Overheard

"The whole purpose of Planned Parenthood is to allow black women to abort their babies."

Wow. Misogyny, racism, and an astounding level of ignorance all in less than 15 words!

Then his friend glanced over at me (we were all in the elevator together) and whispered (uh, a little late for whispering, don't you think?), "I think we're treading on dangerous territory there." You think?!

This is Not a Test

Last night, I was sitting in front of the television writing checks for my bills and idly watching Dog the Bounty Hunter. It was a train wreck sort of fascination; I think I might have to develop a compulsion to watch this show whenever I run across it while channel surfing. But that’s not the point.

The point is, while watching Dog and his boys gather for a prayer circle before chasing after some fugitive, the screen suddenly went grey and the speakers started to blare out a buzzing alarm. Text started scrolling across the screen: AMBER ALERT—TURN TO CHANNEL 20 FOR MORE INFORMATION. The blood ran cold in my veins—the same sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you get when a tornado warning is sounded for your area.

I wasn’t planning to leave the apartment or anything, but I turned to the designated channel anyway. Who knows what might happen? If everyone just ignored an Amber Alert because they aren’t planning to leave the house, then there would be no point in having an Amber Alert at all. However, Channel 20 was showing only the message that an Amber Alert had been sounded at 8:32 p.m. No description of the child or the adult presumed to have abducted the child. No information about where they were last seen or where they might be headed (if known). Just “Amber Alert!”.

It turns out that the local police mucked the whole thing up from the get-go. The abduction of the child was reported at 4:40 p.m. The Amber Alert, if you remember from the last paragraph, was not called until 8:32 p.m.—nearly four hours’ delay. If the abductor had actually been heading for FL (as reported by the news), he would have been at least two states away by that point. Furthermore, the news reported that the abductor had contacted a friend of the mother’s shortly before the Amber Alert was actually sounded to tell her that he had the little girl and wanted to turn her over. The friend met the man (who was the mother’s boyfriend) somewhere and got the little girl from him. Happy End, right?

Well, what on earth were the police doing all this time? What if this had been a stranger abduction? What if the boyfriend had wanted to hurt the mother by hurting her child? Time is of the essence in child abductions—again, this is the whole point of having Amber Alerts: it allows the public to be the eyes and ears of the police in those crucial first moments when it is most likely that the child can be successfully recovered. How can we, the public, be the good guys, when the local authorities can’t be bothered to sound the alarm? The local broadcasters are standing by. I remember another Amber Alert maybe a year ago in which Channel 20 gave out the child’s description and a description of the car he was thought to be traveling in. The local highway authority is standing by—I was actually almost home from a trip to the City of Light when the Amber Alert was sounded and saw the message on the LED signs over the highway. According to the news, the highway authority was not notified, so the messages never went out.

I’d like to think that the community would demand some answers of the police. But I know better. Apathy is endemic here. There will be a few angry, self-righteous blurbs on the evening news, then this story will fade into oblivion until the next time there is an Amber Alert. They were lucky this time; things worked out and the little girl is safe at home this morning. It’s a shame that we’ll probably be betting the next child’s life on that luck holding out.

Second Floor, Ladies Apparel *Ding*

I never noticed until we started talking about mannequins in class today, but you seldom *see* mannequins in stores anymore. I mean, yeah, sure, the window displays at the Gap or at Express use torso-shaped objects to display their clothes on. But when’s the last time you wandered through the aisles of Macy’s or Kaufmann’s or Dillard’s and saw the awkwardly posed wooden figure of a lady, all decked out in the season’s latest fashion, blank eyes staring straight ahead at Better Sportswear, small chips in the paint on her fingers—which are, of course, molded together into one mitten-like paw with carved contours giving the impression of individual fingers when viewed at a distance?

I can distinctly remember being fascinated by the mannequins at McAlpin’s Department Store as a child, the monotony of rack after rack of grown-up clothes relieved by a close examination of the way the mannequin was posed, the way the feet were bolted to the pedestal, the fact that the face on the “lady” wearing the blue dress was exactly the same as the “lady” wearing the floppy hat.

Would the movie Mannequin make any sense to a child born today? As much as Mannequin made sense to anyone, anyway. Ah, Andrew McCarthy, whatever happened to your loveable floundering around?

