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)