Change of Address

Fiddle de doo fiddle de dee, it's a Wordpress life for me. New digs for the Midnight Court, but as it's exam time the beautification will not be underway for a week or two. With thanks to blacknight who donated blogs to the Irish Blog Award nominees. Sings* A whole new world, a new fantastic point of view...

Next up, Land Law

Managed to fight down the rising sense of panic yesterday - horrible tantrum at one point - and by 3 a.m. had covered four topics for this morning's exam. My helpful girlfriend drilled me extensively on the disciplining of the Judiciary, so I managed to parlay that into an eight page epic in the Dining Hall. I gave them short shrift. I got up at 6.30 a.m. to cover an "alternate" just in case the gods had it in for me and managed to get a pretty sound knowledge of the doctrine of precedent into my thick skull by 8.30. Then a quick shower, brekkie and on the bus down to the Inns. Shockingly, one of the guaranteed subjects was not on the paper, so I basically could have gone to bed last night at 1.30 instead of slaving over it like a gombeen. Something tells me the class was getting a dose of its own medicine off the lecuturer. What I like to call the "stupid question brigade" and she didn't exactly see eye to eye, although to an extent there was a pair of them in it. Well, they fucked things up royally for all and sundry. I have a note from my last lecture which says "There is a pattern on the papers, just go with that" as a direct quote. The pattern was juries/courts/juries/courts, except this year it went juries/civil and criminal legal aid! The canons of interpretation also made an appearance for the first time ever, despite a note in the exam report to the effect that "one student confused this with the presumptions of interpretation, which was not asked". That basically left anyone with a prepared question on the presumptions of interpretation with half a question. Thankfully, yours truly had no room in his memory banks for all that latin and lecture notes revealed that I didn't make it in those days, so I had four questions which I was quite happy with, and was spared vicarious liability for the torts of my classmates. My hand is very sore, which is worrying. I don't know how I'm going to make it through the next four exams plus all that note taking. It's hard to believe that ten years ago, I had to sit two three-hour sessions a day during the exam season. It's kind of scary that the old bod is protesting and I still so tender of years. It might be something to do with being left-handed. Apparently, we push the pen across the page, and sort of grind the nib down into the paper. Certainly, my hand was stuck in a claw-like state for about 20 minutes after I left the hall. I've tried to hold it lightly - as I have when playing the guitar - but I can't get the knack. God, please don't be arthritis, you bastard. Next stop, the horrors of Land Law. This time, I really am going down in flames. Speaking of flames, is Blazen Hazen the new "I kiss you"? It is dearly to be wished that the answer is yes!

Oh Dear

I'm frantically going through my notes from Introduction to the Legal System looking for detailed information on the original jurisdiction of the courts. According to my note from the first lecture "full set of notes enough to pass - no extra reading required". Woo hoo, you might well say. She couldn't have said fairer than that. Unfortunately my concentration appears to have lapsed quickly and two lectures later, all I have on the page are some doodles of a Hawker Hurricane shooting down an FW190 (I know, I know. As if!) and some people in sunglasses and cowboy hats, and what appears to be the first paragraph of a planned and particularly cliché 70s style science fiction paperback, written in the trademark beautiful script I can only achieve using a HB pencil. It reads:

There are few things beyond the clouds which cannot be obtained below them, but men, ever restless to seek pastures new and faraway hills, have hurled themselves at the firmament and gunned the engines of their atomic ships in the directions of Alpha Centauri and Betelgeuse, and yet other suns around which were thought to make their stately orbits planets of surpassing riches and unknown treasure; new worlds to conquer. They forgot the weeping Alexander who so many millenia ago knew that there were no more such worlds, that Man is in essence alone with himself. That men are alone with themselves. And if they did not know it before, many were they who discovered it in the cold no-place, the vast nothing among all stars, and they closed their minds to reason and went mad.

That's the last time I read Isaac Asimov when I'm supposed to be thinking about my future. Oh why, Lord, why?!

