Pot Roast Karma

God I love the Chicago Transit Authority. Not just because they make my commute to work more bearable with their shiny silver El trains. Not because it’s fairly inexpensive. No, I love the CTA because it’s like a box of spoiled chocolates. You never know which one you’re going to get, but you DO know that it’s going to be rancid.

Here’s a perfect example. A few weeks ago, I get onto a Brown Line car behind some guy whose probably in his late 20’s, early 30’s. He makes a beeline for the only open seats available – in the little booth-like section at the front of the car. Not all CTA cars have these 2-seater boothy things. If a car does have one, it’s either at the front or at the rear, depends on which way the train is traveling. Whatever. Usually, when a car has one of these unoccupied booths, it’s the first seat taken by a passenger. The second seat is then usually taken later on when the other seats are gone. This is because the booth is like having your own little private compartment, and if someone is already sitting in one of the two seats, you feel kind of weird sitting next to them if other seats are available elsewhere. It feels like you’ve intruded on someone’s little private suite.

On this particular morning, those two seats were mysteriously vacant. The train car was full, but no one was sitting in those seats. The guy in front of me was probably as surprised as I was that they were available. We both thought we had just won the El lottery.

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Wow! I am so thrilled to now have Google Adsense as a part of my blog. I want to thank everyone involved to make this happen. Namely, me. And the engineers at Google, probably.

Hats off to us.

Now, check out the ads over on the sidebar and start clicking! If you’re lucky, you’ll get to see the mass murder defense ad.

What a great way to start my new found life with Google Adsense. Thank you Google!

I recently served as a juror on a gang related 1st degree murder trial at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse here in Chicago, IL.

We found the defendant guilty of the crime. The odds were stacked against the defendant as he had confessed to the crime on videotape to the Chicago Police Department. And he was recorded on audio tape bragging about the murder during a CPD wiretap surveillance operation.

The most interesting part of the trial for me was that, after I befriended one of the county deputies assigned to the courtroom over the 3 day trial, I was told by him that the CPD actually had the crime itself recorded on videotape using a new prototype night time street surveillance video system.

I asked the deputy why this important evidence was never used by the prosecution during the trial. He said that the judge ruled that because the surveillance system was still being tested and that the night time imagery was not as clear as he would have liked, he could not allow the state to present the video and images as evidence.

Maybe my morbid curiosity got the better of me, but I asked the deputy if there was any way he could get me a copy of some of the video or images taken by the camera. He hestitated but he liked me and I think it made him feel important. So he mailed a CD to my home with some amazing footage of the crime. I must say I’m very surprised that the prosecution was not allowed to use this footage during the trial. But hey, I’m not a judge.

So I’ve taken the most compelling parts of the video and edited them down with iMovie to make what I feel is an eye opening vantage point of what goes on in the world of urban gangs.

The link for the movie is below. I will warn you that if you are watching this at work, either use headphones or turn the volume down a bit, but you must HEAR the crime as well as see it.

You will need Apple’s Quicktime software to watch the movie. You probably already have it, but if not, the free download is available here: Quicktime

You can click the link below to begin streaming the movie in your browser or right-click and save the movie to your hard drive and watch it after the download is complete. The movie is approximately 12 MB, so be patient regardless of whether you click or right-click.

View Movie