“So the rules thus far are ‘don’t be late’ and ‘don’t be absent from class,’ unless you are absent because of circumstances outside your control. In that case, notify me before class. If I walk in here and you are not in your seat, and I don’t already know why that is the case… I will assume that you are dead. We will hold a brief service in your memory and then continue on, as we know you would want.”
“Yeah I mean if you don’t know the answer that’s fine, but I’m gonna make you pick the next person I call on. It’s a social experiment I run. I like to see if people pick their friends or their enemies. Wildly amusing. Anyway, be prepared for that.”
“So as the plaintiff’s counsel, you review all the possible venues and pick the one that’s the fairest to everyone….. haaaaahahaha I’m just kidding. You rig the court in your favor as much as you possibly can.”
“You’re supposed to go to a basement during a tornado. Why don’t y’all have basements?” “Can’t watch from a basement” “You’re going to die”
“My own law professor once described admiralty jurisdiction as ‘shit that happens on boats’ so [writes ‘boat shit’ on the board]”
“So then Congress gave itself a raise and America shouted, ‘Give it back you evil bastards!!!’ so loudly that they did.”
“I will provide you with pizza. For beverages, you’re on your own, but please abide by Baylor policy. Which is that we can’t have FUN.”
“And WHAT do we find outside the cities????? C O W S”
“All the desks on the third floor are reserved for 3Ls in practice court. Since you’re dying like, 100% of the time, they kindly give you a place to die. Sometimes you can see the lost souls wandering past the balconies….”
[makes a list of twenty-four things that could go wrong] [writes TRUMP in all caps as number twenty-five]
Round two:
“You don’t want conservatives! You want someone that will redistribute a little wealth! Get some commies! But don’t ask for them out loud, or it won’t end well.”
“Occasionally someone will walk into your office and start with ‘well just as a matter of principle…’ and that right there? That’s when you pull out your extra-strength Advil, because it will be a long day.”
“You can walk into a restaurant and just say, ‘I want tea.’ Sweet is implied! If you don’t want it sweet, it’s ‘tea, hold the sugar,’ and I like that!”
“My biggest goal is to die in Texas. When Gabriel’s trumpet blows, I will be resurrected from Texas dirt… if at all. Depends on his standards.”
“And I say, ‘How much will you pay me?’ and they say ‘a shitload!’ And I say, ‘how much is a shitload?’ and what do you know? Our definitions match”
“So you see that it’s an unincorporated association, and your reaction to that should be ‘shit!’ That is absolutely the proper reaction. That’s a good reaction.”
“You know it’s not perjury if you cross your fingers, right?”
“I would definitely shank someone for pizza.”
“Right now you’re… you’re lawyer larvae. I have a sense for these things.”
“So obviously Congress sprang into action. Why are you laughing? Oh yeah, BECAUSE IT’S BEEN A QUARTER CENTURY”
Round three:
“And by that I mean CRAC, the acronym, not c-r-a-c-k as in crack. Although I was a defense attorney for a long time, so if you want to know how to make crack, we can cover that in a side session. It’s good information. Very interesting.”
“And then I file a complaint against my employer for discriminating against me as a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant. You know… [sarcastically] the historically discriminated against crew”
“Listen, I like money. It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. You can like it just fine.”
“With the well-pleaded complaint rule, we take a scalpel and we carve out the cause of action. We lift it out of the body, bleeding! It is BLEEDING in your hands! You hold it in front of your face and you ask it, ‘WHO CREATED YOU?’ [groaning] ‘A federal law.’ ‘THEN YOU ARE A FEDERAL CASE!’ If it’s a state case, you cast it, still-beating, aside. And stomp on it.”
[with deep respect] “You would make a really good anarchist”
“Beaumont? How’s your family doing?” “Pretty well. I mean, everything is underwater, but it’s fine.”
“Your argument is what? ‘You can’t make that much money because it isn’t fair?’ This is America. Fair doesn’t matter.”
“We need ONLY one more thing: someone rich to sue. Can she help us?? We don’t know… until she describes one word on the side of that truck…. ‘Walmart.’ CHA C H I N G (don’t say that part out loud)! What’s forty percent of thirty million?? TWELVE MILLION. Forty percent is the ONLY math I can do in my head, because that is PRIVATE JET MONEY, BABY! The ONLY POINT of being rich is to HAVE A PRIVATE JET, because THOSE THAT DO can MANIPULATE TIME. As you can see, I am passionate on this point.”
