Author: David

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

So now I’m all excited at the prospect that “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (the TV series) may be coming to DVD soon. I loved that show; I used to watch it in re-runs every night on channel 18, right before “Nanny and the Professor”. And just like “Bewitched”, it had its own token homo, in the person of Charles Nelson Reilly…

Atlanta

I decided on Monday that there were several reasons why it was necessary for me to leave town for a few days. The water was going to be off all over my apartment complex, I have a promising interview later this week which might make future trips more difficult, and I just sort of felt like it.

So I went to Atlanta.

I just got home. I’m beat so I’m not going to tell any exiting stories about the trip tonight. OK, there weren’t really any REALLY exciting stories anyway, but still…

Randomly Saturday

Random thoughts for a Saturday night:

  • For those of you who may have been concerned about this, the secret ingredient in Wednesday’s cake, while no particular improvment to it, also proved not to be particularly detrimental either. In other words, no one (myself included) really noticed.
  • I spent today in Columbia with my parents, visiting an elderly cousin I hadn’t seen in a good twenty years or so. This being the south, we’re ALL cousins here, so I’m not 100% sure of the relationship. She was my grandmother’s first cousin, which makes her (I believe) my first cousin twice removed. Yes, this being the south, people also pay attention to distinctions like that. Makes it easier to keep up with who’s off limits for breeding.
  • Is it just me, or do truck lane restrictions actually make driving on the freeway MORE dangerous rather than less? Around here, trucks are restricted to the right two or three lanes of urban freeways. In theory, I assume it’s supposed to make drivers in the left lane feel safer. In practice, however, it just makes truckers behave like assholes in lanes where other drivers expect to be moving at a slower pace. So you end up with big rigs riding your ass at 70MPH when you’re not even IN the fast lane because (a) they CAN’T pass and (b) they WON’T slow down.
  • Why is every freaking freeway interchange in South Carolina NAMED for someone? And why is it always someone with a stupid nickname in quotation marks, like Jefferson C. “Buzz” Dingleberry, or something similarly idiotic? As honors go, having your own memorial onramp must rank just slightly above having a toilet in New Jersey named for you.

Mmmm. Cake.

I’m baking a cake. A carrot cake, specifically. It may be a very interesting carrot cake, because I accidentally sprinkled garlic powder into the mix rather than the ground cinnamon I thought I had in my hand. I think I managed to scoop most of it out, but you never know how much of a great new taste treat I may have developed here.

Stuff

It’s off to Greensboro tomorrow to take care of some business for a friend and to install a new printer and scanner for my mom. I wanted to do this earlier in the week, but my life is sort of on hold thanks to the leisurely pace at which so many medical professionals seem to operate these days, particularly when it involves getting in touch with patients.

Of course, my aversion to technology which facilitates people getting in touch with me may be making this all a bit more difficult, but I’m comfortable with that.

This, by the way, is hysterical, and comes to you via here.

Death Be Not Painless

I’ve always had a problem with the death penalty. Vindictive old cuss that I am, I’m still a little squeamish at the idea of a civilized society killing individuals in peacetime as a matter of justice. More importantly, I’m horrified at the very real potential for error given the irreversible nature this particular sentence.

That said, I also believe that states which use the death penalty should go ahead and do it, without the constant obsession over the most “painless and humane” means of execution. Here’s a clue: there is no humane and painless means of execution. The knowledge that one is about to die is probably the most painful thing imaginable for most human beings.

As Chief Gillespie said (yes, as a matter of fact I was inspired by an “In the Heat of the Night” rerun, thanks), the only way to execute someone without torturing him in the process is to tell him he’s forgiven, set him free, wait for the smile to cross his lips as he leaves the room, and then shoot him in the back before he realizes what’s happening.

I had an boyfriend once who was not a vegetarian, but who would only eat ground beef or sausage, because it didn’t “seem like” part of an animal. The touchy-feely approach to the death penalty seems a similar contradiction to me. If you’re going to kill people (or eat meat, or have sex with members of your same sex, or practice copyright infringement, or whatever), at least have the goddamned balls not to delude yourself into thinking you’re doing something else.

Don’t blame the mechanics of the act when it’s the act itself that you really have a problem with.