do their end-zone dance when they score a touchdown; I turn in papers a bit early when I'm sure that they're ready to go. Different manifestations of the same sweet, sweet feeling.

*

I've been putting a lot of thought into how I will spend my remaining year of law school, especially since I most likely won't be using my degree to practice law any time soon. As I plan to be parlaying my experiences into a writing career, I've been actively searching for ways to tailor my remaining law school courses to best suit that objective. A part of that search made me decide to apply for positions as a T.A. and a S.W.A. next fall.

The first acronym you probably know: as a teaching assistant for the 1L Legal Practice course, I'll be helping the fall's 1Ls muddle through their transition from undergraduate writing to full-blown legal writing and research. It's a sometimes tumultuous road, I know, so I'm happy to help. And you know the funny thing about teaching? Often times the teacher learns just as much in the process. I just got the OK earlier this week, so I know that I will be one of the TAs this fall.

The second acronym builds off the first: senior writing associates make themselves available for one-on-one sessions with anyone who needs help with a paper, giving them feedback and advice. I'm especially looking forward to this, since this writer-to-writer critique is more up my alley than the general guidance that T.A.s provide, but I don't yet know whether I'll be tapped as one this coming semester.

Here's hoping!

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I can't quite recall what exactly spawned my initial interest in fountain pens. I do remember my first one: a blue Pilot Birdie that should still be around somewhere--but which I haven't seen for ages.

I promised pictures of my fountain pen acquisitions, so:






This is the first of my recent acquisitions: a Lamy Vista. It's basically a clear (or "demonstrator") version of the very popular Safari, which is widely regarded as the best entry-level fountain. Great flow, solid design, and an optional converter for using your own inks.

This is what I stepped up to last week:



It's a Pilot/Namiki Capless. In the States, the "Capless" is a single model, known as the Vanishing Point. In Japan, it's three: the Capless, the Decimo, and the Fermo. The Decimo is a lighter, skinnier version of the Capless, while the Fermo uses a twist mechanism rather than the clicker. The pen pictured above is a blue Decimo, which I had to import from Japan. Very, very smooth, some nice flex in the tip, and the clicking mechanism works like a dream. The only downside? The click can be awfully loud in a quiet room.



These are Noodler's inks--the one on the right is "Bulletproof Black"--so named because of its resistance to UV light, time, water, and other solvents. The other ink is a colonial-style indigo blue called "Baystate Blue," which is very finicky and feathery to use, but has a very appealing hue.

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This Friday heralds what for me is the best superhero film of this summer, and--just perhaps--the best of all time. Others may be more skeptical, but every indication I've seen tells me that Iron Man will be up there with Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins at the very pinnacle of the superhero genre--if not above them. Robert Downey, Jr. wouldn't have been the one I'd peg for Tony Stark, but from the trailer material I've seen, the role fits like a glove. I may be biased, since Iron Man is my favorite superhero among the U.S. Marvel/D.C. pantheon, but I have a very good sense of when a movie is shaping up to be something special. (Yes, count that as a prediction: sight unseen, Iron Man will be the new benchmark for the superhero genre.) More than that, all of the best movies I've seen in recent memory have had a release date only a day from an important due date on my schedule. Serenity, for example, I saw on opening day--the day before the LSAT. Here, Iron Man will open the day after the fore-mentioned 2YS paper is due.

Desk, Keyboard, Pen

Watched: The Green Mile; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; Dan in Real Life
Typing on: Diatec Filco Majestouch FKB104M/EB

I promised updates about the new desk, so:

The new desk is really three pieces: the hutch (top part with cabinets), the credenza (the desk space where my computer, monitor, lamp, etc. reside), and a mobile 3-drawer pedestal. The pedestal can be wheeled out a bit to provide additional surface space.

Of course, the purpose of the six-foot long desk space is to spread things out.


Up until today, I've been using a Kinesis Ergonomic Advantage Keyboard, which is very comfortable and easy to touch-type on, but is a bit too thick for the new setup. I discovered a specialty keyboard shop the last time I was in Akihabara, and spent a good forty five minutes testing the various display models--including a Happy Hacking Keyboard, which I found to be something of a letdown, given the hype and the price tag. However, I fell in love with another Japan-only keyboard: the Filco Majestouch. The Majestouch is actually a series of keyboards, all of which impressed me mightily. Unfortunately, the keyboard was approximately five pounds, and bulky--not something I wanted to lug back with me (along with ~25 pounds of doujinshi and other anime/manga paraphernalia) on the overnight bus to Kobe. (I did end up lugging back a metal airsoft gun, but that's beside the point.) Only recently did I find a website willing to ship a Majestouch to the U.S., which brings us to today:

It uses the brown Cherry keyswitches that most typing enthusiasts recommend (though I recently discovered that the Kinesis does too), but the typing sound and tactile quality are, for lack of a better description, utterly addictive. The anti-slip matte finish on the keys, overall heft, and, to top it all off, blue LED lock indicators (all Filco keyboards using Cherry browns apparently use the blue variety) made this a must-buy for me. One user on a keyboard forum describes this model as "a typist's nirvana"--and I'd have to say that, for the most part, he's right.

