Why does a grown man allow himself to be called Jim Bob?

When you're a child, you're given a name. Sometimes you're called that name. Sometimes yu're called by a variation of that name or by a middle name. Sometimes you're called by a nickname that has nothing at all to do with your actual legal first or middle name. When you're very young, ther's not a hell of a lot you can do about it.  our parents are going to call you what they want to call you. In most cases, refusing to answer isn't in your best interest.  If you are "fortunate" enough to have many older siblings, they, too may take liberties with your name in ways of which you ae not fond. Unless your parents wish to do something about it, or unless you're big and strong for your age, you're at a loss to do much about thatm either.

That, however, is when you are a kid. Once you grow up, you have all sorts of options. Sometimes a legal name change is in order. i knew of a uy whose parents named him "Junior;" not "William Jones, Junior" or Samuel Peckham, Junior."   Before "Junior" even graduated from college, he had turned twenty-one, saved his money, and legally changed his name to "John." I would have done the very same thing had I been he.  Another guy I knew was born with the rather unfotunate surname of "Fagg." His parents were determined to live with it, as it was their family heritage. The kid was not. He took money that was in an account intended to fund an LDS mission that fell under his own control the day he turned eighteen, and used the money to  file the paperwork  and pay the fees to legally change his surname. I believe he used his mother's maiden name, which was, I think, "Madsen." I don't know whether or not he ever made it onto his mission after raiding his mission fund to change his name, but I would have done exactly as he did, too.

So the Duggar family lives in a part of the nation where many of us from other locations consider some of their names countrified to the point of being undignified.  "Jim Bob" is one such name. I've never seen Jim Bob Duggar's birth certificate, but i'd be surprised if his legal naem were "Jim Bob," though nothing about the Duggars or anyone else on reality television should surprise me anymore. Anyway, to me it seems more likely that his name is probably something liked "James Robert." Again, I could be wrong. But even if his legal name is "Jim Bob," would any of us hold it against him either to legally change it to something both more grown-up and something more civilized, or, for that matter, simply choosing to call himself a more adult version of one of the names.  "Jim" by itself is probably fine. "Bob" by itself is OK as well. JimBob, however, reeks of unsophistication to my California-born and -bred ears. I cannot understand why a grown man would choose to call himself that or allow himself to be addressed in such a manner regardless of whether it's his legal name. He can't help it if, at family reunions, long-lost cousins approach him and call him by that name. He does not, however, have to use the name when running for state legislature.

The Duggars, on the other hand, may sit around making fun of some of the more hippie-ish California names such as Rainbow and Moon Unit, or the creative Imunique or Nevaeh.

snark that gets a lot more serious

Jared seems to have had a change of heart. He's sending me videos. Here's one he sent

There are so many I'd love to send in return, but I'm not playing that game. Matthew told me I should have sent this old seventies joke of a heartbreaker called "Torn betweeen two lovers, except tell him that in his case it's at least three lovers he's torn between. but I held my tongue, or fingers. He couldn't deal with my silence, so he sent this one.

I deleted on the request of myaunt.

Then he sent the Art Garfunkel one. If  all he knows is that he loves me so much, he has a funny way of showing it.  Furthermore, his grades are in serious peril if that's truly all he knows.

My brother wanted to text him and said that if the next song he texts is that one from the Police or Sting or whoever, "Every Breath You Take," he's seriously calling the police whether Jared is a friend or not. Instead, my pseudouncle Scott, who is his biological uncle, insisted on texting him. I don't know what the message was, but I haven't received another text.

Seriously, why can't the guy just make up his mind. He could have had me -- well, not really had me -- but I would have dated him until he made up his mind about his mission. I would not have agreed to have waited for him because I think that's a bad idea because it's making a promise one can't necessarily keep. Also, it implies marriage is at the end of the rainbow, and that's an implication I'm not sure I can follow through with even if I'm otherwise unencumbered. There's no guarantee, even if it were to end up that we were right for each other, that either one of us would be anywhere near ready for marriage in two years.

Mormon mishies are typically encouraged to be engaged within six months of returning from their missions. Most likely I'll be through year one of medical school when he returns.  That hardly seems like an ideal time to plan and implement a wedding.   Then, should he successfully complete his mission, chances are he'll be a much more devout Latter-Day Saint than he is right now. I can't see him being all that comfortable with marriage to a Catholic. I know it worked out for Scott and Jillian, but Scott had one foot out the door of the church before he ever left for his mission. Maybe Jared does as well, but if such is the case, he'd be better off not going at all. Not everyone is as lucky as Scott was.

Bottom line: I'm kind of taking the same position as girlfriend #2, or would she be #3, since I'm probably technically numero uno? Anyway, it's the non-Mormon other woman of whom I speak, the one who told Jared to get lost and not to call until he decided for certain that he wasn't riding his bicycle all over God knows where handing out sky-blue paperbacks with golden angels blowing horns that look like the ones people take to football games just to be obnoxious, except that the horns, too, are gold like the angels.

I don't wish to be hardhearted. I won't refuse to have a relationship with him when he returns (if he goes) just because he's a more devout Mormon than he presently is, as long as he's OK with me being the way I am and as long as all other factors work out in such a way that it's a good idea for us to have a relationship at the time. Neither will I promise not to date, or even not to fall in love with anyone else while he's gone. My heart belongs to me, as Barbara streisand used to sing, (I don't think she does that one in concert anymore.)  And  if he decides not to go, neither is that any guarantee we'll again become an item.

Jared needs to decide, totally independent of me,  what's right for him in terms of a mission. Once that decision is made, there's plenty of time for me to decide if I want a casual relationship, a more serious one, or no relationship at all. He'll need to grow up a bit and prove to be more straightforward and less flaky if he expects me to as much as  meet him on campus for ice cream on a day when he has no classes.

My primary concern at this point is not for me (as strange as the songs he has sent me have been, Jared isn't some male version of Jodi Arias who is going to stalk me or worse) but for  Jared's mental health, which  seems a bit shaky to be potentially put on a plane and flown halfway across the world to a place where he knows absolutely no one and possibly doesn't even speak the language. I believe the decision has been weighing on him so heavily that he's really not himself and not quite in his right mind. (I won't entirely excuse his indiscretions on that account, but I do think there's a connection.) I can't say for certain that my state of mind would be a whole lot more stable were I in identical circumstances.  I wish his pareents could see this. He's their son; his well-being should come before any program their church pushes.  Even though he's eighteen, his parents have some obligation to look out for him. Despite what the church says about every young man being obligated to be worthy so that he can serve a mission,  the calling obviously isn't for everyone.
Thomas S. Monson, the current President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the LDS Church, did not serve a mission as a youth. Why, then,  is it absolutely necessary for Jared to do so if either he doesn't want to go or if it wouldn't be in his best interests?

I'd hate to see him come back as my cousin did last year,  half dead from intestinal disease, or worse, so mentally ill that he never fully recovers, as did his uncle about twelve years ago.

Billie Jean is the Queen, and My Mother's Channeling of Madame La Violette

I finally dozed off, woke up at about ten, and knocked off another project  - the one for Sports Sociology. I used the transition of tennis from an amateur to a professional sport as my topic. The bullshit that went on back in the day was unreal. Major  tournaments such asWimbledon and the U. S. Nationnal Championships (now called the U. S. Open) were only available to amateur players.  Many "amateur" players weren't actually amateurs at all. They were being paid money secretly to show up to the major tournaments. The bigger name the player had, the more he or she was handed "under the table." A player's finish in the tournament had no outcome on the money a player received. Sometimes up-and-coming players were not given sufficient money even to travel to tournaments, so the game was heavily biased in favor of the established and the wealthy. This was particularly true with regard to women's tennis. Women who chose to reject this hypocrisy were unable to support themselves with the paltry prize money offered by the few professional tournaments available to them.  While the hypocrisy of "amateur" status 'under the table payment existed within the structure of men's tennis, and male professionals, too were banned from major tournaments,  the men's professional circuit was financed to the degree that a male could earn a living as a touring professional without playing the game of pretending to be "amateur" and accepting the unofficial payment.

