The Agrinautica

   Today there was a ruckus at the Courthouse again. The verdict was due out for the so-called "Halloween Murders" of 2002, wherein five suspected gang members shot to death two victims and injured two others. The courthouse was abuzz this morning with discussion about the case. The courtroom was filled to capacity leaving many would-be attendees locked out. In the office of the court reporters there was discussion that they could have set up the recording equipment to hear it live down there if they'd thought of it beforehand. A small crowd of employees gathered around at the security station to watch the proceedings from the security camera view. There wasn't sound but it being an emotional event for those involved one could get a pretty good idea of what was going on based on body movements. Eventually I believe the defendants were found guilty of all fifteen charges.

   The clicheness of "Halloween Murders" unfortunately makes it very difficult to search google for information on the case. )=

Picture of the Day

Mystery Location!
Sepiatone = love

   I arrive at Court on Friday to find a table there is absolutely heaping with St Patricks Day themed desserts & snacks -- including TWO complete cakes, a set of cupcakes, as well as chips & dip et cetera. Someone remarks "If you want healthy food, its all in criminal division, they have celery & carrots and things." I wonder if the different faire is caused by subtle psychological nuances related to working in criminal versus civil division, or merely a groupthink effect forged by the personalities of people who happen to work in the respective divisions.

   On Saturday Kristy & I made an expedition to Roseville and retrieved my Mercedes.
   On Sunday I put the car through a trial run .. by driving it the 400+ miles from Davis down to Orange County.
   On Monday I hung out with my good friend Petty Officer 2nd Class Aaron Aviv, who's back on leave from the USCGC¹ WPC-13² Shamal. We (Him & I plus two of his friends) were nerdcore and went to this place that has like 200 networked computers and played Battlefield 2.
   Today is Tuesday, I don't know what I'm doing this evening yet, but hopefully I'm doing something.
   Tomorrow, Wednesday, I return to Davis.
   On Thursday, Kristy & I are seeing Franz Ferdinand in Sacramento.
   On Friday a large group of us, approximately consisting of the group of people who usually go on the annual New Years Tahoe trip (which didn't occur this year), will go on a roadtrip down to Vegas. We will return on Monday.

¹United States Coast Guard Cutter
²W? Patrol Coastal


   My internet is acting extremely wonky at the moment. Pages on livejournal & wikipedia are opening fine, but most other pages are not opening at all. Previous to these problems there had been no changes to the set up here since last night when everything was working fine -- except Myspace;
   Myspace is also not loading at all now, but yesterday my login would bring me to the "register new user" page. If I typed in an obviously bogus login, it would tell me I had the wrong username/password, and I further confirmed that it was recognizing my login by telling it I forgot my password and verifying that the information it sent back to me was what I was typing in -- so for some reason its recognizing my login as not a nonaccount or incorrect login, but sending me to the register new account screen.
   And of course AIM is down. This is all extremely alarming because AIM is the principal way I communicate with people and during my very short stay here its extremely important to me to try to make the most out of my visit and see as many of my friends as I can. Myspace is also important to this goal.. I was able to briefly get through and post a bulletin announcing I'm in town, but otherwise I'm cut off from myspace as well for some reason. )=
   Update 9:24pm - things seem to be working better now.


In Other News: So I have a radio in my room here, unlike in Davis, so I'm catching up with whats on the radio now ... and its SHIT. Man what crap, I'm not missing anything. I'm suprised by how often Green Day - When September Ends is still on, man I loathe that song. I can't believe such an obnoxious affliction to the ears was spawned by Green Day. --update 6:44 GOD ITS ON AGAIN!!!! IT MAKES ME WANT TO DIE


Picture of the Day

Bailey celebrates St Patricks Day
He had a moment of celebrity as the St Patricks Day image on the front page of Daviswiki for most of the day.
See also: stuffonmycat.com

   Like I said, my camera is working again. This is the Yolo County Superior Courthouse, where I spend much of my time these days.

   Note the POW/MIA flag that flies in front of the Courthouse. It always seems to me that this flag must seem slightly ironic to the many who come and go from the Courthouse in chains.
   Incidently, Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the POW/MIA flag. I've always wondered what the deal is with it.










   All in all the Courthouse is kept pretty spotless. This is the only graffiti in the restroom. Given that its in a pretty visable location and it appears that graffiti around it has been erased, I think the maintanance people have found it amusing.

