Geoff Is Update Status
Whoo. It’s been what, three years since I last blogged? Feels like it. I’m in an entirely different country now, and was hoping that with a new environment would come inspiration and great new blog material – just like Japan! But no, since I’ve been here I’ve tried to blog a couple of times, but nothing. I have read through my last one hundred and thirty five blogs and marveled. What was it that made those so easy? Maybe I should relax a little, slide into it. So one evening I made myself a drink and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop to see what would come. Gin and vermouth mix wonderfully, so why not gin, vermouth and blog? Why not a cigar as well, since we’re here…the next day, after my private little party, I checked over to see exactly what it was I blogged about, because, to be honest, it’s a little hazy. I remember great excitement, but I also remember a toilet bowl. What came out? A drunken rant against monotheistic religion, and a rambling discourse on Free Will. It was mostly illegible, and worse – it wasn’t even funny.
To tide me over in the meantime I have done what all my literary heroes seem to have done in the last few years – I have plagiarized my previously unpublished material. I found this little gem from last April:
I took my nephew and his friends bowling for his twelfth birthday yesterday. I’m depressed to say that his friends are awful, truly terrible, at bowling. I, however, crushed them with a 146, including a four-bagger – strike in the ninth and a turkey in the tenth.
Twelve year olds really are little shits though aren’t they? While driving them to the bowling alley they were all yelling at one another:
I sell your mum on the street to businessmen for £5 an hour!
Yeah, well you’re gay, and your dad is gay too!
At least I have a Dad!
Yeah, and he’s gay!
You look like a girl from behind!
Yeah, well you look like a girl from the front!
You're a penis!
You’re obsessed with penises!
You’re bisexual!
And this lovely exchange:
Shut up Chris, let Gareth finish his anecdote!
Yeah Chris, you’re just like my nanny!
This country is turning into a nanny state!
Bush is a greedy criminal, he just wants oil and WMDs!
You don’t know anything! Saddam Hussein was a criminal!
Twelve years old. I crushed them at bowling though, did I mention that?
I wonder why I didn’t post that at the time? Obviously had just too much good material as it was…
Much has happened since then of course. I’ve moved to the US for one – living in a very hip area of Ohio. If anywhere in central Ohio can be called hip it has to be Short North/Victorian Village area of Columbus. It’s young and it’s liberal; people don't plant flowers in their gardens here, they plant political flags: “Support the Troops, End the War,” “One People, World Peace,” and there are rainbow flags everywhere. One house has an “Impeach Bush” sign as part of their portico; it even matches the colour scheme of the house. They don’t measure storm damage in dollars here, but in the number of wind chimes lost. Seriously, they’re so liberal that in a recent election for sheriff a lentil won.
I am not allowed to work yet; immigration has not collected quite enough forms about me, another forest or two to go I hear. So I am pretty much free all the time. I thought I should use this time wisely - maybe learn a language, read up on whole periods of history I keep hearing so much about. Relearn the stuff I never paid attention to in school, and also keep up with my sister who is now studying philosophy and fast leaving me behind. I compiled a worthy reading list and joined the library. I go every morning for a couple of hours reading. Unfortunately it seems that every other unemployed man in Columbus has the same idea, and indeed much of the homeless population too: the main library isn’t so much the reserve of learning as it is a refuge for the city’s vulnerable. At 8:30am most mornings you can find men and women lying on benches inside the foyer, or pacing back and fore muttering to themselves, until the library opens at 9am. You can also find me, sometimes, hiding in the car – the only thing that marks me out as not actually homeless. You see, with so much free time it’s awfully hard to get out of my dressing gown before noon, let alone brush my hair. This lethargy permeates everything: learning Spanish has become playing Scrabulous on Facebook. Reading the Bible, as every good atheist should, has become debating religion – on Facebook. Watching documentaries about the Peloponnesian War has become catching up on the last three seasons of ER. Not on Facebook, but I could if I wanted.
