Are You Kidding Me?

Not that Kellogs once blanketed the airwaves with commercials that showed kids craving Corn Pops like coke addicts craving coke (“I Gotta have mah POPs!”)

If stoners ever organized a proper boycott of corporations that did shit like this, the economic consequences would be staggering. But it won’t happen — because they’re, well….stoners.

(That stupid 14-baby woman is on TV now. I’m building the proper amount of rage for my last day at work right now.)

@Signal to Noise: It’s your last day? WTF? I need to start reading all the comments …

I just wish for once someone would go on teevee and say “look, I’m a responsible, tax-paying, otherwise law-abiding member of society. Whether I smoke pot in my personal time is no one else’s business, and decades of scientific research has shown that pot is far less dangerous than alcohol in any event. This is a drug that’s regularly used by people of all income and socioeconomic groups. There were over 800,000 arrests for marijuana offenses in the US last year at a cost of countless billions of dollars–it’s time for this hysterical insanity to stop.”

@Signal to Noise: @blogenfreude: Indeed, what’s happening?

@Original Andrew: Doesn’t Bill Maher do just that?

@Signal to Noise: Huh?

@Benedick:

Probably, but he wasn’t just busted for smoking out.

Original Andrew: See, your problem is that you are stoned right now. You should be clean and sober before you post something sensible like that. Just say no.

@rptrcub: The world is flying apart – there’s a lot of pain in the comments. Damn.

@blogenfreude: Our home planet just got blown up. Personal leave days will be available for all who want to take one. Grief counselors are in the lobby.

I actually feel great today. Don’t know why, but I’m running with it.

@Original Andrew: Richard Branson recently did just that, he said “I enjoy a spleef in the evening.” Every evening, he clarified.

@rptrcub: Well, he’s moving soon, so that might have something to do with it.

@Prommie: “Spleef’? Qu’est que c’est spleef, mon vieux?

@Benedick: Joint. Doobie. nothing dirty.
And the economy lost almost 600K jobs last month, and Toyota is forecasting its first annual loss since 1959. On the upside, Stinque Amazon is offering me books on growing veggies instead of a lawn, wilderness medical care — beyond first aid, and survival tips.

@Mistress Cynica: Thanx. As noted on another thread, I’ve led a sheltered life and learn much of value here.

Veggies instead of lawn. Hmm. In other words, feed the deer. But I’m so going to check it out.

BTW. On the subject of apocalypse, did we all see the Euro movie on subject with the marvelous Isabelle Hupert, ‘Le Temps du Loup? It’s written and directed by Michael Haneke and I couldn’t watch after the horse was slaughtered in close-up. Oh. Spoiler alert. But it’s a very convincing account of an unnamed Europeon country fallen into anarchy. Far better done than The Road. But as before noted, I won’t watch animals being slaughtered for entertainment. Because I will get all huffy and flounce about and make calls to the distribution company and everything.

@Mistress Cynica: Must be the repeated references to the coming Cannibal Anarchy here in the comments. Have you ever checked out Food Not Lawns?

@Benedick: That Haneke is one sick fuck, the cinematic equivalent of Michel Houellebecq (and so worthwhile). That’s entertainment!

FCS got us another C&L link.

@mellbell: Thanks — I’ve been in and out of this here blog for a while.

@blogenfreude: I’ve just been filled with angst, but more personal than that related to the general state of the world.

@Benedick: I totally lurves Isabelle Huppert, since I first saw L Ecole de la Chair, I am looking for this Time of the Wolf movie.

Oh hell, the time has come to praise French actresses, I love them all, I think, there are so many who are so wonderful, especially so because they have something that seems so rare in the US of A, the ability to find and express the beauty of a mature woman with grace and allure. US of A actresses cling so desperately to girlhood even into their 50s, its completely clownish.

Huppert, Fannie Ardent, Emanuelle Beart, ooohh, such beauty, and I mean as they look now, or at least, 10 years ago when I discovered them all. And Charlotte Rampling, also, even if she is not french. I love older, strong, confident women.

@Prommie:
You forgot Deneuve! For shame!

