The Wrong Person?

[I wanted to share a hilarious little piece in this week's New York Times Magazine, "Consumer Man," by comedian and writer Paul Mecurio. The first part is copied below; click the link for the rest of the story. Happy Sunday!]

I’m one of those people who yell at store clerks. Not just any store clerks, but the ones who are rude, incompetent or indifferent. In other words, all store clerks. I’m the guy who always has to speak to the manager. In my head, I’m “Consumer Man”: a superhero fighting on behalf of oppressed consumers the world over. In my wife’s head, I’m crazy.

“Someday you’re going to scream at the wrong person,” she says. “And you’re going to get shot.” This “wrong person” has figured into so many of our conversations that I feel as if I know him, even though I really know only two things: 1) he’s “wrong” and 2) he’s going to shoot me.

One day I called a computer company and tried to reach a human in customer service. As I ran a gantlet of voice prompts, I couldn’t get the automated female voice to understand me when I said “yes.” Repeatedly, she asked if I’d like customer service. Each time, I said “yes.” She kept asking. I could feel consumers everywhere being oppressed. So, standing there in my superhero costume (boxers and T-shirt), it was Consumer Man to the rescue. Instead of saying “yes,” I tried other one-word responses.

“Would you like customer service?”

“Idiot!”

“Would you like customer service?”

“Moron!”

“Would you like customer service?”

“Whore!”

As this insane tirade took place, my wife and 8-year-old son looked on in shock. I vowed to change my ways — or at least to tell my wife that I was changing them. A new, more tolerant me was born. Someone else would have to fight for the rights of consumers. I had a family to not “frighten to death” anymore.

[Click here to read more!]

Saturday Usage Tip #1

New feature! Isn't this exciting?

I will attempt to post, on each and every Saturday, a tip from Bryan A. Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press, 2003), "the authority on grammar, usage, and style." (See here for David Foster Wallace's review of the dictionary in Harper's - and read the footnotes, because they're hilarious.) Why bother posting about such things? Well, as implied in the last post, I am kind of a weirdo, okay? So I get all hot under the collar when I see a misplaced apostrophe (Coat's On Sale - ugh!), and I cry to the heavens when someone scornfully says the opposite of what they mean ("I could care less" - oh yuck). And since this is my blog, I'm going to go ahead and get on a grammar-spelling-usage soapbox once a week, and if it makes just one person stop using the word irregardless, I'll have done my part for the world. Let's begin, shall we?

reason is because. This construction is loose because reason implies because and vice versa.... [T]he type "the reason is because" (instead of "the reason... is that") aches with redundancy, and is still... inadmissible in Standard English. After reason is, you'll need a noun phrase, a predicate adjective, or a clause introduced by that.
The best cure for reason is because is to replace because with that--e.g.:

• "Perhaps the most difficult shot in golf to consistently master is a high, soft, flop shot off a tight lie. Part of the reason is because [read reason is that] to effectively hit the shot requires a looping swing and accelerated clubhead speed."

Variations such as reason is due to are no better--e.g.: "It's a challenge for any athlete to come back after four years of inactivity. The challenge is even greater when the reason is due to injury [read the layoff is due to injury or injury is the cause]".

Garner's Modern American Usage, 2003, pp. 674-75. Quotations and citations omitted.

You're Not Famous 'til You Have a Project

It's just past the wire on Friday night. I was hoping to post every day this week - I seem to have missed the mark by several minutes. Well, you can't say that I didn't try.... Anyway, onward!

This past Wednesday the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a voting rights case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, which Dahlia Lithwick promptly wrote about over at Slate. (Courtesy of SCOTUSblog, you can find the case history here, the transcript here, and the blog's comments here. How great is that?) At issue in the case is whether requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls is constitutional. It's an important case with considerable political overtones and potential ramifications, and Lithwick doesn't seem to think that it went so well for the voters, though the Court has yet to issue its opinion. As interesting as that all is, though, that's not really the point of this post.

In linking to the appellate decision in the Crawford case, which it calls "the most readable piece of legal writing in history" (big words!), the Slate article directed me to a website called Project Posner, which is dedicated to the opinions of formidable 7th circuit Judge Richard A. Posner. Now, I'm a pretty big geek, but I was really happy to learn that someone had had the sense to collect all these great opinions in one place where they're fairly easily browseable and searchable. Now if only there were similar pages about Judges Easterbrook and Kozinski, I'd be in geek heaven. (There is a pretty neat page about Judge Kozinski, but it only lists a few of his more famous opinions.)

Oh, and also: Judge Posner is himself a blogger! You can read his stuff over at the Becker-Posner Blog, which he co-authors with Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker.

