Brief reaction to The Producers

Last night my firm took us to see The Producers at the Kennedy Center. Fortunately, I was accompanied by a person of impeccable taste who could reassure me that my negative reaction was not the result of a general lack of appreciation for musical theater, but instead was justified by the painfully unfunny and borderline offensive production. I walked out feeling as though I'd been the butt of a bad joke . . . where did they go right, the producers of The Producers, such that this stale camp can get rave reviews? It was not as bad as Urban Cowboy: the Musical. That's about all I can say.

Conversion bafflement

Not being a religious person, perhaps I lack the necessary basis for understanding and judging the religious beliefs of others. However, this is utterly baffling to me: the phenomenon of people who convert to a religion for political reasons.

Now I don't mean people who convert solely for political reasons in some cold and calculating way - the atheist who wants to have a chance at electoral success becoming born again, even if it's only superficial. I am thinking of people who are drawn to a particular faith because they agree with the political stances of that church.

I can understand leaving your current faith for one that also subscribes to the important religious dogma and principles you hold, if your present congregation or sect takes a stand you find objectionable (my grandparents quit attending the Episcopal Church when they began ordaining women, for example). But to join a church that has radically different religious beliefs which you do not yourself possess at present but presumably will convince yourself to adopt later, by whatever strange self-hypnosis you can manage, on the basis of sympathy with the church's political stances (abortion, or social justice, for example) is just utterly amazing to me.

Are people so adept at changing their religious beliefs that they are more willing to convince themselves that bread turns to flesh, that angels appeared to Mohammed or Joseph Smith, or that a certain tribe is the chosen people than they are willing to reconsider their stances on public policy issues? Does no one else see a fundamental disconnect here? How genuine is the belief in this case and how does one manage to blind one's self to the fact that your are only accepting their dogma because they also provide you with political fellowship?

UPDATE: Waddling Thunder muses about marriage conversions, a similarly puzzling phenomenon.
UPDATE II: Lewis has an example of political conversions from across the pond.

Genetic testing and paternalism

A friend points out this New York Times article on genetic testing. The woman in the article, a PhD candidate in genetics, requested prenatal genetic screening for a variety of defects. However, she still gave birth to a deaf son and her child's condition was not diagnosed for weeks. A simple blood test could have told her of the risk. The reason for not including this test in the battery: deafness is "not considered to be 'severe' or 'life-altering.'" This classification is a direct result of the Deaf community's efforts to not have deafness considered a disease.
 
Other physicians quoted in the article expressed concerns that bringing up genetic testing could make people feel pressured to abort. One said, "I just feel some people are not ready for some of the information."
 
This sort of paternalism is appalling. Doctors should make patients aware that genetic testing for defects is an option, and if the patients request testing doctors absolutely should not withhold knowledge of the existence of tests for some conditions due to politically correct concerns. Even if you would not abort a defective fetus, the knowledge that your child may or does have a certain condition would allow you to make necessary preparations for care. Just because many genetic tests are not covered by insurance does not mean that patients should be deprived of access to them. For some, it might be worth the peace of mind to spend out of pocket. Doctors have a professional responsibility to be aware of new tests and an ethical responsibility to allow patients to choose for themselves whether they want the assurance such tests can provide - even if that might mean they would make decisions based on those test results that doctors might not agree with.
 
In a hurry and hopping mad. More later, perhaps.

Augh.

I had grand plans to get to work early this morning and attack my most recently assigned project, but waiting almost twenty minutes for a train and getting stuck in the door ruined my schedule. I also have a lunch today and a firm event tonight. Will I finish this project before close of business Friday as requested? Maybe.

Pathetic to what power?

While perusing the sidebar at Begging the Question (Milbarge is guest-blogging at Crescat this week), I noticed a link to Pathetic Geek Stories. This comic is probably familiar to long-time readers of The Onion, although a few months ago it disappeared from its customary place next to Red Meat and moved to its own website. The link reminded me that I once sent in my own pathetic geek story submission. I never heard back - evidently my story was too lame even for for PGS. It may have only been the humbling tale of a badly permed third grader in plastic-framed tinted eyeglasses, her entrepreneurial idea to write love letters for pay, a subsequent crush on her best guy friend, and the painful humiliation of acting as a Cyrano for hire for said friend as he wooed the new girl in our class, who was tall, blonde, pretty, and also named Amber, but it was my story, and pathetic enough, I thought, for comic treatment.

You are so retarded.

Random legal info byte: here's how retarded you have to be for the State of Texas to not be allowed to execute you. You must prove by a preponderance that you meet one of the following standards:

Texas Health and Safety Code, Section 591.003(13): "Mental retardation" means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning that is concurrent with deficits in adaptive behavior and originates during the developmental period.

OR

American Associate on Mental Retardation: Mental retardation is a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. This disability originates before age 18.

Five Assumptions Essential to the Application of the Definition:
1. Limitations in present functioning must be considered within the context of community environments typical of the individual's age peers and culture.
2. Valid assessment considers cultural and linguistic diversity as well as differences in communication, sensory, motor, and behavioral factors.
3. Within an individual, limitations often coexist with strengths.
4. An important purpose of describing limitations is to develop a profile of needed supports.
5. With appropriate personalized supports over a sustained period, the life functioning of the person with mental retardation generally will improve.

A price above rubies?

Via Alas, a Blog comes this interesting econometric study on the monetary value of sex and marriage. I'll reserve comment.

Updates

I've added some new links to the sidebar, mostly in the "Other Worthy Links" section. Check them out.
 
Feeling sort of ill - you know what's worse than finding a bug in your gummi bears? Finding half a bug. No, I didn't eat the other half.

Fantastic reading

Light blogging today, since we have a speaker lunch and I have to finish putting together a binder. I put blog breaks on the level of smoke breaks or coffee breaks: concessions to vice that should be minimized.
 
I encourage you to read instead these posts on China Mieville's The Scar and John Holbo's reply. (Use "ok" for the login and password to access the first two links.) Mieville may be the most inventive and original fantasy writer working today and I'm always happy to publicize his work. However, I encourage new readers to check out Perdido Street Station before The Scar.

Sudden death face-off

Who is the worst Volokh Conspiracy visitor:

Cathy Seipp
Cori Dauber AKA Ranting Prof
Clayton Cramer

UPDATE: Will Baude has a more technologically sophisticated version of this poll.

More nonsense

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Ninth Level of Hell - Cocytus!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Extreme
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Extreme

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Turtle pants are also somewhat nifty.

Austin Bramwell is in the New York Times again. But should the conservative movement be led by men wearing pants with monkeys on them?

