The Tort of Cockblocking (and Others)

2006-12-25T22:56:00.000-06:00

Dear Readers (Old & New),

I have reposted what I believe represent be the very best of two-and-a-half years worth of posts from my old blog. I do this as a public service for law students everywhere who would rather read my random rants than their casebooks, for lawyers who want to bill a few minutes spent reading about fictious torts as "research," and for anyone else who can appreciate intelligent toilet humor.

The posts have been sorted by category, and many of them have been revised for style and content. Although I have retired the blog and do not anticipate posting anything further here, I am hard at work at finishing my upcoming book, provisionally titled Kick Law School in the Nuts, which will have plenty of new material. No release date has been set, but I would guess that it will come out some time in 2008, depending on how long the editorial process takes. In addition, feel free to check out my more philosophical blog, which I will continue to update (albeit infrequently).

Finally, some porn site snapped up my old URL for a month after I deleted the blog. So if you ended up with random beaver-shots on your screen during class, blame them. Or blame society - whatever floats your boat.

Fuck it,

Legally Intoxicated

Court of Appeals Releases Opinion in Chuck Norris Case

2006-11-24T17:57:00.000-06:00

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRTEENTH CIRCUIT
---------------------------------------------------
Chuck NORRIS,
Petitioner,

v.

Bill BRASKY,
Respondent
---------------------------------------------------

Before INTOXICATED, J.

I. Background

The parties in this case are well known to the court. Chuck Norris, a master of all forms of killing that have ever existed, constantly renews the sun’s power with every blink. The defendant, Bill Brasky, is a man who once turned down the Papacy because he did not like the idea of playing second-fiddle to God.

The matter before this court arises out of a petition for a writ of domination in the district court below. In his petition, Norris alleges that “[he is] the Lord Chuck Norris, who led [Brasky] out of Egypt,” and seeks injunctive relief compelling Brasky to bow before him.

In response to this petition, Brasky, appearing specially, moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, based on the fact that the law does not apply to him. The district court denied this motion after Norris performed a roundhouse kick at the hearing, sending a young law clerk’s head flying at five times the speed of light.

After the district court assumed jurisdiction over the case (and replaced the decapitated clerk), Brasky answered the petition, asserting several affirmative defenses. First, Brasky claims, his defecation smells like a grassy meadow in the springtime, and that several major fragrance companies are vying for the rights to his stool. Second, that he was the one responsible for letting the dogs out. Third, that he orchestrated the bloodiest revolt in children’s television history, leading the Doozers to violently overthrow their cruel Fraggle masters,¹ and that he still uses Gobo’s head as a makeshift athletic support.

------------------------------------------------------
¹ These events were depicted in an unaired episode of
Fraggle Rock entitled “Sic Semper Tyrranis.”
------------------------------------------------------

The district court reviewed Brasky’s accomplishments and found them to be most remarkable. After finding that the evidence was insufficient to declare that Norris’s testicles were substantially larger as a matter of law, the court toasted to the respondent and denied Norris’s petition. Norris appealed this denial, and, in a show of magnanimity, gouged out and ate only one of the judge’s eyes. Shortly thereafter, Brasky filed a cross-appeal on the question of jurisdiction. The issues presently before this court are as follows:

(1) Whether 69 U.S.C. § 481, which generally prevents any court from taking personal jurisdiction over Brasky, applies to a petition filed by Chuck Norris?

(2) Whether, as a matter of law, Chuck Norris has substantially bigger balls than Bill Brasky?

For the reasons stated below, we reverse the decision of the district court, grant Norris the relief sought, and offer our children as burnt offerings unto Him.

Discussion

A. The Brasky Act

Jurisdiction is the threshold question in any case. Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475, 502-03 (1903). This is because without jurisdiction we are powerless to hear the action in the first place, and so we cannot render judgment for either party. Id. If a reviewing court finds that the lower court was without jurisdiction, we must direct it to vacate its judgment and dismiss the action. Id.

We are aware that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has granted Bill Brasky a general exemption from the laws of this nation, commonly known as the “Brasky Act.” 69 U.S.C. § 481, et seq. (Brasky authorized to “do whatever the fuck he feels like”). This has been interpreted to preclude courts from exercising personal jurisdiction over Brasky if he does not wish to defend the action. E.g., I.P. Freeley, Inc. v. Brasky, 297 F. Supp. 3d 892 (E. D. Ak. 2001). Based on the plain language of § 481 and its subsequent interpretations, this would appear to conclusively dispose of the matter. However, Norris argues that this general exemption should be interpreted in light of the of the Brasky Act’s legislative history. Specifically, Norris argues that Congress did not intend § 481 to apply to excuse Brasky from responding to actions filed by his betters.

While we will not use extrinsic aids such as legislative history to override the plain language of a statute, we may use it to inform our interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. See U.S. v. Awadallah, 349 F.3d 42 (2nd Cir. 2003). A statute is ambiguous if it can reasonably bear two different interpretations. See Lamie v. U.S. Trustee, 540 U.S. 526, 536 (2004). The courts have consistently held that anything Chuck Norris does is reasonable. See, e.g., In re Anonymous Ninja Henchmen, 238 S.W.3d 83 (Tex. 1993) (Norris incapable of using “excessive” force in performing his duties as Texas Ranger). This implies that any interpretation Norris advances must also be reasonable. Hence, we are faced with the task of ascertaining whether Congress’s choice of the words “whatever the fuck” include avoiding a petition by a fellow ubermensch. We conclude that it does not.

The floor debates surrounding the passage of the Brasky Act make for relatively lively reading. Most of the remarks immediately preceding the unanimous vote involve relaying feats Brasky had performed in ages past. For example, Senator Specter stated that he had once seen Brasky perform Don Giovanni at the Sydney Opera House, and was so moved that he could not stop crying for six-and-a-half years. 115 Cong. Rec. at 60287. Similarly, Senator Clinton claimed that she would “gladly be willing to kill a man” for the opportunity to “give [Brasky] a blumpy.”² Id. at 60311. Finally, and perhaps most telling, Senator John McCain offered to pay Brasky ten million dollars if he would do him the honor of impregnating his wife, so that he could raise the fruit of Brasky’s loins. Id. at 61499-01.

---------------------------------------------------------
² We take judicial notice that this is both sick and wrong.
---------------------------------------------------------

Despite all of this hullaballoo, any mention of Chuck Norris is conspicuously absent from these debates. Had Congress intended to authorize Brasky to engage in such activities as weighty as speaking to Norris before spoken to, surely the subject would have come up. Further, it would be absurd to attribute to Congress an intent to allow Brasky to fornicate with Norris’s virgin daughter with impunity using language as broad as “whatever the fuck he feels like.” Rather, this debate shows that Congress intended to afford Brasky something akin to sovereign status, but only with respect to lesser mortals.

We therefore hold that 69 U.S.C. § 481, known as the “Brasky Act” does not permit Bill Brasky to escape jurisdiction on an action initiated by Chuck Norris, and affirm the lower court’s ruling regarding personal jurisdiction. We must now turn to the merits of the petition, and determine whether Norris was, in fact, entitled to a writ of domination.

B. Writ of Domination

At common law, a party could seek a writ of domination to have judicially determined “whether [he] has the biggest goddamn balls in the courtroom.” Wallace v. Longshanks, 103 Scot. Rep. 208 (1314) (“[T]hey may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM”). Because of the writ’s extraordinary nature, we only issue a writ of domination upon substantial and incontrovertible evidence that the party seeking the writ is “so much more of a man” that he makes his adversary “seem like a little girl wetting herself in comparison.” Bauer v. Wayne, 91 Gthm. App. 281, 296 (2005). In Bauer, for example, the petitioner, an agent for the Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) sought the writ as against a purely local vigilante with a penchant for the theatrical. The Gotham Court of Appeals declined to issue a writ of domination, reasoning that:

Even though it is clear that, by thwarting the imminent detonation of a nuclear weapon on United States soil, Bauer has saved more total lives than Wayne, we cannot say that he has larger testicles as a matter of law. For example, whereas Bauer is known simply by his birth name, Wayne (in addition to his trade name) is commonly referred to as “the Dark Knight,” an intimidating appellation that strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies. Further, it is at least arguable whether standard terrorists, even those of the caliber faced by Bauer at the CTU, pose a substantially more difficult threat to overcome than a supervillain. Finally, although it is certainly impressive that Bauer accomplishes so much with only standard weapons, we cannot discount the sheer “coolness,” in a legal sense, of the many devices employed by Wayne in his crime-fighting pursuits.

Id. at 299-301.

In light of this, we must examine the relative merits of the parties’ claims to badassmotherfuckerhood. We begin by noting that the respondent’s accomplishments are quite impressive. However, we are unable to accept that they are, as a matter of law, sufficient defenses to Norris’s petition. First, it was foretold by hieroglyphics written on the bronze tablets sitting astride the doors of time and space that Chuck Norris shall appear in every generation, born of a technical virgin and sired by a lightning bolt. It is his destiny alone to subdue his enemies with fists and feet made of pure energy, and nunchucks crafted from the very bones of the world. The god of fire, Hephaestus himself, forged a magnificent suit of titanium armor for Norris, decorated with scenes from Walker, Texas Ranger; Norris, however, disintegrated it with a single thunderous fart that toppled mountain ranges hundreds of miles away, simply because he knew his skin was stronger than any metal.

To gaze upon Chuck Norris for even a single moment is to know the answer to the eternal question “why?” He is the One and the Many, the Beginning and the End, the Cock and the Balls. Chuck Norris keeps the planets in their orbits by yelling at them. Instead of urinals, Norris pisses into black holes that he creates by punching through the fabric of the space-time continuum. Every morning, he sits at his breakfast table and pours whiskey into a bowl full of raw meat, scrap metal, and the cure for cancer; he calls it “cereal.” Norris has already slept with every attractive woman who has ever lived and ever will live. Twice.

While it may be true that Bill Brasky ended the Cold War by training an entire flock of bald eagles to set off fireworks that spelled out “U.S.A.” over the Kremlin, we find that this simply cannot compare to Chuck Norris’s single-handed victory in the First Punic War - Norris traveled back in time with a bazooka, but decided at the last minute to take on the entire Carthaginian army with nothing but a donut he made out of Play-Doh. Indeed, Norris grew this very courthouse by planting a strand of hair plucked from his majestic beard. We are satisfied by substantial and incontrovertible evidence that Norris “so much more of a man” that he makes Brasky “seem like a little girl wetting herself in comparison.”

The decision of the district court is fucking REVERSED, and a writ of domination shall be issued. Bill Brasky is hereby commanded to bow before Chuck Norris, the One True God.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

The Jurisprudence of Chuck Norris

2006-11-23T18:20:00.000-06:00

- It is impossible to sue Chuck Norris for battery because whatever force he uses is always reasonable.

- Chuck Norris can recite ERISA from memory, word for word, but he never does it because ERISA is fucking boring.

- Congress once considered amending the Federal Rules of Evidence to make anything offered by Chuck Norris automatically admissible.

- Chuck Norris invented the common law.

- Chuck Norris does not need consideration to enforce his contracts.

- When the law of negligence first developed, liability turned on what Chuck Norris would do. The standard for conduct was later lowered to the “ordinary and reasonably prudent man.”

- Chuck Norris used to own Blackacre, but burnt it down for the insurance.

- Originally, the idea of separation of powers was a reference to the fact that Chuck Norris has two different fists.

- Chuck Norris has unlimited peremptory strikes, which he exercises by melting prospective jurors with his mind.

- Justice is blind because Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicked her in the face.

Yes, yes, I saw Justice Scalia. Now who wants to touch me? I said, WHO WANTS TO FUCKING TOUCH ME?!?!?!?

2006-11-17T18:27:00.000-06:00

What a fucking rush. And I’m not just talking about the blow that Big Tony (what the honorable Justice told me to call him) and I did off that 18-year-old stripper’s ass. No, I’m talking about just being in the man’s presence – I mean, he took out an entire fucking biker gang by himself, with nothing but a pool cue.

After the Federalist Society conference, the Dirty One, X, and I asked Scalia if we could buy him a beer. We never expected him to actually say yes (or “Fuckin’ A” for that matter). We were just sitting there at some dive bar in Milwaukee discussing the implications of Kelo and Supreme Court hazing rituals for new associate Justices. As it turns out, everybody gets hazed, not just Souter, and you wouldn’t believe some of the shit the Taney Court pulled – I’ve been sworn to secrecy on the details, but I can tell y’all it involved George Washington’s wooden teeth, a horse, and a broomstick.

But I digress. Anyway, we were all just sitting there shooting the shit, when this HUGE motherfucker with a bunch of fucking tattoos (including one that had “Earl Warren” inside a heart) walked up to our table, spit in Scalia’s mug, and said that textualism is for pussies. I thought this was going to be some serious shit, but this didn’t rattle Big Tony one bit. No, Big Tony just looked this asshole straight in the eye, said “This is what I think of your ‘living constitution’,” and drank the whole fucking thing, spit and all, and then started staring this crazy fucking biker down. What a fucking badass – Scalia makes Chuck Norris look like a 3-year-old girl with down syndrome and a bad case of hemrrhoids.

Now, I would have been impressed if that had been all, but it wasn’t – not by a long shot. Apparently, Scalia had not actually swallowed the spat-in beer, because he stood up and spit the whole fucking thing in this biker’s Substantive Due Process-loving face. Unfortunately, while the stare-down had been going on like stare decisis, the rest of this asshole’s gang started making their way over to our table, and these guys looked tough. One had a fucking nightstick sticking out of his back pocket, and another was fingering a length of chain – they both looked like they meant business.

But the Honorable Justice would have none of it. Just as these assholes looked like they were about to start wailing on him (and us) like they were complying with a legal duty to beat the shit out of us, Scalia – moving with a speed that belies his age and girth – jumped over the bikers like a fucking Olympic hurdler. He grabbed a fucking pool cue off the wall, snapped it in half over his knee, and started whipping the pieces around like he was Bruce fucking Lee. I mean, I knew he was a grandmaster with statutory text, but that’s fucking nothing next to what the man can do with a couple of pieces of wood – he had the bastards laid out cold in under ten seconds.

