Potty mouth

While I did see the newspaper headlines announcing the death of Milosz, my total lack of familiarity with his work precluded intelligent commentary. When I finish Cervantes and some relevant Stoppard, perhaps there will be time for him before classes begin.

In Warsaw (not sure why); my guidebook's section on Poland is only sporadically accurate about important things like when museums are open, so I spent the day in the reconstructed Old Town and Royal Castle. While it's all very pretty, the knowledge that it's fifty years old makes it a little more Disneyland and a little less appealing. Must, must, must get to Budapest on Wednesday. There is, evidently, only one night train that goes through from here to there, so I am off to harass the railway reservation agent with my bad Polish. (I do make the effort!)

One note: I had not fully internalized, when Geoffrey described it to me after his travels last summer, what an abomination is the German toilet. Platforms for waste examination are just unnecessary. They keep popping up, with no rhyme or reason. At least they are better than the Turkish toilets Angel and I experienced over spring break.

Ripped off

I walked into this internet cafe and asked how much for one hour. The guy says, "one zloty," which is about $0.28. I notice that my time is running out after about half an hour and ask the second desk jockey why, only to find out that 1 zloty/hour is only at certain times, or with a certain number of customers, or some nonsense. I fork over another zloty. Maybe I shouldn't get all worked up for having to pay an extra quarter or so, but it's the principle of the thing. I would have paid 2 zl./hour if that had been quoted. Roar.

Krakow

Random aside: if I'd known that online Scrabble gloating was kosher, I would have been more public about celebrating my last win. But then that would have opened the door to online discussion of my utter demolition in the previous game, so I'll leave the internet gloating to Will and Amy.

Spent the entire day at Wawel Castle, which is absolutely fabulous. I cannot believe the amount 15th and 16th century art has been preserved. You would have thought that someone would have stolen or destroyed it in the course of an invasion/partition.

Internet access in Poland is insanely cheap (about a dollar per hour, half the price of the least expensive I found in Prague). However, George W. and his weak dollar policy are really cramping my style. Somehow the zloty went from 4.00/dollar when I checked it a while back to 3.55/dollar now. The Euro is kicking butt. All prices are quoted to me in Euros.

Bonus: I am actually more likely to get English signage here than in Prague. There most things were in multiple languages but typically only German and Russian. However, far fewer people speak English, leading to my humorous pantomime at the post office today. By the time I get to Bulgaria I'm going to be drawing for people again. Why traveling for me inevitably devolves to Pictionary is anyone's guess. Stupid useless three semesters of Russian.

Random aside 2: did you know that Poland has a Hooters equivalent? It is called Restaurant Rooster. Ah, capitalism.

Hopefully off to the salt mines tomorrow.

Boston v. Prague

Public transit: Prague's is faster, has newer cars (and even the old ones have charm), and speeds you to the earth's surface on escalators so fast that they surely reflect some vital difference in liability law. Like many in Europe, payment is more or less on the honor system: no turnstiles here. Advantage: Prague.

Mexican food: Prague's is better. Shame on you, Boston. Shame.

Smell: the Charles may give you a rash if you fall in, but it's otherwise inoffensive. Prague smells funny. I blame the floods of 2002. Advantage: Boston.

Commie stuff: due to the Russians invading their country, the Czech propensity to celebrate Soviet culture is confined to fleecing college tourists. Boston, and more specifically Cambridge, caters to a local audience for its Communist themed bars. Advantage: Prague.

I went to the Torture Instruments museum and the ossuary in Kutna Hora today. Yes, I am morbid. Off to Krakow tomorrow (not going to the concentration camp, though).

In Prague

I have been feeling rather ill from too much sausage and cannot sleep due to traffic noise, but other than that Prague is fun. The prices are cheap for Europe (about equal to American prices) so my Diet Coke addiction can continue to be fed. Saw the Museum of Communism (check Crescat for my thoughts on that) and Prague Castle. Before I leave for Krakow I am going to the bone church outside of town and the Mucha Museum. God, I want a salad.

Last minute preparations

Backpack crammed full of stuff: check.

