…delusions of retirement. What. The. Hell.

Update: Greatly exaggerated, etc., etc., etc. Bunches of guest posts above the “retirement” post combined with the fact that my name appears in the dictionary under “gullible.”

Best laugh I’ve had all week.

My folks’ place in the country, where The Bean and I are visiting, has no internet access. Twitch. I’m hooked up to a McDonald’s WiFi. Posting will be light or nonexistent until I make it to my next destination early next week, visiting friends in St. Louis, where the man of the house has enough internet access to supply the whole neighborhood.

One year ago today.

Blogging is so much fun. Thank you, you who read here and you who comment here. I appreciate it very much.

Just a light fisking, a little one, for Megan McArdle, for whom magic must depend on scarcity to make sense, and that therefore the Harry Potter series is not as well thought-through as it ought to be. (Via Ace, via PetiteDov.)

There will be **SPOILERS** for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows below the jump. (more…)

Trying to click through to a few links on my cell, which, for a net-junkie, I’d imagine, is like a coke addict licking the last few tiny grains off his fingers, I tried to click an Ace link from Hot Air and got …

Unsupported content type.

I will just say I’ve got a bad feeling about the new book. No, I haven’t read anything. I just don’t see it ending wholly satisfactorily no matter who lives or dies.

Incidentally, J.K. Rowling needs to save her breath (or pixels). It just makes her look silly to keep begging people not to do things they are going to do anyway, over which she has zero control, and lets us know exactly how inflated her head has become over all the hype. The end of her series is not the end of the world, whether Harry lives or dies.

Update: A judgment on my first statement above. No plot spoilers, but nevertheless click at your own risk. (more…)

Did you know the ins and outs of how big-firm attorneys charged?

I didn’t either.

[Reform toward flat-fee or contingency representation is] good for the client, certainly: no more $200 phone calls that last only 5 minutes (but which get billed in 15- and 30-minute increments). No more charges for an attorney to attend a firm-wide half-hour meeting wherein numerous cases are discussed in one-sentence summaries, with each of those clients being billed for the attorney’s full half-hour.

It’s good for the legal system, too. Nothing brings on superflous, unnecessary motion practice like a corporate attorney’s representation of a client with deep pockets.

Yowza. I guess I’m fortunate that so far my dealings with attorneys (as opposed to friends who are attorneys) have been limited to two specified services for two flat fees.

Bonus Venom: Heh.

Nevermind HRC’s arrogance in badgering the DoD about planning for a withdrawal that, as yet, has not been forced on them by the shrillers in the legislature. What I want to know is, when did people start talking like this, and why are they still?

Clinton has privately and publicly pushed Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment.

“If we’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way,” she said then.

Emphasis mine. I see this usage all the time, from writers and speakers on all topics. Why? They’re called adverbs, and they are stronger, more efficient words than “do this in such-and-such a way” (or worse yet, “such-and-such a manner”).

“…execute it safely and efficiently,” are the words you’re looking for, Senator. Or “efficaciously” if you must.

So pretentious and annoying.

Oh, speaking of arrogant, how much chutzpah does it take to accuse the DoD of a political response to a serious inquiry when your whole motivation in asking was A) throwing your weight around and B) political grandstanding? Let’s see how “political” DoD’s response was:

“We are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is longstanding departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.”

Ouch. Yawn.

If you were a hairstylist in a SuperCuts-ish type of place, and you regularly cut the hair of locally based, nationally blogging columnist James Lileks, would you go on being just as surly to him as you were the first time you cut his hair?

And if you never knew who he was, might not you have some friends who would point out how you’re regularly being called out as sullen and “a miserable little scowling pill” on the web, so that you could improve your behavior somewhat?

A: Oh, right. You have no kind friends who might warn you of this depressing fact, because you’re surly. Never mind.

Bring back Home Ec. This time, no sewing skirts. No cooking. No crafts.

Take all students, once per junior high and high school year, to a day care. Pair them up, girl-boy. Match each “couple” to a child under the age of three. Let the day-care child’s parents interview the couple and approve or disapprove the project. Once approved, closely supervised by a teacher, each couple takes care of the child for the length of the school day–every aspect of care.

Let them learn how a child will disrupt their lives–every aspect of their lives. Let them learn how a child will take up their time–every minute of their time. Let them think twice or three times before they have sex.

And then let them have no excuses for the heinousness, the unspeakable awfulness, of this. And then if atrocities like this still occur, execute the offenders.

Death penalty.

Want the new Harry Potter book without standing in line or ordering online?

Just get married the night of the release. Apparently stores are happy to snub the people they worked so hard to bring in several hours before midnight to put you first in line, as long as you’re coming from your wedding reception.

I defended adult readers of Harry Potter (I am one, after all) in Sarah’s list of stuff that annoys her. But this kind of thing is taking the crazy too far. Grow up, people.

Boston Globe article found through Allah’s House of Fish in a Barrel. Yeah: I’m in Indiana and read a web site run by people in New York and D.C. to find a Boston Globe article detailing an event in the town where I actually live.