Awesome: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up

New idea: I will review things I buy, when I feel like it.

First up: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up, aka Super-Caffeinated Hot Chocolate.

Uh, brilliant.

I can't drink coffee. I like the way it smells, a LOT, especially when in a can that's kept in the freezer (what? I can be specific), but it hurts my stomach oh my god and I feel queasy for the rest of the day.

Until I realized it was the coffee (this was like, late middle school, early high school), I kept thinking I had food poisoning. And then when I hadn't eaten anything, and it was just the delicious cappuccino in my stomach (aren't I so-phis-ti-cat-ed), I decided that it was, like, the oils in the coffee that were doing it, making my stomach feel fucking horrible like that. (My dad said, No, kid--that's the caffeine, which I am skeptical of, because in a pinch, I can take caffeine pills and chew caffeine gum and down Mountain Dew, and all I get are the shakes--no queasiness, so I don't know about that, Pops.) Anyway, whether it's "the oils" or just the caffeine, or some interaction between the two, but I do not drink coffee. It does not agree with me.

Nevertheless, I am a student. I have needs. They are needs for stimulant chemicals, and since it's a good idea for me to stay on the right side of the law, caffeine's the way to go.

So I drink tea. A lot of tea. In semesters when I have morning classes, I generally have tea every week day morning. Then sometimes another cup after class if the hot water's still out. I like tea, definitely, yes. It's awesome and there are lots of varieties and I luh-huh-huve the way it smells.

But.

One needs variety.

Enter: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up. Hot chocolate "with as much caffeine as one cup of coffee"! (As trumpeted on the box.) Uh, brilliant. As I said.

Also: delicious. Just like regular Swiss Miss, which, as you may know, is awesome. I need to get some marshmallows for this shteez, because they don't make a Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up Marshmallow Lovers', unfortunately.

But this is totally worth buying, if you want variety in your morning caffeine delivery system and also like Swiss Miss. Which you should, because it's delovely.

I definitely felt energized, but it's hard to say how much was just the placebo effect. But I did do a little dance.

Pros: caffeine; hot chocolate; yummy.
Cons: no marshmallows; placebo effect.
Score: ****

From the Department of Unintentional Hilarity:

"...Kevorkian criticized the Supreme Court, the American people, and national security legislation passed after September 11, 2001. 'The country is sick, very sick. And it needs lots of help,' Kevorkian stated."

--Andrew L. Kalloch, "Kevorkian Reconsiders 9th Amendment," Harvard Law Record, October 9, 2008, p. 2.

Funny because: How Dr. Kevorkian help the very sick, as a rule?

Fuckin' Scalia

Came to HLS yesterday. I had a meeting, so I couldn't go. I must admit that I was tempted, but the sole reason was that I was holding out faint hope that this, finally, would be the day that the fucker would die, something nice and dramatic like a heart attack, and then I would be able to tell my grandchildren about the best day of my life, when I was lucky enough to see justice, real justice, in action. Alas, His Corpulence is still plugging away. More's the pity.

New Product Review: Skittles Chocolate Mix

Aww. Full circle, y'all. I started out in the early days with a (terrible) review of Skittles Smoothie Mix, and now I'm going to give a slightly less terrible review of Skittles Chocolate Mix. It makes me feel young again.

Disposing with the first obvious question, namely, "Why would you get chocolate-flavored skittles when there are, like, you know, M&Ms less than eight inches away from them," to which I have no answer, I will answer your second question. What flavors are in the mix? Answer: five flavors--vanilla, smores, chocolate caramel, chocolate pudding, and brownie batter.

Vanilla tastes sort of nasty. Other candybloggers like it best, but I don't really like vanilla all on its own, and it's just really really sweet to my taste, without a lot of actual flavor to distract you from the sweetness.

Smores tastes sort of like a tootsie roll. That's the note I'm getting. In the way that Tootsie rolls don't really taste like chocolate, that's the way that these don't really taste like chocolate, but more so. There's maybe the tiniest hint of graham cracker flavor.

Chocolate caramel tastes like cheap chocolate-flavored lip balm. I wanna say Bonne Bell, circa 1995, when they were trying to be hip, and branch out past Lip Smackers, and they started packaging new lip balm with lots of black accents. That's what this tastes like.

Chocolate pudding is my favorite. It tastes like expensive chocolate-flavored lip balm. Fine, a little bit like pudding. And a little bit like hot chocolate mix.

Brownie batter was the one that got some of the highest marks from other reviews I've read. They noted that it indeed had a relatively strong chocolate taste, and that there was a sort of unbaked aspect, to connote the "batter" element. Well, friends, I will tell you what this tastes like. It tastes like Chocolate Play-Doh. It is disgusting. Yes, there's chocolate, SORT of, and yes, there's the unbaked-ness, but that is not batter, it is dough, and it is dough of the "Doh" kind, by which I mean, omfg, PLAY-DOH. Oh GOD is that disgusting. Blech blech blech blech blech. But also sort of amazing--look what they put inside a Skittle! It makes me believe that some day, some scientist really figure out a way to put a full three-course-meal into a stick of chewing gum, without any unfortunate externalities.

New Expressions of the Very Essence of Futility

Last night, I had a dream about my Legislation & Regulation final. Yes, the one I took just over a week ago. It was one of those terrible anxiety finals-dreams, the ones I hear about but don't have, where everything just goes horribly and and and and.

In this one, there were three questions (unlike the real exam, which only had two).

The first question was terribly difficult; I don't remember what it was, but I was very upset about it. In the end, though, I just wrote down "fishes" and resolved to come back to it at the end.

