The Grandmother Report

Googie asked whether the bric-a-brac survived its trans-county migration. First, I should explain that Jews do not own bric-a-brac. That's a term of art reserved specifically for goyim. We have tchotchkes. But yes, all the jade made it. And as I feared, my successful endeavor earlier in the week led to another yesterday when The Brother and I had to drive back up to the beach house to retrieve more of The Grandmother's essential items. Want to guess what was "essential" this time?

Try two cans of coffee, a frozen pizza, a sample bottle of a prescription The Grandfather already has in the city, and a half dozen cans of Sprite. We also watered four plants and swept some sand. In all, a very successful trip. Stay tuned for next week's visit.

The Grandmother Report

Now that the my most inflexible paper deadlines have passed, I'm spending time with the grandparents. The Grandfather is doing chemo and it's awful and everyone is heartbroken. I really don't want to go into details. But what I will tell you is that The Grandmother is, in addition to worrying about The Grandfather, worrying about the beach house. With The Grandfather's doctors and treatments all in the city, she can't imagine that they'll get up to the beach for a long time. She's talking about selling that house, and maybe she will, but in the meantime, she has Virg (or Virg's father) driving up to flush the toilets and ransack the wine closet. I drove off with a case of assorted reds and champagne yesterday because The Grandmother is suddenly fretting that no one will be up at the beach to drink their wine.

The Grandmother also asked that I bring a few things from the beach house to the city for The Grandfather. Sounds reasonable, right? I thought she might have meant The Grandfather's favorite slippers or something. No. What she meant was a dozen different jade figurines. I suspect that The Grandfather couldn't give a shit about having a hand-carved elephant or Chinese princess on top of his bedroom dresser, but what do I know? And while I don't mind the schlepping, being responsible for all that jade terrifies me. A couple of the figures are small enough to fit in your hand, and I wrapped them and placed them in my trunk and it was no big deal. But other pieces are more than a foot tall and the have fine filigreed pieces that break easily. Growing up, these were the pieces that my mother admonished me repeatedly not to touch. Now they're wrapped in handtowels and stuffed into a crate that I'll be driving into the city this morning. For the first time in my life, I might drive below the speed limit. If I don't post again, it's because I broke a piece and The Grandmother killed me.

The worst part is knowing that if I complete today's mission successfully, there's plenty more jade that she could ask me to transport. Or the fucking Lladros. Generally speaking, Lladro are less delicate than Jade, but not when you have pieces that are more than two feet tall or wide. I could snap off a porcelain farmer's hoe or a cat's tail without even knowing it. If only The Grandmother collected something easier, like stamps...

Worst Exam Yet?

Corporations exam was one fact pattern of seven single-spaced pages without any specific questions but with a 2600 word limit and 3.5 hour time limit.

Hell. For. Nerds.

Your Questions, Professor, Are Irrelevant

My corporations final is on Wednesday. I've decided that the exam questions will be entirely irrelevant. Any way the hypos go, I'm going toward the same conclusion: the evolution of the last decade of American corporate law has done little more than protect greedy, inept and already insular boards from liability. And I've got proof this time, not my mere liberal tendencies and big loud mouth. An accounting, folks:

--A director's duty to exercise due care has been so eroded that no duty remains at all. That business judgment rule presumption is so generous, dear director, that you could probably cradle a prostitute's tit in one hand while signing a merger doc with the other, and the courts would still defer to your good sense and business experience. But let's say that your particular plaintiff is schtuping the judge and is able to rebut this generous presumption. Not to worry, dear director. The "good faith" component of the duty of care, which used to require of directors a handful of reasonably prudent, affirmative actions, has been twisted so that plaintiffs no longer can show lack of good faith, but rather must prove bad faith. Basically, plaintiffs have to show that directors are completely off their rockers. It's not enough to expend millions on your buddies, enter bad transactions within 10 minutes of casual deliberation, let your accountants fudge numbers for years. You can't just be an asshole. You've got to be an absolutely irrational asshole.

--And even if you are an irrational asshole, you too will be protected. There's a statute in every fucking state insulating you, dear director, from personal liability. And don't worry, your company is protecting you even further with an insurance policy.

