(no subject)
Aug. 13th, 2011 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* The government of Syria has taken to firing on people ass they leave mosques and is arresting children to punish the parents.
* Despite Standard and Poors saying that if we would not raise the debt ceiling, they would downgrade us to B+, Bachman is claiming that the only reason we got downgraded at all was because we raised the debt ceiling instead of defaulting. O.o This got applause and no negative response from the conservative press, despite it being absolutely known to be contrary to fact.
* Meanwhile, Cantor is rallying congressional Republicans to resist pressure from the business community to compromise and make sane economic policy that would help rather than hurt the economy, presumably on the grounds that ideology is way more important than doing what everyone knows is the right thing. Hint: if labor unions, most reputable economists, and wall street are all agreeing on something, and the only people arguing against are faith based ideologues with no facts or evidence, odds are pretty good it's true. Just saying.
* Mitt Romney, when confronted by an angry crowd calling for taxes for corporations, pointed out that corporations are people so shouldn't be taxed. O.o
* Rick "frothy residue" Santorum, despite being firmly against gay rights in the United states, came out last night for gay rights in the Middle east. O.o (I will stop including "frothy residue when he stops calling LGB folk the equivalent of pedophiles.)
* Hector had more than a week of getting plenty of sleep and eating with minimum coaxing, but the last three days he's been escalating. I ended up giving him his anxiety meds tonight. Let's hope it's enough.
* I got up very early today to get ready for court. It turned out to be rather a longer adventure than I'd expected. As the only pair of non-jeans trousers I have are a nasty pair of ridiculously oversized khakis, I opted for my nicest pair of simple black jeans. I do not own a suit and this is summer in the Pacific Northwest, a very casual sort of state. I paired the jeans with the last of my good silk formal shirts from college and a black tie. Those of you who know me know I can't bear anything on my neck. I never even button the top button on my shirts, so picture the sacrifice buttoning the top button and using even a clip on tie is for someone like me. It turned out okay. The lawyers wore the male and female versions of suits, but most non-attorneys went for either jeans and a tee shirt or at their most formal, business casual. There were women in tank tops and shorts or mini skirts. O.o
Being me, I left the house more than 45 minutes early, assuming that there could be construction traffic, that I would likely have trouble finding parking, that I'd likely pick the wrong floor, then get lost finding the courtroom. Two of these things happened. It also turned out, I'd incorrectly recorded the time. The sane thing to do was go get something to eat, but I was in a huge amount of pain and the thought of climbing down and back up all those stairs was simply too much. I decided to go settle into the courtroom and watch the session before mine. I had a book, after all, for the boring bits, and I am interested in how things work. My city rarely has the sort of crimes one sees on tv. My entire county has only one or two homocides at most a year. Kidnaps are very rare. It's more likely to be DWI, drug possession, assault, theft and the like. For all I knew it could be traffic court I wasgoing to be watching, but I'd never seen that either. I slipped in behind a lawyer and defendant and grabbed a seat in the back row where I could tuck my crutch out of the way.
It turned out to be probation violations. They trouped in a string of four prisoners and a collection of lawyers, defendants, and family settled into the normal benches. The judge and clerk were on a raised dais, prosecution and the probation officer sat to my left. The Defense attorneys took turns at a desk to my right near prisoner's row. The probation officer looked nothing like you see on TV, being young, black, and smoking hot. He looked like a young attorney himself rather than the usual grizzled old white guy you see in media. The Defense attorneys were three men and two women, of various ages and builds. This being the PNW, one of them had an impressive beard. The Prosecutor was an older guy with shoulder length white hair and could have been sent from central casting.
Most of it was pretty proforma. The defense would generally admit the violation(s), then try to present extenuating circumstances to get the best deal possible. The Probation officer would give his opinion of how compliant the defendants were and seemed pretty fair as far as extenuation for people who had been doing pretty well before they fucked up. Defense and Prosecution would make suggestion as to sanctions ranging from prison + community service, to more Urine tests, to just community service, to options to revisit in a couple weeks to see if they got their shit together. A lot of it was pretty quick and pro forma. There were several that stood out though.
There was a fortish woman with an adult rap sheet going back to when she was 18 (probably longer). She'd made it within a week of finishing probation before relapsing. She has a list of new charges including harassment and assault, along with yet another brand new restraining order. The judge was not amused, and clearly wanted to remand. The defense pointed out that her jaw was broken and she needed more surgery. Prosecution pointed out that she started the fight that led to her injury. Given that she was supposed to be on bed rest, and the surgery issue, they ended up extending her probation with stricter terms, adding urine tests, with option to revisit pending the outcome of the other court dates.