Snack foods to tide self over during layover in Paris and short flight to Prague: check.

Reading material: check and check.

Reservation for shuttle ride to airport at ridiculously early time due to Orange Alert security measures: check.

AOL service cancelled after much argument with customer service: check.

Temporary custody of Settlers of Catan board determined: check.

The next post will be from a former Soviet bloc nation. Keep checking for updates here and at Crescat!

Quote of the day

Since this blog so rarely has any legal content, I am grateful to my friend Mike for passing this along.

"If there is a hell to which disputatious, uncivil, vituperative lawyers go, let it be one in which the damned are eternally locked in discovery disputes with other lawyers of equally repugnant attributes."

-Krueger v. Pelican Prod. Corp., No. CIV-87-2385-A (W.D. Okla. Feb. 24, 1989) (Judge Wayne E. Alley) (order denying motion to dismiss action).

Book quiz

Pale Fire is my favorite book by Nabokov, but I don't know if I embody it. (quiz via Sua Sponte)

You're Pale Fire!

by Vladimir Nabokov

You're really into poetry and the interpretation thereof. Along the
road of life, you have had several identity crises which make it very unclear who you
are, let alone how to interpret poetry. You probably came from a foreign country, but
then again you seem foreign to everyone in ways unrelated to immigration. Most people
think you're quite funny, but maybe you're just sick. Talking to you ends up being much
like playing a round of the popular board game Clue.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

RIP, Jonathan Brandis

Random: every time I load Energy Spatula's blog, that picture of a baby wombat and caption makes me think of the talking dolphin on Seaquest DSV. You know, the one that had conversations with Jonathan Brandis's Wesley Crusher type character.

*whistling* "Darwin help!"

If I were a pale shadow of Wil Wheaton with no career to speak of, a Rodney Dangerfield movie as my biggest hit, and my most memorable role as the friend of a talking dolphin, I might consider suicide as well.

Sunday Song Lyric

End of the Summer
Dar Williams

The summer ends and we wonder where we are
And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car
And you both look so young
And last night was hard, you said
You packed up every room
And then you cried and went to bed
But today you closed the door and said
"We have to get a move on.
It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead,
We push ourselves ahead."

And it was cloudy in the morning
And it rained as you drove away
And the same things looked different
It's the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer,
When you move to another place

And I feel like the neighbor's girl who will never be the same
She walked alone all spring,
She had a boyfriend when the summer came
And he gave her flowers in a lightning storm
They disappeared at night in green fields of silver corn
And sometime in July she just forgot that he was leaving
So when the fields were dying, she held on to his sleeves
She held on to his sleeves

And she doesn't want to let go
'Cause she won't know what she's up against
The classrooms and the smart girls
It's the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer
When you hang your flowers up to dry

And I had a dream it blows the autumn through my head
It felt like the first day of school
But I was going to the moon instead
And I walked down the hall
With the notebooks they got for me
My dad led me through the house
My mom drank instant coffee
And I knew that I would crash
But I didn't want to tell them
There are just some moments when your family makes sense
They just make sense

So I raised up my arms and my mother put the sweater on
We walked out on the dark and frozen grass
The end of the summer
It's the end of the summer
When you send your children to the moon

The summer ends and we wonder who we are
And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car
And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree
I passed the farms that made it
Through the last days of the century
And I knew that I was going to learn again
Again, in this less hazy light
I saw the fields beyond the fields
The fields beyond the fields

And the colors are much brighter now
It's like they really want to tell the truth
We give our testimony to the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer,
You can spin the light to gold.

Packets, packing

This morning I schlepped over to Staples for new envelopes, Kinkos for new labels, and FedEx for shipping these godforsaken clerkship application packets to HLS so faculty support can stuff them with recommendations and send them to judges who will no doubt reject me because my paper was the wrong shade of ivory or my grades are too low or they have already filled their slots with Stanford and Yale people or . . . (takes deep breath)

The packets are mailed. Leaving for Europe forced me to get it done early (they don't have to be at HLS until August 18th) and allowed me to send the 16 pounds of paper via FedEx Ground instead of overnight, saving me a pretty penny. I will be so glad when this is over.

