On With the Show.

My moot court competition is this weekend. While other teams get to travel to exciting places like New York, Boston, and New Orleans, by team gets to travel to Santa Clara - a city that is fairly and universally labeled by non-residents as “shitty.”

Sans the crap location, I am looking forward to finally getting on with the competition. Months of practice, arguing, writing, researching, more arguing, more revising, and here we are. Thank fucking goodness.

Next week I will be enjoying the snow and the mountains, wine, whisky, DVDs, and catching up on my readings. Eat your fucking heart out.

Follow the Rules, or Find the Barrel.

My remedies professor is quite often a riot. Regarding giving advice to a former student concerning the availability of punitive damages following a change in the law, my professor told him this:

Did you do discovery as provided by the statute? No? Well, you’re fucked.

With sophistry almost being a graduation requirement, you just have to love the honesty of that answer.

Ego Boost of the Week.

So I'm standing there with a beautiful hefeweizen in my hand, trying to enjoy myself at this 1L birthday party I managed to get invited to. It's in a rather posh part of the city, in a rather posh bar/club, which isn't necessarily my scene, but I try to blend as best I can, look the part as much as possible if for no other reason than to avoid the strange glances of douchebags who can tell I don't really belong. Additionally, since I don't know a shit-ton of 1Ls, I was looking to make conversation with anyone who'd give me the time.

One of the 1Ls I'm familiar with introduces me to her roommate. During the course of introductions, she's telling each of us a little about the other, giving us a good base of knowledge to work with to keep the conversation going. In short order she tells me where he's from, what he does, and how they met.

Then she turns to the roommate and, in a rather sweet sounding tone mind you, says, "___ is the guy all the 1L girls have crushes on."

YES! Victory is mine. She said some other shit about who I am and what I do at school, but what random non-school dude gives a shit about that? I don't think hombre was impressed with my ability to draw the affections of new students though as he didn't even offer to buy me another beer, prick.

Now if I could find an efficient way of overcoming my pesky habit of never talking to women I'm not already on speaking terms with, I might have myself a way to capitalize on this delightful piece of information.

In the mean time, I'm content with knowing there are birds out there that dig guys with awkward confidence and have a penchant for drinking whisky like it's going out of style, which is ironic, because drinking whisky will never go out of style.

Silent Shitter.

So there I am, popping a squat in the bathroom right next to the Career Planning Office. I like to go to either that bathroom or the one next to the Deans' offices for two reasons. One, there is less of a chance of a random student walking in on me when I'm taking care of business, so I'm almost always alone. And two, if anyone is going to have to suffer through the smell of my curveball-calls, I prefer it to be staff and administrative types. Call it pointless and rather inane vindictiveness, but it suits me just fine.

Anyways, I walk in, I don't hear any rustling, so I move to occupy the handicap stall, I like the arm and leg room. Who knows, maybe I'll want to start shadow-boxing practice while I'm on the can, why bet against a badass possibility like that.

After pissing out what was likely the vegetarian soup I had for lunch, I look down and quickly realize the water is abnormally high for this particular bowl (I am rather familiar with that bowl), only a few inches away from the bottom of my legs. I immediately begin to anticipate an unpleasant amount of splashback. Taking this into consideration, I start experimenting with a slight slide and lean-left effect, essentially trying to minimize the collateral damage of having my own piss hitting the back of my tender thighs when my donation-to-the-bowl breaks the surface tension of the water in dramatic style. It's not the most comfortable method I've ever employed, but it's working. However the strange angle I'm trying to pull off is forcing me to strain more than normal. Consequently, I begin to grunt. I'm not much of a grunter. Normally I hold my breath and push, it that was people do in yoga? Anyways, I'm alone, so why not release some tension audibly? Nothing out of hand, but I'm making noise.

As the opening sequence comes to an end, I begin the second portion of the shitting-endeavor, the portion where your performance will decide how fresh you feel for the rest of the day, or until you take your next shower.

