Today Is World Day Against The Death Penalty. How’s That For Appropriate.

That’s some timing there.

The lovely Gal, courtesy of our pal Mont!

Happy Weekend!

Today, as mentioned in the headline, is World Day Against the Death Penalty, though technically that is every day, as only about a third of countries still have the death penalty and only about 17 countries still use it regularly. According to Amnesty International only 10 countries — China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, USA, Viet Nam, and Yemen — have consistently carried out executions every year for the past five years. Great company we’re in, there.

You know, for all the shit Republicans talk about Somalians and how they haven’t done enough to assimilate (among other, more disgusting commentary), it seems like it’s somehow always us and Somalia on these kinds of lists.

As you may have heard (or read here yesterday), Department of WAR Secretary Pete Hegseth is about to help us join noted bastions of human rights Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia in being one of the only remaining countries to do public executions. Although even they don’t livestream them. Personally, I’m not surprised, because after Tennessee botched Christa Pike’s execution, there were a whole lot of MAGA creeps on X the Everything App whining that we should have televised executions but with guns instead of needles — they’d probably enjoy watching a botched execution, given their level of blood thirst. Many even said they wished they could volunteer to be in the firing squads. Though in some ways that might be almost preferable, as prison employees who have participated in executions report serious post-traumatic stress and many end up having “alcoholism, drug addiction, considered suicide.” Given their utter lack of humanity, it’s doubtful that they’d have any of those issues.

Enough with that, though, before my face burns off from rage.

Today is also the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, and so your first present is the great Renee Fleming singing “Sempre Libera” from La Traviata, which I am very excited to see at the Lyric this season.

It is also the birthday of Thelonious Monk! I spent a weird amount of time staring at the cover of Underground as a kid, partly because my dad told me that the Nazi was a real dead Nazi who was taxidermied, and I believed him for a whole lot longer than I should have, because I was an idiot.

Here he is playing Ugly Beauty, my favorite song from that album.

And here he is, doing his signature dance, which was mostly spinning.

If you haven’t seen the 1988 documentary on Monk Straight, No Chaser, I highly recommend it. He was a very interesting guy!

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