Music

Awesome spoof video, "I wanna be a pop star."



Ever wondered what those Bollywood lyrics really were?

Both are pretty work safe, but since they're music...you should only click if you can really rock out wherever you are at the moment.

aLs

Video Professor = Prick

UPDATE: The Video Professor (he's not a real professor) had my site taken down for the picture I had here previously. So here's a new picture that he doesn't own.

Has anyone ever seen those ridiculous Video Professor ads on late night television?

Personally, I think everything that he is selling can be found online for free...Or...just about any person on the street could fill you in on the basics of using a computer.

Anyhow, he is suing the users of a website known as Infomercialscams.com because they have told their nightmarish stories about his stupid company. Apparently, Video Professor has a habit of sending you a free DVD, then tricking you into signing up for tons more, that aren't free. Before you know, your credit card company is calling you to let you know you are over your limit.

As this site points out, the lawsuit has very little chance of succeeding. I hope someone goes after him for attorneys fees, he shouldn't be allowed to abuse the legal process like he is.

Read the response to the complaint here. (It's a PDF)

Hey check this out, he has racked up 615 Better Business Bureau Complaints in the last three years!

Also, you suck video professor. Got a problem with that? Sue me.

aLs

Job Search Continues

Well it looks like I won't be crossing the Iron Curtain after all. The defense job went to someone else. I have no idea who got it, but I know that tons of people were trying for that one. I guess I'm glad that I made it past the first round (just getting an interview), but it still sucks.

So I have an idea. I'm thinking about putting up Craigslist ads in several of the cities I'm interested in moving to in the near future. I won't put my name down, just a brief description of who I am, what I'm looking for, and how to get into contact with me if the person reading it is interested. I have no idea what kind of results I'll get out of something like that, but Craigslist is free, what's the harm?

So I'm an uncle now! I saw pictures of my nephew, he's almost as handsome as me!

Coming Soon: I will describe my first real jury trial.

aLs

Iron Curtain of Justice

Instead of thinking up good questions to ask my interviewer, or getting dressed, I have decided to blog a bit. I don't need clothes to ace this interview, I need chest hair.

I am about to try and cross the Iron Curtain of Justice. The job I am applying for would put me on the field as a Public Defender. Surprisingly, the local office has enough funds to pay a pretty penny for the law students it chooses to hire. I would absolutely love to get this job. I would have experience kickin' arse on both sides, which I think would make me a better Defense Attorney/Prosecutor in the future.

I know that a million other students at my school probably applied for this job, so the chances of me netting it are pretty slim, but I am consoled that I even got an interview.

Fun Fact! of the Day!: What law school is most represented in the pool of current U.S. Attorneys right now?

Answer: The Pat Robertson School of Law, otherwise known as Regent Law School. Here's a little article on how that creepy school's graduates have been acting on the public stage.

I won't turn my nose up at any other law school, regardless of its position in the pecking order (artifically created by US World News Reports or whatever it's called). However, I know that if I was interviewing a graduate from that school, I would be wary. Pat Robertson was a complete nutcase and all around asshat. What kind of people does his school pump out? I have a feeling that they might be the kind of people that follow his tradition of being ignorant, intolerant, and no fun at parties.

But maybe I'm wrong. I'd still meet someone before I assumed any of that. Maybe I'd have the luck of meeting the guy that either had the choice of going to Regents or not going to law school at all.

aLs

Mitt "My own party is too bigoted to elect me" Romney

Internet Democracy has brought us another amusing story.



A writer at Slate created a video in the Mitt Romney contest. It received 16,000 votes, or hits, or whatever. The remaining videos combined got 138 or something like that. Anyhow, the video is pretty funny.

aLs

Sadie "The Toy Poodle"

This is a long story. It's the story of Sadie The Toy Poodle. This was my craziest case this summer. The story is funnier if told in person, but I did my best. I don't have the energy to grammar check it, so forgive me in advance.

