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Supreme Court Stalls Texas' 300th "Texecution"March 17, 2003 |
Huntsville, TX Snapper McGee Killers and men railroaded by the system check in, but they don't check out.
Banks' request for a stay of execution was backed by three federal judges, and though the request was significant enough to give the Supreme Court pause, it does not automatically mean they have decided to hear the case. However, the action does guarantee that Banks' execution will be delayed long enough to miss the big-300 window. The lucky customer set to cl...
exas, spawning ground to president George Bush, was thoroughly perturbed when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution to Delma Banks Thursday. Banks, convicted of murder 23 years ago, was scheduled to become Texas' 300th execution since 1976, when the guy in charge of counting got confused and had to start over. All of this begs the question: How does a guy last on death row in Texas for 23 years?
Banks' request for a stay of execution was backed by three federal judges, and though the request was significant enough to give the Supreme Court pause, it does not automatically mean they have decided to hear the case. However, the action does guarantee that Banks' execution will be delayed long enough to miss the big-300 window. The lucky customer set to claim the record now is Keith Clay, a convicted murderer penned in for March 20, causing an unpleasant week-long pause in executions for death penalty fans.
The basis for Banks' appeal is poor legal representation and deceitful attempts by the prosecution to keep blacks off of the all-white jury. The case was already rejected by the Texas Supreme Court before the U.S. Court granted stay.
"Well, duh, he was poorly represented and the jury was selected to favor the victim," said Texas Supreme Court Justice Earl "Two Shoes" Miller. "This is Texas. You don't get to the big three-zero-zero by balancing things in the bad guy's interest. He done it, he know he done it, and now he got to fry for it. Yeah, I know we inject 'em now—don't get me started. I sure miss ol' Sparky. But if Banks didn't not want to be killed he shoulda driven the guy up to pussy Oklahoma or something."
Miller then struck a match off my face and asked if that made this reporter want to kill him. A lawyer issued by the state upon arrival of outsiders suggested it had the makings of entrapment.
Opponents of the death penalty say it is instances like this that makes the death penalty all the more reprehensible, the potential of a man who didn't get a fair trial being executed without receiving adequate representation; proponents of the death penalty say "Whoo-hoo!" really loudly and do the cabbage patch when the lights flicker outside the prison.
Since the death penalty's legalization by the Supreme Court in 1976, Texas has led the sport by a clear margin. The closest runner-up to the Lone Star state's 299 in executions is Virginia with 87. Texas has maintained a wide lead through careful maintenance of laws and tactics, including executing multiple prisoners during monthly "Two-Fer Tuesdays," counting random police shootings of suspects as "one-half" executions, and re-defining the term "murder" to include possible bodily harm inflicted on persons who may or may not be proven to exist. In some trials, evidence can be firmly announced to exist and yet never actually presented, a Texan tradition the president has made good recent use of.
Despite the bump in the road, Texans are confident the 300th execution is just around the corner, and heavy bets are on Keith Clay in a March 20th shut-out. Those wishing to attend the tailgating parties out front can find fliers with hand-drawn directions in most towns surrounding Huntsville Penitentiary. the commune news is all for the Def penalty, and anyone caught copping Martin Lawrence's comedy act will spend a night in the box. Ramon Nootles is quite a talented and handsome correspondent, and appreciates the opportunity to write his own tiny type this week.
