case comment

Went out to the Rideau Centre after my Torts exam yesterday, as a treat to myself. Went to Grand & Toy and found out a horrible, horrible thing: Schaeffer doesn't make $10 cheapo fountain pens any more. They only make the $135 jobbies. I love fountain pens, but at that price, they better come with a bidet. And considering the fact that I buy about one a year because I keep losing them... no. I don't think so.

::sigh::

Also went to Chapters. Found "Take The Red Pill" and immediately thought of Chris. It's a bunch of essays on religion, philosophy, social commentary, etc in The Matrix. Considering the fact that Chris must have seen that movie no less than 200 times, I think he'd get a real kick out of it. I know I did, just from the intro by David Gerrold and the first essay, on Jesus imagery. Really, really cool.

Memo to self: someday I must read the Beethoven/Escher/some mathematician book. And "A Brief History of Time."

Also found two books that made me so wish I could run to my e-mail and share with Leslie. One was a pop-up Frank Lloyd Wright book (the Guggenheim just rises before your eyes - it's really cool) and a "The Making of Chicago" book. Leslie loved architecture - I wouldn't know Lloyd's buildings from a hole in the wall, but she was very much into it. I remember how tickled she was to find out that Sam Waterston initially enrolled in architecture school in college - I found it an interesting factoid, but it really thrilled her.

As for the Chicago book... I kept thinking, man, she would have both loved and hated this book. It went into the background of the play and musical (it's based on some real celebrity murderess cases in Chicago in the 20's) and had all sorts of interesting and amusing and thought provoking stuff about the play and the nature of celebrity and what it says about our society and yadda yadda yadda... but it only mentioned Jerry Orbach once.

Ooh, that would've made Leslie see red. There was one picture of him on stage with Roxie on his lap, with a little caption (Jerry Orbach and *** in original stage version) and then nothing else. They even had pictures of past Velmas, Roxies and Billy Flynns (among them Liza Minelli and Bebe Neuwirth) and he wasn't there - not even mentioned.

Anyway. Must see that movie. Especially now that Chris is willing to see it with me. When I complained to Leslie that I probably wouldn't see it for a long time because Chris isn't into musicals, she told me "Bryan says to tell Chris there's lots and lots of cleavage". To which Chris replied, "Oh, it's a boobie movie? Why didn't you say so in the first place?" :) :)

Aah, women like the simple things in life. Like men.

So. Chicago. After my case comment is done.

Now. On to the last part of the first half of my first year of law school, the last two assignments for Crim.

• provocation defence summary
  
• get and read cases from Quicklaw:
  
  
  
  • R. v. Travers (full)
    
  • R. v. Gladue (full and brief)
    
  • R. v. Proulx (full and brief)
    
  • R. v. Wells (brief)
    
  • R. v. McKenzie (brief)
    
  
  
• outline of case brief
  
• look over course outline, see what I can use in case comment
  
• table of contents
  

Interesting factoids

Couple of interesting articles about the coverage of this war:

• Who Covered the War Best? Try Al-Jazeera
  
• People Just Like You, by Peter Mansbridge
  

And a few interesting (to me) factoids about the defence of "provocation" in Canada.

• Historically, the only emotion accommodated by this defence was patriarchal rage (eg. man catches wife in adultery, or son being sodomized). A woman coming upon either of those situations could not claim provocation as a defence if she killed her husband, his lover, or whoever was sodomizing her son.
  
• Today, provocation is "any wrongful act or insult sufficient to deprive the ordinary person of self-control", but is still used mostly by men, frequently involving sexuality (eg. catching their wife in adultery, or being propositioned by another man.)
  
• The provocation must be sudden. The defence cannot be used by a person who has been beaten for years by their spouse and finally snaps. They can try to use self-defence, although this is rarely successful.
  
• In a study done by the Dept of Justice (Reforming Provocation, 1998) they noted that 1/6 of homicides involved a spouse, 62/80 by men, 18 by women. 60% involved a history of domestic violence – where the woman was killed, it was 90%.
  
• The study advocated several reforms, mostly to remove this defence as a way to let make men get off with 'Manslaughter' instead of murder when they killed their wives. None of the reforms have been implemented.
  

I love the law.

random inanities of life

"I like the sun. I really do," my three year old said as we walked into his day care yesterday. "Because it warms mine ear. It's my favourite star. I should say, Thank you, SUN!!"

?

Whoever has read and enjoyed Good Omens should apparently read American Gods, says my partner. It's not comedic per se, in fact it's rather dark, but it's great Neil Gaiman writing. It's on my reading list, at least.

My six-year old has just told me, very seriously, that he's exploring the inside of his mouth. He's got his finger stuck deep in his mouth and is swirling it around. Whatever rings your bell, kid.

Had a flash of insight yesterday that perhaps Promises is sitting up and eager to be written now because it's no longer hitting quite so uncomfortably close to home. Who knows. Chris thinks this is quite probable, but then again, Chris is a shrink and sees subconsious motivations everywhere. Sometimes a cigar is just a fic, hon ;)