March 2003 Archives

That's right, folks. Animal Planet humor that in no way involves a certain hideously overplayed Australian daredevil. You saw it here first.

In other news, I really hate the fact that Fox News refers to suicide bombers as "homicide bombers." I think the word "bomber" already has enough homicidal connotations to clue people in as to what's going on. The whole point of adding "suicide" is to provide a quick description so people know exactly what's going on. CNN hasn't made this move yet, thankfully.

I remember when Fox started doing this. Bill O'Reilly discussed it as his ridiculous item of the day, even though he heartily approved of the switch. Supposedly it's supposed to de-emphasize the loss of the bomber's life and re-emphasize the loss of the victims' lives. Foxnews.com, incidentally, has a weekly feature called "PC Watch" in which they expose the week's more laughable liberal uproars. Naturally they exclude the conservative counterparts, like, you know, themselves.

During the Beltway Sniper affair, Fox almost started calling the killer a "homicide shooter" instead of a sniper, since the use of the word "sniper" to refer to a serial killer was degrading to Our Nation's servicemen. I swear to God I'm not making this up. Fortunately the duo were arrested before Fox could fully make the switch, and just in time to inspire the hypo on my Criminal Law final.

But at least the cats are cute. I think.

The other night I had a dream that I was at school, and one of my professors, we'll say Professor Y, had all these animals in his classroom, including a yellow snake with red eyes and huge black fangs. The snake was extremely venomous, but no one seemed to care except me. I tried to warn everyone that the snake was going to kill us all, and begged Professor Y to get rid of it. But no one paid attention. At one point it escaped. Again I pled, again no one cared. Even after it tried to bite Professor Y, making a troubling hissing/popping sound, everyone eas perfectly okay with the snake. The snake also got cut in half at one point, but that didn't affect its strength or its deadliness. This was a very very scary snake.

I realize there's a war going on, but I'm not going to let a little thing like armed global conflict interrupt my nonsensical cartooning. The centerpiece of this week's adventure (by which I mean the center frame) actually happened on the night I graduated from college, a night which precipitated a month of drunken unemployment, a new car, and several heartfelt conversations with Chatbot. In short, a simpler time for a simpler people. While I'm not entirely sure I've reproduced the physics-illiterate would-be beer drinker accurately, the renditions of the two disinterested onlookers in the background are pretty much bang-on, right down to the diaphanous sleeves and satchel-strap.

Other elements of that particular party that didn't make it out of my pen were the fact that the party was held in an apartment complex that used to be a barn, and there was a bonfire that drew some firefighters who were sweet-talked away by one of the tallest female future veterinarians ever I did see. Jason's sister was there, too. No, not that Jason, the other Jason.

There's some lovely war-related talk going on elsewhere on the Cement Horizon. Check some of that out, why don't you.

There was a chicken ranch out in the hills, and in the hills lived a lonely wolf. Every night, the wolf would climb to the top of a hill overlooking the chicken ranch and bay at the moon. He would do this all night, until the moon went away. The chickens didn't seem to mind.

Unfortunately, a sudden wave of veganism in the area gutted the market for eggs and poultry, and the chicken ranch had to close down and relocate away from the hills, and away from the wolf. The wolf stopped baying at the moon once the chicken ranch was gone.

Then one night, a friendly bear visited the wolf in his den. The bear approached the wolf and said, "Tell me, friend, why is it that we never hear you baying at the moon anymore?"

And the wolf replied, "No farm, no howl."

Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin "Chunk" Scalia has waddled into the headlines once again*. Apparently he's slated to receive a prestigious award for recognition of his committment to Free Speech, and he's requested a ban on all cameras and recording devices from the venue. While this is being enthusiastically labelled as "irony" by people who don't understand what "irony" means, my theory is that he wishes to avoid televised coverage because he doesn't want the world to see that he is a very, very fat man. The ban on audio recording just veils this concern.

As for Scalia's committment to Free Speech, from what I've read his main concern with respect to Free Speech is protection of the liberal use of sarcasm in precedential law.

A new strip is up at last. Any explanation as to the delay would make less sense than the strip itself. Let me just say, however, that while I was inking it I realized that there's more than one Elizabethan drama joke in the first frame. Also, look closely for the ghost of Andrew Jackson.

In other news, the Master of Cement Horizon recently suggested that I register the strip with OnlineComics.net, which is something that I went ahead and did. Unfortunately I accidentally picked "Horror" instead of "Humor" for the category, so until the error is corrected my strip is listed in the company of shit like this.

