Usus, Fructus, Abusus

This has been the week from hell. Tomorrow I have a paper due and a microeconomics final. On top of that, I've been in real estate school all week. So during the day I learn about the Louisiana civil code and at night I read about monopolies, oligopolies, and how marginal revenue and marginal cost drive profit maximization. Any wonder I have a splitting headache right now?

When I don't worry about supply and demand, I get to revel in the fact that of the fifty states in the USA, Louisiana is the only state that does not follow common law. People who say, "That's right, it's the Napoleonic code" have only half the story. LA uses civil law, which is normally used in almost every European country that does not have English as its native tongue. Spain gets to share the blame for this - LA was theirs during 1762-1802. Anyway, so I have to learn common law stuff for the national real estate test and then forget all of that to learn the LA way for the LA part of the test. Tenants in common? Not in LA. Joint tenancy? Not in LA (BTW, joint tenancy might be a smart thing to check into if you're GLBT). We have expropriation, not condemnation.

Dation en paiement anybody?

"I'm Just a Chicken Guy"

So sang John Doyle, the police chief of Harahan, during our Sunday Jazz brunch at the Hilton Riverside.

This is quite a town - I can have beers with the mayor (not New Orleans') last night after class and be serenaded by a police chief the next day at brunch and have shrimp stuffed mirliton as a menu choice. Where else can you do that in this country?

On another note, I am prompted by my favorite New Orleans bloggebrity™ (whom I've yet to meet) to ask this question: why do so many New Orleans web sites have to increase their sites' cheesiness by adding music to the site? Is there some mad web site designer with a lock on the New Orleans market whose warped sense of web site design aesthetics compells him to add this "feature"? Does he know that it ain't 1995 anymore? At least he hasn't discovered Flash yet.