“See this is a tough question because legislators are supposed to make laws, but how would you know that? They haven’t done it in YEARS.”
“Listen I don’t condone murder-suicide, but like… I feel it.”
With the well-pleaded complaint rule, we take a scalpel and we carve out the cause of action. We lift it out of the body, bleeding! It is BLEEDING in your hands! You hold it in front of your face and you ask it, ‘WHO CREATED YOU?’ [groaning] ‘A federal law.’ ‘THEN YOU ARE A FEDERAL CASE!’ If it’s a state case, you cast it, still-beating, aside. And stomp on it.”
I’m sobbing, this is amazing, I need this professor in my life
the most life-changing customer i’ve ever had at work was a guy who came up to me and my coworker when we were at cash and said ‘hey kids…. wanna see something?’
and I said sure because why the fuck not, i’m here for a good time not a long time, and this motherfucker pulled a railroad spike out of his pocket.
A GODDAMN
ANTIQUE
RAILROAD
SPIKE
It was a fucking foot long chunk of steel that weighed about five pounds on its own so i was like ‘huh….. neat’
and he said ‘wait. there’s more’ and he took out a screwdriver. inlaid into the head of the spike. ‘things aren’t always as they appear’ he said as he unscrewed the bit and pulled out of this goddamn railroad spike
a statue
a tiny, tiny golden statue stood on the base of this flathead screw. it was a tiny golden man standing next to a tiny golden flower with gemstones in the petals. the whole thing was smaller than my thumbnail is tall. it was detailed enough that the tiny man had facial features. it was amazing.
‘oh my god,’ i said. ‘how long did it take you to make that?’
‘here’s a word of advice,’ he said, ‘never answer that question when people ask it. it devalues your work. you’ll get faster and better at things, and be able to make more art in less time. they don’t need to know about the process, just the product’.
and he left and that’s the one artistic piece of advice i definitely wanna hold to.
Gather ‘Round everyone, it’s time for another installment of Family Lore!
So back in the late 60′s dad was getting his undergraduate at Cal Poly, because Dad was an early proto-nerd (like really, he wrote a bunch of the groundwork for the thing that would eventually become the internet), and Cal Poly had one of the first comp sci programs in the country. Also, it was like 10 miles from home, so he didn’t have to move out. However, because this was undergrad, dad had to take a bunch of non-major courses, so he decided to do geology because he’d been good at identifying rocks in boy scouts.
The course was taught by gentleman named Dr. Puck, yes really, who was a brilliant geologist, but teaching a bunch of somewhat uninterested just-out-of-high-school kids about rocks can wear on you, even if you aren’t some sort of deranged fey creature. So he tried his best to make it interesting, and Dad and most of the other kids had a fairly interesting time.
HOWEVER
Dad recounts that there were two girls in class who spent the entire time blowing off lecture, talking and generally being a distracting nuisance, until they heard that a quiz was coming up, then they’d pester and bully anyone for notes, usually Dad. This went on for about three months and virtually everyone in class was grinding their teeth at these two, but Dad in particular, who did not appreciate being accosted in the hall by these two, who would alternately offer sexual favors for his notes, or threaten to start rumors about him if he didn’t help them study. Puck knew some shit was up, but dad wasn’t eager to start legal action in his first semester, not to mention it was the 60′s and rampant patriarchy would have meant nobody would have believed him.
One Day, Dr. Puck organized a field for the class to the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are full of all manner of interesting geology things, most notably, fossils. Really stinking cool ones. Everyone is having a nice time hiking through the hills, looking at all the picturesque geology, when they round a corner and see a Big Goddamn RIB, just sticking out of the side of the trail. Everyone goes OOOOOOH appreciatively, and Puck explains that this is an ancient Whale that UC Santa Cruz was digging up, but he knew someone in their geo department, so he got the goods on the site.
He then explains, in grand gestures and with the sort of vivacity that only people of Fey ancestry can muster, how this used to be an ancient seabed, but due to the magic Natural Geologic Process of Continental drift and Uplift, this whale was now some 2000 feet above sea level. He spent a good twenty minutes telling the tale, while everyone took notes.
Almost everyone.
Literally the moment after Puck finished, one of the girls finally noticed the GIANT FUCKING RIB and asked him “But Dr. Puck- how did whale get all the way up here?”
Puck, somehow, did not explode, but instead stood up to his full five-feet-and-one-and-one half-inches and explained in his most deadpan, eloquent lecture voice.
