Terminus

500/600 block of Irving Street NW, Washington DC:

We heard the impact. It was a dull crack but violent, after a panicked split second of squealing brakes. The sound was shrill and hollow, but you could feel the velocity in it.

Three cheers for crumple-zones.

We turned around just in time to see some dweeb jump out of the car and book like an olympic sprinter up the alley he crashed into. The front end was crushed and the engine (still running, obviously) was left drumming out a crippled beat. Antifreeze pooled beneath the poor thing and ran down the sidewalk. Windshield wipers were jammed on, swaying uselessly. The airbag hung over the driver's seat like a senile iguana's dewlap, frozen in some dead gesture of macho pride.

What bullshit.


It certainly fits the stolen-car-joyride assumption. Several of us were on cell-phones right away, trying to get somebody in uniform to come deal with this thing. The engine's death-rattle began to sound desperate, gasping for breath but choking on its own shattered bones.

Looks like the folks in the two rowhouses next to the alley saw more than I did, so maybe the little shit will get nabbed. But I suspect not. It seems we don't "nab" people for "crimes" in this town. Maybe that's the case everywhere. But honestly, where do you begin trying to find the bastard?

But for what it's worth: If your car has been missing and looks like this (and has Maryland plates that begin with KEP), I think we found your vehicle.

We've got some genuine, good and decent people on this block (I try to be "good" and "decent" myself, but the success of that is up for debate), and many of us have noticed more "incidents" in recent months, vs. the last couple of years. Things improved after the teen 'mob' were evicted a few doors down, but hopefully we're not seeing another slide in that direction now. This joyride incident seems totally random: the kid was racing up the alley from Columbia Road to Kenyon at wicked crazy speed. It could just as easily have been somewhere else, and certainly could've killed somebody.

Anyway. Could this be a grim omen for the summer?

Law and Ogre

Today was my first jury duty experience ever.

I'll be forty next year, and somehow I've dodged this particular bullet all my adult life. They say it has something to do with voter registration records, and maybe that's the rub. I've been a lifelong militant non-voter until just last year, so the lesson is simple: Keep your damn head down. Snipers take many forms.

Washington DC's Moultrie Courthouse (pictured above) is a perfect example of America's obsession with the stark, sterile modernism of 1960's concrete architecture. It's a disgrace, like many of the architectural eyesores that pollute southwest DC (L'enfant Plaza, etc)...

ehh, forget the architecture. This is about Jury Duty. Stay focused.

The check-in line of jurors was the most visibly miserable and pissed-off bunch I've ever seen. It looked like an Army inductment line full of suicidal draftees: Are we about to be shipped off to Iraq, to have our heads (or worse) blown off for that Texan fascist in the White House? Am I in the wrong line?

Inducted? Perhaps. I'm now "Juror no.484" and promptly called in for selection on a case involving a young fellow and allegations of possession-with-intent-to-distribute, something about un-registered firearms, etc. Typical evening news stuff. The (disarmingly likeable) judge interviewed each of us and presto: I'm invited back at 2pm to play more games in this sterile, pinewood sandbox of tension...

Overheard in the courtroom cafeteria:
Insectoid and effeminate male attorney chatting with co-worker over a tossed salad,
"I'm allergic to EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD, okay?"

Thunderclouds have rolled overhead and my window's view of 6th Street is sepia tinted with the threat of rain. No, wait..... there it is. A light sprinkle sends the Judiciary Square crowd running like rabbits.

2:00 arrives, which means I can finally escape this godforsaken bullpen/waiting room with its 6 (six!!!) televisions bolted to the ceiling, ensuring no escape from "A Beautiful Mind." I'm sure it's a fine movie, but a bit heavy for this place.

No matter. Back to the action.

Okay, so I admint my total, gagging ignorance about the Jury Duty experience. Some of you have been through this meat-grinder dozens of times. Fine. Indulge a brother a moment of wild discovery here.

We filed back to our seats in courtroom 313, and the jury selection process really got rocking.

A preliminary jury is selected from the panel, then mercilessly shuffled as the attorneys edit the choices in a creepy poker game of sorts. Makes one feel like a pregnant sow in the state fair 4-H tent. Each attorney gets a turn to tweak the jury by pulling bodies out and substituting others from the panel. The lawyers pass their selections back and forth on a tattered sheet of paper, then to the judge. The rejected sit down and the new ones take their place. The attorneys squint at us, burrowing into our brains and trying to get a sense of the mix.

I began to wonder if they were actually working, or simply assembling fantasy football teams.

For an added dose of surrealism, we have the court recorder: She's a frail bird of a woman, typical of the sort seen in TV legal dramas, except... no stenotype machine! That mysterious device that court recorders have used since the stone age...Gone!

In its place is a Dell laptop and some speech-to-text software which the recorder uses by repeating everything into a microphone. This microphone is embedded in a soundproofed cone, like a rubbery gas mask. The effect is very strange, and looks like the poor woman is eating raw oats out of a cart-horse's nosebag.

Anyway. The final jury was selected, and by a strange miracle, I was released. It was close, though. I was "voted off the island" just one round before the jury-selection game was over. Hip-hip! Here's to freedom!

The judge was careful to say to the entire panel, words to the effect of "uh, don't take it personally if you get the brush-off." No problem, dude. It must've been my patented anti-social scowl, and the blood capsules I keep in my cheek pouches for this very thing...

One never knows.

a brief diversion south

We left Washington DC for Florida, and the mission was to acknowledge the death of one person and the rebirth of another person.

Leaving home required a tremendous leap of faith, that the tarp-covered wreckage of our back deck would remain unmolested by wind, rain, or storms for a few days. We're still waiting for contractors to begin re-roofing back there, and we're feeling a little, uh, exposed...to the elements right now. The slightest mention of rain sends us to fits of nervous twitching, like un-medicated veterans at the sound of a helicopter.

The trip was pleasant, considering the cause, and I'm still convinced that the United States should return Florida to the Seminoles. They obviously know how to manage that land much better than we. But anyway...

In Miami was the peculiar estate known as Vizcaya (garden pictured above). The mansion home and its surrounding ornaments were built by James Deering on Biscayne Bay in about 1916. The home itself is filled with a head-spinning array of Rennaissance-era furnishings (hence, no photography inside), and is operated today by Miami-Dade County as a museum. A fun diversion.

Meanwhile, the motel television was dripping with news from home. DC appears to be having another crime wave, and the national media never tire of the irony of it all: the Capital of the Free World has a Murder problem!?!? Folks seem to forget that this city contains real people, and isn't some obscene, fascist campsite for powermad stormtroopers.... Yes, sweet motel television, it is both of those things.

Of course the sad truth is, according to the media, there are NO murders in DC until someone of status is victimized. I simply don't understand how the murder of a tourist on the Mall or a foreign journalist in Georgetown is any more important than "some guy" in Ward One.

And then Lebanon blew up. Jeez, I turn my back and go to Florida for ONE MINUTE, and see what happens... That does it. For the safety of the human race, we shall not travel in 2007.