Justice Brianna Style

Today I was supposed to go to Splish Splash with Amy and spend the day eating ice cream and getting sunburned, but instead I had jury duty. My first 3 hours of civic duty involved:

• 83 minutes of pedantic instruction on the difficulties of tearing along a perforated line and just how unlikely it was that I was ever going home (I believe the phrase, “Save it, I don’t care.” was used).
• 60 minutes of musing over exactly how many of my tax dollars are being wasted keeping the Queens Civil Courthouse a frosty 42 degrees in July (~$89/year).
• 17 minutes of admiring a guy outside tooling around on a solid gold bicycle with a red velvet seat, deciding he must be on trial for being the biggest pimp ever, hypothesizing that the cops were likely just jealous and considering becoming one of his hos.
• 30 minutes viewing a repeat of a pro jury duty film starring Ed Bradly and Diane Sawyer which I first saw in a California court house 4 years ago and which I believe is called, “Stop Your Whining Bitches.”

I probably should hold back a bit on the whining since Queens County had seen fit to provide me with free wireless internet access so I was able to use my laptop as a personal heating device while sending out emails begging for pity from friends and coworkers. In the following hour, while making laps around the large waiting room in an effort to keep the icicles at bay, I contemplated ways to ensure that I would not be making the one hour, three train trip back to Jamaica Queens.

I come from a long line of civic duty shirkers and hope one day to live up to my mother’s high standards. The one time mom made it into the questioning room it was in regards to a case involving a neighborly dispute over pets. When asked how she felt about pets mom said, “Well I’m a responsible pet owner myself but I have a neighbor whose dog repeatedly got into our horse pasture -- luckily the problem went away after I paid a visit to the neighbor and told him that the next time I saw his dog on my property I would shoot it in the head.” Unfortunately I’m nowhere near as good a bluffer as mommy. While filling out my jury questionnaire I noticed that they ask you to let the bailiff know if you’re a felon which got me thinking. What is the most minor felony that I could commit that would allow me to get out of jury duty for the rest of my life? Is there some service that could find an unobjectionable crime that I could take part in which would only result in a fine and no jail time? I would happily go down to Texas and buy a vibrator if that would get the job done. Apparently the punishment for just not showing when summoned to jury duty is $1000 or 30 days in jail so if I can find a felony with less of a punishment it would seem like a smart investment to just get with breaking the law. I walked across the room and took a cutting from one of the decorative plants in hopes that stealing government property was felonious enough for now.

Finally my name was called and my 19 new BFFs and I were lead (“single file, no pushing, there’s enough civil justice to go ‘round”) into a jury questioning room where the strangely hip heavy prosecutor explained that his client was suing over a car accident that took place years ago. At the time of the car crash he didn’t appear to have any injuries but he has since realized that he is scarred for life and would feel much better if he had a big fat check. It was at this point that I had what I really hoped was a brilliant idea and not an idea likely to get me held in contempt. As soon the questioning began I made with the very obvious note taking which I was hoping would have three parallel effects:

• Provide much fodder for late night blogging (see: NOW)
  
• Make me seem annoyingly interested and inquisitive
• Possibly result in being removed from the jury for being a VERY FAMOUS BLOGGER

It turns out that my tactics for getting dismissed from a jury are much more complex than those of the other 19 potential jurors I entered the room with. Every person that I witnessed being questioned had obviously gone with the “act too stupid to be on a jury” plan which resulted in questioning that went something like this:

Lawyer: Do you think people always tell the truth?

Potential Juror: <5 minute pause> ummmmm I don’t know...

Lawyer: Can you imagine a situation where someone might not tell the truth for any reason?

Potential Juror: uhh maybe… I don’t really understand the question...

