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TL;DR (too long, didn’t read): The person that was posting here as LauraMcLaura (for months) was a troll that had hacked her account. The real LauraMcLaura did not make those racist remarks. However, the real LauraMcLaura, and her sister, JennaMcJenna, are still completely bat crap crazy, racially insensitive, insecure turds. It’s always hilarious when 30-year-olds act like 14-year-olds, yes? OH! And be sure to scroll down for the link to JennaMcJenna’s post about this. It’s hilll-arious. And be sure to check out their twitter feeds (here and here) for even more butt-paralyzing wankery.

———-

Ah, blog and Twitter drama. I’ve pretty much escaped it thus far, with a few minor exceptions that barely counted. I mean, if you give your opinion and toss in a few colorful worlds, obviously it’ll get a reaction from someone. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. Reactions are what this is all about.

So a while back I posted about the debate on the masjid by Ground Zero. This was before it was politicized and turned into a major issue. This was back in the halcyon days of (the charade of) religious tolerance, when the majority of Manhattan residents favored the masjid and Islamic center.

My post was simple, and, of course, colorful. I do swear when I write, although I don’t swear that much in person, but at the end, after setting forth my argument, I told anyone that persisted in making racist arguments about it to get f–ked.

What can I say? I get ticked off. And I felt that if, after reading my lengthy post, certain racist thoughts persisted, then there was nothing anyone could say that would change that person’s mind anyway. Hence the colorful remark – because those are only used when there’s absolutely no benefit or purpose to drawing out the discussion any farther.

Susan Cartier Liebel had an interesting response to my post. She posted a long, rambling remark about how she was reading a magazine article about the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic church. Immediately following the article was a full page ad with a picture of a mostly naked toddler. She argued that the two things on their own were just fine but in combination they created new meaning that was horribly offensive and just plain wrong.

Just like putting a masjid near Ground Zero.

After all, according to the founder of Solo University or whatever the hell it’s called, there’s nothing wrong with masjids. There’s nothing wrong with Ground Zero. But when you put them together, you’ve got something that is horribly offensive and just plain wrong.

Naturally, I took great offense to this. And I immediately figured out that there was no point in arguing with her. She’d persist in the racist and ignorant construct she was clinging to, equating an entire religion with a few madmen (guess that means all Catholics are sexual predators, right?). There was absolutely no point in saying anything else to her. So I basically said that the post stood for itself, and I referred her to the last two lines. Which advised her to go do colorful things to herself.

Susan took offense at this and complained about my tone, which, of course, is the bull crap kind of thing you say when you have nothing else to hang your hat on. If anything, it amused me. I still occasionally harass her on Twitter, because I am a bad person.

Here’s the pertinent part: After Susan posted her reply, Laura replied and agreed with her, reiterating the same ignorant and Islamophobic arguments. I’m not all that sensitive, and I certainly don’t take myself too seriously (um, I squeal about shoes and argyle vests here – of course I don’t take myself all that seriously), but I’ll be honest: seeing such ignorant, disgusting comments teh first time was bad enough. And then to see them repeated just ticked me off even more. So I repeated my earlier suggestion, this time to Laura.

The problem, however, was that apparently it wasn’t the Laura I thought it was. The Laura that responded on this blog, let’s call her TrolLaura,  listed her name as Laura, her URL as the real Laura’s blog, and so on. The pertinent details for posting comments on blogs were all there. Because of that, I presumed that TrolLaura, who listed Real!Laura‘s site as her site, was the Real!Laura.

To repeat: apparently, the Laura that posted here with those hideous comments wasn’t @LauraMcLaura, but was attempting to successfully pass herself off as such.

This was quite a while ago. In that time, I’d gotten a couple more horrible comments from TrolLaura. I had a policy from the first day, when I started this blog, that I wouldn’t ever delete anyone’s comment if it wasn’t spam. Even if I didn’t agree with that reader, even if that reader’s comment was ignorant, and even if it was downright hateful. I just didn’t want to. Everyone gets to have his or her own opinion; whether I agree with it or not is something else entirely.

And I stood by that…with the exception of 2 comments that TrolLaura allegedly made. They were so….disgusting and horrible that I honestly couldn’t stomach them after I read them. All comments that are posted to this blog sit in the Pending queue until I get online and get around to approving them. I always approve all of the ones that aren’t spam, asking me to buy Viagra or whatever. But when I saw those two comments on two different occasions, sitting in my Pending queue, both from “Laura,” who was actually apparently TrolLaura, it was just too revolting for me to post. If that makes me a weak-skinned hypocrite, then I am one. I honestly couldn’t fathom what could make anyone say such vomit-inducing, hateful things, and I don’t like recalling those comments.

I’ve heard a lot of really racist stuff in my life. Some of it directed solely at me. It started when I was 5 years old, attending school in one of the wealthiest Boston suburbs with a nationally renowned school district. I was the only minority child.

Yeah, any sensitivity and urge to go crying to Mommy you might have gets worn down to something cold, hard, and resilient when you deal with racist remarks every single day. From your peers. As a goddamn 5 year old. I dealt. And then, as I grew older and found myself in a private Islamic school where everyone was just like me, I repressed.

(And then in the first year of law school, I remembered it all again and just sat in the corner for two days. I think. The memory is kind of fuzzy and colored with the urge to stab.)

So I can handle racist remarks. I have been handling (and repressing) them for quite some time. But the two comments I deleted were honestly the most vile bits of speech I’ve encountered in a long time. Possibly ever. And I will not be repeating them. Ugh.

Ever since then, I despised the person I believed was the Real!LauraMcLaura, who was apparently actually a troll. Just could not stand. If she ever commented again on my blog I left it up but recently gave in to the urge to tell her, yet again, to go screw herself.

I have certain buttons that, when pushed, really set me off. I’ve been working on it.

I snarked off on Twitter about her racist remarks and tagged her in the tweet. This was apparently the first time the real Laura McLaura had heard of this mess and she was very confused.

To that end, I apologize to Laura for leading my readers to believe that she was the one that made those remarks, when it was actually a troll that had fooled me into thinking it was her.

But here’s where things get even more interesting. Or even more high school, depending on your interpretation.

Apparently, my repeatedly (okay, twice) telling Laura to go screw herself constitutes hate speech, at least to Laura McLaura. The REAL Laura McLaura. Yes. My telling her to go screw herself is hate speech.

I said on Twitter that I had nothing to say to that. It was more like there was nothing I could say to that. I have my own issues with hate legislation, but that’s not what I’m getting into.

In response to this, you better believe I’m drawing the white-person-vs-person-of-color line in the sand. You better BELIEVE it.

Because, trust me, white people, for all your bawwing about reverse racism, you do not understand proper hate speech. I doubt you even can. You do not understand what it’s like to be ridiculed, discriminated against, labeled, disparaged, excluded, and any other slew of verbs, on the basis of nothing more than the color of your skin or your religion or the fact that your name sounds just a little too terrorist-y and it makes the nice people uncomfortable.

You think calling someone a bigot for making bigoted remarks is hate speech? You think saying ‘fuck you’ counts as hate speech?

News flash: FUCK YOU.

Perhaps, if you really think that, you ought to be told to get fucked more often. Clearly, you’re in dire need of the shock.

Laura, I’m sorry you were mortified by the racist comments someone posted at you and I’m sorry that someone was posting as you, period, but that’s out of line. This little clarification on our parts doesn’t seem to be having the ‘let’s hold hands and skip through meadows’ effect that this sort of thing usually does, and that’s okay. It’s okay to ‘fix’ one disagreement by creating another on different grounds.

As for the “you should have known it wasn’t me” argument, I’m afraid I should not have. In the words of the great Michael Scott, what part of shorn’t don’t you understand?

We do not know each other. We do not go to school together, we are not in constant contact, we don’t know anything about each other. Twitter and Facebook and our blogs just allow us to fool ourselves into thinking we do. I do not know anything about you, Laura, except that you are a law student, you’re very intense when it comes to studying law, and you’re passionate about women’s rights and committed to the fight against domestic violence.

You don’t know anything about me except that I’m a Muslim, a law student with a near-rabid interest in Labor law, an animal lover, and that I love steaks, root beer, cigars, and training dogs.

It is entirely possible for people with certain values and beliefs – justice, empowerment, etc, like yours – to harbor other beliefs that seem completely contradictory and counter-intuitive.

You would hardly be the first person to have surprised me like this. I have many friends who have absolutely shocked me with their radically divergent beliefs. I have friends that are devout Christians, help pack food for low-income seniors every week, and are as sweet as all get-out, and so loving and nurturing and forgiving…and then I learn that every night, they pray for God to kill Barack Obama.

You would not have been the first person I know with whom I share certain important social and political and moral beliefs except for raging Islamophobia. We’ve come to realize now that it was a troll. My point still stands. You would not have been the first person I know who, like me, was committed to our justice system, flawed as it is, and hoped to enter the fray one day soon, but was an absolute bigot when it came to the rights of people that weren’t like him/her.

So, no, I should not have known better. Because I didn’t base my characterization/perception of you on presumptions. I didn’t presume that just because you were so committed to women’s rights that you were also, for example, a hard core liberal and therefore necessarily in support of Muslims building a masjid near Ground Zero. I try not to make those presumptions about people; I always have, since so many have made such presumptions against me when I was far too young to be able to understand the battle or defend myself.

As for your worries that I deleted your comments in which you defended yourself, I had not and I would not. All comments on this blog are posted pending moderation. When comments are posted, they sit in my little queue until I approve them. Like I’ve said, I have approved all comments but spam and those 2 particularly vitriolic ones. I was on the train when you posted those comments, and because I lack a fancy phone, didn’t have internet access. When I came home, I collapsed on my bed because I’d been up since 4AM, as I usually am during Ramadan. After sleeping for a half hour, it was time to break the fast. After the fast comes prayer. After the prayer comes a quick bite before more prayer (tarawih, exclusive to the month of Ramadan). After that prayer comes exhaustion, and sometimes some time on the computer.

I can hardly be around to check my queue 24/7 and approve comments. Just because I can’t doesn’t mean I’ve deleted them. That assumption irks, even though you had no way of knowing my opinion about not ever deleting comments.

As for the post that Jenna McJenna put up about this, there’s really nothing I can do at this point but laugh. As the author of an email I received titled simply, “Holy fucking Jesus fucking what?” said in a fictitious reply to the Gruesome Twosome (thanks Homer Simpson, and your undying hatred of Patty and Selma): You know the only constant thing in your steady stream of fucked up  flame war/turd throwing/corner pouting troll bologna is you!

Couldn’t agree more.

Laura asked that I take down the comments the troll posted. Fair enough. I agreed and sent her back an email saying that the confusion was unfortunate, blah blah blah. Thennn I logged onto my Twitter and saw her and JennaMcJenna’s constant stream of bullshit. And, surprisingly, I somehow misplaced my charitable spirit at that precise moment. Where the devil could it have gone?!

I tweeted both of them a couple replies on Twitter, and sent Laura an email with an additional reply about the troll remarks and Jenna’s post. After reading it, I wanted that post gone, before I stabbed something. (I mean, my stuffed animals, all 4 that I have ever owned, are just wayward tufts of cotton at this point, you guys.)

And then, this morning at 4AM when I awoke to eat before the fast, when my mind is either at its sharpest or its most screw-everything-est, I decided, no. That post should stay up as a testament to JennaMcJenna’s rampant, galloping idiocy. I want to be able to link to it and be like HAHA LOOKIT THIS GUY. Because it really is a great reminder. Of a lot of things.

I have not heard back from Laura McLaura in more than 12 hours. The comments stay up until I do. Your move.

That’s about it. I doubt we’ve actually solved much, but at least we’re a little more clear now as to where we both stand. Which is something. Better to despise each other based on principle rather than a troll-based misunderstanding.

:)

From now on, the only trolls worth my attention. (Are they supposed to be terrifying?!)

So this just happened.

We were sitting down for Iftar, which is basically our de facto dinner during Ramadan, since no one but my dad and bro eat anything else before bed. My mom was talking about various people in her life. This followed.

Papa Hoomster: OMG, so-and-so is such a kamina. [kamina = Urdu for asshole, let's say. Not a good word.]

Me: It’s Ramadan, don’t you think you should lay off the swearing? Any time you hear me and Askari swear, you’re all I NEVAR SHOULD HAVE COME TO AMURRRICA.

Papa Hoomster: Kamina is not a bad word.

Mama Hoomster: Kamina is a bad word.

Me: Kamina is a bad word.

Papa Hoomster: Kamina is not a bad word. It’s a description. I’m using it to describe so-and-so.

Mama Hoomster: Well, I know so-and-so is that word, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a really bad word.

Papa Hoomster: It’s not a bad word. By that standard, everything is a bad word. Why do we bother saying anything?

[cue me sniggering as Papa Hoomster storms off.]

Mama Hoomster: >:(

Me: What?

Mama Hoomster: Why do you start things?

Me: Um, he saw the F-word in a QUOTE listed under QUOTATIONS on my Facebook page [note: my Info section is the ONLY part of my profile my dad can see, yet he still managed to find that quote] and was like, I never should have moved to America. First, I cannot even BEGIN to tell you why that statement is completely ridiculous and stupid. Second, HE SAYS WORDS JUST AS BAD ALL THE TIME AND LIKE ALL BUTT-PARALYZINGLY FRUSTRATING DESI MEN HE THINKS THEY’RE NOT ANYWHERE NEAR AS BAD AS ENGLISH SWEARS.

Mama Hoomster: >:(

Me: >:(

Mama Hoomster: Why do you start things?!

[the family disbands to pray maghrib. Yes, we pray maghrib/sunset prayers to Allah on American soil. I'm sure this really enrages @SCartierLiebel and @LauraMcLaura, who have basically said as much on this blog because they're that word that Jennifer Aniston said on Regis & Kelly for which she still hasn't issued an official apology for, which has angered lots of people, and which is mildly surprising because her PR team is so aggressive in most things.]

[I'm putting my dad's dinner and a glass of water on the table when he comes back in with a big, thick Urdu-English dictionary that he's probably had for far longer than he's had me. That's 24 years for anyone that's counting. And for my stalker in the 2nd row with the binoculars and the vanilla wafers. Hello, Walter, good to see you, as always.]

Papa Hoomster: Let me tell yooouuuuuu what kamina means.

Me: *snicker* Sure, let’s hear it.

Papa Hoomster: [lists off long, OED worthy definition of kamina in all its forms with multiple synonyms at the end]

Me: Uh-huh. Really. Wow, you don’t say. Oh. Uh-huh. That, too, huh? Really. Wow. You don’t say.

Papa Hoomster: [slams book shut] THAT is what kamina means. It is not a bad word. Don’t argue with me.

Me: Uh-huh. So you’d have no issue with it if I said kamina in front of, say, Imran uncle?

Papa Hoomster: Of course you can’t. It’s always looks very, very bad if a girl is the one saying a bad word.

*FACE PALM*

Ignoring the guy-girl distinction, did anyone else notice that he used ‘bad word’ to refer to kamina?

Not just me, then?

God, and people wonder why I need therapy.

(Eustace doesn’t wonder, though. He’s been discouraging me from seeking professional help since he popped up in my stomach lining.)

(Eustace, devotees will remember, is what I have named my ulcer.)

(Yes, I know it’s the 31st. I have limited internet access tomorrow and am posting early.)

All right, nerds, I’m bored. I’ve had to cut down my blog posts here, at least temporarily, because of all my coursework this semester. So, I’m officiating our first De-Lurking Day!

I know there are a ton of you that read these posts and choose not to comment. Instead, a lot of you ‘lurkers’ send me emails with funny pictures and political!wtfery and requests for help with your clothes, which I love. Trust me. I love hearing from you.

