the fiddy defense
Okay, I admit it. I was too busy reading about the fact that Mark Prior is out for the season to actually pay attention to most of my Evidence class today. The one thing I manage to overhear, though, is a fact pattern involving a statement a deceased declarant made after getting taken to the hospital with six gunshot wounds. My professor asks the class if anyone can counter the dying declaration hearsay exception.So I pipe up with this: "Well, if 50 Cent can get shot, like, eight times and survive, this guy can get shot six times and think he'll survive."Suddenly, I don't look so stupid for reading celebrity gossip blogs instead of studying, do I?(You know what? Don't answer that.)Labels: classes, evidence, ridiculous hypotheticals
according to darwin, i should be dead
So we have the pleasure of having T&E class in a different room today. I sit down at the seat I find the most agreeable to my head angle/typing/make-it-look-like-I'm-paying-attention tendencies, and start trying to plug my computer in. It doesn't work. I try my neighbor's outlet; it doesn't work.Like the genius I am, I start jiggling the plug in the outlet, trying to somehow work the plug into the actual outlet. After about a minute, I feel a strange sensation in my thumb. You know, where I got shocked. By a faulty outlet.In the law school.One of my friends in class told me that she thinks that I got shocked because the law school is mad at me for hating it so much. You know, like that episode of "The X-Files" where Mulder and Scully are in the middle of Florida on the way to an FBI retreat and end up getting attacked in the forest by the invisible spirit of the trees that has come to life to attack people.Maybe the next time I sit down to watch "The X-Files", I should really think about picking up a book on electric wiring. You know, since my tuition apparently doesn't pay for someone to come into the law school and fix that sort of problems.Labels: classes, x-files
why i'm a bad person (today)
I got invited to a friend's house for dinner. Said dinner is supposed to take place about an hour and a half after I get home from class.So I ask my friend what's on the menu for that night - particularly whether the menu includes some sort of seafood or eggs (neither of which I eat). Ever. (And my friends are huge quiche fans, which I find completely foul. Even the smell of eggs cooking makes me nauseous.*)After class today, my friend asks me if I'm still coming to dinner. I say yes, and she replies that she was unsure because I had the gumption to ask what they were having for dinner. (Apparently, inquiries about the menu are extremely gauche when you're a picky eater.) So I point out that I wanted to be sure that I would actually have something to eat. My friend replies that the point of getting together for dinner is to enjoy the company, not to be concerned with what we're eating. (Hmm.) So I once again say that I wanted to know if I should eat in the hour and a half I'm sitting at home before I go over and hang out.... but apparently even that response has put me on the douchebag list. I mean, I understand the fact that my question may have sounded like my hanging out was contingent on the menu. But at the same time, is it so difficult for people to understand that there are certain foods that others can't/won't eat? It's not like I was asking for special consideration; I just wanted to know if I should just eat last night's spice-encrusted chicken before coming over.*Speaking of foul food smells, I should mention my dad's homemade tofu scramble. I'm convinced that particular smell is the smell of death (if not worse).Labels: madison
i hate making choices
I'm trying to decide which class I want to take Pass/Fail: Trusts & Estates or Evidence.I'm fairly confident that I'm going to bomb one of them; I'm just not sure which one it'll be. Now, I've been operating under the assumption that I'm going to pass/fail T&E, mostly because I have no idea what's going on in there (aside from how to distinguish marital property from individual property). On the other hand, I feel like I have a good grasp of Evidence.Now, with one exception, the classes I feel like I have the best grasp in have been my lowest grades in law school. And my Evidence class is rather small (only about 40 students), and half of those students are your top-of-the-class, journal/moot court types. Conversely, there's about 120 people in T&E, which means that there's a lot more room for "B" students on the curve. But I'd have two more days to study for my Evidence final. So what's the best way to go about this? Do I go with my initial intention and P/F T&E, or do I try and play the curve (and my Scott Norwood-like choking ability) and P/F Evidence?Labels: classes, finals
an open letter to the madison hobo association
Dear State Street Beggars,Look, I'm sorry that I don't give out spare change like...well, like I have change to spare. Really, I am. But making catcalls (such as telling me what parts of me you'd like to "play with") isn't going to make me want to stop, turn around, and magically procure some change from the depths of my wallet. Maybe this just makes me a horrible person, but that sort of thing only makes me want to run away faster.Thanks, though, for cementing my desire to stay in at night and catch up on my TiVO backlog.Jim and Pam are totally real,Me.Labels: hobos, madison, the office
don't i have a constitutional right to not smell someone's foul odor?
