Then the main hard drive for my ‘pewter died…
Not to worry! Son can fix computer and will let me borrow his laptop until my machine is functional again.
Reconstituted bookmarks and most passwords in between sessions of frantic typing to avoid falling behind in classes. Of course I suddenly had more work hours each week, too. And did I mention that the calendar was heading into the holiday season, too? So…oh well, sleep is overrated…
Son returned repaired ‘pewter. Oh boy, a new round of trying to remember passwords while still doing the work stuff, holiday stuff, and school stuff! Final week of class block approaching (along with the peak of holiday activities) and it’s time to stop rebuilding bookmarks and password lists in order to do the necessary research for those final projects.
WHAT!?! Why isn’t this search engine working right all of a sudden? It worked fine yesterday!
Rootkit. Ick. Much time and effort required to accomplish anything until the darn thing could be completely removed.
Okay…’pewter functional, if absent the former D: drive stuff; survived another holiday routine; work hours stabilizing, comparatively speaking; final projects begun and my brain needs a break from thinking that direction. Time to go to the blog before it shrivels up and disappears.
Two hours of fighting with password retrievals and tweaking unfamiliar hosting settings later, I have arrived–exhausted and totally blank regarding what I thought I would write about today. All that’s left is an old nursery rhyme that insists on playing over and over through my memory…
“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
The reason why, I cannot tell,
But this I know, and know full well:
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.”
There may some deep, perhaps even profound, meaning to all this, but if there is, then I am unaware of what it might be. Maybe I’ll go take a nap…
]]>Normally, when seeking televised diversion, I would watch HGTV, or maybe catch some “Bones.” But the lineup on HGTV tonight just doesn’t grab me and TNT’s self-promotion commercials were jarring. Not because commercials are annoying, although they often are. No, I can’t veg out and just absorb into the fiction because the folks at TNT have made a grammatical error that a reasonably intelligent person from a good high school or maybe a community college should have spotted and remedied long ago. But it appears that grammar is not a high priority with the folks at TNT. For months they have been airing their “More Movie. Less Commercials.” ads. ARGH!! No, no, no, no, NO! Commercials are individual, countable units. Isn’t the state of American education sad enough without a major broadcaster proving, multiple times each day, that Americans can’t properly manipulate the English (American style) language?
“More movie. Fewer commercials.”
“More movie. Fewer commercials.”
“More movie. Fewer commercials.”
I kind of doubt anyone in the TNT offices will read this, so I probably won’t be able to actually relax watching their channel until they change to a whole new ad campaign. Meanwhile, looks like Lifetime has gained a viewer.
]]>Using the currently talked about case, what is the purpose of imposing a death sentence on Cal Brown (hereafter referred to as CB) for the kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of Holly Washa?
Revenge: CB did a horrible thing, therefore he should be executed. The problem is that there’s no way society could exact full revenge for the scope of his crimes against Holly Washa. Execution is relatively clean and painless compared to what he did to her. It’s possible that 18 years on death row provides some recompense for the hours of fear and certainty of death he imposed on the end of Holly’s life, but I’m not sure there’s any meaningful equivalence. The alternative (no longer practiced by this society) is to torture him to death, but that’s repugnant, degrading to the torturers, and ultimately rather pointless. At some point his suffering would end in death and nothing more could touch him. Holly Washa would still be dead and the realization that nothing can change that would again sadden those who cared about her.
Punishment: As with revenge, what constitutes adequate punishment for taking the life of another person? There is the “eye for an eye” school of thought and many seem to feel that death is the appropriate and acceptable form of punishment for murder. For some, the idea that CB will spend the rest of his life remembering his horrendous crime is greater punishment than simply ending his life would be. He told the clemency board that Holly Washa haunts him every day. He may just be saying that in a sympathy play; if true, I can’t imagine that anyone would think it wrong that he should be haunted. Assuming that CB is actually haunted by the wrongness of his actions and not merely by the fact of being caught and the specter of his own impending death, it may be that living will be a greater punishment than dying.