Last week I decided to actually do something – I went to a human rights conference organized by Ohioans to Stop Executions and Amnesty International. The death penalty really is a terrible thing. I knew before I went that I opposed the death penalty; found it barbaric, unjust, and just plain wrong. I knew a few facts about it – that is does not act as a deterrent, that is actually costs more than life in prison – and other bits that I’d picked up in my general opposition. But I came away from this conference almost fuming at the ridiculousness of it. A couple of things stuck in my mind:
1) The prosecution has at its investigatory disposal the police and the justice department. The defence team has, well, the defence team. If you can afford one of course. This defence team you can’t afford is not privy to all the evidence either. If the prosecution deems a piece of evidence as not helpful to their case they don’t enter it into evidence. If they don't enter it into evidence the defence don't get to see it. Sure, if they find out about it by themselves they can use it, but if they weren’t aware of it the prosecution is in no way obliged to tell them about it.
2) You are 3.8 times more likely to get the death penalty for killing a white man than you are a black man.
3) 1099 people have been executed since 1976. There should have been 1125, but 126 innocent people were exonerated in time. That’s 10%. There are 3000 people on death row right now. How many of them are innocent?
But what really struck me about the death penalty was how it affects others – there were several parents and siblings of people on death row at the conference, even one man who had spent seven years on death row before DNA exonerated him. They were lambasting, arguing, crying – but they were all reasoning. Most of them were broke. For us armchair liberals these things are really just pursuits – the odd petition, forwarding emails to the Chinese government, signing up to Facebook groups. Until you actually meet people directly affected by it you can’t appreciate how something this terrible can actually happen in a developed, freedom-loving country like the US. The so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ countries have the death penalty. The Taliban have it. Great company to keep. In Nebraska they electrocute you. Hell, even Rwanda has abolished that.
But this is not funny.
I broke my thumb on a dog last week - that was pretty funny. I was at the dog pound. I thought it was just a bite, indeed the staff gave me two band-aids and a tube of ophthalmic antibacterial ointment - that would be doggy eye cream – and sent me on my way. It was only the nauseating pain that night that sent me to the hospital the next day. It turns out that this mongrel bit through the distal phalanx of my thumb. In effect separating the tip of my thumb bone from the rest of my thumb bone. It swelled up so much that the doctor had to burn a hole in the nail to release the pressure inside. He told the student doctor with him that she might want to back up from the spray. Nice. Also, turns out I broke my wrist – ten years ago. Straight across, there’s a piece of bone floating around in there and everything. The doctor told me this as he looked at me with sympathy – obviously I was abused as a child.
I am now trying to get the animal shelter to cough up for the medical bills because I am of course uninsured. Did you know that 45 million Americans aren’t insured? It’s ridiculous. Hang on, this isn’t funny either.
Maybe I should have a little drink, and why not a cigar while I'm at it…
To tide me over in the meantime I have done what all my literary heroes seem to have done in the last few years – I have plagiarized my previously unpublished material. I found this little gem from last April:
I took my nephew and his friends bowling for his twelfth birthday yesterday. I’m depressed to say that his friends are awful, truly terrible, at bowling. I, however, crushed them with a 146, including a four-bagger – strike in the ninth and a turkey in the tenth.
Twelve year olds really are little shits though aren’t they? While driving them to the bowling alley they were all yelling at one another:
I sell your mum on the street to businessmen for £5 an hour!
Yeah, well you’re gay, and your dad is gay too!
At least I have a Dad!
Yeah, and he’s gay!
You look like a girl from behind!
Yeah, well you look like a girl from the front!
You're a penis!
You’re obsessed with penises!
You’re bisexual!
And this lovely exchange:
Shut up Chris, let Gareth finish his anecdote!
Yeah Chris, you’re just like my nanny!
This country is turning into a nanny state!
Bush is a greedy criminal, he just wants oil and WMDs!
You don’t know anything! Saddam Hussein was a criminal!
Twelve years old. I crushed them at bowling though, did I mention that?
I wonder why I didn’t post that at the time? Obviously had just too much good material as it was…
Much has happened since then of course. I’ve moved to the US for one – living in a very hip area of Ohio. If anywhere in central Ohio can be called hip it has to be Short North/Victorian Village area of Columbus. It’s young and it’s liberal; people don't plant flowers in their gardens here, they plant political flags: “Support the Troops, End the War,” “One People, World Peace,” and there are rainbow flags everywhere. One house has an “Impeach Bush” sign as part of their portico; it even matches the colour scheme of the house. They don’t measure storm damage in dollars here, but in the number of wind chimes lost. Seriously, they’re so liberal that in a recent election for sheriff a lentil won.