Were mannequins back then as anorexic as the torsos in today’s window displays? I was too young to have noticed one way or the other back then. But it irritates the holy crap out of me when I go to a store and the display torsos are draped in a size 2 shirt that has been pulled and pinned together in the back so that a) the shirt is being displayed in a way that it will never, ever drape in real life (i.e., it looks like a tapered, tailored blouse, but when you put it on, it looks like a tent) and b) the image being presented as desirable is literally smaller than the smallest clothes offered in the store—no one could ever live up to it. I have a real problem with that. The last thing this society needs is to further distort our image of what a woman (or a man—this is one area where the narrowing of the gender gap is a negative development) should be.

Things They Don't Teach You In School

What, exactly, am I supposed to wear to work with this firm?

And don't tell me "business casual", because that phrase is so meaningless you might as well say "clothes".

Are there certain kinds of shoes that are not OK? I mean, obviously my silver strappy sandals and Hello Kitty sneakers are Not Appropriate For The Workplace. But what about my other shoes? Can I wear slacks and a sweater? Can I wear slacks and a button-up?

I have no frame of reference for this stuff. In the past, I've worked in places where you either had a uniform or it didn't really matter too much what you wore. Even at my job in the City of Light, "business casual" meant "don't show up in your jeans and sneakers... too often". I'm pretty sure that won't be the firm policy.

And don't tell me to ask the person who hired me. He's a man in his 60's. Men have NOT A CLUE how much more nuanced women's clothing is. A guy can put on a nice pair of khakis and a button up and go to a wide range of places for which he would be dressed appropriately. The same kind of outfit on a woman works in a much narrower range of places.

Either way, I have to buy some clothes. After 1 1/2 years of law school, my wardrobe is a little manic-depressive. I have jeans and sweaters and knit shirts. And I have little black dresses. Nothing in between except my interview suit.

I don't want to go clothes shopping. The very thought of clawing through the racks makes me feel bored. The thought of trying on the clothes makes my soul shrivel up just a little bit. Nothing ever looks right on me-- unless it costs at least $70. And the thought of actually going to the mall with the rest of the unwashed public makes me feel just a little homicidal. My stupidity threshold is especially low lately because I'm so stressed over school (Why, oh WHY, did I pick that topic for my Seminar paper????). I'm not sure that I will be able to go shopping without getting arrested. Those who doubt the veracity of this statement should ask Finbar about the things I said OUT LOUD to people while we were out shopping on Saturday.

I Haven't Auditioned Since High School

So it’s pretty close to certain that I’ll be spending the summer in Bethesda. It sounds like the position is tailor made for Katze:
- It’s a fairly small firm—only six permanent associates.
- It’s a very international firm—half of the permanent staff is from another country and at any given time there are also numerous foreign attorneys “on exchange” with the firm.
- It’s in the field I think I’d like to work in.
- I’ll get to use my foreign language skills at least some of the time, as the firm specializes in work with foreign researchers (i.e., AIDS researchers from China)
- It’s in D.C.(well, OK, in the suburbs)- which I honestly thought was out of my reach. I love D.C. and I’m so excited about the opportunity to spend an extended time there. What a phenomenal experience! Plus, it will look really good on my resume.
- The work will be a mix of a very, very interesting political asylum case (and an attendant federal claim, which is going to be muy cool) and filing forms for more routine matters, so I get a little taste of both sides of the field.

But first I need to Answer The Questions Three—metaphorically speaking. I’ll be spending Spring Break working for the firm. If they like me (and I like them), then we’ll set a contract for summer employment.

So now I’m hauling out my old Civil Procedure outlines and commercial preparation materials. I’m also going to spend the next few days looking up information about the federal laws underlying the claims. Then I’ll be refreshing my memory on motions for summary judgment and so on. I want to go in and totally wow them, and even more so, I want NOT to make an ass out of myself.

Tangentially speaking, is this a new trend in job searches?

The bad news it that I probably won’t get to visit Vesna, since she’ll probably be back before I’m finished working for the summer... unless you’re staying longer than I think, Schatz.

