Open Articles in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

So, this likely to be the deeply edited version of this shared with the Public Space because… that’s just something I’d do. Due to the sensitivities of my job, sometimes there are things I must edit out of articles so as to protect the legally protected information that cannot be shared in public forums.

My plan for today was to respond to notes while I worked, read some entries, maybe FINALLY CLEAN MY DESK (gosh, I’m awful) and have that be my Friday.
INSTEAD I’ve been non-stop go go go go go go go all morning.

Item 1: Busy Morning

The only three things on my work calendar for today are
(1) Prep/Review next week’s cases
(2) Review June Court Schedule
(3) Prep for June

So… vague… but not “butt clenching”.

Then as I sat down this morning, I reviewed closely the upcoming schedules. ALL of the trial dates for all three court divisions take place THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE! So… District Court? June 4. District Associate Court? June 6. Magistrate Trial Date? June 6. And oh by the way… Juvenile Court Meeting? June 6. And Crisis Intervention Rape Response Meeting? June 6.

Okay… so between Boss and I, how many cases are we looking at? 54! FIFTY FOUR CASES! Some of that isn’t so bad… just a “plead to this please and we’ll move on.” Some of that… is bad. “Indecent Contact w/a Child” kind of bad. So I legitimately spent my entire morning reviewing cases, creating plea deals, and contacting attorneys to let them know, “Okay. We’d like to avoid trials on June 6th for so many reasons. Please talk to your client about the following!” And that’s just prep for the first week in June! That’s two full weeks away! We’ve got… lots of other stuff before then! Like… the week before the first week in June? That has memorial day! Which means Tuesday, May 28thth must no be both a District Court Day and a District Associate Court Day. Plus, my Boss has a “County Department Head” Meeting that is supposed to last most of that day. So… two attorneys… to cover two courtrooms and a meeting. We’re just one attorney short of that being in any way feasible. Now… what does NEXT week look like?
12 Juvenile Cases on Monday. A lot, but honestly… about half of what we usually have scheduled! Tuesday is suspiciously manageable. Wednesday 11 hearings (some of a serious nature so… worrisome). And then 9 Serious Hearings on Thursday. So… today will be BUSY to make next week EASY and the week after MANAGEABLE and the week after that SURVIVABLE.

Item 2: Aggravating Bullshit!

This had to be edited heavily to protect the information of an on-going case. A summary would be as follows:

It is truly aggravating and frustrating when someone calls the police because they are being assaulted. Then when the police arrest the attacker; the victim becomes furious. Apparently, the police are supposed to show up, stop the fight, and then leave without arresting anyone or filing charges (which, no, is not how things work). The victim was SO PISSED that they have called us A LOT to try to make the case go away. I’ve been willing to work with the victim as much as I can, but things don’t happen immediately in the law. The time it may take from incident to arrest to filing charges to County Attorney involvement may be up to (or more than) 1 week. Apparently, this lack of immediacy is unacceptable. The victim threatened to report me to the Bar Association if I was not able to force a judge to do what she wanted. Okay, Lady? If I could force a judge to do anything my life would be very different. Power in this situation is held entirely by the judge. If you want, call him and threaten him. Threatening me to make the judge do something is the same as threatening the Cashier at Hy Vee because they don’t have your favorite brand of chips.

Item 3: Because of Course!

You want to know something interesting? Being “on the inside” but not being so “on the inside” as to have inside information. Because of the way that our computer systems are rigged up at work, I have access to County Police Electronics remotely but not City Police. Our support staff does have access to City Police Electronics remotely though.

So… when the town where I’m living (where my wife and dog are right now) starts blowing up on social media with things like, “The Police are aware of the situation; all emergency responders are being directed to LOCATION. Please do not call for emergency support at LOCATION.” Uhm… oooookay. I now immediately need to know what is going on. There is an All Town Emergency… what is going on?!

So I have the Paralegal inform me what the Calls for Service in the area are. Bomb Threat. Apparently, the fifth bomb threat to a franchise business today. First for our county, but fifth for our area. Our town is 5,000 people. Now, while it is certainly POSSIBLE that some nut job is targeting Global Franchises in Small Towns as a pro-small-local-business act of Domestic Terror.... it is actually way more likely that it is some stupid idiot that thinks, “This’d be funny and I’m bored.” Considering the sheer EXPENSE and DISRUPTION CAUSED in all of these small towns by these dumb bomb threats? I hope we find the person or persons responsible, charge them, and require them to pay restitution to the Emergency Departments who were the victims of this little “prank.”

