An Eye For An Eye Part 2

We're still on the death penalty in Sociology.

Today, we watched a piece on what happens to the men sentenced to life in prison/Death Row and are then released. Because it turns out that, you know, they were innocent and all that.

So what happens to these men? Well, for most of them, they were released with a handshake and an "Aw, shucks!" and not much else. Of course, there was a media frenzy about them, and legislative representatives who swore they would see to it that they were compensated for their many years (years of their lives that they will never get back) in prison.

And for most of them, that money never comes. There's only a handful of states that will pay you for that sort of thing. There's only a handful of them that seem to give a damn if you've been wronged by the justice system. There's only a handful of them that even want to apologize.

Although, I feel like any sort of apology would be hollow. Most of those men (all, I guess, actually) screamed out their innocence. They begged and pleaded for the DNA tests, because a good portion of them are in for rape. Unfortunately, it took like, ten years TEN YEARS for some of those DNA tests to be performed.

How does this happen? How does it happen that innocent men not only go to prison, but they stay there? And not for like, a few months. I mean years. Half of lifetimes. Time is so precious, and it isn't like you'll ever get that back. And I'm starting to see that even if they do get some kind of compensation for their time spent to repay a debt to society that did not exist... That money won't erase that.

That money will not make it better.

Nothing is going to make it better.

How broken is our justice system? How broken are we that we cry out for someone to pay instead of trying to be rational and find the correct answers? Since when is any answer the right answer? Since when is any body rotting away the best way for us to get things done?

And then when the men get out... There's nothing for them. Sure, there's a family, maybe. But how do you go from being told what to do day in and day out to freedom? How do you learn to integrate yourself back into society?

There's also the matter of record expunging. Guess what? Doesn't always happen. You can be exonerated, and you can explain this, but that crime could still be on your record. HAVE FUN FINDING A JOB!

How does this happen? Why hasn't this been fixed?

Confessions from a Fat Girl

I believe I've mentioned before that I am over weight. I've struggled with my weight my whole life. I've been losing weight since I got off my crutches, recovered from minor surgery, and my health issues concerning my vitamin D were worked out.

My specialist and PCP (primary care physician, not, you know, the drug)are very pleased with the progress I've made. But we all three know that I still have some more to lose.

Although, I want to make it known here and now that my blood sugar is great. My sodium is amazing. My cholesterol is fantastic. My joint pain is unrelated to my weight. I have no health problems that are contributed to my weight...

...Yet.

That's why I want to get some kind of place with my weight that everyone can agree is good. I know that I will never be "skinny". I'm just fine with that.

I'm on Tumblr. There are several blogs on there that are for the acceptance of body types. Or rather, that's what they're masquerading as. What they honestly are is WE ARE FAT AND THAT'S OKAY AND ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT BEING FAT MAKES YOU UNHEALTHY IS WRONG!!!!

There's one that's for chubby fashion. It has now decided that anyone size twelve is not chubby and therefore cannot be featured on the blog. There is one blog that took down a girl's picture because she dared to mention losing weight and saying that she felt being too overweight is unhealthy.

I am NOT opposed to loving yourself at any weight. I'm really not. I think that it's hard to learn to love yourself fat or thin, and I do think that today's society and media is putting a lot of pressure on women my age that they need to be "perfect". And "perfect" is Photoshopped and fake and unobtainable.

That doesn't mean I feel like being fat is good for you.

I do feel like you can overweight and still be healthy. You for sure can. I don't feel like that should mean you never have to try to do anything about your weight ever again. I think being overweight makes it SO much harder for you to be healthy and STAY healthy.

I don't think that everyone needs to go on a starvation diet. I don't think that everyone would look SO MUCH BETTER AS A SIZE 000000000000!!!!! I don't think that having a little chub is going to kill you in the slightest.

That doesn't mean I think being two hundred pounds over weight is a good idea.

