Real Americans Celebrate Kwanzaa

Americans are exceptional. As in, we celebrate an exceptional number of holidays. The holiday of Kwanzaa is both an exceptionally recent development and an exceptionally controversial one; it is steeped in politics, philosophy, criminal intrigue and higher learning. If all of that sounds boring to you and you just want to figure out what Kwanzaa is about, scroll down to watch Kwanzaabot's (Coolio's) explanation of the holiday.

Since the late 1960s, Americans have celebrated the Pan-African holiday of Kwanzaa from December 26 to January 1. The name Kwanzaa comes from the Swahili term, "matunda ya kwanza" or "first fruits of the harvest" in English and has as its goal the reaffirmation and restoration of African-American connections to traditional African communitarian culture. Kwanzaa is actually celebrated in a few other countries, but those countries complain that it's really a celebration of African-American culture and is therefore yet another instance of American hegemony. What they meant to say that it is one of many pieces of evidence that point to African-American American exceptionalism.

As holidays go, however, I have to question the placement of a holiday celebrating African-American heritage in the United States after the 25th day of Kislev and during the 12 days of Christmas. Sure, it means that yearly Christmas cards can have Kwanzaa stamps on them, but strategically someone should have seen 1976's Black History Month coming when historian Carter Woodson designated a week in February as "Negro History Week" in 1926 in honor of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass's birthdays and planned accordingly.

But I digress. This post is really about learning the history of a holiday.

While most people give Black Power movements props for harnessing black nationalism and using it to cause social and cultural change in the United States, fewer people know that they also had a hand in creating Kwanzaa.

Ronald McKinley Everett, later better known by his Swahili name, Maulana Ron Karenga, was a prominent figure in the Black Power movement, writing his first Ph.D. dissertation on African-American nationalism and his second Ph.D. dissertation on classical African morality, using Egypt as his guide.

Dr. Karenga was influenced by Malcom X, Pan-Africanist movements, and was involved in the Black United Front, which included the Black Panthers and Dr. Karenga's US Organization. The Us Organization was devoted to promoting the African-focused humanistic philosophy of Kawaida, but it eventually developed a young subgroup that developed para-military tactics and began to battle with the Black Panthers themselves.

The FBI's counterintelligence staff saw Karenga's appeals to black nationalism as an attempt to divide the United States and create internal conflict. Dr. Karenga landed in jail as a consequence of these para-military tactics based partially on testimony from his ex-wife, but claimed that he was a political victim and came out of prison with the hope that he could convert all African-Americans to his brand of secular humanism.

And so Kwanzaa was born.

The philosophy of Kawaida is based on Ngudo Saba, or 7 principles:

1. Umoja (Unity) - in family/community/nation/race
   
2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) - in name/creation/speech
   
3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) - in working together to solve each other's problems
   
4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) - build and maintain businesses and profit from them together
   
5. Nia (Purpose) - to restore the African diaspora to its traditional greatness
   
6. Kuumba (Creativity) - to leave the community better than it was before we existed
   
7. Imani (Faith) - to believe in our people/parents/teachers/leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle

On each day of Kwanzaa, one of the "mishumaa saba" (seven candles) is lit, and one of the seven principles is the focus. The candles are black (people), red (struggle) or green (future and hope) and gifts reflect learning and African heritage. The first candle lit on the first day of Kwanzaa is the black candle, symbolizing that the people should come before everything else. Meditation and feasting closes out the festivities.

As promised, here is Kwanzaabot (Coolio):

Futurama
Hermes' Kwanzaa Party
www.comedycentral.com
Funny Jokes It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Ugly Americans

Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes

I'm going to do a post about the holiday of Jesusmas at some point, but before I get there, I wanted everyone to enjoy my favorite holiday song.  We'll talk soon.

Learn the History of a Holiday*

December is a month of holidays. Some celebrate arbitrary divisions, cult leaders with great postmortem press, the Angolan currency, or shitty hotels.

These are all great holidays, but today I am going to talk about Hanukkah [Pronounced: clear throat·nuk·kah]. Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days in December. Nobody knows exactly which eight days, because calendars are hard to read, apparently. Except in the America, Hanukkah celebrations are pretty weak, although you are expected to play with fire. In America, Jews have parties, put up lots of decorations, and give their children gifts. This is so their children don't see exciting Christmas celebrations and realize the moral and cultural superiority of the American majority. They also play an excellent drinking game, which we described here.

Hanukkah celebrates the reconsecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BCE. In the 2nd century BCE, Jerusalem came under the control of the Seleucid Greek Empire. The Jews revolted, and in 165 BCE the Hebrew Hammer (Judas Maccabeus) kicked the Seleucids out of Jerusalem and established the nation of Israel. Since that time, the Jews have lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors, free from foreign interference, war, and prejudice.

The victorious Jews only had one day worth of oil to keep the Temple's eternal flame burning. But this oil miraculously lasted eight days, which is how long it took to get more oil. It may seem odd to us today that oil would be important in the Middle East, but things were different back then.

*The accuracy of this post compares favorably to our predictions on when the Mass. bar results would get posted.

Spend One Dollar

The lady and I are having a small Chanukah gathering and have asked everyone to bring a one dollar ($1) grab bag gift.  Evidently you get points in life if you can stretch a dollar the furthest.

