Best Served Chilled

I bought a sandwich today. It said that it was 'best served chilled', although I can't imagine under any circumstance how it could have possibly been worse if it was warm. And considering I had to actually pluck it from the shelf myself, carry it to the checkout, and then scurry outside to eat it in shame, I'm not even sure about how it could served in any manner less convenient. Yes, I'm allowed to be a snob. Anyone who pays that much for a sandwich should have it delivered by an Angelic choir, wrapped in gold leaf and blessed by a saint. The merest nibble should cause you to die of estascy, only to be revived by the power of how awesome it tastes, before being left cold and alone, weeping as the last mouthful slides down.

Speaking of ambient produce, revenge is another dish that is best served cold. Apparently. Or possibly with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Nom nom.

Anyway, in a round about way, I've been thinking about justice. Yes, justice. That grand, abstract concept that we all know and love. No one wants to be the guy who argues against the course of justice. No one wants to be him. He's a prick.

Right, back. I'm at a work party, talking to someone I don't even know about crime and punishment. He describes himself as 'a little bit more Victorian' than me. If the Victorian's had Sharia Law, he'd know he'd been born too late. The conversation proceeds much like a slow motion car crash, ploughing fearlessly through topics that should not be discussed over beer, until it reaches the point where he condemns everyone to a burning lake of sulpher.

Forever.

They deserve to go down, down, down, to a burning ring of fire.

Now, this got me thinking about justice. Unless you wear a silly wig and work as a tool of an oppressive bourgeois regime, you are incapable of comprehending justice at all, apparently. I certainly don't know right from wrong. I was getting frisky with a dead cat the other day before someone told me that was messed up. Who would have known? It was still warm. And dressed provocatively.

In many respects is just as well, because most of us knuckle dragging primitive apes are in favour of a strange type of justice. This justice sees the wholesale slaughter of social deviants, the exile of miscreants, the destruction of all transgressors, and the execution of hungry people who steal loaves of bread while accidentally shooting someone in the face. Where's the sense in that?

The funny thing about justice, to me, is that it is not a real word. You can spell it, sure, but it has no meaning, because what is just and injust relies on a loose coalition of your intepretation societal norms, rehabilitation, law, and most importantly, revenge. Justice is not justice unless someone suffers for what they've done. It is not reformative to cut the hands off a theif, or gouge out the eyes of a stalker, or burn people alive in ovens because they transgressed against someone you don't even know, in circumstances you can't comprehend. But it is, at this moment in time, what people seem to want. So thank god we have all knowing judges, that's all I can say. Without their omnipotence, we'd surely be tearing out throats over things like littering.

Things have to be done a little more carefully than simply eliminating people who've somehow upset us, though. Life and death are big concepts, as Mr. Tolkien mused when he wrote that many people who deserve death are still alive, and many people who deserve to live are dead. Can you give life to those people? Don't be so quick to deal out death in judgement. And those words ring true for a lot of things, a lot of the time. Without getting into a moralistic quagmire, I'll just finish with an idea I've been mulling around. That is one of 'extreme justice'.

Extreme justice calls for ludicrious and unfair punishments of just about anyone, for any reason, all of the time. Next time you're on a lunch break with someone who says that X sentance for Y criminal is 'a slap on the wrist', advocate cutting off the lips of people who drop their crumbs on the floor. Defend it with complete deadpan seriousness. Point out that it is a major problem in society, that people should not be so inconsiderate, that it attracts vermin, looks disgusting, at that people should be raised in a manner whereby they can eat without throwing half their food on the pavement.


Trust me. What this country needs is harsher sentancing, for everyone, for anything. That'd get 'em thinking.