Quote of the Day

Just finished Criminal Law today. Think I did enough to pass. Anyway, treated myself to a copy of Knights of the Dinner Table on the way home; an hilarious RPG magazine/comic book. I don't do the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing myself (primarily because I have no friends), but I have whiled away many's the happy hour in front of Baldur's Gate, hacking and slaying my way up and down the Sword Coast and trying desperately to level up some no-spell motherfucker of a Mage as his hit points are repeatedly clubbed away by trolls. Today's KotDT mag features a chucklesomely negative review of the current Battlestar Galactica series (which I haven't seen much of but am prepared to be favourably disposed towards as a matter of reaction) by someone called Noah Antwiler. It contains the following withering appraisal of Galactica's Viper jocks who:

...are about as combat effective as Communists in a Chuck Norris movie.

Well, I thought it was funny. Observant BSG watchers will have recognised Cmdr. Adama as Gaff from Blade Runner, which Mr. Antwiler points out is a good thing as he will need all his blade runner abilities to "retire" the Nexus 6 Cylons which are ruining the show. Emo bonus for all AD&D and X-Men nerds. Sing along now:

I've got the Dungeon Master's Guide, I've got a 12-sided die, I've got Kitty Pryde, And Nightcrawler too, Waiting there for me, Yes I do.

Enjoy. Next stop for me, the Irish Legal System. Wish me luck.

Hip Hop Thursday (Re-format)

Yo, cop! What it is homies? Drop the verse. Word. Back in the day, a posse of homeboys rolled straight outta Compton with some seriously ill flava which they laid down in a gangsta vernacular that belied a deep intellectual communion with the human condition itself. Fifteen years after the appearance of 1992’s seminal The Chronic galvanised post-modernist scholars internationally, a fresh interpretation of the classic track, Bitches Ain’t Shit (but Ho’s and Tricks) by pasty beanpole and emotional hardcore composer, Ben Folds, provides the perfect opportunity to revisit in a less febrile academic atmosphere the critical context which gave birth to what appeared prima facie to be a remarkably jejune hip hopera. If it achieves anything (and the enlighened listener will concede that it achieves much), Folds’ exploration of Bitches succeeds in throwing into stark relief through its use of “gangstacoustic” patterns of melody the essential pathos of the narrative Dr. Dré, Kurupt, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dat Nigga Daz inhabit as the song plays out; a pathos obscured with pointed deliberation in the deployment of “street” posturing and the sinister - now nasal, now gutteral - tones with which the “raps” are delivered. But how did we get to here from there? Studio-quality audio here.

Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks, So, lick on deez nutz and suck the dick, Gets the fuck out after you're done, And I hops in my ride to make a quick run.

The novice critic might well be tempted when confronted with a text like this to appeal to the theoretical tools provided by FR Leavis and his New Criticism, but this approach is unlikely to be fruitful since a literal construction of the words as stated might lead one to the erroneous conclusion that Bitches is somehow a facile, confused, unfocused and aggressive work which could never be admitted to the canon. To illumine the authorial intent requires the application of the more “teleological” tools of the deconstructionists, which approach it is obvious from even a preliminary “reading” is fully in keeping with the artistic project conceived by the rappers themselves. The clues are in the language used. Dr. Dré is too well informed an artist to be unaware of the basic structuralism of Saussure which holds that language is a social product and that, therefore, the social aspect of speech is outside the speaker’s control. According to Saussure, then, language is not a function of the speaker but is passively assimilated from society. Speaking, or “rapping”, as defined by Saussure, is a premeditated act, however. Dré knows this. In fact, he embraces the underlying structural truth of Saussure’s insight by using highly charged, socialized, prejudicial and sexed “words” (bitches, ho’s, tricks) which he communicates to his audience though a violated, necessarily learned, grammar (gets out after you’re done, I hops in my ride). But the Dr. is also too well informed, as we shall see, to be unaware that Saussure himself had begun to recognize the limits of structuralism in his final working years and started to develop an identifiably post-structuralist perspective on the interaction of language and meaning according to which:

1. poetic language adds a second, contrived, dimension to the original word. 2. there is a correspondence between elements, in both metre and rime. 3. binary poetic laws transgress the rules of grammar, and 4. the element of the key word (or even letter) may be spread over the whole length of the text or may be concentrated in a small space, such as one or two words.

