Elijah Page

It's always fun living in South Dakota. The big story we've been following here for the past two weeks is the impending execution of 24-year-old convicted murderer Elijah Page. It would be the state's first execution since 1947, so naturally, all the pro-lifers were very excited about it. "An eye for an eye!" they shouted. "Kill him now!" others said. They wondered why he had been kept alive this long, given that the brutal, meth-induced murder he committed was in March 2000.

As the buildup to the execution continued, I found myself becoming more and more angry. This is South Dakota, after all. The governor and the Legislature love to talk about how this is state has created a "culture of life" by passing an extremist ban on abortion. In fact, up until the execution countdown began a few weeks ago, the so-called culture of life in South Dakota was all any of the politicians here ever talked about – with the drought coming in a close second.

But as the execution of Elijah Page drew near, the silence was deafening. No one protested that. No talk about building a "culture of life." No, because executing prisoners, that's OK. Elijah Page was part of a three-person team that brutally murdered one of their friends. They tied him up, forced Drano and hydrochloric acid down his throat, beat him to a pulp, then drove him out to a gulch in the Black Hills, where they threw rocks on his head.

So, you see, no one cares what happens to Elijah Page. No one wants to defend a person who would do something like that. And actually, that's understandable to me. The part that makes me angry is the whole "culture of life" rhetoric. The governor, who happens to be Catholic, actually made the point during an interview that the death penalty is different from abortion – and that the church is "not necessarily" opposed to capital punishment. Therefore, he said, he had no intention of sparing the life of Elijah Page.

So last night, in the midst of my 12-hour shift devoted to covering the execution story, we got word a few hours before the lethal injection was set to start that Rounds (the S.D. governor) was going to grant a stay of execution. We had no details at that point, just that the execution wasn't going to happen. And most of my colleagues were angry. How could Rounds do this? Why would he do such a thing? It's ridiculous!

Until finally I couldn't take it anymore. "How could he not do this?" I responded. "When you blow smoke all day about being pro-life, you damn well better not let an execution proceed under your watch."

But that angered my extremely conservative co-worker, who retorted, "There's a difference between innocent life and non-innocent life." To which I replied, "I think that's crap." If you're going to call yourself pro-life under those terms, then I think you need to qualify it by saying, "I'm pro-unborn-life, or pro-life-toward-people-I-think-are-worthy." And the big question I want to propose to the pro-lifers in this state would be – Wouldn't life have been much better if Elijah Page's mother (who, by the way, was a drug-addicted prostitute who loaned her young son out to pedophiles in exchange for drugs) had just had an abortion?

You can read everything you ever wanted to know and more about Elijah Page here.

Intern update

I almost forgot to relate the best part of the whole intern fiasco. She was kind enough to write me a check for $20 to pay for the gas on the trip. (A clear indication that she hasn't gassed up a car probably ever because it costs a hell of a lot more than that to drive 500 miles.)

I haven't cashed the check yet, but I have some special plans for the money. All of it will go toward purchasing booze or some other similarly "immoral" items. I thought about just taking it to the bar by my apartment, but then I decided that that was too nice of a place – not seedy enough.

I think it needs to be spent at a really gross, seedy establishment – preferably one of the numerous places around here that are bars/casinos. Then I could use some of it for booze and plug the rest of it into a slot machine. A night of alcohol and gambling on little miss perfect's $20. Wait, I guess more like a few hours of alcohol and gambling with only $20, but still, it should be a good time.

Any other "immoral" suggestions for using $20? This will be my only revenge, so I want to make sure I use it in a way that would be truly abhorrent to my "Christian" friend – even though she'll probably never find out about it.

It doesn't pay to be nice to interns

I usually try to avoid personal attacks in the blogosphere, out of fear that my rants could fall into the wrong hands and then get me into trouble. But I was so upset about this particular person's behavior that I don't even care.

