truth or fiction?

So I heard this lawyer talking about protecting yourself against lawsuits today. Why, you might ask, do you need to protect yourself against frivolous lawsuits, Michele? Not me! But my wonderful hubby will need malpractic insurance when he gets done. (I can't possibly think of anything in my line of work that could get me sued AND be covered by an insurance policy - if you think of something, let me know though, okay?)

During the talk he tells us of the Stella awards... they're named for Stella Liebeck, the woman who sued McDonald's over the heat of their coffee.

BUT what he told us was about an urban myth. He told us about a plaintiff who sued Winnebago because she (he) thought 'cruise control' was like 'autopilot' and left the driver's seat of the moving vehicle to go to the back and make coffee. Looks like that never happened... but it makes a great story.

Frivolous lawsuits are filed all the time, but they're often thrown out before they even go to trial (a good thing) and the ones that actually take up court time are usually a bit less dramatic (and frequently don't involve individuals), like the following:

Allstate sued Kraft Foods, the maker of the Toastette toaster pastry, and Pop-Tart creator Kellogg to avoid having to pay homeowners' fire claims. Allstate claimed Kraft and Kellogg were responsible for the fires by making dangerous, flammable toaster pastries.

Caterpillar sued the Walt Disney company for portraying bulldozers in a bad light. Caterpillar tried to block the release of "George of the Jungle 2," claiming that the film gave the company a bad name because its machines are used to attack the jungle. A judge found that "even the most credulous viewer" would understand that the people operating the machinery, and not the machinery itself, intended to destroy the jungle.

Mattel sued artist Tom Forsythe for his photographs of Barbie in poses the toymaker claimed defamed her character. The toymaker also sued recording label MCA when musical group Aqua released the song "Barbie Girl" that the company claimed defamed the doll with sexual innuendo. Both suits were dismissed, and Mattel had to pay $1.8 million to the artist in attorney fees, for trying to intimidate him into not using Barbie's image in his art.

Kellogg's sued the owners of Toucan Golf for trademark infringement. The cereal maker claimed that its Toucan Sam logo for the Froot Loops cereal would be damaged by Toucan Golf's golf-playing bird. A court found that no one could possibly confuse breakfast cereal and golfing.

Amway and Proctor & Gamble are engaged in an ongoing fight -- which has encompassed 20 years and has stretched to the courts -- over rumors that P&G is in league with Satan. P&G claims that Amway is accusing it of ties to Lucifer. A judge dismissed the fight's most recent incarnation in court, and expressed her hope that the corporate giants would continue their fight at the commercial level, and stop wasting judicial resources.
From the Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights

The urban myth includes such eye-poppers as the following (you'll see the Winnebago at the bottom):
The Stella Award

It's once again time to review the winners of the annual Stella Awards. The Stellas' are named! after 81 year old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's.

That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States. Unfortunately the most recent lawsuit implicating McDonald's, the teens who allege that eating at McDonald's has made them fat, was filed after the 2003 award voting was closed. This suit will top the 2004 awards list without question.
THIS YEAR'S AWARDS GO TO ...

5TH PLACE(TIED): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving toddler was Ms. Robertson's Son.

5TH PLACE(TIED): 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently did not notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal the hubcaps.

5TH PLACE(TIED): Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door Opener was malfunctioning. He could not re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for 8 days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue ! mental anguish. The Jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4TH PLACE: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's Beagle dog. The Beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been a little provoked at the time as Mr. Williams, who had climbed over the fence into the yard, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3RD PLACE: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier, during an argument.

2ND PLACE: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a Night Club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out two of her front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak in the window of the Ladies Room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1ST PLACE: This year's runaway winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new Winnebago Motor home. On his trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he could not actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago Motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreational vehicles.

BUT, snopes.com (which I have a great deal of trust for) indicates that these stories are false. They do have some interesting real stories at the bottom of their page about the Stella Awards though.

Blocked blogger

Haven't blogged in what, a week?
Very busy.
Nothing interesting to say.
Maybe better luck tomorrow.

