Yesterday I went the mailbox and took a peek at the letter on top and it had the dreaded jury duty return address on it. Yikes! I screamed. Then I breathed a big sigh of relief when I realized it was my partner who was on the hook, not me. That got me to wondering about the state of jury duty and if it is more of a hardship to businesses and individuals alike with the state of the economy and business climate right now.

A long time ago I was a Deputy County Clerk for the County of Los Angeles. Part of my job was to issue marriage licenses. I think that was the best part of the job. There were specific tasks I had to perform, questions to ask and I watched as the couple swore or affirmed what they said was the truth. Sometimes I looked at a couple and thought “For the love of humanity dude, run, do not marry this chick!” or maybe “Hell, they don’t need a license, they are already married in their hearts.”

For those of us who will peddle push our way to the polls it is an exciting time. Many people want to take their daughters, sons and grandchildren to witness the most dramatic and unpredictable election in recent American history. Before I begin, I need to give an ancestral shout out to Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Ida's career included being an homemaker, teacher, writer, pamphleteer (pre-Internet print based blogger) and journalist.

Friendship runs deep in individuals and in humanity. It's an essential fact of life for most people, a vast collection of relationships reported to lower blood pressure and the risk of depression and provide social interaction and connection in an increasingly disconnected age. It's immortalized in songs and in its own section at Hallmark. When it works it survives bridesmaid horrors, periods of remarkable self-absorption and the collection of bumps and bruises that life gives every relationship. It can be painful and it can be glorious. But should it be legalized? 

I was sitting in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center court house in downtown Los Angeles. I got called for jury duty. A responsibility that most upstanding Americans expended their most creative efforts to get out of serving. 300 of my fellow Americans failed to find that perfect excuse.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stop the Spying campaign asks for people all over the U.S. to send photos and videos of their opposition to the telecom immunity bill. Here's mine:

Anyone who secretly (or not-so-secretly) checks out celebrity photos while pretending to work (something I have perfected), may have noticed a trend popping up in the last year or so: ankle monitors. Once upon a time, if you were out and about wearing one of these clunky-yet-fashionably-black shackles, the sirens were soon to come after, as you were breaking house arrest. Actor Tracy Morgan wears an anklet on the set of 30 Rock. Source: Eric Ford