I haven’t been to a funeral in years. I guess I’m lucky. Well, at least in that it’s been a while. I’ve been to quite a few funerals in my life with most of them being before the end of my high school days. People that I now barely remember in blurry memories, forgotten pictures and a whiff of smell now and then. People that I wish I could talk to once more. Learn from them. Share with them. Tell them how much they meant to me. But that is the nature of loss, remorse and regret. And the forgetting? That is the nature of humans.
Tonight I attended the funeral of one of my father-in-laws. Well not necessarily a funeral. More of a memorial. There was no service planned. He had been cremated so the only reminder of him was the hundreds of pictures throughout the room and the innocuous green marble container with his name written on it. I know people were planning on getting up and telling stories or just telling others how they felt. My wife among them. I didn’t get to stay to hear those speeches because I had to take Kira back home. It was getting close to bed time and she was starting to fade into crabby-land. It was expected – no regrets.
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This is not the way to start a new year – or the way for the previous one to end. 2010 was a horrible year and we were only too happy to see its end on the horizon. Unfortunately it went clawing tooth and nail like a wildcat slipping into a well and made certain one remaining casualty would haunt the first day of what should have been a happy new year.
There was no countdown, no champagne, no celebration. Only the sadness of family so emotionally and physically exhausted too confused by the state of family stricken down in an instant. There were no party hats, no music, no resolutions. Only anger at the injustice of it all and the unfairness of losing someone who deserved to live more than just 46 years.
But to the year of 2010 I say piss off – you will never be missed. Yes, you spoiled these first days/weeks/months of our new beginning in 2011 but no matter how hard things are now we will carry on. Prayers fail, begging fails, pleading fails and we know that life is just life and that we are on our own. How we handle things now, then and forever are ours to own and no one else’s to lay blame.
Life is short. Be good to one another and to yourself. And hope that those around you do the same. We’re all each other have.
Doctor and author Michael Crichton died of cancer at age 66 on Tuesday. Yet another of my generations icons gone. I didn’t know much about him other than he was responsible for some very cool stories such as Jurrasic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and the TV show E.R. but I know that his passing will be quite a loss to the science fiction field.
He will be missed.
The U.S. Supreme Court this week hears arguments about whether the death penalty can be imposed for child rape.
OK, honestly… who has a problem with this type of sentence? Who thinks that a person who rapes a child deserves anything less than the most brutal and painful torment and death that can be conceived by the most depraved minds in the world? I, for one, would be happy to give them suggestions on how to torture child molesters and would be happy to be their executioner.
So I guess you can tell where I stand on Capital Punishment. I am all for it and I believe it should be a simple cut and dry process. No languishing in prisons once the sentence is passed down. Just do it right there on the spot and viewable on national TV.
- Rape a child (and probably kill the child): then we execute you.
- Commit cold-blooded murder: then we execute you.
- Torture animals: then we execute you.
- Cancel another TV show as good as Firefly: then we execute you.
But no, there always has to be some tree-hugging pacifist who thinks that we should spend millions of dollars every year keeping these bastards alive. Feeding them three meals a day, providing them with workout equipment, basketball courts, satellite television, etc. The best punishment we can hope for for their time in prison is perhaps the occasional beating and/or ass-raping for the convict.
Why do we have so much crime? That’s an easy one to answer. Our legal system is broke or at least severely fractured. Sure justice is served from time to time, but people are willing to take the risks that they do in committing crimes because they know all they have to do is pay for a good lawyer and if necessary go whining to the various ‘humanitarian’ groups. People who are inclined to commit crimes are not afraid of the system and that’s where the downfall is these days. And if you are a celebrity you already know that the laws don’t apply to you in the same way.
What happened to the public execution? Entire cities used to turn out to watch the beheading of criminals. When people were strung up to hang from their necks in the middle of a town square, everyone was reminded of the consequences of bad deeds. When was the last time you saw a person die by execution? Probably never in real life. People are no longer faced with the very real consequences of evil deeds.
So my answer to crime in general is more executions IF they are publicly viewable on television, YouTube, HD satellite broadcast. Start with those that have been rotting in our prisons for decades like Charles Manson. Use the money that would have been spent to guard, feed, entertain, administer and heal him and others like him and use that money to setup an execution with advertising on the SuperBowl. Why not? It’s not like we are EVER going to let people like him out and yet we just can’t bring ourselves to kill the poor wretch. It’s not his fault, it was his mother/his father/society/rock & roll/drugs/insanity/war/whatever. Kill him. Plain and simple.
But it will never happen. And that’s why we will continue to see gangs on the streets because they know if they kill a baby in a drive by shooting they only have to go away for ten years and hang out with others from their gang and make more contacts for when they get out. That’s why we will see random killings and hate crimes because there is no fear. The system is a joke people and the more easily offended our society gets and the more politically correct everyone is forced to be because someone can’t handle reality the worse it’s going to get.
Food for thought: Every time I fly to Malaysia, the announcement before landing reminds everyone that anyone caught smuggling any illegal drugs into the country is subject to capital punishment. I bet Malaysia doesn’t have the same drug problems that the United States does. I wonder why?