Why can't I feel that both are true? Why can't I feel that you can be a over weight and still healthy, and that being extremely overweight is a bad idea? I'm not passing judgement on anyone who is fat, Lord knows that's someone living in a glass house throwing stones.

I used to really like the idea of the body acceptance blogs. I used to think it was for anyone who felt like they were down trod and beaten because their bodies didn't look they way they "should". Now I feel like it's a bunch of fatties who want to feel elitist and make other people feel bad because NOW THEY HAVE THAT POWER AND HOLY SHIIIIIIT DOES IT FEEL GOOD.

And it breaks my heart.

An Eye For An Eye

In Sociology we watched a piece on Sister Helen Perjean, a nun who is a spiritual advisor to convicts on death row in Louisiana. The movie Dead Man Walking was based on her book of the same name, detailing her first two experiences with gentlemen on death row.

It turns out that spiritual advisor is the only person allowed to be with the inmate up through their death. There are (or were at the time of the piece, 1996) witnesses to the execution, however, they are not friends or family members of the inmate.

It led me to thinking;

Should we have the death penalty?

Yesterday, my Charliam and I were speaking about it. I said in theory I don't agree with it. We don't ever have the right to say that you can kill another person. We're not God. In practice, I'd love to light up every rapist, every child molester, every mass murderer.

Or, I did yesterday.

What really makes me sick is that the families of these victims tend to get so blood thirsty. Years ago, I was watching the news and the grown children of a murdered woman witnessed the execution of her murderer. Their reaction after the man had died of lethal injection was; "He didn't suffer enough."

Didn't suffer enough? A man died. He gave you his blood. What do you want, to rip out his arteries and sacrifice his blood to your grief? Jesus. I don't know exactly what they were expecting.

The sheriff in piece I watched in regards to the case of Robert Willie was angry that he didn't fall on his knees and beg and plead for forgiveness. Instead he said; "If you guys think murder is wrong, I'd like to know what you think you're doing to me." And then he looked at the parents of his victim and said; "I hope you've got some satisfaction."

And the thing is, they didn't. They continue to be miserable and grieve and mourn. They continue to attend every execution that takes place at Angola, sitting outside. They say they're there for the victims, so that they have a voice. I don't think that's why they go. I think they're hoping that if they see enough people die, if they see enough of the people they have deemed to be evil have their lives ended, maybe it will ease the pain of losing their child.

I don't think they quite realize that she's dead. Nothing is going to bring her back. Not an execution, not beating the shit out of the murderer, not watching and listening to the sobs of the family of the murderer as he is put to death.

There is nothing that is going to ease that pain. The sooner they come to grips with that, the happier they are going to be. The mother said she didn't like people getting life in prison because they still got to talk to their families, and she didn't get to see her daughter anymore.

So everyone should suffer the way she suffered? When the murderer is put to death, a mother lost her child, too. A family was torn apart. There are other people who feel pain, and she is not the first person to lose someone and quite sadly, she won't be the last.

I don't think there's any satisfaction to be gained from watching others go through pain. I don't think that's going to save you.

On the other hand, what do we do with these criminals? Can we rehabilitate them? There is a shamefully terrible rehabilitation rate here in America. Something like fifty to sixty percent of people return to prison.

That's frankly pretty disgusting.

And there's the cost of keeping people, even on death row, alive. It costs the taxpayers a lot of money. Maybe we wouldn't have so much debt if we could kill some more of these people. Maybe we wouldn't have them going back if we could just off the ones that seem to be too obstinate, too broken, too insane to be allowed out into the world.

Or maybe we should find better counselors, better programs, better places for those that are mentally ill and end up in prison.

Or maybe we should stop giving them A/C and television and radio. Maybe we shouldn't make it so cushy. Maybe we should cut them off from their families. Maybe we should make them do more labor.

There are a lot of people who (of course) use the Bible to support their side, no matter which it is. There are plenty of murders in the Bible! Whoever sheds human blood let humans by his blood be sheeeeed!

