Crashed and Burned

That about sums up my oral argument tonight. More later if I feel up to it.

Easter and such

One of the perks of going to Notre Dame is getting a nice long weekend for Easter. We had a four-day weekend (Good Friday, weekend, Easter Monday). Some people got a somewhat longer break either my luck (the other Contracts section didn't hold class on Thursday) or by skipping out early. What made this mini-vacation interesting for me is I actually stayed on campus this time, instead of heading back to Ohio.

I did get some work accomplished, though not as much as I would have liked (but isn't that always the way?). In addition, I got to meet Brooke's boyfriend Craig and partake of lots of free food (courtesy of Brooke and Craig). The three-course Easter brunch was very good.

As it turns out, it's probably for the best that I didn't go anywhere - Depositions had a class today and I was up to perform.

Now for a little news in the world of blogs... Brooke is back from her hiatus and posting like crazy. Brendan's NCAA pools are going strong (and in which my picks performed fairly well - not bad considering my absolute lack of sports knowledge (just ask anyone who's played Trivial Pursuit with me)). Derek's experimenting with a new blog format, when he's not painting by number at work. Brad's not feeling the love over at his blog where no one's been commenting lately (so take some pity on the boy and leave him a few words). And last but not least, it seems my sister's jumping on the blog bandwagon.

Anyway, it's back to law school tomorrow. I only have one class - Contracts. It'll be a nice way to ease back into the week. But tomorrow night I have my oral argument for LegWri II/Moot Court. Look for a post late tomorrow night to see how things went.

Coming Attractions

Most people who know me know that I'm a pretty big fan of movie trailers. It's an additional incentive to get to the theater early to see a movie. (The other reason is to get a good seat, which could be its own argument/post.) Nowadays, it's no longer as big of a deal because modern technology has brought the movie trailer to the internets. I find Quicktime's site to be a good place to find and view trailers for upcoming movies.

Movie trailers can be a work of art, and often better than the movie itself. They frequently come in two types: the "teaser" and the traditional trailer. Teasers offer a frustratingly small glimpse of the upcoming movie. The new War of the Worlds teasers are a good example.

The traditional trailer tends to give a little more away. Hopefully, it doesn't give too much away; too frequently the trailer includes so much of the story that there's really little point in seeing the movie itself. Of course, there are some movies where you pretty much already know how it's going to end (Titanic and The Alamo come to mind), but you still don't want to give away all of the best scenes. This goes double for comedies; there are few things more annoying than going to see a movie and realizing that all of the best gags were in the trailer.

Trailers are often made before the movie has gone through its final edit, and sometimes it includes parts of scenes that don't actually make it into the movie. This can also be annoying sometimes. But now that movies are released on DVD with bonus features like deleted scenes, which may let you see some of that lost footage.

Based on my recent perusal of Quicktime's site, here are a few of my recommendations:

The newest trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is pretty good. One thing that makes it particularly amusing is its meta-commentary on trailers themselves.

Sin City looks interesting. It has an interesting style to it, kind of a mix of black and white film noir and random splashes of color. I'm not quite convinced that the underlying storyline will be that great though. Though a certain level of narrative deficiency may be forgiven if the scene with Jessica Alba lives up to its potential...

There may be some promise in The Island, provided that it amounts to more than a Matrix rip off.

I'm also looking forward to Batman Begins, and of course Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (not hosted on Quicktime).

Now for a few movies that probably shouldn't have been made:

A remake of Herbie the Love Bug? How many Disney remakes will Lindsay Lohan star in?
Zathura? I don't think we really need Jumanji in space. (Seriously, right down to the board game.)

Ok, enough from me for now. Enjoy a few movie trailers; as they say in the trailer to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it'll help you plan out the next few months of your life.

Irish Bowling

It's Thursday night, and time for a special St. Patty's Day edition of ICBING bowling!

We were a bit shorthanded tonight with only 5 bowlers. (The other ConLaw section has its final on Monday.) We decided not to rotate through a phantom slot, and just kick back and enjoy. Things were very festive tonight. Most people were wearing green for the occasion, green beer flowed freely, and we were even serenaded by bagpipes. There was also a video camera floating around, though I'm not quite sure why. Non-internets rumors speculate that the bowling alley might have been filming a commercial.

