290 (2) in Book Four: Ichi-no-Tani 2017

1400
I’ve spent the last hour updating GOOGLE CALENDARS (which Ran wants to use… which is a damn sight better than the NOTHING Boss used); and now (upon Ran’s request) am creating a White Board charting Indictable (thus important) cases. Granted… it is another one of those times where I am spending the day organizing and planning as opposed to actually doing anything with the cases… but shit, son… seeing what you are up against is an important part of taking care of things.

1435
Here is an irritating little bit. Since yesterday morning, my left eye will vibrate periodically. It is totally random. And it is irritating as hell. When it happens, I want to just… punch myself in the eye. Of course… the common cause of this is stress, especially stress added to tiredness. Stress Added To Tiredness could well be my nom de plume! So… in that spirit… shit.

1500
Now there’s a funny thing to point out. Ever since I started here, despite having a printer and printer service company, there was no good way to print letterhead. I would select letterhead in my Word Printing Properties… then have to walk to Cecilia’s Office, hand select letterhead on the printer, clear the error code, and then it would print what I wanted to. As per “Small Town Rules”… as ridiculous and broken as this process was, it is how it had always been so it was how things were going to continue. Ran found out about that, called the service company, and within 10 minutes I could actually print letterhead without leaving my desk. So… it is a small step forward; but getting things that work is always better than working with things that don’t.

1515
Terrible thing to say/do during work but… a facebook friend was discussing “Z” the biography series of Zelda Fitzgerald starring Christina Ricci. I have long been a Ricci fan and have long had a thing for the actress (blame copious amounts of Mermaids (seriously, I watched that movie 30 times), Addams Family (1 and 2), Casper… I really liked her). AND, random bit, she is approximately 4 months and 4 days older than my wife. ANYWAY… they were talking about Dark Haired Ricci playing Fitzgerald and so I wanted to see how she looked in character. Meh, okay, I suppose. But as I was looking at those… I saw a picture that honestly made my heart stop and I just… sat… looking at this photo. So, I wanted to share it. Maybe it says something about me… maybe it doesn’t… but… as I’ve said before… WHAT we find attractive WHY and how varied our preferences can be… all of that fascinates me.

1600
This may not be as deep as it seems at first blush but… what do you think this means? “I’m only interested in girls who are interested in me.” I don’t know what led me to think about this but… it occurred to me that when I was a kid… I’d have crushes on people no problem. I even asked a few people out who wound up rejecting me. But the larger history of my social interactions with females has been the female approaching me. T1 had a whole scheme in place. Aku literally tied me up. Thompson had an odd way about her but it could be argued she approached me. And Wife certainly approached me as I swore to never date a woman who was seeing (let alone living with) another guy. So, ultimately, of the small handful of women who ever went out with me (depending on definition)… (something around 6ish)… of those 6, there were only two that didn’t in some way approach me first. Compare that to the times I approached someone and got rejected (around 8ish) or didn’t even have the courage to begin with (around 3ish)… it seems interesting.

1615
A reason to leave this job. Or at least… a reason to go to a Community where Lawyers are expected to be Lawyers (meaning… they have secretaries, victim/witness coordinators, and a staff… or in other words… how most prosecutor offices are set up in towns over 50k people.) I have been getting the “The cops won’t do anything” calls from Domestic Violence… just… off the hook. And… there is nothing I can do. I just had a woman call and say that the house is in both her and her b/f’s name. The b/f has been acting inappropriately towards her. There are no recordings, no witnesses, no physical evidence… just her word against his. The police won’t arrest because there is no provable case. Her b/f is still the legal owner of the house she lives in. She wants me to solve the issue. I’m heartbroken (though come off like a cold, evil bastard) but… there is nothing I can legally do. Not a thing. You call me to say that your boyfriend is harassing you… the police file a no-contact order and the judge dismisses it for lack of foundation… you call the police who say they can’t do anything… calling me isn’t going to give a magic new answer. But… this is something I’ve come to learn about The Impoverished Area. Impoverished individual has no resources. Thus they believe The State is required to intervene and fix all of the problems. We literally can’t. I can uphold the laws as written by (1) obeying the laws; (2) helping others obey the law; and (3) punishing individuals that the police have declared have broken the law. That is all I can do. And while I certainly don’t like it.... I do get a little sensitive about it. When a woman screams “So, when he kills me… then you’ll get involved?” I don’t enjoy that. That isn’t why I do this job. But… I don’t even have a Woman’s Shelter in this region to suggest to her. All I have is.... call the police, if they won’t press charges, I certainly can’t. But I’m the bad guy because I can’t solve her problem for her. I suppose this is just… more proof that I can’t do this job here (at least not long term). Which is what I’ve heard. I’ve spoken to lawyers who had this job in the 50s and 60s and 70s… and they all said any more than 5 years as a Prosecutor in this area is too much. Too many people with too little funds demanding too much from someone with too little power to help them. Well… that is certainly not what I want to do with the rest of my life.

1700
Oh.. and to cap it ALL off… a stupid pointless political argument on Facebook. I love how people immediately think “YOUR experience isn’t MY experience so your experience means less!!” This time it is with a conservative PROUD Trump supporter. I mentioned how people in my community have told me they don’t care what Trump does as long as he builds the wall which will give them jobs; gets rid of the muslims because they’ll feel safer, and open up the gun laws because the 2nd Amendment says there should be more guns. The individual took GREAT offense to that and was very upset that I would cast all Trump supporters as rednecks. After all, SHE certainly doesn’t think that liberals are so one dimensional. Re-engaging, which I should not have, I tried to tell her… I wasn’t creating a straw man. This was an actual interaction I had. While I’m not saying “Trump Supporters are red necks” I am saying “The Red Necks in my community are Trump Supporters.” My County voted 3 to 1 for Trump… literally three quarters of this county were Trump supporters… many of them (still) loud, proud Trump boosters. So no, Miss. Your experience as a Trump Supporter in an urban area of 500,000 people does not eliminate my experience speaking with a Trump Supporter in a rural area of 1500 people. I don’t know why I let this stuff rile me up. WAIT. STOP. Yes I do. I know entirely. May I share it with you? This stuff riles me up because it directly goes back to the “nuh uh” bullshit. I return to my urban environment and say that life in the rural areas can be hard because there is only 1 grocery store and they don’t sell Tyson Chicken products. To which the response is “Nuh uh. Life isn’t still like that!” Or when I return and say we purchased the best internet package we could get… yet we can’t use wireless devices between 3 pm and 6 pm because of Rural Net Usage issues. To which the response is “Nuh uh. You’re just trying to make rural America look worse than it is.” Or when I say the nearest Burger King, McDonalds, Hardees, Dairy Queen, Wendys, Starbucks or Taco Bell is at least a full county away.... and the response is “Nuh uh. Those places are everywhere. Hell, we have 12 of each in a 4 block radius!” There is this, apparently, firm belief that because something exists and is easily accessible in one place… then it exists and is easily accessible in another place. Hell, when I lived in the Urban Areas… I thought that, too. But alas, it is not so. And simply because YOUR experience isn’t MY experience… that does not belittle MY experience… just as MY experience does not belittle YOUR experience. If we could transform… become a people that share stories of our experiences and understand the wide variety of experiences that can exist… instead of trying to crush someone’s experience in an attempt to validate your own… bah. Humans!

Last updated January 18, 2017