I'm using my Amazon Prime (which you can get for free if you have a .edu address that's not an alumni address) to find a gift that will ship for free that's $1 or less.  So far, the best item I'm not buying is:

It's available on Amazon here for 92 cents. 

I need your help - because if I don't get it, I'm just buying a scratch ticket.  What do you think I should buy that is less than a dollar?

Engage the Crazies

I was sitting there reading the New Yorker, when I came upon this article.

Climate-change legislation in the new Congress

I didn't so much come upon it, but rather it was the first article in the magazine.  It talks about the Republican and Tea Bag refusal to accept scientific evidence of global warming.

So you're clear on where I stand on this issue, I'm not asking for laws requiring everyone to drive hybrid cars.  I'm not asking for laws prohibiting all carbon emissions - or even severely limiting them (cap and trade makes some sense to me).  I am asking that you at least let scientists who can prove global warming say so.  And let them present evidence that might convince me to buy a hybrid car.  Not to villainize them for reasons beyond comprehension.

My favorite part of this article:

[Rep.] John Shimkus, of Illinois, is one of four members now vying for the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. At a congressional hearing in 2009, he dismissed the dangers of climate change by quoting Genesis 8:22: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” He added, “I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for His creation.” 

I like Genesis.  My bar mitzvah portion was from Genesis.  This is absurd.

My prayer?  God help the US of A not destroy the world.

Iron Your Suit (Buy an Iron)

MA is sending out emails assigning the official swearing in dates and times. The options are 9 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1 p.m.-3 p.m., and the assignment appears to be based on alphabetical order. (These emails are proof that MA BBE is just lazy and/or full of Luddites.)

After you receive your email, you will remember that you have not had the best personal hygiene due to your obsession with predicting the impending doom of bar failure, and your suits are all crumpled in the bottom of your closet.

While you may be able to pull off the wrinkled look with panache, those of us who cannot carry it off should be buying professional grade irons or spending the $ on that sketchy dry cleaning place on the corner.



Or, if you would prefer to screw it and become the stuff of bar swearing-in ceremony legend, just wear this:

Be Wary of the Pre-Official NY Bar Results

Not saying that there is no possible way for the results to be accurate, but the results posted on Above the Law list several people who failed the MA bar exam and somehow still passed the NY bar exam (if the results are real).

Reliability officially questioned.

Edit: Get your BOLE ID ready and enter it here --> https://www.nybarapply.org/bresults/bresults.asp

Edit: I got my official email - according to http://www.nybarexam.org/ you should be getting yours soon . . . .

"Notice to July 2010 Bar Examination Candidates

Results of the July 2010 bar examination are being emailed to candidates beginning on November 5, 2010. It could take up to 24 hours for your results to be received and delivered by your email system. If you have not received your results by 9:00AM on Monday, November 8, you may fax a request to the Board for a duplicate letter. Please include a current, working email address. You may also access your results by clicking here . You will need your BOLE ID. If you were successful on the bar exam and certified for admission to the bar, the attachment in the email notice of your results (“Notice of Certification”) must be sent to the Appellate Division as part of your application for admission."

Celebrate Like a Lawyer

It's getting close to crunch time - most of you have just passed the bar or will soon.  Or, if you're in California, most of you will fail the bar soon.  Sorry, but dems the breaks.

Either way, pass or fail, your best bet will be to get super fucked up super quickly.  And the best way to do this as a lawyer is to get drunk.  But not sleepy drunk.  Nobody likes a sleepy drunk. 

Evidently there's a new product on the market that is perfect for bar celebration.  It's called cocaine Four Loko.

This fruit flavored beverage is, as you can see, 11% alcohol.  But evidently that varies per state.  (Can we just, for a moment, think about how absurd it is to have a beverage that has to change its alcoholic content to be legal in various states.  Who understands these laws?  Oh - shit - that's our job.  Fuck.)  It also has caffeine.  So you get fucked up and stay up.  Perfect for either celebrating the reality that if you're lucky you'll review documents 80 hours a week for the next six years or celebrating the reality that you can put that off for another six months - or both.  In fact, this might be perfect to get you through document review. 

As I'm sure you know, however, the public outcry has been insane.  Evidently we have a reader who is a student at Boston University, which also cried out about Four Loko.  The letter sent to the entire "community" is printed below.  My additions are in red.

Dear Friends,


We want to pass along this important message about a potentially dangerous alcohol drink that has received some national press recently. We share this information first because we know you don't read the news and also so that you can continue to make smart choices about your personal health and safety while at Boston University.  And if there's time, to decide to transfer to Harvard.



There has been much fanfare recently about a fruity malt liquor called “Four Loko” and the attendant side effects which have been referred to as,! “Blackout in a can.”  [What is that ! random exclamation point?] Alcohol companies are targeting college students with these products without regard for your safety but with ample regard for your amusement. National attention has been focused on this particular beverage because of a couple of very troubling incidents at Central Washington University and Ramapo College in Northern New Jersey where students clearly don't know how to hold their liquor.


We want to take this opportunity to provide you with some information about caffeinated alcoholic beverages and about mixing caffeine and alcohol in an effort to aid you in your decision making. Mixing alcohol and caffeine is not a new concept, but the recent cases involving students who were hospitalized after drinking beverages combining the two in a large can, is a cause for concern across college campuses and elsewhere around the co! untry. Please pardon my random exclamation point. At the request of 18 attorney generals, or 18 attorneys general, the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing whether the drinks are safe.  But since the FDA already approved lots of other things that are bad for you, don't worry.  You'll still be able to find this amazing beverage. 


