December 10, 2002
Jury! Duty! Jury duty. Rock and roll.
I had my first jury duty, and I know I'm supposed to bitch and complain about it like 99.9% of the other people who were there just duh-HYING to return to their jobs. But I gotta hand it to the jury system (at least here in LA...): They kinda kiss your ass a little bit. They kinda know by now that it pisses people off; they've 'picked that up' over the years i guess. So they they keep telling you all day at every opportunity how grateful they are that you're there, and you get all those breaks and shit and the judges are pretty interesting, entertaining speakers (where i was kind of expecting more "asshole cop" mentality to be bandied about). I mean don't get me wrong, when I figured out my christmas plane tickets would be getting me out of sitting on a 10 day trial today, i was for sure psyched. But i wasn't planning on trying to get out of it until i remembered the tickets. Serious. Like i find the whole civil duty aspect of it really genuinely fun. Does that make me gay?
The first panel I sat in i really really wouldn't have minded sitting on that jury cause the dude was defending himself and it was a 2-3 day thing. That sounds like pure entertainment to me. But not just entertainment, also just kind of... fascination. I was pretty into this guy defending himself on crack charges... like I think it was probably a hopeless case but at least he was going to learn something from it. You know? He was figuring out the terminology as we went along and playing the little game of chess the lawyers play with ousting jury members and actually, he kinda ended up winning that little game of chess on accounta i was the last person they were able to toss, and i was tossed for mentioning that i'd donated to the ACLU in the past (i was asked... i wasn't even like "I'M LIBERAL LET ME OUT"), and the guy who replaced me was a) a lawyer who b) was an active member of the ACLU, not some silly little donator who sends the faxes now and again.
But serious. A crack addict who wants to defend himself and carefully arranges all his post-it notes and everything and takes notes diligently during voir dire: that's something you can't really ignore or be bored by. That's a kid who really, really needed some attention and education in his youth. You know? Like that motherfucker has initiative and a desire to learn, and some (possibly misguided) confidence in his own abilities. That is 100% wasted potential, and that's 100% sad. But, maybe he'll be one of those guys who gets his associate degree from prison, who knows.
In other news: checking the order status of my laptop DID work, it shipped a full four days early and UPS says it's gonna get here like tomorrow. So I take it all back. I don't hate that at all. What i meant to say was, I love how checking the order status of your laptop makes it ship faster. That is so neat. That's what i meant to say.