Here were tonight's scores:

Wrong Lane: 115, 155
Bowling Injury: 80, 101
Breaks 50, et al.: 92, 88
One Arm Bandit: 127, 132
No Show*: 133, 118

* So named because despite being on the team roster from the beginning, No Show made his first appearance tonight

Some of the highlights:
Wrong Lane bowled a personal best of 155 which included a turkey. No Show dazzled all with his bowling prowess (where have you been all season?!). One Arm put in a very strong showing; the jury is out on whether having the use of both arms has benefitted his balance.
Since we only had five bowlers, we managed to fit in a third game that didn't count towards the standings. No Show experimented (unsuccessfully) with bowling between his legs. Bowling Injury demonstrated considerable talent at bowling backwards, racking up 19 pins in three frames and almost getting a spare.

Legal Neologism

The legal profession seems to encourage making up new words. Law students who have used Microsoft Word to take notes during class are frequently confronted with the following situation. You're typing away, trying to catch the most salient points of the daily Socratic dialogue when the evil red squiggly line pops up under half of the words. At first, you think you must have misspelled it. But no, you had it right. It matches the professorial scrawl on the board; it matches the printed text in the casebook.

Granted, some of the words used in law school might be expected to set off Word's spelling alarms. Some words/phrases are basically latin (res ipsa, parens patriae, etc.). Others are clearly terms of art that lawyer-types have adopted (tortfeasor, offeree, textualism). A few others at least look like words (consider, e.g, foreseeability).

Then there are the really fun ones: those that don't even look like words. These are words that clearly sprung from the mind of some lawyer or judge who either couldn't quite find the word s/he was looking for, or had some idea they wanted to convey but couldn't be bothered to consult a dictionary. Justiciability? Purposivism? Neglify?

Of course, other professions have been known to invent words as well. I hear that engineers have given us plenty of "-ize" gems, the most ridiculous of which is probably "requirementize." Still, I find it funny how many crazy words the legal profession has created. After getting through law school, maybe I can be a neologist too.

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Worry not, I am still alive. Currently, I'm on mid-semester break in Ohio. As my parents are still using dial-up, my internet access hasn't been all that great. I apologize for not posting much in the recent weeks, but my LegWri brief was eating up a lot of my time. You know how the saying goes, the Law is a jealous mistress and all that.

I had hoped to post some in-depth bowling coverage, but alas the scores are still back in South Bend. But here's a general recap of last Thursday:

Most of ICBING showed up, and our first game went pretty well. I bowled a 120, far above my average. 10 pin and Take a Knee also bowled well, raking in big numbers. Performance dropped off in the second game. Nevertheless, I triumphed over Bowling Injury, winning a new bet and restoring my good name. Bowling Injury now owes me a beer, and will be driving next week (on St. Patty's day, no less). Afterwards, several of us decided to get a jump on celebrating the end of the first half of the second semester. (It's hard to believe that we're now 25% of the way through law school!) There was drinking, dancing, and general craziness at the 'Backer. Then we stumbled home to our beds and a general state of unconscoiusness. That it was a good night was more or less confirmed by the next morning's hangover.

The LegWri brief is now finished (or perhaps more appropriately, abandonned). After putting a few finishing touches on it, I handed it in Friday afternoon. Despite the delays caused by this and Pres. Shrub's visit to ND, I made the trek back to Ohio and arrived late Friday night.

Since then, I've been relaxing, catching up with Honor, and doing a little reading. Honor had her last choir concert on Saturday night. It was a very good concert. OSU Men's Glee opened, and I enjoyed all of the performances.

On Sunday night I reconnected with an old friend from high school. Matt's just finished getting his Masters in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), and is now back in Chillicothe to conduct his job search. He doesn't plan to get a job here, just live at home to cut costs while hunting for a job.

That's pretty much all that's been happening lately. I'll try to post a little more frequently now that the brief's behind me. But updates may still be a bit slow while I'm in Ohio and using dial-up.