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World's oldest New Yorker now just some nobody dead guy
Iraqi extremists boast killing 15 policemen, all ten-foot tall ninjas
 Obama to Change Spelling of Name to oBAMa for Maximum Impact |
Conservative Woman Found he White House, always on the search for rare species of human beings or close approximations, unearthed an impressive find last week: A female conservative. Defying usual stereotypes, the so-called “right-wing woman” is apparently not a career politician or from the deep rural South. In fact, she’s completed higher education and appears to be not at all an idiot of any sort—though field-testing leaves the possibility open. And, perhaps most startling of all, the administration found the rare species in the most unlikeliest of places—within its own ranks. The alleged female Republican is Harriet Miers, White House attorney and personal lawyer to the Bush clan for years. Born and raised in Dallas, a small state in the country of Texas, Miers earned several accolades for her legal work and previous appointments by Texas governor George W. Bush, no relation to the current president. Though she lacks any bench experience, discounting bus stops, Miers is a respected lawyer, despite being personal attorney to the president and the White House counsel. Fox Disappointed by Desperate Alien Prison Escape Ratings he new television season barely underway, Fox executives are already lamenting the low ratings for their most calculated new show of the season, Desperate Alien Prison Escape. “We don’t understand it,” lamented stunned network executive Roger Bacon. “This show capitalized on every hot trend currently on TV. We even had swearing. It should have been the biggest hit of all time. Fuck.” Fox’s latest ratings hopeful follows the travails of Juk, a member of a secret alien invasion conspiracy who intentionally gets arrested for sleeping with a bored suburban housewife in order to help his cousin escape from jail, using a detailed map he had tattooed on his scrotum, which due to his alien anatomy is located where a human being’s eyelids would be. “Female Sex Patch” Nothing But Dermal Tequila Shooters Constipation Drug Pulled; Results Not Shitty Enough |
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 March 8, 2004
I Have Caught the CIA's Latest Death VirusI am in no mood to talk, gentle readers. Fortunately I can do my column in a written fashion, although it throws me off my game not to hear my own voice ranting as I freestyle my diatribe. But my voice hurts too much to even think about talking—see? That just now hurt really bad. I am sick with the influenza.
At least that's what doctors tell me. I have much darker suspicions that I have been infected with the CIA's latest death virus.
Doctors, friends, and those folks at the radio call-in show are quick to doubt me, I know, but it only makes my suspicions stronger. They ask me, "Why would the CIA waste time trying to kill you?" Of course, that question has a list of answers a mile long. There's my controversial columns which someone must be reading, influencing a whole generation of hypothetical readers toward an underground revolution. Or there's what I did last year in the city of Branson, Missouri's water supply. And these two things are only at the top of the list. Frankly, who knows? They're the CIA. I don't pretend to understand their motivations, even as I make them up.
All that matters is this may well be true. As you may know, the CIA are not to be fucked with, sir, when it comes to death viruses. They invented the best of them—AIDS, syphilis, Hong Kong flu, herpes. I hear tell one of them even escaped the lab and got a talk show under the name Jenny Jones. These people are clearly the go-to folks when it comes to...
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I am in no mood to talk, gentle readers. Fortunately I can do my column in a written fashion, although it throws me off my game not to hear my own voice ranting as I freestyle my diatribe. But my voice hurts too much to even think about talking—see? That just now hurt really bad. I am sick with the influenza.
At least that's what doctors tell me. I have much darker suspicions that I have been infected with the CIA's latest death virus.
Doctors, friends, and those folks at the radio call-in show are quick to doubt me, I know, but it only makes my suspicions stronger. They ask me, "Why would the CIA waste time trying to kill you?" Of course, that question has a list of answers a mile long. There's my controversial columns which someone must be reading, influencing a whole generation of hypothetical readers toward an underground revolution. Or there's what I did last year in the city of Branson, Missouri's water supply. And these two things are only at the top of the list. Frankly, who knows? They're the CIA. I don't pretend to understand their motivations, even as I make them up.
All that matters is this may well be true. As you may know, the CIA are not to be fucked with, sir, when it comes to death viruses. They invented the best of them—AIDS, syphilis, Hong Kong flu, herpes. I hear tell one of them even escaped the lab and got a talk show under the name Jenny Jones. These people are clearly the go-to folks when it comes to inventing death viruses. And if this one is their latest, it stands to reason I'm in big, contagious trouble.
The doctor was right about one thing—nothing you can do but let it run its course. So I'm taking a fatalistic approach to it all, I suppose, saying what happens happens. Of course, this doesn't stop me from making our Marketing VP Sully work on a cure 24 hours a day, minus lunch. I've also cursed the name of God for letting this happen and trashed a church, but I was probably going to do that anyway.
