Jury Duty

It's one thing to be stuck in a room, unpaid, with other unpaid and unpleasant people, none of whom want to be there except the unemployed person trying to feel useful.

It's wholly another thing to wait in the security line outside in the frigid morning breeze for 20 minutes for the opportunity to wait another two hours in a plastic folding chair for your name to be called to go on a break for another two hours, only to return after wandering the streets seeking WiFi to discover the court has postponed our call for another three hours (without telling us or giving us another break), at which point the court releases us because the defendant ultimately decided to settle.

Did I mention I probably would have been excused anyway, given that my parents would likely disinherit me if I served on a jury instead of graduating?

I am so glad the justice system is coordinated enough to waste everybody's time equally. No wonder prisons are overcrowded. If I had been put on a jury after all that, I'd call the defendant guilty, too.

91 days

Every day of my calendar has a tiny speck of pencil in the corner telling me how many days there are until graduation. I was so excited about having added myself to the degree list this semester that I immediately sat down and counted all of the days, which simultaneously made the end seem closer and farther away.

Right now, and probably until at least spring break, 91 days feels like an eternity of pushing boulders uphill. Not terribly difficult intellectually, but definitely requiring a good deal of effort. I declared to everyone who cared a while ago that I would never take 19 units again, and here I am with 21 (formerly 25, but then senioritis hit). It kind of sucks.

And in case anyone was wondering, I don't advise starting and completing a second major in two semesters unless you have absolutely nothing else to do with your time.

All of this is just me procrastinating reading Judith Butler, because I sincerely believe she is part of the reason I closed the rhetoric chapter of my education so quickly and ended up taking many many units and eating pasta more often than I could have dreamed. I guess it all comes full circle.

To the drunk who ruined my nose last night

I am so sorry that your efforts to charm me in front of my friends-- which wouldn't have worked anyway, Don Juan-- so utterly failed when your elbow solidly planted itself into my nose, and that the drink you bought me afterward, which my aforementioned friends had to persuade you to buy, utterly failed to prevent the dull but constant pain my nose has suffered the entire next day.

Or maybe it was picking me up and spinning me afterward, like if I was an infant and sufficiently distracted I would forget you had just hit me in the face. Or maybe it was fifteen minutes later, when you came back to our table and tried to make amends by kissing my nose. HARD. Which almost made it bleed again. Your efforts in this respect made some of my more testosterone-laden friends almost hit you in the face, and it took all of my remaining patience not to let them.

I can't smell anything right now, nor can I properly sip from a straw, and if you damaged my nose permanently I will totally bring those friends and find you in your beer-addled corner of Beckett's to return the favor.

UPDATE:
Three days later, I still can't smell (save particularly putrid perfumes), but now the pain has subsided to the type of invisible bruising where I grow complacent and itch my nose, only to relive the pain all over again. I should be lucky I don't look awful, but who knew the tip of your nose touches so many things on a daily basis? This is living Heidegger's equipmentality! I am such a dork.

Women have totally ruined Valentine's Day

I don't celebrate Valentine's Day with any more vigor than I did when I was seven, which is to say, I still (approximately every other year) buy the Valentine's cards that seven-year-olds give to their classmates because their teachers made them.

Now, I don't mind friends and family giving each other Valentine's candy or cards, because there are no politics involved. It's just a nice thing to do and a convenient excuse to do it, and yeah it's commercialized and pink but who cares if there's Sees bordeaux bars or cherry Lifesavers involved? (Incidentally, those are my two favorite candies and the ones my mother has so kindly provided for many of my childhood Valentine's Days of yore)

But why, oh why, does it make seeing people--romantically or not--complicated? I don't want to ask someone for coffee or a drink before or after work tomorrow night (like any Saturday night), only to discover that they think this means something important, that they are My Valentine.

Here are my Valentine's Day plans: To see a basketball game with my dad, and then go to work. And that sounds awesome. I am totally stoked to sleep in and get a hot dog or whatever stadium fare basketball games offer. Not to mention, because it's a Cal-Stanford game, I can't wear red. So there.

I blame women for feeling obligated to even think about it. I recently began more actively swimming in the dating pool, so to speak, and it doesn't surprise me that I have no prospective dates for the weekend. Not that I have time for them, mind you, but suddenly people I've been speaking to have fallen off the face of the planet, probably because they think I am one of those people who will think that it means something more than usual to get a drink after work on February 14.

That this type of person is what a straight single man probably thinks of women (me included) is unfortunate and annoying. This entire discourse, of thinking something means something because of this stupid Hallmark holiday, is preposterous. Further, it causes my frustration with all things Valentine's to put me in a category of anti-romantics, which I wouldn't necessarily consider myself.

Why are women to blame? Because in all things related to love, we are most often the ones attributed to totally irrational behavior and overthinking, which is precisely what Valentine's Day has become: a totally irrational and overthought "holiday."

Boo.

New year, new post

Obviously I've given up on this blogging thing, and I worry that the waning of this phase in life means that I am the kind of person who perpetually waxes and wanes through various phases and fads. This was true as a child but I had always felt like I would grow up someday and, you know, find and become committed to my true passion. Not that blogging was destined to be, like, my true passion or anything, but I would hope that through all of these phases the light at the end of the tunnel would be there

I also worry that this means I will wax and wane through career choices, and I'm not sure whether these recent reflections say more about my anxieties about life in general or if they actually reflect some kind of truth about my future.

