December 2002 Archives

Ahem.

Among the questionable creative decisions made by Peter "Dead Alive" Jackson in the latest Lord of the Rings installment was the change in the origin of Gollum's onomatopoeic name from a swallow to a cough, a cough which, while hacking in nature, sounds suspiciously like phlegmy throat clearing as opposed to any debilitating malady that might be brought about by insane devotion to a magic Ring. As a chronic throat clearer myself, and someone who already receives his fair share of ribbing therefor, I'm forced to take umbrage. And I'll take all the umbrage I want, thank you.

As for the movie itself, movie reviews 'round these parts are taken care of in another place, and I'm not about to step on anybody's toes by offering my own meager analysis. Instead, I'll just tell you what I thought of a few of the actors.

Karl Urban as Eomer: HOT.
Brad Dourif as Wormtongue: Bad ASS.
Miranda Otto as Eowyn: Also hot, but in a cute way.
Liv Tyler as Arwen: Still thoroughly unengaging.
John Rhys-Davies as Gimli: Hey! Isn't it funny how he's shorter than everyone else? He's a dwarf, get it? Har har! Dwarves are small!
David Wenham as Faramir: Also hot, also cute, but in a Viking way.

Until next year, then.

This ambushed me on my way out of the shower just now:

She wears real tight dresses
And high-heeled shoes
And if you've got cash
She'll have sex with you
Oh, she'll take you to bed
And she'll charge you for head
She's a call girl after all

She's a call girl after all
She's a call girl after all
She's a call girl after all
And she's worth... the... price...

Oh, you won't find her
In the back of a car
'Cause she hangs around
In the hotel bar
She's a classier ho'
And she rakes in the dough
She's a call girl after all

She's a call girl after all
She's a call girl after all
She's a call girl after all
And her name... is... [(preferably single-syllable) name of girl in room]

Wednesday, indeed!

(1) During my Criminal final today I was forced to abstain from making a solid gold pun, and accordingly I'm going to be cranky and sullen for approximately 35 hours. The pun was "Just as there was no money in the pocket, there was no meth in the madness." No further explanation will be provided.

(2) For some reason every now and then I'll check my bank balance online, and it'll be about $20 short. I'll click the link to the detailed statement, and it will be missing a number of entries since I tend to do a lot of check-card business after bank hours, and it only updates once a day at 7:00 a.m. The following morning, without fail, the $20 is always back. I'm imagining some night clerk at B of A headquarters "borrowing" $20 from my account just in case he needs a little extra cash over the weekend, and then returning it on Monday. I'd like to complain about whatever is going wrong to the bank, but how on earth do I even approach this?

Me: Uh, hi. [Explains problem.]
Customer Service: Well if it always comes back, what are you complaining about?
Me: Well, where's it going? Why is it doing that?
Customer service: ...
Me: It's very disconcerting, that's all!
*Click.*

(3) Apparently if I walk on the grass instead of the sidewalk while traveling between the laundry room and my apartment, Mimi, the friendly cat who lives behind me, won't zig zag in front of me like she usually does. She's a rescued stray who lives outside but apparently she's too dainty to walk on the grass.

(3) What the hell ever happened to Phil Tanofsky, that bastard Jew-fro Texan?

The flush handle of the handicapped urinal in the second floor mens room of the UCLA law library is the funnest thing under God's Green Sky. It's SO big. I like to press it on the very tip, and watch as the extended lever arm allows me to apply the appropriate flushing torque with minimal effort. In my mind I envision the R vector crossing with the F vector and creating a great and mighty Tau, and I become wistful for the days when the only laws I needed to know where the laws of Physics, and the laws against statutory rape.

It's shiny and metal and flat. And when it hits home, a thoroughly satisfying swoosh of industrial-strength water pressure destroys the evidence. It really is, my friends, a thing of utmost beauty.

For some reason parties got a lot cooler after I left the Bay Area. Or maybe I just wasn't being invited to the cool parties while I lived there.

Happy Friday the 13th, everybody.

When I began reading this story about the latest cross-burning battle brewing in the Supreme Court, my first thought was, "You know, I'll bet there's a Black lawyer representing the KKK guys." Sure enough, about halfway down the page:

The ACLU agreed to represent Black, even hiring David Baugh, a prominent African American lawyer, who argued Black's his right to free speech was violated, however disturbing the speech.

I was reminded of a movie we watched in high school about a neo-nazi march in a small town in Illinois, where the lawyer representing the neo-nazis was Jewish. Apparently based on a true story. While discussing this with a few of my classmates someone mentioned that a very lucrative field for female attorneys is the defense of rape defendants. I'm usually suspicious of things I hear in the air like this, but I don't doubt that it's true to some extent. Furthermore, I'm told by one of my professors that when Ruth Bader Ginsburg brought her first sexual discrimination cases in her ACLU days, her clients were almost exclusively men.

Now I'm wondering how extensively this idea can be pushed. Should they find lawyers who are also cattle ranch owners to defend ELF and PETA activists? How would the communicate this to the jury? Would the judge allow the lawyer to eat a fat steak drowned in butter at the defense table?