Billie Jean King spearheaded a group of women, including herself,  Rosemary Casals, Francoise Durr, and Ann Haydon Jones, who obtained sponsorship for a tour and turned professional. Eventually major tournaments became "open," as in open to both professionals and amateurs. Soon the issue became the disparity between prize money offered to men and to women for either the same tournaments or comparable tournaments.

At the 1970 U.S. Open Tournament,  the women's prize money was to be one-eighth of what would be awarded to the men.  Several women threatened to boycott the u. S. Open. Gladys Heldman, founder and at-the-time publisher of World Tennis magazine offered instead to find a sponsor for a tour, beginning with the Family Circle Cup tournament, to be held a week before the U.S. Open in place of the usual preparatory tournament.  Nine women signed up for this tour, which was to be sponsored by Philip Morris.  Two Australian women who signed with the new preparatory tournament were banned by their national association. The United States Lawn Tennis Assosiation (then the USLTA, since then shortened to the USTA) president Jack Kramer threatened all nine women with sanctions, but instead formed his own rival tour.  Because Kramer's tour couldn't or wouldn't offer the prize money equal to that  offered by the Virginia Slims tour, sponsored by Philip Morris, depending upon how one views it, the USLTA women's tour either caved in or merged with the Virginia Slims Tour. The Virginia Slims Tour evolved to what is now know as The Women's Tennis Association Tour. Prize money on the WTA tour  is comparable to or equal to the money received by the men on their tour.

There was a major sideshow in a highly publicized televised match between Billie Jean King and senior men's tour professional Bobby Riggs, a self-proclaimed male chauvinist.  King Prevailed 6-4, 6-4, 6-3.

Women who chose not to risk their careers and the sanctions that might have occurred also ultimately benefited from the risk-taking of the original nine Virginia Slims signers and a few others who joined the tour shortly thereafter without themselves taking any risks.This created many hard feelings, some of which persist to this day.

One player who did not prticipate in the original Virginia Slims Tour was Chris Evert. She was still a minor at the time of the USLTA/Virginia Slims rift, and had little choice but to abide by the decision of her parents. She is now probably Billlie Jean King's  staunchest and most vocal supporter and admirer, and was the first of the woman professionals to state publicly that the women who (while she was still playing) were earning prize money equal to the men owed it all to Billie Jean King. Eventually Martina Navratilova and others echoed her sentiments, but she was by far the first of the younger players to publicly commend King. In contrast, the Willliams sisters seem to offer very little in terms of words of appreciation or praise for Billie Jean; they're too busy praising themselves or each other.

It was an exciting time in women's sports. I wish I'd been alive to witness it.

I'm typing now on my pseudo-aunt's computer.My mom took my books and laptop away from me and sent me to my pseudoaunt's house. She told me pseudoaunt I can blog or othrwise use the internet ut that I may not do any work. Her "licensed clinical psychologist' persona is getting the better of her, and she's forgetting that she's my mother and not my therapist. Her concern is that by working so hard and completing all my assignments, I'm burying my feelings about the breakup with Jared, and that if I don't deal with the feelings now, they'll emerge at some point in the future, most likely in the form of an illness. It sounds like voodoo psychology to me. Perhaps she picked it up from listening to Madame LaViolette's testimony in the Jodi Arias trial. It sounds like something that quack could have come up with.  What does my mother want me to do?Sit around and cry all day? Would that be healthier? Sometimes I think the Mormons are onto something in their distrust of the professions of pschiatry and psychology.

Ironically, my dad can't help me in this situation because he is off playing in the finals of some club tennis tournament.  He would side with me, as his distate for madame laViolette is, if anything, even stronger than mine is. He may even have to change a reference he's made since I was born, and probably longer ago than that. While he admires her as a tennis player and human being, my dad doesn't think Billie Jean is particularly attractive. I say big deal; half the world isn't all that attractive. My dad isn't quite so willing to leave it alone. Anytime he sees a person he thinks is especially homely (and my dad isn't exactly Jesse Spencer's clone, by the way, so I'm not sure who he thinks he is to be critiquing the appearances of others), he says (not to the person, of course) that the person looks just like Billie Jean King. Now perhaps he'll change things up and say the homely people of the world look just like Madame La Violette.

So my psuedoaunt and I are entertaining ourselves by making fun of Jared. She probably shouldn'tbe doing that, as she's Jared's aunt by marriage, but I'm not going to repeat wha she said, so no harm has been done. She said if she makes it to church before Wednesday, when Jared will most likely receive his mission call, she'll light a candle and say a prayer that his mission is in Afghanistan. There isn't really an LDS mission in Afghanistan or in most war zones. She's joking. If Jared were to be somehow assigned to Afghanistan, pseudoaunt do everything in her power to keep him from going.

My mother thinks she has drastically altered the remainder of my weekend for the sake of my mental and/or physical health.Little does she know that all the work I have remaining is two chapters of my "Physics of Fractures" text to memorize, and I wasn't going to do it today, anyway, because we're going over one chapter in class on Tuesday, and the other on Thursday, and since they're a little unclear to me, it seems prudent to wait to hear what the professor has to say about them before committing the material to memory.

So there, Mommy Dearest!

Don't Think Twice . . . It's All Right

I know I said I was going to sleep a couple of hours ago, but some things are easier said than done. My dad says if I'm not asleep in an hour, he will intervene with pharmaceauticals  because he doesn't want me to get sick. Whatever, I'm getting a little tired of being awake  myself

Meanwhile, I may as well clarify things in my own mind by detailing the events that led to my latest break-up. Jared doesn't read this blog. His mother knows about it and possibly reads it on occasion, but she has six kids and manages the office for her husband's medical practice. She has better things to do than to obsess over the details of my love life, even if it does involve her son. Furthermore, she's not a blabbermouth. If push came to shove, she'd take her son's side, because there is that mother-son bond thing, but by the same token, she knows he's fallible. She wouldn't  further the rift by letting him know how the whole thing is playing out on the Internet. Furthermore, what I'm writing is true if biased. The conversations between Jared and my brother, by the way, are from the best of my brother's recollection. I trust his memory for details.

My brother Matthew called me to ask me the status of my relationship with Jared. I said as far as I knew, it was the same as yesterday, the day before, or a month ago. He asked if the relationship was supposed to be exclusive. I told him we'd never actually discussed it.  He told me that it was not exclusive -- that Jared had dated two girls twice each in the past two weeks. He said there could be more, although he doesn't know where Jared would find the time for any additional dating if he's    still attempting to keep his grades up, which one would assume he is. I asked Matthew first of all if he was sure, which he said he was, and secondly,  if I needed to deny having heard the information from Matthew. Matthew though about it and said no. Jared should know that Matthew would tell me if Jared dated someone else while he and I were supposedly in some sort of relationship

I didn't call or text Jared because I'm not a Jodi Arias-style stalker, even without the blood, gore, and homicidal tendencies. Two days later, which was a little less frequent that we had been speaking or texting, he called.  After the initial exchage of social pleasantries, I asked him if  he considered our relationship to be exclusive. I said I didn't want to put him on the spot, because we hadn't discussed it, and I had no right to assume that we had an exclusive relationship without hearing it from him.

He immediately jumped on the offensive, blaming my brother. "Matt called you and ratted me out, didn't he?" he demanded.

"Yes, he did," I answered truthfully.

"That asswipe!" he blurted in a manner unfitting for a young man who had submitted mission papers and was expecting a response shortly.

"He's my brother. I would do the same for him. In fact, I have done the same for him," I told him.

"That's different,' he muttered. "Girls blab. Guys are loyal."

"Loyal to whom? " I asked him.

He hung up on me.

The next day he ended up at an event Matthew was also attending. The two allegedly had words that were hostile initially but quickly grew more civil. Jared wanted to know why Matthew had told me,as he considered Matthew a close friend. Matthew told him that he wasn't totally sure where regular sibling relationships fit into the hierarchy of loyalty but twin trumps friend every time -- even best friend.

Matthew asked Jared about dating both of the girls at once - one a girl from school and one from his family's Mormon ward at home.  He asked if it didn't feel just a bit slimy to be leaading the two of them on, never mind me.  Jared answered that neither had any reason to believe that anything was exclusive at that point. Matthew said he disagreed - that if you take a girl out, then ask her on another date for three days later, she has a reason to believe you're not dating someone else in the meantime.