One of the incarcerated guys was caught driving on the wrong side of state street with an heroically high blood alcohol. Luckily it was the middle of the night, because that is scary dangerous. He went back to jail to no one's surprise, including his own.
One of the other prisoners was back for the second time because he kept refusing to request an attorney. He still didn't have one. The judge had one of the guards testify as to how to get one, and the ease of access. I'm betting in two weeks when he's to be brought back he still won't have one, judging from the man's expression.
The youngest guy in the room, I recognized from middle school. I'm pretty sure he was the one with issues with authority for all three years I had him, and that he was the one called me an asshole because I wouldn't let him spitball the guys across the room instead of working in 7th grade. He was going into rehab, so they gave him a new date for reaccessing. That he had a drug problem, was no surprise to me at all. It all must be horrifying for his parents. Their community is very close knit and religious. He was one of the ones who just couldn't adjust to life in America and ran wild. The parents had no idea what to do as nothing they tried seemed to work. sometimes that happens, and it's always heartbreaking for everyone involved. Even though he was a serious dick to me when he was adolescent, I have a lot of empathy for that, for the ones who didn't want to travel to the other side of the world, who hate having to learn yet another language (I can't remember if he was trilingual or quatrelingual), who hate having to deal with a whole new often antithetical culture. Sometimes we lose one. It looked to me like we lost him. It's always a tragedy.
My favorite was second to last. He was representing himself, and came in his muddy construction work clothes. He was a single father working forty to sixty hours a week, close to the end of his term. He'd had a brief alcoholic relapse, and the only reason they knew about it was he turned himself in. The parole officer backed him up. They all agreed on 6 hours community service, which he cheerfully took. He'd even picked out several choices for serving in advance. I wish him luck, I really do.
I was second in my session. The guy ahead of me could have been one of the dudes from the probation session if I didn't know better. The women who came after were shedding their married names. They processed us through very fast. We swore we were non-felons not fleeing creditors. The longest part was reading through the document for accuracy and signing it. Once all the names were changed, they sent us all out as a group to wait for our papers. This is why I know about the ex-husbands, as the papers took longer than the actual proceedings. The people left behind had lawyers and were there for some sort of civil proceedings, but I missed hearing what they were. I can definitely see why they didn't give us our own session and why they put us ahead of the folks with more complicated stuff.
At this point, I was about fifteen minutes from dizzy, so I went for food before sorting the DMV and Social security. Boy was I happy to get my tie off and the top button open. I still need to work through a new set of bureaucratic paperwork for yet more disability related things, and Monday I need to get going in my birth certificate.
I am officially Misha now on ID and soon on my social security card. I'm seriously considering going by that instead of Gwydion. I do not like creditors calling me by my use name, but going by a middle name as a use name wouldn't have that problem. I picked Gwydion because it was mythological correct and I'd used it before so it was simple. It feels like it might be time to change again.
* Why is it always look psychotic on my driver's license?
* I gave up on the execrable Teen Wolf ages ago. Apparently, sparkindarkness didn't: http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2011/08/teen-wolf-episode-10.html
* Even the idea of deep fried butter on a stick makes me gag.
* This thing critiquing the Savage Beauty exhibit has a lot of complicated things to say that I'm going to be turning over in my head: http://thegloss.com/fashion/alexander-mcqueen-deserved-a-better-exhibit-than-savage-beauty/
* Talk about a life worth living! Rest in peace "White Mouse" Nancy Wake: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-nancy-wake-20110810,0,1866093.story?track=rss
If someone just told me about her, I'd have thought she was a glorious fiction.
"France's junior minister for veterans affairs, Marc Laffineur, hailed Wake on Monday as "an exceptional woman whose commitment to liberty was matched only by her courage and tenacity in the face of the Nazi occupation. Nancy Wake was an intrepid Resistance fighter, a genius saboteur and spy, who gave everything in her fight to rescue France.""
* Colbert shows you his ads for Rick "Parry:" http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/394520/august-11-2011/colbert-super-pac---rick-parry-with-an--a--for-america
* Despite Standard and Poors saying that if we would not raise the debt ceiling, they would downgrade us to B+, Bachman is claiming that the only reason we got downgraded at all was because we raised the debt ceiling instead of defaulting. O.o This got applause and no negative response from the conservative press, despite it being absolutely known to be contrary to fact.
* Meanwhile, Cantor is rallying congressional Republicans to resist pressure from the business community to compromise and make sane economic policy that would help rather than hurt the economy, presumably on the grounds that ideology is way more important than doing what everyone knows is the right thing. Hint: if labor unions, most reputable economists, and wall street are all agreeing on something, and the only people arguing against are faith based ideologues with no facts or evidence, odds are pretty good it's true. Just saying.
