Bob Dylan

Lil Monster

More after the jump

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Ahhh Vegas, how you won my heart liver and emptied my wallet. Your streets and dirty, your casinos are shiny, and your prostitutes are legal. I left you when I had no other choice, but mark my words, I’ll be back.

The full trip after the jump…

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I got to do my public service a few days ago and serve on my first jury on my very first jury summons. It was nice to be on the other side of the process for a change, although I never did have a jury trial in all my visits to the Pennington County Courthouse. I got there early in the morning and they shuffled all the potential jurors into a single room where they pulled panels of about 20-30 of us and escorted us off to various courtrooms for juror selection. I was selected in a group of 20 and we all went off to courtroom on the 3rd floor for a DUI trial. They needed 6 of us and pulled 12 of us from the group of 20 to sit down in the juror’s box. From there they asked us a number of questions and the DA and the Defense attorney decided that the 12 of us would do and excused the 8 who hadn’t been called or even questioned. From there we were questioned further and each attorney got to excuse 3 of us. It was the People of the State of Colorado vs. Kathleen McMullen (yes I can put her name here, it’s public record and the Judge stated we were allowed to talk about anything and everything now that the trial is over). The DA excused the youngest member, age 21, from the panel, an elderly man, and this tattooed kid who’s pops “ain’t working right now ’cause he just got out of jail”. The Defense Attorney, Mr. Sesna, excused one lady whos friend’s son was killed by a drunk driver, another who was a devout Christian, and an elderly lady who’s father was an alcoholic. That left me and 5 others as the selected jury in this case.

The DA called 3 police officers as witnesses. The defendant was pulled over on a Saturday night close to midnight for a busted taillight. The officer smelled alcohol on her breath and noted bloodshot watery eyes. He called a second officer in who did all the field sobriety tests. It was determined that he didn’t really do these tests right, his certification to administer such tests had lapsed, and she actually received a passing score on one of the tests. She was taken into custody and to police station where she blew a .113. The defense attorney had a neat little parlor trick where he took the mouth guard/spit trap, that’s attached to the Intoxilizer 5000 EN breath analysis machine, filled his mouth with water and blew through the mouth piece spraying water all over the court room, in an attempt to show that it wouldn’t prevent saliva, which could be much higher in alcohol concentration than deep lung air which is what’s supposed to be measured, from entering the test tube. The defense also called an expert witness who really wasn’t much help to their case.

Ultimately we found her guilty of the lesser charge of Driving While Ablility Impaired (DWAI) and went about our business. The case took 2 days and overall was an interesting process to take part in. I didn’t envy the defendany at all through the process and past experiences and tribulations certainly came to mind. All and all though we still had to decide the case based on the evidence presented and we just couldn’t ignore her breath test, as much as the defense attorney tried to shed doubt on the machine. She should’ve taken a plea and not wasted her money.

-Matt

Carson City Smackdown

Drunk Squirrel

Trick Bowling

L.A.S.E.R. Tag

Mike Tyson, 80s Cartoon intros, and more after the jump

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I think I watch too much TV. I decided to run the numbers. Currently there’s 12 TV shows that I would consider myself a ‘fan’ of and consistently catch every new episode. In no particular order it’d be The Office, My Name is Earl, 24, Heroes, House, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, Thief, The Shield, Sopranos, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Sarah Silverman Show, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Now, thank god all of these shows aren’t “in season” at the same time or I’d probably be a shut-in. Also, if it weren’t for the wonders of TiVo/DVR this list wouldn’t be possible. Shows once in my life, but have been bumped due to there being just so many hours in any given day would be The Wire, Deadwood, Robot Chicken, and Nip Tuck. I also catch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report whenever possible and tune in to The History Channel and the Discovery Channel for shows like How it’s Made, Dirty Jobs, The Mythbusters, and other one-time specials.

So yeah, even after just typing all that it would seem my original thought that I watch too much TV would appear to hold true. But how’s it really add up in comparison to the average human? What about the average American? Well according to these guys it’s 4 hours a day, while these guys think it’s a more modest 14 hours per week. The official count by A.C. Nielsen is 4 hours and 35 minutes, according to USA Today. The Office, My Name is Earl, 24, Heroes, and House are all currently running new episodes and get my undivided attention each week. Together they are a total of 4 hours of programming. I’d say I also watch reruns of South Park and Family Guy a couple times each week along with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and a handful of shows on the Discovery Channel. Throw in about 8 hours of other mindless crap and I’m sitting at roughly 22 hours of TV a week.

Whew! I’m below the average (American) of 32 hours a week. Even if you took the leap of faith that people take at least one day off I’m still below 27 hours a week. Which is understandable, because you’ve got to have time for video games somewhere, right?

One site I found stated that the average human watches TV 3.4 hours a day which puts me right on par.

Maybe the bumper stickers are right — kill your TV.

-Matt