Chronology of a crisis, Vancouver Island-style

5:35 pm. Environment Canada predicts two to five centimetres of snow will fall on Victoria within a 24-hour period. Ed Bain reads the forecast on-air , turns white and faints.
5:40 pm. Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe issues immediate appeal for federal assistance. Prime Minister Paul Martin promises to send in the army.
8:45 pm. Victorians begin queuing at tire stores, leaving vehicles in line overnight to be first served in morning.
10:15 pm. It turns out B.C.'s last army base, CFB Chilliwack,closed in 1998. Martin promises to send in the navy instead.
10:20 pm. Navy announces deployment to San Diego and Hawaii for "security reasons." Leader Stephen Harper suggests prime minister call Quebec advertising agencies to shovel snow, "since that's where the Liberals are spending all our money anyway."
6:22 am. Temperature plunges. Word spreads that Saanich man found ice on windshield. Curious neighbours gather to watch him scrape it off with credit card. One motorist, a former Albertan, claims use of mysterious "defrost" switch on dashboard can aid in process.
8:15 am. Terrified downtown skateboarders lose toques to menacing mob of balding, middle-aged men. "We tried to run," they say, "but those stupid baggy-assed pants made us fall down."
9:30 am. Hardware stores sell both of the snow shovels. Islanders begin cobbling together implements made from kayak paddles, umbrellas, plywood, cookie sheets and boogie boards.
10:00 am. Golfers switch to orange balls. Beacon Hill Park cricket players, anxious not to repeat the ugly "snow-blower incident" of the Blizzard of '96, switch to orange uniforms.
Noon. Word of impending West Coast snowfall tops newscasts across Canada. Saskatoon hospitals report epidemic of sprained wrists related to viewers high-fiving one another.
1:20 pm. Elementary schools call in grief counselors. Grief counselors refuse to go, citing lack of snow tires.
2:30 pm. Rush hour begins an hour early as office workers come down with mysterious illness and bolt for home. Usual traffic snarl is compounded by large number of four-wheel-drives abandoned by side of road.
2:50 pm. Airplanes grounded and ferries docked. No way to travel between Island and rest of the world. Times Colonist headline: Mainland Cut Off From Civilization.
3:22 pm. Prime Minister Martin announces Canada's DART rapid response team can be on the ground within six months. "We can't leave Victoria to deal with 225 centimetres of snow on its own," he tells Lowe."Um, that's two-to-five centimetres, not two-two-five," replies the mayor. The prime minister hangs up.
3:33 pm. Provincial government responds to crisis by installing slot machines in homeless shelters.
3:45 pm. Builders of new arena announce weather-related delays will push completion date back to July 2008.
4:10 pm. At behest of Provincial Emergency Program, authorities begin adding Prozac to drinking water.
4:15 pm. Fears of food shortage lead to alarming scenes of violence and looting. Grocery shoppers riot across the city, except in Oak Bay, where residents hire caterers to do the rioting for them.
4:30 pm. Bracing for the arrival of snow, the city is gripped by an eerie stillness reminiscent of Baghdad on the eve of the invasion. Searchlights comb darkening sky for first sign of precipitation.
4:48 pm. Panic ripples across region as word comes in that first flakes have fallen on Malahat. False alarm. "Flakes" turn out to be nothing more than anthrax spores released by terrorists. An uneasy calm returns to city.
5:40 pm. Ed Bain, shaking uncontrollably, tells viewers that snow warning has been extended. This weather pattern could go on for days. Mercury plummets to Calgary-in-August levels. Martial law is declared. Victoria-area politicians announce plans to establish emergency command centre aboard HMCS Regina once it reaches Oahu.

*Thanks to Rob for the forward

A PhD is a desert wasteland

So much of my work is solitary. I like talking to other people about stuff I've read (that'd be why I belong to a couple of book clubs), but there's only so much talking that you can do as a student of literature. Conferences are cool in that they're a chance not only to talk about things you've been working on, but also hear what other people are doing.
Much more of your time is spent reading...all alone. Before you can talk about a book, you have to have read it, right? And sometimes after you've read it, you need to write about it...another solitary activity.
The worst part? All that sedentariness tends to make your ass grow on top of everything. I actually have found I need to get out and go to the gym - my legs will start twitching and aching when I don't. I suppose that's a good thing (the exercise, that is).
But it's a lot of hard work done without the benefit of coworkers or companions like you might have in any other line of work.
So when I see an article like this, that describes how one senior employee in the government managed to get a six figure position by earning a PhD that took five hours and a 2,000 (yes, two thousand) word dissertation to complete, it gets really depressing.
[To put it in context, that dissertation is eight times longer than this post] Hmmmm, I seem to be doing a whole lot more than that for mine!

Sad news

My grandmother died about a half hour ago. She was sick for a long time.

My mother has been with her for the last three days, but my father may have difficulty joining them because the weather is very bad. I hope all my relatives can safely travel for the funeral.

I now have no grandparents left.

I am still luckier than many people I know to have so many in my family still with us and in good health.

Clueless about my birthday

During dinner tonight, my kids were talking about when people turn fifty.

They then turned to me and asked, "what do you want for your birthday?"

Ouch!