* Mitt Romney, when confronted by an angry crowd calling for taxes for corporations, pointed out that corporations are people so shouldn't be taxed. O.o
* Rick "frothy residue" Santorum, despite being firmly against gay rights in the United states, came out last night for gay rights in the Middle east. O.o (I will stop including "frothy residue when he stops calling LGB folk the equivalent of pedophiles.)
* Hector had more than a week of getting plenty of sleep and eating with minimum coaxing, but the last three days he's been escalating. I ended up giving him his anxiety meds tonight. Let's hope it's enough.
* I got up very early today to get ready for court. It turned out to be rather a longer adventure than I'd expected. As the only pair of non-jeans trousers I have are a nasty pair of ridiculously oversized khakis, I opted for my nicest pair of simple black jeans. I do not own a suit and this is summer in the Pacific Northwest, a very casual sort of state. I paired the jeans with the last of my good silk formal shirts from college and a black tie. Those of you who know me know I can't bear anything on my neck. I never even button the top button on my shirts, so picture the sacrifice buttoning the top button and using even a clip on tie is for someone like me. It turned out okay. The lawyers wore the male and female versions of suits, but most non-attorneys went for either jeans and a tee shirt or at their most formal, business casual. There were women in tank tops and shorts or mini skirts. O.o
Being me, I left the house more than 45 minutes early, assuming that there could be construction traffic, that I would likely have trouble finding parking, that I'd likely pick the wrong floor, then get lost finding the courtroom. Two of these things happened. It also turned out, I'd incorrectly recorded the time. The sane thing to do was go get something to eat, but I was in a huge amount of pain and the thought of climbing down and back up all those stairs was simply too much. I decided to go settle into the courtroom and watch the session before mine. I had a book, after all, for the boring bits, and I am interested in how things work. My city rarely has the sort of crimes one sees on tv. My entire county has only one or two homocides at most a year. Kidnaps are very rare. It's more likely to be DWI, drug possession, assault, theft and the like. For all I knew it could be traffic court I wasgoing to be watching, but I'd never seen that either. I slipped in behind a lawyer and defendant and grabbed a seat in the back row where I could tuck my crutch out of the way.
It turned out to be probation violations. They trouped in a string of four prisoners and a collection of lawyers, defendants, and family settled into the normal benches. The judge and clerk were on a raised dais, prosecution and the probation officer sat to my left. The Defense attorneys took turns at a desk to my right near prisoner's row. The probation officer looked nothing like you see on TV, being young, black, and smoking hot. He looked like a young attorney himself rather than the usual grizzled old white guy you see in media. The Defense attorneys were three men and two women, of various ages and builds. This being the PNW, one of them had an impressive beard. The Prosecutor was an older guy with shoulder length white hair and could have been sent from central casting.
Most of it was pretty proforma. The defense would generally admit the violation(s), then try to present extenuating circumstances to get the best deal possible. The Probation officer would give his opinion of how compliant the defendants were and seemed pretty fair as far as extenuation for people who had been doing pretty well before they fucked up. Defense and Prosecution would make suggestion as to sanctions ranging from prison + community service, to more Urine tests, to just community service, to options to revisit in a couple weeks to see if they got their shit together. A lot of it was pretty quick and pro forma. There were several that stood out though.
There was a fortish woman with an adult rap sheet going back to when she was 18 (probably longer). She'd made it within a week of finishing probation before relapsing. She has a list of new charges including harassment and assault, along with yet another brand new restraining order. The judge was not amused, and clearly wanted to remand. The defense pointed out that her jaw was broken and she needed more surgery. Prosecution pointed out that she started the fight that led to her injury. Given that she was supposed to be on bed rest, and the surgery issue, they ended up extending her probation with stricter terms, adding urine tests, with option to revisit pending the outcome of the other court dates.
One of the incarcerated guys was caught driving on the wrong side of state street with an heroically high blood alcohol. Luckily it was the middle of the night, because that is scary dangerous. He went back to jail to no one's surprise, including his own.
One of the other prisoners was back for the second time because he kept refusing to request an attorney. He still didn't have one. The judge had one of the guards testify as to how to get one, and the ease of access. I'm betting in two weeks when he's to be brought back he still won't have one, judging from the man's expression.
