i can't make anything of this...

I confess

I’m reading a story about the Central Park Five and their overturned convictions from the 1989 rape in Central Park. I remember vividly the entire story about kids out “wilding” in the parks and streets in NYC. I didn’t know that all five were exonerated and released in 2002; my immediate excuse might be that I was living in England but that’s probably lame.

What this has got my mind working on is the intersection of “the times” and “techniques” modes. For criminal proceedings the easiest events to look at are the exonerations driven by the passage of time, exonerations combined with advanced scientific techniques like DNA testing. What we want to believe is that wrongful convictions are simply a poor application of a mathematical formula: The reason that a conviction was wrong was because the techniques we had at the time weren’t advanced enough to convict or not. But that never seems to be the case – when people are exonerated through DNA testing what is exposed in the underbelly is always horrible or biased police work. I never read about someone being released who was convicted through efficient, unbiased, or unprejudiced police work. Maybe a murderer is released and we hear a backstory about how at the time of conviction the preponderance of evidence, or whatever legal term fits here, showed that the suspect was the murderer. No false confessions and no violations of rights and no crappy witnesses. No guesswork or assumptions that led to a failure to disclose evidence or the like. Is this because it’s nearly impossible to mistakenly convict without some of law enforcement insider trading?  Are we as humans preconditioned to convict based on bias? Or, does our system’s “beyond a reasonable doubt” ideal force our hand? There must be convictions are would stand up to any test of technique or time, right?

In a lot of human endeavors we can agree that “the times” we the basic underpinning of human behavior – times when no technique would ever trump or sway the truth. Nearly all civil rights issues wear this anchor: It was the times we lived in; we didn’t know or believe that X was equal to us. We eventually outgrow that and move forward, but we recognize somehow that there was a contribution from time and place within our granting of civil rights. We can understand it. With police/court work the techniques reveal the truth, not the passage the time.

Right. I’m stopping. My head is spinning. I haven’t even fully addressed the ins-and-out of The Life of Pi.

Lemon was taken to the doctor/parole board this morning at 7a and even though he was wishy washy on releasing her, she will roam free this evening. All hail...

listening and reading

There’s a regular guest/segment on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU that’s always my favorite of the month: Shaping the City with Roger Lewis. You can get the podcasts of just that show or segment free at iTunes. Lewis is an architect/professor and the shows about D.C – and cities, in general – are always enthralling. You may call me a dork; you may not.

There was a time not so long ago that I’d sit around reading slip opinions from the Supremes. (I know this is adding weights to my dorkness from above.) Andrew Cohan has published his list of must reads in law for 2010. I think I’ve already read at least parts of them but I think I might take the time to sit down and work through them more detail.

We have our first snow of the year coming down in the Metro area and you can safely assume the D.C.-area drivers will make the road a living hell. I’m heading out. I’m sure the stores won’t be crowded.

believe

Former Solicitor General Ted Olson has written a truly important piece on gay marriage rights in America. (Olson has joined David Boies, his nemesis in Bush v. Gore, in a federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.) Fortunately for me, he covers everything I wanted to say about gay marriage but didn’t possess the clear, legal, and logical opinion headmeat to write. You can read it here. (I’ve claimed my stake from an entry by Andrew Sullivan.)

One thing I want to add, and something that Olson addresses in the piece, is the idea we have that somehow progressed ages from other types of discrimination. I’ve given this idea a test run on X and some friends and I think it’s is important to understand. When you look back to Brown v. Board (1954) and Loving v. Virginia (1967) and really take the time to just process those dates – 1954 and 1967 – you’re more likely to believe that it took way too long to overcome segregation and discrimination; yet it's not been long enough to be fully destroyed. I use my parents as a measuring stick of time – not opinion – when I sort this out in my head. My father would have been a rising college junior when the United States finally decided that ‘separate but equal’ was unconstitutional. My father. Not my grandfather or some distant ancestor from the 19th century: my father. At a university, studying, planning a family (me included) when we decided as a country that segregation was illegal. It stuns me to think of what it would be like to be a 20 year-old man and living in a time when a country finally decided that blacks and whites must be allowed to attend the same schools. If you contemplate the amount of time that black Americans have had to grow and succeed in our country it's the smallest of eras: my father’s working life. Period. Yet, we somehow expect that we’ve solved all the racial issues of our country in a blink of the eye. As for Loving, I was two years old when the Court decided that blacks and whites could not be prohibited from marrying. Suddenly, we aren’t even digging back to some generation of my family that came before. It happened in my lifetime and I’m all of (nearly) 45.