They say that there's a time and place for everything.I'm assuming that this includes overloading on the perfume. You know the type of perfume - that stinky, musky, come-hither perfume that is only appropriate in bars?Yeah. The time and place for that perfume does not include Trusts & Estates class. Especially when that perfume is worn in such a high quantity that the person behind you can smell you when the air conditioning blows a certain way.Needless to say, I'm highly offended by this odor, and I think this person needs to enter some sort of rehabilitative facility to deal with her perfume addiction. If not for the rest of the student body that has to smell this crap, but for herself.Labels: classes, law school douchebags
vicious cycle
I'm currently using a Diet Coke (the non-caffeine-free variety) to wash down my sleeping pills.I'm so smart, it's scary.Labels: insomnia
how i spent my spring break
Some people write briefs, journal articles, or outlines.Others spend all day lounging around on the beach.Me? I make cake. Or, rather, I create an homage to one of my all-time favorite cartoons, using cake as my medium rather than paint or clay:
All in all, it was a good vacation. Twelve days was definitely too short.
Labels: austin, cooking, vacation
nightmare
It's spring break.So why am I dreaming about Evidence class? Labels: evidence, vacation
here we go again
So some of my more loyal readers may remember my spring break adventure from last year. Good news, my friends: this year did not disappoint. Since Prosecution is at the crack of dawn and T&E is a mind-sucking vortex, I got an early flight out of Madison to start the spring break revelry on Thursday afternoon. I should've known I was in for a real doozy of a trip this year when my laptop (which had been acting up lately) just stopped working on Thursday morning. (It stopped responding to the battery, so it just lost charge. Basically, this resulted in me not being able to watch stuff on the plane.) And, because it's spring, it was storming in Texas. (You know, big Texas-style storms.) So when I got to the airport, this is how it went down:11:38 - walk up to self-service ticket thingy.11:39 - roll eyes at evil glare from other spring breaker using the other self-service ticket thingy. scan credit card.11:41 - scan credit card again after first transaction canceled.11:43 - flag down ticket counter lady. credit card scanner not working.11:44 - somewhere, the theme to "The Office" starts playing. oh! that's my cell phone.11:45 - Dangerous Dad tells me that my 4:45pm Dallas-Austin flight has already been canceled. (note the current time.) 11:47 - ticket counter lady issues me first-class tickets for the only open flights from Dallas-Austin remaining: one for an early flight (in case my Madison flight is early), and one if it's not.11:48 - call back Dangerous Dad to tell him that I'll be in Texas tonight, and won't be stuck overnight in Dallas.11:49 - triple-check with ticket counter lady that I can take cheese curds through security screening.11:54 - still on cell phone. Hang up, then toss it into security bin with laptop.11:55 - phone starts ringing while it's in the middle of the scanner. Yes, apparently I am that guy. So the plane gets to Dallas about five minutes late. Fortunately, the early flight for which I was ticketed was delayed about an hour, so I had plenty of time to make the flight without sprinting the length of the Dallas airport. So we board the plane about 4:15...and then sit on the runway in Dallas for about 20 minutes because of "storms in Austin". When we finally take off, I see lightening bolts out the window (always a good sign). Then our hour-long flight takes longer because we have to go "around the storms" - namely, from Dallas to Austin via El Paso.I get to Austin about 6:15 that night - only 20 minutes later than originally scheduled. As I'm explaining this to my parents and grandparents, they tell me that there were never any storms in Austin, so that couldn't be the reason for the extra delay. But at that point, it really didn't matter, because the evil magic powers of Howie do not hold a candle to the evil magic powers of Cliff, so I was able to make it to my destination that day (instead of being stuck overnight in Denver).My luggage, on the other hand, was still ticketed for the canceled flight - consequently, it didn't arrive until 11:15 the next morning.Labels: airports suck, austin, vacation