@ManchuCandidate: And Bardot! Bit of a washed-up nutter now, but that opening scene in Contempt? Damn.

bill maher never miss’s an opportunity to tell the world he’s a proud pot smoker. on one occasion he compared it to the gay marriage bruhaha.
he said “i get it. sure they can have legal documents drawn up that basically give the couple the same rights as the holy matimonied, and i don’t have any trouble getting pot, BUT, it pisses me off when i’m in a restaurant with friends and everyone is enjoying their after dinner cognacs, and i’m in the alley smoking my joint while treated to watching hookers give blow jobs”
the best was when branson was on his show, oh how they reveled in their potheadedness. and you know i’m stoned right now, dontcha?
took me one day to find it.
most impotantly is what OA said. the stupid is remarkable.
now before i go off on a rant about alcohol legal/pot baaad, i’m stopping right here. don’t want to harsh the buzz.

They can have my bong and sweet, sweet eighth of Pussycat hybrid when they pull it from my cold, dead, 2nd generation pot user hands. The stuff is such a part of my family that I can’t imagine Christmas without some of Mom’s “not for the kids” cookies.

Fuck Kelloggs anyways. Weren’t they founded by some dude trying to keep teenagers from masturbating? What kind of bullshit is that?

rant topic for another time:
did you know it was illegal to NOT grow pot in virginia in the 1700’s?
guess who was behind reefer madness? big tobacco.

@ManchuCandidate: The whole cast of 8 Women.

@blogenfreude: And a C&L link from a week-old post, at that. Stinque has a Long Tail.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:
ha! i was going to say that! they’ll have to peel my rigor mortis fingers off my bong! and my mom’s stash when i was in high school added much to my popularity.

@baked:

Mom didn’t share until I turned Eighteen, but she really took the edge off my freshman year at college, let me tell you. Side effect? I never found myself drinking until I puked like the other guys did.

@baked:
What’s the legal status of pot in Israel?
How’s the quality?

@Mistress Cynica:
you cracked me up today. everyone else will have to wait for the jam for hot israeli bachelors 1,2 and 3.
there was a stunner in front of a table of baked goods i posted on FB, and cyn said “i’ll take one of everything” my feelings exactly.
you crack me up, girl. up there with benedick and nojo. the 3 of you should be chipping in to buy me a new screen.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: It wasn’t until I was 13 and was handed a joint at a party that I realized that the oddly familiar smell was pot, and not that of the tobacco of the “home-made cigarettes” that my parents used to roll and smoke in front of me. To this day, the smell of pot flashes me back to being a kid, the simpler time of contact highs.

@SanFranLefty:
same same same. ratbastard has a kid working for him who alerted my stoner antenae and hooked me up. i’m not a pot snob, it’s all ok with me.
i appreciate the knowledge of the serious, but i’m not picky.
you should google ‘marijuana’ for a giggle. worse than the wine tasting crowd.
i’m still so amazed and pissed that we didn’t hook up in miami.
20 damn minutes!!! i pictured running toward you in slow mo like a douche comercial.

@baked: “i pictured running toward you in slow mo like a douche commercial.”

COTD! There is water all over my keyboard and desk and I have water coming out of my nose. Don’t do that to me!

@baked:

Ha! You crack me up. So glad to see you back here.

I don’t know why I’m surprised to find out that so many Stinquers are hardcore heads. Probably for the same reason (I try to keep my stoniness on the DL since my sister-in-law started reading my blog) I was amazed to find that there is tons of readily available KB in Fargo once you’re in the loop.

When I think “douche commercial,” I think of a mother and daughter strolling along a beautiful beach at sunset, and the daughter says to the mom, “Mom, my vag reeks lately, what do you do when your cunt stinks?”

@HillRat:

Are we talking about North Dakota? Wow…stoners around the world. We should form a secret society. In fact, I’d get started on it, but I can’t find my car keys.

KB?

@Prommie: “K Bueno.”

@Prommie: I literally almost did a spit-take at the coffeehouse.

@Prommie: I saw that one. The mom replies, “I sit on your father’s face because he likes it that way. He’s a real man.”

@Prommie:
oh and you should be chipping in too.

@FlyingChainSaw: Ya ain’t a real man until you’ve eaten a yeast infection. Ummm mmmm.

@Prommie:

Jesus God, man! I just had lunch!

@Original Andrew:
xoxox

@Prommie: Here’s something on those Sleestak things you were raving about.

http://io9.com/5148169/are-cute-sleestaks-and-sneaky-t+rexes-enough-to-carry-a-movie

@blogenfreude: @rptrcub: @Benedick:

Moving to Portland at the end of the month for bigger city and more money.

