A RICHLY REWARDING EXPERIENCE!

This post is about jury duty. Or rather, no jury duty for an entire year. Our group's instructions were to show up after lunch. Once there, we watched two video tapes, trooped upstairs to a courtroom, gave roll, listened to the honourable judge-type person explain the whats and wherefores, and filled out one of two questionnaires.

The hardship questionnaire was the easiest.
Being only one page, single sided.

Of course I claimed hardship; like anybody who isn't a superprogrammer tech yuppie, a real estate shark, an ethically crippled investment banker, or a drug baron, sitting on a jury till sometime in June would be an issue.


"He's guilty, no need for a trial, hang the bastard now!"


Please get this travesty of justice over with, and let us go back to our coolie grubbing. We need the money for insta-noodles and catfood, and the baby needs vaccinations. The dog needs to be put down. Grandma's gotta have an operation. We haven't paid for garbage service in six months, it's starting to move around on its own. It already reeked four months ago, like aunt Grace who died then, but it has come alive. Unlike aunt Grace. Who died. Four months ago. We put her out in the utility passage next to the airwell, none of us have opened our bathroom or kitchen windows since.
Oh, and we need to pay off our student loans.

"Please rise for the honourable Facoontai Yan"

And everybody except those weak with hunger rises, then demands to hang the guilty bastard. Dumb-ass disputed a parking ticket, he deserves it.
He works in a tech company? Shoot him!


Actually, the courthouse is airconditioned and luxuriously appointed. Cool. Quiet and calm. An oasis during the hot weather we are presently having. And well guarded. A good thing, seeing as all the glories of the Tenderloin start less than a block away. One the way there you will pass drug addicts and mental incompetents, alkies, and folks with no set abode.
They will go back and forth in front of the window of the place where you decided to have a quick lunch. They will not affect the taste of the chicken teriyaki over rice you ordered; that was uninspiring to begin with. Nor the coffee. Which was standard slop, with fake cream to make it worse.

But the place was clean and bright, the proprietress seems to know the locals, and employs hard working honest Mexicans instead of illiterate trailer trash inbreds from coalmine country, and she put a big bottle of Sriracha on the table without asking.

When I left paramedics were treating an overdose in the alleyway. A block further, a policeman rushed by toward a crime in progress. Almost at the courthouse and two cops had handcuffed a violent vagrant.

One the other hand, I passed by a gaggle of well-dressed lawyers, and didn't even once feel the need to brutally assault them.

Those were very nice suits. They would have looked better ripped.

You know, the "stressed look", just like jeans.

Free, no charge!


I was planning to have a hot Vietnamese sandwich and a cold cà phê sữa before showing my face at court, but the nearest shop was where the thugs hung out -- they're still there, by the looks of it -- and the other one had a line of skeevy types out the door. Bánh mì Sài Gòn for breakfast.

The excellent noodle place was too far to walk.
That's not because of the neighborhood.
Purely because of the heat.
Teriyaki chicken?
Meh.



Anyhow, I've done my civic duty. It's up to you folks to enact mob justice and condemn dissidents for the next twelve months.
If they are Republicans, lock them up.
If they're in e-commerce, ditto.
Livery drivers likewise.


Yeah, I'm pissed. I really wanted a Vietnamese sandwich.




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