Now I think they’re just messing with us.
Jul 31st 2009Bull MooseSports
The Brewers season is saved! Vargas is back!
Like Orson Welles said in Touch of Evil: ” Myah! Vargas!”
Archive for July, 2009
Pictures of What the Bar Exam Looks Like – Exciting!
Jul 31st 2009Bull MooseBar Exam
I wonder how the summer bar exam takers did. Another reason I’m glad I didn’t have to take the summer bar – aside from the obvious one – is that it took place on the three of the hottest days in Seattle in the last 100 years. Of course, the February 2001 bar takers still have the best story – theirs was interrupted by an earthquake and they were locked inside the building.
In any case, I hope the AC broke and the heat made the pass rate nice and low. Who needs the competition?
I noticed that they have pictures of what the exam looks like now at the WSBA site. So if any of you want to see what I was bitching about all last winter here it is: linky. Fancy, ha?
Hot
Jul 29th 2009Bull MooseWeather
It is the rare day in the Puget Sound Region of Washington where it can actually be classified as “hot.” It is likely to hit 100 degrees today. It might be the hottest day ever in Seattle, presumably breaking the record set 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth was a molten ball of lava.
Usually I accuse people from around here of being weather wimps, and usually I’m right to do so. This week has been brutal, though, and mostly because AC isn’t a “necessity” like it has become in most of the country. It’s not quite as bad as it gets in the continental climate regions at the same temperature, though, because the humidity is 25%, not the 99% it would be in Chicago or Atlanta. One thing that we don’t get, though is the guarantee that a thunderstorm is going to roll through at least once during a week of 95 degree days cooling the air for a little while or at least spawning a tornado or softball size hail which bring the sweet relief of death.
I do plan on freaking everyone in the neighborhood out tonight, though by going for a run. People yell at me for running in the heat when it is 85.
An Open Letter to the Milwaukee Brewers
Jul 28th 2009Bull MooseSports
Not off the hook.
Jul 20th 2009Bull MooseObama
Oh no you don’t, Professor Althouse. You don’t get off the hook for your Obama vote that easily. Your reasons should have been obvious to even the most dimwitted individual in October of last year. And you didn’t just not vote for McCain, you voted for Obama. Now you get back out there, and you clean up your mess. Maybe start by filling in that $23 trillion ($23 trillion!) hole.
I’m already getting sick of people like Althouse acting surprised that Obama is racking up $1.8 trillion budgets, pretending that anything he said about the economy – or about anything else – during the campaign made any damn sense at all. He said what he was going to do; it was clear the kind of person he is. I don’t want to hear any reasons “why he lost you” now. Not until he does something that we couldn’t have predicted from what he told us he was going to do.
Why so serious?
Jul 20th 2009Bull MooseLaw School
As at least one of you had noticed, I haven’t written anything in the last 10 days. Part of that is the fact that it is summer, part of it is that I am spending all of my computer time trying to get better at my new career, part of it is that I throw up random links I want my friends to see on Facebook, part of it is that I lost a lot of my source material when I stopped commuting to Seattle three to five times a week.
But I found something nice and irritating to write about: Lawyers who get all uppity over lawyer jokes or even just cracking wise about being lawyers.
By nature I have a pretty self-deprecating sense of humor. I can take things seriously when I need to, but I try not to take myself too seriously. So it was natural when I ended up in a job that is the most made fun of in the world that I embrace the lawyer joke. I hope that when someone tries to tell me a lawyer joke that I can beat them to the punchline.
Maybe you’ve seen the clip of Nancy Grace getting mad about lawyer jokes. She says very self-righteously: “Who are you going to call if your rights are violated?” Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t mean we’re not whores. Especially since there’s always a lawyer on the other side trying to make sure your rights stay violated.
Last Friday I was in court for a motion hearing. I brought our college intern along so he could see a master in action. After the hearing, the courtroom was empty, but the judge had not left the bench. As I was cleaning up and handing my stuff to the intern, the judge asked who he was. I told her and said, “He wants to be a lawyer some day but Bill [my boss] and I are trying to show him the error of his ways.”
I knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon as I said it, but again, it was my self-deprecating instincts kicking in. I don’t know the judge very well, but I suspected she doesn’t have a sense of humor about the legal profession. Sure enough, I got a short lecture about the noble profession of law. I restrained my “jerk-off” hand motion I wanted to make, since I didn’t want to spend the weekend in jail.
The hearing was over, couldn’t we all have just had a short chuckle? Lawyers don’t need to get so defensive about having a sense of humor about the profession. We all know at least one lawyer that those jokes apply to, pretend they are about that one if you must.
What I get more upset about is when I see a lawyer doing something that lends credibility to lawyer jokes. Maybe Nancy Grace and the judge should get more irritated with those lawyers rather than the jokes about them.
M-O-O-N, that Spells Moon
Jul 20th 2009Bull MooseGeneral
Obviously, since it was Year 6 B.B.M., I don’t have any recollection of the Apollo 11 landing. My dad talks about it a lot, though. He was on leave from ROTC Basic training, at my mother’s family’s home – it was a few weeks before they got married. Sounds like it must have been a pretty fun time.But I don’t know… seems like it was kind of an expensive way to get an MTV promo shot.
Is anyone else surprised that Google doesn’t have a special logo today?
The Palin Answer: Follow the Money
Jul 7th 2009Bull MoosePolitics
Everyone has an opinion on why Sarah Palin quit. They range from sensible to bizarre. I think the answer is simple: Like most things, follow the money.
Palin has a half-million dollars in legal debt, and as long as she was in office that number was going to go up as her star status was making her a big target for those who can’t abide a conservative woman. A year or two worth of speaking engagements at $100,000 each not only retires that legal debt, but it also sets her familiy up for a long time.
I think this ends her chances of being the Republican nominee for President, though. I’m not positive about her reasons for leaving early, though I suspect it’s a combination of setting up the Lt. Governor for re-election and there being some truth to the fact that it was hard for her to get anything done. (I’ll admit to waiting for the other shoe to drop over the weekend, but if there was any scandal it would have been sniffed out by now with the entire might of the media looking for anything.) But no matter what the reason, she gave any potential opponents great ammo: “You couldn’t even finish your term, how are you supposed to handle being president,” and they’d have a very good point.
In short, I think she came to a point where she said, “nuts to this, time to cash in.” How many hit pieces like the one in Vanity Fair, how many photoshops of your baby, how much national attention given to the sexuality of your teenage daughters, and how many frivolous ethics charges would it take before you decided that maybe being a millionaire was the better route than a shot at the White House?
This is an important lesson for conservative women and minorities: Time your national stardom carefully. You have one shot before you are crushed by the weight of those who are trying to destroy you for stepping out of line. It’s easy to say that in hindsight Palin should have passed on the VP nod, but don’t forget it was a Black Swan in September that put Obama in the White House.
Have a Kick-Ass Fourth of July!
Jul 4th 2009Bull MoosePatriotism
Apparently, “Have a safe Fourth of July” is the standard holiday greeting around here. I was told that at the grocery store, by someone at the office, by the daycare staff, at another grocery store, at Best Buy, at Costco, and by a client.
Screw the whole “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” debate. I’m insulted by “Have a safe Fourth of July.” Is the Fourth of July something that hurts a lot of people? Maybe it’s a day that people tend to exhibit their stupidity, but people are idiots every day; I never hear anyone telling me to have a safe third of October. Plus, do I look like someone who is going to launch a bottle rocket out of his ass crack when I’m buying diapers and milk?
And Independence Day isn’t about being safe anyway. Did Francis Lightfoot Lee or Button Gwinnett and the 54 other signers of the Declaration of Independence play it safe? No, they knew there was a good chance that they’d end up on the end of a hanging rope. Does that mean it’s a good idea to look down a mortar tube when your fireworks fail to launch tonight? No. But having everyone tell me to have a safe Independence Day doesn’t change that.
The next person who wishes me to have a safe Fourth of July is getting back a: “Well you have a kick-ass Fourth. WOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Because that is way more appropriate.
I hope everyone has a kick-ass Fourth. Take a minute today to think about the big risk the signers and supporters of the signers of the Declaration of Independence took. And then blow some stuff up.