But Jesus said turn the other cheek! Forgive seventy times seven!

All I can think is...

If we an did an eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind.

My No-No Square

She Who Must Be Kept has always told me that being nice is going to get me in trouble one day. She might be right.

Today, there was a tornado warning. Or watch. I'm not sure which. The point is, in the middle of Interpersonal Dumbassery, an administrator poked their head in and said everyone had to go down to the Center for Student Services.

But I didn't want to go. I wanted to go and eat my lunch. Nope, everyone had to go. With a grumbling belly, I followed the herd downstairs to the aforementioned room. Some people managed to sneak out a door and into their cars to get out. Not me. Not me. :(

So we all cop a squat in the Center for Student Services. I was hanging out by a window watching the "storm". It was some wind and a little rain. Literally. That was it. I got shooed away from the glass.

I was so tempted to go; "Fuck you! I'm twenty one, starving, and late for a test! If I wanna stand by a window, I fucking will!" But I didn't. I plopped down on the floor at the behest of a boy I'd met once before.

He hangs out at the same place I do between classes. He has, in the past, made some inappropriate comments about my breasts. And they were entirely innocent. I will say that my breasts are kind of a joke amongst my friends, but we can TELL when they're a joke. They aren't brazen comments about how large and wet they are from the rain...

So I plopped down. And this boy, whom I have spoken to a handful of times in my life, proceeds to wrap his arm around me and SNUGGLE me! SNUGGLE ME! I didn't want to be snuggled! Then he tried to get me to go to sleep. ON HIM!

I was sooo wildly uncomfortable. I managed to squirm away. He was still invading my bubble, his knee touching mine. In desperation, I reached for my phone. But service out at the college is shoddy at best, so I was unable to complete my call to my BFF in Ohio.

"Use my phone!" Creepy Pants said.
"It's long distance, don't worry about it."
"To call your brother?" (I had tried to call my older brother earlier.)
"No. To call my---boyfriend."
"Boyfriend?" (I'm pretty sure he knows that the confidence giver and I broke up last week.)
"Yeah. I wanted to let him know where I was."
"Well, where is HE?"
"Ohio!" I blurted. "With my best friend!"
"What's he doing down THERE."
"He goes to OSU."
"...Oh," and with a sulk, he lumbered over to a computer to get on fanfiction.net.

This dude seriously gives me the creeps. He's too interested in me, my body, and my chest. I really feel like he wants to touch my No-No Square. Ugh. No thanks.

But I don't just want to never speak to this guy ever again. And I don't think it's fair to label someone like that when I have no proof but a feeling. I'm a nice person, and I like being nice to people. Is it nice to tell this guy to piss off, he's a creeper? No, it is not.

I'm just going to sit with someone else whenever he wanders into the Potter Center, I guess.

Argh. I hate people

If You Can't Say Anything Nice

I've expressed before my sheer displeasure about my Interpersonal Communications class. It's gotten worse. I didn't think that was possible. Boy howdy, was I wrong.

I sit in the back of the room. I like to have my back to the wall. I also like to sit up towards the front so I can hear/see better. I like to take off my glasses sometimes, and if I'm up front, I can still see the board! It doesn't matter in this class, the instructor wanders around a bit, and doesn't use the board that often.

So I sit in the back, and we're in one of those three quarter boxes with the tables. So I'm ALMOST in a corner, but not quite. On one side is a pretty nice girl, she sits quietly, takes her notes, and doesn't mind when my stuff flows onto her side of the desk. (I don't let that happen often, just when I'm digging through my bag for something.)

On my other side, in the Corner of Cattiness, there sit three stereotypes. The OHMYGOD,I'MALTERNATIVEANDANARTIST!!!! girl, the IWASANATHLETEINHIGHSCHOOL,THATMAKES MERELEVANTINCOLLEGE,RIGHT!?!?!? girl, and I'MAMOMSOEVERYTHINGISAYISWIIIIIIIIIIISE girl. They make me want to stab myself in the eye.

