fertile octogenarian

ahhh, it's fun being menlove. i guess i should reply to some of the comments from yesterday's message board, but unfortunately, i've got to keep this one really short, as i've got a few contracts cases still to be read, and i have a feeling that the dozer will be calling my name tomorrow. of course, i always claim it's going to be short, and then it turns out to be long... long like my 14 minutes of menlovin'.

(i'm already off topic and wasting time. back to the show.)

specifically, i'd like to take a look at my friend saucy intruder's comments, which i've copied for you below...

saucy writes: Menlove, you're not a nihilist, you're clearly a Lionel Hutzes. ANTLPOP's a Zipursky,and I'M in fact the only nihilist.

menlove replies: saucy, i stand corrected. i'm a lionel hutz, you're a nihilist, and in the last 8 hours, we've found ourselves a third careena collins and a fourth zipursky! thanks to our newest contributors. don't look now, but we're just about to reach a fairly major fundraising milestone...

saucy continues: I realized just how clever you were, menlove. $1,500 dollars? Out of your largest class (Civ Pro), there are 120 people. Assuming all of them read menlovian (even though most of them do), and assuming each and every one of them donates to Africare, every one of them would have to donate $12.50. And that's not even counting those individuals who had to leave BLS for whatever reason. You're very shrewd! You donate money for a charity, but you're in no danger of revealing your identity, because your class is full of piss poor law students. I salute you!

menlove replies: hmm, first, i don't think that that many people in our section read menlove. it seems like only about a third or half of them do. anyhow, i'm not trying to dupe anyone here, if that's what you're implying. remember that so far i've only collected "pledges," not "donations." if we fall even a dollar short, then i won't be collecting any money. it's basically an all-or-nothing proposition. anyway, here are some interesting numbers to think about:

so far, we've had 17 people make pledges to Africare. the average pledge thus far has been over $43, which i think is pretty amazing.

also, i've been accepting pledges for something like 36 days. this means that on average, we've managed to raise a little better than 20 dollars per day, which is also pretty cool.

now consider that if we manage to maintain this average between now and the day of our con law exam, we will have raised a total of over twelve hundred dollars. true, we'd be a little bit short, but reaching $1500 is certainly within the realm of possibility (especially with 2L's starting to donate, and with people from section 7 who i've never even met before starting to contribute... like you, saucy! although i do hope we meet someday.). the point is that i don't believe that i've set us up to fail or anything like that.

way back on march 8th, in my jean valjean entry, i wrote that "in the weeks ahead, i will be choosing a charity that matters to me. i will set a fundraising goal that is just at the edge of reasonability (reasonableness?), meaning that it will be very hard, but not impossible to attain." anyway, i think that our 1.5K goal pretty much straddles the border between reasonable and ricockulous. the fact that a bunch of poor law students have already shown such amazing generosity makes our accomplishments so far even cooler, if you ask me.

finally, saucy concludes: However, I don't think you can do it. We'll fall short this year, you'll end menlovian, and you'll spend the summer in wonderland with PSM, but when you come back to school in the fall, it'll hit you. You suddenly have an hour more in each day! You'll try to do something else, but you can't! Blogging is a compulsion! it takes over your life! You'll begin again! Sure, you'll try a new name, but in less than a month, you'll drop your subtle hints again... all of a sudden, everyone will be reading your successor site, and either everyone will know it's you, or you'll attempt to maintain your anonymity again, and it will fail. I say you just throw in the towel and admit that you're Adam Lubow.

Menlove replies: that's interesting what you said about blogging being addictive. you may actually be right. i have no frame of reference (i'm out of my element) because i've only been a non-blogger or a blogger, but never an ex-blogger. however, i think that what i'm hooked on, if anything, is having a creative outlet. i do have some other things in mind for next year, some things that i'm really excited about, but to tell you the truth, writing menlovian, trying to get something interesting up here for you guys five nights a week - as fun as it is, and as much as i get out of it - is really exhausting. on top of that, the whole secret identity thing (while it is like a fun game on some levels, and while i do get a kick out of hearing people hypothesize about my identity) is really a drag. it's tiring having to lie about it so much, and it's hard for me to keep track of what i can talk about in my real life, and what i have to keep separate for menlovian.

anyway, i think that i'd much more enjoy a collaborative blogging scenario like the one you and your pals have over there at the345wall, or the one going on at intermeddler. both are excellent and entertaining blogs, but i'd imagine that because of the group dynamic, they both create significantly less burden for any single member.

oh, and by the way, you were right about me being adam lubow.

***
well my big mouth has got me rambling on and on much longer than i'd intended to. still, before i get back to contracts, i have to mention that property class today was absolutely loco. (you know, i hate using crazy fonts or big fonts or anything like that, but i think that it was called for after what we went through in this morning's class.) BJ was simply turbo-charged, and i think that i must have typed at least a dozen pages of notes. the whole thing with her trying to call on jon provided some much-needed comic relief. still, by the end of the second hour, i had begun to question whether i was indeed either born or ascertainable. i'm figure that i'm going to have to freebase or something at 10:45 on thursday morning so that i may get myself more on the wavelength of the lecture. look out, law review, menlove's coming to getcha!

gotta run, everyone. you know what i've got to say, though: i hope you all have a splendid tuesday at good old brooklyn law school. especially fuhrman & furman, attorneys at law... i hope you two have a most peaceful and excellent day today.

-menlove