Jared asked if it was Matthew's Mormon heritage coming out in him. Maybe he planned to marry both of the girls he was dating.  Matthew told Jared he could probably forget about including me in the polygamous set-up, as he couldn't see me going along with it.

Jared was understandably miffed at Matthew's dragging of religion into the discussion, but Matthew said that LDS boys who two- or three-time girls are asking for  polygamy jokes at their expense.

"Well, I'm not exactly dating either of them anymore," he confessed.

"Why?" Matthew asked, mildly surprised.

It seems that he had explained his upcoming mission dilemma to both girls -- that he had filled out papers but was waiting to see the location and timing before he made a decision for certain as to whether or not he would go. The Mormon girl flipped her lid and told Jared not to bother calling her until he was committed to serving a mission. The other girl was equally upset, and told him not to waste her time if he was considering taking off for God knows where for two whole years, and that she did not want to hear another word from him until if and when he had made a permanent decision not to go off on one of those "Mormon missionary things." Jared apparently is attracted to cerebral women. I hope that doesn't say anything about me.

"It sort of makes Alexis look better all the time, huh?" Matthew commented to Jared.

"Yes,but I'm not sure that's the dorection I should be going, either," Jared responded.

"Maybe not, but before you call her again, if you call her again, make up your mind what it is you want. If it's a casual relationship, be up front about it. If you expect a relationship to be exclusive, be up front about that, too. But hold up your end of the deal. Don't tell her the two of you are in a steady relationship, then feel free to date someone else."

"That's fair," Jared replied.

"I'm not sure  she wants you back, anyway, " Matthew added.

He's right. I'm not sure I want Jared back, either. Too many things are up in the air right now, with his mission being the most cumbersome of them all. Then there's the issue of whether or not either of us wants to date the other, what sort of relationship we'd want even if we did decide to see one another in some capacity, and whether or not I can trust him enough to have any sort of relationship with him. Maybe neither of us is mature enough to be involved in anything more than a fun-and-games occasional trip to the beach or some campus function when he happens to be around. Or maybe he really wants to go on his mission.

I'm certainly glad I never gave up my viriginity to the guy, not that he was pushing me hard in that direction, anyway. Regardless, however rotten I'm feeling  now, it would be worse if I had let the physical aspect of the relationship go any further. I don't feel as though I have to hang onto my virginity forever. Depending upon my schooling situation and how long I wait before marrying, I may not hold out until marriage . . . Or then again, I might. Nevertheless, it's not something to be given away lightly, and not to be a prude, but I'm certainly glad to have held onto it for at least this far.  I'm feeling lousy and generally used, but had I allowed him to take that from me, I would be devastated.

Get the Work Done Before My Heart Finds Out

It's difficult to deal with problems of the heart while one is attempting to knock off an entire quarter's work of academic work, but I'm giving it my best shot.  My psychopathology paper is finished.  I endured at least one rather unusual interview but now, a mere thirty-two hours later,   it's all history;  recorded history, in fact, as I included every titillating detail .of the interview in the paper.

My Appalachian music project has likewise made it to the press. The research was very interesting to me. I delved into the pentatonicity of Scottish and particularly Irish ballads and their influence on the ballads and hymn tunes of southern Appalachia.  The pentatonic scale consists of the tones do, re, mi, so, and la.  (The tones can be most easily visualized/auditorialized by thinking of he black keys on a piano, although a pentatonic scale can be played beginning with any kep on a piano[unless it's too high to complete the scale; duh!).  Some tunes, such as "Amazing Grace" or  "Beech Spring," (a hymn tune associated with such hymn titles as "As We Gather at Your Table"  or "Come All Christians, Be Committed,"), "Wayfaring Stranger," and non-hymns such as "It's Raining" or "The Riddle Song" arecompletely pentatonic. Other tunes are suggestive of a pentatonic scale, but insert  the rare to occasional fa or ti,  such as "Shenandoah" or  "What Wondrous Love."  Other cultures, particular various Asian cultures, relied heavily upon the pentatonic scale in melody composition as well.  I know less about Asian music, but with the Celts, many of whom migrated to Appalachia, they obviously knew the diatonic (do re mi fa so la ti do) scale and thus had access to the tones of fa and ti as well, but instrumentation heavily influenced the notes they used in singing.  Pentatonic harps and lyres were common  in Scotland in Celtic regions, and were brought with the Scottish and Irish as they migrated to southern Appalachia. The mandolin, common in southern Appalachia, is tuned to a pentatonic scale minus mi. The banjo, also essentially pentatonically tuned (minus la) made its way up from Africa to southern Appalachia.  The accompaniment  instrumentation clearly influenced the melodies. I suppose anyone who has made it this far has read more than he or she ever wanted about the pentatonic scale and its  influence in Scottish, Irish, and Appalachian music.

If you were bored by the pentatonicity treatise, I apologize in advance for my description of  the incredibly complex memorization required in my "Physics of Fractures" course. No paper or project is required. I merely need to parrot the information I memorize in a series of combination multiple choice/fill-in-the-blanks/short essay answer tests.  I'll try to minimize the boredom to which I subject you here, but did you know that, in theory, because the bone itself has no nociceptors (sensory neurons), a bone fracture in theory would not be painful were it not for several other factors, such as breaking in the continuity of the periosteum, injury to nearby soft tissues, and muscle spasms as muscles try to hold bone fragments in place. I'll spare you, any further clarification, as just hinnking about it has been known to cause pain. Additionally I'll give you a pass on the many types of fractures: many you already know, and the rest you'd probably be better off never knowing..

I still have work from a few classes to address, but I'm making progress at record pace. With any luck I could be finished with this drudgery by Tuesday. . . Except that  it's not really drudgery when it's taking my mind off things on which I'd prefer not to dwell. At least this time the breakup was of our own doing and not the work of parental interference. It could be the final end, or the situation could resolve itself in a mending of the current rift.  Alas, relatively few people end up permanenetly with the subject of their first relationship.  What happens will happen. I can cry, pound my fists against the wall, go on a hunger strike,  or vandalize his car [not seriously an option], but none of those things will change the final outcome.  Que sera, sera.

I've been awake for forty-one consecutive hours. I must sleep, although I'm mildly concerned about what the dream world has in store for me tonight.

Incidentally, the music video is a late 1970's minor hit, "Before My Heart Finds Out," by Gene Cotton, which I've always found charming,  though less so when it applies to me personally.

My Latest Encounter With a Psychopath

not my actual bra, but not far off (it may in fact be bigger than most of my bras)

Because I'm attempting to get a jump on all my coursework so that I'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off late in the quarter as many of my classmates will be, I had my second interview in one week (fourth interview overall) with my diagnosed psychopathic inmate. There's always an unbreakable (to the degree that anything is unbreakable) glass partition between us, and there's a guard on each side of the glass lurking not far away, surpervising usually three inmates and their visitors, all of whom for various reasons require closer supervision than do the average prisoners who conduct their visits through glass. In addition to the guards' supervision, our conversations are audiotaped and viedotaped. We converse through a telephone.

Today's visit started out much as did all the others. We always start out with the usual social niceties (psychopaths are better than most at that) but quickly got down to the heart of the matter.  It has been made clear to all of us in the course both by our professsor and by prison officials  that we are not the prisoners' counselors. We are in no way qualified to counsel prisoners or anyone else. We are there to collect information that is to be used in our personal research for the course.
For the most part, we are given a script from which we work. We are authorized to deviate very  slightly because sometimes a prisoner's response  leads to a logical follow-up question, but curing what ails them, or making them feel  better about their prognoses or about life in general, are not the reasons we are speaking with them.  The guards supervising on both sides of the glass are also aware of our parameters and have been instructed to cut any interview short if it appears to be veering blatantly off-course, or if they see us [the university students] doing anything as stupid as giving out  personal information that could endanger us. We're just dumb university students. It's their job to protect us from our own stupidity. If that sounded snarky, such was not my intent. The correctional officers are looking out for our best interests and are doing their jobs.