Four Loko is one brilliant example of a caffeinated alcoholic fruit punch beverage. The 23 ounce can of this drink contains an equivalent amount of alcohol to four 12 ounce beers and 156 milligrams of caffeine. So you know, a five hour energy has 138 mg, a 12 oz. diet coke has 45 mg, a red bull has 80 mg, and a grande starbucks coffee has 330 mg. The danger here is not just the alcohol content but rather, the combination of high amounts of alcohol and caffeine. And that you had no idea that starbucks coffee had that much caffeine.


Drinking high amounts of caffeine can cause symptoms like rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath,! BAM, I'm Emeril, dizziness, feeling jittery and nausea. When consumed in combination wi! th BAM alcohol, caffeine may produce the feeling of being “wide awake” despite the fact that one may be intoxicated on alcohol. This is a perfect combination for having a party while studying for finals. The fact that the depressant effects of alcohol are mitigated by the caffeine may lead people to continue to drink alcohol and thereby become dangerously drunk. Law school might do the same thing.



We strongly recommend that you steer clear of these types of drinks and from mixing alcohol with other caffeine containing beverages. Use soda water instead. It has fewer calories. We also recommend that you avoid mixing other substances with alcohol as a general rule. Everyone knows that vodka tastes better straight anyway. Unless it's from a plastic bottle. Then mix it with whatever cheap juice you have. Boston University is concerned for your personal safety and we hope that you will use this information to make wise health choice! s. BAM.



With best regards for your drunk and awake future,


REDACTED, Director, Student Health Services


REDACTED, Chief of Police

Start Freaking Out About Your Second Bar

Those of you who took the NY Barbri course last summer received an email letting us know that NY results will not come out until November 8 at the earliest.

And the final countdown begins . . . .

Get Ready to Vote!

What? You were or are too busy freaking out about bar exam results to care about the mid-term election?

What? You also like aesthetically pleasing websites that hand you information about the names on that ballot?

If you answered yes to one or both of the above questions, you will appreciate Project Vote Smart's VoteEasy. It lists issues from abortion to taxes, asks you questions, and tells you which candidates' platforms are closest to your own. Simple. Brainless. Helpful.

If you are one of the 85% of poli-sci majors who went to law school, then you will probably actually look at this information re: ballot initiatives. The rest of us will read the paragraph description listed on the actual ballot and make an educated guess when we vote tomorrow, based on the lessons we learned from "The Walking Dead's" pilot episode.

(Brainnnnnnnnsssssssss.)

View the results ONLINE

Yes, it happened, as cranky MA BBE employee said it would: the results are ONLINE.

Guest Submission: Rant Like a Madman

This is a guest submission from "BN":

How come no one tells you that, even after you get your bar results, you still have to wait until December to be sworn in?  You're not officially licensed until then.  And they don't even print your bar cards until after the swearing in ceremony.  Which, by the way, is mandatory and apparently oppressively long.  This is the most elaborate and underhanded hazing method known to man.

Hang in there man, hang in there.

Have Mercy on the MA Board of Bar Examiners

Today I caved in and called the MA Board of Bar Examiners at 12:30 p.m. The tipster was 2 days off in accuracy - the results were mailed today.

The woman I spoke with on the phone had a request:

"Please tell all of your friends not to call. The results were mailed out today, so they need to stop calling. We actually have other work to do."

Now come the predictions for when the results will actually be ONLINE. Cranky MA BBE employee said that it usually takes 2 days to put them online post-mailing. She said definitely not before next week.

But, as we all now know - we'll believe it when we see it . . . on the internets.

Playing Telephone is Fun

So clearly my tipster was wrong. 

But games are fun.  I remember in fourth grade music class where my teacher maestro didn't want to do anything productive so we played telephone.  What started with "She forgot her address" turned into "Susie has big breasts."  And of course it was true - she did forget her address. 

I digress.  For what it's worth, contrary to the accusations in the comments to other posts, the prediction was not a hoax.  It was information that turned out not to be correct, despite seeming sufficiently reliable at the time.

Results will come eventually, that much I promise.  For now, though, I'll refrain from rumor.  Some comments to the earlier posts offer other speculation, take it or leave it as you will.

I wish I could say I was sorry for causing panic, but while I am sorry I was wrong, I'd probably do it the same way again.  I enjoy watching you all squirm. 

For now, I'm going to do something a whole lot more important than waiting for bar results - and probably less trivial too.

Remember Why Law School Sucked

As law school fades into the past, it will increasingly seem like a golden era, full of leisure and intelligent conversation. As you slog through boxes full of random documents and emails that might prove the billion-dollar corporation your firm represents failed to do a good job of covering up the fact that a few of their 11,000 employees are not as politically correct as they should be, you may look back longingly on your time in law school. You might even begin to think of it in the same category as some of the truly great times in your life.

When this happens, you should look back and remember the things about law school that really sucked. And lots of it did.