Dr. Dré uses each of Saussure’s insights here to inform the construction of the following tranche of rapped narrative:

I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright, We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night, Tight than a mutharfucka with the gangsta beats, And we was ballin' on the muthafuckin' Compton streets, Peep, the shit got deep and it was on, Number 1 song after number 1 song, Long as my muthafuckin' pockets was fat, I didn't give a fuck where the bitch was at, But she was hangin' with a white bitch doin' the shit she do, Suckin' on his dick just to get a buck or 2, And the few ends she got didn't mean nothin', Now she's suing cuz the shit she be doin' ain't shit, Bitch can't hang with the streets, she found herself short, So now she's takin' me to court, It's real conversation for your ass.

Here, the key to unlocking the text is concentrated in a small “space” and confined to the two-word cipher “Eric Wright”, the “bitch” throughout the quoted lyric. Dré cleaves to the post-structuralist doctrine according to which meanings within texts are unstable and shifting. For example, “bitch” it is obvious admits of more than one interpretation as the “mike” is passed from MC to MC. Eric Wright was a Kelly Park Compton Crip who, along with Dré, was one of the original members of NWA, rapping under the moniker Eazy E. As the lyric suggests, while shit got deep as chart success followed chart success, material ease lulled the Dr. into a false sense of security. Eric it transpired was hanging with a “white bitch”, NWA business manager Jerry Heller, and conspiring with him “to get a buck or two”, that is misappropriate funds generated though the group’s musical activities. As the Dr. wryly observes of one of hip hop’s most infamous feuds, that is real converstation for your ass. Next post; "No Rap is an Island". Sneak preview:

Move up the block as we groove down the block See my girl's house, Dré, pass the Glock Kick in the do', an' I look on the flo' It's my little cousin Daz and he's fuckin' my hoe, yo I uncock my shit...I'm heart-broke, But I'm still lo'ked.

And! More exciting critical theory... "[the work] is a classic example of Woods’ recherché postmodernism and, like the work of Pynchon and Foster Wallace, is grounded in a kind of vital hyper-reality not seen since the breathless melodramas of the Victorian period. And yet, underlying the appearance of conventional melodrama is a truly fractured postmodern reality, presented as a disturbing, cinematic montage of disembodied genitalia, rolling low-riders, prison blues and locked n’ loaded Glock 9 mm handguns." Until then, we out. Peace.

Yo, cop! What it is homies? Drop the verse. Word. Back in the day, a posse of homeboys rolled straight outta Compton with some seriously ill flava which they laid down in a gangsta vernacular that belied a deep intellectual communion with the human condition itself. Fifteen years after the appearance of 1992’s seminal The Chronic galvanised post-modernist scholars internationally, a fresh interpretation of the classic track, Bitches Ain’t Shit (but Ho’s and Tricks) by pasty beanpole and emotional hardcore composer, Ben Folds, provides the perfect opportunity to revisit in a less febrile academic atmosphere the critical context which gave birth to what appeared prima facie to be a remarkably jejune hip hopera. If it achieves anything (and the enlighened listener will concede that it achieves much), Folds’ exploration of Bitches succeeds in throwing into stark relief through its use of “gangstacoustic” patterns of melody the essential pathos of the narrative Dr. Dré, Kurupt, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dat Nigga Daz inhabit as the song plays out; a pathos obscured with pointed deliberation in the deployment of “street” posturing and the sinister - now nasal, now gutteral - tones with which the “raps” are delivered. But how did we get to here from there? Studio-quality audio here.

Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks, So, lick on deez nutz and suck the dick, Gets the fuck out after you're done, And I hops in my ride to make a quick run.