The best part was when, standing over their unconscious bodies, he turned to us and said:

"You like fundamental rights? How you like them fundamental rights?"

The man isn’t just a man – he’s a fucking legend, a warrior-poet. Now, I know what you’re thinking: B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T. And ok, maybe I exaggerated a little bit. Maybe Scalia didn’t “actually” tell us to call him “Big Tony.” And maybe he didn’t “actually” take out three hostile Warren Court-loving bikers with a pool cue. And maybe I didn’t “actually” do a line of coke off a stripper’s ass with one of the nation’s leading jurists. But I did shake his hand after he spoke at the Federalist Society conference. So fuck off – Congress isn’t regulating poetic license under its Commerce Clause powers. Yet.

Actually, the conference was fucking awesome. And I realize that this is incredibly nerdy, but I was just fucking starstruck by being in Scalia’s presence, along with like four U.S. Solicitor Generals. The highlight, of course, happened after Scalia spoke and was taking questions – X, after having been talking the talk, fucking stood up and walked the walk:

X: As a law student, I’d just like to thank you for writing all those great dissents. [audience laughs] Anyway, I have a two-part question. First, what do you think is the future of the Court’s Commerce Clause and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence? And second, have you ever seen the show “Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law”?

Scalia: Harvey Birdman?

X: Yeah, they featured you on it. You were rapping with Donald Rumsfeld.

Scalia: Well, I don’t remember appearing on any show rapping. I hope they got someone good to play me.

X: It’s a cartoon. You should get one of your clerks to TiVo it.

Awesome.

I'm going to clerk for that man. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to clerk for him. Or alternatively, at least I'm going to head out to the bars. Fuck it.

People I Want to Punch in the Face #2: Most Posters on Xoxohth

2006-11-14T18:21:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while, I see that someone [found my old blog] through a post on AutoAdmit/Xoxohth – you know, “The Most Prestigious Haven for Insecure Douchebags in the World” – and I’ll read a couple of threads. And of course, each time I do, I can’t help but think that “he needed killin’” should really be an affirmative defense to murder.

Now, don’t get me wrong – the idea of a forum for current and prospective students to discuss admissions and other shit is a great idea, and there are plenty of legitimate posters on there. Taken as a whole, however, the threads on that particular site have exceeded any reasonable quota on douchebaggery by a factor of infinity billion.

I’ll ignore for a minute that a quarter of the posts are written in the style of a prepubescent girl IMing a balding pedophile (“OMG r u trying out 4 law review LOL”). I’ll ignore all the posts about sexual topics that seem to be written by people who couldn’t get laid in an Amsterdam whorehouse on free sample day. I’ll even ignore the frequent use of the word “pwned,” easily the computer geek equivalent of collar-popping. But Jesus tittyfucking Christ, I’d sooner cut off my dick with bandsaw, glue it to my forehead, and use it to do Rosie O’Donnell up the ass, than take any advice whatsoever from that site.

The threads are more obsessed with “prestige” than flies are obsessed with shit. I swear, if I looked hard enough I could probably find a thread discussing the most prestigious special ed program to eat crayons in. But it’s all fucking meaningless. Basically, you can divide the posts into two categories: (1) debating (and I use that term very loosely) which NYC sweatshop they think will finally help them find the social acceptance they can’t get among their peers, and (2) talking shit about “TTTs” (“Third-Tier Toilets,” defined as any school below the top 14, or something equally stupid). In other words, it’s like a fucking convention of 1L gunners bragging about ~~who has the smallest penis~~ outlining all their classes before orientation.

Basing your life around “prestige” – in other words, what other people think of you – is probably the surest path to putting a 12-gauge in your mouth before you’re forty I can think of. Ultimately, it’s no different than spending your life trying to impress the “in-crowd,” and fuck that shit – to thine own self be true. If what you want to do happens to be “prestigious,” fucking go for it. If not, who gives a flying fuck, as long as you’re happy. In the end, all that matters is getting your genes into the next generation anyway.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes violence is the answer. Especially when it’s directed towards raging douches who argue over shit like whether it’s more prestigious to lick ass or fondle balls. And to anyone from that site who disagrees with me, or tries to start a flame war here, I’ll give you my response in advance:

Fuck you. No, seriously – fuck you.

That’s all.

Why I'm an Equal Opportunity Offender

2006-11-13T16:44:00.000-06:00

I had the following conversation with Slutz following her argument with Justin Timberlake in the comment section [of my old blog]:

Slutz: "It's guys like him that perpetuate the glass ceiling."

Me: "Yeah, but I like the glass ceiling. The hot secretary on the floor above me never wears panties."

Slutz: "Wow. That's all I can say to that. Wow."

Of course, she made fun of Jews during dinner, which balanced out my misogyny. And really, that's what it's all about. Fuck political correctness, life is much more enjoyable when you can good-naturedly rip on your friends' ethnicity / gender / sexuality / religion / politics and whatever else the fuck makes for good humor.

You know what true diversity and tolerance is? It's not this bullshit environment where everyone has to walk on fucking eggshells lest someone be [gasp] offended. It's about not being a fucking retard* about things.

I'll give you a model of racial fucking harmony: During the 2L recruiting season, I was doing some interviews in Dallas, where one of my oldest friends, Pinche, happened to be going to med school. Since I was crashing at his apartment anyway, I decided to stay a couple of extra days and hang out with Pinche.

One evening, after discovering that we had run out of beer, we headed out to Fiesta - a Mexican grocery store that will sell you some crazy shit. For example, it's where the pledge class below me picked up what they need for a prank that involved placing a fucking pig's head in each and every bathroom stall in the frat house. Anyway, since Pinche happens to be Chinese**, I made a crack that we should pick up some dog while we were there. Rather than getting offended, however, he just responded that (since I'm Jewish), I'd probably be too cheap to pay for my half.

That's what it's fucking all about - not just being cool enough with someone's "differences" that those differences don't fucking matter - but also being cool enough with them to give (and take) shit for those differences like you would for anything else. Ripping on Pinche's ethnicity was as normal as giving him shit about the time (back in high school) when he got so wasted in Mexico that he started getting into arguments with inanimate objects...

Ah, memories.

Fuck it. And fuck political correctness.

* - And yes, I said "retard." Fucking deal with it.

** - Half-Chinese, half-Mexican to be exact.

Another Reason I Hate the Homeless

2006-11-04T22:00:00.000-06:00

Flipping through my old photo album, I was reminded of a very shitty story. And by “shitty,” I mean involving feces – the feces of an insane, homeless man.

It was the summer after my senior year at Texas, and I was living in a giant, yellow house with eight of my friends. Several of the residents at the Yellow House, however, were new. You see, during the school year, I lived with seven of my frat brothers and my best friend from home. Most of these idiots graduated; I, however, decided to take an extra year to write my thesis and take fun classes like Roman History and Elvish (yes, I’m a big ole nerd).

Anyway, a lot of the guys left Austin shortly after graduation and, since our lease went through August, sublet their rooms. Two of the rooms were sublet to old friends of mine from El Paso, people I had known since elementary school, who I’ll call “Yel” and “Gerbil.” Yel is a peace, love, and flower power hippie; Gerbil is a Marxist, blame-everything-on-colonialism-and-hegemony, leftist. Despite our totally opposite politics, I’ve known them forever, so it was a good time. After the LSAT was over and done, I had nothing to do that summer but sit on the front porch, sip bourbon, smoke hookah, and read Kierkegaard. So I did precisely that.

Now, the Yellow House is located in the middle of West Campus, which is the big student residential area to the immediate west of the UT campus. It’s full of fraternity and sorority houses, run-down apartment complexes, and Bosnian war-zone style houses rented at Manhattan prices. It’s a wonderful drunken, college playground. Unfortunately, it has something of a bum problem. And they weren’t just any old bums – they were fucking nuts. I mean that literally – full-blown, unmedicated, delusional schizophrenics.

Usually, we’d just ignore the bums – we’d leave them to their dumpster-diving, and maybe shoo them away with a broom if they got too close to our house. Gerbil, who also spent a great deal of the summer sitting on the front porch, would occasionally give one of the bums a glass of bourbon. I objected because, as I predicted, he kept coming back for more booze. It’s the reason you don’t feed wild animals. But, despite my objections, Gerbil, not wanting to be “classist,” kept giving him booze.

Anyway, the crazy homeless guy began to take greater liberty with our house. For example, we would come home to find him sitting on our porch, uninvited. As if this wasn’t bad enough, one morning I caught him pissing on the side of our house.

Enough was enough.

I thought I could put an end to this unpleasantness by going outside and waving my sword at him. No, not the one in my pants – a katana that I picked up a while back. When I confronted him, the bum claimed that he had been given permission to pee there. I asked him who had given him permission and he told me that “the Visitors” said he could. Of course! The Visitors – why didn’t I realize that straight off the bat? However, when I asked him why the Visitors had not painted him green to show that he had permission to urinate on my property, he began to get suspicious, asking whether George Bush sent me. I told him that, yes, George Bush sent me to chop off his willy with my katana if he didn’t get the hell off my property.

Needless to say, he left. One of my housemates, Blackbelt, who was watching the spectacle from the kitchen thought that it would be funny to shoot him with one of his many BB guns as he left. I disagreed; I thought it would be hilarious. So Blackbelt, with sharpshooter-like aim, proceeded to nail this insane old bum several times in the butt as he ran down the street.

Anyway, that was the last of the bum I saw until a party we threw several weeks later. Now my house could throw some serious parties – our end of year bash, for example, went through several thousand jello shots within the first two hours and even had a moonbounce in the backyard. This party, however, was the first party we had thrown with my old friends from El Paso. The party dynamic was odd – Yel’s hippies invaded the house, passing around doobies like…well…doobies. Frat boys bonged beer outside and tried to hook up with sorority girls. As a host, I floated between these two very different worlds, both united by a common desire to get really fucked up.

Around midnight, I was outside talking to a hot little blonde girl, when Gerbil interrupted me. The goddamn hippies let the crazy old bum into our house, so I had to go kick him out. Great.

Kicking the dirty old bum out of the house was easy – and when I returned, I saw several people carrying a recliner out of the house. “What the fuck?!?!” I thought. When I inquired as to what the hell these people thought they were doing, I understood completely.

The bum had shat in the chair.

That’s right - this dirty, drunk, delusional, smelly transient had taken a dump in the armchair of my living room. Now do you understand why I harbor so much animosity towards the homeless?

POSTSCRIPT: We took the chair to the dumpster catty-corner from the house. The bum continued to live in the chair that he soiled. On July 4th, Blackbelt came home with a big ole bag of fireworks, so we decided to blow the chair up. God bless America.

Advice for 1Ls

2006-10-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

As the summer draws to a close and the school year creeps closer and closer, I've had some time to reflect on that hazing ritual called "1L". Rather, I've had time to reflect, but I've mainly used that time to drink beer on the Terrace. Since I'm such a nice guy, I've assembled a few thoughts to try and assuage the fears of this incoming class:

1. Watch The Paper Chase. In fact, watch it over and over. You may even consider buying a transcript, an outline, and possibly even memorizing it. Not only is law school exactly as it is portrayed, but you will be tested on the movie come exams. In fact, if you don't cite to the movie at least three times on any given question, you've probably failed and will be condemned to spend the rest of your life clerking for Judge Judy.

2. Stress yourself out as much as you possibly can. There is a reason that the inscription over the door to any respectable law school reads "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter This Place." Because, after all, ulcers are the shit.

3. Beware the Socratic method. At some point in the semester (probably the first day), the professor will ask you a mind-bogglingly difficult legal question that even Chief Justice Rehnquist couldn't answer. After you get it wrong, (which of course you will,) the entire class will laugh at your utter incompetence and throw spitballs at you. The professor will call you names and ridicule you mercilessly. But don't worry - your torment will soon stop. Fortunately, the school is equipped with a trap door underneath every classroom seat which will open and you will fall into sweet, sweet oblivion and you'll wake up several days later in a bathtub full of ice and missing your kidneys.

4. Law school is exactly like high school. Make a bet with your friends to lose your virginity by prom. Try not to have sex with any baked goods, as this will come back to haunt you on the "Character and Fitness" portion of the Bar.

5. Sleep with your professors. Since the grading is anonymous, it may not help you get that A. But hey, it couldn't hurt either.

6. Tell everyone your LSAT score. In fact, post flyers around the atrium with it. People will be very impressed and you will make friends quickly. Actually, flyers may not be very effective. Use spray paint.

7. Take up smoking. If you're already a smoker, take up heroin. If you're already addicted to heroin, just freebase the UCC.

8. Finally, make sure that you say good-bye to your old friends and family. You're not going to see them or speak to them for the next year. In fact, you're not going to see anything outside the library for the next year. As we all know from books like One-L, Law school is a terrible experience and if you have any sort of social life, you will fail out. If you manage to have a social life and still pass your exams, you will still be expelled on principle... Or, you could always just chill the fuck out and enjoy yourself.

Hope that helps.

You don't know Jack (unless his last name is Daniels)

2006-10-25T22:06:00.001-05:00

Back when I was on my high school wrestling team, all of the other schools would gather in a circle, chant, scream and otherwise psych themselves up. Not us. We would gather in a circle and quietly, though forcefully, count off, "one - two - three - Cougars."

This wasn't a matter of sportsmanship. Coach Mimms told us that he wanted us to be "quietly confident." He wanted us to focus on kicking ass, not the loudmouthed trash-talking that preceeded it. Victory, he said, was decided on the mat; nothing else mattered. Brag after you've won, not before.