   On my first day working there my supervisor Gail looked over the filing I was doing and remarked "good, it looks like you're doing it all right ... but of course if you weren't it would be my fault for improperly instructing you." This struck me as a particularly enlightened philosophy others should take note of -- that if one has subordinates and they are operating sub-par, rather than blame it all on them, the ranking individual should consider it entirely their own responsibility to ensure quality operations.


In Other News:
   (1)Contention continued throughout the day on the Rob Roy / Talk page regarding whether the wiki would include any references to his allegedly racist public statements. Thomas Lloyd repeatedly declared himself to have won the argument and deleted all references he found offending, but I wouldn't let him get away with it. Then Lloyd dropped the Libel word, which is becoming somewhat like Godwin's Law on the wiki¹ I think (the Abebnego Woods troll alleged libel the other day as well), and illustrated his point with a link that clearly damaged his own point.
   Lest you get the wrong idea, it should be noted that I have not added any of the disputed content myself, and am not saying I think he's a racist; I am standing against the suppression of unfavored viewpoints & a double-standard in reporting.

   (2)Jurists across the world were saddened the other day by the death of Slobodon Milosevic while in custody in The Hague. Slobo's death denies thousands of the justice his conviction would have brought them.

¹"As a wiki discussion grows longer, the probability of someone incorrectly alleging libel approaches 1." - Call that Kris's Second Law (The first is that if the potential for drama is enough, anyone can and will find your livejournal)

Previously on Emosnail
   Year and a Week Ago Yesterday: The Politics of Character Assassination - More on the drama in MUN: I post links to the opposing arguments. Also, the BBC calls me for an opinion on US Supreme Court Cases (true story).
   Year and a Week Ago Today: UCBMUNC 2005 - In the middle of all our MUN drama we decide to all pack into a small hotel room or two for a weekend. We survived with fairly little intrigue considering. I think I was the only one to win an award (Shemek might have as well?)
   Year Ago Last Wednesday: Classified - Classified. Sorry for the broken picture links.
   Year Ago Last Thursday: Elections & Disenfranchisement - The new ASUCD Senate is seated "ushering in an era of unprecedented diversity of affiliation on the Senate." In contrast, with the seating of this year's new Senate, the Leadite party controls 2/3rds of the Senate, the Executive Office, and has appointed all but one of the Supreme Court Justices (I was a Focus appointee).
   Year Ago Last Friday: The Emo-Agricola International - In an international development I've found reason to cite with suprising frequency in the year since, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa attempts to resign only to have his resignation rejected by the Bolivian Senate. Also, the former president of rebel Chechnya, Aslan Maskadov, meets a humble end at the hands of his own bodyguards in a basement. Also, a hawt picture of Kristy.
   Year Ago Yesterday: Senate Finds Chief Justice to Have Jedi Powers - Sen. Darth Lloyd was instrumental in convincing them that I used mind tricks to cause 9 Internal Affairs Commissioners & 12 Senators to think that a 5 line Bill meant the opposite of what it actually meant. And I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those pesky kids "your mind tricks don't work on me" Kalen the Hutt! Also the Lebanese Prime Minister tries for the second time to resign, but once again his resignation is rejected by the parliament.

   After some delays, I finally began working at the Superior Courthouse in Woodland yesterday. I lurk amid bookshelves of records that move back and forth on tracks. When these aren't sufficient, one must get records from either "the bunker," or "the vault." I think there's a third location as well. The courthouse is primarily peopled by two types of people -- bureaucrats who also spend their day wrangling records, and sheriffs deputies. The sheriffs deputies wear all black uniforms, and seem to without exception be about as friendly as an imperial stormtrooper. Occasionally, one will also see prisoners being escorted about in striped pajamas like in cartoons (seriously!).

   During lunch I went across the street to the Fat Cat Cafe. There I encountered none other than the prosecutor from my jury-duty experience last Spring, one Tim Wallace. When I mentioned that I thought he dismissed me because he thought I was an anarchist, he responded with "hah, ME?" and made this face as if to say I should be well aware that he himself is practically an anarchist. He also mentioned having written a letter-to-the-editor the other day strongly criticizing the Chancellor vis-a-vis the Celestial Rose Scandal (I'm guessing in the Davis Enterprise?). After he left someone else approached the defense attorney he'd been chatting with and tried to convince him to have a particular witness testify. I felt like I was in a movie or something.


In Other News: Interned Japanese-Americans are no longer banned from Davis.

