Into the depths of my mind...

"I cry not because I'm less of a man. I cry because I am a man.''
          - Bruce Smith, hall of fame Defensive End

I don't think anything else needs to be said.

Two days have passed, and of course the election furor is still high.  We have an African American president elect.  There's a feeling of change in the air.  Things are gonna be different. 

A friend of mine last night made an interesting statement.

"He's either going to be one of the best presidents we've ever had, or one of the worst."

When we pressed him as to what he meant, his stance was simple. 

"Obama isn't going to do anything half planned, half assed or half way.  He is the candidate of change.  He has a plan, and he's going to move forward with it, with the support and backing of the senate and house.  Will it work?  I hope so.  Hell, I voted for him because I believe it will work. But history isn't going to be forgiving if it doesn't.  He won't be one of those presidents that gets lost in the shuffle."

I have to agree.  I hope what he does will work, and if it does, and he can make the changes and move our country forward, in 30 years, he'll be remembered as this generations JFK or FDR.  If it doesn't work and everything goes to hell in a handbasket - even if it isn't his fault - history will paint him as this generations Herbert Hoover or Franklin Pierce.

Alot of people are happy, hopeful, joyus, estatic...hell name a positive adjective, and there are people feeling that now.  Me, not so much.  I remember when Reagan was elected and how happy and hopeful people were, and I remember  noticing just a couple years after he was out of office how urban blight had consumed neighborhoods I had grown up in, as a middle class kid in the urban midwest.

Reagan, who was heralded as the man to fix America left a legacy we all have to live with.  Bush the elder, Bush the younger, Iran, Iraq, the Mideast, tentions in former Eastern Bloc countries that are supposed to be our allies, a negative perception of the US as a bunch of gun hungry war mongering cowboys.

I listen to my Obama supporting friends (and just to clear myself, I too voted Obama) and read blogs and see a wave of optimism and happiness, and I worry that we're putting too much faith in him before he even takes office.  Over the last two days, the Dow Jones has lost over 500 points.  The economy is still grim, and he has 10 weeks before he takes the oath.  How long before he can get anything moving; any change?  It won't be the first day.  If we're lucky, something will happen in the first hundred days.

Stuart Rothenberg is the editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan newsletter that reports on and analyzes the United States current political developments. He noted that Democrats' expectations of our new president-elect are running high.  "They don't think he's merely going to be president," Rothenberg said. "They think he's been elected savior."

That's a bit much to lay at Obama's feet, and unfortunatly, from my perspective it  rings true.  Is it a response to the painting of GeeDub as the anti-christ?  Is it a reaction to the hopelessness seen in this current crisis?  Is it an adverse flip on the Reagan era polcies that have dominated the American landscape for most of the last 28 years?

In '88 I went into the military and voted for Bush the elder.
In '92 I came back and saw the mess this country was in and voted for Perot.
In '96 voted for Clinton for lack of a better candidate.  If Perot hadn't fallen off the deep end, I might have voted him again.
In 2K, I voted Nader.  Gore had my home state locked up in the polls. so I voted Green just to send a message to the big two that they were out of touch.
In '04 I voted Kerry, not because i was voting for Kerry, but because I was voting against Bush.

Welcome to 2008.  The next four years are gonna be one hell of a ride.

OK, so a while back I posted an entry called "Fine then...hang him" about a rapist/murderer who was trying to get out of the death sentance by claiming he was "too fat".

It seems the Ohio State Supreme Court disagrees.

If there is a hell, Richard Cooey, enjoy your stay.  If there isn't, I hope the worms enjoy the meal.

My heart goes out to the families of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery.  I hope his death brings you closure and peace.

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On a side note....Ohio doesn't have a "last meal".  But they do let him have a "special meal".  His consisted of a T-bone steak, hash browns, french fries, four eggs over easy, onion rings, four pieces of toast, a pint of Rocky Road ice cream, Mountain Dew and bear claw pastries.

Maybe I'm missing something, but does the word "irony" come into play?

Ok, here's the story.

In a nutshell:

Psycho kills and rapes a pair of 21 year old girls.

