the tribe has spoken

nearly six hours of class today...

civ pro sort of had that influenza ward vibe going on. it was an ongoing cacaphony of coughs, sneezes, snorts and wheezes. even professor hunter got in on the fun. she used this really nice quiet sort of bedroom voice all morning, and was even without her trusty glass of icewater with lemon. it was a nice change of pace.

schneider had some sort of formal observation in class today by another member of the faculty. though she was a little on edge, it basically was a really helpful class. all things considered, she's definitely improved a ton since week one. think about it... no other professor has to answer as many idiotic questions as she does, and she handles it all with aplomb. robyn even made a funny today (after her observer had departed) when she told us that we don't have to cite the other supreme court cases that are mentioned, that we could simply find the language we need elsewhere in the opinion... "unless we want to be sexy and impress me with your string citations."

it's good to know that a complex series of string citations is one of our professor's "turn-ons."

big tony put on another fine performance today in torts. the dude gives me like five or six shout-outs per class. (shout-outs? or would the plural form be shouts-out? i digress...) he's crazy about menlove. he rattled off a few good one-liners about the public interest club's talent show, calling the "social event of the season," and going on to deliberately misconstrue the grand prize (a really huge barbri scholarship) as "really huge barbie dolls," and went on to note that he "had enough of those already."

it's interesting to hear how he pronounces the names of some of these cases. just today, he said "monk" as if it rhymed with "wonk." i invariably like his pronunciation more, but that's just me. has anyone else noticed how he pronounces "gasoline"? it's friggin' great.

anyway, the real point of this little entry is to talk about the wonderful things that have been going on lately in my study group.

my study group is the shit. technically, we're not even a group. it's really just five of us who sometimes meet up in one of the study rooms. sometimes there are six, and sometimes there are just three. there's always someone who has severe gas. but not just your standard gas; it's more like that just-ate-a-cafeteria-panini kind of gas. as long as we're being technical, not only are we not truly a group, but we don't really even study. so i guess we're not really a study group at all. it's more like a bullshit collective.

so i was sitting with four other members of my bullshit collective earlier this week, ostensibly to get a head start on the 80 pages of torts reading that 'bok choi assigned for today's and tomorrow's classes. our meeting lasted for approximately ninety minutes, starting at 4:00. here's a quick rundown of what we managed to accomplish:

• 4:00-4:10... setting up computers and taking out books and pens.
• 4:10-4:15... one group member farts loudly. a round of depositions are held to discover the culprit. someone then hypothesizes that the gaseous expulsion could easily have been heard through the air vents by those who are studying out in the main reading area. said hypothesis is debated, then tested. one person is sent outside to listen, and someone inside created a fart noise that was similar in volume, pitch, and duration to the one which had sparked the debate. result: clearly audible.
• 4:15-4:30... an in-depth jurisprudential examination of the ALCS, replete with explications of the constitutional ramifications of johnny damon's australopithecus-like mandible.
• 4:30-5:00... everyone speaks at length about the prospects of having sexual intercourse with specific members of our crim law class. one group member (who seemed to have prepared extensively for this aspect of our meeting) speaks quite eloquently about who he'd like to bang, how and in what positions he would bang, the duration of said banging, and the pleasure his prospective partner would derive should this banging ever actually occur. the other members of the group then raised numerous and serious doubts as to the veracity and probability of these assertions.
• 5:00-5:20... the group decides to explore a rather interesting tangent of admiralty law by proposing the following hypo: suppose that professors schneider, sebok, hunter, hellerstein and pitler were on a sinking ship, and managed to escape to a deserted island. what roles would each of them take on the island (i.e., who would do the hunting, the cooking... who would be the alpha, who would be the lazy one who cried all night...)? what would the sleeping arrangements be, and would any romantic liaisons ensue? and finally, which one of them would manage to be the ultimate survivor? (the intricacies of this discussion are too extensive and offensive to recount here, but by all means, feel free to post your thoughts on this topic on the menlovian message board...)
• 5:20-5:25... setting goals for our next group meeting, determining a meeting time, and congratulating one another on a job well done.

should any of you be interested in sitting in with the bullshit collective, you're certainly welcome to join us. just listen closely to the gutteral rumblings emanating from the air vents, and you'll have found us in no time.

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