Hey there.
So today was my first day of work at the good ‘ol Toys R’ Us distribution center. It was a very long day (6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) I picked up well over 1,000 boxes and put them on trucks. I never want to see a box again in my life. My legs are very sore. I was very dirty until I showered a little bit ago. I have to repeat the whole process tomorrow.
On the plus side, everyone I have met there so far is pretty cool. I hear that starting pretty soon they’re going to do 8 hour work days instead of 10… which would be kind of nice I think. Oh yeah, and I’m gonna have plenty of money come Cornerstone time. Of course, after Cornerstone is over I will have approximately nothing…. but.. *shrugs*.
I have like 2 months after it to get more money for other various things I probably don’t really need but think that I do.
Anyway, I am sick of writing this, but I am very happy that I am sitting down. 10 hours is a very long time to stand, even with the 2 15 minute breaks, and the 30 minute lunch break……
Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow, when I will undoubtedly be yet even more sore than I am now…..
Later.
computer games and Halo are fun. Bruce Almighty is a good movie. That is all.
computer games and Halo are fun. Bruce Almighty is a good movie. That is all.
So I will be working shortly. I went in for an interview at the Toys R Us warehouse earlier today. It all went well, and I am to come in for orientation next tuesday… and they said I can start on wednesday. Will be working from 6 to 4. It’ll be crazy. And hot (20 degrees hotter in the trucks then it is outside. But money is good. And they will give me off for Cornerstone. And it is during the day… though it starts incredibly early… heh. So anyway… I am going to resume my current job-free life.. and finish watching the simpsons.. and then play some Enter the Matrix… I just thought I would share that.
So I was under the impression that….. while stuff was kind of sucking at school, life would be much improved upon returning home… but here it is… not even a full 2 weeks of being home, and already stuff is stupid. I write this not even from my house, because I don’t care to be there when all I can do is sit in my room, since leaving i would undoubedly cause me to be attacked abou something I can’t even do anything about. What is the point of discussing an issue which is over and done with? The past cannot be changed. What am I supposed to say or do?
I would also think that i is enough that I more or less have a job worked out, while I am not employed at this immediate second. But then, nothing I was saying was really being listened to anyway.
But at any rate, I sure as hell don’t feel like being woken up at some excessively early tie tomorrow for no real reason, and there is the other main reason why i am here, as opposed to there… This way the first hing hat happens when I wae up tomrrow won’t be stupid drama.
Just felt like venting a bit. I’m done.
By the way, The Matrix Reloaded was awesome….. and so is the game, Enter the Matrix.
Godspeed. Hope you have a pleasant day.
Last night I went to a Pedro the Lion show… first one not at Cornerstone ;). Show started pretty late… was supposed to have started at 8:30…. doors didn’t open till 9, and I think it started slightly after 9:30. Opening bands were pretty good… but Ester Drang had too long of a set, especially considering that the show started late. And I didn’t really like the vocals for them… the next band, Stratford Four, was pretty good overall. I enjoyed them. Anyway, then of course was Pedro. I was very happy to get to see him live. He was playing bass, which was new, since both times i saw him before he was playing guitar… He played like 6 new songs… I pretty much liked them all… was kind of a cool touch because they haven’t written all the music for them yet, so it was just him playing on acoustic, rather then the whole band. I tried to find the lyrics to one of the new songs online somewhere, but haven’t been able to do so as of yet… but the song had what I felt was a really cool line in it… I dunno… when I heard it I just thought it was a great line:
“My old man always swore that Hell would have no flames, just a front row seat to watch your true love pack her things and drive away.”
