Before

Monthly Archive: July 2005

Culture

We don’t have liftoff

Mary and David Savoie had returned to their favorite viewing spot along the Indian River, bringing cousins from Pennsylvania to watch the shuttle launching in the distance.  Joshua Lacy had settled beside them with a cooler, and nearby, Tony Vivian had fired up his radio and grill.

All had staked out a grassy lot beside Route 1 to watch the first space shuttle liftoff in more than two years, but after hearing that the launching had been scrubbed, all left dejected.

“It was going to be so perfect,” said Ms. Savoie, casting one last glance at the Discovery, barely a glimmer across the water, before driving home to Sanford, near Orlando.  “Oh, well, make that past tense now.”

– New York Times, 14 July 2005

No, damn it, make that subjunctive!  Regular old past tense is used for things that actually happened in the past!  Grammar idiocy is killing this nation.

Law school

Nightmares

I am taking the Criminal Law final exam today.  As usual, whatever I am taking at the moment tends to inform my actions and thoughts.  Lately I have been going around muttering “guilty of this, guilty of that” when I see bad things happen to good people.

I had a terrible nightmare about this test last night.  In real life the exam has fifty multiple-choice questions (I hope).  In the dream, I got to question 45 or so and then I think I decided to go get a drink of water.  When I came back, I noticed I only had about fifteen minutes left for the last five questions — no sweat.  Then I hit question 51, and then 52, and then realized the exam was a lot longer than I thought.  I did what I could to plod through the rest of the questions, looking at tame stuff like accessories before the fact and criminal negligence involuntary manslaughter.  Then it started getting crazy — questions like “If Defendant has an equilibrium of 2p = 0 * 5, what is the optimum value for p?”  I started to panic a lot and did my best as the exam changed form into a hybrid legal/math/chemistry mess.  Time was called, but I was nowhere close to being done!  As I frantically counted carbon atoms, a tall white woman stood over me and said, “Time is up!  Time is up!”  I tried to mark “A” for each multiple-choice answer but found the exam spiraling into short answer, essay, everything!  “You have reached the secret bonus section of the exam,” it read at question 80.  “Some of these questions are trial questions for future versions of this exam.  Be sure to answer everything completely!”  She started grabbing my test.  The entire room started chanting “Finish him, finish him!”

And I woke up, jerking my head off the pillow with a start and a yell, afterschool-special style.  In all my life I’ve never had a dream about a test before.

It’s been a looooooong year.  School ends Thursday.