Fucking. Stoned.

Hahaha. You thought this was going to be a post about me using marijuana. See? You don't really know me at all.

Do you?

I was thinking about the scene in Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" recently where John Cleese presides over the stoning of an elderly, spindly little man for the crime of blaspheming-- in this case, saying "Jehovah." Of course, because it's Monty Python, John Cleese's character ends up getting mercilessly stoned by a bunch of men dressed as women wearing fake beards pretending to be men (you following this?) and, as they say in the world of MPFC, "Well that was all good fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh."

Pondering this scene got me thinking about stoning. A while ago, when I was delusional and thought that what I wrote on here mattered a nanodamn and that, if I could change just one person that was akin to changing the world, I wrote a half-way serious post about that woman that they were going to stone in the Middle East for infidelity. I don't know what the hell happened to her, but I'm willing to bet that, whatever it was, it had little to do with my blog. And I'm okay with that.

Stoning is a shockingly economical way to execute somebody, and I'm not sure that it shouldn't be re-examined in the Western hemisphere-- if we're still going to entertain the notion of state-run terminal justice. Ooh-- I like that-- "Terminal Justice." I think I would buy a CD by a band called "Terminal Justice." Do people buy CDs anymore? I'm not sure I exactly know what normal people do. I work in a mental hospital after all, and that skews all kinds of lines.

It skewers them, too. Which is another relatively cheap way to kill someone-- if you happen to know where very large skewers that can penetrate chest cavities/skulls may be located.

Still, I think stoning's the way to go, if you're on a budget-- which, let's face it, most states are these days. N'yah mean? Look at Camden-- they just laid off all those police officers and firefighters. Feel free to disagree with me (it's a pretty popular pastime amongst immediate family members) New Jersey sounds like a state that ought to be considering stoning.

If you think about it-- stoning is ingenious. No money spent on new technologies. No reliance on electricity or firearms or pharmecutical companies-- and green?! Oh, is it green! Especially if the stone has moss on it. But seriously, kids-- no waste! You use what's right there on the ground in front of you, and after a quick spritz with the garden hose (obviously with sprinkler-head attachment to conserve water) those rocks are ready to roll once again!

You can even feed the prisoner stone soup for his last meal!

Fucking. Genius.

So, yeah. Stoning. Awesome and such. There are people in this world who need to be stoned, and, even though I am not a real big proponent of mind-altering substances, there are definitely people in this world who need to get stoned. You see the diff, of course, jawohl? You know who I mean in the latter category, right? Those insidious, tightly-wound, Type-A people who walk briskly wherever they're going, even though they may very well have no place in particular to go. They're always checking their watches and tapping their feet and fixing themselves in the mirror and worrying. Worrying about what others are thinking, worrying about what they're thinking, worrying that people aren't thinking of them, worrying that people are thinking of them. Picking their cuticles. Biting their cuticles. Flicking their palms with their fingers. Fretting. Holding in their urine and their poodie for a more... opportune time. They use words like "opportune" and, incongruously, "poodie," often in the same sentence. They've got white hairs, and wrinkles. They're a frigging mess.

They're... me?

People always say that they'd love to see me stoned. I know they mean "on drugs" and not "pelted mercilessly with rocks," and, although it annoys me to no end when people comment that I would be funnier/better/calmer/more or less... whatever on drugs, I'm at least comforted by the fact that they don't want to see me lying dead on the floor with more dents in my head than on the front fender of a 1987 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.

Yup. People often say they'd like to see me stoned, primarily because they think it'd be a laugh riot. Nobody ever says that they'd like to see me with no trousers on, though. Thing is-- that'd probably be a lot funnier.

The Penalty Box

Changing my trousers is a bit of a pain. This, of course, comes from a man who, only yesterday, on this very blog, complained about the drudgery involved in making fucking sandwiches.

Changing my mind is even more of an ordeal.

A long time ago, I was an ardent proponent of capital punishment. It seemed logical to me: take a life, lose yours. Pretty simple.

Well, life just isn't so, and the only thing more complicated than life is death.

It took me a long time to come around, but I eventually did. Well, sort of. You certainly won't see me taking to the streets with a poster of some murderer's face yelling for him/her to be freed, brick by brick. And you won't see me calling for the abolition of the death penalty either.

Maybe I should be, if it's really something I don't believe in anymore, but I guess I'm just too fat and lazy.

Well, I'm lazy.

See, I say that I've come around "sort of" because I believe that, while the death penalty is on the books, it ought to be used. I do not believe in convicted murderers languishing on death row for twenty-five years (or more) while they literally shit out appeals. As far as post-conviction relief appeal hearings, I'm a fan of the "One and Done" philosophy. Oh, can't prove your innocence after one goodhearted appeal?

Sorry. Thanks for playing.

Of course, I won't be shaking my head in despair when the death penalty, imperfect and blemished as it is, finally gets put to death itself once and for all in this country. That will be okay with me. The idea of your average, run-of-the-mill shitfuck wasting away in a prison cell for the remainder of his or her natural life is just fine. Having been inside prisons as an EMT, I can state that the idea of being in inmate in a prison for the rest of my life would make me wish for capital punishment to come quickly to me. Yeah, sometimes I think an early termination of life is too good for them.

And then the news comes on, and I can feel my mind going to the other side...

The piece of shit who put a bullet into Congresswoman Gifford's head, who slaughtered and wounded so many on that arid Tuscon day-- the man who turned a supermarket parking lot into a bloodbath. The motherfucker whose name I can't even bear to write out.

The piece of shit who ended the promising life of Lakewood, New Jersey Police Officer Christopher Matlosz. Matlosz pulled his cruiser up next to this bastard and, as they talked, the suspect pulled out a handgun, stepped back, and fired into Matlosz three times. This brave officer, dead at 27, was buried on Thursday. And all his fiancee got was his hat.

And, closer to my home, we've got the piece of shit abortion doctor. I want to throw up every time I think about him, about his filthy exam room, about the fifteen-year-old he had working for him, administering narcotics and anesthetics, about how he cut the spinal cords of viable, alive babies with a pair of scissors after they were delivered. About how he killed a mother, a poor woman, desperate for even the help of a charlatan, how he killed her through his negligence, his greed, and his ineptitude. Murderer. Ungodly, horrible, corrupt murderer.

I don't shock easily, friends, but this has been a rough couple weeks.

Why shouldn't we, as a society, kill this man? Why shouldn't we kill any of the aforementioned sonsofbitches? What are we proving by a stance of supposed morality? That we are better than them because we will gallantly spare their lives? Because we do not kill assassains or cop-killers or abortion butchers?

Well, go, us.

Where is the higher ground when we are confronted with such atrocities? And, even if we should find it, why bother to climb to its peak? Why? Who benefits from sparing such lives?

And, of course, I suppose I have to just ask myself, as I struggle with my own petty, internal grief, who benefits from taking theirs?