Deterrence: Has anyone ever seriously contemplated killing another person and decided not to do so because there is/was a death penalty in place? Quite obviously, the possibility of a death sentence didn’t enter into CB’s thinking and planning. As for others, I’m not talking about the transient “I wish he were dead!” or “I could just kill her for that!” — I mean actually considered, maybe even planned, a killing and set those plans and considerations aside because the death penalty seemed too big a risk. I don’t personally know of anyone, maybe you do? But I know I’ve never read about one, either. Have read about the opposite, though. If I can find the article again I’ll edit this to include the reference, but the gist of it went like this: A suicidally-inclined teenage girl was babysitting two young children and slaughtered them in their beds because she knew the state would put her to death for the crime. Sounds like an urban legend, but it was a newspaper report, not an online gossip posting.
From what I’ve read, most people who commit crimes don’t do much thinking about consequences until after the crime is committed. Logical, rational thought doesn’t seem to have much of a role in most crimes; a person wants a certain result and finds justifications for that result, but the ripples of consequence are not carefully contemplated in real life the way they are in fiction. Personal experience angle: I once worked with a young woman who died in a house fire, along with her boyfriend and her 2-year-old son. When told of the fire, her ex-husband expressed shock that his son was home with mom and boyfriend, since he thought the boy was at Grandma’s that night. He set the fire thinking the ex-wife and boyfriend would either be badly hurt or maybe die, but his son would be safe since he wasn’t there. Killing may not have been his direct intention, although he was so possessive and angry that he didn’t care if the adults died. He wanted to “teach her a lesson” for divorcing him and finding someone else to share her life. He planned the fire and waited to act for weeks, apparently, because he didn’t want to endanger the boy. He might have expected that someone would notice the fire was arson, maybe even that he would be considered a leading suspect, but actually getting caught never occurred to him.
One other thought about deterrence as a justification: I’m skeptical of the deterrence value of a punishment that may or may not be applied. There are many more convicted killers who are not executed than there are those who have been or will be executed — and the viciousness, brutality, and quantity of victims is no guarantee that the death penalty will be sought, let alone carried out. Even with a death sentence in place, the appeals process is lengthy and time-consuming; if you might die of old age while appealing your death sentence, is the death sentence really all that scary?
Closure: This one is kind of slippery. It’s one of those words that are so popular these days, but different people have different definitions and I’m not sure it means the same thing to others that it means to me. I would think that “closure” would indicate reaching a point where the pain is lessened greatly, where the awareness of loss is not constantly at the front of your mind, where the trauma doesn’t invade your sleep. Personally, the death of someone who has harmed me has not been the deciding factor in whether or not the harm continues. In some ways, it has made “closure” harder to reach. I can’t get answers from a dead person. I can’t scream at a dead person and make that person feel guilty and ashamed. My ability to accept the past and move toward the future had to come from within, and I’m not sure it could have come any other way. Will Holly Washa’s family and friends find any relief from the pain and loss when CB is dead? Could they reach the same point without his death?
Weeding: This is the one I never hear anyone on TV mention. This is the colder, more dispassionate approach. There’s nothing Biblical or emotional about it. It has little, if anything, to do with legality or ethics. It’s more of a practical application process. When something is dangerous, be it a weed, or a tumor, or a rabid animal, you remove it. You don’t transplant weeds from your vegetable garden into a “weeds only” patch; it’s a waste of space and resources and just plain silly. (Granted, one person’s weed is another person’s flower. Personally, I like dandelions, but not in my vegetable garden.) You don’t create a growth and sustenance medium in the laboratory for every noxious growth removed by a surgeon. (Yes, I know. Some are kept for research and experimentation. Let’s not go there right now, okay?) You don’t take a rabid dog to the vet and try to nurse it back to health while simultaneously trying to avoid being bitten. Life is precious and may even be rare (in this solar system, at least), but malignant life loses it’s value by virtue of it’s damaging effect on other life.