[Actually, they were talking about their dad turning 50, and since our birthdays are only 2 days apart, it's natural they would next think of me... but I didn't catch the bit about it being their dad that they were talking about...]

Ah! there's nothing like a little Marxism in the morning!

I've come to the conclusion that I am Marxist-illiterate. It's the only possible explanation for my seeming inability to understand anything that a Marxist critic says.

Okay, maybe I should qualify that: I can't seem to follow the arguments of Marxist literary critics. I'll be reading and find myself thinking 'he's talking about the author here...but I thought we were talking about books. Where did that change?' and other such moments of disorientation. It's as if my brain takes a vacation each time there's a change in example, attention, or focus within a given section.

With other theorists, I can usually see (at least vaguely) where they are going, and can connect what I'm reading at the moment to what came earlier. But with Marxists, I find myself repeatedly unable to follow the shifts. It feels like a series of unconnected paragraphs strung together - I can usually understand what's going on within a given paragraph, but it's relationship to the previous one is a complete mystery.

Hence I take these long, huge pages of notes, hoping to make sense of it in the end.

But it rarely happens.

I always feel like there's something I'm missing - that I've simplified things too much and I'm missing a more subtle argument somehow. Everything I write down feels like soundbites, or just random bits of information that don't cohere around a single (or even multiple) unifying points in the work. Even whole books (and I read two whole books by Marxist theorists last year) seem to evade my intelletual grasp.

Perhaps I'm too deeply indoctrinated into the fascist ideology of capitalism to ever understand!

I am so boring

I'd say the most interesting thing I did today was book my flight to San Diego in March. The rest of the day, I sat and read, and read, and read, and now I feel cross-eyed. It's time to do something else.

I got the flight for a VERY good price though, which makes me happy. I've been checking prices since before Christmas, and basically getting the same thing every time. Then today, I checked and I found a fare at LESS THAN HALF the fares I'd been seeing - so I figured I should jump on it. The flight down is timed really nice, but the one back is non-stop and starts at 7 am - blech - I'm not a morning person. But at least it's on the way home, and I can be all comfy-at-home at the end of it. Better than a flight that sucks when you're going someplace strange.

I also found the program for the conference, which has some very cool sessions...can you find mine?

Some of my favorite titles so far:

Dead Rebs, Magical Realism, and the Blue Plate Special: Burke’s Electric Mist
Mickey and Minnie Aren’t Married?!: Disney Scholarship and the Culture Wars
Strange Bedfellows: Mikhail Bakhtin and Alanis Morissette, Strange Bedfellows
Essential Contradiction: Perceptions of the Spiritual and the Absolute in John Coltrane's Love Supreme and Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast

Deliberate Obscurity

I understand that in a theoretical discussion (just as in law and other generalizing disciplines), there is a certain vagueness that can creep into the language because you are trying to use words that would encompass the broadest range of categories as you write. You are not talking about a specific phenomenon, but rather a class of phenomena, and in order to accurately represent every element in that class, you must be very general, which can lead to a vagueness that borders on uselessness. That's where example becomes useful. BUT, it also is the responsibility of the writer to make those generalities as easily understood as possible while allowing for all the possibilities they might refer to. But this following passage of lit theory is just ridiculous:

"In epistemological terms, the realist internalization of precept within example only sophisticates the anti-naturalizing pedagogy of more traditional exemplarity. Here the gendering of realims as feminine expresses less the reality principle over against male fantasy and romance than the subtle indirection of realist pedagogy, which internalizes precept within example as the domestic pedagogue accommodates the outspoken rationality of the law to the interiority of the domestic virtues"

It took me about fifteen minutes to get it fully square in my head what the author was trying to say here. I would figure out part of it, but then the next part would be confusing and by the time I'd puzzled through it, I had to go back to the previous part and try to remember what it translated to.

AND, I had to read about ten pages further (where the subject comes up again) and then come back to this quote to really understand what it was saying.

Now that's just bad writing.

50 Book Challenge

So, all the rage this year is the 50 Book Challenge. The idea is that you commit to read 50 books over the year. Opinions vary about what's required, but the basic elements are: 1) read 50 books, and 2) blog about them (either on a hosted site or on your own). I went over to my book site and counted about 25 books blogged about since May when I started keeping track... pretty close to a 50 book a year count (and I didn't include any poetry, criticism, or theory in the list).

So I figured, what the heck! It's a good goal to shoot for - so I'm officially beginning a 50 book a year challenge.

On your mark, get set, READ!

Soggy toes

soggy toes...oh I have soggy toes... 'cause there's water, water everywhere!

The little weather thingy at the bottom of the page says there's 'light rain' - which I suppose technically is correct. But when that light rain is falling on top of an earlier dousing of freezing rain and snow, that means slush up to your knees... hence the soggy toes!

