Things That are Good, part 2 - Coffee Houses in Denver

1) The Perk Hill Coffee house, South of 26th street on Kearney. Free wireless, coffee, an army of cute preschoolers and their mothers*, classic jazz albums decorating the walls, art galleries across the street, a pilates studio next door, etc. On the menu: milkshakes in any flavor you want (from their ice cream selection of about 10 flavors), with 4 shots of espresso.

2) Geeze Louise Coffee house, on Colfax near Elm Street. Free wireless, coffee, nice people, funky atmosphere hosted by a mannequin named Louise. On the menu: secret recipe mochas which feature tiny delicious chunks of warm melty chocolate in the bottom of your glass.

3) The St. Mark's Coffee house, on 17th street just West of Josephine/York. Free wireless, coffee, an army of people who want to focus on quiet study. (Caveats: Music occasionally too loud, bathroom too small for large number of patrons.) On the menu: large tea selection, not bad peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, delicious egg-and-cheese bagels smushed into a panini press.

4) The Pennsylvania Perc Coffee house, at the corner of Pennsylvania and 13th streets. Free wireless, coffee, frigidly cold air conditioning. (Caveats: parking limited, baked goods overpriced and unexciting.) On the menu: paninis, especially the Molly Brown.

5) Budgie's crepes, 17th street somewhere between Grant and Vine on the South side. Free wireless, coffee. (Caveat: closes very early, right after lunch.) On the menu: totally delicious brie and salami crepes.

* - Where are the fathers? Work? Home? The park? Maybe the mid-morning playdate at the local coffee house is a strictly female phenomenon?

Things that are good.

1) Whisky.

My new dental work has developed complications. Yesterday my poor fiancee had to stand staunchly by and witness as I went from pain to worse pain to constantly bathing my sore teeth with ice water every 20 seconds to avoid entering the 7th circle of Hell, even taking side trips off the interstate to raid the ice machine at Safeway, and then again at McDonald's. How does one sleep while bathing a tooth every 20 seconds, you ask? We scurried to the internet last night to find out. Which leads me to the next good thing:

2) The internet.

Turns out you can put a stop to the eternal 20-second cycle of ice water treatments by bathing the area with mouthwash, or better yet, whisky. Teeth still hurt, but that horrific 7th-level-of-Hell feeling subsides nicely for several hours. Big thank you to the several people who posted this advice on line, for free. I slept just fine last night, and my teeth didn't start to hurt again until after I woke up. In the car on the way to my dentist my complication developed another complication, and I whiled away the usual traffic jam on the way to Boulder by making bargains with God and using mouthwash every 10 minutes or so.*

My dentist reports that the mouthwash/whisky trick works simply because alcohol is a topical anesthetic. Not because it kills germs, and of course it won't cure your tooth problem. As your dental problem worsens alcohol loses its ability to relieve pain for very long, which is why there's:

3) Novocaine.

Sweet, sweet Novocaine.

I'm off to see the endo- and/or periodontist this afternoon, presumably for a root canal.

Wild entertainment beyond belief!

:)

* - I don't believe in "God" but making bargains with an imaginary deity seemed better at the time than praying for death.

Road Rash

I have finally finished moving into my new apartment. Body and mind exhausted, but I nevertheless got enough sleep last night. The upside to hard physical work: easy for me to fall asleep.

Now must focus on the next big project: writing a memo, due Monday. But first . . .

Someone close to me (let's call him Rex) was in a motorbike accident. A bicyclist decided to swerve from the right side of Cherry street to the left side of the south-bound lane, presumably to turn left, in front of Rex. As a result Rex was faced with this choice: 1) hit the bicyclist and perhaps careen into oncoming traffic, 2) careen into oncoming traffic, or 3) set the motorbike down on the pavement and try not to break any bones.

He chose the latter. Then the bicyclist turned around and asked "are you all right?" Rex, lying in a tumble and bleeding on the pavement, responded "no." The bicyclist then replied "I have to go, I don't want to get in trouble," and pedaled away. Folks in the cars coming along Cherry stopped and called the ambulance.

