Thought Snax

Having thoroughly enjoyed Shit Sighted People Say to Blind People, Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls, and Shit White Girls Say to Arab Girls, I decided it would be hilarious to make a video out of some of the stupid shit people have said to Tim* over the years.  Only problem, of course:  I have no video production skills, not to mention equipment.  So — as with a couple of previous posts — I relied on the cartoon people over at xtranormal and created this.   I’m sure it doesn’t measure up to the videos that inspired it, but on the upside, I only wasted three hours on it.

*  Yes, it’s weird that it’s me (a walkie) and not Tim who made this little video, but he’s busy actually practicing law, or possibly (we can only hope!) drafting his first guest blog post.  Stay tuned!!

If you have a relative who is completely deluded politically  with whom you graciously disagree on various political matters, you may have trouble from time to time coming up with something to talk about at family gatherings.  As regular readers of both of our blogs have discerned, my brother is completely deluded politically a Republican and I am correct in all things a Democrat.   Yet we have many fascinating, non-political things to talk about.  Herewith, as a public service at these family-oriented holidays, a working list of the things that can completely occupy our conversation in the absence of politics:

1. the awesomeness of my niece and nephew.
2. our weird extended family.
3. nasal allergies.
4. solutions to nasal allergies.
5. things his kids have puked up compared with things my dogs have puked up (I win — neither of his kids ever puked up a tennis ball).
6. food (generally not immediately following item #5).
7. decades old in-jokes involving pointless things our grandfather said.
8. sports.
9. hilarious things our father used to do, for example, applying lotion to his face while driving by pouring a big puddle of lotion on the dashboard and dabbing it on his face.
10. Fart jokes.

Your mileage may vary.

Tim and I have a mixed marriage.

Not really religion :  even though we’re technically of two different faith traditions, we’ve found we often have more in common with each other than either of us has with most of the rest of our respective tribes.

Not sports teams:  I converted.

And of course, we’re both lawyers.  I have *no* idea how mixed marriages between lawyers and non-lawyers work.  What on Earth do they talk about?

No, Tim and I are a mixed marriage with respect to time.  I’m analog.  He’s digital.

For example, I don’t believe that the time of day comes in chunks smaller than five minutes.  So I would no more say “it’s 12:37″ than I’d say “it’s 12:37:42.03.”  It’s either 12:35 or 12:40.  And truthfully, I’m much more likely to see this

and say “twelve thirty” or “quarter of one.”  Because really, who needs to know that it’s “twenty-five of one?”   In fact, I’m likely to see this:

and say  “twelve thirty” or “quarter of one.”  This, of course, drives Tim up the wall.

When we first met, my watch looked like this:

That’s right — no numbers whatsoever.*   Do you really need them?  Look at that watch face.  You know all you need to know about the time:  it’s that time of the afternoon when you should start thinking more seriously about what you are going to eat for dinner.

I’m also generally late.  This is based on (1) my refusal to remember the digits to the right of the colon in the start time of any event and (2) the fact that when that time rolls around, I view it as my signal to start getting ready to go.  Thus, if I were in charge of getting us on a 12:37 flight, I would internalize it as “12 something,” and at 12 something,  start to think about packing for the trip.  This is why I am *never* in charge of getting us to the airport on time.  Occasionally, on a lark, I take charge of some lesser event, say, dinner reservations at a steak joint where they know us, we’re not meeting anyone, and if I totally screw it up, we can eat in the bar.   I can usually get us there within 20 minutes one side or the other of when we’re supposed to be there.

Where it really gets interesting, however, is where Tim is forced reassert control over the time situation.  This is when we discovered his time-bending abilities.  For example, if we’re supposed to be at his parents’ house at noon….  Pause to explain that in the Fox family, the time gene follows the paternal line.  This was clearly not so in our family, where my father had more or less my attitude and aptitude toward time and my mother and brother share Tim’s precision.  But when we’re set to meet the Foxes at, say, noon, we generally get a call at 11:55 asking our ETA.  (Love you, Denver!)

Back to time-bending.  If I’ve managed to make us late — say, just as a hypothetical, by waiting for the actual necessary departure time to begin a long list of pre-departure tasks (change clothes, brush teeth, gather miscellaneous items that belong in my purse, put the dogs out, wait several minutes for Saguaro to select the optimum location to pee, bring the dogs in, locate my coat, etc.) — Tim will reassert control over time.  This is not an adversarial process.  It’s not “Dammmit, we need to get going.”  It’s the fact that once Tim is in the car with me, a trip that — based on the speed limit, the physical capabilities of the van, and the theory of relativity as I understand it — takes 30 minutes will in fact take 10 minutes.  I have no idea how he does it.  We call it “Timmifying time” and it has to be used judiciously, as randomly Timmifying any given trip has the risk of getting you to your destination very early, leaving you as, say, the first two people to arrive at a heinously boring bar dinner.  In those situations, we retroactively Amify the time by stopping at the actual bar and preparing ourselves, chemically AND chronologically, for the event.

