Signing Off But Not Really

Today is my last day of class in law school (provided of course, I do not fail the PC III exam which, let’s face it, is no sure thing). This is it. I’m done. One foot out the door and ready to go off and conquer the world. So it’s a good time to take stock of things in a public forum where I am open to mockery and ridicule. Or worse yet, you could ignore it. Then again, this is going to be rather long-winded, so I won’t blame you for clicking over to Deadspin.

Chris hung up his blogging spurs when he graduated, but I am not going to follow his example. First off, this blog has never really been devoted to law school all that much. It’s been about me. Or more accurately, it’s been one guy’s attempt to stay sane during the pressures of law school and realize that maybe this isn’t all that important. It’s ok to laugh at ourselves and to realize there’s a whole world outside the grounds of this school. I think we lose track of that.

School consumes our lives. We go to school together, we study together, we hang out together. Even when we go out, the conversation always seems to drift to law school. And we’re staring a whole lifetime of this in the face. Only soon we’ll talk about our practice and our trials. Which is cool. You should love what you do, and I do love the law. Maybe not all the time, but I’ve enjoyed my time here. And I do look forward to a lifetime of this. But if I spend all of my days doing nothing but talking about law, I’m going to find a very tall tower and very high-powered gun.

This has been a poor attempt to stay sane. Stop and smell the roses some times. Take a look at our wide world and realize that a lot of it is pretty ridiculous. And that’s the things which make life worth living. And just because I’m (hopefully) graduating next Saturday, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop being interested in UFOs and my fictional album. I’ll always need an outlet like this, if just to make myself laugh. Or just to take the ten minutes to step away from the important things and revel in the trivial. Because the trivial stuff makes life fun.

I would have liked for someone to pick up the void left by Chris, Swanburg, and I and start their own student blog. OK, Swanburg’s still chugging, but he’s off at B-school. I’ve found this to be a rewarding experience, if only to have someone walk up to me before class and tell me they read something on here and they laughed. Or thought I was a moron. Either way, I was happy to help people through in my very small way. I’ve never intentionally taken a shot at anyone, mainly because I know every student here works hard and they don’t deserve some jackass to take potshots at them. You can do anything if you like the people you were with, and I have genuinely enjoyed the company of all of my classmates, my professors, and all of the staff. Especially the staff. You guys rock, and never get enough credit for making this place run and keeping us all sane.

However, this blog has been a burden at times. I’ve felt the need to crank out content, even when I had nothing to say. I did my best, and I hope I was a good read most of the time. I think I know why no one has picked up the student blogger mantle, as we’re told at every turn why one of these things is a bad idea. And I think that’s a shame. I think we are so concerned with scaring off a potential employer who can dig through these archives at the expense of fostering a community. I’d like to think I’ve done that, at least to some degree. It’s always been my goal to make this place a little nicer than how I found it. To give us a small outlet where we could stop being law students for just one second and act like human beings. At the end of the day, being lawyers is something we will do, but it will not define us. I will always need an outlet.

So, after two and half years, my law school career is over. Well, almost. It hasn’t always been fun. Hell, sometimes it’s been awful. But if it would have been easy, then it wouldn’t have been worth doing. And this wasn’t just worth doing, it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I’ve learned so much in the past two and half years, and not just about the law. I, at the risk of being even sappier than I have already been, will treasure each and every one of you. Thanks for sharing this time with me. I hope you enjoyed it. I surely have.

I’ll close this off with a quote from SLC Punk, because it’s my blog and I can do that:

“In the end, I was just another poseur.”

My Fake Album

1 - Go to Wikipedia's random article page
The first article you get is the name of your band

2 - Go to the Random Quotations page
The last four words of the last quote is the album title

3 - Go to Flickr's Interesting photo page
Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover

The results.

My result?
Contour Canal- Religion and fly fishing


We go on tour next week.

Illegal Aliens Attack

People are tired of being lied to! We demand to know what actually happened in Stephenville last week, as the good people who write letters to the editor are not fooled by the US military's alien cover-up.

In case you haven't been keeping track of the alien invasion, some UFO's were spotted in Stephenville two weeks ago because, as anyone who watches South Park would know, aliens dig cows. The military cover up sprang into action by telling us the that they were F-16's. And people should get a life and perhaps should not watch Fire In The Sky for the seventy-third time.

Steve Hudgeons of the Mutual UFO Network was not convinced:

"I think it's a little late ... then there is a comment here about an error. The military isn't supposed to make errors. I think it's just a standard cover up. That is immediately what I am thinking ... some kind of cover up"

Um.... Steve? The military doesn't make errors? Really? The military is government bureaucracy with guns and heavy artillery. Do we suddenly trust the government to not make mistakes?

