Post-apocalyptic civic duty

I received my jury duty notice the other day. While it's pretty awesome that the State wants to entrust me with the deciding of an actual legal matter, I can't say I'm thinking much about it. Instead, my mind drifts back to the last time my number was called. Early 2003. The winter was bitter. Bush was on the warpath. I was vaguely depressed and enmeshed in one of Mike Davis's drearier riffs on the tortured decline and death of American urbanism.

In the central jury room, they showed us a video about American Justice. A bunch of actors depicting medieval villagers threw a woman into a lake to see if she was a witch. Then Ed Bradley appeared on camera to explain the virtues of our evolved legal system. Early in the day, I ran into an ex, and we went for an awkward lunch. In the afternoon, I froze up horribly while a girl attempted to chat me up in the hall outside one of the courtrooms. I spent the next two days in the grand courthouse waiting for something to happen. All the while, I imagined how pop songs might be conceived and enjoyed in one of those future dystopia movies from the early '80s. Not the main theme, just one of the casual numbers the characters might listen to at night in a moment of calm. It sounded a lot like this.

Shy Child - Mercury and Sun