And so, if anyone knows someone in Bethesda, MD or in the vicinity, who will be looking for someone to sublet or who might have a guest room that they would be willing to rent out or something like that, please let me know. I need a cheap place to live there, since I’ll have to pay my expenses both here and there for the summer. I’m not particularly picky, and I’m nice, quiet, and easy to live with (or at least I think I am. Julio or Luneray may beg to differ for all I know).

Victory Is Mine!

I FINALLY got my checkbook to balance. It’s been out of balance ever since I was in Europe last year and I couldn’t find the error anywhere. I balance my checkbook every month, down to the last penny, so this has been making me vaguely nauseous for ages now. I still couldn’t tell you exactly what the problem was—there were a handful of minor math or recording errors and two or three checks that never cleared the bank, presumably lost in the mail or something, but nothing that should account for the crazy discrepancies I kept finding—but it balances perfectly.

There’s not nearly enough money in the account, but it balances.

Still Working On That Cure For Monolinguism

For some reason, the Spanish word “calcetines” sounds like an exotic fruit to me.

Miscommunication

Dude, I think I know where you’re going with this, and I think I agree with you, but your abuse of grammar and misuse of words that mean something other than I think you think they mean has so obscured your point that you might as well be speaking Swahili.

Rude Bus Passengers

I love public transportation. I think it should be more common and more widely used in this country. It's better for the environment, it's better for the traffic situation, it's better use of limited resources (be it oil, parking, or space on a crowded road). I take the bus to and from school every day. If I end up working downtown this summer, I’ll take the bus. I’m also a fan of carpooling, which is a whole different page of this story.

But I hate some of the people who take public transportation.

There's the smelly person. Sometimes it's BO. Possibly a person from a culture where standards of personal hygiene are different than here in the US. Possibly a person who is too lazy to bathe. Others smell so nauseatingly of alcohol that your stomach turns (Yeah, lady who sat next to me this morning, I’m talking to you!). This was more common when I took the late night bus to the near suburbs last year, but occasionally happens if I take the evening express bus now. On a few memorable occasion, it's happened on my morning commute in to school. Once the guy was dressed in a neat suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, but smelled soooo strongly of beer that I can't imagine anyone in his office was fooled for a second.

Then there’s the person who doesn’t seem to understand the one-seat-per-person rule. There are the people who think they need a separate seat for their backpack. Most of them will move their belongings onto their laps if challenged. Then there are the people who sit on the bench seats at the back of the bus and position themselves so that they are taking up 1½ seats, thus preventing anyone from making use of the 2nd seat. These people tend to be the most intractable. They’ll pretend like they don’t know that you want to sit down or act as though they can’t see the delineation between the seats that should tell them to scoot over. Then there are people—almost always young black men—who sit with their legs splayed out so that, while their butts and upper bodies are entirely in the zone of one seat, their legs are so far into the neighboring zone that they might as well be laying across both seats. If you sit in the seat next to them, they’ll typically move their legs a fraction of an inch closer together. One must resort to passive-aggressive techniques, such as the “oops, the bus made a fast turn, so sorry I ended up on your side of the seat” or the “shoving the backpack on the floor by ‘accidentally’ bumping the errant leg”. A direct request to scoot over usually results in a cursing and nasty look, but seldom an actual scoot.

Then there are the people (almost always teenagers and younger adults, usually female) who sit in the front seats and develop situational blindness that prevents them from seeing the pregnant woman, the elderly man, or the person on crutches that boards the bus and can’t get a seat. This class of bus rider has reduced me to a frothing righteous anger on more than one occasion, including one day that found me standing up from my seat a little more than halfway back in the bus to announce that since all of the other able-bodied young women at the front of the bus had apparently been raised by wolves, that the gentleman (white haired and at least 70 years old) could have my seat—and I punctuated the announcement with a withering “Shame on you!”. Not that I have any delusions that I might have changed their behavior, but sometimes I just can’t stand the inconsiderate habits of my fellow man. The flip side of this are the passengers, usually professional-looking white men, who seem to think that they deserve a seat and will try to intimidate someone into getting up.