And also for another song, which now that I have read the lyrics I think it makes a pretty good point… but umm.. yeah, I think it should spur some kind of good discussion maybe? Anyway, here you go:
“I don’t wanna believe that none of the above is true
But I couldn’t resist it, if you were to give me proof
Why don’t you come over Thursday, maybe we can talk it through
But I’ll be packin my pistol just in case you aren’t true, I’ll shoot you
After all, you and I are nothing more than Foregone Conclusions
You were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord
to hear the voice of the Spirit saying “shut the fuck up”
you thought it must be the devil trying to make you go astray
besides it couldn’t have been the Lord because you’re pretty sure
he doesn’t talk that way
After all, you and I are nothing more than Foregone Conclusions (repeat)”
-“Foregone Conclusions,” by Pedro the Lion
I am home. my hair is black, for real this time… not purple. the dye I used felt like burning. It actually kind of hurt, I think cuz I just bleached my hair like 2 weeks ago…. so… yeah. ;)Anyway, I am tired and am going to see X2 for the 2nd time tomorrow at 1, so I am going to get in some sleep I think.
Godspeed.
checkout is in about 2 hours. I probably will not post again until I am at home. Hope you all have a great weekend.
Godspeed.
Tomorrow I take my last 2 finals, one of which I still have yet to study for. But that is ok, I will do that as soon as I am done posting. 6 and a half hours till I take it 😉 I think I will stay up tonight, just because I want to play Final Fantasy, and type this, and so forth. Then tomorrow I can just sleep most of the day away.
Anyway, in regards to the post yesterday, a couple of people mentioned their thoughts on the death penalty in their comments. So I thought I would write about it to at least cause people to think about it and maybe call into question what they currently think.
I can understand where people who support the death penalty are coming from. Up until pretty recently, I was right there with them. In a way I guess you could say I still think the same way, except I decided that something I had thought maybe was possible then, I have ceased to think is really possible. The condition on which I support the death penalty is if someone is without any doubt whatsoever completely proven guilty of a crime worthy of it. However, given the number of people who have been given the death penalty that were later proven innocent by dna testing, etc, it is obvious that all of these people who were “proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt” were not really. Therefore, it is obvious that we are incapable of determining complete proof of guilt.
You also have this situation with the WM3. Of the 3, Jessie has life + 40 years, Jason has 3 life sentances (both of them without parole), and Damien has been sentenced to death by lethal injection. Yet to me there is not only considerable doubt as to if they did it, I find it extremely unlikely that they did it, as they were convicted on little to no actual evidence. Their situation is in fact what caused me to call my beliefs into question.
In my opinion, the taking of human life is a very serious thing. It is something that is completely irreversible, and you can never take it back. I feel that life without parole is sufficient punishment for the crime. Sure, if people are actually guilty of murder, they DESERVE to be put to death… but as long as there is a chance that maybe they are really innocent, they should be allowed to live, and to attempt to prove their innocence.
I welcome comments and agreements/disagreements. Like I said, I understand both sides…
Godspeed.
[Edit: I just finished reading the book Devil’s Knot, and I just thought that the last page was really kind of touching and like people should read it. So I am going to type it out here. Feel free to read it or not… it’s not too terribly long.
“”It’s crooked,” twenty-five year old Jessie Misskelley said, offering his opinion of Crittendon County. By the spring of 2001, Jessie had spent a third of his life in prison. He had seventeen tattoos, including one with his nickname, Midget Biker. He said he was thinking of getting another one. “I want to get a tattoo on my head,” he said. “I want a brain. I want a brain tattoo on the top of my head. Because I ain’t never seen no one that has one.” He described himself as hopeful– and a bit smarter then when he’d been arrested. Now, he realized, “If you didn’t do it, don’t ever admit that you did.”
Damien’s interest in metaphysics– Which had so colored his trial– continued on death row. He’d read books on Buddhism and come to embrace that philosophy. As a result, many Arkansans were doubly surprised when they read, in December 1999, not only that Damien had married but that the ceremony had been a Buddhist one performed at the prison. The woman marrying him was Lorri Davis, the architect from New Youk with whom he’d been corresponding since the release of the first documentary.
Captain Allen said he was “stunned and dismayed” to learn that Damien had wed. “I thought to myself, ‘What’s this old world coming to?'” he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “I know it’s federally mandated, but unless [a prisoner] is getting married to a cellmate, they really need to revamp the system.” Brent Davis said he thought it was “strange” that Damien had so many supporters, and that one would even marry him. “We made him what he was,” the prosecutor said. “We elevated Echols from a psychotic-fringe to being admired by thousands.”
