September 26, 2003 - Virginia Law Weekly

6 Columns & ReviewsVirginia Law Weekly Friday, September 26, 2003VANGUARD Today, Gone TomorrowGuess who’s back? Back again.VANGUARD’s back, tell a friend.What up trailer park girls! Justwhen you thought it was safe tomake out during Hung Jury’s“Livin’ on a Prayer” encore. Justwhen you thought we wouldn’tnotice if you threw up all overyourself. Just when you thoughtwe weren’t tracking your everytantalizing move... the VANGUARDis back baby! Social order is restored.There is a reason to liveagain.Tom O’Grady, athird-year lawstudent, is LawWeekly AssociateColumns Editor.VANGUARD has been undergroundthe past few weeks justwatching the precious U.Va. Lawuniverse attempt to get by withouthim. “Thank God we don’t haveto put up with that insufferableVANGUARD,” they said. “I’m so sickof those stupid initials and theirstupid antics,” they cried. “Wedon’t need them in our lives,” theythought.I normally think Mother Natureis a good mother. She hasgiven us so many greens and blues,and she made the koala bear. I’venever seen one of those small bears,but I sometimes buy Snuggle FabricSoftener, and I understand thatthe Snuggle Bear is a distant relative.And I really like the SnuggleBear. Not just because of what hedoes to my fabric, which can’t beoverstated, but because of someother things that I can’t reallyexplain but I’m pretty sure arereal. And the greens and bluesand koalas aren’t all nature has tooffer.A Bad Case ofthe Benjaminsby Nick BenjaminJust the other day, while traipsingthrough a nearby copse, I cameupon a bed of lilies and begonias.At first I was overcome by the urgeto lie in the bed of lilies and begonias,mainly for symbolic reasons,but then I picked some and broughtthem home to my mother, whoisn’t Mother Nature, but who is anexcellent mother nonetheless. Andshe loved them! It made me thinkthat Mother Nature had reallydone a good job with this world,making daughters who becomeI’m a fairly negative person. Idon’t like nature. I don’t like birthdays.I particularly dislike small,noisy children. But hell hath nofury like my scorn for the wirelessnetwork. I mean you abso-f*ckinglutelyhave to be kidding me. I don’tremember what “ITC” stands for,but I’m guessing that it is not “Instituteof Technological Convenience.”Angry Rantingby Lee KovarskyFor most trilogies, the third installmentis the worst, but the wirelessnetwork is the Godfather III ofthe Virginia TelecommunicationsSaga. Computing 101: Are We ReallyStill Using ISIS? and Computing201: Honey, I Found the GlitchThat Was Randomly Deleting E-mails were clearly debacles in theirown right, but Computing 301: TheWireless Network Mystery exhibitsso many of the genre’s flaws thataudiences must ask themselvesWhy do they hate, when allVANGUARD does is love?“You fools,” VANGUARD thought,“don’t you know how much youneed me? How you can barely functionwithout me?” VANGUARD bidedhis time. He waited for his prophecyto come true. He watched thestudent body get soft and listlessas issue after issue of Law Weeklyappeared with no VANGUARD. Hesat in exile as the studentsstruggled with the age-old question:If a keg stand occurs in thewoods and VANGUARD can’t reportit, does it really happen?VANGUARD has witnessed thedisastrous consequences. The A-list has retreated to their ownworld, their exploits no longer soglamorous, no longer back-pagefodder. Meanwhile, the masses arerestless, left out. They want toknow what they are missing. Theywant to know what they can’t have!No longer can they catch a fleetingtaste of the good life.VANGUARD has waited longenough. He knows you need him.He knows that you know that youneed him. VANGUARD provides apublic service. VANGUARD is back!First off, VANGUARD has got topour one out for his fallen homey4L G.F., a.k.a that Ryan Seacrestlookingblond-haired kid who alwaysdressed really nicely. VAN-GUARD is going to miss his seersuckersmile around the halls. Butwhatever baby, VANGUARD doesn’thate, VANGUARD loves.With the first month of the schoolyear in the books, VANGUARD is totallyshocked by how many totallycool things have happened that havenot been reported. Last Wednesdaynight for example, 3Ls D.S., B.W.,D.M., and S.S. played beer ponguntil nearly 4 a.m. While D.M. andS.S. just stopped short of pattingeach other on the bottom after eachsuccessful shot, they did high-fiveeach other hardcore after each victorywhile saying things like “Youknow it, baby” and “Next.”VANGUARD thought he had