I think that'll do it for now. There's a chance that I may take next week off, it being Law Review write on week and all, but I'll see what I can scratch together.

I lied about posting a strip yesterday. Well, it wasn't a lie, because I believed it was true at the time. But a strip will be posted. Eventually.

But more importantly, I'm engaged!

The deal was sealed over the weekend amid numerous hugs and flowers and stuffed cats and phone calls to parents. The wedding itself will take place either next summer or the following summer (after I take the bar), depending in part on various extraneous circumstances which are largely beyond our control. I'm planning on having multiple bachelor parties.

So go ahead and let your daughters out. This cat's found a home.

There will be a new strip posted later today. It will include more bitching about Law Review.

In other news, I finally saw Real Genius over the weekend. It was funny, and entertaining, and had lots of pop corn. It also proved that the guy who played Walter Peck in Ghostbusters is probably a dick in real life. But most importantly, it made me realize that I do not, in any way, miss hanging out with science geeks.

Except for a few select science geeks, who know who they are.

This just in from Fox News: a group of soon-to-be canonized scientists have done some promising work on a treatment for peanut allergy, that great looming specter of anaphylaxis that threatens to kill 1.5 million Americans (including me) at any moment. Apparently we're still a few years away from a publicly available treatment, but my nipples are all a-tingle nonetheless.

My favorite paragraph from the article is this:

Before [15-year-old Allison Rush's] first treatment, the equivalent of one-60th of a peanut made her throat start closing up, her skin break out in hives, her face swell, and her blood pressure drop, said her mother, Bonnie Rush. After four monthly injections, it took the equivalent of six peanuts to bring on such an anaphylactic attack.

This brings up some methodology questions. I'm picturing the girl sitting on the examination table, the doctor sitting across from her with a jar of Planters, and a nurse behind her with an Epipen drawn and ready. And then it goes:

Doctor: You dying yet?
Allison: No, I'm good
Doctor: Have another. (Gives Allison a peanut.) How about now?
Allison: No, still okay.
Doctor: Have another. (Gives Allison another peanut.) Anything?
Allison: (Begins the overture of a slow, excruciating death.)
Doctor: DO IT!!! (Nurse jabs her with the Epipen, Allison passes out, Doctor writes the number "6" in his notebook.)

As promising as this research is, I can't help but mourn for the impending loss of peanut allergy humor. I'll also have to bang that script out sooner than I thought.

Because, really, who needs Spring Break?

Yeah. So the UCLA Law Review, unlike the fourteen law reviews that receive more citations than the UCLA Law Review, has an intensive week-long "write-on" application process instead of just inviting the top 10% of the first years to join. This is basically an AYSO "everybody plays" approach to law student prestige, except unlike AYSO, everybody loses as well.

Yes, even the third or so who make it lose their Spring Break. That's time that could be spent with family, friends, neighborhood cats, good books, any of a number of decadent tourist destinations, several bottles of Seagrams, Property outlines, hornbooks, or orgasms. But no. SOMEBODY came up with the bright idea to artificially inject a horse tranquilizer-sized dose of egalitarianism into law school. And while egalitarianism is an important element of the Law itself, it has absolutely no place in the practice thereof.

I think what the Law Review should do, really, is take some empirical data and see how closely the successful writers-on correspond to the actual top ten percent of the 1L class (or, since the school insists on not ranking us until it doesn't matter anymore, set a reasonable estimate for the 90th percentile GPA and go from there). If the top ten are consistently filling the ranks of Law Review anyway, they should shit-can this ridiculous write-on process and do it like they do it at the schools we all wish we were at. If, on the other hand, there's a great disparity between Law Review invitees and the top grade earners, then either UCLA is routinely giving good grades to people who can't do legal research, or the application criteria used by Law Review is hopelessly defective.

"But," you say, "Why should someone's candidacy hinge entirely on three final exams? I mean, maybe some people just don't get Civil Procedure." To which I reply, "A semester's worth of learning and ten hours worth of exam-taking is just as indicative, if not moreso, of legal abilities than spending a week sifting through hundreds of pages of bullshit to slap together fourteen pages of mealy-mouthed analysis. Neither of these processes accurately reflect what it's like to be a lawyer, but only one of them is going to take my Spring Break away. Which would Jesus choose?"

Angry now. Go to bed and have angry dreams.

Witness the downfall of Shame TV. It always warms my heart to read about the failures of others, but the last paragraph of the article turns my heart into a blinding fireball of petty glee.