What does it mean, to me? It means that when I look at the gay marriage issue and consider transporting myself back to when my father was 20, and putting myself in that time and place – knowing what we as a country now know, it would be truly embarrassing to live through the debate of integration. And if I can look forward in my life to when I’m 65, I’ll be embarrassed for the current me to have lived through a period where basic civil rights were ignored by so much of my country.

That's all I've got...

T

man! this is one, long song

I was listening to the Sound Opinions podcast on my walk to work this morning and as they were discussing the agreement to remove digital rights management (DRM) software from iTunes-purchased music, my mind start to wander back in time. What interested me was the conflation of digital music capabilities and their relationship to singles and albums created by artists and marketed by big record companies. Way back when, as a ten-year old haunting the corridors of Omaha’s Westroads mall, about 1975, I remember endlessly buying 45s for $.79 - $.99. Each song was lovingly selected after having listened to AM radio (WOW and KOIL in Omaha back in those days) and remembering just which songs Kasey Kasem played on the countdown the previous Sunday night. The “record buyers” back in those days primarily bought 45s and eschewed the LPs that were marketed and pushed on FM radio – you had to be driving a 1970 yellow Chevelle SS to be someone who actually bought complete albums on vinyl or 8-track: 10cc, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Aerosmith, ELO, Blue Oyster Cult, and the Steve Miller Band. Record sale profits were based on the sale of millions of singles and dozens of one- or two-hit single releases from artists; seriously, take a gander at the top singles of 1975 (1976 was even more amazing for pure singles):

Love Will Keep Us Together – Captain and Tennille (saw them twice in concert!)
Rhinestone Cowboy – Glen Campbell
Philadelphia Freedom – Elton John
Before the Next Teardrop Falls – Freddie Fender
My Eyes Adored You – Frankie Valli
Shining Star – Earth, Wind, and Fire
Fame – David Bowie
Laughter in the Rain – Neil Sedaka
One of These Nights – The Eagles
Thank God I’m a Country Boy – John Denver

I owned all of them on single except Freddie Fender (my brother had the album…on 8-track…in his Chevelle), and Fame by Bowie. I’d guess that if you were a music buyer back then you might have owned a couple of them on LP. My point being this: we’ve been through entire eras where music was purchased primarily as singles and not albums. At some point in the late 1980s sales seems to move full force toward full-length albums; about the time near the tail end of cassettes (awful!), the birth of CDs, and the industry’s opportunity to eliminate singles – they no longer provided a format for singles sales. By that time music had become much more compact to carry and people didn’t much seem to care that they had to buy the $18 CD just to get the two or three songs they wanted. But, we’ve always been a singles species even through we passed through that bit of history where they weren’t available for purchase. How do I know? How about the 71 volumes of NOW! That’s What I Call Music in the UK and 29 volumes in the U.S? The UK version has been around much longer (they are even more singles oriented than the U.S. – see, Top of the Pops) but when the U.S. version launched in 1998 it proved very successful. All of the U.S. Now CDs have gone platinum and almost half have gone to #1.

What this sort of proves, via my twisted logic, is that the idea behind selling singles on iTunes – and the “sky is falling because no one buys full albums anymore” argument –is a false ideal. The industry has known forever that singles are what props up the whole building and they even spent the entire 1990s proving the premise true once again by cramming endless singles bands down our throats: Britney, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Destiny’s Child, Hanson, Christina Aguilera, Hootie, blah blah blah. I can safely assume that no one has ever uttered this phrase “Man, that new Backstreet Boys album really connects with me. The B-side was such a surprise after the smooth musicianship of the A-side.”

The shock of the DRM implementation decision was that the record companies (it’s always been their requirement, not Apple’s…although they certainly didn’t suffer) felt the need to limit the movement of legally-purchased digital music. It almost seemed as if they were saying that since they couldn’t rely on the big dollars for selling albums as a single unit that they needed to figure out a way to place limitations on the singles that people were picking-and-choosing from the iTunes store. They feigned amazement when they watched as people purchased only the song Delilah by the Plain White T’s instead of dropping ten bucks for the rest of that crappy album. They have for two decades been essentially getting $12-$20 for one song – now they only got $.99. They are, after all, the ones who trained us to love singles and it was forty years spent getting us ready for the digital music era that no one apparently foresaw arriving. Suddenly, they were lost.

