Cursed With Ambition

Saving the World in My Spare Time

If you want to be a serious blogger you should post once a day.

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I've been feeling really good about my career choice.  Recently I have: gotten a young couple out of over $10,000 worth of unpaid highway tolls and penalties  and I also got a dude out of a contract he signed in Mexico for a timeshare scam. That saved him $16,000.  I'm crazy busy and it's just a matter of time before I make a mistake or get a bad result, but so far I'm loving this shit.

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Today is the MBE section of the bar exam for those poor souls unlucky enough to be taking it.  The MBE is an impossible meat grinder mind fuck.  It's 200 multiple choice questions covering the following subjects:  contracts, constitutional law, evidence, property, criminal law and torts.  Each question has four answer choices.  The MBE is broken up into two 3-hour long sessions of 100 questions each.  When I took the bitch, there was a string of 30 questions where I could not eliminate a single answer choice.  I was literally shaking my head and laughing.  My heart goes out to those going through it today.

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Things I have promised my girlfriend that we would do, but haven't (yet):  dinner at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, palm reader, Rockets game, Astros game, weekend trip to Mexico.

A Crone, A Blessing and A Story About My Dad

A Crone

I have really been itching to use the word crone lately.  Used properly, I think you could really score a blow against a middle aged woman with it.  Especially if she's concerned about aging and her appearance.

There is a female attorney who is opposing counsel on a case I am working on who almost got it yesterday.  I think she gave her client some premature good news and then took it out on me.  Or, she could be an insufferable cunt full time.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt and I'll always err on the side of collegiality.  But if things continue on like they did yesterday, I am personally going to take an interest in making her life (and her client's) mizz-er-a-ble.

A Blessing

Man am I glad I don't have to fuck with this.

A Story

When I was a kid (9 or 10 or so) the grocery store we shopped at ran a promotion involving televised horseracing.  I think they called it "Friday Night At the Races."  The name of the store was H-E-B, which stands for H.E. Butt - a man's name.  It was pretty funny to a kid my age that a store was named after a man whose last name was Butt.  It was also funny that my hometown also boasted stores named Dick's and Weiner's.  Anyway, H-E-B would give you a colored ticket for every $20 worth of groceries you bought.  The colors of the tickets changed weekly.  The tickets had numbers on them that corresponded to horses in a race they would show on TV on Friday night.  I had no concept of it at the time, but it was very similar to the ticket you get at an actual horse racing betting window.  To me, this was all very novel and exciting.  If your horse won, you could win $1, $2, $5, $10, even $20.  I would wait impatiently for Friday night at 7:25 when the familiar backdrop would appear and the announcer would say nice things about H-E-B and build up the race.

I don't know how many weeks the promotion lasted.  It seemed like maybe ten or twelve weeks.  We lost most of the time, but every now and then we would win.  And I was hooked.  "Friday Night at the Races" became a family event.  Sometimes we would have enough tickets so that all 5 of us could hold a ticket.  That would create further excitement because we would all be cheering for different horses.  Sometimes we would have the same horse and would cheer together for that one to win.

One time in particular we only had one ticket for the week.  But, it was a $10 ticket.  Much higher than the usual $1 or $2 and an unfathomable sum to me.  I looked at our number and looked for our horse on the TV screen while they were loading them into the gate.  Ours was a sad looking gray horse.  I figured we were fucked.  But my Dad was undaunted.  He cheerfully said, "We got the old gray mare.  That old gray mare is going to win."  I think that was the first time in my life I understood the concept of an underdog.

The horses were put into the gate and then came the familiar bells and the announcer's "And they're off!!"  The horses bolted out of the gate in a big pack, but as the race progressed they spread out.  The old gray mare was only four or five spots back from the lead!  My Dad stood up out of his recliner.  "C'mon old gray mare!" he shouted.  My brothers and I stood up too.  We were getting excited.  The old gray mare actually had a chance!  Even my Mom leaned a little closer to the TV from her spot on the sofa.  With only one turn to go, the old gray mare was in third place!  Coming into the final straightaway, our horse looked strong and was gaining on the leaders.  As the finish line drew nearer and nearer, my Dad started shouting, "C'mon old gray mare! C'mon old gray mare!" over and over.  We all chimed in with our little voices, "C'mon old gray mare!"  By this point my Mom was standing too.

And then, the old gray mare took the lead right at the finish line and won the race!!  We cheered!  The old gray mare had won!  We had won ten dollars!!

To this day, my family uses the phrase "Old gray mare" to mean an underdog.

Ojo Burning the Midnight Oil

So it's just before 2am on a Sunday night/Monday morning and I'm currently in my office preparing for a summary judgment hearing. 

But that's not the point. 

The point is that as one of my "strategic edges," I like to print out opposing counsel's profile from their firm site or from Martindale and have it sitting out in plain view.  Hope is that they'll see it and think that if I went to the trouble of reading and printing out their profile that I must be really, really prepared and they'll get psyched out.  If I really want to be a dick I place their profile face up on top of a stack of folders labelled "Criminal Background Checks," "Registered Sex Offenders" and "State Bar Grievance Committee."

After Beating the Dead Horse Into Glue

Dead Horse

Last post's comments got carried away.  If I wasn't a lawyer I'd be a documentary filmmaker.  If I wasn't a lawyer or a documentary filmmaker I'd be an economist.  I think the shit is fascinating.  For the record, Tom sent me a very gracious email (one that still refuted all of the points in my last comment, but still).  We're still friends and have agreed to carry on the conversation over beers in Austin sometime soon.  Or on the roof in POC.

Trends

1. People. Typing. Like. This. To. Make. A. Point.
2. Using the phrase, "sea change."

Dart News

Well, our team took first place in our division, going away.  We beat the then 2nd and 3rd place teams 11-2, 11-2 to close out the season.  We finished 20 games up on the next closest team.  Individually, I finished in the top 10 in both statistical categories, which isn't bad considering I missed two weeks and played fewer games than most of the other players.  (If the league kept stats based on averages instead of straight totals this wouldn't matter, but I digress.)  So, the spring season starts in a few weeks and we're going up against the big boys in the top division.  Should be interesting.

If our team hadn't won first place I was thinking about starting my own team.  Our home bar would've been Kenneally's and the name of the team would have been the Bombardiers, which I think is a really kick ass name for a dart team.  Kenneally's Bombardiers.  Has a really nice ring to it.

Postscript to 'Ojo's Latest Unbelievable Story'

I was looking at my latest phone bill yesterday when I noticed some strange charges.  I figured out that there were three charges incurred between when my phone was stolen and when I recovered it.  The first was for picture mail for a total of $6.45.  The second was for data charges at $.03/KB for $15.45.  The last one (and the only funny one) was a charge for a ringtone for $2.50 - by some musician named Bomba-Don Omar.  Never heard of him.  Naturally, it was a total hassle to get these charges removed and a story in its own right.

In the News

Can you believe this astronaut love triangle/murder plot deal?  It's funny, back in July, when I was procrastinating instead of studying for the bar I would watch the NASA channel, which I had just discovered.  I watched a lot of STS-121 where Lisa Nowak was one of the robotic arm operators.  I remember thinking then, "Hey!  It's a cute astronaut."  Turns out she's also psychotic.  I really do feel sorry for Nowak.  Just goes to show - romantic relationships can drive even the most solid people batshit crazy.

I also noted a story in today's Houston Chronicle about the conditions facing illegal immigrant families at a detention center outside of Austin.  I'm admittedly conflicted on the immigration issue, but this story pissed me off because it was so blatantly biased against the government and this facility.  Sure, the conditions might not be resort-like, but I'd bet they're a damn sight better than what you can get in Moga-fucking-dishu.  Besides, if you want to find someone to blame for the fact that these people are detained in the first place, look to those 19 muslim fuckers who hijacked those planes back in September of 2001.

Social conservatives are coming out against Gov. Perry's order requiring 6th grade girls to receive a vaccination for HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer.  The headline says that doctors are coming out against the mandate and their reasons are listed in the article.  The TMA, the lobbying group for Texas physicians, cites several reasons:  it's too early to be sure the vaccine is safe (despite approval by the FDA), liability and cost.  I'm aware of the risks of new drugs, but this one has received FDA approval - no easy task.  I think that the benefits of the mandate for the vaccine far outweigh the TMA's concerns mainly because their concerns strike me as overly cautious.  (Overall I think doctors are overly cautious when it comes to liability, mainly because of the abuses by med mal lawyers in the 80's and early 90's.  Tort reform has largely done away with these concerns, but the docs are still jittery.)  Anyway, here's the the real booger:  "Social conservatives said a mandate makes sex seem permissible."  Ahh, here we go.  Now I don't know how far the TMA's agenda overlaps that of social conservatives on this issue, but to the extent it does, I say "NUTS!"  Just so I understand - you want to hold off on mandatory vaccines for a virus that causes 70% of cervical cancer so that we can keep teenagers from fucking?  That's just ignorant.

Lastly, the story about the Rev. Ted Haggard just kills me.  If you fuck dudes, then you are gay.  I know of very few more fundamental truths than this.  My advice:  admit to yourself and the world that you are a homosexual.  Try to unlearn all of the hate and self-loathing and be comfortable with who you are.  You will be much happier that way.  Maybe your congregation will buy your routine - I don't.

Compendium II

1. This global warming debate really cracks me up.  Apparently, a group of scientists called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have gotten together in Paris to issue a collective statement that the Earth is, indeed, getting hotter.  Over the last couple of days, the main sticking point of the statement was how strongly to say that humans were responsible for it.  The Chinese delegation insisted on weaker language (their expanding economy needs fossil fuel energy so they don't want to reduce their access to it by creating a Chicken Little scenario where oil and coal use is banned globally - like that would ever happen) so they settled on the phrase "very likely."  When I saw that politics was affecting the wording of the statement I immediately wrote off whatever it is that they have to say.  Either there is a solid scientific link to global warming or there is not.  I'm not a climatologist, but based on my education I know that there have been temperature fluctuations throughout the Earth's history.  We've had ice ages for Chrissakes!  In fact, we're coming out of one right now.  I, for one, am not the least bit surprised at the measurable rise in temperatures because of the natural cycle we know exists.  Nor would I be concerned about it except for a couple of things:  If humans have impacted the Earth's temperature (there's pretty solid evidence we have), how is that working with the natural cycle?  Maybe the change will be more rapid b/c of what we've done and evolution can't keep up so 80% of the Earth's species go extinct.  Maybe the temperatures will top out higher and deserts will cover 4/5's of the Earth's land mass.  I don't know.  I'll be dead and gone before things get critical, if they ever do.  I'd just like to see some truth about this issue that isn't influenced by economics or politics.
2. I'm spending my third day offsite at this document production.  I really admire the people who are doing this work.  It's tedious as hell - they have to take out every staple and paper clip, unfold every creased edge, tape small pieces of paper like receipts to a full size page that can go through the scanner, mark each distinct set of pages as a certain organizational unit, run each page through a scanner, quality check each document against the original to make sure each image is legible and in the correct order and finally, they have to rebuild the file just as it was with every staple and paper clip.  I don't have the heart to tell them that 99% of the work they are doing is utterly futile and wasteful and that it's just part of the war of attrition that is civil litigation.
3. I've gotten a chuckle out of the story about Harry Potter going buff in that stage play.  As part of the hullaballoo, this came out.  The most disturbing of the pics was that of Keshia Knight Pulliam - Rudy from the Cosby Show.
4. Lastly, I leave for Austin tonight.  When I return I will have all of my girlfriend's stuff in a Uhaul.

Compendium

1. Super Bowl:  I don't give two shits about it, but if I did I suppose I'd pull for Peyton Manning to win.  He's a solid dude who's paid his dues and he deserves it.  One of the things I don't like about the game itself is the timing.  Just about the time that I settle in to my vague New Year's resolutions to not drink or smoke too much and to exercise more, along comes the Super Bowl.
2. Darts:  Our team is in first place with one week to go in the season, which means we are moving up to the "A" division next season.  It's the highest division and there are players there who have world rankings.  Last night we played the second place team for what was essentially an elimination match for first place.  They were four games back going into a thirteen game match.  We won 11-2.  Here are the league stats going into last night.
3. My girlfriend is moving to Houston and we are going to be living together.  So that's pretty big.
4. This Seattle weather we've been having here sucks.  It's been in the low to mid 40's and raining for 15 out of the last 18 days.  Pretty much the worst weather possible.
5. So far, I like being a lawyer.  You know free meals at expensive restaurants, discounts at pretty much every retailer, theater and sports tickets, random chicks flashing their boobs - it's all been pretty swiit.
6. Someday I think I want to move back to Austin.  Especially if one or both of my brothers is there.
7. I don't want to open up a can of worms here (billy please don't comment this) but this Plame Wilson/Libby deal with the White House and Iraq proves how fucked up our justification was for going to war.  It further proves how shitty this administration has been, especially concerning Iraq.
8. I'm currently sitting in a 2-1/2 day long document production offsite at a client's office.  Basically, I'm sitting in a room with three people who are making copies.  Every half hour or so, one of them will ask me whether they need to copy both sides of a page because there's a phone number or something written on the back.  Exhilarating.  If I didn't have internet access I would go insane - insane like rubbing my own shit all over myself insane.