Because yelling at the TV just wasn’t enough anymore.
Dec 21st 2006Bull MooseGeneral
I’m outta here for some Clark W. Griswold-like hijinx, no doubt.
There is rumor of hi-speed at my in-laws house, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
So if I don’t chime in before, have a Merry Christmas.
Dec 18th 2006Bull MooseGeneral
There are still a mess-load of folks around here who have no power after our back-to-back windstorms. It sounds like half of my co-workers are out, half aren’t. There was a wait for the showers in the locker room this morning because so many people couldn’t shower at home.
We lost power for all of 30 seconds. The bulk of our damage was that we didn’t have high-speed internet Saturday and I had to replace a half-dozen shingles on the roof. Somehow, we are able to press on.
It sounds like some people won’t have their power on for Christmas. To those people (reading this at work, apparently) I say: I’m willing to lease my powered house for the week we’re gone on Christmas vacation for $2400. That price includes all the light and hot water you can handle.
Dec 15th 2006Bull MooseLaw School
Well, almost. I just need to make it up to school by 5 to drop off my paper.
I’m thinking of waiting to leave work until 4:50 so I can have a Blues Brothers-like chase through the streets in an effort to make the office.
Dec 12th 2006Bull MooseGeneral
Just in case you’ve either never been kicked in the nuts or are female and wonder what being kicked in the nuts feels like, Bull Moose Strikes Back, as a Chriskwanzaka gift to all of my readers, presents that feeling in the form of the complete Star Wars Holiday Special in 10 parts.
Enjoy! (Especially the part where Chewbacca’s father, Itchy(!), has cybersex (!!).)
PART 1:
Continue Reading »
Dec 12th 2006Bull MooseLaw School
I finished exams last night with Intellectual Property. It was my opinion and seemed to be the consensus of the class that it was a tough exam. I feel kind of sorry for anyone who took it who has never taken the patent bar. I’ll be interested to see where I come out on the curve.
The guy sitting next to me finished in about an hour of a 3.5 hour period and just stared at his screen.
Con Law on Saturday was interesting. It was 25 sets of 5 True or False questions, one set of which you could exclude. Consensus was that it was also a tough exam, but I’d say it was middle-of-the- road. I think people feel less comfortable making a definitive answer and not being able to BS for some points. Everyone finished that one in about 60-90 minutes of the allotted 2.5 hours.
Now I have to whip out a 12-18 page paper for Bioethics by Friday and I’ll be done. I’m going to the Squawks-Niners game on Thursday night, though, so I really have to get it done by Wednesday night. Shouldn’t be too big of a problem.
I feel better this morning, but after that exam last night, I was exhausted. All I could think was “Two more years of this routine?”
I thought that if I don’t feel more energized next semester I’m going to be in real trouble. I’m hoping my temporary disheartening was just the effect of being beat up by the hardest semester of school combined with a stressful time at work.
In fact, I’m feeling so run down after this semester that when we just had layoffs at work I was almost disappointed I wasn’t on the list (Yeah, right – I just look like dead weight). I thought between the severance package and stock options I could coast on fumes through the rest of the year, go to school full time and finish early.
No such “luck.”
Dec 12th 2006Bull MooseLife in the Enlightened Blue Archipelago
Well, there goes the last thing the Seattle area did well. Now even their political correctness is half-assed.
Dec 8th 2006Bull MooseGeneral
If a terrorist attacked a mall in Rockford, would anyone notice?
Hey Joe-Bob, is that new debris?
Ah, who the hell can tell? Let’s just turn up the Cheap Trick.
(Rock River + I-90 = Bad News)
Dec 7th 2006Bull MooseGeneral
Another year has passed and I still have the USS ARIZONA on my list of things I must see. How come the Navy constantly sends my wife goes to San Dog and DC all the time for business, but not over to Pearl, where I’d actually want to tag along? Conspiracy against me.
I’m happy to report on this Pearl Harbor Day that I recently saw the old dude with the “Pearl Harbor Survivor” license plate driving around the neighborhood. And by “saw him” I mean he nearly ran me and my dog over while we were jogging the other night.
