Hey, no class tomorrow (today)! That’s right, I only have one class on Wednesdays, and my professor is… out of town, or at a conference, or whatever it is that law professors do when they don’t teach classes. Whatever. That means no class! And THAT means… LRW research project. Whee. Finding statutes and case law on a given topic. Whoopee.
In other news, sometimes judges totally lose their shit writing decisions and it’s flipping hilarious. Read the rest of this entry »
(Normally I wouldn’t do this, but this joke deserves to be shared. Now, I’m going to try to type the accents, but you’ll need to use your imagination. If you can’t do all of the accents, find someone who can and make them read it to you.)
A German, an Australian, an American, and an Irishman are in an airport, all waiting on their flights. They walk into the airport bar at about the same time as each other and sit down in a row at the bar and size each other up for a second while the bartender comes over.
When the bartender has arrived, the German says authoritatively, “I vill have ze Beck’s, ze best of vat Germans do best.”
Next the Australian orders. “I’ll ‘ave a Foster’s. Y’know, Austrahlian fer beer.”
Then it’s the American. “Yeah, gimme a Budweiser, the king of beers.”
When the bartender reaches the Irishman, he says, “Bring me a Diet Coke wit’ lemon.”
The other three men stare at the Irishman as he gets his drink and takes a small sip. Then, looking up at them, he says “What? If you pussies aren’t going to start drinkin’, then neither am I!”
I should stop doing things like this. So in the last week I’ve become aware of a few people at this school who are into tabletop RPGs, and am discussing with a couple of people the possibility of getting into a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign (please don’t make me run it, please please please, I’m really not that good at it…). That part is cool. The problem part is where as soon as I start thinking about playing a game, I start mass-producing characters for it. Right now I’m working on a third, and have a concept for a fourth. Seriously. What the crap.
Those of you who were in the one campaign I did run for a while may remember one of the characters I’m considering playing – I rewrote Rebar as a Camarilla Brujah instead of a Sabbat Toreador. A little less creepy, a little more badass.
Today in LRW, representatives from the two major legal research sites, LexisNexis and Westlaw, came in to show us how to work with their sites. The two sites have the same laws, the same cases, and similar analyses of both. The major difference is which one you like more, so these helpful trainer types are really just here to sell a product.
I think I like Westlaw better. The color scheme is easier to look at. Also their rep is cuter. Redhead. Energetic. But I repeat myself.
What? The sites are roughly equivalent in their functionality. Nonquantifiable factors are important.
If that which does not kill me makes me stronger, I may be quite a bit stronger at the end of this semester. And then again…
From the concurring opinion of Justice Jackson in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), the SCOTUS judgment on Truman’s seizure of the steel mills:
“[Under the Weimar Constitution] the President of [Germany]… was empowered temporarily to suspend any or all personal rights… in 13 years suspension of rights was invoked on more than 250 occasions. Finally, Hitler persuaded President Von Hindenberg to suspend all such rights, and they were never restored.”
Dude. Godwin’d.
Memo – done. And done. And done. And done. I edited that thing more than it even nearly deserved. With a whole nine hours left, too, because I kept the procrastination down to a minimum. Go me. Fun fact: Not that five pages is a whole lot of writing, but when you have to do it in Courier New, double-spaced, with larger-than-normal margins, it’s really not a lot of writing. Now set that five pages as a ceiling, and throw in a few legal citations and a header that kills space to the point of genocide, and I have to put together an objective analysis of a moderately complex issue in about three sentences. Blaaaah.
Saturday I’m calling all of you to inform you of my location. I’ll give you a hint: I’m going to need to find a nautically-themed pashmina afghan this week.
Maybe I should be working on my first LRW memo. My class, apparently, is one of the last ones to have ours due (it’s due Wednesday morning online, while others were due as early as a week ago), so everyone else is moaning about the next steps in the process – such as ego-shattering self-evaluations. Oh goody.
It should be noted that learning how to write a legal memo – a predictive or persuasive analysis of the facts of a pending case – is pretty much the entire point of the first semester of Legal Research and Writing. Learning how to brief past cases is the second semester. LRW is without a doubt both the least exciting and most useful first-year course, as it’s the only source of actual practical learning you get as a 1L.
So here I am, sitting in one of the libraries on campus. (This campus consists of five buildings. Two of them are libraries. One is a fitness center. Just slide that into your headspace.) I’m trying to work, and my room isn’t great for that when it’s not pure reading. Nice bed, nice desk, crappy chair. Whatcha gonna do. Of course, blogging isn’t good for work either. I don’t know why I thought switching to the netbook would make me do less online. But I’ve got a rough outline of my memo planned, now I just need to write it, cite it, and… spite it? Might it? Flight/light/trite/night/sight/right/tight/alight/bright/fright/kite… ninety-seven options and nothing good. Sad.
Thirty-seven hours until this thing’s due, thirty-seven hours to go… you write a blog and check Facebook, thirty-six hours until this thing’s due…
I think I realized that when I read Alex’s post about internet addiction. I mean, why else would I be online at almost 1 AM putting my second post on a blog when
1) I got on to do a few minutes of work before I went to bed
2) I haven’t slept well, and I’m really tired
3) I am a bit sick, so I need the sleep all the more
I suspect the internet of being an independent and parasitic life form that feeds of of human life energies in a process similar to Ssi-Ruuk entechment. Or is that just me?
All Right, I am posting something. Yes, I said in private conversation yesterday that I was going to post something, and I instead sat at my computer and watched random youtube videos, and other things I shouldn’t have been watching.
After all that was done, I sent out a few quick emails. Yeah, go me. On the computer for more than 7 hours, and I get about 1 hour of quality work done. What’s really scary is that there are some people in this world who are, in fact lazier than I am.
Please wish me luck, I expect a call on monday that says “We would like to hire you, Sam.” or something like that. My job would be to sit in front of a computer with a cool headset on, and call people saying “Mrs. Jones, I am calling from {insert security alarm company here}, are you aware that your alarm… oh, what’s that? You are being attacked by 10 baboons? And penguins are raiding your kitchen? Yes, well, the city zoo did have a security breach recently. I will call- what’s that? Kanye West has come to take an award you won in your high school music competition? Yes, Mrs. Jones, I will call a SWAT team…”
So, that’s what my job will be, if they accept me. Again, please wish me luck, because I want to cease to have to yearn for the financial security and the dignity of employment.