“This is a Great Flying Whale of the Cretaceous Period.” He gestured at the Rib. “They used to migrate here to Santa Cruz to breed, from their winter grounds in Hawaii, and would build magnificent nests out of kelp.”
Dad recalls stuffing his notes into his mouth to keep from laughing. His more silver-tongued classmates began to chip in.
“Didn’t they used to eat Stegosaurs? Just swooped down and gobbled them up.” a student asked, trying not to snicker.
“Indeed! They were far from the gentle giants we have today!” Puck agreed. “Teeth the size of your arm, and long sticky tongues to catch smaller prey with.”
“How did they fly?” Asked another, ready to hear a choice piece of bullshit.
“Oh, gravity was much weaker back then, so they could ‘swim’ through the air with only the aid of a few helium bladders.” he nodded sagely. “Yes, and when they fossilized, the bladders were preserved. Santa Cruz has some of the finest Helium mines in the world thanks to these magnificent beasts.”
“Wow.” Muttered one of the girls, scribbling notes furiously. Dad unwaded the parper from his mouth, ready to drive the nail into the coffin.
“Is this going to be on the test?” He asked, sweetly.
“Oh yes.” Puck nodded gravely.
Sure enough, two weeks later, there was a test, and at the very bottom was the following:
“EXTRA CREDIT: explain everything innacurate/wrong about The Great Flying Whales Of The Cretaceous Period. One Point per Idea that makes me Laugh.”
And that’s how Dad walked out of geology with 106% and the invaluable knowledge that people will believe ANYTHING if you speak with enough conviction.
last night i had a dream that my college was adding a minor in Gnome Studies, and it…actually sounded really cool
okay so this is how the Gnome Studies minor worked in my dream, if i’m recalling correctly: there were five classes you had to take, and each one corresponded to a letter in the word “gnome” (though the material really doesn’t match a letter at all):
G – the class you had to take as a prerequisite. introduction to gnomes in general—what is a gnome? what are their origins?
(all the other classes you could take in whatever order you wanted)
N – a sociological look at gnomes. specifically i remember this dealing with the question of, like, why blue-collar/working-class families tend to place garden gnomes in their yards while white-collar/upper-middle class people view them as tacky (yes that actually is a real thing), and what gnomes’ presence or lack thereof can teach us about real and perceived class divides
O – gnomes from a gender and women’s studies perspective. in what ways do gnomes and gnomish figures queer the gender binary as it exists today? why are so many gender non-conforming people fascinated with gnomes? can gnomes’ radical ugliness help us to brush past society’s problem with superficial beauty?
M – gnomes in literature and mythology. not only is this class a deeper look at the History of Gnomes, but it also forces us to ask questions about timely issues facing our society today: why have gnomes endured in western media for so long? what is it about the gnome that somehow brings us back to it again year after year? what does the gnome symbolize in our collective consciousness?
E – unfortunately i woke up before finding out what this one was. if i had to guess, though, it’d be memetic uses of gnomes; why “gnome” has become such a weird internet punchline recently, why “gnomeo and juliet” and “sherlock gnomes” exist, what about the word “gnome” brings us such delight in these troubled times, etc.
“I’m not big on heroic speeches, and that’s not going to change today, but I’ve got some things I need to say about what we’re setting out to do.
Over the past few months, I’ve been stabbed, shot, drowned,
frozen,
poisoned, electrocuted, set on fire – both consecutively and concurrently! – and on one occasion transformed into a ground squirrel, which I did not care for at all. And I know a lot of you have been through a lot of the same things.
At the time, I thought of it as the hazards of the job. I’m sure you did, too. But with what we’ve learned today, we now know that a singular force – some people would call it a god – has been behind it all from the very start.
Many would find it disheartening, to know that a god has it in for them, but I look at it like this: if there’s someone behind it, then there’s someone to blame for all the ridiculous bullshit that’s been visited upon me – indeed, upon us all. And if there’s someone to blame, then there’s someone who can catch payback.
…
Is this about justice? Maybe. Is it about freedom? Certainly, if we succeed, a lot of people will be set free. But I think it’s important to have a personal reason going into this, and for me, that reason is an ass that needs kicking.
So come on. Let’s go beat up God.”
Voices that folks have informed me they heard this post in:
So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.
I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”
She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”
I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”
And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.”
And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.”
She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”
So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.
My mom has been telling me this story since I was five.