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* My watch would still look like this if I could find one for under $25.  I bought this for a couple of bucks in Hong Kong in about 1984 and it long ago gave up the ghost.  Unfortunately, I don’t buy nice watches for the same reason I don’t buy nice pens:  I lose them.  I long ago figured out that this wasn’t going to change, and that rather than freaking out over losing an expensive watch, I would simply buy Timexes or Swatches and replace them as needed.

or:  Where 5’2″ + the Sno-Brum (TM) couldn’t reach.

I was just about to post a cranky post about opposing counsel in a case we’re involved in* and my last two Facebook posts have been

This is where we are on our Big Case: witness has to go back to doctor for urgent tests and possible exploratory surgery for cancer; Defendant refuses to withdraw the subpoena for her deposition at the same time as the medical appointment.

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be lawyers.

and

File under “K” for karma’s a bitch. Opposing counsel who refused to reschedule a deposition for the witness’s medical procedure now needs us to reschedule for *his* medical procedure. Must.Control.Sarcastic.Response.

so it hasn’t been a good week for Rule 1.5.  But before I launch into my latest diatribe, I wanted to link to this, a wonderful meditation** by my friend and co-counsel Kevin Williams on how lucky we are to practice in the field we do.

As many of you know, CCDC’s offices are like many non-profit’s, but from my office, I can see the Colorado Rockies South and West.  From Pike’s Peak…almost…(if you stretch)… to Long’s.  This evening, as I wrap up today’s work (responding to letters from some lawyer telling me why he thinks I’m an a**hole), I was lucky enough to remember to turn around from my desk and look out my window.  I just watched the magnificence of another spectacular Colorado sunset.

…

The sunsets keep coming.  Fifteen years of being a disability rights lawyer has taught me one undeniable principle: When you represent people who have a righteous cause, you are doing the right thing.  Although we have had a few let-downs over the years, and many, many contentious battles, the victories keep coming. I look forward to tomorrow’s sunset.

We are lucky.  I’ll be ranting again soon — tomorrow, even — about the antics of our opposing counsel, but for tonight I’m thankful to practice in the field that I do, with a partner like Tim, co-counsel like Kevin and the rest of our incredible and various teams, and righteous clients, cases, and issues.  And much as I love our coastal colleagues, with the amazing view of the sun setting over the Rockies.

**********

*Coming soon.

**I think Kevin will hate this word.  I think he’d prefer something more like gin-fueled philosophizing.

Everyone’s trying to solve the wrong voting problems.  Conservatives are worried that people who can’t drive or people who go to college might vote.  Liberals are concerned that conservatives make campaign claims that aren’t, strictly speaking, true.  But checking driver’s licenses and bloviation accuracy isn’t going to solve the most fundamental problem:  voters who don’t have any clue wtf they’re voting for.   I’m not talking about whether your candidate will change this policy position or that.  I mean fundamentally what sort of world you’re voting for when you pick the person who doesn’t “believe in” evolution or thinks the military should fund itself through bake sales.*

What we need is a technology that is not going to be perfected until at least the 2370s:**  the holodeck. Before citizens are permitted to vote, they enter a holodeck, punch in the candidates or initiatives they’re voting for, and experience the world as it would be if these people or views prevailed.

I was inspired to propose this technology by the following photo:

Photo credit:  Unreal Americans  h/t Beau Weston.

So, for example, the Zero Taxes lady would enter the holodeck, type in “zero taxes” and have to spend, say, a week in a world with no police, firefighters, roads, sidewalks, or, of course (not that I’m making any particular assumptions) Medicare.  Or she could rent Mad Max.

Even generic business-oriented conservatives would have to try to run their businesses without the public highway system, the police to keep marauding bands stealing everything from their factory,*** or an educated workforce.

The folks voting to protest the Affordable Care Act would experience a world in which they work at Wal-Mart and their spouse has cancer.

The folks hoping the military has to fund itself by holding a bake sale get a choice of the Third Reich or the Confederate States of America.  Harsh?  Yes – get a grip.  Though honestly they can share a holodeck experience with the “cut taxes not defense” person in the photo.  If defense is not going to be funded by taxes, I think a bake sale might be her only option, too.