The novice critic might well be tempted when confronted with a text like this to appeal to the theoretical tools provided by FR Leavis and his New Criticism, but this approach is unlikely to be fruitful since a literal construction of the words as stated might lead one to the erroneous conclusion that Bitches is somehow a facile, confused, unfocused and aggressive work which could never be admitted to the canon. To illumine the authorial intent requires the application of the more “teleological” tools of the deconstructionists, which approach it is obvious from even a preliminary “reading” is fully in keeping with the artistic project conceived by the rappers themselves. The clues are in the language used. Dr. Dré is too well informed an artist to be unaware of the basic structuralism of Saussure which holds that language is a social product and that, therefore, the social aspect of speech is outside the speaker’s control. According to Saussure, then, language is not a function of the speaker but is passively assimilated from society. Speaking, or “rapping”, as defined by Saussure, is a premeditated act, however. Dré knows this. In fact, he embraces the underlying structural truth of Saussure’s insight by using highly charged, socialized, prejudicial and sexed “words” (bitches, ho’s, tricks) which he communicates to his audience though a violated, necessarily learned, grammar (gets out after you’re done, I hops in my ride). But the Dr. is also too well informed, as we shall see, to be unaware that Saussure himself had begun to recognize the limits of structuralism in his final working years and started to develop an identifiably post-structuralist perspective on the interaction of language and meaning according to which:

1. poetic language adds a second, contrived, dimension to the original word. 2. there is a correspondence between elements, in both metre and rime. 3. binary poetic laws transgress the rules of grammar, and 4. the element of the key word (or even letter) may be spread over the whole length of the text or may be concentrated in a small space, such as one or two words.

Dr. Dré uses each of Saussure’s insights here to inform the construction of the following tranche of rapped narrative:

I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright, We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night, Tight than a mutharfucka with the gangsta beats, And we was ballin' on the muthafuckin' Compton streets, Peep, the shit got deep and it was on, Number 1 song after number 1 song, Long as my muthafuckin' pockets was fat, I didn't give a fuck where the bitch was at, But she was hangin' with a white bitch doin' the shit she do, Suckin' on his dick just to get a buck or 2, And the few ends she got didn't mean nothin', Now she's suing cuz the shit she be doin' ain't shit, Bitch can't hang with the streets, she found herself short, So now she's takin' me to court, It's real conversation for your ass.

Here, the key to unlocking the text is concentrated in a small “space” and confined to the two-word cipher “Eric Wright”, the “bitch” throughout the quoted lyric. Dré cleaves to the post-structuralist doctrine according to which meanings within texts are unstable and shifting. For example, “bitch” it is obvious admits of more than one interpretation as the “mike” is passed from MC to MC. Eric Wright was a Kelly Park Compton Crip who, along with Dré, was one of the original members of NWA, rapping under the moniker Eazy E. As the lyric suggests, while shit got deep as chart success followed chart success, material ease lulled the Dr. into a false sense of security. Eric it transpired was hanging with a “white bitch”, NWA business manager Jerry Heller, and conspiring with him “to get a buck or two”, that is misappropriate funds generated though the group’s musical activities. As the Dr. wryly observes of one of hip hop’s most infamous feuds, that is real converstation for your ass. Next post; "No Rap is an Island". Sneak preview:

Move up the block as we groove down the block See my girl's house, Dré, pass the Glock Kick in the do', an' I look on the flo' It's my little cousin Daz and he's fuckin' my hoe, yo I uncock my shit...I'm heart-broke, But I'm still lo'ked.

And! More exciting critical theory... "[the work] is a classic example of Woods’ recherché postmodernism and, like the work of Pynchon and Foster Wallace, is grounded in a kind of vital hyper-reality not seen since the breathless melodramas of the Victorian period. And yet, underlying the appearance of conventional melodrama is a truly fractured postmodern reality, presented as a disturbing, cinematic montage of disembodied genitalia, rolling low-riders, prison blues and locked n’ loaded Glock 9 mm handguns." Until then, we out. Peace.

Things To Do in Dublin That Won't Get You Dead

If any of my small band of readers isn't already doing so, I recommend they hit the Dublin Community Blog where I have just blogged about an exciting gig tonight in Slattery's of Capel Street. The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra blows into to town to blow your little minds and I, for one, will be there, completely ignoring the parlous state of my legal knowledge in the run up to next week's exams. Free musical tasters here. If you'd like to do something that doesn't involve dodging a beating in Temple Bar, I exhort you to tag along. Be there or be square, Midnight Courtiers.