Before The Trial

This story starts on a Wednesday like any other. Whilst going about my work, a prosecuting attorney popped into my office to ask if I would be able to handle a few court trials that were happening next week. I checked my calendar and I was free on that day. He told me he hadn't looked at them, but there were only 5 or 6 in the file. I took the files.

On Thursday I paged through the files to make sure that there wasn't anything out of the ordinary in them. Most court trials are just speeding tickets, inattentive driving, or other traffic offenses. Every now and then a small misdemeanor creeps into them. Even more rarely, people occasionally drop a DUI or a DWP (driving without privileges) into the court trial calendar. So it's always a good idea to check them out as soon as possible.

The first five were pretty simple.

The last file was at least 100 pages thick. There were pictures clipped onto the file.

I got a tasty DC (diet coke, derr) and settled in to read the file.

The first thing that struck me was the latest demand for discovery. Discovery demands are rare in court trial cases, but a third demand for discovery is so rare that I had never seen it before.

The second thing that caught my attention was the signature on the bottom of the discovery pages. It said the following (name and all identifying information changed of course):

John Doe
Representing Sadie "The Toy Poodle"
2221 Somewhere Drive
CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

That's right, he not only claimed to be representing his toy poodle, but he signed the discovery with CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

The discovery demanded all sorts of stuff. He wanted a complete run down of what every witness was going to say. He wanted a full legal explanation for how he was being charged with Dog At Large and Dog Biting when he was originally ticketed by the animal control officer for something else.

First off, some of the witnesses he was demanding that I tell him about, I have no idea who they were. I spent hours trying to figure out who these people were. To this day, I have no idea what cavern of his that he pulled these names out of.

Second, the State has the right to amend charges. It does it all the time. It's not something that I have to, or will be, explaining in discovery. Discovery isn't a place to have legal questions answered. In fact, it has nothing to do with that.

That wasn't all.

There was a letter in the file that had been sent to the judge. It asked permission to bring Sadie to court, so that the defendant could demonstrate (I'm not making this wording up) "that Sadie is a kind and gentle creature, a friend to all humans."

Even crazier, the judge approved the request. That particular judge is the only judge that I know of that would have told this guy he could bring the dog.

Apparently the guy had missed a previous court date. There was a letter in the file saying he was sorry and would like the warrant quashed and another court date set. He had no criminal history or history of missing court dates, so the warrant was quashed and another date was set.

I should tell you what the basic facts of this were. I gleaned this from the report of the only witness and what the defendant said.

On a beautiful Saturday morning, in August of 2006, Bob was out front gardening. Bob heard a door close and some dogs yapping. He kept cutting his hedges or whatever he was doing. All of the sudden, a white poodle comes flying out of the bushes and bites Bob on the thigh, breaking the skin.

The owner of the dog, who we will call Citizen (the defendant), came over and asked if his dog had bitten Bob. Bob said that the poodle had indeed bitten him on the thigh. Citizen promised that if Bob went to the doctor and had a shot or whatever, he would pay for it. He apologized and that was that.

Or was it?

Bob was unable to get Citizen to pay for the doctor visit, which cost about 200 dollars. Citizen claimed that it wasn't his dogs, that he wasn't at that location at 7 AM (when the vicious attack occurred), and that his dog Sadie was a friend to all humans.

Bob called animal control and made a complaint.

Animal control spent the next few weeks trying to ticket Citizen. Citizen avoided his phone, would not answer the door, and was a general pain in the ass. Animal control finally got tired of it and left a note on his door stating that he was being ticketed and that if he failed to show up in court he would have a warrant for his arrest (dog at large and dog biting are misdemeanors).

Okay, now that you know the facts, back to the story.

I decided that I should call Citizen and inform him that the State would not be complying with his demand for discovery. It just seemed like it was the fair and courteous thing to do. I mean, I imagine it's hard to be Pro Se and therefore I'll do a bit more for a Pro Se guy than I would for an attorney in this situation.

The phone call did not go well.