--Also working in your favor, dear director, are a series of watered-down checks and balances that have been perverted to enable your whims and fancies. First, consider the dumb-bunny but earnest shareholders. They used to sometimes batter their way in with a proxy proposal, but the courts and the SEC have found more and more ways to keep their proposals off the proxies. And when the rare shareholder proxy contest goes down, the corp can expend pretty much unlimited funds to defend itself, but the shareholders, even if they win the contest, don't get reimbursed for their expenses. And yeah, like um, there are a whole lot of shareholders, even the institutional bigwigs, who have the $$$ to take on Walmart or Exxon. You pretty much don't need to worry about these things at all.

--And you've been lucking out with the SEC too Of course the last few years have seen a commission run by a majority of Republicans. Of course these fine gentleman stepped in to amend rules like 14a-8 to keep out those pesky shareholders. And of course they haven't bothered to do much of their own investigation into things like insider trading and securities fraud because the economy, as you know dear director, is doing swimmingly.

I've still got 36 more hours to study this shit. God knows I'll find more crap that these assholes are abusing. But this counts as studying, right?

If You're Gay, Skip That African Safari

In 37 African nations, it is unlawful to be gay. In many of these nations, the punishment is death. A bill currently pending in Uganda seeks not only to make homosexual sex a capital offense, but to make it unlawful to merely talk or write about homosexuality. People who suspect that they know someone who is gay are required under the bill to report to the authorities.

My first response to this bill was predictable: I got angry and sad. But as I read more about the Uganda bill's provisions and the hateful, shamefully ignorant words of its supporters, I thought well, at least they're honest. At least gays know what their enemy in Africa looks like.

This bill in Uganda looks hideous. But guess who's funding and pushing the sweeping criminalization of homosexuality in Africa? Yep, the American right-wing evangelicals who have lost their footing proselytizing on this continent. But what we're up to in the United States is hideous too. I'm sick of sitting around watching gays in every state go around begging for their civil rights. I'm sick of a certain president who, as a black man publicly touting the importance of equality, continues to tell gays to put up with their second-class status and shut up. I'm sick of a cowardly court that is relieved to have the issue get battled around in the states so they don't have to make an unpopular decision. And I'm sick of assholes who kick their dogs and beat their wives but think that the bumper stickers on their cars announcing their "family values" entitle them to the full privileges of citizenry.

We throw around a conveniently blind "morality" just as easily as the motherfuckers who dreamt up the Uganda bill. Maybe it's time to recognize it and to say it. Maybe it's time to let them know how ugly they are.

Madonna Parody French and Saunders

I love them. I can't help myself.

Napping

Naps are one of the great privileges of an academic life. No matter how hectic your semester is, you can pretty much guarantee the inclusion of more naps than any form of employment would ever allow. I nap a lot. So does The Brother. I think it's our way of coping with stress. Anyway, I nap even more during finals period when I don't have to bother with attending classes. Lately, I've been taking late afternoon/early evening naps, like from 4 or 5 p.m. until 6 or 7 or even 8. Which sounds delightful but then I'm up half the night. I should be using the time I'm up to read some outline or work over yet another paper, but my brain is really only good in the morning and early afternoon hours. (I think you all know that my evenings are for drinking.) Tonight following my nap I've done little more than download new apps for my ipod. I've been playing so much late night skeeball that my right forefinger is raw. I tried switching to air hockey because I thought I could play with my thumb. But I was so much better with that right forefinger that I got frustrated and dropped it all together. Now I've found a car racing game that lets me play just by tilting the ipod. It's a fingerless wonder. We may be up together all night.

The Dog Report

Guess who decided to help himself to the clean beach towels?

The Dog Report

The Grandfather starts chemo this week. It's sad and awful in all the ways you would expect it to be and I really don't want to talk about it right now. Somehow, strangely, I had been writing stories for years about people losing people to cancer, and now the loss is far too close and I can't imagine writing about it ever again. Though of course I will. Just not now.

On a lighter note, I didn't fail the MPRE. On a second lighter note, Googie didn't fail the MPRE. On a third lighter note, my mother is still sending me the regular dog report:

It's raining. Stanley is very upset. I tried to take the boys out when the rain died to a drizzle. Stanley pulled and pulled. He preferred strangulation to getting his feet wet. He quickly pooped on our front lawn and then turned around in the direction of the front door. I had to carry him for over 1/2 block before he was willing to walk on his own. What an ordeal.