Item 4: Alabama

I know people are sick of this topic. I know that. How do I know?

Because one of my friends on social media asked everyone to shut up about it. Of course, that person was a MAN.

That same man’s WIFE then did a long post about how she and many of her friends have actively sought tubal ligation for various reasons (no desire to have children, medical reasons, etc) and how the Doctor refused to do it. The responses ranged from “You’ve had two children, both boys. What if you want a little girl? Have you talked it over with your husband?” to “You’re under 30, married, and have no children. I’m not doing a tubal ligation.” It did not surprise me in the least that all of these women with these stories were in states like Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. In fact, this woman’s post received a lot of follow up posts from other women from all around the country stating how they have repeatedly asked their doctors about Tubal Ligation and how they have all repeatedly been told no.

Switch focus: Many celebrities and others have joined Busy Phillips’ hashtag movement “You Know Me.” The current statistics say that 1 in 4 women have had an abortion. How many women do you know? Many of my own friends (and some of my family members) have shared their stories. And they aren’t “I didn’t have birth control so I killed my baby.” Many of the stories read like, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I would never do it again. Ever. I’m not even sure I would have done it the once but for (EXTREMELY UNIQUE PERSONAL PAINFUL SITUATION). I don’t support abortions for all but abortions for none is far too extreme!”

Then some of the other stories reminded me of something I forget… and of all people to forget this I shouldn’t be one of them considering my job! Sometimes abortions aren’t about “the woman’s health” but are still the difference between the woman being alive or dead anyway. ABUSE SCENARIOS. “I knew I was in an abusive relationship and I was trying to find the strength to leave. Then I discovered I was pregnant. I couldn’t bring a child into this hell. If I told my husband I was pregnant, he would increase his control over me and force me to have the child. That child would either have been another victim of my husband’s cruelty and/or another link in a generational chain of violence. I planned to kill myself to spare the child and end my nightmare. But I couldn’t go through with it. Instead, I got an abortion. That experience was enough to finally force me to realize I had to run. I had to escape. I got an abortion and it saved my life.”

Some of the other stories coming out that I think people really genuinely honestly need to hear? There are several teenage rape survivors coming forward to tell their stories. More power to them. The MeToo Movement’s backlash seemed to force them into hiding because “believe women” offended too many men. But these women are coming forward not to say, “I was raped and it was awful.” but are now coming forward to say, “I was raped and it was awful, I was impregnated against my will and it was a nightmare.” Some of these girls were as young as 11 years old when they were raped. They are right to be indignant about this shit. I applaud their spirit and their attitude. Because honestly: “What makes you think that a little girl should be forced by the government to bring her rapists’s baby into this world? How dare you tell me that I should have been required by law to go through that!”

And in all of this? Of course I can rely on Trumpist Cousin to be his usual asshole self and prove all of his detractors correct!! Trumpist Cousin (who you should already know is male) decided to follow through with his tone deaf world view. You may remember his views on women as being barbaric, misogynistic, and terrible. With such comments as, “Divorced men should get sexual alimony. If I’m paying for her lifestyle, I should still get sex out of it!” and other such gems. He honestly believes that women are second class citizens to men and should be treated as Men’s Property. If he, his father, and their world view were still considered entirely acceptable; a woman would need a man’s permission to own property. So… I can’t say that I’m surprised with his support of the Ohio/Alabama/Missouri bills… but I’d have thought that being a father to daughters would have at least made him pissed that there’s no exception for rape. I was, apparently, wrong. He is in full support. And then he doubled down. He posted a long tirade against what he called “government overreach into his decision as a parent!” What was the problem? A high school (in a different state) was teaching Sexual Education with an emphasis on Birth Control and helping girls find where they could get cheap and easily accessible birth control without their parents’ permission.

