Blawgging doesn’t get any cooler than this — having a MadKane.com song stanza written specially to accompany my recent complaint against lawyers who engage in driving while telephoning (DWT). As Madeleine Begun Kane explains in her posting this morning, “Legal Humor and Interactive Songwriting” (Sept. 15, 2003):
Some songs go platinum. One of mine has gone interactive. I’m referring to my song parody That’s What The Law’s About, which I wrote Saturday and which can be sung to that wedding perennial, “The Hokey Pokey.”
Within hours of my posting it, David Giacalone of ethicalEsq? (who found my legal spoof through Denise Howell’s eclectic Bag and Baggage) had linked to it and requested an additional stanza: a car-phoning stanza to go with his rant about lawyers using their cell phones while driving. He even threatened to write one himself if I didn’t come through for him.
That sounded to me like an offer I couldn’t refuse. Wherefore, I hereby post my spanking new additional and supplemental stanza, which I dedicate to David:
You’ve got to wield that phone
Right from the driver’s seat.
Your time is not your own
And you rarely sleep or eat.
But if you’re very lucky,
You won’t crash or run aground.
That’s what the law’s about.
All of which leaves me uncustomarily speechless. Mad has indeed saved the world from lyrics of my own making, which is surely an ethical and proconsumer action on her part.
More and more studies (I’m too lazy to find them right now) have concluded that happy people tend to be more moral, and that laughing at yourself helps keep a person happy and sane. Thus, and to wit, lawyers who learn to laugh at themselves will be happier, more content and more ethical. So, add a moment of humor to your daily schedule. Besides Madeleine’s site and her suggestions for the best lawyer humor, and a couple more from Denise Howell, we recommend the Nolo.com Lawyer Joke Emporium, which offers jokes in the following categories:
No One Loves a Lawyer, Doctors and Lawyers, Lawyers as Ambulance Chasers, Lawyer Bashing: It’s Not a Dying Art, Lawyers and the Truth, Lawyers as Money Grubbers, Lawyers in Love, Lawyers in Hell, Courtroom Behavior, Lawyers in the Woods, Lawyers as Blockheads, Law School, Lawyers on Vacation, Lawyers and the Animal Kingdom, Partnership, And Justice for None, Judges and Lawyers, What Is a Lawyer?
If you still need to groan a bit more over lawyer satire, silliness and whimsy, try ethicalEsq?‘s own Weakly Specials collection. I wonder when Madeleine will spoof the endless self-promotion and mutual pointin’ and pingin’ in the blawgosphere.