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November 20, 2004
Disney lights or Miss World? You Decide 2004.
The Magnificent Mile Lights Festival is currently underway some 40 feet outside my windows (and 850 feet below) and blocking Michigan Avenue, so I have settled in to watch Dr. Suess's How the Grinch Stole Christimas, the original version with Boris Karloff, not the stupid remake. What can beat lines like, "Why that Grinch even took the last can of Who Hash!" and "You're a three-decker sourkraut sandwich with arsenic sauce" or "Your soul is an appaling dungheap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable."?
In other news, Powerline has suggested that, now that the election is over, we turn our attention to things like beauty contests. Always eager to lend a hand to another Wharton Real Estate alumnus (in this case, Donald J. Trump Sr.), I have checked out the homepage of the Miss World pagent. I note that the attractiveness of the contestants is inversely proportional to the attractiveness of the average young woman seen in the street. I won't point out the specific countries; just check for yourself.
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November 19, 2004
Destroying Dubrovnik, one cruise ship at a time
One of the interesting things about traveling is that one can start to recognize where various commercials are filmed, such as the Nissan commercial filmed at Thingvallavatn in Iceland. Now Celebrity and Cirque de Soleil are showing an ad where the people of Dubrovnik, Croatia, come running out of church, across the town's medieval walls, out the ancient gate, and onto a small quay at the end of town to watch the ship approach. The irony of this, as I write in the Dubrovnik entry below, is that cruise ships like Celebrity's pollute a small city like Dubrovnik with enormous numbers of day-tourists who contribute nothing to the local economy save a few kunas spent on a coke and a handicraft. And the quay shown on the ad is much more enjoyable in the evening when Croat teenagers come to compare mobile phones, old men sit and stare, and families let the kids run over the slippery rocks until the kids injure themselves.
Posted by adrianjo at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 18, 2004
A great job for $17.20/day
I spent the last two days serving jury duty, at a pay of $17.20/day. In the end, I think people actually enjoyed the experience--everyone was all smiles at the end, and we frequently were reprimanded by the sheriff for laughing too loud. We were quite a crew, including an Egyptian chiro, a young Subway manager who had previously served on a Murder 1 jury, a young fake-baked math teacher of Polish background, a Naval radar technician, and a South Sider whose brother was murdered. We spent more time in the jury room than the court room, where the jester was an obese south-side schoolteacher who regaled us with tales of her wild ADD students and the Smell-Blaster toy.
The case was a young Hispanic man of slight build accused of drunken driving and obstructing traffic. It looked like a slam dunk for the prosecutors. However, the cop and defense witnesses (including the defendant) told wildly different accounts, and either the cop or the defense witnesses were committing perjury. The cop asserted he witnessed the defendant arguing with his girlfriend and drive away wildly, at which time he made the arrest of the driver. It was a prima facie case, and the arrogant prosecutors were quite sure that the conviction was in the bag. The defense then called three witnesses who argued that the defendant wasn't even driving!
Both sets of attorneys, the prosecutors and the public defender, were novice attorneys. The public defender was a female Columbo (less rumpled cloak and cigar), stumbling through her poorly-prepared case and seemingly grasping at straws, with lots of "oh, and one more thing." In fact, the jury came up with nicknames for all the participants, and we considered entering the list as "Jurors' Exhibit #1." The prosecutors were both extraordinarily arrogant. One was one of the type of fat guys wearing poorly-tailored trousers whom I regularly encountered (and beat) in high school debate. The other was a young Indian who delighted in confusing the low-IQ defense witnesses and using this to brand them as "liars," which the jury found offensive and insulting to our collective intelligence. (It was actually a very smart group of jurors.) Among this prosecutor's most brilliant questions: "About how tall were you on September 19, 2001?" The defendant's response: "About as tall as I am now."
I actually have to hand it to the public defender because, despite her awkwardness and poor preparation, she did an excellent job presenting the case. The doubt started with some shoddy policework, as the cop errored in his account of the traffic stop, claiming it happened eastbound when the road was one-way westbound. All three witnesses were led to point out this shoddy policework, and a small technicality started to provide the doubt needed for the defense to make a credible assertion that the cop happened upon the scene after the argument when the car was parked. The defendant frankly admitted that he was wasted and asked his buddy to drive him in his car. Seeing his girlfriend walking, he said he got out and argued with her while the driver parked his car. Someone called the cops because of the domestic disturbance. (This was a very key point that the prosecutors didn't even recognize.) The cops proceeded to the parked car, around which two people were standing. The cop then assumed (or so my theory goes) that the drunk owner of the parked car must have been the driver and backfilled from there to create a story that we didn't find believable. For instance, the cop argued that he spent five minutes waiting as the car blocked traffic--no cop spends five minutes patiently waiting while someone obstructs traffic on a narrow road, not even in Paris. The defense also portrayed their witnesses as being rather dim-witted, such as dressing one in a soiled Old Navy shirt. This contrasted very strongly against the female prosecutor's haughtiness and actually contributed to the theory that both the prosecutors and police were playing loose with the facts to get a conviction. Just like when I went to court on a traffic violation of my own.
