Incoming!

If Orbitz is to be trusted, I should be on the ground in Beantown at 11:06. I might even see you guys at the Kong. 2L year is never gonna know what hit it.

Retention

Last night at dinner my gracious host asked me a legal question. She'd heard on the news about a man who had been living in the canyons near our neighborhood for eighteen years and had just been kicked out. After eighteen years, she asked, isn't there something that protects him from that sort of thing? And I actually knew the answer. I said generally there's a rule that if he lived there long enough and treated the land as his own it became his, but that the doctrine doesn't apply to government-owned land, and since I assume the canyons are some kind of park or preserve then no. For the first time, instead of hemming and hawing about research and overlapping jurisdictions, I actually had the answer to a layperson's legal question! I had not only learned something, but I could remember it later! I had this law shit figured out.

But it took me an hour to remember the words "adverse possession."

History

This is why I love Dinosaur Comics.

If you havent been doing your REQUIRED READING (see sidebar at right) and you haven't seen DC before, don't worry about what the characters are doing in the pictures. It uses static art, so just worry about what the characters are saying. And then go read the archives.

And That's Not Like a Euphemism or Anything

Best of Craigslist: To the guy I gave a skull to.

Man I love San Francisco.

Against Planning: A Vindication

For example, have you ever wondered why you often make commitments that you deeply regret when the moment to fulfill them arrives? We all do this, of course. We agree to babysit the nephews and nieces next month, and we look forward to that obligation even as we jot it in our diary. Then, when it actually comes time to buy the Happy Meals, set up the Barbie playset, hide the bong, ignore the fact that the NBA playoffs are on at one o'clock, we wonder what we were thinking when we said yes. Well, here's what we were thinking: When we said yes we were thinking about babysitting in terms of why instead of how, in terms of causes and consequences instead of execution, and we failed to consider the fact that the detail-free babysitting we were imagining would not be the detail-laden babysitting we would ultimately experience.

From the really excellent Stumbling on Happiness, pp. 105-6.

Sinister Advantages

When I was a kid, my parents gave me a book called The Natural Superiority of the Left Hander. Critics will say that my ego has suffered, or at least been insufferable, ever since. But there may have been something to it.

Snakes! Zombies!

It's probably too late for you to see Snakes on a Plane properly. When I went, in what I assume was an unrelated if entirely appropriate incident, there was a zombie flash mob at the Metreon. Garishly made up youngsters staggered about groaning, their jaws slack and their eyes excitedly scanning the room to see if anyone noticed what a great vacant stare they were affecting.

Roast

I was a big Star Trek fan growing up, but the original was a bit before my time. He's great on Boston Legal though. This Comedy Central roast is trying a bit too hard. This motivational poster someone sent me last week, though, is great.

Shut The Hell Up

I've been sitting around researching places to interview with in the fall, and in the background there's a marathon of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I used to love this show, because the chief inspector's interrogations are thoroughly brilliant. He always gets the bad guys to give themselves away. But now, after a semester of Crim, the show is almost unwatchable. I keep shouting at the suspects. "Just be quiet! No answering questions! Listen to your damn lawyer!"

They never listen.

George Bush Reads The Stranger

August 12: I begin to suspect that God is merely a way of coping with our fundamentally absurd condition, an act of bad faith, a desperate attempt to deny our own responsibility for creating meaning in a disenchanted world by locating it outside ourselves, in a fabricated transcendent will we then refuse to recognize as our own creation -- bastard offspring we confusedly call "father". I relate my epiphany to Karl with the excitement of a man beginning life anew. He says the message is unlikely to resonate with the base.

Diary by Julian Sanchez

Snakes on a Phone

Have Samuel L. Hackson make a personalized phone call to your friends.

Because I Know How Popular Food-Blogging is at Neo Tokyo Times

Roommate (down to one! so sad!) and I are throwing dinner togehter on no notice, so we wind up making Yuppie Chili Dogs. Hot dogs from the counter at the organic grocery store down the street, fancy-pants chili, drunken goat cheese, all wrapped up in fresh San Francisco sourdough. I feel dirty. But they were so good.

