In all fairness, I don't know if I can self-identify as a voicewriter anymore.

So I'm taking suggestions for a new blog title. I am doing some soul-searching... which is not that productive when you're shallow. So what does anyone think about a new title?

Just to get the fire cracking, I think this new incarnation of my blog will be more about hating the law school admissions process and then ultimately probably hating law school.
And when that gets tired, I think I'll just send updates about my dogs.

Some working titles I have come up with are, "Wyatt and Junebug could get better LSAT scores than me and one of them is a dog. (The other is a T-rex, who incidentally looks like Terri Hatcher...?)"

or how about "When I was little I never thought I would be an attorney or a dog-owner... and other rude awakenings."

and finally, "Why is everyone publishing books about dog training? The free-for-all I have encouraged has ultimately been very rewarding. They are like latch-key kids who eat your underwear."

More soon. (Shudder.)

The lost and found art of Shutting Up

I know that I have no eye for art, but I think you should trust me on this one.

As I’ve introduced, on a work-daily basis I sit in college classrooms and repeat the proceedings. Professors lecture and prompt discussions and students engage in debate, sometimes to the quick stimulation of my gag reflex. Seriously. Professors show a lot of restraint when it comes to feilding inanity. When I was in college, people may have said stupid stuff, but now that I am considerably older, wiser and more pretentious, hearing the stupid stuff that college students say is decidedly less tolerable. I may have a Darth Vader-esque mask in front of my face, but it can only conceal so much. Sometimes my eye-rolls start before I remember I am not invisible and then I have to act like I was just going to look at the ceiling. What?

I have a confession to make. I originated this blog mostly because I wanted a forum for airing all the indignation that I am bound not to air in class. I had a real burning need to tell someone about how much smarter I am than all the people who I repeat all day. I was going to parade their folly out over the internet for ready comparison to my own smarty-smart-smart grasp on everything.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am bothered by those people because I am that guy. I am the guy who couldn’t stop herself from thrusting her hand in the air at every chance when I was in college. I was never perceptive enough to catch it among my peers, but eyes were doubtless a-rolling each time I decided I had some super astute (read: unoriginal) interjection.

The generous angel on my left shoulder with the moustache and the harpsichord says that I am inquisitive and eager! The devil on the right says I have an inflated ego and an over developed affinity for the sound of my own voice. He’s laughing at me at this very moment for using so many pseudo-intellectual words just now!

Which brings me back to art. I am humbled and ashamed to wonder how classes would have gone if I hadn’t been opening my big mouth the whole time, all those years I was a student. (I say all those years because I feel I was equally as vociferous and arrogant in elementary school as I was as a college senior…D.A.R.E essay contest, anyone?)

These days in class, if there comes a point where I know my arm would have shot up in protest or hearty (superfluous) agreement, I listen to the moments pass the way they will without the questionable benefit of my two cents. Something at first totally frustrating----picture me, quivering behind my iron mask, unable to interpose----is now sort of comforting. I think I used to be one of those people in conversation who pretends to be listening when they are really just waiting to start talking again. I bore the need to tell people just how it was like a wooden cross. I was an ox before the cart of ineptitude. What a relief to learn something from people I would have left for idiots in my former life. Didn’t Socrates say something about how the only true knowledge is that we can know nothing? Don't I sound smart when I reference Socrates?

It just goes to show you, compulsive blabber doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes people hate you.

This is a brand new idea....

So this is a brand new idea. I thought I would do what thousands have done before me (among the thousands some of my closest friends) and start a blog. It's true that I've been consistently late to bloom. For example: late at getting wisdom teeth, late to say anything and get them crushed inside my mouth and subsequently and violently extracted. Late to understand the punchline of most funny jokes. Fashion trends manage to fly by me at Monorail speed (RIP, the Monorail) and it's all I can do to jog helplessly after these figurative trains, wearing unfortunate things at inopportune times. Late like the white rabbit.

Anyhow, I've been considering the fact that I'm in a line of work which requires no creativity or expression whatsoever. I'm a Voicewriter, which means I repeat things (college classes, conference speakers... noises of most kinds) into an interpreter's mask. My speaking is interpreted by a voice-recognition machine which produces the transcript in a scrolling, TV-captioning form on a laptop for the benefit of people who are hard of hearing, or just benefit from seeing things written and would read that captioning or a transcript or whatever they like.

In fact, the ethics of said work literally bar me from editorializing or fabrication in the slightest. I am a non-entity, by trade. This status is sometimes comfortable, but more often the material I repeat and witness begs retelling. After reading some of the forthcoming blog, you may readily disagree.

I have a feeling this is highly unethical, so maybe this blog won't report exclusively on the remarkable things I have the privilege to repeat all day. Maybe that way I will manage to escape firing or dismemberment at the teeth of some verbatim reporters committee. Then again, what a glorious way to go.