Time out here to examine some of the argument against execution:
Mistakes have happened and will happen in the future, no matter how carefully we examine the evidence or how evenhanded we try to be in dispensing justice. There have been plenty of cases where a death row inmate was proved innocent years after sentencing; sometimes that proof has come after the execution was carried out. This is one of the more powerful arguments against having a death penalty.
Is execution “cruel and unusual punishment” in and of itself? Everyone has an opinion on that and very few would be willing to entertain any position other than the one they have already taken. Personally, I think the cruelest part of modern executions has less to do with the execution of the person and more to do with the extreme slowness of the carrying out of the sentence. The convicted person stays in limbo for years, even decades, often getting close to the “zero hour” only to be pulled back for yet another wait on yet another court ruling. The living victims of a convicted killer — the family & friends of the victim — also spend that time in limbo, waiting on the courts to determine whether their part in the process ends with the clang of a prison door or the signing of a death certificate. And society stays in limbo, too, paying the financial costs for food, housing, medical care, clothes, and quite often legal expenses for the convicted killer, as well as the cost of maintaining the legal system itself. A system with fewer delays, where the time from sentencing to the carrying out of the sentence is much shorter, would seem to be much less cruel than the current process.
If we are going to execute people, then we need define some very precise limitations and requirements that have to be met before execution can happen. The trouble is that it may well be impossible to write any rules because it really does need to be a case by case decision — while still being evenly applied, without prejudice or privilege affecting the outcome. But we have to get it right, because a system that allows decades to pass between the first sentencing and the final step of execution is profoundly unjust and killing someone isn’t the kind of thing you can take back afterwards. When it comes to crime and punishment, I suspect that in most cases prison is the absolute worst, most long-lasting punishment that can be imposed. But sometimes you have to pull the weed, excise the tumor, shoot the rabid animal, no matter how sad or revolting the process may be.
Okay, I said it should have a rational answer; I never promised it would be a simple one.
Oh, you still want a simple answer? There is no simple answer.
Yes, I think CB should be executed. There is no doubt about his guilt and the taxpayers have carried him for long enough. It’s not about punishment, retribution, deterrence, or revenge. We have much more important things to do than sustaining noxious life. I also think execution should be reserved for those cases that are as blatantly obvious as the murder of Holly Washa. There have been, sadly enough, enough notorious and obvious cases of guilt to keep the execution option on the table, although the legal system as it stands hasn’t always gone that way. I don’t think we should execute idiots who “didn’t really want to kill him–the gun just went off.” or fools like my former coworker’s ex-husband. Partly because life in prison seems much more punishing (especially when the chance of parole is removed) and mostly because we cannot afford to get casual or relaxed about killing, even if it is legal.
]]>I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or woman driving. It could have been a big blue frog for all I know. When it was close enough to see the driver, I was busy keeping out of the way and couldn’t take time to stare. I don’t know the names of auto colors either — this one was a slightly metallic but not sparkly, yellowish beige sort of pseudo-neutral, one of those colors that starts to blend into the road surface at any distance greater than a city block or when weather conditions encourage poor visibility.
It’s foggy this morning. Not the soak-everything clinging kind of fog, but the billowy erratic kind with inexplicable clear patches that fool the unaware and the willfully stupid into thinking that headlights aren’t necessary. “I can see just fine. Why do I need lights?” Sheesh.
I first became aware of the Yukon (and potential big blue frog) when it suddenly appeared in the “right turn only” lane next to me, slipping sideways into the barely-long-enough space ahead of me and behind a blue sedan of some kind (maybe a Toyota–they seem to be everywhere these days). It then whipped back to the main lane at a two-lane “left turn on green arrow” light and scooted around, ahead of, and in front of the blue sedan, which was turning left from the right-side left turn lane.(Does that make sense? I hope so, since I haven’t a clue of how else to explain it without trying to draw a map, which I’m not sure I can do here and now.) The Yukon disappeared into the fog on the winding uphill road ahead. It’s easy to disappear when your vehicle is one of those road-mimicking colors, the fog is flowing thick and thin, the road has multiple curves and hills, and you don’t use headlights or turn signals. Come to think of it, I never saw any brake lights, either.
