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2003

About Jury Duty

So the jury thing is over, the rest of the jury more or less agreed with me, and I don’t have to walk to Civic Center early in the morning anymore. And just to make life that much more pleasant, it’s raining out. This whole late spring series of storms has me all squishy-happy…

Anyway, some notes on jury duty:

I arrived at 10:15 on Wednesday and immediately spotted Larry-bob and a nice guy named Smurf, about whom I can tell you little more except that he’s a DJ and an obscure music buff, which I find to be admirable qualities…

We watched the orientation video, which told us how beautiful California is and how wonderful and emotional we’d find jury service. “Many jurors even keep in touch after the trial is over,” it stated proudly. Funny, I’d never thought of jury duty as the cool new way to make social contacts…

I was called upstairs for jury selection pretty quickly. Mercifully, it was to be a very short trial, only two or three days. I was on my best behavior lest I be excused and assigned to a nastier one. It took a couple of hours to get twelve jurors and one alternate seated. Fortunately, the flakes and other people with whom I dreaded serving were all eliminated…

The first two to go were the two who apparently couldn’t understand a single question asked of them and needed every one repeated. One seemed hard of hearing and the other evidently had, at best, a tenuous grasp on the English language. I sort of wondered why neither one had checked his respective little box on the questionnaire, which would have saved him (and the rest of us) considerable time. Another guy was eliminated because — although he seemed like a very nice guy — he just wasn’t terribly bright…

And then there was the “issues” guy. You know the type, especially if you live in the Bay Area. He was the quintessential San Francisco granola neurotic, the sort of individual who has to spend fifteen minutes pondering the metaphysical implications of such probing questions as “what is your name?” and “what is your spouse’s occupation?”. This guy was a pure 100% flake, a basket case, and he went on and on about his wife’s illness, his job difficulties, and a litany of other issues which had nothing to do with the (very simple and straightforward) questions being asked. Note that this was very obviously NOT a performance to get him excused from service. The thought of watching this guy try to make a decision about a case (or even of being in a closed room with him for a couple of hours) horrified me. Fortunately, I was spared the nightmare…

The trial was uneventful, if odd, and it centered around a semi-violent 1998 encounter between a postal worker and one of her customers. I didn’t find either account particularly believable, and (as it happened) neither did my fellow jurors. Since the burdern of proof was on the plaintiff, we found for the defendant. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the picture…

I was rather impressed to see that most of my fellow jurors were more or less rational and reasonable individuals. I’d really feared being part of a San Francisco jury, assuming that the native silliness so common in this area would surface, but it never really did. We went about our business and handled things quickly and efficiently (but also with sufficient attention to detail)…

All in all, it really wasn’t bad, although I’m not itching to do it again anytime soon nor to have cocktails and quality time with my former colleagues…

Randomly Wednesday

Random thoughts for a Wednesday afternoon:

  • I’ve finally visited my first Ikea store. My expectations weren’t all that high, and said expectations were definitely met. All in all, I’d just as soon go to Target
  • Vague plans afoot for a quick trip to North Carolina with Mark on the last weekend in June. I’ll keep you posted…
  • Twenty years ago this week, “True” by Spandau Ballet was number one on the UK charts. I didn’t like the song any more then than I do now, but I sure do feel old…
  • Be very wary of eggplant curry when your stomach is in certain frames of mind. Enough said…

Crystal Community

Evidently, it also takes a village to raise a homosexual:

“We can’t allow the few to continue to carry on the fight for many,” he said. “As a community, we have to define that crystal is not acceptable for this community.”

So sayeth SF Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who seems to believe that drug abuse is a community decision rather than an individual one. It therefore follows that the community in question — rather than its individual members — bears the responsibility for its impact as well…

I beg to differ. I am homosexual. I do not use crystal meth, nor do I enjoy the company of people who do so. And I feel no particular sense of responsibility to random strangers who are suffering from drug addiction merely because we share a sexual orientation. Why should I?

This is not to say that I don’t feel any compassion toward my friends who have (or have had) problems with drugs, but my support is based on my individual relationships with them, and not on some contrived notion of “community”. Similarly, their behavioral changes were (or will be) based on individual decisions rather than on any “community mandate”…

Drug abuse is not a marketing problem…

Tolerance?