Citizen told me that if I wouldn't tell him how I had the authority to amend the charges (after I told him how I had that authority), that he would object and have the case dismissed. He also told me that my failure to comply with the discovery demand would be fatal to my case. Last, but not least, he told me ten times that pursuing this case was a prime example of abuse of power.

I calmly told him that if he'd stuck to his word and compensated his neighbor, he wouldn't be in this mess. I couldn't help it, he was being rude to me.

After the phone conversation, Citizen called my office and demanded to speak to the head of the office. He claimed that a prosecutor had just called him and given him a false name, had cussed him out, and was trying to illegally get his trial strategy out of him. Lucky for me, two other attorneys had been in the room when I made that phone call. Even they hadn't been though, this guy was a nut case. I would have been fine.

The call was given to a prosecutor that had been with the office for ten years. He wouldn't talk to her. He had used the internet to figure out who the highest level attorney was in our office and he wasn't going to settle for anything less than that (also, he didn't want to talk to a woman).

10 Year Attorney told him she'd pass a note on to Head Attorney, but that we weren't required to talk to him and that the likelihood of him getting a phone call back was pretty slim.

Several attorneys, after hearing this, attempted to clear their schedule so that they could watch this court trial that was going down in a day or two.

The Day of Trial

I arrived in the court room and immediately spotted the man with a dog. I also saw two animal control officers with their own dog. It was incredibly well trained though, and sat at perfect attention for the next hour.

So I thought to myself, "I should deal with the people that want to plead guilty first. I'll write everything up, and I'll make him go last." I wasn't doing this to be a jerk. I just knew that his trial was going to take forever.

I took the first written guilty plea to the Judge's chambers and I got a surprise.

Our judge had changed.

When this started, Judge A was in charge. When Citizen missed his court date, the case got put on Judge B's calendar. Judge B was on vacation, so Judge C was handling his cases today. Judge C is absolutely feared by both prosecutors and defendants.

He's incredibly Prosecutor oriented, but if he thinks the prosecutors should be asking for more jail time, or shouldn't have dismissed a witness after reaching a deal, or whatever, he will yell at the prosecutor in front of the entire court room.

Judge C does not do deals on paper. He wants to sentence every defendant face to face. Sometimes he even says, "Stand and be sentenced" before he pronounces the sentence. THESE ARE MISDEMEANORS! Anyways, I couldn't deal with the other cases on paper like I usually do. Several other people wanted court trials. That's when I decided I would do Citizen's case first, and then maybe the other people would just give up and plead guilty.

I called Citizen to the conference room right outside the courtroom in an attempt to reach a plea deal with him. I was pretty sure he would say no, but I decided that I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I was offering 50 + court costs (about 75 bucks) for the dog at large, and 100 + court costs (75ish) for the dog biting + restitution for the victim, Bob. I was told that he'd rather throw himself in front of a bus.

Citizen showed me a giant binder full of random papers, discovery, and pictures. He told me that he wanted me to stipulate to him entering everything in it into evidence. I told him he could try to admit everything in the folder individually, and that I would determine whether or not I would object at that time. This really pissed him off. He reinformed me that he would be asking for a continuance/dismissal of charges because of the lack of discovery, the illegality of amending charges, and because I couldn't prove my case.

I spoke with Bob the Gardener. Bob was like the nicest guy on Earth. He exuded a natural "I'm everyone's grandpa" aura. I kept expecting him to try and give me a Werther's Original and take me fishing.

Judge C came out and asked me if I had any cases resolved. I did. I had a few people plead guilty to speeding tickets. This is quite normal. A lot of people come to a court trial just to see if their officer shows up. Officers are kept in another room separate from the court room, so there is no way to tell if the officer has shown up. You could ask the prosecutor, but he/she doesn't have to answer that question. The prosecutor can't lie, but the prosecutor can answer without really answering.

Sorry, I keep getting off track.

