.soap box.

Saturday 10 October:
Dax came and woke me up around 9:30am last Saturday morning.
the PSE was off at an art sale, [see tomorrow's post,] so that meant Dax and i were hanging out all day.
i got out of bed, did my morning things and puttered around the House for a bit.
i had oven pretzels and some oranges for lunch then Dax and i went out around 12:30pm.

Dax decided she wanted to go to the Secret Playground, which is one of the half-dozen playgrounds within walking distance from our house.
but unlike all the others, this one is owned and operated by Anarchists, made of old palates nailed together with little regard for building codes of structural integrity.
it's a play-at-your-own-risk kind of playground, and i like it in spirit, for what they are trying to do.
though, as a dad it does kind of make me a bit nervous.
but i repress that nervousness, and basic survival instinct, because i think it is important to engage in risky play.
for Dax's child development as well as my own general worldview.

the Secret Playground can be accessed off the street, in the junkyard part of town, or it can be accessed via the back way, if you follow a creak through a homeless camp.
Dax and i like to go in the back way.
so we drove a few blocks over to the mouth of the creek and followed the path past piles of garbage and graffiti and a guy taking a leak.
the graffiti was nice, a lot of FUCK TRUMP! and FUCK ICE! and FUCK ISRAEL! which maybe could use a bit more nuance, but isn't necessarily incorrect.
the guy taking a leak gave us a friendly waive.
then we crossed over some rocks in the stream to get to the Secret Playground and we spent the next three hours climbing around on their improvised and haphazard playground equipment.

Dax and i climbed up rickety ladders to planks of wood hammered high into trees.
Dax was a little scared on her first climb up and down, reasonably so, but after proof of concept that she could do it, she was brave and did it all on her own without issue the next several times.
great job Dax!
i pushed Dax on a swing-set that was only tenuously anchored to the ground, then we went and looked at a clutch of chickens that live in a pen on the grounds.

after a while Dax was over-warm and needed some water.
she was wearing a sweater and she wouldn't take it off and be topless because of some terrible sense of preschool modesty.
i tried to tell her that if you are hot you should just undress, that your comfort is more important then societal expectations, but Dax has a real sense of propriety and i don't know where she gets it from.
i didn't bring Dax's water bottle because sometimes i fail as a father, and it looked like we were going to have to head home, but then we went over to the trailer at the front end of the park and found it unlocked with a group of people having some kind of Troika about Anarchist Playground Management.
the Troika invited us in and gave us water and ice and a couple granola bars.
we sat there getting our energy back then took another cup of ice water to go sit in the shade for a bit.

Dax and i sat on a bench overlooking an improvised soccer pitch and threw rocks at seven different kinds of sports balls.
we drank our water and ate out granola bars and then tried to chuck the spots balls into a basketball hoop hammered into a tree.
then we went back to climbing on all of the makeshift equipment and doing other playground things.

it took another hour for me to get Dax to finally be done.
she didn't want to leave, but it was getting late and she still hadn't had lunch [she ate a late second-breakfast,] and i felt the need to get food in her sooner rather then later.
before we left we went back to the trailer where the Troika was set up to have one more drink of water each, then return and wash their plastic cups.
as we did all that i talked to the Troika for a bit about how they operate this facility then i offered them a modest donation of a hundred dollar bill.
both for their kindness in helping me and Dax in our time of need, and because i believe in what they are trying to do here.
fuck safety regulations and fuck the government!

on the way out of the Secret Playground Dax and i passed under an overpass that Dax wanted to climb.
the overpass was carved into stair shape, so we climbed up, up, up, up, up them.
it was scary because there was no ledge and the steps were covered in dirt and pebbles that Dax could slip on.
a fall from anywhere at the mid-point or higher would definitely kill her, but yet, here i was, indulging this foolish adventure because i am a fucking pushover.
once we got safely to the top of the train overpass Dax wanted to go across the overpass to the other side and then climb down.
christ, Dax! but i found a path that was inset a few feet from the edge so we took that path and started heading to the other side.
that path was at a pitch, which got steeper as we got closer to the other side, and, soon enough it was at such an angle that Dax slipped down and tumbled towards the edge.
i grabbed Dax, but then i started to slide down the pitch myself and the only thing that stopped us both from tumbling to our doom was that i planted my leg against a tree.
i got Dax back on the path and we made it the rest of the way to the other side and we climbed down those stairs.
i didn't let go of Dax until we were, like, five feet off the ground.
my heart didn't stop pounding until we were halfway down the trail on sold ground and back to the car.
Dax didn't seem to have any idea that she almost died and just continued on with her fun adventure.
i don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