To be clear, I don't want to smash my head into the cinder blocks behind me just because they're like that. That is perfectly fine with me. What is not fine is they sit and make snide comments about everything anyone says ever. Through the whole class. To the point where I can hear their attitude over the lecture.

And you know, I think it's fine they have their little opinions about what people say. My problem is they are NEVER positive, and they are NEVER kind. (Because you can not like what someone says and still be kind about it.) And it goes on all. Class. Long. That is an hour and a half of hearing these little remarks.

"Look at that guy, he looks like a banana!" "Don't hurt yourself, (in reference to a boy saying he had been thinking about something)" "I hope we don't get ANYONE from that group in OUR group when we have our final project." "Goood, they don't shut uuuuuuuuup, do they?"

I gave some glares a couple times and rolled my eyes at them. Their negativity really brings me down. I have even had to use my palm as a blinder to not get visually distracted by them.

Look, I don't care they come to class and don't listen. I don't either. I don't care that they've made friends with each other. Awesome, if that's what you come to class for, I'm glad you met your goal. I don't care that they don't seem to like anyone else. I care that they are distracting me and creating a hostile learning environment for everyone else.

Bitches.

A Letter to The Dean

I've had nothing but trouble this semester. So I wrote the following letter to my Dean of Student Services.

(Names changed because this is the internet.)

Dear Ms. S*****,

This is my fourth semester at J****** Community College. Previous to that, I was a student at The d* ***** Institute for four years. In short, I am no stranger to the campus, the instructors, or the other students.

I regret to tell you of my deep disdain, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment for and with the college and my own education.

Let me start at the beginning, shall I?

I have been fighting tooth and nail for over a month to get my financial aid approved. I submitted my paperwork for my Pell Grant in a timely manner. However, it was cut through a paperwork error. All well and good, I thought, even though if I had been informed say, a month or so earlier, perhaps I could have put in for a loan in a better time frame.

Then I had to hound my financial adviser to get make sure my Pell Grant even went through. I needed desperately to know about it, because I am an underemployed single woman. I still live with my mother, and she simply has no money to give me for college.

I applied for my loan, and have been hounding and harping to make sure that went through. Naturally, the website, the JCC website didn't seem to accept my information the first time, an unfortunate event I am all too familiar with. Two days later I got an e-mail saying all my information was not received. I gave it again.

I was then told it would take four weeks to be approved. I am on the fourth week. Another request on the status told me another two weeks. This is highly unacceptable. Why, you may ask? I simply cannot afford the books required for my courses. Without books, I cannot succeed. I cannot study, I cannot ask questions, I cannot understand the material.

A young woman in Student Services asked me if I could get the money elsewhere. No, I cannot. It does not exist anywhere else. I had been told that previously, the college did book loans in case of something like this. And now, they do not. This is leaving students (I can think of another young lady off the top of my head) high and dry and crying and frantic. This is not fostering a good learning environment in any shape of the word.

When I asked her, frankly, what was I supposed to do, she just shrugged at me. That was very helpful, let me tell you.

Honesty, I can think of three other students who have had something happen to their finanical aid which put them in a very bad position. One of those students had to drop out of this semester. He is now going to be put back at least a semester in getting his degree.

A semester doesn't seem like a long time; but it is. That's another semester that he can't be out in the real world. That's another semester of student loans. That's another semester being here instead of at another university earning the degree he's thirsting for.

I, being that I don't even have my loans through yet, went down to Student Services to at least get a bus pass. What is this new policy? They are not given to students who get finanical aid? Because we can pay for them ourselves? I don't know about anyone else, but I am outraged. If I am getting grants, it is because I don't have enough money to go to school on my own. It is because I need every cent worth of help I can get. And instead of being helped by the college, I am once again getting told to find the money on my own. This is ridiculous. I cannot even begin to see where the logic in this is.