Don Quixote

On the literature front, yesterday at Monticello I saw Thomas Jefferson's rather well read four volume edition of Don Quixote. This only confirmed my tentative decision to make it my travel book for the Eastern Europe odyssey in August. However, I emailed the fine folks at HarperCollins and found out the the paperback edition of Edith Grossman's new translation does not come out until mid-2005.
Bad news: I have to lug a giant hardcover book around (along with my journal, camera, and guidebook . . . who needs room for clothes?
Good news: thanks to my friend Chris's present, a BN.com gift card, I can now get the much desired book for free!

The dawn of my mid-twenties

After yesterday's pleasant jaunt to TJ's house, some friends and I went to The Melting Pot for fondue and then to Ben and Jerry's for ice cream (we would have ordered dessert at the restaurant, but they evilly confine Bananas Foster to the special couples menu, and I can't eat chocolate fondue). All in all, it was a fine birthday. Many thanks to those who posted or emailed with good birthday wishes!

Ovary rosaries?

Yesterday's article on the latest and most radically simplified form of "natural family planning" was interesting, if disheartening. I appreciate that this adds one more choice to women's birth control menu, but what an underwhelming innovation: a bead counter you use to track your cycle? We're too flighty and stupid for calendars and need a shiny plastic toy? If anything, the fact that this is comparable to diaphragms and condoms just highlights how horribly deficient most methods of birth control are.
 
Ms. Sarah Hempel takes issue with the language used in the article to describe your chances of getting pregnant: "high-risk" and "low-risk," by her reckoning, make pregnancy sound like a disease.  Without entering into the pregnancy: natural or unnatural state? argument, I'll simply point out that the risk being minimized is that of an unwanted pregnancy, which I think almost anyone will acknowledge is undesireable and thus properly characterized as a negative. To refer to days as fertile or non-fertile, besides being deceptive, speaks in the language of the baby-wanting classes: the fertility clinic frequenters, those who are "trying." If you're selling to the aspiring barren wombs of the world, you tailor your language.
 
UPDATE: The Slithery D points out the kerfuffle over Seasonale. Being able to take control of your body in that particular way is pretty cool, but nothing new, as the article points out. The absolutely revolutionary new birth control method is Essure.

Quote of the Day

"Ronald [Coase] said he had gotten tired of antitrust because when the prices went up the judges said it was monopoly, when the prices went down they said it was predatory pricing, and when they stayed the same they said it was tacit collusion."
--William Landes, "The Fire of Truth: A Remembrance of Law and Econ at Chicago", JLE (1981) p. 193

Jerky boys

The attorneys that look at Ms. Bond funny when she thanks the waitstaff (I just murmur occasionally, myself) are spiritual cousins to the confused lawyers at Ms. Fowler's conference, who, reading between the lines, are probably less than respectful to someone garbed as she is.

Nerdling Olympians

I've already admitted that I don't think sports are particularly important, but this article in Slate on the definitions of sport was a decent read anyway. My personal inclination is that we consider things to be sports if they can be traced, through some tortured connection, to physical preparation for battle. I'm willing to debate that, though.

Confession: I was never on the math team like the Slate author, but I was on the UIL literary criticism team, which had less traditional nerd cred and was infinitely more twee.

Blogger toys

Suddenly yesterday afternoon, my Blogger Dashboard acquired about eight zillion new toolbar options. I don't like it, since it seems that the default font is no longer the one I've been using and thus I don't know if my posts look the same without reloading. Grr. Stupid Blogger, giving me more free toys.

Kozinski at play

Found in the course of my antitrust research: Judge Kozinski's opinion in U.S. v. Syufy. He's incorporated over 200 movie titles into the text of the opinion. This is what happens when geniuses with lifetime appointments get bored.

IRAC/CRAC

Heidi does a decent job of IRAC bashing, but I must add one tiny thing about it that aggravated me no end during 1L year: the interaction of IRAC and page limits. Using IRAC entails so much repetitive writing that you have to cram your analysis into less space than you might otherwise have. Perhaps it's good to teach us to be concise, but that goal is at odds with the IRAC method's insistence on redundant content. (Practitioner citations in text instead of footnotes only aggravate this problem. God, I hated FYL.)

Online bake sales for body armor?

Now I don't have time at the moment (or the confidence that it would be work safe) to search FARK, but I distinctly remember a thread organizing donations to purchase body armor for a Farker who was being deployed to Iraq. Can any more regular readers of that dubious forum confirm this? Maybe Eliana is right and any campaign would have been in vain due to the heavy volume of government orders, but I'm not willing to concede the point without some sort of confirmation that the donations were, in the end, not used to purchase body armor.

UPDATE: Spencer at Mediocrity's Co-Pilot has found something to get apoplectic about after all: Eliana!

Color mavens

Is it just me, or do these people sound like they belong on the B ship from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series? I knew there was a secret conspiracy to make me look crappy in beige. (Via Boing Boing)

Walden wants to be free

Eric Eldred, plaintiff in the well-intentioned but ultimately doomed lawsuit against the Mickey Mouse Protection Act (an extension of copyright by Congress that effectively choked off the supply of new public domain works) is in trouble again. This time he was distributing free literature without a permit at the Walden anniversary celebration. Evidently the state's desire for concession fees is more important than the ability of citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights. What possible legitimate concerns about literature distribution could the state have in a situation where people are voluntarily printing out copies of a public domain work?

On an unrelated note, how much longer will I have to wait before someone makes a "Where are They Now?" series about famous Supreme Court plaintiffs? it would be like a cross between VH1 and Court TV. See the awful (and deserved) end of Mr. Miranda! Trace the conversion of Jane Roe from abortion rights plaintiff to pro-life crusader! Find out whatever happened to the star-crossed affair between Mr. Lawrence and, er, that other guy! Surely this would be a hit.

Googlebomb (not whack)

That Timothy Sandefur sure has a crazy girlfriend.

PSA

I heard that there were some Journal people at the party last weekend who were looking for me in the crowd. I don't know if all of you found me, so if you did not, send me an email.

Hey jealousy

Not that I want to be tethered in this particular way, but I just found out that the summer associates at Cruel & Boring get laptops and Blackberries - burn!

Hypothetical

If someone were to steal my credit card information, how much of the resulting false charges would I have to pay? Does this vary from company to company? Does it matter that I didn't subscribe to one of those credit card protection services?

(Don't worry, no one's stolen my card. I need to reserve a hostel room in Prague, though, and they don't have a secure website. Would sending an international fax be better?)

I do not like this Red & Blue, I do not like it in a shoe

Although my 24th birthday is coming up, my mental age is evidently much lower. Jake thought International Kissing Day was "junior prom" stuff, but Mitch Webber at Red & Blue puts it at a strictly third grade level. This guy probably hates mistletoe too. If this is a deliberate attempt to bait me, it has succeeded (if belatedly).

If you're getting enough kisses, after all, there's no reason for a day devoted to them

This is completely wrong. Just because you are getting a lot of something doesn't mean you appreciate it. Mr. Webber may think he's too grown up and sexually fulfilled to need a day for kissing, but I suspect that even he could benefit from a little extra perception of its benefits and pleasures.

