Things My Teacher Says

“So the rules thus far are ‘don’t be late’ and ‘don’t be absent from class,’ unless you are absent because of circumstances outside your control. In that case, notify me before class. If I walk in here and you are not in your seat, and I don’t already know why that is the case… I will assume that you are dead. We will hold a brief service in your memory and then continue on, as we know you would want.”

“Yeah I mean if you don’t know the answer that’s fine, but I’m gonna make you pick the next person I call on. It’s a social experiment I run. I like to see if people pick their friends or their enemies. Wildly amusing. Anyway, be prepared for that.”

“So as the plaintiff’s counsel, you review all the possible venues and pick the one that’s the fairest to everyone….. haaaaahahaha I’m just kidding. You rig the court in your favor as much as you possibly can.”

“You’re supposed to go to a basement during a tornado. Why don’t y'all have basements?” “Can’t watch from a basement” “You’re going to die”

“My own law professor once described admiralty jurisdiction as ‘shit that happens on boats’ so [writes ‘boat shit’ on the board]”

“So then Congress gave itself a raise and America shouted, ‘Give it back you evil bastards!!!’ so loudly that they did.”

“I will provide you with pizza. For beverages, you’re on your own, but please abide by Baylor policy. Which is that we can’t have FUN.”

“And WHAT do we find outside the cities????? C O W S”

“All the desks on the third floor are reserved for 3Ls in practice court. Since you’re dying like, 100% of the time, they kindly give you a place to die. Sometimes you can see the lost souls wandering past the balconies….”

“You don’t want conservatives! You want someone that will redistribute a little wealth! Get some commies! But don’t ask for them out loud, or it won’t end well.”

“Occasionally someone will walk into your office and start with ‘well just as a matter of principle…’ and that right there? That’s when you pull out your extra-strength Advil, because it will be a long day.”

“You can walk into a restaurant and just say, ‘I want tea.’ Sweet is implied! If you don’t want it sweet, it’s ‘tea, hold the sugar,’ and I like that!”

“My biggest goal is to die in Texas. When Gabriel’s trumpet blows, I will be resurrected from Texas dirt… if at all. Depends on his standards.”

“And I say, ‘How much will you pay me?’ and they say ‘a shitload!’ And I say, ‘how much is a shitload?’ and what do you know? Our definitions match”

“So you see that it’s an unincorporated association, and your reaction to that should be ‘shit!’ That is absolutely the proper reaction. That’s a good reaction.”

“You know it’s not perjury if you cross your fingers, right?”

“I would definitely shank someone for pizza.”

“Right now you’re… you’re lawyer larvae. I have a sense for these things.”

“And by that I mean CRAC, the acronym, not c-r-a-c-k as in crack. Although I was a defense attorney for a long time, so if you want to know how to make crack, we can cover that in a side session. It’s good information. Very interesting.”

“And then I file a complaint against my employer for discriminating against me as a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant. You know… [sarcastically] the historically discriminated against crew”

“Listen, I like money. It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. You can like it just fine.”

“With the well-pleaded complaint rule, we take a scalpel and we carve out the cause of action. We lift it out of the body, bleeding! It is BLEEDING in your hands! You hold it in front of your face and you ask it, ‘WHO CREATED YOU?’ [groaning] ‘A federal law.’ ‘THEN YOU ARE A FEDERAL CASE!’ If it’s a state case, you cast it, still-beating, aside. And stomp on it.”

[with deep respect] “You would make a really good anarchist”

“Beaumont? How’s your family doing?” “Pretty well. I mean, everything is underwater, but it’s fine.”

“Your argument is what? ‘You can’t make that much money because it isn’t fair?’ This is America. Fair doesn’t matter.”

“We need ONLY one more thing: someone rich to sue. Can she help us?? We don’t know… until she describes one word on the side of that truck…. ‘Walmart.’ CHA  C H I N G (don’t say that part out loud)! What’s forty percent of thirty million?? TWELVE MILLION. Forty percent is the ONLY math I can do in my head, because that is PRIVATE JET MONEY, BABY! The ONLY POINT of being rich is to HAVE A PRIVATE JET, because THOSE THAT DO can MANIPULATE TIME. As you can see, I am passionate on this point.”