The lawyers seemed so used to this that I almost felt bad for them until one said, “I don’t know what computer science is!” Shortly after this winning phrase was uttered he asked the juror if he, a Comp Sci student (aka some sort of techno whiz), would be tempted to go home at night and google words or phrases that he heard in the trial. I immediately thought, “Of course! How could he not? Is this illegal!??!” The prosecutor seemed intent on convincing us that when on a jury you’re pretty much not allowed to use the internet – if this is the case I am so going to jail if I end up on a jury. Yesterday I may have claimed not to be at all addicted to the internet but now that I have faced the possibility of being prohibited from accessing this sweet cake of knowledge frosted in naked women and sprinkled with the corn nuts of celebrity gossip I have no doubt that even one day on a jury could lead to serious withdrawal. I talked to a lawyer friend about this issue (see that lawyer guys? I have LAWYER FRIENDS – I’ve been corrupted with her knowledge I totally should not be allowed on a jury.) and she didn’t think it was really illegal but the judge could ask me not to do it which would obviously force me to agree to something that I am incapable of doing and could result in him tossing me in jail if I don’t learn to lie about my love affair with the magic tubes.

I was eventually called up to be questioned for the position of “alternate number 1” where I made sure to put on record all of the following

• “I’m an Atheist so I don’t believe in God”
• “I’m actually very interested in tort reform, especially in regards to limiting excessive payouts.”
• “My mom testifies in A LOT of medical cases, testifying is practically her favorite hobby after shooting dogs”

Unfortunately mid discussion of my love for Google and it’s sweet sweet knowledge a police officer knocked on the door and forbade us to continue as all government work must stop at 4:15pm. Which means that tomorrow I’ll be back for more frostbite and fun times– If I never update this blog again you’ll know I’m either out defending justice or rotting in jail.

A New Kind of Family

A month or so ago New York City was wallpapered in ads for The new ABC Family show, Greek and my readers were almost subjected to an uninformed rant about just how unrealistic I imagined the family channel's take on fraternity life must be. At the urging of a coworker I've since begun watching season one of another ABC Family show, Kyle XY, and now suspect that by extension Greek can only be one big heroin induced orgy.

The first few episodes of Kyle XY teased at a plot line involving the 17 year old daughter, Lori, giving up her virginity to a boy who is not even really her boyfriend. Obviously, I suspected that this was a ruse since there was no way that the former Christian Broadcasting Network was going to sanction a no strings teen sexcapade; but I was WRONG!!!! Lori totally gives it up to Declan in the woods (and uses a CONDOM -- which might be an even greater affront to the Christian right.) while her 15 year old brother gets in on some naked hottub action with a girl he just met. This little jaunt into corrupting the youth of America took place (in my year behind netflix supplied world of Kyle XY) 4 episodes ago and, miraculously, Lori is still alive and not pregnant -- I don't know what Disney (owner of ABC) is trying to teach our kids but I expect to see Mickey Mouse promotional lube on store shelves any day now. Since recovering from the shock of unpunished teenage sex I've noticed that this is not the only way that the Kyle XY writers are trying to mock our freedom -- they also endorse the two Ps: Pot and Porn. Try not to burn your eyes on the following completely true examples of how Disney is further promoting the Devil's agenda:

• When Lori bemoans losing the attention of her sausage supplier to video games her mother comments that Lori is lucky not to be a teen in the 70s when boys would constantly ditch you to smoke the weed.
• 15 year old Josh is realistically portrayed as fantasy BFFs with one of the centerfolds in his very dirty magazine collection (which is much more Penthouse than Playboy if you know what I mean) -- the parents know about and condone the collection even going so far as to giggle when the porn spills out of Josh's hiding place in front of the family and a collection of neighbor kids.
  

As a sex loving liberal freedom hater I applaud ABC Family and their attempts to expedite station founder Pat Robertson's eventual heart attack. I don't know how he's still hanging on -- maybe they should break out the golden showers.

Dear Pandora

We've been friends for a long time now and even though I am still a little hurt that you chose not to respond to my past advances I've moved on and I'm really happy now. I had hoped that we could still hang out without there being any weird animosity or sexual tension but lately I'm a little worried that you are incapable of putting our past aside and working with me to develop a healthy friendship. A few times over the past few months you've choosen to act out in ways that can only be described as cruel.