THAT is what he was enraged about. The same week he is supporting the Georgia Abortion Ban, he’s pissed that a school is teaching girls how to avoid pregnancy and helping girls obtain contraception to avoid that pregnancy. These people are real and don’t appreciate the irony of their own existence. They scream that abortions are wrong and then interfere, protest, and block every attempt to prevent a woman from being in a position to get an abortion. And THAT is ultimately what pushed me into being pro-choice. I was pro-life for a long time. I do believe that, at a certain point in fetal development, that creature becomes a human child and should be treated with the respect we give to life. Do I think it happens at 6 weeks? Fuck no. In fact, there are some tribal cultures that believe a human child isn’t even given a SOUL until it has been alive for 1 year. So… between 6 weeks of fertilization and 1 year of life… yes, I think somewhere between those points a Human Child has clearly been established. But… ultimately… I’m not PRO-LIFE. Or at least, I can’t call myself that in the current world perspective. Because Pro-Life brings about the Alabama Bill, the Ohio Bill, the Missouri Bill. Because Pro-Life is people like my cousin. They don’t want abortions to be legal, they want abortions to be criminalized, AND YET they are willing to do everything in their power to make CERTAIN that any other avenue to prevent abortion is removed.

I’ve been struggling with a proper analogy for this all week. I don’t think this is it but it is the closest I’ve come to.

Two people buy land and build houses there. They both want to protect their home from burning down. The first man puts a fire extinguisher in every room, creates a man-made lake near his home, and installs a fire hydrant along the road. The second man bricks up his fire place, bans the use of matches and candles, and forbids any clothing that is not flame retardant. Lightning strikes both houses. The man that prepared for fires saved his house. The man that banned fires watched his house engulfed in flame.

See… it isn’t quite right. It isn’t a solid enough analogy and I don’t even think what I’m honestly trying to say gets communicated here. Is it at all clear? I’m trying to suggest that sex ed, birth control, and those avenues would prevent abortion and prevent unwanted babies.... whereas simply banning all of those things almost guarantees abortions and unwanted babies.

Item 5: RARGH DAMMIT

And then we have the continuing fuckery of the American Political System in such a way as to GENUINELY make me concerned that, as a government employee, there will either be such an erosion of the government as to make me fear my career prospects OR that people will be so pissed off at our failing corrupt government, that I just may be kidnapped and killed as One of Them!

Bill Barr’s recent behavior? Fucking infuriating. Frustrating but expected as it is STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TRUMP PLAYBOOK! Instead of diplomacy? Act like a dick because instead of being a “nice kid” you want to be “the fat kid laughing at the poor kid because you have cake and he can only afford bread!” Barr mocking Congress Members about his position. Barr refusing to do his job or answer to Congress; but making damned sure to give Fox News an interview whenever they ask! This is a bit of a dated remark but when I see Bill Barr it seems apt:
WHAT A CHODE!

As my best right now is throwing around 1990s insults, I’ll let Dan Rather say it better:

It is a fact of a long life, one lived through eventful times, that I have seen a lot. And yet the nature of life is that almost inevitably it is the contemporary that is in most vivid focus. So it is now. And the crises of the present loom seemingly without precedent.

One must be worried, deeply worried, about the attacks on our democratic institutions, by the needless and manufactured emergencies, the divisiveness, the stoking of combustible religious and ethnic animosities, the false sense of victimhood, the lies, the corruption, all of it. Each news alert it seems brings a new low, a new threat, a new debasement of what we thought was possible.

I have shared here before that I am an optimist by nature and by experience, that I have hope for this nation. And I feel it timely to reiterate that once more. I say this without complete confidence that our better angels will prevail. But I believe that is the far more likely outcome, and not just because to acknowledge the opposite is too horrible to contemplate.

I don’t know how many laps of the track I have left, but I find myself thinking back a lot. There are the personal memories, thankfully far more happy than sad. But the historical events that tend to crowd my consciousness these days are inevitably other moments of crises.

There is the Great Depression, families on the brink of starvation, the indignity of no work to be found. And Pearl Harbor, very distant but indelibly marked, my parents’ faces and hushed words, the shadow over our neighborhood with the coming war. I have gone on to see many wars up close, none quite like Vietnam where men even younger than my then-young-self lost their lives and limbs and hope in a jungle hell, sent by a government of lies. I remember the assassinations of ’63 and ’68, the protests, the despair, the divide. I remember seeing the true scale of crimes come into focus with President Nixon, and the existential anxiety, everpresent, like the world could end with atomic flashes launched by even a mistaken push of a button. Of course the horror of 9/11 and the wars that followed are never far from my mind. And so is the divide of wealth and race, brought into stark relief through the prism of death during Hurricane Katrina. And so much more.