And I will point out why I don't believe in alien contact... it requires believing in a government conspiracy involving hundreds, even thousands of people. Our government can't even deliver mail right. And they certainly can't keep a secret. The more people required to keep a secret, the less likely that secret will be kept.

We here at Poseur HQ will work tirelessly to get to the bottom of the Stephenville alien attack. We hope friend of the blog and Stephenville resident, Chase, is safe from all sorts of alien probes. I'd be broken up if he got abducted.

Silly Hats Are Functional

Prof PC III made fun of my hat. In fact, he's made fun of it on two separate occasions. He even laughed at me before class one day as I ran to my car. I'm glad to be a source of amusement, and hope it will translate into a passing grade in his class.

The hat looks a little like this:

So let me defend my hat. First off, you lose most of your body heat through the top of your head. It's more important to have a good hat than even a warm jacket. And it's been freezing outside, so having a good warm hat has really come in handy. Secondly, my ears get cold. So ear flaps come in handy. The hat is functional, I swear. It is one damn fine hat.

OK, it is a bit silly looking.

Sign On The Dotted Line

College football recruiting makes me feel sort of dirty. It's a creepy business, and it's all so shady that I'd just rather not think about it. All of those kids who are going to sign with my school are doing so because of a deep love of my alma mater. Right? Right?

Anyway, the NCAA pretty heavily regulates recruiting, but it doesn't do a good job because everyone agrees it is an icky business. And how do you make something as seedy as recruiting not seedy? It's like outlawing jealousy.

Which is why I've always sort of admired Florida' Urban Meyer, who throws himself into the loopholes of recruiting with reckless abandon. Rules against phone calls? No problem. Send a whole bunch of text (now against the rules). Spurned by a guy with questionable academics? No problem. Alert the NCAA to the jump in his ACT scores so no one else can get him. But this is my favorite...

Meyer is now recruiting girlfriends. He found a scholarship in gymnastics to a recruit's girlfriend in the hopes he would follow his true love to school. While it might be against the rules, it is pretty brilliant.

Killing Smurfs

I know I've posted this before, but I really do get a perverse kick out of the Smurf village being bombed into submission. Do not mess with Gargamel or he will bomb you back to the stone age.



I enjoy that WAY too much. Now, if we could only figure out how to wipe out the Snorks.

Download This Post!

I don't download music or movies on the internet. I never really have, but I've never really understood the entertainment industry's hardline stance on it, which mainly meant they were suing their own customers. And they blamed any dip in sales on downloads instead of trying to incorporate the internet into their business model or maybe realizing they've been putting out substandard fare. The MPAA used to claim television was gonna kill the movie industry as well, a now absurd claim.

And the reason I don't believe anything the MPAA says is because of things like this:

The MPAA has said that college students account for more than 40% of the movie industry's losses due to piracy. This week, the Associated Press reported that the association's math was wrong.

The MPAA now says that college student account for about 15% of illegal downloads and the group attributed the higher figure to human error. The MPAA is one of two groups to blame college students for increases in piracy and loss of revenue. The Recording Industry Association of America also has targeted college campuses, claiming they are responsible for much of the peer-to-peer file-sharing that has cut into profits for record companies and artists.

15% is still significant, but I don't even believe that number either. Particularly since "human error" lead to that number more than doubling in their original estimate. Here's a tip to future lobbying efforts: don't lie to us. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to ever regain. Something about crying wolf.

How come music and movies are the only two industries LOSING money on the internet? Doesn't that say more about their business models than the evil consumers ruining their bottom lines?

Nearing the end

7 days of classes and 3 finals left. It's a wierd feeling to be almost done with this place. I feel like one of the walking dead. I'm not happy or euphoric, just exhausted. There's still finals to be taken, a Bar to pass, not to mention all of the studying in the meantime.

But there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. i'm hoping that's not God calling me home. Because it sort of feels like it.

Football, Unemployment, and Hypothermia

I'll be honest, i didn't really care who won the Giants-Packers game yesterday. I guess I went into the game rooting for the Packers, but as things went on, I couldn't really bring myself to care. So when Lawrence Tynes stepped up in overtime to kick a 47-yard field goal, I had to root for him because, in the end, it meant more to him than anyone else.

Kickers are the NFL version of a fungible good. Pretty much every NFL kicker will hit 85 percent of his kicks, while a great kicker will 90 percent. Which, over the course of a season, is one or two extra field goals. A bad kicker will hit 80 percent of his kicks and end up unemployed. The line between being great and bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly is razor thin. So when a kicker misses not one, not two, but THREE crucial kicks in one game, you can bet even money that he won't even be on the team charter home. And that no other team will bother to pick him up.

