Legal Commentary

the (swift-sluggish-frozen-thawing-swollen-dammed) fickle river of time

By David A. Giacalone

Prof. Yabut is almost sixty years old.  By now, he should have resigned himself to the strange and subjective elasticity of time; or, at least ceased to be surprised by it.  Nonetheless, over the past few days, as January rushes/drags to a close, he’s been heard mumbling each of the following notions (and a few more that I can’t remember):

• “the Holidays aren’t even a dim memory any more”
• “no, I haven’t had time to get those Christmas cards written”
• “the Inauguration seems likes months ago”
• “Chinese New Year snuck up on me again”

• “I thought that two-hour concert would never end”
• “those 60 minutes on ‘24‘ zoom by much too quickly”
• “weren’t you supposed to fill out those W-2’s this week?”
• “it can’t possibly be February already?”

Speaking of time and its mysteries, Erik Turkewitz wrote this week about trying to use his time more wisely by avoiding “Twitter and the Age of Information Overload” (Jan. 25, 2009) Unlike our foray into the topic of Twitter, Erik has been able to voice his skepticism without being called a naive dinosaur, or worse, as has Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice.

On a related note, I clearly thought of Twitter and Info-Source-Glut when I saw the Trailer from “He’s just Not That Into You”. At 2:12 of the Trailer, Drew Barrymore’s character says:

“I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my Blackberry, and so I text it to his cell, and now you have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Before January deserts us, here are a few poems from

Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar 2009 .. ..

Colonel Mustard
in the library . . .
winter night

… by John Stevenson (winner, January)

oyster shells
a boy asks where
the wave began

…. by Peggy Willis Lyles (Hon. Men., January)

white wind the eyes of the dead seal missing

… by Carolyn Hall (winner. February)

ice floes
coming and going
the ides of March

… by David Giacalone (Hon. Men., March)

spring break –
the pale legs
of the motel spider

… by Roberta Beary (Hon. Men., April)

Full post as published by f/k/a . . . on January 31, 2009 (boomark / email).