Also fun are the people who shove their way to the front of the line to get on the bus. Civility is dead, my friends, at least at the bus door. And conversely, there are the people who get on, find that there are no open seats on the bus, and plant their carcass right in the middle of the aisle at the front of the bus instead of moving as far back in the bus as possible—you know, to allow the people at subsequent stops to get on the bus. Then, even when the bus driver yells back for people to move to the back of the bus, they just look around and don’t move at all. Why should they worry about any of the other people?

Of course there are the cell phone talkers. I’m not talking about someone who answers a call and quickly and quietly takes care of business or tells the caller they’ll call back later. Nor am I talking about someone who makes a quick and quiet call along the lines of “I’m on my way now” or “Do you need me to stop and pick up milk on my way?”. I’m talking about the loud morons. Yes, that means you, Mr. “I Just Got Out of Rehab”, and you too, “Ms. He-Got-Scabs-On-His-You-Know-What-But-I’m-Sleeping-With-Him-Anyway” (and I only wish I had just made that up). I’m going to let all of you in on a little secret: your cellphone doesn’t generate a soundproof bubble to surround you and your conversation. I CAN HEAR YOU!! I’m also talking to all of you who have very loud and obnoxious ringtone and bury your phone at the bottom of your purse or bag so that we’re all treated to a good long listen to your retarded ringtone.

Similarly annoying are the people who get on the bus with their children and let them scream and yell and act like hooligans. No, it’s not cute.

And then there’s the man who was so nasty and rude that he deserves his own entry into this impromptu Hall of Infamy. When I catch the bus home at 4pm, I almost never get a seat. This bus tends to get so crowded that it has to stop taking passengers because you quite literally cannot fit anyone else into the bus. I get off three stops from the end and usually get to sit down two stops before that. I try to avoid taking the bus around this time of the day because my book bag and laptop case are so heavy that I get strained across the shoulder if I have to stand in the bus most of the way home, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Anyway, this particular day, I had a young man offer me his seat so that I wouldn’t have to stand with the bags (which were even heavier than normal). At the next stop, quite a few people got off, including the person sitting next to me. Hanging to the bar in front of me was a woman in her 40s. She started to shift her bags to the side so that she could sit in the newly vacated seat next to me, but before she could take the two steps across the aisle and bend her knees, she was elbowed out of the way by a man about her age. He plopped down next to me and didn’t even hace the grace to loop sheepish about shoving the poor woman aside. I was so stunned that I couldn’t even speak for a moment. Another passenger stood up and gave the woman his seat before I could respond. Meanwhile, the shover had pulled out a pocket Bible and started reading—Hey! Way to live a Christ-like life there, jackass! And he was very smelly on top of it. His coat was crusted in dirt and he smelled like he hadn’t seen a shower or a bar of soap in a week. THEN he spread his legs out so that they encroached on my space (my heavy bag “slipped” an whacked him in the leg a few minutes later). All in all, he made me want to scream “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” at the top of my lungs.

Seriously, why can’t people enter and exit the bus in an orderly manner and just sit down and be considerate of the other people who are just trying to get from one point to another? Is it really that hard?

Happy Valentine's Day

What was your first kiss like?

I was fourteen years old, in the 8th grade, and suffering from the pains of adolescent hormones and insecurity-- not aided by the terrible frizzy perm from the JC Penney beauty salon. I was also half way through dating the entire tenor section of the choir. My current tenor lived not far from me and we walked home together after choir practice three times a week. Usually we walked with another member of the choir (and my subsequent boyfriend-- a baritone, breaking my tenor streak), but that day-- Valentine's Day-- Greg somehow manuevered it so that we were alone.

It was snowing and cold. Halfway home, we had to cross through a spit of land that was actually part of a park, so it was tree-lined and the path was seldom cleared of snow and ice. He stopped among the trees and handed me a little wrapped box. I opened it and found a little silver heart necklace. I was so excited-- no boy had ever given me a gift before! And it was jewelry! Undoubtedly cheap and probably would end up turning my neck green, but it was jewelry! Dear Lord, a fourteen year old heart is already drowning in melodramatic nonsense, even a level-headed fourteen year old, as I was.

While I was still standing there in a stated of pleased shock, he leaned in and gave me the world's quickest peck on the lips. My God, he kissed me! I must not be completely ugly!-- that's pretty much how it went.