Resolution? What is this word "resolution"?

Five days in and I'm still avoiding thinking of new year's resolutions. I suppose that has something to do with the fact that I made three last year and only made good on one of them.

So... the question is: do I just import last year's resolutions, or invent new ones? I still want to do both of the things on the list, but am afraid I will jinx them by putting them on again. On the other hand, I can't think of anything new that I want to commit to this year, so putting the old stuff on the new list would just be expedient, wouldn't it?

I've had mixed luck with resolutions - sometimes I've stuck with them, and sometimes they've pretty much fallen by the wayside. I've been most successful when I've made the kind that start "sometime this year I will..." smoking and divorcing my first husband come to mind... but the ones that are more vague "I would like to be more..." tend to be so amorphous that they are not only difficult to implement (am I actually being more... right now?) but it is also difficult to know whether or not I have achieved them (was I actually more... at any point this year?)

Part of the problem is that I'm not feeling particularly resolute right now. That would imply that I'm feeling pro-active, not the passive mood that I'm currently entertaining (which partially arises out of a feeling of depression looking at the pile of books I have to read sometime soon).

I've also wondered if new year's resolutions are supposed to be like birthday wishes... do they only come true/happen if you don't tell anyone? Or is it the reverse and they only happnen IF you tell someone? I've never really shared mine with anyone before, so I have no empirical evidence either way. If anyone knows whether there's a rule for this, let me know.

I suppose you could argue that publicizing them would allow your friends and family to call you on it, but that could also be really annoying.

So, right now, all I've got for resolutions is to recycle the leftovers from last year. What remains to be seen is whether I actually get around to them this year!

Music

Filled the CD changer with new music to enjoy while reading today:

Forty Licks Rolling Stones
Something Beautiful Great Big Sea
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb U2
Flugrekorder Nicht Offnen Rammstein

Nice mix... thanks to my wonderful husband and kids

Luxurious is a synonym for a good vacation

How absolutely wonderful to do nothing AT ALL for a week and a half. It has been so very long since I've had a break like that, which made it all that much sweeter!

I visited friends (some twice!) who I hadn't seen in a long time, ate, drank, watched movies and not much else - okay, so maybe for you that ain't heaven, but for me, that's downright celestial bliss.

My brother in law and I took the kids to the Leisure Center on Christmas eve [note: going to the Leisure Center on Christmas eve was a brainstorm - we had the place almost to ourselves!] The kids loved the waves and waterslide - I spent much of the time following my 7 year old nephew through the complex and waiting at the bottom of waterslides to catch him... which was cool!

Our whole family was together for Christmas and Boxing Day - something that hasn't happened for probably four years... longer than we've been gone even. My nieces and nephews are getting big! My far-away sister and I braved the shopping malls on Boxing Day and I was rewarded by finding a Board Doctor jacket for Angie at half price - guaranteed to -35C - not that we have those kinds of temps here! but she'll be warm anyway.

We also drove out to Banff for the one day that Dwayne was with us and it rose above -15! The wind was chilly, so we ducked quickly into our favorite candy store and the Cow store, but the wind was blocked up at the Hot Springs and the contrast between the air temp (about -12) and the water (41!) was very, very relaxing... I was glad Dwayne was driving 'cause my muscles felt like putty after all that heat!

Coming home was a bit depressing - I know we've only been here for a little more than 2 years, so I can't expect to be as familiar with the city as I am with Calgary, but I felt more comfortable with the familiar surroundings of Calgary (even though I was staying in my sister's house and my niece's bedroom - surrounded by Avril Lavine posters) than I do in my own house here in Boston. I think one of the things that makes me feel uncomfortable here is the whole visa thing at the border every time we come back - it reminds me that I don't belong here, I'm only a visitor... an "alien"... and that my stay is only temporary... at least under our current status. I suppose comfort comes with time. I just hope that some day I'll feel just as comfortable here as I do there.

Great vacation! just wish it had lasted even longer...

426 Emails

Sometimes, going away sucks... at least, the coming back part does...

End of vacation

"So coming back from a journey or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then. One could be at one's ease."

Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse

Happy New Year!

Boy! was it nice to sleep in my own bed last night!

Not that my vacation was horrible, or the bed a bad one (actually quite nice) but it was really nice to just be at home again.

My head aches today - hangover? no - I wish! - head cold - and my ears still haven't unplugged from the last airplane descent... *sigh* I hope they do soon.

And now it's a new year - I suppose I should spend some time today thinking about resolutions... Hope you had a good holiday and HAPPY NEW YEAR!