The character Roger “Verbal” Kint in Usual Suspects is a charade, disguising the evil genius of (spoiler alert) Keyser Söze in the same body. He is called “Verbal” because he can talk your ears off. He should, technically, be called “Oral,” but the connotation is a bit racey for the role, so Verbal it is. Verbal vs. Oral You see, ...
Almost nobody plays Monopoly by the printed rules. A genuine game of Monopoly takes approximately eleventy-seven hours, so most people make up their own ways to play so that, if they started at sunup, they stand a reasonable chance to finish by supper time. By Monopoly’s printed rules, the Banker is supposed to hold an auction for any property a ...
Sometimes treasures hide in plain sight. What was true of Edgar Allen Poe’s Purloined Letter (you can read it courtesy of the University of Virginia)1 held true in the recent discovery of a genuine, multi-million-dollar Auguste Rodin sculpture2 sitting unrecognized for years in the Madison, New Jersey municipal building. The same is true in legal circles; important, valuable information for ...
You may argue the political disingenuousness of the name of the recently passed tax law, “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” depending on whether or not you are an American receiving either meaningful tax cuts and/or an improved job. Pushing aside the benefits you may or may not see from the law that was passed, locked within the Act’s broadly sweeping ...
Today’s Latin Lingo goes out to all those surprised Virginia Dads out there: Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat, which roughly translates to “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” It is, sadly, a reason given when surprised Virginia Dads find out they are, in fact, Dads. We are not here to tell you when to keep your pants zipped, but if ...
You cannot make this stuff up: the FBI is looking for “The Chameleon Beard Bandit,”1 a bank robber who has robbed six banks, including two in Virginia, using the clever ruse of changing the color of his beard. If you feel your wife (bearded or not — we’re not judging) has essentially robbed you by cleaning out your bank accounts, ...
Dwayne Parsons knows what paternity fraud feels like. He will go on knowing for the next 1,913 years, after a Chester, Virginia judge ordered him to pay past child support payments on a child legally proven not to be his, at the rate of $1 a month1. Though he had been falsely accused of paternity for the child since 2000, ...
Shakespeare thought little of names. Why else did he have Juliet Capulet say, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet ...” For The Bard, the substance of a person or object was found in its essence, not its name. You may not feel so gracious if your ex-wife is continuing ...
The New Year has brought with it many householders determined to stay on budgets, so they sit down in earnest and divvy up paychecks to be spent on housing, food, and so on. If, like Virginia’s legislators, they do this without regard to actual income and expenses, their budgets are doomed. In similar fashion, Virginia’s lawmakers often stipulate programs but do not provide ...