• Money. Those of you who are going to work for BigLaw will make lots of this. Good for the three of you. Everyone else will be making somewhat less than they did if they worked before law school. This will suck. But keep in mind what you made during law school: negative $160K. That is worse than positive $40K; it really is. So when you are writing out those monthly loan checks, remember that you are still making a LOT more than you did in law school. And still paying for that mistake.
• Finals. And everything that goes with them: outlining, practice exams, study groups, the library. Finals were an exercise in mental self-flagellation. If you make yourself sit in front of your laptop long enough, what, hopefully your exam will end up at the top of the staircase when your professor "grades" the stack? Sweet.
• Unpaid internships. Remember struggling to get these for the summer after first year? And then having to borrow money from your parents so you could live in some dump with three random people your roommates found to sublease to while they interned back home so they could live with their parents? At least you weren't given anything that resembled real work.
• Books. For almost every class, you got to spend $160 on some shitty book full of boring cases so your professor could transfer a bit of wealth from the poor (you) to the rich (him).
  
• People. Law school was full of less than ideal people. Most of the professors were self-centered, egotistical theorists who had little knowledge of actually being a lawyer. And your fellow classmates were the same, but worse. They were not as smart as the professors, but didn't realize this fact. Many of them thought they could look smart by making inane comments or parroting the professor. Most lacked a sense of humor, and all of them liked to argue. Unfortunately, few students were actually good at arguing. More likely, they took things far too seriously, and tended to attack those who disagreed with them. They would commonly assert that others had ulterior motives for everything they did, even when there was a much more obvious reason for the other person's actions. And when students thought they had somehow been slighted, they would go out of their way to attack others, generally in public.*
• Dating. The dating pool consisted largely of the above mentioned people.

*This link, like this post, was definitely not written solely as an excuse to attack one of our commenters. That would be childish.

Find Your Sense of Humor

We try hard to be funny.  And by we I don't just mean the three of us still writing for this blog.  (Milhouse was never funny, except when he skipped BarBri to get his iPad.  Which was kinda funny.)  All of us try to be funny.  Sometimes we're successful. Sometimes we're not.

There are lots of eleven ways to be funny.  You can be explicitly funny and tell a joke.  But if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny anymore.  And in fact, it probably wasn't funny to begin with. 

You can also be punny.  You know, word play?  This involves things like playing "I Love This Bar" while studying for the exam.  That's why they call me the punisher.  See, e.g., Myq Kaplan of Keith and the Girl and Last Comic Standing.  Using the bluebook properly is also depressing funny.

And, sometimes you can use subtle misdirection to be funny.  Sadly, some people don't understand this.  I'm not referring to the bar results prediction.  That wasn't a joke, although the reaction has been funny.  (OMG - UCC refers to more than just UCC Article 2).  I love cyclical jokes for example.  So does Doodie.  So doesn't Mr. Anthony Anonymous* who posted in the comments on Mr. Doodie's last post. 

Find your sense of humor.  It'll be too late once you pass the bar.  And it's already too late if you failed.  Also find a bottle of scotch.  You'll need it either way.


But even so, you should learn the "funniest joke in the world":

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

*Name might be a random alliteration.

Come Up with an Excuse

ATL, a semi-respectable legal blog, recently reported that Massachusetts may be mailing bar results today. If you took the MA bar, that means you may get your results tomorrow, sometime this week, or, if you are living in Somaliland or some other territory/state the US doesn't recognize, never. If only there were some form of quick, reliable "electronic mail" they could use to send the results to everyone at the same time. Alas.

Anyway, if you took the MA bar and you are currently working (a very small sample size, I know), you should probably come up with an excuse for missing work in the near future. Because going to work after getting really, blackout drunk the night before is not fun, and you will want to do this after getting your results. If you pass, you will want to party. If you fail, you will need alcohol to lessen the pain.

Here, in no particular order (actually, the order that I think of them), are some ideas:

1. I was abducted by aliens. If getting probed by little grey/green/magenta/some other color aliens is not a reason to get off work, you got a job at BigLaw and you are deferred.

2. My goldfish died. Pretty sure flushing Swimmy is worth a day off.

3. My favorite teddy bear attacked me last night. This is both sad (my best/only friend turned on me) and terrifying (I WAS ATTACKED BY A BEAR).

4. I was attacked by a bear. More manly but lacking the emotional appeal of number 3.

5. My boyfriend/girlfriend/favorite prostitute just died. If you are working at a law firm, only the third option is believable.

6. I am trapped in a South American mine with a bunch of other dudes. This is both plausible and timely. If you make the correct insinuations, it may also get you some diversity points.

7. The Green Line broke down. Only works if you live in Boston. Always works if you live in Boston.

Hedge Your Bets: Invest in Stamps

Since the Federal Reserve is issuing large amounts of currency in an effort to reduce the value of the dollar (and therefore the value of the U.S. foreign debt), you should probably start investing in something less inflatable that you can pass along to the grandkids.

Sure, paid spokesperson Glenn Beck says gold is where it's at - and, sure, gold is nice to look at, but it's heavy and, really, all gold bricks look pretty much the same.

Stamps, however, are light, thin (so portable!), and come in multiple shades, sizes, and languages.

Philately requires minimal financial investment. Only a tweezer, a magnifying glass, paper, adhesive, and a lack of social skills is required. Plus, after 40 years of stamp collecting, you can sell your stamps for six figures to old people who regret having sold their own collections. (Okay, fine, that NYT article was from 1996, when stamps were booming. Here's another one from 2004, and 2008.)

