Do you find it ironic that the State of Alabama — a state strongly associated with guns and killing — has had so much trouble killing Kenneth Smith? They should have asked Smith himself for help — he apparently had no trouble murdering a woman. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. The woman he killed was the wife of a preacher. The preacher paid him $1,000 to do it and later killed himself.

It was over a year ago that Smith was on a gurney to be killed by lethal injection. 11/17/2022. The thing about injections, though, is they have to be injected. We’ve all been there, right? Can’t find a “good” vein. Let’s try the other arm. Make a fist. OK, there it is. Well, a whole team of fine Alabama folks was having the devil of a time finding a good vein to kill Mr. Smith. They tried his arms and hands first (duh), and eventually looked for a vein near his heart. The problem (for everyone except Smith) was it was taking so long (4 hours!), they started to worry they wouldn’t be able to kill him by midnight, when the death warrant expired. Sort of a spin on the Cinderella story, sans pumpkins. So, as the NYT put it, “the jabbing stopped.”

Alabama is taking another crack at Smith tonight. They’ll be using nitrogen hypoxia, a gas that he’ll get via a mask, so no injecting is needed. It will deprive him of oxygen until he’s dead. It shouldn’t be confused with nitrous oxide — laughing gas. The last thing Alabama needs is for Smith to die laughing. It’s never been used in a U.S. execution, but what could possibly go wrong? An expert on the procedure reviewed Alabama’s set up and is worried about the dangers of vomiting and/or an oxygen leak that could prolong the process. (TMI?) It has been used in Europe in assisted suicides. 

Get this — when Smith was convicted, the jury voted 11 to 1 that he not be killed — that he receive a life sentence. But the judge overruled them. In 2017 Alabama stopped allowing judges to overrule juries in such cases, but the change was not applied retroactively. Bummer, eh, Smith?

Hard to believe in this age of medical advances that they can’t come up with a simple way of ending a life. Why don’t they just put him to sleep like they do routinely in thousands of surgeries every day. Then lop his head off with a scimitar. Painless and quick. What am I missing?

Here – they can use this one.

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We love David Sedaris. He has an absolutely wonderful story in the New Yorker that just came out (the Jan. 29 issue). I hope you all get to read it, but I’m going to steal one small part of it, because it’s too good:

Walking along the busy highway in Montrose, Colorado, we came upon three eighteen-wheelers parked on a dusty lot. The doors of one were open, and inside were stacks of new-smelling tires. “If you had a year, do you think you could eat one of those?” I asked, pausing to wipe the dirt and sweat off my forehead with a bandanna I’d been carrying. “If you had to, I mean.”

Dawn looked inside the truck. “A tire? Sure, if it didn’t kill me. First thing I’d do is cut it into three hundred and sixty-five pieces, then divide each of those into pill-size portions I’d eat throughout the day.”

It was exactly what I would do. “I wonder what percentage of people would put it off to the last minute,” I said. “Can you imagine? Time is almost up. You have a knife in one hand, a fork in the other, and are staring down an untouched radial tire thinking, Fuck!”

A convertible roared by, and we could briefly hear the music the driver was playing, a song that neither of us would ever voluntarily listen to. “That’s what my brother would do—put it off,” I told her. “Then, there’d be people who’d wait until the last minute and beg you to help them. It’s the Ant and the Grasshopper, when you really think about it, and, though I’m not proposing this, if you had to cull the population, I think this would be a pretty good way to do it. Those who eat their tire by the deadline stay. Those who put it off and make excuses die.”

“That seems fair,” Dawn said, adding that kids could be given bicycle tires.

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The Pistons won last night! That’s two wins in their last five games and a 5-39 record for the season. They beat Charlotte 113-106 in Detroit. Still without their star Cade Cunningham. Good game, fellas! 

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So old Basil Featherston, 87 years old, came into his office one morning and discovered that $20,000 was missing from the office safe. His personal secretary, the voluptuous 19-year-old Ms. Winters must have taken it — she was the only other person with the combination. He waited for her to arrive and confronted her.

“I know you are the thief, Ms. Winters, and I’m calling the police,” he told her.

She said, “Please, please, Mr. Featherston. Please don’t call the police. I’m only 19 and it will ruin my life. Please give me a chance — I’ll do anything if only you won’t call the police.”

He looked at her for a few moments and said, “Anything?”

So the scene shifts to a dingy motel on the outskirts of town and the two of them are in bed. But he’s 87 and he just can’t get the ball rolling, so to speak. They try everything they can think of, but nothing works. Finally, after 45 minutes, exhausted, his head slumps on to the pillow, and he says: ”Ms. Winters, I’m going to have to call the police.”

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How do we feel about Trump’s calling Haley a birdbrain the other night? Welly, an unusually wise owl, didn’t take offense. More often than not, he noted, an insult is like throwing a bucket of water out of a moving car: Most of it splashes back on the insulter. 

And what was that about her perfectly nice dress? He called it “a fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy.” Phil tells us it was a floral jacquard dress by Teri Jon similar to this one that lists for $500-$600, but you can get it for much less if you’re careful. 

Haley turned 52 this week and has two grown kids. She’s 5′ 6′, in good shape, and can show off her looks when she wants to. Trump can attack her appearance all he wants, but, as the saying goes, that dog won’t hunt.

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Today’s puzzle had an unusual theme — Mercury. First, at 17A, we had “Mercury is in this,” and the answer was GLASS THERMOMETER. At 45A, “The Mercury might be in this” was a basketball reference: WNBA FINALS. At 26A, “Mercury might be in this” was RETROGRADE. (It’s when the motion of a planet is reversed from its usual direction, due to the relative orbital progress of the earth and the planet. You knew that, right?) And, last, at 58A, “Mercury was in this,” is a Freddy Mercury (of Queen) reference: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. 

If you like hard core rock and roll, turn it up for this David Lindley tune, “Mercury Blues:”

If I had money
I’ll tell you what I’d do
I’d go downtown
And buy a Mercury or two.
I’m crazy ’bout a Mercury.

Who isn’t? See you tomorrow.

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