2005 year in review. No, a good one. Trust me.

Mishead lyric of the day, just now:

"Are you happy for a milk cow?"

(Actually "Are you hoping for a miracle," but I like mine better.)

I'm not sure about the percentage, but giggle at the two reasons at the bottom.

You Are 60% "Average American"

You are average because you drink on occasion. You are not average since you would pay to go in space.

How "Average American" Are You?

Brain droppings

Rick told me long ago that I talk in my sleep sometimes -- complete, grammatically correct sentences that make no sense and relate to nothing.

Usually, if I go to sleep first, I leave the room and go to bed. Lately, I've been unwisely trying to stay up past my bedtime (and when your alarm goes off before 6am, bedtime ought to be pretty early). This results in me falling asleep on the couch fairly often.

A few weeks ago, I conked out on the couch while watching TV (I think) with Rick and a friend. According to them, I announced, in my sleep, "If it's not for some asshole client, sure." Apparently my subconscious still has issues from my freelance writing days.

Some days later, I mumbled something about Bugsy Seigel. I mean, I have been to Vegas recently, but still. I didn't even quite remember who he was ("a mobster, right?" I had to ask).

Saturday night, in front of an embarrassing number of people, I opened my eyes and was somehow aware that I'd just announced a need to "save the princess." Half-awake, I then explained that I'd been playing a video game. In real life, I don't game.

Jen Needs A Vacation.

Perhaps a little TOO much fun with science

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, a quote which I promise is not as science-y as it looks at first:
"Although quarks are much too small to have color or taste or any other physical characteristics we would recognize, they became clumped into six categories - up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom - which scientists oddly refer to as their "flavors," and these are further divided into the colors red, green, and blue. (One suspects that it was not altogether coincidental that these terms were first applied in California during the age of psychedelia.)"

It's also worth noting that the always kickass physics horndog Richard Feynman wanted to name quarks "partons," as in Dolly.

Artsy fartsy

AlsterHead2-31Dec2000_1
Originally uploaded by jmuehlbauer.

I got a flickr account a while back, and have decided it's as good a holding place for the photos I take that, by some stroke of luck, come out cool. Let's see if it really does let me blog a photo from here.

This one's for Hamburg...

Memo to the woman in the locker room at my gym:
I don't care how perfect your lipo'd body is, no one wants to watch you stand around buck naked and groom your pubic hair. Euch.

With any luck this'll be all talk and no riots, but fyi, I have no dealings in any Crip neighborhoods tomorrow so no need to worry 'bout your token white girl. Fingers crossed for peace nonetheless, just on general principle and because I know a lot of kids down there.

As Stan from South Park sang, "It's hard to be a Jew on...holidays?"

There's a big hubbub in the U.S. now about whether to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." Of course, Bill O'Reilly and the Christian-right crazies think "Happy Holidays" is blasphemy akin to saying Jesus was born from sex and died in vain. As a thoroughly non-religious person who was raised Jewish, in a half-Jewish town that said not only "Happy Holidays" but "Happy Hanukkah" I must say this...

I truly don't give a damn what you say to me this time of year, as long as it's not "let's go shopping."

Yes, the Christian-right crazies are out of line. It's not like we're going to become a predominantly Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu country because we say "Happy Holidays" instead of mentioning Christ's name (and if we did, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it). But seriously...saying "Happy Holidays" to include Hanukkah or Kwaanza or whatever is a joke. Are mean people nice to you only in December because they're excited about spinning the dreidel? Is the mad shopping frenzy so that parents can gather eight nights' worth of presents? (Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the Jewish faith, and became a gift-giving holiday only so Jewish kids wouldn't feel bad when Santa visited their Christian friends). When people say "Merry Christmas" to me, so I feel a smack of anti-Semitism? No, no, and no.

I do like "happy holidays" because it includes New Years, and I like it from other non-Christians (and interfaith couples) because there's some unspoken solidarity there. But the reason for the season, as they say, is the tree, the stockings, the eggnogg, the forced family fun, the cards, the mistletoe, the horrible music, the fake niceness from your boss, the parties, the cookies, the vacation days, the high airfare, the excited kids, the credit card debt, and yes, the presents. That's Christmas, whether you're Christian or not when you experience some or all those things. But it has about as much to do with Jesus as Arbor Day.

From snopes.com: The State of Idaho has passed a resolution commending the makers of Napoleon Dynamite. My favorite points:
* WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export; and
* WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and
* WHEREAS, Rico and Kip's Tupperware sales and Deb's keychains and glamour shots promote entrepreneurism and self-sufficiency in Idaho's small towns; and
* WHEREAS, Tina the llama, the chickens with large talons, the 4-H milk cows, and the Honeymoon Stallion showcase Idaho's animal husbandry; and
* WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"

Gosh!


You are Kip Dynamite and you love technology.


Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Proof that there's a scholarship for everyone:

"Purpose of Award: To encourage students to pursue careers in the marketing of dairy goods."

I now know that, if you go down to the fifth floor jury assembly room during lunch, you can take a nap undisturbed. I know that the court cafeteria has worse captive pricing than the airport. I know that if you're in a hurry it's fastest to take the second set of elevators up to floor 11 then the stairs to floor 13, but that if you're not in a hurry you get used to 13 flights of stairs, too. I know that depending on your bailiff, you can get away with joking on the deliberations room intercom that you'd like to order a pizza.

I do not know if the guys we just declared "not guilty" are actually not guilty. That's just how the system works, and it beats the alternative. They don't ask your reasons for the verdict ("by reason of insanity," etc) like in the movies, but we would have to say "by reason of unreliable witnesses, sketchy cops, and crappy evidence."