DRM was something that was simply a petulant child’s reaction to losing money – taking a ball and going home. It only caused consumers to react poorly when confronted with the idea that legally-purchased music was limited in its digital use for the purchaser. DRM wasn’t ever going to stop pirating or free downloading any more than naming a drug czar was going to stop drug use – it was just a stupid, knee jerk reaction. The vast majority of music lovers will pay a reasonable price for music. For those of use that buy full albums we might pay something like $5 at emusic.com (yours truly), or $16 at a local record shop. It depends – if emusic doesn’t have the release then I’ll go to Melody Records and buy the CD. What I won’t do, for whatever reason, is buy a 12-track full-length release from iTunes for $10 if there are going to be restrictions. And, in my guilt-by-association mindset, I won’t buy a single from iTunes for $.99 for the same reason – restrictions.

I don’t see any of this as directly related to piracy or the flow of free music: that’s another issue to me (hey, I hadn’t read the slate article before I starting spouting off). All of my music is paid for because I think the artists deserved the money. What DRM did was force consumers to try to separate the artist from the company and the artist always ended up getting punished by the deeds of the industry. It was too hard to figure out if Prince or Sony was being the jerk in the process because the end result was simply that we were paying too much, living with restrictions, and fighting back against the entire beast.

I think I’ll let you go. If you got this far, well done; if not…well, you’re not reading this so I have nothing to say to you.

sidle up to the bar, bring a #2 pencil.

X called this morning from the parking lot of the Bar Exam testing location. She’d been parked for a little while and gave me a call before heading inside and the inevitable filling of bubbles on a computer scan sheet. She primarily reported on other arriving drivers – and lawyer nominees – who felt the need to navigate the parking area by slipping between her car and a car two spaces over instead of simply going the additional 15 feet to the end of the row. As much as anything, it seemed an indictment of local drivers more so than law school alums. She said there was also some guy walking in and drinking from a paper bag; turns out it was soda but I wouldn’t be too sure. With that, we finished our call and I wished her luck as she headed into the jaws of the hypotheticals.

L. and I went to see Wall-E last night; my first, her second viewing. For those that have watched Pixar movies develop you can’t help but be amazed at the changes in computer animation since Toy Story. It’s not a knock on Toy Story, but the differences in the entire process are particularly obvious in Wall-E. After the debacle of Cars, Pixar got back to the basics of a good story with Ratatouille and then deliver a pretty tough punch to the solar plexus of the America in Wall-E. It’s nominally a love story that kids will find acceptable – cute robots, computers, funny voices – but the backdrop of the film is more of a haunting hidden behind the usual well-written dialogue and comedic efforts. The real target is consumerism and our faulty logic that everything will continue on forever and there’s no need to worry ourselves about the outcome. The people in the movie are simply soporific beings managed by food, video games, TV, Wal-Mart, and big easy chairs. I found myself quite taken aback at how easily the producers slipped the screwed-up humans right passed us – candidates for laughter instead of pity. I don’t know that a lot of the theater got it the first time through but I suspect that if there’s any spark of light in a person’s mind then it might hit light a fire later this week. Maybe I’m being to optimistic. It reminded me of something Steve Earle said at a show in Reno a few years back. He was playing some of his bluegrass songs from The Mountain and laughed at just “how much socialism you can slip into a bluegrass song and no one seems to notice”; I think Pixar has copied the formula.

We’ve got a bit of a heat wave rolling in over the next three or four days. I’ll try to keep cool and ungrumpy.

t

irish eyes

I almost decided to open with some ramblings about the military academies and their seemingly endless problems with religiosity; or, a couple of Supreme Court decisions handed down this morning. Instead, what I’m asking for is an extra $7m that anyone might have hidden in couch cushions or Swiss Bank accounts. I’m fully convinced that this is where we need to be living. Why? So everyone can come visit and hang around Ireland relaxing – it’s all for you, really. Consider your multi-million dollar contribution as some kind of timeshare investment. I’ll cook.

Loosely based on The Eleven’s NYC excursion to see La Boheme, we’ve decided to take in three operas performed by the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center this season. Even with fancy-pancy opera doings and big money donors about, I’ve managed to procure some front row seats in the first tier which should serve our needs just fine. (We’re on to see Carman, Turnadot, and The Pearl Fishers.) The last of the shows is in May so I’m going to swear off tickets, with the exception of any future Steve Earle or Tom Waits dates, until after that last show. I’ll live with hockey and opera.