The worst thing about any cold, even a death virus, is being sick all the time. Snotty, sore throat, always rushing to the bathroom at the drop of a hat, or something less hat-like. Everything in my office is germ-ridden and nasty. I've gotten the commune cleaning staff (a.k.a. the copywriting desk) to come in and scrub down my office every two hours, just to keep it less contagious—also, I admit, I'm a little curious to see how quick they catch it, to see what this death virus can really do. I've also had them empty all my jars of urine, since when they began to get in the way I had to confess I really didn't have much idea what I was saving them for.
In the even of my death, however, seeing as how this is a death virus, I believe the commune will be in good hands. I've assigned editorial duties to Sully, Mazie the Chicken, Lil Duncan, and celebrity heartthrob Leif Garrett, just to shake things up a bit. Each will have the reigning editorial duties on a certain day of the month, from first to fourth. On the event of a rare fifth Monday, responsibility for those duties will be determined by a battle to the death. Perhaps a bit extreme, but I'm damned to determine to see the creative control doesn't suffer due to my brother's meddling and the CIA's attempt to kill me.
Sure, I suppose I could get better, but you have to plan for the worst. After all, this all probably could have been avoided if I had invested in that hermetically-sealed personal bubble I planned on buying after seeing that John Travolta movie all those years ago. º Last Column: Work Sucksº more columns
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|  July 8, 2002
Stick a Fork in the Whole Damn TeamHey, I can't pitch like Satchel Paige. Hell, I can't even pitch like Jimmy Page. But I'll tell you one thing. The Macon Turdburglars are the worst team on earth. I saw them "play" the Grand Junction Shuttlecocks last night and it was a spectacle that made me ashamed to be a man, let alone a Maconite.
Minor league baseball has often been reviled in popular culture, long considered a playground for the uncoordinated, the home of stumbling, oafish, slow-witted ballplayers of questionable athletic talent who are cursed with an unfounded determination. And it's true: you've come to the wrong place if you want to see slick-fielding supermen who sometimes turn double plays and hardly ever step out of their own jock straps when swinging for a home run. But minor league baseball has always held a unique charm for its fans: It's really cheap. Like sneaking generic cookies into the second-run theater cheap. Like finishing off a warm beer that somebody left sitting on top of the trashcan cheap. So penny-clenching baseball fans have come to expect a lower level of play in exchange for the cut-rate admissions they're playing, and they accept it. Up to a point. Well beyond that point lie the Macon Turdburglars, who are so stupefyingly inept that attending one of their games should count as community service in the eyes of the court.
The game I attended last night was about par for the season. In the third inning,Manyon Durbing, the shortstop for the Shuttlecocks,...
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Hey, I can't pitch like Satchel Paige. Hell, I can't even pitch like Jimmy Page. But I'll tell you one thing. The Macon Turdburglars are the worst team on earth. I saw them "play" the Grand Junction Shuttlecocks last night and it was a spectacle that made me ashamed to be a man, let alone a Maconite. Minor league baseball has often been reviled in popular culture, long considered a playground for the uncoordinated, the home of stumbling, oafish, slow-witted ballplayers of questionable athletic talent who are cursed with an unfounded determination. And it's true: you've come to the wrong place if you want to see slick-fielding supermen who sometimes turn double plays and hardly ever step out of their own jock straps when swinging for a home run. But minor league baseball has always held a unique charm for its fans: It's really cheap. Like sneaking generic cookies into the second-run theater cheap. Like finishing off a warm beer that somebody left sitting on top of the trashcan cheap. So penny-clenching baseball fans have come to expect a lower level of play in exchange for the cut-rate admissions they're playing, and they accept it. Up to a point. Well beyond that point lie the Macon Turdburglars, who are so stupefyingly inept that attending one of their games should