I feel a little bit like I'm the butt of the internet radio version of that hilarious joke where the cute boy asks out the slightly awkward girl but when she agrees he laughs and informs her that no one wants to go out with her because she is really smart and totally funny and will absolutely be a heart breaker once she escapes the hell of 7th grade (Not his actual words. Not that I would know...). I'll be sitting at my desk, rocking out to some new band, bookmarking songs, thinking that you have been awfully nice to me today (maybe you've changed your mind about me? I have a nice bottle of red and the New White Stripes CD at home, wanna come over?) and then, when I'm feeling my best and thinking that my hair looks really good today and all the boys love me, you play a little Hootie and the Blowfish. I may not be fluent in the communication methods of music recommendation software but even the illiterate know that Hootie is an insult. I am a very upscale music listener most people haven't even heard of half of the bands that I love, I think we both know how cool that makes me. I didn't even own a Hootie CD back when they were the musical equivalent of Funyuns (hugely popular, apt to give you bad breath, devoid of nutritional content) so your behavior is particularly hurtful. But you know what? Forget about me for a moment, I'm a big girl, I can take the taunting -- How do you think this makes Blue Rodeo feel? It's their radio station that you insist on playing this crap on and it's not fair, Blue Rodeo is just a ragtag group of Canadian rockers, they don't deserve to be dragged into your little game; we both know that this is about us.

A few days ago you played a Firehouse song for me on my Lyle Lovett station. Firehouse has changed a bit in the past 17 years and is making a valiant effort to grow with their fans from "main stream rocking hair band" to "sensitive adult contemporary guys who are just edgy enough to have long hair." Regardless of which of these categories you are filing the band under they should never be played next to Lyle. Pandora, I have to question how well you know me, and frankly, if you care about my feelings at all. I thought we were close but no true friend of mine would mess with my country music boyfriend. I owned a Firehouse cassette tape back in 1989 when "Don't Treat Me Bad" was on heavy rotation over at KIIS FM so I am familiar with their particular brand of auditory assault and I am appalled that your passive aggressive behavior has devolved to the point of mocking my preteen self. I admit that I was a pretty bad ass sixth grader who was constantly playing with fire and getting burned and/or getting kicked in the face and coming back for more, luckily I've matured and if you continue to torment me I will go have a little tete-a-tete with lastfm. Do not mess with me.

Get it together or else,
Brianna

It is Getting Harder and Harder to Pretend I am Not Grown Up

My 26 year old brother is getting married. This is a kid who less than a year ago gleefully told me about running a motorcycle into a tent housing people whose early bedtime did not live up to his partying standards. This boy used to engage me in “reasons to get married” conversations which resulted in lists like:

1. Well, what if you really needed nice silverware? Like what if you had a job where you had to host lots of dinner parties?
2. Ok, let’s say you’re super religious and very eager to have some sex?
3. Perhaps you have crappy friends who won’t show up to a party without pretense?

Last Thursday when Kurt told me about the engagement I was on my way home from wine club where I had luckily partaken in just enough of the devil’s juice to keep my head from exploding (Rose wine, haven’t you heard? The devil is going subtle these days). In true low key baby brother fashion (tendency to crash motorcycles into tents aside) he just slipped this nugget into our boring conversation about each other’s weekend plans, “So you should look for a plane ticket so you can be home on April 19^th.” Which allowed me to ask “why?” and buy a moment to catch my breath and resist blurting out “OH MY GOD ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED?!?! ARE YOU EVEN OLD ENOUGH? IS THIS LEGAL????”

I’ve managed to chill out over the weekend and I think I might be able to get through to April without having a break down about being old and single. Congratulation Kurt, I know you never read my blog but if you did you would be super happy that I did not use this opportunity to tell embarrassing stories about your childhood. I’m saving those for my drunken toast.

I'm Official

Look what I got: http://www.randomaccessbabble.com/

(thanks Garth)

I've Finally Been Reduced to Talking About the Weather*

As a child my family used to occasionally take trips to Las Vegas, mostly for the strippers but we also appreciated the access to stores that specialized in goods other than feed. On a few of these trips when I was about 8 or 10 years old we stayed at the Tropicana which I saw as the height of luxury. My favorite thing about the Tropicana was the night time laser light show that was performed on the side of the hotel tower. The show was choreographed to the song “Hot Hot Hot” the tone of which is decidedly positive with its "party people" and "hands in the air" and "rum bum bum." I now have to acknowledge that the band Arrow totally lied to me about what it feels like to be hot hot hot. It is very hot in New York these days. I want my readers to fully comprehend what I mean by that last statement but I am unable to find the proper font, text size or color to convey exactly how hot it is. Yesterday, I sat on a frozen bottle of water, the resulting sensation was the best my ass had felt in years. I’ve been wearing skirts and using the extra fabric to fan my lady bits, this means that roughly 750 people are seeing my panties on a given day which seems like a reasonable trade off. On Monday I contemplated lying down on the subway ramp on the theory that the tile might be cooler. This is a place where I KNOW people have peed