It’s fitting. My last day is also my three-year anniversary at this job.

@Prommie: I heard it’s like Vegemite.

@Prommie: I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. Really, you need to give a warning.

Michael Phelps, Fred Phelps what’s the diff?

@FlyingChainSaw:
You too, Chainsaw. Nasty-ass Vegemite? Errrggg…

@redmanlaw: Oh crap you’re kidding *sigh* Hollywood, what won’t you remake. Sid and Marty Krofft, really? Man I can’t wait for the Banana Splits movie starring The Olsen Twins, Latoya Jackson, and Heath Ledger’s corpse as Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky.

@Benedick: AKA spliff.

@drinkyclown: Oh, no — there will be no disparaging of The Land of the Lost. Don’t make me sing the theme song again. I’m hoping we get Puff the Magic Dragon one day.

@SanFranLefty: Remember the SPILF auction? I used to call it the SPLIFF auction and always attended staggering drunk. I had to explain to some of our classmates what spliff is. Just like when I called Order of the Coif Order of the Queef. Yes, I had to explain that one, too.

@JNOV: Yeah, I too called it Order of the Queef to a future SCOTUS clerk/gunner from my year, who didn’t get the reference. I don’t remember you being hammered at the SPLIFF auction, but I do remember one of your classmates dramatically falling down a flight of stairs in front of the Dean during the silent auction in 2002.

And OMFG, I would pee my pants and be first in line to see a remake of Puff the Magic Dragon.

@SanFranLefty: OMG! Totally great minds! I thought I’d made that queef business up! I have no idea who fell down the stairs, but right after they remodeled the classrooms and laid new carpet in the admin/library bldg, my best friend got shitfaced at some event. After telling me repeatedly that I wasn’t the boss of her, she needed to get to the bathroom to heave. So, I’m basically carrying her to the bathroom in the admin bldg, and bam! she hurls on the new carpet and on me. I did get her into the bathroom to finish, and I held her hair for her. Later, when she was sober, she asked me if she’d made it to the bathroom in time. She’s easily mortified, so I was like, “Yeah, you made it.” After enough time had passed, I told her the truth. I was like, “Remember that big stain on the new carpet…”

@JNOV: The Student Bar Association (heh) at the New Mexico law school used to do occasional Friday afternoon keg parties, even after the legislature outlawed the use and possession of alcohol on state property. Some guys I knew took a bunch of shrooms and wandered around lost in the Pecos Wilderness for several days after graduation. I knew that expedition was doomed because of the presence of the guy who fell into the fire at a spring break the year before. The ancestors who gave him his 1/64th Apache heritage must have been appalled.

Need I say I don’t approve of young people, who have all their lives ahead of them, besmirching themselves partaking in illicit substances? The Dirty Weed can only lead to bad things.

Young Michael should be thankful that he was caught at an early stage in his otherwise inevitable downward spiral which would see him, make no mistake, turning tricks on Polk Street in search of his next desperate fix.

Let us be thankful that some star-fucker and the Divine and Righteous Mainstream Media were there to coerce this poor soul into repentance and save him from a lifetime of wanton debauchery, a path which only leads to the fiery pits of Hell. Amen.

@redmanlaw: OMFG! Fell into the fire?!??! Bwahahahahahahaha! That takes talent. My embarrassing law school moment (well, the drunken one, there were plenty of sober ones) was when we were on our graduation booze cruise in SF, and I’d been drinking like a 40oz Corona out of a paper bag. One of our non-gunner cool as can be SCOTUS clerks gave it to me when we got on the boat, and I was staggering around bagged bottle in hand trying to maintain my balance on the boat. After one of my friends asked me if I’d poured any out for the homies, I decided it was time to get the party started cuz we had a DJ, but I was the only one drunk enough to start dancing. So, I start dancing and pulling people on the dance floor while maintaining a death grip on my beer. At some point I decided that I was invisible or something, and I became The Stealth Ass Grabber. I guess I figured the dance floor was crowded enough that if I started grabbing dudes’ asses, they would never know it was me. And then the DJ played that song, “It’s Getting Hot in Here, So Take Off All Your Clothes,” and that’s when I decided not to be stealthy at all, and I was liberating male classmates of their shirts. THEN I got all weepy and started telling everyone how much I was going to miss them and that I wish I had gotten to know them better. Drunken babbling, snot and tears. Yeah.

