Got summoned for jury duty.

Not my first time.

Just the first time I answered the summons with something other than a request for deferment.

Not because I’m not civic minded, but I’ve spent most of the time where I currently live working elsewhere.

Mostly in places where people were shooting at me.

Not me, personally, just people that looked like me.

I mean, I don’t have a particularly shoot-y face, it’s just that certain elements object to neo-colonialism, no matter how well intended.

Thanks to a combination of being “between opportunities,” a state that if it continues for much longer means I will be “between refrigerator boxes,” and a general sense that I’d rather get out of jury duty in person instead of with a phone call, I made my way to the courthouse.

Where all of us were promptly excused.

I had no objections.

Because when the current “justice” system isn’t busy privatizing the hell out of incarceration for the benefit of corporations under legalized slave labor, it’s putting people out on the streets who just entered a bigger jail, because they’re forever hobbled by past choices when it comes to exercising their basic civil rights.

All of which I had teed up as reasons why I didn’t want to be there.

And then they sent us home.

Went and got a donut.

Because systems are best when they’re doing nothing at all. Unless those systems mean donuts.