Oh Clarence, how do I love thee?

Truly disturbing Supreme Court poetry at De Novo (scroll down for more).

Determine my joy/misery

What should I do for my birthday on Saturday? The plan was to go to Monticello, but that's five hours of driving.

Verdict: Monticello!

Litigation Rotation

I officially rotated from the corporate/tax department to the litigation department two weeks ago, but I only just received my first litigation assignments. Two of them are pro bono matters and one is a research assignment. It's nice to have a few different things to do. I find I am more productive when I can switch off when I get bored with researching one issue. Thursday and Friday of last week were hard because I only had one assignment left, and thus when I got bored with that the alternative was not different work but fooling around. Idle hands, etc.

Query: how many Scrabble defeats will it take before I admit Will Baude is the Scrabble champion?
Answer: at least two more.

Note to self

That nice memo template that the firm has? With the date on top? That date is not automatically updated in MS Word, so if you should, say, revise a memo and send it back to the partner, you might want to manually change the date so it doesn't look like you're sending him/her something from two weeks ago. Just a thought.

Snazzy

Check out the new look at Fly Bottle. At some point this blog is going to have to break out of the Blogger template ghetto.

Does this mean I get to smash people with baseball bats at dinner?

Via The Slithery D, a personality test that claims I am the new Al Capone. I doubt this very much, although I do aspire to lead like O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill.

You are an SRDL--Sober Rational Destructive Leader. This makes you a mob boss. You are the ultimate alpha person and even your friends give you your space. You can't stand whiners, weaklings, schlemiels or schlemozzles. You don't make many jokes, but when you do, others laugh out loud. They must.

People often turn to you for advice, and wisely. You are calm in a crisis, cautious in a tempest, and attuned to even the finest details. Yours is the profile of a smart head for business and a dangerous enemy.

You have a natural knack for fashion and occupy a suit like a matinee idol. Your charisma is striking and without artifice. You are generous, thoughtful, and appreciate life's finer things.

Please don't kick my ass.

Travel books

I need to begin preparations for my eastern European odyssey, which begins August 9th and ends September 3rd. I had planned (for months, ever since I read about it coming out) to take along the new translation of Don Quixote, a book I've never read before but should. However, said tome is still only available in hardcover and is a giant brick, which militates against its being brought on a trip which requires me to live out of this backpack for four weeks.

So: does anyone have any suggestions for alternative reading material? It should be:

-Challenging, if not an acknowledged classic; I read very quickly, and this needs to last me for the entire trip if possible. I tend to read on planes and trains and at night, so typical summer beach books are unsuitable no matter what their page count. No religious texts.
-Available in paperback and preferably small.
-Something I would like. I prefer fiction to non-fiction.

Clerkship judge list triumph

After generous assistance from various amazing people, I have compiled a final list of judges to beg for clerkships. I hope one of the 84 heeds my plea. After some phone calls, I also was able to make sure that all my recommenders' assistants will not destroy me for getting it to them so late. Cross your fingers for me, people, because if I don't get a clerkship after graduation I will be adrift and forlorn.

Is there a lawyer in the house: does anyone know of a good labor law practice in the L.A. area? My friend needs a small amount of legal help.

Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses.

Marginal Revolution points to this article, which claims that rising rates of myopia are the result of nurture, not nature. For those of you who wish to wear spectacles, the desired vision impairment is just a few more years of staring at computer screens away. My vision has not declined since beginning blogging, or even since starting law school (although my optometrist claims that a multiple diopter change during law school is common). I attribute this to getting it over with early by destroying my eyes through overreading by the tender age of eight. They're probably completely egg-shaped by now.

Empty altars everywhere

Will Baude receives a letter from a divorced fellow on the subject of being left at the altar (Will's correspondent would have preferred it). I wholeheartedly agree that the time to leave is before exchanging vows, but the time to do so is not while all are assembled and waiting, but before, so the wedding itself can be delicately cancelled and the groom's agony is not drawn out by forced participation in what was to be a happy gathering (while Miss Manners may think that the party will simply go on with more spice, the party is certainly over for the groom, and I don't think that the gossipy good times of the guests are a deciding factor for him).

I wish to highlight the actual hypothetical at issue, however: this is a choice between abandonment at the altar, before all and sundry, or an immediate annulment or divorce (before any lifestyle changes are made and loans taken out, for example). The latter still seems preferable to me, especially given today's moral norms regarding marriage. Both involve broken promises and heartache, I'd think that most red-blooded American astronauts would be less inclined to want to experience that in a very public setting. Is it better to be looked at with suspicion and possibly moral opprobrium or to be a figure of pity? I hate to be pitied.

Clerkship application rant

So I'm finalizing my judge list for clerkship applications, and boy is this not fun. The reviews on the OCS website are almost all bland positive assessments. The one exception I found was for someone who reviewed a District Judge in Virginia who rejected him. Unfortunately, while rejected applicants are more informative about the judge's personality, they can say little about working for the judge, so it's a tough researching road. I am adding some more district judges to my list due to last semester's grading disappointments (although it appears that my Discrimination professor displeased many people, so at least I did not suffer alone). I don't see how anyone can apply to as many judges (60-80) as we are goaded to and also only apply to judges you know you'd want to work for. I don't know anyone who worked for them and the Greedy Clerks board is no help. Fortunately, my partner mentor person is going to look at my list and give me the lowdown on any of the judges on it that he knows. At least that's some first hand information.

Minor quibble: now we apply after two years' worth of grades instead of one. That's all well and good - larger sample and all that. But the law school curriculum in the first year is relatively standardized. 1L grades are roughly comparable from school to school. 2L year you can go hogwild and stuff your schedule with clinicals and fluffy seminars if you want. How can judges compare applicants in the same way with this immensely variable factor? Augh.

Kissing for kids?

Jake at Overcoming Unmündigkeit emails me with a Kissing Day post but simultaneously calls the blog celebration via poetry "cloying" and "juvenile." He caps this with the assertion that I would also probably think "International Junior Prom Day" was a good idea. I actually didn't go my junior prom. However, Jake comes around in the end and chips in the e.e. cummings poem we saw on Three Years of Hell and Crescat.

Update: this post corrected to remove some misdirected annoyance.

Felicitations

Someone was doing more than just kissing over the long weekend . . . Who's the lucky lady?

Lunch break movie review

Better late than never: my impressions of Spider-Man 2 [minor spoilers].