Any liberal breathing the name “Nader” gets the holodeck of the Rick Perry administration.

The anti-regulatory crowd gets the holodeck where they navigate the world of 1990 in a wheelchair and test their own food and drugs.  Toxic?  Ooops!  Now we know!

Tort reformers will incur expensive injuries due to a defective product — one that the company knew it didn’t have to improve or pull from the market because there was no financial exposure in maiming the occasional customer — but be unable to rely on the rule of law for recourse.

My usual half-assed humor aside, what do people think they’re voting for?  Zero Taxes lady, Grover Norquist who wants to drown the government in a bathtub, even Eric Cantor — what is their vision?  What does America look like in their minds?  Rich people in gated communities and Mad Max for the rest of us?  Besides political gamesmanship for its own sake, what do they want?

Even if they don’t know, with holodeck technology, at least voters could know before they vote!

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* A word about equivalence:  buttheadedness seems to me to be fairly evenly distributed along the political spectrum.  Money and power, however, are not.  So while I like to make fun of both sides, it’s pretty clear that the people who are very far removed from reality on the right are now calling the shots for their team, while the reality-impaired on the left are not.  So, for example, there is a fair amount of evidence that the Koch Brothers underwrite the Tea Party, but most of the military-bake-sale bumper stickers tend to be on aging Ford Escorts.  Not that there’s anything wrong with old cars.

** You just knew that if you googled “when was the holodeck invented” there would be an answer.

*** I love Elizabeth Warren!  Preach it, sister!

I finally have empirical proof that “Special Interest Group” just means “group that wants to do something conservatives oppose.”

I’ve always known this in a sort of episto-sarcastic way.  “Oh yeah right,” I’d say, sarcastically, “gays and lesbians are a special interest group because getting married, visiting your spouse in the hospital, and not having the crap beaten out of you are such special things to do.”  In contrast to companies that don’t have to pay taxes or answer in court when they violate the law – a very ordinary, unspecial approach to citizenship.

Indeed, any group advocating for civil rights – that is, the same rights that straight, non-disabled, white people take for granted – is a “special interest group” advocating for “special rights.”  For example, here’s Juan Williams,* with the standard line that people with disabilities are a “special interest group.”

But I finally found a naturally occurring example of the flexibility of the term “special interest group.”  To graduate from being a “special interest group” to “fine upstanding Americans,” you just have to find a group that annoys conservatives more.   Here is a Republican politician in New Hampshire, reacting to the fact that a liquor store has parking reserved for hybrid cars near the front entrance where the accessible parking usually goes:

To choose to display such blatant priority for special interests over seniors, wounded veterans and others who have mobility difficulty is deplorable.

Voila!

*******

*  This link contained a paragraph so classic I have to paste it in its entirety.  Here is Juan Williams making the all-important link between speaking respectfully about people with cognitive disabilities and the downfall of western literature:

That’s ridiculous. These special interest groups say you shouldn’t say retarded. You should say developmentally disabled. It’s silly to make a big deal about it. It’s like language police. You’re made into a villain. It’s being done to enforce a certain speech code. It leads to resentment, anger. It leads to people thinking we’re not allowed to read books by dead white men even if they’re great books. What a waste of time. Just have an honest conversation.

I’m going try to do two possibly contradictory things in this post:  (1) urge everyone to wish each other merriness and/or happiness in a spirit of joy and celebration; and (2) unleash just a little bit of snark on the whole war-on-Christmas baloney.  Here goes.

New rule:  No one gets to be indignant when someone else expresses the wish that they be happy or merry.  Unless someone is wishing you something truly bizarre like Happy Dog Shit Day,* the proper response is “thanks!” and possibly, “you too!”  The following is an incorrect response:  “Dude, you just wished me to be happy and/or merry for the wrong reason.  You must have some sort of weird political agenda.  Let’s bail on this whole joy and celebration thing and really annoy each other!”

For the record, as a half[assed] Jew, I have no problem with being wished a Merry Christmas.  It’s not a holiday with religious meaning to me, so I feel the way I felt when my Chinese friends wished me Gong Xi Fa Cai on Chinese New Year.  And that feeling is:  Happy.  Instead of the human interactions that fill up my average day — bizarre italicized accusations from opposing counsel, middle fingers from other drivers,** depressing political commentary — someone is just telling me to be happy.  Or merry.  Or in the case of Gong Xi Fa Cai, congratulating me and wishing me to prosper.  This is all good.  All.  Good.  Did I mention good?

Let’s practice:

Jewish person:  Happy Chanukah!
Christian person:  Thanks!  That’s so nice of you!

