Cat summoned for jury service

A tabby cat has been selected for jury duty in the US after his owners registered him on a state census form.

The bizarre letter was sent to the cat, which was listed in the pets section of the census, by a court in Boston, Massachusetts calling on him for duty.

Cat owners Anna and Guy Esposito wrote to the court asking the family pet, named Sal, to be excused from service because he doesn’t speak or understand English.

Mrs Esposito reportedly included a letter from her vet confirming that the cat was a ‘domestic short-haired neutered feline’ and not human.

However, the request for the cat’s exemption was refused by a jury commissioner and Mrs Esposito was told that Sal ‘must attend’ Suffolk Superior Crown Court.

She said: “When they ask him guilty or not guilty, what’s he supposed to say – meow?”

“Sal is a member of the family so I listed him on the last census form under pets but there has clearly been a mix-up.”

The Daily Mail reported that Sal could have accidentally ended up on the juror list when paperwork was misread at the last census.

According to the Massachusetts judicial branch website, US citizens who ‘do not speak and understand English sufficiently well may be disqualified.’

If Sal’s application for disqualification is denied, the cat is expected in court on 23 March.

– Yahoo News

Tempura can be bought to support whichever political party you desire, please send in all applications (include brand of cat food offered for bribe in your letter).

Wolf and willow;

One of my favourite characters in Stephen King’s apocalyptic miniseries, The Stand, was the devil’s secret mistress, Nadine who saw her hair colour change from black to a willowy white by the end of the series. Somehow white tresses will bring to mind her role in the series, where she played a rejected wildchild with an elegant vulnerability. 70s horror flicks with a dramatic flair.

Yes, watch The Stand, Irving, I really liked it, even the creepy sci-fi music at the beginning of the series. Las Vegas as the setting for hell and bright lights over red convertibles, and anarchist geeks alike Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.

But yes, the fashion shoot by W Korea brought to mind Nadine once again. Whoever said that white tresses could never be fashionable?

ps: And isn’t that pink cape exceptionally dreamy. Also note that gorgeous white tipped manicure.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Inside its glass dome, the One State is a place of mathematical precision, a community where everything is everyone’s and integrity, clarity and unerring loyalty reign over all. Δ-503, Constructor of the Integral, is an honest number, ashamed of the hairy hands that link him to a barbaric ancestry. It is this forbidden legacy that torments him by making him lust, that allows him to imagine, that has given him a soul. Consumed by his sickness and obsessed with the seductive and mysterious I-330, Δ-503 is led by his new lover outside the Wall, where he colludes in a plot to overthrow the Benefactor. As the Benefactor retaliates by ordering a state-administered Operation to return order to the perfect world, Δ-503 finds himself fighting for the primitive and natural state of chaos – and rebelling against all that he once held true.

A key work in the history of dystopian literature, Zamyatin’s We was hugely influential, shaping the writing of many other authors including Orwell and Huxley. Written in the1920s, and banned in the Soviet Union for over sixty years, We is still topical today, a portent of future totalitarian regimes, and an admonition that the battle for freedom is never over.

I have an obsession with dystopian literature, yet ironically ended up in the civil service. We live out several ironies in one lifetime. R reminds me that Kafka, too, was a lawyer working for civil service.

What’s on your dystopian booklist?

Gipsy Scarlet / Oh, Summer!

Taylor tube dress from Gipsy Scarlet, Necklace from Topshop, Blazer from Zara

A LBD for many occasions. Black chiffon pleated dress from Oh, Summer!, accessories from Topshop/Far East.

That divorce case;

Ontario Superior Court Judge Joseph Quinn’s 31-page December decision—which made the local papers and is still doing the rounds of legal circles on the internet—is filled with the kind of black humor and derision one would imagine is usually kept for close be-robed colleagues only. He chided the couple for “marinating in a mutual hatred so intense as to surely amount to a personality disorder,” and said the chances of amicable resolution were “laughable.” The wife had poisoned their daughter “irreparably” against the father who, the judge admitted, had “a near-empty parenting tool box.” (More on TIME.com: 5 New Reasons to Get or Stay Married This Year)

Quinn mocked the couple’s habit of sending abusive, vulgarity-laced texts to each other and their inability to be civil at their children’s sporting events. On one occasion apparently, Catherine, the wife, had tried to run Larry over with her car — “always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart,” the judge noted.

Catherine’s relatives, several of whom are Hell’s Angels, made death threats against her ex , which the judge mentioned, adding that  “on Oct. 18, 2007, a nautical theme was added. According to Larry, ‘Catherine’s sister-in-law yelled out her window that I was going to be floating in the canal dead.’ ” That Catherine told her children they’d go to jail if they even called their dad did not help matters.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/05/the-family-judge-who-flipped-out/?iid=WBmostpopular

Gita Lenz;

One of my favourite upcoming photographers who specializes in black and white photography, Gita Lenz, recently had her exhibition opening in New York.

I thought to share some of the photographs that she chose for the event.

Virginia-based photographer Gordon Stettinius first met Gita Lenz back in 2002, at an exhibition of his work. Gita had attended the private view in the company of her neighbour and Gordon’s friend, Timothy Bartling. Gita – who was already in her nineties at this point – mentioned she had been a photographer in the past, and the impression she made on Gordon remained with him.

A few years later, Timothy mentioned that he was helping Gita move to sheltered housing, but he was at a loss about what to do with her photographic prints and equipment. Gordon made the journey to New York City to collect her work and take it back to Richmond with him. What he found in those boxes of prints revealed, as he puts it in the introduction to this book, ‘an abundance of evidence of a rich career and a compelling personality’.

Get the full story at Fraction Magazine

A new journey;

Our junior college Theatre Studies classes attended our classmate, JH’s wedding last week. It was a beautiful event and C and I agreed that the experience was as if we were marrying our daughter off! In our A Levels examination theatre piece, JH and C were my little daughters, and it was a pity that my husband ‘E’ was not available on that day to see her off too. The wedding took place in Queenstown Lutheran Church, and was a charming affair with a rendition of how the couple first met and JH was positively beaming. E also played a lovely harp piece to commemorate the event. It is so exciting that V and JH are going to start the next chapter of their life together! I think they have been together for more than 8 years.

Some of the shots I took of the event:

Nostalgia;

I don’t know about you, but looking at these quaint bathsoaps bring to mind happy spring afternoons in white bathtubs with a ducky (who has an English name like Thomas).

What does it mean when someone gives you bath-soap?

I’ll like to think the connotations are different when you give them something like these:

Let them eat cake;

Takashi Murakami au Château de Versailles