Of course, this little burst of self-confidence completely backfired on poor Greg. I dumped him maybe a month later (although a month is a long time for a junior high school romance) for the baritone who sometimes walked home with us. It kind of cracks me up that I had this firmly rooted idea that I was so hideous that no one could possibly love me, when, looking back, I can see that I was pretty heartlessly working my way through a phalanx of suitors. I thought I had lame experiences, but my first kiss was like something out of a highly sanitized Disney sitcom. What things are happening to me now, I wonder, that I don't appreciate the way that I should?

Brainless

I forgot my charger for my laptop today. Now I have to try to track down someone with the same laptop as mine who is willing to let me borrow their pack for a few hours. I’m so irritated with myself. How hard would it have been to put the stupid plug back in the bag last night when I unhooked the laptop from the dial-up? Jeez.

Maybe Someone Should Tell Him About Downy Wrinkle Releaser.

Prof. Marbury is wearing a shirt that is obviously brand-new: you can still see the fold marks where it was wrapped in the cellophane that he must have unpacked it before immediately putting it on this morning.

My Road Sister Name Was Angelique LaFroufrou

Five or Six years ago, Julio and I were Christmas shopping together at The Yuppie Mall in our hometown. We wandered into The Nature Company to look for a gift for Finbar, which degenerated into us poking around picking up things that we’d like to have for ourselves—if we had any money to buy them, that is. Being the addict that I am, I eventually ended up in their book section where, wedged in between the think volumes on polar bears and the paperbacks about astronomy, I found a copy of “The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road”. It was hot pink vinyl and I found myself compelled to flip it open to see what on earth someone would want to encase with hot pink vinyl that a buyer for The Nature Company would think should be stocked in their store.

It combined things like lists of tips (“Things to do with pantyliners: use to insulate a hot coffee cup so that it doesn’t burn your inner thighs, wipe off dipstick after checking your oil, clean the inside of the windshield...”) with practical advice (how to check your fluid levels, what to do if you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere) and anecdotes about girl power road trips so that you and your “raging road sisters” can hit the open road in your own beat up Thunderbird and shed the stress of your everyday life.

At last, a book that speaks to my inner Bad Girl!

We were, in fact, so inspired by the book that we planned a road trip to celebrate our graduation from college. My host sister from Germany and her best friend flew over to join us and we spent three weeks tooling around on the East Coast. It was a good experience—but there were lots of bad experiences in between. We violated several of the rules laid out in the Hot Pink Vinyl Bible and paid for it down the road. But it was a great trip anyway. Maybe we should do it again after I finish law school...

But I digress.

Last month, I went into Barnes and Noble to return a book that I’d gotten twice for Christmas. Browsing around for something to spend my store credit on, I came across a “Bad Girls Guide to 2005” calendar (or whatever the actual title is), which is one of those daily rip-off-yesterday’s-page calendars. I’ve definitely felt the need to get in touch with my inner Bad Girl lately and this calendar is going to be my inspiration.

It’s already given me a boost with tips on how to get fired from a boring job (“Do an interpretive dance every time you wait for the elevator or copy machine, Leave all voice mails in rhyming couplets, Act out the instructions on the fax machine or fire extinguisher like an airline stewardess”—I can’t wait to get a summer job!), Power Steering a Bad Date (“Your date is 45 minutes late...PERSONAL WORST= When he finally shows up, you wave, smile politely, and act like nothing is wrong...PERSONAL BEST=You enjoy a pricey meal alone and hand him the bill when he arrives. Be sure to wave and smile as you walk out!”) and mini-biographies of Famous Bad Girls (Dorothy Parker, Alice Walker, Eleanor Roosevelt).

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Man sues Satan
Motion to Kiss Your Ass Denied

98% Preparation

The previous officers of our public interest society were incredibly disorganized. There is no organization to the office. Paperwork—very important paperwork, like the signed contract for recipients of the summer grants that we fund or the documents needed to file our tax return—is nowhere to be found. The computer was full of files like the resumes of previous officers and drafts of papers, but not a single copy of the program for the auction or the list of previous donors. Even the graphics used are missing.

How much soda and pizza should we order? No clue—there are no records of how much we ordered last year. In fact, we don’t even really know the exact number of admissions we had last year.