Tags: capital punishment, Charles Manson, crime, death, drugs, execution, gangs, law, Malaysia, rape
Politics, Rant | cybrpunk | 
April 16, 2008 10:45 am | 
Comments (3)
Have you heard about the 6 year old girl who died from complications to surgery after a swimming pool accident? I can’t imagine how horrible that must be for her family but how about what happened to her? The article says the injuries were caused by “intestines were partially sucked out by a swimming pool drain” after “she sat on a wading pool drain.” THAT is disturbing.
It doesn’t say much more but I can read between the lines. She sat on a drain and part of her intestines were sucked out. Intestines are inside the body… therefore that means that this drain was so powerful that it turned this poor 6 year old’s ass inside-out and then kept on pulling. That doesn’t even register on the scale of things that I would ever have thought possible to happen to a human body.
This was in a wading pool… how powerful of a suction do you need for a wading pool? And if this is the case for a wading pool, what is the suction on the drains of a normal pool? I’ve dove down to the bottom of the deep end of big pools and touched the drain at the bottom before coming back up. Does that mean that I could have potentially been stuck there and drowned? Or worse still had my arm sucked through the grate like a bunch of hamburger?
Obviously it’s a good thing that new legislation is being passed on drain safety but it could be a long time before all the offending pools are found and fixed. I think from now on I’ll just stay away from the drains in pools from now on. Just in case.
I just saw a notice that legendary author and theoretical scientist Arthur C. Clarke has just died at the age of 90. He was in a hospital near his home in Sri Lanka which is off the coast of India (and not too far from my location). This will be a very sad day in the Science Fiction industry and fans alike.
For those of you not familiar with Clarke, he wrote the well known 2001: A Space Odyssey [and it's sequels] and co-authored the movie based on the book with the equally iconic and departed Stanley Kubrick. Clarke also authored a great many other science fiction short stories and novels that are considered classics in the genre. Many of his stories have to do with the mingling of science and faith and questions regarding humanity and existence instead of the typical pulp fiction that many sci-fi writers go for.
Farewell Arthur. I hope that you now know all the answers to the questions you always hoped we’d ask as well as the answers.
I just found out from Yoshi that the legendary Gary Gygax died today (yesterday here in Hong Kong) at the age of 69. If you’re not familiar with the name, you may have heard of Dungeons & Dragons that Gary helped to create. Gary was also the co-founder of the now defunct TSR that was bought by Wizards of the Coast quite a few years ago. More information on Gary Gygax can be found on his Wikipedia page.
I got into the original Dungeons & Dragons when I was little, back before there even was an Advanced version with multiple hardcover manuals. I’ve practically grown up seeing Gary’s name on one book or game or another all my life till I had to basically give up role-playing as I got older and had less time to devote to it. Video games helped with that too.
It seems that a lot of famous people have been dying lately (Jeff Healey only a few days ago) but that’s not really accurate. Famous people die all the time, it’s just that I’ve reached an age where the people who made a difference in my life are getting older and dying so I take more notice. That’s one of the problems with getting older: the older you get, the more people die during your lifetime. And eventually you and I will be that dead person who made a difference in someone else’s life and hopefully some people will take notice of our passing.
Rest in peace Gary.
The first thing I see in my e-mail this morning when I wake up? Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment yesterday. The same Heath Ledger that starred in Brokeback Mountain and was cast as The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie The Dark Knight.
Filming was already well under way for the Dark Knight as I saw here in Hong Kong and from the insanely long trailer for the new movie I saw at the theater before I Am Legend started.
It’s not too often that a major actor dies in production of a major movie. A similar loss, only under much different circumstances, would be Brandon Lee who was mortally wounded while filming super/anti-hero movie The Crow.
They’ve yet to announce if Ledger’s death will affect the release of the new movie, but with a July release date, I somehow doubt they had all the footage they would need for the final cut before now. It’s sad to see anyone die, but it would be even worse for the work that the cast and crew of the two Chris Nolan led Batman movies to be lost because of this tragedy. I would hope they can finish the movie and honor Heath Ledger in it’s completion.
I started writing again the other day. No, not on the zombie series. [Well OK that's not entirely true. I did do a little work on The Killing Fields at lunch today.] This is another new story line. Something along the lines of a children’s book. For adults. Because of all the blood and death. You know… for kids. *swivels hoola-hoop*
Yeah OK so there usually isn’t a whole lot of blood and death in kids books so this would obviously not be the correct classification. I was just thinking of something light-hearted like Jumanji and Night at the Museum mixed with something a little more disturbing like Hellraiser and The Relic with maybe a bit of Cthulhu mythos influences to spice it up a bit. I probably won’t finish it just like everything else, but you never know. Maybe if things settle down at work after I get back from the States, I can try and concentrate on writing more often. Maybe some more drawing too. That would be nice.
If any of my readers is a police officer, especially one that’s been on a murder crime scene, and wouldn’t mind me asking them a few procedural questions through e-mail, send me a message @ cybrpunk 13 @ gmail dot com. Your country or state of jurisdiction is not important to me so don’t let that stop you.