Oh yes--and the tiny computer that crept into the last few pictures is my 2G Asus EEE laptop, which is now my primary school computer, allowing the Vaio to assume the role of desktop computer. Both seem happy in their roles.

I've also been dabbling in fountain pens again, but I'll save the pics for next time.

Break, SYS Revisions, Hutches & Credenzas

This coming week begins the law school's Spring Break, which, as always, is welcome. It coincides with the end of the required Professional Responsibility classes, which means that even when school starts up again, I won't have classes until the afternoon, and only one class each on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. (God bless once-a-week clinical courses, though I'll be paying for them come next semester, when I'll likely have to fill my schedule with traditional classroom courses.)

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My schedule ultimately evens out, as the other casenote editors and I have begun the processes of selecting a case for the write-on competition, and my SYS prof was kind enough to return our papers the Thursday before the break, so that we can make full use of our time off to work on revisions. Revision has always been my favorite (if time-consuming) part of the writing process, so I'm looking forward to polishing up my work. The goal--whether realistic or not--is to have a finished draft ready for a quick second review by the end of the week. Just so long as my
other tasks don't interfere--the fore-mentioned case search, a client meeting, an environmental law paper to be cite-checked, and the subject of the next section.

*

I went out and bought a credenza, hutch, and rolling 3-drawer file to replace my current desk, which has been in my service since the third grade. (A quick bit of math makes me admit, to my general disbelief, that that comes out to fifteen to sixteen years . . . .) The desk is really built for a third grader, with a hutch too low for a computer monitor to fit on the desk itself, and a surface too narrow to accommodate the mounds of papers that necessarily accompany legal scholarship. So, taking that into account, the new credenza/hutch is 72 inches--6 feet--wide. The expansion requires the removal of one of my two remaining drawers (which, incidentally, date back to roughly the same period as the desk) so from now until the time when the new desk elements arrive and are assembled tomorrow afternoon, my room looks like it has been overrun by books, anime figures, starships/warships, and electronic equipment. More updates once the new desk is in place.

Two Weeks, 24, & SYS

(Re)Reading: Armor, John Steakley
Watching: Minami-ke ~Okawari #8-9
Playing: Professor Layton and the Curious Village (weekly puzzle updates); Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Here I logged into my account thinking that it had been a week since my last post, only to discover it's been two. Oh well--baby steps, right?

Today I turned twenty four (hey, like the TV show!). In a lot of ways, twenty four seems to resemble twenty--one year away from the next milestone (here, 25--though instead of being able to imbibe liquors, you're half the way to thirty and can finally rent a car on your own).

For the reasons below, though, the greatest birthday gift I'm liable to get is one I can give myself: a good night's rest.

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Today was also the deadline for the rough draft of our second-year seminar papers. I forewent sleep the morning of March 5th to finish it up, attending the morning class as a walking (or, I suppose, sitting) zombie, took a four-hour nap, headed back for my afternoon/evening class, then went through the draft from 8 pm to 12 am. (I never realized how long proofreading a 41-pager could take when you're sleep deprived.) I emailed the paper to the prof at 1 am, and called it a night. (Should have called it a morning, in retrospect.)

Headed to school early today to borrow the high-capacity stapler from the law review room, only to have the blasted thing destroy my printed copy with a tangled mess of industrial-strength staples. God bless LexisNexis, which along with Westlaw, gifted the law review with complimentary printers, so I could reprint the paper (on LexisNexis-branded paper, no less) and get the stapler to do its job properly. Turned it in, only to notice by sheer luck the plagarism statement attached to another paper, which reminded me that I needed one too. So, with less than five minutes remaining before the morning class, I rushed back to the law review room, printed out the form, signed it, and clipped it to the draft. Made it to class with a full thirty seconds to spare.

What lessons can we learn from this fiasco? One: never trust a high-capacity stapler (or the bastard who used it before you, gumming it up). Two: thank God for law review's free printing privileges.

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Speaking of SYS, I suppose a general summary of my topic is in order. In a nutshell: doujinshi and fansubs both constitute cases in which loose enforcement of copyright actually benefit both public domain and the economic and creative incentives for the copyright holder (which, though often diametrically opposed, form the dual purposes of copyright). From those cases, I seek to establish a definition for a class of "fan-based activities," which I then use to propose two addenda to the current four-factor test for fair use, as prescribed by 17 U.S.C. section 107(1)-(4). These addenda expand fair use to include overarchingly beneficial (though technically infringing) uses like doujinshi, fansubs, fan fiction, etc., thereby furthering the purposes of copyright while requiring no legislative change because the addenda aren't for the specific factors described by section 107, but for the courts who employ the four-factor test.