When Judge C called Citizen, Citizen walked up to the Defendant's table with his poodle on a leash. He also had a carrier case that he was holding, but the dog was zipping back and forth on the leash. You could literally see Judge C's face change color. It was now very red.

I informed the Judge that we had not reached a resolution in this case and intended to take it to trial. Citizen asked to approach the bench. The Judge was irritated, but said it he could.

Citizen told the Judge that I was acting in bad faith by saying I would object to a giant folder full of random shit being entered into evidence. Citizen wanted the Judge to read through it while Citizen was giving testimony and offering evidence. The Judge curtly told him that even if I the prosecutor would allow something like that to happen, the Judge would not. Citizen told Judge that the change in charges put him at a disadvantage and that he wanted a continuance. I told the Judge that I had my witnesses here, that Citizen knew of these amended charges 6 months ago, and that he missed his last court date.

I have seen Judge C yell at people that miss their court dates. When he heard that Citizen had missed a court date, he said "we're finishing this today."

I called Bob the Gardener. Getting his story took all of 5 minutes. He was sitting there, he was bit, his neighbor said sorry and that he'd pay. Bob was sure he was on his own property.

Citizen began his cross examination.

While he was crossing the witness, Sadie was shivering. Citizen, I kid you not, had placed the dog on top of the defendant's table. She was tapping around, knocking Citizen's papers over and distracting everyone. At one point, Citizen was looking for a specific piece of paper and asked the court to be patient with him. The Judge responded with saying, "While you're looking, how about you put that dog in her cage."

Citizen put he dog in the cage. He found his piece of paper and started crossing the witness again. Almost immediately, a low growl began to issue from the cage. It slowly got louder and louder until Citizen put his finger through one of the bars in the cage and wiggled it around. He looked ridiculous, but it shut the dog up. As soon as he removed his finger, the dog started growling again.

Citizen had trouble understanding how to cross examine a witness. When you cross a witness, you have to ask questions. You aren't supposed to testify. I objected at least 40 times because this guy just couldn't understand that. He also asked Bob "How often do you drink?"

OBJECTION Relevance

Judge: "Mr. Citizen, you had better be ready to introduce evidence that Bob was under the influence of alcohol at the time that he was bitten, otherwise, you are traveling down a dangerous road."

At this point, the cross had been going for like 40 minutes, which explains the Judge's exasperation.

Citizen would ask a question. If he didn't like the answer, he'd ask it again. If he didn't like that answer, he'd rephrase it five minutes later and ask it a few more times. After a while I didn't have to object anymore, the judge was so enraged that he would objecting for me.

Citizen kept trying to introduce all sorts of random shit into evidence. At one point he tried to introduce petitions from people at his church group that agreed the dog was a friend to all humanity. When I objected to this and he was not allowed to admit it, he said, "I worked for the railroad for 20 years, I know when I'm getting railroaded."

Judge C is known for putting people in jail for contempt. He is known for his harsh sentences. Saying something like that in his court room is suicidal. If Citizen hadn't been 60ish, he would have been hauled out of the room for that comment. As it is, Judge C's only soft spot (by that I mean, the only people that he wouldn't destroy on the spot after their first misstep) is for older people. Judge C said, "If you don't watch your mouth, you will spend the night in Jail, pondering the word Contempt."

When Citizen got up to testify, he let the Toy Poodle out of her cage and she jumped off the table. She skittered around the front of the court room, in front of the Judge's bench and the witness bench, in circles while growling.

Citizen was going to sit down and testify, but the Judge said "CITIZEN, GRAB YOUR DOG."

Citizen got on the stand to testify. His version of the story was basically this:

The neighbor was gardening, but was somehow on Citizen's property. When, and if, Sadie bit Bob, it was on Citizens property and therefore not against the law. Also, Citizen left the house at 6 in the morning, not at seven. Bob is lying.

So.....Sadie bit Bob on your property, but also, could not have bit him at all because Citizen simply wasn't there at that time.

Oooookay

He also insisted that there were many white poodles in the neighborhood and that it could have been any one of those.