What the heck happened there?! What kind of trouble could possibly be worse than dealing with the guilt of knowing that you caused someone injury and then just ran away?

Anyway, Rex is fine - aside from some broken ribs and road rash. He's on Vicodin. :)

Rinse and Repeat

I love people. I have met and known some extraordinary characters over the years. (And I'm just getting started.) But various events occur (and recur in different guises) with relentless predictability to remind us that people are temporary.

Compounding that difficulty, people tend to approach slowly but depart quickly. I enjoy the approach with a sort of growing, smiley feeling but the departure is usually abrupt and always horrifying.

Ways to avoid the problem:

• Drink a lot. Meet extraordinary characters and behave dangerously around them to make sure they never call.
• Stay home. Unplug the phone and watch Netflix. Remain civil and outwardly friendly to coworkers but save your best self for your lonely inner dialogue.
• Use non-humans as surrogate friends. (Emo. Celebrities. Porn.)
• Ignore everyone. Save your energy for conversations with the people inside your head.
• Be overly critical. Remind people of your negative evaluations of others. Make sure no one is worthy of your love.
• Fall in love with a shallow and sarcastic jackass and then dump your friends because they're not stylish enough for him/her. Then fall out of love before something really bad happens.

Or don't avoid 'the problem.' Embrace it. Enjoy everyone and then cry a lot later. And keep crying and enjoying until you're dead.

Personally, I hate crying. But it seems like the least painful option. It's been working for me so far.

Riduculization. Green chile.

Certain friends of mine, when engaged in intense "in your face" argumentation and discussion, are reputed to occasionally lunge in and lick the faces of their opponents. These are grown men. Adults. Who nevertheless understand that argumentators are often in need of a good ridiculization.

New topic, totally unrelated. I went to a Mexican restaurant in New Jersey. There were no margaritas, no beer, and most importantly: no green chile. They had green sauce but it was tomatillo sauce. I enjoy regional differences in food so I'm not complaining. I ordered chicken mole and it was delicious. :)

Here's another New Jersey phenomenon: pork rolls. I hear varied reports of what they might be. Is it a roll with a slice of ham on it? Does 'roll' refer to the bread? Or is 'roll' the shape of the meat? Is it Spam? I am in New Jersey. I must taste it.

I Ain't Sayin' She a Gold Digger.

And now for an excerpt from a song by Kanye West:

Now I aint sayin she a gold digger
But she aint messin wit no broke niggaz

Other excerpts reveal that "she" has four children by another man or men. The narrator lampoons men who love women in spite of public opinion and advises them to insist on prenuptial agreements. Then he advises women to 'stick by the side' of hard working men with "ambition," and "stay right" even though inevitably:

when you get on he leave yo ass for a white girl.

http://www.lyricstop.com/g/golddigger-kanyewestfjamiefoxx.html

Popular radio bleeps out the word "nigger" when this song is on the air.* Because of this the internet is of course wild with copious commentary on the nature of language and the evils of censorship, including this wonderfully obtuse little footnote:

"deductive arguments are only valid if they are tautologies - useful for eliminating obfuscation or 'unpacking' meanings in complex symbology." Richard Noggin, "the Explainer," at http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/14575.aspx (June 2007, Fray.Slate.com).

In my view what's missing from the online dialogue is gender politics. Within the song's rhetoric a single mother who does not "mess with broke niggers" is by definition a 'gold digger' and on the other hand a man who works hard and has ambition deserves the commodity of womanly support until he can trade up for "a white girl." I interpret these lyrics as farcical. An attempt to make human tragedies seem comic. If so, the real target of the lampoon is not the gold-digging woman but the hapless man who falls in love with her.

One response to the gendered warfare described in the lyrics might be that mutual objectification is deserved. (Never mind that a custodial parent has virtually no bargaining power to make a fair contract with the absent parent or potential step-parent.)