it was after 4:00pm when we returned to our car and drove over to a Mexican place for a late lunch.
i got two tacos ad Dax got a bean-and-cheese burrito.
we took our lunch over to the bunker where the PSE was selling her ceramics for another hour.
Dax and i had a taco picnic in the parking lot then went in to check on the PSE.
business was not great. [see tomorrow's post.]
i left Dax with the PSE to go walk around the art bunker and look at all of the offerings from a bunch of Lesbians and witches.
i ran into a witchy Lesbian Investigator from work who was looking for a Tarot Reading.
she said she was able to buy the cards, but couldn't find a practitioner to tell her what they meant.
i thought about offering to do it, i can make up nonsense with the best of them but my hands were covered in taco spillover, so i decided not to make a mess of her brand new deck.

after Dax and i left the PSE's art sale we went back to the House to sit quietly for maybe a half hour before it was time to go get everybody dinner.
Dax and i drove to an Indian place to get dinner for her and me and the PSE, then we had to go to the McDonald's across the street and wait in an unreasonably long drive-through queue to get chicken nuggies and french fries for my Mother.
because my Mother is a fucking child and only eats beige things.
by the time Dax and i got back from our food run the PSE had returned from her day selling ceramics.
we ate our dinner, then i went and sat on the couch and fell asleep immediately.
Dax and the PSE took an after-dinner walk but fuck you guys! i'm done!
i woke up in time to do Dax's nighttime things and then i watched a movie.
after the movie i stayed up writing LiveJournals and fucking around on the computer until 2:50am.

Sunday 11 October:
i woke up at 12:30pm last Sunday afternoon and got out of bed sometime after 1:00pm.
i spent the rest of the day puttering around the House, hanging out with the PSE and Dax but mostly writing LiveJournals.

at dinner time, the PSE just kept on sitting on the fucking couch, so i had to take responsibility for feeding my family.
i warmed up my leftover Indian food for myself, and i put several chicken nuggies from a frozen bag on a tray and heated them up in the toaster oven for Dax and my Mother.
i served that to them with carrots and cherry tomatoes.
the PSE didn't have anything. i don't know what her problem is.

after dinner the PSE and Dax and i took a walk, like we almost always do.
this time, however, the PSE had the idea to take our walk over in a different neighborhood, the nice part of town with the million dollar houses – The Old North End.
the PSE feels better walking around neighborhoods where people have money.
when there are too many poors around, or even just evidence of their existence, the PSE gets upset.
so we drove to the nice part of town and we parked and we walked around several blocks, looking for houses that had decorated for Halloween.
we saw some light-up spider webs and a few plastic tombstones.
the highlight of the tour, however, was one house with maybe a dozen gigantic anamatronics that would move and talk.
that house must have spent north of $4,000 on all that shit, and, even more notable, the amount of space that it must take up in their attic!
about halfway past the large, corner property Dax got scared and said “can we leave? i'm scared!” but then, after we moved along she said that she wanted to go back, so we did.
good for you Dax, for overcoming your fear! well done!

back at the House we put Dax to bed, then i had a shower, watched a little TV, flossed and brushed my teeth, and wrote some more LiveJournal.
the PSE went to bed around 12:30am and i suggested we have a spot of sexual intercourse, but she wasn't into it.
maybe some other time, PSE? huh?
i went to bed around 1:30am unsatisfied.

//[AVAST YE!]

