In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Friday Random Ten

1. Tom Waits – Muriel
2. Sufjan Stevens – Jacksonville
3. The Fugees – Killing Me Softly
4. The Smiths – Asleep
5. Le Tigre – Let’s Run
6. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane – Sweet and Lovely
7. Pearl Jam – Go
8. Ben Lee – Catch My Disease
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Details of the War
10. Radiohead – Thinking About You

Random thought: I really wish that I was more interested in big firm work, because then I’d be rich. Damn this bleeding heart.

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22 thoughts on Friday Random Ten

  1. Particularly considering that I’ll probably working for some fledgling human rights organization and be in debt until I’m 80. I hate law school sometimes.

  2. When I was in law school, starting salaries at the big firms in Detroit, where a lot of grads were going to, were the princely sum of $50K. One of my classmates took great pleasure in bursting the bubbles of those who were quite pleased with themselves over those offers by reminding them that, once you took into account how many hours they’d be working, they’d be better off working the line at GM.

  3. Jill, for lawyers with really huge debt loads, the big firm salaries may be almost mandatory; but there are areas in the law that are a compromise between the grinding poverty of the public interest sector and the soulless career of a big-firm drone. There are some private practices that, taken as a whole, are on the white-hat side. For anonymity reasons I don’t talk about my practice area, but if you’re trying to think outside the box write me privately and I’ll tell you the areas where I think a lawyer looking to make a difference and still feed the bulldog might go.

  4. 1. “Maddening Cloud” Blonde Redhead
    2. “Cast Iron” Superchunk
    3. “Download This Song” MC LARS
    4. “Window” Fiona Apple
    5. “Every You Every Me” Placebo
    6. “Nonesense” Komeda
    7. “The Dog Song” Nellie McKay
    8. “Nice Mover” Gina X Performance
    9. “Y Control” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    10. “Leaf House” Animal Collective

    Recommended Song of the Day:

    “Women To Control” AK Momo

  5. 1. Coldplay, Garden State: Don’t Panic
    2. The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, Vol 1: Come Back From San Franscisco
    3. Laura Cantrell, Not the Tremblin Kind: Churches off the Interstate
    4. Broken Social Scene/Emily Haines, Bee Hives: Backyards
    5. Martha Wainwright, Bloody Motherfucking Asshole: When the Day is Short
    6. OK Go, Oh No: Invincible
    7. Mono Puff, Unsupervised: What Bothers the Spaceman
    8. Stars, Set Yourself On Fire: Sleep Tonight
    9. The Arcade Fire, Funeral: Une Annee Sans Lumiere
    10. Calexico, Ballad of Cable Hogue Sdtrk: Ballad of Cable Hogue (french)

  6. May I just say yay for the United States Army and federal loan forgiveness! Yes, there are the potential downsides, like being sent off to Kansas, but for all but $20,000 of debt being erased? I can compromise. My soul for Stafford Loans.

  7. there are the potential downsides, like being sent off to Kansas

    I can just see some poor smuck in Iraq, wondering why the hell he signed up for the Army, clicking his feet together, wishing he were in Kansas.

  8. Jill, I have now decided to call your FRT the “Tom Waits song of the week plus nine other random tracks.” Brava.

    But Le Tigre?

  9. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2— Pink Floyd
    You Are So Beautiful—Joe Cocker
    Johnson Party Of Four—Kingston Trio
    Making Memories of Us—Keith Urban
    Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565: I. J.S. Bach / Koopman
    The Rose—Bette Midler
    Love Hurts—Nazareth
    Kelly – the Boy from Killarn—The Clancy Brothers
    The Minstrel Boy— The Clancy Brothers And Tommy Makem
    Moonchild—King Crimson

    2nd try of the day and weirder than the first.

  10. I can just see some poor smuck in Iraq, wondering why the hell he signed up for the Army, clicking his feet together, wishing he were in Kansas.

    True, but they tend not to send lawyers into combat. I’m sure some people think that’s an oversight…

  11. 1. The Pearls (Dirty Dozen Brass Band) / 2. Praying to the Aliens (Gary Numan) / 3. Jerkin’ Back and Forth (Devo) / 4. Carol (Chuck Berry) / 5. Givin’ It All Up (J. Geils Band) / 6. Come On In My Kitchen (Robert Johnson) / 7. Miss the Mississippi and You (Jimmie Rodgers) / 8. Dress Up In You (Belle & Sebastian) / 9. Clash City Rockers (The Clash) / 10. Purple Haze (The Cure.. no, really)

  12. The good news is, Jill, that the cost of living is so reasonable in NYC that you’ll be able to devote a large share of whatever money you make to repaying those dag-blamed student loans. Well, compared to Honululu, at least.

  13. Jill, I have now decided to call your FRT the “Tom Waits song of the week plus nine other random tracks.” Brava.

    I know, right? Weird. I don’t plan it that way, I promise! I think it’s because when I was home, I copied all my dad’s Tom Waits albums onto my iTunes, so I have a ton of them and they always come up.

  14. Yeah. You could work for a big firm and, most likely, be miserable. It’s a revolving door at the firm I work for.

  15. z, it’s a revolving door at all those firms. Their business model is to sell time. The need an army of third-year drones to bill 2500 hours a year, but they can’t afford to pay them all non-equity-partner comp, so they have to ship’em out. It’s easy to let that environment become a pressure cooker with no interesting work, no mentoring and no release valve for personality clashes. It would take some effort to fix those conditions, but it’s in their interest not to. Those conditions weed the herd so that there are not a lot of fifth-years and very few seventh-years (most of whom have left the practice of law) and by the time partner review comes up, they’ve moved out most of the folks who won’t make it. (They’ve also invented the permanent associate role, sometimes called “senior counsel” for those who will work almost as hard for less money and no advancement at a high level of experience.) The problem is that all the partners are the kind of people who will bill 2500-3000 hours a year in a pressure cooker, some of them doing work as intellectually stimulating as copy-editing the instructions for making easy-mac in the microwave.*

    *That’s not entirely fair. I’m up against the big firms all the time. Some of the partners are fine, and their work keeps them interested. A significant portion are mean, soulless drones or raving cases of asshole personality disorder.

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