Another response might be compassion towards those who are (unfortunately) more comfortable with mutual objectification as a basis for relationships, rather than the partnership model. In that perspective 'gold digger' might be seen as a term of affection, mirroring the recent transformation of the word "nigger" in Caucasian consciousness from taboo to endearing (much to the delight, horror, and fascination of Caucasian America).

Just what is Mr. West attempting to do with this farce? Does he mean to call our attention to the inequities of single parenting? Is he asking us to broaden our minds to encompass nigger/gold digger partnerships as a loving and supportive alternative to traditional marriage? Rubbish. Rather, he is resigned and cynical, urging a continuation of (and winking at) what he thinks are the eternal, never evolving consequences of human sexuality, chanting "get down girl, go 'head get down." Mr. West understands that the listening public is also resigned and cynical, ready to step up and hand over money for confirmation that its feelings of cynicism and victimization are justified.

Do these lyrics make people angry? They do because they use the word "nigger," but so far I haven't seen much debate over Mr. West's less than generous treatment of families and human sexuality. Is that because we're more resigned and cynical about gender issues than we are about race?

* Americans know how to spell "nigger."'Soulful' or trendy pronunciation and spelling merely supply nuance to the meaning of the word, nothing more.

One who verbs is an associated noun.*

One who buys is a buyer.
One who sells is a seller.
And most importantly at this moment, companies that sell insurance are insurance companies, with all the rights and duties thereunto appertaining. Except when they aren't.

Mere policing doesn't result in officer status.
But mere selling does result in seller status, licensed or otherwise. Complete with associated fines.

*Scott is a dreamy fount of useful quips.

Metaphors on a Monday Morning

I broke a crown. (Much preferred to breaking a tooth!)

I was eating . . . um . . . how d'ya call 'em . . . we ought to have a P.C. word for them because they're so delicious but as far as I know, we don't. (Can anyone assist?) They're the brown, unpopped kernels in the bottom of the popcorn bowl. Wikipedia unabashedly reports the "popcorn industry" refers to them as "old maids" but offers no other term for them, instead linking us right to the article on "spinsters."

I love the English language because of its rich opportunities for metaphor. I broke my crown while trying to crush an old maid, you see.

I don't mind going to the dentist because I have a really good one. :)

Maybe she's already awake . . .

I'm at "the office"* today, unsupervised and contemplating the nature of adult responsibility. Is 'adult responsibility' intrinsically good? Shifting via pun to another knowledge domain, is 'adult responsibility' actually just a public good?

A friend of mine has posted an entry about her inner female triumvirate: girl, lawyer, and mommy. She writes of putting the girl within into a coma. My response is sadness. The girl within is a spark of glory! The girl within is the real person. The lawyer and mommy roles are extra limbs grafted on, like Shiva's. Let the girl go! Wake her up so at least she can watch. Life is a grand, sparkly opera.

"The Buddhist tradition teaches the truth of impermanence, or the transitory nature of things. The past is gone and the future has not yet happened, so we work with what is here -- the present situation. This actually helps us not to categorize or theorize. A fresh, living situation is taking place all the time, on the spot. This noncategorical approach comes from being fully here, rather than trying to reconnect with past events. We don't have to look back to the past in order to see what people are made out of. Human beings speak for themselves, on the spot." - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

* Internet Cafe.

Gym. Office. Home.

Today's itinerary: gym, "the office," tour of a possible new apartment, Chez Scott for more "office," then dinner.