The worst part of the heat is trying to sleep through it. I have one air conditioner in my apartment and it’s located in the living room so that a certain Mr. Grump-n-stuff can enjoy not dying. This means that when temperatures rise about 80 degrees I have to choose between sleeping on my couch where it’s nice and cool but I can’t quite get comfortable or on my bed where I can lie spread eagle in front of the fan and whine all night about the heat. I could also buy another air conditioner but they weigh 8 million pounds and I don’t have a car and I can’t carry it by myself and when I start planning out the process for actually procuring a second air conditioner I quickly say fuck it and commence with the back up plan of eating another popsicle. So I have been forced into being creative and have experimented with a variety of methods for staying cool at night:

Method 1: Fill spray bottle with water, spray above head, let mist rain down on me
Reasons for Failure: mist dries too fast, fear that I’m making the humidity worse, process is too manual, concern regarding growing mold in my mattress.

Method 2: Hold frozen bottle of water in hand
Reason for Failure: Hand sucking up all of the coolness, rest of body still overheated and considering revolt against selfish hand, ice melts too fast

Method 3: Rest frozen bottle on belly
Reason for Failure: Belly is an oversensitive nancyboy who can’t handle the awesomeness of the frozen bottle, ice melts too fast

Method 4: Rest frozen bottle on panties just over hips
Reason for Failure: As I doze off my hips move and then the bottle rolls onto Mr Wimpy (aka my belly) which results in general body freak out, ice melts too fast

As you can see nothing is working and my creativity button has now melted.

The only thing significantly worse than the heat is the corresponding arctic chill that has descended on the NYC subway system. I was recently on a subway train covered in Con Edison ads describing ways to save energy I read these while shivering on a 50 degree train on a 90 degree day. Oh irony, you’re such a cad.

*Next time on RAB: How 'bout them Mets?

The Winner Parade: Entry 4

A few months after moving to the bay area when I was a bit lonely living on my own for the first time and spending all of my time either at my job programming graphics for slot machines in an office where no one turned on the lights or visiting the all women hippy dippy gym where I attended water aerobics at least three times a week. One of my few friends in the area was Monica, the evening receptionist at the gym who had occasionally invited me out with a few of her friends. It was on one of these outings (I believe at Halloween when I was dressed as Raggedy Anne and so, obviously looking super hot) that I met The Boy With Awful Taste. He seemed like a nice enough guy, not really my type but fun to hang out with. We hadn’t flirted or even talked much so I was surprised when a few days later Monica asked if I’d consider going out on a date with TBWAT. Having very few friends or plans I figured what the hell and told her to have him call me.

In my memory of the date that followed I do not recall knowing exactly what show I was being taken to see but I admit that this is likely due to some postdate self esteem survival instinct. I certainly knew the show’s venue and date and time and I knew how to use the internet so I must have known that at 22 on my first post-college date I was being taken to Disney on Ice. Now maybe lots of young girls are wooed by the dewy reflection beaming off of Micky’s skates, maybe the magic of fog machines and pirouettes has sparked many a romance but my feelings about ice dancing caricatures of cartoon characters were more gag-y than swoon-y. Selective amnesia aside it is obvious that my gag reflex has been so tamed that when faced with the decision between another Saturday night curled up with the internet and an actual date I was fully convinced that I could keep my lunch down through a 2 hour skating spectacular.

The date started its skydive into a ravine filled with barbed wire when we arrived at the San Jose HP Pavilion and TBWAT had to stop at the ticket booth, not to pick up our tickets to ice skating cartoonary, but to grab his tickets for a future event…. WWF wrestling. He was super excited about seeing some live action man on man sparring and I have to applaud anyone with a strong enough sense of self to resist backpedaling when his date is so clearly unable to hide her general disgust whiling thinking, “Who knew that there was a Disney/WWF combo demographic?”