We've been told since we were in kindergarten that we need this higher education. That we have to-have to-have to go to college. And now that we're here, we're getting thrown down, denied and shrugged at. The main buzz around campus is; "JCC screwed everyone over this semester." I know this is not the kind of college you are striving to maintain.

Maybe this letter means nothing to you. But to me, it's everything. My education, my future is everything to me. It's everything to my past instructors, who tried so hard to get me here. It is everything to my high school teachers, who worked with my daily to try and prepare me for this. And most of all, it is everything to my mother, who raised me and prays for me every night that I can live a better life than she does.

-with all respect

R****** *** *******

Yes, my birthname starts with an 'R'.

"It Was Only For A Minute!"

I went to the mall today. I love going to the mall. It's a dying art now, being a Mall Rat. Leaving us are the days when you could spend whole summer afternoons hanging out at the mall, people watching and sipping and Italian Soda.

At least we'll always have Wal-Mart for our cheap entertainment.

Anyway, it's August. It's HOT in August, although today, it wasn't as bad as it's been earlier this summer. We've had some pretty humid days, and while today wasn't the worst, it still wasn't what I'd call comfortable.

I was walking a couple friends to their car so another friend and I could keep hanging out. My friends informed me that when they had arrived ten-fifteen minutes previously, there had been a minivan full of kids left in the sun.

"Did you call the police?"
"No," they looked at me, aghast.
"Is there even a window cracked?"
"Kind of?"

We approached the mini van, which was parked directly next to my friend's car. Sure enough, there is a car load of kids, one small enough to be in a car seat. While there wasn't a "window cracked" the back door for the trunk part was left wide open. Ventilation, right?

"Should we call someone? I'm really tempted. I think I should." I pulled out my cell phone, because, good grief, who leaves their kids in the car, in the heat, and leaves the trunk open!?!? This is screaming TERRIBLE IDEA to me!

Suddenly, coming rushing from behind me, was a tall woman, very well put together, with hair matching that of all the children. They all cried out with joy and called her Mommy, so I guess she was their mother. She glared at me as I said my goodbyes and headed back into the mall.

Well, Jesus lady, I'm sorry you didn't want to drag five kids into the mall, but they could have been A) kidnapped B) hit by a car when they decide to climb out of that trunk door C) had the heat take them if it had been too much hotter out.

I'm not a parent, and there is a SHIT TON I don't know. BUT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? I later saw her hauling them all through Wal-Mart, giving me pointed looks. Okay, so you're doing what a mother does. What, you want a cookie to go with that?

I realize I seem really indignant here, but I always hear at least one story a summer of a child left in the car who dies, and I don't want to have be responsible for that. I also know when I was a kid and my mom left me in the car (AND SHE DID!) I *hated* it. I would sit and cry because I was so frustrated with waiting and thinking she'd forgotten me. So maybe I'm projecting all those feelings. And maybe she had just taken longer than she'd expected, and maybe she had to go inside because there was something she absolutely needed. There could be a million and one explanations that lady could give me.

...But really. Her kids. In the van. Trunk open. Seriously?

"But I'm a Moooooooom."

I went out to dinner last night. Going Out to Dinner is sort of an event for me. There's Grabbing Some Food, Running to Get Some Supper and Going Out to Dinner.

Grabbing Some Food means going to Little Cesar's and getting a five dollar pizza, or running to McDonald's and ordering off the dollar menu. This typically happens early in the afternoon when I have a lot of other thinsg to do that day.

Running to Get Some Supper involves any drive thru, but preferably Taco Bell, and getting a meal. I do not mean dollar menuing it up, I mean gettign a value meal, taking it home, and plopping down on the couch to watch a movie and eat.

Going Out To Dinner means puttign on real clothes and shoes, and going inside somewhere to sit down. You know, Bob Evans, some Chinese, Fazoli's, something like that. I don't do it often, and when I do, I want to have a good time.