I also had to finish boxing up my life in D.C. and packing my tiny backpack for Europe. I will be blogging from internet cafes just like I did for my spring break trip to Turkey. My posts will appear at another blog also (three guesses where) so you can get your dose of Bamber in two ways.

Dammit, Janet

I have discovered two things in the course of preparing my clerkship packets:

1. The return labels are supposed to have the faculty services address on them instead of my address. Why? I don't know. But if HLS wants to FedEx my packets to judges for free, I won't argue. Going back to Kinko's to create new labels sucks, though.

2. My manila envelopes are non-regulation size (9x12, not 10x13). I guess it's back to Staples for more envelopes. I threw out the receipt, too. Damn damn damn.

LSAT Prep

Jeremy disagrees with this post at Neo Tokyo Times (the blog of a friend of a friend) regarding the best methods for LSAT preparation. While I think NTT did not outline a method that would work for everyone, and in fact came close to what I would consider over-studying, I think Jeremy's near total disagreement should have been tempered. For example, this is just bunk:

if you don't have the motivation to just sit down and take some practice tests, what are you doing signing up for more years of school?

People are motivated to do specific things, often because they enjoy them. I enjoyed my 1L course reading, so I did it all (okay, I didn't derive much pleasure from CivPro or Dersh's many books and essays, but the generalization is true). The LSAT does not test the law. It has little to do with what you learn in law school, even if it does accurately predict law school success or sort out people who lack the necessary analytic skills. I don't think a lack of motivation to do dozens of practice problems for the LSAT/GRE/etc. indicates that you're not cut out for graduate education.

I come down in the middle on the question of the utility of a course such as the Princeton Review. I signed up for the class and paid my $1000, but after one session and a diagnostic test I realized that I was not the target audience for this class. However, I always do very well on standardized tests, and for someone who was trying to get from, say, 145 to 160, I think such a course could be beneficial. I cut my losses and got nearly all my money back. However, I did get to keep the course materials. I think these were worth the non-refundable 200-300 bucks.

My two cents: you can overstudy on the LSAT. I know someone who did; she obsessed over it for more than a year and then ended up scoring lower on test day than she had in some of her first practice tests because she was burned out. You can also under-study. I was cocky going into the first online diagnostic I took junior year. The unfamiliar format and types of questions threw me for such a loop that I spent a significant amount of time considering a career in library science. But after some additional practice, my scores came up to the percentile level that is typical for me on standardized exams.

My suggestions would be to take a class if you have practiced a bit and don't seem to be making headway at increasing your score. You might also consider it if you do really badly in one section (like games) or would have trouble keeping yourself to a study schedule on your own. It is not necessary to take a class, though: working through 2 practice exams (use real tests!) per week for a couple of months prior to the LSAT should get you accustomed to the format without burning you out. Don't obsess, don't feel guilty when you aren't studying (that way madness lies, especially if you carry that behavior over into law school), and do what works for you. How did you study for the SAT? Do that, but more intensely. How your brain works has not changed since then. It takes a year of law school to warp your mind.

Going out with a bang

I don't know if this will post, since I hear that Blogger is having spasms again, but I just spent the last hour and a half standing around outside because someone called in a bomb threat to the firm upstairs. They should really lower their rates.

Weird fiction

Ken Macleod, writer of libertarian Trotskyist space operas, has a blog. I like Neil Gaiman's journal better, but you may disagree.

Iron Council reading

Last night I went to a reading from China Mieville's new book, Iron Council. He read from Chapter 6. The book sounds pretty good, although the word on the street is that it's not up to the standard of Perdido Street Station and The Scar. The best part, though, was the Q&A session afterwards. Highlights:

-The guy who asked Mieville if he liked Piers Anthony (Answer: he enjoyed them when he was ten or so, but upon rereading the Xanth books he found them "terribly mysogynist." No surprises there.)

-The journalist from Locus who wanted to know if the riot in the scene from Chapter 6 was influenced by violent nature of British society and politics, because "we don't do that here." Response: "Oh, no, Americans never fight."