So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.
I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.
And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”
So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…
This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.
A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.
The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas – like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.
Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.
And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.
He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”
And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…
Smiles.
He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”
As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.
“My dad did it for most of his life.”
“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”
The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”
“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”
“I remember that cane,” he says.
I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”
“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”
“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”
“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”
“Yup.”
I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.
I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.
And this is what I made.
This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”
And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me.
That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.
I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.
So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.
Keep it up.
Hi! Person who works the Great Dickens Christmas Fair here. I have seen this tree about in our fake London and I was always so in awe of it. I can’t stress this, the women who wears this literally looks like a Christmas tree and it’s magical and I was always like ‘that’s crazy and definitely Fair, I love it’.
You’re a joy and always welcome at the Fair 🙂 I would love to give you tickets for this year and/or future years. You’ve made our fake London more magical and for that I can’t thank you enough.
Wow that’s so sweet!!!!
Unfortunately, I’m not going to be there this year as I’m traveling literally the entire time the fair is on, but I might just take you up on this in future years if you’re game! I love going to this fair and wearing my period costume I made. Really a fun fair. Thank you so much for the offer.
Ah bell hoops…
Are you wearing bloomers also?
That is a very fine gown.
True Story: I’m dating the Fiddling Christmas Tree.
oh my god every single part of this was magical but then i get to the end and THE TREE IS YOUR GIRLFRIEND this is the best thing ever.
why do we have 567898475 hallmark christmas movies about some bland woman being shown the magic of christmas by falling for an equally bland man when we could have generational santa magic inspiring intrepid costumers to bring fiddling trees to life? a Travesty
Hey if you wanna reach out to Lifetime network, that’s totally fine with me.
Touched By A… No. Let me think through this again.
sometimes people try to tell me that scientists are paragons of rationality and I have to break it to them that I have yet to work in a lab that didn’t have at least one weird secret shrine in it
new guy: why is all of the equipment in this room covered in toys?
me: dONn’t touch those
new guy:
me: they need the toys to function. if they don’t all have toys they get jealous.
new guy:
new guy:
me: when something breaks just take the wizard and wave it around for a while. they seem to like that.
So I’ve been ruining my kids lives by saying “weird flex but ok” to everything and when I do it they scream no and tell me they’re running away and I made this lovely photo lemme get it
Ok so I need some help coming up with the absolute worst “to flex on” live memes ever to pretend I’m an even more really lame parent. they don’t have to make sense but they need to be absolutely awful yet believable enough that it isn’t obvious I’m intentionally trying to be more lame
Here’s the ones I came up with so far
“You ever just eat a well balanced diet and exercise daily to flex on heart disease?”
“You ever just boil chilies to flex on your eyes?”
“You ever just be cool to flex on your kids?”
“You ever just use sanitizer to flex on 99.9% of all bacteria and viruses?”
“You ever just turn all the lights and up the heater to flex on Dad?”
Catholic edition:
“You ever just like receive the sacraments frequently to flex on Satan?”
“You ever just like love your Mom to flex on Protestants?”
So I executed the first one in the kitchen then I dabbed and my son didn’t say anything he just set down his pomegranate and walked out the front door with no shoes on and now he’s walking down the street
everytime I hear about children of the corn I think about the guy I met at comic con who actually lived in the town they filmed that movie at, and on the farm where they filmed in the corn.
he was a teenager at the time and him and his friends would get drunk on moonshine and rustle the corn and let the air out of the tires of the production team’s trailers and shit.
and now there’s Wikipedia pages about how the children of the corn set was haunted and they thought they angered god but it was really just drunk hillbillies
I don’t like adding to posts but I also have a funny story like this, so I was watching the movie the Blair witch which takes place in burkettsville maryland, which to me is so funny because that is were my grandfather lives and the town is literally just old people and cows with their main street consisting of a post office. Well anyway he told me that after it came out people were coming in like bus loads to the town to find the witch and my grandfather lives up in the Mountain area and people were up in his property trying to find the witch and it made him angry so he went out and hung up stick people and stacked rocks and it freaked the people out so they started thinking something was out there when really it was my 80 year old Italian grandpa who wanted people out of his woods.
We had ghost hunters come to a historic house in my town to film and if you think every high school kid in town respectfully stayed at home that night instead of going to fuck up that filming you’re dead wrong.
this is comforting, actually, sometimes paranormal things are just a bunch of bored people dicking around in the woods.
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