Wasn’t that easy?  And fun!  How about this:

Christian person:  Merry Christmas!
Jewish person:  Thanks!  You too!

See!  Don’t you feel merrier and happier already?

Random person #1:  Happy Holidays!
Random person #2:  They’re not “holidays.”  There’s only one real holiday, that is, MY holiday.  Please don’t wish me happiness unless you’re doing it for the right reason.

ZZZZZT!  Wrong.  Remember the rule:  whatever merry or happy you are wished, the proper response is “Thanks!”  Seriously, try it.  My prediction is:  you might actually feel merry and/or happy.

But I do want to say a quick word about the “put the Christ back in Christmas”***/”Reason for the Season” crowd.  I’m perfectly fine with putting Christ back in Christmas if that means, on December 25, focusing on the religious meaning of the birth of Christ instead of acquisition of new and better electronic devices and fleece sweaters.  Indeed, I enjoy focusing on the Christian religious meaning of Christmas, and each year find myself learning and reflecting on important things from and with my Christian family and friends.  And, happily, acquiring cool electronics and fleeces.

But if “put the Christ back in Christmas” means the only merry or happy we all get to say starting after, say, Halloween or perhaps Labor Day is “Merry Christmas,” I’m afraid I have to (merrily and happily) dissent.  And because I’m a complete nerd, I have to point out that the “reason for the season” is not, in fact, the birth of Christ, but the need of early Christians to promote their new religion by attaching their observances to existing pagan solstice celebrations.****  So technically the reason for the season is the circuit of the earth around the sun, the beginning of the lengthening of days, and the need of people in the cold and dark to eat fun high-carb foods and drink enough to forget the cold and dark.

Still, snarkiness and nerdiness aside, I really think there should be more merries and happies rather than fewer, and that when someone wishes you a merry or happy that doesn’t line up with your particular views, just go with the merriness and happiness.  And feel free to wish others merriness and happiness for whatever reason strikes you.

Or if you want to try for more calendrical accuracy, here are some suggestions:*****

Dec. 1       Rosa Parks Day
Dec. 2       Chanukah
Dec. 3       International Day of People with Disabilities
Dec. 4       National Cookie Day
Dec. 5       First Sunday in Advent
Dec. 6       Finnish Independence Day
Dec. 7       Islamic New Year
Dec. 8       National Brownie Day
Dec. 9       Jeff’s Birthday
Dec. 10    Constitution Day
Dec. 11    International Mountain Day
Dec. 12    Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Dec. 13    National Cocoa Day
Dec. 14    National Bouillabaisse Day
Dec. 15    Bill of Rights Day
Dec. 16    South African Day of Reconciliation
Dec. 17    National Maple Syrup Day
Dec. 18    International Migrants Day
Dec. 19    National Oatmeal Muffin Day
Dec. 20    National Games Day
Dec. 21    Winter Solstice
Dec. 22    National Date Nut Bread Day
Dec. 23    Festivus
Dec. 24    Chinook’s Birthday
Dec. 25    Christmas
Dec. 26    Boxing Day; beginning of Kwanzaa
Dec. 27    St. Stephen’s Day
Dec. 28    Card Playing Day
Dec. 29    Pepper Pot Day
Dec. 30    Festival of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute******
Dec. 31     New Year’s Eve

* There have been circumstances in which that would have been an appropriate greeting in our house, but I’ll spare you the details.

** Unpleasant even when justified.

*** But do remember to “Keep the Han in Hanukkah.”  (h/t Laura R.)

**** There are a couple of other theories too.  http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

***** Recipients of our 2006 holiday card will recognize that I’m recycling material here.  And yes, Mom, I corrected the typo.

****** Not a lot of documentation for this one, but I really liked it.

Rule 1:  These rules govern the procedure in all civil actions and proceedings in the United States district courts, except as stated in Rule 81. They should be construed and administered to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.

Rule 1.5:  Don’t be a dick.

I don’t know if any of you caught the hilarious animation ridiculing the iphone, but the tag line at the end was “Xtranormal.  If you can type, you can make movies.”  Well, I’ve always thought that I’d be a great animator, but for my total and complete inability to draw, so Xtranormal seemed like a great service:  my deathless prose; their artistic renderings.

Here is my first attempt.   Possibly not funny outside our case team, but importantly, I totally cracked myself up.

I pondered whether it was a good idea to post this and concluded that it was OK:  I don’t name the defendant, and every last bit of it is in the public record.  True,  as a technical matter, no giant saw blade was involved, and I don’t generally wear my Coffee Woman superhero outfit to court.  But it is otherwise completely accurate.