My arm looks like a battlefield.

As I know the readers of this blog depend exclusively on myself for their news, I'd like to start tonight off with the fact that Edgar Ray Killen was given the maximum possible sentence for his conviction of manslaughter in the deaths of 3 civil rights activists. The presiding judge did say that he took no pleasure in pronouncing the sentence, and he shouldn't only because he should take no pleasure in pronouncing any sentence. Edgar Ray Killen is 80 years old and will die in prison before completeing his sentence (unless he becomes the first person to live to 140), but that is, after all, what he deserved for killing three innocent people that were trying to get the point across that maybe everyone should try treating people like people for a change and the fact that he's had 41 years to do whatever he wanted as a free man does not diminish that.

Along the same line, I'm currently reading this book. There are two things that I'm concerned about while reading this book. The first is that it paints a portrait of the Deep South that may not be true anymore (being written in 1958, it is 47 years old), which makes it more important as a historical work and to remind us of the horrors of the world before the civil rights movement. I'm not sure if that's true. The second problem I have is the presumption that it would take John Howard Griffin, a caucasian reporter, to write this book, rather than a true African-American, who would have had much more experience with the terrible situation of the Deep South before civil rights. His perspective DOES allow for the study of the differences between how whites and blacks were treated by the citizens of the Southern States, so perhaps it was necessary for Griffin to be the author of this specific book. I'll start a thread about this on R&M and stop talking about it here.

Switching gears so violently that I just dropped Austin's transmission, my puppy appears to love the scent of someone who's just put in 7 hours at a burger joint. That makes one of us. Nothing like working a summer job at McDonald's to make you want to get on with your life. That, or he likes seeing me recovering from the wounds I received from Jenna's cat in a knife fight over a red stuffed dog.

I've decided that I'm going to the first of my friend's weddings, which throws into the light my own pending knot-tying ceremony. Rather than speculate on that, I'm going to move along and pretend I have said nothing.

Additionally, the Pirates won today, though by less of a margin than they had when I saw the game briefly on my break at 9:15pm. Whatever. We needed a win. Still, snapping the 12 game losing streak against the Cards isn't enough. The Bucs need this series. Yes, it gets easier after this (save the next Nationals series), but we're not supposed to be content with beating only the teams that we should be beating according to ESPN.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now, comforted by the fact that I don't work tomorrow.