Its Show Time!

Dress Rehearsal Week sucks! There's not much else to say about it. Not only am I not getting home until midnight every night after 4-5 hours of "dancing" and "singing," but I'm paying more for parking than I have had for the rest of my law school career (I normally never drive to school, but my bus doesn't run that late at night... so now I have to pay for parking all day at school, and then for 5 hours at the St. Paul Student center for rehearsal).

Oh well... at least the show's coming together. I still don't know if it will be as funny as last year (although that is a pretty high bar), but it will be funny.

Damn, I Voted For That Guy

For those fans of The Daily Show (and if you aren't, you really should be), once again a hapless interviewee was made to look like a fool because they didn't know that The Daily Show isn't a real news show ("Ha Ha Ha! Look at the moron who agreed to be interviewed on The Daily Show!"). Unfortunately, their latest "victim"¹ was the sitting Governor of Illinois, who I helped put into office (via my lone vote when I was still an Illinois resident).

For those who didn't see the segment a couple weeks ago, it was about a pharmacist in Suburban Illinois refusing to fill a prescription for "emergency birth control" (the latest euphemism for The Morning After Pill, which itself is a euphemism for "Oh Shit! The condom broke!" or "Oh Shit! We were too fucking stupid to use a condom!"). As part of this segment they interviewed Gov. Rod² Blagojevich (that's pronounced Bluh (rhymes with "Duh" - goy (rhymes with "boy") - uh (rhymes with "uh") - vitch (rhymes with "itch"³)).

When I first saw the skit, I just though the Governor was cool, and had agreed to go on The Daily Show. Nope, turns out the guy didn't know that the show is the fake news.

Here's my question. Why would he admit that he didn't know it was fake? If he pretended that he knew, then he has a good sense of humor, and people (at least "The Young People") would like him (as one quote in the article put it "I thought the governor was hip enough that he would have known that [The Daily Show is a comedy program]"). Now he's a complete tool... a rod, if you will... for being duped by one of the more popular shows on TV.

And I voted for the guy. Crap.

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¹ I have trouble calling them a real victim, because they agreed to be interviewed and didn't see what kind of show they were being interviewed on.
² How can there be a Governor Rod? Doesn't that sound like a male stripper who wanted to sound more sophisticated? "Ladies! Are you ready for a dose of state-level executive privilege! HEEEEEREEEEEEE'S Governor Rod!"
³ Admit it, you thought I was going to say rhymes with "bitch" didn't you. You have a dirty mind.

Two Days 'Til Mental Health

We just had two days off for President's Day (Why? Who cares... we didn't have to go to class!) which we colloquially call "Mental Health Days" (seemingly because we have had to slog through three of the dreariest and coldest months in the continental United States all while reading about the Rule Against Perpetuaties, or in my case Piercing the Corporate Veil, which tends to make you a little peeky).

Now, we're back, and I'm experience a decided "Post-Mental Health Day Let Down." Four days off is awesome, but the first day back SUCKS. Stress will be building over the next few weeks. Here's why:
1) I (along with my fellow "Research Editor") need to start planning this year's Petition for the ickle firsties¹;
2) Last cite check for Law Review is due next Friday... by itself this wouldn't be a huge deal... BUT
3) The TORT musical starts NEXT Thursday - Holy crap! How can that be? That means next week is dress rehearsal week, and reading for class probably won't exist.

Blogging may be sparse.

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¹ Oh yeah, I'm a Research Editor for next year on Law Review, which means I get to help prepare the Petition for getting onto journals for next year. So, if, come what May, you like the topic and are happy with how you did on the petition, you can thank me... if you don't like the topic, then that was the other Research Editor's fault.

"I'm Sorry My Nuts Got In The Way of Your Foot"

Would you ever hear anyone say that?

NO!

So why is the guy who got shot by the Vice President apologizing to the Vice President? I don't understand. Unless he thinks Cheney is going to come back to finish the job.

Lunch Meetings

I rarely go to lunch meetings at school any more. Sure, I can get free pizza two or three times a week if I did, but really there is only so much pizza you can eat before 1) Getting sick of it (this is particularly true of Papa John's, the seemingly-Official Pizza of Student Organizations at the University of Minnesota Law School); and 2) Getting cheese clogged in your aorta. So, I don't go to that many (pretty much just the Student IP group... and that is as much because I'm an officer).

