No music -- too busy working!

On jury duty, but have morning free, so I went into work. What a mountain of stuff I'm behind on.

Jury duty is very odd. I am not going into detail now, not enough time. But what a frame of mind I am in.

Today is our 5 year anniversary! I thought my life would be different five years ago, but I also assumed we'd be together, so things are going well in that regard. I'm not sure what we'll do tonight. We've got lots of "stuff" going on all at the same time right now. Life is often hectic, but our relationship is like what Spender called the "still center." Or was it "centre?" Oh, whatever.

No music - jury duty

I am in the jury room at lunch. I am actually on a case that'll take two or three weeks to resolve. It's odd to be on jury duty. I did it before about 8 years ago and each time I feel really overwhelmed, being so close to a vast eternal truth. We are trying to draw as near to this ideal of Justice as we can. And though we are mortals and flawed, together we seem to get really close at times. I pray to G-d that we do so this time.

Being on jury duty means I am not working my regular job. But my employer pays for unlimited jury duty. As much as people poop on corporations, big companies don't have to give nice things to employees like unlimited jury duty days, but they do. And it's a little bit of goodness. It's an absolute good. You go, huge corporate behemoth that I love!

I got to go and get lunch. I wonder if anyone ever reads anything I ever write.... perhaps it's better if this is my secret journal that's technically public but hiding in plain sight....

Bruce Springsteen - Paradise

It's Friday. I wish I was the kind of person that had lots to say and wrote it in an intelligible manner. Well, I sometimes am, but not today. I want to do an entry but am too busy to actually do anything beyond ramble. There you go.

Finn Brothers -- Edible Flowers

I have been wearing black mostly for almost five years now. Partly it's because my g/f has been kind of dressing me and she says I look good in black. That's partly because she's in West LA and the black thing is big there. Secondly, it's easier to just have things match. But I've been in a funk of sorts for ages and I finally touched the long-standing ache under a lot of stuff in my life.

Bush.

I've been in mourning of sorts for almost five years now. I haven't said Kaddish because America's not dead, but America is kind of in a coma and she may never come out.

XTC - Millions

My mother is English, and I lived in England for a year when I was a kid. But you know how childhood is. That single year (and four years in New Zealand, in many ways an extension of England) had an immense effect on me. I am much more English in temperment and outlook than American. I prefer English music to American. I have more of an English sense of humor. My ideal vacation involves a year, my girlfriend, and England. And I am taking the terrorist bombing in London very personally, much more than with Madrid last year or Bali before that. Al Queda, in my opinion, made a mistake with bombing London. First, there are thousands and thousands of old Londoners who lived through the Blitz. My mother was evacuated to the countryside with the other kids back then. These pensioners have seen carnage and suffering beyond comparison with today. This makes a difference. It's not a shock in the way the Eleventh of September was a shock to America. Secondly, everyone too young to have direct experience still has a collective-memory kind of thing where they are shaking it off and going about their lives just as the English did during the Blitz. Third, low-level terrorism is nothing new to London. They are used to occasional bombs here and there for decades due to the IRA. Of course, the IRA were relatively gentle about it, calling in warnings beforehand, but still.

So the terrorists tried to terrorize people that are not going to be easily terrorized. It's like blowing up a bus in Israel. It's so played now that although it's a tragedy for those involved, it doesn't have the desired effect on the people that they want.

Blur - Ambulance

Oh. Tarnation is the best damn thing I've seen in ages. Is it the best thing I've ever seen? I dunno. It's amazing. Partly because I've messed with iMovie and so know the mechanics of how the movie was made, I can appreciate how the mechanics of the movie are irrevelant to the story it tells. It is at the same time one of the most disturbing and hauntingly beautiful things I have ever seen.

Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives

War of the Worlds -- spoilers aplenty.

The movie was a beautifully well-done failure. I guess they couldn't hire someone to give the script a simple once-over to spot all the obvious flaws because all the money went to CGI.

The EMP flaw is so bad my 11 year old protested loudly at all the electronics suddenly working. Add to that all the irritating junk like the airplane burning but none of the neighborhood being set on fire, the constant inexplicable open road in front of the van on crowded highway and rubble-filled streets...

Some have jumped on the aliens dying of bacterial and viral infections. But aliens not having immunity to germs isn't a bad angle. It's classic and sensible. It makes sense that there would be unforseen problems in an invasion... but why do we end up with the aliens apparently like the Bush Administration? All this planning and a brilliantly executed plan involving ships buried on earth tens of millennia ago, thus meaning the aliens had been to our world before, but then no awareness of germs on this planet they've been to before, and no plan to "secure the peace?" If they had gone with HG Wells where the aliens landed, that would have been fine. But no. The aliens came here eons ago and planted their ships and waited? For what?

If the movie was emotionally engaging, few of us would have noticed the flaws. But the movie failed miserably. So we noticed all the crap.

Patti Smith - High on Rebellion

So it's Friday and we can leave early cuz it's July 4 weekend and I want to leave but there's this spreadsheet work I gotta get done but it's Friday and I'm in a casual Friday state of mine so I'm not motivated and I tell myself I'll do it at home but I know I won't so I sit here paralyzed and not being able to motivate myself to do anything beyond read the news and handle the most basic customer needs and now the phone isn't ringing at all and day is quiet outside and even the streets are empty today in LA.