Sits in prison for 21 years, using every last method of getting around the death penalty (except insisting innocence)

Gets within 13 hours of death in 2003, but a federal judge approves an appeal.

State sets a new date to put him to death (Oct. 11 2008), and in responce he files an appeal based on he's "too fat to be executed" and that because of medication he takes, he has built up an immunity to the drugs they would use to put him out before administering the lethal injection.

Enough is enough.  Why does death for condemed killers have to be painless? Were his victims given the same sort of mercy?  He's been in prison nearly as long as his victims were on this planet. Being protected from "cruel and unusual punishment" somehow means "merciful"?

Bullshit.  if they're mentally compitent and can distinguish between right and wrong, fry 'em.

Yes, everyone deserves a fair and impartial trial, and I would never want to take that away from people.  Give them thier appeals.  But base thier appeal on what they did or did not do, not some bizzare technicality or politically correct b.s. about "we've evolved as a society beyond needed to execute criminals".

Too fat for lethal injection?  Fine. He's got 12 weeks. There's a program for that.

So,  my two best friends in the world are moving away.  I just had dinner with them, for the last time in the forseeable future.

When I say moving away, I don't mean across town.  Fourteen Hundred miles.

I've rationalized it all out.  They have an opportunity to make a fresh start, get away from a city that crshed the soul out of people who dare to think outside of the box and live life as an individual.

It doesn't make it easier.

There's a million things that I want, i need to say to them, but at the same time, theyre such good friends, they already know everything i could and would say.  I love them as family.  Flesh and blood.  After my kids and my wife, there's nobody I feel closer and more love for,

I know I'll see them again.  i know I'll talk to them, and soon.  i know we won't lose touch.

But there's a sliver of loss I will still feel that I can't express in words.  It's a selfish sliver.  A sliver of me that doesn't want them to go because it will leave a part of my life hollow.

Thomas, xakara, you are my brother and my sister. You have a spot in my heart that even as a writer I can't fully put into words.  Big slobbery kisses and spine crushing hugs.  i want nothing but the best for you guys.  i want the move and your new life to work out for you.  But I'm going to miss you.

I love you two.

 Sundays are supposed to be the day of rest.  Yeah right.

My normal routine during the work week gets me up at 5:30 every day.  My day is far too full of all of the things I want and need to do, so typically I get to bed around 1am.  Yeah, not the healthiest of patterns, but after years of it I'm fairly used to it.  I seem to make up for it by sleeeping in until 9ish on weekends.

So I fell asleep on my sofa reading last night, rather than in my bead.  Besides the fact that it's a litle stupid (I have sleep apnia, and should be hooked up to my CPAP machine when I sleep) it shouldn't have been a big deal.  My wife got up at 6 to blog and let me sleep.  Somehow children know.  You think they don't, but they do...

They got up around 6:30-7:00.  Thier first entertainment? "Let's jump on daddy!" Fathers develop a danger-sence for that sort of thing.  Even in my half-asleep state I thought to cover my head.  I don't think they left any bruises, but I'm really not a morning person, so I'm grumpy.  Probably will be until I get a few doses of caffiene in me.  Life would be easier (or at least cheaper) if I could stand the taste of coffee.

So while I'm laying on the couch, awake, but wishing I wasn't, I was struck by a thought.

"Why not do something to get yourself going.  Something creative to get your brain going?"

This struck me as something to make out of early Sunday mornings.  My biggest problem with writing has been the buckle-down-an-do-it phase.  i have have written out story and novel ideas sitting in a folder on my computer, some of which go back 10+ years.  Yet since my wife really helped m focus and start writing seriously 9 years ago, I've only managed to push out 4.75 novels, and the .75 has been lost to a computer crash other than a couple chapters that were recently found on a forgotten hard drive.

So I guess that's what a blog is to me.  A place to focus.  A place to spit the words in my head out and get the brain running.  A place where I can knock off the dust and cobwebs and rev the engine up.

I'm not a linear thinker.  I think this post is a good display of that.  But I am a object of momentum.  I think the more I write here, even if it is meaningless rambling that nobody can follow but me, it will get the clutter out and let m tell the stories I have trapped in my mental attic.  Here's hoping.