@JNOV: As of now, you are my favorite feminist Male Liberator.

@JNOV: @SanFranLefty: @redmanlaw:

I was kinda surprised by the supercharged drinking that was my law school life. Maybe it was the stress, maybe it was the situational camaraderie, such a bond we all had, as scared 1-Ls, like kids in boot camp, I suspect, we had weekly SBA sponsored keg parties in the student center, some kids formed a decent band, I remember they did U-2’s I Will Follow really well, there were pool tables, and afterwards, we would descend en masse on South Street. The puking, the shameful hookups that fueled the insane feverish gossip that filled our time between lectures.

It made undergrad partying look like child’s play.

3 nights a week, every member of my law school class would meet up at some bar, it would be quietly whispered around Friday afternoon, and every one of us, except the terminal dweebs, would be there. One of those nights was the last time I performed the gentlemany hair-holding while a nice young woman regurgitated who knows how many Long Island Iced Teas in the parking lot of some joint in Cherry Hill, near the racetrack. Good times.

@Pedonator: Huzzah!

@JNOV: Man, and you was hanging with the masters of the universe, scotus clerks, future investment bankers. Dayyum. I was there at this little third rate law school, I think part of the reason we drank was because we knew we were also-rans, we’d be the hardscrabble attorneys. JNOV, I cannot tell you how much I fucking am in awe of you getting yourself there. And it does not matter that you are not an investment banker, you did something amazing. And you are amazing.

@Promnight: Haha! Yeah, every week we had this thing called Bar Review where the student govt people negotiated drink deals for us at local bars. These outings were publicized through the law school non-law-school-business email group. (At one point I was banned from the law school business related email group because I got into a flame war with some dude who called himself Publius. I made some snarky remark about him masturbating while reading The Federalist Pages or something.) Anyway, each week a horde of law students would descend on some bar and act stupid (I’m sure the regulars wanted to kill us, and I know no court would convict them). Being that I’m pretty uninhibited sober, I was not comfortable going out with these kids (I was one of the oldest in my class) and getting drunk, esp since I had that history of trying to fight the DJ. Once in a while I’d get a little liquored up at the Cinco de Mayo party and try to wrestle that big ass guitar from one of the Mariachi dudes or something, but my school is soooo small, I did not want to fall victim to some ill-advised hook up with some kid ten years my junior and then have the whole school know. I’d hooked up with a 19 yr old in college when I was 28, and even that was kind of pushing it into perv land. I did not want to do that at law school.

@Promnight: Oh, darling! That means so much to me, esp coming from you. You are brilliant and amazing, and I love you. I didn’t make it through school alone — a lot of people supported me and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I am not a self-made person. I am a very lucky woman.

@Signal to Noise: Yay, another Oregon stinquer. I live about an hour from PDX. Drop me an email at cynica77 at gmail.

@JNOV: Honest to God I feel dumb around all the people here, you included. Law school was the first place I found myself in my life where everyone was, well, literate. I was so happy there. But this, this crew here at Stinque, here, I feel so average, and ya know what? Thats the greatest thing about it, for me.

@Promnight: You feel dumb? I am often struck dumb because I can’t follow some of the conversations here. I am not well read. Had I stayed at the Friends school, I’d probably be in better condition.

@JNOV: If it’s any consolation, I pat myself on the back for never actually making a single Bar Review for the entire 3 years I was in law school; two of which overlapped with you. I was the crazy “old chick with a dog who lives off campus” which in hindsight I’m even happier about to avoid that clusterfuck of alcohol and entitlement. Because I would have been swinging at white boys on the dance floor had I actually been there.

@SanFranLefty: Haha! I went to one Bar Review my last year. It was meh. I did go out with friends, and the other mothers I knew and I used to get together on Friday nights. We’d meet at each other’s homes, our kids would play together, and we’d drink Coronas. I called out get togethers The Meeting of the Moms (like meeting of the minds!). One of your classmates had three kids. Do you remember her? She is teh awesome and now lives near RML.

@JNOV: Whoops! I meant Federalist Papers. See, Prommie? I have teh stoopid.