-Mieville on his coolness: "It may come as a shock, but I'm a total geek. . . . it's tragic, really."

-Mieville on Tolkien: "I told myself I'd stop talking about Tolkien about a year ago . . . I would be at sci fi conventions and people would say, 'China, do the Tolkien thing.' (mugs) . . . Let him rest."

-On whether The Scar is more gruesome than Perdido Street: "Well, it did have a slick of pus. . . . They're equally gruesome."

-On his relationship with mythology: It's "piratical" and "an act of epic point-missing. . . People tell me, 'So, the khepri symbolize rebirth,' and I'm like, no - people with beetle heads: cool!"

Saddled

All jesting aside, Professor Volokh is right to take Letourneau's actions seriously. I don't think of statutory rape laws as particularly good ones, but the situation here was clearly the sort that such laws are created to address: a teacher abusing her authority and using the affections of her 12 year old student for sexual gratification. The probability that a 12 year old male could rationally choose to engage in a sexual relationship with an adult is low, and the power dynamics of the teacher student relationship make it even more likely that this was the result of manipulation by a more experienced person of a younger one. Even if most 12 year olds might be hot for teacher, ideally your first sexual relationship should not be a secret adulterous affair with someone with whom you have nothing in common and who is an authority figure.

Volokh even soft-pedals the actual harm involved here; unlike many victims of sex crimes, Fualaau was not anonymous. At age 21, he has no job and no high school diploma. He had two children by age 16, although his mother apparently cares for them. Is it likely that he would be similarly unsuccessful had he not been a father of two before most kids get their driver's license, the center of a media circus for years, and engaged in an on again/off again relationship with a disturbed woman 22 years his senior who was in prison? At this point it's his right to engage in relationships with whomever he wishes, and it appears he will again reunite with Letourneau. But he should not have been the target of sexual advances from his sixth grade teacher, and no matter how much they may love each other now and how much joy he may take in being the father of two children (perhaps now that both parents can be together, some burden can lifted from their long-suffering grandmother), his potential for success and happiness was almost certainly squandered as a result of the choice of one grown woman. Even if that weren't illegal, it should still be wrong.

In the balance

My officemate just had his final evaluation. Mine is tomorrow. It doesn't matter that much how it goes, since we don't hear about offers for a couple of weeks and even if they get back to me ASAP it will almost certainly be while I am abroad. I am definitely glad to have worked at a law firm this summer, regardless of whether I make this my career. (I am especially happy to have ended up in D.C., an outcome that looked dubious at some points in the OCI process but which has yielded surprising benefits.)

Scramble

The assignment coordinator had to reallocate some work at the last minute yesterday, so I got a corporate project from another summer associate. This is going to make my last week a bit more hectic than I thought it would be.

*Insert impotent tooth gnashing here*

You know, when you order a memory chip for your digital camera for a vacation that begins in a matter of days, maybe you should double check that Amazon isn't sending the package to your address at Harvard instead of to D.C. Because forgetting that would mean you had to either bug any available friends still in Cambridge to forward you a package or drop another 40 65 (extortionate bastards at Best Buy!) bucks on a memory chip. Stupid.
UPDATE: Saved by the Bill: Tiffany's fiance is a jolly good fellow. He is sending me my chip.

Mmm, sentient creatures

I have eaten whale sashimi. It was delicious, but I felt oddly guilty. It was not sufficiently superior to tuna or steak tartare that I would pay the premium again. At least the whale was probably killed humanely; my consumption took place in Iceland, not Japan.

Would you eat whale? Dog? Dolphin (you probably have already)? I don't know if I'd eat dog, but I have eaten horse and am a horse owner (again, in Iceland - those cold hearted islanders love to eat strange things).

UPDATE: For your viewing displeasure, I present Proposition 6. The voters of the great state of California succeeded in banning the sale of horsemeat for human consumption because "horse slaughter is not and never will be part of our culture." Bah.

Toilet humor

After perusing the racism v. sexism faceoff in the comments to this post, a reader inquires, "Must all bathrooms in government buildings be unisex?"