Over the weekend I caught a showing of Spider-Man 2. The fellow on my left [note: this was not Will Baude] was a compulsive commenter on the obvious ("Wow, could anything else go wrong for [Peter]? His life really sucks!") and the previews were terrible. Aside from those minor problems, the moviegoing experience was pretty decent. Like X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2 is an improvement partially because it got all the backstory and exposition over with and could concentrate on the characters. Mary Jane was far more fleshed out in this one, although the basic feminist insight that she should be permitted to decide for herself whether to accept the risks involved in being Peter's girlfriend seemed to dawn on her rather slowly (and on Peter not at all). Some scenes taken directly from comic panels worked, like the shot of Peter discarding his costume, whereas the extended and unnecessary Uncle Ben sequence was just tedious. In a movie this long, the fat should have been cut.

Good sequences: Spider-Man being crucified on the front of a train car, Peter at the society ball, and the parts with his landlord.

Bad or boring bits: Aunt May on why we need heroes, the aforementioned Uncle Ben in heaven (very Defending Your Life, with all the glowing white background), and the cheesy fusion pseudo-science.

Random aside: that Harry kid has some serious guts. If I were being dangled over a ledge by a totally insane scientist with robot arms who wanted things from me, the first words out of my mouth would not be "let's make a deal." They would include screaming and promising anything he wanted if only he wouldn't kill me.

The main topic of post-movie conversation was whether it is more humiliating for a man to be left at the altar or for the marriage to be immediately annulled. I contend that the former is more pathetic and tars one forever with a relatively rare brand of public and expensive rejection in front of all your loved ones. Divorce or annulment, while traditionally stigmatized, is so commonplace as to have little weight in this day and age.

What would you rather be, fellows: abandoned at the altar or abruptly divorced after the ceremony? Which option is more humiliating?

Kissing Day Round-Up

I hope everyone is having a sweet and lovely Kissing Day. Here's a round-up of today's kissing posts:

One Sided Wonder recounts a sacrilegious kissing story.
Mediocrity's Co-Pilot celebrates with two poems.
Mr. Poon works some kisses into his busy bar prep schedule.
Sheila O'Malley lists her top five kisses.
Ex Parte has a Kissing Day announcement that stresses the innocent aspects of kissing (self link).
Freespace has an original poem.
Crescat provides a Scottish ballad and some hot Neruda.
Singing Loudly posts Anne Sexton's The Kiss.
Waddling Thunder comes up just short of waving a stick and telling us all to get off his lawn.

Shoot me an email if you have a post to add to the parade of kisses.

International Kissing Day is Today!

To A Kiss

Humid seal of soft affections,
Tend'rest pledge of future bliss,
Dearest tie of young connections,
Love's first snow-drop, virgin kiss.
Speaking silence, dumb confession,
Passion's birth, and infants' play,
Dove-like fondness, chaste concession,
Glowing dawn of brighter day.
Sorrowing joy, adieu's last action,
Ling'ring lips, -- no more to join!
What words can ever speak affection
Thrilling and sincere as thine!

-Robert Burns

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth

(While the object of Kissing Day is to appreciate kissing as an end unto itself, I am mindful that kisses can lead to other delicious things.)

Her breath is like honey spiced with cloves,
Her mouth delicious as a ripened mango.
To press kisses on her skin is to taste the lotus,

The deep cave of her navel hides a stone of spices
What pleasure lies beyond, the tongue knows,
But cannot speak of it.

-Rumi

Because some days require stupid funny things

Seeing photos of Saddam Hussein in business casual makes me really uncomfortable. This still made me laugh, though.

Somewhere out there is a South Park-themed Saddam and Satan Photoshop.

Happy Fourth

Lest I be found remiss in my promotional duties, today's kissing poem:

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

- Percy Bysshe Shelley


Spider Man 2 review to come.

De-Lovely

I had originally planned to see De-Lovely this weekend, but the negative reviews have pushed it back to a rental prospect (perhaps a double bill with the Cary Grant version). The song from which the movie takes its title, though, is still very fine and involves kissing:

I feel a sudden urge to sing the kind of ditty that invokes the Spring
So, control your desire to curse while I crucify the verse
This verse I've started seems to me the "Tin Pan-tithesis" of melody
So to spare you all the pain, I'll skip the darn thing and sing the refrain

The night is young, the skies are clear
And if you want to go walkin', dear
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely

I understand the reason why
You're sentimental, 'cause so am I
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely

You can tell at a glance what a swell night this is for romance
You can hear, dear Mother Nature murmuring low "Let yourself go"

So please be sweet, my chickadee
And when I kiss ya, just say to me
"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious,
It's dilemma, it's de limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely"

You can tell at a glance what a swell night this is for romance
You can hear dear Mother Nature murmuring low "Let yourself go"

So please be sweet, my chickadee
And when I kiss ya, just say to me
"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious,
It's dilemma, it's de limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely"


P.S. I'm going to Spider-Man 2 instead. Whee.

Singles

A friend emails:

How would you answer the criticism that Kissing Day is just another way to make terminally single people feel stupid? I ask not only, or even primarily, for myself - think of all of the single-girl-bitching about Valentine's Day we hear every year. Imagine that, twice a year. Horrifying.

A difficult problem, and related to the one Curtis highlighted. There are a variety of possible responses:

-Holidays are not always meant to be celebrated by everyone, so you shouldn't feel left out if you abstain from Kissing Day festivities due to a lack of kissable partners any more so than men feel left out of National Breast Cancer Month (yes, I know men *also* get breast cancer, but go with it) or those of us without a talent for mimicking Johnny Depp felt left out of Talk Like a Pirate Day.
-The non-commercial nature of Kissing Day militates against the expectations that produce some of the single-person backlash on Valentine's Day. It's a day for quiet reflection and quiet smooching.
-This is a kick in the pants for you singles. I'm not telling you to go out and find a Valentine, a true love, a sweetheart. I'm telling you to find someone to kiss! It's an important first step on the road to these other things, perhaps, but it's much more manageable to find someone willing to accept a peck than it is to find someone willing to spend a connotation laden hypercommercialized holiday with. Baby steps, people.

Poor form

I do not recommend stealing kisses on Kissing Day, as not all juries are so lenient.

Never enough kisses

Give me a kiss, add to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million.
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun.

-- Robert Herrick

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us judge all the rumors of the old men
to be worth just one penny!
The suns are able to fall and rise:
When that brief light has fallen for us,
we must sleep a never ending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.
Then, when we have made many thousands,
we will mix them all up so that we don't know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.
..
You ask, Lesbia, how many kissings
of you are enough and to spare for me.
As great as the number of the sands of Lybia
to be found in silphium-bearing Cyrene
between Jove's torrid oracle
and the sacred tomb of legendary Battus;
or as many the stars which in the silence of night
behold the stealthy loves of mankind:
so many kisses to kiss you with
would be enough and spare for love-crazed Catullus,
too many for the inquisitive to be able to count
or bewitch with their evil tongues.

