man oh man

how funny is it that the adsense ads along the top are all for sleep aids and insomnia cures? did i mention sleep, or is google just trying to tell me something?

"mel, it me, google. stop blogging at 2am and either study or go to sleep."

heh.

tripping over my joy

look out biznatches! the triumverate will soon rock the box. nothing you can do about it, just lock up the kids and pass the whisky.

and now back to your regularly scheduled exam-fuelled freak out. no, mel, that's just you. jesus, now i'm talking to myself. it's all over.

"nonsense upon stilts"

it is almost 2am and i am admittedly a little punch drunk. but i find the way that supreme court justices beat up on one another in their opinions sometimes to be terribly amusing and no one is here for me to tell about this right now. all my compadres are going with the "i have morning exams at some point and want to get on a regular sleep schedule" theory of exam studying. i am more of a "take it when i can get it" girl (and yes, this does apply to other parts of my life as well--just ask w). so if i'm on a roll and no one else is here to distract me, i can go all night.

but not necessarily in any coherent fashion, as evidenced by this post, which is beginning to sound suspiciously like legalese. not fucking cool.

so anyways, i'm reading this case where justice o'connor does a big no-no, at least acacording to my first year writing prof. she cites webster's dictionary as the source of defining certain words. the idaho law allows the phrase "utter disregard for human life" to be used as an aggravating factor sufficient for the death penalty, as the state's supreme court construed the language to refer only to "the cold-blooded, pitiless slayer." still with me? good.

she says that this passes muster because it works a meaningful narrowing on the body of murderers who are eligible for the death penalty. after all, she argues, a cold-blooded pitiless slayer is someone who kills without feeling or sympathy. some killers are angry, or jealous, or vengeful. these things are bad and nasty, but are at least some kind of feeling.

callousness is a state of mind that can be shown by the surrounding circumstances. and in this case, those circumstances are nightmare-inducingly bad and described in graphic detail. the killer was a guy who killed at least 27 people. 11 bodies were found in 7 different states. he said that if he was not completely isolated from society he would most definitely kill again, and specified 3 people on the outside who he would go after if he ever got out. the murder he got the death penalty for was of a fellow inmate. depending on which version of his story you believe, he aranged for this hapless fellow to be provided with a weapon that he could try to attack him with, which would justify the murder by self defense. he beat the guy over the head with a sock full of batteries until the plate in his head smashed. then, when the victim was totally helpless, he kicked him about the head and throat. they brought him to the hospital after a guard finally noticed the copious amounts of blood, and he died the same day.

anyway, o'connor does some crazy contortionist shit to show how clear and non-subjective this is as a standard. then blackmun calls her out. he says that her "reconstruction only highlights the deficient character of the nebulous formation that it seeks to advance." like "nonsense on stilts." fucking priceless.

this is how demented law school has made me. i can wring humor out of the utterly deranged.

"i don't even like dogs, but that's how the game is played"

w is not a morning person. to say the least. when we fight, it's usually in the morning (or afternoon really--morning to him).

this is not to say that i'm some kind of morning person. no sir. in fact i think that dealing with w's morning monster might be the payback that my mom was imagining with a gleam in her eye when i would yell FIVE MORE MINUTES from beneath my covers all those years. i am haunted by those words now as w utters them on a daily basis. and the alarm irritates me if i am already awake, and if he knows i'm already up he will let me be his snooze bar. then he doesn't even have to get out of bed to snooze, he can just yell, from 'neath the cozy blankets, FIVE MORE MINUTES!!

it sets up an interesting bargaining process sometimes though, whereby i will go in the bedroom and tell him i need his help (and cringe as i say those words i hated to hear my mom say so many years ago) and could he please get up. his responses are different every time, but always totally hilarious.

"five more minutes then wake me up with the tiger!" (i sometimes play survivor's "eye of the tiger" really loud to wake him up. or, in the alternative, the paul anka loungey version of said song.)

"i need more time! i went to bed after you!" (yeah, but not three hours after me.)

today i went in with bella (she gets up with me) and got back in bed to warm up my cold feet and wake him up, as i need his help around the house before i go study. i can't study with a messy house! even if i'm studying at school!

so bella is walking all over the bed, narrowly missing w's nuts left and right and he's yelling at her through clenched teeth to LAY DOWN and GO TO BED, the evening commands we use when she won't settle down to sleep. i mention that we just need a bigger bed. "a king," he asks? "california king," i reply. "then," he says, "we can get more dogs." "that's how they judge you," he mumbles, "not by money, but by how many dogs you have. i don't even like dogs, but that's how the game is played. first you get the dogs, then you get the bigger bed, then you get more dogs."

after catching my breath from all the laughter, i got out of bed. if he can be that funny after just waking up, he deserves five more minutes.