count as community service in the eyes of the court. The game I attended last night was about par for the season. In the third inning,Manyon Durbing, the shortstop for the Shuttlecocks, hit a grounder into the outfield. A routine single, should they have been playing the Little Oak Oakies or the Sacramento Rehab Saints. It ended up being an inside-the-park homerun, because the TB's left fielder, J.B. Frisco, couldn't find the ball. I'm serious, it rolled out there and Frisco lost sight of it when he was distracted by a plane flying overhead, and then it was just gone. Durbing kept running around the bases, thinking he might be able to score some extra runs all by himself. This got the rest of the team excited and guys came pouring out of the dugout and ran around the bases behind Durbing, in case there was some kind of scoring loophole involved in losing the ball in fair territory. The ump stopped Manyon after his third time around because he was afraid the kid would have a heat stroke. By that time this happened, the Shuttlecocks had scored 54 runs on the ground ball and Frisco still hadn't found it. He wandered around the outfield for a while with his hands on his hips, looking at the ground kind of funny, and had peeked in his glove in case it had rolled up in there on a lark. He squatted down and checked the ground for gopher holes, and glanced up into the sky a few times. After a while he jogged off into the dugout to take a leak, then came back and looked for the ball some more. After about a half an hour the ump declared it a ghost ball and the section of shallow left field between second and third was roped off and blessed by a man carrying a snake. After a call from the official scorer to a radio call-in show, Durbing's hit was ruled a ducentasedecle, the first ever 216 base hit in the history of professional baseball.The Shuttlecocks ended up winning the game 53-1, since they had a run taken away for gloating in the eighth inning. Macon's lone run was scored by right fielder Scooter Busch, who was hit by a pitch on his way to the on-deck circle. He was hit by three more pitches while on the basepaths, and though the Turdburglars were grateful for the run, they suspected that some of the pitches may not have been unintentional. Aficionados of minor league baseball history (and you know who you are, Ted and Virgil) often point to the Laughlin Cookie Eaters as the worst team in Minor League history. Direct comparisons are moot, since the Cookie Eaters went the way of the dodo long ago, but I have little doubt that should they ever have gone toe-to-toe with the Macon Turdburglars, the TBs would have taught them a hard lesson about what it really means to suck. And if I hadn't been banned from the stadium for life after hitting the TB's mascot with a roll of quarters, I'd be down there demanding my 85 cents back right now. º Last Column: Take Them Out to the Guillotineº more columns
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Quote of the Day“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. This means you, Gerardo.”
-Napoleon BugglyparteFortune 500 CookieFinally, you'll win that annual shit-talkin' contest. If the shoe fits, it still means you only have one shoe, dumbass. It may hurt, but don't worry, they can re-attach it if you put the testicle on ice quickly. Don't buy the lottery ticket this week—your money is better invested in cookie dough. Lucky marbles: steely, cat's eyes, and… uh… shit, we're fresh out of marbles.
Try again later.Top 5 commune Features This Week| 1. | Vietnam: The New San Francisco? | | 2. | 10 New Ways to Weight a Body Down | | 3. | Uncle Macho's Ethnic Pudding | | 4. | Love: The Source of All Bad Poetry | | 5. | Pants You Could and Will Die In | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Roland McShyster 2/3/2003 Well Hop on Pop, it's time for another installment of Entertainment Police. I guess we just couldn't hold it in any longer. Feast your eyes (and if you really are, literally, feasting your eyes, drop me an email because that sounds freaky as hell and I'm curious as to how it works) on the latest and, by default, greatest films that Hollywood is wedging in between Coke commercials this week:
In Theaters
Final Destination 2
Raise your hand if you knew there was a Final Destination 1. At first I thought this might be one of those joke titles like Leonard Part 6 or Jaws 2, but then I realized it wasn't funny, so there must really be a first film. I asked around and nobody...