@SanFranLefty: You would have liked our weekly SBA parties. There was no entitlement at my law school, none. Everyone had the same story, working, middle class backgrounds, for most, the stars of our poor families for even being in law school, and a small sprinkling of upper middle class kids, the kinda underachieving sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers. Still, this was the best they could do, you know, not like the elite. I know, you would have fit right in there with me, snarking in the corner, hustling pool, and then, later when everyone was drunk, encouraging and egging on others to foolishness.

C’mon, y’all are Legal Eagles! You’re the Law! Defending the innocent and guilty. Fighting for our rights and all that. In the prelude to Cannibal Anarchy I know I want youse guys on my side.

You gotta have some serious chops to get through law school and actually pass the Bar Exam, right? (Not counting those Regent assholes, who are just good at taking tests.)

Pat yourselves on the back!

Pages, Papers, whatever, I knew what you meant. Now, tell me more, who was publius?

@Pedonator: Pedo, law school is a fantasy dream world for a good english major, I mean, a real english major.

Here is what law is: Reading, writing, and speaking. You have to read the law, and understand it. Thats all. You have to be able to read difficult text and understand its meaning.

You have to be able to form logical arguments, of course, but then the next skill is simply writing well, being able to succinctly, accurately, precisely, stating your argumentts based on the facts and your interpretations of the texts. (the law and the cases)

And you have to be able to speak coherently about these things.

Now of course, before one can read, write, and speak, coherently, one must be able to think coherently. And thats why they say that law school “teaches you how to think.” Yes, it does, but its funny, it teaches you how to think by teaching you how to read, write, and speak.

Its just basically a doctorate in basic english, as far as I am concerned.

To the extent they teach anything beyond that, its just a trade school.

@Promnight: it teaches you how to think by teaching you how to read, write, and speak

And that is exactly why it is such an accomplishment. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of highly-edjumakated Ivy-Leage assholes I’ve encountered in the bizness world who can’t write a coherent sentence to save their lives.

Don’t harsh on yourselves so much. I do love a good lawyer joke, but you guys and gals are my heroes.

@Pedonator: I am not practicing law, technically, right now. I work for a nonprofit asscociation, I do support for our lobbying, and I am just an in-house expert for everyone to consult. But I am seeing more of what people in business are like, and I notice that a law background gives maybe 3 huge advantages. First, as you mention, sheer literacy. I have seen people in senior management positions in a state of panic and madness over having to write a one page memo for a superior. The second is decisiveness. People in either a corporate or a beaurocratic environment are so risk averse, so afraid of making a call, just making a fucking decision, that they will drag a simple little discretionary call through weeks of meetings and bullshit.

Lawyers? They will listen to a 60-second oral presentation of the situation, ask three questions, and then make the call, and issue orders on what is done when by whom.

The ultimate lesson of law school is that reality is whatever you can convince people it is. If the jury believes that your version of the facts is what happened, then, magically, your version is, as a matter of law, what happened.

And besides, in any given situation, there are as many ways to be right as to be wrong. Its best not to worry too much about whether you have the perfect solution, its always the better bet to go hard and fast with A solution. Decisive action is a good thing in and of itself.

@Promnight: See, that was it! The rocket scientists that banned me somehow were unable to prevent one of my schoolmates from registering under an alias. He was so full of himself and so annoying. Just calling himself Publius made my teeth ache. (This was the email list that all of the professors and deans supposedly read, and that’s why posting rules were so strict. Can’t fill the dean’s inbox with spam! Horrors!) So one night he was up to his usual shenanigans and a group of us from my year started responding to him. Then we got warnings from the brown shirt monitors that we were going to get banned if we kept it up, but they couldn’t ban Publius because they didn’t know who he was. I took the monitors to task and told them they were impotent tools who couldn’t manage a jackass like Publius, but they were going to go and ban us. That was my last post before I got banned, and then several other people kept up the ruckus and they got banned, too. But a classmate of mine set up a mirror site so I was still able to read msgs, but I couldn’t post. My jackass comment and Publius were written into the school musical, so that was cool. I felt like a rock star.

But I really felt like a rock star after we graduated and I led a mini student loan revolt. Near the end of our last year, we met with a representative of the bank that held our private loans. We were told that if we consolidated our loans through this bank within 6 months of graduation, we’d get a specific excellent interest rate, so of course we all jumped on board. Some of my classmates were carrying HUGE debt from their undergrad Ivies in addition to law school, so even a half point meant a lot w/r/t these loans.

