August 2008

IANAL* (But…)

by WSBA Bar News Editor Michael Heatherly

OMG! Instead of reading books and writing letters I have been reading the blogs and now I dont write as good. I forget where to put the paragraphs and grammer. Also most of our writing is text messages or IM or chat or comments on websites. so we don't use capitols and punctuasion and we shrtn the wrds or UA (use acronymns). And because of technology your cell phone spells words for you so all you need to no is what letter it starts with and the number of letters and the phone guesses the word. Or we dont write at all instead we video everything and put it on YouTube. You know like that one about the Iowa floods where the fru fru reporter lady is in the canoe talking about how deep it is then two guys walk in front of the camera and the water is only up to like their ankles. Hilarous.

Now that Tim Russert and Peter Jennings are gone and the other old news people just do shows once a year about fly-fishing or World War II, we get our news from random websites and those yelly cable talk shows with the right-wing vs left-wing nutjobs and you can hardly wait till the commercial comes on for that thing where you put all your clothes in a bag and use your vacuum to suck it down to the size of a pancake. People say things like Barrack Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist and if he gets elected he will invite Osama Bin Laden to live in the White House and Michelle will spend the whole federal budget on shoes to be the hottest first lady since Jackie O. Kennedy. And how can you tell if its true or not. Or the people for Obama call McCain "Walnuts" because he has those squirrelly cheeks and they say he is so old he will stroke out right after the inauguration and whoever is vice president will be president and if its Mitt Romney he will pass a law so we all have to become Mormons.

This will be a historic election because it is the first one where I have a high-def TV. I think Obama will win because he is teh cute. Just like when they first had TV and Kennedy won because Nixon had that ski jump nose and wore makeup like they put on people for open-casket funerals. McCain's wrinkles show up in high-def which is too bad because he got shot down in the war and tortured and he cant raise his arms so you have to respect him for that. And did you see now their going to make it illegal to talk on your cell phone when your driving unless you put one of those Bluetooth things in your ear like a corporate dorkwad. Thats in Washington and California. I saw in California its ok to get gay married again but they have to vote to see if its permanent. Hey did you see where that one judge who was having a trial about porn turned out to have his own website with really weird porn on it like cows dressed as women and women dressed as cows? I would say thats ironic but the snarky blog police say "ironic" is way overused and its really just a bizarre coincidence. Whatevs. And he was appointed by Reagan!!1! Of course some people say that the more conservative somebody is the more likely their doing some kinky thing in private like Larry Craig who is against gay rights but spends his weekends in airport mens rooms or that governor from New York who busted all the hookers then got busted for shipping a hooker across state lines to his hotel.

And its like we all have ADD now. Because we keep jumping around on the Internets like when you just start reading something about how gas prices are still going up then you see a link on the side that says "Woman beats 7-foot sex offender with baseball bat" so you click on that and start reading then you see a link for "Sixth human foot washes up in BC" and you click on that and it says the sixth one was just a hoax where somebody took a bear paw or something and stuck it in a tube sock and an Addidas and threw it in the bay or sea or whatever they have up there. Pretty soon you cant remember where you started and you have to close all the windows and go back to the Google homepage. You wonder whether the world or at least the USA is going to end up like those science fiction movies with the late Charlton Heston where everybody is broke and living in the streets except for a few rich people who run the whole government which goes around kidnapping people to use as slaves or grind into food. I hope not. 

KTHXBAI! 

Bar News Editor Michael Heatherly is indeed a lawyer (IAL) and surfs and practices in Bellingham. He can be reached at 360-312-5156 or barnewseditor@wsba.org.

*IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer. For help in translating this article, see the partial list of IM acronyms at: www.jabber.org/im-acronyms.  :)