The show finally began and the hordes of tots that surrounded me were lulled into silence by the jazz hands and figure eights of Woody and Buzz Light Year (note #1 to single guys: if you wanna get laid avoid date venues where the child to adult ratio is greater than 1:2). At intermission TBWAT offered to procure us some Disney themed snakage and beverages (note #2 to single guys: dates, like all things, are always better with booze so do not take your date to a place that refuses to serve cocktails). He returned with all he promised and more… while foraging for sustenance TBWAT had bought me a gift: a pink wand that when shaken lit up and played twinkling sound. Despite my now ample experience with Toy Story (is this a sign?) I cannot identify which character was likely to carry the wand. I also cannot provide a picture because I regifted the thing to an 8 year old neighbor girl within 1 month of receiving it, but for that night I had to put on my best 22 year old princess face and ohh and aww over this very generous gift, thank god for my secret BA in Theatre Arts. And so, wand in hand, I spent act two trying in vein to cast spell after spell, “Bippity! Toy Story On Ice, become a Ryan Adams concert!” “Boppity! Diet Coke become a margarita!”, “Boo! TBWAT, turn into Jack White!”

Post kiddie ice capades TBWAT proposed we grab some real food and, because it is impossible to say no to a guy who bought you a wand, I agreed. On our way to his second venue of choice (a diner with some sort of dimly lit lounge/strip club hiding behind a curtain near the bathrooms) his phone rang and at the end of his 10 minute conversation he invited the caller to join us for diner (note #3 for single guys: do not invite your friends to join you on your date). I was mostly ok with this plan (not that I was asked) since the addition of a third party seemed a sure sign that he was not planning on romancing up the evening. I figured the drive from the ice spectacular to the diner would serve as the necessary transition between “possible couple” and “just friends.” When we arrived at the diner I was doubly glad to be a single woman because our dinner companion was hot! That’s right folks – Winner Parade Four is a twofer!

Hot Friend(HF) and I spent most of dinner inappropriately making eyes at one another and (for my part at least) wondering if there was any way to finagle going home together without making both of us horrible people. Unable to reconcile that or come up with a way to surreptitiously jump his bones in the diner I was forced to get a ride home from TBWAT but not before HF asked for my number. I’ll admit to a small amount of shame at picking up a Guy #2 before my date with Guy #1 was officially over but I mostly figure that this is the kind of disaster #1 should expect when he invites another guy along on his date. I told TBWAT as much a couple of weeks later when he implied that my behavior made me a huge bitch.

HF called me a few days later and, since we worked within a few miles of one another he picked me up from the casino gaming empire for a quick lunch which lead to another date and another until we were sitting on the edge of relationshipdom staring into the abyss. Once I get past date three I’m usually a jumper and HF was no exception, he was cute, lived near by, worked at a tech company and… did I mention cute? Did I mention that I was 22? Unfortunately, HF was stuck on the edge of the cliff paralyzed with fear. He hemmed and hawed and sited being much much too busy for girlfriend but stopped short of actually breaking up with me until one day when he called to tell me that he had signed up to coach volleyball to high school girls. I am a lot of things: witty, cute, gifted with the internet, an expert on trashy tv, a great chef, a decent writer. None of these attributes can compete with 15 year old girls in short shorts jumping up and down and encouraging you to get behind them and show them exactly how to serve ("But I'm not very good and it might take a few tries! I Hope you’re patient!"). Needless to say I was broken up with over the phone just before the second night of practice.

While I’m sure many of my readers are dreaming of the chance to hook up with TBWAT or HF I cannot tell you the whereabouts of either. I honestly cannot remember the name of TBWAT so he is ungoogle-able but I suspect that he has yet to discover the internet anyway (and thus he is seriously missing out on the chance to relive our date but all of you lucky people can do so here – feel the ROMANCE.) . I do remember the name of HF (typical, right?) but unfortunately he shares a name with a famous race car driver so I can't properly stalk him -- it probably doesn’t matter, I don’t think they let pedophiles access the internet.