The Flag

This image circulated around the internet this past week.

It was viewed with a number of different reactions. There was outrage that the flage was used in this way which is not in the US Flag Code. Or it was viewed as a picture of a precious baby held in the flag by the parent that served and sacrificed for her country to protect her child.

Then over the weekend was the LA Marathon. and I took this picture off of the TV at the end of the run.

This image is also not what the Flag Code condones, but at the end of the marathon they were given a flag as a celebration of the American winners. But did any of the people who were pissed off about the baby get pissed off about the flag/towel use for these 2 people.

If you read the Flag Code, it seems very concerned about how the flag is treated. Does anyone get pissed off when the flag or an image of the flag is turned into handbags or patches or flags that flap on the car windows as people drive? I've seen some of the car flags that are so tattered and torn that if it had been a flagpole flag, they would have retired it. But since it was on a Honda, continue. I wonder if other countries have regulations for how their flag is handled.

Seems to me that people like to get pissed off. I don't see anything wrong with either image.

Jury Duty

I failed at the Russian Roulette of call in jury duty last week. On the last day to call in I was picked to go into the court and do a day or a trial. That's the way it works here in LA.

They said they were only needing 2 juries that day. There were over 100 people there in the waiting room. The most exciting thing that happened in the waiting room was when the woman explaining the whole thing saw a cockroach moving on the brown carpet. I had seen it earlier. But since it wasn't bothering me I didn't see a reason to kill it. The woman at the mic stopped orientation and said she didn't do well with cockroaches. A female juror jumped up, pulled off her sandal, and went after the roach. He was mightily resilient but in the end he was squished.

I got called to go to a court room with 59 others. The judge sat us down and explained the civil case. A guy admitted to molesting a 15 year old girl. Immediately my heart turned to stone. It was civil suit where she was suing for damages and pain and suffering. I'm not going to be impartial. My first thought was, "Why is he not in jail?" Maybe he had been and he was now out and being sued. I don't know or care. I sat listening as the judge questioned the panel. I was not put in a chair but I can hosetly say I would not be impartial. There are some things you can suspend your prejudices, but for me that is not one of them.

The crazy thing is he was representing himself. That made me think of the old lawyer saying. Whoever represents himself has a fool for a client.

Hope the girl wins a lot of money.

Mr. Spock Saved Me

You might say I have two totems. They are diametrically opposite of each other. Both represent me at my most extreme.

One is the Incredible Hulk. He is the rage that burns inside me. All the anger that has no outlet in a civilized world.

The other is Mr. Spock who was masterfully portrayed by Leonard Nimoy. He died this last Friday. When certain actors pass away I'm hurt because of what they meant to me. I may have loved their work or a particular character. It depends.

Mr. Spock is someone I identified with. He was among them but not part of them. He was always the outsider to some degree. It was his alien DNA and his alien upbringing which set him apart from his crewmates.

I was born in December and that always makes for a difficult choice. Do you put the child in school at 4 1/2 or 5 1/2? I got put in kindergarten at 4 1/2. So compared to everyone else, I was younger, smaller, and less emotionally mature than most of my classmates. This made me a target for bullies. Pick on me. Make me cry. It must have been a fun game for the mean kids. Apparently society figured out that bullying is bad and it is not the problem it used to be. But when I was a kid, I ended up getting picked on. I was constantly in the principal's office as a victim.

Mr. Spock was salvation for me. Since I was like him, among them but not of them, I decided to emulate him. I became logical and unfeeling. Or not unfeeling, but I damped down my feelings and didn't let the bullies see they bothered me. I didn't cry anymore. It made them leave me alone. If they got no reaction, they lost interest.

I remember one Halloween I dressed as Mr. Spock. The kid up the street was Kirk. My blond hair was dyed black with shoe polish and styled like his. Then when it dried, it became a helmet of black. It took many shampooings to make that learning experience go down the drain.

In some ways I'm still a bit like Spock. I keep my feelings pretty close to the vest. But, Oh, the things that boil inside me.