Axis of Sleazy

Big up to our visitor from the Islamic Republic of Iran who found his (I'm pretty sure it was a he) way to the Midnight Court dot blogspot dot com via the following search. Let's just say, it's not work safe. [Link on search.arabia.msn.com] Is this what women are looking for in a man, now? Is he expressing a commendable desire to be an industrious lover? I'd also like to thank his ISP, the Telecommunications Company of Iran, for making the visit possible. Does this mean I should blog more about the west coast rap scene or less? I can't decide.

You Are Mighty!

Need a boost? Worried about those exams, that job interview, your ability to totally kick some ass? Just type www dot your name dot you are mighty dot com into your browser, turn up them speakers and you go guy, stroke, girl! www.copernicus.youaremighty.com UPDATE: In the absence of an ability to sit down and actually start the hard work of cramming for my exams, I have been playing my youaremighty music and inspirational messages at high volume while dancing around and punching the air. A much more effective tactic. UPDATE - Track is by E NOMINE off their Album Das Beste aus Gotte Beitrag und Tuefels Werk.

Hip Hop Thursday

Yo, cop! What it is homies? Drop the verse. Word. Back in the day, a posse of homeboys rolled straight outta Compton with some seriously ill flava which they laid down in a gangsta vernacular that belied a deep intellectual communion with the human condition itself. Fifteen years after the appearance of 1992’s seminal The Chronic galvanised post-modernist scholars internationally, a fresh interpretation of the classic track, Bitches Ain’t Shit (but Ho’s and Tricks) by pasty beanpole and emotional hardcore composer, Ben Folds, provides the perfect opportunity to revisit in a less febrile academic atmosphere the critical context which gave birth to what appeared prima facie to be a remarkably jejune hip hopera. If it achieves anything (and the enlighened listener will concede that it achieves much), Folds’ exploration of Bitches succeeds in throwing into stark relief through its use of “gangstacoustic” patterns of melody the essential pathos of the narrative Dr. Dré, Kurupt, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dat Nigga Daz inhabit as the song plays out; a pathos obscured with pointed deliberation in the deployment of “street” posturing and the sinister - now nasal, now gutteral - tones with which the “raps” are delivered. But how did we get to here from there? Studio-quality audio here.

Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks, So, lick on deez nutz and suck the dick, Gets the fuck out after you're done, And I hops in my ride to make a quick run.

The novice critic might well be tempted when confronted with a text like this to appeal to the theoretical tools provided by FR Leavis and his New Criticism, but this approach is unlikely to be fruitful since a literal construction of the words as stated might lead one to the erroneous conclusion that Bitches is somehow a facile, confused, unfocused and aggressive work which could never be admitted to the canon. To illumine the authorial intent requires the application of the more “teleological” tools of the deconstructionists, which approach it is obvious from even a preliminary “reading” is fully in keeping with the artistic project conceived by the rappers themselves. The clues are in the language used. Dr. Dré is too well informed an artist to be unaware of the basic structuralism of Saussure which holds that language is a social product and that, therefore, the social aspect of speech is outside the speaker’s control. According to Saussure, then, language is not a function of the speaker but is passively assimilated from society. Speaking, or “rapping”, as defined by Saussure, is a premeditated act, however. Dré knows this. In fact, he embraces the underlying structural truth of Saussure’s insight by using highly charged, socialized, prejudicial and sexed “words” (bitches, ho’s, tricks) which he communicates to his audience though a violated, necessarily learned, grammar (gets out after you’re done, I hops in my ride). But the Dr. is also too well informed, as we shall see, to be unaware that Saussure himself had begun to recognize the limits of structuralism in his final working years and started to develop an identifiably post-structuralist perspective on the interaction of language and meaning according to which:

1. poetic language adds a second, contrived, dimension to the original word. 2. there is a correspondence between elements, in both metre and rime. 3. binary poetic laws transgress the rules of grammar, and 4. the element of the key word (or even letter) may be spread over the whole length of the text or may be concentrated in a small space, such as one or two words.