-- Catullus

Kissing Day Conspiracy Theories

Timothy Sandefur apparently has confused my light-hearted efforts to establish Kissing Day in the U.S.A. with that insidious candy-company holiday, Sweetest Day. Let me assure you all of the following:

-I own no stock in greeting card or candy companies, nor do I intend to acquire any.
-I am doing my best make others aware of the day's existence so fewer strange looks or catcalls will be thrown about. We may not need a holiday, but I like excuses to kiss and be kissed.
-While kids today are not ignorant of the pleasures of kissing, I do contend that they are less conscious of kissing as an end unto itself, as opposed to a mere step on the path to more intimate activities. Let us use Kissing Day as a time to remember our best kisses, practice new ones, and renew our appreciation for this age-old pasttime.
-Celebrating Kissing Day can be done in whatever fashion you like. Despite Mr. Sandefur's concerns about propriety, one can celebrate throughout the day with any consenting parties you choose. Kissing is a broad category of action that can include the chaste and friendly cheek kiss as well as the ten hour snog (that's much longer than my record!).
-Don't feel compelled to buy anything! Kisses are free as air, and almost as necessary.

Waking up to a kiss is a fine thing.

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

-Adrienne Rich

Orientations

Patrick Belton's ex-girlfriend has forsaken men. As someone who has been in his shoes, I advocate embracing the optimistic response.

Lapdog redux

Will Baude is in TNR again, this time rebutting the foolish Thomas-and-Scalia-always-agree meme (now in full length form - thanks, Spencer).

Sonnet 38

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, 'My love, my own.'

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Google search weirdness

Lately all these hits have been coming to the site from people Googling Austin Bramwell. You're in the wrong place, folks! This is the home of Amber the small-l libertarian, not Austin the paleoconservative in monkey pants.

Update: the sudden curiosity about HLS's best dressed conservative is explained.

Scalia, you old dog

A tasty Blakely footnote:

"To be sure, JUSTICE BREYER and the other dissenters would forbid those increases of sentence that violate the constitutional principle that tail shall not wag dog. The source of this principle is entirely unclear. Its precise effect, if precise effect it has, is presumably to require that the ratio of sentencing-factor add-on to basic criminal sentence be no greater than the ratio of caudal vertebrae to body in the breed of canine with the longest tail. Or perhaps no greater than the average such ratio for all breeds. Or perhaps the median. Regrettably, Apprendi has prevented full development of this line of jurisprudence."

Sonnet 128

Oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

-William Shakespeare

Countdown to International Kissing Day

As some of you may know, July 6 is National Kissing Day in the U.K. The United States lacks such a holiday. In an effort to call attention to the underrated pleasures of kissing, I am beginning a one-woman crusade to establish Kissing Day in the U.S.A. Every day I will post a song lyric or poem relating to kisses.

How you can participate:
-Post on your blog or tell friends via email that next Tuesday is International Kissing Day. Write a kissing-themed post or share a sweet kissing story.
-Find someone to kiss. You have a whole week, so get cracking!
-Kiss 'em! Kiss now, kiss all week, but definitely kiss next Tuesday.

Foiled Again

Why can't cell phones cause infertility in women? I can't hear people talking on mine half the time. It would be nice if it was good for something.

Dodgy theories and evasive maneuvers

Today the summer associates took a field trip to the Supreme Court. We heard the judgments in Hamdi, Padilla, Rasul, Patane, and Seibert. I confess to being most interested in the two Miranda-related opinions (despite my disappointing performance in Advanced Crim Pro, I maintain an interest in the subject matter - atypical for someone who normally gives up on things she's no good at). Justice Thomas was the only one willing to go along with the government's line in Hamdi, but in the cab on the way back I was still treated to the old saw about Thomas being Scalia's lapdog. In this instance, one of my colleagues sniffed that he probably wrote a confused opinion, since he usually just goes along with what Scalia says. Bah.

We also were told that we'd meet one of the justices. I had envisioned something a little more personal and intimate than what occurred (a Q&A session in a conference room along with another 20 summers from a different firm) and also something a little more informative. The justice couldn't comment on any matter that might come up before them in future cases, wouldn't disclose any juicy Court gossip (Closed Chambers is "nothing like the Court I know," the Justice says. they all get along peachily and sing kumbaya), and was a bit vague when it came to substantive questions. Anything specifically about a case produced an instruction to read an opinion. The Justice thinks the greatest challenge facing young lawyers today is balancing work and home life (how stale). When someone asked what would be the most lasting decision of this Court in the civil rights arena, the Justice dodged the question. We walked out having learned nothing except that the summers from the other firm prepped themselves with much more showy questions about cases. It was less exciting than one could have hoped for.

Regional differences in stolen items

During one of my visits back in Texas, I took note of the fact that condoms were the only item locked up behind glass in the town's supermarket. I thought this was sad for a variety of reasons: that young people there were so ashamed to be sexually active that they would rather shoplift than take condoms to the checkout line, that putting birth control items behind glass where they required a special request to a clerk to obtain probably further discouraged bashful teens, and that all this probably meant more unsafe sex and teen pregnancy (not that this was the store's fault - they are within their rights to minimize shoplifting by locking up frequently stolen items).

Last night I stopped by a drugstore in D.C. to pick up milk and soap. Unfortunately, the latter (in both its bar and liquid forms) was locked up in the aforementioned glass cabinets and I had to track down an employee to let me in to get body wash. He said they have a problem with people stealing soap. Ah, D.C., where the condoms roam free but the soap is under lock and key.

Where is the South?

There was no blogging Friday due to my firm's summer associate outing, but while we rode the bus back to D.C. there were some interesting conversations. (First of all, I revealed that I was a libertarian, which produced much befuddlement and consternation among those who formerly had good opinions of me as a right-thinking and sane individual.) Perhaps more controversial was our discussion the nature and location of "The South." It began with the assertion that D.C. is a Southern city and rolled merrily along from there. Some relevant issues we highlighted in determining whether an area could be included in the South:

-The Mason-Dixon line
-History of secession
-Slave v. free states
-Self-identification by residents as Southern and chosen association with "Southern culture" (whatever this means) and historical narrative
-Percentage of immigrants from other regions and number of generations who have lived in the same place
-Whether entire states had a consistent identification as Southern or whether states could be Southern even if a significant portion of the population rejected Southernness (NoVa, possibly Atlanta)
-Conversely, can regions of non-Southern states be Southern (example given was Kentucky/Indiana border, AKA Kentuckiana)?
-Texas: is it the South?
-How long does one have to live in the South before becoming Southern and how does one become non-Southern after leaving the South?
-What is "The South" defined with respect to? The North? The Mid-Atlantic? The Midwest? The more subdivisions are permitted, the smaller "The South" becomes.

We had some strong sentiments expressed by people from the D.C. suburbs that D.C. is not Southern and neither is Maryland or Virginia (at least NoVa). I think a lot of this was people imposing their own reluctance to be identified as Southern on the discussion, but I am suspicious generally. My quick and dirty definition of the South:

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, Virginia, D.C., Kentucky, Tennessee, southern Missouri, eastern Texas, and northern Florida.

