Behind the Veil: Genealogy of a Chunk

Even those of you who know me might have sometimes asked yourself: "From where did this Chunk emerge? Was he always veiled? Did he evolve from the wetness of the Precambrian Sea, or did he spring-forth from the Platonic Divine Spindle?"

Well, the life history of Veiled Chunk is, for the purposes of this blog, irrelevant and uninteresting. All the reader needs to know is that it was the fierce love of Madame Wong (one of her many names) that brought him into being in Orange County, California 23 years ago, and that their adventures together have spanned from the busy streets of Manhattan to the even-busier streets of Cairo. At the moment, VC is spending the summer in Afghanistan working for a human rights organization (quite different from his former stomping grounds as a BigLaw legal assistant!), and will be returning to Egypt in the Fall to complete a master's degree in Middle East Studies. Afterwards, I, Chunk, hope to continue on to law school and forge a path for myself in the jungle of international human rights law, and be only minimally distracted by promises of glitzy summers and SeamlessWeb that will fill my law school.

I'm sure, given my self-confessional nature and total lack of creative 3rd person writing skills, that the rest of my personal and academic life will be quickly and plainly revealed, but for the moment I think the readers of this blog (who I would imagine are probably limited to Wong, Curie, and Desi) already know more than enough about me to enjoy (or scoff at) my thoughts and comments that follow.

Eager to jump into things and get to some real blogging! Since it's 9:30pm in Kabul, though, and my stimuli options are more or less limited to BBC/CNN, an array of Bollywood movie channels, Althusser, and Hassan Van Damme (if he is outside in the garden, right now), I might not have a lot to say of substance, tonight (or ever).

VC

The Unveiling

"Say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty. They should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their ornaments." (The Qur'an, Sura of Light)

I cannot promise a lot of things in terms of the content and direction of this blog, but I can promise that Veiled Chunk will not be showing his bosoms or displaying any ornaments whatsoever in the foreseeable future.

Searching for a way to keep friends and family updated about my wanderings and thoughts without plaguing them with mass emails, I was motivated by my intense enjoyment of some of the law-related blogs that I've been reading this summer (especially Waddling Thunder's chronicles of his Harvard Law School adventures, and Article Three Junkie's hysterical analysis of the federal judiciary) to make my own blog.

**QUICK NOTE on these blogs -- WT and A3G are both, to the dismay of much of my circle, I'm sure, libertarian/conservative/REPUBLICAN, and will no doubt disagree with most of what I've got to say about just about everything; nevertheless, I have learned a TON and enjoyed myself greatly reading their blogs, and I have to say that if you are looking for more or less rational and carefully-considered conservative reasoning, these are two people to look to. If you just want to laugh, and maybe gain some insight into the struggles we all have between what we perceive as our "path" and what we see as our actual options, check out Jeremy's blog -- very funny, and very sincere. Just for the record: no, I am NOT an HLS troll, but it's got some great writers. What can I say?

Ok, back to VC -->

Friends, family, and other life characters will be identified by aliases that will hopefully protect their anonymity and cause them to chuckle a little, and I would ask that anyone leaving comments who knows me personally not identify me publicly in this blog. I may or may not post photos, depending on how they turn out -- if Veiled Chunk finds himself one day a Veiled Hunk, then the thing about not displaying his ornaments might go right out the window.

The blog will likely contain mixtures of the following things:

* Sporadic and ill-reasoned commentary on world events

* Maudlin philosophizing about Life

* Tedious detail about quotidien matters that are of little relevance to me, let alone anyone else

* Directionless stream-of-consciousness verbal diarrhea that is likely to be mis-spelled, overly-hyphenated (and overly-parenthetical)

I will not be held responsible for any misquoting, copyright violations, offensive material, character damage (EVERYONE IN THIS BLOG IS FICTIONAL -- INCLUDING VC HIMSELF), or anything else not good. I will not be held to any intellectual, academic, or other standards other than my own, meaning: expect me to stay stupid things and not spell-check.

Bon appétit!

VC