Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Things I want to do

See the Holiday Trains at NY Botanical Gardens (before 1/11)

Go to a Knicks game (did you know they have Duhon now?!?!?)

See EQUUS (Harry Potter naked!!!)

See Speed the Plow (Jeremy Piven (aka Ari Gold, Super-Agent) on Broadway!)

Probably a few other things I can't think of right now

EDIT!!!!
Speed the Plow is no longer starring Jeremy Piven b/c of MERCURY POISONING?!?!?!?!

boooo. so perhaps cross that off my list =(

Monday, December 15, 2008

My new hobby

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm actually quite the DIY-er (do-it-yourself-er).

Finding myself w/somewhere near 150+ old business cards, and not wanting to use them as wallpaper, I turned to the internet

Lo and behold, of course there are so many little uses for business cards. But I don't really have a need for 150 bookmarks. And I can't use them as return addresses on mail anymore b/c my school in Korea is not my return address.

I really liked the idea of using them as perfect little to-do lists.

Alas, my business cards are double-sided (one side in English and the other in Korean). So I couldn't use them as to-do lists or little note papers next to my phone.

Then, I found this website.

And that's how THIS


turns into THIS


Since I found all this while procrastinating during finals, I've only been making a few cubes at a time. But soon I will have a WHOLE LOT MORE and I will be able to make COOL shapes then. PUHAHAHA.

Yea. That's probably a sign I should get back to Torts now.

Last exam Wednesday morning and then OFF TO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ON THURSDAY!!!!

At least I have a back-up life skill if this whole law school thing doesn't work out. =T

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Contracts and Happily ever after

The intersection of Contract Law and children's fiction.

As I come to the end of the semester, I'd like to share a few of the thoughts that've crossed my mind during Contracts classes. Contracts is one of the required classes for our Foundation Curriculum. Taken in first-semester by most 1Ls throughout the US.

And it's a wonderful class. Not only did I learn how Contracts protect my freedom and liberty even more effectively than the "War on Terror," I also made poignant connections from Contracts class to the familiar fairy tales and cartoons of my childhood days.

There is SO MUCH that my favorite characters could have learned from Contracts. It's not a knight in shining armor or a Prince Charming that they needed. What fairy tales need to solve most (if not ALL) of their woes, is a skilled and adept contracts lawyer. Hopefully one who is very good at drafting.

I didn't do it on purpose, but somehow learning contracts doctrines reminded me of all the problems that my favorite fairy tale and other fictional characters had. Going through my notes to create my end-of-semester OUTLINE to study from, I came across the little notes I had written in the margin, trying desperately, perhaps futilely to figure out HOW my fairy tale friends could've been saved from their miserable fates by the prudence and foresight that modern contract doctrine provides.

Example 1.
Rumpelstiltskin. This is the one where the idiot farmer tells the prince that his daughter can spin GOLD out of STRAW or something like that so she gets locked in a room full of straw with a spinning wheel. And of course she caN'T. So she's all crying and then Rumpelstiltskin shows up and tells her that he'll spin the straw into gold for her in exchange for her firstborn child. Anyway the day comes when she has a child and Rumpelstiltskin comes to collect and the girl goes all berserk and so R cuts her a new deal where if she can guess his name, she can keep her child and the original deal is off. Luckily she stalks him to find him singing his name to himself and then is able to keep her child. Happily ever for her (even w/o contract) and poor old R who actually did all the hard work gets stuck alone in the woods.
ISSUES spotted 1. unconscionability (the kind on steroids), duress, constructive fraud, no consideration for modification on contract


Example 2.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The thing here is Willy Wonka's unilateral offer involving the Golden Tickets and an exclusive tour of his uber-secret factory. However, that spoiled brat Veruca Salt has her ridiculously rich dad just buy up a TON of chocolate and he has his factory workers just ripping them open until someone finds the Golden Ticket.
ISSUES spotted 2. who is the offeree who actually "accepted" the offer of the Golden Ticket? the factory worker. can you contract to have someone else perform (accept) on your behalf and then you get the offeror's performance? does not seem justicey at all...

Example 3.
The Little Mermaid. Ok, so in The Little Mermaid Ariel falls in love with Prince Eric (look forward to my love at first sight entry based on Gossip Girl) and following her father's total spaz-out because Eric's a human she goes to visit Ursula, the sea witch. The witch has an ulterior motive of blackmailing Ariel's father, King Triton, but first she has to make Ariel her captive. So Ursula names the price of her giving Ariel legs: Ariel's uniquely beautiful voice. If Ariel is unable to get Eric to kiss her, she becomes a little sea cretin - Ursula's prisoner.
ISSUES spotted 3. ok there are SO many things wrong here. again: unconscionability, constructive fraud (elements present: duress, unequal bargaining power, conflict of interests), liquidated damages that look totally like a penalty, nearly illusory promise (Ursula attempts to have complete control over the next few days' events), and DEFINITELY some tort claims thrown in there.

