cleolinda | (no subject)

Dear Sender of English Chocolate Bars: Thank you thank you thank you thank you I love you squee! That is all.

More fun for y'all: 99 Sin City bases/icons. Many of them are different versions of the same image, but still: a pretty good selection. If I missed someone you wanted, let me know and I'll dig through what I've got. Take/want/have, alter, animate 'em together, be creative, have a party (but no hotlinking).

General linkspam:

New pics from Batman Begins, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. (More Batman pics here.)

There is now actually an Wikipedia-style encyclopedia entry on "My hed iz pastede on yay" (complete with original photo manip!), in case you've ever wondered what it means. I like to give myself credit for helping popularize the phrase with the Crystalwank metaquotes I did on Journalfen... and then I get over myself.

Yeah, I bet Michael Jackson feels "ill." I would too, if I had a lot of time on my hands to contemplate what would happen to me in prison.

In similar news, Paul Shanley gets 12-15 years for the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal. Lawyers estimate that he'll last 12-15 minutes in general population before he gets shanked.

Because Starsky & Hutch did so well.

Dear Usher: STFU.

Johnny Depp frightens children as Wonka. NO, REALLY?

(Mmmmmmmmchocolate.)

Keira Knightley stars in a movie about a model-turned-bounty hunter that's based on a true story. Only problem is, the real Domino is a lesbian. And she doesn't like the film's "raunchy [heterosexual] sex scenes." In other news, advance ticket sales just shot up 1000%.

The Amazing Race's Jonathan and Victoria will be on a Dr. Phil special tonight. One can only hope that Phil beats him to death with his own bottle of hair gel. (Actually, I'd like to see Host Phil turn up to help out with that.)

Back to work it is! I wonder what reading I have due for tomorrow...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If a judge sentenced Paul Shanley or Michael Jackson to death by torture, that would be one thing. It's quite another to pretend that they're being sentenced to life imprisonment, when everybody knows perfectly well that it probably will be death by torture. Big fat screaming hypocrisy there, to let the prisoners do what the law will not do.

Also big fat screaming hypocrisy for people to gloat over torture and murder by prison inmates when the victim is some celebrity, but to expect protection from the same when its themselves or their loved ones facing a prison sentence. Either the Rule of Law means something, or it doesn't - either it's not acceptable for anyone to be beaten, raped or killed in prison, or it is acceptable. If it is, then that means acceptable for anyone - whether a 74-year-old child rapist, or your 18-year-old brother or son who got busted for marijuana possession.

I didn't say I approved of it. In fact, I think it's pretty terrible, the dangers that prisoners are exposed to. I just comment on things in the spirit of satire (http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/satire), I guess.

I know you didn't; didn't mean *you*. Just I've gotten really sick of all the gloating and sniggering that goes on about this sort of thing. The jokes about what's gonna happen to Michael Jackson in prison have gone on for months, and every time I hear them, it highlights how lawless and corrupt this society's become; how jaded and cruel even the "nice ordinary people" are.

Reminds me of dear little Lynnette, the Sweetheart of Abu Ghraib - oh, all horror that a nice American girl could do such things to helpless people - yeah right, because the very same nice American people who were all horrified over that are all gleeful over the prospect of Michael Jackson getting butt-raped by gangs of convicts with AIDS; preparing to rejoice at the news that an elderly man was beaten to death... it just really says something to me, y'know? and not something good, either.

Most people don't think life in prison a suitably harsh crime for raping children and scarring them for life, therefore there is a covert hope that prison will somehow equal the horror those children had to go through. I do not disagree with you in the respect that our society has some problems regarding the same barbarity that led the Romans to watch the gladiators slaughter each other and anyone else that came into their reach. But I do not think that is the whole problem in the cases you mentioned.

My apologies, Cleolinda. I'll continue this in my journal.

But this is a democracy, so if "most people" really think life in prison isn't harsh enough punishment for the crime, they have it within their power to change the law. Prison rape (http://slate.msn.com/id/2089095/) isn't "justice under the rule of law", and treating it as if it is undermines the rule of law.

I don't know about America, but here child offenders have to be put in solitary confindment...for their own safety.

But what about the other prisoners?

You see, what happens is that according to some survey I read a while ago (google it if yee doubt me) even the serial killers HATE child rapists. There is a kind of prison law, and the child offenders are at the very bottom. Everyone hates them, everyone wants them dead, even in prison. There is not the same kind of hatred for junkies, and so they are not treated by the other prisoners the same. Some might be raped, but that is the exception rather than the rule.

It's not the fact that the person is a celbrity that people snigger about them getting hurt. It's the fact they molested children.

It's not "the exception rather than the rule" in America for prisoners to be raped - check out this report (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html) by Human Rights Watch. For sure, child molestors are at the bottom of the prison pecking order, but having a system in which it's considered acceptable - even a good thing, apparently - for any prisoners to be raped for any reason means that anyone who goes to prison is in danger. And as you will see from the report, it's the younger, smaller, less-violent prisoners who are most victimized.

Either rape is wrong, or it's not. If it's not wrong, then rapists shouldn't be sent to jail; if it is wrong, then it shouldn't be condoned as a "fringe benefit punishment", outside the law but really okay because prisoners don't matter. That makes a mockery of "justice" - saying we don't inflict cruel and unusual punishment on people, then sending them where other people will inflict it is hypocrisy, no different from "out-sourcing" torture by sending political prisoners to countries that have no laws against it.

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

Perhaps, the issue is...

Re: Perhaps, the issue is...

no subject

no subject