Weblog Sin Pies

By Charley Daniels

Heading back to jury selection in the morning. I won’t be Twittering this time, at least not regularly. Maybe an update here or there, but since I’ll mostly be in the courtroom tomorrow I don’t see there being much of a chance for me to post. Especially since I’ll be so busy catching up on my sleep.

Speaking of stinky pee, asparagus has been in the news a lot lately. Scientists recently announced that the soil on Mars is perfect for growing the vegetable:

Soil on Mars ‘good for asparagus’

There is still no answer to the old question of whether there has ever been life on Mars, but apparently there could be vegetable life.

Guess we know what we’ll be eating after we have to abandon earth in the next decade or so. Or maybe not:

Dodgy asparagus sauce killed restaurant diner

81-year-old William Hodgins died just hours after dining with his wife at the up market Tables restaurant in Pymble last year. An inquest has today found it was a pathogen in the asparagus sauce, served with his fish that killed him.

Well, back to the drawing board. Maybe the soil on Venus is perfect for growing some other vegetable?

By Charley Daniels

Looks like things are working around here for the most part (site was broken yesterday). That’s good, because I’ve got some things to say. Like, I bet you didn’t know I spent yesterday on jury duty, which was interesting. It wasn’t the first summons I’ve received, but it was the first time I’ve ever had to appear.

Every lying asshole I talked to told me, “Oh, yeah, don’t worry. You’ll just sit there all day and then go home.” Which actually didn’t sound too bad. I planned to get some work done, read a little, make some friends. You know, typical day off stuff. I just had to stay in a room. How hard could that be? Not hard at all, it turns out, until about an hour in when I got called for the very first panel.

That actually worked out well, because I got to take a two-hour lunch while the people who couldn’t serve on a jury for the next two weeks had to tell it to the judge. By “it,” I mean they had to explain why they couldn’t serve on a jury for two weeks. I tried to quickly think of a good reason, but I had nothing. Jaxon suggested I should have just lied, which is a good point, but I’m glad I didn’t, because then I wouldn’t have had such a long lunch.

So after my luxurious break, I went back for jury selection. It’s a process I’d describe as frustratingly deliberate, punctuated by moments of something straddling the gap between pure genius and the highest level of dip-shittery.

I’m just in the general pool; I haven’t been called up to answer questions. But I have to go back Monday, owing to the thorough nature of the proceedings and the exhaustive replies by the 24 people who are currently being questioned. Everyone understands, it seems, that the more you talk, the likelier you’ll say something that one of the attorneys doesn’t like.

A few have taken a more direct approach, declaring their bias against this or that, but each time they wilt under the judge’s inevitable grilling on the subject: “Do you think you would be able to put aside your personal feelings and render a verdict without prejudice, based on the evidence presented?” Sheepish replies, all of them, but they all say yes.

It’s like watching children trying to bring down an elephant with sticks. Running in hesitantly, swatting a leg, getting kicked back. There’s always one that won’t give up, and such was the case during this selection. Each time he’d try a fresh angle of the “I don’t think I can put aside my bias” approach, which is actually sort of, I don’t know, admirable if his only goal is to be excused. Because unless he’s really stupid (which obviously could be the case) he has to know how bad he looks using the “Your honor, I’m too prejudiced to serve as a juror” line. He was relentless.

The subtle approach is way better, I think. One of the questions is whether we’ve ever served on a jury before and whether or not that jury reached a verdict, to which one lady’s response was: “I have served on a jury before, and the verdict was guilty.” I’d lay odds she’ll be released by the defense attorney on Monday based on that one answer alone.

They haven’t excused anyone yet, but they’re choosing 15 out of about 80, so there’s a good chance I won’t even be questioned, let alone picked. We’ll see Monday.

Oh, and if this treatise wasn’t detail enough for you, I Twittered jury duty live, as it happened. For the most part.

By Charley Daniels

Speaking of Hancock, Will Smith was on The Colbert Report tonight, which was odd enough that when I saw the show description I thought it might be a mistake. Normally Colbert doesn’t have mega stars on his show. In fact, most of his guests are obscure scientists or authors you never would have heard of if it wasn’t for the show.

But he was there, The Fresh Prince himself, super cool, etc. Now, I’m very positive on Will Smith; I think he’s generally really good in his films and always really likable and funny in interviews. Unfortunately, he broke the number one rule for facing Stephen Colbert:

1) Just because he’s a comedian, it doesn’t mean you’ve become one. Even when you think you might try to be funny, please, let the impulse fade. You’ll be glad you did, because the overwhelming chance is that he is thinking of something funnier.

Not every attempt at humor was a miss, but enough were to make me cringe a little.

By Charley Daniels

I added “Culver City news” to my Google News homepage because I live in Culver City and it’d be nice to know what’s going on around here. So far, no good. The typical story that ends up in the Culver City news section is not so much newsworthy as it is, well, crappy. Take right now, for instance, where the story at the very top of the stack, news position one in that section, is this:

Recipe: Grilled pineapple with rum and long pepper glaze

Dial down the flames to a slow burn and watch pineapple luxuriously transform.

Delicious, yes, but is it really the top story of the day for Culver City? I mean, I can understand having that there in the morning, before the real movers and shakers have had a chance to go out and make headlines, but it’s the end of the day. Nothing more noteworthy has happened around here? Just the grilled pineapple thing?

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Speaking of grilled pineapple, Dane is undertaking a real grueling task by eating vegan for a month and blogging about it. Now this is a guy who I’ve spent one evening with, during which he ate an entire chicken, the expensive part of a cow, and a hunk of emu leather. The whole hunk. And I hear he doesn’t like vegetables much. So you should probably subscribe to his blog for the next month, because I’m pretty sure we’re in for an animal-product-and-byproduct-free treat.

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And lastly, Hancock hasn’t been doing great in the first few reviews that have been trickling out. It has a 40% on RottenTomatoes, which really isn’t so bad in the current movie climate, but it sounds like it may take a dive in the coming days as more critics weigh in. That said, I was still ready to enjoy it, especially since it strikes me as just the type of film that a lot of critics won’t like, yet may still be fun to watch.

But then I spoke to T.L. Stanley about it today. Going in she seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic. Coming out, however, she seems utterly disappointed:

In a word: terrible.

Ouch. That’s a shame, but I’m still planning to see it, because you never know!

By Charley Daniels

So, let me get this straight (ha ha, get it? Oh, well maybe you will after you read the rest of the post). As I was saying, let me get this straight: If I’m a conservative, I believe that the government should mind its own business, unless it’s to legislate or amend the constitution regarding things that don’t apply to me because of my beliefs. In those cases, say gay marriage or abortion, etc., I’m all, “Go Big Government!” But when it comes to gun control and taxes and the United Nations, I say, “Keep the government small and let the people decide. Hey, where’s my Confederate flag lapel pin?”

Do I have that right? Anyone? Can anyone explain to me how allowing gay people to marry hurts anyone else? Can anyone explain to me how opposing gay marriage isn’t simply homophobia that’s not even well-disguised?

I’m issuing a reward (a free gay wedding) to anyone who has information leading to a reasonable explanation for being against same-sex marriage.