Just last year the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch column noted that investing in stamps was being pitched to hedge fund experts, and that "alternative investing" is all the rage in China and India. That's right, you can be a jet-setting philatelist and tell war stories of that one time when 100 people all wanted your 24 cent air mail Jenny Stamp from 1918 that was accidentally printed upside down! OMG! You should have been there (to buy it for $825K).

Not bad. Know what I mean, Vern?

Reliable Source: Spoiler Alert

Per the grape vine allegedly originating in the Massachusetts Superior Court, results of the Mass bar will be mailed tomorrow, Tuesday, October 26.  I figured it would be nice to share.

Hey -- remember that UCC Question that started the second half of the exam?

EDIT (10/26, 7:13 AM): We trust our reliable source, but some in the comments don't.  Decide for yourself.

Wait, wait, wait...

So what's new?  Anything exciting happening soon?  OH, that's right - the results from the bar exam still haven't been released.  Well, unless you're from Illinois, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Florida, or some state I don't really care about.  If you're from there, you have your results.  I'm waiting on Massachusetts and New York.  I expect Mass will come down this week - based solely on the week it was released last year.

Of course, waiting for the results are not the worst thing in the world.  There are plenty of worse experiences than waiting for your bar exam results.  Such as:

10. Study for the Bar Exam
What you're going through now sucks.  And why does it suck?  Because of the fear of failing.  But that's not precisely it; if this was like an IQ test for a guy on death row, you'd want to fail.  It's more about the social stigma of being the only person in the history of your {family, section, journal, high school, social class} to fail the bar exam.  And, worse, it's about having to go through this whole "learning the law" process again.  Trust me, as bad as waiting is, studying for and taking the stupid test again is wore.  Much, much, worse.

9. Shop-Vac Abortion/Castration
I covered this in the days leading up the exam.  Or, at least the abortion part.  Gentlemen, you can (but need not) imagine the male version of this (not the male version of abortion . . . you knew what I meant).

8. Crabs
You know, pubic lice?  Isn't it so much worse sounding that way?

But they're not just pubic lice anymore.  There are eyelid lice too.

7. Get Into a Creepy Fight
Like these people:














6. Oral Surgery
Because waiting for the bar is not as bad as needing to have this fixed.

And, for what it's worth, don't do meth while waiting for your bar results either.

5. Be Mel Gibson
This guy had a rough summer.  Rougher than yours.  And his was transcribed.
Do you remember when it was okay to like Mel? 

4. Lamb Chop and Friends











3. Lose Your Identity
Not because that's so bad, but because you might end up meeting Chris Hansen.  And it's never good news when you meet Chris Hansen.






2. Random Limb Amputation
OK. Here's what I won't stand for: Don't take out a saw and cut off your leg. And why? Because then I'd have to change your name to Ilene. And because prosthetic limbs are expensive.

1. Failing the Bar Exam
Let's be honest.  When you get that letter with the information on how to reapply to take the exam and when you call Barbri to enroll in the "free refresher," you're going to be longing for the days before you found out that you failed.  Ignorance - one step better than failure.

Good luck everyone.

Attend a Redneck Wedding

As Breacher mentioned previously, Barbri is now finished. Luckily, most of us are not working: we are either deferred or jobless. I blame the Obama-Palin conspiracy for destroying American jobs and values so the terrorists and Chinese will win. Despite this political truth, we all still need stuff to do. Some of the suggestions we have already made can still be used, but there are now more possibilities. There are things you can do while jobless, broke, and living with your parents that you cannot do in a Barbri classroom. Change the channel, for example. Other things you can do in either setting, like be depressed. I am going to try to give some ideas for the former category, although I suspect the depression will show through at times.

Most of our readers are probably not rednecks. Law schools do a pretty good job of keeping out poor whites. Also poor Asians. I do not really count as a redneck, although I am certainly part of the larger category of white trash, of which rednecks are merely one sub-group. A couple examples of other sub-groups: trailer trash and door-to-door insurance salesmen in the Midwest. Also, that guy sitting across from me at the bar. What kind of loser goes to a dive bar at 11:00 AM?

My friend is a redneck: one of his many nicknames is "the raging redneck". He lives on a farm, shoots animals out of his windows and processes them in his garage, and loves Jim Beam and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He is a legend and a great man, and last month he got married.

There are a few things that every redneck wedding must have. Rednecks, obviously, and either the bride or groom must be one. Preferably both, which is often the case. There should also be lots of cheap beer and cheaper whiskey. And hopefully some deadly-dangerous homemade moonshine. My buddy's wedding was all outdoors, at his parents' farm. The groomsmen's dinner was homemade lasagna, made with venison (that's dead deer for you East Coast city dwellers). They held the ceremony in a nice little clearing, and had a buffet dinner in a huge, steel-sided shed, originally built to train horses. The main coarse of the dinner was pork, from two full hogs: one roasted on a spit, and the other buried with coals and allowed to slow cook. It was amazing.

There was a lot of drinking. We went through eight kegs of Natty Light, and numerous bottles of various hard liquors. Like most farms, this one is in the middle of nowhere. Now, this area of the country tolerates a fair amount of drinking and driving, but no one considers it ideal. One solution is sober drivers. This is a poor solution: it means someone has to stay sober, and then put up with a car full of drunk idiots firing guns out the windows and shit. It's very nerve-wracking, and the sober driver must be pretty drunk to deal with it.