So it ended up anti-climactic, as every juror agreed on acquital very quickly. I don't know what we would have decided if the policework were not so shoddy, but at least it felt good to give the verdict. Perhaps we were totally hoodwinked by three brilliant confederates who orchestrated the flawless telling of the exact same lie three times (even under cross-examination), or perhaps a cop lied under oath attempting to obtain a false conviction. One of these whoppers was said under oath today, and that's what really bothers me.
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November 14, 2004
The magic of nothingness
This morning I set out early (about noon) to procure the Bose noise-cancelling headphones. These are the headphones that produce an equal-and-opposite sound to cancel-out background noises like humming, buzzing, jet engines, etc. Chicago is not a very loud city--places like Bangkok and Athens are much louder with their thousands of motorbikes and large industrial sites and ports nearby. Nonetheless, I now realize that I live bathed in 10-20 decibels of noise that radiates up from the city below, over from the elevator shafts, and all around from the air handling system. All of this disappears with the magic headphones. And the best thing: when local urchins sit below my windows (albeit 850 feet below) and bang on buckets for the amusement of brainless suburb-dwellers, that horrible sound gets cancelled too.
At the office, we sometimes do these psychological profiles, one of which declares that I am an "extrovert." Maybe... I suppose maintaining this website (at a cost of $250/yr) would be some evidence of extroversion. Back in the States, I also find lots of reasons to like introversion. The biggest is that I really like being in a place where conversations are conducted in languages I don't understand. I always wondered what people in the streets of Paris, Oslo, or Krakow were discussing. If it's anything like what people here discuss, I am happy not to know the language. Religion. Personal problems. Shopping. "What a tall building." Into a mobile phone: "Yeah, I'm shopping on Michigan Avenue." That one is my favorite. Why is it that I never hear anyone on Oak Steet say anything similar?
Posted by adrianjo at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 11, 2004
Do you know who I am, Google?
If you run a google on my name, Adrian Jones, you find that this website is barely in the top 10. That is quite annoying, so I am going to repeat my name several times in hopes of moving myself up. I know that there are 30 Adrian Joneses online, but this is a bit crazy. So here: Adrian Jones. Adrian Jones. Adrian Jones. Thank you for the indulgence.
Posted by adrianjo at 01:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 10, 2004
An unrecognized talent of the fairer sex
Chicago is a city of some 3M inhabitants, yet I somehow manage to make a fair number of random encounters with people I knew a long time ago. After another of these yesterday, I recollected the long-lost friends I've randomly met in the street. Well, actually, they recognized me. It occurs to me that (1) I am not good at remembering faces and (2) women are. I don't know why I could recongize the shape of Solvenia but not a face I knew for years. It's like how a typical man can parallel park while blindfolded but a woman, well, can't; how women are great conversationalists but men can't hold a conversation that doesn't devolve a series of grunt-like noises. So thank you to ye who recognize me from among the 3M people in this city. And happy Armistice Day to all.
Posted by adrianjo at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2004
I only drink and drive on Election Night
PORTER COUNTY, INDIANA: I won't comment much on the election at the national level other than to say that Bush finally has a mandate and I couldn't be more happy for him. At the local level, we had even more successes, with Indiana government being completely taken-over by the Grand Old Party: returning the Governor's Mansion, gaining control of the Senate, and retaining statewide offices like Attorney General. Meanwhile, my district elected a Republican to the State Senate, for the first time in over 30 years.
As for me, I was given a new nickname yesterday by the Mayor, but I can't quite recall what it was (sorry, Connell). Jim Stinson of the Post-Tribune will surely print it soon, perhaps along with something about the "Female Adrian Jones," the young law student who ran a big part of our get-out-the-vote effort in this County this year. I think "The Baman" is a far better nickname, as she is from 'Bama and proudly plugs the virtues of the beautiful Alabama Riviera.
The races ran well into this morning, with some very close races locally decided only when the last precincts came in after 2AM. As the pumpkin hour loomed, coronor-cum-commissioner John Evans led by only 60 votes of over 20,000 cast, and State Senator-elect Vic Heinold was down by 600 votes of perhaps 30,000 cast. Our friends counting the ballots decided that the GOP was being too demanding in requesting results and decided only to release results to the news media (who had gone to press at midnight). Meanwhile the candidates, who are the ones who actually need the results at 2AM, were cut-out of the loop by the County and sat at Headquarters on pins and needles until the 65,592nd vote was counted. As we sat nervously waiting for the mainstream media to declare Bush the national winner, I reassured the candidates that the GOP's strongest precincts were being counted last. I usually don't make election predictions until the fat lady starts warm-ups, but I know Center Twp and I knew that our precincts would deliver for the GOP. When the final tally was posted online, Vic gave perhaps the best "I won" yell I've ever heard. Sure enough, Center Twp delivered and he pulled together enough votes to come from behind and capture a Democrat's State Senate seat by only 199 votes. Others weren't so lucky, as Bob Wilchinski lost a County Council seat by 198 votes of 66,000 cast.
These tight local races are what makes working the "final mile" fun in politics. When we made over 10,000 get-out-the-vote calls again this year, surely we picked up the 200 votes Vic needed to win his State Senate seat. It's good that our President won, but it's even better that we could influence local races though grassroots democracy.
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