The blue sedan turned into a housing development and it wasn’t long before I was again looking at the back of that same Yukon. It was fidgeting back and forth, trying to find a chance to go around yet another vehicle by passing on the right. Still no lights–and no turn signals when the chance to get around came along. That car turned off a couple hundred yards later and there I was AGAIN, watching the Yukon do some odd automotive rendition of the potty dance. (See why I remembered the license plate number?) At the last moment, it swerved from the main lane into the left turn lane–no turn signals, no brake lights–and turned off onto one of the narrow roads that slither over the sides of the hills in this area.
I continued home–lights on, using brakes and turn signals when appropriate–in my almost-17-years-old compact. It’s not powerful or pretty or classy, it just keeps running, albeit not as smoothly as it used to. It doesn’t quite get the mileage it used to, but it has a lot of miles on it. I’m pretty sure it does get better mileage than an hyper-thyroidal luxury SUV with a lead-footed nitwit behind the wheel.
How do people afford those things, anyway? For the most part, they cost more than I make in an entire year (and then some), the gas mileage pretty much sucks, and I would bet an antenna ball that the insurance is somewhere between “Pricey!” and “Faint when you see the premium.” Really, I’m not bitter, just a bit peeved. I follow the rules as much as I can and work as hard and as much as I can. It might be nice to have a car with a properly functioning heater. It would be heavenly to have a car with seats that don’t freak my back and cause numb patches down both legs. I guess it just seems unfair to be the one who keeps on doing while other, less worthy (If this be ego, make the most of it!) individuals walk (or drive) all over me.
Fair: a peculiar and abstract concept, possibly unique to humans. There is no evidence of “fairness” in the day-to-day functioning of the natural world. But that’s another topic…
]]>One of the recent themes in my life seems to be “but not now.” I’m not feeling the financial side of it on a personal level, because I know a large portion of that change is not my doing. There was a time when I could afford an infrequent splurge like dinner out or hobby supplies, but not now. Every cent goes to survival, which costs much more than it used to even though there aren’t as many cents coming in. I didn’t make the larger mess we call the American economic system and I certainly didn’t order up the kind of business climate that has resulted in my barely sufficient paid hours being cut down to the not viable level. I’ve cut almost every non-essential I can and will soon have to cut absolutely everything in a desperate attempt to keep shelter and food as part of my life. And gasoline, since I have to get to work in order to acquire that half-of-what-it-used-to-be paycheck.
It’s like being in a small wooden boat on a river. The oars are a bit small, but sufficient for normal conditions, and they’re the only ones available, so you make do, paddling back and forth as best you can. Then the rain starts, and you have to bail out the boat now and then, which means putting down the oars for a bit, which means drifting off course due to the river’s flow, but you keep at it and still manage to move around pretty much the way you need to. Then the river rises fast, because the rain here is just a bit, but rain further upstream is torrential. Now the current is pushing you downriver and your small oars can’t fight it well enough to reach a riverbank and it’s still raining, so you still have to stop rowing in order to bail. Sooner or later you’ll be pushed right out into the sea…or you’ll hit a bridge or a clump of debris…but whatever the outcome is, as long as you’re trying to row you know any failure won’t be for lack of trying. If you had bigger oars, if you had someone to help you row, if you had a cover to keep the rain off of you and mostly out of the boat, if you just had some help, maybe you could navigate this swollen mass of water to safety. But the oars are small, there’s no help with the rowing, you don’t have an umbrella, and nobody seems to notice your predicament. Failing may be catastrophic for you, but it will be a catastrophe created by many factors, not just by you.
