Divorce…Part II. I am thankful for lawyers.

I am thankful for lawyers. As much as we cast sarcastic jibes at the profession, they serve a useful purpose. They do the dirty work which you don’t want to touch. They charge a pretty penny for this function, but it is well worth the price to remain at arms length. And so my divorce is proceeding inexorably toward a very ugly and unpleasant juncture. My wife is going to be forced out of our marital home in mid winter unless some rational choices find their way back into her head. Yes, I started the process when I first set foot in my lawyer’s office. So in the end it all comes back on me. Getting there is now out of my hands. But that’s in the end. I’ll let St. Peter be my judge. And now I must keep to the resolution I made. No going back. No more delay. I can live with that knowledge and choice. Let the lawyer and the law do their thing. Damn the torpedoes. Stay the course. Ride it out. Just keep eating healthy. Get your exercise. And fire up the sauna. Don’t know how I could get through this without my meditation sweat lodge. Strength. Honour. Integrity. Passion. May those principles continue to guide me to the end of my days. Amen.

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Baby on Nevermind cover sues Nirvana over child sexual exploitation

Today’s snippet is so ridiculous I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It boggles the mind to think of how America’s litigious society can entertain such ludicrous lawsuits. I’m pretty sure most of the western world is familiar with the 1991 album cover. How many of you had even the briefest notion that this iconic image constituted child pornography? Happy reading and have a great Pandemic day y’all!

Spencer Elden, who appeared as a naked baby on one of rock music’s most iconic album covers – Nevermind by Nirvana – is suing the band, claiming he was sexually exploited as a child.

In a lawsuit filed in a Californian district court against numerous parties, including the surviving members of the band, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, and the record labels that released or distributed the album in the last three decades, Elden alleges the defendants produced child pornography with the image, which features him swimming naked towards a dollar bill with his genitalia visible.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of “commercial child sexual exploitation of him from while he was a minor to the present day … defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer”.

Elden, who was four months old when the image was made, says he has suffered “lifelong damages” from the 1991 album cover, including “extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations”, plus loss of education, wages, and “enjoyment of life”.

The lawsuit claims the image is “sexually graphic”, and says it makes Elden resemble “a sex worker – grabbing for a dollar bill”. It claims Elden was never paid for appearing on the cover, and that his parents never signed a release form for the image, which was shot specifically for the album cover. It has previously been reported that Elden was paid $250.

In 2016, Elden recreated the image with the New York Post newspaper to mark the album’s 25th anniversary, saying: “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember.” That year he also said: “Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice.” He had previously recreated the image for Rolling Stone, aged 10.

In 2007 he told the Sunday Times it was “kind of creepy that many people have seen me naked. I feel like the world’s biggest porn star”.

Robert Fisher, who designed the cover, said the image was inspired by Kurt Cobain seeing a documentary about babies being born underwater. “[He] thought the image would make a cool cover. That vision was a bit too graphic, so we went with the swimming baby instead.” It is seen by many fans as a comic image, that satirically suggests the band, who had signed to a major label for the album, are grasping for money. (Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian)

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Banks never lose!

Banks cover their butts with the most incredibly convoluted waivers of liability. My bank is soon to change some of their systems and part of this change required me to agree to the new waivers of liability. The document went on for 30 pages! I scanned it and excerpted some of the most airtight paragraphs for your amusement. Remember, this is just a brief sampling of the lawyer speak they present, ensuring that WHATEVER should go wrong, the bank is never caught holding the bag and having to accept any responsibility, even if their error results in you losing money. Makes me want to grab my go-bag and head for the hills! Have a great pandemic day y’all.

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