Jail

There’s a new show on myNetworkTV, or at least we just newly discovered it. It’s called Jail. All it is is snippets of people being booked into, well, jail. Usually these folks are the kind of people you may have just seen on Cops getting scooped up.

It’s a pretty enlightening show, and you see lots of weird stuff. You see people who want to wear skin-tight uniforms because they like the way they feel, males who get mistaken for females, maniacs banging any part of their body against any hard surfaces they can find and being put in restraint chairs, oh the list goes on and on. But it got me thinking. How does anyone who works in a jail keep their sanity? All they deal with day in and day out are people who are brought in who don’t want to be there. They’re mostly unpleasant, and if they’re not unpleasant, they’re crying and screaming their innocence, as if that will make the guards change their mind and release them. The guards’ job is simply to keep them safe and get them through the process. No one can be trusted. In a prison, I can at least see some potential for rewarding interactions. Prisoners are there for a long time and come to accept it. There are activities guards can lead. There’s a chance to see progress. But work in a county jail where people come in, get thrown in a cell to either sober up or go to arraignments over and over and over again cannot possibly be rewarding, or at least it has to be extremely rare that something rewarding happens.

It got me thinking. That job has got to suck about six zillion times more than the cycle one sees when doing social work-related jobs. I’m sure the burnout is high, but how does a guard even look forward to going into work the first week? I’m picturing a guard getting ready for work and thinking “What will it be today? Will I get spat on? Shat on? Will I have to break up a fight? Will I have to throw someone in a suicide smock? How about a restraint chair? Maybe I’ll have to throw everyone in lockdown because somebody got a home-made tattoo and we have to find the equipment. Or, on a good day, I’ll just have to shove some unhappy folks through the booking process and I might sustain some scratches and bruises. I can’t wait!”

Maybe someone who works in a jail can set me straight. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it at all. They are better people than I could ever dream of being.

Play Ball!

Am I the only one who’s had more than an assful of all this steroids in baseball stuff? Seriously, doesn’t the United States Congress have anything better to do? The economy is in ruins, your world image has never been worse, 2 separate wars have gotten way beyond out of control, and all these imbeciles are worried about is the integrity of America’s pastime? Baseball is still America’s pastime, right? I ask because spying on the citizenry and finding new and creative ways to do away with civil liberties seem to be big there these days. Honestly, what does it matter if a millionaire who swings a stick for a living shoots himself full of hormones because he wants to put a few more miles on his fastball or add a few feet to a home run? It doesn’t, at least not until America fixes all of its real problems.

I might feel differently if all of these investigations were more about saving lives than busting cheaters and restoring glory to the great game, but that doesn’t seem to be anything that’s on anybody’s radar. if it was, then surely by now there would be hearings into professional wrestling, a sport with an under 50 mortality rate that would blow people’s minds if only it was important enough for the media to cover for more than a couple weeks at a time when something like a
Chris Benoit
happens.

A Big crush

This story is just weird, not because of what it is, but the way it’s being reported.

A girl in a high school in Scotland was walking down the hall, and bent to pick something up, I’ve heard shoe in one place and pencil in another. But what she’s picking up doesn’t matter. What happened was 25 other students crashed into her. Nobody was seriously injured, a few bumps, bruises and sprains, but nothing horrible. But the headline sounded like it was the Hajj! I mean, crushed? I don’t think anyone was really crushed.

Yup, that whole situation would be bizarre. But the story gets longer and longer as person after person deflects blame. “The halls were supervised…” “They are not narrow…” “This really was a freak accident!” Um, was anyone saying it was anything more than that? They even took the time to interview a senior pupil about it, and mentioned the building of a new school. What in the blue blooddy hell does the building of a new school have to do with this? Is it going to be freak accident-proofed? Are the halls going to be super wide so people bending down to pick things up won’t be trampled?

I can only come to two possible conclusions. Either they’re terrified that they’re going to be sued over this and are trying to get it on the record that no one did anything wrong, or Falkirk is really low on newsworthy events.

I Guess It Beats Repeatedly Asking "Do You Love Me?"

Oh lord. Now we have a mobile service in Korea grading a caller’s sincerity level. They’ll even send the person paying for the service an analysis of the conversation, broken down into affection, surprise, concentration and honesty.

Part of me wants to see how well this works, and part of me wonders how many Korean relationships are about to go straight down the shitter.