Many law students could benefit from Coach Mimms' advice. No one cares whether you've read Corbin on Contracts, Law School Confidential, the entire Encyclopedia Brittannica, or Harry Potter and the Order of the Coif. Bragging about having read all of your textbooks over the summer doesn't make you any smarter; it just means that you wasted your summer. No one wants to hear about your time in the library unless it's a story about how you had sex underneath the Federal Supplements.

This goes double for 1L's: If you have to brag, at least wait until you have something to brag about, e.g., grades*. (Bragging about how much you drank at Bar Review, however, is perfectly acceptable.) Trying to psych out your classmates, especially this early in the year, is just pathetic. Don't pretend to be Learned fucking Hand after a week of law school.

* - In which case, you're just a jackass.

Blogger's Intent

2006-10-25T22:04:00.002-05:00

[Posted after I actually started getting hits]

Wow. People are actually reading this blog - beyond the small group of people that I revealed its existence to. Of course, this also means that people may misunderstand some of what I say or do here. To this end, I present the following:

1. The blog began in order to get the blogger discount at tortfeasor.com, home of t-shirts that say "tortfeasor." I decided to continue blogging after it turned out to be a great way to get my brain-juices flowing. I am now mildly addicted.

2. The opinions reflected in this site are not those of the UW Law School. Often, they aren't even my own. I have a long history of deliberately (and often humorously) arguing for positions that offend people. Why? To paraphrase Nietzsche: in every age, people declare certain things too serious to laugh at, or too sacred to dispute; these are precisely the things that must be shot at with arrows of laughter. In other words, societal sacred cows make great hamburgers. Take what I say with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila.

3. I blog under a pseudonym to create a rebuttable presumption of anonymity. If you know me in real life, it will be obvious who I am.

4. I am not an alcoholic – The title “Law & Alcoholism” is meant to parody all the “Law & Whatever” movements. In other words, Alcoholism as an “-ism” ideology.

5. I write primarily for my personal amusement. If y'all are entertained, that makes me happy. Feel free to leave comments.

Gay Marriage and Evolutionary Theory

2006-10-25T22:04:00.001-05:00

I’ve officially changed my position regarding gay marriage. I used to oppose gay marriage because it seemed to confer no reproductive advantage to the organisms, and believed that this sort of behavior ought to be discouraged. However, thinking about it last night, I’ve realized two things.

First, although homosexuality is maladaptive for the organism in a pure Darwinian sense (you don’t get your genes in the next generation by mating with another dude), gay marriage will not erode the basic biological underpinnings of regular marriage.

The institution of marriage has evolved because it generally serves our species reproductive interests. For the male, it normally guarantees exclusive mating rights with a particular female (or females in polygynous societies). This substantially raises the likelihood that he is the father of the female’s offspring. The male therefore can safely invest energy in the offspring, raising the likelihood that it will survive and successfully reproduce.

This arrangement benefits the female because it tends to guarantee a healthy supply of male parental investment in her offspring. Even in polygynous societies, a male will only be able to acquire as many wives as he is able to support.

Gay marriage will neither interfere with exclusive mating rights or guarantees of male parental investment – the real “family values.”

Second, not only will banning gay marriage will not discourage maladaptive behavior, I don’t want it to.

Let’s assume for a second that if gay marriage was banned, then gay men would go and marry women. This means I would have to compete with an influx of better-dressed men as I search for a mate. Girls already seem to have a strange infatuation with gay guys – why would I encourage them to compete against me in a zero-sum Darwinian game?

So by supporting gay marriage, I keep potential competitors out of the gene pool. The species as a whole may not benefit, but I will.

My Day in Court (Sort of)

2006-10-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

Despite a total lack of hard work and preparation, I somehow made it to the second round of the Omar Megahed Oral Advocacy Tournament. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the quarterfinals. I've been ruminating on my performance, and I think I know where I went wrong. Here's a transcript of what may have been my biggest blunder:

Me: May it please the court. Your honors, there are two good reasons this court should refuse to enforce this exculpatory contract. First, Respondents cannot contract away their own negligence because their organization falls within the Tunkl public duty exception. Second, because I'm just a caveman. Now my first point...

The Court: Maybe I misheard you - did you just say you're a caveman?

Me: Yes your honor.

The Court: If indeed that was the case, shouldn't you have died a million years ago?

Me: Perhaps your honor, but I fell in some ice and some of your scientists found me and thawed me out.

The Court: Counsel, assuming that you are a caveman, how is that relevant to our decision?

Me: Well your honors, your world frightens and confuses me. When I get a call on my “cell phone,” I wonder how the voices come out of this magic box. Are there demons inside? I don't know, I'm just a caveman. My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. But I do know this - Respondents cannot contract away their own negligence.

The Court: I see...

Funny thing is, when I argued for the respondent in the preliminary rounds, the judges thought my argument highly persuasive that if Chewbacca lives on Endor, the contract must be enforced.

If I Were an Appellate Judge...

2006-10-25T22:02:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine recently pointed out that I end a great many of my posts with "fuck it." I think that this would make an excellent signature opinion. Sure Cardozo and Learned Hand may have been famous for their "brilliant prose" and "legendary judicial reasoning," but did they ever end an opinion with: "Fuck it, AFFIRMED."?

Opinions written in Limmerick or Haiku wouldn't be a bad idea either. Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. would go a little something like this:

Jumped on moving train
Guards help him and package falls
Man's package explodes

Plaintiff nearby, hurt
Conduct not wrongful to him
Not proximate cause

Or perhaps a Lettermanesque opinion, with the "Top 10 Reasons Appellant is Not Entitled to Relief."

Fuck it, Reversed....I mean, off to study.

Library Alarms

2006-10-25T22:02:00.001-05:00

I was exiting the law library to work on my Legislation take-home exam over at Starbucks, free from the distractions of the internet. Everything was normal up until I walked through the gate. Suddenly, sirens blared and I was immediately surrounded by what must have been 50 agents from the FBI's special "Library Police Task Force." Protesting my innocence, I struggled valiantly, but they managed to subdue me through several tasers to my testicles and brought me to the law school's "interrogation room" at the point of an M-16. I didn't know the law school even had an interrogation room.

They demanded to know what rare and valuable books I was attempting to steal. Violating every international law against torture, they stretched me on the rack and forced me to listen to Christina Aguilera. But I wasn't going to break. I knew that I was innocent. I whipped out my official Junior Lawyer Badge, and insisted that I would file a § 1983 suit if they did not release me; eventually, they let me go.

Bullshit, you say? Well, maybe it's a bit of an exaggeration. So I wasn't actually "tortured." And yes, maybe no FBI agents actually "came." But I did set off the alarm. Apparently, the DVD's I rented from Blockbuster are incompatible with the law library's security system. Who knew?

Fuck it, back to my exam.

Missing an Issue (and Possibly a Kidney)

2006-10-25T22:01:00.001-05:00

Fuck. Not five minutes after I left my Criminal Appeals exam did I realize that I had completely neglected to talk about sentence modification as a potential ground for post-conviction relief. Not that the fictional judge was likely to have granted it, as my fictional client had no fictional cards in his fictional hand, but fuck - I missed an issue.

I have two choices at this point. First, I can start studying right now for my last final and do my damnedest to get the top grade in the class to try and make up for my idiocy. Alternatively, I can get mind-blowingly drunk, have anonymous sex with a strange girl who looks remarkably like a hot Margaret Thatcher, wake up in Panama, tied-up in a bathtub full of ice sans kidneys, stow away on a ship passing through the canal while unaware that it's actually a pirate vessel bound for Indonesia, and spend the rest of my days pillaging fat merchants and using my three semesters of law school to revolutionize efficiency in the white slave-trade.

Is there a happy medium between these two extremes? Absolutely not.

UPDATE: As it turns out, I did get the top grade in my other class. And more importantly, I still have both of my kidneys. Fucking sweet.

It's Finals Time

2006-10-25T22:00:00.002-05:00

I can't believe how quickly this semester just flew by. Wasn't I just buying books yesterday? Well, yes - but that's besides the point. Luckily, I only have two finals. Of course, this is because I mainly took writing classes, which cumulated in a 72 hour paper-writing binge that ended yesterday afternoon.

Anyway, since law school thrives on the competitiveness of the curve, students face a dilemma: How do you honestly say "good luck" to your friends? You want your friends to do well... just not as well as you. So last December I came up with an honest form of well-wishing:

"May you fall just below me on the curve."

You want to be number one, but you hope that the recipient of your good wishes is number two. It's the most genuine way that one law student can express their goodwill towards another at exam time.

Now, I've heard other people saying it too, so I guess it caught on. (That, or like the Theory of General Relativity, I discovered it independently and just thought I was original.)

So fuck it, back to work, and may all y'all fall just below me on the curve.

The Time I Hit on Jenna Bush

2006-10-25T21:58:00.000-05:00

My last post put me in a nostalgic mood for my days of undergrad glory, so I've decided to share two stories about my encounters with the Bush clan. Both of these stories share a setting - The Iron Cactus in Austin, TX. It's resturaunt/bar on Austin's legedndary 6th Street, serving some of Austin's best fajitas; it's also one of the top tequila bars in the country, boasting over 80 different kinds, from the cheap stuff that tastes like a mixture of paint thinner and burning, to the $35 a shot Herradura Seleccion Suprema.

Anyway, one evening a few months after Dubya was elected, some buddies and I were hanging out on the upstairs patio, sipping top-shelf margaritas. Needless to say, I was a bit intoxicated - not sloppy drunk, but definitely past the point of having "inhibitions" - and in walked none other than the President of the United States. Accompanying him was Colin Powell and several people I didn't recognize, which I am assuming were Secret Service agents. Even though he had been governor throughout my time in Austin, I had never seen him in real life before. They were there to dine on the Cactus's delicious fajitas; apparently the leader of the free world needs to eat too.

Assisted by liquid courage, I walked over to their table and introduced myself. Bush was very friendly and down to earth. I asked him if he would do me the honor of taking a shot of Porfidio with me (my favorite tequila), one frat guy to another. He politely declined because he "doesn't drink anymore." Quitter. However, we chatted briefly and he said to me:

"Son, let me ask you a question - as an American. I'm thinkin' about invadin' Iraq. I'm fixin' to kill 100,000 Iraqis and one blonde with big tits."

"What?" I replied, horrified. "Why would you want to kill a blonde with big tits?!?!"

So he turned to Colin Powell and said, "See Colin, I told you no one would care about 100,000 Iraqis."

Buh-dum-dum.

No this didn't actually “happen.” It's actually a joke I heard, but it works so much better as a first-person story, and since I'm from Texas, it's plausible right up until the end. The next story, however, is actually true.

It was graduation weekend at UT and two of my frat brothers that I hadn't seen in a while (since I stayed an extra year) happened to be in town, so we decided to go down to 6th Street and get drunk. After hitting up a couple of other bars, we decided to check out the Iron Cactus. I ran into a girl I knew, a tall, slender blonde who was in Theta. While I was talking with her, one of my frat brothers, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Holy shit - isn't that Jenna Bush?" pointing to a girl by the bar, guzzling beer like it was going out of style.

The girl I was talking to said that yeah, it was her - Jenna was one of her sorority sisters. Now Jenna is cute, don't get me wrong, but she definitely pales in comparison to most of the girls in her sorority, who are almost universally smoking hot. She was, however, the President's daughter, so I walked over to the bar and asked her if I could buy her a shot.

She said ok, and I ordered two shots of tequila - I don't remember what kind. However, before the bartender could pour them, a young-looking guy came over and said that they needed to leave. He was wearing normal bar-hopping clothes, but I noticed something strange in his ear - an earpiece.

I was getting cockblocked by that Secret Service. I'm hoping that either it was because she was too drunk and shouldn't be taking more shots, or that there was some matter of national security, and not that it was because I was me. But in any event, the result was the same.

My fucking tax dollars at work.

The Infamous Cowboy Hat Lawsuit

2006-10-25T21:56:00.000-05:00

One Saturday night, a few weeks into the second semester of my 1L year, I called up a friend of mine to go out. She's a cute grad student and a fellow Texas Ex (the alumni association for UT) from El Paso. I don't remember where we started our little bar crawl, but we eventually made our way to Bullfeathers.

We had been there for a while, when all of a sudden some drunk, undergrad asshole grabbed the cowboy hat off my head. Now, I'm used to people taking my cowboy hat and putting it on - you don't see too many people wearing a Stetson in Madison. Normally, I don't really mind because it's usually an attractive*, often drunk, undergraduate girl attempting to flirt with me. This, however, was what the politically correct call a "Penised-American." But he didn’t just grab it – he actually started walking (or stumbling, rather) away with my hat.

I caught up with him a few feet later and asked him to return my hat. He refused. So, despite having had quite a few shots of Jager, the Wisconsin defense of property statute was running through my head:

A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with the person's property. Only such degree of force or threat thereof may intentionally be used as the actor reasonably believes is necessary to prevent or terminate the interference.... Wis. Stats. 939.49(1).

If I wanted to kick this guy's ass, I needed to make sure that I "reasonably believed" that force was necessary to "prevent or terminate the interference" with my hat. I asked for the hat again, a little more forcefully, and he started claiming that the hat was his. I tried to grab the hat out of his hands but, unfortunately, my motor skills were a bit off, and he jerked it away and started shoving me. Satisfied that force was reasonably necessary, I grabbed him by the throat and he did the same to me. We were maybe five seconds away from a brawl.

Now, this guy was about six or seven inches taller than me, but he was a skinny little motherfucker. What he thought he was doing by engaging me in combat I have no idea. Of course, the guy was drunk out of his mind, so that may have had something to do with it. I tensed my body and prepared to tackle him, when the bouncers interfered.

Luckily, I'm something of a regular at Bullfeathers, so the bouncers knew me. More importantly, they knew my hat. They humored the guy and asked whose hat it was and he claimed that it was his grandfather's hat, and that he had given it to him before he died. The fucking drunk actually conjured a note of genuine emotion in his voice. The bouncers, however, didn't buy it. However, as they tried to coax this sonofabitch into returning my hat, I was getting pissed. To make things worse, the asshole started crumpling up my Stetson while he was talking. I pointed this out to the bouncers and they took the hat out of his hands and gave it to me - a $90 Stetson, fucking deformed as all get-out.