As the ninght anniversary of the murders approached, Jason was living a lief as close to a middle-class life as he could manage inside a prison. Because he was quick to learn computers and maintained an impeccableprison record, he’d been assigned to a series of white-collar jobs in various clerical positions. He’d joined the prison Jaycess and begun to study investments. “I don’t want to get out and be that sixteen-year-old kid I once was,” he said. “I want to keep up.”
He’d taken college courses in subjects like anthropology, accounting, and American politics– “because I want to see what our government’s built on.”– and dreamed of attending law school. And he had a sweetheart. The correspondence that he’d begun in 1997 with young Sara Cadwallader had grown into a serious romance. She was in high school when they’d met. Now Sara had graduated from college and had herself been accepted into law school. Jason credited Sara, his faith in God,and the support of friends, many of them “total strangers,” for his emotional stability– for his ongoing belief “that right will prevail.”
“I have grown up in prison,” he wrote at the end of 2001. Even with all that I have suffered, I have not allowed myself to become hateful, spiteful or resentful of either those who put me here unjustly, or of those who allowed it to happen. I know you’ve got to love life, enjoy it, embrace it while you’ve got it. I love this country we have. I love America and her people. And I hope that someday I will be able to live here as a free man again, with my reputation intact.”
Jessie, Damien, and Jason all had different visions of what life would be like if they were freed. Jessie dreamed of a “big party.” Damien said he wanted to “disappear” with his wife. Jason foresaw a life of activism relating somehow to law.
“Being in here has made me stronger,” he said. “It’s made me more reflective on things I should be proud of and enjoy, things like freedom. I don’t take things for granted. And I’m not as naive as I was. The reason I’m here– the real reason– is that someone had to pay the price.” Jason said that the police and prosecutors had been “content just to say we did it” and that had been “enough” for the public. But he added that he understood the public reaction. “I used to think that way too,” he said. “To me, a suspect meant, ‘That’s who done it.’ but I didn’t do it, and that’s the main matter.””
I highly reccomend the book by the way. It is definately worth your time to read.
Later.]
All right, as to my last post, several people have asked what incited me to write it. There was no paticular event or anything that did, though I made references to a couple events. It is just after seeing so much of it for awhile I just had something to say about it, and so I did.
I also made another post yesterday, which was up for a few hours. It was seen and commented on by one person, I dunno if anyone else saw it or not. Anyway, I decided it had served it’s purpose at that point, and that it stood enough chance of upsetting some people that I should remove it. For anyone who saw it, my reply to the comment that asked what the point of it was, was this:
“the point was just to comment on it. you said a lot of things that i had something to say about, and i felt it was too big of a thing to just put in a comment thing underneath your post…. if you found it interesting, then the point was achieved. It was simply to impart my views on said topic. Oh, and the point of putting in your post in between what i was talking about… wasn’t so much to “review” your entry… it was just to make my comments on what you said easier to follow. otherwise it would have been just kind of a jumble of thoughts i think.”
That is mostly just for the person who asked, because otherwise she won’t be able to see my reply to her comment ;).
Several of you know of my interest in the West Memphis Three, which I learned of through Zao, but didn’t really get too interested in until one day when I got bored and went to www.wm3.org. For the past couple weeks I have been reading a book called Devil’s Knot, which is about the investigation and trials and so forth. It is a very interesting book, because of all the insight and stuff it gives you into the american court system. It really kind of pisses you off at it. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the case, I will give you a brief overview. You will probably VAGUELY remember it, at least, as I vaguely remember hearing about the crime.
“On the evening of May 5, 1993, in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, 3 8 year old boys disappeared. The next afternoon, the naked bodies of Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore were found submerged in a nearby stream. The boys had been bound from ankle to wrist with their own shoelaces and severely beaten. Christopher had been castrated.