Thoughts?

Unwarranted fears

Yesterday I turned in a memo that had been looming over me since the first day of work. It dealt with an area of law I had never encountered before, even in the most general or elliptical sense, and involved a great deal of research that confirmed, on a daily basis, how little I understood about how such transactions operate, the applicable (and changing) legal standards, and where the case law in all the different jurisdictions was going.

Today I got a call from the partner and went upstairs to review the memo with a fearful heart. Of course, it all turned out much better than I thought; he liked it and wants me to do some deeper research for a follow-up.

*sigh of relief*

Being a summer associate is nerve-wracking sometimes. It's not all lunches and wine-tastings.

PSA

Never go to the Willard Hotel for breakfast. Although we had a very nice tea there last week, today we waited for 45 minutes after ordering before getting our breakfast dishes - and that was after having to ask repeatedly for the breads we ordered before and for such necessities as drinking water and milk for our tea. After the unacceptable delay, fully half of the meals had something wrong with them: sauces that should have been on the side dumped on top, onions missing, gummy waffle texture. Fie on the Willard Room and its pokey staff.

Nitpicks, nerves

I really wish the work computers had a tabbed browser. There are three programs running along the taskbar at all times: MS Outlook, the window of firm applications, and the document management system (which never seems to work for me when I want to save something). This means if I have more than four MS Word or Explorer windows open they tile themselves, and this is insanely annoying. Mozilla would be nice.

I turned in one of my memos and scheduled my midpoint evaluation for next week. Oh, that sinking feeling. On the bright side, I found a really helpful revenue ruling for the research for my second memo. I will miss tax when I rotate to litigation. Maybe they can continue to throw me some tax assignments on the sly. It's not like they have a dozen summers clamoring for them. Then again, I don't think document reviews are so bad. We'll see how things work out in my new department.

Maybe a just a little blog . . .

Breaking radio silence to say yay for Will Baude, who published his first piece in The New Republic Online today.

Discouraging

My grades continue their slow motion slide. If only I could adjust myself to contextual mediocrity or, in the alternative, bring myself to put forth the effort of 1L year. All I do know is that I am never taking another class with a take home or a paper if I can have one with an in-class exam instead. (I'm vaguely envious of people with GPA-boosting clinicals. Too bad most of the ones Harvard offers are uninteresting.)

The memo research is becoming critical, so no more blogging today.

Staying late

I'm still at the office. Today is my first real experience with staying late - most of the other summers, especially those in litigation, have done it tons of times in the last month. I thought I might order dinner through the firm's online delivery service (Seamless Web, for you New York types in the know), but I've been snacking all afternoon on a bag of gummi bears and am really not that hungry. I am getting frustrated and more than a bit panicky, though, since I've been hacking away at these last two issues since before lunch and still have little idea of the answer to the partner's questions.

Damn! I left the taxi voucher in my other purse. Maybe someone will still be at the front desk to give me another one when at last I finish this assignment. I'm sure the Metro will still be running then, but . . .

Gmail

I have four Gmail invitations available. If you're interested, write to my Harvard account.

Strangers

No longer knowing the identities of all my commenters is an odd sensation.

I feel a sudden urge to sing the kind of ditty that invokes the spring

It's a beautiful day, cool and bright: perfect for strolling and picnicking. Unfortunately, today's schedule includes a less appealing menu of tax research and memo writing. I suppose that when one is thus cooped up, a certain amount of staring out the window and daydreaming is to be expected.

Productivity outlook: low to moderate.

(By the way, does anyone know of a decent Tex-Mex place in DC? The cantina on 17th is mediocre in all ways and Lauriol Plaza is a bit expensive for what you get.)

Harvard, why do you hurt me?

From an email sent out by the registrar today, June 18:

Full report of 2003-04 grades will be released on line on June 22. Please note the new location. Go to the Registrar's web page, select Registrar's Office On-line Services, and within that, select On Line Schedule. PIN is required.

If you find that you are unable to access HLS on-line services from the computer terminal at your company/firm, please try again from your home computer/laptop, as your employer may have technology in place to prevent you from accessing our web site.

Now I love that they are providing grades nearly a full month earlier than they did last year, but now my weekend will be filled (okay, not filled, but randomly interspersed) with thoughts of impending grades, grades that are unavailable to me for four whole days! Why not just send this email out on Monday? The inability to access them from work is just icing on the cake.

Out of my head

After nearly two whole days in a migraine induced state of wooziness, my brain has finally broken free. Unfortunately, in the interim I have acquired another project, been confronted with several journal problems, been seen at work for the last two days in some sort of disjointed fog, and realized that my wardrobe has some gaps that need to be filled immediately. The deadline for my large research project suddenly looms. It's like I've been away on vacation for the last couple of days and it all went to pieces in my absence.

Best friends

Eugene Volokh muses on the divisions between those whose closest friends are same-sex versus opposite sex. He thinks that close cross-gender friendships have become more common with increased integration of the professions. That may be one factor, but the propensity to be close friends with members of the opposite sex is often well entrenched at a young age. My tendency toward membership in his third category dates back to at least the third grade, but I always attributed that to a greater appreciation for boys' more straightforward way of interacting (versus the cattiness of elementary school girls). After years of complex and exhausting friendships with women in junior high and high school, finding good male friends in college was like coming home again.

Revenge of the memo

I got back the memo I submitted last week. They did not enjoy it as much as Curtis's boss enjoyed his memo. They didn't like my Bluebooking, either. Sigh.

Tuesday song lyric

Are the stars out tonight?
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright
'cause I only have eyes for you.
The moon may be high,
but I can't see a thing in the sky,
'cause I only have eyes for you.
I don't know if we're in a garden,
or on a crowded avenue.
You are here, so am I.
Maybe millions of people go by
but they all disappear from view,
and I only have eyes for you.

Mr. Yuck says do not lick the wall

The firm picnic was not as exciting as last night's gambling evening, although there was tasty barbequed chicken. Of course, being back home is no great shakes either. My entire apartment reeks of Raid due to a late night encounter with some kind of two inch long, multi-legged insect that crawled out of the windowsill right by my face. If anything can survive the chemical dousing I spent the greater part of the morning performing, it deserves this apartment more than we do.

Little rainbows everywhere

This evening my firm had a social event near Georgetown, but since it was a beautiful day I thought I'd walk instead of cab over. For the previous couple of hours there had been shouting and distant bullhorns, but I attributed it to another protest (there was one against genocide in Cote d'Ivoire earlier today - how odd is it to see people in DC waving signs decrying the policies of Chirac?) or general neighborhood noise. Only two blocks from my apartment, though, I ran into a march. The streets were lined with people, but until the rainbow flags peeked over their heads I didn't know what was up.

