Ok. I have a problem. I see lots of links and cool things online I’d like to read, link to, or otherwise enjoy, so I open them in tabs in Firefox. And then I see more cool things and open them, too. And then I end up w/62 open tabs and my poor little G4 iBook says, “What do I look like, a brand new Mac Pro?” So, here’s what’s getting closed (and trust me, you don’t want to read what follows unless you’re insanely bored; it was just something I had to do, some housecleaning, really. You don’t normally want to watch someone clean house, do you?):

1. Confessions of a Burned Out Ex-Lawyer, an online novel/book I began reading months ago and to which I hope to return. I might have posted about it before but I really can’t recall. Great reading, though.
2. The Underdog Blog’s comments on Barry Cooper’s Never Get Busted video. Looks like Cooper was the model of a bad cop. So is he different simply because he admitted he didn’t care about the law?
3. Twitter, because it’s basically always open these days, just in case.
4. Reasons prosecutors make me scream from Woman of the Law. Ditto! Amen, sister! One prosecutor in particular is always telling me how well he knows my clients ââ�¬â�� he seems to think he’s their best friend, he knows exactly what’s wrong with their lives and boy, does he know how to fix it! One of these days I’m probably going to punch him. If I don’t, somebody else will.
5. A January 15 NPR story on the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments about an illegal search. I can’t seem to make NPR’s media player work at the moment, but I know it was a very interesting story, really. I promise.
6. MOO MiniCardsââ�¬â�� I really want to order some of these and start giving them out instead of my normal boring business cards. On the back I’d like to print an advice of rights so my clients can keep my card and give it to the cops the next time they meet them. ;-)
7. The Vow of Stability, a link I followed from my best friend’s blog. It’s a compendium of thoughts on travel, most tending along the lines of the following from R.W. Emerson:

   Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

   Sadly, I have not really had the opportunity to travel in close to a decade. I know Emerson is largely right (wherever you go, there you are), but still, my giant needs some air once in a while and it’s really beginning to feel like it’s time….
8. Doubtslinger, both because it’s always good, and because I read it on my Treo daily and often just want to check out the real thing. And also, could there be a better name for a public defender blog? I, um, doubt it. (Please, though, why must people use black backgrounds!? Why why why? My eyes!)
9. Don’t do what I did: An ABA Journal article about a 32-year old law school graduate crusading to convince people that they should not go to law school because the debt they will incur will shackle them to decades of servitude and they will be miserable and stressed and wishing they were dead. (I might be exaggerating.) Some interesting discussion in the 200 comments… (Yeah, I posted about this before.)
10. The ABA Criminal Justice Blawg Directory. I commented on this before, too. Both tabs now closed, I swear!
11. tough loss, a post from 1/10/08 on Curia Advisari Vult about how hard it is to lose when you are absolutely convinced of your client’s innocence. Tough, indeed.
12. An obscure comment on Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t about whether the Montana Rules of Ethics actually allow a lawyer to get paid for referrals.
13. LibraryThing, which looks like a pretty cool way to catalog the books you’ve read or want to read or own. It also integrates nicely with blogs so you can easily share your catalog…
14. War on Greed, a campaign to get presidential candidates to commit to closing tax loopholes that allow rich executives to pay less in taxes than do their impoverished employees.
15. QOOP flickr fun � many different ways to turn your photos into cool stuff.
16. Taking Care of Business, a book about the myriad evils associated w/the fact that corporations are treated as “individuals” w/rights by American law.
17. A Rookie Guide to Digital SLR Cameras, because, well, I just was curious.
18. Host, the David Foster Wallace essay I mentioned before and still haven’t read.
19. Why I Do What I Do from The Saucy Vixen on Life on how tiresome it is to have to explain the work of a public defender and the one argument that actually works: “by defending the rights of the indigent, my cohorts and I are defending the rights of everyone.” Exactly so.
20. An iPod charger/FM broadcaster from Buy.com that was only $12 when I first looked at it, and has now jumped to $32. :-(
21. A Reader’s Guide to Infinite Jest from Amazon.com, because I still sometimes dream about being pseudo-scholarly.
22. Elegant Complexity, a study of Infinite Jest, because, again, yeah, like I have the time.
23. I know what you’ve been convicted of from the blog, “a public defender,” on the merits of putting all criminal records online in searchable format for anyone to browse on a whim. Generally not at all what I think was intended by the idea of making criminal records “public.”
24. 500 GB hard drive I’ve been thinking of ordering b/c it’s a good deal and I need more storage. I have nightmares about hard drives crashing and not having backups…
25. Journler, a journal application that looks pretty cool, if you don’t already have something like this.
26. Shawn Blanc’s review of MarsEdit, a desktop blog publishing app.
27. cameron i/o, a tumblelog that’s using the new chyrp blogging engine (see below). It’s a different way to blog, and perhaps more appropriate for what I find myself having time for these days. Experiments forthcoming, maybe.
28. Chyrp. You know you want to.
29. Amazon’s Best Books of 2007, as if I have time for that. See, lots of these links are about dreaming, aspirations, hopes, tangents, ephemera…
30. Amazon magazine deals because I was thinking of subscribing to some magazines for our office’s waiting room.
31. Snopes.com on Barack Obama ââ�¬â�� a friend told me he’s afraid of Obama being a muslim terrorist b/c of what he read on Snopes.com, so I wanted to see it for myself. It’s largely a fabrication and a smear. Obama is most certainly not muslim, although his father was.
32. Another smear that Obama is Muslim, found in the same search session as above.
33. Obama’s own website on whether he is a Muslim: No.
34. FactCheck.org says Obama is not and never has been a muslim.
35. Not for Sheep, because puppies are cute, super villains are cool, and my website is 75% evil.
36. The source of the black heart I posted on V-day.
37. Apparently we’re all liars: Another great post from Woman of the Law on the many frustrations and aggravations of being a public defender.
38. Be the Boy, a blog I reached only god knows how.
39. Myths and falsehoods about Barack Obama from Media Matters.
40. Law & Order SVU Valentines. Sadly I didn’t find these until after V-day….
41. Blonde Justice, an Explanation, in which she discusses how her move from public defender to private practice has been very much disappointing. It’s striking because I never would have dreamed from her posts while she was a PD that she was at all depressed or unhappy; perhaps she’s right that she needs to get back to doing what has meaning for her.

You know what? That’s so more than enough. You’ll just have to trust me that there were 62 tabs open. Thbbpt!

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