But, on Wednesday there were actually two meetings I wanted to go to... at the same time!
1) The Future of Blogging (or something like that) - Understandably, I had an interest in this topic
2) The Crackpot Economist Arguing that Intellectual Property Should Be Abolished (This was the official title... er, it should have been) - Again, understandably I had some interest in this as well

I decided that the IP talk probably made more sense as it dealt with my future career, not my current hobby. So I got to hear some crack pot - who clearly knew very little about how patents work, and next to nothing about patent law - tell me why, according to "Economics" that we shouldn't have patents. For the most part, he just tried to show why some of the current justifications for IP proctection are not right. He didn't really do very well (in my completely biased opinion), and moreover, he didn't really even try to argue why "abolishing" intellectual property was a good idea (except for "social efficiency"). My honest guess is he got a grant and has been milking it with this BS for several years.

Anyway, long boring story later, my question is, did anyone else at Minnesota go to the Blogging presentation? Especially Bitter Stephanie, Nate (Certain Point of View), Shaheen (Fade to Black), Nick (Generic Heretic), Ivan at Joint Strike Weasel, or the guys at Done as a Society or anyone else at the U who went. How was it? What was the talk about? Anything interesting at all? How was the pizza?

Bad Blogger!

I got yelled at by the head choreographer¹ of the Musical on Monday night for not posting for almost a week (and now it has been a week) because she didn't have enough to do in class (or something along those lines). Being sufficiently chastised, I promised to post soon. Oops! Still haven't posted for two days. Sorry DQ! And then, today Next-Door Jen² told me she needed more to read at work, and that I needed to post more.³

The biggest reason I haven't been posting is because I just haven't really experienced anything that has inspired me to blog about (and that includes Veep shooting a 78-year-old "friend" in the face, as hilarious as it is). I'm too busy because this is my busiest semester ever⁴ and I've been stressed out.

But, in an effort to satisfy DQ, Jen, and my legions of other fans fan, I will post about one thing that struck me as funny. Yesterday, being Valentine's Day, is apparently a big holiday for the Law Students for Choice⁵ so they handed out candy, condoms, and a list of "interesting" facts that are in no way related to Valentine's Day, and certainly not to romance. Here are some of the facts, followed by my immediate reactions to each:
- A Texas Law makes it illegal for woman to own more than six sex toys - [UM Thoughts: Why in the world do you need six sex toys all at the same time? Are they enforcing this law? What about men? Can we have 23 dildos, four butt plugs, three cock rings, two french ticklers, and a partridge in a pear tree, but women have to limit their inventory to only two vibrators, two dildos, and two miscellaneous? How does that square with the Equal Protection Clause? Why do I think about this kind of thing?]
- One in Nine people has an STD - [UM Thoughts: You have a better than 10% chance that your partner has chlamydia or some other genital shrivling disease. Happy Valentine's Day Everybody!]
- It's much easier for women to catch STDs as it is for men - [UM Thoughts: "Honey, I know I just said that there's a 10% chance that I have an STD... but that's balanced by the fact that you are much more likely to catch syphilis from me that I am to catch the clap from you. So do you wanna?"]
- Condoms are the only contraception that help protect against sexually transmitted diseases - [UM Thoughts: Sure, but they can't stop crabs. Hmm. This post seems to have deteriorated into a VD-fest. I can't wait to see what Google searches will find this post. "Unreasonable Man has the clap" or "you'll get crabs at the University of Minnesota Law School." Awesome]

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¹ Who shall hereinafter be known as "the Dancing Queen" or simply DQ, not to be confused with Dairy Queen and their yummy ice-cream treats.... Mmmmm Blizzard.
² So named because she was in my section last year, and her last name is close, alphabetically, to mine, so we sat next to each other in approximately 6,000 classes last year, and she is now my Next Door Neighbor in Corporations.
³ If I were a more responsible person, my advice to Jen would be to focus her attention at work at... oh, I don't know... work. However, I can't say that I've never been known to have a wondering mind at work, so I won't.
⁴ At least it *feels* like my busiest semester ever. But, that could just be because it is my *current* semester... so far, every semester has felt like my busiest (except for last Spring, which didn't seem that busy, for some reason). However, this one really, *really* is my busiest semester.
⁵ The connection apparently being that V Day is romantic, romance leads to sex, sex leads to pregnancy, pregancy leads to abortion, and they want to keep abortions legal... makes sense to me, NOT!

"I Firmly Oppose Dropping Anvils On People"

The lead headline on CNN.com this morning is "Bush Urges End to Cartoon Violence" referring to Bush calling on world governments to put an end to the Muslim violence associated with the Danish Mohammed cartoons. However, this makes it sound like the President has gone a little crazy, and is waging a war on Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote.