My gym has fancy new lockers which will cut down on the line that forms at the front desk - we no longer have to wait for a locker key. I go to a nice gym. It has all the trimmings including a vast, burgundy leather, S-shaped sofa in the locker room, ironing boards and irons, Q-tips, cotton balls, organic hairspray, a dedicated full-time nametagged human being who monitors fullness levels of said supplies, and a special cooling water filter from which to fill one's water bottle. Grabbing my complimentary cup of gourmet coffee and surveying our fancy new panels of convenience and joy, I overheard a nicely-dressed lady not budging in her strong opinion that, since she's "been a member here for 13 years" and was attached to her old locker, she no longer has a use for one. "I won't have one of those" she said to the unfortunate and apologetic nametagged girl who came along to show her how to use her new locker. Looking around at my hurried compatriots, jamming themselves into or peeling themselves out of gym clothes, I noticed them noticing the non-budging lady's comments but not smiling. Rather, they seemed to be looking sidelong at one another in a sly sort of poker-faced silence. Me, I smiled. Just like this: :o)

It isn't so hard.

When I say "office" I generally mean internet cafe, but I might also mean my place or the back lanai at Chez Scott. Anyplace that has power and connectivity. Why? Because I'm a tele-commuter. The price of gasoline being what it is (unknown because I've quit looking at the price when I fill up), I avoid driving to the little office in the little mountain town where my boss works. (Unless the teleportation unit is broken and I have to *gasp* look at the actual file. Praise Jesus for pdf.)

I'm thinking of moving to a new apartment, closer to Chez Scott and less expensive than the bat cave. Much as I love the bat cave, that "less expensive" quality becomes significantly more important the longer I go without finding a Job. Also thinking of finding a gym with fewer trimmings. In Denver these are the options I've found: pay a vast sum for a palatial gym with tons of equipment and amenities, pay a vast sum for a crowded, so-so gym with a medium amount of equipment and no amenities, pay almost nothing for a hot room full of sweaty guys and equipment that smells like rust, or . . . pay almost nothing for an okay gym without the one piece of equipment I vitally need to keep my bulging disk from . . . um . . . bulging. It might be worth to simply buy that piece of equipment, no? Hmm . . .

The Price of Freedom

By titling this entry 'the Price of Freedom' I don't mean to invoke weighty thoughts about liberty and death. Only to refer to the title of my previous post, 'Free at Last.'

My temporary job at M.L.U. ended at the end of May, leaving me 'free' throughout the month of June to pursue a Job. The kind that's permanent, salaried, and comes with benefits. More rare than one might suppose for those who are new to the profession. I fall into this popular category: looking for the job that I actually want and flattening my spending to near zero while I wait for the ink to dry on my Bar Exam results. Law firms don't hire people with wet ink. 'Two years of experience' seems to be the standard for strangers.

Grateful though, that my law clerk position has been upgraded to contract attorney. Still in discussion: how much work and for how much money.

In the meantime I am writing a little something about corporate veil-piercing. Good fun. Even get to include a little about reverse veil-piercing, a spicy and delightfully arcane little concept, and I love that.

Also very, very grateful for my beloved fiance', who continuously encourages, supports, lightens, entertains, and feeds me.

On July 4th I am celebrating my freedom with ironic zeal - still not fully employed but reveling in my freedom: hanging out with my man, going for long runs at the gym, reading "Harry Potter" just because I can, and playing W.O.W.

Free at last.

Sworn in to the Colorado Bar yesterday. Had lunch with family and friends, smiled, then held up my hand and recited the following words:

I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR by the Everliving God that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Colorado; I will maintain the respect due to Courts and judicial officers;I will employ only such means as are consistent with truth and honor; I will treat all persons whom I encounter through my practice of law with fairness, courtesy, respect and honesty; I will use my knowledge of the law for the betterment of society and the improvement of the legal system; I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed; I will at all times faithfully and diligently adhere to the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct.

My cup runneth over.

Catching up, taking naps, settling in. Today I ate homemade breakfast prepared by the man I love, then drove with him to Boulder to visit my P.O. box, then visited Tracy at the Farmer's market. Then lunch. Then home. Then nap. A fine use of a perfectly good Saturday. :) See what I mean? Wonderful. Now all I want is permanent employment.