Well Hop on Pop, it's time for another installment of Entertainment Police. I guess we just couldn't hold it in any longer. Feast your eyes (and if you really are, literally, feasting your eyes, drop me an email because that sounds freaky as hell and I'm curious as to how it works) on the latest and, by default, greatest films that Hollywood is wedging in between Coke commercials this week:
In Theaters
Final Destination 2
Raise your hand if you knew there was a Final Destination 1. At first I thought this might be one of those joke titles like Leonard Part 6 or Jaws 2, but then I realized it wasn't funny, so there must really be a first film. I asked around and nobody had heard of it, but somebody told me to check the Internet Movie Database, some sort of government Big Brother thing where they list every movie that anyone has even thought of making. I thanked the guy, of course, but couldn't get behind his back to make the cuckoo faces fast enough. What a freak. Like anybody cares that much about movies. Most directors can't even remember most of their films, and let me remind you, they're the ones getting paid. So anyway, the only conclusion I could come to was that there never was a Final Destination 1, but for some reason the studio wants us to believe there was. Like maybe if we can't remember the first one sucking, we'll figure it was good and be eager to see the sequel. A clever ploy, probably the smartest thing Hollywood has done since making the smallest soda size bigger than any human bladder, so you have to pay to see 9 ½ Weeks twice to catch the part you missed while you were pissing out in the hallway. But anyway, now that I've deflated the silicone out of their fake-boob premise, the real question is, should you want to see Final Destination 2? There's another question in there, too, which is if this film is a hit, will they call the next film Final Destination 3 or just admit the ruse and call it Final Destination 2 again? My guess is that they'll dodge that bullet altogether and go with some safe bullshit title like Finaler Destination or My Big Fat Final Destination. But getting back to the original question, the answer is: six.
The Recut
Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this boldly experimental film about Al Pacino being Al Pacino. And the funny thing is that I don't think Al Pacino's really even in the movie at all, the whole thing is just a bunch of famous scenes from Al Pacino's other movies cut together. Average white man Colin Farrell is computer-dumped into every scene to add continuity, using the same technology they used to treat us to John Wayne crapping in a beer commercial and Gandhi telling us why he'd drive a Volvo. The result is startlingly similar to Al Pacino's last eighteen films, at a fraction of the cost. Will this bold experiment in giving viewers exactly what they want pay off? That's hard to say, but I did love the parts where Farrell ad-libs and makes it sound like Pacino's talking about something other than what he was in the original films, like when Pacino's famous "Just when I think I'm out…" speech from The Godfather of Soul becomes about him mud-wrestling with Barbara Bush and Margaret Thatcher on peyote.
Shanghai Knights
This isn't the first time a poorly conceived theme restaurant has been made into a movie, and unless somebody was killed by a helicopter while they were filming, this probably won't be the last. But this film certainly deserves its claim to fame as the most recent. An offshoot of those annoying restaurants where yuppies pay to eat with no silverware while a bunch of gay failed actors bash about with swords and armor and people pretend like they're having fun, the Shanghai Knights chain at least made the improvement of offering Chinese food. The upshot here was that even in those backwards historical times the Chinese knew what the hell silverware was, even if they thought it was chopsticks. But how to translate this improvement into movie success? Well, you could do worse than casting the likeably gay duo of awkward nose model Owen Wilson ( Dennis the Menace, The Math Man) and Attention Deficit Asian Jackie Chan ( Ladder Fight Disco, The Underpants) in the lead roles, and surrounding them by an able supporting cast that falls down in charming ways. The script is a little on the thin side, but that's to be expected as it was based on a menu. However, even with all its shortcomings, this film is a marked improvement over previous efforts in the genre, such as the unfortunate Steak Knight and the truly wretched Eat Your Chicken or Die.
In order to keep up with the prevailing trends in Hollywood as of late, I've decided to open up some new revenue streams for the column by inserting product placements and some ads here and there, you know, because nobody gives a shit anymore. So as I sit here and drink my Gnert‡ cola and sniff some Elmer's‡² glue while I ponder the mid-winter movie season, let me be the first to suggest that it'd be awfully nice to have my cock sucked by a hooker‡³ right about now, maybe while I was smoking some crack†. Yeah, that would definitely help these movies go down smoother.   |
