Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Extreme Capital Punishment

There's a lot of debate about the death penalty - whether or not we should do it - but not enough debate about the forms that it takes. Most of these forms are pretty played-out, and don't resonate with today's hip youth. As a result, they fail in a twofold manner: first, these lackluster execution methods fail to provide an effective deterrent to today's hip young potential murderers. Second, the trite nature of the executions gives death penalty advocates nothing to get excited about. As a result, the pendulum swings the other way.

Now, I'm not an advocate on either side of the issue. I prefer to stand apart from the process. But even an impartial, disinterested observer such as myself can see that the capital punishment industry needs some serious sprucing-up if it wants to remain a relevant social controversy going into 2007 and beyond.

Therefore I offer my suggestions for three exciting new methods of execution to be phased in over the coming months:

Virtual Electric Chair: the condemned murderer sits in his seat of destruction, but he has a slim chance for temporary survival! Strapped into a virtual reality video-game helmet of the type once projected to revolutionize all forms of entertainment, the criminal squares off against the victim's family. If the family wins - BZZZZZZZT!!!!! If the criminal wins - he gets a one-week reprieve. Each week that goes by, the difficulty level rises as the family get better and better virtua-weapons. This Xecution has the added bonus of potentially reviving interest in the all-but-moribund virtual reality video-game helmet industry.

Extreme Lethal Injection: this one is so easy. Switch out the boring sodium potassium whateverithol for a megadose of pure, sweet heroin. Not only does this Xecution reek of bad-boy outsider chic, not only is it just as certain and sure as your conventional poisons (when administered in the proper dosage), but it definitely puts to rest those allegations of inhumane treatment that have been dogging the lethal injection method for ages.

Bungee Hanging: you can just imagine!

With these three new, improved, Extreme Capital Punishment methods worked into the rotation, capital punishment can once again be something for us to get excited about. And why not? Even the staunchest of death penalty opponents would agree that the taking of human life should never be boring.

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