I was pretty much following the script. The guy was describing his high school experiences when he started talking about a girl he dated in high school. As he became more and more specific about this girl, the guard on the other side stepped closer to him. Then the inmate asked me my bra size. He was immediately handcuffed, and the interview was over. He laughed hysterically as he was led away in cuffs.The officer on my side escorted me to an officer just outside the door of the visitors' room with the glass partitions. This guard immediately asked me if I was OK (he didn't yet know what had been said, but knew the inmate had spoken inappropriately to me). I had to wait in an office while administrators listened to the audiotapes and viewed the videotapes.  I'm not certain exactly what they were listening for; I can only surmise they wanted to know if I had in any way contributed to the direction the interview had taken, or if the inmate had said something even worse than what he had been heard asking me. It was confirmed that neither was the case.

I was directed to an outside office (proson personnel can't, for a myriad of reasons, take us into the secure areas, where most of the high ranking administrators' offices are housed) where I met with an assistant to the warden. She apologized to me for what had happened. No apology was really needed on that account; if a person has reached the age of eighteen without enduring anything more traumatic than being asked one's bra size  (in my case, it's not particularly impressive, incidentally), that person has lived a highly insulated life. My life certainly has not been lived with that level of protectiveness, it almost goes without saying, or I probably wouldn't be finishing my second year on a university campus as someone who is barely eighteen.

Then the warden's assistant went on to deliver the blow, which was that I would not be allowed to have further contact with that particular inmate.  She apologized, saying that it was through no fault of mine and that she understood the inconvenience to me (major understatement), as I had already invested considerable time in this project,  but that it was a privilege for a prisoner to participate in such a program, and that the inmate in question had abused his privilege to the degree that he could no longer be trusted to be involved with interview-based research involving university students. She offered to have another inmate available for me by Monday. She gave me her card and told me to call her on Monday, and she also told me she would personally contact my professor to explain the situation and the time I had already devoted to the project in the event that a time extension for completion of the assignment was required.

There was nothing more she could do. The prison has its protocols it must follow. I thanked her for her time and consideration. I was escorted all the way to my car by a correctional officer, which I thought was perhaps a bit of overkill. After all, an inmate in one of the more secure penitentiaries in the nation had asked for my bra size. He was on  one side of the barbed wire, and I was on the other. It wasn't as though my life had been threatnened or I was otherwise in any danger. Still, it was a thoughtful gesture.

Right now I wish to take the time to say that I formerly lived in a community in which a not insignificant number of (mostly California State-employed) correctional officers and their families live. For whatever reason, recent legislatures and governors in California have given generous deals to the state's prison employees, and their salaries, benefits, overtime compensation, and retirement plans are reflective of this treatment.  While I concede that many prison jobs are quite dangerous and/or unpleasant, when  roughly twenty qualified applicants vy for every available position,  it's indicative that the pay and benefits could probably be lowered to some degree without losing an unmanageable number of qualified employees and/or future applicants.  This is critical in a state with a budget deficit the size of California's.  

It is unfair to paint all workers of a particular line of employmnet and their families with the same brush, but, speaking broadly, while I didn't know most of the officers themselves well, I knew their children quite well. In one of the most educated communities in the nation, many of these offspring stood out like gangrenous thumbs.  (My primary attacker in the restroom assault incident was the offspring of a state prison correctional office, as one of his two accomplices.)  In general, the overall attitude of many (but not all; I must be fair)  of these students seemed to be that their fathers (if the families were intact, most of the mothers were stay-at-home moms) were doing quite well financially without ever having taken education seriously. There seemed little reason for the offspring to invest any major time or effort toward the endeavor of academic success, either. I must add that the number three graduate in the academic standing of my graduating class was the daughter of a state prison correction officer. She was a most diligent student and a genuinely good and decent person.  Not everyone fits the same mold.

My experience with the correctional officers and other prison employees with whom I had contact today (though, as federal employees, they could be cut from a different cloth, but I'll hope that such is not the case) gave me a more positive feeling toward prison employees and correctional officers in particular than I've ever felt since being aware of them. I felt that they all did their jobs proficiently and professionally, and were a credit to their profession, and additionally, went out of their way to be kinder  to me than their job required that they be.

It was a thoroughly dejected state of mind that dominated my thoughts as I drove through the prison gates and along the highway leading to home.  I don't have the technology to talk on my car phone through speakers because my parents consider it unsafe for an inexperienced driver.  I exited at an off-ramp so that I  could call my professor. In a major stroke of luck, I actually reached him rather than his voice mail. The prison official had already spoken with him. He asked me to come to his office as soon as I made it back to campus.

I thought it would be wise to carry evidence of the work I had already completed on my Psychopath Study, so I quickly stopped by my house to grab the file before going to the university to meet with my professor.  ( The idea of carrying a file jammed with transcriptions of  prior interviews with an inmate to a prison and leaving it in my car in the prison parking lot is something that, to my paranoid mind, is inviting trouble.)

I parked in the parking structure closest to the professor's office because he had told me to hurry, as he had things to do and didn't wish to waste an entire Friday afternoon waiting around for me.  (This professor is a most genteel sort of man.)  I pretty much  ran (I wish I'd had my skateboard in the car with me) to the professor's office, taking the stairs to the fourth floor so as to avoid wasting time waiting for the 1970's-designed elevators. A paraplegic could pull himself up the stairs at about the same pace that the elevators in this particular building move.

Allow me to state that I was not expecting sympathy in any form. I showed up at the professor's office because he told me to do so. Still,  it caught me by surprise when the first words out of his mouth were, "Boo hoo! An inmate asked you your bra size. Now I suppose you expect to be exempted from the assignment and expect a week off from classes for mental health reasons."

I had no answer, so I gave no answer. I just stared at him. "What do you want from me?" he finally asked.

"You told me to come here, " I reminded him.

"Oh, yeah. I guess I did." He stared blankly. My guess is that the professor is roughly in his early sixties. All sorts of stange and mind-altering drugs were avsilable during his college years. My suspicion is that he partook freely of those substances back in the day.

"So what have you done so far on this project?" he asked.

I took out the typed transcriptions of the first four interviews and handed them to him. All were quite lenghty because the inmate was cooperative and loquacious in those interviews, and the guards allowed me a little more time than was supposed to be allotted. The professor read through the transcripts  closely.

"I have twenty-five minutes of interview material from today's interview, too," I told him.

"You have more than enough to complete the project just with what you've already done. Go with it. You don't need to start over," he concluded.

"Thank you," I said to him, leaving hurriedly so as not to waste any more of his Friday afternoon.

"I'm sorry if I seemed a bit abrupt," the professor said as I walked out of the office.

"No problem," I answered. "It's all good."

So miracles do happen, whether they're more heavily influenced by God himself, by persuasive prison officials and crusty and spacy but not inhumane professors, or by mere chance. I'm not looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. Instead, I'll simply type  the final project tonight as I begin The Big Push.

I'll pop in sporadically over the next seven to ten days when I need a mental health break as I'm grinding my way through every reading assignment, project, essay, research paper, or even short-term assignment if it's already been given.

I'll appreciate it if you think of me as you're enjoying your leisure time, but my time will come soon enough.

Happy Friday!

#

interviewing an Identified Psychopath at a Federal Penitentiary: Does That Sound Like a Trip to the World Series to You?

I have two more nights of relative freedom and leisure until I start what I've begun to call "The Big Push."  I've been doing this since high school. Each semester or quarter (my university is on the quarter system) I give myself a few weeks to become familiar with the curriculum of each class and with the point of view of each professor, which is what he or she wants to hear parroted bck to him or her in every paper, essay, or essay exam.

I suppose I've reached the point by now that nothing is really stopping me from getting a jump-start on this workload, but, OCD-type that I am, I'm a creature of habit.  "The Big Push," by tradition, begins on a Friday night. It's Wednesday  night right now.  I'm not sure exactly what I think might happen were I to begin "The Big Push" two days early, but I do not possibly see how it could be a good thing.  One might think it's something hanging over my head, and the dread of it is worse than it would be to just get started and get it over with.

The truth is that I'm not lying in bed at night worrying about the intense workload I'm going to dump on myself in a couple of days. I'm savoring m last few days of a normal life before the onset of "The Big Push."  I have a battle plan for most of my courses.

