This is the 1,001st post on Hellblazer.net but if yer seeing this on a feed on LJ or Facebook or something well it is far more or far less than that. So anyway. The big JD!

Got to the courthouse at 8:45 and sat down. Started to read. Got interrupted by … well a jury duty training video. How the court system works and so on. But it started with footage of some guys out of Braveheart trudging along mud covered roads. Then the voiceover:

In the old days, if you were being tried for a crime you would stick your hand in a pot of boiling water. If, in three days, your hand healed then you were judged not guilty.

Yeah. JURY DUTY - Better than a hand in boiling water!

Well there you go. It went on, narrated by Diane Sawyer, who I suspect traded her work on the instructional video for getting out of jury duty, and on and on and on. Then it stopped and we had to listen to three different people tell us the same thing over a too-loud mic.

Back to reading.

Wait no, called.

And into a courtroom I go. They’re talking to us and going on and on about this case and interviewing people and so on. The way they do. And they mention that all though we were told that “most civil cases last 2 or 3 days, this one will be 2 or maybe 3 weeks.” Yay? No.

Ended up not getting picked for it. And back to the waiting room and a book. Then lunch and making a few calls. And then back to, you know, the waiting room. Where they quickly moved us around and explained they had a big case that had to do jury selection in the waiting room. Buh?

So they’re interviewing all of us. Because this case will start next week and last at least 3 to 4 weeks, but probably longer. You see there are at least 12 lawyers involved due to multiple defendants and so on. When there are as many lawyers as jurors you learn the meaning of fear. I explained that I would have major problems with that: both day job and writing-wise. Because if I have to miss 3 or 4 weeks of day job I will have to start going in at night and then no writing happens and I have a book due end of the month, damn it.

They went through everyone and then told us that we would find out tomorrow if we are passing deeper into jury selection for that case. So I go back. And we see. Might be hell, might sit around all day and go home and be done, might get trapped on a 27 week case at this rate. I don’t rightly know.