Uneventful...

Let's face it, some weeks just are. This past one was not. I sat on the jury for a four day long murder trial. My impressions? Oh, all right, if you insist:
Artists and other self-employed persons who show up for civic duty and are honest during questioning and selection, only to be picked for service that is of indeterminate length, NEED to be afforded more than $25 a day for that service, especially if it goes in excess of 10 hours each day. $2.50 an hour might have been all right for an 18 unwed mother working the night shift at Denny's back in 1992, but it doesn't hardly buy a gallon of gas these days (not to mention at Denny's you get tips).
Police work, though likely routine at best in 9 out of 10 cases (or where the victim's name does not begin with, say, 'Senator' or 'Ambassador'), is reduced to shoddy and/or haphazard when it comes to black on black crimes (but I'm not telling you anything new with that).
Although I'm sure there are merits to our criminal justice system, I fail to see how someone can be tried and convicted of murder, and yet have sat around in prison long enough before the case even came before the court that by the time the sentence is handed down, they have less than one year to go before the option for parole, and at most, just over two more years to serve. I suppose in the future, the trials will be so far behind the crimes that inmates will actually be sentenced for less time than they have served, and end up being given some sort of stipend for the lost time. Or perhaps they will bring a case against the state. I could dream of being on a jury that tries the state for such an infringement, but I would never make it through the jury selection questions of bias. Still, if wielded properly, honesty can be a deadlier weapon than a handgun, and I'm packin'.

Revenge--the one regrettable behavior we can ALL still agree upon...

That's it--I'm oficially homeschooling my not even soon to be born children.
The socialization process in this country is a brutal, biased, bigoted, blasphemous, bucket of stench. We have a warped sense of what is noble, remarkable, noteworthy, beautiful, progressive, heroic, prophetic, praiseworthy and memorable.
We raise up at best mildly talented youngsters as pop icons whose greatest talent is their unblemishing ability to remove their clothing and pose in front of a camera.
We Elevate our 'professional' atheletes, giving them great media attention, vast sums of money, and nearly everything they ask for beyond, but are surprised when they take drugs and wreck their homes (at which point we swoop down upon them and feast upon their entrails like winged mythological monsters).
We discard children that are 'difficult' or 'loners' and celebrate those that are wired to excel and succeed, who have large deposits of physical beauty, charisma, charm, or familial wealth, then we forgive them their failures and eccentricities later in life when they have cememted themselves in the Walk of Fame in their chosen fields (or we swoop down upon them and feast upon their entrails like winged mythological monsters).
We sit in front of computers and television sets from early in the day until late in the evening.
We invest ourselves fully in the temporary, the transitory, the ephemeral, the incomplete.

I admit it. I can be sucked into all of those things, too.
That's why I'm going to create a micro-race of people who are sheltered from ignorance, because I will not deny them knowledge or truth, nor will I cloud their brains with pointless ideas and imagery to dilute or dissuade them from the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
I will protect them from hatred and discompassion, at least until they are old enough to know their enemies and meet them on an even playing field.
I will not send a child to sit in a room full of 30 other children who, for half the day will sit in front of computer screens (and/or something worse--angry tenured teachers), and for the other half will vie for esteem and identity in a big Darwinian social miasma of routine activities.
Do you know where I spent most of my (free...) time in High School? Under the stair landing in the library. Why? Because children abuse one another. Why? For just about everything and also for almost no reason at all. Do you understand why I wonder that the main criticism people have for my decision to home school is the LACK of socialization that my children will receive?
Don't worry, though. I won't undereducate my children. They will learn about Evolution. They will learn that politicians evolved from apes, and that that is why they seem so adept at mudslinging. I will play sports with my children, only I will pick them first as my teammates so that they do not start out feeling rejected and mistrusted. (I found that those feelings can prevent some fabulous displays of athletic prowess. I had a few of my own, long after the sulphuric glow of grade school had passed). We will have conversations so that they can master the English language early on, but we will still go to fast food restaurants and megastores so that they can also learn to understand the language that most of the rest of the country speaks. I will definitely start them on a foreign language before the age of, say, 14, when the brain is not especially receptive to thinking in a whole different code.
I'll even teach them Math by letting them go through a grocery store and having them pick out the best deals per ounce and explaining why, then paying the cashier and telling them how much change is required when they sit confused over the register as they often do. Beyond that, unless my child demands it, I don't think I'll teach them math.
These are just a few of the exciting things that await my children. We will be accepting applications starting late next Fall. Please, no phone calls.

A sudden icy feeling of powerlessness

I was just reading over a friend's blog and thinking what a great receptacle of thoughts this whole internet thing is, a vast unending forum for the exchange of ideas and new concepts. It's strange, though, how much stuff we can put onto the internet, and it just sort of hangs there, like little bits of fruit in a holiday jello mold. I have an online savings account, for example, that I put money into periodically. I've never touched the money, though, and I don't exactly know where it is. But there's a figure there that keeps increasing. If the figure were to disappear or to decrease without me doing anything, I don't even know who to ask about it. Presumeably, I would just go to the web site and hit 'help'. But who does that involve? A series of default scenario explanations? A real person who is waiting to type immediate responses? I feel like the more thoughts and ideas I leave in cyberspace, the more capital I trust to remote digital assurances, the more transparent I become, my hands losing mass and density to the point where I cannot even hold a book, my eyes narrowing until they can only interpret digital images and characters, only able to express my feelings through keystrokes, not voicewords or skintouch. I look at a computer more than I look at my wife. I remember when my bills are due, but I need a couple of phone calls to remind me of a parent's birthday. I can recall a web link better than the name of someone I just met five minutes ago.
If I were monitoring myself in the same way I monitor my accounts and investments, I would probably have done a complete withdrawl a long time ago. Apparently, there exists a greater hope for the survival of humanity. I'm just curious how many science fiction classics will prove frighteningly prophetic in the meantime before its re-emergence.

There's no business like no business

I'm sitting at a desk.
I'm sitting at a desk in an office.
I'm sitting at a desk in an office that I used to work at before I ventured into the small business plane of despair, before I said goodbye to my time, my energy, my grasp on personal finances, on reality.
I'm not herding obnoxious children into small rooms with bright walls.
I'm not running bizarre errands, attempting to find ways to bridge the gap between my bosses constant big ideas and their ever complicated literal realization.
I'm not lambasting lazy contractors and lethargic landlords in hopes of landing what in layman's terms might be described as 'the goods'.
I'm not hating life or the people around me.
I'm not even overly bothered by the fact that although everyone seems to want me to work for them, no one seems to want to lock down a schedule with me. I currently have two jobs where I can 'just show up and work whenever'. If I were the bionic man like I was in college and didn't need insurance, or a drug addict and preferred that kind of non-committal employer/employee thing, that would be one thing. I'm neither. I'm a thinker and a worrier with bad Southern winter allergies and the only substance I abuse is sugar. And right now, the days go by just a little too quickly for my taste.
In other news, I had a pretty good callback for a new musical theatre piece based on the children's book 'Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day'. Even if I don't get the part, I can rest assured that nonetheless it was a role I was born to play. Or be. Depending on how broad a brush you paint with. Oh, and I'm beginning the process of thinking about looking into getting a house. Which, for a tight-fisted nomad like myself, is an almost unthinkable development. More on that later. For now, I'm going to lean back, kick off my shoes, and re-arrange my paper clip jar.