Bad Glacier

Huh. I would have expected… I don’t know, something different. More vulgar, I guess. Zero percent? That’s not right. (from Stag and Magic Cookie)

the Wit (65% dark, 30% spontaneous, 5% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you’re probably an intellectual, but don’t take that to mean you’re pretentious. You realize ‘dumb’ can be witty–after all isn’t that ‘the Simpsons’ philosophy?–but rudeness for its own sake, ‘gross-out’ humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it’s also the best, in my opinion. Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables. How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 81% on dark You scored higher than 9% on spontaneous You scored higher than 0% on vulgar

Reading blogs has become a harrowing experience since the new Harry Potter book came out. I’m terrified that someone is going to spoil it for me before I can read it. What if some blogger forgets to hide the sensitive information or it somehow shows up in the RSS feed? I can’t trust anyone–not even myself. When I recognize a post as being about Harry Potter, I have to jerk my head away and close the browser to ensure that my treacherous eyes don’t read anything they shouldn’t.

Seriously, I’m on edge here. I really have to read that book soon.

So what’s up with the dislike for embalming and burial, huh?

I mean, I don’t want to be buried either (I’d prefer cremation after donating my organs and/or body to science and/or people), but I just thought I was the weird one.

My thoughts on (ano|pseudo|google)nymity, partially inspired by CM’s post:

In the style of Neo Tokyo Times, this here blog is Googlenonymous. I keep my full name off the internets, but I don’t really make much of an effort to conceal my identity, either. Anyone who went to Harvard’s April 10-11 admitted students day should have no trouble figuring out who I am (if they happen to care enough to read through the archives, I mean), and I expect the same will be true of all my classmates soon enough. I’m not terribly worried about this. Readers might learn how much of a nerd I am, but that’s okay. They’d figure it out after a few minutes of conversation, anyways. I don’t want or expect to be anonymous, so if you think you know who I am, say something. Or e-mail me and ask. Or whatever.

I haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to handle blogging about law school. Things could get mighty boring if I avoid all mention of the people and things that make law school interesting, but I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. I’m not sure how secretive to be. Even if I don’t come right out and say which section I’m in, which professors I have, or which groups I join, it’ll become obvious soon enough. But if I don’t provide enough details, non-HLS readers won’t know what’s going on. There’s a line I will have to walk, and I don’t know where exactly it is right now.

So here’s the deal: I won’t post anything that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face, I’ll avoid real names where it’s appropriate, and I won’t pass on the rumors about who’s sniffing what off of which stripper’s body part. In return, dear reader, I ask that you don’t take anything on here too seriously, and to let me know if you think I’ve crossed the line.

I claim to have started this site as a way to keep in contact with my friends and practice my writing skills as I prepared for and entered law school. That turned out to be a lie, of course. I only ended up telling two friends about the site and I don’t write posts that require any special effort to put together. Without those reasons, I’m not sure there’s a justification for Bad Glacier’s existence. Why people would want to hear my thoughts, I don’t know, but that hasn’t stopped me from sending them out over the internets anyways. Basically, this site has become nothing more than a way to keep myself amused (it doesn’t take much) and a way to discover more interesting blogs than I can possibly keep track of–though I’m making a valiant effort.

The name Bad Glacier comes from the first chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Slaughterhouse-Five, where Harrison Starr, after hearing that Vonnegut is writing an anti-war book, suggests he write an anti-glacier book instead. This seemed appropriate for my site, which I anticipate becoming an extended rant on law school and other things not within my power to change. I am not the Bad Glacier here. I expect to be the one shaking my fist at the glacier as it slowly flows past, crushing my soul, carving out lakes and valleys, starting a new ice age, and generally letting the metaphor go too far.

I plan on maintaining this blog through law school and promptly neglecting it as soon as I get a job and can afford a real hobby. Until then, thanks for reading.

It has recently come to my attention that I have a blog-twin. Just look–the evidence is overwhelming:

• We’re both 22, left-handed, and heading to HLS in the fall.
• We’re both blogging about it.
• We both like reading Kurt Vonnegut.
• We were both in a fraternity (not the same one, though).
• I read the Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book on my recent vacation. T also read it recently.
• We both enjoyed the Unfogged law freestyles enough to post about it.
• Strong Bad.

See? It is obvious that we were separated at birth, and either I was immediately teleported to a hospital in Virginia or T moved to California sometime early in life. Oh, sure, it’s possible that this is just coincidence, but baby-teleportation is certainly a simpler explanation than the complex web of occurrences that would have been required to create another person my age with a similarly twisted sense of humor and greater dexterity with his left hand.

Occam’s Razor!

As you all know, there is always a good twin and an evil twin. We have agreed to settle this matter using Giant Battle Monsters. T threw down earlier today by summoning T Sinister, a giant, color-changing lizard with a ray gun and impressive stats (Strength: 12, Agility: 6, Intelligence: 4). In defense, I call forth Josh, a Giant Mecha-Dragon that can Fly, is Extremely Hydrophobic and Covered in Bumps and Nodules, and picks up Cars and Throws Them. He has 9 Strength, 12 Agility, and 8 Intelligence.