I now have three jobs:
1) Temporary Henchman in a position very similar to my old job at M.L.U. ("Medium Large University").
2) Legal Clerk (on contract) for an attorney at a small law firm.
3) Assistant Instructor with an organization that teaches non-violent self-defense techniques to health care workers, professional cheerleaders, and girl-scouts.

Last week I finished a response to a Motion for Rule 11 sanctions in Federal Court. Learned several lessons including this: even very large, famous, and well-paid law firms do incompetent and/or unethical things. Thankfully, a motion for Rule 11 Sanctions is itself automatically subject to Rule 11 sanctions at the discretion of the Judge. See Fed. R. Civ. Pro. Rule 11, Comments.

Inertia

Bar Exam over. It was fun. Must now get mail, answer e-mail and phone messages, pay bills, and sleep. Very grateful for amazing supernatural support from my boyfriend, who fed me, let me study, kept me warm, and made me play laser tag. You rock, Baby!

Looking for Green, Just Like Every Human Being.

So says Ani DiFranco, says my friend. It snowed again in Denver, covering the crunchy icy snow which covers the icy black snow which covers the frozen blocks of black and chunky ice which persist in every side street unless piled in massive lumpy statuary where there once were metered parking spaces downtown. What I say is that Winter is the city, Summer is the countryside, and Spring and Fall are just the right kind of cozy little town near the suburbs. I spent a summer on the island of Hawaii in the 1980's. I remember that the parking meters downtown took pennies, just a block and half away from the beach.

But enough about the weather. Time to study.

We Don't Mean to be Coy, but . . .

Re: Denver. Snow and ice from repetitive storms persists, becomes denser, more black, more treacherous. Residential side streets are graced with wavy grooves down the middle, one for each tire. Passing traffic the other way means reciting a prayer and then a jolting slide back into the groove. It sounds groovier than it is.

Re: Bar Exam. 42 days remain. Recently my strong subjects have been Criminal Law and Constitutional Law. Ironic. Probably just a few lucky guesses. My normally strong performance in Contract Law has dwindled to a pathetic scramble to guess the least incorrect-sounding options. Not good.

What kills me about Con Law is the almost arbitrary choice of squishy English words to describe levels of scrutiny that control extremely important democratic concepts such as 'equal protection of the laws' and 'Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.'

Words like "necessary," "compelling," "important," and "substantial" are not interchangeable in the law. No. Used by judges in each case to describe something "necessary," etc, but then adopted by "the law" as a stultified, ossified, brittle and crunchy rule of law that thou shalt quote correctly or be killed. And "legitimate?" Who decides what's a legitimate government interest? A silly word choice to describe something driven almost totally by previous judicial decisions. A better standard would have been: "not rationally related to a government interest that the Judicial branch has already anointed as legitimate."

What exactly is a "substantial government interest?" I'm pretty sure I know what it should be, but don't we all? Too squishy for comfort.

What we memorize and regurgitate for the Bar Exam is that words like "necessary" and "compelling" are about things like race, alienage, and national origin discrimination, while words like "substantially related" and "important" are about gender discrimination and whether or not the children of illegal aliens should be allowed to attend public schools. So there you go. That's what's important: gender and whether children of illegal aliens can attend public schools. Nothing else is particularly important. Age, sexual orientation, social class . . . not important. No.

The Tuesday of My Discontent

Re: Bar Exam.
Today I cover the law of Administrative Agencies. Not a subject for the multiple choice section but a potential target for an essay question. An easy subject, a fine place to begin to practice. I counted the number of multiple choice practice questions in my collection - I'm in no danger of running out, even practicing for seven hours per day. I'm strong in the area of multiple choice. Therefore, must commit myself to grinding out practice essays instead. Erk. Today I meet my study partner at a Public Library, so as not to suffer alone.

Re: Law Clerky Goodness.
Must work. Rent not yet paid for next month. On a positive note, three weeks remain for me to corral the money. Before my study partner arrives, I shall log an hour on the following topic: what speech and/or internet activity can support a claim for ‘tortious interference’ given that the plaintiff and the defendant are business competitors, and what must the plaintiff allege to survive a motion for summary judgment?