If anyone has any question concerning the rule against perpetuities just let me know. I’m apparently still studying for the Massachusetts Bar on a nightly basis.

t.

sweet! law!

If the term cowpunk scares you off then you’d be best to either giddy-up along or skip the clicking on the little youtube arrow thing. There’ll be more afterwards.

This is a 1983 (year of my HS graduation) video of Jason and the Scorchers doing Absolutely Sweet Marie. This has everything you’d hope for in 1983 MTV offering: grainy camera work, huge hair, at least two guys singing into one microphone, girls in school girl outfits, guy walking down the street with his band joining him, cowboy hats, a bar, drinking, and a horrible overall storyline. Awesome. A few things to consider: first, Jason and the Scorchers were one of the greatest bar bands to ever live. Second, Jason and the Scorchers were one of the greatest bar bands to ever live. If I could possibly imagine any act whose music wouldn’t translate to video, it’d be these guys. In time you realize that CDs or videos will never properly reflect great live music that includes beer and smoke. If you get the through the entire horrendous three minutes than I admire your stick-to-ituvness. That is awful hair. Regardless, I’ll always love them.



X asked me a few weeks ago if I’d help her review for the bar; maybe 60 hours of time. She pointed out on night 2 that the initial askance/contract meant that asking was no longer required. I’m such a sucker. By the end of this summer I think I’ll be able to do well enough on the bar to at least be a public defender. Does that sound like a slap in the face of public defenders? Honestly, no intent.

We’re off to watch an episode of The Closer.

t

law and order

X graduated from law school on Sunday; the weather forced the ceremony, diploma giving, and reception indoors, so attendees were limited to two for each graduate. Her mother and I were lucky enough to join her and the other JD and LLM kids in the old Georgetown gym on the main campus. It was a very nice ceremony but it’s the more than three years of academia that impresses me most – pomp and circumstance be damned. What you see from the professors that attend in their myriad of robes is the same look – a look that parents give when their children have moved onto sixth grade. She, along with two of her cohorts in crime, graduated with Honors and all of the Owls (Older Wiser Law Students) so move into the real-world of employment delays and business casual dress. I’m very proud of her. (Once we locate the camera disc loader thingy from the moving boxes I’ll post the photog of the lovely and her pals…)

Corey and Wondertwin2 took her (and me by default…free dinner, no studying) to dinner last night at a fancy joint down in Alexandria to celebrate her mean feat. What none of us could figure out was why we didn’t just have dinner at home since Corey decided he could make everything; a bit of mystery. I’m wholly unable to make anything that looks remotely gourmet or Food Network-y since my limits are set at the “mess of food” level. This is probably an answer to the issue of why he can bake and I can’t.

Two things for you to ponder before I next type: first, what do we think about the Aussie double-amputee sprinter trying to qualify for the Olympics; second, how ‘bout those Cubs.

Love to all.

T.

can i see some id?

At some point it was either Andrew Sullivan or another commentator that remarked, concerning gay marriage, that “I don’t have to justify my civil rights.” There’s a ton you can read into that little phrase and all of it should be good. No one should have to stand up and defend their right to vote, marry, speak their mind, write what they think, create their art, sing their song, or dance their dance. Unless there is proof positive that an action is harmful or detrimental to society then there can’t be a law that forbids that action.

The Court decided today, if that’s a reflection of what happened (it seemed more a 3-3-3 split…Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts together...surprise!), that you must have photo ID to vote in Indiana. I ran through my little mind’s input when this was argued but now you can read commentary on the result – as if you will. Slate has some blogging from their folks, Michelle Malkin pipes in (I’ve got to be fair), and scotusblog adds a few shillings to the fray. What I found most interesting was the scotusblog bits about this really being a Republican-driven action in order to…make up your own mind.

This is a case that fully limits facial challenges to the court. The facial bit (I live with a lawyer-to-be) means that you cannot challenge a law that adversely affects you until you can prove that you’ve been adversely affected by some inane law (I can’t help it). Think about challenges to the separate but equal idea for schools – under the current Court they’d tell you that in order to challenge that law as unconstitutional you’d have to prove that discrimination is wrong after the fact – let us discriminate and they you prove it…dare you! Passing a law that discriminates is fine because it isn’t hurting anyone unless they tell us it’s hurting them. That’s a very nice modus operandi.

