Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Reporting for duty, sir!

Jury, that is. My state wants me and they want me bad. Luckily it's not in the form of a warrant for my arrest or men chasing my butt with a white "I love me" jacket and shoving me into a padded room. Yet.

I get called for jury every damn year, it feels like. Last year I received a summons for Superior court on a Friday and Municipal on Saturday. Can you believe that shit? Jeez people, I'm good but I'm no Marsha Clark. I wouldn't be caught dead with that crap head of hair and those cankle-making flat shoes.

I managed to get out of the Municipal summons since the big wigs who send the perps to pound me in the ass prison over-rode the got drunk on 4 beers and stole my daddy's Saturn and crashed it into a Krispy Kreme court. Mmmm....Krispy Kreme.

I tried with all my wiley ways to get out of it last year but apparently cancer treatments aren't as important as determining the fate of 4 foreign fuckwads who try to smuggle 6 thousand pounds of blow on a stolen fishing skiff through the Panama Canal. Sheer genius. I had to sit through 2 days of...oh sorry, I was remembering those 2 days and my brain stopped.

It was lame and tedious and lame. In the end I had to stand at a podium, talk into a very loud microphone and answer too many very personal questions about my health history to complete strangers and convince the judge that I wasn't your typical weasel trying getting out of my civic duty. I'd serve if I could. I really would. If was reasonable and didn't suck the ever-lovin' life out of me.

But I truly didn't have the physical strength to endure a 6 week trial driving 60 miles round-trip in suck-ass traffic, pay $20 a day for parking, walk in the scariest part of downtown dodging homeless guys and puddles of piss, and getting reimbursed the phenomenal sum of $5 giant clams a day. And can we just talk about the bathroom issues! I have an unpredictable pooper, people! I can't be trapped in a fucking courtroom all day for chrissakes! What if a turtle crowns? I'm up shit creek, literally.

So, I was dismissed. Fat lot of good that did me. Here I am again. Dammit. Thankfully I'm in a little better shape physically, but it's still hard for me to sit in one place for more than an hour without getting up and walking around, my energy levels are wonky, and I'm supposed to get my period tomorrow. Great Odin's raven! SUCK!

I sort of wish that I felt like serving. I was on a jury in college and it was a great experience. But it only used up 4 days of my summer vacation and it was an interesting case. But I learned that people are unintentionally stupid, outright lie, and use their own personal agenda's to make decisions. Ignoring evidence. And I've seen that observation reinforced a quadrillion times over since then. Hello, Michael Jackson jury? Now I'm older, wiser, and crankier.

I'm afraid that if I get onto a jury, and we made it to deliberation, the first moron who says something stupid would find a styrofoam coffee cup lodged in their colon and all eyes would be on me. Then I'd get arrested for assault with a man-made product and my "they're all fucking idiots" defense won't fly and it'd be a whole thing.

Therefore I will be a good girl and report as ordered tomorrow, act like a surly teenager and do my best to get out of it. My plan is to either develope a raging case of Tourette's on the way down there or be brutally honest. Either way'll work, I figure. I'm sure time will come to a screeching hault, it'll suck big juicy gorilla balls, but can you imagine the parade of freaks I'll get to watch? It'll be better than sitting on a bench at Disneyland.

Will report tomorrow night.

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