I was livid. I asked the bouncers to detain him for a moment while I called the cops. Normally, I'm not a big fan of the police, but I was fucking glad to see them. Mainly, I just wanted a case number so I could get his name.

Watching this schmuck get arrested was pretty rewarding. He started crying like a little bitch when they cuffed him and threw him in the back of the squad car. I asked the officer what they were going to charge him with, and they said they wrote him a ticket for disorderly conduct. I was not satisfied. I told the officers that they should at least charge him with felony damage to property (Wis. Stats. 943.01). They disagreed.

Not to be dissuaded so easily, I stumbled home, whipped out my statute book and called the police station and proceeded to tell whoever answered the phone about everything that they could charge this hat-mangling jackass with. Whether or not they were amused, I couldn't tell. However, no felony charges were filed. The bastard got away with a civil forfeiture on a city ordinance. Fuck.

Anyway, I began to put together a lawsuit for civil battery and tresspass to chattel. Legally, I think I had a pretty good case, and there's some neat precedent in Wisconsin that would have allowed me to get some serious punitive damages (See Jacque v. Steenberg Homes, 209 Wis.2d 605). After all, this wasn't just about the hat. No - this went to the heart of property rights in general. The court needed to send a message to every drunk asshole who thinks that they can just take whatever they want, regardless of the consequences. This case would have gone to the essence of what makes America great - the right to exclusive control of your own property. Also, I really wanted some punitive damages.

I drafted a complaint and wrote a great closing argument. However, being the lazy guy that I am, though I talked about it a lot, I never filed it. Of course, I still have another year left under the statute of limitations....

POSTSCRIPT: I've tried to fix my hat and it's still wearable. It's damaged, but now it definitely has character and a story to go with it. And most importantly, girls still love it.

The law school rumor-mill got wind of the story and soon I heard a rumor that I was suing someone else in the law school. I dismissed it as ridiculous, and never really thought much about it. I mean, the guy was like 21. However, over the summer I ran into the law student who thought I was suing him. Apparently, he had taken my hat one evening outside of Qdoba, danced around in it, and thought that that was the basis of the suit. I don't even remember the incident. Eventually, we sorted the whole mess out when I asked him if he had been arrested.

Fuck it. I really need to do some actual "work."

* - Or, at least attractive at the time.

FUCK Minimum Wage

2006-10-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

I have heard Madison described as "30 square miles surrounded by reality." It's a pretty fucking apt description. In Wisconsin's latest effort to emmulate the paradise that was Soviet Russia, the Milwaukee Council voted to follow Madison's lead and hike up minimum wages. They hope to push for a statewide minimum wage.

Great going, you assholes.

Let me give y'all some firsthand experience with the effects of minimum wage on the people it's purportedly designed to help. My dad used to own a jean factory in El Paso, where he was forced to pay his employees minimum wage. (I think at the time, it was like $4.25 an hour.) As soon as NAFTA came along, he was forced to compete with factories in Mexico that paid their employees $0.25 an hour, and let's just face it, that's not going to fucking happen.

Eventually, my dad, and every other garment manufacturer in El Paso was forced to shut down. Instead of making a "decent living wage" of $4.25 an hour, his employees made $0.00 an hour, because they didn't have a fucking job anymore. I'm sure they were thanking all that "progressive" minimum wage legislation when they were standing in the fucking unemployment line. I don’t know of many grocery stores that accept leftist ideology as legal tender to exchange for food.

Minimum wage is fine in theory. Of course, when the theory fundamentally conflicts with the realities of the marketplace, it's going to fall flat on it's face. Employers don't want to pay people more than their services are worth, and punching a button on a cash register at McDonalds, or standing behind a counter at a convenience store isn't worth a hell of a lot. Sure, that may be the only job some people are qualified for, but they shouldn't expect to be paid as if they have specialized skills.

Now I've gotten myself all worked up. I need a drink.

Fuck it.

Aliens (Not the Kind that Work at Walmart)

2006-10-25T21:48:00.002-05:00

After watching War of the Worlds last night, I thought back to an old question I had about these types of "alien-invasion" scenarios: Why do we assume that if there is intelligent life out there, it's bound to be more advanced than us?

Fuck, it's just as likely that we're the smartest assholes out there. Where are all the movies about us invading some pathetic little civilization that's still stuck in the Stone Age? Good old-fashioned wars of conquest may have (temporarily) gone out of fashion on this planet, but what's to stop us from terrorizing us some E.T.'s? I want a little, green butler dammit.

Fuck it, time for lunch.

On the McDonaldland Gang

2006-10-25T21:48:00.001-05:00

According to Wikipedia (hat tip Vanessa),

Grimace is a fantasy character, and not intended to "be" anything specific. However, ever since the character's introduction there has been much speculation (though much of it tongue-in-cheek) about his appearance. Because the majority of McDonald's characters more or less directly represent a food product sold at the restaurants (ie: Mayor McCheese, Fryguys, Chicken McNuggets Buddies, etc) many have naturally tried to guess as to what, if any, food product Grimace is supposed to represent. A common speculation is that he is supposed to be a giant McNugget, though there are many more fanciful attempted explanations. In reality, Grimace's "official" role, according to McDonald's, continues to be to represent the chain's famous milkshakes. However, he does this out of love for the taste, and not because he is in any way a shake-based creature himself.

Bullshit, I say. Or at least, that's got to be a half-truth. Grimace may not be a milkshake-based creature, but has McDonalds ever said that milkshakes aren't Grimace-based? And after doing ~~a lot of research~~ ~~some research~~ absolutely no research whatsoever, I've discovered that this is, in fact, the case. McDonald's corporate has done an excellent job hiding the source, but it's true: McDondald's milkshakes are Grimace-based. Indeed, they are made with Grimace's own secretions of some as of yet undetermined variety. Fucking gross, I think.

Further, Grimace is "generally portrayed in McDonalds' commercials and merchandise as a sort of well-meaning doofus, whose clumsy antics provide a comic foil to the more serious and mature Ronald McDonald." That's right, the more serious and mature Ronald McDonald. I didn't believe it either, but the article prompted me to ~~do some more research~~ ~~download porn~~ talk out of my ass - and it's true. Did you know that Ronald McDonald is not only a clown, but also a Shakespearean actor? It's true, and goddamn, y'all should see his interpretation of the part of Macbeth; it's fucking unbelievable. (The Hamburglar, in fact, plays opposite Ronald as Macduff, though without the same undeniable pathos that can only be expressed by a man with a bright red nose.) And did you know that Ronald McDonald is related to Pennywise, the clown from It?They're second-cousins! Now you know why Ronald eats children.

The Hamburglar, as y'all may know from your first-year criminal law class, was the subject of the famous case U.S. v. Hamburglar, 90 McD.2d 182 (1983). Having been charged with 735 counts of theft of hamburgers moving in interstate commerce, contrary to 18 U.S.C. § 659, the court had to decide (1) whether they could accept a plea of "Robble robble robble," and (2) if they could, what the fuck it would mean. Eventually, of course, the McDonaldland Circuit held that they could not accept such a plea, and that it would be the equivalent of the defendant standing mute. The Hamburglar was subequently tried, convicted, and was sent to federal prison, where he made the thief from the Cookie Crisp commercials his bitch.

Fuck it, I really need to get some work done.

Harry Potter and the Reasonable Wizard

2006-10-25T21:47:00.001-05:00

I read Harry Potter books like I drink: with a total lack of self-control or ability to stop that has often left me waking up next to a girl whose name I don't know. Ok, maybe not. I usually know the girl's name after I go on a Harry Potter bender...

Anyway, the point is that, instead of pacing myself and savoring Book 6 like a fine sipping bourbon, I basically started chugging literary goodness straight from the bottle and my hangover's fucking killing me. Alternately, it might just be the Jager. Whatever. Either way, I still have to wait two fucking years for J.K. Rowling to hook me up with my next fix.

In one of my rare moments of sensitivity, I'll refrain from discussing the book in detail for now. I know I'd be fucking pissed if someone told me that Professor Flitwick gets thrown in Azkaban for molesting Hogwarts students, or that the judge was the murderer. (If you get that reference, I'll be fucking impressed.) However, I will say that Book 6 fucking rocks.

I've also realized that the whole fucking Harry Potter series should be on any incoming 1L's summer reading list. I'm fucking serious. Harry Potter can teach you just as much about law school as fucking One-L:

1. Just like at Hogwarts, law school teaches you to use magic words. Hell, the law is full of fucking incantations, and if you wave your hands around and mutter a bunch of silly Latin phrases magic happens. For example, "res ipsa loquitur" will conjure liability out of thin air.

2. Everyone loves gunners like Hermione Granger. Of course, most of the gunners in law school are not like Hermione Granger. For example, your typical gunner will not have sick fucks creating countdown-until-he/she-turns-18 websites about them. Also, unlike your typical gunner, Hermione Granger will probably go on to a satisfying and fulfilling life after she graduates.

3. Watch out for professors that have Dark Wizards growing out of the back of their heads. They tend to have tough curves.

4. Try out for your law school's Quidditch team. To do this, take hard drugs until you think that you can fly. Then fucking kill yourself because you think that Quiddich is a real sport. Jesus fucking Christ, what's wrong with you?

5. As demonstrated by the Weasley Twins, everyone loves a good practical joke. Although you probably can't do magic, you can still surprise everyone with bangs and smoke if you set off fireworks indoors. People will particularly appreciate this during exams. In fact, you might not have to bother with that whole "bar exam" thing and you'll have all the big firms just dying to pay you to sit around and snort blow off a Veela's ass. I don't know where I was going with this one.

6. Expect several important characters to die by the time you're ready to take the bar.

I need a fucking nap.

New Hearsay Exception: Thorough Intoxication

2006-10-25T21:46:00.001-05:00

Rule 803. Hearsay Exceptions; Availability of Declarant Immaterial

The following are not excluded by the hearsay rule, even though the declarant is available as a witness:

(1) Present sense impression. A statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter.

(2) Excited utterance. A statement relating to a startling event or condition made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition.

(3) Thorough Intoxication. A statement made while the declarant was under the influence of an intoxicating beverage, and the statement was the result of consuming that beverage.

~~(3)~~(4) Then existing mental, emotional, or physical condition. A statement of the declarant's then existing state of mind, emotion, sensation, or physical condition (such as intent, plan, motive, design, mental feeling, pain, and bodily health), but not including a statement of memory or belief to prove the fact remembered or believed unless it relates to the execution, revocation, identification, or terms of declarant's will.
...
2005 Committee Notes

The exception embodied in the new 803(3) reflects the ancient Roman legal maxim, "in vino veritas," or "there is truth in wine." However, it is not necessary that the declarant be under the influence of wine; rather, nearly any intoxicating beverage will suffice, including but not limited to beer, whiskey, rum, gin, tequila, malt beverages, and orange juice fermented under a radiator. (Note: the Committee has never tried the latter. And if it did, it certainly would not have gone skinny-dipping at the Washington Memorial. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking liar.)

What is essential to the admissibility of a statement made under thorough intoxication is that the declarant actually be under the influence of an intoxicating beverage while the statement was made. The term "under the influence" denotes something more than a mere "buzz," however it does not require that the declarant be subject to the "blackout monkey." Similar to the "excited utterance" exception, the reliability of this exception requires the declarant to be so drunk as to be beyond the point of self-censorship when making the statement.

The Aristocrats v. Super Talent Scouting, Inc.

2006-10-25T21:41:00.000-05:00

WARNING: The following is my version of "The Aristocrats" joke. If you are easily offended by things like incest, necrophilia, and singing, stop reading right now. (Of course, if you are easily offended, what the fuck are you doing reading this blog in the first place?)

-------------------------------------------------------

Baliff: “Oye, oye, oye. Now for consideration, No. 05-22691, The Aristocrats v. Super Talent Scouting, Inc.”

Me: “May it please the court. My name is Legally Intoxicated and I represent the appellants in this case.

“Your Honors, this is a case about fairness. Respondent, a talent agency, refused to represent my clients’ based on their family status. Would the court like a brief statement of the facts?”

Judge 1: "Yes, counselor."

Me: “Respondent owns a talent agency. The appellants, a family of five, walked into Respondent’s office, seeking representation for their act. Respondent initially declined, citing the fact that family acts were “too cutesy,” but agreed to allow them to perform a brief audition.

“The act began with the father reciting the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy from Hamlet, followed by the mother, two children, and grandmother singing ‘Amazing Grace’ while masturbating and flagellating themselves with green onions…”

Judge 3: “Counselor, correct me if I’m wrong, but did you just say that they were masturbating?”

Me: “Yes, your honor. While the rest of the family continued singing, the father brought out an apparently unconscious homeless man, tied him to a chair near Respondent’s desk, and hooked a car battery up to both of their testicles. As the mother, grandmother, and children neared the final few bars of their song, they each defecated in the homeless man’s lap. Because Appellants had been on a diet of Indian food, cocaine, and carrots for several weeks prior to this incident, the fecal matter was a delicate shade of orange, which apparently upset the father, who began to yell obscenities, inserted a plastic Bugs Bunny toy into his wife’s rectum, and punched her in the face three times.

“The father, however, had forgotten that his testicles were still attached to the car battery…”

Judge 2: “I find that very difficult to believe. How could you forget that your testicles are attached to a car battery?”

Me: “Well, your honor, that’s because all of the appellants were on a combination of cocaine, horse tranquilizers, peyote, and free-based polyethylene. Really, your honors, it’s a miracle they weren’t dead. However, as I was saying, the father had forgotten that his testicles were still attached to the car battery when he went to assault his wife, and consequently ripped his scrotum, spilling his testicles. I believe that the son ate one, and the grandmother ate the other – the record isn’t totally clear on this point – however, both of them were ultimately consumed, regurgitated, and force-fed to the still-tied up homeless man, who by now had regained consciousness.

