Attorneys at law.

I had other ideas for tonight’s blog entry, more ambitious ideas, but the sun is shining and the sky is blue and I am feeling fat and lazy. Well okay, I usually feel fat and lazy. But this time, it’s in a good way.

So tonight, I guess I will just gab a bit. I will get around to writing another short story some time this week. I got the idea worked out in my head. It’s just a matter of putting in the effort.

Finished Into The Abyss. I won’t say too much more about it as I bored you all with my ramblings about it last night.

But wow. I can’t believe how perfect a documentary it is. It’s a powerful story simply told, in the words of the people involved. It captures so much of America and the conflicts inherent in its ways of doing things that it is like literature.

And yet it was made by a German. Sometimes, outsiders can see things more clearly than those in the thick of things.

There was one part I saw that I have to relate because it was so extraordinary. Werner interviewed a man who was the captain of the death house that executed one of the two killers, Michael Perry. This man had overseen, and actively participated in, over 125 executions. He was one of the guys strapping prisoners down and then unstrapping them once they are dead. He was also the guy who spent eight to ten hours with the prisoners before they died, getting them their Last Meal, making sure they are comfortable, taking them to the chaplain if they want to go.

So he would get to know these people really well, and then help kill them. He said he tried not to think about it, and just did his job like anyone else.

But he is not a heartless man, and something had to give, and what set it off was the first time he had to assist in the execution of a female prisoner. That was the last straw. That day he started sweating profusely and shaking like a leaf and having trouble breathing, especially after she thanked him for all he had done for her.

That’s when the left work, and went home, and his wife asked him what was wrong with him, and he told her he didn’t know, but he figured he had to talk to someone. So he called up the prison chaplain, and the chaplain came over, and he told the chaplain that he just couldn’t do it any more. He couldn’t go back to the death house.

And that is how a man who assisted 125 executions had a total moral and spiritual breakdown and now is one hundred percent against the death penalty no matter what the law says. That is powerful stuff. Take it from one who knows!

He said nobody has the right to take a life. That’s how I have always seen it. Murder is murder, whether it comes from a gun or a needle in your arm, and a murderer is a murderer whether the State gives them permission to kill or not. To me, killing the killing simply means there are now two crimes where there was once only one.

And the executioner should be the next to die. I mean, we kill killers, right? Well, the executioner just killed someone!

Human beings have the right to life no matter what they do and no matter how angry are with them and how badly we want to kill them for what they have done. Emotions do not justify violence, that is practically the entire message of the law. We know you want to do wrong things, and we are saying don’t do them. And we won’t do them for you, either.

Let’s see. What else. Well, my knee has not gotten any better. In fact, it has gotten a little worse. I now get a burning sensation in the muscle of the knee even when I am putting no weight on it at all. So I will definitely be making an appointment to see my GP, Doctor Chao, after therapy this Friday.

I have my wracking my mind to try to remember if I injured the knee somehow, but I am drawing a total blank. I do not remember stumbling or falling and landing on my feet or any of that.

The damn thing just blew out on its own. Welcome to being old, I guess. Shit just fails on you.

I am worried that it has something to do with the lack of calcium in my diet. I just don’t get very much dairy at all. I fell out of the habit of drinking milk when I was a teen (which is like, the worst time for that), and I have never been someone who ate a lot of cheese. Don’t get me wrong, I like cheese, I just don’t eat it that often.

And while I would love to eat ice cream all the time, the sugar free stuff is too expensive.

And sure, I know that there are other dietary sources of calcium. Most of them are leafy green vegetables that are not exactly tasty, and I don’t care for blackstrap molasses.

So that leaves me with nuts. Almonds in particular. I tried to get a big bag of almonds from Safeway yesterday, but of course, they didn’t have them. I swear, they hide the things I am looking for just to piss me off.

My idea was to treat the almonds like a tasty nutritional supplement and have, like, ten with every meal. But instead, all I could do was buy some trail mix with almonds in it, and go from there.

I do not want to resort to a calcium supplement. I already take too many damned pills and I would much rather eat something tasty than take more.

I guess that’s all from me tonight. See you tomorrow, folks!