Example 4.
Rugrats. As children, my sister and I were avid fans of Rugats. So much so that my dad (who is like, totally pop culture illiterate) knew the characters on the show by description (i.e. "oh that potato head baby). There's this episode where Angelica saves Chuckie's life and so tells him that the "rule" is that he is now her slave for life. In a plot twist, he saves her life at the end of the episode and now she must be HIS slave for life.
ISSUES spotted 4. so anyway, given a few tweaks this would be an ideal "moral" consideration/past consideration case. however, Angelica's demand that Chuckie be her slave for life in "exchange" for her having saved his life is completely unenforceable. Even if he had been the one to make the offer, it would be treated as a gratuitous promise. Although, given Angelica's character, it's very likely that she didn't act "purely" gratuitously and expected something out of her act. In that case this could be an example of when the court recognizes "moral" consideration or restitution. Especially since he (was coerced into) actually performed - it could be read as his intent to enforce the "past promise" (Webb v. McGowin).

Example 5.
Pirates of the Caribbean. So the contract here was that Davy Jones would raise the Pearl and allow Jack Sparrow to captain her for 13 years in consideration for Sparrow's eternal service on Davy Jones' damned crew. Obviously, Sparrow tries to get out of it and in the end he does, but only after several years and a trip to Davy Jones' locker and the world's end and multiple battles costing lots of lives.
ISSUES spotted 5. Perhaps if he had brought suit for rescission of an admiralty contract he would've had better luck and avoided a lot of death and high-risk adventure. I would've suggested going with frustration of purpose or unconscionability (v.2.0) and maybe statute of frauds. Frustration of purpose b/c Barbossa stages a mutiny and Sparrow doesn't get to be captain for the specified period. In addition, there are only hints of how the agreement was reached but I imagine that Davy Jones was taking the Pearl as he does other ships that run aground (POTC 2) and Sparrow somehow bargained his way so's to postpone joining Jones' crew (serving for eternity rather than the typical 100 years). So maybe this would be considered a modification w/o separate consideration even. And anyway neither's performance could be completed within a year so statute of frauds is sure to block enforcement (no writing).

Ok. Tired from actual contract exam today. (haha rather than forgetting the course i'm all like YAYY more contracts examples!) - CivPro time starts tomorrow w/exam on Friday. (then 2/3 done!)

Monday, December 8, 2008

An oily question



How do they make olive oil? Or any of those oils for that matter? Coconut oil? Sesame oil? Grapeseed oil?

I have a vague instinct(?) that is has to do with compressing/squeezing the "thing" but I can't possibly IMAGINE how hard you'd have to squeeze an olive to get all the "oil" out of it. I mean, I guess there's all this stuff called technology and stuff today so they have some big silver cylinder machines somewhere doing this, but I really can NOT NOT NOT imagine how they made olive oil and sesame oil waaaaaaaay back when, when it was first invented.

How those Italians (Greeks?) and Asians even thought to squeeze an olive or sesame (seed?) until you got oil from it is beyond me.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

What do I want

my girlfriends, a half dozen bottles of wine, and a few of the guys sprinkled in later

what does that mean? let me translate

One of my favorite memories at duke goes like this.

I think a few of us girls had had a ROUGH week and feeling pretty beat up and tired had gone out to splurge a bit on dinner. I had gone on a Target run earlier in the day and whilst dropping off friends on Central Campus, I decided to just grab the bottle of Riesling I had in the trunk and head up to my friend's apartment.

We all decided this was the smartest thing I'd done all week and proceeded to open up the bottle of aptly named, "Relax."



This somehow led to another bottle or two of the house wine to be opened and consumed. And I think at 2 1/2 bottles down we realized there would be no more if we finished the remaining half! WELL, first we had to check the time bc NC is kindof a dry state and they stop selling the hard stuff and the non-beer stuff at like 9 or 11 or something like that. Once we found out we had like 15 minutes to make a wine raid, we had to figure out who was soberest ... no longer remember but think it was unlikely to have been me, to drive to the nearest BP for some more wine (classy, you bet!).

So we herd into my car (ok, POSITIVE i wasn't the driver) and head over to BP to get at least another bottle or two before heading back to the apartment. By this point we were ridiculously silly. Seriously, I can't remember anything other than thinking EVERYTHING was SO FREAKING HILARIOUS!!! But anyway, at some point our guy friends started texting and calling us to see what we were up to. We convinced them to join us and they turn up TOTALLY SOBER (which was a surprise!) and I think they may have sat around laughing at us for a bit before they realized how sober they were and went somewhere to remedy that. Maybe. I actually have no idea. I remember NOT blacking out, but that's about it.

Haha. I just remember how warm it was in the apartment, how nice it was to hear all our laughter, how we couldn't stop laughing, how we kept counting the empty bottles and laughing even more, how I was blamed for drinking the least (probably only the one bottle on my own), and how no one really cared.

It wasn't crazy, or wild, or scandalous, or even that interesting - seeing how I can't remember a single specifically funny thing about the night. But it's just a wonderful secure happy memory. One that'll keep me warm for the ages.

=) nostalgic, I suppose. But with the phone calls I've been having lately, can you blame me?

I don't even care to apologize for the non-literariness or anything of this post. This one is for me.