Untoward thoughts (2 of 2): Mutual aid.

Like the past month-and-a-half or so, there's some young (queer?) things in keffiyehs sitting on the high-traffic part of the sidewalk right before you're at the farmer's market on Saturdays, just sitting there in the shade of a wall and selling water bottles or "popsicles for Palestine" (I think the hand-drawn sign on their cooler actually said that, at least one Saturday).

And, I wonder what would happen if you started talking to them, but instead of saying "mutual aid," you said "mutual masturbation."

Like, if you asked them who they were with, they would explain the genocide to you, and that they were raising funds independently to send to affected Palestinians, and as they said all of this you would just nod along like you dug it, and then at an opportune time, you'd just slip in and say, "So, this is like a, what do they call it, a mutual masturbation thing?".

I really wonder what they would do if you said that at just the right moment, and all deadpan. 

Untoward thoughts (1 of 2): Pride.

When I was having coffee last week with the one (older) (white) (female) artist who 's been cancelled who I know from around town, she was saying how "unhealthy-looking" so many young queer-identified people are.

"You used to go to Pride and it was all of these gorgeous men, and now it's all these unhappy young things with their breasts sliced off," she was like. 

"And I don't know about you," she was like, "But if I was a gay man, I would be pissed." 

Addendum.

Because they wanted to maximally preserve anonymity during jury duty, they addressed us all individually by our assigned juror numbers, and never by our real names.

And, the (older) (dyed-blonde) (white) lady seated in the box next to me with glasses was #99, so they kept calling on her and asking her the standard questions, only, in the form like, "Ninety-nine, have you ever been the victim of a crime?".

So, after she was in the same batch of dismissed jurors as me and we were all walking out together, I turned to her and told her that them calling her "Ninety-nine" all the time made me think that she was "Barbara Eden in Get Smart."

"Oh, you're dating me!", she was like, not noticing that both she and I had forgotten that it was actually Barbara Feldon in Get Smart, not Barbara Eden.

"But I just know it from Nick at Night!", I was like.

When we were about to pass security and exit the courthouse, too, I turned to her and was like, "So are you going to pick up your shoe and call for a ride, now?". 

. . .

(You can tell why I'm popular as a waiter.) 

Jury duty.

I was notified and I'm in the pool for two weeks, and on the very first day after the morning orientation, I was randomly selected to come back that afternoon for possible seating on a domestic violence case, and then out of the like 35 possible jurors, I was randomly selected as part of the 1st 14 that they quizzed.

My problematic (?) answers: 

- I might have known someone who was a victim of domestic violence (a hometown friend's little sister who had bad boyfriends and who I didn't pry about and so never really heard the details, but in any case it never reached the courts, and she died years ago).

("I'm very sorry for your loss," the district attorney was like.) 

- I have an advanced degree, and they asked me about the field and any overlaps and I name-checked an article that I did involving legal topics  and cults like the R. Kelly "sex cult" and NXIVM, which involved abusive treatment of many women.

("Interesting topic and I want to know more," the district attorney was like, "But I don't think the judge will allow me to ask all day about it.")

-  I don't have a medical condition that would affect my ability to serve on the jury, but I still wear a KN95 mask.

(The defense asked me and another juror about this, although he said we don't have to disclose why we wear them; although  I didn't say it, I just don't want COVID again, and I was actually super glad that I wore it to the morning orientation, since the room had over a 100 people in it and it was kind of stuffy in there and we were in that room for like an hour.) 

- I knew someone else on the jury (a nurse-practitioner who's part of the practice of the family doctor that I go to).

(They didn't ask us to divulge why or how we knew each other, but just whether it would affect our decision-making, and we both said no.) 

- I've been the victim of a crime like years and years ago (attempted robbery on subway) and last summer (attempted break-in to my cottage), although neither reached the legal system.

(They didn't ask what happened, but they did ask if it left me with any feelings about police or would affect judgments made about accused criminals, and I said no.)

So, overall...  Dismissed from the case!

Someone nixed me, although they didn't nix the nurse-practitioner, who they also had asked about what she has seen when being a nurse.

Interestingly enough, a hometown friend works in the domestic violence area and has for years, and I sometimes talk with her about her work and research and I have a continuing (minor) giving history to the shelter that she used to be the head of, and both of those facts never came up during questioning.

At one point, they asked if there was anything else about us that would affect our ability to be neutral and I thought of mentioning all of that, but in my personal evaluation of myself it wouldn't actually affect my ability to be neutral and hear the facts of the case, so I didn't offer it up, since it didn't meet the threshold that they explicitly asked about.

Just quite the experience, and all on the first day.

I still have to call back every night, too, since they might call me up again during that 2 week period. 

So, I might go through this again? 

On characteristics of friends.

The other week I was talking to the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities), and I was saying how I wanted to try to make it to this one upcoming beatification mass in a city like a half day's trip away if I could get it off work, since it's something that doesn't happen very often and it's such a major thing and it would be cool to be there to see what happens and what it's like.

"Oh, of course," she was, quite seriously, and you could tell that she was fully behind the idea, even though she isn't (Roman Catholic) and has no substantial ties to it that I know of.

Rather, her response came from her openness to and curiosity about the world, and a love of new experiences.

You can see why we're friends. 

A recent dream, of hair.

Like last week I dreamnt -

I'm in my bathroom looking in the mirror when I get up in the morning, and the front of my hair is like bleached blonde and tufted up and it looks all coarse, all from the lemon juice that I put on it "on the reg."

And, I think to myself that that lemon juice that I had put on it the previous day must really have been in the direct sun a lot, to get my hair looking that blonde.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(. . .) 

"Up there."

When I recently went to the website of an every-four-years academic congress to check out the presidential address for possible inclusion in a paper that I'm writing, I stumbled on a draft of the relevant bibliography summarizing work in that field over the past four years.

And, my work wasn't included, although I reached out to someone and found out who wrote it and I emailed that other person my relevant articles as well as a book review, since I had noticed that someone else had listed a book review, too, so why shouldn't I list the one that I did.

And, the amount of stuff I've done puts me right neck-and-neck at the top of the scholars working in that field just in terms of numbers of publications, not even in terms of the magnitude of the findings, like two-and-a-half of which are relatively big and which don't seem to be matched by anything else that anyone else seems to be doing.

Funnily enough, one of the few other top people is someone who works as an independent scholar, too.

Just because you're dedicated and do good work doesn't mean that someone will throw you a bone, in an atmosphere of scarcity.