Sorry man, I don't have any change

This is a line I'm forced say far too often. 

But first, a little prologue.

My daily routine proceeds as follows: Wake up, gussy myself up to appear at least as presentable as a side of mashed potatoes (with the lumps, of course), and make my way to Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe*.

Now, whilst sitting outside of YOCS I do a number of different things, though keeping myself abreast of the previous day's sporting news and whomping the Orlando Sentinel crossword are constant. Keeping this in mind, note that both aforementioned activities require me to keep my head down, poring over whatever might be laid flat on the table before me. This has sparked the development of a new, uh, 6th sense**?

With eyes fixed downward, my ears have reluctantly been trained to hear the difference between the purposeful footsteps of those who work for a living and are traveling to a specific destination, and the aimless, shuffle-footed shambling of the homeless.  In reference to the latter, my attention remains on the piece of paper in front of me, because to make eye-contact with a bum is to invite said bum to approach me.  However, this action (or inaction, as it were) is only mildly effective.  These human turkey buzzards still saunter up, and will open with variety of lines, ranging from, "Excuse me sir, I'm an artist and poet.  If you could spare some change, I'd be happy to recite a few lines of poetry for you" to "Yo man, gimme a cigarette".

I feel that the homeless hold my time hostage, heartily heaving wholesale shamelessness in my direction.  One cigarette is a small ransom to pay in order to be left alone.  Though as the day progresses, this presents a problem; I end up giving out way too many smokes.

I'm not so near-sighted as to believe I've invented the way to handle this, but I suppose I could say I independently discovered a solution: the decoy pack.  Simply keep your full pack of smokes in your pocket, and an empty pack on the table.  This nullifies any request in that you open the decoy pack and say something to effect of "Sorry dude, last one".  But, as we all know, some people just won't take no for an answer.

This is when I feel my strongest urges to kill.  And not just the easy bing bang boom GSW to the ol' noodle, but a really rewarding murder.  Something like shattering your quarry's jaw and hands, then plopping him in front of a buffet.  This way you can watch as the fucker fruitlessly tries, amid the worst pain of his life, to sustain himself.  Oh, the satisfaction of seeing a vagrant starve to death with tuna salad dripping off of his fractured mandible.

Wow.  Reading what I just wrote, I think I need to stop and chill out.  Uhhh, just kidding?

     

*The actual name of the the coffee shop will go unspecified, as I'm not being paid to advertise. Henceforth it shall be referred to as YOCS.

**Maybe not a whole sense, per se, as it requires the use of the other, more commonly accepted senses. Lets call it my 5 and 3/8ths sense.

The Road and the road

So I've just finished The Road and it's absolutely fantastic. It's by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country for Old Men...which is also fantastic. But The Road is better. McCarthy has this wonderful way of writing, and it's really more like prose, or at least the two books i've read are in that style. He composes epics, and he refuses to use dialog. But the best thing about The Road is it's truly crushing view of a post-apocalyptic landscape. but the best thing about The Road is how perfectly it describes the virtue of a small kindness. but the best thing about The Road is that it is impacting. Few of the novels I've read were anything more than an anecdote, and I've read plenty. It puts The Road in a category of mine that's shorter than a hand. the most interesting character in No Country was an autistic murderer. and the most interesting character in The Road
is hope.

shit made me cry

no kidding

nancy grace is poisoning american journalism

...somewhere in abaddon on a frigid october night in 1959, the young tabloid-demon let forth a thunderous petition to the empty sky and birthed its fire breathing progeny. the demon vowed to set her daughter forth to destroy american journalism and when this broodlings name is mentioned it turns the blood of the virtuous to ice and the corrupt and panderous come running to kiss the fishermans ring fasted upon her cold, bony right hand. the demon deceivingly named her seed… nancy grace.

ok enough.

anyone who knows me, is well aware of my undying hate for - above all else - these two things:

1. the unapologetic melodramatics like ben gibbard
2. the post-peter Jennings prejudicial news outlets that have become ravingly popular in the last few years. (i.e., sean hannity, rush limbaugh and the demon spawn nancy grace)

i always knew nancy grace was full of shit, but just recently its been making my blood boil. for instance, casey anthony… at first i thought it was just because i live in orlando, because this case was getting more airtime and local exposure than the $3.00 gas at the ferncreek and colonial chevron, and was really starting to wear on everyone’s intellect. but then the paragon of journalistic integrity, the soul-squandering sinner herself, nancy grace broke the story nationally and was officially the first to jump on the missing girl bandwagon, as she always is. Iidon’t feel like i need to explain the details of the case to you, as im sure you already know them, but if you don’t, go to casey anthony’s wikipedia page, yes, you read that correctly, casey anthony’s wikipedia page.

