The Stitch lives, ladies and gentlemen--or should I say lives on as a bona fide esquire instead of a would-be counselor at law.
It took 4 months to find out that I passed the bar. It took 4 more to be formally admitted in New York's 1st Department. A pox on the bureaucracy! Utterly ridiculous. I've heard conflicting numbers, but there are anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 attorneys in Manhattan. That's like what? 1 out of every 20 people on the street? Your mom didn't go to college; apparently she went to law school. (She was a gunner too.)
It's amusing to see that my last post came right before the test. How things have changed since then. Gone are the proverbial dark clouds that had be blind. New job, new home, new outlook. You can bet your sweet asses, though, that I miss having Fridays off in the winter like no other. 30 days last year at mountain, and I'm still looking for my first tracks of the season. My knees thank me, but I've opened myself up to general taunts on par with those spewed forth by certain Frenchmen looking to fetchez la vache. At least I have an East Coast spring to which I can look forward. Tuckerman's anyone?
Btw, it was Chuck Norris' 69th birthday today. Friends tried to throw him a party, but decided against it--knowing full well that Chuck always has the element of surprise on his side.
Monday, July 28, 2008
From the end of the road:
So tomorrow is the first day of the bar exam. Suffice it to say, I'm tired, gaunt, paler than usual (if that's possible) , sick of sitting in the same chair--reading the same notes--for twelve hours a day, and I can't get "Everybody Hurts" by REM out of my head. Yes, 'tis true what the Upstart Crow said of misery while bombasting out his blank verse: it acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.
At least I can say that there is no longer a point to studying. I am as prepared as I'll ever be (notwithstanding the likelihood that I'll be taking this thing again in February).
Unfortunately, it only recently came to my attention that the bar review racket....um, I mean course, left the one question I had unanswered.
Where the f*&% is Blackacre?
Wish me luck, people. And if you're the praying type, well throw one of those in there too. I appreciate it.
Friday, July 25, 2008
From Carnegie-Mellon:
If you've been following the headlines today, you might already know that Prof. Randy Pausch has passed away at the age of 47 from pancreatic cancer.
Without saying much more, I hope you all can take an hour out of your day to watch his last lecture (provided below).
It's about achieving your childhood dreams.
Monday, July 21, 2008
From a testing center near you:
Eight days and counting 'til the bar exam, and I for one must say that this state of concurrent dread and excitement is wholly repugnant. The headaches are constant, I haven't had a drink in weeks, sleeping has all of a sudden become an arduous task, and it's f*&%ing hot on the east coast. But soon it will be all over.
Hopefully.
At least failing would put me in the good company of JFK, Jr. and HRC, aka the Hill-dogs, aka Not-President, aka the Junior Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. Yup, she failed the D.C. Bar, but passed in Arkansas. Who would have thought the latter to be an easier ordeal, hmmm?
But enough about failing and stereotypes about the south. I'm over it for the moment.
Some of you may remember I post I did a while back about Snakes McGee and Lacey Boa, a couple of regular jet-setting reptiles who took a Parisian vacation during the whole Snakes on a Plane brouhaha. Their exploits accounted for the highest traffic that the Rogue Stitch has ever seen, thanks to a strategic link placed on the New Line Cinema webpage for the film.
Well, to get to the point, I came across this practice torts question in what seems like a never-ending preparation process for the bar. Hope you enjoy.
Philips, a law enforcement official, was transporting a prisoner on a plane from Hawaii to California to testify in a criminal case. Unknown to those on the plane, an assassin hired to kill the prisoner had bribed an airport baggage handler to sneak a timed-release crate of poisonous snakes into the cargo hold of the plane. Once the crate was triggered to open, the snakes were able to slither into the passener compartment through gaps in the conduits between the crago hold and the passenger compartment. In the ensuing panic caused by the snakes, Philips was struck in the head by a fire extinguisher that another passenger threw at a snake, and suffered a severe concussion.
Philips filed suit against numerous parties, including Jackson, who designed the conduit system on that type of plane. At trial, evidence established that the design for the conduit system that Jackson used has been rejected in the industry because of the danger of pressure loss between the cargo hold and the passenger compartment. An industry-approved design that Jackson could have used would have kept the snakes from getting into the passenger compartment of the plane.
As between Philips and Jackson, which party is likely to prevail?