I Have No Fucking Title For This

So I just found out that my grandfather has stomach and esophageal cancer. He's bleeding in a hospital bed in Santa Monica waiting for the oncologist to decide whether to take him directly to surgery or to begin chemo treatments first to shrink the cancer before cutting. That's really all I know. My mom has been at the hospital with my grandmother for the last two days and my dad had instructed the entire family not to tell me so I wouldn't be distracted during finals. But my aunt, who was supposed to be having a holiday party next weekend, blew it by sending out a party cancellation notice through e-vite. I'm sitting at my desk in that stunned kind of silence when you recognize only that trouble is here, not what it will cost. I have papers I need to be writing, an exam to be studying for, but I am thinking of just two weeks ago when I was sitting on the deck at the grandparents' beach house and we were mixing red and white wines and the sun was too warm even in November. And already, I'm worried mostly about the healthy among the living--mainly about my grandmother and my mother--and that's another bad sign.

Woe Is I

Oh corporations! To outline or not to outline?

There's a reason I take as many courses with final papers as I can. I don't like taking exams. And worse, I don't like studying for exams. In fact, I think I never really learned how to study right for anything.

I figure I should be able to knock out studying for corps in five solid days of torture, but I haven't decided how I'm going to do it yet. I actually paid attention through half the classes this semester. I have Gilbert's and Barbri's and The Brother's rocking outlines. Do I really need to make up my own inferior version? Can I just read and highlight other people's shit?

19 Years

In our wrongful convictions seminar tonight, a guest speaker came to talk to us about the 19 years he spent in prison for two rapes he didn't commit. At the time of his arrest, he was a 23 year-old sergeant in the army. Although he was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence and seemed incredibly clear and cogent today, I can't imagine many experiences that are more terrifying and hideous. And though I'd meant to get through law school without ever crying in class, I cried several times during his presentation. He named his daughter after the two women lawyers from Project Innocence who got him exonerated. He choked up when he mentioned the prison guard who believed for years that he was innocent. His parents and brothers visited him once a week in prison but his sister believed in the justice system and imagined him guilty and never came.

If only one percent of this country's prisoners are innocent, then some 20,000 people are sitting in jail for crimes they didn't commit. If three percent of prisoners are innocent--and the number is likely that high or maybe higher--then we're talking about 60,000 people in this country alone that are wrongfully imprisoned. You can read about our speaker's story here.

The Boston Report

I'm pretty sure my lit prof got laid over the holiday weekend. She was nice today in class, even to me. She smiled and actually listened to students instead of interrupting them with her own ("better") ideas. And she actually mentioned her husband for the first time. In fact, it was the first time in three months that she'd said anything at all about her real life. It was the first time she invited (asked?) us to see her as human.

And speaking of alarming news, I am now getting the LL Bean catalog in the mail. I have no fucking idea how this happened and I want it to stop. I have never ordered anything from LL Bean and never will. I know that New England has its little love affair with LL Bean and probably considers it a right of passage for me, but I'm not amused. I wear men's button-downs and cowboy boots, for fuckssake. What's next, Dunkin Donuts and North Face? My mailman and I are going to have it out.

And earlier today, I watched a big bellied man with a cane have it out with all the nice skinny people at physical therapy. Apparently, someone stole his coat from the coat rack while big belly was doing his exercises. His keys and wallet were in the coat pockets, so the whole thing was particularly sucky. Part of me still thinks he just misplaced the coat though because I can't really imagine anyone stealing stuff at physical therapy. But anyway, the skinny little therapists didn't do anything wrong and the entire episode ruined my zen or my chi (or my opiate high) while I was working out.

And now I'm sitting in sweaty clothes and trying to motivate myself to shower before I sit down to yet another night of writing a paper. I turned in my animal law final paper yesterday, but I've got my last Bishop paper and my corporations final exam on the same day, and then my wrongful convictions paper due five days after, and then another draft of my banking note the next week. So it's going to be a fucking haul.

Wanna know my secret strategy? I bought two cases of cheap, watery domestic beer that I can drink for hours without getting drunk. Shit, you'd need the mild, functional intoxication too if you were me.