But this was a redneck wedding, so there was a much better solution. Most rednecks own some kind of camper, whether it be their home or just something to sleep in when hunting (the former call the latter "high class"). So everyone just brought their campers, as well as a few tents, and spent the night. The only drawback to this is that most campers had 6-8 people in them, making the classic wedding-related one night stand difficult. But that's why God invented woods.

The moral is, if you've never been to a redneck wedding, find a redneck friend, and marry them off. Totally worth it.

PS: This girl gives a better description of a redneck wedding.

Be Like Chris

Yesterday was Columbus Day. I decided to call it Genocide Day after hearing some liberal rant about what terrible people Europeans were. Columbus's landing was amazingly bad: within 150 years of his arrival, EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the Americas who was alive at the time of his landing was dead. Interestingly, the exact same thing can be said of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Great Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Makes you think. It doesn't make me think. I've been trying to avoid that sort of thing, along with getting up at a reasonable hour, not being an alcoholic, and daily showers.

Columbus wasn't really that bad. It wasn't his fault the Indians had shitty immune systems. Or lacked steel, gunpowder, and horses. I don't care what that liberal says. It also wasn't his fault he used those advantages to kill, rape, and enslave those he encountered. OK, maybe it was, but the Pope seemed to think it was OK. And pretty much everyone else in Europe. Thank the gods none of our values will look immoral or foolish to those who come after us. Anyway, he was kind of a jerk.

It is time someone followed in Christopher's steps. Most of us are still looking for work, and hoping we passed the bar. Basically, we are doing nothing. I think it is time for someone to step up and discover new lands. Well, not so much "discover" as "be the first from your area of the world". And not so much "new" as "previously unknown to your area of the world". Oh, and not REALLY the first from your area...

But those are all mere quibbles. Someone needs to introduce a new Age of Exploration. Because, frankly, I am pretty bored. And I think raping and pillaging embracing technologically inferior sub-humans unique, precious, fellow-children of Mother Earth sounds like fun. So someone get on that. I would, but I own a TV. Besides, I'm a blogger; bloggers don't actually take action.

Entertain Yourself on the Road

If you're like me, and let's face it, you are, you took the vacation of your life at some point since August.  Or, you took it in June and July and will have another opportunity to take the bar an awesome trip in February.

I drove to Florida, took a cruise, and drove home back up north.  What to do in the car?  Besides eating.  Well, for starters, I got jokes.  I pulled in here.

You all know why?  I thought I'd defer to this gas station.
Also, my lady and I figured we'd play a game I call the "Privileges of Immunities game."  Many of you know it as the "license plate game."  That's where you first see if you can name all of the states.  You'll get about 46 or 47 and will keep racking your brain until you remember Wyoming, and the other ones you missed (WEST VIRGINIA, that's right).  Then, you'll pay more attention to the license plates on the road than the fact that you still have 300 miles to drive.  You'll live for rest stops and box stores because there will be so many cars, and you'll certainly find Hawaii (Costco in New Jersey) and Kentucky (Home Depot in Alaska).  It passes the time.

And, if you're smart, you'll also borrow a book or three on CD from the library, rip it to your iWasMolestedBySteveJobspod and get some literature in ya.

(for those who were wondering, the license plate game story was really just an excuse to make a joke about how the privileges or immunities clause guarantees us only one thing, and that's the right to interstate travel, and I wrote this post just so I could make that joke)

Fill in the Back Story

I saw a news article about this guy today, and went looking for the back story. 

There's not much, but it's worth reading:

A Three Forks man is in jail on charges that he hit his pregnant sister in the mouth with a large wrench during her wedding reception last Friday night.

David James Sicotte, 31, is charged with assault with a weapon, a felony, and disorderly conduct.

According to charging documents, Sicotte showed up uninvited to his sister's wedding reception in Three Forks. He reportedly pushed his sister's new mother-in-law to the ground and started fighting with the groom.

Sicotte later came at his sister with the wrench, the report says. The bride told police she slapped her intoxicated brother and he returned the blow, hitting her in the mouth with the tool. The bride sustained a cut inside her mouth.

Police found Sicotte leaving the residence where the altercation took place. He was carrying a large wrench, the reporting officer wrote.

Witnesses corroborated the bride's account.

Sicotte was taken to Bozeman Deaconess Hospital for stitches and was subsequently arrested. He is being held at the Gallatin County Detention Center on $15,000 bond.

from here.

Anyone looking for a client? He plead not-guilty earlier today.

Stress Cook

Who out there is a stress baker?  You were my friends in law school.  Because I was not a stress baker, but I was certainly a stress (and non-stress) eater.  Those brownies in the journal office?  Never lasted more than three minutes.  Remember the time your baked alaska set off the fire alarm?  Ha - those were the days, right?  Lasagna for the study group?  Only thrice weekly in December and May. 

Well, since you're probably bored and out of work, you should apply those stress cooking skills and do something productive.  That's right, you should enter a recipe contest.  I entered one today from Hood dairy available here.  That's our local, New England milk, etc. company.  You can enter your original recipe here if you live in Massachusetts or a surrounding state.  Six people from each state get to compete in Maine.  You know, where competition usually involves sitting in a circle sharing complements.  If you're not from here, that's okay.  There's certainly a contest near you that you can enter also.  Maybe the prize money will pay off some debt.

