why does my hand smell like an old lady's neck - New Random Thread

[Greg Nog]

nobody deserves that, not for any crime.

Thinking about the outermost limits of what a person deserves: what would you guys say is the harshest punishment and/or rehabilitation method that should be allowed for a human that's committed what you consider the most abominable crime?

[dumbfish]

Sex and the City marathon

[Greg Nog]

dumbfish, you're such a Miranda.

[coldforge]

Frankly, I would find it much more on the level to kill somebody than to essentially trap them in a state of permanent deprivation from which they are refused every escape, even death. Not that it's necessarily ever justifiable to kill somebody, but you can talk about capital punishment in relatively simple terms. Whereas solitary confinement for life is basically keeping someone alive just to inflict suffering on them. The endless, unbalanced spinning out of more misery into the universe is like dividing by zero. I mean, for this guy, I can understand the equation The Life of a Cop ~= The Life of a Cop Killer a lot more easily than The Life of a Cop ~= The Infinitely Prolonged, Meticulously Maintained Dehumanization of a Cop Killer.

EDIT: Screw Killer, not Cop Killer.

[Good Intentions]

There's the bit in the declaration where Silverstein, during the course of a prison riot, gets to spend a week outside of his cell. When the authorities convince the riot leaders to hand him over as a sign of good faith (the authorities must hate Silverstein) he pleads to be killed instead.

[Good Intentions]

I'll probably use this as material the next time I have to teach applied ethics.

[YojimboMonkey]

Why does Animal Planet think a red panda belongs in their "grizzly bear rescue" playset?

Apparently my sister's zoo thinks red pandas are the responsibility of the primates keeper



Not that my sister's complaining

[YojimboMonkey]

I don't think they mean you and Jacob. For instance, I've never seen Jacob rock the handlebar mustache or the cycling cap. And I don't believe you go about in American Apparel normally.

I have seen a dude who looks just like the caricature of the male hipster there though.

[davy]

Have you guys read the Silverstein Declaration? It's a statement by a man who has been held in solitary confinement for 28 years, and a chilling document of the evil that men do to each other.

Wow.

But even now I am not hoping for much. I would like to eat a meal with someone else occasionally. I would like to have a visit with my family that ends in being able to hug my daughter and shake my son's hand. I know that I have sacrificed most of my rights by virtue of my actions as a much younger man. But I think that these things are not too much to hope for, even in my circumstances.

fucking hell, I just read that whole thing. nobody deserves that, not for any crime. one more unconscionable disgrace for the glorious carceral state in its most invasive and pulverizing form.

Yeah, I posted that excerpt after reading the first few pages. I was thinking, dang, how sad. Five pages later, we were well beyond that.

[peacocks]

I like the part where he says he is a man who looks through bifocals while crocheting afghans for his family and legal council, but it almost makes me more sad than the excerpt davy and adf posted. Doesn't the way he was treated fit the description of torture? This is really naive considering guantanamo and our foreign policies, but isn't that supposed to be illegal? Aren't there people who oversee these kinds of things in prisons?

[Greg Nog]

HOLY SHIT RED PANDA

[Ignatius]

I've been smiling a lot in the past two days for no good reason and now I'm worried it means I'm crazy or about to DROP.

[clare]

Maybe you're looking forward to the rapture?

[morgan]

My professor said in an email to me that I was "hands down the most engaged and intelligent person" in both of the classes I've taken with him. Even if that was a lie, it almost made me cry. It's been a long semester, guys.

[Good Intentions]

morgan =

[G.C.R]

That is a huge compliment, and I think professors see so many people in the course of their teaching careers that there is no way they would say it if you hadn't really made an impression and they felt it to be true. Congratulations!

[morgan]

Thanks.

[auto-da-fey]

man, it is a weird thing, the process of writing. I envy those craftsmanlike folks who adhere to a 500-words-before-noon regimen or some such steady pacing. Monday I bashed out 2000 words, then yesterday I spent the entire day staring at a screen; I think my wordcount for the day was literally about 8, and that's because I added info to a footnote. today I managed to grind out another 1500, but it was like pulling teeth and it's all kind of shite (which is fine at this point).

huh, so a week later I have 10,134 words written. I can't tell how I feel (good: that's ten thousand more words than I had ten days ago, which is great; bad: they're still shite, and I only wanted 8000, now I'll need to pare it down, and that's when the screaming really starts).

I guess mostly I just wish this could be a less terrible process for me, because while all of the untold hours of staring at walls, chopping at my hair with scissors to release anxiety, and reading internet shit that leaves my mind ten seconds later, while not exactly time wasted because it's simply part of the process, collectively leaves me feeling pretty hollowed out. 

THIS YEAR'S MODEL:

writing remains terrible for me, something that just wrecks me every time, but I've been trying really hard to tap into that craftsmanship model I was yearning for a year ago. there's something I've lost that by now I'm pretty sure I'll never recover--the way I wrote in grad school, all no-distraction ten-hour bursts from 5pm to 3am. that just seems completely unthinkable today.

but one unintended effect of increasingly sleeping most nights with a partner grounded in the real world (something that hasn't been the case--both most-nights-partner AND partner-with-normal-life-patterns--in many years) is that I get woken up by 8am and am left to my own devices, which usually entail going out for coffee, then plopping down and working a stint. the very notion of accomplishing something before noon is so utterly foreign to me, but it helps--then after the mid-day epic procrastination bouts and madness set in and burn through, another afternoon shift, and . . . not accomplishing things in great bounds, but moving slowly and steadily through benchmarks. since last week, I've put together a 6000-word essay, and with fairly minor dissociative or depersonalized consequences.
granted, I could write 6000 words of sex-blogging in a day, but this stuff is a little more turgid and comes out more painfully.

I still finish most days feeling like absolute shit, just frustrated and depleted and etc., but it's better this summer than last . . . so far, at least. I also have some massive responsibilities, on a level I don't think I've ever encountered, so it's going to be unrelenting in frightening ways. but so far, so . . . not good, but so not-excruciating, I guess.


the essay is pure shite, but that's another matter.

[Anne the Man]

My professor said in an email to me that I was "hands down the most engaged and intelligent person" in both of the classes I've taken with him. Even if that was a lie, it almost made me cry. It's been a long semester, guys.

Totally read that as "enraged and intelligent" which would also be awesome. Congrats, morgan!

[mixed cats]

Another year, another person from your class in high school dies tragically, eugh

[bethany_m]

oh man i've been having a hard time with similar stuff lately mixed cats, i'm sorry

[mixed cats]

this is someone who I was not close with but knew to be nice, so I'm not personally super upset, but a lot of people I know are. She was 9 months pregnant and got in a car accident (not her fault - the other driver crossed lanes). They tried to save her and the baby at the hospital but neither made it. fffffff.

[peacocks]

christ!

[davy]

god damn 

[elpollodiablo]

That's awful, cats.