Bar Exam countdown: 53 days remain.

I'm in the Hell of wishing for a job to end my poverty but finding unemployment a better study aid.

Permasnow.

It's the day before the day before the new year. Yesterday a new layer of snow fell on the old, crusty snow and deep mesas of compacted ice from "The Blizzard of 06." Last night, the grumbling of a million cabin-fevered Denverites zapped the weatherman's dire predictions of yet more snow into an echo of wispy nothingness. The sun rose this morning into a blue sky. I jumped out of bed, finished a legal memo, rode with Scott to Boulder (dodging fender-benders and tow trucks every few miles along Highway 36) , and met Brad, Elizabeth, and the wee and adorable Scarlett for brunch at the Dushanbe Teahouse. Now reclining in the study station at Scott's after perusing photo albums from his year in Australia in the 1980's.

Two goals for the evening:
(1) Start a legal memo on the effect of silence in a contract. (I assume expressio unius est exclusio alterius is a valid rule of contract interpretation except as to essential terms.)*
(2) Study for the Bar Exam.

* - Answer: expressio unius est exclusio alterius is a valid aid to contract interpretation but it is often superseded by other maxims, such as "intent of the parties" or "interpret me against the drafter's interest."

Equilibrium for Christmas.

The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure have received a beauteous facelift! (See http://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/.) Federal Courts may no longer forbid citations to cases "designated as unpublished, not for publication, non-precedential, not precedent, or the like," beginning with cases "issued on or after January 1, 2007." 2007 Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, Rule 32.1(a)(ii), available at www.ca10.uscourts.gov/downloads/2007_Rules_Changes.pdf.

This is important to me for two reasons:
(1) My teeth grow weary of being gnashed when the only cases I can find on point are unpublished. Granted, the 10th Circuit has heretofore been kind in allowing citations to unpublished opinions when necessary, but sometimes one simply needs an unnecessary, gratuitous citation to an unpublished opinion to prove that at least sometimes the courts are on your side and when they are the sky does not fall.
(2) The Supreme Court of the United States is no longer able to appoint the President and then turn and say "but you can't use this decision as binding precedent. Do as we say, not as we do." Et voila - at least for now the Judicial Branch is once again its own branch of government. Its stint as a mere department of the Executive is over. God save the King.

Snow Day

Woke at 5:30. Then again to Scott's quiet exclamation "oh! No school today" in the darkness, at his desk. Crawled to my house at 10 to feed birds and collect laptop for a prolonged blizzard sleepover chez Scott. Found my car just two hours later enrobed in a snowdrift near a jack-knifed Ford and hapless Toyota. Escaped from downtown and crawled slowly back towards Himself. Now lazily meandering on line. Downloaded BitTorrent. Read some blogs. Did some research. Contemplating how best to get a library card to use the Sturm Law Library. $10 per day, plus parking. Undemocratic. CU Law Library is free, but . . . it's in Boulder. Issue(s): must audiotapes of secretly recorded conversations be disclosed in a civil case, if used only for impeachment purposes? If so, can the party who failed to disclose them be sanctioned, and how?

Scott took this picture, btw. :)

An Academic Exercise

I'm happy today because I finished a response. Issue: must expert witnesses be licensed in any particular field of expertise in order to testify? Answer: no. (But note testimony must be relevant, helpful to the jury's understanding, and not more prejudicial than probative.) See Huntoon v. TCI Cablevision of Colorado, 969 P.2d 681, 689 (Colo. 1998).

Which introduces this question: why would opposing counsel, who seems well-educated and experienced in the law, assert otherwise?

I want X, but Y.

In a class last weekend we discussed how "Y" and "X" in the above statement are, perhaps, unrelated to one another. For example, "I want to go to Paris, but I don't have any money" has the same meaning and usefulness as "I want to go to the beach, but I don't like artichokes." Hmmm . . .