a littletoo much to drink at the Brown’sMountain houseparty until he saw3L J.J. striking out with the ladiesleft and right. Two lines that apparentlydon’t work: “I’m from the Releasethe Twins foundation…” andthe Roadhouseian “You gonna bemy regular Saturday night thing,baby.” Luckily by the time H.J. tookthe stage, the dance floor wasdirrrrtier than a Xina Aguiliera concert.Words were meaningless andforgettable.3Ls T.O., T.W., and S.L. took arare night off and totally watchedMTV’s new reality smash Newlywedslast Monday. They couldn’tbelieve Jessica Simpson was capableof housing Wendy’s for breakfastand then announcing to the tablethat she had to “go drop the kids offat the pool” and “it’s probably goingto take about an hour.” Poor S.L.was distraught. He doesn’t like tothink of his virgin pop stars in thatposition. He spent the rest of theeveningtrollingwww.maturehizzies.com to try totake his mind off it. Oh snap, insidejokes!!!!Don’t think VANGUARD neglectsthe 1L ranks. 1L J.A. totally wentoff last Thursday by ordering jerseynumber 69 for his new section softballteam. It was hilarious to choose69 because it is a sexual position.Not to be outdone, 1L N.H. fired upthe big 00 for his jersey. He was like“What? What? I’m double zero baby.Double zero.” VANGUARD was like,Mother Nature Reviewed with Mixed Emotionsmothers who have sons, and allthe while sharing the credit andthe bounty.But then not everything MotherNature does is so good.Take HurricaneIsabel. HurricaneIsabel, while clearly achild of nature, wasnothing like theSnuggle bear or thelovely begonia. HurricaneIsabel spent quitea while brewing off thesouthern coast of ourcountry, and thenmade landfall somewhereon the NorthCarolina coast thispast Thursday. It tooka while to get toCharlottesville,though it somehowmanaged to preemptivelyknock out ourelectrical grid, andwhen it got here it wasbad on a number oflevels.The first bad thing about HurricaneIsabel was all of the troubleand fear that it created. I had tostay home all day on Thursdayand Friday because my classeswere canceled. I couldn’t drivebecause all of the traffic lightsaround town went out and I don’tfeel comfortable driving in a worldwhere there are no rules. I couldn’teat because my refrigerator diedand my milk went bad. I couldn’twatch TV because the cables hadgotten tangled in the storm. Icouldn’t read because the electricitywasn’t working and my housedoesn’t have any windows. Myroommates and I tried talking butthat was only good for half an houror so and even then wasn’t reallythat good. I spent some time infront of the mirror, trying to findmyself, but that doesn’t work verywell in the dark. Plus, the verynice Asian lady at the nearby 7-Eleven who calls me “Macho Man”had her car destroyed by a fallingbranch. That’s not fair.All that was a problem, and notvery cool of the mother at all, butI think maybe the worst thingabout the hurricane was the lackof excitement. Am I wrong, or is ahurricane just a really windy, rainyday? At least an earthquake or aWireless Network Reviewed with Displeasurewhether this one is worth the$30,000 price of admission.When we returned to school thisfall many of us mistakenly presumedthat our inability to access the wirelessnetwork in Withers-Brown wasa consequence of the new “noInternet in class” rule. We quicklylearned that this was not the case —students’ failure to connect easily tothe network was instead a result ofan unrelated interest in securing a“closed” network, a significant andcontroversial networking decisionfor which, apparently, it was notnecessary to solicit student input.Not that anybody really asks for myinput about anything, but I’m sureother people would have had somethingto say about it. Setting myfeelings about the merits of opennetworks aside for a moment, I firstpromise that I will never, ever againmistakenly assume that disruptionsin our wireless communications infrastructurebear a logical relationshipto any widely-communicatedinstitutional objective.Registering a wireless card is, ofcourse, easy. So is reconfiguring theHurricane Isabel: 1, U.Va.: 0network settings on a computer.Granted, few of us ever knew theywere supposed to do the second one.