Death to us all

The death penalty is always a touchy subject, one that regularly divides and confuses the masses. No other issue bears witness to as much consternation and flip-flopping. At times, the same man who felt vehemently pro-death one day can suddenly remember that the Pope forgave his would-be assassin, and so why can't he do likewise unto his wife who may have dumped a box of Borax into his cocaine stash?

Live and let live, whydoncha.

For me, the issue is pretty simple; I'm all for it. Being pretty liberal, I already espouse wonton murder, and I don't subscribe to the same brand of hypocrisy that my conservative counterparts flaunt on their collective soapboxes. I say, "Death to us all!" not just the unborn (that's discrimination).

I don't see what the big deal is. After all, death by lethal injection is a pretty good way to go. Except for the needle penetrating the skin, it's painless. A soothing sleep of various paralyzing agents starts the process, followed quickly by a Potassium Chloride cocktail. You don't feel a thing. On my list of "ways to lick the bucket", this rests quite high, actually.

It would be nice to know my expiration date. I mean go right ahead and stamp that thing on my forehead like I was a quart of fresh squeezed OJ, so that I can make my peace with God the day beforehand.

What's not so pleasant is the time leading up to the day of reckoning. First, there are the lawyers; a decade of witnessing an endless Mortal Kombat session between attorneys is enough to make even the toughest man succumb to the temptation of sweet, swift demise. Second is prison, which is undoubtedly worse for a cute little honky like me than any state-issued execution that has ever been devised. I'd rather stare down at the dusty earth as Robespierre himself pulled the guillotine then get gang raped 6,018,574 times by Willie Horton.

I always got a laugh while watching Law and Order when assistant DA Jack McCoy gives someone the choice of either 25 years-to-life, or 10-to-15 if he's willing to rat out all of his friends, who will be in prison waiting for him once he gets there. Ooooo, great choices there, Jack. Because, let's face it folks - a decade in the joint is a death sentence for a guy like me. I'd rather they just inject 100 cc's of pharmaceutical morphine directly into my jugular and be done with it. Personally, if, God forbid, some scumbag murders a member of my family, I'm definitely not going to fight for the death penalty. I say let him rot in Shawshank for the rest of his life.

Instead of being restricted, I say capitol punishment should be expanded to a number of lesser crimes. That's right – let's just start offing people for any ol' thing. Wait! Where's the compassion? Where's the fairness? Where's the reverence for the precious gift of life?

Oh puh-leez.

If human life were so damn precious, there wouldn't be six-and-a-half billion of us milling around. We're not all special. You're not special, I'm not special. We all could be sent off to war at a moments notice at the whim of a megalomaniacal president and his ill-advised advisors, put in the path of bullets and bombs, all because somebody worships a different God or they happen to have more bubble gum than we do. How special does that sound?

Also, take a look at the prisons today. They are ridiculously overcrowded and they cost the taxpayers far too dearly. Cut out the appeals and the stays of execution and just get to it; that way, we can free up the prisons for people who should really be there, like Jon Bon Jovi for polluting the airwaves with his banal brand of cheesy hair rock for three fucking decades.

While were at it, why not take it one step further? Why not expand the death penalty to a number of things that aren't even considered crimes? I can think of several things that need to be recognized as "activities punishable by death." Since I'm on my computer and you are too, let's start the death march with:

• Making any of the following: Computer viruses, spyware, pop-up ads that install spyware, pop-up ads that blink rapidly in incredibly annoying colors, making any advertisement that blinks on a webpage I want to read. I mean, who the hell sits around doing this stuff anyway? Losers, that's who – and who needs those fat, sexless desk jockeys anyway?
  Method of punishment: getting run over by a "Geeks on Call" VW Beetle.

• Making that exasperating sound, to show your displeasure, by clicking the top of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and then following that by a petulant sigh.
  Method of punishment: asphyxia with cotton balls soaked in Rosanne Barr's crotch sweat. If petulant sigh is followed by "what-EVER," punishment is asphyxia with cotton balls soaked in the crotch sweat of that fat guy who jogs around your neighborhood in a leisure suit.

• Saying "like" more than once every fifty words. Sounds extreme, but we've really got to put an end to this "like" shit because it's driving me crazy.
  Method of punishment: mandatory attendance in a 72-hour seminar on Shakespearian sonnets. That should, like, be enough to kill most violators.

• Screwing off at work for six hours every day, and then blaming the people who bust their ass when things go wrong. I believe this should eliminate a significant portion of the workforce, with little or no drop in overall productivity.
  Method of punishment: decapitation by circular saw, just for the hell of it.

• Inventing, manufacturing or distributing that car alarm with the fifteen different alarm signals. You know the one – it starts off with a police siren, followed by a spaceship sound effect, followed by an ambulance siren, then a "clear the factory floor" buzzer, then a European police siren ... and on and on. It goes off whenever anyone gets within five feet of the car, or if the wind blows.
  Method of punishment: sitting in your apartment in Washington, DC, trying to write an article for Hobotrashcan.com, and having an intra-cerebral brain aneurysm because your neighbor has a car alarm that has gone off for eleven straight hours.

• Making an "air golf" swing while having a serious conversation with someone who does not play golf or does not care about golf in the least. As a ravenous golf addict, I have been guilty of this several times, so this is a form of suicide, I suppose. But I can see why it irritates people, so I promise to stop doing it – for the life of me. If I continue this tiresome practice, feel free to shove a five-iron up my ass.

• Being a wannabe hippie with a dog named Marley and two cats named Shroomy and Mary Jane.
  Method of punishment: meet Rocco, a 120-pound Pit Bull with distemper. If the same hippie has asked the host of a BBQ to "clean off the grill before you put on my zucchini," add an additional punishment of choking to death on a full rack of baby-back ribs from Chili's, while the staff sings "I want my baby-back baby-back baby-back baby-back ..."

Well, that should be good for starters. Next up: taxi-cab drivers.

Evan Redmon is a freelance writer and editor. He has lived in Washington, DC for most of his life, with seven years of college down the drain in Madison, WI and four and a half years of doing nothing in particular in Boulder, CO. He has visited 39 of the 50 states in the Union (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and can be reached at evanredmon@yahoo.com.