Tolerance? You’ve got to be kidding. San Francisco is many things, some of them quite wonderful, but I can’t quite see it as a bastion of “tolerance” nor of “wide-open encouragement to be as independently minded … as you can possibly be”. Maybe I’m missing something…

To me, tolerance suggests that one not only embraces anything and everything which is outside the mainstream, but that one also has respect for those who DO choose to live their lives in a relatively mainstream fashion. This includes people who shop at Wal-Mart, people who work for a living and want to own homes, people who (for whatever reason) actually watch Fox News, and (gasp) even people with conservative religious or political views…

The writer babbles on and on about our “tolerance” while his whole article rather reeks of the direct opposite. About the only people worthy of tolerance, it seems, are the ones who live here, think like he does, and are terrified of stepping out of line by getting out of the city and seeing something different once in a while…

And how come his idea of “independent mindedness” only seems to apply to those who agree with the “tolerant” (and, of course, left of center) party line? I’d always thought that critical thinking (you know: analyzing ALL sides of an issue and coming up with your OWN opinion rather than adopting a pre-packaged one) might play a small part in that definition as well. Frankly, I’d argue that San Franciscans are no less intellectually lazy than anyone else in the country, just somewhat more inclined to walk down the granola aisle at the dogma store…

While I like to think of myself as “independent minded”, I’ve never really considered myself “tolerant”. If I think something is a crock of shit or that someone is a flaming idiot, I’m probably going to say so. Say what you will about my weakness of character, but at least I’m not a hypocrite about it…

Appearing at a Library Near You

In case you find yourself in Burlingame this Sunday, I’ll be there speaking to the Burlingame Historical Society. Why yes, I am slightly nervous now that you mention it…

I’m even more nervous about this SBC/Yahoo DSL “upgrade” disc I got in the mail today. Not nervous, mind you, that it will have any impact on my life, but that less tech-savvy people will think they have to install the damned thing (which is basically a bastardized version of Internet Explorer which forces you to slog through extra content when you launch it) in order to continue having internet access…

If I wanted my ISP to force-feed me useless content for marketing purposes, I’d have AOL, thanks…

Hmmm. Who saw this coming?

Icky Tummy

I’m sitting here in front of my computer making a list of everything I’ve eaten in the past 48 hours just so I can make sure I never eat any of it ever again. I’ve also been taking occasional breaks from doing so, but I won’t elaborate on those…

It’s no fun being ill when the weather is so miserable. I’d gotten a bit spoiled by having the cold and the rain continue so late in the year, and I wasn’t at all ready for this annoying sunshine and heat, thanks…

Gonna watch a movie now, albeit with one finger glued to the pause button…

My Relationship Can Beat Up Yours

Here’s my take on it (or at least on the “controversy”): a relationship is defined as an interaction between two or more people. One very simple rule applies: the people involved are the only ones who get to make the rules. Their families and friends do not get a vote, nor do “the gay community” or “society”. You’d think that would be pretty basic, given that the whole homosexual rights movement is based on that simple idea. But no…

Those who say “monogamous relationships can’t work, ever” and those who say “open relationships can’t work, ever” are equally misguided on some level. First and foremost, what gives these observers the right to make any presumption whatsoever about someone ELSE’S relationship? A relationship is like eating dinner; the meaning and circumstances are determined by those engaged in the activity. How seriously would anyone take me if I said that eating alone in a restaurant (or eating while wearing a blue shirt) is the wrong thing to do in every case?

Yes, it’s true that some types of relationships may be statistically more likely to survive long-term. Which means nothing other than that more individuals fall into a personality type which might lead them to be most comfortable in those sorts of relationships…

And it’s true that some types of relationships are generally doomed from the start. Which means nothing other than that the individuals involved probably should have communicated more efficiently or spent more time analyzing the situation (and each other) from the onset…

Individuals have the sole right (and responsibility) to define their relationships. If Mark and I want to be monogamous or polygamous, or to be asexual, or to be stereophonic or quadrophonic or quadraplegic, or even to engage in romantic rituals involving penguin droppings, it’s nobody’s goddamned business but our own. And no one but us can say for certain if it’s the right way for us to conduct our relationship. Except maybe for the penguin…

This is true no matter how badly they may want to bring up assorted self-righteous nonsense about “aping heterosexual marriage” or about “self-indulgence” and “trampiness”. The point is that there are as many types of realtionships as there are types of people involved in them, and to make blanket statements about such an individualized and dynamically-defined a condition as “being in a relationship” is pointless and silly…

World Book

Dinner with Sarah at Tad’s on Thursday night. It had been a disturbingly long time since I’d seen her, so this was a very good thing. But I still forgot to give her that book I’ve been holding since December or so…

Speaking of books, I picked up a complete 1935 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia in Stockton on Sunday. One of the first things I checked (having learned much of what I knew about the subject as an 11-year-old from a much later version of the same source) was the article on “sex”. But there was no article on “sex”, only a pointer directing me to the article on “mental conflict”. Interesting, that…

Another interesting note: in 1935, Greensboro, Fresno, and San Jose all had about the same population of around 50,000 people. I think San Jose won…

And now it’s laundry day…