#cw: death penalty

[tanuki-kimono]

Irezumi kei (tattoo penalty) as depicted in the [徳鄰厳秘録 - Tokuringenbiroku], a kind of penalty instruction book compiled in 1814, digitalized by the National Archives of Japan.

CW for this post about Edo period judiciary => mentions of physical punishment, torture, death penalty (text only, no details, no graphic illustrations) . The irezumikei pages above are p.19 to 25.

I won't reproduced the illustrations here, but the Tokuringenbiroku book also presents other Edo period "punishments" and death penalties, like different types of goumon (torture), gokumon (decapitation and exposure of the head to public view), kakei (stake), haritsuke (crucifixion), or tameshigiri (sword cut testing, here on executed convict corpse). Please proceed to the full book according to your sensibilities!

Back to irezumi kei : the markings of character Akaza (from Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon's Slayer) are directly inspired by those, same for Mugen in Samurai Champloo for example:

After Tokugawa Yoshimune's reforms abolished bloodier punishments (nose or ear cutting) for lesser crimes (like theft, gambling or fraud), irezumikei spread, inspired by Chinese bokkei practices.

Yet, zainin (lawbreakers) were also often beaten or whipped (tataki), which could be a "light" sentence or more far extreme one. Women tended to be imprisoned instead.

Punishment tattoos also often went alongside tokorobarai (banishment), which had several levels depending on the crime. You could be banished to a remote island, just away from your city, or forbidden to enter a certain perimeter.

Exile is why different areas had different marks, placed on the arms or faces, easily identifying the person as a criminal convicted in another region.

Number of lines or dots were often used to symbolize repeated offences (pic below source). Most of the times, getting 3+ irezumikei could grant you death penalty.

Irezumikei maybe be why criminals came to use extravagant tattoos, as to cover their infamous marks, leading to the yakuza association with body ink.

Yet, other strata of population also favored figurative tattoos, so the link between criminals and tattoing in Edo period is not self-evident.

Some shapes of -sode (sleeve part of a tattoo) for example left arm interior bare, maybe to prove then that no armband tattoo was hidden underneath a bigger design.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

It seems my experiment in actually writing something substantive and not just screaming about bangs was well-received! I will insist that it is a fluke for a while, just to keep up appearances, but truly, thank you all. Let's move forward with the first season of LWT!

Last Lee Tonight

(wherein we talk about shirts and the death penalty, not in that order)

Season One, Episode Two

(original air date: 5/4/2014)

Major topic covered: Capital punishment, Brunei

Trigger warnings for discussion of the death penalty and botched executions; homophobia

"As you know, our show is dedicated to covering the biggest news of the week, whatever that news may be. We have a long, proud, one week history of doing that."

As much as the last episode of LWT covered was a time capsule shooting us straight back to 2014, this episode proves that time is basically a flat circle. John opens this episode talking about Russia invading Ukraine, and how the US and allies are going to stop this threat by... imposing sanctions. (Thank God we grew more committed to actually helping Ukraine in our current timeline, Republican agents be damned.) These sanctions, both in the moment and looking at this from the future, clearly didn't do much.

Already the pacing of the show is growing slower, to LWT's benefit - the Ukraine segment, despite being about two minutes, hits more concrete satirical points and feels more put-together than everything from the first segment of episode one.

It seamlessly transitions to what the US was more interested in than the potential fall of Ukraine, the White House Correspondents Dinner. John hates the idea of it and shows clips where George Condon of the White House Correspondents Association talks about how its purpose has completely diverged from its intention in its charter... but he can't show it because the White House lost it. Let's use this space to remind people of the time Stephen Colbert fucking ethered George W. Bush at the Correspondents Dinner in 2006, as I inherently believe that ethering presidents was the entire point of the Correspondents Dinner as laid out in that charter. You can't convince me otherwise.

"And Now This" gives us our first "local newscasters get really excited about a dumb thing" clip package, this one for Star Wars Day. There are so many wide-ranging ways to sound like you're being held hostage while saying "may the fourth be with you"! (The lady who said 'I actually speak droid' painfully reminded me of child me, who said that maybe three million times. As I've said many times, I was a deeply weird child.)

Unlike last episode, episode two isn't structured like an ersatz version of The Daily Show, and instead is beginning to resemble the LWT format of the current day. I genuinely thought it took longer for the show to morph into that, but no, the staff collectively went "fuck it, let's spend fifteen minutes talking about the death penalty and see where it takes us". Good move staff!

John even acknowledges that it's a potentially awful choice to make for a show's second episode, particularly because he is a comedy show. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh John. Poor sweet innocent past John. LWT, a comedy. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

The kick-off for this segment is news in Oklahoma of an inmate dying after a botched execution. John isn't sure he wants to talk about it, President Obama doesn't want to talk about it, do any of us want to talk about this? But we're talking about it.

