Jury Duty...

So I had the fantastical fucked up luck to actually be picked to sit on a Jury this time. I had managed to dodge that shit for the last 15 years. Most of the time I would just sit and take a book and wait until noon and then get to go home. Not this time. And I can't talk about the case, so don't even ask. But I do want to talk about how brain numbing legalese is. It sucks. I now know the reason the attorneys trot out expert witnesses with resumes longer than your leg. They are trying to bore you to death. I get the feeling that their goal is to overload the poor saps whose numbers are finally up. I think that they figure the average person will just shut down and go with the path of information that they understand. This is what they hope.

I am on day 3 of what could be a 5 day trial, and by the end of each day I find that I am so disconnected and exhausted that it makes it hard to keep my mouth shut. My internal filters just shut off. My inner bitch comes out to play. Most of the time, it is relegated to the car or the bike. Sometimes it bleeds over into the rest of my life. I find my tolerance for people less than normal. I get angry when people in the express lane have more than 20 items. It bugs me that we have become a nation all about 'me'. We have given up on getting to know our neighbors, hell, mine stare at me like I have a third eye when I pull into my drive way.

And I have to say that being on a jury has just reinforced the idea that people suck. I like most people, but some are working my last nerve. I don't know what it is about the fall, or the weather, but it seems that drama and politics seem to peak this time of year. Maybe it's people doing house keeping before winter sets in. I don't know and right now I am not impaired enough to figure this out. All I know is that I long for the days when people take care in their actions and think that maybe just for a moment that it has an effect on other people. But I ramble on. I think that it is a combination of jury duty and booze...