Dr. Dré uses each of Saussure’s insights here to inform the construction of the following tranche of rapped narrative:

I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright, We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night, Tight than a mutharfucka with the gangsta beats, And we was ballin' on the muthafuckin' Compton streets, Peep, the shit got deep and it was on, Number 1 song after number 1 song, Long as my muthafuckin' pockets was fat, I didn't give a fuck where the bitch was at, But she was hangin' with a white bitch doin' the shit she do, Suckin' on his dick just to get a buck or 2, And the few ends she got didn't mean nothin', Now she's suing cuz the shit she be doin' ain't shit, Bitch can't hang with the streets, she found herself short, So now she's takin' me to court, It's real conversation for your ass.

Here, the key to unlocking the text is concentrated in a small “space” and confined to the two-word cipher “Eric Wright”, the “bitch” throughout the quoted lyric. Dré cleaves to the post-structuralist doctrine according to which meanings within texts are unstable and shifting. For example, “bitch” it is obvious admits of more than one interpretation as the “mike” is passed from MC to MC. Eric Wright was a Kelly Park Compton Crip who, along with Dré, was one of the original members of NWA, rapping under the moniker Eazy E. As the lyric suggests, while shit got deep as chart success followed chart success, material ease lulled the Dr. into a false sense of security. Eric it transpired was hanging with a “white bitch”, NWA business manager Jerry Heller, and conspiring with him “to get a buck or two”, that is misappropriate funds generated though the group’s musical activities. As the Dr. wryly observes of one of hip hop’s most infamous feuds, that is real converstation for your ass. Next post, No Rap is an Island. Sneak preview:

Move up the block as we groove down the block See my girl's house, Dré, pass the Glock Kick in the do', an' I look on the flo' It's my little cousin Daz and he's fuckin' my hoe, yo I uncock my shit...I'm heart-broke, But I'm still lo'ked.

And! More exciting critical theory... "[the work] is a classic example of Woods’ recherché postmodernism and, like the work of Pynchon and Foster Wallace, is grounded in a kind of vital hyper-reality not seen since the breathless melodramas of the Victorian period. And yet, underlying the appearance of conventional melodrama is a truly fractured postmodern reality, presented as a disturbing, cinematic montage of disembodied genitalia, rolling low-riders, prison blues and locked n’ loaded Glock 9 mm handguns." Until then, we out. Peace.

NeoConservatives at the Crossroads

Every so often, I buy the New York Times, sunday edition, in Tower records to see how the other half lives. Amid the myriad supplements selling 30 million dollar apartments on 5th Avenue and the photo accompanied marriage announcements by horribly bouffant and manicured yuppies, I spotted this entertaining letter in the Book Review section. Knowing how close Charles Krauthammer is to the hearts of many on our small island nation, I thought it might be nice for those without a NYT subscription to have the opportunity to browse it. It's from one Francis "history is for chumps, fool" Fukuyama. Once again, I'm moved to plead, why can't we all just get along? *Sigh.

'America at the Crossroads' To the Editor: The overheated tone of Charles Krauthammer's letter (April 16) about my book "America at the Crossroads" suggests that he is in something of a panic that someone should hold him accountable for his advocacy of the Iraq war. He pretends that his 2004 speech at the American Enterprise Institute was an abstract, academic disquisition on international relations theory, unrelated to the momentous events swirling about at the time, and that he himself was expressing reservations about the war. This of course is nonsense; as everyone in the audience understood, he was trying to provide a theoretical justification for the Bush administration's foreign policy. Despite the small qualifications he cites, the overall tone was highly triumphalist, and he failed to address any of the obvious setbacks the administration had suffered like the growing insurgency and missing weapons of mass destruction that undermined his strategy of "democratic globalism". If anyone thinks I am misrepresenting the speech, they are welcome to read the 7,000 word critique of it that I wrote in The National Interest in the summer of 2004. My opposition to the war from early 2002 was not a secret; had Krauthammer done a simple Lexis-Nexis search he would have found any number of things I wrote expressing grave reservations about the war before it took place. The only thing "breathtaking" about this whole sorry affair is Krauthammer's determination to shift the focus of the debate from substance to personal invective. FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Washington.

*Shakes head sadly.