Lacking Substance

As if I wasn't hating law school enough already.

I realize that it's a little early in the game to be falling back on the old poorly drawn strip bit, which I consider to be closely akin to the inevitable column about writing a column that pollutes so many high school and (sadly) college newspapers, but after the weekend I've had I think you'll want to cut me some cake.

Or actually, probably you won't. After you realize what's going on here your very fists will clench with rage, you'll turn away in disgust, and I'll lose my entire little readership in a single crushing blow of "The boss is coming over for dinner" obviosity. But I'm willing to take that chance. Here it goes.

So you know how you always hear those stories about the guy who didn't back up his files, and his computer crashed and erased everything he ever worked, hoped, and strove for? And you always think, "Oh, that guy doesn't exist. He's just a mythological construct invented by well-meaning computer consultants to encourage people to back up their files." Well, you're wrong.

We have here all the elements of a bad Joe Pesci movie. The bright, disorganized student, the big paper due the next day, the profoundly unhelpful tech support people, the computer that was purchased just past thirty days ago, meaning that a simple receipt-refund transaction is impossible, and, of course, the bruises along the sides of my hands from pounding various things and fixtures over and over again. Also, this weekend was anomalous in that I was invited to three (3) social gatherings at three (3!!!) different places of residence, the directions to all of which were swallowed whole when my Brand New Sony VAIO(TM) self-destructed on Saturday afternoon.

Fortunately, having dispensed with all of my anger in various localized acts of violence against inanimate objects, I know possess the piece of mind to provide an optimistic appraisal of the situation that would make migh high school self gag with disdain. I'm lucky it happened now, just when outlining is supposed to start, as opposed to, say, November. I'm lucky that I backed things up two weeks ago instead of three, or four, or not at all, and that there are people willing to share notes. I'm lucky that I've been lazy about briefing cases for the past week, so now I won't end up double-briefing as many cases as I would have. All things considered, I've learned a valuable lesson. Well, a number of valuable lessons:

Back shit up every day.

Don't buy a VAIO.

Don't buy anything from CompUSA.

Get a haircut if you need one.

Back shit up every fucking day.

And I'm not going to "sign" these stupid things anymore.

Two more things. I made two attempts at making the "TM" appear in superscript, and I can't do anything else without getting up and finding my HTML for Dummies book. At least I tried. The second thing was too self-indulgent to pass committee, and editing this sentence has been deemed beyond the bounds of efficiency. Editing this paragraph, that is.