The task remains for me to find out what I'm the opposite of, and make a career out of defending them. How about this:

Need a Lawyer?
Hate donuts?
Call M. Christian Holohan,
Attorney at Law
You sugar-hating freak.

And another thing. If people are going to take it upon themselves to draft criminal statutes related to sexual offenses, they accomplish NOTHING by being shy about what they're talking about. To wit:

Model Penal Code Section 213.0(2): "Sexual intercourse" includes intercourse per os or per anum, with some penetration however slight; emission is not required.

Yesterday the Torts final happened. You know that part in The Princess Bride when the guy is in the Pit of Despair and he has a year of his life sucked away? That's how I felt afterwards. But then, there was beer.

I don't know what it is about tort law that brings out the second-grade comedian in me, but regardless:

What do you call the ghost of a potato?
A spectater.

What do you call a tyrannical potato ruler?
A dictater.

What do you call an introspective potato that is made up of many smaller potatoes?
A meta-tater.

What do you call a potato that copies you?
An imitater.

What do you call a potato that's a very close friend but is also threatening?
An intimate-tater.

What do you call a German potato that kills people?
A taeter.

I realize this is just the same punchline over and over again, but after growing up on "hare/hair" jokes I think I'm operating under diminished capacity.

This week's hurriedly drawn smut-fest continues the theme of creative yet impractical revenge plots that I began last week. I'd like to eventually develop the ability to design schemes of retribution that don't necessarily involve billions of dollars or science fiction, but for now it seems that my enemies are safe as long as I don't get hit by a radioactive meteor or anything of that sort.

Also, as I said, this week's strip is hurriedly drawn. Sadly, this isn't reflected in the actual artwork since it's on par with previous efforts on which I spent considerably more time. There are, however, two things I would have changed had I started with pencil instead of pen. First, the picture of Kam's head projecting the naked Ted would have been replaced by a bald version, it being the future and all. Secondly, I would have inserted the word "legal" before "career" in the third panel, to forestall the possible misreading that Kam means to ruin Ted's adult film career by making a movie in which Ted has a small wang.

What do you want from me, people? I've been studying the economic fucking theory of torts all day.

This graphic accompanied an article in The Daily Bruin yesterday about how people don't like taking finals. Okay, now what's interesting about it? What might an overly sensitive freak like me find objectionable? I'll give you a few seconds to figure it out. (Hint: It's not the fact that the artist's name is "Wang.")

Give up? Okay, check out the way they visualize coffee. It used to be that coffee would be symbolized by a coffee mug, with or without steam. But now, instead, we have a paper cup with a plastic lid and the implied logo of a trendy coffee shop. So in addition to rubbing out unique local flavor across the continent, Starbucks has gone ahead erased the Great American Coffee Mug from popular culture.

And Michel Savage gently weeps.

I went to my first Hollywood club last night to see Demon Bros. play some music at me. The lead guitarist is Mike from my class, who incidentally is only the second most punk rock person at UCLA Law. The name of the club was A.D., located just barely on the ghetto side of Hollywood (just a few blocks past where they stop lining the streets with big glowing stars), and getting there reinforced my theory that to get anywhere in the Los Angeles area from my apartment I just head down Santa Monica Boulevard for nine miles and turn right.

The band was cool. Much rocking was done. My latent purism forced me to scoff somewhat at their use of backup recordings, but since they're going for kind of a dance-metal sound that necessary involves unnatural noises, I made allowances (the standard response given by Sourdough Gunn, for example, when people complain about Nine Inch Nails' drum machines and backup tapes, is "Do you want to watch him sit there and program a computer on stage?"). Anyway, the highlight of the set was a really cool cover of "Strange Love" which, enjoyable as it was, really shouldn't be their first single if they hit the radio lest they suffer the fate of Orgy, Frente, and Alien Ant Farm.

Other high points of the evening were nearly making Jedi cry by asking him about the earlier version of "James K. Polk" (he didn't know about it), subsequently getting beaten by Jedi at arm wrestling, and learning from Steve that there was never any interesting Presidential hair.

How many Supreme Court Justices does it take to change a lightbulb?
Six. One to turn it, and five to overturn it.

What did the Supreme Court Justice say when his friend asked him for a mint but he didn't want to give him one?
"Cert denied."

What do you call it when twelve women of various ethnic backgrounds become lesbians?
Diversity jury's dick shun.

What do you call a sarcastic lawyer's second lawsuit against the same person?
A witty re-tort.

What kind of cheese do judges put in their lasanga?
Res juricotta.

What do you call someone who used to be your mother's sister?
Your ex ante.

Okay, after finishing off the last of the non-cherry donuts I'm ready to come on get happy.

I've spent a great deal of time this past year thinking up ways to exact revenge on the schools that rejected me in the Spring. I'm not talking about rats or stink bombs or fountains full of sewage here, I'm talking about undermining the academic and professional reputations of these schools. I am, basically, talking about the U.S. Fucking News and their intolerable rankings.