So, we graduate, and we had an email list devoted solely to our class. Time goes by and I realized that I’d submitted my paperwork to consolidate my loans super early, but the six month deadline was approaching, and I hadn’t heard from this bank. So, I shoot an email out to the class to see if anyone else was having this problem. Come to find out that NO ONE had received confirmation from the bank that their loans had been consolidated, and those who tried to contact the bank to see what the deal was were meeting with some serious resistance, given no information except that we’d be ass out after six months if our loans weren’t consolidated in time.

Well, people started emailing me personally, wishing to stay anonymous, and they gave me information to disseminate to the group like an exemplar letter to the CEO, the CEO’s private email address AND his phone number. So, I put all that out there, and we were prepared to inundate this guy with calls and emails when the school’s director of Fin Aid posted to the list that the office of fin aid had handled the issue and the bank had guaranteed her we would all get our lower interest rate. No need to bother the CEO, etc. Now that was an awesome few days.

Awesome, and sad, that awesomeness was necessary.

i’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned that law school is nothing like the actual real world practice of it. if you can read and retain it, it’s cake.
law school does not sufficiently prepare you for the coutroom, don’t you think so? the crazy judges, the dregs you try to put away and get hammered by the defense assholes on borderline technicalities. the insane rulings that they forget to mention in law school, etc etc.

my favorite career of 12 years was a company that lent money to start up bizzes.
i’m talking millions. i was a legal loan shark and made a fortune. there were 70 people internationally working for this company, 15 women. the company got greedy and is not in operation now. personally i believe it was by design and the ceo retired to florida with his gazillions. of course i recently lost most of it along with everybody else, but have enough for a nice nursing home or a posh rehab.

@baked: My start-up company (well, not mine, but the one I just went to work for) got a $50M infusion today so those of us who were still at work on a Friday afternoon drank champagne and toasted to our continuing paychecks. Even in harsh times, people with loads of money need somewhere to park it. Your kind are angels. So if you end up in that nursing home, I’ll be there to change your bedpan.

@Promnight:

“Lawyers? They will listen to a 60-second oral presentation of the situation, ask three questions… magically, your version is, as a matter of law, what happened.” – prom

Interesting. I’m not a lawyer. Never spent a minute in law school. My work life was mostly enterprise software sales and sale management. But in that paragraph I could replace “lawyer” with “software sales”, “jury” with “client” and it is spot on.

We used a shorthand phrase to describe that dynamic “Perception is reality.”

@Pedonator:
angel? nothing altruistic about it, more like commision driven.
will that still earn me a sponge bath?

@Hose Manikin: As a long-time consumer/implementer of enterprise software, your observation that perception is reality strikes to the bone. These boondoggles are sold to corporate higher-ups based on bogus “return-on-investment” and “long-term cost-carrying” studies that usually come straight from some freebie throw-away industry advertising rag.

How many times have I suffered through a multi-million dollar, year-or-two-long implementation of, say, an ERP system, which was guaranteed to provide a hefty ROI, only to have the company flail around for months after go-live, lucky if they even managed to ship product and get invoices out?

The companies who buy these systems rarely have the wherewithal to take advantage of their features.

And always, always, the very people who complained about the legacy system, which had been fine-tuned over years to support their persnickety business processes, the very people who demanded a new, state-of-the-art system, were the loudest whiners when it went live. “The old system did it this way. We can’t function unless we do it the way we always did it!”

@baked: I’m glad you got your hefty commissions. As I told my boss earlier today, “When the pay is good, I’m a capitalist.”

And that sponge bath comes with soothing salts and organic aromatherapeutic lavender blossoms. And magic hands.

@Pedonator:
pedo, i’m checking in.

@Pedonator:
Yeah. Software is an infinitely malleable commodity. Prospects have an unfortunate habit of framing questions in the form “Can your software do xxxx.” Which can always be answered “Yes.” Left unsaid – [If you are willing to pay for the modifications/consulting/implementation services/change your business practices to make it do xxxx] .

Ethically, I would rationalize my “yesses” by making sure that there was a path, the resources and a commitment to get to xxxx by the time the client needed it. Then would spend as much time riding herd and selling the company to make sure it was delivered as I would spend selling the client. Most of my clients got what they expected, whether it was there when I sold it or not. I considered that telling the truth in the future tense.