Despite the show moving more towards its current iteration, there is still that early-series weirdness to it all. For starters, the idea of John not wanting to talk about the death penalty, when he went on to be the subject of a SLAPP suit because of his show, has routinely discussed abortion and trans rights (the two things most likely to get people screaming at you in my personal experience), and is just generally is plumbing the depths of governmental and social misery every week, is a bit comical. Additionally, the segment officially opens with an extremely didactic "what is the death penalty and what are the arguments for and against" mini-monologue that seems designed to guide audiences through this new type of late-night show. John pulls off being a teacher well, but this sounds like an actual high school teacher trying to introduce a topic they know is gonna be a shitshow.

It is nice to know that the baseline for the death penalty according to the first clip is that we shouldn't execute innocent people. Bold statement.

John also sells the idea that he is an outsider to this topic since he is British. This is another thing dispensed with quickly on the show - he's an American and generally defines himself as such unless it's funnier for a joke - and I honestly didn't expect it to crop up in LWT at all. I'm guessing he brings it up so he can talk about British torture devices, a rich vein of violent nonsense he's loved his entire career, but point still stands. Genuinely shocked he didn't talk about burning Catholics at the stake. Someone must have stopped him in the writer's room from slipping his favorite joke in there.

I don't want to get too in-detail about the factual arguments for any given subject while doing this project, unless I feel like I have interesting additional insight from my own life or a clip shown is ridiculous enough to note it. In any case, this segment is a well-done, high-level view, from my understanding, of the basics of the death penalty argument in the US.

On that level, it is sadly hilarious that John makes a joke that the death penalty is a great deterrent to fishing without a license, since he has done multiple segments since this showing that no, it's really not.

The way this segment ends is also somewhat off, in that it feels like there should be something stronger tying it together. John offers a hypothetical about a guilty person committing a heinous crime and the family of the victims wanting their death - what would you do in that situation? And instead of a clip or a more rigorous examination of that hypothetical, John offers that his opinion is still that the death penalty isn't a good recourse, and that the opinion of you at home might be different, who wants to see hamsters eating burritos? It's... weird. And it's weird because I am looking at this from ten years in the future, recalling John begging England to not vote for Brexit, hearing and seeing the entire last video clip about forced family separation at the border echoing in my head. I can't expect past John to be at where current John is now, and yet, that still colors how I look at this first stab (...ugh bad wording) at a longform LWT segment.

The death penalty segment gives way to something seemingly ripped straight from The Colbert Report, "Other Countries' Presidents of the United States". Truly, this reminds me so much of "Better Know a District". This segment focuses on Francois Hollande of France, namely his complicated and gross history with women and how that somehow made him more popular with voters.

We move on to Brunei, which is a country. (Literal words from the show here, I'm not that ignorant.) Important note, he does not try to fool the audience into thinking Brunei is a country you think about so seldomly that you haven't realized that this ISN'T Brunei, it's actually a pockmark on my face. Namely, Brunei is starting an "experiment with Sharia law" that involves implementing the death penalty for homosexuality. John highlights the hypocrisy of the leadership's turn given their ostentatious wealth and lax morals. Again, pretty solid overview of the situation and the international blind eye being taken there, and good on John for criticising Saudi Arabia consistently.

Finally, our last "And Now This" is people falling asleep behind politicians. I adore this kind of dumb shit. The guy behind Biden is a treasure.

Random notes:

Lee obviously focuses on important things corner: Red is John's color and I will die on this hill. Red shirted John Oliver is my goddamn kryptonite. 10/10.

Gdi Lee you're getting old: I bought Stephen Colbert's Correspondents Dinner speech on iTunes so I could listen to it on my way to classes in college. WHAT A SENTENCE!

Apparently they did an interview with Simon Ostrovsky from Vice News that was cut for time. Not only have I never watched this, why were they cutting things for time on HBO? (I will make a separate post about this interview because I genuinely have no idea what it's about and forgot it existed.)

Filmed during the same episode is a Web Exclusive of John getting a case full of Pom Wonderful from the Pom people, and them telling him, in veiled language, to shove it up his ass. He is clearly delighted by the letter. "Dear John, What fun."

[goosegoblin]

I sometimes feel a divide between and other people who are against the death penalty when it comes to the topic of sex offenders, because their argument often seems to go "the death penalty in that case is bad because it can be targeted against trans people/ queer people/ gay people", and my argument is that I don't think the government should have the right to kill people

[basildni]

fly high you guys you wouldve loved roblox pressure

[horygory]

The Green Mile (1999)

[zinesbycee]

pro-marijuana anti- capital punishment politician trying to appeal to gen z like "abolish stoning women 😭🙏 let women get stoned ☘️🤪"

[penelopesbridgerton]

I... I mean, we love you very much. So come home soon. Let’s hug tight.