“Okay, Here’s what I’m going to do for you – I’m going to punch you in the face. Don’t worry, it’s okay until the point-in-time where you tell me it really hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. What? You think it’ll hurt and you don’t want me to do it? Sorry, doesn’t work – you don’t know it’ll hurt until it does hurt so standstill and so let’s give it a go….”

One last nugget: it’s not just a photo ID, it’s a photo ID with an expiration date. My retired military ID card (as I’ve already pointed out) has no expiration date so I can’t use it to vote in Indiana.

Ah, sign of our times.

T

run kick step run

In my desire to give dap to those commuters who go above-and-beyond the call of commuting duty, I submit the following event. It occurred at the Dunn Loring Metro station yesterday morning as I was heading towards the up-and-away elevators. The D.C.-bound train was already fully in the station as a woman was running down the escalator, full of eternal hope. She must have been about half-way down, just out of my view, when I suddenly spy a black, low-heeled, slip-on shoe flying through the atmosphere of Metro platform. It tumbled to a stop about 15 feet beyond the end of the elevator. Fortunately, that area of the platform was nearly empty since the running crowd was already a ways ahead of her. The period of time between the appearance of the flying jutti and the appearance of the shoe-kicker was barely long enough for one to sort out what was happening. She bounded down the trailing third of steps, appearing to hop off three or four sets from the end, skipped towards the shoe, twisted her right foot just so, and slipped the mischievous item back on while still at a full trot. I didn’t turn to see if she made the train, I heard the telltale ding-ding of doors closing, but if all’s right in the World she made it.

Former Governor (former Senator, former Representative) George Allen is on the WAMU Politics Hour this afternoon. Exactly how anyone believed that he could actually be President is frightening. In fact, his spewing of the party line concerning the War on Terror, activist judges, and all the other junk that flows from his portion of his party is comical. I’m sure there are tons like him in the Senate but I’m thankful he’s moronic enough to have dug his own grave last Summer.

If only my neighborhood had nicknames as great the newly indicted Gambino Family…

T.

oi! redux

I'll come right out and say that the last thing I want to read in the media, mere days after pleading not guilty to a very serious crime, is this..."One of the co-defendants in the Michael Vick federal dogfighting case pleaded guilty on Monday and pledged to fully cooperate with prosecutors." Maybe it's a combination of crap and shit. Hows about shrap! Any lawyers or justice officials out there with input?

T.

lock and load

The Eleven stepped out of from the administrative/hibernation den this morning and was smacked in the face with 92% humidity. That kind of number would certainly qualify for Dean’s List…what’s that figure to? an A? The transition from a do-ably moderate cave to the swamp presents issues for those, like me, that just love the heat. Additional baggage was included in our march to the Metro, more to come on that little story.

The trip out west was uneventful in the main but full of trivial questions that fill my head. As an example: on my flight home from Reno I was on Southwest via Las Vegas and on to Chicago Midway. The plane out of Reno was full and as we pulled to the gate at McCarran to disgorge all but 48 passengers carrying through to the Windy City, the Southwest flight attendant gives the following announcement:

“As we arrive at the gate please remain in your seats if you are continuing to Chicago in order to allow the Las Vegas passengers to de-board. Once all the Vegas passengers have exited, please remain in your seats until we have counted onward passengers and given the correct count to the gate attendant. After we finish the count we’ll make an announcement so you can move to another seat if you wish.”

