I am SWAMPED!!!! and stressed out, and then my cousin called me yesterday to tell me that she had been laid off, as of the time she was calling me, no severance, nothing, they just came in and told them to pack their shit and go. She wasn't too upset, as she has only been working for them for just over a year, but she was upset because their were people there that had been working there 15 years or more, and no severance for them either. When you get laid off here, bang goes the health insurance, unless you can afford to pay what your employer was paying monthly (thus taking it over), then you can get coverage for a year. I did that when I left my job, it cost me $310 a month (look up the conversion). Most people can't afford to do it.
I will be in Virginia for a show next week from Weds to Sat, I will write more then. But, here goes regarding the sniper then I am going to have to get back to work...............
I actually don't know too many people that agree with the death penalty, even my Repub friends, it's not a deterrent, and most don't believe in an eye for an eye. I personally think that it's inhumane on every level. However, and I must admit me included, most of us were indifferent regarding the sniper. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that for those few weeks we feared for our fucking lives. I have NEVER been so terrified for my life. When there is a terrorist attack you are not expecting it, however, when there is a guy going round randomly shooting people, and you think you might be next it's freaking terrifying. I had just bought my house when the killing spree started, on the first day he shot 4 or 5 people. I drove 5 miles out of my way to get my petrol pumped at a place where they pump it for you, because he was popping people off at petrol stations at first. Then it was outside the grocery store, and then the last killing (he killed 10 in this area), was a Ride-On bus driver. That killing was the worst, and it upset people more than any of the other killings, plus he also shot an elementary school kid, while he was walking into school (elementary is from 10-13 years old I think). The boy apparently did some of the shooting too, and I would have been distraught if he had got the death penalty, but they gave him life. They tried Muhammad in VA first, even though most of the killings were in MD because although both states have the death penalty, we are more liberal here in MD, and they were afraid that he would get life, or the death penalty and be on death row forever. I have never heard of someone only being on death row for 7 years, people are generally on it for about 15, so it shocked the shit out of me last year when I heard that he would get executed this week!! Anyway, regardless of Muhammad's last name he was a goner anyway. He shot up blacks, whites, hispanic and Indian. Everyone thought that it was some redneck white guy from West Virginia, even the FBI profiled him as such, we were all shocked as hell when we saw it was a nice-looking black guy. Np one was more shocked than the blacks!!
He was crazy like a fox. He fired his trial attorneys, and decided to represent himself, and then after he was convicted based his appeal on having inadequate counsel at trial, LMAO. I didn't even realize it was still a big story until his 2 ex wives were on Larry King Live (LKL), on Monday night. Then I had to watch LKL last night, because he was due to be executed at 9pm, and I wanted to see the press conference afterwards etc. They also had Chief Moose on the show, who was the police chief of the Maryland county where most of the murders occurred, he is a huge hero here, even now, and he has been gone for about 6 years.
Anyway, they were saying on LKL that they didn't have the anti-execution protesters out at the prison last night, like they normally do when an execution is scheduled. There were maybe a handful, there are usually hundreds. As high-profile a case as this was, I just think people were kind of indifferent to it.
I had closure when his ass was convicted, I didn't feel that they needed to kill him, and as one victim's relative said, the death penalty doesn't bring closure it just re-opens old wounds.
