I’ve always been in favor of gay marriage. How could I not be? Gay marriage means gay divorce and gay divorce means more work for lawyers. I’m in favor of any law that can create more work for lawyers.
Shutting out partners in time of illness always seemed to me to be cruel and mean. That defect could have been cured without opening the doors to marriage, but if the gay community wants in, so be it.
In one Saudi case, a woman asked for political asylum in the UK because she faced persecution in Saudi Arabia because she is a lesbian. Asylum was granted.
After a while, she decided that she wanted to be a mother. She asked a male gay friend to assist, and he provided the seed which was administered medically. I poin† this out only because in this fashion, there was no violation of the Islamic shari’a. In Saudi Arabia, artificial insemination is perfectly legal.
In due course the baby was born. The donor claimed that he had rights to the child. His partner did as well.
Mom was unhappy with this claim and back in Saudi Arabia, the baby boy’s grandparents wanted a relationship with their grandchild—and why not?
Normally you don’t visit a country that is persecuting you and from which you have claimed asylum. The question presented was whether the little boy could visit his grandparents in Saudi Arabia with his mother. Mom said yes. Dad said no. Would the little boy, born in the UK, have a right to Saudi natioality? The UK has no birthright citizenship and neither does Saudi Arabia. But these rules have exceptions, as all rules do.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. The king is oonstrained only by Islam. Of course, since he is the ultimate arbiter of Islam, this constraint doesn’t chafe too much. No matter what the Saudi Passport Office says, if the Governor of Riyadh—exercising powers delegated by the King—were to say. “give the boy a passport” his will would be done.
Everyone ended up hiring their own lawyers. The legal icing on the cake was the family law judge hiring yet another law firm to provide a legal opinion as to the state of Saudi citizenship law, gay persecution, in vitro fertilization and how Saudi might treat the father, who had no intention of traveling to Saudi Arabia.
The issue of bigamy came up; a crime unknown in Saudi Arabia—you have to attempt to marry a fifth wife before the door slams shut, but in the UK, having two spouses is not permitted.
Yet another issue in what in Miami would be called a mogolla (a stew with everything thrown in) was the validity of an Islamic marriage entered into via Zoom, supposedly without any real intention to marry, such as a marriage conducted in a film.
Was Don Corleone’s daughter, played by Talia Shire, married—for real? After all, the legal requirements were all met. “But they were just acting,” you claim. Does the law contain a “Hollywood” or “just acting” exception? Maybe it does: intent is the island you wish to escape to, but what if only one of the parties thought they were acting?
Mick Jagger tried to squirm out of his marriage to Jerri Hall but failed. All you need is some kind of ceremony and a Hindu ceremony om a beach in Bali perfectly meets the legal requirement.
Drunken couples who marry “for fun” on a Vegas vaation quickly find that they are legally married back home due to the “Full Faith and Credit” clause, as Britney Spears found out to her dismay. She hired legal counsel and obtained an annulment after participating in an ill-advised ceremony on the Strip.
Could you have selfie-taking influencer on hand in order to claim it was content for a vlog, a stunt? And so qualifying as cinema? Or do you need some kind of director to announce Action! and Cut!?
Mick Jagger is now in his 80’s and his fiancée in her 30’s. And you’re worried about a twenty-year age gap relationship. Shame on you. Perhaps this time Mick will involve a pre-nupe to avoid a messy divorce and expensive divorce lawyers.
In our Saudi travel case, after a legal opinion covering all these issues was rendered in the UK-Saudi travel case, another legal expert was hired to examine the foreign legal expert’s conclusions.
All these legal opinions admitted that the King or his delegate may
decide to modify the law or create rights, so ultimately the opinions weren’t that useful.
Don’t think I’m playing a Saudi card here either. Back in the good ole USA, these cases can be just as troublesome and so create lots of work for platoons of lawyers.
A WNBA player who was domiciled in Georgia wanted to marry her girlfriend. Unfortunately, Georgia did not permit gay marriage at that time so the still-happy couple went to another State and married. After a while, they decided to raise a child together.
Eventually, the non-athlete decided she wasn’t gay after all and married a man in Georgia. Parenthetically, I should point out that you don’t have to be gay to enter into a same sex marriage: there could well be other reasons why a couple might marry, e.g. to prevent a police inquiry or court tesimomy, see, the televisiomn series Shameless where this was a plot point. The Romans used adoption as a method of tying families together and eo adult adoption was ommon.