We’ve had to do everything for the upcoming auction from scratch. It’s been a huge pain in the posterior region. So, LaPresidente, Martin, and I are trying to track everything that we’re doing and record it all so that next year’s auction won’t have to be built from scratch. We’re also trying to over-organize this year’s auction to try and avoid the chaos of last year’s auction—which was basically a free-for-all on several levels.

Last week we sat down and mapped out in painstaking detail the jobs that will need to be done the day of the auction, what time they need to be done, estimated the time that each would take and the number of people that we would need. Then we drew up sign up sheets for each of these jobs(44 in total, not including the tasks for the officers and Martin and me), in hopes of getting people to take specific responsibility for some area instead of just saying “I’ll come and help”—which means that either they won’t show at all, they’ll show up and stay for maybe 20 minutes, or they’ll show up and need to be told exactly what to do and where to go. Plus we are hoping to spread the burden among a greater number of people than the three or four who always show up.

I created individual job descriptions for each position in the hopes that they will know what to do without needing to track down LaPresidente, who will have more than enough on her plate without needing to babysit some of the dingier members. We’re also hoping that having written guidelines will kind of shepherd people into doing what they’re being asked to do instead of standing around talking to their friends.

Not that all of our members are stupid or irresponsible. There are a few who are wonderful and you know you can count on them for anything. Most of the others will do something if you ask them directly and specifically. It’s just that there are a few who are apparently incapable of doing anything without being told exactly what to do and how and when and where.

As with all major projects, there are 10 million details to be taken care of, many of which can’t be done in advance. There are programs to be written, formatted, printed, folded, stapled, numbered, and grouped to ensure an orderly registration process. The lists of lots can’t be completed and formatted to be sent to the printers until the afternoon of the day before the auction because we receive donations right up until the day of the auction. The items that arrive on the actual day of the auction are put onto an addendum page (which has to be typed and printed and stuffed into each program). The items have to be grouped together into lots—no one is going to pay for a $10 dry cleaning gift certificate, but when you pair it together with tickets to a concert or a dinner at a fancy restaurant, you’ve got yourself a package. The lots have to be strategically arranged to spread the big and popular items out. Some items that are worth a lot, but that people might not realize exactly how much they are worth, have to be placed toward the latter half of the evening—when people will be drunk from the six kegs of beer we’ve ordered and more likely to think they can and should spend $1200 for a week in a resort in Florida. But if you put them too late in the evening, they’ll already have spent all of their money on other things and will be too drunk to pay attention. You have to get professors to agree to be auctioneers and schedule them strategically (“If we put Prof. MacPherson too late in the evening, he’ll be drunk and start talking about his sex life onstage again”).

And that just scratches the surface of it.

One of the jobs that I interviewed for after college was as an event planner for the Red Cross. At the time, I bowed out because their decision making process was taking so long. I’d already been out of work for several months and had a decent offer from someone else on the table. Now I wonder what it would have been like had I taken that job. I’ve enjoyed working on the auction, but I’ve hated it at the same time. It’s hard to imagine doing this as a full-time job, but at the same time, it might have been fun.

Anyway, the day after tomorrow is the big night. I’ll let you know how things go.

Idle Observation

The guy who sits beside me in this class has freakishly tiny ears.

Note to the Cat

Just because I am too tired to yell at you doesn't mean you got away with it. STOP CLAWING THE LEGS OF THE DESK CHAIR BEFORE I HAVE TO KILL YOU!

I Need a Break From My Weekend

The theme for this weekend was “Are you retarded or just inconsiderate?”

Finbar was here, which was nice. But with auction preparation in full swing, it was also stressful. We ran errands most of the day Saturday, including trips to the local open air market and the Horribly Overpriced Chain Store, locations that I normally avoid like the plague on weekends. Highlights of the day include the 30 minute search for a parking space ANYWHERE in the general vicinity of the open air market, the woman who clipped me with her cart so that she could cut in front of me at the check out at Marshall’s (made all the sweeter by the fact that I had one item and she had a car completely filled to overflowing with clothing), the woman in front of us in the 8 items or less express line who had a full cart and then challenged half of the prices and got upset because some of our items were less than three feet away from her items (because apparently the little plastic dividing bar wouldn’t be enough to alert the cashier), and the woman who blocked the entire walkway with her SUV stroller and refused to move so that we could get by.