It was the Gay Pride Festival Parade.

It worked out that the route from my apartment to the hotel where our event was located exactly followed the path of the parade, so I saw the whole line of floats, from political candidates to PFLAG to (many) drag queens prettier than I am to the DC Bears Club. A guy trotted up, made a little bow, and asked if he could have a hug. I gave him one. A woman from one group handed me some Mardi Gras beads. Even the cops seemed to be caught up in the spirit (the salsa music pumping from the Latino group's float had to help).

One of the great things about living in a city is you just happen upon wonderful things without looking for them. The firm event was fun, but if I could do it over again I think I'd be a half hour late to the cocktail reception and stay to watch the parade.

Where did everybody go?

The last day or two have been full of strange and unsettling events. First, my friend Chris was supposed to join Lovely Sarah and me for drinks yesterday, but he stood us up with no explanation.

Then my roommate, who I had half-quarreled with on Wednesday, not only did not acknowledge my greeting when she finally came back to the apartment last night and instead continued to talk on her cell phone (granted, I shouted down from the loft, but I was already in bed), but she was not in the apartment this morning when I woke up. I know she was going to Tennessee to drive the partner's car there this weekend, but that's not until this afternoon (last weekend was her firm retreat). So where is she? Where was she? Are we not on speaking terms? Who knows?

Thanks to the government workers' being on holiday, the Metro was eerily empty this morning. I've never seen it so deserted on a weekday before. The streets were bare of traffic as well. DC was a ghost town. Even the office seemed a little echoing today, although the firm was open for business.

This weekend I have two firm events, so that should keep me occupied and provide human contact. I hope.

Life's little victories

Fun: receiving packages.

More so: gleefully mailing packages to other people.

Best yet: sending messages via unusual means with the goal of surprising someone - and succeeding. I love surprises.

Whoops

If you're not a regular Crescat reader, here's a belated heads up. I have been guest-blogging over there this week, which is part of the reason for my limited blogging here lately. The posts:

In which I lament the relative absence of wild creatures from my recent city life.

In which I reveal my preference for economic efficiency over "character-building" charity work

Not enough of this

Leisure

Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime:
Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods
That sole condition of all loveliness,
The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time.

-Amy Lowell

As if I needed more reasons to despise Harvard

Harvard recently announced that it will move to an electronic billing system for students. My initial reaction to this was positive; I pay as many bills as possible online, since it allows me to save on stamps and to pay my bills as they come in and thus makes me less likely to forget them. However, Harvard refuses to send you a paper bill even if you request one - completely ignoring people who pay bills but do not have internet access, either due to age, technological inexperience, or poverty (although undergraduates below a certain level go to Harvard for free now, so this last point is less important than it would have been a year or two ago).

While it's almost certainly a huge cost savings for the university to do away with mailing thousands of paper bills, not having an opt-in request system for paper copies and forcing people to do everything electronically whether they have the hardware or not irks me.

We also don't have grades yet. However, the registrar's office has helpfully added an additional layer of webpages between you and the online schedule request, making my obsessive checking include one more agonizing click-through.

No time to weep

They may close the firm on Friday for Reagan's funeral. They may close all the big firms in the city. In how many ways is it bad that my first thought on hearing this was, "but I have a memo due on Friday!"?

Things are heating up

Yesterday was pretty intense. I still haven't heard back from the partner about the submission, but no news is probably good news: no "see me" emails in my inbox this morning. Today will be spent puzzling through the tax code (how much is tax like a choose your own adventure book, or maybe a text based computer game?). Tax I like for the same reason I like accounting; you get to play with numbers until you get the answer you knew you wanted in advance. There might be a maximizing solution, but it's likely that no one can agree what that is, so the only wrong answers are ones that make your client lose in Tax Court or get mad at you for causing him to pay more than he had to.

Tomorrow, unless I am utterly baffled by the tax project and have to skip it, will be our Habitat for Humanity day. Of course this means that the relatively cool weather is slipping away and it will be in the high 80s or 90s for the rest of the week. Mmm, working outside in the heat. At least the cicadas are disappearing too.

Good intentions

I had grand plans to come home and blog, but after working in a frenzy all day, turning in my first big project to a partner, going out to reward myself with consumer goods and being defeated at every turn when I attempted to purchase some useless frippery, and having doughnuts for dinner, I'm exhausted and have no creativity to spare. Maybe in the morning.

Monstrous

My friend is in her room watching a movie on her laptop while I am in the living room reading articles about Regulation FD. Unfortunately, the movie in question is Monster, so she is gasping and screaming, "Oh my god! I'm going to throw up!" and "I don't know if I can watch this movie." Charlize is screaming, too. Tiffany refuses to walk away from it, though.

I knew watching it would be unpleasant and work provided a good reason not to. I didn't know I'd have to hear it.

A lot of graphic violence doesn't bother me. Neither does a really dark or depressing choice of subject matter. Some movies, though, seem calculated to make you feel worse for days after leaving the theater. I avoid those, even if part of me thinks that consuming critically acclaimed downers would be a valuable part of my film education. I don't eat a lot of vegetables, either.

Update: Will Baude comments. Without taking too much time from my current tasks, I wish to highlight the distinction between films and books that make you sad and those which delight in the degradation of their characters or seem to portray the most negative aspects of human nature as the most essential. I don't require happy endings. I do, however, wish to gain something from the experience of reading or viewing more than the irresistable urge to shower or a week-long despairing funk over the futility of the human condition. It's the difference between a dish of bitter greens and a bottle of castor oil.

Living the life

I often discuss, both with my roommate and with my own coworkers, the differences between our firm experiences. Part of the difference is firm culture - a Southern firm will have a different feel than one based in New York or Los Angeles. However, it seems that there are at least two strategies for wooing summer associates as well. Will Vehrs asked what I thought of my firm's team building exercise from yesterday and answering him only heightened the distinction.

I am at a firm where they do spend money on social events for us, but not an inordinate amount. We have a handful of big events scheduled, most of which are firm-wide, not just for summers. Our happy hours are the monthly firm happy hours. There's no drinking at lunches or a habit of going for drinks after work. We do get one day off, if I recall correctly, for a public service project (working on a Habitat for Humanity house: I'm going, not because I particularly want to give houses to the poor but because building things is immensely satisfying and gaining some tiny knowledge of carpentry sounds appealing). When we do get a free lunch, about half the time the food is modest; we go where the associates would have gone anyway or have it catered in by the firm cafeteria. I like it. It's a realistic taste of firm life.

My roommate, however, has already had two Fridays off, most recently to go on an all expenses paid road trip to pick up a car from another state for one of the partners, although I think he is paying her and the second summer associate in his individual capacity. They took another day off to go sailing. Drinks after work is an institution and she had lunches every day her first week and some days her second at fancy restaurants. Nothing is real. She works in a fantasy summer associate paradise. I think this is dishonest. It's a bait and switch; when you get back as a first year associate none of this will remain. How can you make an informed choice without a good sense of how your work experience will be?