(A) Philips, because Jackson is strictly liable for designing the conduit system of the plane.
(B) Philips, because of the high degree of care owed to passengers of a common carrier.
(C) Jackson, because the assassin's actions were an unforeseeable intervening force.
(D) Jackson, because Philip was injured by another passenger rather than the snake.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
From the Great Depression:
When I hear the words "bank run," I tend to think of scene quite similar to the one shown above--or at very least the ending to Mary Poppins (which then reminds me of a man with a wooden leg named Smith, but that's neither here nor there). I usually don't associate the phenomenon with this modern age or time.
As it turns out, however, bank runs are still within the realm of possibility in the 21st century. Just take a look at poor IndyMac. The Feds sezied control of the bank this week, citing a massive run on deposits resulting in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Oh shit.
Hopefully, if you're not worried right now about the economy, you're studying for the bar and completely preoccupied. (And from today's date you should infer that I'm procrastinating by way of this post.) Otherwise, you might want to take a hard look at what's going on around us.
Of course, the irony here is that bank runs sort of operate on drawing attention to precarious financial situations, and the snowball effect that such alarm brings.
Just ask good ol' Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about how this works. He was the one who complained to the FDIC & the OTS about IndyMac's troubles two weeks ago. Since then, depositors have withdrawn $1.3 billion from the bank. Smooth, Chuck, smooth. You gotta love his response, though, to the situation. He blamed the failure on "poor and loose lending practices," as well as insufficient regulation, and told the OTS chairman that he should be "spending less time playing politics and more time doing his job." Snap.
Well, I'm sure Chuck didn't help with the matter. Now I'm just waiting for him to challenge the 21st Amendment and really send us back 90 years. You can bet your sweet ass that I'd turn bootlegger in a heartbeat if Prohibition were to rear its ugly, puritanical head once again.
How much fun would that be?
Postscript. The John Nemeth Bank was organized in 1917. In 1920, it changed its name to the American Union Bank (pictured above). The Superintendent of Banks closed it down on August 5th, 1931.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
From the I-70 Corridor:
First post of '08, so I might as well show you what Summit County traffic looked like last Friday in Officer's Gulch. If you want the full effect, just go ahead and stare at the picture for four and a half hours--beacuse that's how long it took us to get from Vail to Frisco. No joke. Might have had something to do with the jack-knifed semi, or the 35 other cars involved in one accident or another. Ridiculous. Oh yeah, and we spent another four hours just getting to Vail because CDOT had to trigger some slides on the pass.
Was the trip worth it? The snow on Friday was decent. Not incredible, but decent. Plus, the traffic forced us to stay up in Summit...which meant some hiking on Saturday. You tell me if it looks well worth the wait:
Oh yeah, and Happy belated St. Patrick's Day. Sorry I didn't get that in sooner. Til next time, folks.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
From a happier time:
Yesterday I lost a beautiful friend and a kindred spirit. It is next to impossible for me to express all that I want to say about Jenn and how she enlivened our drab world. Yet the grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.
The last time I saw Jenn was right before our Corporations final. She gave me one of those looks. Neither of us really ever went to class (nor cared for the subject), and that was our inside joke. A week earlier, our professor gave his final lecture before fading off into retirement, and both of us happened to be there. He ended with a terse but poignant speech about what we should take away from the class--and from the law school experience. Suffice to say, it wasn't about black-letter law or the importance of regurgitating an outline into a bluebook. It was about life in general, and how we shoud conduct ourselves.
He then left us with copies of a requiem he wrote a decade earlier for a deceased colleague named Art. It asked, "How does one credibly praise in epitaph one who really did never meet a person he didn't like," before noting that one could not help but smile "when you think of him." The work finished in admiration and praise with instructions to "just lead a life imitating Art."
Despite my struggle to write even the most paltry of tributes for Jenn, I think it is fair to ask how one should credibly praise in epitaph a young woman who was loved by all. Like Art, Jenn made us smile. She was the one person that everyone asked about if she happened to be late or missing. When I now think about Jenn I can't help but laugh before giving in to my sadness. She was our fourth roommate--the one we would look forward to finding on our couch after a long night of general mischief. While it pains me to admit it, gone are the days when we would wake up and laugh at our antics from the night before.
At this point, I don't know what else to say--other than we should all try harder to imitate Jenn.
