Archives, eh
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# For Zeus's sake, don't show me on national television
Dear D1,
I write you this letter but post it to a public forum – well, technically public even if negative two readers doesn’t amount to much of a forum – so that there can be no question of my wishes should something happen and I am either in a persistent vegetative state or otherwise incapable of communicating because of stroke, dementia or an ill-fated chainsaw adventure that resulted in me losing my hands, eyes, tongue and hoof-tapping capabilities. Painful and terminal illness… well, let’s leave that one, we can decide it on a case by case basis.
So. I’m fucked. Just lying around like some dirty hippy. Insensate or at least incapable of enjoying any sensations I can pick up. Unresponsive. Possibly wearing an adult diaper. In fact, especially if I’m wearing an adult diaper. Sounds like life basically sucks, so in light of that I would like to die, please.
Now, there are a lot of intrusive pricks who think they know better than I (henceforth referred to as “Dickheads”) and would like nothing better than to make me hang around waiting on their invisible pink unicorn to adjudicate. I’m supposed to hang around for some beardo to make up his mind if I should stay or if I should go. All very well and good, but their particular beardo isn’t the beardo whose opinion actually matters, the beardo who is getting my soul after I finish the dregs and spit out the grinds2. But because the dickheads apparently have not yet had their throats stepped on and told they are naughty, we’re going to have to be creative.
They say it’s up to “God” when I die? Okay dokie. I can go with this. Only, I don’t believe this “God” fellow is paying sufficient attention to all that goes in this world. Even if he is paying attention, he must be a lazy bastard, so we’re going to have to force his hand. Here’s the plan. First we get a tinnie and take it up to the top of, say, Mt Erebus. Put me in it along with, oh, a kilo of C4 rigged up with a mercury switch; a five litre glass bottle of sulfuric acid in my lap; a vial of polonium; and one irate tiger. If an irate tiger can’t be found, just an ordinary tiger will do and I’ll try my best to sing off-key to it. Oh, and a banana; I might get hungry. Set the boat on fire and then push me down the slope until gravity takes effect.
By now we should be in full compliance with the wishes of the Dickheads. It’s all up to their “God”. If he wants me to die, well, here’s a perfect opportunity to do bugger all. Hell, if he doesn’t care he can leave well enough alone. However, if he genuinely wants me to live then he can bloody well get off his arse and stop being so damn passive. God, “God”, carpe diem, mate. Life is passing you by and it’s going to keep doing so unless you get off your arse and make something of yourself. Yeah, so if he does care, if he wants me to hang about in crippling agony – if we make the death decision – or whatever, then so be it. All he has to do is make sure I survive the trip down and the, you know, Antarctic climate. Should be a cinch, I reckon.
Yours, gilmae.
1 Or if D should be unavailable due to a) coming to her senses, or b) selfishly leaving me all alone in this cold world, whomever has been silly enough to be my BFF.
2 Although I really hope Cino decides to argue the point and Zeus is forced to fight her for me. Of course, he’d send in a proxy to do the actual fighting since Cino is a girl. I’m thinking mud wrestling with Athena. Particularly if Athena looks like Grace Park.
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# A line
Defense lawyers have to say and do things that most of us have trouble understanding as part of their job. Their entire role in society is to paint their clients in the best possible light, to question the evidence put forward by the state, to call testimony into question.
After the gang rape trials in NSW earlier this decade the public’s opinion of defense lawyers was damaged and it wasn’t like the public thought that highly of defense lawyers in the first place. Some of the in court behaviour when questioning the victims was brutal. Hours of repetitious accusations of lying thinly disguised as questions. Speaking only as a member of the public it’s an awful system we have in which a rape trial can come down to he-said-she-said, consensual sex vs rape and victims who are psychologically scarred have to endure having their testimony called into question. And there’s a line between appropriate rigor in questioning and harassing a witness, bullying them into ‘mis-speaking’ and creating a doubt that only exists when hairs are split. I think the moral panic movement in Australia – although it’s probably the same elsewhere – blow the “Protect the victim not the criminal” to levels of hype beyond what reality can sustain – victims generally are served as well as the system can.
But. Bilal Skaf, one of the ring leaders of a series of gang rapes, currently serving a multi-decade sentence and a generally awful human being, is appealing one of his sentences. A gang rape involving rape by 14 men while being held at gunpoint. The lawyer today said while presenting the appeal to a three judge panel:
Mr Haesler also said the 18-year sentence was manifestly excessive.
“The Gosling Park incident appears to take place over less than one hour,’’ he told the court.
“There was no significant harm caused to the complainant. No significant physical injury.”
As I said, defense lawyers have to say and do some things which seem straight from bizarro-world. And there is a line. On one side is a lawyer doing their job to get the best outcome for their client. On the other is incomprehensible inhumanity, the kind of thing that should make your partner wonder who you are when you go home. The kind of thing that should make your daughter flinch away from you. The kind of thing that should get you quietly dropped from guest lists at your friend’s dinner parties.
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# Links for 2007-06-17
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# Links for 2004-12-06