One can argue that perhaps spoiling the summers is necessary to draw us in and convince us to work there for a year or two, giving us time to become accustomed to the lifestyle the salaries bring and thus more likely to stay despite the long hours - any dealer can tell you the first one is free. I can't help but think how silly it all is, though; why jet us off to Mexico for retreats (as some Houston firms are rumored to do) or ply us with binges of liquor when they could be finding which of us will be hard workers? The whole thing is somewhat bewildering.

Lessons Learned

If there is one thing Wonkette has taught us, it's that the blogosphere equivalent of sleeping your way to the top, providing titillating sexual content and being female (so it's hot, not creepy), gets results. That's why I feel conflicted about the current Instalanche; in an ideal world, my blog would get noticed because of something I wrote about law school or firm life or even a particularly witty comment about film or literature. Instead my musings about making out are what get the links. I don't know what relevance this has to the whole women-in-the-blogosphere debate, but you can draw your own conclusions.

Kissing Day

Apropos of my earlier post, Jesse at Abelblog suggests that tomorrow, June 5, be declared National Kissing Day. That's possible, but why not align ourselves with the Brits and have it on July 6?

Victory is mine! - er, ours.

We took a break from projects this afternoon to have a "team building exercise." I was afraid this would involve standing on top of a table and other summers having to catch me or some such nonsense, but instead we played a Jeopardy style trivia game. My team was in third place going into the bonus round, but thanks to some gutsy betting and my accurate recollection of how to spell "autochthonous," we took home the grand prize: Loews Theatres gift cards and little trophies to keep candy in. The card will pay for at least 3 movies. What should I see?

I am the very model of a modern major cheapskate

Yesterday we received our first paychecks. This is undoubtedly the largest biweekly paycheck I or anyone I am related to ever had. The understandable impulse is to send it off to the bank. However, my subletter called to let me know that she's sending the first month's rent and it should arrive soon, so I'm holding off on depositing my paycheck until I can send them both at once and save the extra stamp.

They are Lewis & Clark stamps, after all. Why waste 37 cents worth of something so pretty?

In defense of comments

Some bloggers have recently discussed their aversion to having comments enabled. While I think that Scheherazade did an excellent job of defending comments, I feel compelled to add a few things I've found valuable about having them.

1. People are much more likely to leave a comment than to write an email. Email is more formal, non-anonymous, and does not leave a public record of protest. Unlike Jeremy, I'm not concerned about being upstaged by commenters. I find that one of the best aspects of this reduced cost of communication is that people are more likely to correct me. I hate looking stupid and not knowing it, so I appreciate readers who let me know when I went too far or made a mistake. We all learn something, the blog is improved, and everyone wins.

2. I can count the number of strangers who have emailed me about this blog on one hand, but have discovered at least a dozen new blogs by following links to commenters' websites. Because they read my blog, we often have some interests in common, or at least more so than random surfing produces. Comments provide me with additional web entertainment!

3. Comments are not always from strangers. I have several classmates who read and comment semi-regularly, and since we no longer live in the same apartment (or even the same coast), it's a convenient way to have a conversation with old friends. Sometimes surprise guests even appear - like Christiana or Ray - and we can all circle around and give them a virtual hug and ask them why it's been so long.

4. Finally, reading comments (or their more conventional counterpart, letters to the editor) on any website functions as a rough gauge as to when a website has jumped the shark. Once I find the comments or letters more informative, well-written, and interesting than the post or article they address, it's time to go. There are some exceptions to this; a site can integrate comments with its format such that the site is largely discussion based from the beginning. This, however, requires a certain humble approach to blogging, with an emphasis on creating posts that provoke thoughtful replies. (Update: Teresa Nielsen Hayden, whose website sets the gold standard for valuable comment threads, comments below that the best approach may not be to keep the riff-raff out but to guide the discussion by participating. I defer to her experience.)

Will may bemoan the signal to noise ratio in the comments section of popular blogs, but for those of us who are in the less traveled areas of the blogosphere they have their incidental benefits.

Kissing is a pastime highly underrated by people of a certain age. It seems that once one is out of the teens and well into the experience of adult sexuality, there is a tendency to shift focus away from the delicate pleasures that once enticed us. Kissing becomes a perfunctory act, or at most a form of foreplay. Fewer and fewer people recall the keen delight of kissing for kissing’s sake, of making out for hours in a state of foggy bliss, drunk on sensation. The absurdity of pressing lips together, of daring to explore with the tongue: perhaps their strange charms are forgotten, or they no longer inspire giggles and heady excitement. We no longer make time for oddball kissing games, sneaking nibbles or marathon snogs. It’s a damn shame.

Newspaper editorial from World War I:
“As for those wretches in the Senate, envious, pusillanimous, or abandoned, who with doubts and quibbles have denied their country’s conscience and courage in order to make a Prussian holiday, they may well be left to the judgment that good men and true men never fail to pass upon delinquents and dastards.”

Not enough people are called dastards these days.

WaPo seems to think we should be worried about unlicensed phlebotomists. While I'm sure that, all else equal, more training makes for better and safer blood drawing technique, I would take the current average phlebotomist over the alternative, a licensed and trained nurse who draws blood only occasionally and received a smattering of training in her distant nursing school days. My mother's a nurse and she routinely has to call phlebotomists in to do difficult sticks that young nurses cannot do (that's when the other nurses don't call her instead; with twenty years of experience, she has the techniques down pat and while she complains about how often that happens I think she secretly likes being the resident expert).

My needle horror story (not as gory as Ms. Butler's): when I went in to get my wisdom teeth out, they put in an IV to shoot me full of liquid Demerol and Valium. While the drugs were on drip, they stuck the nitrous mask on and waited. After a few minutes, I was high as a kite but not sleepy in the least. They wait more and keep asking if I was getting sleepy, but I said no. Finally, they lifted the sheet from my arm and realized that the silly nurse (not an experienced RN or trained phlebotomist, I assume) has infiltrated my IV and all the yummy druggy goodness is just hanging out subcutaneously and not anywhere near my bloodstream. They freaked out, which I thought was funny since the gas is still flowing, and then had to restick me and shoot another dose of Demerol and Valium into my vein. I passed out and woke up on my grandmother's couch with my mother screeching about how subcutaneous liquid Demerol eats flesh or something and I need to keep my arm elevated so I have tissue left in my elbow. Moral of the story: painkillers good, IV insertion training better.

Despite my best efforts to medicate it out of existence last night, the Migraine from the Black Lagoon has returned in full force, along with the realization that the research assignment I intended to finish over the weekend and which is due today slipped my mind completely and now has to be finished this morning. Ugh and double ugh.