[uriswhumpchamber]

A character has been accused and convicted of a crime. A particularly heinous one - potentially world-ending levels of evil, I mean. Even capital punishment wouldn't be enough.

Luckily, this character cannot stay dead.

Perhaps after the fifth death they can get a retrial - see if they should be forgiven already.

[v-t-holmes]

this is sort of a disorganized ramble even though im trying to be coherent be warned

cw death/suicide discussion (also in the tags)

whatever you want to say about him regarding abuse allegations and whatever else might come to light, you should be able to understand that Liam's death is a terrible way to go

i think i was saying the same thing back when the Titan submersible's accident happened, but this is one of those deaths I wouldn't wish on anyone, no matter how terrible of a person they are, and shouldn't be a subject of jokes

(sure it's funny that a ceo imploded in his half-assed submersible, but making light of a gruesome death like that is fucking terrifying)

i remember one of my high school roommates and friends say about a death like that being the most terrifying way to go especially if it's by your own hand, because people will start realizing they don't want to die way too late

and then you're dead

obviously we don't know if it was his decision or if something else happened, but any realization that you're going to die if you don't do anything and you don't want to die is too late as soon as you're falling

(also this is another aside but the fact he was clearly struggling with addiction, something that we've seen as a pattern that happens especially to young people who become too famous too fast and leads to death is just something that we've seen so many times and it's tragic every time) (again, regardless of what kind of person somebody was)

i will say i am not all that attached to the person that he was, i am attached to the fact that he's been part of the band that shaped a good part of my teenhood, and his death is really marking the end of what could have been

remember those edits we used to see of the band members getting old? the fact we wont see that happen is what is actually the most tragic to me

31 is too young to die

again, whatever you want to say about him, my statements stand regardless

it's not about if he is worth mourning or anything, it's just about having the human decency to understand this is just another person who was lost in an event that did not need to happen

(and god knows there are so many deaths like that these days)

[fictionkinfessions]

I might kin from Garten of Banban. I think this crime should carry the death penalty, so I can be put out of my misery /j

🖨

[inhidingxoxo3637]

CW Albert Arenas

A win doesn't get you good treatment ☝️😔

[coulsonlives]

Can't wait to see all the "aw dang, they missed again" posts in relation to That News. 🙄

Edit: welp no one ever fired gunshots at him, it was just gunshots from SS agents being shot at the potential perp.

[loverlaner]

abolish death penalty. no exception. no buts or ifs.

[fly-chicken]

Im here today to talk to you about one of my special interests;

Señor Danny Trejó

This man has lived such a life at age 79; and is still kicking, but I think people don’t really appreciate all this man has been through to be who he is. I genuinely believe his biopic needs to be made bc oh my goodness.

CW: drug usage, incarceration experiences, tough home life, murder, stabbing, death penalty, violence (feel free to lmk more and I’ll add as pointed out)

Also to note; this is a historical summary. Aka the facts with as little of my opinion as I can manage (while considering that I do have a bias), I do not condone the violent acts mentioned. That being said I do sympathize with many actions being a product of circumstance and that this is a man trying to own his past while using his present to make a better future for himself and others. And THAT is why I respect the hell out of him

Ok let’s start this; spoiler alert I look like

By the end

Ok so Im gonna have to categorize this baby; a note, most of this is from his Wikipedia page and subsequent cited sources

Personal

-was born in (1944) as the child of an extramarital affair; his mothers husband was away fighting in WW2 at the time

-He’s been a fan of the LA Rams since their early days (1946) and some of his earliest memories are from sneaking into games as a child

-he fled LA with his family to Texas as a small child bc his father was wanted for stabbing someone. His father turned himself in a year after moving back to LA

-he purchased his childhood home and as of his 2020 biopic, still intermittently lives in it.

-he completed his high school diploma during his stay at Soledad correctional facility (likely during his time in solitary)

-among his many jobs between prison and film; Trejo helped construct the Cinerama Dome in California (now where many of his films have been screened at today) with a construction company as a labourer, a gardener and part time owner of a lawn company

-Trejo has been quoted to still have fears that his life is all just been a dream and that ‘hell wake up in prison with someone urging him to “go get some chow”

-Trejo has been a contributor to several books relating to prison life

-trejo published a cookbook in 2020 and his memoir in 2021

-As of 2020 Trejo owns 8 restaurants; including a taco restaurant, a cantina and a coffee and donut shop. His rainbow cauliflower tacos made the LA times fav recipes of 2017

-He has been married and divorced 4x with 3 children (however he helped raise 2 additional children with his second wife)

-Trejo is a registered Democrat

-battled liver cancer in 2010, moved to be closer to his mom in 2011. She passed while filming the Muppets most wanted in 2013. Although sad, Trejo recalls he didn’t truly break down until Kermit offered his apologies in character (due to his macho personality)

