Unused and Probably Unusable

Announcing a (hopefully) regularly recurring feature here on U&PU, a science fictional episodic essay, examining the works of Robert Heinlein, with particular attention to Law, Courts, Lawyers, as well as common non-legal themes, features, and characterizations.

(I don't know if I'll be able to hit every Friday, and for that matter when I'm going hot I may have to have supplemental posts - a post-Friday Heinlein Friday, if you will.)

Statement of Purpose

But my intention holds, sitting well in order, to push off, smite the sounding furrows, and blog about what were then newer worlds, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die. Deepest apologies of course to Tennyson. Heinlein was a fan of "Ulysses," it seems; he titled one of his last, fat novels after a line in the poem: To Sail Beyond the Sunset. The penultimate sentence, in fact:

Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

Good stuff. The protagonist, Maureen Long, mother of the much-storied Lazarus Long, and perhaps a thinly-veiled female version of Heinlein himself, trades quotes with a Dean, in the process each satisfying the other that they Love Good Literature.

The themes of the poem, too, and particularly of those lines, are commonly featured in Heinlein's work. Adventure, traveling, endless exploration, scouting into the unknown, and a happy death while pushing the boundaries.

In my Heinlein posts, I intend to do what I always wanted to do with a webpage, but never had the opportunity to: lay out some of my insights into commonalities, weaknesses, strengths, and intriguing features of Heinlein's work, and invite others to respond. I know not everyone's fond of him; fortunately there's no need to agree with me about the significance or value of RAH's work. If you don't like it, don't read it. Same goes for my posts.

I also wish to draw attention at this time to Tenser, Said the Tensor, which has a marvelous feature on Linguistics in SF, with prominent presence of Heinlein (who in Gulf, Friday, and numerous other stories and novels added a heavy dose of linguistic ideas into the plots, or even scenery, of his fictons). [ed.: are we sure the plural of ficton isn't ficta?] While I invariably read Language Log for the widest possible coverage of pop ling news, T,stT is an outstanding effort in its area.

This post is not about my lawsuit. It is a post about MyLawsuit....

Stuart Elliot, writing in the NY Times, catches a mild topicality/ timeliness/ brand identification lift from MySpace and Nuestro Himno in his article "Nowadays It's All Yours, Mine, or Ours."

I'm reminded of two similar faddish naming/ branding/ advertising themes. One was the relatively localized bump that -ster received, around the time that social networking site Friendster boomed. As Wikipedia tells us, Friendster was founded in 2002, and had a boom in popularity during and through 2003. Friendster is now suffering both decline in usage but a far more precipitous drop-off in hotness, as substitutes like myspace rob the phenomenon of the all-important trendiness. Around the same time as F-ster's peak growth, other uses of the -ster popped up, often to mock or evoke the most prominent version. I recall Enemyster and Fiendster, although I don't recall seeing Mob-ster (for friends of Nostra Famiglia, I would assume), Dump-ster (for ex-friends?), or Ham-ster (for pets?).

A much longer-lived phenomenon was the persistent trend of naming movies in the form Xing Y. I don't know that Waiting for Guffman was a particularly significant impetus, but it was early in the trend, perhaps not an innovator but certainly a presager of the main body. Examples include Saving Private Ryan; Saving Silverman; Kissing Jessica Stein; Boxing Helena; Deconstructing Harry. The Volokhs had a post on Gerunding Name. I rather like how clever the comments to the post got. Here's another list of movies with gerundy titles ("Gerunding the Movie Titlings").

In the same vein, I propose MyLawsuit.

You start out with MyProblem. Being bitter, unforgiving, injured, vindictive, and determined, you hire MyLawyer.

You embark on MyDiscovery, perhaps engaging in MyDepositions and MyRequests for Admission. With MyEvidence and MyExpert Witnesses in hand, you can try MySettlement Negotiations or MyArbitration.

And if all else fails, and the lawsuit drives you into penury, there's always MyBankruptcy. Oops, already taken.

In fact, I think Mylawyer.com hopes to take advantage of its nice trendy name. They sell self-service legal forms. I don't buy it for a second. Mylawsuit.com seems to be for sale; smells like a squatter to me.

Still no Google hits for "myjurytrial" though.