In other words, not guilty by reason of What the fuck, motherfucker, what the fuck are you thinking?

The crime

So this teenaged dude, let's call him Juan, and his girlfriend and their baby rear-end a carful of guys. If you believe Juan, the driver of the other car got out and tried to punch him. If you're continuing to believe Juan, he then told the other driver to follow him home so he could pay for the damage.

Either way, Juan makes a U-turn and the carful of guys follow. This is when Juan's girlfriend, let's call her Denise, swears the carful of guys started shooting at them. A big-ass chase follows. Juan makes a right onto a different major street and runs up onto the sidewalk into a newspaper box, all while Denise is screaming and crying. Then he extracts himself from the newsbox, makes a left, and the carful of guys pursuing them hits a van.

The van contained a lady from the neighborhood and two of her daughters. Mom and the teenage daughter both remember a passenger sticking his head out the window and waving for them to follow. Just in case, Mom read the first four license plate numbers to her teenager. Teenager writes them down. Carful of guys busts through a yellow light and Mom gets stuck at the red. A little further up, Mom finds a crazy scene but not the guys who hit her.

What happened was that Juan, having missed the entrance to the freeway, started driving on the wrong side of the street and ploughed onto someone's lawn, through an iron gate. As this was happening, a resident of the house was on the porch having a smoke. She agrees with Juan and Denise that what happened next was someone getting out of the carful of guys and shooting Juan in his car. Resident runs inside and calls 911. Did we mention that this house is a clean and sober house? And that the resident, at the time of her testimony, was on 6 types of medication for epilepsy, pain, bipolar, and schizoaffective disorder?

Back to Juan's story. He says he and Denise begged for their lives, and said they had a baby in the car. Juan put his hand up to block his head and the gunman shot him in the hand. Juan says he then offered his wallet, and the shooter took it and everyone drove off.

We know someone shot Juan, because the bullet's still in his hand. We know someone shot at the car, because there're bullet holes in it, too, but accounts vary on whether the car got shot during the chase or in front of the sober house. The question is, who? This is where the cops come in.

One cop wrote down Mom and Teenager's license plate numbers then gave them BACK to the teenager -- and claims she offered a full plate, not just 4 numbers. Everyone gave descriptions, with Denise and the sober house lady describing the driver as Mexican, Mom saying he was a dark skinned black man, and Teenager saying he was a light skinned black man. Descriptions of the gunman were less inconsistent, but none too descriptive (the guy accused of being the shooter had a big tattoo on his neck that it seemed like someone would have mentioned had he been the guy). Juan wasn't able to give descriptions at all, but in fairness, he had a bullet in his hand.

Cops traced the license plate to a car whose damage was consistent with having been in the two accidents described above. The woman who owned the car, when asked who'd taken it out that day, gave a fake name. They impounded it for a few weeks yet somehow the jury never got to hear if they found any fingerprints or gunshot residue.

A few weeks later, Juan and Denise picked the same two black men out of the only 12 photos offered by a detective who never did testify at this trial. One of them was the babydaddy of the owner of the car. We don't know how they found the other guy.

Most interestingly of all, though Juan's car was also impounded for weeks, months later, Juan says he just then decided to open the trunk to see if there was a bullet in it. Hey! There's a bullet in the speaker! Why didn't the cops find that? He called the detective who showed him the suspect photos, then says the detective came over, dug around in the speaker with his bare hands for a few minutes (!) then told Juan to keep trying and call him if he got the bullet out (!). When Juan got it out, he called the detective, who then never picked it up. Juan brought it to the first trial himself.

Oh, yeah, this thing already went to trial once before I got there. At this trial, Mom and Teenager -- prosecution witnesses -- announced that the two men sitting in there in handcuffs weren't the right guys. Also, Juan and Denise said some things that were pretty different from what they said this time, and sometimes pretty different from what they told cops the day of the crime.

I just gave you the quick version -- it took us 10 days in court to get that far. Essentially, we all thought, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the guy accused of being the driver was IN the car, but not necessarily that he was the driver at the time in question. Since the witnesses, including the victims, were unreliable and we felt like were were missing key evidence -- where's the detective? where's the other two guys in the car? where's the forensics on the car the shooter got out of? -- that felt like reasonable doubt. Meanwhile, the guy accused of being the shooter had two alibi witnesses, including a pastor, who none of the actual Christians in the room believed, while the old Jewish man juror and I did!

Probably, just from reading this, it sounds like we freed OJ or something. You'll just have to trust me that twelve intelligent people didn't feel like the prosecution gave them enough proof.

The jurors

The other women on the jury were -- though I don't like to give real names on this site, I must -- girly girls from ages 26 to sixty-something named Mimi, Mamie, and Bibi. They were all nice, smart women but I am just about done hanging out with them socially, which I couldn't really wriggle out of once they started inviting me to lunch. I might come up with more stories later but for now I'm just tired. No more civic duty for me for a while, thanks.

Notes to the youth of LA:
1) "Bad hair day" is not an acceptable excuse for truancy.
2) Showing up, behaving, and handing in reasonably neat work is not enough for a passing grade from any competent teacher. You must also have a grade average of more than 60%. Seriously.
3) Teachers who disregard point #2 and pass you to be "nice" are not being nice. English and math teachers who do this, in particular, must not care if you ever pass the high school exit exam.
4) If you copy all the homework and classwork from someone else, don't be shocked when you fail all the tests.
5) When teachers ask you questions, it's not because they don't know the answer. It's to get you to use the gray stuff between your ears. It does not mean the teacher is stupid and looking to you for help.
6) "Shit" and "fuck" are still not appropriate for classroom use.
7) D's are not good grades.
8) Just because no one ever told you this stuff before doesn't mean it isn't true.