Dude

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran and Generally Crazy Fucker has a blog.

Little Miss Sunshine

Go see this movie. It's very good. Steve Carell is funny, and if you're a law student there's a scene involving a police stop that's worth the price of admission alone.

Tea Partay

When I first read The Great Gatsby in tenth grade English class in suburban San Diego, I did not get it at all. Re-reading it part way through 1L year, I did. In other news, this video is pretty funny.

Parasitism

Two friends from college, now a management consultant and a commodities trader, came by to visit earlier this week, and after catching an A's game we met up at my house. Before long we were embroiled in a furious game of Beirut with another guest.

Trader: So Guest, what do you do in the city?
Guest: I do neurobiology research.
Trader: Oh really?
Guest: At a lab down in Stanford.
Me: Wow. Cool.
Consultant: Yeah, you actually do something useful.
Trader: Huh?
Me: You actually contribute to society. We sure don't.
Consultant: Ha-ha. Yeah.
Trader: Hey, I contribute.
Me: No you don't. What do you contribute?
Trader: Sure I do. I contribute liquidity.
Me: Psht. Liquidity.
Consultant: Hell, I contribute Innovative Business Strategies.
Me: Taking Advantage of Untapped Efficiencies?
Consultant: Creating Synergies, Facilitating Free Exchange, Filling Unmet Demand.
Me: Sure, and I Provide A Non-Violent Framework For Adversarial Dispute Resolution.
Trader: Rule of Law. That stuff's important.
Consultant: Important so other people can contribute.
Trader: Even if we don't.
Me: Face it guys, we're all just transaction costs.
...
Guest: So, were you planning on shooting at some point, or what?

Legal Word of the Day: Keistered

Finally, the defendants argue that the court erred in excluding from evidence certain photographs and a display board depicting representative samples of contraband recovered from within the confines of the Washington State Penitentiary and that allegedly were capable of being secreted in an inmate's anal cavity. The defendants concede now, as they did at trial, that the offered items were not necessarily found 'keistered' in any inmate's rectum. They contend, however, that the mere fact that these items are capable of being keistered, as supported by the testimony of their colon rectal specialist, makes them relevant and admissible.

Wetmore v. Gardner, 735 F.Supp 974, 983 (E.D.Wash. 1990).

Victory Donuts

Death March Smeath March. At the end of the second day, the allegedly hard one with an 11 mile stretch and a 3000 foot climb, five other intrepid souls and I figured we were feeling fine, and we should press on the last eight miles and finish in two days instead of three. We got rained on a lot, which was bad, and got lost for a bit, which was worse, but the feeling when we finished was worth everything. I had smuggled through a pack of chocolate covered Donettes from Walgreens, which tasted like victory, only better.

We watched Talladega Nights the next day, mostly because everyone else still on the hike couldn't have seen it yet. You know how competitive litigators can be. And it is awesome. Go see it.

Big Sky

We leave tomorrow morning for the annual firm hike, a three-day trek referred to affectionately by the associates as "The Death March." I was skeptical at first that it could be that hard - these are a bunch of lawyers after all. But then I found out that Founding Partner, the driving force behind the operation, does Ironman competitions. Oh crap. Plus, there are bears. But that doesn't mean I picked the easier of the two routes our group will take. As I keep explaining to in my best Mayor Quimby voice to anyone foolish enough to stray within earshot, ""We do naht do these things because thay ah easy, but rathah because thay ah hahd." Anyway, I've got to get up at 4 tomorrow to fly to Billings, Montana.

So, like, wish me luck.

Nameology

Me: *hands over credit card*
Clerk: Wow, you're got a really great name. Trevor Austin.
Me: Oh, thanks.
Clerk: It sounds like a movie star's name.
Partner: Yeah, is that even your real name? Or is it your porn name?
Me: Actually, close. It's my litigation name.
Partner: Yeah, that's the same kind of thing.
Clerk: *stares*

Karaoke!

Say what you will about the US Attorneys (and my public defender roommate does), but their summers sure know how to party. I spent most of today wishing I was dead. So you know that was a good time. Or can at least infer.