My grandfather’s passing this year makes me realize how quickly WWII is passing into history. For that matter, I can’t believe we’re down to a handful of WWI vets. A few years ago my Great Grandfather was recognized as the oldest living WWI vet. The fact that he was 107 at the time should have clued me in that they weren’t going to last too much longer.
Anyway, I’d say “never forget,” but some of us are having trouble remembering 9-11-01. A few years back I heard someone, I wish I could remember who, say, “The great thing about America is that we forget and move on; the bad thing about America is that we forget and move on.” I wish we could find a balance.
Dec 7th 2006Bull MooseMovies & Politics
I hadn’t seen Reds in a very long time, and I wondered if my perception of the movie would have changed over the last seven years or so, so I got the beautiful new HD DVD transfer that they put out for the 25th anniversary via Netflix and gave it a look over the last couple of nights.
First of all it’s a testimony to how good that movie is on the level of being just a movie that Warren Beatty was able to make me care about a three-hour story where the characters were all people that I wanted to punch in the throat.
Second, it’s worth watching for someone of my political viewpoint if only encouragement. A lot of the same crap you hear from the left now – there’s no real democracy in America, war is all about profit of the rich, the blood of the workers oils the machinery of capitalism – is the same crap you heard from the left in the 1910’s and the same crap the resonated with the Hollywood left in the early ’80’s when this movie was put out. It’s encouraging to know that no matter how many times the left is wrong, they’ll keep saying the same stuff over and over, so they can be easily ignored. (Though it’s easy to see how a naive person could buy into the pipe dream of a better world through communism in the early 20th Century; I’m not sure what the pipedream of a better world through Islamofacist victory is about.)
I also have to give Beatty a little credit in that he didn’t allow the movie to be a straight out propaganda piece. For instance, there is a great moment in the movie where Jack Reed (Beatty) and Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton) are in post-Revolution Russia having a conversation, and Goldman has realized that communism in the hands of Lenin is worse than the system she left and that it cannot work. Of course, I rather doubt the real Emma Goldman ever came to such a conclusion (at least the “it can’t work” part) and Reed gets the last word, but the doubt is in there none-the-less.
I don’t think that Beatty’s purpose was to make a good movie that points out the constant of the utter ridiculousness of the American leftist intelligentsia throughout the years, but taking it in the context of a 25-year-old movie about events 90 years ago, I think that’s exactly what he did.
Bravo, Mr. Beatty.
Dec 6th 2006Bull MooseLaw School
From a story about the Buchanan – Jennings race:
“We’ve gone from rubberstamp recount to preordained audit, and now with those events behind us, it’s time to get to some forensic testing that’s meaningful, by outside experts,” Jennings lawyer Kendall Coffey said.
I’m going to suggest that in addition to focus areas like Intellectual Property, Environmental Law, Criminal Practice, etc., that the law school add another focus area: Election Stealin’.
I can see the courses: Hanging Chads and Diebold: How to Distract from Recounts that You Lose, Playing the Race and Age Card Post-Election, and Case Study: Florida 2000 – How to Almost Steal an Election While Creating a Myth that the Other Guy Stole It.
They should get on the horn to the Daley family before someone else hires them as professors.
Dec 4th 2006Bull MooseLaw School
I’m into finals prep time, so my blogging will be low grade for the next couple of weeks.
The good news is I’m done with Legal Writing! I am now officially trained in legal writing by the #1 Legal Writing program in the country. So I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask you for fifty bucks for reading this.
Dec 1st 2006Bull MooseLaw School
From the ABA Journal:
In what one expert says is a rising trend, a woman lawyer has sued her law firm for sexual discrimination alleging, among other things, that she was told she needed to spend less time at work and more with her family.
Now there’s a lawsuit you can put on your recruiting materials: We’re so family friendly, we got sued over it. I hope to find a law firm that tells me to go home and spend more time with my kids. I’m not holding my breath.
This is a weird lawsuit. At first glance, I thought someone didn’t make partner and is pissed, but the woman is already a partner, and is suing her own firm. I don’t even want to think about how that works.
Seriously, you made partner, the others told you to take it easy and spend time with your kids. You’re in paradise lady.
The Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan