California Coastal Cleanup (2009)

I did the California Coastal Cleanup on Saturday with my son and daughter. We went to McGrath State Beach in Oxnard, California. It's always a great experience, you get sweaty outside with tons of other volunteers cleaning up the environment.

My son's high school class did the cleanup for some extra credit. And my Church's youth group also did the California Coastal Cleanup, so it was a twofer for my son and one good deed for my daughter. We found two dead seals. My daughter and I found one sort of North along the beach. My son and his high school class found a dead baby seal Southish along the beach.

Not sure what caused their deaths. We reported them to those in charge and the park rangers. It smells bad, very bad at this beach. And unlike other years, we had no trouble finding bags full of trash to clean up.

It was a good day in all. They had a BBQ afterward for the volunteers. I highly recommend anyone in California participate in this event next year. It's a good one.

When a Case Screams Out "This is Wrong," a Judge Should Do Justice

Do you remember the case where a administrative law judge sued a dry-cleaner for $67 million over the cost of a pair of pants? Well, despite "winning" the lawsuit, legal fees and costs have forced them to sell the dry-cleaning shop where the action took place. Apparently, the lawsuit lasted two years and involved thousands of pages of documents. My take? If a judge can't derail an obviously frivolous lawsuit sooner than two years into the case, something is wrong. We need to give judges the power to adjudicate the ridiculous early on and then let the "aggrieved" party appeal if they must.

California Coastal Cleanup Day: I'm Off to the Beach

California Coastal Cleanup Day

The premier volunteer event focused on the marine environment in the country. I, my children, and 50,000 other volunteers will hit coastal cleanup sites statewide to remove debris from our beaches and waterways. Since the program started in 1985, over 750,000 Californians have removed more than 12 million pounds of debris from our state's shorelines and coast. It's a great day, outside, with your family, doing something that feels right. Whatever your stand on government or the environment, we all like our beaches to be a bit cleaner, a bit less flotsam out there on the ocean.

Later all. After my beachtime, I'm headed to a volunteer carwash to raise money for my church's middle school group: full on dad time all weekend.

Brillliant Ad Campaign

We hate spam. We hate boring. But done right, no one can resist a superbly funny (e.g., "Dress to Kill" )marketing campaign. In the late 1990s, Ravi-Gullit Beeharry & Andrea Mancuso fashioned such a campaign for Wallis Fashion. And men have executed double takes ever since. To see the photos, go to Al Lowe's Humor Site and view his post titled "Why Men Die Younger." I think most will agree that it is worth the click.

On the other hand, ad campaigns can work evil too. As we learn in in the story of how "a graduate of Columbia Law School ... and almost 80 other people, who really should have known better, got suckered into giving away all [their] personal details as well as up to two months of [their] lives for “jobs” that never actually existed." In what the author believes was an elaborate scheme by the scammer to impress a girl.

If you read the above story, don't be too hard on the young man. I once accepted an email/telephone job researching American Indian tribal law in a particular setting for a man who claimed to work for ABC's 20-20. In the end, I got paid and the man turned out to be legitimate. But this was before the Internet developed into what is now an instant global information bank. And I made no real effort to research this individual's legitimacy. I just did the work and sent him a bill. He turned out to be a great guy.

Other advertising campaigns,

In Dublin, out of safety concerns, I suspect, we see this warning:

And this ad ran in New Zealand for a few weeks,

And finally, to close out on a non-advertising note, I stole this from a well done web blog that gives its author's personal choice of the best and worst that that net has to offer, hours of entertainment:

When Online Romance Invades and Shatters Lives

Thomas murdered Brian in a jealous rage over Jesse. This story has roamed the Internet since January. And it neatly illustrates the lurking danger we see behind some online interaction (e.g., When Murder Hits the Blogosphere; MySpace Murder Plot Foiled; The Baltimore Myspace Murder; Stalked by Strangers; The Online Feud that Turned Toxic; and so on).

I first stumbled upon this story in Wired. A story of an online romance where almost

everyone played a role, an online triangle that ended in heartbreak, death, and prison.

Thomas Montgomery punched in at the Dynabrade factory in Clarence, a small town in upstate New York. He strapped on his goggles and stood at his machine until the late afternoon, churning out components for power tools. After work, he walked the family dog, Shadow, and took his two daughters to swim practice. He became such a regular presence at the local swim club that he was named its vice president. He tried to be a good father and a decent husband to his wife of 16 years, Cindy. There were a few things he enjoyed — poker night on Fridays with the guys, playing Texas Hold 'Em on Pogo.com, and the Dynabrade euchre tournament, which he dominated for two years in a row. For the most part, though, life was uneventful.

Which may be why Montgomery looked at himself — a 45-year-old former marine with a reddish mustache, bulging gut, and disappearing hair — and decided to become someone else. That person, he wrote on Dynabrade stationery that he stored in his toolbox at work, would be an 18-year-old marine named Tommy. He would be a black belt in karate, with bullet scars on his left shoulder and right leg, thick red hair, and impressive dimensions (6'2", 190 pounds, and a "9" dick"). Emboldened by his new identity, Montgomery logged onto Pogo in the spring of 2005 and met TalHotBlondbig50 — a 17-year-old from West Virginia, whose name, he later learned, was Jessica.

He began instant-messaging "Jessi," who later also went by the handle "peaches_06_17," and the lies flowed easier with every press of the Return key. His mom had died of cancer when he was 12, he told her, and his father was a military man. At 17, Tommy had raped a cheerleader, and his life became so hopeless that he enlisted in the Marines. After a stint at boot camp in June to train as a sniper, he was headed to Iraq. Montgomery concocted elaborate ruses to maintain Tommy's cover story, creating a second identity as Tommy's dad, Tom Sr., who bore a striking resemblance to the real Montgomery. Tommy's access to the Internet was supposedly limited because of his military duties, so Dad, as Jessi soon referred to him, began shuttling messages between the two lovers. He also told Jessi to send any mail and packages for Tommy to him, because he had contacts in Iraq and could get them to the young marine quickly.

Tommy's tales of hard luck drew Jessi in. He was in need of comfort, and Jessi provided it, saying she was proud of him despite his mistakes. Tommy responded by telling her that she was "the best thing that ever happened to him." As their intimacy grew, he sent her a picture of a young marine, claiming it was himself, and confided that he planned to commit suicide in Iraq; she made him promise to stay alive for her. They talked on the phone when they could. But if Jessi couldn't reach Tommy, she sometimes IM'd Tom Sr. to talk about her lover. Jessi also emailed Tommy photos of herself, care of Tom Sr. She lived up to her screen handle, whether she was running her fingers through her flowing blond hair or wading in a pool in a yellow bikini or showing off her long tan legs in a denim miniskirt.

Jessi fell for Tommy, and Montgomery did, too — or, at least, for the idea of himself as Tommy, a young man on his way to a future with the prettiest girl around. Tommy told Jessi that he'd had their special motto — the Marine saying "Always and Forever" — tattooed on his arm, along with her name encircled by a heart. Jessi, for her part, crafted video montages of herself for Tommy that were set to power ballads like Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and Lonestar's "I'm Already There."

The story continues. It gets ugly. And it ends worse.

I searched out the New York Times article on this pretend web romance. I wanted to ensure some sort of reality existed behind the story. If someone out there is involved in an online relationship, read these stories and the other examples that I linked. And then just think about keeping safe and secure. A trusting nature and an open heart should not lead to a shattered life. But they can and sometimes do.

Child Uses Gun As Prop in School Picture; High School Bans All Props Including Flowers

We read that in New Hampshire, a few years ago, a student posed for his high school yearbook with a gun. Wow, I think we all know why we don't want guns showing up in high school year book photos. But increasingly, in America, we abandon all common sense when faced with such situtations. The school's answer when faced with the gun-holder, ban all photographic props (a zero tolerance props policy).

So when Melissa Morin had a photograph taken for her senior yearbook that showed her holding a flower, the school of course rejects the offending photograph. Apparently, the photograph showed the young lady sitting on a costume trunk backstage at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. She wore a black and white sundress and clutched the flower.

Now, while the photograph was banned. The school gave the parents the option of buying advertising in the year book and having the photograph appear in the year book in that manner. It's a sad world where we let the ridiculous becomes ordinary in an effort to protect ourselves from the obscene who violate society's rules.

I'm not outraged. I'm just sad at the direction our society is heading.

A 59,000-Word Brief is Still An Oxymoron, Even If Your Lawyer is Famous and Your Case is Really, Really Important

The Wall Street Journal's law blog relates "The Curious Case Of Skilling's Really Long Appellate Brief." Apparently, O'Melveny & Myers filed a 239-page appellate brief for Jeffery Skilling. This firm is at the top of the tree in Los Angeles. It's attorneys are not only bright, but for the most part, decent and ethical. They are also damn good.

Nevertheless, a 59,000 word brief (the normal limit is 14,000) is absurd. I would try to tell you how absurd, but Mr. Lawyer from Lowering the bar does it with more élan than I could manage. I quote briefly from his post, but you might pop over and read the whole thing yourself:

The last brief I saw that was long enough to mock was a 100+ page draft of a brief that featured a 17-page introduction (itself longer than most briefs), with eleven separate main arguments, the last of which was the Dormant Commerce Clause. (Tip: If your argument even mentions the Dormant Commerce Clause, you probably need a new argument.) O'Melveny's brief uses 239 pages to cover just five main points. ... Each and every page, of course, is deeply treasured by its author(s), who could no more delete one of these pages than you would push one of your own children in front of a bus to buy yourself a few extra seconds to dodge out of the way.

If a lawyer thinks about the case load of federal appellate judges; if a lawyer contemplates the volume of reading material these judges wade through daily; he or she may ask, "Do I really want my client's points lost in a 239 page black hole?"