Last Thursday At Work:
my alarm went off at 8:33am last Thursday morning.
soon thereafter i had to get out of bed, do my morning things, get dressed, kiss my family goodbye and get off to work.
but, rather then turning left to head into Downtown, i turned right to head out towards the jail.
i arrived ten minutes later, which was a few minutes before 9:30am.
i checked in with the Front Desk, went through Security, then went back to the inner lobby where i met my Felony Docket Partner.
together, we went up to see a Client.

my Felony Docket Partner was set to go to trial the following week for a Client charged with Assault on a Peace Officer after he had a scuffle with a Deputy at the jail and yanked on his nuts.
the Client also has a separate Possession of Contraband case after they found a chunk of plaster in his jail cell that obviously just fell off the jail cell wall.
that one is stupid, but the Jail Assault case is going to be rough.
plus he is up for a Probation Revocation for an Arson case that he previously plead to.
anyway, with all that going on the Client is looking at a minimum of six years in prison, maybe as much as twelve years because, if we lose at trial the Jail Assault is mandatory consecutive to the Arson.
my Felony Docket Partner was able to get a plea offer to resolve all three cases with just two years in prison, which he should absolutely take because he has eleven months of credit already.
but the Client doesn't want to take that deal because he is fucking insane.
that's why i was there.

i have a pretty good reputation around the Office for being able to talk to the Clients and to help them see what's in their best interests.
a lot of my Colleague don't really know how to talk to our Clients, all they know is comfortable socioeconomic status, law school and the tedious empathy of Nice White People but i've spent decades talking shit with scumbags and being able to make things make sense to them is one of my strong suits.
so i met my Felony Docket Partner and we went up to see her Client.
we sat in the visiting room for a while until a Deputy came out to tell us “yeah, he doesn't want to come out of his cell...”
he said he was going to go get the Jail Social Worker and see if she could use some gentle words to come out and see us.
i wasn't too optimistic, but eventually the Client came around.
but he did not sit at the table with us. he stood in the corner by the door for the whole hour.

ultimately, i was not able to convince the Client to take the government's offer.
i used all my tricks 'this will get you out sooner...' 'look at all of this credit for time served that you have!' 'the food in prison is better then at the jail...'
the Client didn't bite on any of that, because the Client is absolutely insane.
the Client spent the whole hour telling us his nutso ideas about how criminal prosecutions are supposed to be run.
-he cannot be brought to trial until he has had lunch with the Judge
-everybody in the Courtroom must speak at the same volume. it is illegal to whisper
-everybody in a Courtroom must face in the same direction
-his attorney, my Felony Docket Partner, must wear the same clothes every time she meets with him and at every court appearance and, after the conclusion of his case, those clothes must be destroyed.
[to my Felony Docket Partner's credit, she did make a point to wear the one top that the Client said he liked, which is both sweet and fucking crazy on her part.]
the Client also had several other nutty things to say like:
-convoluted ideas about the order in which criminal defendants can appear in Court, based on their race
-elaborate ideas about the symbology and placement of different kinds of door knobs, based on their shape and material
-Sheriff's Deputies are trying to feed him Queer Food – he did not elaborate on what that was, but told us to look it up.

soon after the Client came into the meeting room and started spouting his nonsense i gave up on trying to sell him a plea.
even if he wanted to take one, which he emphatically did not, it would have been unethical for us to let him sign the paperwork.
this guy was clearly out of his mind.
so, we hung out for an hour letting him filibuster us with his crazy ideas, then we thanked him for taking the meeting and left around 11:45am.
when we got into the parking lot i turned to my Felony Docket Partner and told her we cannot ethically go to trial with this guy.
later, back at the Office, she filed a Motion to raise Competency.
she's been down this road before, three different times, and on three occasions two different Psychologists wrote reports opining the guy Competent To Proceed, but still, the way this guy was acting, we don't have a choice to try again.
we'll see what that's worth.

after leaving the jail i drove back downtown, parked at the YMCA, and stopped at a pizza place for garlic knots and a salad.
that came to $12.45, but i only had a $100 and a $10, and the pizza guy couldn't make change so he just took my tenner.
that was nice.
i took my lunch back to my Work Office Downtown and ate with my lunchtime friends.
i helped an investigator do her crossword by telling her the name of Popeye's nemesis, Bluto.
on the other side of lunch i spent the next two hours sorting through my e-mail in box.
i got it down to zero by 3:25pm when my alarm went off and it was time to go pick Dax up from Preschool.