Included in the attempt to navigate this financial mess in the search for a second job, a demeaning and depressing prospect for a middle-aged woman with a limited resume. Past the half-century mark, I am discovering I have limits that I didn’t used to have. Maybe I could work two full-time jobs a decade ago, but not now. Maybe I could haul a small moving truck worth of furniture and boxes all in one day without any help a dozen years ago, but not now. The body won’t cooperate now. Too many years of hard use and indifferent maintenance will wear out a machine, and I’ve been under the gun and under-supported for years.
I keep trying…by now I should be able to pick up a skyscraper, and that’s definitely not happening, but I keep trying. Like there’s any other choice?
“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Repeat continuously and belief may follow.
]]>I’m so tired my hands are shaking. Maybe that’s so tired and angry, come to think of it.
Who cares?
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens…”
]]>I’m down today, so anything I write at this point is probably best left alone, but I’m paying for this domain, which makes it “my party, so I’ll cry if I want to.” Right? Whatever…
So, I’m down today, and the obvious first question is “Why?”
Maybe I’m tired
Definition of a good night’s sleep:
(1) Fall asleep, more or less comfortably, in less than an hour after getting into bed.
(2) Sleep a minimum of 6 hours without being awakened by physical pain, external noises, in-house noises, or dreams of the frightening and/or strange type.
By those parameters, simple as they are, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks…maybe months…although I’m pretty sure it must have happened at least once in the last year or so. That makes “I need sleep” a pretty reasonable excuse for the downness of me, I suppose.
Maybe it’s my job
Even in the best of times, work can be tough–these are not the best of times, though.
Today I am (more or less) starting on a “new” schedule which starts me off with a closing shift and works up the clock until I get to my weekend, which will be Sundays and Mondays unless I ask for a different day off (infrequent), or I switch shifts with someone else who wants the day off (slightly more likely), or I volunteer to work somewhere in order to increase my hours on the next paycheck (fairly likely), or my manager goofs up or flakes out (very likely).
Adapting to a new weekly routine is stressful. Even harder is not really knowing if you actually have a routine. In addition to the manager-induced uncertainty, the company is closing my store sometime in the next 2-9 months, but we don’t know when; we also don’t know which stores we will be transferred to or what it will be like at the new destination when we get there or even if we will be transferred or “offered a generous severance package.” It’s a good guess that work issues are at least contributing to my downness.
Maybe it’s a health thing.
I’ve got a double row of prescriptions on one of my medicine cabinet shelves, and not a single one is for anything “fun,” unless you count the budeprion (generic Wellbutrin), which I certainly don’t. Most of the pills are about getting older after not really taking great care of myself for a few decades.
There’s also the pain, for which I have no prescriptions. Why not? I have no idea, but I think a change of doctor will be required to do something about it. In the meantime, I wake up feeling like I’ve fallen down a flight of cement stairs. (Yes, I do have first-hand knowledge of how that feels.) I spend my day battling constantly increasing discomforts (ranging from dull ache to piercing sharpness) in assorted places; sometimes the pains make me clumsy enough to pick up some very nasty bruises, as well as scrapes and cuts and burns, which of course feeds into the increasing pain. Sometimes the pain is so bad that nighttime finds me trying to fall asleep in spite of it; on those nights, I’m lucky if I get to a half-sleep stage for a couple of hours. When the new days begins, I get out of bed feeling like I’ve fallen down a flight of cement stairs…
The down factor for aging, pills, and pain is huge.
And then there’s the big one — Money.
More precisely, it’s the lack of money, and it’s big because just fixing this one would not only delete it from the stress list but would enable me to address all the others more aggressively and more effectively. I’ve never been in a position of having too much money, so I can’t honestly say if having that much would be good or not so good, but I’m constantly aware of the impact of not having enough.
