Mini-Tantrums

Today while "condensing" my notes after lecture, I stopped and yelled at my computer: "Oh my god, I don't care!" It was just an irresistible impulse. Like a reflex to studying Evidence. If I think about Evidence for more than six hours a day, apparently I have to yell about it. I'm pretty happy no one else was around me at the time. It was akin to throwing a mini-tantrum. Great stuff.

Inspired by something I read, here is what I have learned so far from bar studying: Record your deed immediately. Do no accept a quitclaim deed, someone is screwing you over. Tumblrs about studying for the bar are more interesting than studying itself. I am capable of giving a crap for over five hours a day, but less than six. Don't go into property law.

Just booked my bar trip to Peru. It's gonna be baller. Machu Pichu, the Amazon, and Lima. I can't wait.

Brief Update (You Didn't Know, But That Was A Pun on Case Briefs-I Suck)

Journal competition has started. I only spent a few hours on it today. Off to a good, highly-motivated start. Of course my Contracts reading suffered from this. But I did my Property reading. Equitable servitudes and real covenants, sounds sexy right? Real covenants? Not fake covenants, what's that about? I think they are fake covenants though. The real covenant is with the Big Man in the Sky.
Also, it occurs to me that journal competition is quite reminiscent of DBQ's (document-based question) from when I took the AP U.S. History exam in junior year of high school. What a throwback. You get a bunch of documents and you have to use them to write an essay. More proof that law school = high school!

Today in the middle of Property the professor started talking about an ice cream store and I decided I wanted nachos for lunch. I needed nachos for lunch. I had a flash of how some corn chips laden with warm melted cheese would taste and I knew there was no alternative. Within two minutes of class ending I found six other people to join me at a restaurant a block away from the law school that has excellent nachos. Of the seven people there four of us got nachos. I finished mine first. And I was so damn happy. I ended those nachos. I went General Sherman on those nachos.

Sharp response of the day:
Me: How do you know I'm not conservative?
Stephanie: Because you've said more than "hello" to me.

Shove it, Milton Friedman

Last Thursday was my last Property class before today. It ended with libertarian kid (the one who essentially advocated racism last semester in Civ Pro) arguing that there should be no rules against excluding people from private property, mostly businesses, because the rationality of the market would create incentives not to discriminate, so rules against discrimination are unnecessary. Well today we picked up right where we left off. He reiterated that argument. Another kid, I believe supported it. Then Gunner also chimed in with some measure of support, though it was sort of difficult to pick out his position from the rest of the inane, self-important comments he made. But I was done listening to this crap about the rationality of the market.

So I raised my hand, and got called on. Basically: "This type of Milton Friedman-esk argument that the rationality of the market will work everything out is just empirically false. Historically it doesn't work. Look at the picture on page 125. [It's a picture of a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in the 1960's.] And it doesn't work today. Also, the argument that was made that it is irrational for a business to discriminate because they lose so many consumers can be wrong. A business that discriminates can also be more popular than one that doesn't because it will attract other people who believe in that type of discrimination, further incentivizing discrimination."
My professor responded, "Well, what about the argument that we just haven't given the market enough time to adjust?"
To which I immediately said, "Sure, let's give it another hundred years."
Moving on.

Someone behind me whispered "Good job." And later on a lot of other people shared their approval, many liked my last little crack to the professor. Good, lots of other people aren't dumb libertarians.
Sorry for the overt politics, but I think it's a fairly obvious point. Just look at history. Also, discrimination is a largely irrational thing. The proposed fix is the rationality of the market. But you can't fix something that is irrational through rationality. You can throw all the logic you want at them, but their view isn't based on logic, so logic probably won't change it.

So much meat. For serious.

Last night I headed up to Baltimore for Nakul's birthday. It was my first time being in Baltimore and to appropriately prepare for the occasion I emptied my wallet of all non-essential items and brought only things I would be alright with if they got stolen. Turns out that wasn't necessary - I didn't even get mugged. But really, from what I hear about Baltimore, you are just playing the odds. Actually, Baltimore was a nice city from what I saw of it. It had some lovely architecture. It also had a place for bail bonds. That was a little disturbing. But Nakul's apartment is quite nice, and he enjoyed rubbing it in my face that he pays far less for far more.

His parents took us out to this Brazilian restaurant that serves...well...meat. They give you a little thing that looks like a coaster, one side is green and the other is red. When you want meat you flip it to green. When you no longer want meat you flip it to red. After grabbing a little bit at the extensive salad bar (they had incredible sun dried tomatoes, if you were wondering) I flipped to green. And immediately roving waiters holding large sticks with various types of meat on them descended on the table. They offer different types of meat and different cuts. So good. Sirloin, fillet, fillet wrapped in bacon, lamb, lamb chops, pork chops, chicken wrapped in bacon, to name the ones that I remember eating. And multiple servings of many of them. Everything was good, the fillet and the sirloin were nothing short of incredible. **Bad pun alert** To find meat that delicious is rare. All in all I ate two plates of salad and a whopping six plates of meat. I am absolutely certain that I gained weight from that one meal. I also clogged some arteries and raised my blood pressure. And 22 hours later my stomach has still not forgiven me. "Why did you put so much into me?" It wants to know. "Because the meat was so delicious, stomach. And because I don't eat things that good...ever. So stop complaining and start digesting." But seriously, eating today has been an issue. I'm still recovering and putting down the revolt that my stomach is attempting. Also, working out today hurt really badly. You ever get the meat sweats? While I was actually sweating because of the running it felt kind of like the meat sweats. Gross. I haven't had that much meat since eating at a BBQ restaurant named Bullocks in Durham, NC after the Duke Invitational.

After stuffing ourselves, we had the courage to go out to a bar. Nakul got bought a number of drinks. He ended up having what appeared to be a fantastic night. I ended up arguing about Zionism with one of his friends, who I then befriended, while drinking National Bohemian: the classiest beer of them all. And this morning I have an inexplicable and invisible bruise on my left arm. Is it a bruise if it's invisible? I don't know. But something hurts.

And the first week of law school contained 3 cancelled classes, with only one make up class. That's just fine with me. Property looks interesting, which is good because I feel like that class has a huge potential for sucking. Thursday in Property, with about four minutes left in class, the kid who last semester in Civil Procedure basically advocated racism said something really dumb about the inherent rationality of the free market which, for some reason, included the sentence "If God wanted, he could have made the moon black." I couldn't tell you exactly what his point was, but it was something Milton Friedman-esk about how we shouldn't interfere with any decisions that the market makes because the market will always do what is best for itself (untrue, in fact at the time we were discussing a case where a company made the economically irrational decision to exclude a patron at random - just to prove that it could). Ok, he said something dumb. That kind of thing happens all the time. But after class two separate people came separately came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed watching my face while this kid was speaking. Apparently my expression was full of obvious rage and disbelief at the inane crap that I was hearing and they were amused by this. The funny part is that I wasn't even consciously making any face. I certainly was thinking about how wrong he was, but I didn't try to outwardly manifest anything. I suppose I am very expressive, particularly around morons. (Almost typed "mormons" there by accident. Whoops.) I should probably make sure I don't do that in important situations. But for now, I'm glad to be of some entertainment value.