I don't remember what the second question was; however, my answer to it was in the form of a picture, drawn with colored pencils (I think; could've been crayons or cray-pas or some appropriately mushy medium) on a brownish kraft-kind-of paper. I think there was a teddy bear and some quilt-y elements. It may have had edges like a postage stamp.

The third question I also don't remember the question. However, in response to this question, on my Legislation & Regulation final, mind you, I made a pair of earrings. They were mixed media--metal wires and findings, some glass beads, and then the major design element was a sort of bell-shape made out of reddish-purple paper. The earrings ended up looking sort of like lily-of-the-valleys, but, you know, red-purple, made out of paper, accented with glass beads, and earrings. Also somewhat bigger than lily-of-the-valleys.

It was at this point, just finishing up the earrings, that the TA came up and told me that time was up, that I had to hand in my exam, and I realized that I hadn't had time to go back to the first question. All it said, still, was "fishes."

The panic and the anxiety induced--Do I try to keep going and risk getting called out for cheating? No, I can't do that; but I can't hand in two thirds of an exam either, and hope to pass!--were enough to make me cry, in the dream, and then, delightfully, lovelily, cry in real life, too.

I woke up in the middle of the night, crying and stressed out, over an exam I took last week, where the issue I had was the insufficiency of the word "fishes" to constitute an answer to one-third of a LegReg exam answer (notwithstanding the fact that apparently a picture of a teddy bear and a pair of earrings would be just fine for the other two thirds). Crying over spilled milk indeed.

Then today, I started to pretend to be the rug pad as Dan trimmed off its edge (it was ever so slightly too wide), and made high, keening, crying and whimpering noises, and then suddenly I was crying again for real. Whoops.

The question now is whether I need to be meds-d up, or whether I should give trying-really-hard-to-get-my-shit-together-and-then-perhaps-I'll-be-less-stressed-and-
less-prone-to-weird-crying-fits a try first.

Deficiencies

You know how we all learned in My Side of the Mountain and a recent episode of "House" that your body is MAGICAL and makes you hungry for foods that have nutrients that your current diet is lacking? So Sam suddenly and inexplicably craves liver because he was Vitamin D deficient from living on a mountain by himself? Or possibly Vitamin K, I don't remember? Or hell, it could've been iron, actually, now that I think about it?

Given this, I have a very serious problem. Two days ago, walking down the hallway in the tunnels underneath the law school, I was struck by a sudden, strange craving: a Flintstones vitamin.

Oooh, Now I'm Mad.

So I checked my statcounter (which is delightfully fun in a navel-gazey kind of way), and someone in King of Prussia has been googling "zakaria backpack."

I am not being vain, only factual, when I say that this is clearly in reference to how I made fun of the choice of Class Day speaker anonymously like a big chicken-shit on the interwebs and then he mentioned it in the speech on Class Day.

So. I googled it myself, to see how many pages our poor KOP'er had to go through to find my claiming of the credit for my funny funny funny joke. Happily, I was the last link on the first page! But.

But.

Slightly earlier up on the page was the official Yale page with the text of Fareed Zakaria's speech. I clicked it to see how accurately I had remembered what he said.

Here is what he said: "Y ’07 agreed: 'Having a Yale Corporation member as Class Day speaker,' he wrote, 'is like talking about your backpack on show-and-tell day because you forgot to bring something more interesting. It has zippers and two pockets,' he wrote."

DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE AN ANATOMICAL ASSUMPTION WHICH MIGHT BE PROBLEMATIC HERE?

Dear Everyone, Ever:

Penii are not a prerequisite for meanness, nor for funny funny funny jokes such as the ones I am making ALL THE TIME. FURTHERMORE. It's not polite anymore to assume people are male unless told otherwise. So CUT IT OUT. Because I AM A LADY AND NOT A HE. NOT THAT YOU GIVE A SHIT, CLEARLY, BECAUSE ONLY PENIS-HAVERS ARE EVER RELEVANT.

Fanks.

Love, Dash

In seriousness format: Part of the reason I sometimes hate being female is that being female, in our day and age, and despite our efforts to deny it, is never really the default. And sometimes it is nice to be the default. Or so I would imagine. Or, so I know, from being white.

In any event, I'm a lady, I made fun of you, get over it. (Does not have the same rhyming niceness of "We're here, we're queer." Must work on this.) (Suggestions welcome.) (Not if they rhyme "fly honey" and "I'm funny." Lame.)

Liveblogging Legal Writing and Research

You never believe how painful it is until you're there.

I have officially run out of websites with which to procrastinate, and may be forced to start paying attention.

At least, all the websites I can read without the people behind me looking over my shoulder thinking I'm a freak. So, no bridal websites and no Crime Library. Ahem.

Was anyone aware that legal citations A) make no sense and B) are no better than Chicago and C) are so intensely preoccupied with the most MEANINGLESS MINDLESS MINUTIAE? Because now I am. And I felt that I should share that with you.

I miss my big beautiful Chicago Manual of Style. Come give kisses, Chicago.

I feel as though I am being hypnotized. Possibly I just need a nap. Everything feels heavy.

EVERYONE STOP ASKING QUESTIONS NOW. I have got BUSINESS to attend to. LET US GO, CLIMENKO FELLOW/WRITING INSTRUCTOR and also STUDENT ADVISORS.

GO GO GO I WANT TO GO NOW.

We have half an hour left officially.

We just got a new assignment. I am personally overjoyed by this. It will take approximately forever and be worth nothing to us.

My neck is starting to twitch.

AHA!

I forgot about Solitaire!

Peace out, sugar boogers.