The best part of entering these contests?  You can read the rules and understand what the "Force Majeure" clause is.

Imagine What You Could Get Away With If You Were This Cute

Find Hilarious Sports Interviews

Now that your Barbri books are in limbo until you pass/fail the bar exam, use the hours you spend dreading your inevitable demise to laugh at sports interviews gone wrong/hilarious. Even if you think watching sports on television is boring, you will enjoy these. Enjoy the magic of schadenfreude, and may it inspire you to find more of the same . . . .

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4 - The interviewee isn't an athlete, but the interview is about one!

Exhibit 5 - Evidence that being a female sportscaster is the low run on the ladder of success.

Exhibit 6 - Classic

Enjoy Your Sunday

Hello BarBri alums and other friends.  I'm going to try to start writing again, I hope my co-patriots do too.

It's hard to believe it's been so long since the bar exam.  It's harder to believe that as long as it's been since the bar exam, it's longer until we find out that we have to retake BarBri.  It's amazing how soon we forget the awesome times we had in law school and studying for the bar.  But today I did something I hardly had the opportunity to do during school - enjoy a Sunday.  Particularly a Sunday during football season. 

Through and through, I'm a baseball guy.  I love the Yankees, and I live in Boston.  My team wins more.  But my town can't always win more.  See, e.g., my football team.  Nonetheless, the Giants did win today.  And, more importantly, my fantasy team won today.  What's that you say?  My Jets defense doesn't play until tomorrow and I'm still up over the other guy by thirty-five points?  Yeah, picking first makes fantasy sports a bajillion times more fun. 

But you know what makes Sundays more fun?  NFL RedZone network.  Holy bajeezus.  I'm sure I'm the ten-millionth person to write about how awesome this is, but this channel is a dream come true for the casual out-of-market and fantasy-football-playing fan.  I got to see the big plays for the Giants, I didn't have to watch Tom "I like to hit people with my car" Brady with his funny hair or Bill "Unabomber" Belichick pacing the sidelines:

And the absolute best part was that I could tell my lady, with all honesty and seriousness, that she could watch whatever she wanted as soon as the commercials came on. 

So whether you are one of the few going back to work tomorrow, or one of the many going back to looking for work tomorrow, or one of the medium decent number deferred waiting to find out if you ever get to go back to work, enjoy not spending Sunday in the library for the first time since you almost failed that writing assignment 1L year because you didn't work during the weekend. 

Hold On

Hello faithful readers,

We did just finish the bar exam.  We'll be back, probably more regularly in September with occasional posts before.  Add us to your RSS feed, follow us on twitter, and fan us on facebook, and we'll let you know when we're back posting. 

Lots of love,
Stuff To Do - The only STD you'll ever enjoy

Kick Ass

Yup. It’s time. You can do this. Or you can’t, but you won’t know until November. And by then you won’t care. Well, you’ll care, but there won’t be anything you can do about then. Turns out there’s nothing you can do about it now either. Let’s face it - you haven’t looked at Workers’ Comp since the first day of BarBri and we’re going to have two essays about it tomorrow. Okay, one essay about that and one about a credit card company’s contract coming out of Delaware with a former NY resident now living in Connecticut. Whose usury laws do we follow? And when you go to your lawyer’s office, you leave the car in a garage. Is it a bailment? FUCK!

Now that you have six more subjects that you just remembered you need to study, I just want to relate a tale of my youth and wish you a good night. I have studied fairly adequately for the last few weeks. It reminds me of when I studied for my AP Bio exam in high school. I took the day before off. Our casebook had fifty chapters. A classmate and I reviewed forty-five of them. One was the introduction. Four others each comprised the basis of one of the questions on the AP Test. That’s my luck. And I’m taking the test with you tomorrow, at least if you’re in NY, or Thursday if you’re in MA, and that makes it your luck too. So get ready for the subjects I never studied (see earlier paragraph).

We’re not done posting, we’re just done posting until after the bar (or maybe until after the NY Essay day). Keep following us, and good luck. To at least however many of you will fail anyway. What’s the NY pass rate these days? I need some help – some of you have to fail.

And, if you’re a single guy reading this in a hotel, I bet there’s a single girl out there, just looking for a distraction from trusts. Go take advantage – without force, threat of force, or unconsciousness; that way it’s not a problem. Unless she’s younger than seventeen. What’s the mens rea requirement again?

Good night.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

This is it, the last day before the bar. At least for those of us taking three days of exams. The rest of you can go to hell. Today is going to be great. You will be stressed out, still trying to study, getting everything ready for tomorrow (what can I put in my stupid plastic bag?), and many will be traveling. Good stuff.

At least you can look forward to tonight. You know, lying in a shitty hotel room, staring at the ceiling and trying to get to sleep. Looking at the clock every ten minutes and becoming even more stressed because you know you will be overtired. Crying. Thank you [insert state here] bar, you really are great. Good work protecting your guild.

If you are reading this, I wish you luck. You should really be working on Wills. Unless of course you totally understand how power of appointment fits with the RAP, the suspension rule, and whatever stupid reform statute your state has.

If you are not reading this, you will not read this.