I do not relate these events to rank our crises or even to try to put our current moment into a broader context. I repeat them mostly to myself to try to understand why and how we as a nation endured, even at great cost.

I do not take the damage occurring today lightly. Real people are suffering in dire and irrevocable ways. And that is set against a backdrop of a legitimate fear that our political system is so wrecked that even a popular vote may not be enough to rescue us from this morass.

But I also believe that we have a spirit in this country to adapt to stress and strain and change. We are remarkably resilient, or at least have been. And I believe we still are. I fervently do. I hear it in your voices and see it in the energy of those who will not give in or give up. We cannot minimize what we face. But we cannot believe that it is insurmountable.

When I cast back in my memories for inspiration, I can’t help but think of Dr. Martin Luther King. More than any historical figure I have met, I wonder what he would say to us in this time of need. I remember the early days of his campaigns, when there were more failures than successes, when it seemed like most of America didn’t care, or couldn’t be bothered. I saw him stay steady, look for his advantages, and believe in the hope that justice would prevail. But that didn’t mean he could take it for granted. He might have believed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Yet he knew that arc was not preordained. It depended on the anonymous actions of countless individuals, those willing to do the hard work and too stubborn to believe in a limit of the possible. It is our turn, all of ours, to answer that call today.

This is a far different kind of hope. And my Wife and I are not in “as bad of shape” as some of these individuals started out with… but the transformations I share below are inspiring. As I have struggled these last few weeks and months with the fight I’ve struggled against for the last 10 years… to get below 220 lbs and stay there… I hope to follow in these fine folks’ examples. Though I will say… call it skepticism, or pessimism, or realism… but I’m not entirely convinced that all of these “AFTER” photos are really of the “BEFORE” individuals.

SOME OH SNAP FOR HUMOR













Because sometimes… I have to:

Personal Throwback to Weeks or Months or Years Ago when people were upset that I said something like this to my Wife:

Actually, I’m going to just spam the rest of Chive Today but I’ll tell you a few of the following… not as spiteful or angry and hopefully, I’m not seeming rude. I’m doing this for a genuine purpose but the way in which I am doing this may come out wrong.

(1) I share Chive and Pintrest type photos because as NSFW as they might be… they are infinitely less NSFW than what I would prefer to share
(2) As the majority of what I share comes from Pintrest and Chive; they are almost exclusively User Submitted and then processed through an Admin Algorithm to perpetuate a more conventional standard of beauty. YES, even the Goth Shots. There IS a Goth Standard of Conventional Beauty. If you don’t believe me, go onto any Goth Site and watch the Flame War that happens if you ask, “Why aren’t there more photos of Goth Black Girls?” I watched one of those once, because I have a friend who is an Electro-Goth Black Girl and… dayum. I never realized how there could be some deeply racist ass Goth people until then!!
(3) As these images are typically processed through the Conventional Beauty Algorithm, to me… these are far more, “In the Youth Market Acceptable Images Generally Appreciated By The Widest Audience” what do I prefer.
(4) I say that because my actual tastes may still surprise people. Not many would know it but my five favorite Adult Film Star Preferences? One is a heavily mixed-race 42 year old woman in California. One is a relatively flat chested white British girl of indeterminate age (likely between 21 and 27). One is a 29 year old white British red head. One is a 28 year old white nerdy-looking girl in California. And the last is a 36 year old raven haired Czech woman.
(5) So from that… I’d guess that my Personal Pornographic Preferences would be White Women with Dark or Red hair between the ages of 27 and 42. ??? As a 35 Year Old White Man in America’s Midwest… I’d say that rates. The youngest I would ever consider dating at this age would be 24 and the oldest would be 52. Which, while a good rule, is somewhat upsetting as that puts beautiful women like Ming Na Wen and Terri Hatcher as “too old” but still holds open Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Love Hewitt (that’s a joke, as obviously I’d never have a chance with the likes of them… and I think all of them are married!)

Last updated May 17, 2019