okay so now that you’ve read up on floridas latest white-trash celebrity, you probably are wondering the same thing i was: how can casey anthony get charged with murder 1 and aggravated manslaughter for one child whos body has not been recovered for evidence on said murder? i did some research on WestLaw and the legal library my law office has and came up with some interesting facts. two words: corpus delicti, or “body of crime”. not a literal body, but a figurative one:

“…refers to an act or omission to act (failure to act), and it also requires criminal agency to be in the mind. That is, there must be intent, criminal negligence, or strict liability.”

black’s law dictionary (6th ed.) refers to corpus delicti as:

"…the fact of a crime having been actually committed."

so in this case the grand jury found evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that casey anthony did in fact commit murder under the corpus delicti definition. im not sure how i feel about this. what if, because of nancy graces speculative journalism and unearthing myspace photos of “tot mom alleged sexy partying!” - which was an actual headline on her show under the heading of BREAKING NEWS - that the jury actually finds casey anthony guilty, zaps her in the next life and then a week later they find caylee hanging from a ceiling fan by her pigtails in some pedophiles house in casselberry? what then, oops? understand im not defending casey anthony’s actions by any means because the simple fact is shes a moron and the worst parent since andrea yates. my point is: we don’t need nancy grace spewing her rhetorical vomit swaying the publics opinion about parenting and the judicial system to understand these facts. any marginally responsible parent wouldve done everything she didn’t do. the florida state attorneys office has been throwing the book at casey anthony since late july and nothing has stuck, theyve got to be proud now, but really, what if? but i can see through all of this. first of all, there are 390 people on death row in florida and only one is a woman. in fact, florida has only executed two women in the modern era, so heres my point: the state attorneys office pushed for murder on the chance she gets charged by the grand jury, the state can finally hold her on remand and save getting her bail posted (which so far totals at $1,000,400) by no-named yahoos wanting to jump on the celebrity bandwagon along with our friend nancy. which brings me to my next point; the only thing about this case that makes me angrier than nancy grace is the jackasses nosing into this anyway they can just to get a little free airtime. as if dan newlins giant forehead and thinning, wispy, crypt-keeper hair wasn’t enough to attract attention to the Morgan & Morgan law firm, john morgan has to get his melting face on the tabloid circuit representing zenaida gonzalez in a defamation suit against casey anthony.

we are walking into dangerous territory here. when you expose a local case like this nationally before any court proceedings, you run the risk of not being able to find an unbiased jury. look we all know that oj simpson shouldve been rotting in a cell over a decade ago, but honestly, do you really think the jury in his most recent case wasnt biased? to be fair, i wouldve sent him to jail anyways, biased or not. but by nancy grace insisting that this girl killed her daughter before the grand jurys indictment hearing, is it possible that there were a few people on the jury who actually believed her and ignored the reasonable doubt they may have ever had? i believe so. watching nancy grace should be an expellable bias in voir dire hearings. anyways, the whole point to this is that she should be taken off the air, or at least start practicing sound journalism. personally id like to see her tried for jury tampering in addition to her wrongful death suit of melinda duckett, who was another florida mother of a missing boy who pulled a hemmingway after being grilled live on grace’s show. secondly, ambulance chasing attorneys have no place sticking their nose in a capital murder case under the guise of a defamation suit just to get noticed, and third and most important: theres a landmark presidential election going on and it seems that on some days it gets overshadowed by tabloid news.

im seeing similarities between the timing of this case with the 2008 elections and the carlie bruscia murder in sarasota during the 2004 elections. these cases are blown out of proportion as a political distraction. children are reported missing and get killed by their parents every day - whether intentional or accidental - more often than once every election year, this is the sad truth. lets at least put a spin on this if its going to be in the public eye for so long, lets actually relate the nonsense media hype to politics for once and see if makes an impact. im going to say that little caylee is this years political groundhog, just as in 2004 it was carlie bruscia. if punxsutawnee phil can predict six more weeks of winter maybe the fate of these little girls can predict the outcome of the political climate. could a dead caylee mean mccain takes the presidency? or could finding caylee alive mean a win for obama? i guess well have to tune into “headline news” to find out.

if you think this is taking it to far, youre right it is, and no thanks to ms. grace who has practically made it this way. down with speculative journalism and trash media! the irony behind all this is that she actually co-authored a book entitled: “Objection! -- How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System” in which she referred to defense lawyers as "pigs" and compared defense attorneys to Nazi concentration camp guards. i take this personally because i work in a firm that deals solely in defense for medical malpractice suits and it is hard, respectable work, much more than i can say for her work on her television show where she has been blatantly one sided on issues, ignoring the facts presented and in a few instances humiliated when it all gets thrown in her face. for example, melinda duckett, the duke lacrosse rape case and elizabeth smart owning her on live tv insisting that she was sticking her forked prosecutorial tongue where it didn’t belong.

in short, do yourself and everyone else a favor if you watch nancy grace, turn it off and take a stand for responsible journalism and watch anderson cooper, who may just be the last great television journalist.