-In 2019 Trejo witnessed a car accident and helped rescue a small ychild from that very wreckage (trapped in the car seat in an overturned SUV)

Prison

-was first arrested at age 10, first incarcerated at age 12 at Eastlake Juvenile Hall

-was in various prisons within the California prison system from 1956-1969 (conflicting accounts say one term may have been till ‘72)

-notable stints include; three years at Camp Glen Rockey in San Dimas for stabbing a sailor in the face with broken glass, a stint in Los Angeles County in 1961 where he met Charles Manson (who Trejo describes as a “dirty, greasy, scrawny white boy” who was an allegedly talented hypnotist), Soledad in 1968 where he hit a guard with a rock during a prison riot on Cinco de Mayo. Due to this he was sent to solitary confinement and faced capital charges and the death penalty. He also completed the 12 step program at this time.

-His most memorable stint was in San Quentin in 1966; his heron use was exacerbated here. Here he was a debt collector and drug dealer; often engaging and witnessing acts of violence and occasional murder. He also picked up boxing in this stint and became both a champion of the lightweight and welterweight divisions throughout his other prison experiences.

-his final prison stint was five years of a ten year sentence, most commonly believed to have ended in 1969 (aged 25)

-he was known as the gossip queen of his cell block in several prisons

Drug Usage and Recovery

- Trejo had been using Marijuana since age 8, heron by age 12, and cocaine by age 13; all introduced by his uncle Gilbert

-Trejo overdosed on first heron fix (also under his uncle’s supervision)

- participated in his first drug deal at age 7

-completed the 12 step program during his time in solitary at Soledad. He has been quoted being sober since completing this program, and is celebrating 54 years in recovery

- Trejo became a substance abuse counsellor in 1973, and is still actively working to help substance abuse cases today

-in the 1980s Trejo worked in Western Pacific Med Corp, assisting with the establishment and operation of sober living houses. He also lived in the houses at this time

-He was called to help assist with the cocaine usage amongst teenagers on the set of Runaway Train (1985)

-Trejos work as an actor was meant to help further his work as a rehabilitation counsellor and he claimed it helped him as clients would recognize him as an actor

-While filming scenes at San Quentin for Blood In, Blood Out; trejo helped a prisoner (Mario Castillo) through the 12 step program and remained in touch after his release. Today him and Mario remain great friends and both speak around the country in both juvenile detention centres as well as rehabilitation centres about their experiences

Film

-his character Machete was created FOR the Spy Kids film

-the creator of the Spy Kids franchise is his second cousin

-Danny originally got into acting after meeting a boy in a sober living house who explained he worked a day job as an extra to make 50$ a day (in 1980); between the “easy money”, availability with his schedule and publicity he could provide to the Western Living House Org, Danny decided to find an agent for background rolls

-After being asked to help with cocaine issues on the set of Runaway Train, Trejo was recognized by the screenplay writer, Edward Bunker. Bunker has been a fellow inmate with Trejo in San Quentin and was also a fan of his boxing work. Bunker helped hire Trejo as a boxing trainer on the film and negotiated Trejos pay to be closer to ~$330 a day, due to his additional help on set and general knowledge/experience

-Bunker also helped land Trejo a role as a background actor in the prison scenes in Runaway

-Penitentiary 3 (1987) was his first billed role, during which he met one of the members of the Galbino crime family (one of the 5 mafia families in New York)

-in 1991 Trejo turned down a role offered by Edward James Olmos due to a call from the don of the Mexican Mafia advising him to take a role in Blood In, Blood Out (1993) instead

-During the filming of Blood In, Blood Out; Trejo experienced PTSD while filming his scenes in San Quentin. Especially when filming the scenes in C550, his previous cell from his time incarnated there

-Whike filming Anaconda (1997), Trejo was able to negotiate a higher salary when filming in Venezuela. As Trejo enjoyed leaving the hotel to socialize in his off time…during a possible coup. A particular incident with a group of teenagers with AK-47s brandished at Trejo over his combat boots, helped Trejo negotiate the higher salary to REMAIN at the hotel in his down time

-Trejo contracted Hepatitis C shortly before filming Spy Kids and concluded treatment and recovery just before its premiere (however had gotten so I’ll that his cast noticed his weight loss and demeanour in a different project filmed during spy kids post production)

-Trejo produced his first film in 2014

-To date Trejo has 445 acting credits on IMDB (between 1985-2023) and 84 on screen deaths (12 TV, 72 movies) according to cinemorge (+4 are music video deaths, +1 video game death)

-in total that would make Trejos risk of onscreen death per project roughly 20% per project (89/445)

In Conclusion

[limoncats]

trigger warning: fire, burning

the burning of the witch

[lizardsfromspace]

Also that death penalty was inspired by seeing the reaction to the murder of a tech executive in San Fransisco, