vacation...

Moving to Dallas, so no posts for a bit... don't be sad. I'll be at Home Depot if you need anything. Patio furniture here I come.

(insert sound of liver squealing)

My brain is finally able to do what it was intended to do--filing away useless sports information and waiting for football season. I have been unable to properly report on things to this point, but this is my last "bar" post... thankfully.

That test was awful. I don’t know why I thought that exam might be a bit easier than it was, but it was definitely a humbling experience. As far as the actual test goes-- me vs. the test-- I was destroyed. I guess the curve is really really helpful, or else there will be trouble in November. For future generations of bar applicants, I can offer this recap of the festivities:

I typed the exam, which means, because my typewriter was broken, I used my computer. I took the exam at the Palmer events center. The chairs are comfy relative to the Crockett Center, and the room is a nice subdued shade of gray. It felt sort of like the Rothko Chapel in Houston, except full of plastic tables and crazed idiots. One lady even wore a "SARS" mask for some reason. I went "earplugs" for my first exam ever, and aside from the fact that I had to listen to the breathing inside of my head, it was a good move.

I arrived early at the Palmer because for some reason there is one parking garage, with one exit, and if you don't get there early you end up parking deep in the recesses of the garage and have to sleep there at night with the hobos. People sit in their cars, studying, and their cars run to keep the A/C going and the carbon monoxide probably counterbalances whatever knowledge is being absorbed.

Bonus - the Palmer is 50 yards from a Whataburger. Food at my house consists of American cheese slices, Vitamin Water, and a banana that has seen better days. Once again, I owe Whataburger for saving my ass. Taquitos contain an egg-related substance that really does the job.

By 7:20am I am staring at flashcards because basically I am just a highly-caffeinated robot, retaining nothing but unable to stop myself. If there is a stack of flashcards I must get through it; this puts me at ease for some reason.

The exam instructions begin at 8:00am. The guy reading the instructions is all kinds of awful. He speaks so slowly that you want to shout out the instructions for him, and I mumble sarcastically to myself, no doubt irritating the person next to me.

The essay exam begins. The questions are full of people with stupid names doing stupid things. Some people started a meat-processing business. Some other guy left a guy named Herbert $500,000 in his will, but then decided that he didn't want to leave Herbert $500,000. Fickle jerks and careless people screwing each other over, and me with my laptop, a blank screen, and three hours to make up laws and answer six questions.

10:20 am, and I check the available fonts on the exam software, only to find that they have included “Wingdings." This amuses me to no end and I imagine how awesome it would be to fail the exam with 100% Wingding responses. This occupies my mind for far too long and at some point I settle with using emoticons to indicate when I am bullshitting. Example: "Under Texas Law ;0 ;0, a court could find that this guy is a jerk ..." I hope they have a sense of humor.

Laws were created, decisions were made, mistakes were made. It was hard to fight back the feeling of elation of being done with the need to write and write some more. It's over now, and normal life can resume. Congrats to everyone...

good times

Wow. Two days down, and i'm already feeling like february is a real possibility. The multiple-choice questions were ridiculous, and I'm left wondering how that measures anyone's ability to do anything other than go cross-eyed. Normally, I'd try to make a joke out of the situation, but that was awful, and tomorrow doesn't look much better. I hope I'm good at guessing.

By tomorrow night, I will be incapable of committing first degree murder.

Ahh... Relaxation.


Since that is what my schedule says to do, I guess I will just "rest and relax" today because I "am going to do fine."

Oh, wait, there's a huge thunderstorm and the lord is going to destroy my house and home, but first he or she is going to give my poor cowardly dog a heart-attack with 10,000 lightning strikes. Then the house will be destroyed. You know things are bad when your first thought at the sound of the storm is "my laptop - just don't fry my laptop!" I would fail the exam on sight if someone had to look at my handwriting.

I wish all of you (all 5 of you) out there good luck. Feels good to almost be done with this. Then we get to spend 3 years doing document review.

"It's Better Than Anywhere I've Ever Been"


--- Jennifer Love Hewitt, on attending her first soccer game to see David Beckham limp around.

Appointed by the Supreme Court of Texas

I have just finished reading the instructions for the Bar Exam. I got 45% correct.

General Instruction #13 from the Board of Law Examiners Instructions:

“SOUND SUPPRESSION DEVICES: The use of sound suppression devices other than standard in-the-ear earplugs must be inspected and approved for usage by the site administrator before beginning of each exam session.”

Question #1 – What the hell other kinds of earplugs are there other than “in-the-ear earplugs”? In-the-nose? Mouth? Somewhere else?

Question #2 – Are these an acceptable sound suppression device?

I am imagining the meeting where Bar Examiners discussed the guidelines for determining an acceptable sound suppression device. This was possibly an amazing meeting.

New, Improved Fed. R. of Evi.

Rule 1:

Just let everyone testify. Perverts, aliens, cats, dogs, parrots, cartoon characters, all of them. Dead. Alive. Excited and insane uttering perverted parrots. Your baby's mama can testify. That talking guitar that Peter Frampton has - let it take the stand and rock. The Bible. It can testify. Stephen Hawking's machine voice and the Radiohead robot voice from Fitter, Happier. Again, no objections here. Know a Transformer? I bet they are some truthful sonsofbitches.

Rule 2:

Think the defendant is a crack head? Call him a crack head. Our juries aren't so easily fooled. Did the Plaintiff take a dump and not wash his hands in 1967? The jury needs to know this, and if you feel like coming to court to tell them, why should anyone stop you? I certainly won't object. Maybe you didn't even see it happen, maybe someone told you, but now they live in Finland and when they told you they were being treated by a radiologist they recently divorced. American juries can sort through it all.

I move for an Emergency Law Thing to have these rules applied no later than Monday.

The Reality

I wake up around 9:45 or 10:00 because the night before I was up late watching reruns of SportsCenter, baffled by the concept of “Who’s NOW?" and commenting to myself that someone at ESPN needs to get fired. And maybe I’m hungover, maybe from Benadryl or Wal-a-dryl or maybe from some booze, and the dog threw up on the floor because she’s secretly the canine reincarnation of Hitler. I know this because the vomit is in the form of a swastika.

I walk out into the living room and there are piles of books and papers and stacks of flashcards that will never be looked at. This depresses me and so I walk to FlightPath and get some coffee, stare at the yellow walls, and read the Onion. I am blessed with the ability to be distracted or make excuses even in the most inappropriate situations. Did I pay my credit card bill? Better go on-line and see. Now that I’m here, is there a trade rumor I should know about regarding any WNBA all-stars? As a patriotic American, I should be sure to watch the Hotdog Eating contest at least twice—even though I know who wins. I liken myself to the Kobayashi of bar reviewing, cramming statute after statute into my head until I vomit it through my nose and maybe win a trophy. I like the image, but this would require that I study. Any news on Transformers 2? What did Mundo write on Sullivan’s wall? All of these minor issues take on the most pressing weight of seriousness and I have to cross each one off the list before I can look at another statute hotdog. Cigarette? Sure. There’s gotta be something in nicotine to make me smarter. Coffee? Well of course.

At some point the guilt of not studying overcomes the urge to procrastinate, and for maybe an hour or two I am on, and I draw an elaborate picture with →→→’s and $$$$ to make sense of commercial paper. This takes forty-five minutes but it is worth it. Then it is dinner time so I look inside the care package the firm sent and I guess it’s Doritos, Twix and aspirin for dinner. A friend with a normal life calls and tells me I’m a douchebag, asks me to come have a drink, and laughs before I can answer. I mumble something about “all this work” I have to do. Outside my window a bird chirps incessantly. I tell the cat to go and kill the bird. The cat ignores me. If I could talk to animals I wouldn’t have to be taking this test. Then I cut a deal with myself. Just answer 50 multiple choice questions, and if you get 80% correct, you can watch SportsCenter. I get 68% correct and remember the 12% margin of error I forgot to include in my deal. Where’s the whisky? Did David Beckham get a hair cut today? Who's NOW?

best laid plans...

I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that things aren’t going according to plan....

The Vision

I awake every morning at 7am and recite the Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance, which I had blown-up to 125-point font, laminated, and glued to my bedroom ceiling. Getting out of bed I turn on the coffee and allow myself five minutes of internet news browsing—no sports—only the Times. By 7:10 I am taking the dog on a briskly-paced walk, waiving to neighbors and imagining various tort scenarios that could play out if my dog were to become unleashed and maim a mentally handicapped member of a quasi-suspect group. 7:45 and I am home, breakfast appears somehow, and it is time for yoga and other mystical eastern arts of mental clarity. Shower. Floss. Check for testicular cancer. 8:30 and I am ready to be one with the law. The next 8 hours are spent absorbing every nuance of every statute, outlining essay topics, and creating 10-27 letter mnemonics for the MBE. During my allotted 5 minute break I memorize state capitals and learn the geography of Eastern Europe. There is no need to use the bathroom because my body is perfectly efficient. Dinner is delivered by an elderly neighbor who is indebted to me for rescuing her cat after a freak hot-plate accident (strict liability?) set her house ablaze. She lives in my shed and cooks homemade gnocchi with a summer tomato sauce that is so delicious you weep. After dinner I enjoy a non-alcoholic beer, balance my check book and correspond with indigenous prisoners I hope to one day represent after I pass the bar exam. In bed by 9:30, I dream of John Marshall.

Tomorrow I'll give you the reality...

I do not like mosquitos. If they were any kind of bug worth a shit they would figure out how to get the blood out of me painlessly and without the itch. There would be a lot less dead mosquitos if their proboscis (a fancy word for sucky-beak i learned on wikipedia) packed some vitamins or maybe some botox for the ladies. Someone please make it happen.



If you don't know what a mosquito is there is a picture of one.

And, in other news, this site is going to make someone very rich. Make sure your sounds is on... And no, it's not that awesome new cell phone tracing website everyone raves about.

Barbri 2.0

Soon I will run out of clean underwear. Understandably this is not a very big deal to anyone. If need-be I can do without. What is important is that, staring at the large pile of laundry littered across my room, it has become very clear that BarBri simply doesn’t do enough.

Assuming that at some point I will actually pass this exam and get to practice law, and once I get burned out, I am calling “dibs” (this, I’ve learned, is a valid future interest) on the luxury bar prep company. Anyone out there interested in starting this company with me? All we need is a snappy name. The lectures will have catered breakfasts, ice sculptures, ergonomic chairs, and instead of frustrated wannabe law prof comedians, we’ll have actual comedians or comically pathetic celebrities. M.C. Hammer on secured credit, O.J. on Crim Law. I don’t know how much this will cost, but it doesn’t mater, because law firms will want to pay for it. It will be a competitive marketing advantage for recruiting.

Yes, it is true that I have filled in many a blank this Summer and on some subconscious level this makes me feel confident. Well done BarBri. But, who is going to do my laundry while I make piles of flashcards and talk with the FBI? (Yes, the FBI is coming to my house tomorrow – what timing – to discuss my security clearance needed for my judges’ chambers). BarBri PLUS will offer laundry service, chair massages, origami classes, and dog-walking. Just a thought…

last minute ideas

What? It's my birthday? And you didn't get me anything??? If you're not consumed by guilt there's still time to get me something. A few suggestions:

1) Open the Eyes Time Life Video (I'm really into ultimate worship anthems these days - and check out the glowing reviews!)
2) Tickets to Lobsterfest
3) Kittens
4) RedRider BB gun
5) Muddy Bears (proof that candy inventors are out of ideas)
6) Some Allspark
7) Norbit (director's cut) or Ghost Rider... i'm down for whichever
8) I might be getting greedy at this point
9) A list of 10 looks better, though
10) time machine

An Even Minier Review:

So, apparently “conviser” is not a word, but a person. Someone (assholishly) decided to break this news to me earlier today as if he was the 3rd President or had donated me his kidney.

I thought “conviser” made a cool word, and I’d been using it in casual conversation. Example: “Hey man, did you see those conviser highlights on sportscenter of the professional lacrosse all-star game skills competition???!!? They were to the point!”

See, it sounds kind of like “concise” and “reviser”, and after looking at the book I would imagine the word would also have something to do with an emphasis on charts and diagrams. But fuck if he isn’t a real dude living somewhere in Illinois teaching law at some piece of crap school. Richard J. Conviser. There he is. He would have been cooler as a word.

Either way, I’ve decided that I am going to take his mini-review and make it smaller. The mini-mini review will be 8 pages long and contain only the following words:

“reasonable” “negligence” “amendment” “duty” “easement” “deed” “malice” and “breach". It will be amazing.

Dress Code?

My friend Adam tells me that the Georgia bar has a dress code. Apparently you can’t wear flip flops, “fashion hats” (whatever those are – top hats maybe?), or bandanas. Additionally, “revealing clothing is not appropriate and may be distracting to other applicants.” Yeah, I can see how a little side boob might keep me from concentrating on something as unimportant as the bar exam.

This got me thinking about what I’m going to wear here in Texas, where, to my knowledge, there is no dress code. There are several ways to go, and while I’m still entertaining offers from various designers, there are just too many options for me to decide:

1) Camouflaged with face paint and maybe a giant stuffed animal
2) The Speedo/Cowboy Boots/Tank top combo
3) South American Goal Keeper (think Jorge Campos circa 1993)
4) Count Chocula

I guess with three days of testing I could change it up. Back to work...

GOOD and EVIL

A simple list…

GOOD: Entourage DVDs (and, derivatively, Netflix), Transformers, the iPenis (trust me, it will be here soon), taunting the British, kittens, Andrew Bird, competitive eating, rampant cursing, collecting parking tickets and then moving far away.

EVIL: ESPN Insider, the general dearth of decent sports (fuck you NASCAR, Baseball, Wimbledon), endless rain ruining things, idiots on Craigslist who can’t read or spell or buy my worthless crap, people with iPhones at the gym, the parking meter cocksucker ninja who must have hid in the bushes to give me a ticket in less than 3 minutes, sobriety.

July 1st

This date seems important. Aside from it being Canadian Independence Day, rent is due. There are 24 Days until the bar. 2 Days until Transformers. 2 Days until wedding anniversary. 2 Days until my wife has to sit through Transformers on our anniversary.

She’s a clever one, the wife. She's smart enough to plan a 3 week hike on the John Muir Trail in California while I slowly deteriorate into a caffeinated, twitchy, super law encyclopedia asshole. While she gets chased by bears and poops in the woods, I’ll be piling Wendy’s wrappers all over the house and gluing index cards that explain wild animal tort theory to the cat and dog. She gets back and we move to Dallas 3 days later. Those 3 days will be nothing but fun—of this I am certain.

Also, in “blogging” news, I realized that no one really reads this (and man, site tracking software can really confirm such a suspicion), and that is fine, but then I realized that there is no real point in writing something if no one reads it, and so I have attempted to link to other UT blawgs in hopes of poaching readers. All 6 of them.

And finally, in other news… real property can suck it. No, seriously, in minority states like Nevada it really can suck it.