I don’t think that immigration law has caught up yet, but it seems to me that if a foreign man can obtain US citizenship by marrying an American woman, logically he should be able to obtain US citizenship by marrying an Amerian man. Finding out will prohably require three or more sets of lawyers: immigration, trial, appellate and a team to write a certiorari petition. Despite the finality of DNA tests, it is only recently that American law started treating children of American fathers born overseas the same as those children born to American mothers.
The marriage to a man was bigamous in the State of marriage but legal in Georgia which didn’t recognize the earlier marriage. The new husband wanted to adopt his wife’s child, the WNBA player wanted joint custody, everyone hired their own lawyer, then their own appellate lawyers and since two States were involved—at some point there was a move—the matter ended up at the Supreme Court of each State, so specialist State Supreme Court practitioners had to be brought in as well.
As far as I know the grandparents never stepped in but it’s likely that they too sought legal counsel to be apprised of their rights. In the Second Amendment grandparent-heavy State of Florida, the legislature has seen fit to enact grandparent protections.
So yeah, gay marriage sometimes means a lot more work for lawyers. Thumbs up to gay marrieage.
Modern Dentistry
A half-century and ten years ago, I fell off the monkey bars at the playground and chipped my tooth. Thirty years ago, the crown affixed to the tooth after the playground accident was replaced.
These days, I avoid the monkey bars. Were I to find them, were I to climb them at a local playground, I have little doubt that the police would be called.
It’s a pity, in a way. Swings are fun and safe. But were I to write a piece on Swinging for Seniors people would get the wrong idea.
Trump, 1945
Trump survived two impeachments, four indictments and two assassination attempts.
His aides believe this is proof that he is a “man of destiney” and that he answers only to History. There was another leader who commanded such devotion before he committed suicide in Berlin in 1945.
Unethical Employee Life Hack
Take a picture of a hospital near you. When you need a day off, send the picture to your employer advising that you are at the hospital.
Protip: take hospial pictures under several weather conditions. It’s no good to send a picture of a hospital on a sunny day when a thunderstorm is rolling in.
Foreigner in a Fight
A Finnish man drove his motorbike to a Thai polkce station in Pattaya seeking medical assistance. Perhaps he didn’t know where the nearest hospital was or the police station was close-by.
He explained to the officeer on duty that he had been stabbed following a fight with his transgender boyfriend over money. The 58 year-old Finn was taken to the hospital and survived. The status of the ladyboy was not reported.
In other ladyboy news, an Indian police officer holding a valid tourist visa got into a street fight with a paid ladyboy companion after refusing to turn over the agreed consideration. The altercation became physical, both of them put on hands until other ladyboys, seeing the kerfluggle, flew into the fray, wieldiing high-heels as dangerous spikes and overwhelming the poor officer who finally realized that the costs of trating high-heeled inflicted wounds would well exceed the balance owed to his earlier chosen companion. The police eventually shut down the street brawl.
These fights can be vicious and seem to frequently involve ladyboys and their paramours. A few months ago a pair of sewing scissors and a can of insecticide were the chosen weapons in a brawl over money. If you think that sewing scissors are weak weapons, you would be mistaken, especially if wielded by a greedy ladyboy hungry for money. A harmless cylinder of Raid becomes a life-changing weapon when sprayed in the face.
I am sure there is a lesson here.
Crossing the Border
With my Thai permission to stay in the country soon expiring, I flew to Udon Thani in the north of Thailand, a mere hour from the border with Laos. I had confirmed with my visa agent that I would be able to do a visa run, that is, exit the country immediately and return with a new sixty-day permission.
Unfortunately, he was wrong. Because of misbehaving Indians, Israelis, Russians—and I suppose we should include Finns with transgendr boyfriends—the visa rules have changed and visa runs are no longer permitted.
At immigration I was referred to secondary where I was scolded and told that visa runs were no longer permitted. I had no excuses I could give. My truthful claim of upcoming medical appointments was ignored. “Not our problem.” Do I look like a sewing-scissors wielding farang who would get into a fight with a ladyboy? An Israeli soldier on holiday who believes “no man left behind” extends to a comrade under police custody in a Thai jail? Or a Desi tourist trying to save a few rupees by sleeping on the beach?” My pleas were ignored.
I once had a vanity Florida license plate which read No Pleas but I was referring to something else.
I soon found myself on the bus heading towards Lao immigration. Two hours later, I was back in Thailand. You may ask how I pulled off this wizadry. A lesser man might have hired a coyote to guide him through the jungle across the land-mined Thai-Laotian border. Or lied about it. In this part of the world, the Mekong River demarcates the border between the two countries.