“See this is a tough question because legislators are supposed to make laws, but how would you know that? They haven’t done it in YEARS.”

“Imagine my confusion when I arrived in Russia not being able to read, and seeing the word “pectopah” everywhere. It sounds like somewhere ghosts eat”

When a kid in my class was struggling to do the rolled R sound “Oh so that means you can’t do any bird calls? I pride myself on my bird calls. I speak bird better than I speak Russian” and proceeds to show us all of his different bird calls.

When I asked him to pass me my water bottle from the front desk he shouts “VODKA” and smells it “Actually it just smells like lemons. LEMON VODKA”

“Tom, your Cyrillic handwriting is worse than a 7 year old’s and you’re only writing “Tom” “

“The Щ character sounds just like a train. Shch shch shch come on, do it with me” and then forces us to make a train around the classroom going “shch shch shch“

He said, and I quote:

“My mention of him should not be seen as an endorsement”

“I wouldn’t recommend his work to anyone”

—

My screenwriting prof.

I felt like a lot of people needed to hear this. Including myself.

-”Now I’ll take attendance in the order in which I don’t like you”

-Made us say ‘may I use the potty?’ in a British accent when we need to use the washroom 

-”Good morning, how’s my favourite class doing-they just left you would’ve passed them in the hallway”

-Had names for all of the variables: a is for apple pie, b is for brownie, c is for cookie, and D IS FOR DOUGHNUT

-”This is beautiful. Just like if you were in front of a mirror-with me standing in front of you”

-He spent like 10 minutes making sure we understood the difference between cannoli and cannelloni

- “You should join the geek protection squad, we would beat up kids like you”

-On the first day of class he drew an x in the corner of the whiteboard with a box around it and it???? somehow stayed there???? all year?????

-”you should all take French just in case you meet a pretty French lady on a plane like I did”

-We had this closet in the corner of the room, and then it just became a thing to talk about the body in the closet (especially when people not in the class would come in)

-Answered the phone in one of two ways “greetings human” or “Pizza Pizza”

-While we’re talking about phones if someone was being looked for he’d tell them that they were out in the smoking area handing out anti-smoking pamphlets

-”You guys are so loud! People would think you’re Italian or something”

-Once turned the lights on using ‘the force’, a.k.a a lightsaber he kept on his desk, and a student standing under the light switch

-”BIG LIKE HOUSE”

-He told us this story about how a few years ago if a kid was particularly annoying/disruptive he’d send them to a certain teacher to ask for a ‘long stand’ that teacher would take a loooong time looking for this item before sending the kid along to the next teacher (I think there were 4?) anyway, once the kid would get back and be like ‘there is no long stand’ he’d say ‘well weren’t you standing for a long time?’

-There was a girl who had a broken arm, who got moved out of the class when her schedule got rearranged. During attendance he’d call ‘broken arm girl’ first, and she would come into the room before we got there to write stuff like ‘broken arm girl was here’ on the board

-The day before christmas break we just talked about star wars the whole class

-called us all sunshine and when one girl asked why he called her stormy clouds for the rest of the year

“You can walk a goat but you cannot walk this noun”

“It’s not a person, it’s not a place, so it better be a thing or I won’t know how to classify the world and I will be scared”

“You can try to read it, but I have a PHD and reading it made me want to die”

“Can I be goating in the field? No.”

“Imperatives are weird, if I don’t know how they work, you certainly won’t”

“I don’t want it in your hearts I want it in your minds”

“People make noises all the time that aren’t sentences”

“We’re baking a delicious syntax cake”

“Yoda does constituency tests for fun”

“This is a triangle of laziness and this is the triangle of ignorance”

“You can’t utter an infinite sentence because you’ll die someday”

“I will call this sentence 1 and this one sentence b)”

“Should the professor steal the book? … Yes, books are expensive”