Operation Soda Mountain

While reading Today's Papers, I picked up that on Tuesday the military launched an offensive in Diyala, Iraq. The name of the operation: Phantom Phoenix. This got me thinking. Whose job is it to figure out what to call a particular military operation? There is no small number of these! And they have names like Ivy Serpant, White House, Tiger Clean Sweep, and the totally mean-sounding Devil Siphon. Arrowhead Blizzard! Panther Squeeze! Bulldog Mammoth! And of course, because we need a double entendre in at least every other post, let's not leave out Operation Desert Thrust. Uh! Seriously, some officer somewhere really, really enjoys his work.

Easterbrook on Easterbrook

Recently, TR favorite Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote a characteristically witty opinion in FTC v. QT, Inc. (see comments at Decision of the Day). QT et al. marketed and sold the "Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet," available in both "silver" and "gold" (actually, both made of brass) as a miraculous cure for chronic pain. Easterbrook cuts to the chase and calls the claims "techno-babble" and "blather." Here's one representative (and fabulous) excerpt, in case you need more convincing to spend the 5 minutes to read the opinion: Defendants might as well have said: “Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.”

In the most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback, the other (Gregg) Easterbrook gave a shout-out to his big bro in this week's Family Moment.

Last week, Official Brother Frank Easterbrook, a federal appeals judge, upheld a large judgment against the maker of Q-Ray bracelets, saying its claim that "Q-rays" exist and confer fantastic health benefits is "poppycock" and "a form of fraud." Q-ray bracelets supposedly deliver astonishing "bio-energy." Frank found they were just metallic trinkets.

Yet here's a true story: In 2002 and 2003, the Official Wife of TMQ experienced persistent pain in her right hand, probably from too much keyboard time at work. She was taking ibuprofen and naprosyn, plus attaching pain patches (local analgesic) to her hand and right wrist, and was still in pain. The family was in Colorado for a while in conjunction with yours truly teaching at my beloved alma mater, Colorado College. I suggested she get a copper bracelet, especially one made by a Native American; she scoffed. We took the kids to see Manitou Springs, an old cowboy town that hosts craft shops. I went from shop to shop asking for not just a Native American-made copper bracelet but one that had been blessed by a medicine man. I found one seller, an Arapaho jeweler, who said his work was blessed by a shaman. (Probably later he said to his wife, "Guess what, today I had a customer from Maryland who believes in the medicine-man stuff.") Nan put the bracelet on. Her pain was gone in two days and has never returned. True story.

#1 Unofficial Market: Law Students

From Slate's Human Nature:

A study suggests a drug [orexin-A] can compensate for sleep deprivation. Monkeys that were kept awake for 30 to 36 hours were "significantly impaired" on cognitive tests, but in those that got a peptide dose just before the tests, "cognitive skills improved to the normal, non-sleep-deprived, level." Official market: "patients suffering from narcolepsy and other serious sleep disorders." Unofficial market: truckers, "shift workers, the military and many other occupations where sleep is often limited." Caveats: 1) The drug didn't enhance performance in well-slept monkeys. 2) Let's check it for side effects before troops and truckers start using it.

In the kind of coincidence that writers pray for, apparently the drug is particularly potent when taken through the nose.

Exclamatory Disclaimer

Sorry for all the exclamation points in the last few posts. I've been finding myself drawn to them recently. Maybe the combined excitement of starting school, electing a party representative, and cheerful sun are getting the better of me. Anyway, for the sake of your cynicism, I'll try to tone it down from now on.

New Hampshire Day!

Today is the day of the second big primary of the season: New Hampshire! Obama eked out a victory in the first round of the Democratic primary in Dixville Notch (pop. 75), winning seven whole votes, and John McCain was the big winner in the Republican primary with four. Good job, dudes!

For lots more news on the NH primary (even China is reporting!), I've already done the hard work for you here.

All this shaking-hands-kissing-babies is fun! Who doesn't love to see grown men and women jostling for position in every possible medium? See e.g. the photo below of a streetcorner in New Hampshire, taken by my Hillary-supporting, half Persian, half Cajun, totally effervescent cousin Leila.

Freakish Weather

Tomorrow's set to be 70 degrees! In DC! In January! Woohoo!

The one thorny bit about the wacked-out weather patterns up here is wardrobe-related: just as I get ready to finally (finally) put away my cute summer ballet flats and swishy skirts, a day like this pops up and my closet remains perpetually crowded.

Back with a vengeance

So I'm fresh off of vacation, back in DC and ready to start a new semester with little memory of the disappointments (sigh) of the last. A new day is dawning, people!

On the schedule from January 7th through April 15th:

1. Civil Procedure continues with silver-haired and -tongued law professor extraordinaire Peterson.

2. Contracts continues with charismatic charmer and section 12 favorite Cunningham.

3. We begin the study of Constitutional Law with Barron, the fellow who wrote the book.

4. And finally, Communists beware, we embark on the study of property with a new gentleman, Overton.

The desk is clear, the backpack is full, the mind is ready to absorb. Excitement abounds! Stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, content yourselves with GWLaw's namesake, former President Washington. Isn't he handsome?