To a surprising degree, the level of satisfaction for clients in general was determined by who sold them the software. Some of the most scrupulously honest and scumbag dishonest people I ever met, were my software sales peers. It really did not correlate to level of success or income either. Just personal choice.

I’ve been out of the game for a few years. My experience was in the go-go years of the late eighties to middle 90’s. Not sure if its the still the same. I think there are tougher rules now.

@Promnight: I was in an REM/Stones law school band. We played some fun gigs, including a birthday gig where I left blood on my drum heads and got paid in Jagermeister.

I applied to one fucking law school cos the fishing was good. I didn’t give a fuck about the Supreme Court, the SEC, Congress or whatever. I went to become a lawyer. And I’m a lawyer. I help people deal with shit. I don’t tell them what to. I tell people “do what you want. But if you do, here’s what’s gonna happen.”

I’m not a master of the universe. I’m a guy who provides for his family. In my world, that’s everything.

@Hose Manikin: I just love sitting in those meetings when Willy Loman the ERP/CRM/etc. salesman says, “Hey, your supply chain is gonna get tighter, your inventory turns are gonna get faster, all your customer contacts are gonna be revealed, your pipelines and forecasts and history are all pretty here in this dashboard view, complete with click-through Pareto charts! And this configurator is gonna take the human error factor out of the fuckin’ equation, man!”

@Pedonator:
It is going to be fun to see who is going to sell the magic medical record software to Barry that he promised will wring so much cost out of the system, we’ll get free health care for everyone. I expect it’ll work about as well as your CRM system. When they finish implemiting it that is. Sometime around 2020 and $5 Billion in overuns from now.

@Hose Manikin: Yeah, technology is such a cost-reducer.

You know, I used to love to fly in aeroplanes, until I started working with computers and the idiots who instruct them.

But to return to Michael Phelps: dude needs to lose the backward-baseball-cap, even while sucking on bong.

I want my heroes to look manly, not douchebaggish.

I disliked law school and almost everyone in it. Intellectually, it was a joke compared to my undergrad studies. I treated it like a part time job, along with my real part-time job and my interest in playing pickup basketball every day.

@Promnight: I was thinking about your comment today, and I realized I neglected to share something very important with you. Those SCOTUS clerks and JD/MBAs and trustifarians, etc. treated me with kindness and love. They volunteered to babysit for me (usually someone wanted to see a kids’ movie and didn’t want to go without a kid, so they’d take Jr). They shared their notes and outlines with me. They studied with me. They played with my son. They gently taught me how to move within their circle. They included me and never made me feel like an outsider, an impostor or an interloper, and I have deep affection and love for all of them.

@JNOV: Gawd, I totally remember your war on Publius. That was some funny shit. I was totally cheering you on. I also remember your enthusiasm on the email listserve for the pow-wow – did you get banned for that too?

Like for you, law school was my first extended exposure to Ivy Leaguers and I found most of them were pretty decent when you got to know them. A couple were entitled douchebags, though, although I think there was more related to their age and immaturity.

@SanFranLefty: Oh, my. I think what you’re remembering is when we had an Indian law school dean (God! I can’t remember his name) coming to lecture on why we should study Indian Law. What you’re remembering is actually the time I went manic at law school. I had been prescribed an antidepressant, and no one had any idea I was bipolar. The antidepressant slingshotted me into a hypomania. I was sending those Indian Law emails out every morning, and my friends were like, “Dude. You sent that email out at 3:30 am. What’s up with that? Why weren’t you asleep?” But see, at that point I felt like I had superpowers or some such until a friend of mine was like, “Dude — go back to the doctor.” So, yeah. I was also writing my memoirs longhand during that period.

ADD: I forgot to answer your question — no, I didn’t get banned when I was sending out those Indian Law emails. I was so invested in having a big turnout for the speaker, and the classroom was packed. It was awesome.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again – Yes, Fargo, ND. I’m back in DC now and I’ve exhausted my stash from the Peace Garden state. :(

@Prommie – KB stands for Kind Bud (High quality marijuana)

Oh noes! Boycotting Kellogg isn’t as simple as laying off the Pop-Tarts — the fucks own Kashi and Morningstar Farms, too!