This is a terrible abuse of my blogging privileges and surely sanctionable under the Bloggers’ Code, but I have a sincere bleg for my legally-minded colleagues and readers. I’m positive I recall a case, possibly written by Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit, which makes the point that a complaint doesn’t meet the standards of Rules 8 or 9(b) merely because it contains a lot of words. Rather, the words have to fit and satisfy the juridical elements of a legal claim. (I realize that Rule 8’s "short and plain" requirement suggests this, but I’m going for overkill.) I also seem to recall the case containing some quip about how you can’t just file the New York Times and demand your day in court.
If any of this rings a bell, and you recall the case, leave a comment. I promise that any information you leave will be used by the forces of truth and virtue in their neverending battle against evil and tyrrany.
In the alternative, leave an insult. (I don’t get enough of that in my line of work.) I’ll post the best in an update tomorrow.
UPDATE: Well, it turns out that our readers can at least do something well. The insults were fast, furious, and sometimes downright funny. Y’all should be, umm, proud of yourselves.
Jes, a virtual insult machine (or is it insulting machine?), gets top prize. Not for her "five assed Eskimo" insult, which got most of the press, but for deploying the WMD of insults in her post: a Menudo reference.
May 4 undercover members of Menudo fill up Diabetic Desserts while hiding out in your recommended daily allowance of ant farm.
An honorably mention to Hilzoy, who took the Barlett’s approach and submitted the following gem from Disraeli (among others):
"If a traveller were informed that such a man was leader of the House of Commons," Disraeli once remarked of his colleague, "he may well begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped an insect."
Kudos to all.
I call shenanigans.
May a plethora of my favorite corpses give the Heimlich to door nails around your green eggs and ham.
May 62 wicked judges hide evil ducks while tinkering with your refurbished lower intestine.
May 1,024 very badly burned damn dirty apes fantasize about Uranus while kicking your local Starbucks.
May 666 obese elected officials live La Vida Loca with $240 worth of pudd’n after shoving glass shards into your diseased hotel minibar.
May a barrel of crispy scientists play naked twister with spicy chicken all over your liquified excrement.
May a bushel of genetically cloned five-assed eskimos curse at squid tentacles outside your fishing buddy.
May 4 undercover members of Menudo fill up Diabetic Desserts while hiding out in your recommended daily allowance of ant farm.
May 101 flaccid late night talk show hosts flash genitals beside your Swedish helicopter.
May a handful of worried Mormons brainwash dust bunnies after applying Preparation H to your filthy dumpster.
Jes and I had the same idea, but went to different sites.
He is a man of splendid abilities but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.
– – – John Randolph
He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
– – – John Bright
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
– – – H. H. Munro
He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.
– – – Paul Keating
He is so mean, he won’t let his little baby have more than one measle at a time.
– – – Eugene Field
He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
– – – Mark Twain
He was as great as a man can be without morality.
– – – Alexis de Tocqueville
He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin.
– – – Dorothy L. Sayers
He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
– – – Molly Ivins
He was trying to save both his faces.
– – – John Gunther
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
– – – Oscar Wilde
She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.
– – – Jean Webster
She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
– – – W. Somerset Maugham
She proceeds to dip her little fountain-pen filler into pots of oily venom and to squirt the mixture at all her friends.
– – – Harold Nicholson
You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.
– – – Mark Twain
five-assed eskimos?
(Jesurgislac rocks)
With the result that Hilzoy appears literate and I just appear… ahem. 😉
(Five-assed Eskimos? It’s an interesting image, at least.)
Yes, hilzoy is terrifyingly literate. But there is much to be said for being…”ahem.”
But there is much to be said for being…”ahem.”
Five-assed?
[Is anyone else getting images of South Park here? “Behold! I have created an Eskimo… with FIVE ASSES!”]
I always wanted to be ahem, but I ended up this way instead. (Namely, able to cut and paste from other people’s sites.)
But this one I had stored away myself, because I love it. It’s Disraeli on one of his rivals:
“”If a traveller were informed that such a man was leader of the House of Commons,” Disraeli once remarked of his colleague, “he may well begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped an insect.””
You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
von, you might find this insulting.
I love Disraeli. Prime Ministers just haven’t been the same since.
“Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your book, which I shall waste no time in reading.”
“He has to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective.”
“Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty, you should lay it on with a thick trowel.”
And of course the famous: “Yes, I am a Jew; and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
Also, he is credited with the even more famous: “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.”
hilzoy: don’t for a minute think I was implying one cannot be both terrifyingly literate and delightfully “ahem.” If anyone is both, surely it is you (and Edward and Moe Lane).
Von, on the other hand, is neither. (Does that count as an insult?)
You’re a lawyer.
Pretty sure that it’s not the case you’re for, but Posner’s decision in Davis v. Ruby Foods is a hoot.
Oh, and courtesy of Oscar Wilde:
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
You’re a lawyer.
Oooo…doesn’t that violate the posting rules?
;p
Lawyer: “You know, 99% of lawyers are making the rest of us look bad.”
That may understate the percentage by quite a bit.
You mean in other kinds of grad school professors don’t end the class with a plaintive plea to at least sometimes use your powers for good and not evil? Huh.
No point. Deconstructionists always use their powers for evil. As do mathematicians.
Mathematicians don’t always use their powers for evil. Statisticians do. 🙂
100% of statisticians* use their powers for evil.
*Statisticician is defined herein as a person who misleads using statistic and no other definition…
Three statisticians go duck hunting. One shoots at a duck and is a foot high. The second is a foot low. The third says “we got him.”
Unless I’m completely mistaken, the quote attributed to Molly Ivins was in maddeningly frequent use by practically every kid in my sixth grade class, circa 1972.
Slart, were you a student or the teacher?
You say that like the roles are never reversed, if even briefly.
Student, though. I’m not quite THAT old. And what I had to teach was patience.
Mathematicians don’t always use their powers for evil.
Wanna bet?
Great blog, btw, rilkefan. Except I’m now all depressed with all the things I could have been accomplishing…
Thanks, JerryN. It’s not the one I’m thinking of, but it is classic Posner:
I would have thought that mathematicians pretty much used their powers only for exponentiation.