While unisex bathrooms were the bugbear during the ERA debates, they seem less threatening now, having made appearances on Ally McBeal and in many other locations across America. The separation between men and women in the lav was never that strict; boys have been accompanied by their mothers and (less frequently) girls by their fathers for years. We've more openly acknowledged the presence of male caregivers (and thus the increased likelihood that fathers will bring children into the men's room) by the recent installation of changing tables in both bathrooms instead of only the ladies' lav. Although the unisex bathroom experiment at HLS may be coming to an end, my experiences with them were uniformly positive (unisex bathrooms mean no line for the ladies'!). That said, how can we create an unisex bathroom that will please everyone, or at least minimize offense? How to deal with segregated bathrooms that we already have?

I think the ideal government bathroom would have be T shaped with a single entrance: on one side of the T could be a wall of urinals. There should be partitions for privacy and so they can't be seen be everyone entering. Then just put a line of stalls on the opposite side of the T. Sinks can be facing the stalls and urinals or centrally located near the entrance hall. At the very least sex segregation should not be enforced by law (don't retrofit already-built bathrooms but do not punish people who use the "wrong" bathroom). Nearly all of us share bathrooms at home with people of the opposite sex, so why not at work, too?

UPDATE: Inspired by Spencer, a relevant poem.

Sic transit gloria . . .

. . . but for the moment, I will bask in the influx of readers from JD2B. Welcome to my hideous blog. There's movie snark, literature snark, law school and law firm snark, and thinly veiled personal snark. This month there will also be travel blogging from Eastern Europe, albeit cross-posted. Please participate in the comments section; I appreciate both bizarre non-sequiturs and substantive legal discussion.

Enjoy. No, really, enjoy, dammit.

Girls girls girls

A woman's place: Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World

A rebuttal can be found at History News Network. (via Agoraphilia)

Lyrics to Dar Williams's When I Was A Boy

More Village commentary

A couple of thoughts that occurred to me after the initial flames of anger and disappointment died down:

-There was only a small core group of elders who founded the village. The population at the time of the movie appears to be 60-100 people. If they continue to be isolated for another two or three generations, there's going to be some serious inbreeding. I'm talking flipper babies, people.

-So red is the "bad color." Nothing in the entire town is red. There's no technology and it's apparently an agrarian society that relies heavily on human power to get work done - a state of affairs that privileges physical strength. How many generations would it take for women (cursed monthly with manifestations of the "bad color") to be utterly subjugated? They appear to have political equality at present (which struck me as anachronistic when we first saw the elders' meeting), but how long can that last?

Stuff that came up in conversation

I present for your perusal but do not endorse:

-The photography of Sally Mann

-The fiction of Sherri S. Tepper

Random demographic factoids: one of every three white non-Hispanic residents of Manhattan is Jewish. About one of every eight residents of the five boroughs is Jewish. This is the first time in 50 years that less than 1 million Jewish people have lived in New York City.

In defense of elitism

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Guilty as charged. (The book referenced by this post title is an interesting read as well.

I feel like the Village idiot

Despite the bad reviews, I couldn't keep away from M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. Be warned: it is not scary. It is not well written, it is not surprising, and it is not well acted. Adrien Brody is wasted as a retarded man, Joaquin Phoenix plays a strong and silent type who also does little on screen, and the performance by Opie's daughter was uninspired as well. Even the previews before the movie were terrible (attention Reese Witherspoon: acting in period pieces will not erase Legally Blonde 2 from our minds. you are still not a "serious actress.") and the score during the credits was overwrought.

(Spoilers follow: highlight to read them.)
I had read some message board discussions of the movie beforehand and had read that the big twist was either that the village elders were the monsters or that it all took place in the present day. Both of these seemed weak and I was excited to hear rumors that a new ending had been shot recently. Imagine my disappointment when (not even halfway through the movie) it is glaringly obvious that both are true. Sigourney Weaver, who supposedly had nightmares for weeks after reading the script, was criminally underused; as an actress, she has the potential to be authoritarian, seductive, threatening - Weaver was none of these here. The problems present in the film were easily picked apart afterwards: if you were retreating from the world, wouldn't you lay in a decent supply of penicillin? Did no one think it was a bad idea to keep one of the monster suits in the retarded guy's room? If the outside world is so terrible and scary and full of rapists and murderers, why send a blind girl to fetch anythingfrom it? Did none of the elders find it troubling that a creature was killing animals and it wasn't one of them? and how could one guy have killed and skinned all those animals with no one seeing or hearing a thing?

