Toner Low

I'll be the first to admit that this week's strip isn't necessarily prima facie funny, but I submit that if you take a few moments to envision the background story, picture step by step the few hours immediately preceding Claudio's appearance, you'll have yourself a proper larf. So, to mix legal metaphors, this week's offering might be considered "constructively" funny.

I'm trying to figure out how to approach a discussion of Lexis and Westlaw without taking up seven Internets. I've decided to offer three opinions. One is mine, and two belong to professors.

Mine: Someone at school allegedly won a car through one of the online legal research tools. I refuse to believe that either of these companies are giving a free car to every law school in the country without asking for something substantial in return from the student who actually wins. This helps me cope with the fact that it could have been me but wasn't.

Professor Number One: Lexis and Westlaw are like junior high drug pushers. They get you hooked in law school (when they're free), and then stick you hard when you become and actual lawyer (when they cost several thousand dollars a letter).

Professor Number Two: Lexis and Westlaw have made the traditional practice of screwing over your classmates by tearing pages out of library books completely obsolete, since they both contain everything you'll find in the law library online in easily printable electronic media. That isn't so much an opinion as a fact.

My major beef with how the two systems are set up is the fact that between the two of them they have four printers in the library, and between the nine hundred of us we have nine hundred law students in the law school. This isn't such a big deal during Ordinary Time, but when all three hundred 1Ls are working on the exact same assignment involving the exact same eight cases at the exact same time, a single person printing out everything Fordham Law ever had to say about anything can really ruin your day. Also, as I've alluded to in the background action of the strip, the printers themselves are just an RCH faster than the coughing, convulsing desktop printers that Epson insists on selling at affordable prices.

In other news, I had dinner with my friend Brook at the Westwood CPK this weekend. When the waitress made her first approach she asked, "Can I get you anything to drink? An IBC root beer?" Realizing that I hadn't had an IBC in perhaps years, I decided to go for it. So she brought out an open oldskool bottle of root beer and a chilled glass, and I commenced to enjoy, and wish I had a scoop or two of vanilla iscream to sweeten the deal.

Then, as I neared the bottom of the glass a glaring burst of Berkeley-style anticommercialism damn near knocked me out of my chair, and I said to Brook, tapping the empty bottle, "You know why they push the root beer? No free refills." I then paused for effect and added, "Sonsa bastards," at which point the waitress glided by, obviously having heard everything. I became embarrassed and vowed to redeem myself by tipping well.

That launched me into a Los Angeles-style realization about the nature of tipping. Now, now, don't get all excited, I'm not about to get all Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs here. I simply realized that sometimes, it might be better to get lousy service, because then you don't have to tip as much and you save money. How fucking sick is that? What's wrong with me?

Oh, by the way, in case you haven't noticed, the Log page is new. Many thanks to the proprietor of Cement Horizon for the space, and to didofoot for going to bat for me. Please make some comments. It would please me.

Finally, the girlfriend wants to be mentioned in the log. Further amusement can be found at her four craigslist postings regarding yesterday's American foot-ball match.