Section Fore! Subsection Oh!

With 5 days left till the end of law school, I find it difficult to focus on studying for my last class. At the same time, I'm thinking of things I plan on doing this summer, and the new focus it will require. Such as:

- Reading novels, without isolating facts, relevant issues, holdings, and Denning quotes.
- Going to a friend's wedding, closing my mind to the newfound tax implications of this momentous event.
- Making road trips in my car, acknowledging only the road signs and not the new legal jurisdictions I enter.
- Relaxing on a beach on the Amalfi Coast, selectively considering the wisdom of public nudity laws.
- Touring the Whitechapel area of London, without consulting the Statute of Limitations should I solve the identity of Jack the Ripper.
- Practicing my golf swing, resisting the urge to compare mulligans to de novo appeals.
- Enjoying a zombie movie, without questioning whether the actus reus element of zombie murder is sufficiently made out.
- Practicing my golf swing on zombies... OK, that's definitely some kind of illegal.

4 weeks later...

We're just under one month till I hand in my final final exam, and you know what that means for this site.* I'd be lying if I didn't say it's actually a bittersweet time, but there'll be plenty of time to reminisce over the next month. After all, I have to procrastinate from studying somehow. In the meantime, there are some positive developments happening outside of law school worth mentioning:

Oprah has finally selected a book I can get - and have gotten - behind. Cormac McCarthy, one of my favourite writers, is also famously reclusive, so it'll be nice to see him appear on television and, let's pray, jump on the couch.

A new show, "The Tudors," is premiering on television this week. I don't know much about it save that it features Henry VIII and it's modelled after the very R-rated "Deadwood," a fave of mine. Only time will tell if "codpiece-sucker" will be revived as the go-to swear word, much like the word Al Swearengen of "Deadwood" made popular again.

Zombies! Up until the trailer for this panic-inducing, carpet-bombing zombie spectacular appeared, 28 Weeks Later simply referred to the point at which I have to get back in school mode and attend PLTC courses in the fall. Now I just don't know which is scarier.



*That should have read, "you know what that means for this site."

Lawyers will be zombie stand-ins

We are off to the races in the final term. And like each new term, there are some surprises, although I guess I didn't expect them to come from Admin Law. Maybe it's early in the course, but I like what I hear, the profs seem easy-going, and best of all - the reading material is free. This is a benefit understated until I tell you I have to pay $92 for 153 pages in International Trade Law.

I can't speak about the Trade Law class itself because the professor was missing for the inaugural lecture. Say what you will about the generosity of lawyers, we extended the famous 5-minute rule a whole extra half-hour before we left. Or maybe this just speaks to the tenacity of lawyers and their inclination to extend measurements of time...

Thankfully, Entertainment Law is shaping up to be as great as I'd hoped it would be. Speaking of entertainment, there was a large crowd of guests at the school the other day, and word on the street is that they were a film crew scouting locations around the building. Now I'm confused, because the only movie I can picture being filmed at the law building is the British film 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to my favorite movie of 2003, 28 Days Later - but I guess if a plot calls for a dank, impenetrable refuge where people can hide from zombies and possibly a nuclear attack to wipe those zombies out, then, sure, the Curtis Building is the natural choice.

Thank you, I'm here all night

I'm gone for a much-needed vacation up the coast this weekend, returning just in time to register/curse the university's server on Tuesday morning. After doing some more thinking, I've finalized the list of courses I want for next year, listed below along with the nicknames I'll inevitably know them as. This practice isn't new, first years take "Crim," "Legal I," and it allows me to justify such bad jokes like, "What's a zombie's favourite law course?" (Answer below.)

• Securities Regulation - "Sek-Reg," which sounds like it should be a TV show starring David Caruso. And I still wouldn't watch it.
• Conflict of Laws - "Conflix," just as no client likes to be billed unnecessarily, I substitute the 'x' for 'cts' because it's efficient, and because it looks sharp.
• Civil Procedure - "Civ Pro." Unfortunately, this course was previously titled Civil Litigation, meaning now I can't add to the list of Lit courses I've taken over the years: Brit Lit, Vic Lit, Romantic Lit etc.
  
• Media & Entertainment Law - "Hollywood." A new addition to my list, where you learn about such things as entertainment contacts, marketing and drafting celebrities' prenuptial agreements.
• And the rest: European Union Law - "Euro," Real Estate Transactions - "Re/Max," International Business Transactions - "IHOP" (because IBT is no fun), Advanced Legal Research - "Library fun," Administrative Law - "Admin fun."
  

Ah yes, that hilarious joke:

A: "Corps!"

Irish zombies? Well that's easy

Decisions to make:

Indulge my affection for all things zombie, and see Romero's Land of the Dead this weekend? Or, respect my aversion to all things Leguizamo and simply tend to my season 1 24 DVD? I guess the deciding factor is that the flick features a cameo from two of the funniest Brits around (after David and Gareth of course), men no stranger to the art of the undead. (But of course, Ryan, the answer is always zombies!)

After just finishing Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (an author who, by the way, out-music-geeked me - who the hell is this Kenna dude that he spends a whole chapter on?) I'm now deciding between poor Roddy Doyle, who has been shuffled down my reading pile since Christmas, or this Edward P. Jones book The Known World I'm eager to get to. Hmm, a book about slavery later in the summer could be a good lead-in to my fall human rights class, so I'll opt for skull-cracking Irish immigrants for now.

Now on to enjoy the weekend. I'll leave you with this, representing the confluence of my love for Spinal Tap and hilarious Oasis interviews.

(Et pour la personne qui ecrit en francais au dessous, keep 'em coming! Or you, mi amigo abogado, escriba algo en espanol!)

Those Marvin Monroe tapes work wonders

If memory serves correctly, there was a mass cull of chickens in this province many months past due to fears of avian flu (the flu du jour at the time). I'm not sure how many they slaughtered in those fateful abattoirs, all I know is they missed one little chicken, for certainly, the sky is falling!

The city woke up to a few centimeters of snow this morning, and panic hit the streets. (Unfortunately, it was not due to rage-infected zombies as would have been cool.) I have never seen such a quick transition from snowflake #1 to talk of a snow day. I admit, I was surprised to see snow in this famously green city, but I couldn't help but think that Albertans would be laughing and telling the snow to "come back when you've got something interesting to tell me." Snow, being a solidified form of water and unable to construct speech, would fail to make a witty response.

Anyway, I do hope tomorrow is a snow day. The first week back after holidays are always pretty tough. One can't just step up unprepared to the foosball table. On top of that, we are getting exam marks back and surveying the damage. The prognosis is stable, so far, but that could all change with a subject known as Criminal Law.

They tell us there is no wrong answer in law school. But clearly, when you are given a fact pattern and asked to either acquit or convict a woman, and every single person except you acquits her, the maxim must fail. If I were to be right, and this were a real case, news bureaus would be busy trying to come up with a new graphic for their latest headline: a Grand Miscarriage of Justice.

But hey, maybe things will be alright. Stranger things have happened. Snow has fallen in Vancouver. (Someday zombies, someday).