As you can see, T wins on strength, but is defeated by my bumpy mecha-dragon’s agility and intelligence. Burnination!

Unfortunately, I don’t know what this means. Did the powers of good conquer over evil, or does the evil twin rule the day, leaving the good twin self-righteous asshole to recover from his wounds in a musty cave, then to build up his skills in a training montage, ultimately leading to a rematch with his dastardly sibling?

I certainly don’t know.

I’ve only spent two hours out in the sun for each of the last two days… with SPF 30 on… and I’m starting to turn a little red.

This is pathetic.

Also: Whoa, the albino kid in Powder (pic here) was played by Sean Patrick Flanery. That is awesomely weird.

I had an eye examination today. Nothing funny or interesting happened, but I did confirm that my eyes are slowly but surely getting worse. A few more years of hardcore reading and computer use should fix things up, right?

Oh, and those eye drops with the yellow dye in them? Awesome. They’re like liquid sunglasses. Oh yeah.

Why Law wins! I’m an INTJ, which means that I was more introverted than extroverted, more intuitive than sensing, more thinking than feeling, and more judging than perceiving. This type is apparently called “The Scientist” or “The Mastermind” (it’s not “Sex Machine”, but I’ll take it).

I won’t bore you with the details of the INTJ personality type (and here), which basically said I like to think and I’m a perfectionist. It seemed about right to both my girlfriend and me.

Anyways, thanks for playing, everyone. It distracted me from worrying about my tuition deposit.

A stunning kinda interesting example of real life and blog life coming together:

A few days ago, in preparation for a meeting at the career center, my girlfriend took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. Around the same time, I come across some links in the second Blawg Review THIRD Blawg Review (how’d I miss the second one?) discussing the use of personality tests in hiring decisions. With all this talk about personality types, I felt left out. I kinda got into the online quiz/emode.com thing a few years back, but I couldn’t remember my MBTI type, so I googled this personality quiz thing to find out.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the MBTI is a personality test that classifies people based on where they stand along the following four psychological dimensions:

• Extroversion (E) / Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) / Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) / Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) / Perceiving (P)

A person’s type is based on their position on each of these continuums, which means we end up with 16 types (ESFP, ISTJ, etc.). But really, how much does this actually tell you about a person? I don’t know, but probably not much. A person is so much more than their basic personality, and even the types seem fairly simplified (a whole continuum reduced to an A/B choice?). I guess this was kind of the main idea of the Blawg Review(ed) posts–hiring based on MBTI type doesn’t work well because it tells you little about the individual as a worker and workplace relationships are too complicated to analyze using these types.

But I got to wondering: does this work in reverse? Can you take someone you know and pick out their type? I could probably come close with a few of my better friends, but in general, I don’t think this will work very well, either.

Well, here’s your chance to prove me wrong. If you want to guess the result of my MBTI, e-mail me or let me know in the comments. It’ll be fun. No, really. Here’s a list of the different types, and here are descriptions of the four dimensions. You know you want to try it… C’mon, I’m bored over here. Entertain me, dammit!

I won’t guarantee anything to the winner(s) other than a blue mountain e-congratulation card, but I’m open to suggestions.

I’m also open to making a fool out of myself by trying to guess the MBTI type of other people, so if anyone’s up for that…

Maybe some of you have been wondering about my childhood. You’ve been reading my posts here or you’ve met me in person, and maybe you’ve asked yourself, “What land could be so pure, so enriching, so heavenly as to produce such a flawless human being?”

Maybe you read Kristine’s post and realize I’m stealing her idea.

Or maybe not. I don’t care, because this is a good way to justify the ridiculous amount of time I spent on Google Maps yesterday.

My home, land of milk and honey corn and pickup trucks.

Sometimes, when I’m driving, I recognize a car pulled over by a Highway Patrolman as one that passed me a few miles back. Whenever this happens, I immediately break into my victory celebration, complete with maniacal laughing and fist-pumping. Then I call up someone I know to gloat.

Does this make me a bad person?

Well, maybe not the best ever, but it’s gotta be in the top ten.

At one point Friday night, I was told, “You would be so offensive if you were louder.”

Well, those aren’t the exact words, but it was something like that.

I’m so proud.

So why did I decide to start blogging? There are the usual reasons—fame, power, groupies, and plain old exhibitionism—but the main reason is that I want to improve my writing.

I’ve always had trouble translating my thoughts into words. I write slowly, revising paragraphs over and over. I want to get to the point where I can come up with an idea, fire off a quick post, and go back to whatever I was doing. To me, a blog seems like the best place to improve this aspect of my writing because of the nature of the posts: short, mostly self-contained, with a wide range of styles and topics.

So anyways, there you go. I started blogging to improve my writing. The groupies had nothing to do with it, I promise.

Uh, hi. This is my blog. I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in computer science. This blog will document my applications to, entrance into, and (hopefully) passage through law school, as well as the strange experiments with writing and talking I conduct in between.

Wish me luck.

P.S. - Thanks to ambimb for setting me up here at blawgcoop.