The "Wheels of Justice" sometimes have flat tires

On Monday, I had a fairly heated conversation with Gary, the managing partner of our inept attorney's firm. He was told in gory detail all of the ways which his employee has completely screwed the pooch; he got just a mite defensive.

Jeebus...it was like talking with a fuckin' trial attorney.

One of the many issues I had was that last Thursday, the mediator's first words to our attorney were, "What made you think this case was ready to mediate?" Sadly, it went downhill from there for nine hours.

Our attorney was utterly freaking clueless. She was not prepared. She had neglected to bring critical photographic documentation which has been in her possession for more than two years. She did not insist that the plaintiff be present (which is a rules violation in CA). She had not deposed anyone, yet was already trying to negotiate a settlement before she'd even built her goddamned case!! Plus plenty more.

About the only thing she said to my friend Jim - the owner of the roofing company - afterwards was to advise him to retain a personal attorney (as the damages the crooked plaintiff wants are about $400K over our policy limits).

And she followed up by mailing him a letter the next day putting her advice in writing. What a dangerously incompetent maroon. It would seem that the University of San Diego has a Special Needs Law School.

Gary said that he'd "look into the matter" and try to get back to me later that day (as he claimed he was going to San Francisco for the day on Tuesday).

By an odd coincidence, about 30 minutes after my call, Jim got a "P.R. call" from Gary. One of the things he told Jim was that I was "very emotional".

(As DFC!, our marvelously helpful "consulting attorney" wrote in an email to me yesterday, "You were emotional?  GOOD!!!  That's how people react when they're being deprived of zealous and competent representation.")

I asked Jim if Gary had said I was actually wrong about anything I reamed him for, apparently I was not.

Heh!

Even more coincidentally, shortly after Jim's call from Gary, our attorney called to advise Jim that she would finally start scheduling depositions. (She claimed the insurer had been holding her back from this; we'll see if that's the truth...)

Jim's personal attorney will be talking to the claims adjuster (hopefully) later today to find out what the hell's going on at his end. And to put the carrier on notice regarding possible breach of contract.

And if I don't get a call from Gary by the close of business in L.A. today, I'll tear him another new asshole tomorrow for not getting back to me, as he agreed to. (I'm sure he'll attempt to claim that his call to Jim fulfilled his promise to "get back to you".)

I really want to see if that motherfucker will try to tell me I was materially incorrect about anything I told him on Monday.

It's very disheartening when even the folks who are ethically and contractually bound to defend us are colossal fuck-ups.

"...the law is a ass - a idiot."

Charles Dickens' Bumble the Beadle spoke a truth when he uttered those words.

The company I repped for when I lived in Los Angeles got sodomized by the law yesterday. We got assaulted and had the shit stomped out of us; alas, it was all nice and legal.

It sure isn't right. Or just.

Our testicles were placed on the little wooden disc and whacked repeatedly by the gavel.

In fact, had we acted a lot less responsibly, we would be in a significantly better legal position. What a steaming crock of shit. Not to mention how it provides a disincentive to "do the right thing".

I now have officially zero respect for America's legal system, as it clearly has no respect for anything resembling actual justice. (Something I've believed for a long damned time, but now actually know from firsthand experience.)

The company has been the victim of a provably fraudulent insurance claim in the amount of nearly $1M for the past three-and-a-half years. Sadly, the law cares not one whit for the facts of the matter; it only cares about the law. And the filthy vermin, both clients and attorneys, who know how to work the system.

As far as I'm concerned, every fucking attorney in America contributes to this foully corrupt institution. Because even if they're principled individuals, they do effectively nothing to a) weed out the predatory douchebags among them, and b) fix the odious system which their profession has created and permits said douchebags to flourish.

Right about now, I wish much long-term suffering on each and every lawyer in America followed by an ignominious and painful death. Sadly, I have a few friends who are attorneys; please know that my desire for your painful suffering is, in the words of the Mafia, "nothing personal; it's just business".

Like it or not, your profession is a bunch of organized criminals which you virtually never do a goddamned thing to change. Actually, you seem to do whatever you can to make yourselves indispensible in daily life and guarantee full employment for your profession.

Fuck you all with a barbed wire dildo lubricated with cat saliva.

On the brighter side, the demise of every attorney in this country would do wonders to clean up our Congress.

In the words of a character in L. Neil Smith's novel "Pallas":

"People - pardon me, journalists and politicians - have often accused me of believing that I'm above the law. And yet, who isn't? Everywhere you prod it, even with the shortest stick, the established system isn't simply corrupt, it's unequivocally putrescent. The law is created by demonstrable criminals, enforced by demonstrable criminals, interpreted by demonstrable criminals, all for demonstrably criminal purposes. Of course I'm above the law. And so are you."

Bitchy bitch bitches about "bitch"; sonofabitch!

(Original NYT article here)

August 7, 2007
It’s a Female Dog, or Worse. Or Endearing. And Illegal?

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

What about "spic", "kike", "wop", "slope", "cocksucker" and so many other potentially offensive words? Or is it that women and black folks are more "sensitive" than others?

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

Um, get over it, Councilwoman Mealy-Mouth. You fucking whiny cunt.

But conversations over the last week indicate that the “b-word” (as it is referred to in the legislation) enjoys a surprisingly strong currency — and even some defenders — among many New Yorkers.

Especially NYC cabbies, public transit workers, construction workers...and pretty-much everyone else in New York.

And Ms. Mealy admitted that the city’s political ruling class can be guilty of its use. As she circulated her proposal, she said, “even council members are saying that they use it to their wives.”

The measure, which 19 of the 51 council members have signed onto, was prompted in part by the frequent use of the word in hip-hop music. Ten rappers were cited in the legislation, along with an excerpt from an 1811 dictionary that defined the word as “A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman.”

And precisely what miniscule percentage of New Yorkers are English women, you useless, contemptible twat? I could dig-up all sorts of interesting cites from a reference book nearly two centuries old; I'll bet a sawbuck that dictionary didn't label "nigger" as a pejorative.

While the bill also bans the slang word “ho,” the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection.

“Half my conversation would be gone,” said Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, whom a reporter encountered on his bicycle on Sunday night on the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Christopher Street. Mr. Musto, widely known for his coverage of celebrity gossip, dismissed the idea as absurd.

“On the downtown club scene,” he said, munching on an apple, the two terms are often used as terms of endearment. “We divest any negative implication from the word and toss it around with love.”

Darris James, 31, an architect from Brooklyn who was outside the Duplex, a piano bar in the West Village, on Sunday night was similarly opposed. “Hell, if I can’t say bitch, I wouldn’t be able to call half my friends.”

They may not have been the kinds of reaction that Ms. Mealy, a Detroit-born former transit worker serving her first term, was expecting. “They buried the n-word, but what about the other words that really affect women, such as ‘b,’ and ‘ho’? That’s a vile attack on our womanhood,” Ms. Mealy said in a telephone interview. “In listening to my other colleagues, that they say that to their wives or their friends, we have gotten really complacent with it.”

Might as well consider banning "cunt", "slattern", "tart", "tramp", "trollop", "whore", "slut" and a host of other words that "really affect women". And I'm sure that "they buried the n-word". Stupid bitch.

The resolution, introduced on July 25, was first reported by The Daily News. It is being considered by the Council’s Civil Rights Committee and is expected to be discussed next month.

Apparently every other pressing problem facing the city of New York has been successfully solved.

Many of those interviewed for this article acknowledged that the b-word could be quite vicious — but insisted that context was everything.

“I think it’s a description that is used insouciantly in the fashion industry,” said Hamish Bowles, the European editor at large of Vogue, as he ordered a sushi special at the Condé Nast cafeteria last week. “It would only be used in the fashion world with a sense of high irony and camp.”

Mr. Bowles, in salmon seersucker and a purple polo, appeared amused by the Council measure. “It’s very ‘Paris Is Burning,’ isn’t it?” he asked, referring to the film that captured the 1980s drag queen scene in New York.

There's some sartorial splendor; is it bitchy of me to point that out?

The b-word has been used to refer to female dogs since around 1000 A.D., according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which traces the term’s derogatory application to women to the 15th century; the entry notes that the term is “not now in decent use.”

But there is much evidence that the word — for better or worse — is part of the accepted vernacular of the city. The cover of this week’s New York magazine features the word, and syndicated episodes of “Sex and the City,” the chronicle of high-heeled Manhattan singledom, include it, though some obscenities were bleeped for its run on family-friendly TBS. A feminist journal with the word as its title is widely available in bookstores here, displayed in the front rung at Borders at the Time Warner Center.

So, given the "context", is that usage “a paradigm of shame and indignity for all women", bitch?

Robin Lakoff, a Brooklyn-born linguist who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, said that she despised the word, but that enforcing linguistic change through authority “almost never works,” echoing comments from some New Yorkers who believed a ban would only serve to heighten the word’s power.

“If what the City Council wants to do is increase civility, it would have to be able to contextualize it,” said Ms. Lakoff, who studies language and gender. “You forbid the uses that drive people apart, but encourage the ones that drive people together. Which is not easy.”

If by "not easy", you mean "bloody fucking impossible", than you're right, bitch.

Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., the Queens Democrat who successfully sponsored a symbolic moratorium on the n-word that was adopted Feb. 28, said he supported Ms. Mealy’s measure, but acknowledged that the term had many uses.

“We want to make sure the context that it’s used is not a negative one,” Mr. Comrie said yesterday.

Because politicians, being such moral paragons and so incredibly intelligent, are just the folks to approve "context". Stupid son of a bitch.

Back at the West Village piano bar on Sunday evening, Poppi Kramer had just finished up her cabaret set. She scoffed at the proposal. “I’m a stand-up comic. You may as well just say to me, don’t even use the word ‘the.’ ”

But at least one person with a legitimate reason to use the word saw some merit in cutting down on its use.

“We’d be grandfathered in, I would think,” said David Frei, who has been a host of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York since 1990. The word is a formal canine label that appears on the competition’s official materials. But Mr. Frei said he worried about the word’s impact on some viewers, especially younger ones.

Aaah..."it's for the children". It's a "teachable moment", too.

“I think we have to take responsibility for that word on the air. The reality is it’s in the realm of responsible conduct to not use that word anymore.

Jeebus...what a cunt. (Which I mean in the British English sense, citing the same 1811 dictionary used by Councilwoman Mealy-Mouth. Who is clearly a bitch.)