I am not allowed to work yet; immigration has not collected quite enough forms about me, another forest or two to go I hear. So I am pretty much free all the time. I thought I should use this time wisely - maybe learn a language, read up on whole periods of history I keep hearing so much about. Relearn the stuff I never paid attention to in school, and also keep up with my sister who is now studying philosophy and fast leaving me behind. I compiled a worthy reading list and joined the library. I go every morning for a couple of hours reading. Unfortunately it seems that every other unemployed man in Columbus has the same idea, and indeed much of the homeless population too: the main library isn’t so much the reserve of learning as it is a refuge for the city’s vulnerable. At 8:30am most mornings you can find men and women lying on benches inside the foyer, or pacing back and fore muttering to themselves, until the library opens at 9am. You can also find me, sometimes, hiding in the car – the only thing that marks me out as not actually homeless. You see, with so much free time it’s awfully hard to get out of my dressing gown before noon, let alone brush my hair. This lethargy permeates everything: learning Spanish has become playing Scrabulous on Facebook. Reading the Bible, as every good atheist should, has become debating religion – on Facebook. Watching documentaries about the Peloponnesian War has become catching up on the last three seasons of ER. Not on Facebook, but I could if I wanted.
Last week I decided to actually do something – I went to a human rights conference organized by Ohioans to Stop Executions and Amnesty International. The death penalty really is a terrible thing. I knew before I went that I opposed the death penalty; found it barbaric, unjust, and just plain wrong. I knew a few facts about it – that is does not act as a deterrent, that is actually costs more than life in prison – and other bits that I’d picked up in my general opposition. But I came away from this conference almost fuming at the ridiculousness of it. A couple of things stuck in my mind:
1) The prosecution has at its investigatory disposal the police and the justice department. The defence team has, well, the defence team. If you can afford one of course. This defence team you can’t afford is not privy to all the evidence either. If the prosecution deems a piece of evidence as not helpful to their case they don’t enter it into evidence. If they don't enter it into evidence the defence don't get to see it. Sure, if they find out about it by themselves they can use it, but if they weren’t aware of it the prosecution is in no way obliged to tell them about it.
2) You are 3.8 times more likely to get the death penalty for killing a white man than you are a black man.
3) 1099 people have been executed since 1976. There should have been 1125, but 126 innocent people were exonerated in time. That’s 10%. There are 3000 people on death row right now. How many of them are innocent?
But what really struck me about the death penalty was how it affects others – there were several parents and siblings of people on death row at the conference, even one man who had spent seven years on death row before DNA exonerated him. They were lambasting, arguing, crying – but they were all reasoning. Most of them were broke. For us armchair liberals these things are really just pursuits – the odd petition, forwarding emails to the Chinese government, signing up to Facebook groups. Until you actually meet people directly affected by it you can’t appreciate how something this terrible can actually happen in a developed, freedom-loving country like the US. The so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ countries have the death penalty. The Taliban have it. Great company to keep. In Nebraska they electrocute you. Hell, even Rwanda has abolished that.
But this is not funny.
I broke my thumb on a dog last week - that was pretty funny. I was at the dog pound. I thought it was just a bite, indeed the staff gave me two band-aids and a tube of ophthalmic antibacterial ointment - that would be doggy eye cream – and sent me on my way. It was only the nauseating pain that night that sent me to the hospital the next day. It turns out that this mongrel bit through the distal phalanx of my thumb. In effect separating the tip of my thumb bone from the rest of my thumb bone. It swelled up so much that the doctor had to burn a hole in the nail to release the pressure inside. He told the student doctor with him that she might want to back up from the spray. Nice. Also, turns out I broke my wrist – ten years ago. Straight across, there’s a piece of bone floating around in there and everything. The doctor told me this as he looked at me with sympathy – obviously I was abused as a child.
I am now trying to get the animal shelter to cough up for the medical bills because I am of course uninsured. Did you know that 45 million Americans aren’t insured? It’s ridiculous. Hang on, this isn’t funny either.
Maybe I should have a little drink, and why not a cigar while I'm at it…
posted by Geoff at 7:44 PM
4 comments