So when I go out to eat, I don't typically enjoy it when there is a screaming toddler and a mother who is ignoring the child. I went out at about ten o clock at night to Steak and Shake (which is neither an appropriate time for a child, nor is typically a place where I would imagine a child being) to avoid that.

But no, sure enough, sitting in one of those half table/booth places, there was a very young mother with her best friend and her baby, and an adorable two year old, who refused to sit down, stop pushing her stroller, or even stop running around to other tables.

This child was so disruptive that the waitress wouldn't sit anyone else in that half of the restuarant. The mother steadfastly ignored her child until she looked over and noticed someone looking at her with a raised eyebrow or a frown.

The little girl almost tripped the waitress while she was carrying trays of hot food. When the mother denied her the right to push her stroller around, she began to howl so that my dining companion and I could not hear one another speaking.

And what got me was--who has their little kid out at ten at night to eat? This was not; "We're here because this is the only time we can come." This was; "We're here because I want time with my friend, and to hell with the rest of you."

The kid wasn't even wearing shoes. :/ That seems good and healthy, what if someone had dropped a glass and the girl stepped on it?

The mother repeatedly gae me dirty looks when she noticed me watching her child. It made me laugh because, well, it was funny. Sorry that you have a kid, I guess? But that doesn't mean that I have to enjoy that my patty melt is now tainted with your kid caterwauling.

I get really really tired when I see people go; "Being a parent is soooo haaard. Look at what a good job I'm doing. I do everything for my child. This sucks. BUT I NEVER COMPLAIN! Everything is for my child."

Here's the thing; you had a baby. I don't know the circumstances surrounding every birth, but there's a pretty good chance you made the choice to have a baby, or at the very least participate in the act that resulted in the baby. Now you take care of it, you don't get a medal for that. Everything is going to revolve around your child, because that's what a parent does. You don't get a pat on the back for doing what you are supposed to do.

This is why I don't have a child. (Even though little kids are cute as hell and I want to eat them up. I wasn't mad at the little girl, I was mad at the mother.)

"Shaddap and Take Your Shot. "

I really hated going to the doctor when I was young. Wanna know why? Because I didn't like shots. I still don't like shots. Also, I was pretty sick when I was growing up (asthma, chronic sinus infection, muffed up tonsils that resulted in surgery) and frequently needed a blood draw.

Being that I was such a dramatic little thing and had veins like a Spaulding ball, I would sob and freak out, and make everything worse. Finally FINALLY they would get a vein going, milk the vials, and set me free with bruises.

Know what kind of makes me mad? That there are a bunch of parents now that don't want their children to get vaccinated. There was a study that some how linked vaccines to autism. ...Okay.

I know I'm not a parent, and I know I don't have an autistic child (though I have had several play mates through out the years that had Aspberger's Syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum), but you know what? You can live through autism. You can go on to leave a full, normal, lovely life with that disorder. Especially with all the strides we're making in research and development and teaching and all that.

You might not live through whooping cough. Or measles. Yeah, I know back in the Dark Ages they were normal illnesses that everyone went through. Now they are not, and there is no reason we need to suffer. We are just baaaaarely clinging on to Herd Immunity right now. And every time someone decides not to have their child get that shot, that goes down a little bit.

I understand that some people won't do it for religious reasons. I understand some children are allergic (like, kill you kind of allergic not the itchy throat kind) to vaccinations. I don't understand that whole; "JENNY MCCARTHY SAID MY KID WOULD GET AUTISM!!!111!!!one"

But maybe I'm crazy.

A couple months back, at my Community College they had a free vaccine clinic set up in the dining room. As nasty as that sounds, it was sort of nice with neat little curtains set up. I went and I got my D-tap. Diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis, also known as whooping cough.

I'm twenty years old, I'm scared of shots, and I went on my own accord to get jabbed with a needle, holding tightly onto the hands of some of my friends. My shoulders were sore for days and days. But you know what?

I DID IT FOR THE CHILDREN!!! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?

Well, I did! So get your kids jabbed in the arm, okay?