If you are in shape—I am not—you could swim across. Laotian deportees return by canoe—there’s a local name for these skiffs which I don’t know—to Nong Khai the next day with newly-minted fake Thai identity cards. There is jungle between Thailand and Cambodia and there are coyotes who will guide you through, but I am nowhere near Cambodia. In the Golden Triangle whose pounts are China, Myanmar and Thailand, national borders are more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. You can cross officially or stroll through a hold in the fence. There is always someone around, glad to xhos you the path. So how did I get back into Thailand? You may ask.
Indeed, you may ask.
I think I might have had more sympathy for the public reaction to Jeannine Cummins and her novel Americsn Dirt if I had been told that she was sent to secondary as questionable aliens—e.g., someone like myaself—always are.
When was the last time a scheduled book signing was canceled because of threats of violence? Perhaps I could throw together Doing Business in Tehran and schedule book readings in places where the Second Amendment is alive and well.
No boring canceled book signings for me.
Come to think of it, as a former Miami drug lawyer, visiting the Golden Triangle should have been a dream come true.
After turning up at a drug lab in the Colombian Amazon, what was left?
Why Due Diligence?
I was contacted by a Washington State real estate developer who had great plans to build a development that the whole world would marvel at. The only problem was that he needed money to buy the materials, hire the workers, pay the architects and get all the necessary permits from the city, county and state. He went to a bank and they told him they were happy to finance a new automobile purchase—the car could always be repossessed—but they were reluctant to take a flyer on a real estate development program despite its worthiness.
The developer searched from pillar to post for a lender. He had already purchased options to buy the land and was eager to break ground. A friend of his in Moses Lake suggested that he obtain Saudi money to fund the development. A broker in
Malaysia knew all te details. The developer flew off to Malaysias—that seems a little rash to me—and returned from Kuala Lumpur, happy that the loan, according to the Malaysian, would soon be funded.
The contract, which I only saw months later, was not in the form typical of Saudi contracts. No lawyer of any stripe had reviewed the contract. Sure, the developer reasoned, some blanks needed to be filled in, such as the identity of the lender. But surely this was just a formality. The developer returned to Kuala Lumpur to close on the loan. No lawyer accompanied them—why do you need a lawyer at a closing?—and the developer had already made calls to arrange for the groundbreaking ceremony. The mayor of the town was called upo to say a few words.
The broker announced that the Saudi lender would, unfortunately, not be coming to Kuala Lumpur for the closing. This was not altogether surprising, because as a matter of fact the lender did exidst, but had not agreed to make a loan to the developer. Indeed, the Saudi lender knew nothing of the transaction.
The Malaysian broker told the developer not to worry, that he would sign on behalf of the lender. As to his authority to sign, the developer assumed that the Malaysian was truthful. He wasn’t, but he signed anyway. The blanks in the contract hadn’t been filled in; the developer was told that doing so would be a meaningless formality that could be ignored.
The developer retunred to Washington State and waited for a wire transfer that never came. The Malaysian broker suggested contacting an Italian consultant who was said to be in contact with the Saudi lender. The Italian consultant only charged a modest fee for his services. In fact, he did not know the Saudi lender at all.
The developer meanwhile hosted the mayor at the groundbreaking ceeremony. In his all too short speech, the mayor spun a tale that the non-Mexican construction workers could understand, of all the benefits that the development would surely bring to the town.
The wire, like Godot, would surely come tomorrow. But tomorrow came and went, creeping in its petty pace “from day to day” but never arriving. When the Italian consultant requested yet another round of fees, the real estate develoer went, finally, to an American lawyer.
Did you do due diligence on the lender? The loan? The transaction? The answer, of course, was “no.” The Malaysian had not recommended any such ecercise and the real estate developer wanted to save money. GE’s Jack Welch had commanded that costs be cut and this was a faith that the real estate developer followed. Why pay for a lawyer when you can get a public defender?
The American lawyer advised the real estate developer that, despite his urgency to file suit against someone, there was no contract to enforce. The Malaysian had no auhority to bind a Saudi lender, who address was absent from the contract and whose alleged name appeared all too common.
The American lawyer gave the bad news: no contract, no case, no nothing.
Don’t be like the real estate developer. Have a lawyer review all international contracts before tuey are signed.
And the real estate project? Indefinetly delayed.