Interactions in Biomolecular Complexes is largely a lab class where we each design our own project, which is pretty much growing one mold, introducing something equally disgusting, such as a fungus, and then trying to kill 'em both, ideally with a single agent. Fascinating, huh? 

Fracture mechanics is a biophysics course. It's not heavy on papers and projects.  It's a matter of learning the material, then regurgitating it for tests. It's heavy on quizzes in addition to the announced tests.  it is interesting to know why, in addition to size and density,  some bones fracure more easily than others.

My strings course is a peformance.mastery course. I have to develop a designated level of mastery of violin, viola, cello, and string bass. Because I play violin, what I know transfers to the other instruments to the degree that I could pass the course (it's pass/fail) tomorrow, but I'd actually like to master each of these instruments to some degree, particularly the cello, which I consider, when well-played, the instrument that produces the second most beautiful sound in music, with French horn being the first.

I've already got a great jump on my Appalachian music project; I'm using the overall pentatonic tonality of southern Appalachian ballads to demonstrate their roots to Scottish and Irish music. I'll have fun with that one. 

In Psychopathology, each of us  has to interview  a different assigned inmate from Lompoc Federal prison six times,  (it's not terribly far away), and write a paper about our conclusions concerning his state of psychopathology, onset, etiology, prognosis, etc. I've met with my inmate three times already. He's not someone I'd necessarily choose to go trick-or-treating or to Disneyland with, but with the glass between us and the close supervision that is provided,  I'm not overly traumatized by the situation. I'll share more details about it later.

In Sports Sociology, my project will probably feature the onset of agents as primary contract negotiators in professional sports. (Back in the day, the players were expected to do their own negotiating with their teams' general managers, and were regularly screwed over.) It wasn't easy for the players to institute the change, and many paid heavy prices for being pioneers in this arena.  I'm also considering focusing upon the transition of tennis from an amateur sport, where players were secretly and unofficially handed money in envelopes for participating in tournaments, but got nothing for winning or making it to the finals or semi-finals -- the bigger name the player, the more he or she got simply for showing up regardless of the player's performance in the tournament.  It took the courage of several players who stood to lose a great deal  who blew the world of high-level tennis wide open and exposed it for what it was.

In Religion and Film, in each course session we watch a movie that has some at least vaguely religious  connection. We submit a 2-page essay by computer before midnight of the day the movie was shown.  There will be midterm and final essay tests. The ovearll focus of the course's movies is Christianity, with a little Judaism thrown in to lend the false impression of multi-culturalism. Our research papers need to focus upon the religious overtones of a particular film besides one of the ones we've seen or will see in class. God, how I wish we could use a TV series, as I'd grab Seventh Heaven in a minute, but I'd probably have to arm-wrestle half the class for it.   I'll probably use either Gabriel's Oboe or Gran Torino, though I'm open to suggestions.

Asian American Queer Studies is a bit baffling. I'm not getting much from the course, but then, getting something from the course isn't really the point of taking  the course. I've known that for a long time, as in since roughly kindergarten.. I think I'm just going to profile actor-director B. D. Wong  and his experiences as a gay Asian-American in the film industry.  I've been told he sometimes answers questions when tweeted, and might consent to a lengthier Internet onterview.

This semester's workload is far less cumbersome than was that of past quarters. I'm knocking on my ebony baby grand as I type this. Not everything is as simple as it seems, and things have been known to go awry.

#

As the Dust Settles

I'm not sure the dust has totally settled in Boston. The death toll, at last count, was still at three. The lastest word I heard was that a pressure cooker was somehow involved in one of the explozive devices. This does not sound terribly sophisticated to me. The devices sounds like things that some of my brothers's stupider friends could have put together on a Saturday afternoon using things they found lying around in their own homes and garages. Thank goodness my brother's friends - even the less inteliigent among them, and especially thr more intelligent ones-- aren't into  making devices that explode.

I would make the assumption -- though Iknow i could be worng, so I'm carefully wording that it's an assumption and not a statement of fact -- that woever creatdd this latest death trap was likely ot part of an extremely organized operation, such as, say, al Quaeda. I certainly could be wrong. Al Quaeda could have taken to creating the sort of explosive devices students who recieved D's in chemistry might be capable of making just to throw the rest of the world off their tracks. I doubt it, though. I'd have to guess that it's either a domestic group or a less organized foreign faction, but not al Quaeda. (Those words foreign faction always remind me of the Jonbenet Ramsey ransom note.)

I hope for the sake of the injured, the survivors of the deceased, and the rest of us who might be victimized in a future similar attack, the sub-morons who caused this mayhem are soon apprehended. The sooner the guilty are caught, and the less publicity they receive as they are locked away for life or worse, the less likely they are to repeat their actions or that copy-cat types are to engage in similar terroristic activities.

An Act Of Terrorism

I obviously have no new information to add to that which is already being disseminated by the many news outles concerning the tragedy that occurred in Boston. My prayers are with the families of those whose lives were lost (reportedly three at last count -- one an eight-year-old boy) and with those who were injured or traumatized byt the event.

As law enforcement is doing its job, may sanity prevail. My hope is that this not be used a a platform of anyoe's agenda.

To the three people who have died so far, and especially the little guy, rest in peace.

In addition to the of terrorism, the were also acts of heroism. The first responders acted exactly as they have been trained to do. Nurses, some of whom were there to provide first aid to the runners, instantly went into trauma mode when the situation called for it, undoubtedly minimizing the number if casualties. Some of these nurses had served in the military in  war zones, and, once they got past the transition from the idea that they were there to treat dehydration,  ankle sprains, and such,  drew upon their training to triage, to get injured people the help they needed, and to save lives.

President Obama, I love you and stand behind pretty much everything you do, but a terrorist attack is a terrorist attack. Calling it such is not premature. Yes, we must be cautious in terms of whom we attribute it to, but terrorism is terrorism -- foreign or domestic.

Cyber-Stupidity, in Addition to Other Issues

Fifteen-year-old Audrie Potts recently took her own life after seeing online video footage of her being sexually while unconscious at a party.  This is horrible on so many levels that I scarcely know where to begin. First and foremost, I wish this poor gorl had known that anyone with half of a functioning frontal lobe who saw or knew of this footage would have been on her side and not on the side of the thugs who abused her and thought their actions were worthy of online posting. no one with an ounce of humanity would have found anything funny in this act.

Perverts, rapists, and such have been around since before the time of  Christ.  What's new to the equation is technology.  I understand why third parties tape others in the commision of a crime and use the footage to bring the guilty party or parties to justice. Likewise, I understand why others film law enforcement officers exceeding what would be deemed "necessary force" in apprehending accused criminals. What I don't understand at all is why anyone would be stupid enough to film himself and/or his friends in the commission of a violent act, period, much less to go on to post it onto an online source.  Perhaps some crimes carry higher status among reprobates than do other crimes, but would these people videotape themselves breaking into a pharmacy after hours to steal drugs (they'd probably be so stupid that they'd walk out of there, if they were lucky enough to evade authorities, with pockets full of blood pressure medications and prescription-strength laxatives)? There don't seem to be a great deal of online video-footage sites featuring theft, vandalism, or other sorts of crime along such lines. Instead, it's usually sexual and/or violent crimes that are posted.  There must be more of a market for this sort of "entertainment."  I don't understand this, either, but apparently there are people out there in the cyber-world who get their jollies by watching such smut.

Perhaps I am an anti-constitutionalist -- a person who would undermine the first amendment rights of others --  but along with the right to host a website that allows individuals to submit videos should come responsibilities.  A person owning such a site should be responsible for monitoring the content. The person operating the web site should  have a very limted time , say thirty six hours, to remove and forward to the proper authorities anything criminal, particularly if the crime in question possibly involves a minor and/or is of a sexual or violent nature. If  the job is too cumbersome for YouTube or whomever else is allowing such illegal activity to be shown, perhaps the website operator needs to hire more staff to monitor the viideos posted or scale back its operations.