Picture of the Day

I think this has got to be the coolest picture ever taken

   So today I found myself testifying under oath in the Yolo County Superior Court as to what I believe my mohawk represents, and later bringing an entire courtroom to applause. Much later managed to get 52 persons into a room in Olson for an hour and then went to the City Council meeting as an encore. Altogether it was a very successful day.

   This morning I had jury duty in Woodland. This caused me to be a bit torn because I was from the start intrigued, curious and interested in participating, but at the same time I really didn't have time. So I wore my mohawk up and figured they'd surely dismiss me for it.
   I was one of the original 18 jurors selected for questioning and one of the last ones dismissed. Of probably around six jurors dismissed during the cause dismissals, three of them were because they knew the prosecuting lawyer. He's from Davis, chances are someone reading this knows him, seeing as apparently out of a random sampling of 18 people from Yolo county he knows 1/6th of them. Unfortunately his name escapes me at the moment. [Tim Wallace, see 02/18/06]
   One juror acted quite crazy, and quite determined not to be on the jury. I wouldn't be
suprised if he was faking the craziness. If he really was so crazy why would he be so determined to get off the jury? On the subject of being biased towards police officers, one lady who looked to be about forty and very frumpy casually mentioned she'd recently had relationships with "six sheriff-deputies from Yolo County" omgwtf. The judge casually responded that the officers involved in the case weren't
sheriff's-deputies.
   Most of the selection process proceeded without giving me reason to speak up to any of the questions. Finally towards the end the prosecutor asked "so.. Mr Fricke. You have very interesting hair. Could you explain what it means?" or something to that effect. I think he expected me to quickly incriminate myself as a crazy radical, but my answers portrayed me to have a rather healthy under-standing of the relevant principals (I like to think anyway), which led to even more questioning. One of his early questions for me was to the effect of "what do you think of the American legal system" (he no doubt suspected I'd clearly identify myself as a no-good anarchist), but my answer of "excellent" thoroughly flummoxed his hypothesis. In his probing he asked what I was studying and intended to do. When I said that I was IR and pre-law and thought maybe I'd go into diplomacy and negotiate treaties, he said "so.. you want to work for the Bush administration?" (somewhat humoristically) to which I responded "I want to work with for the United States government," and this interchange brought the whole courtroom to applause.
   After this I rather expected the defense was more likely to dismiss me since I had generally expressed a strong belief in the rule of law, however (once four people in a row had been dismissed from "seat 11" - when someone in seats 1-12 was dismissed someone from 13-18 was shuffled into the lower 12) it was the prosecutor who said "Mr Fricke, I like you, but I'm not gonna take a chance with that hair."
   In conclusion, you want to get out of jury duty, mohawk your hair beforehand.

   Upon returning from Woodland, I had to hit the ground running because Michael Newdow was coming at 7:30 to speak for Phi Alpha Delta and I was organizating it. I nearly died from stress over the event, but it all worked out and we had good attendance (51) and I think everyone enjoyed it.
   From there I went to the Davis City Council meeting where they were discussing
implimenting choice voting. I found this meeting positively brimming with tension between mayor pro tem Sue Greenwald and the other four councilmembers, including such comments as "I won the election, the rest of you need to be mature and accept that" (having gotten teh highest number of votes last election, Greenwald will be the next mayor), accusations that other members were "thwarting democracy," and councilmembers attempting to speak at the same time (repeatedly). It was definitely such sauce.

   This previous weekend was the MUN conference we host here at Davis for HS students. As soon as the high school students started arriving saturday morning one of them came up to me and was like "You're emosnail aren't you! Its like meeting a celebrity!"
   Also, as I was leaving at around 12:30 Saturday night, I was walking past Sproul when I noticed only a single window was lit on the building, on the second floor. Glancing up I noticed familiarly pointy hair and glasses. "Lamar?" says I, causing Lamar Heystek to stand up and look around like a meerkat. Turns out he was working on his weekly column, about which he said "this time its going to be good I swear."


In Other News: Yesterday when I went into MyUCDavis, there was a notice asking us to take a survey for the UCD student polling unit, with this incentive: "As a small token of our appreciation, we are giving the first 1500 students who answer the survey a debossed BREATHE wristband (similar to thehe Livestrong band)"
   In addition of course such bands with things like "princess" written on them can be found at various retail locations. I think its very very sad that something that started out as a symbol of support for a certain charity is now being copied into completely frivolous forms because its become fashionable.
   I don't expect such knavery not to appear in retail stores, but for university unit to participate is increasingly deplorable.