To make a long story kind of short, we had an intern at work this summer. She had no car. I have given her rides to work and back from work every single day. I have taken her shopping, out to eat, to movies, etc. All of this in an effort to reach out and make her experience here as pleasant as possible because I was miserable when I was intern because I didn't know anyone and had no life.

So, since this girl had never been to the Mall of America, I offered to take her. Actually, she asked me to take her, and I said yes. I knew all along that she was Dutch, hard-core Christian, and pretty much a total square. So I knew that it was going to be a dry, boring excursion to the Twin Cities, but I thought it would be tolerable. I was wrong.

I had decided we would stay with my sister, who now lives up there. We decided to go to dinner with my sister and her boyfriend after spending the day shopping at MOA. We headed downtown, and I soon found out that this girl hates big cities. She didn't like being downtown, none of the restaurants had menu items that were acceptable and she decided at that time to quit speaking to any of us. I suggested we go to the suburbs and eat at a generic chain restaurant. So we ended up at TGI Fridays, where I orderd a Bud Light and my sister ordered a strawberry daiquiri. My sister mentioned that she had two college friends who were going to stop by her apartment later, and they planned on going out.

I had no plans of going, and I said so, because I knew intern girl (who had, incidentally, just turned 21) would flip out. So my sister and her boyfriend left the table to go outside and smoke, and intern girl picked that time to have a total mental breakdown. She started bawling – BAWLING!!! Because she couldn't deal with the fact that people were going to come over to my sister's and be drinking. She said – through her tears and sobbing – that she couldn't be around it, that she was too stressed out, blah blah blah. She proceeded to cry through dinner and through the car ride back to my sister's apartment.

So, after we got back from dinner at about 10:30 p.m., I told her ridiculous, sobbing ass to get into the goddamn car so I could haul her ass the 4 hours back to Sioux Falls. She proceeded to attempt to justify her behavior, and asked me if I understood, and I politely said No, I don't understand, and then turned up the radio really loud.

It was one of the most bizarre situations I've ever encountered in my life. And I generally don't get mad about too much, but I was borderline enraged for that whole four-hour ride back to Sioux Falls. And I'm still (obviously) kind of pissed off about it. I might be overreacting, but it was so annoying and irritating, and then the icing on the cake was her attempt to justify it as if it was normal behavior.

So hopefully this blog rant will help me mellow out and let the whole thing go. Oh, and my sister says I'm not allowed to bring friends to her apartment unless she pre-approves them.

Good news

Despite my pessimism, I in fact will be getting a better schedule at work. I've been given the choice of choosing between having Thursdays and Fridays off or having Sundays and Mondays off. And, of course, I can't decide.

I think having Friday nights off would be more fun, but having an actual weekend day off would present me with better opportunities to visit my family, because I could visit them on Sunday when everyone else has the day off, too. In addition, Christmas this year is on Monday, and so is New Year's Day.

Basically, I'm really bad at making decisions. It would have been better had I just been told - "Hey, you now have Sundays and Mondays off" or vice versa. Because either way, both options are better than what I have now.

Winds of change

No, I'm not changing jobs again - at least not at the moment. I generally like to stay somewhere a full year before I start looking for something better. But my job is changing - that is, they're doing a major overhaul of the entire system to create "the Newspaper of the Future"

Without getting into too much boring detail, it bascially boils down to I have no idea what I will be doing a month from now. All I know is that it will be drastically different from what I do now. Will it be better? I'm kind of a pessimist, so I'm leaning toward no. I actually like things the way they are now, and I'm afraid of change - Wow, maybe that means I'm becoming a Republican!!

It also means that we're going to go through a transition phase where we have to put out two papers every day - the paper that the subscribers will get and then the "newspaper of the future" prototypes. It makes my eyes hurt just thinking about it (because proofing all that copy and staring at a computer that long really strains your eyes).

On the upside, I might end up with a better schedule out of the deal. Mondays and Tuesdays off just plain blow. I'm hoping for Thursday, Friday, but in my case they'll probably just leave me stuck with the same days off since I have absolutely no seniority (there's that pessimism again).