Last Friday At Work:
my alarm went off at 8:33am last Friday morning, but i didn't get out of bed until 9:20am.
i was fucking tired.
but, i had to get shit in line for next week's Felony Docket Day and i hadn't even gotten started, so eventually i forced myself out of bed, did my morning things, kissed my family goodbye they rode my motorcycle off downtown.
i arrived sometime after 10:00am.

at 10:30am i had a jail call over WebEx with a Client with two different Motor Vehicle Theft cases.
the Client was set for a Preliminary Hearing and we needed to figure out what he wanted to do.
i went over discovery with him in both cases and, yeah, he was caught in two stolen cars.
then we went over the government's plea offer which was basically open, meaning Probation, the Halfway house or 2-6 years in prison.
but, with the Client's lengthy criminal history, he'll be going to prison on an open offer.
the Client told me that he's been in and out of carceral facilities since he was thirteen and he'd really like an opportunity to get off the heroin and get some rehabilitation instead.
i told him that was likely wishful thinking, fucking prosecutors never met a person they didn't want to ruin, but that i would do my best to try to convince one to do otherwise.
he said he was willing to waive his right to a Preliminary Hearing for that.
also, while going through Discovery in one of his cases i determined that another one of my Clients is potentially a witness or an alternate suspect, which means i got to Conflict off of that other case.
so, one down, ninety to go!

at 11:15am i had an Office Conference with a Client.
she turned up at 11:00am, but i kept her waiting in the lobby until i finished my 10:30am WebEx call.
this lady was charged with Menacing for waiving a kitchen knife at her brother after an argument.
it was the lady's first time in the criminal process and she was absolutely insufferable about it.
every time i tried to go through the police reports in discovery with her she would interject to say how wrong it all was and how it really went like this instead, and how she has PTSD for all kinds of reasons she would get so spun up, it was insufferable.
get yourself under control, lady!
i don't respond well to that kind of self-indulgent anxiety. i don't engage with those feelings at all and i just get exhausted and dismissive.
ultimately i told her we would just ask to set her case over and i'll negotiate her a plea and she can take it or not, but that's a decision for another time.
meanwhile, get the fuck out of my office!

at noon i went down to the Training Room for a training from some guy who owns a Sober Living Home.
he was a former Mexican gang-banger who did some time at the Halfway House before he found god and now he is trying to help other people, or whatever.
it was the kind of sob story that sells to idiots, but beneath it all the guy's just got himself a new grift.
i wasn't going to go to this Training, and really, only maybe twenty people did out of an office of 160, but i like and respect the Supervisor who put this presentation together, and this guy was somebody she knows.
i sat there in the training room until 12:30pm and after that i went to go get myself a hamburger from Indian Hamburger.
i brought that back to the Office and ate with my lunchtime friends and talked shit until 1:30pm.

at 1:30pm the Front Office called to say i had another Client waiting for another Office Conference.
this guy was charged with strangling his girlfriend.
i talked to him about that, and about witness chicken, and it was a pretty run-of-the-mill Client visit, but then we got to talking about Andrew Jackson Jihad, and folk punk generally, and it was nice to get a Client that i could relate to on that level.
i mean, i generally like my Clients, but i find that i usually like a guy a little extra if he is a punk rocker.

after my last Office Conference of the day i spent the rest of the day calling other Clients, e-mailing Prosecutors and otherwise trying to get things in order for Felony Docket Day.
that all took me to 6:30pm, somehow.

//[AVAST YE!]

Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2, or maybe Daredevil - Season 5, depending on how you're counting:
Daredevil: Born Again is a show about Daredevil, a blind lawyer and Catholic who fights crime dressed up as an acrobatic devil.
i am a guy who takes comic books pretty seriously, but i never really gave too much of a shit about Daredevil, because there isn't a lot there.
but then, maybe a decade ago, the people at Netflix got their hands on the Daredevil intellectual property and made a pretty good show.
what was notable about it was the realistic fight sequences, the way Daredevil would punch criminals seemed like it had a kind of wet brutality that a lot of other comic book media did not have.
most of the other karate fights on TV were highly choreographed and glossy, in a way that felt silly.
Netflix had three seasons of their Daredevil show before the gods at Disney, who own Marvel Studios, took their intellectual property back.
they made their own Daredevil TV show which might be a continuation of the original three seasons, or might be its own thing. i think it is a continuation of the original three seasons.

Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2 starts off right where Season 1 left off.
the Kingpin has gotten himself elected the Mayor of New York and his administration is boarish and corrupt and obviously Trumpian.
Kingpin consolidates power, manipulates the media, forms a private militia / cult of personality, and scapegoats masked vigilantes as a scourge on the city, promising a return to law and order and safety and security at any price.
over the next ten episodes political norms fall away, a police state ramps up and the Kingpin sets up special courts to try vigilantes, or anybody suspected of aiding and abetting vigilantes, or any of his political enemies, really.
Daredevil spends most of the season working to try to uncover evidence of Kingpin's corruption.
much of this is focused on a shipment of small arms that passed through a port that the Kingpin owned, that was headed for Guinea Bisseou where the CIA was funding some kind of guerrilla adventure.
the Kingpin enjoyed the CIA's support for just this reason, but he soon lost them and everybody else.
meanwhile, Daredevil's blind lawyer alter ego spends most of the season laying low, but he emerges in the last episode to defend his lover / paralegal who has gotten herself put on trial for vigilantism.
the Blind Lawyer outs himself as Daredevil in front of a televised trial audience, but, while doing so, he is able to help prove that the Kingpin knew about the gun smuggling, and the city finally turns on him.
when the Governor and the police finally come to try to oust the Kingpin, he tries to instigate a January 6th, but he ends up getting reverse-January 6thed instead, and the citizenry comes to run him down.
the Attorney General intervenes and offers the Kingpin immunity if he would just resign and get the hell out of the country, and eventually the Kingpin takes the deal once he realizes he can't punch his way out of the maddening crowds who were there to tear him to shreds.
then Daredevil gets arrested for all of those many, many, many extrajudicial assaults that he's been committed over the years. the end.

Season Two of Daredevil: Born Again was sometimes alright, sometimes dumb.
i didn't love all of the Trump allegory.
i mean, sure, President Trump is a bad guy, corrupt, authoritarian, whatever, but he is also pathetic and sloppy and old and gross.
Kingpin has a virility to him and his ego and thirst for power are kind of cool.
there is a scene in the end where the people of New York have turned on him and are attacking him and he's just beating the piss out of them by the dozens, and that's pretty cool.
President Trump couldn't do that. he gets winded trying to touch his toes.
also, all the Resist! Rebel! Citizen Uprising that was going on in the background just seemed like a cringy power fantasy.
like, guys, if you want to stand up to the Trump Regime, just do it! making a TV roman à clef about it doesn't do anybody any good.

also, not for nothing, but there is a huge difference between scapegoating Mexicans and sexual minorities, and scapegoating vigilantes.
Mexicans and sexual minorities have a right to exist and i don't know that vigilantes do.
is the Kingpin wrong to crack down on masked vigilantes running around New York City?
he did it as a way to consolidate his own power, to scapegoat and to facilitate his corrupt business practices, but, he wasn't necessarily wrong.
his motives were bad, but his goal wasn't, necessarily.
as opposed to President Trump, who is wrong in both concept and execution.
if you're going to make two whole seasons of TV predicated on Trump Bad! you should at least be able to make a cogent argument about why your fake-Trump is bad.
but i'm with Kingpin on this one. Vigilantes roaming the streets is a bad thing and should be stopped.

for vacillating between being interesting and being silly, for trying to do some good anti-authoritarian storytelling but missing the point entirely, for making the argument that lunatics who put on spandex and go out and beat up criminals are good guys but trying to stop that kind of madness is somehow bad, Season Two of Daredevil: Born Again earns a 5.3/10.