The crime scene had yielded few clues, and despite Christopher’s castration, there was a remarkable absence of blood. The police were stymied, and citizens’ alarm mounted as weeks passed without an arrest. Finally, a month after the murders, detectives announced 3 arrests- and a startling theory of the crime: that the children had been killed by members of a satanic cult.”
That is from the inside cover of this book. Anyway, the 3 that were arrested were Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Miskellie, jr.
Anyway, there is a lot of stuff in this book that has upset me that people would do (such as questioning Jessie, who is mildly retarded, without his parents or a lawyer present or giving him his rights, yelling at him to tell the truth, telling him that the polygraph machine is telling them that he is lying to them when there is no indication that he was (except on one question, which was if he had ever used drugs, and was in no way related to the crime), etc, etc, in order to produce a confession out of him, which was wildly inconsistent with the facts of the case…)
Anyway, the thing that I read yesterday that I really wanted to post about is this…. This is shortly after Jessie recieved a sentance of life + 40 years in prison:
“Outside the courthouse, Jessie’s lawyer stood talking to resporters on the building’s icy steps. “Mr. Misskelley made a decision last night that he is not going to testify against his codefendants,” Stidham announced. Reporters hollered questions. Had Jessie been offered a reduced sentence if he testified- one that would give him an opportunity for parole, as Damien’s lawyers claimed? Or had no such dealbeen offered, as Fogleman contended? Stidham decline to answer but did say tellingly, that the decision Jessie had reached the nbight before had been “the most difficult decision he will ever make.” Stidham said that as he spoke, Jessie was being driven back to the prison at Pine Bluff.
Years later, in an interview in the prison, Jessie described the pressure he’d been under. He said that when he was brought back to northeast Arkansas after his own conviction, he was told that if he did not testify against Damien and Jason, they would not be convicted, and that while he rotted in prison, they’d go after his girlfriend. “They told me that if I didn’t testify, Damien and Jason would walk free,” he recalled, “and they were going to go see Susie; they was going to get to her. That’s when they told me: talk or Damien and Jason are going to walk free and IU was going to be locked up.” Jessie credited his father and stepmother with helpiong him to understand the situation. They told him that if he lied at Damien and Jason’s trial, “That’s somthing I’d have to live with the rest of my life.” That, he said was when he decided not to testify. “This way, if I ever do get out, he explained, “my name will be clear, and IO can live pretty much a decent life.””
Hmmmm…. interesting thing to tell a mildly retarded person in order to get them to testify….
But it doesn’t stop there, because as several of the defence lawyers put it, the first of which was Jessie’s lawyer, as Jessie’s trial was seperate, and before Jason and Damien’s, the prosecution had developed “Damien Echols tunnel vision”. They were determined that he was to blame for the crimes, and wanted soley to convict him. And so a deal was offered to Jason…
“Instead of asking the jury to sentence Jason to death, they would seek a sentence of forty years-a term that would allow for his eventual parole-if he would plead guilty and testify against Damien. If Jason accepted the deal and exhibited good behavior in prison, he could expect to be out in 10-15 years…..
,,,”They (his lawyers) said, ‘j=Just say something. Save yourself,'” Jason recalled. “Ford was encouraging me to do it. But I was, like, ‘Nah. This isn’t right.’ I made the decision on my own, right then and there. It was a flat-out no. For said, ‘Well, I still had to ask.'”
Like much about Jason’s role in the trial, the drama played out quietly and was ultimately ignored. But the episode was revealing. It showed a lot about the prosecutors- and about the character of the 16 year old who, in turning them down, risked being put to death.””
To me, it seems like, if you honestly feel like 3 people are guilty of murder, you would not offer 2 of them the chance to be out on the street again in 15 years, for the sake of getting one of them the death penalty. And why so focused on Damien? Why not make the same offer to Damien so as to get Jason? I just think that it is wrong that Jason even had to hear that he had that option. That is not justice to me.
Anyway, just something to think about.
Free the WM3!
Godspeed.