Finbar purchased the remaining Lemony Snicket books and left them here with me, so the day wasn’t a total loss.

We met with Death for coffee Saturday night, which was lots of fun. She’s a funny girl and so deliciously evil. She and Finbar tend to get going on a riff and I can just sit back and be entertained by the two of them. We cackled inordinately evilly at the rumors of Big Local Law Firm’s imminent bankruptcy which would result in one of the top students in our class (a disgusting excuse for a human being who fulfills every stereotype of the weasel lawyer already) losing her much-bragged about summer associate’s position. Not that we wish the other attorneys at Big Local Law Firm any ill, but damn, it would be good to see Anna get screwed.

It’s funny how law school tends to change you. I feel like my edges have gotten so much sharper, but that I’ve gotten intellectually stupider. I’m learning to work without reward, which is good in theory, but I fear the backlash in my personal life. And I think that I’m paradoxically more generous and much nastier than I was before law school. There are people here that I would walk across hot coals for, and there are people who I seriously wish would just disappear from the face of the earth—which is not normal, people!

An otherwise horrible and banal 1L blog I ran across describes the author’s fantasy of seeing his classmates dropped into a tank of sharks with laser beams mounted on their heads. I laughed at the image... and then I thought “Hmmmm... sharks with laser beams...” There are a lot of people here that I would drop in that tank.

Sunday morning, I woke up and last week’s cold was back for an encore. After spending Sunday afternoon and early evening working on various auction junk with LaPresidente and Martin, I planned to go to Dami’s Super Bowl party. I even drove part of the way there, but then I realized that I was just too tired. So I went home and laid on my couch with a cup of hot tea. I tried to watch the Super Bowl—mostly for the commercials, of course—but I kept dozing off. I eventually got up and went to bed, where I laid and stared at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep.

And that one statement pretty much sums up my weekend. It’s pretty sad when going back to school looks better than the weekend.

I Want To Pinch His Little Cheeks

My Spanish professor is a cute little thing sometimes. He's from Argentina and has an adorable accent to begin with, but he's even cuter when he makes mistakes. His English is really quite good, which makes any mistakes even cuter. Last night, in discussing some point of grammar or another, he wanted to use the phrase "the meat of the matter". What came out of his mouth was:

"Ah! Now we come to the ham of the sandwich!"

Political Humor

Sent to me by War. If you wanted to use this on your own blog, too bad, you've waited too long between updates.

The President, the First Lady and Dick Cheney are flying on Air Force One.
George looks at Laura, chuckles and says, "You know, I could throw a
$1,000.00 bill out the window right now and make somebody very happy."

Laura shrugs her shoulders and says, "Well, I could throw ten $100.00
bills out the window and make 10 people very happy"
Cheney says, "Of course then, I could throw one-hundred $10.00 bills out
the window and make a hundred people very happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes, looks at all of them and says to his
co-pilot, "Such big shots back there..... hell, I could throw all of
them out the window and make 56 million people very happy."

Woe Is Me

I'm sick. Not bad-sick, just irritating-sick. Technically, I could have hauled my carcass into class today, but what with the auction coming up and all, I decided to stay home and drink hot tea and take vitamin C today with the hope of a) being back to healthy as quickly as possible and b)not making anyone else, especially LaPresidente, sick.

Of course, I'll have to get in for Adoption Law this afternoon, seeing as it only meets once a week. But at least it's only for two hours and I'll only be with the other 11 people in the class-- none of whom I care about particularly, so if I spread the plague to them, that's not heartbreaking. ;)

Law School Humor

YOU ARE RULE 12(b)!

While you might be a defendant's best friend, you
aren't exactly polite to others. You have
seven separate grounds on which to dismiss a
plaintiff's case. You are a bit paranoid,
since if you fail to raise your 12(b)(2,3,4, or
7) in a motion or a pleading with one of the
other 12(b) defenses or a 12(e) motion, you
waive those objections for the rest of trial.
Some might say that 12(b) is the biggest bully
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but
hey, somebody needs to keep the peace. You
might not be the most popular guy in the
office, but you're probably the most important.


Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
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