Definition of enough money:
(1) Can pay usual monthly living expenses without having to incur huge late fees, without picking up overdraft fees, and without needing a payday loan (which means the next paycheck won’t cover things, so you need another payday loan…). Can do this without giving up gas for car, necessary prescriptions, routine doctor visits, or food.
(2) Can regularly pay on indebtedness enough of the total due as to not make the creditors call and nag at you, or turn your account over to a collection agency, or have someone threatening to garnish your paycheck.
(3) Can manage things like routine car maintenance or replacing worn out work clothes.
(4) Can manage unexpected expenses like a flat tire or sudden illness.
(5) Can have some fun once in a while. Like go out for a meal that isn’t on a dollar menu. Like take a drive just to look at the scenery. Like go to a play put on by the local small theater group. Like take grandchild shopping for a small toy “just because” and stop for ice cream cones on the way home.
In a good month I can manage (1) and a tiny bit of (2), but there haven’t been any good months for a very long time. That means (3) requires juggling things around and usually has to be put off way too long. Which means (4) is more likely to happen and it’s a given that (4) will completely screw up (1), (2), and (3). Just thinking about (5) makes me tear up…
With enough money I could buy a really good mattress topper and maybe I could wake up feeling rested, not crushed.
With enough money, the uncertainties at work would be annoyances, not overwhelming restrictions or potential disasters.
With enough money I could find a doctor to address the pain issues and take the actions needed to improve my general health.
With enough money I could look forward to my rapidly approaching “golden years” knowing that part-time work may never stop being necessary, but full-time on-my-feet work will have an end.
Money can’t turn a good life into a amazing life. Money can’t make an empty heart feel full. Money isn’t a fountain of youth or a magical, all-purpose treatment for every ill thing in life. But it isn’t true that money can’t buy happiness. When you don’t have things you truly need, when surviving is a constant struggle, money can dissolve an awful lot of obstacles and leave you with enough strength to try and rise further.
I’m down today, and I don’t feel like trying, but there’s not a lot of choice for me. I have to do what I have to do even if I don’t want to do it and can’t do it without making some part of life worse, not better.
Have you ever considered the idea that sometimes depression is not a disease or a defect, but a reasonable response to an ongoing set of circumstances? Would I need antidepressants just to continue struggling if the struggles were not so hopelessly endless?
]]>Maybe now I can actually do some NEW writing…sometime…but not now, because I’ve got things to do that don’t involve the computer…{sigh}
The server may have changed, but some things still remain t
]]>Unlike previous years, I don’t have to spend this morning behind the counter racing around while trying to look serene, smiling when I want to snarl, speaking in measured tones instead of screaming out my fury and just letting the tears become a fast-flowing waterfall, staying “on task” as the time scrapes by without the slightest hint of a break and with increasing pressure to do more and do it faster–in other words, working what has become the usual 8 hours. That’s become the usual, but I’ve worked every other Black Friday since I started with this company, so I can imagine quite accurately how much worse it is on this kick-off day for the holiday shopping season.
“But working people without breaks illegal; they have to give you breaks.” you say? Uh-huh.
Miss Rosy Glasses, may I introduce you to Mr. Cold Reality?
If that’s your first response then you’re very young, very naive, or not trying to survive for 14 days on a paycheck that barely stretches for 10 days (AKA “a wage slave”). Of course it’s illegal; so what? Nobody’s really all that interested in legalities when profit is involved. so when the high muckity-mucks decree labor cuts during holiday shopping season, and not meeting performance expectations can have a negative influence on your future earnings outlook, well…like most of the other “working poor” I know, I just keep going and pray it doesn’t kill me since I don’t have funeral insurance and my “estate” consists almost entirely of red ink entries.
So why am I up early thinking about this when I finally have a chance to avoid the trauma?
It’s not multiple choice, by the way; all of the above, and more, are part of the answer.
]]>Well, I’ve started to do it, anyway. There’s a lot yet to be accomplished, so for now it’s
“To be continued…”
]]>