Pretty straightforward, right? My lifetime of training (and listening with my ears) has told me that Southwest does the counting and moving this way for a reason. Thousands of flights and an efficient arrival/departure record certainly vouch for their procedures. My theory, important as this is, is that the attendants don’t want to be attempting a count while the following are ongoing: idiots moving all over the cabin or, idiots moving slowly all over the cabin. Sit in your damn seat and let them count so they can begin boarding passengers and get me to Chicago! This is a ‘greater plan’ than Don and Betty from Des Moines can possibly understand. And speaking of Don and Betty…they were in the window and center seats of my aisle on the flight to Las Vegas. Don’s hell-bent for leather to move from his window seat to another window seat in some other aisle after we land. The Vegas passengers aren’t yet off the jet before Don’s up-and-at ’em trying to pitch Betty’s train case over the seats in front of us so he can evacuate our row, immediately! I, of course, sit tight awaiting the last of the Vegas exits and the promised announcement. Trust me, I want to move to the window seat in the front row so I’ll have more legroom…this isn’t me just being difficult, not really. Don’s got his big head on a swivel, snapping back and forth, eyeing the back of the jet, while nudging Betty and telling her to get up and move, “that’s the last passenger…go go go” he says to the bewildered Betty (she can see that I’m clearly not moving). Don reminds me of those paratrooper jumpmasters in WWII movies, the guys at the plane exit screaming “MOVE MOVE MOVE!” Don is a real mental giant. After the Vegas gamblers do manage to actually finish the exodus (by the way, Don was wrong…they weren’t done) the attendant announces, “Please remain in your seats as we will count passengers from the rear of the jet.” This is too much for Donbo, he screams in a nearly crushed whisper, “Goddamnit Betty! What does it matter if two of us are on one side of the plane or the other side of the plane…get up! Two is two.” He’s right there, I think, two is two. Betty starts to half-rise while pitching a glance at the aisle dam that is I. In a very gentle tone I say, “Oh, are you getting off here in Vegas?” Betty is flummoxed, “No, we want to move seats” she says. “Oh,” I say “I think they want us to stay in our seats until they finish the count.” She sits back down and looks at the exasperated Don with a face that conveys the fact that I must be someone who not only listens with my ears…but actually follows directions. Mere moments later the attendant passes our row, counting people, on her way to the front of the jet where she announces that the count is complete and we are free to move seats. I almost take an extra few seconds unbuckling my seatbelt just to see if I can get Don’s head to explode…I don’t. I amble up to the front row while Don and Betty run like rats on a covert death mission to another row nowhere near me. I didn’t see Don and Betty in Chicago but I’ll guess that Don was in a Weaver stance over the baggage claim screaming about incoming baggage…INCOMING BAGGAGE! “Betty, get the fucking bag…the bag! Get the suitcase!”

X is applying for judicial clerkships next month. All of her application packages were due at the G’town Law Center this morning. Remember the manila envelopes? That’s just the beginning. Here’s the ten-step process to completing judicial clerkship packages on a peaceful Sunday:

1. X gets her journal assignment / soon-to-be writing sample in order. There’s cursing from the couch as her octogenarian laptop signals power issues…like not staying on. We use our four eyes and four hands to stare into space and push various buttons, repeatedly, like this: push button, computer doesn’t work. Push button, computer doesn’t work. Push button, computer doesn’t work. “Clearly we’ll need to get out to a store quickly and drop a hundred dollars on a new cord and battery,” we say, “clearly.” We eventually jiggle the cord, find it loose, and try to ignore our impeccable troubleshooting technique.

2. While X types away I get her list of 96 judges who’ll be graced with the perfect, summertime, manila envelopes. 96! I’m off to surf the G’town Web site to confirm what each judge wants: transcripts, writing samples, letter(s) of recommendation, references, daisies, a new lot in life, a better secretary, blah blah blah. Each judge, with names either hyphenated or full of initials and middle names, is compiled on a legal pad (what are the odds?). Checkmarks are made for each item. Checks tallied and retallied. All the numbers appear good. Transferred to Excel spreadsheet for sorting (that’s me!).

3. Copies made of law school and undergraduate transcripts. Why does a judge need an undergraduate transcript? I would think that Dean’s List at G’town Law would pretty much cover the academic stuff. I would think that admission to G’town Law covers the undergraduate stuff. Does Judge Roy Bean think he knows more about admissions? Sure he does. “Did she take any courses in Psychology or Sociology in college? She did? As an undergraduate? I’ll have her!”

4. Writing sample is ready to print. X asks me how many judges want writing samples. I reply, while giggling…89. Hmmm…math….11 pages to 89 judges; that’s a lot, or something like 1000 pages. Our printer isn’t quite ready for that so we send the file (and $100) to Kinko’s for printing and collating; seven pm pickup. Onward!

5. Oh baby, 96 cover letters to manage. If you’ve never done a mail merge using MicroSoft Office you don’t know what you’re missing; it’s a bitch to sort but great in the end…like marriage, but backwards. Each letter needs to be checked to make sure the enclosed material list is correct (they don’t all want the same stuff), the “I’d love to work in New England” is added to the appropriate judges, and they all need to be printed on nice resume paper to match the resumes. P.S. make sure to include that you’re a third-year law student on your cover letter…the printer won’t catch that. P.P.S. we need to get more resume paper.