But today, you’re going to reply to a post. And you’re going to like it. :D

So, to all my lurkers, and all my normal posters, too, sound off in the comments. This is going to be a first-of-the-month thing, so get used to it. Every 1st, I’ll be posting some funny prompt or question for you to reply to, and it’ll be ever so much fun and we’ll probably tell our grandchildren about it when we’re old. Well, you guys will tell your grandkids. I’ll probably just tell my plants. My dead plants.

(My plants always die. :( It’s so tragic.I just kind of forget that they exist, and they don’t deal well with that.)

De-Lurk September Prompt: Go to one of the online stores you regularly shop at (ex: Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Target, Forever21, an Etsy boutique, Ann Taylor, Old Navy, whatever!) and post a link to the UGLIEST pair of shoes you can find there. And then tell me why you think they’re heinous and need to be set on fire and thrown at insert!politician!or!public!figure!here’s face.

And…go, team, go!

:D

(I fully expect Laura McLaura to come here and be like THROWING FIRE SHOES AT SOMEONE IS ASSAULT EVEN IF THEY DUCK. I HOPE THE BAR ASSOCIATION DENIES YOUR ASS FOR MEMBERSHIP AND SLAPS YOUR MOTHER IN THE FACE. Heh. These are the people you’ll have to deal with if you ever go to law school, dear readers.)

OMG SO UGLY.

The following is a guest post by Alexis Bonari.

Working in the entertainment industry can be tricky, so it’s never a bad idea to brush up. The following is something of an overview for two of the most often discussed topics in this field.

Accounting (Royalties):

Any artist signed to a label, with a commercially released record, will look forward to when he/she can be paid royalties. The process wherein the artist gets their royalties is called an “accounting”.

Accounting’s are made usually twice a year, within sixty to ninety days after the end of each six-month period. The cut-off for the six-month periods are usually, but not always, June 30th and December 31st. Sometimes, labels make quarterly accountings, which is better for the artist because wait for money is less. On the other hand, some labels account only once in a year. When an artist is accounted to, in addition to receiving a check (provided records were sold), he or she will normally receive a statement showing record sales and how the royalties were calculated. Since an artist will only receive royalties on records that were actually sold, as opposed to records simply shipped, an artist may to wait a long time to be paid.

Collaborations

When two people sit down and write a song together, they create a “joint work” and both people involved own the song. Even though each person may create a distinct part, both writers have an interest in the entire work.

For example, if A only writes the music and B only writes the lyrics, B still owns half of the music and lyrics, and so does A. When there is a joint work, either of the writers can deal non-exclusively with the entire song, while still subject to the obligation to pay the other writer(s) his/her share of the net profits. Therefore, it’s judicious that the writers enter into an agreement which establishes how the profits should be split should the split be anything other than 50/50. An agreement can be simple, but needs to include some major points:

  1. The title of the song in question on must be listed.
  2. The writers must agree to split any and all net profits garnered from the sale of the song.
  3. The writers must agree that if expenses are accumulated for the preparation or presentation of the song, each of the writers will be responsible for a percentage of the expenses. The percentage is usually in the same proportion as division of the net profits.
  4. The writers should agree that at any time before the song is placed with a publisher, the writer may withdraw his/her contribution freely, provided that he/she shall have no claim to, or rights in, any later collaboration on that particular song.
  5. The date, signatures, addresses and social security numbers of the writers should be included at the end of the agreement.

There are hundreds more legal issues in a business as complicated as the music industry, but hopefully this provided some help.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of online universities. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.


I love Foster Kamer. Hat tip to Jessica Lin, my old high school buddy and currently 3L at Boston University, for introducing me to this Village Voice columnist a while back.

Click here for his column, but here’s the pertinent graphic.

Yep, so I’m starting a new thing. From now on, the first of every month will be the Official De-Lurking Day here at TRPLS. I know there are tons of you that read my silly posts and leave without commenting (I know this because you guys often send me emails about random things, which I enjoy very much), perhaps because you feel you have nothing to say in reply to the post.

Because, granted, my posts don’t always leave much room for discussion. It’s usually OMG HERE’S CLOTHES and then I leave. If I did that in real life, just walked up to you and threw clothes at you and left, you wouldn’t be inclined to start a lively debate with me. You’d just call the cops and go ice that lump on your head from when I threw a pair of stacked heels at you.

So from now on, the first of the month is going to be Official De-Lurking Day, and since you might not really have anything to say in reply to one of my posts, I shall GIVE you something to say!

Maybe I’ll ask you to post a picture. (Not of yourself, so no worries for those among us that are shy little wallflowers.) Maybe I’ll ask you to post a YouTube video. Maybe I’ll ask you to post a LOLpicture. Maybe I’ll ask you to leave a little story in the comments, like what happened when your mother made you wear something embarrassing as a kid.

It’ll be fun, we’ll get together, we’ll share things, we’ll laugh, we’ll eat Oreos, we’ll drink orange drink, and we’ll get together in 30 days to do it all over again. It’ll be like a family brunch, but with less drunkenness (lies) and it won’t end in tears (also lies).

So yeah, mark your calendars, folks. Set no less than three alarm clocks, write on your hand with Sharpies, and tell your secretaries to hold all your calls, because this is going to be BIG (omg when will she stop lying?!).

Since I loathe posts without pictures (and since those posts post weird on FB, without a banner image), here’s a picture of me and Mama Hoomster. Mama Hoomster’s all pretty and smiling and meanwhile I’m all AY. WHY AM I NOT IN CENTER FRAME LEARN TO TAKE  A PICTURE PAPA HOOMSTER BECAUSE I’M THE REAL STAR HERE.

I was such a brat as an infant.

So I was skimming through my columns on Hootsuite, which is the third party Twitter client I use, and I saw one of my 2L friends talk about how his books for 2L were going to run him about $1,100. This statement was immediately followed by Holy Crap and about six exclamation points. Totally reasonable reaction when you’re being bent over a barrel for your textbooks.

Pigeons > sexual imagery.

But not by much, because pigeons are awful. >:( Diseased rats with wings and no concept of personal space, flying around being annoying. My backyard is once again home to mourning doves this summer, but even that’s not as cool as it should be, because doves are just pigeons that have TRICKED US INTO THINKING THEY’RE ALL FANCY AND CRAP.

Anyway, moving on…

That’s the thing: the textbook publishing industry does nothing short of commit highway robbery every single freaking year. They’ll release a book filled with cases and problems and notes, then release a supplement to go with it (for the same year!), then two years later, they’re cranking out a new casebook. If they’ve got two authors on the first casebook, for example, who’ve been writing it together for a while and are getting up there, they’ll add a third author to the new edition, knowing he’ll be able to take over and they can add another one and keep cranking those books out. It’s a business, and one that cares little for its consumer base: cash-strapped students.

And, as you know pretty well by now, these ‘new editions’ don’t contain much new information. They might have a handful of new cases, some of the notes might be condensed into fewer notes (at the end of the case) with some new notes about recent legislation sprinkled throughout, and some new problems that don’t really add much to the discussion anyway. There’s very little ‘new’ material in ‘new’ editions. Trust me: I pore over two consecutive editions of almost each casebook I buy every semester.

And frankly, my 2L friend’s estimate seemed to be a pretty good deal, considering my textbook costs for the year routinely come up to be around $1,400.

Or, they would be, if I always bought the ones that they sold at the bookstore.

Beck’s Bookstore caters to the law schools in the Chicagoland area. God, I hate them. They’ll sell you a new book for $150, and a used book (the same one) for like $120. When you use it for a year, they’ll buy it back, even if it’s in great condition with very little marking, for $60 at most.

It’s why I do not buy their books and I do not sell them my books. I stay away from them as much as I can…except for when it suits my purposes.

I mentioned earlier that I check out two consecutive editions of a given casebook at the start of the semester. Let me explain why, and my textbook-buying method. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even all that clever. It’s kind of a hassle. But it saves me about a thousand dollars a year, and I’ll take it.

Before the semester starts, I get my book list for my classes. A lot of the time, my professors are using the newest edition of the casebook. I’ve hardly ever had a book on the official list that was published before 2007. That was why I liked my Evidence professor – he was still using the old edition of the book, I believe, even though there was a later edition, and a newer one that had just come out that year. He didn’t care.

When I get my book list, I check out the editions and I check their prices out online by doing some comparison shopping, like on Alibris or AbeBooks or Ebay or whatever. For my Criminal Procedure (Police Investigation, often CrimPro1), the list price of the 6th edition book (published in 2008, with a newer edition out this year, I believe) was $150. That was also the price that Beck’s Bookstore was still selling a new hardcover AND new ‘looseleaf’ copy for. YES. LOOSELEAF. Those jerks. I found the same edition online for $60. At that price, it is my most expensive casebook this term.

Let’s take another example. My Criminal Procedure (Adjudication) book. Yes, this is CrimPro2, which I am taking concurrently with CrimPro1. There are no pre-requisite requirements for it at my school, and it seems perfectly do-able so far, and I don’t anticipate any problems. But my CrimPro2 book is supposed to be the 12th edition or something. That retails at about the same price – $150, let’s say, although I’m not entirely sure. But it’s very, very close.

So I went to Beck’s Bookstore and bought a brand new copy of it. And I went online and bought the 11th edition (not the 12th) for about $20, if that. My 11th edition arrived, and I checked through both books to see what new cases and notes had been added, and just made photocopies. And then I returned the 12th edition to Beck’s for a full refund. Sure, it’s in a legal gray area with respect to copyright protection, and I’m okay with that. I have my 11th edition for $20, and I have all the notes/problems/cases that are exclusive to the 12th. It’s even easier when it’s just cases, because you can just write down the citation for them and don’t have to worry about making copies – pull them from Lexis instead. And I definitely didn’t have to pay $150.

Yes, I take being cheap to startling heights sometimes. And I’m not even cheap, really. I put down the coin for important things, I donate to my favorite causes, and I am apt to spend more generously on my friends than I do on myself. And I own enough nice things like a netbook, an mp3 player, and a pair of Jimmy Choo mules that I like a lot but that Mama Hoomster calls ‘witch shoes’ because they have an elongated pointy toe.

But when it comes to ridiculous stuff like paying $150 for a book that I’ll only be able to sell back to the bookstore for $50 at the end of the year? Yeah, spare me. I will fight them for my money.

So that’s what I do every single semester: on the first day, I head to the bookstore and buy all the new books for my class. By Friday, the last day to return for a full refund, all my books have arrived from online, sometimes the editions I need and sometimes an older edition when it’s significantly more cost-effective to go retro, and I’ve made all my copies or copied down all the new case cites. So on that Friday, I return all the books and get the money put back on my Visa. And I’ve spent just a fraction of the cost I’d have spent if I bought my books at the store for real, even Used instead of New.

An example?

Total cost of new and used (when available) textbooks for Fall 3L: $649

Total cost of textbooks for Fall 3L bought online: $150

That’s $500 extra, back in my pocket.

Now TELL me that buying online isn’t something you’re interested in doing. I always tell people to buy online and I get arguments like, oh, it’s more convenient just to get them at the bookstore, and if I sell them back to the bookstore I’m guaranteed to make at least SOME money off them, and I don’t like waiting for my books, and sometimes the online ones take too long to get here, and it’s all a big hassle.

Sure, it’s kind of a hassle, but you just have to plan well. As for convenience, yes, it’s more convenient to buy them at the bookstore the day you need them. But $500 >>> convenience, in my opinion as a money-conscious student. If I can cut corners without it affecting my schoolwork, I will. If I have to buy new, I will. But when it’s worth my effort to buy online, I absolutely do.

And that brings me to another point – resale. So many kids sell back to the bookstore. Sure, you’re usually guaranteed a resale…but not always. It depends on whether there’s national demand for your book, whether a new edition is already out (often, it is), if your professor is even using the same book next semester, and so on. Sometimes, you get very little for your book. Sometimes they don’t even buy it back.

I keep my casebooks, yes, and the ones that are in decent enough condition, I sell online. The ones that are way too outdated (like my pre-BAPCPA Bankruptcy text) get tossed or recycled when possible. Last semester, I went online and bought the Corporations book my professor asked for (not the older edition) for about $50 and at the end of the semester was able to sell it online for $60. A lot of people tried to sell it back to the bookstore and got nothing because the professor is using a new book next semester.

