Keep Track of Your Stuff

The February exam sucks.  My guess is that there are four categories of you people taking the February exam: (1) those who just graduated, mostly going to school part time; (2) those who took July, passed, and want to be licensed and a second, third, and/or fourth jurisdiction; (3) those who failed July and still want to be a lawyer OH SO BAD; and (4) those who missed the deadline to register in July and have been making excuses for the past few months but are now back in the legal saddle.

What most of you have in common is that you're working - either because you went to law school part time or because you need to wait tables because you're student loan bills are coming do.  And that means you're going to school and studying in addition to doing something else.  And that means you're going to lose stuff.  Don't.  There's nothing worse than writing out by hand 150 index cards describing the prima facie elements of every tort, along with exceptions, and leaving them for some homeless guy at the coffee shop.  Or taking a $50 cab ride back to the class location to pick up your keys that you left on the desk.  Or realizing that your prosthetic limbs aren't where you thought they were.

Well, there is one thing worse than all that.  Losing your pet snake on the train.  Like this lady:

The woman who says she lost her pet snake on the Red Line Thursday has turned to Craigslist in an effort to recover it.

In a post on the online classified ad site headed "penelope- lost snake (T-between park and andrew)" the woman wrote that her snake "is a very mellow snake- never hisses or bites and is very timid. she is a bit under 3 feet long with a brownish, almost pinkish paisley looking pattern on her back. she is 3 years old and i've had her since she was 5 days old. if you see her, if you find her- please call me . . .you will be rewarded and will also be a hero. please help!"

She included a phone number and an e-mail address. In an interview, the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Melissa, said she is accustomed to taking Penelope everywhere, and was wearing her around her neck, concealed by a scarf, when she boarded the T Thursday.

She felt for Penelope at multiple points during her trip, she said, and first noticed her missing as she headed outbound on the Red Line in the late morning. MBTA employees helped her look in the car in which she was riding at JFK/UMass, where they held the train for a few minutes, and performed a more exhaustive search at the Braintree terminus, walking through each of the six train cars and looking under the seats.

Melissa said she considered the search cursory. "For about 20 minutes or so they looked, and they couldn't see her, but they don't realize that no matter how thick she was, she can get into really small places or often under things. You can't really tell. She's related to a ground boa, so she's not likely to climb very high."

She said Penelope belongs to a species known as Dumeril's boa.

"Snakes can get lost in the strangest and smallest places for a very long time before they come out," she said. "The transit authority, they originally asked me if I was hallucinating and if I was on drugs, because I was really frantic looking for her." She said the snake was her and her husband's "dearest pet."

She said people should not be afraid if they encounter Penelope. "If they come across her in a train car, they don't have to be scared about picking her up. I know that people are really squeamish. She's never bitten anyone, she never hisses, she's not aggressive at all."

MBTA officials believe the trains are snake-free, and that passengers should not be concerned, spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.

Quoted from http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/01/woman_seeks_hel.html
 
For crying out loud, keep track of your shit. And don't ask for help looking for it from Craig's List.  I can't wait for Mr. Samuel L. Jackson's new sequel: Boa's on a Train!

Life Sucks ... For You!

Hello February 2011 Bar Exam Takers.  I'm sorry that you don't get a January or February this year.  I'm also sorry that you probably didn't get a "2010 5771 holiday season" either.  I'm also really sorry for 80% of you that you already failed the bar exam once.

You're studying for the bar.  Which means your life sucks.  And we're here to help.  Because we already studied for and passed the bar.  And we're unemployed lawyers.  Which means our life doesn't suck as much as yours, although it still sucks a lot.  We just have ways to cope. 

We started this blog as four students sitting next to each other in a New York Exam BarBri class.  We all became proficient at filling in the blanks (a skill surprisingly irrelevant for actually passing the bar exam) and decided that we needed to do something else to occupy our time.  So we started this blog to figure out stuff to do during BarBri.  It should give you stuff to do during BarBri too.

Now we're three busy people (one dropped off the face of the earth and got an ipad) without any real motivation to do anything.  But we'll do our best to post when we can. 

If someone sends us a New York paced program for February, here, we'll do our best to make fun of your "teachers."  Also, if you get bored during class, and you know you will, feel free to e-mail in a guest submission of stuff to do during BarBri and we'll be sure to post it for you.  Follow us on twitter and fan us on facebook.  Hell, add us to your Google Reader subscription.  Spread the word, it'll make this miserable two-month experience a modicum less miserable.

Thanks and enjoy!!

Note to self: buy stock in index cards.

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.