Not all games are fun!

My number finally came up. There are some things from which you just cannot wriggle free: death, taxes, jury duty. I received my second summons for jury duty, and I cannot avoid my fate. The first summons came and went, I just made a mental note of it and then promptly forgot. If I'm asked why I missed the first round, do I tell the truth?

Question: "Sir, why did you not come when you were first summoned?"
Answer: "Judge, I just did not give a god-damned!"

No, honesty is probably not advisable. The second summons, in big, black, bold type tells me if I blow this one off I'm liable to be punished! The last remaining, barely flickering embers of my Catholic upbringing tells me that I deserve to be punished. One wonders if living through a Chicago winter is punishment enough. Punishment or not, jury duty is my civic duty!

So, I'm up at the crack of dawn, (who am I kidding, dawn ain't on the schedule for hours), although, since the Lovely Carla has a photo shoot today, we're both up, me making the coffee, she getting ready to be high-powered Fashion Maven.

So, I will go to the bowels of the R.J. Daley Center, and queue up (one thinks of Kafka!) with all the other unlucky ones, but for me it will be with a heavy heart. I mean, I do not buy into the whole judgement thing. I cannot be an impartial judge of my fellow man. I mean, "dumps" tells me that everyone is GUILTY! And "sunny" tells me everyone is INNOCENT. That leaves me supremely confused, strongly ambivalent, and basically recalcitrant.

War criminals occupy the highest office in the land, the Titans of Capital are crooks and flim-flam men, the hypocritical, totally misguided war on drugs is imprisoning a generation of poor suckers trying to hustle a buck, Scooter Libby scooted, innocent men are sitting on death row (those on death row are really there because they had the absolute shittiest lawyers in the land!), justice is a game, and really now, we know it's a game that's rigged and corrupt and as Woody Guthrie says "some rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen."

Or as Dylan asks us in "Hurricane:" How can the life of such a man/Be in the palm of some fool's hand?/To see him obviously framed/Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land/Where justice is a game.

Right!