Perhaps existing laws need to be amended as well. I'm not an expert on what laws presently exist pertaining to the filming of rape or other forms of violence, but if they donesits, they need to be more aggressively enforced. In the instance of the filming (or posting) of anyone under eighteen  while being sexually assaulted, it would seem obvious that child pornography laws should apply in addition to any other charges. Laws should also exist for the filming and/or online posting of those over the age of eighteen being sexually assaulted or perhaps even physically assaulted. If this means government is taking away too many of our person freedoms, I don't really care. Take them away. (People who have a problem with the number of laws we have in the U. S. could always move to a nation with fewer laws. Somalia might be a good choice, as very few laws exist there.) Give the idiots who videotape and post such heinous activity something to think about before they pull out their cell phones and start taping as they take turns with whatever unconscious, overpowered, or otherwise incapacitated female (or male) who happens to be at the wrong party at the wrong time.

I'm not advocating underage drinking to the point of unconsciousness, but in the late Audrie Potts' case, we have no idea if that is what happened. Someone could have slipped something into her soda. It happened to a friend of mine. I suspect it happens more frequently than we would like to think.

Videotape was taken of my assault  by one of the two girls who were involved.   All that was visible of me, which was more than enough as far as I'm concerned, was a full-body shot  with nudity from the waist down; no sexual action occurred as the attacker was unable to maintain n erection. The police made a good guess as to what the cell phone's function was in the incident, and confiscated it to confirm their suspicions. The others had cell phones on them but no pertinent video footage was found. (Perhaps the police should have blurred my face and  body and posted the rest of the tape on YouTube; the the thug's limp organ once I threw up might have made for some interesting footage for his friends and family.)  I don't believe  charges pertaining to the videotaping of the incident were a part of the various charges that were made, or at least not included in the final plea bargain. That was over two years ago, though. Let's hope the legal system is at least in the process of catching up wih technology.

I don't know what I would have done if I had seen video footage online of myself being sexually assaulted. I would hope my reaction would have been to get even, not to end my own life. I haven't been in that exact situation, though. My thoughts are certainly with the family and with poor Audrie, whom I like to think is in a much happier place now, though that's probably of little consolation to her family now.

Sexually assaulting someone is horrific enough. Videotaping and broadcasting the attack online is beyond horrific. On the other hand, in theory, it should make it easier to apprehend and prosecute the morons who perpetrate such acts.  How stupid does a person hve to be to commit a felony and then to post video evidence of the act online?

My hope is that the victims understand that, humiliated as any of us would feel, the shame belongs elsewhere than upon the victim. Additionally, let's hope that the websites can take greater  reponsibility in catching and removing footage illegal acts of violence and in turning over evidence to the proper authorities.

I'm not sure I believe in a literal Hell, but if I'm wrong, I hope those involved in attacking Audrie Potts and in videotaping it enjoy a long and miaerable eternity there. In the meantime, my wish is for our justice system to function as it is desgned to function so as to maximize the time spent incarceration for each and every person involved in this despicable act. I don't particularly care how young they may have been, how bright their futures might have been, how they spent Saturday mornings volunteering in soup kitchens, that they were on track for admission to Stanford, or anything else.  I hope the rest of their lives are Hell on Earth.

For Those With TOO Much Time on Their Hands

http://duggarsblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/tour-duggars-pantry.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DuggarFamilyBlog+%28Duggar+Family+Blog%29

If you wish to take this opportunity to tour the Duggars' pantry, click on the above link, which will direct you to the appropriate site. By the way, if you're truly inclined to take the Duggars up on their hospitality, I have some other recommendations for ways you can spend your time at least as productively.

Tweet Jesse Spencer.  https://twitter.com/Jesse_Spencer   Ask him if his mum would be willing to videotape herself flushing her toilet in Australia so you can enjoy the view of the water swishing in the opposite direction in which you normally see it swish if you're from the northern hemisphere.

Tweet or IM Jan Crouch c/o her husband Paul https://twitter.com/PaulCrouch_TBN. Ask for a tour of the  closet (which  probably has greater square footage than my entire house) containing her hair supply products.

Tweet Donny Osmond https://twitter.com/donnyosmond to ask about his ratio of purple socks to non-purple socks. I heard he's going more mainstream and is occasionally seen in black socks.

Tweet or IM Judge Alex https://twitter.com/judgealexferrer to advise him against going on "Dancing with the Stars."  The Rock'em Sock'em Robot look hasn't been receiving particularly high scores the past few seasons.

Tour a Q-tip factory http://www.qtips.com/, either in real life or online. I don't know if an online tour is available, but since everything else is, why would that not be?

                         
 If you don't care to see the real thing, Roger MacDuff,  according to Knotty, does bear some resemblance to a Q-tip.  I'm inclined to agree.


Make an appointment to be counseled by Alyce LaViolette http://www.alycelaviolette.com/.You say you have no mental health issues. I can almost guarantee that after one session with Madame LaViolette, you will have one if not multiple mental heath issues.

The Trial of the Nano-Second: Snow White and Humpty Dumpty: she wouldn't have pushed him had he not battered her on a nightly basis

I didn't plan to blog about the Jodi Arias trial today, but I'm becoming like a crack addict who loses it when her  supply has been cut off.

While I hate much of Arizona and everything for which it stands (though I do like Flagstaff), I absolutely love the way their court system allows jurors to submit questions to the judge to witnesses.  Today MadameLaviolette answered the questions submitted by the jury.More correctly,   the judge read questions as submitted by the jury, and Madame LaViolette spoke after each question was asked. In some cases , what she said had very little to do with the question that was asked. In other cases, she answred a question that was similar to but not the actual question that was asked. In other cases, she restated the question in statement form, then paraphrased the statement aa few times. She must have read the sm book that my cousin gave me right befor I started high school on how to maintain a 4.0 or about without necessarily mastering course material. I wish i could recall the actual title and author of the book.

I never really needed te information in the book my cousin gave me, as I typically did my assigned readings, papers, projects, etc. The information provided in the book helped several of myfriends on more than one occasion, though.

One of the major points of the book is that a teacher, professor, or grader may read the first paper assigned for a course with some degree of attention. It would behoove you to put in the time and effort on that first paper.

After the first essay or research paper, readers/graders/professors are looking for length, format,  key phrases, and plagiarism.  Make your paper the required length. Don't exceed the required range of length because (A) it draws attention to your paper, and (B) the person charged with reading the papers already has plenty of reading to do. He or she does not want to read War and Peace in the form of your submitted paper.
If you're going to plagiarize, hire a trusted source whom you know won't steal something off the Internet and sell it to you as his or her original work. Cheating is one thing. Outright stupidity is another. Internet programs will catch any plagiarism that has been lifted from a source that has been found on the Internet or submitted to any Internet site.




Follow the assigned format, MLA, APA, or whatever. That's the one thing for which a grader always checks.

After the initial assignment, often a person reading papers merely scans. Be sure to include key words and pertinent phrases, and use them in correct context. Use a glossary at the end of a textbook for a reference, or scan assigned readings for good terms to randomly toss into a paper.

There is an art, as well, to passing tests.  The ideaof always choosing B or Con multiple choice tests isn't as fool-proof as it once was. Professors and teachers have actually gotten wise to that. Instead, out of the four or five possibilities, at least two will be ridiculous.  Both "all of the above" and none of the aobve" are popular answers, and it should be obvious which is correct: in the former instance, the answers will be sensible but overly simplified; in the latter instance, one or two answers may appear to make sense until you read closely, ut at least one or two will be very silly rendering an "all of the above" answer implausible.

You'll face more multiple choice answers in high school or junior college than in four-year college or university. That's because teachers/professors are inherently lazy, but if they have underlings onto which to dump the labor, essay questions become a much more attractive test option for the professors. The keys here are many. For one,  the teaching assistant usually has office hours just as the professor does. Visit the teaching assistant; don't make a total pest of yourself, but let him or her know you value his or her input.

When actually taking the test, if you know the correct answer, state it as clearly and eloquently yet concisely as possible. Spelling, grammar, and usage do matter. A tiny typographical error (laptops are often used now for university tests) will be overlooked, but writing as though you were home-schooled by a person who couldn't make it through eighth grade somewhere in the Ozarks will not escape the notice of the T.A. Even if your answer is, in principle, correct, its correctness will most likely be lost somewhere in the translation.