6. 10 x 13 manila envelopes can’t be printed at our house or on the industrial-strength printers at Kinko’s. They do this just to piss us off.

7. Off to Kinko’s to pick up 1,000 pages of writing sample. It’s 6pm and they haven’t even started because they can’t work ‘the computer’. Don’t even ask. They finally get started on the sample, one guy tries to figure out how to print the envelopes or some labels, and we head off to Staples for resume paper, labels (in case he can’t figure it out), and any other spare bits we might need. Staples closes at 6pm. Office Depot closes at 6pm. We go to Target. Mission accomplished. Back to Kinko’s. Printing done. No luck on the envelopes.

8. Pick up pizza and beer.

9. Reprint cover letters, X is now a third-year law student. Another mail merge to get the labels printed for envelopes. She types more stuff, prints more stuff, whilst I put all the labels on envelopes. Cover letters and envelopes alphabetized. Stacks laid out, people and beer at table.

10. Envelopes stuffed and number of recommendations handwritten on back (the law center adds those). 96 packages stuffed into a perfectly sized tote for the morning transport. It’s 10:30 pm and the mission is complete: two people, 12 hours.

I volunteered to carry the tote to the train this morning…I’m like that. Remember the 92% humidity? I do.

More later.

T

in the mail

I’m off on a jet plane tomorrow morning for four days of work in northern Nevada . I managed a flight via Chicago (ATA and Southwest) instead of the normally required march through Phoenix; if you’ve done PHX you’ll know how much more relaxing it is to make a run west by passing through the Windy City .

Here’s a quandary for the office gerbils out there: when did the manila envelope become the brown envelope? We’re not talking dark brown but something more like a lightish brown blended into the old manila color. The reason I ask? Well, X is gathering materials for clerking applications (I’ll be printing, packaging and S.W.A.K. next weekend) and the requirements put forth, in cap and bold letters, that all submissions to judges be enclosed in 10 x 13 stick-and-seal MANILA envelopes. As a neighborhood elder, I remember the day when a manila envelope was simple enough to pick out – it was manila. Now the Staples folk don’t say manila but instead have given the nom de guerre as brown. Can we package everything up in these brown impostors? Do the old, grumpy judges immediately call upon aides, paralegals, and personal assistants to decry the just-off hue of law student submission packages? I’m telling you…they are manila, even if some politically correct manager at a global office supply store decided to label them as brown way back in 1999. Update update. The Eleven stopped by Office Depot this afternoon so see if they stocked the 10 x 13 easy seal MANILA envelopes. I'm starting to feel like we might be on a snipe hunt ("Here's your bag and your whuppin' stick!"). We've cornered the 10 x 13 white and the 10 x 13 Tyvek models...but no manila. I have a sneaking suspicion that the next requirement for this application process will be to use ink drawn only from the blood of the golden lion tamarind printed on 53-weight paper produced from the pulp of coastal Oregon Pinus ponderosa. Christ. Law students. Judges. Lawyers. Do you think I’m overreacting? Fine, you can come by and convince X that’s it’s just a color…

Kt is also traveling this week so X and Corey will be left to their own devices for three or four days. The last few times this has occurred the commune on North Park became a beer drinking, pizza eating frat house. The very last time it happened the two ambled over to Willow for dinner and ate so much they couldn’t eat anything else for days. X will have to make her own coffee, breakfast sandwich, and walk to the Metro all alone; Corey will no doubt knock out a few boxes of Lucky Charms and a gallon of milk. It does take a village...

L told me she isolated herself for 4 hours yesterday and finished the newest Harry Potter. From our discussion I’d guess she’d rate it at 3 ½ stars; it apparently falls somewhere between third and sixth favorite of the series. She has her methods.

We attempted to hook up a wireless router for the printer this evening. Like that son-of-a-bitch will work.

Love to all.