“At this point, Respondent said he had seen enough, and asked Appellants to – and I quote – ‘get out of my office, you sick, dysfunctional fucks.’ Appellants, however, had not yet gotten to the most endearing part of their act, which included crucifying the homeless man, both the mother and father sodomizing the grandmother and two children…”

Judge 3: “How could the mother sodomize the children?”

Me: “With a strap-on, your honor. Also, with a broomstick. And the homeless man’s severed pinky. However, the point is that Appellants were never even given the opportunity to do this. Nor were they given the opportunity to cut the homeless man down from the crucifix, cut open his rib cage, and for the son and father to engage in sexual congress with his chest cavity. Further, Appellants would have finished up with a rousing finale of the classic song, ‘This Land is My Land,’ had they been allowed to finish.

“Indeed, Respondent never even asked Appellants what they called their act.”

Judge 1: “Counselor, this may be the foulest, most disgusting, most vile thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t even know how you agreed to represent them. Personally, I’d rather be representing Klansmen or…well, I was going to say child molesters…but…hmmm, I guess just regular old child molesters that don’t expose their children to… this! I am shocked and appalled and frankly don’t understand why these people aren’t in prison. Tell me, counselor – did these monsters even have a name for this…this… ‘act’?”

Me: “Yes, your honor. The Aristocrats.”

Judge 2: “I thought the facts of this case sounded familiar. I saw them in London. One hell of an act... one hell of an act. Do they still do that thing with the dog, the bottle, and firecrackers?”

Report: Video Games Cause Cannibalism in Children

2006-10-25T21:36:00.001-05:00

Associated Press - Horror struck the sleepy town of Fuckityville, IN when little Timmy O'Toole, aged 13, cracked open his little sister's skull and feasted on her sweet, sweet brains within. Uncomprehending parents and authorities are blaming video games for this grisly crime.

"If only we hadn't bought Timmy that gosh darn Stubbs the Zombie game for Christmas," said Mindy O'Toole. "If only I had read the Mediafamily.org report on how horrible violent games are for children... children are so impressionable, especially when these awful games glorify cannibalism."

Sadly, this is not the first such incident to blemish Fuckityville. Police Chief Basil Shitski attributes a string of carjackings/murders to youngsters playing Grand Theft Auto. "It was mayhem, I tells ya," said Shitski. "Kids was just yanking people out of their cars and jumping in. Some of dem would just start shooting at random folk with machine guns and rocket launchers purchased at AmmuNation. It was even worse then back in '89 when all dem kids kept getting high on mushrooms and jumping on those poor little turtles by da old pond."

Police have issued a warning to others who may have purchased games on Mediafamily.org's list of games they don't like. Parents are urged to watch for early warning signs of cannibalism in their children. Signs of cannibalism include dialated pupils, withdrawal from family and friends, and consuming human flesh.

Never Meet Your Heroes

2006-10-25T16:41:00.000-05:00

I met Tucker Max this weekend, and I have to admit, I was kind of dissapointed. When I first found out he was going to be doing a book signing here, I was fucking ecstatic. In all seriousness, I was looking forward to seeing him in person just as much as I was Scalia - I mean, if there was a Drinking and Womanizing Hall of Fame, he'd be the first one inducted. And unlike Scalia's brilliant opinion in Crawford v. Washington, I still laugh out loud at repeated readings of The Absinthe Donuts Story or Tucker Tries Buttsex.

Thing is, he just seemed tired and hungover. And, while I can sympathize, having been in that position a few times myself, I had expected someone larger than life. I expected belligerent drunkedness and general obnoxiousness. Instead, there was just this guy sitting there, looking like he was bored out of his mind.

Of course, you can't fault the guy for not living up to my inflated expectations - after all, he's the biggest propenent of the "this above all: to thine own self be true /tho' thine own self be an alcoholic a-raging" philsophy. You can't force the kind of things he has in his stories: getting drunk and doing stupid things have to happen of its own accord. If he was just "performing" to portray the "Tucker Max image" for his adoring fans, he would have been as much of a poser as the douches he mocks.

Even so, I wish I had had the opportunity to see the man at his A-game. Maybe someday.

Fuck it.

Fuck. Shit. Cock. Balls.

2006-10-25T16:39:00.000-05:00

According to a recent Associated Press poll, Americans are exposed to more profanity than they were 20 years ago. Also, according to this survey, some prude fucking dickburglers actually give a fuck.

Irene Kramer, a grandmother in Scranton, Pa., gets her ears singed when passing by the high school near her home.

“What we hear, it’s gross,” says Kramer, 67. "I tell them, 'I have a dictionary and a Roget's Thesaurus, and I don't see any of those words in there!' I don't understand why these parents allow it."

The price is wrong, bitch - but you probably didn't bother to actually look it up. However, it might be a recent addition. I mean, do you have any idea how hard I tried as a child to find a dictionary definition of the word “fuck”? Or even “damn”? Seriously, it was like a fucking puritanical conspiracy to keep eager young children, keen on expanding their vocabulary and refining their proper grammatical usage, from an integral segment of the language. I mean, talk about stifling a child's natural curiosity - I fucking guarantee that there are more 10-year-old boys looking up “tits” than “onomatopoeia.”

And even if that weren't the case, language isn't bounded by a motherfucking dictionary. It's a living thing that evolves over time. As Wittgenstein said, you can't give a sign in the wrong sense - if the sign is understood by the listener, it is part of the language. This means that newly invented profanity (i.e. “cuntbubble”) can be more linguistically relevant than a more established, but obscure, sign (i.e. "tachydidaxy").

But she goes on:

For Kramer, a major culprit is television. "Do I have to be insulted right there in my own home?" she asks. "I'm not going to pay $54 a month for cable and listen to that garbage." And yet she feels it's not a lost cause. "If people say 'Look, I don't want you talking that way,' if they demand it, it's going to have to change."

It's called the fucking market, grandma, and Adam Smith is giving you the invisible finger. First of all, I guarantee you're still a fucking cable-subscriber because you don't want to spend your retirement years without Matlock reruns, ordering useless shit off of QVC, and random second-rate movies from the Forties on Turner Classic Movies that remind you of a golden past before your tits migrated below your goddamn knees. Nobody, least of all you, is going to change a fucking thing. In reality, you're going to take it in the ass and continue to pay the cable company $54 a month. Sure, you may rant about it to your sewing circle, but angry ranting doesn't change a goddamn thing, and I know that better than anyone. If it did, we'd have the homeless fighting to the death in gladatorial battles for our amusement and Hugh Hefner's birthday would be a federal holiday.

The point is, there's a market for G-rated shit and "family" entertainment, and cable has certainly catered to serving it. That's why if you want to see a cartoon with a character who says things like, “Shut up Kyle! Shut your goddamn Jew mouth! You're the reason that there's war in the Middle East!” you turn to Comedy Central, and not the motherfucking Disney Channel. And thanks to the market, you're more than welcome to watch Mrs. Cleaver and Lassie save the fucking orphanage. Just shut the fuck up when you flip past shows that them crazy youngsters watch because that's what really brings in the dollars. This will be easier to accept, Mrs. Kramer, if you just repeat after me: “I am not a key demographic. My opinion doesn't matter.” There - isn't that better?

Fuck it.

The End

2006-10-25T16:38:00.000-05:00

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this blog lately, and I’ve come to the sad realization that its days are done. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not a college kid anymore. Hell, I’m not even a law student anymore. I’m a fucking professional (and I don’t mean that I fuck professionally).

The thing is, the person you see on this blog isn’t who I really am. It captured just one aspect of my personality I refer to as my “inner fratboy” – the Peter Pan part of me that didn’t want to grow up and be an adult. Except that instead of running around Neverland wearing tights, the Lost Boys were blackout drunk and hitting on 19-year-old girls at a toga party.

But times change, and my inner fratboy isn’t what he used to be. He grew bored of his “love life” being a string of random, alcohol-fueled hookups, and discovered that there’s something remarkably pleasant about having a girl you actually want to [gasp] talk to in the morning. He realized that there are better occasions to celebrate with a kegstand than “Tuesday.” And even stranger, he realized that there are experiences that he might want to remember himself, rather than having to ask what he did the night before. In other words, “Alcoholism” simply lost its luster as an ideology. At some indiscernible moment, my inner fratboy grew up

If you had asked me a year ago what I thought I would be doing after law school, I’d have said I was going to be clerking for a federal judge, working at the USDOJ, or something along those lines. I figured that my grades alone would guarantee me a sweet fucking job, and that I’d be choosing between multiple offers. Yet there I was, four months after graduation, honors galore on my resume – and unemployed.

I am living proof that grades aren’t everything. Sometime during my third year, I realized is that the reason I wasn’t getting any offers was because I was an arrogant, immature smartass, and I’m pretty fucking sure that it came across in my interviews. Given that there are plenty of highly qualified candidates willing to work, I can understand why they didn’t want hire a guy they thought might get wasted and hit on an important client’s wife. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand this until the recruiting season had come and gone.

I had to do a lot of growing up over the past year before I could finally let my inner fratboy retire. I mean, he’ll always be there for me, doing the things I need him to do: making steaks out of sacred cows, saying insensitive things to sensitive people, telling stories about vile acts of bestiality he’s seen in Mexico, and relishing the craziness of the occasional Guys’ Night Out. But for all intents and purposes, he’s gone. He’s not welcome at a black tie charity ball, in front of a client, or any other place where my inner fratboy really needs to grab an inner beer, sit in front of my inner Xbox, and just shut the fuck up.

In reality, my days of debauchery have been over for more than a year now – writing this blog was my inner fratboy’s last holdout. I haven’t had a new drinking story for nearly a year. This, of course, makes sense, since I just plain don’t drink like I used to. And while I don’t regret my years of shameless womanizing, I was surprised to find myself actually being happy in a real “long-term relationship.”

But the strangest thing of all is that I don’t miss my inner fratboy – not really, anyway. I mean, I’m going to miss reckless, self-destructive behavior like I miss playing with G.I. Joes in elementary school: something to remember fondly, but something that I ultimately grew out of and moved on. My poster of John Belushi now languishes in the basement next to Cobra Commander, symbols of eras gone by.

After all, I’ll always have Paris. And by “Paris” I mean how a random Monday night bar crawl could lead to me convincing two drunk sorority girls to make out – and then having a three-way kiss with them. Or stumbling down the street with a friend, convinced that everyone wants to hear us sing Willie Nelson songs at the top of our lungs. Or… you get the idea. The point is, my college (I include law school) “glory days” have been relegated to nostalgia – not lifestyle.

Now, the time has come to turn my energy towards the future. I landed an incredible job that will give me the chance to really prove myself, doing exactly the sort of things I want to do. The blog helped me get a book deal which I hope will be the springboard for many literary endeavors to come. I have a wonderful girl to call my own – someone who saw the person that I could be and always wanted to be – someone who believed in me, and who helped me finally grow up and become that person. All I can really say is that life is good.

I used to dread the idea of growing up and becoming a responsible adult – a “real person,” not a student. I think that I held on to this blog so tightly out of fear. I have always been terrified of growing up because I thought it meant becoming a boring fucking stiff, watching reruns on Nick-at-Nite and eating oat bran. Quitting the blog meant giving up the last vestiges of my old self – in other words, relinquishing a part of my identity.

And yet, it amazes me how easy it is to finally let it go now. I’ve discovered that growing up and moving on isn’t so bad after all. You still get to have fun as a grown-up – it just gets classier, with cocktail hours replacing frat parties. Instead of weekend roadtrips to hook up with girls in another zip code, I’m looking forward to safaris and cruises with my (eventual) family. Instead of guzzling vodka that comes in a plastic bottle, I’ll be able to sip fine scotch (in moderation, of course). Instead of a loud apartment complex where you can tell the day of the week by the number of beer cans littering the floor of the elevator, I’ll have a house – with a yard. And of course, what I’m looking forward to most of all is being a professional instead of an overgrown, adolescent fuck-up.

I think Tim McGraw’s “My Next Thirty Years” pretty much sums it up:

I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age
The ending of an era and the turning of a page
Now its time to focus in on where I go from here
Lord have mercy on my next thirty years

My next thirty years I’m gonna have some fun
Try to forget about all the crazy things I’ve done
Maybe now I’ve conquered all my adolescent fears
And I’ll do it better in my next thirty years

My next thirty years I’m gonna settle all the scores
Cry a little less, laugh a little more
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear
Figure out just what I’m doing here
In my next thirty years

Oh my next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers
Maybe I’ll remember my next thirty years

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life
Raise a little family and hang out with my wife
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear
Make up for lost time here, in my next thirty years

All good things must come to an end, and so too must Law & Alcoholism. The time has come for me to bid a fond farewell to my inner fratboy as he rides off into the sunset on the back of a Tijuana donkey. I hope y’all have enjoyed reading this blog even half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. And so, for the last time:

Fuck it.

This is Legally Intoxicated, signing off.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

2006-10-25T16:36:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons I decided to go into law (despite my highly marketable philosophy degree) was that I hate the business world. Don’t get me wrong, I like business law – U.C.C. § 2-207 gives me a fucking hard-on – but there’s something about business itself that annoys me at an almost existential level. Mostly, I think it’s the buzzword laden, team-building, motivational bullshit. The only time I want to shift my paradigm is if it’s getting in the way of achieving synergy on the boss’s desk with my proactive secretary. Seriously, fuck that shit. I have very little patience for listening to some over-cheerful douchebag drone on about mission statements when I could actually be doing something “productive.”

I mean, it’s not like a pointless seminar is going to make a fucking difference anyway. If you haven’t bonded with your co-workers during the normal course of interacting, you’re sure as shit not going to do it by putting together a fucking puzzle that symbolizes how ~~each unit in the company must interlock with the others~~ pointless your existence is.