When taking the test, if you do not know the answer, this is where you can learn from Madame LaViolette.  Option A is to answer a question similar to the one asked if you are capable of answering a similar questionear all along even if it wasn't the question that was asked. Option B, if you're slightly more desperate, is to restate the question in statement form in about four different varieties. An alert grader will catch this but may not give a raccoon's anus, or may feel sorry for you, or may give you more credit than for which you are legitimately entitled for creativity and perseverence. Again, this is where your occasional visits dring office hours may pay off in the dividend. Good looks and/or charm and/or simply kissing up may be worth more points on an essay question than one might think.

If the question is such that you neither know the answer, can't write the asnwer to  similar question,a d for some unexplained reason cannot restate the question instatement form (perhaps you're suffering from temporary aphasia)  write about another topic you know to be near and dear to the professor and/or grader's heart. just a little ingenuity can tie your treatise to the assigned topic or question even if only slightly. If you make the point the professor or grader really wanted to hear espite what the assigned topic or question posed, you will score points.

The bottom line is that ever professor has a point of view. His T.A. has been apprised of this point of view. He or she has something that he wishes to impart to students, and he wishes to have it restated in every paper or exam. Find out what that pearl of wisdom is. tell it to him or her at every opportunity. You will win the game of higher education if you succeed in doing this.

Regarding Madame LaViolette, I'm confident she either read or wrote the book to which I referred earlier.  She's playing the game well in some respects -- answering parallel questions,restating the question in statement form, changing the topic and working in the key terms, and going off on tangents so far from the topic that only the closest of listeners will really believe that she would actually digress to the degree tat she did; they assume there must have been a connection that they missed.  The only way she may not ultimately prevail in this battel of witnesses (notice that I said the only way she may not prevail; her client, on the other hand has roughly the same chance of a clear acuittal that I have of becoming a Playboy ccnterfold in 2013, and I'm still a AA cup.) is that she hitched her wagon to a client who has no better than a snowball's chances in hell of being liked by a jury. Furthrmore, while Madame LaViolette herself may have come across as somewhat likeable early in the trial, her likeability factor is dropping faster than barometric pressure drops as a storm approaches.  Furthermore, there's no way around it: her "Snow White as a Battered Woman"  presentation was eventually destined to see the light of day, and anything long those lines not clearly labeled as fiction couldinvariably impact the credibility of the author only in a very bad way.
alexisar.blogspot.comI'm still waiting to hear how Humpty Dumpty figures into the scenario.

If, and this is a big if, I ever become an attorney, I plan to take the Arizona Bar Exam, provided  Arizona does not have bar status reciprocity with California (and I could never be so lucky). I intend to go to Arizona during a vacaton time and take on a fairly boring case, pro bono if necessary,  just to see how long I could get the case to drag on. Even though Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander  are not the names of people who are or were famous prior to this trial,  it is a capital murder case with a great deal of sensationalism attached to it due to the gruesomeness of the crime and the relative slowness of news in general at this particular time.  That by itself could lend length of time to the trial. still, my mom was on a jury panel for a first-degree murder that concluded in less than ten days, jury deliberation time included.   This trial is dragging.

My plan isto go to Arizona and defend an accused prostitute or someone similarly accused. My goal will be to drag the trial out as long as is humanly possible, to the extent, if such a thing is able to be included, of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest trial in the U.S. for a misdemeanor.

All of this talk of guinness reminds me that it is time for one of my 2.5  half-bottles of Guinness per week.

#  the non-artist still known as Alexis

It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Person

My dad has shingles. He didn't get the vaccine because he's among the medical researchers who think the medical community is over-vaccinating the populace.  I assumed that if he had it to do over again, he would've gotten the vaccine (my mom did even before he came down with the dreaded herpes zoster) but he says since the shingles were caught early and the overall impact should be minimal, he'd rather deal with shingles than take his chances with the vaccine.

I was actually the one who first diagnosed my dad's case of shingles. We all first thought kidney stones were the culprit, but my dad came home from the hospital with a negative CT scan.  No one at the hospital thought of shingles. They all thought it was a muscle strain. I said it was shingles. My dad said it didn't seem likely that all the MDs missed the diagnosis and an 18-year-old nailed it, but he said he was going to pick up an prescription for acyclovir the next morning just to hedge his bets. When he woke up this morning, the very beginning of the characteristic rash was present. He broke land-speed records getting to the hospital pharmacy, as there is a narrow window of opportunity during which the anti-viral medication will accomplish anything. After than, one must let the shingles run their course.

Shingles are not contagious in the sense that one cannot contract shingles from another person. A person who has not had chicken pox or who has low immunity to the virus can catch chicken pox from direct contact with a herpes zoster (shingles) lesion. We're being cautious since I've not had chicken pox. My immunity to chicken pox from the vaccine is less than if I had actually had a full-blown case of the disease. My dad is not walking around shirtless, is not touching his midsection, and is using hand santitizer as though it was H2O from the fountain of youth. My risk of contracting chicken pox from my dad is low.

I'm pondering both getting the shingles vaccine and being re-vaccinated with the chicken pox vaccine. It's been many years since I had it, and the verdict isn't in as to just how long it is effective.

My father was opposed to my brother and me getting the chicken pox vaccine, but my mom overruled him. She had such a horrible case of chicken pox when she was in kindergarten that she said she wouldn't wish chicken pox on her worst enemy. She took us to the doctor who was at the time our pediatrician and demanded that we be vaccinated. The doctor had no problem giving us the shot.

My heading sounds sarcastic, but it really isn't. My dad is actually a hell of a nice guy. He doesn't deserve shingles. I hope his case is extremely mild.

This Is The Trial That Doesn't End

This is the trial that doesn't end.

Yes, it goes on and on, my friend.

Some people took the witness stand not knowing what it was,

And they'll continue testifying forever just because  . . . .

Mean Girls, Anorexis, Speech Impediments, and Sensitivity

I have a somewhat morbid obsession with speech impediments. Someone might ask, "Why then, did you not pursue speech pathology as a career?" The answer is that I'm intrigued but not that intrigued. I wouldn't want to make it my life's work.

As the daughter of  mother who holds a doctorate in educational psychology (in addition to music performance) I was expected from an early age not to ridicule others with differences or disabilities.
It wasn't always easy to meet these expectations. When other kids were calling me "Anorexis" and (in the case of one girl) doing so with a lateral lisp ( in which air escapes from the sides of the mouth when the /s/ is made, producing  something that sounds more like /sh/ than /s/) .  It was difficult in such cases not to say something back to the person who was  insulting me using the speech impediment she used in insulting me. I knew, however, that had word gotten back to my mother, I would have been in trouble, so I kept my mouth shut when the girl with the  speech impediment called me "Anorexis."

By middle school -- the era  in which my nickname "Anorexis" was coined -- most kids with classic frontal lisps-- where the tongue sticks out and a sound resembling /th/ is produced in place of /s/, have usually outgrown them or had them remedied through speech therapy. The more difficult to correct, and thus more commonly lingering and remaining obvious speech impediments tend to be  lateral lisps, dysfluency [AKA stuttering], and inability to produce /r/, which occurs most frequency as a result of aphasia. In a gross oversymplification, aphasia has something to do with the inability of the brain and certain muscles to work together to physicallly make the movements that are necessarily to produce certain sounds.  The most common sound affected by this disorder is /r/, with /l/  and /y/ probably being the second and third  most frequent.

It's common for very young children to replace /r/ with/w/. By somewhere around the age of  four, more that half of English-speaking children living where a western or midwestern dialect is spoken have mastered the standard production of /r/.  It is generally considered that formal speech therapy should be sought if a child has not mastered /r/ by the age of seven.

Some adults never master /r/. In a perfect world, the person could move to Boston, where /r/, especially in medial and word-ending  positions, is often pronouced more closely to the way those with the particular form of apraxia impairing their respective abilities to produce the sound say it. Such is often not practical, unfortunately. Inability to pronounce /r/ in adulthood will most likely not be corrected.