The other 9/11
On September 11, 1973, q coup led by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende was killed in the coup after fighter jets bobmed Santiago’s Moncada Palace. The award-winning photograph shows Allende at the Moncada, shortly before he was killed. Frank Teruggi, of Des Plaines, Illinois, was another of Pinochet’s victims.
Allende’s ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier and his American aide Ronnie Moffit were murdered in Washington, D.C. by Chilean intelligence after Piniche’s coup.
Mysterious Teleportation
A Trump administration official was relieved from his position as head of FEMA after higher-ranking officials tried of his claims of teleportation.
In one such trip, Gregg Phillips was transported to a Waffle House 50 miles away. It is not clear shdghdf zn overwhelming desire for breakfast triggered the teleportation event or it was due to some other force. Nor did Phillips report teleporting into a Waffle House affray.
There have been no subsequent reports of Americans transporting to a Waffle House or any other place.
Cannibal Ghost
A Thai man and his friend began their day by drinking white liquor; that is, moonshine. The strong struff. When the afternoon rolled around, they had already been drinking for several hours.
As the afternoon dragged on and the drinks kept coming, one of the quaffers then reached the entirely reasonable—in Thailand—conclusion that his drinking companion was not his companion at all, but an impersonator, a particularly vicious Thai ghost known as phii pop, a Thai cannibal ghost.
To defend himself from the cannibal spirit, the man picked up a hammer and struck the cannibal ghost—his drinking buddy—several times, killing him. Usually, the first line of defense from such a creature is an exorcist monk. Unfortunately there were no monks available at the time, hence the hammer. The ghost’s target then surrendered himself to Thai police, admitting to killing his companion, who had become, or had been possessed by, a cannibal ghost, purely in self-defense.
In other countries, this defense would be ridiculted.
Not here.
Vonnegut on Trump
In Back to School, there’s a scene where Rodney Dangerfield demands his money back from Kurt Vonnegut after a paper Vonnegot wrote about his own books only was graded “C” by Dangerfield’s lit professor.
Let’s say you’re a Vonnegut fan but disappointed that Kurt didn’t live long enough to see Trump in the White House, much less write a novel about his presidency. So you upload all of Vonnegut’s work into an LLM, then write a prompt along these lines: “you are a novelist whose work is very similar to the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Even experts have difficulty distinguishing your work from Vonnegut’s. You write a novel about Trump’s presidency, including the War in Iran, tariffs and other Executive Orders, the East Wing ballroom, covfefe, midnight cheeseburgers, Ivanka’s golf course burial, felony indictments, the pee tape and Vladimir Putin. The novel is 40,000 words long in the style of Kurt Vonnegut and many believe it was somehow written by him.”
And so it goes.
Investigating Ancient Egyptians
Scientific inquiry is asking key questions, ever-building on the discoveries of past scientists. Claims must be peer-reviewed and experiments repeatable wit similar results Researchers ask only the most important questions.
Here, a member of the press, after comparing emojis to hieroglyphics, directs one such question to an expert in Egyptology.
Mummies have the brain and other organs removed. In this state, both locomotion and balance are most unlikely. The larger question is whether the dead can ride bicycles at all.
But if all things are possible…Perhaps a proper repost to someone who asserts that “all things are possible” is to ask whether they have ever seen a corpse on a ten speed with drop down handlebars racing down the road. After all, if all things are possible…
Felony Conviction? No Problem.
In Miami, everyone has a felony conviction so it’s no big deal. There are really only two consequences: you can’t possess a firearm and you can’t vote. Most people don’t vote anyway, so that doesn’t matter.
Of course, you do need a gun in Miami because someone may meet you at your front door with plans to unalive you. So after five years or so, you can get that crucial 2nd Amendement civil right restored. Keep in mind that the chief law enforcement officer of the United States–Donald Trump–is a convicted felon, so by any stretch you’re in good company.
Update: If you need a TWIC card you will probably be denied if you’re sporting a felony conviction.
A TWIC (Transportation Worker’s Identity Card) is issued by TSA and affords you entry into ports, bonded warehouses and other such places.
It’s picture-displaying, government-issued ID. Whether it meets the requirements for RealID™ I don’t know1, but I suspect it qualifies. The TWIC card is a requirement if you seek a Merchant Marine license so you can ship out on US flagged ships.
The cost is $120 and a personal interview. If you’re denied, there’s an appeal process. So even Trump might be able to get one.
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The government of Cambodia issues a picture ID card to everyone who buys a ticket to visit Angkor Wat. This ID is enirely in Khmer. I doubt that it would be accepted at O’Hare as government-issued picture ID, though that is what it is. ↩︎