The Punisher – One Last Kill:
The Punisher is a Marvel Comics character who's gimmick is that he kills people.
which is uncommon for most comic book characters, which normally have a pretty PG tone.
when i first got into collecting comic books when i was in middle school, at first i only collected Punisher comics, because Punisher is the kind of character that speaks to twelve year old boys.

The Punisher – One Last Kill is another TV show that is a Marvel cash-grab from some old intellectual property that they thought they didn't want.
Marvel let Netflix make a TV show out of The Punisher eight or ten years ago, and when that proved to be successful, Disney / Marvel took it back. a bunch of fucking Indian-givers at Disney.
but Disney / Marvel never really did anything with The Punisher.
a character like The Punisher doesn't really fit in with The Avengers or Spider Man.
he's not quippy, he's not cute.
The Punisher just murders people, and there isn't a whole lot that the people at Disney can do with that.
but, they couldn't let Netflix continue making money without them, so they took The Punisher back.
and, inexplicably, made one forty-five minute episode of TV.
not a whole season, not a move, just one single episode of TV for some reason.
i feel like this has to be a use-it-or-lose-it copyright thing, like that Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie from the 1980s.

The Punisher – One Last Kill sees The Punisher living in some crime-infested shithole in New York.
multiethnic gangs roam the streets, assaulting people in broad daylight and the police are unable to do anything about it.
still, the Punisher just keeps to himself, living in some spartan apartment in a housing project, suffering from PTSD delusions of all his dead friends and enemies.
The Punisher's family had been murdered by the Mob for reasons that i can't recall, but The Punshier did his job and killed all of those Mafiers dead a few seasons ago.
except, he made the mistake of leaving the Matriarch Mob Mom alive, and one day she catches The Punisher by surprise and tells him that at 6:47pm, she was going to put out a bounty on his head.
sure enough, at 6:4 7pm, The Punisher is attached in his shitty apartment by an army of no less then 200 goons.
The Punisher has to fight his way through them and out of his housing project, into the larger ghetto, where they are just having an open air riot.
it's like Woodstock 99 out there.
The Punisher fights his way through the crowd and saves a local store clerk and his daughter before escaping to the cemetery where his dead family is buried.
he talks to them some and decides he wants to get back to work punishing people again.
it's not just about the Mafiers who killed his family, there is a whole wide world of dirtbags out there who need to be massacred. the end.

The Punisher – One Last Kill was an incomplete thought.
the Punisher isn't doing well, then some Mafier sends a bunch of goons after him, and, in killing all of them, he gets his mojo back.
okay, alright, but, like, what are we doing with that?
why did they make One Fucking Episode of TV and then that's it? why not make another nine episodes and call it a season.
but, the thing just ended at the beginning of Act One, and that left me frustrated.

also, not for nothing, but this neighborhood where The Punisher was living was ridiculous.
these multi-ethnic gangs rampaging around were like some Fox News understanding of what the South Bronx is.
even if there are so many dozens of people in this crime-infested hellhole who are just going about their business beating up old ladies for the thrill of it, why are so many of them willing to risk their lives charging at The Punisher?
you would think that after The Punisher shot, impaled and defenestration the first dozen-someodd goons that charged at him, the rest would have changed their tune.
sure, there was a bounty out for the Punisher's head, but i don't know why some dumb tattooed doofus who doesn't even have a speaking role thinks that he's gonna be the man to bring him down?

finally, i'm not really sure what the Mafier Mom's plan was here.
she seemed to know where The Punisher was hiding out, she seemed to be able to catch him by surprise, and she seemed to have at least one, of not a few hired goons.
why not just post up outside of his apartment and snipe the motherfucker as he is coming home, rather then putting him through all of this Assault On Precinct 13 bullshit.
but, plot wasn't really important here. what was important was The Punisher punching and grunting in smoothly executed fight choreography, and that is what was delivered.

for being incomplete, for being unnecessary, for being a parody of the hysteria and fear of what terrible people think life in the inner city is like, and for being an excuse to have 40 minutes of glossy fight choreography, The Punisher – One Last Kill earns a 4.1/10.

//[AVAST YE!]