Citizen thought he was making a strong point when he said Sadie wasn't technically a poodle. He kept trying to make that point until Bob said, "I don't know the difference between a normal poodle and the specific kind of poodle Sadie is." Citizen was pleased with this, until the Judge interjected, "I don't have any idea what the difference is either, or why it would matter."

At the end, my closing argument was pretty simple. I said, "Your honor, we have two stories here. One makes sense, the other is completely devoid of sense. I ask you to find the defendant guilty. Thankyou."

Citizen said something weird, mentioned the Constitution and his status as a US Citizen.

The Judge said something like, "I agree with the prosecution. There are two stories here, and yours simply does not make sense. I find that you are guilty on both counts."

His sentence:

200 + Court Costs for Dog at Large
200 + Court Costs for Dog Biting
Restitution of $250

Citizen told me the whole thing was unconstitutional.

I still remember seeing a prosecutor and defense attorney that were watching. They almost had tears in their eyes from trying not to laugh.

Hilarious.

aLs

Battle is Joined!

A good friend of mine is about to take her landlord to court.

In July of this summer, she signed a lease for an apartment. The lease and the agreement called for August 15th to be the day she took possession. The apartment was being renovated, but what was being promised was a very nice place.

Near the end of July, the landlord told Friend that he thought the lease said the 30th. He told her that there was no way he could hand over the apartment on the 15th, but that he could get it to her before the weekend of the 25th. Friend, being a nice person, told him that this would be a major inconvenience to her, but that she would find a way to make it work.

The apartment was not ready on the 25th.

The landlord again told her it would just be a few days and asked if she could possibly hold off for a little bit longer. Friend spent more money and was able to delay her move out at her old place a bit longer.

School started on the 19th.

Landlord tells friend that apartment will not be ready until September 3rd. Friend packs all her stuff up into a truck, moves it to a storage facility, unpacks it. With nowhere to go, friend is forced to stay in a hotel for a few days.

On the third, friend skips class and loads up the moving truck. Friend arrives at new apartment. Landlord tells her that it isn't done, but that it will be finished in two days. It's late at night and friend is afraid of what it will cost to go back into a hotel. Relying on his promise, friend moves her stuff into the new (but still torn apart) apartment.

2 days pass and the apartment is not done. In fact, there is little evidence that anything has been done in the past few days.

More promises are made. More promises are broken.

17 days later, friend is so mad she can barely speak. She gives him an ultimatum. Finish the apartment by 5 o'clock on Friday, or I'm moving my stuff out. Landlord swears it will be done.

Friday comes, it is not done. There is dirt everywhere. The cabinets are not all straight. The doors on some of the cabinets are not installed yet. The bathroom is one big stain. There are a few random holes in the wood floors. There are paint drops scattered throughout the apartment. The windows have paint on them. Half the lights don't work.

Friend informs landlord through email that she is moving out.

Landlord calls and yells at her, calling her "a spoiled law student." He says that he can have these problems fixed quickly. Just another day or two.

Fuck him and fuck his another day or two.

He will be served with papers on Monday or Tuesday. Be ready to be Friend's first win in court, asshole.

aLs

Can Someone Tell Me?!

Why would my entire template stop working when I haven't made any changes to it in the last few months? I mean, completely out of nowhere it just stopped working!

Insanity. Insanity I tell you.

Stories soon. I'm enjoying my weekend.

aLs

I'm still alive!

I'm into my new apartment. It was a long and arduous path getting here. I'm atleast a week and a half behind in most of my classes.

That really doesn't matter though, it's the beginning of the semester. I can catch up with very little exertion.

Now that I have a real base of operations again, I'll start posting again. I have two stories from this summer that I never had time to talk about.

1. The Case of "Sadie The Toy Poodle: Friend to all Humans"
2. My first Jury Trial

Update

I'm holed up in a hotel. I have a dead cell phone and this computer is running out of battery power. I will be in my own place sometime next week.

aLs