If Tynes had missed that kick, he would not only be out of a job... his career would essentially be over. Considering the average kicker makes about a half of a million dollars each year, and Tynes probably could continue to toil in anonymity for another four years or so, it's not much of a reach to say the kick was worth about two million dollars to him. And frankly, I'd hate to see a guy lose two million dollars because he couldn't kick a frozen solid football over forty yards in a swirling wind. He could have had one of the worst professional days ever. And I didn't really want to watch a guy's career end on national television. so I'm happy for the guy.

Instead, the big losers of the day are these three girls.


Woo hoo! Frostbite is so much cooler when you make it on TV! Who else thinks these girls are currently in the Green Bay hospital receiving intravenous fluids to recuperate from hypothermia?

Woo Hoo!

Big Trial is over. We lost. This image still conveys my feelings:

I actually slept last night. I forgot how awesome sleep is. I'm actually gonna watch TV tonight. I remember TV being really cool.

See below for the post you missed that i would've written on Monday had Big Trial not ruined my life.

Pretend It Is Monday

On request by a loyal reader who knows of my deep and abiding hatred of the Colts, I shall now laugh with maniacal glee over their defeat this weekend. I’ve been unable to get to this because, well, Big Trial is sort of all-consuming. So pretend I wrote this on Monday.
I hate Bob Irsay, the owner who moved the Colts, with the passion of a thousand burning suns. When asked why, the answer is always the same, “He ruined my childhood.” Which is an exaggeration of course, but when the Colts left town, I was eight years old and I cried like, well, an eight-year old who just had his favorite team stolen in the middle of the night. I still won’t use Mayflower moving trucks. Imagine if the Cowboys moved. Same thing.

Then again, hating Bob Irsay is eminently reasonable. It seems silly to have a grudge against a guy who I never met and isn’t even alive anymore, but sports fandom is pretty silly anyway. Any time I’m feeling blue, I read a particularly savage Sports Illustrated piece from the mid-1980s on Irsay. I swear to God, I am not making any of these quotes up:

Pat Bernstein, the spokesperson for the Mayor of Baltimore William Donald Schaefer: “I don't think you ever get over betrayal like that. The presumption was always that the mayor was dealing with somebody who had some scruples.”

Robert Goldy, an attorney for one of the many coaches Irsay fired: “They [said we] would like the separation to be on a fair, dignified and gentlemanly basis. Their definition of those words is a puzzle to me. Maybe we don't read the same dictionary.”

Bert Jones, the star quarterback: “He lied and he cheated and he was rude and he was crude and he was Bob Irsay. He doesn't have any morals. It's a sad state for the NFL to be associated with him, but beyond that I've removed him from my mind.”

Mike McCormick, a former coach under Irsay: “Those were the two most unpleasant years of my life and I really don't care to comment further on it.”

OK, but those people were all burned by him professionally. Maybe they’re just bitter. How about his family?

Ronald Irsay, his brother: “I don't know how else to say this, but my brother tried to run my father out of business. Bob actually worked to try to destroy his own father. Oh, he's a real sweetheart, all right.”

Harriet Irsay, his wife of 39 years before filing for divorce: “Between his power and his drinking, he just became obnoxious.”

Elaine Irsay, his mother: ''He's a devil on earth, that one. He stole all our money and said goodbye. He don't care for me. I don't even see him for 35 years. My husband, Charles, sent him to college. I made his wedding. Five thousand dollars, it cost us. When my husband got sick and got the heart attack, he [Bob] took advantage. He was no good. He was a bad boy. I don't want to talk about him.''

Thank you, San Diego Chargers. You made my week.

Puppies Are Cute

This is the week of Big Trial. So, like most PC students, I am extraordinarily cranky and sleep-deprived this week. Please do not tap on the glass.

I have to judge on Tuesday, do trial on Wednesday, sit on a jury on Thursday, and then witness for Titanic on Friday. All on top of class and studying for the Bar. I may be a little stressed right now, so proceed with caution. I also am not likely to be updating much this week.

So, take this time to look at some puppies.

Sir Edmund Hillary Was Really Cool

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, died today. I use this as an excuse to link to the Times of London calling the rest of us a bunch of ninnies:

“The mountain is littered with aluminium ladders and thousands of feet of fixed rope,” he wrote. “Deep tracks are beaten up the mountain by dozens of eager feet. Even on Hillary Step near the summit there is usually a choice of three ropes to ascend.”