Unfortunately most of my plans have entailed me having a great deal of money and a law school of my own. All I could think to do was somehow attract professors away from the top schools, thereby weakening the respective academic strengths and reputations of the schools. Needless to say this plan didn't afford me much pleasure as I stared helplessly at the darkened ceiling every night fantasizing about admissions officers curled up and crying in their offices.

But all that changed today. With the new scandal at Boalt Hall, I realized that I've been approaching it from the exact wrong angle. Why attract professors away from law schools when I can push them out from the inside? All I need is a small army of attractive women to gain admission into high-end law schools, engage in brief, steamy affairs with professors, and then blackmail them into resigning in disgrace! Disgrace!

For what, indeed, is a Dean but a professor with a nicer suit? No one will be immune to the charms of my sexual army. I will employ agents of all shapes, sizes, and races. I will have thin women, heavy women, and medium women. White women, Black women, and China women. Oh, and gays! I'll have gays, too! No one will be safe!

And it'll pay for itself! A small, rotating band of sexual predatees will hit one school at a time, and who do you think will represent them in their sexual harassment suits? Why, a graduate from a school with a 92% bar passage rate, that's who! The money from the settlements from one school will fund the downfall of the next! Genius! Genius, I say!

Think of it. Just think of it! Dozens of law schools being utter destroyed just because a single guy bubbled in the wrong letter on his LSAT four or five too many times! Oh, the bitterness! Oh, the pettiness! Oh... Oh, the POWER!!!

Mwa ha ha. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. MWA HA. MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this happened.

This kind of shit really, really, really pisses me off. In fact, there's not a single thing about it I don't hate. Let's go point by point.

I certainly don't consider myself to be a person governed by traditional morality, but even I get really angry when I hear about professors banging students. I'm not going to get on some high horse here, I'm just saying that, as inappropriate consensual sex acts between adults go, professor-student ranks pretty high on the list. If anyone out there is suffering from the delusion that the "single consensual encounter" between Dean Dwyer and the unnamed student was anything more than the indulgement of a pathetic power fantasy (on both sides), I'll point out that true love can wait until after graduation. So, it would seem, can sexual harassment reports (see below).

But really, it's the hearing about it that I mind more than the banging. The Daily Californian, shining bastion of journalistic incompetence, got something out of this that makes every newspaper editor drool: A banner headline with the word "sexual" in it. I'm increasingly glad that Berkeley continues to use its status as Home of the Free Speech Movement to fill its deplorable newspaper with cheap, non-substantive sex while student publications who push the limits of free speech in courageous, insightful ways are consistently swatted down by campus politicians.

And then there's our sainted victim, who was so deeply violated by the Big Bad Dean's sexual predation that she went right out and filed a report against him. Two years later.

That said, I'm not asking for much sympathy for Mr. Dwyer himself, who knew exactly what the fuck he was getting into, knew that to keep your job after getting head under your desk you have to be an extremely popular world leader, and should have kept it the fuck in his pants. But, to be fair, you can tell he's been deeply affected by this and has learned his lesson:

"I acknowledge that this reflected a serious error in judgment on my part and was inappropriate," Dwyer wrote in an internal memo to the Boalt Hall community. "I believe I can no longer effectively lead the school."

Accordingly, following his immature, inexcusable abuse of power, he promptly resigned from his position as head of one of the nation's leading law schools. Two years later.

I was going to turn this around into a light-hearted revenge plot against schools that rejected me, but after writing all of this I'm too depressed. Maybe a little later.

Our futuristic adventure this week begins with a reflection on the fact that I can't do something as simple as take a field trip to federal court without almost being permanently relieved of my belt. But that's not what this week's strip is really about.

It's difficult for me to begin discussing my tragic encounter with cherry flavored donuts without getting emotional. I feel like I've been violated on a very personal, very fundamental level. Even in our mid-twenties, as we outgrow religion, come to terms with the humanity of our parents, and watch our childhood dreams collapse into dreary day jobs, there remain a few unassailable truths to which we can still cling. And for me, one of these truths has always been that donuts taste good. Accordingly, last week when I found that I had unwittingly purchased a box of cherry flavored donuts, I was nearly crushed under the weight of human existence once and for all.

Now let me just make it absolutely clear what we're dealing with here. These weren't cherry frosted donuts, or cherry filled donuts. No. The cherry flavoring was baked into the very cake of the donuts themselves. Imagine biting into what you expect to be a delicious chocolate-coated fluffy cloud of goodness and suddenly finding yourself with a mouth full of pink cake and chunks of crystallized cherry flavoring. So wrong.

The sheer profanity of cherry flavored donuts was further evidenced by the fact that I literally couldn't give these things away at school the following day. This is how it went down.

Me: Care for a donut?
Classmate: Ooh! Donuts!
Me: They're cherry flavored, though.
Classmate: Cherry flavored? That sounds disgusting.
Me: And how.
Classmate: Mmm... No thanks. I think I'll just go chew on this shoe leather over here.

I've written a letter to Ralphs Grocery Company detailing my disappointment with their culinary heresy and urging them to repent before they're damned for good. In the meantime, I'll be checking food labels for cherry flavoring as well as peanuts.