another day, another terrifying start to a hapless quarter at the medill school of journalism. this quarter promises to be a wee bit harder than the previous one. i've got three classes: new media storytelling, wherein i will learn how to make stuff for this "internet" thing; a legal RPA (reporting on public affairs) and a seminar to accompany the RPA.

when choosing amongst the urban, econ and legal RPA last quarter, my thought process went something vaguely like this: don't you dare do urban, because you know if you do, you are going to succumb to the arts & culture sub-beat, which you just had last quarter, and anyway, you've been reporting arts & culture stuff since you were, oh, five. LEARN NEW SHIT. hmm, econ? hmm, numbers? hmm, no fucking way? okay, legal. there we have it. reporting by process of elimination.

what makes it even worse is that now i will be reporting for Real News, instead of just submitting articles to my kindly instructors for a grade in class. we've got the medill news service, which sends out dozens of articles every day to local publications, with a hearty number of them getting published, fo' real. so my legal reporting this quarter promises to be entertaining for everybody involved: for my instructors, who will no doubt snicker at my astounding lack of knowledge of our fine legal system; for you all, as i recount errors after hysterical errors, possibly ending in jail time for me and my wackily libelous articles; and for me, because this entire process can only increase my alcohol input.

so, yeah. if you've got knowledge of the law, or tips, or bourbon, lemme know. fun times, fun times.

Sommer falls in love with Roller Derby, and reminds me of my own favorite stupid pseudosport: SlamBall. Sure, it sounds dumb. But I've never seen a sport as gleefully, accidentally brutal. It seemed like SlamBall's fate would be decided by which happened first: achieving popularity, or its first high-profile spinal injury. The odds looked good.

Sadly, someone made some stupid business decisions and my beloved SlamBall went away. But lo! What light on yonder trampoline-filled basketball court breaks?

Apparently, the sport isn't totally defunct. Some dopes even think the future looks bright for a EuroSlamBall league. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it's tough.

Belatedly going through some predictions for 2006, I realized that *I* had stupidly made some predictions last year. And hey, they turned out pretty well (although my batting average in the "science" category was weak). But this year, I got nothing. Well, okay, there's this: total entropy in the closed system of your choice will not — I repeat, not — decrease.

There. I've put myself out on a limb. Anybody else got guesses about what aught-six will bring?