TL;DR: Buy your books online a week or two in advance. Buy an older edition and get the new cases if it makes a significant difference in cost.

I took a long time outlining all this because sometimes, people just don’t get it: BUY YOUR BOOKS ONLINE. Your wallet will thank you for it, I promise. How else do I get by spending less than $500 on books for the whole year, when I would otherwise be likely to pay almost 3 times that amount?

Addendum: I have to say, I love Laura’s insistence (check the comments) that writing down case cites or photocopying cases to supplement your older edition of a casebook is a gross infringement of copyright and should preclude me from joining the Bar. Isn’t self-importance hilarious? You meet all kinds in law school, folks. :)

Remember when Megan challenged me to make over one of the outfits from the Miss Universe costume pageant thing? Remember some of the absolutely hideous things those otherwise pretty girls wore? Sure, you do! Your minds are like steel traps, after all.

I’m back at it this week at the Working Wardrobe, and this time, I made over Miss India’s entirely tasteful gown here. I bet she totally regretted not wearing a skimpy sari (little more than a sparkly bra and a a long skirt with slits cut up almost to her hoo-ha) when she saw what the other girls (MISS COLUMBIA STANDING THERE WITH YOUR LEGS GLUED TOGETHER) wore.

Click on Miss India to get over to The Working Wardrobe and check out my post!

You all know Barney Stinson’s catch phrase on How I Met Your Mother by now: “SUIT UP!” And that’s exactly the advice I followed today when I put together my post at Heave, which includes fandom!secrets involving my deep-seated fear of relationships and commitment and thinly veiled disdain for marriage, not one but TWO fanmixes, Neil Patrick Harris singing, a pretty desktop wallpaper, and a fabulous suited-up outfit for under $100.

So click the picture of my HIMYM BRoTP and head on over to Heave to check it out!

Real Talk.

All right, nerds. Let’s get down to it. I’ve been kind of MIA. I know it, you know it. Your mother would even know it, but computers scare her because she thinks she’ll fall prey to viruses and sex predators. It’s still a fact: I haven’t been here.

Law school just started, and we’re hitting the middle of Ramadan, and things have been busy. I am still doing my posts for MyShingle, The Work Wardrobe, and HeaveMedia, but other than that, I’ve been majorly slacking.

And Victoria, if you’re reading this, I know I said I’d post those three outfits for you last week. :( I suck. I’m sorry. I’m working on them, though. Does that count for anything? No? Drat. >:(

But here’s the thing: I have about 6 classes this term, and it’s going to be tough. Not impossible, just tough. And with Ramadan in full-swing, my schedule is completely out of whack because I’m up at 4AM every morning and don’t get to sleep until around 11ish. But in mid-September, things will settle down and I’ll be back in the swing of things…hopefully.

All I’m saying is that I’m probably going to be hit and miss when it comes to my daily posts here. If this throws your life into a sixth dimension of chaos and doom, I am sorry. Go have some tea and think of puppies; you’ll feel better.

I’d talk more about my life because I’m soooooo important, but something starts in like 15 minutes. Or 45 minutes. Something starts in either a quarter or three quarters of an hour. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s Conflict of Laws. Maybe it’s my appellate brief writing course. Maybe it’s Underwater Basket Weaving. No one knows, and that’s the beauty of it. Also I’m too sleep deprived to remember how to access my schedule. And there’s a cute boy sitting on the couch across from me who’s been trying to talk to me about breakfast cereal bars for the past ten minutes.

Long story short: I am not on nearly enough pills for this mess.

Also, I hope everyone has noticed how I haven’t been swearing on Twitter (except at this one troll that really got my goat), or on Facebook, or on my blog. I hope everyone has noticed and is planning a surprise party accordingly. And I hope there is a clown at this surprise party, because I do not like clowns and would very much like to chase said hired clown around with a pitchfork. A pointy stick will also work.

Look at this picture.

Keeeeeep looking at it.

*slowly backs away*

*flees*

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