The youngest guy in the room, I recognized from middle school. I'm pretty sure he was the one with issues with authority for all three years I had him, and that he was the one called me an asshole because I wouldn't let him spitball the guys across the room instead of working in 7th grade. He was going into rehab, so they gave him a new date for reaccessing. That he had a drug problem, was no surprise to me at all. It all must be horrifying for his parents. Their community is very close knit and religious. He was one of the ones who just couldn't adjust to life in America and ran wild. The parents had no idea what to do as nothing they tried seemed to work. sometimes that happens, and it's always heartbreaking for everyone involved. Even though he was a serious dick to me when he was adolescent, I have a lot of empathy for that, for the ones who didn't want to travel to the other side of the world, who hate having to learn yet another language (I can't remember if he was trilingual or quatrelingual), who hate having to deal with a whole new often antithetical culture. Sometimes we lose one. It looked to me like we lost him. It's always a tragedy.
My favorite was second to last. He was representing himself, and came in his muddy construction work clothes. He was a single father working forty to sixty hours a week, close to the end of his term. He'd had a brief alcoholic relapse, and the only reason they knew about it was he turned himself in. The parole officer backed him up. They all agreed on 6 hours community service, which he cheerfully took. He'd even picked out several choices for serving in advance. I wish him luck, I really do.
I was second in my session. The guy ahead of me could have been one of the dudes from the probation session if I didn't know better. The women who came after were shedding their married names. They processed us through very fast. We swore we were non-felons not fleeing creditors. The longest part was reading through the document for accuracy and signing it. Once all the names were changed, they sent us all out as a group to wait for our papers. This is why I know about the ex-husbands, as the papers took longer than the actual proceedings. The people left behind had lawyers and were there for some sort of civil proceedings, but I missed hearing what they were. I can definitely see why they didn't give us our own session and why they put us ahead of the folks with more complicated stuff.
At this point, I was about fifteen minutes from dizzy, so I went for food before sorting the DMV and Social security. Boy was I happy to get my tie off and the top button open. I still need to work through a new set of bureaucratic paperwork for yet more disability related things, and Monday I need to get going in my birth certificate.
I am officially Misha now on ID and soon on my social security card. I'm seriously considering going by that instead of Gwydion. I do not like creditors calling me by my use name, but going by a middle name as a use name wouldn't have that problem. I picked Gwydion because it was mythological correct and I'd used it before so it was simple. It feels like it might be time to change again.
* Why is it always look psychotic on my driver's license?
* I gave up on the execrable Teen Wolf ages ago. Apparently, sparkindarkness didn't: http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2011/08/teen-wolf-episode-10.html
* Even the idea of deep fried butter on a stick makes me gag.
* This thing critiquing the Savage Beauty exhibit has a lot of complicated things to say that I'm going to be turning over in my head: http://thegloss.com/fashion/alexander-mcqueen-deserved-a-better-exhibit-than-savage-beauty/
* Talk about a life worth living! Rest in peace "White Mouse" Nancy Wake: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-nancy-wake-20110810,0,1866093.story?track=rss
If someone just told me about her, I'd have thought she was a glorious fiction.
"France's junior minister for veterans affairs, Marc Laffineur, hailed Wake on Monday as "an exceptional woman whose commitment to liberty was matched only by her courage and tenacity in the face of the Nazi occupation. Nancy Wake was an intrepid Resistance fighter, a genius saboteur and spy, who gave everything in her fight to rescue France.""
* Colbert shows you his ads for Rick "Parry:" http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/394520/august-11-2011/colbert-super-pac---rick-parry-with-an--a--for-america
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-13 11:10 am (UTC)I didn't think you got summer in the pacific northwest? I thought you got rain? :P And I've had clients in halter tops, sweats, track suits and shell suits before. In court. Jeans are nothing! And most cases are pro-forma - it's cheaper and easier all round :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-14 12:40 am (UTC)We get Summer now and then. The two years previous to this had real summers. It created an air conditioner shortage as so few people own them and the stores could not handle the volume. As far North as I am, Summer is generally a couple weeks in July. The rest is mostly Spring or Autumn with random days of summer mixed in here or there between squalls.
Oregon gets real Summers though. They are not Southern state or California summers, but they are actual summers.
There were men in sweats too. The most amusing outfit was a man in a nice formal office type shirt, but when he stood up, he had on torn blue jeans and flip flops with no socks. O.o
I know most stuff is pro forma, and I'm all for saving time and money on things like this.
I think it was reassuring that it seemed so fair, even with the speed of processing. I was expecting it to be harsher, and I expect it would be in a bigger city. Here, they genuinely did seem to want people to get their shit together, and it only got harsh on the people who were fucking up royally and endangering others.
I'm from a big east coast city originally and I'm used to the system being wildly corrupt and racist. That didn't seem to be the case here, at least in this one small sample.