If corporations really want to create loyal and cohesive teams, what they should do is bring in a fraternity pledgemaster to haze the fuck out of their employees. Seriously. Nothing brings a group together like common adversity, and fraternity hazing is about as adverse as you can get without going to boot camp.

You want to build trust? Fuck that stupid fall-backward-and-I’ll-stand-behind-and-catch-you shit. Try tying your dick to a cinderblock and trusting your partner to have left enough string when you drop it. You want people to learn your mission statement? Get a trough full of ice water, pour in salt to lower the freezing temperature, and make your employees strip down to their boxers and partner up. When one guy has to sit in the tub until the other recites your mission statement perfectly, word-for-word, they’ll fucking memorize it like their balls depend on it (since, they sort of do). Believe me, your employees will bond for life when they’re sitting under a table covered by a tarp and can’t leave until they smoke an entire pack of Swisher-Sweets and eat a whole raw onion. They’ll be reminiscing for years to come about that time Jimmy from Accounting ate an entire stick of butter to save them from getting paddled, or the time they bet their Christmas bonus that Helena from Marketing wouldn’t drink a bottle of piss and lost.

Sure, there are probably “laws” against this sort of thing. But if you’re going to be indicted eventually anyway, wouldn’t you rather have a better story to tell in the slammer – that you got busted for making your employees eat goldfish – than for something lame like “embezzlement”? And if you did get indicted, wouldn’t the prosecutor really be indicting the whole corporate system? And if the whole corporate system is guilty, then wouldn’t it really be an indictment of free enterprise in general? I put it to you, my faithful readers – wouldn’t this be an indictment of our entire American society?

Well, I’m not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

[LI walks out humming the Star-Spangled Banner]

Seriously though, I’m not going to sit here. I’m going to go sit at a fucking bar and drink beer with my friends.

Fuck it.

(Hat tip: Bama Girl, for the conversational inspiration)

Fuck. Shit. Cock. Balls.

2006-10-18T18:26:00.000-05:00

According to a recent Associated Press poll, Americans are exposed to more profanity than they were 20 years ago. Also, according to this survey, some prude fucking dickburglers actually give a fuck.

Irene Kramer, a grandmother in Scranton, Pa., gets her ears singed when passing by the high school near her home.

“What we hear, it’s gross,” says Kramer, 67. "I tell them, 'I have a dictionary and a Roget's Thesaurus, and I don't see any of those words in there!' I don't understand why these parents allow it."

For Kramer, a major culprit is television. "Do I have to be insulted right there in my own home?" she asks. "I'm not going to pay $54 a month for cable and listen to that garbage." And yet she feels it's not a lost cause. "If people say 'Look, I don't want you talking that way,' if they demand it, it's going to have to change."

It's called the fucking market, grandma, and Adam Smith is giving you the invisible finger. First of all, I guarantee you're still a fucking cable-subscriber because you don't want to spend your retirement years without Matlock reruns, ordering useless shit off of QVC, and random second-rate movies from the Forties on Turner Classic Movies that remind you of a golden past before your tits migrated below your goddamn knees. Nobody, least of all you, is going to change a fucking thing. In reality, you're going to take it in the ass and continue to pay the cable company $54 a month. Sure, you may rant about it to your sewing circle, but angry ranting doesn't change a goddamn thing, and I know that better than anyone. If it did, we'd have the homeless fighting to the death in gladatorial battles for our amusement and Hugh Hefner's birthday would be a federal holiday.

The point is, there's a market for G-rated shit and "family" entertainment, and cable has certainly catered to serving it. That's why if you want to see a cartoon with a character who says things like, “Shut up Kyle! Shut your goddamn Jew mouth! You're the reason that there's war in the Middle East!” you turn to Comedy Central, and not the motherfucking Disney Channel. And thanks to the market, you're more than welcome to watch Mrs. Cleaver and Lassie save the fucking orphanage. Just shut the fuck up when you flip past shows that them crazy youngsters watch because that's what really brings in the dollars. Repeat after me, lady: “I am not a key demographic.”

Fuck it.

Express Actual Authority to Make an Offer a Third-Party Can't Refuse

2006-09-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

1. Tom Hagen meets with Woltz, a movie producer. Tom states to Woltz that he works for a friend of Johnny Fontaine’s who would give his undying friendship to Woltz if he casts Fontaine in his upcoming film. Because Woltz has notice that Tom is acting for a principal, but has no notice of the principal’s identity, Don Corleone is an partially disclosed principal. REST. (2d) AGENCY § 4. Had Woltz accepted the Don’s offer of undying friendship, and the Don failed to perform, Tom might be personally liable for the breach. REST. (2d) AGENCY § 321.

Woltz investigates the identity of the principal and discovers that it is Don Corleone. The Don is now a fully disclosed principal and Tom drops out of any contract to take place. REST. (2d) AGENCY §§ 4, 320. However, Woltz refuses the Don’s offer. As a result, Tom, acting within the scope of his authority as consigliere, has Woltz’s prize horse decapitated and placed in Woltz’s bed. Tom is not relieved of liability in tort simply because he acts as an agent on behalf of the Don. REST. (2d) AGENCY § 343. However, law-in-action suggests that Woltz will not sue either Tom or the Don because he would likely end up dead.

2. Sollozzo (“the Turk”) meets with Don Corleone to solicit his investment in a narcotics-distribution venture. The Don refuses, but is concerned with the Turk’s involvement with the Tattaglia Family. To this end, the Don sends Luca Brasi to investigate the Turk’s connections with the Tattaglia Family. He instructs Brasi to represent to agents of the Tattaglias that he is dissatisfied with his current employment and might be interested in making a change. Because he is acting within the scope of his express actual authority, any representations to this effect would not violate his duty of loyalty to the Don. REST. (2d) AGENCY § 385, 394 (duty not to act for persons with conflicting interests variable by agreement). The Tattaglia Family does not believe Brasi, instead electing the equitable remedy of sending him to sleep with the fishes.

However, were the Tattaglia Family to rely on this representation and hire Brasi as an enforcer, an agency relationship would have been created between Brasi and the Tattaglia Family. While Brasi could argue that there was no actual consent to act on behalf of the Tattaglia Family, his actions would probably be a “manifestation of consent” upon which the Tattaglia Family could reasonably rely. REST. (2d) AGENCY § 1. As a result, Brasi would be breaching his fiduciary duties to the Tattaglia Family. REST. (2d) AGENCY §§ 394 (duty not to act during period of agency for persons whose interests conflict with the principal), 395 (duty not to disclose confidential information acquired during course of agency relationship). As a result, the Don would be liable to the Tattaglia family for Brasi's actions as the Don's agent. See Food Lion, Inc. v. Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., 194 F.3d 305 (4th Cir. 1999). Hence, the Tattaglias' self-help remedy of attempting to whack the Don would be reasonable, albeit a strategic blunder in the long run.

U.C.C. § 9-109 would be better if it said: "This Article applies to a bunch of shit, but not to certain other shit."

2006-08-25T21:52:00.000-05:00

Amazingly, I've actually been productive today. I've actually spent the past six hours...(gasp)...outlining. Of course, this was ~~possibly~~ ~~probably~~ assuredly caused by the fact that the internet connection at Starbucks sucked more dick than a porn star working overtime. However, since Starbucks is now closed, and I've relocated to the library, my productivity had to come to an end. So now I'd like to share some of what I've learned about Secured Transactions this evening:

1) Despite it's name, "Secured Transactions" has nothing whatsoever to do with hiring a hooker to tie you to the bed. Apparently, it has to do with collateral, or some shit like that.

2) If you take a security interest in someone's firstborn, you should probably get your interest noted on the birth-certificate.

3) "Accounts" under § 9-102(a)(2) are basically the equivalent of a pimp saying "Bitch, where's my money?!?!"

4) If one pimp sells all of the ho's in his stable to another pimp, along with their accounts recievable, cf. U.S. v. Pipkins, 378 F.3d 1281 (11th Cir. 2004) (detailed description of pimping financial affairs), this transaction would be excluded from the scope of Article 9. § 9-109(d)(4).

5) The word "fuck," or any of it's conjugations, is conspicuously absent from, not merely Article 9, but the entire UCC.

6) The following fact pattern will never appear on an exam:

Debtor is a corporation organized under Delaware law. Debtor does business in a Middle Eastern country where selling young women as “harem commodities” is legal. Creditor takes a security interest in "all of Debtors inventory, now held or after-acquired" and properly files a financing statement in Delaware. Does the Thirteenth Amendment void Creditor's interest in any harem-girls owned by Debtor, or does that country's law govern the effect of perfection under § 9-301(2)?

7) I am very ready for this semester to be over.

Fuck it, back to work.

The Tort of Cockblocking

2006-07-25T21:53:00.000-05:00

§ 1.1 - Overview and General Definitions

(a) Cockblocking is defined in the common law as an unlawful interference by the cockblocker with the cockblockee's chances of getting play from the target. The target must be a specific person; merely throwing off the cockblockee's game is insufficient. To analogize from Justice Cardozo, proof of cockblocking in the air, so to speak, will not do. See Martin v. Herzog, 126 N.E. 814, 816 (N.Y. 1920).

(b) The cockblocker is the person who engages in cockblocking, that is, the actual tortfeasor.

(c) The cockblockee is the person who was cockblocked. Only the cockblockee has standing to sue on a claim of cockblocking, although the law of agency may apply under appropriate circumstances.

(d) The target is the person from whom play was sought by the cockblockee.

(e) For the purposes of this treatise, the cockblockee will be assumed to be male and the target female; the cockblockee will be assumed to be male or female, depending on the type of cockblocking at issue. However, any actor may be male or female.

§ 1.2 - Play

It is not necessary that the plaintiff would have actually engaged in intercourse with the target; rather, there must only have been a substantial likelihood that the cockblockee would have hooked up. While to be actionable, cockblocking requires something more than a mere kiss, what counts as "play" shall be determined with reference to the local community in which the encounter took place. For example, evidence that the cockblockee would have engaged in a "hot make-out session" may be all that is required (for example, at a high school party), while other times the cockblockee must prove that "dude, she would have totally gone down on me" in others, see, e.g., College.

Note how characterization of the facts underlying "play" alter the claim. For example:

A meets B at a bar and they hit it off. They soon begin making out heavily. C, jealous of her friend, demands that B go home with her. C could potentially argue that she did not "prevent" A from getting play from B because they had already been playing serious tonsil-hockey at the bar. However, A could argue that he would have gotten to third base, had C not interfered and B come home with him. At this point, the court would have to consider questions of proximate cause in deciding on how it ought to characterize the alleged prevented "play."

§ 1.3 - Chances of Getting Play from the Target

The cockblockee's chances of actually getting play from the target is always a question for the trier of fact. Proof may be had by direct or circumstantial evidence. Notwithstanding any statutes or rules of evidence to the contrary, the target's sexual history is almost always relevant to determining the cockblockee's chances; such history may include, but is not limited to the target's preferred "type," the target's "easiness" (including when alcohol is involved), and any prior play from target recieved by the cockblockee.

§ 2.1 - Types of Cockblocking

The law recognizes three types of cockblocking: negligent cockblocking, intentional cockblocking, and malicious cockblocking.

§ 2.2 - Negligent Cockblocking

The cockblocker negligently cockblocks the cockblockee if his conduct poses an unreasonable risk of interfering with the cockblockee's chances of getting play from the target, and that he should have been aware of such risk.

§ 2.21 - Unreasonable Interference

The cockblocker's conduct must pose an unreasonable risk of interfering with the cockblockee's chances of hooking up with the target. What consitutes an unreasonable risk will be weighed relative to the cockblockee's actual chances of getting play from the target. The cockblockee's chances must therefore be measured at the time of the incident. For example, if at the time of the incident, A, the target, is totally wasted and would not have hooked up with B sober, B's chances with A must be measured relative to "drunk A," not "sober A." That A would have chewed his or her arm off upon waking up next to B is not relevant to B's chances. However, that B was "coyote ugly" is relevant to whether the interference was reasonable.

§ 2.22 - Cockblocker's Awareness of the Risk

To be actionable, the cockblocker should have been aware of that risk. Negligent cockblocking does not require a mental state, hence it is not necessary that the cockblocker was actually aware of the risk. Hence, that the cockblocker was too drunk to recognize that B was grinding her ass on A is no defense. Indeed, the degree and obviousness of flirtation between A and B is highly relevant to whether the cockblocker "should have been aware" of the risk his or her conduct posed to B getting play.

§ 2.23 - Conduct of the Cockblocker

Finally, there must have been actual conduct that interfered with the cockblockee's chances of getting play from the target. Acts of ommision are not negligent cockblocking. For example, if B was hitting on A, and C was busy downing shots at the bar, B cannot sue C for failing to be a good wingman and "take one for the team."

§ 2.3 - Intentional Cockblocking

A person commits the tort of intentional cockblocking if, with the intent to prevent the cockblockee from getting play from the target, engages in conduct that prevents the cockblockee from getting play.

§ 2.31 - Intent

The tort of cockblocking incorporates the common law on intent from other intentional torts. As such, a cockblocker may intend to cockblock by having a subjective "purpose in the heart" to cockblock, or may "know with reasonable certainty" that cockblocking will flow from her conduct. Here, severe intoxication may negate intent, if the plaintiff's theory is "knowledge with reasonable certainty." It does not however, negate a subjective "purpose in the heart." Hence, it may be advisable for the plaintiff to plead both negligent and intentional cockblocking, if the cockblocker appeared to be intoxicated.

Further, like other intentional torts, the doctrine of "transferred intent" is applicable to cockblocking. For example:

A, B, and C are approached by D and E. D hits on A while E hits on B. C approves of D, but not E and attempts to ruin E's chances with B. Although E is successful in separating B from the group, A is annoyed by the whole situation and leaves with C. C's intent to cockblock E transfers to E in the same way that missing a punch and hitting an innocent bystander transfers that tortfeasor's unlawful intent.

