Rusty’s Blog

I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately beyond NCAA Picks. It is worth noting that — barring another mishap of some sort — I’ll be having my wisdom tooth surgery for real on Monday. More on that in my original post about it.

Other items:

There’s a presidential election in less than a month. I have not written much about it here. Maybe not anything actually. If you can look at the last eight years and say, “oh yeah, gimme some more of that!” there’s probably not much I could say to you that’s going to change your mind.

I did have some fun with Photoshop the other night as I was waiting for the second presidential debate to start though, my friend:

Perhaps I’m a masochist, because I bought tickets to the Tennessee-UGA game this weekend. I’ll be traveling with Alyssa, who is good people even if she is a UGA fan.

UGA is a 13-point favorite despite losing the last two games by a combined score of 84-47. Even though history tells us anything can happen in this game, I picked UGA to cover in my picks. The tickets weren’t expensive, fortunately, and they do sell alcohol in Athens the last time I checked.

My 30th birthday is coming up in just over a month. I have no idea how I want to go about marking the occasion. Any ideas?

Not too long ago, Amber and I took a landlord from an apartment building we used to live in to court — magistrate court, to be specific. We have yet to write much about this encounter, but probably will someday. That’s not what this post is about.

This post is about clown parades.

Magistrate court is a clown parade: an endless source of amusement, sadness and unsettling epiphanies about how miserable, stupid and unfair life can be.

In magistrate court, people frequently forgo the services of an actual lawyer to sue and defend themselves against lawsuits. With rare exception, these people have not the slightest idea what they’re doing. They fill out forms incorrectly, they speak out of turn, their arguments (if you can call them that) trail off into tangents and they are reprimanded by the judge and bailiffs over-and-over again.

Sometimes people just can’t afford a lawyer. Sometimes people have seen enough episodes of Law and Order to think they can get by against an actual lawyer. Regardless of the reason, where magistrate court stops being amusing and morphs into the macabre is people often will torpedo a legitimate claim with their ineptitude.

In one case that came up in court before ours, a man appeared to have a legitimate beef with his landlord. I don’t remember the details of the case, and they’re unimportant now. The man was suing the landlord for probably a couple of thousand dollars. When the judge asked him to explain how he came up with the number, the man just said something like, “that’s what seemed about right.” Not surprisingly, he was lectured by the judge and the case was thrown out.

I was reminded of this clown parade by another one that’s been unfolding this week.

President Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake asked Congress for $700 billion this week to bail out some failed private investments.

When asked for a justification for this number, a Treasury spokesperson said, “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Now, if that poor sap in magistrate court is required to provide a reason to ask for a couple of thousand dollars, one would think that the president, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve would need to provide a reason when asking for $700 billion.

Apparently not.

A benefit of writing blogs is you can revisit your old self occasionally, check in, and compare notes. Since interviews seem to be the new black this week, I thought this would be a good time to see how things are going for myself circa August 2004.

But first, a disclaimer: when conducting an interview with your past self, you must be careful not to reveal any information about the future which might set your past self on an alternate timeline. You might be tempted, as Biff was in Back to the Future II for example, to send your past self future sports scores so your current self may reap the profits.

Don’t.

You might destroy the entire space-time continuum, or you may end up sending yourself crippling addictions to ketamine, nickel-plated revolvers, and expensive champagne. Don’t ask questions, that’s just how The Rule of Unintended Consequences works. It won’t end well.

With that in mind…

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