Jury duty is bumming me out. I spent ten hours at the County Courthouse, yesterday. I came away feeling sorry for the judge, the lawyers, the bailiffs and everybody else who has to do that for a living.
I was empaneled, along with 55 other people, to be voir dired for a case. I first learned the term, voir dire, from Lenny Bruce, when, in 1965, he testified in his own behalf in a famous concert at Berkeley. So, I would have thought that 55 was a lot of people to voir dire 12 peers of the realm, and I guess the lawyers thought so, too, because they stopped questioning individuals right before they got to me. So I didn't get to tell them who, in my immediate family, had ever been arrested.
Around 6:00 PM, I was rejected and released, with the Judge's personal instruction to call on Tuesday evening to see about doing it all again on Wednesday. He didn't look any happier about it than I did.
When I got home, I looked up GOOG on Yahoo! and saw that it was down 11. I didn't want to know that. At that point, I was too tired to see what my cash had done, so I ate something and went to bed.
Today, was a normal day. I went to work, and was able to check on GOOG, from time to time, to see what it was doing. It wasn't doing much. Since it gave back the 700 marker a couple of weeks ago, all the helium has gone out of the stock. A dive, all the way to 616, was required to rout the buggers, but they're all gone now, and GOOG has settled down for a long winter's nap.
A little while ago, I called to see about Wednesday and was let off. However, the recorded message made it clear that all we prospective peers would remain at risk of selection until further notice, or Saturday, whichever came first.
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A private correspondent has pointed out that I never gave the definition of "voir dire."
My feeling is, if I define "voir dire" for you, then you know what "voir dire" means, but if I put you onto www.dictionary.com, I have bestowed a lifetime of looking it up yourself.
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