§ 2.32 - Conduct

Like negligent cockblocking, intentional cockblocking requires actual conduct, rather than acts of ommission. See § 2.23, supra.

§ 2.34 - Affirmative Defenses

(a) Consent of Cockblockee. While this is a rare situation, a person prone to beer goggles may ask his friends to prevent him from hooking up with an unattractive target, or to prevent him from cheating on his girlfriend. Here, the two issues for the trier of fact will be (1) whether the cockblockee actually consented, and (2) whether the conduct within the scope of the consent (i.e., were the cockblocker's standards too high). In cases where the target was questionably the scope of the consent, the trier of fact should consider both the objective attractiveness of the target, the clarity with which the consent was given. Of course, the cockblockee is always free to change his mind, regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed.

(b) Consent of Target. Similar considerations apply as with consent of the cockblockee. However, the trier of fact should be particularly careful to distinguish between cases where the consent to interfere was in force at the time of the conduct, and those where target changed her mind and the cockblocker used the target's prior "consent" as a pretext for her own agenda.

(c) True Competitor. A competitor is a person who cockblocks with the intent of getting play from the target himself. This defense follows from the maxim that "all's fair in love and war." However, in order to be a "true" competitor, the trier of fact must find that he had an equal or greater chance of recieving play from the target than the cockblockee.

§ 2.4 - Malicious Cockblocking

Malicious cockblocking incorporates all of the elements of intentional cockblocking. However, it contains the additional element that the cockblocker "willfully and wontonly" interfered with the cockblockee's chances of getting play. In other words, malicious cockblocking can be thought of as "depraved mind cockblocking," (similar to the mental element in many second-degree murder statutes). Typically, though not necessarily, the malicious cockblocker will be female, who will not be getting any action that night, and so feels compelled to drag her friends into her misery.

Whether intentional cockblocking qualifies as "malicious" is a matter of culpability. Therefore, it will always be a question for the trier of fact.

Malicious cockblocking carries punitive damages.

Contract Law at the Speed of Light

2006-06-25T21:45:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons that I think I’ve done as well as I have in law school is because of my fascination with outlandish hypotheticals. In particular, I love the mental exercise of trying to come up with a fact-pattern to thwart any given rule of law. While these scenarios are often absurd and totally unlikely to come up in the practice of law – or “real life,” for that matter – fucking around with them seems to help me explore the contours of the law, finding the nuances and loopholes, the joints and bendy parts.

Sometimes, however, these just get totally ridiculous. For example, during my first-year contracts classes, I pondered how Einstein’s theory of relativity would affect the statute of frauds. Granted, I am by no means an expert in theoretical physics – hell, I can barely do long division – but I have a layman’s interest in this stuff. Basically, time is reference-frame dependent; as you approach the speed of light, time itself slows down. Since the statute of frauds requires you to have a written contract where performance takes a year or more, this got me wondering: whose reference frame governs a contract?

Let’s say that A hires B to work for him, but doesn’t reduce the agreement to writing. B takes his family on a month-long vacation to a planet a third of a light-year away, traveling at 0.9 times the speed of light. While he’s away, A decides to fire B – can B successfully sue A for lost wages, or will A be able to use the statute of frauds to bar B?

The question depends on whether the courts measure the time for performance using A’s reference frame, or B’s. At that speed, only nine months has passed for B. However, over a year and eight months has passed back on earth, where A’s been twiddling his thumbs. So who wins?

Surprisingly, despite my significant research into the subject-area (read: fucking around on Westlaw), there’s no answer. No court (for obvious reasons) has yet addressed anything even remotely resembling the burning issue of relativistic-speed travel. Also, calculating the time for performance using the Lorenz Transformations would be really fucking complicated.

Fuck it.

Legal Terms for Everyday Use: The "12(b)(6)"

2006-05-25T21:55:00.000-05:00

12(b)(6) - A situation where no matter what you do, you're not getting laid - usually time to abandon ship.

Example:
"Yeah, that girl's a total 12(b)(6). She's not leaving her friends tonight."

Source: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6):

Every defense, in law or fact, to a claim for relief in any pleading, whether a claim, counterclaim, cross-claim, or third-party claim, shall be asserted in the responsive pleading thereto if one is required, except that the following defenses may at the option of the pleader be made by motion: ...
failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted...

Basically, it's a motion that says "even if everything you said in your complaint is true, you're fucked because there's nothing the law can do for you." In other words, you're still not getting any action, no matter how good your game.

“Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.”

2006-04-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

Ah, daytime television, you train wreck, you. So horrible, and yet I cannot look away. And, as it seems, I cannot stop thinking like a lawyer – it’s a fucking involuntary reflex.

Anyway, the case on Judge Mathis was pretty fucking simple. The plaintiff, a 300 lb. girl, hired a fashion designer to create a prom dress for her. The dress wasn’t ready on time, and she didn’t go to her senior prom. Since she didn’t pay for the dress, she sued the fashion designer for the trauma of missing her senior prom. And, of course, all I could think was, “Ok, this is just a question of consequential damages, and it’s a loser.”

Under Article 2, you can get “consequential damages resulting from the seller's breach” for “any loss resulting from general or particular requirements and needs of which the seller at the time of contracting had reason to know and which could not reasonably be prevented by cover or otherwise.” U.C.C. § 2-715. In other words, all the bitch had to do was buy another fucking dress and she could have easily gone to her prom, shared an intoxicated romp in the back of her boyfriend’s parents’ station wagon, and she would have been able to go to the abortion clinic three months later and live happily ever after. And of course, she could have sued for the extra cash she had to spend to get a prom dress on such short notice.* But no, she decided to mitigate her damages by sitting in her bathroom and crying while she freebased a gallon of Rocky Road. This is summary judgment shit, maybe even 12(b)(6)-able (depending on the pleadings). Why the fuck would you let this case get to trial?

Because it’s good TV and your producers choose the cases, that’s why. And, of course, because you’re not actually a “judge” presiding over a “court” – your “jurisdiction” is based on a contract between the parties and the network. And the bored housewives watching your show while they spoon-feed Gerber peas to their precious little poop-factories are going to flip the fucking channel if you start talking about the rule of Hadley v. Baxendale, 156 Eng. Rep. 145 (1854) or citing the Official Commentary to the U.C.C.. Besides, under the Federal Arbitration Act, you’re about as likely to get reversed on appeal as I am to start working at a soup kitchen. See 9 U.S.C. § 10 (really fucking limited grounds for vacating arbitration award).

Fuck it.

----------------------------------------------------------

* - Whether she could have gotten compensated for having to orally pleasure the manager at Dress Barn is an open question.

Some Tax Hypotheticals I Did Not Bring Up in Class

2006-03-25T21:42:00.000-06:00

1) Employer maintains a buisness for the distribution of marijuana. He offers his employees the opportunity to smoke a bowl with him whenever they're in the neighborhood. May the lower-level dealers exclude the fair market value of the marijuana they consume from gross income?

The free marijuana is likely excludable as a "de minimis fringe" under I.R.C. § 132(a)(4). An employee benefit is a "de minimis fringe" if, "after taking into account the frequency with which similar fringes are provided by the employer to the employer's employees," the value of that benefit is "so small as to make accounting for it unreasonable or administratively impracticable." I.R.C. § 132(e)(1).

Generally, the frequency will be determined by reference to how often Employer smokes out each individual employee. Treas. Reg. § 1.132-6(b)(1). However, "where it would be administratively difficult to determine frequency with respect to individual employees," frequency will be determined with regard to how often the employer smokes out his workforce as a whole. Treas. Reg. § 1.132-6(b)(2). Assuming that Employer is high as a motherfucking kite while he provides the fringe benefits, it would be administratively impracticable for him to remember what he did five minutes ago, much less which individual employee he has provided fringes, how many hits they each took, or how often. Of course, the same thing could be said about how often he smokes out his employees as a whole.

Further, the value of the marijuana is "so small as to make accounting for it unreasonable or administratively impractible." I.R.C. § 132(e)(1). Assuming that the average employee smokes between one and three bowls worth of marijuana (or two hits of "really good shit") while watching reruns of Aqua Teen Hunger Force², he is unlikely to have consumed more than the fair market value of a few cups of coffee and a donught. See Treas. Reg. § 1.132-6(e)(1).

2) Employer operates a brothel and a casino-hotel in the state of Nevada. He offers all his employees free time with any unoccupied hooker. What, if any, tax consequences do his employees face, should they choose to cash in on this fringe benefit?

This arrangement could arguably be either a "no-additional-cost service" or a "qualified employee discount." I.R.C. §§ 132(a)(1), 132(a)(2). First, however, we must separate out the employees that work only for the hotel. Both of these exclusions require the employees to be providing their services to Employer in "the ordinary course of [his brothel's] line of business." I.R.C. §§ 132(b)(1), 132(c)(4). For example, the brothel's bra-sorter is in the running, while the casino's blackjack dealer is out of luck.

Whether this benefit is a "no-additional-cost service" for brothel employees really depends on whether a whorehouse counts as an "excess capacity service." Treas. Reg. § 1.132-2(a)(2). If this is to be the case, we must assume that an unoccupied prostitute is analogous to an empty seat on a plane that an airline may travel in for free. See id. Arguably, this is the case since if the prostitute is just sitting there with her thumb up her ass³ instead of entertaining a customer, she's not generating any additional revenue for Employer's business. Further, the service provided can be minimal in terms of additional labor provided - the prostitute can simply lay there. However, § 1.132-2(a)(5)(ii) seems to suggest otherwise. Although the employer can arguably characterize the fringe benefit such that he is simply giving his employees access to otherwise unoccupied bedrooms, and that the hookers are providing an incidental service akin to that provided by airline stewardesses, it is more far more likely that the IRS would characterize fellatio, rather than use of the room as the primary service Employer provides.

However, even if the free whores are not a "no-additional-cost service," it may be a "qualified employee discount." Treas. Reg. § 1.132-2(a)(2). Under this categorization, the employees can exclude 20% of the cost of what Employer charges customers for the services that the prostitutes provide. I.R.C. § 132(c)(1)(B). This amount, of course, may vary from hooker to hooker, and therefore some employees may wish to avail themselves of a less-expensive whore in order to avoid the remaining 80% of their debauchery from being taxed at a higher rate.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Fuck it.

----------------------------------------------------------
¹ - Although I know why I've been on your mom. Hoo-ha!

² - Meatwad make the money, see. Meatwad get the honeys, G.

³ - Or, up a colleague's ass. Whatever.

My Jacket of Sin

2006-03-25T21:37:00.000-06:00

While I was home, my dad asked me to go with him to Saturday morning services at my old synagogue. I went, mainly because it makes him and my grandfather happy - despite the fact that I don't actually "pray" while I'm there, and haven't done so in many years.

Anyway, since (1) I don't pray, and (2) my grandfather would probably get upset if I brought my laptop to synagogue, I needed something to stave off the crushing boredom of services. I therefore turned to reading the Bible.

Now, despite my total lack of belief in the god of my ancestors, I always enjoy reading the Bible. In particular, my two favorite books are Genesis and Leviticus. Genesis is great because I'm kind of a mythology buff and its stories are on par with Homer; my personal favorite is the Jerry Springeresque story of Lot. Leviticus, however, is straight-up statutory law, and let me tell you something: God is a crazy fucking legislator. He's set down everything from the gory details of ritual sacrifice - you take a turtle-dove, twist off its head, drain the blood on the altar, and then place the bird's head on the altar and burn it (Lev. 1:14-15) - to the prohibition against shaving (Lev. 19:27) and the death penalty for sleeping with another man's slave-woman (19:20).

This past Saturday, however, one law in particular caught my attention, because I realized that I was breaking a divine commandment right there as I sat in synagogue. I couldn't believe my eyes. Before me was a bright-line rule: "You shall keep My statutes: ... you may not wear a garment made of two kinds of fiber" (Lev. 19:19). And there I was - sitting there, in a house of the Lord, shamelessly wearing an unholy sportcoat of wool and silk.

I was ashamed. And by "ashamed" I mean "hungry." Because it was almost lunchtime and the service was fucking dragging on and on.

Really though, how can my family expect me to take this religion stuff seriously when its primary authority is full of gems like the sin of mixed-fiber fabrics?

Fuck it.

Sometimes a 50-foot-tall gorilla is just a 50-foot-tall gorilla

2006-03-25T21:35:00.000-06:00

Back at Texas, my honors program (Plan II, for those of y’all who know what the hell that is), required all freshman to take a year-long world literature class. It was supposed to be a great experience – instead of a normal 500-person freshman English class in a huge fucking lecture hall, you were in a 15-person discussion section. Many of the professors teaching these small sections were among the university’s elite, and each of them offered a different reading list based on a different theme. I chose the class on monsters.

I thought it would be the perfect class – it was at 11:00, so I’d actually be able to wake up for it, and we were going to be reading classics like the Oddysey and Frankenstein, and modern shit like A Clockwork Orange and Jurassic Park. We were even going watch movies – King Kong, Godzilla, and Alien.

I didn’t realize that the theme would really be “Whitey is the Source of All Evil.”

Describing my professor as “a bad teacher” would be accurate; describing her as “an insecure, pretentious, affirmative-action case who was off the fucking deep-end” would be even better. Hell, she even told us point-blank that she’d never have gotten her Ph.D. without affirmative action. She’s the kind of person that makes a conscious effort to pronounce every non-English-based name with a Spanish accent – even when the names aren’t fucking Spanish in origin. For example, when we read The Tempest, it wasn’t just “Ariel” for her; no, it was “Ahrrrrrrrrrr—iÉL!” “Ariel,” however, is Hebrew for “lion of God” – Biblical, not Latin. I mean, if you’re going to make a conscious effort to be pretentious, at least get your fucking etymology straight.