Out of nowhere, I start to hear the sound of wiping coming from another stall! Some fucking savage sat there silently as I struggled, grunted, and confronted what was a dangerous shitting situation. This primitive fuck didn't have the decency to at least scuff his shoes on the floor a little bit when I walked in, I know because I was paying attention. When I'm taking a deuce and someone walks in, I immediately move my feet a little bit, enough to make a recognizable sound so as to prevent the bastard who just walked in from trying to open my door. Did I get this common courtesy when I walked in today? No I did not. Fortunately the rude ass did not pause long enough while walking by my stall to catch a glimpse through the door-hinge-crack and realize it was me, we both would have been mortified I'm sure. Thank goodness the individual washed his hands, otherwise I would have reported to security that an ill-mannered ape-like creature was roaming the bathrooms and needed to be escorted from the building posthaste.

Ash Wednesday.

No matter how many years I've now seen it, I still get a crack out of telling at least a couple people, "Hey, you have some crap on your face."

But really, I am fairly surprised to see ash on some of my classmates' foreheads. I have this notion that one significant part of law school is tuning your mind to be relentlessly logical.

So here we are, spending hours upon hours a day reading cases, analyzing lines of reasoning, attacking opinions, challenging ways of thinking. Yet this same attack-dog mentality somehow fails to materialize among these folks when it comes to thinking about what the hell they're doing/believing in. Ash on your forehead tells me you believe the Easter story, it tells me you believe in Zombie Jesus. If this is the case, my faith in your abilities to competently advise a client have just hit the floor. I hope Zombie Jesus bites you in the fucking neck, using the ash on your face as a homing beacon, the irony would slay me.

Another downside to Ash Wednesday is finding out which pretty birds are Catholic. What a bummer. I could have gone for another year and a half of law school simultaneously staring at your bum and trying to understand Bush v. Gore, neither of which required me knowing you subscribe to the Pointy-Hat-Guy-is-the-Vicar-of-Christ religion. Yup, could have gone my whole pervey life without knowing that information.

On a final note, the sun has been down for roughly 2 and a half hours. You can wipe the soot off your face. Failure to do so means you are either ignorant of your own tribalistic ritual, a filthy hippie-esque character, or a low-level douche. Your pick. Go forth and prosper.

Ego Knock of the Week.

A friend that has insider knowledge on The Pogue, he says to me the other night:

She likes you when she's drunk, she likes hooking up with you when you're both drunk. But when she's sober, not so much.

Ouch. Maybe more of a backhanded compliment than a straight-up knock. Still, it does a bloke no good to hear he's not as likeable when the other person is sober.

And it isn't as if I'm in a position where I'm dying for The Pogue to want to date me, because I'm not exactly dying for the idea of dating her. But you know, it's always nice to at least think the other person wants to date you.

Shut up.

Last week in the lounge at my law school, a group of 1Ls got into an argument concerning abortion. Apparently it got rather intense and aggressive sounding.

My only wish is that a 2L or 3L sitting nearby would have leaned over and impolitely said, "Shut the fuck up! You haven't taken Con Law yet, you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, and no on cares to hear about your uneducated opinions!"

I think it would have solved a lot of problems - problem number 1 being that law students too often speak authoritatively about subjects they know relatively little about.

What is this, Bush league boozing?

I stopped in at the local grocery store last Saturday night to find multiple miniature herds of co-eds purchasing their alcoholic beverages for the evening.

As I roamed the ailes seeing one fresh face after the next purchasing their portions of liquid courage, a singular comment ran through my mind: Amateurs!

One lone backwards-cap soul had 4 sixers of various micros in his wee basket. I didn't know whether to congratulate him for rising above the stereotypes concerning fratboys and their beer, or to admonish him for abandoning his roots.

Seriously, who waits/needs to buy their hooch that close to closing time? People who do not plan out their drunk, that's who.

"But wait, what if they drank everything they had during the day and needed to get more?!!1"

Fuck off, they should have anticipated such a conumdrum when they started and acted accordingly. Being a lush is no excuse for being a poor planner.

"Wait, what were you doing in the store during closing time then?"

I was buying pasta asshole, and I had a gallon and a half of whisky waiting for me at home, like a veteran, thankyouverymuch. I like pasta with my whisky, sue me.