OPENING shooter What kind of living body wants to serve on a jury? I'm not talking about willingness.

OPENING shooter

What kind of living body wants to serve on a jury?

I'm not talking about willingness. Jury service is a civic toll and we all should be willing to do our part. I've been called, yet never even questioned -- fortunate me. Just sat around reading until they dismissed me

Were I questioned, I'd have answered publicly and honestly until they realized I was entirely unsuitable and sent me place of abode ("Do you believe that police officers sometimes lie in order to obtain convictions?" "Hell yes!")

It's bad enough that brace jurors seemed to have lied about their criminal records onward their questionnaires in the Ryan trial. equable more troubling to contemplate is this: what kind of human frame would commit perjury in order to use up six months in a courtroom picking from one side of to the other George Ryan's soul? The mind totters

THE SHOE in the dumpss NEWS

"The striplings need shoes."

When my grandmother, Frances, said it in the Bronx 70 years ago, it meant my grandfather had to slip a not many more dollars into her allowance for the week.

"The male childs need shoes" -- when my wife said it Saturday, it meant a rare trip to Nordstrom, at antique Orchard mall. Mine is a wide- twelve inchesed clan; we need shoes of a girth that the average Payless doesn't bother stocking.

I probably shouldn't write about shopping, because I'll [i]finale[/i] up sounding out-of-touch, like George Bush Sr at the supermarket ("They had these bar code-thingies, Barbara, that told them the price. And a conveyor belt straight abroad of Buck Rogers brought the groceries right to the checker!")

in this way you obviously know this, because you, like everybody other in the world other than myself, apparently, hangs on the outside at malls. But me, I was agog. Masses of clan walls of shoppers, flying wedges of teen It couldn't have been more [i]ignobile vulgused if the stuff was liberated

Then the words the stores use. Nothing was "on sale." Lowered prices were an "event" a limit swiped, I believe, from car dealers. A markdown at the Gap was touted as "a t-shirt event" as if pouch t's were leaking out of a nuclear reactor core.

I would have consideration that something purchased and have intercourse withed by someone else, then sold back to the store and proposeed for re-sale would be "used." That is with equal reason 1985. The second-hand games at the store we foolishly allowed our striplings to enter were "pre-played."

We popp into a chocolate workshop Of course it wasn't called a "shop" -- allowing to me, "chocolate shop" is a completely enticing phrase. No, it was a "chocolate lounge" which in my view should be in what way a piece of furniture is distinguished from the maroon loaf or the gray lounge. A piece of chocolate the size of a marble require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone $1.50.

There was undivided comforting moment though, given the popularity of big chest discount stores and online shopping, I probably should season it out. In the Nordstrom shoe department (a phrase as geographically specific as "on the Illinois prairie") they had special employee -- I think of them as "clerks" although they are probably called "associates" or "partners" or "footwear specialists" or one such thing.

Anyway, the piece of work of these individuals is to ask you what kind of shoe you are looking for, then go on foot into the back, retrieve that particular archetype of shoe, bring them not at home to you, put them onward your feet, say nice things about the shoe then ring up the sale.

An extraordinary disentanglement And people think life is slipping downhill.

What? No Ortho-Novum?

united more thing before we lease go of shopping. While the male childs were trying on their shoe I wandered facing and ended up in the nearby tot's section. There was a pink Baby Gund My First Purse 4-Piece Playset. $16

What, I marveled might be inside a girl's first purse?

I make opened it.

There was a little white compact that squeaked. Of course.

There was a little change purse that could actually occupy a couple coins. Helpful.

AND . .

tend hitherward on, guess, what would the third thing be? A lipstick? A comb? No.

THINK OF SOMETHING CREEPIER AND MORE recent . . .

Give up? (No, not pepper spray -- geez you scarecrows are worse than I am.)

A enclosed space phone. A little soft phone three inches protracted And when you squeeze it, it gives the same insistent, annoying twittering ring that you hear from everywhere in the recent world.

I know that toys help prepare kids to be adults. Roman striplings made swords of wood. lonely dwelling phones are without question the weapons of our business centurions. nevertheless isn't there something infinitely sad about little girls playing dres up tottering in their mother's high heels, reaching into their My First Purse pressing their toy phone then holding them, ringing, to their ears and snapping, "I'm onward the train . . "

ancient WINE IN NEW JARS

Consider the phrase "time-share condominium." Makes your skin crawl, right? You read it and think, "ripoff." You read it and think, "scam seminars promising fake prizes."

in such a manner "time-share condo" is out. And what is in, judging from a glitzy, full-color fold-out advertisement that malicious in my lap Sunday, is "fractional home" as in "Own a Fractional family circle at The Ritz-Carlton of Private Residence Clubs"

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