I found Signs to be a mixed bag with a clumsy theme and Unbreakable a strange but appealing film. This is an unmitigated failure and Shymalan should not be allowed to direct from his own scripts or act in his own movies. He lacks sufficient talent to do either. It was beautifully shot and well directed, but that alone cannot salvage this abortion of a feature, which fails as both a horror movie and as a love story.

P.S. And if Bruce Willis's character died from getting shot once in the stomach in The Sixth Sense, how could Lucius Hunt survive getting stabbed repeatedly in the belly and chest with what appeared to be a dirty six inch blade and only be threatened by an infection?

P.P.S. Ebert hated it. His taste is often questionable, but I should have listened to the Flick Filosopher. Or A.O. Scott. Or . . . well, you get the picture.

Cue "It's a Small World"

I just got off the phone with D, who worked with me at Cato in 2000 and now is attending school at Harvard and living three blocks from my apartment there. She got my contact info from her dad, who I ran into at a Federalist Society event in DC. On the phone we discussed:
-My gay ex-boyfriend, who was a Koch Fellow with the guy who threw the party I went to last night, and who recently held a position on the same law journal as my officemate here at the firm,
-Another fellow Cato intern, who I ran into on the street this week and who is renting a room in the same house currently inhabited by Will Baude,
-The city of Houston, her residence for the last three years and mine for the first decade and a half of my life, and
-Her Boston T encounter with another 2000 Koch intern, a girl who is currently friends with both D's ex-boyfriend from that summer and the ex of our mutual friend and fellow Cato intern H.

The libertarian incest is overwhelming.

New Mieville

Crooked Timber advises me that the new China Mieville book is out. Reviews are mixed, but it's a Bas-Lag book so I'll slog through it despite the Marxist revolutionary nonsense. The only problem is how to fit this into my reading schedule. School starts the week after I return from Europe and I still haven't read Song of Susannah, The Confusion, the last half of Ada, Possession, and another half a dozen books.

On a related note, discussing the relative believability of the last seventy pages of Middlesex, specifically with respect to the likelihood of a teenage intersexed runaway who worked in a San Francisco sex club subsequently getting a State Department job overseas, is probably an unwise topic for mealtime conversation. Especially if the lunch speaker is present.

Not so hypothetical

Say you are an employee of a museum controlled by the federal government, working in the conservation department. Let us assume further that you are female, as are all other members of the conservation department at this museum. An Indian artifact belonging to the museum needs to be conserved, but according to the members of the tribe that created the item, this artifact is a "male object" and may only be handled by men.

Is it legal, under currently existing antidiscrimination law, to prohibit female employees from conserving the object and to transfer you to another museum for one week in exchange for a male conservation employee from that museum? (The male employee is permitted to conserve the object and then returns to his home institution.) Should such catering to the religious/cultural prejudices of the creator tribe be the policy of our federal government? Does your answer change if the item is still owned by the tribe but they wish to permit its display subject to the condition that it only be handled by men?

UPDATE: Curtis references NAGPRA, which apparently establishes that the museum doesn't really own any of the sacred objects in its collection in the first place. The relevant law with respect to this particular museum can be found here. I think the substance with respect to this issue is the same in both pieces of legislation.
UPDATE II: An actual employment law type person weighs in.

D'oh

Yesterday I emailed the firm's in-house writing coach my memo on a pro bono matter. He is, by all accounts, a stickler for proper everything. I wanted to get decent editorial comments, since this memo is likely (in the absence of any real academic writing on my part) to be my clerkship application writing sample.

The email had a typo. I'll never hear the end of it.

