December 31, 2006

• hang your very own Home Despot... Har har.
• RTD is very into gallows humour today.
• Humans can be truly horrible creatures.
• I believe hanging was originally reserved for common folk - european aristocrats enjoyed the privilege of decapitation. Is that correct?
• Hereya go Ralph, everything you never wanted to know about hanging. (Sorry, much as I like you, the hanging thing is distressing to me.)
• darling I don't think there's a protocol in these matters. Hanging was used for both commoner and noble in Britain, for example. In any case, I'll say that murder by the state remains murder, albeit by a collective rather than by an individual.
• Well, hanging is clean (no blood/guts) and cheap (get a rope). This salsa was made in NEW YORK CITY?
• darling's right that, in England, at least, decapitation was seen as more honourable than hanging or burning at the stake, so nobles could opt to die that way, IIRC.
• Hanging is potentially clean, but can take a long time (leading to uncleanliness...). It's invariably cruel as well.
• Well, if it's done properly (if the body is allowed to fall far enough before *SNAP*), then there is no lingering death. The point is to break the neck, not choke the hangee.
• Well, yes the idea is to get a good clean *snap*, I understand that part, but getting the *snap* is not so easy. Each person that is condemned to death, or hanged, has a different drop quotient as it were.
• Drop quotient? Is that like the Hooke's spring constant?
• You can't buy them off this farmer any more though.
• Well it’s hard to imagine it’s the times that have changed When there’s a murder in the kitchen that is brutal and strange If killing anybody is a terrible crime Why does this bloodthirsty chorus come round from time to time Let him dangle --E. Costello
• Violence just begets more violence- why haven't we learned this yet?
• Hector and Uriah were suffering palpitations Accompanying Josiah to his decapitation. "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!" they screamed, in exclamation, While, "Miserere mei!" wailed Joe, in lamentation. For he was not proceeding there all of his own volition: No, Joe was in the grip of governmental extradition. He walked toward the chopping block, all full of trepidation, While onlookers looked on, all full of morbid fascination. He'd pleaded with the Governor to stay the execution: "Couldn't I just make a monetary restitution?" Hector and Uriah were his only consolation, And they were not much comfort in his mortal condemnation, For Hector was the victim of a mental aberration That made him think his long johns were a fledgling Third-World nation. Uriah, an escapee from a "certain institution," Used seven pints of gravy for his everyday ablutions. But still, they loved old Joey, and were sad at his destruction, And that his height should suffer an eleven-inch reduction. The man in black picked up his axe, and o'er Joe's protestations, His head and neck were forced into a trial separation. Uriah's tears, they flooded forth in utter desperation, While Hector's long johns staged a coup, demanding liberation.
• But really, doesn't brain death take 4 to 6 minutes after oxygen supply is cut off? So, there's a chance that the hangee could be conscious to some degree for that long? I seem to remember a report about some one beheaded in England, maybe one of Henry VII's wives, whose mouth kept opening and closing after the deed was done. I've always wondered whether she had some consciousness and enough nerve endings left in the neck that she could have been trying to talk. I'm opposed to the death penalty in general, but hanging seems barbaric, no matter how barbaric the person killed was.
• Lucid decapitation.
• We debated heavily about our '04 production of The Mikado, following so closely as it did the beheading of Nick Berg, (who had briefly lived in the community years before, IIRC). We decided to go ahead, and the gallows humor turnd out to be more cathartic than disturbing.
• If he was lucky the blood supply to his brain was instantly cut off and unconsciousness occurred in seconds. If you've ever stood up too fast and started to feel dizzy, I'm thinking it would be that fast, only with no recovery. Hanging is barbaric? What would you suggest, lethal injection? I mean it looks all medical 'n' stuff, and the condemned just lays there without all that distasteful jerking around. Hanging is old-fashioned, stoning is barbaric. Though here we're discussing the relative barbarity of different methods of murder, so yeah I suppose hanging is barbaric. If I had to design a method, it would involve a 120 tonne steam hammer to the head, traveling faster than nerve impulses. Oh yeah, it would happen in the victims sleep 20 or so hours eailer than the schedule their running to. As long as they don't get suspicious about the giant concrete pillow it'd be pretty humane.
• The long drop method of hanging, complete with a table of drop lengths for different weights.
• Just realized that last one's within Ralph's third link.
• When they really didn't like a noble, they would deny him decapitation. There was some earl or other in the seventeenth century who was hanged - stories of lurid murder and violence. Yeah, I don't have any details, sorry.
• I wondered if you were thinking of the Earl of Castlehaven, jb, but refreshing my dim memory of his definitely lurid case, seems he was beheaded. Now I'm intrigued - I thought he was undisputed as top noble pervert for the seventeenth century.
• Pretty stiff competition in the PervNob17C contest. He musta been some dude. Then there was Anne Boleyn, who got upgraded to beheading by sword instead of the clumsy old ax man.
• Hanging is barbaric? What would you suggest, lethal injection? Not killing.