One More Good Deed

A good deed is usually recorded, right?  Well, we're going to do a different kind of good deed - and this is in a race jurisdiction:

Thanks to our earlier efforts (and those of others) Jen Taylor is one of the five riders nominated to be on Boloco's virtual team. Boloco is currently donating 25 cents from every Cape Codder smoothie sold to a PMC fund. One of the five finalists will be chosen to receive, as a PMC donation, that money Boloco is raising. Details are here (if you live near a Boloco, go pick up a smoothie!): http://boloco.com/feedback/vote-for-your-favorite-pmc-rider/

Jen needs your help to win that sponsorship! Not only is this a great promotion that will raise more money for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber, winning this sponsorship will help Team Sara G reach its $12,600 goal that much more quickly. Voting is easy! Just click on this link, then click on "LIKE" to vote for me! http://boloco.com/feedback/bragging/pan-mass-challenge-rider-jen-taylor/

(You have to be signed into a Facebook account to like the page. If you are not on Facebook, please send this to anyone you know who is!)

The contest ends on July 28. Please pass this along to anyone you know on Facebook - it's free, it takes 10 seconds, and it's the easiest way to support the PMC!

Guest Submission: Play A Prank on Fellow Bartakers

This is a guest submission from "WP4":

Here is a suggestion for a post. My friend and I took some time from studying to entertain ourselves. We are students studying for the Maryland exam. This is what we came up with.

I know, it's getting close to when we have to finally take this horrible exam. The hours go by slow and the days have become even longer. The monotonous studying has taken its toll on all of us. One thing that you can do to help pass the time or at least put that long forgotten smile back on your face (even if for just a moment) is to play a harmless yet funny prank on others who are studying for the bar.

Now this will require some characteristics that most law students do not possess. 1) A sense of humor, or at least what may appear to be a sense of humor, and 2) The mindset that 15 minutes wasted will not be the reason why you fail. Let's be honest, we are all going to fail for many other reasons. When you plot out your prank, it is best to plot against a friend or at least someone who does not hate you. This way they are less likely to jump up and strangle you. Also, you want to do the prank in the library, where there are a lot of people studying. Sure, the other people around will probably be annoyed. That just adds to the fun. There are few things better than seeing a crowd of law students get upset because someone or something has distracted them while studying.

The first prank that we pulled was a good ole surprise trust fall. If you don't know what they are, and you probably don't, because you have been too busy studying to keep up with the show Tosh.o, but nonetheless, the concept is in the name. Our buddy was in the library's computer lab watching a lecture on corporations given by Mr. Belding in preparation to take his NY bar.

The second took a little more planning and effort in order to execute. It was played out in a crowded area of the law library. The plotting is all laid out in the video itself. Law students can relate, because it is probably the most annoying thing that can happen in the library.

We have already caught some flack from other bar takers, but the response has been mostly positive. I think that people will ultimately enjoy the effort that you have put in to try and make others laugh, or just make yourself laugh. Either way, when the exam is over and you are living in your parents basement, jobless, twenty pounds heavier and swimming in school loan bills, at least you will be able to look back and know that you had some fun while preparing to the fail the bar.

Plan Your Post-Bar Celebration

If this is what life would be like until the end of your days, you'd have some serious decisions to make. Fortunately, it's not. Creeping ever closer is that mythical time known as "post-bar", in all its jobless glory.

You need to plan how you will welcome this glorious new world. There are a few things to keep in mind. First, your initial embrace of this post-bar world will invariably end with drunkenness, balckouts, generally stupidity, and probably a "nap" in a ditch or on a curb. Dress appropriately. Don't wear anything you would really hate to get red wine/champagne/dirt/puke on. You also probably still have a character & fitness review of some sort in your future. Try not to carry ID. And maybe consider trying to burn off your fingerprints.

You should also plan on where you will go for your initial drink. The places right next to the test site will be packed, and you probably won't be able to get your desperately-needed shots of tequila for a couple hours. But you also don't want to walk too far, because, well, walking takes time, and you will need some of the gods' sweet nectar to help you forget the horror.

Bringing some alcohol seems like a good solution. Unfortunately, the test sites do not seem to have places to leave necessary stuff like bottles of whiskey or champagne. You could wear a coat, and stuff a few flasks in it, but it's the middle of summer. If you are driving, you can leave lots of alcohol in the car. You could even sell some of it to fellow test-takers and make some money. DON'T DRIVE. That will almost certainly end in disaster. If you have any friends meeting you who are not taking the test, have them bring some stuff. Alcohol, your cell phone, maybe a change of clothes (be prepared). If all else fails, you can always include a bottle of "water" in your little plastic bag.

Your final step is determining what bar you will go to for your first group of drinks. If you have some alcohol, you should choose a bar that is within walking distance, but far enough from the test site that it will not be impossible to get a drink. Said bar should also be within walking distance of other establishments. Go with a group, even if that means sharing some of your alcohol on the walk. You will want to share the beginning of this glorious time with others. Try luring someone cute with your alcohol; it probably won't work, but what the hell.

I know you are tempted to continue planning. You won't stay at one bar the entire night. Why not also plan on a club for later in the night? And get reservations at a restaurant? Fight this urge. Just have a bunch of drinks and shots, and let the night flow.

I know, you are an anal law student. You want to have everything planned. You find the thought of a spontaneous event terrifying, like most things that are fun. Do it anyway. For once in your life, don't be a boring, annoying, prick. An unplanned night is more likely to end up in prison, I know, but it is also more likely to result in a good story, good friends, and a good time.