One of my friends recently dated a guy who lacked the ability to pronouce /r/. During their dinner date, the guy was critical of what he considered the girl's rather large feet, in a way that she didn't feel was facetious or good-natured. (For the record, she wears a size 8 1/2 shoe and is 5' 5". The foot size-to-height ratio might be slightly large, although I've never made a study of such things.)  She said she was tempted to respond with, "But at least I can prononce my r' s," but she resisted the impulse. She chose instead to decline any future invitations from the guy. One would think that he might have known that he lived in a glass house, metaphorically speaking, and that he wasn't really in a position to make petty criticisms of someone else's shoe size or anything else, especially in a dating situation.

A girl in one of my  classes in an earlier quarter is named Jennifer. She lacks the ability to produce /r/, but I was initially unaware of this. Usually those who cannot produce /r/ substitute with /w/, but this girl instead  substituted with /l/ followed by a schwa sound, or unaccented syllable. So when I asked her name, she responded with "Jennifla." I thought it a slightly odd name, but far from the strangest name I've heard in this age when people are naming their children Imunique and Nevaeh [heaven spelled backwards] Jennifla seemed barely to the left of mainsteam. It was a class that was primarily lecture, with only limited input from students, and the professor called none of us by name. Our professor had us sign in rather than orally taking attendance, so I never heard him pronounce the gir's name, and she usually arrived after I did, so I didn't see her name in written form for quite some time. Then one day I was in line to sign in just after her, and I saw her name written as Jennifer. I felt like the most insensitive person in the world.

Dysfluency, or stuttering, is one of the most difficult speech disorders to correct, and is probably the most frustrating, especially to the person suffering from the disorder but also to those who communicate with the person suffering from the disorder. It can stem from neurological, emotional, or unknown causes.  One thing that is known is that the worst thing a person can do for a person suffering from this disorder is to say something like, "Just spit it out! We're waiting." No one is more frustrated by the situation than the stutterer himself.  A guy who usually sat in front of me in a music course has a severe case of dysfluency. Our professor asked us each week to give the number of minutes we'd devoted to practice of the instruments we were supposed to study. The poor guy would tell me his number of minutes in the event that he couldn't get it out when the instructor called his name. It was worst for him when he felt put on the spot. Like many stutterers, he has no dysfluency when he sings.

My mom remembers a girl from her high school days who had a fairly drastic lateral lisp - the kind that makes /s/ sound like /sh/.  The girl was very bright, though probably not as smart as my mom. The girl's parents were somewhat educated, and the girl received speech therapy with only limited success. According to my mom, this girl wasn't very nice to my mom, and made fun of my mom because she occasionally wore clothes that weren't terribly stylish because she didn't have tons of clothing and she was doing the laundry for her father and herself at that point since her own mom had died. Sometimes my mom would be too busy to do laundry, as she was doing the cooking and cleaning as well,  so she'd wear one of last year's outfits because it was at least clean.  This girl was fond, my mom said, of pointing out, usually in front of as many people as possible, the out-of-stylishness of my mom's outfits on the days she wore her outfits from the previous year.

This woman went on to become an attorney and eventually a judge somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.  My mom says even though she knows it's unkind to have such thoughts, she wonders if the woman ever was able to remedy her lateral lisp, or if she calls out "Objection Shushtained" or "Shidebar" each time either one is called for in her courtroom. My mom is nicer than I. I'd probably show up in the woman's courtroom to see it for myself.

Watch out folks; she'll chew you up.

Maneater

                                                                  courtesy of hall & oates

Madame La Violette, Snow White, and Humpty Dumpty

I understand why Dr. Drew and his colleagues are giving the Jodi Arias as much attention as they are. Nothing else of note is occurring in the news, at least among those who are more interested in true crime and Dancing With the Stars than with major world events. There's only so much to be said about Kim Kardashian's weight gain and choice of style in maternity clothing. I've violated my own principles by saying even THAT much about a Kardashian.

Some discusion is  taking place as to whether or not juror number five, who was dismissed from the jury, should be allowed to be to present for the remainder of the trial.  Since the public has no idea why the juror was dismissed, the discussion seems moot. We have no clue as to whether or not the conditions under which she was removed from the jury would be such that she should be barred from attending the trial. Some talking heads are speaking of her continued presence as grounds for a mistrial. In light of our lack of knowledge regarding the reason the juror was removed, it seems a  rather premature argument. The judge would want a mistrial less than anyone other than possibly Jodi Arias. If the judge felt that juror number five's continued presence at the trial were compromising the trial's integrity  in any way, one would have to assume she would ban the juror from the courtroom.

Juan Martinez was a little more on top of his game today than he had been previously. He did what my pseudoaunt said he should do, which was to ask the judge to compel  Alyce LaViolette  to answer yes or no questions in a "yes or no" format rather than resorting to telling stories or inserting her own agenda.  Ms. LaViolette's true colors are coming through more clearly, and she's demonstrating herself to be all shades of the spectrum of bat-shit crazy.

I didn't have time to watch extensive converage, but I believe at one point the defense attorney objected to one of Juan Martinez's questions, after which Jodi Arias herself sustained the objection. I don't know if she was merely thinking aloud or if she has even more delusions of grandeur than for which many of us  had previously given her credit.

I still don't know why much of Ms. LaViolette's testimony is being allowed. She's testifying to things that Jodi said Travis said, which is, any way it is interpreted, hearsay.  I understand that the judge has to err, if she's going to err, on the side of the defense, but hearsay is hearsay, and is almost never admissable in a court of law in the U.S.

I want to hear more about Madame LaViolette's treatise on how Snow White was a battered woman. Ms.  LaViolette would also be a fine therapist or whatever it is she calls herself to take on the case of what actually happened to Humpy Dumpty.  Maybe Humpty was the one battering Snow White. Perhaps Snow White finally snapped, stabbed him a few hundred times, shot him, then pushed him off a wall to make it appear a to be simple fall, all the while snapping pictures of the action. A little sloppy forensic work could  easily cover a few hundred stab wounds and a bullet hole or two..

Then again, maybe the dwarves, tired of seeing Snow White come in to clean their house and do their chores day after day with fresh bruises on her lily-white body, joined forces to take care of Humpty Dumpty once and for all. Any dwarf by himself, even with the advantage of anger-fueled adrenaline, would not have stood a chance against the rather stout Humpty, but if all seven of the dwarves had joined forces, who knows what they might have accomplished?  There CAN be miracles when you believe. (Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill, you know.)

For that matter, Humpty Dumpty may have stood trial for an unrelated charge and may have been prosecuted by the likes of Juan Martinez. The brutal battery of Martinez's questioning  of Humpty day after day may have driven Humpty to propel himself right over the edge of that wall. I can just hear it. Humpty: "Mr. Martinez, are you mad at me?" Any being as eggshell-fragile as Humpty Dumpty  could easily have been compelled to throw himself off the tallest of brick walls under such verbal fire.  Anyway, I'm fairly certain Ms. LaViolette's take on the topic would be far more interesting than anything I could ever imagine.

Deep in my heart, I do believe, this trial shall reach a conclusion someday.

All Will Be Well

                               My Favorite "Teen Angst" Anthem


It says Gabe Dixon Band, but mostly you just hear Gabe Dixon himself playing and singing. My Uncle Scott actually does this one better than Gabe Dixon -- he plays pretty much the same notes, but my Uncle Scott's voice is a little better. Still, I must give Gabe Dixon credit for having come up with the words and the music. 

This song received its first exposure beyond a few YouTibe hits when it was used  as a theme in some promotional commercials for Conviction, a Dick Wolf mid-series replacement (I think) featuring assistant assistant district attorneys. The series didn't survive past the first eight or so episodes. It shared Alexandra Cabot with SVU (at different times), but didn't last for long enough for Cabot's backstory to be explained so that the viewers could be told why she was able to safely come out of the Witness Protection program. When she re-emerged in SVU, it was as if Conviction had never happened, almost like it existed in an alternate universe. No mention whatsoever was made of Alex Cabot's time as a bureau chief in this particular crime-busting unit of young hotties.

More recently, the song was used in a Parks and Recreation episode.

It's a good song despite its dependence upon TV series for any exposure whatsoever.  I would have written it myself except that A) I didn't think of it; B) I don't write music, as it's a talent I do not possess.