Up At 3

Yesterday my state voted a marriage amendment into law that would, I told my friend Amy, "keep her from getting her live-in boyfriend imprisoned when he beat her," a crass joke that feels like one thousands of strangers are all making independently of one another at roughly the same time.
In other election news, the Democratic Party reclaimed the House of Representatives and it seems likely that Nancy Pelosi will become the new Speaker of the House, something which inexplicably angers my father. Not that its unimaginable to dislike Nancy Pelosi, he is just literally unable to explain why when I ask.
"I just don't think she knows anything," I think were his words.

Yesterday was also the day I decided to eat a ton of crappy food: pot roast and mashed potatoes, a pot pie, three or four donuts, a cupcake, lots of coffee, a few tootsie roll pops, several beers, several sodas, and a large piece of vegan birthday cake. I woke up at three in the morning sweating with terrible heartburn, wondering what was wrong with me, and in the hours that I've been up since I've attributed it to what I ate. I have also repeatedly checked election returns, showered and shaved, watched half of The American President (which I knew was stupid but has less charm than I remembered) and half of The Shawshank Redemption (still good).
In my late night session of surfing the internets I stumbled on a Slate.com article about Sadam Hussein's February hanging. It tells of "drop tables," charts that tell executioners how far to drop the person they are hanging. Drop them too far and their head will pop off; drop them not far enough and their neck won't break and they strangle to death. This is all based on weight: skinny people need to drop further than fat people, and the drop table is calculated accordingly. Which sets up the following:

The Army drop table turned out to be inadequate for Mitchell Rupe, a Washington inmate who was supposed to hang in 1994. On death row, Rupe refused all exercise and ate junk food nonstop. By the time of his execution he'd reached 409 pounds, well above the table's maximum listed weight. According to Army regulations, anyone heavier than 220 pounds would get a 5-foot drop. The Washington authorities made an exception and cut Rupe's planned drop to 3.5 feet. Rupe appealed his case, and a federal judge ruled that the risk of decapitation was still too high. Rupe died in a prison hospital this past February..

As I write this post, The Shawshank Redemption plays on in the background. Coincidentally, I just saw the scene where Brooks hangs himself. Right now it's the scene where Andy plays the Mozart aria over the prison public address system. It reminds me of my friend Katie.
Once when Katie had been drinking she and Cara and I went to the Village, and I played Mozart on the juke box. As I returned from a trip to the bathroom my song came on, and drunk Katie, remembering the scene I mention above, started yelling "SHAWSHANK, MOTHERFUCKER! SHAWSHANK! YOU SHAWSHANKED THAT SHIT!"
I miss Katie.