Tonight was a Karaoke bar review night, and I went with every intention of not getting up and singing. As I walked in someone was just starting in on a Shakira song, which I took to be an ominous sign. Nonetheless I met up with a group of Section 2 folks and, after a single beer and no coaxing at all, headed to the stage to represent with a rendition of, you guessed it, "I Fought the Law." They only had the Bobby Fuller Four version, which is different from the Clash version in a few material respects, so I got a little tripped up in a few places. As for objective vocal abilities, according to one witness I "sounded really bad."

Another curious thing about the song list was that the only Nine Inch Nails song they had was "Closer." I would think if they were just going to have the one NIN song they'd go with "Head Like a Hole," "Terrible Lie," or some other song that doesn't require the singer to want to fuck the audience like an animal. Maybe next time I'll toss back a few G&Ts and have the audience get me closer to God.

But the true highlight of the evening was the discovery of the worst pick-up act ever: A middle-aged, bullet-headed gentleman trying to convince the Asian women in our group that he was a producer for an upcoming "sequel" to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon called The Forbidden Samurai. Finding no luck with the ladies of the group he inexplicably started laying his rap on me, possibly under the impression that once he got in good with me I'd grant him easy access to the women.

At one point he asked the girl standing next to me if I was her boyfriend, which I wasn't, and she said so. This not five minutes after I had told her all about how this girl I knew in college used to bring my friend Bret with her to parties so she could pretend he was her boyfriend if she was being set upon by a creepy guy. Sadly, in this case, my friend's negative response only encouraged more bullshitting from the Producer.

Afterwards I had a little talk with the truthteller that closely paralleled the "When someone asks you if you're a god..." scene from Ghostbusters, only replacing "you're a god" with "he's your boyfriend," and instead of fingertip-lightning it was drunk and incoherent boastery.

But all in all it was a fun time. Happy birthday, Angela, you decrepit old crone, you.

The UCLA Graduate Students Association is having itself a bit of a logo contest. I've narrowed my entries down to four candidates. If you have any opinion as to which one I should enter, please share via the comments section.

Entry 1: Health Consciousness

Entry 2: Psycho Bear

Entry 3: The Glamour Project

Entry 4: Psycho Bear Alternate

Ever since the unsettling disappearance of Mimi before the rains started I've been depressed by the lack of feline presence in my yard. However, yesterday I got quite an eyeful from a few other neighborhood cats that are much less interested in the likes of me than Mimi ever was. As I was leaving my apartment to buy some duct tape* I spotted Murphy, the orange cat with the human face, mounted atop a small, nameless white tabby, apparently trying to have sex with it. Now, Murphy is terrified of me and usually bolts as soon as he sees me, but apparently the promise of feline poontang instilled him with enough courage to risk the dangers of proximate human activity. The white tabby, for its part, was half-heartedly swatting at Murphy he stared me down with those creepy people eyes of his.

For anyone who has never had the pleasure of witnessing feline copulation, female cats are all about playing hard to get. They scratch, hiss, growl, roar, and make every other effort possible to keep the male cat's spine-covered wang out of their sweet spot. However, given the non-chalantness with which this particular tabby was fighting off Murphy, I gathered that Murphy had sufficiently broken her down by the time I showed up. This might explain why he was so insistent on not running away. After an investment like that you definitely want to close the deal.

As I was walking away I also spotted Jethro, the invisible black cat, watching the spectacle from a few feet away. So Jethro's either a pervert, or he was just waiting around for his turn to get scratched and bitten and humped.

*The duct tape was to fix my side mirror. Up until yesterday I had quite a time finding duct tape due to the fact that I live in a nation of idiots.

Help yourself to a heaping helping of I Fought the Law. There's at least one joke in every frame of this week's strip, except for the second one, but there are several in the first one so it all evens out. Trust me.

This week's inspiration comes from a flyer that showed up in our mailboxes last week, placed there by unknown phantoms of employment offering the following "service": For a nominal fee, a law student can videotape an interview to be included on a DVD, which will then theoretically be distributed to law firms across the country. Then, in a chocolate-covered fantasy world, the firms seek out the interviewees they like and offer them big Ed McMahon-shaped checks. It's like a dating service, only for law students. Supposedly the flyer, which contained a picture of a guy sweeping garbage out of the street, was offensive to a number of students (not to mention one of our esteemed deans, who saw fit to send out an apology e-mail despite the fact that no one actually involved with the school had anything to do with its distribution). But as far as I'm concerned the only offensive thing about it was the belief that anyone at UCLA would fall for something like that. I mean, really.

Happy quincenyera, Paige! There won't be any money left for your wedding!