I think he's calling modern mountain climbers are bunch of sissies. That's right at you, Prof. Contracts. Of course, I'm such a sissy, I don't even climb the big rock at the Slick. Heck, I get dizzy just going to third floor of the BLS. Heights are bad. It's not that heights frighten me, it's falling from them that scares me.

Beauty Queens Go Bad

Law Student Traumatized? Really, how about the ex-boyfriend?

"I mean she has never had a problem with the law," her mother, Valerie Fulbright, said. "This whole ordeal has been traumatizing for her."

Police believe 25-year-old Kumari and three accomplices lured former boyfriend 24-year-old Joshua Conway into her home, where they allegedly held him at gunpoint for nearly 10 hours. Conway claims he was bound and tortured while a knife was in his ear.

I mean, talk about a misleading headline. Who cares about the guy bound up for 10 hours with a knife to his ear? There's a former beauty queen and law student who feels upset by the fact her alleged scheme to torture her ex has been uncovered! I feel really bad for her. She must be going through a living hell right now.

Yeesh. How about this for an idea? How about we feel for the trauma of crime victims and not their perpetrators? Because I'm feeling a little difficulty mustering up sympathy for the feelings of someone who could abduct someone by gunpoint. But maybe I'm just too cold-hearted.

Fear the Hat

Don't mind me... LSU fan gushing over his coach, who has been ridiculed all season long as not very good. Well, Miles has a big trophy that says otherwise:

34-6 = The Hat's Overall Record at LSU
19-5 = The Hat's SEC regular season record
15-5 = The Hat's record against Top 25 teams
13-4 = The Hat's record against Top 15 teams
7-3 = The Hat's record against Top 10 teams
3-0 = The Hat's Bowl Record
19-2 = The Hat's Home record
11-1 = The Hat's record in November
11-3 = The Hat's road record
4-1 = The Hat's record after November
2-0 = The Hat's record in BCS Bowls


2 SEC West Titles
1 SEC Championship
1 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

Oh, yeah.... and LSU is the first team to win two BCS titles. Suck it, USC.

Game Day!

I wanted to write a post on hating Ohio State today since today is game day. But honestly, I have no beef with the Buckeyes, even if their mascot is a nut. I like the Sweater Vest even. So you're not gonna hear me say something like there is no such thing as Ohio culture, and since our head coach is from Ohio, he had the good sense to go to school in Michigan and coach at LSU. Because that would be uncalled for. There will also be no references to OSU as "Slowhio" due to their perceived lack of speed. I will also not make fun their immobile quarterback, Todd Boeckmann, who may spend tomorrow night enjoying Louisiana medical care after Glenn Dorsey hits him so hard that he recovers memories from childhood. I also certainly will not make a below the belt cheap shot about Ohio State's 0-for-forever bowl record versus SEC teams.

Because I'm above things like that. May the better team win (READ AS: LSU).

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

The Death Knell

I'm a fan of horror movies. and not just any horror movies, but I also enjoy BAD horror movies. I've seen all three Leprechaun films, okay? So I know there's a certain arc to the death throes of a once-proud franchise. There's the one sequel too many, followed by the misguided cross-over movie, and then, only every once in a blue moon, the comedy. It's kind of sad to watch, but most horror franchise die in some terrible movie with D-list actors and the word "Versus" in the title.

Which, of course, bring me to Alien v. Predator 2. I haven't seen, nor do I really have plans to, but Matt saw it yesterday, prompting the rest of us to pop in the original. And it struck me that this was the one horror movie that deserved a better fate. Mainly because it was always more than just a horror movie. It was an actual movie, with plot and characters and all of that other stuff that so rarely gets used in movies anymore. The famed chest bursting scene doesn't take place until the movie is almost at the one hour mark. You don't see the Alien until about twenty minutes after that, when Harry Dean Stanton is taking one for the team. The Alien is probably only on screen for five minutes total, and that's pushing it. The movie was more about the interaction of seven people stuck in the middle of the nowhere.

But the franchise ends up the same way as Jason, Freddy, the Wolfman, and Dracula. Slumming it in some lame movie slapped together in a weekend which just seems like an excuse to make a video game. That's sort of sad. Good thing this doesn't happen to movies like Casablanca. Though I would like to see Rick take on Atticus Finch.

Tearful Farewells

Well, I'm back in the land of computer access after a blissful holiday spent doing holiday things like Midnight Mass, hanging out with a family full of Davids, and roasting chestnuts and all that.

My mom ruined a perfectly idyllic moment as I was headed to the airport. cut to the scene:

ME: I love you, Mom.
MOM: I love you, David.
ME: I'm not David.

I wasn't upset though. My mom has a husband named David and a child named David. She was just being a good gambler and playing the percentages.