In any case, 2009 will be an exciting year for many reasons. The two most important ones: I will become an aunt AND a college graduate. I've decided to stay in the Bay Area for at least another year's lease and see where that takes me. And even though it sickens me to think about this right now, I remain open to the possibility that I will become so bored with life that law or grad school will become suddenly appealing next fall, in which case I'll take the necessary tests and send off applications and such.

Now, I know that "law or grad school" is like deciding between buying a duplex in Rockridge or a penthouse in San Francisco--equally expensive but totally different-- but I truly have not given it any thought beyond the conceptual ideas. I do not wish to become a lawyer in the long term, but could envision myself as, say, a judge or legal secretary or law professor or something. I have no idea what I would study in grad school; that's just if I decide I hate law school but still want to dick around without a real job.

What is wrong with Nebraska?

The headlines in the Associated Press read "Neb. parents rush to leave kids before law changes." The sad part is, the headline actually means that parents from Nebraska and states within driving distance are abandoning children, uh, with abandon, in efforts to abuse a loophole in the state's safe haven policies. The AP followed up when Nebraska legislators closed the loophole with a 30-day age maximum for drop-offs, but how did someone in the legislature not notice the loophole in the first place? Especially if people stupid enough to abandon their teenaged children were smart enough to notice the loophole. One would hope the state government were smarter than that.

The law also didn't say that abandoned kids could only be residents of Nebraska, and so a handful of parents actually carted their kids from other states to get rid of their pesky children. Can you imagine how awkward the car ride from, like, Iowa must have been? Does a parent have to drug the kid to get them to willingly be carted to be abandoned? Is there a Chuck-E-Cheese near the hospital to entice them, or what?

Sheesh. I do not want to go to their house for Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, I cannot wait for Thanksgiving.

On, you know, voting.

An audibly elderly Yes on 8 phone bank caller apologized today to my roommate for her views after he mentioned his homosexuality. Why she apologized is beyond us-- if you put forth the effort to volunteer your time calling in support of a particular proposition, why apologize to someone directly targeted in that proposition? For that matter, who did this woman think she was calling-- like-minded individuals for a cup of tea?

I can't imagine how a conversation between me and a Prop 8 supporter would go, not because I am avidly against it, but because of what it means to even put Prop 8 on the ballot.

But I don't need to climb on a soapbox about Prop 8, especially not while living in a liberal bubble writing on a blog likely read by reasonable people who may not believe in gay marriage but who believe it shouldn't be constitutionally forbidden, either.

But in the spirit of standing up for my beliefs and not apologizing for them, I've decided to list my decisions for the state-wide propositions. It's also convenient since I will probably forget how I voted in this election after tomorrow morning, owing in part to the vast extent of California propositions and even vaster extent of Alameda County ballot measures.

So here we go. My unsolicited proposition choices for the 2008 general election:

1A: Yes
2: No
3: Yes
4: No
5: Yes
6: No
7: No
8: No
9: No
10: No
11: No
12: Yes

And some explication:
1A: Folks tell me 1A is expensive and won't do anything in any reasonable time period, and while that's probably accurate, 1A gets the ball rolling for something that our kids can pay for later. We know that public transportation in this large state is unnecessarily absent. Something like 1A was on the ballot last election and failed probably because of NIMBY impulses against increased train traffic in towns quieted by the slower pace of freight trains. That's a lame reason to vote against a lot of things, among them public transportation and the UC's sports facility construction at Memorial Stadium (where the Panoramic Way residents supported the Tree People merely because they didn't want construction noise).

2: The eggs I eat are already pretty happy and free range and kinda local and stuff. Those are probably better-selling anyway. That aside, if it's an issue about animal cruelty in our food animals, making California a safe haven for our chickens won't solve the problem; it only moves it to other states or countries where standards are lower and costs of transport and demand are higher. A parallel: Maquiladoras in Mexico were/are an easy way for American companies to avoid accountability for environmental impact and gain cheap and abusable labor-- does that make it any more ethical to say that environmental regulations and labor laws have improved the quality of life for those in America whose jobs were lost? (Also, the whole point of veal is that the calves can't move around, whether or not one believes they should have the right to.)

3: I don't really care, but it makes me feel like a better person to support children's hospitals. I'm sure I could find something terribly wrong with the written proposition, but I'm too tired to bother.

4: No question.

5: It's nice to see something.

6: Eh. Seems a bit much.

7: Researchers barely know what "renewable" energy even means, and the government shouldn't be forcing utilities to follow certain timelines dependent upon uncertain technological advances.

8: Shouldn't even be on the ballot; government shouldn't even be involved in the issue.

9: Potential costs outweigh potential benefits.

10: Why is the government/us in the long run helping us buy a Prius?

11: Ugh. More bureaucracy. No, thanks.

12: Veterans have seriously gotten the shaft lately. "Farms" or "home aid" sort of sticks out as an awkward moment, but maybe those are refreshing changes from the battlefields?