"We gotta stop that little bunny from tying the barrels of a shotgun together so that it blows up in Elmer Fudd's face. That's not right. I also oppose the use of rocket skates to catch birds which are fleet of foot.

If we don't stop that kind of violence, the terrorists win."

It reminds me of an article in The Onion last week: TV Blamed For Rise In Formulaic ViolenceWhich included things such as:

Police nationwide are reporting increases in bullet wounds to the shoulder area that have little effect on the victim's ability to use the affected arm, and a rising number of vulnerable blond women being rescued just in the nick of time by a man wielding a two-by-four who was previously thought to be knocked unconscious.

Perhaps CNN should think a little more before writing such a ridiculous headline instead of just throwing it on after the article is written.

Theatre of the (Relatively) Talentless

As I've mentioned, our law school puts on a musical every year.¹ Last year, the show was Wally Wonka and the Lawyer Factor, a spoof on... anyone?, anyone? That's right, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the creepy Gene Wilder version, not the creepy Johnny Depp version). The year before that was Law Wars, which I believe was based on Gandhi, and the year before that was The Wizard of Fritz, based on some movie made by Liza Minelli's mom.

This year, we're doing a West Side Story show... and rehearsal has been going OK, but I don't know how we are going to get the entire show down in a form that is entertaining. Granted, we call ourselves the Theater of the Relatively Talentless (aka T.O.R.T., aren't we clever?), so the expectations shouldn't be too high, but right now I can't even sing through the songs without the sheet music (and I'm just a chorus member with like, three lines), let alone sing and dance without looking like a complete jackass.

I guess what I'm really saying is if you're here in Minnesota, try to make it over to the show on March 2-4, because either we'll pull it off, and the show will be awesome... or we'll fall on our face, and that will be funny too.

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¹ As a complete aside, as I was writing this post, a professor was describing what a blog is to get us to read the Enron Trial Blog for my Corporations class. It was spooky... being told about blogs for class while I was blogging during class.

Resolutions Revisted

It's now February, so this crazy year that is '06 is already 1/12th of the way done, and I want to keep this blog updated on the progress/status of my New Year's Resolutions. So here's how things stand as of today:

1. Get in Shape - I'm actually doing really good on this one. I still go to the gym at least 4 days a week, and usually 5, where I lift a little weight¹ and then kill myself on a torture cardio machine for 45 minutes. Because of this I am noticeably thinner (at least when my shirt's off), and have lost about 10 to 12 pounds.² I'm going to have to revise my weight goals however. I'm still hoping to cut out as much as 40 pounds by summer, but my new goal for March is slightly more realistic... 20 pounds lost instead of 30. That should be doable without having to go on the tapeworm diet.

2. Grades As I mentioned this morning, last semester kicked ass... so I'm hoping to use that momentum and keep 'em up this semester. Except for BA/Corps, the most painful class ever, but I definitely have the potential of doing well in my other classes (I'm hoping Advanced Patents and Statistics for Lawyers will be good grades that won't take too much effort, then I can focus the rest of my study time on Admin. Law and Trademarks, and maybe slide through BA Corps with something decent). Let's hope so.

3. Don't Stress This one I'm not doing so well at. I'm still not in the groove regarding a good reading schedule so I always feel behind. That, and T.O.R.T. seems to swallow up more time than the 3 hours of rehearsal per week that it actually takes. Maybe things will be better in March when the Musical's done.

4. Work-Life Balance Too early to tell on this one. Because I'm stressed out from school, I'm not as nice of a person as I should be in normal life. Hopefully that will be a little better now that my Law Review Note is done, and even better than that after the musical is through.

For this year, 1 and 2 are still the most important. If I can get those done, hopefully the others will fall in line.

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¹ Very little weight... but even wusses gotta start somewhere.
²Since mid-December... not since the beginning of the year... but mid-December is when I started actually exercising.

Best. Semester. Ever.

I finally got my last grade,¹ and this was undoubtedly my best semester of law school. I got a job, I got to do not one, not two, but three citechecks for Law Review, and I got really good grades.² If I can keep this up, I may graduate Magna Cum Laude and possibly even Order of the Coif.³ Fingers Crossed.

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¹ How it takes almost two months to grade a Scantron... I don't know, but whatever.
² I am being sarcastic about one of the three things I listed. Can you guess which one?
³ Not Summa Cum Laude though... you have to have a 4.0 or above for that, which means I'd pretty much have to get a ton of A+'s and the rest A's. Yeah, that won't happen.