Two Performers Needed for Legal Nonsense Night
Luke Lefler kindly provided me with a night to enable my dream of legal mumbo-jumbo read aloud. It’s going to be April 13, at 3 Friends Coffee House, starting at 7:00 pm, with an open mic to follow.
The format follows the name of the coffee shop – 3 readers/performers. We’re each going to have (roughly) 15-17 minutes of stage time. The theme is found poetics within boilerplate or legislative gobbledygook – so the idea is not merely to read the worst legal document you’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving (although that would be fine), but to mash up, surrealize further, or otherwise play with legal language in a fashion that begs to be spoken aloud.
I’d like to see two folks with musical or other talents, so that we don’t have a full hour of reading. Even at the best of times, that can be trying. And of course, if your shtick is not exactly what I’m describing (how could it be) but you feel that there are synergies, also feel free to leave a comment or @ me on Twitter or email me or whatever. Myself, I’m going to be working on an epic poem of sorts to read for my piece.
It would be good to see friends and tweeps take some open mic time as well, themed or no…
The Chicken Co-op
See what I did there? With the title? That’s Comedy Gold.
You don’t have to be a chicken to start a co-op in Oregon, but if you are a chicken (the proper term is “risk averse”), or you want to have all the Starkadders around you as you wander into the unknown, or you generally like hanging with your peeps, then a cooperative corporation is not the worst way to go.
A cooperative is no more or less than a group of people with a common goal, interest, or profit motive in mind who incorporate under the Oregon Cooperative Corporation Act for that purpose. Cooperatives are not by definition nonprofit (though they can be), nor are they really all that different than regular Corporations, except that they can issue capital stock in exchange for a membership fee. Such stock can create the right to a dividend (see, e.g., REI or that grocery co-op in the NW neighborhood). It can be the only class of stock issued, or can be part of a group of classes, or itself be divisible into classes.
Heady stuff, I know. Here’s the payoff: the cooperative model presents unique opportunities to leverage a distributed workforce of smart people into a cohesive profit sharing enterprise. Rather than bear the burden of your own overhead, you share that burden with others, and under a corporate umbrella. Similarly, work that ends up being substantially above margin benefits everyone. If someone (I’m looking at you, Cubespace) were to, say, bid out, supervise, and administer contracts that various smart people would then work on, they could pay people for work but also have a means of developing and expanding a common warchest for marketing, facilities development, or just plain dividends out to anyone interested. And because they can create classes of stock, they could allow investment by unskilled individuals who may even (gasp) occasionally require the services of the type of people who are in the cooperative. So those people (let’s call them “retail members”) get dividends and discounted services.
That’s worth a membership, right? I mean, people seem happy to pony up a fee to buy a sleeping bag. And the retail members provide an initial capital infusion to cope with some of the expenses of getting the pump primed. The applications are pretty much boundless for the purposes that I’m contemplating, and the ethos of the thing fits right in with Portland’s very unique sense of self.
It’s worth a closer look (much closer than I have, to date, given it).
Things Unsaid
There has been a marked lack of posting here, but as I am currently unable to exit the house, I might as well crank out the backlog.
On working. The return to the rigors of law practice has thus far gone reasonably well. There are still some hitches in my various getalongs, but for the most part it’s been better than I could have hoped. Part of the credit goes to the fact that I’m back to doing things that I spent an awful lot of time and energy on during law school.
First Knit Complete. I made c. (I’ve instituted big C/little c anonymity for wife and kiddo, respectively) a scarf out of two balls of crazybuttersoft yarn (merino/cashmere blend – and no, that’s not the brand, but a descriptive term). I did it in stockinette and only screwed up once (but it was a doozy, right at the end). As promised, the scarf has quite a curl, but that adds to the cuteness. The baby blanket for Neil’s kiddo is coming along (about 3/4s done), and I learned a while back that I’m going to need to start another for Demetri’s baby as well. Yay babies!
Drafting as Coding epilogue. I’ve been gathering comments and ideas from a variety of sources regarding legal drafting as code (and/or vice versa – see John Metta’s riff on the analogy’s other direction). Rather than write them up properly, I’m going to synthesize them into some sort of top ten list, coming soon.
Ignited. Turned in my slides today, complete with infographics (yeah!) and New Yorker cartoon (19.95 power point license fee, all for you good people).
Plumbers have nothing to worry about. Um, holy crap, when did it start costing $200 to install a faucet? Joe et al. are going to be just fine during this recession, yo.