Moot Win/Pacha London/Dom Boots

Miscellaneous disjointed updates:

After spending more time and energy thinking about eyelash-tinting than mentally healthy, I’m pleased to report that we won Wednesday’s moot and are in the next round of the competition. Notable successes of the day included restraining ourselves from referring to Jennifer Lopez’s butt insurance while trying to argue that “Demi Massinger”, the model suing our beautician client, could bloody well have gone and insured her eyelashes if they were that important to her career. Also satisfactory was our efficient downing of Screaming Orgasms and peach margaritas in the 20 minutes we had in the pub before we had to catch the train back to London. A rather fulfilling day.

Don’t bother with Pacha London on a Friday night unless you want to see the tackiest chandelier ever, and pay nearly twice the price (£15!) for half the quality of music you can get in Turnmills. The crowd was friendly and unpretentious, though, which is always good. Even Martini Breath Guy who felt it was very very important to talk to me in order to promote the interaction of Western and Eastern cultures, and who simply couldn’t understand that my name was not Mya-Chung or Mi-Choo or something else vaguely Oriental sounding, was amusing for about ten minutes.

The dominatrix boots have received their first wearing. I managed to teeter quite successfully through the Egyptian and Greek sections of the British Museum, although staircases raised minor issues. Teething problems. I’ll whip these boots into shape soon enough.

Django is showing me love for the first time in a long while. Goodbye 20th Century (Sonic Youth) and Sounds From The Gulf Stream (Marine Research) are hopefully pootling their way across the Atlantic to me. Yay.

Setting Clear Priorities

Clearly, when I am under severe pressure not to let UCL down when I represent it tomorrow in the Blackstone’s Moots, the most important things I should be doing with my time should include redoing my desktop icon/wallpaper combinations, (re)reading December’s edition of Cosmo, and attempting to dance to Alien Ant Farm’s rendition of Smooth Criminal, all this rather than actually writing legal arguments as to why “Demi Massinger, a well-known model” shouldn’t be able to claim damages from my beautician client for losing her opportunity to be a Bond Girl due to a disastrous eyelash tint.

Clearly.

Bugger, Bugger, Bugger

Just found out that I have a jurisprudence essay due this Friday. I must not have known about this because it must have been announced at one of the three seminars I decided to skive. Conveniently, I am also told that the major focus of the essay just happens to be the material covered in the aforesaid seminars. Somehow I always manage to do this to myself. It’s a sort of gift.

So, er, if anyone’s got (jurisprudentially informed) views on whether:
1. there is a right answer to every legal question, or
2. what function the notion of community has in the making of law,
I will be eternally grateful and consider naming my firstborn child after you (as long as you’re not called Prunella or Bubba or something similarly vile) if you send a few ideas my way.

[While we’re on the subject of my general crapness, I ought to write here and now that I had a productive power lunch today with Sabrina, where we tried to get our act together about our external moot in January (representing UCL at the Blackstone’s mooting competition), and I have to know something about incorporation of terms into contracts by December 28th so we can start assembling our cunning plan for world moot domination. Must not let Sabrina down. Must not let Sabrina down.]

[While we’re on the subject of my general malaise, I should also add that the only reason I’m typing this whinge right now instead of studying my arse off in the library is because we’ve all been evacuated due to what is apparently a fire emergency. This will, no doubt, give the little gremlins that live in the UCL library ample time to take the books I was using and hide them in Medieval Feminine Hygiene Products or some other ridiculously obscure section of the library. They do this frequently. I was hoping I’d foiled them today. Obviously not. Gah.]

Hall Chronicles: ABBA Priest /Jurisprudence Choices

Tiny glittery stars are strewn along the floors of my hall, incredibly well dispersed from their original places on the tables at our Christmas dinner party by getting caught and carried in clothes and under shoes, or unstuck from noses and cheeks and foreheads. It’s rather nice.

The Christmas party had highs and lows, lows being the mediocre cuisine and people who couldn’t sing particularly well deciding they’d sing for what felt like particularly long, but of course we all clapped and squealed and hollered “Encore!” because that’s what this hall is like, highs being Mark’s unfailing ability to choose the exact moment a priest is walking by to be saying PUBES!!!, giggling with Tay about him getting his guitar out and leading everyone in a rousing chorus of “FEEEEEEEED THE WOOOOOORLD”, and a brief period in the bar where a small number of people were going absolutely apeshit dancing until everyone promptly decided they were far too drunk to continue and went off to vomit/attempt to pull/sleep.

Neither high nor low but just in a whole other dimension was Father J dressing up as the Queen (complete with handbag) and giving his version of the Queen’s speech (tailored for the hall), which included statements like a new pricing system for showers which would involve “50p for a 30 second spurt”, and then dancing to, unsurprisingly but terrifyingly, Dancing Queen.

Life was somewhat back to normal yesterday, or at least it seemed normal by the time I’d woken up at 2 pm. Have been grappling with a morass of practical really-must-do’s since then – Conflict of Laws reading, choosing my Big Jurisprudence Book option for next term (see below if interested), badgering NatWest about the Switch card they’re supposed to send me but haven’t.

[I’m going for Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates as first choice and Machiavelli’s The Prince as second. Discarded Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship and Montesquieu’s The Spirit Of The Laws early on because they take a more sociological approach to the law than I’m interested in, decided against Finnis’s Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dworkin’s Life’s Dominion and Mill’s On Liberty despite their legendary status because they felt like ground a little too well trodden, and finally eliminated Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic rather reluctantly later on because they sounded a little less fun than my final two choices, and also because, as Alec pointed out, it might ultimately feel unfulfilling and difficult to take them on without a wider grounding in philosophy.]

Pleasant distractions abound, though. Amazing dinner at Alec’s, cooked by Larry (home-made bread, tortellini, duck, The Mother Of All Chocolate Cakes, wine, some other alcoholic beverage that tasted of lemons). Excitement about Friday’s Tori Amos gig, and Saturday’s outing to Rent. Slight consternation as to how to avoid nudity and freezing in Andorra in a few weeks, note to self: find out about renting skiing clothes.

Just So You Know

I just want to take this opportunity to say to anyone reading this who ever sees themselves doing anything remotely related to land in the UK, for God’s sake register it. Register the land, register whatever interest you have in it, and employ the best damn legal advice on the planet so that you don’t screw up, because at this point of time I hate everyone and everything ever connected with land registration, and if people didn’t keep making mistakes, I wouldn’t have to read all about their cases.

Oh yeah. If you ever fancy becoming a judge who judges land registration cases (you sad bastard), just kill yourself now. I recommend a blunt spoon, doused in sewage. Be creative.

As for the people who drafted the Law of Property Act, Land Registration Act and Land Charges Act, I curse you with acute and chronic acne, a lifetime of bad hair days, and a virulent case of the crabs. May every toilet you use have a floater in it. May your children speak with the eloquence of whoopee cushions.

Yes. I have completed one of the three essays. It was about land. It took the entire weekend. Saturday was sunny. I am bitter and vengeful.