Triage

Packing has been a slow and sporadic affair, but with the end of my time in this bohemian little Dupont Circle loft approaching it must be done. Perhaps the most awkward part of it is the culling of unnecessary items over time: deciding what can be packed away already and what is required for the next week or two. (This is vaguely embarrassing, as I am forced to ask myself ,while putting away an armload of long sleeved shirts and decade old baby tees, why exactly I thought I would need these this summer in the first place, and possibly why I still need them at all.)

The book triage is the most difficult. When to pack up the dozen or so books I have somehow acquired over the summer (most of which have not been ready - so busy!), whether some of the yard sale purchases with pages already falling out are disposable, etc. The agony!

Why I am a small-l libertarian

Dan Alban is tearing the Libertarian Party's VP candidate apart for claiming a PhD from a diploma mill. I approve.

Captivating

More Straussian madness at The Fly Bottle. After spending four years at the home of the West Coast Straussians, I always thought there should be a coastal rivalry a la Tupac and Biggie.

Updated to add this link with one view on the East/West breakdown.

Road to recovery, movie gripes

I think I get more traffic when I take the day off than when I blog regularly. What that says about this blog I don't know.

So my fellow summers are a big bunch of chickens and voted to see The Bourne Supremacy (starring stumpy fireplug Matt Damon) instead of The Village for the firm's "dinner and a movie" outing next week. Blah blah and double blah. I don't even read Robert Ludlum books, so why would I want to see a movie made out of one? I always think of Ludlum/Clancy as the macho chestbeater's equivalent of Danielle Steele or Belva Plain - it's all supermarket rack crap. Then again, I liked Unbreakable, so my taste is considered questionable by many.

I hate you, migraine.

Not at work today, and feeling dizzy/quivery/headachey. Fortunately the memo is not due until tomorrow afternoon, so I can polish it off then.

Random roundup II: now without libertarian sex

Will Wilkinson goes off on Harvey Mansfield.

Interesting thoughts on the Amy Richards/Barbara Ehrenreich abortion kerfuffle. (Via Alas, a Blog)

Waddling Thunder completes Phase 2 of the HLS takeover of Crescat.

Convention blogging

Friend and former boss-lady Christiana Dominguez has some special guests who are blogging from the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Check them out.

Conspicuous consumption

I beg the blogosphere's collective pardon, but this is just silly. If your duvet is ripped, the proper response is probably to sew the rip closed, not to drive all over creation and spend a bunch of money on a new one. Duct tape is right out as well. Maybe there's a good reason needle and thread couldn't solve this problem, but I am skeptical. Then again, I sew up holes in my couch, so I am clearly weird.

Where is Volokh?

I haven't been able to access The Volokh Conspiracy for the last two days. What's up? (Random: IIRC, Professor Volokh met his lovely wife online. Take heart, blog crushers!)

UPDATE: The Conspiracy is back, Seipp has crawled back to her own blog, and all is right with the world.

Blog crushes

Milbarge recently admitted that he, like so many of us, has blog crushes. While internet romance has made major inroads toward respectability, some are still skeptical:

[B]log crushes are wonderful as passive one way daydream inspirations, but probably silly as the seeds of real romance. . . . [T]aking the germ of a fantasy crush and converting it into a relationship between flesh-and-blood peoplewho are no longer projections but instead have pesky details and needs and logistics to contend with is a different thing.

Milbarge is not alone - my name is Amber, and I've had a blog crush. Do not be ashamed, fellow crushers! Blog crushing broadens the pool of potential dates, siphons out the dimwits that flock to Match.com and Spring Street personals, and email and comments allow you to hit on people without talking to them - how awesome is that?

I admit that logistics can be a problem, but you can get around that if you try.

I knew offhand remarks about sex were good for something

I am now an Adorable Little Rodent.

Can I be a squirrel? I am a little squirrelly.

Clerkship slog

I get the feeling that my last weekend in D.C. is going to be spent in a Kinko's, printing out labels and stuffing application packets. Ugh. Mail merge is a wonderful thing, though.

Poem of the Day(s)

The Face we choose to miss --
Be it but for a Day
As absent as a Hundred Years,
When it has rode away.

-Emily Dickinson

Seipp Watch

Narcissistic much?

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