Shawn Bayern

News headline that reads “Bat flew in woman’s mouth and now she’s out almost $21k.”

Roses are red,
Lilies are grey, …

just in case it’s helpful, US legal writing (which of course is a different context) would permit “hilarious[]”

The inside of the House of Representatives chamber in the Australian Parliament building.

The inside of the House of Representatives chamber in the Australian Parliament building.

the Australian Parliament looks like they repurposed an indoor competitive swimming pool for their chambers

most royalty-free music libraries still have dozens of recordings of "god save the king." where's the outrage?

once wrote this description of a boorish character in a short story: “He thought ‘always a bridesmaid, never the bride’ was a rule about who he should hit on at weddings. He didn’t always follow the rule.”

Dreamed last night that I was someone’s emotional-support animal on an airplane. (I was still human.)

"always the nursemaid, never the nurse"

when i was 10 or 11 i’d sometimes randomly say “i know you’re listening!” when i was alone just because i thought it would be funny for spies to worry about how some kid had seen through their tradecraft

"i get imposter syndrome whenever i try to commit bank fraud"

As the game of Monopoly teaches us, one of the ways to fail as a real-estate baron is to stay in the overpriced hotels of competitors.

Ha, thanks! I will.

i was going to make this joke (with "pin the tail on the donkey") but am a legal academic, so i did a "preemption check" and realized you beat me to it :)

my handwriting is so bad that i once accidentally told someone "i'd love to see you in prison someday soon" (instead of "in person") when inscribing a book

One ended:

I know my love to be as rare as gold.
What other mistress qualifies as mold?

just found some shakespearean sonnets i wrote about a (fictional) alien "mistress" when i was 17:

Her ventral stoma bears the sweetest scent
Of lemons. Don’t ask; I know not wherefore.
And people know exactly where she went:
She leaves a trail of liquids on the floor.

A water tower labeled “Mayo” for a city with that name in Florida.

wonder what the taps are like here

This is clearly in need of work. Rudolph's nose was -- famously -- red, not pink.

And I don't think it was known for being especially sensitive (though reindeer's noses in general are).

"Rudolph's bullies always said ..." fixes the first problem, but it doesn't evoke Rudolph's feelings as nicely.

Also to the tune of "Ding Dong Merrily":

Rudolph's bullies made him think
That he was unattractive
Just because his nose was pink
(and specially olfactive).

A Concise Cynical Deconstruction of "A Christmas Carol" in View of Anachronistic Features of Tax Policy, to the Tune of "Ding Dong Merrily on High":

Ebenezer sees a wraith;
His selfishness relaxes.
Did he donate in good faith,
Or was it for his taxes?

Dreamed last night that UPenn opened a campus in Ljubljana and called it PennSlovenia.

publication is the best form of data backup

In a public-benefit organization like Bluesky (and as it turns out in modern LLCs generally), it is much easier to set an organization on an immutable course than in traditional corporate law. I joined Bluesky largely because it was such an organization; I avoided Twitter, etc., from the start.

A Research Agenda for Organizational Law ‘Organisations are at the heart of private law. This book takes an inspiring new look at them - broader and more fundamental than ever before, and from a highly innovative transactional perspective. S...

As my posts perhaps make too plain, I'm not here to promote my own work, but coincidentally I've written quite a lot about this very interesting question from the perspective of organizational law and agency law. One important tension is the power of operating agreements vs. that of agents.

spoiler: those are both central australia

An undifferentiated reddish-gray ground photograph that could be of either central Australia or Mars.

A zoomed-in satellite image of central Australia that might as well be of Mars.

there should be "central australia or mars?" captchas

years ago i had a recurring dream in which i hosted a game show called “is it zeugma?”

i’d read out phrases and the contestants had to buzz in and say whether they made use of zeugma or not.

It's not exactly the same but maybe Alexander Pope's inscription on the collar of a dog he gave to the Prince of Wales qualifies:

I am his highness’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?

job interview:

Q: What are your long-term goals?

A: I'd like to avoid becoming a fossil fuel.

for years Delta misparsed my name as "SHAWN BAYE RN" and classified me as a nurse. i couldn't get it fixed and worried they'd need me to deliver a baby in a midflight emergency

A public poster reads "When there's only one race and that's mankind... we shall be free."

this poster takes on a very different meaning when you imagine you’re in a militaristic science-fiction novel