I have to say, I've yet to comprehend the mass hand-wringing, tutting and desultory nose-gazing against the state of Utah. Not for executing Ronnie Lee Gardner, no, but for doing so by firing squad.
What baffles me is that the shock and horror is not actually over the fact that the USA still perpetrates capital punishment - albeit almost entirely by one or two yee-haw States such as Texas - but that they've merely sort of revived a slightly dormant form of execution because a guy asked for it. And why the hell not? FIRING SQUADS KICK ASS. Despite the fact that he actually stated that 'I lived by the gun, I murdered with a gun, so I will die by the gun', we still see that 'demonstrations were held on the steps of the Utah State Capitol building'. What the hell did they want instead? Have him watch Michel Gondry films in a chair without appropriate lumbar support until he possibly develops Deep Vein Thrombosis? Have him waterboarded with warm Evian? Be force-fed asparagus that... that ISN'T organically sourced?? You sick, sick bastards.
Now, I daren't even poke at the myriad ethical minefield that is the death penalty, but suffice it to say that I oppose it in principle.
However.
If I ever find myself with a hankering for unspeakable crime amounting to an almost certain Death Row penalty, I sure as hell am choosing Utah as my romping-ground. I mean, at least Gardner got a choice. And with that limited choice he decided to die like a real man: eat a steak, watch Lord of the Rings, and then be blasted to shit by four massive rifles. How the hell can you dispute that choice against the others? Well, apart from, you know, not having to be killed 30 years after you shot a bloke in the stomach this one time, but, hey, this is America after all. Honestly though, if I had to choose between having my life slowly trickle away as I wilt like a sad little flower from a crappy injection, or have my still-beating heart explode out of my chest via the business end of four high-powered rifles, well... sign me up for the latter any day. Talk about dying like a man, christ, I want to go out the way I came in: screaming, naked and covered in bloody entrails. Even better, push me out of a plane, that'd be equally badass. Or make me fight two lions with only a paper plate and a can opener for defence. I mean, if the end's inevitable, I'd at least want it to be interesting. I don't smoke either, but I feel that smoking a cigar as you're blown skywards is also more or less a crucial necessity for the quintessential manly death.
I laugh mockingly at the other contenders. Electrocution? Jiggle about in a chair for a bit with a sponge on your head. Hanging? Dangle boringly from a wooden climbing frame like an incontinent Christmas fairy. Stoning? Be the human equivalent of a badly-done pebble drive. Lame. All of them.
Moreover, if it could somehow be staged to exactly replicate Protest the Hero's 'Blindfolds Aside' video, I'd be all the more happy. Just so you know. Check it out.
Finally, in the inevitable situation in which I've been bitten by a zombie in a war-torn post-apocalyptic wasteland and have but 15 hours to live before I devolve into a subhuman brain-eating machine, I fully intend to pick a method from Maddox's list and go with that.