“You got an e-mail,” we’re told. Yeah— no sh*t. We got an email fromITC about that, and we also got oneregarding just about every otherthing on God’s green earth. I mean,I was really relieved when, this summer,waiting for a message from apartner at 2:08 in the morning, Ireceived an e-mail reassuring methat the SLH printer’s double-sidedcopying functionality was re-enabled.How about a subject line thattells me when I’m supposed to payattention — something along thelines of “How to connect to the wirelessnetwork.”And on behalf of everyone whohas wireless at home, I would alsolike to thank the new networkingrules for thoroughly disrupting thatotherwise helpful technology. I don’twant to spoil the ending for myreaders, but if you have a wirelessconnection at home, reconfiguringyour network settings will, in allprobability, severely retard yourInternet access there. In addition to“Hell yeah, man.” In other softballrelated news, VANGUARD has decidedthat should it ever don a softballjersey again, it will wear single zeroand the nickname “Manchild.” Ifonly someone would invite VANGUARDto play on a team. Aww don’t youlove when VANGUARD acts all sad.VANGUARD also overheard 1L T.B.mention that if he gets called on byhis seating chart-less professor he’sjust going to sit there and not sayanything thus making the professorthink he is not there, even thoughhe is actually in the classroom. Bigups TB!Finally, VANGUARD is obligatedto give a lone straight-upshoutout to 3L M.A. who actuallyconceived the idea of the FakeVANGUARD — most likely as amechanism to get his stupidname in the paper. The kidquacks under pressure — whichis bad, not good.VANGUARD knows he is rustyand out of the loop. With yourhelp, the cream will rise to thetop again. Help VANGUARD helpyou. Please, if you have any greattidbits of gossip, e-mail me atyouaresomint@vanguard.com.tornado has some kind of signaturestyle; a hurricane just rollsthrough and inexplicably destroysa lot of stuff.Anyway, all of this gotme thinking aboutMother Nature in a kindof exploratory way, andI’m not so sure how I feelabout her anymore. Yes,there is a lot of beauty inthe world, but we all die,don’t we? Is somethingreally a gift if it ultimatelygets taken away?Sure, our lives seempretty long to us, butimagine how short theymust seem from theMother’s frame of reference.And what about allof those really scarylunch ladies out there?You know, the ones withthe impossible facialbristles and the butts aswild and arid as the Russiansteppe? The Motherphoto by Maggie Samramade them too.And so, for today, even thoughthe sun is shining and the grassout here in front of the Law Schoolis pretty damned green, I’m givingMother Nature a thumbs down.And for those of you who disagree,answer me this: Where is the garden,and wherein lie the wild berries?receiving instructions regardinghow to reconfigure our network settings,students would have appreciatedsome technical support for dealingwith what were, apparently,home-wireless problems that ITCforesaw. Home-wireless technologyproviders would doubtlessly complainabout a policy that effectivelyforces students to choose betweentheir service and that of the school,except it seems that most studentshave in fact chosen that domesticoption over the chance to contortoneself around a Scott Commonstoilet just to get a wireless signal.I must confess that I’ve saved myfavorite complaint for last. A friendof mine has a non-Cisco wirelesscard. Non-Cisco cards, he was told,may not work on the new wirelessnetwork. Well golly-gee!! Wasn’tthat a pleasant waste of one hundredand fifty dollars? I’m really nota fan of the “I pay thirty thousanddollars a year and all I get is thislousy…” line of student agitation,but come on. If the Law School isgoing to make a decision that effectivelyrenders useless certain equipmentpurchased with the expectationthat it would last for severalyears, it should have a less cavalierattitude about it — no pun intended.Of course, the “you should havebought a Cisco card” rejoinder isentirely consistent with ITC’sbroader policy of encouraging studentsto purchase most equipmentat a 100% markup from CavalierComputers.Audiences greeted the new wirelessnetwork with a mixture ofoutrage and confusion. In responseto this blistering critical assault,the Director has cast his lot withthe likes of David Lynch and othersurrealists by arguing that “noteverything needs a reason.” Uponbeing confronted directly by theincoherence of his oeuvre, the Directorcontinued to restate hissomewhat cryptic and wholly frustratingmantra: “if you have questions,please fill out an email ticketand submit it over the network.”(You know, the network you can’tconnect to.)THE WIRELESS NETWORK– 0 Stars; Directed by Gary Banks