T.

hey kids, don't do drugs

The idea that I would be checking grammar on any document (a driver’s license, an exit sign, a birthday car from my mother, or children’s homework) must be some sort of irony (X can explain the four types of irony; she’s like that). I vividly remember sitting in English classes taught by the likes of Ms. Wiltsie, Mr. Howe, Mrs. Chevalier, Mrs. Lorenzen, and Mr. Drickey, and ruing the day I was born and eventually mandated to fulfill public school English requirements. Those hours were, and I am not understating, the most tedious and horrific classroom times of my entire life. I hated them…every last second. I hated English like I hated Barry Switzer and the Oklahoma Sooners during the 70s and 80s. Hate. Is that clear enough? It wasn’t the teachers, it was the material, and it’s probably one of the reasons I never much liked fiction or novels - it seemed like too much work. Back to the story. X gave me a legally paper of some sort last night to proofread. Giving me anything like that is opening up the writer to ridicule and general laughter from my position on the couch. The reason I’m so difficult on papers these days is that I remember running away screaming from any type of writing, but I also reflect on the last ten years and know that I’m much better at some of the word stuff than I was throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By any account I’m self-taught, a very middle-of-the-road self-taught, and I find myself amazed that college graduates (and law school students) write formal dissertations at about my writing level. I’m always assuming that I’ll be duly impressed by their wordsmithing, yet I rarely am. (By the way, I had two New Yorkers, one Esquire, and the Onion laid before me, ready to enjoy some reading when the 30 pages covering “prior informed consent” were tossed at me.) I played along and made feeble attempts to only highlight subject-verb agreement errors, grievous misspellings, lack (or inclusion) of hyphenated adjectives, etc. I think these are the evenings spent together that represent the pillars of loving relationship. Actually, that’s not true. I think she’s been misguided by our daily discussions on slip decisions, politics, and ‘what’s for dinner’. It happens.

Not only that, but as I was scratching a few red marks, and making sure that I didn’t make her look stupid when she hands in the draft, we end up delving into some of her tax law studies. For instance, if you purchased a lottery ticket and gave it to your progeny as a gift, and those numbers hit three days later, what is the adjusted basis of said “gift” and when would you claim the income tax purposes?. I know what you’re thinking – who cares? I care, that’s who. I immediately piped up with a ‘scenario’ where I had sat down at a Caesar’s Palace blackjack table (non-smoking) and parlayed $100 into $1200 over the course of an hour. If this had ‘actually’ happened, the pit boss would have stopped over to not only complement my excellent play, but he would have wanted me to join the player’s club. You know…name, room number, address, driver’s license…just fill out this form, well played! You see, if I’m sitting at his table with 1G of earnings he’s going to report me to the IRS. The problem for him is that he’s got no idea whether or not I’ll cash in and walk away when I’m done; all he knows is that I just made $1,000 – so it’s time to pay up. The value of my black chips doesn’t change unless I’m stupid (see below), just like the value of the ticket doesn’t change regardless of when I cash in because it isn’t traded like a stock or bond. You pay taxes the moment it’s worth the winning amount and you claim it during the tax year it was awarded, not the year you cash it in. I’ll be open for tax consultation, and comedic interpretations of the tax code, through the extended deadline in October. Two shows on Sunday.

If you must know, my friend took his money and walked down to the MGM in a vainglorious attempt to get back the $300 he lost the previous night. That is never a good idea. I think everyone should use the story of my friend as a definitive lesson in gambling.

Peace and aces.

T.

that guy jack

I was in the elevator heading down to our building’s lobby café for a little nosh when I overheard this conversation:

Guy #1: “…then Jack broke into the embassy in Los Angeles.”
Guy #2: “Really?”
Guy #1: “Yeah, he did. Got the hostage out.”

I’m thinking that it’s a story about the high jinks that always took place when a few American Beer Drinking Team (ABDT) buddies were back in college. The hostage portion made me realize that this was something much more interesting. At this point we’re stepping off the elevator: I’m heading around the corner, they are heading to the set of elevators ten feet away that actually go the additional one floor down to the parking garage. (I don’t even want to get started on that little building trick…since the one flight of stairs is right there.) I finally suss out that “Jack” is Kiefer Sutherland’s character “Jack Bauer” on 24. As I take a few steps and round the corner I hear the follow-on:

Guy #1: “You can’t actually break into an embassy. That’s illegal.”
Guy #2: “Really?”
Guy #1: “Yeah. Embassies are territories of the countries they represent…”
(fades out)

Suspend disbelief? Whaa? This guy is happy enough to watch a show that involves Mr. Bauer saving the world from destruction over the course of 24 hours; in fact, Big Jack has apparently done it almost six times, and this guy is concerned about him breaking into an embassy in LA? The rule of law? This wedge is just the kind of party guest I want to have around some weekend for dinner.

T.