Anyway, somehow instead of studying about monsters in literature, I turned out to be studying about “post-hegemonic colonial dialectics,”* or some bullshit like that. I think I must have missed the part of the course description where it said, “We will be studying how every goddamn monster, in every work of literature ever written, somehow represents oppressed minorities.”

I’m not fucking exaggerating either. Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Oddyssey? Represents colonial natives, and how the white oppressor, Odysseus, blinded them. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park – you know the ones with big, pointy teeth and razor-sharp claws that try to eat people? They’re “really” scary because they represent the Other Womyn’s reproductive habits gone awry (because the females start breeding without males). And the monster in Frankenstein – the one made from dead people? He represents the modern black woman’s plight (I have no fucking clue how she made that conceptual leap.) In other words, she was a fucking crackpot.

That was the first time I had ever heard the theory that King Kong is racist. And, to be fair, it was probably the only theory I heard in that class that was at least plausible. As James Pinkerton writes on the Peter Jackson version:

Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.

Fine. If you want to find the metaphor in Kong, at least the elements are there. On the other hand, you can see a metaphor for racism in fucking pretty much anything, for example, my argument that doing laundry is implicitly racist.

Kong is Kong, not because he represents the “big, scary black man chasing after the blonde, white woman”; he’s Kong because he’s a giant fucking gorilla. What next, do the dinosaurs in the movie represent Mexicans? Or here’s one: Toucan Sam must represent Jews because he has a big, brightly-colored nose, and “Froot Loops” just symbolize the round shape of the coins we Hebrews lust after. Fucking hell.

I should really get to Evidence. Fuck it.

* - From what I was able to piece together during the class, this is a fancy way to say “psychotic ultraleftist pseudo-intellectualism”**

** - This is a fancy way to say "a load of fucking bullshit."

Why I Should Be the Next Pope

2006-02-25T21:52:00.000-06:00

As I sit here in Starbucks, slowly getting close to catching up on all the Con Law that I have neglected to read for the past month (mmm... Pass/Fail option), I've realized something very important. Even though I've wanted to be a lawyer since I watched The Devil's Advocate in high school, there might be a more satisfying career choice out there: being the Pope.

First of all, the job security is incredible. Not only are you Pope until you die, you don't even have to be able to fulfill the duties in your job description. You can sit around on a golden throne, mumble incoherently, and look holy. Moreover, you're pretty set on your career path. Fuck having to worry about making partner - you're God's representative on Earth. Unless you plan on running for Jesus, you're pretty much at the top of the food chain.

Besides all that, just think of all the girls you could get as Pope. Sure, you have to take a "vow of celibacy," but that's pretty much a formality, like promising not to bill clients for playing solitaire. I mean, it's not like you can't fool around as Pope - see, e.g., most of the Middle Ages and Renessaince. Fathering illegitimate children was practically expected ~~and I'm pretty good at that~~. Plus, I've heard that chicks dig ~~piety~~ ~~funny hats~~ incalculable wealth and power.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Legally Intocxiated, you're ~~an idiot~~ Jewish. You can't be Pope." However, I don't see that as a serious obstacle. I mean, Jesus was Jewish. So was the first Pope, Peter. I think that I'm in pretty good company. Sure, my ancestors may have killed Christ, but that was an accident. We thought we were just killing Santa Claus.

Further, as far as my qualifications are concerned, I'm an excellent bullshitter. If I was able to convince my high school physics teacher that performing a ritual out of some stupid New Age book was a legitimate scientific experiment for my science fair project, I'll have no problem with all that "God loves you" and "If you repent for your sins, you'll go to heaven" stuff. Moreover, I'm already infallible and have a direct pipeline to God. And I ~~have a doctorate in theology~~ look good in big hats. If that's not enough, I don't know what is.

Fuck it, back to Con Law.

The Honorable Justice Balki Bartokamous

2006-02-25T21:49:00.000-06:00

Professor Althouse's (whom I will be taking a class with in the Fall) discussion about the problems of nominating people to "represent" different groups on the Supreme Court got me thinking. Why should we stop at trying to nominate such broad fucking groups like "women" or "hispanic" or "pygmy"? After all there are plenty of minorites that have never even been considered for the Supreme Court...

- Black, Jewish Women. We've had a few black people on the Court by now, a couple of Jews, and two very lovely ladies. But have we had all of these qualities in a single person? I think not. And I remember meeting a hot, black Jewish girl at my friends' anti-Matzah Ball Party in Dallas. Of course, I had quite a bit to drink, so she may not have been hot/black/Jewish/real. But either way, we have a perfect nominee.

- Dolphins. Almost as intelligent as we are, (and incidentally, delicious with tuna,) nominating a dolphin would be a "first-ever" non-human. Screw women and minorities, at least they've got their fellow Homo sapiens on the Court. The downside to having a dolphin on the court is that it would make oral argument even more taxing than it already is:

Counsel: ...therefore, the statements in question were not "testimonial" within the meaning of Crawford v. Washington, and to support this, I'd like to point out...

Justice EEEEK 'KLIK A A A A 'KLIK: A a a 'klik ch'a a a ch' ch' eeeek a a a a a ch' klick a a?

Counsel: No, your honor. The case before us concerns only a private citizen's statements to an off-duty law enforcement officer, who cannot be said to have been operating in his official capacity.

Justice EEEEK 'KLIK A A A A 'KLIK: Ch' k'k'k a a k'a eeek eeek?

Counsel: Yes, your honor. That would be a relevant difference because it goes to the similarity of the inquiry to the type of ex parte examination that the Confrontation Clause was designed to...

Justice EEEEK 'KLIK A A A A 'KLIK: Eeeeek a a a k'a k'a eeeek ch'k'k'k a a a?

Counsel: I'm sorry, your honor. I did not bring any fish for you today.

- Meposian Immigrants. If the wacky antics of Balki Bartokomous are any indication of this radically unrepresented minority's procilivity for fun, homespun tales and folk wisdom, and a love of delicious sheep eyeballs, the Senate will be sold in no time. I mean, it's not like the Constitution requires Justices to be natural-born citizens. Besides, who wouldn't want to see a dissenting opinion that starts out with "Don't be rediculous, ~~cousin LARRY~~ Justice SOUTER"? Perfect Strangers make perfect justices.

Fuck it.

I see dead people... explicitly acknowledging their wills

2006-02-25T21:40:00.000-06:00

Ok, here's an agument that will probably get laughed out of court:

In Wisconsin, one of the conditions that must be met for a will to be validly executed is that the will "must be signed by two or more witnesses, each of whom signed within a reasonable time after witnessing any of the following:
(a) The signing of the will...
(b) The testator's implicit or explicit acknowledgement of the testator's signature on the will, within the conscious presence of each of the witnesses.
(c) The testator's implicit or explicit acknowledgement of tht will, within the conscious presence of each of the witnesses." Wis. Stats. § 853.03.

However, § 851.035 defines "conscious presence" as "within the range of any of a person's senses" (emphasis added). So what happens if you (1) acknowledge your will in front of one witness, who then signs it, (2) die, (3) come back as a ghost, (4) find someone with a well-developed sixth sense, and explicitly acknowledge your will in front of them, and (5) they sign your will before anyone claims shit under intestacy? Do you just get screwed?

Probably, because the law treats the undead like second-class citizens. It's wrong, and something needs to be done about it. I mean, let's say you get bitten by a vampire - does that mean your shit automatically gets probated? Or, can you name yourself the beneficiary for your own life insurance policy if you anticipate becoming a zombie?

Hell, the law doesn't even acknowledge that the undead are people too, decomposing though they may be. If you prick them, do they not bleed? Well, probably not. Simply because they shuffle along and eat brains, or are invisible, and tend to prey on the living, doesn't mean that they don't have feelings too.

Serously, how do I get off on these tangents? Fuck it.

"Show Me Your Tits!": A Contract Law Analysis

2006-01-25T21:57:00.000-06:00

Professor Seymore Butz, J. Walker School of Law
Professor Oliver Cleauzoff, Ron Jeremy University Law School
69 J. L. & Alc. 1234 (Mardi Gras Symposium Issue)

... It is therefore clear that this transaction is a unilateral contract. We have an offer (e.g. "Show me your tits, woooooo!!!") supported by consideration (beads), and an acceptance that is manifested by performance (that is, baring of the breasts). The question, of course, is whether this transaction falls within the scope of Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. We believe that it does.

Article 2 applies to transactions in goods, with "goods" defined as "all things...which are movable at the time of identification to the contract other than the money in which the price is to be paid...." UCC §§ 2-102, 2-105. Clearly, plastic beads are movable at the time of the contract, but what of boobs? Other than those surgically enhanced yabos, the average bosom will heave up and down, left and right, jiggling and bouncing - oh so delightfully movable. However, regardless of whether sweet sweater-kittens fall within the Article 2 definition of "goods," as flashing is the valuable consideration in exchange for particular beads, they are part and parcel of an Article 2 transaction.

...

Consider the following scenario: A offers a string of expensive "marijuana-leaf" beads to B in exchange for a flash. B accepts and places the beads around her neck, but refuses to perform. What remedies might A pursue?

A has several options. First, he could seek restitution of his beads. This, however, would not be ideal. Although uncommon enough to warrant certain the sight of mammaries, even marijuana-leaf beads fluctuate in value according to time and place. If the lawsuit takes place after Mardi Gras (alternatively, Spring Break), it is highly unlikely that A will be able to exchange his beads for a glimpse of milk globes. Hence, although he will be put back where he was before he had entered into the contract, even the judge cannot order restitution of time. A will have to wait until the next Mardi Gras before his beads regain their value.

However, the same reasons that make restitution unattractive also make specific performance a real possibility. Specific performance is a viable remedy "where the goods are unique or in other proper circumstances." UCC § 2-716(1). This is a case of "other proper circumstances" because, given the gap between breach and suit, A will be unable to "cover" by convincing another drunk girl to drop her shirt for those beads, and may have no other beads special enough to see a quality pair of tatas. Hence, specific performance is the proper alternative, and B must display her melons in all their glory.

One final issue arises, insofar as whether B may be liable for consequential damages. For example, let us say that A can prove that, had B simply rejected his offer, A would have been able to trade those beads and a string of "jumbo beads" to C & D, who would not only flash, but would also make out. Is B liable for causing A to miss out on a lesbianic kiss? Here, the answer turns on whether B had "reason to know" that those marijuana beads would have led to some hot girl-on-girl action. UCC § 2-715(2). Although we would like to say "yes," we do not believe this to be the case. Unless specific circumstances dictate otherwise, it is likely that all B "had reason to know" was that A could have used those beads to induce more nudity. That A found a pair of girls to make out is purely fortuitous...

Doing Laundry is Racist

2006-01-25T21:50:00.000-06:00

After spending the good part of a beautiful afternoon the other day doing laundry, I have come to the realization that the institution of laundry itself is inherently racist and that we, as a society, ought abolish this social evil.

I mean, think about it - what is the fundamental principle of laundry? Why, to separate the "whites" from the "color" loads - in other words segregation! And why, pray tell, must the coloreds be separated from the whites? Because the colors will contaminate the whites by making them "dingy" - because the colors will "bleed" into the whites! In particular, we are supposed to separate "new" items of colored clothing - a clear allusion to individuals who have refused to abandon their ethnic identities and adopt the mores of the mainstream whites - because these will do the most "damage" to the purity of these items.

What kind of message are we sending to society when we do laundry in this fashion? What stereotypes are we perpetrating by distinguishing our loads in this manner? Hell, why don't we just go the whole nine yards and designate certain machines for “colors” - perhaps grouped close together in the center of the laundromat - while the white loads are comfortably spread throughout the rest of the facility?

This oppression must end! Hence I encourage each and every one of you who reads this to lobby your representatives in the government to outlaw the separation of white and color loads. I urge you, in your own practice, to achieve a true American melting-pot, every time you de-stink your stinkables. For only when the red sweatshirt, the black pants, the blue and green t-shirt, and the tighty-whities swim together in the same washing machine, will this country truly live up to its ideals of democracy.

---------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: Since this blog has an occasional tendency to attract people who lack a certain faculty known as "a sense of humor," and it's attendant ability to recognize and and appreciate things like "sarcasm" and "satire," I'll make explicit what this post was about. I was in no way suggesting that we get rid of the institution of laundry (much as I'd love to for reasons of sheer laziness). Nor was I suggesting that the institution of laundry is in fact racist or that those who separate their laundry into loads based on color are consciously engaging in racism. Rather, I was making fun of people who feel the need to find racism everywhere, and in everything. Yes, racism is real, and it’s a terrible when it happens – but come on folks, pick your fucking battles.

Why I should probably be wearing a straightjacket instead of a suit and tie

2006-01-25T21:44:00.000-06:00

So last night I tried to upstage a preacher on the way back from a journal meeting. He was one of those fire-and-brimstone-accept-Jesus-into-your-life-before-you-burn-in-hell fuckers with a bunch of assholes holding up huge signs with bible quotes, standing in front of Memorial Library. I really don't know what got into me - maybe it was the fact that they serve beer at journal meetings - maybe it was nicotine withdrawal angrying up my blood, since I just quit dipping - maybe I was just in a weird mood - but regardless, it happened.

As I passed by, I started preaching in my best televangelist voice:

"Praised be to Thor and His mighty hammer, for He is the Light and the Way. Only Thor can slay the Frost Giants. Only Thor can slay Jormagandr, the Midgard Serpent, and bring Ragnarok to a close.

"Praised be to Thor and His mighty Father Odin, who rides his six-legged steed. Only through Odin shall you enter into the eternal glory of Valhalla, and only if you die in battle. For, without Odin, you'll spend an eternity in Hel.

"In Hel, you will not spend your days in glorious battle, to be resurrected at night. In Hel you will not feast with the Gods. In Hel, you will not fornicate with the Valkyries.

"NO! In Hel, you will be prodded and poked by dwarves! DWARVES and Goblins!..."

You get the picture. I don't think the campus preacher liked me very much.

Fuck it.