Democracy: It’s Mediocre

Congratulations, Senator Clinton, you have won the vote of my state’s old, uneducated racists. Your candidacy is now backed by the abhorrent but passionate, pitchfork-carrying un-elite that you would rather see dead than deciding the fate of the country. Twenty years ago they wouldn’t have voted for a dame like you either.

And you, Wolf: the sentence, “We predict that Senator Clinton is the winner of the PA primary,” is not acceptable. Shameless, Wolf, shameless.

My Time to Shine

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Hear me now for I am a Pennsylvanian. Bestow unto me your money, your chattels, your love and finery. Gift to me your daughters and wives, mothers and sisters. For today, after two score and six years, I hath finally come upon this grant of a great and mighty Political Power. It is today that I and my brothers, sitting atop this great Olympus of a State, shall decide whom will maybe become President, and whom will be less likely to become President. Make haste! Make haste! The polls are open but twelve hours.

With wrath and pity,
Amateur Content

A Favorable Omen

Today, as I opened up my The Office Complete Second Series DVD case in preparation for my mid-afternoon ice cream and The Office break, my long-lost Rocky IV soundtrack fell out. If that isn’t a favorable omen for success on exams, I don’t know what it.

Brief-Writing Quiz

Please identify the problems that the following remedies can help solve:

1. Research authority from the federal circuit that encompasses your state.

2. Take out a string cite and just use “e.g.”

3. Change the sentence from active to passive voice.

4. Use parenthetical authority to help articulate your point.

5. Squint and hope nobody notices.

ANSWERS:
1. When you need additional authority for a particular point of law.
2. When you are over your word limit.
3. When your client is guilty as sin and there’s no two ways about it.
4. When something that was written in an opinion sounds good but was in no way a holding and you are just making this shit up.
5. When the last sentence of your brief has no basis in the law whatsoever but just sounds so totally badass.

I enjoy the…content.

Tonight as I was working on my brief, amidst cries of “AC! You are studying 2 fast,” and, “Look away, dear child, that girl is learning 2 furiously,” I decided to use one of my eyes to catch up on my blog-reading habit. Turns out, Chicago Typewriter is back. For those of you who like to read things on the Internet that are sometimes sort of funny, and that are written by an ex-law student, I would like to direct your attention henceforth.

Project Fury

I have a hard time motivating. In fact, I’ve arguably slacked off the entire year while my fearless associates have gained a considerable lead in the realm of academic performance. This troubles me, so I have spent the last six hours or so researching how to make up for lost ground. I have consulted two great films, The Fast and the Furious, and 2 Fast, 2 Furious. Both sources seem to advocate the use of a special button that, when pressed, makes the car go very fast for a short time. However, the great and explosive speed is accompanied by a proportional loss of control. This, I believe, is the Fury.

So in my workshop I have fashioned a new plan of attack based on this model. I shall unveil, in my last weeks as a 1L, my secret weapon: Project Fury.

Project Fury is a “Zero Tolerance,” “Take No Prisoners,” “No Fear,” “Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture,” strategy for success in law school. It involves, as its name suggests, a furiously manic form of studying. In this form I will work twice as hard as my fellow students. Where other students raise one hand in class to answer a question, I will raise two. Where others bring one laptop to class to take notes, I will bring two, and perhaps also a notebook. Where others use both eyes to focus on one book, I will use each eye for its own book. I will learn bright and I will learn hot, fast and furious as fire.

I will dress appropriately for Project Fury. Twenty minutes ago, I designed and put into production a “Project Fury” headband that I will use as a signifier for when people try to talk to me: “Hey, Amateur, how’s it going? You wanna go to Chipotle?”

“…..” I will not even have to look up from my books and laptops; I will point to the headband and they will understand. I will sense that their knees have gone weak upon witnessing the Fury, but I will not be distracted. I will dress in but one outfit, an outfit I will wear to sleep, to class, and to shower. It will be mottled by sweat and by blood. The mottling of the Fury.

So cast aside your eyes, ye of the weak spirit, for when I pass, I will pass with the glory of a Phoenix, burning hot into the future, racing for my rebirth as a 2L.

What Grades May Come

To brief or not to brief. That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous brief-induced cookie eating,
Or to take arms against a sea of cases that favor the prosecution,
And by opposing end them? To blog: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand first-circuit opinions
that have nothing to do whatsoever with my fact pattern, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To blog, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to fail: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of rest what grades may come
When we have shuffled off this legal argument,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long briefs;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of word limits,
The defendant’s inarguable wrong, the proud prosecution’s contumely,
The pangs of despised bluebooking, the law’s delay,
The insolence of classmates and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a Benedryl and cup of Sleepytime tea? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a reasonless precedent,
But that the dread of something worse than brief,
The undiscover’d grading from whose bourn
No career returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those assignments we have
Than fly to jobs, the salaries we know not of?
Thus conscience does make lawyers of us all;
And thus the native hue of procrastination
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of grades,
And enterprises of great peace and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of inaction.

They’re holding hands!

Today I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, fully dressed from the day before. It has been 3 days since I changed into a separate outfit to go to sleep. I am behind. Behind in my reading, behind in class attendance, and behind in my LRW exam-writing process. Because I am so behind, I skipped an important journal write-on meeting today–I thought I could use the extra time to begin my brief.

However, about an hour ago, as I was reading a case for my brief, I became possessed by an intense and frankly uncompromising urge to surf the internet looking for images of otters. Before I knew it, I had cast aside the case, opened my laptop, opened a browser, and typed “otters” into my Google bar. Quickly it became apparent to me that it was this video, hosted some thousands of miles away, that was beckoning to me. I strongly advise watching the whole thing.

Two Questions

On the school front, I have my LRW exam this week, so I’ll keep this post brief. (Get it? Yar, yar.)

1. Who left that thispeanutlookslikeaduck comment? Are you a person? Are you a spam? I can’t tell, but I love ducks. Love them.

2. Why does xkcd.com now link to questionable content? Not that I have anything against questionable content (though I generally prefer the amateur kind, yar yar), but I prefer xkcd. What happened? Anyone? Anyone?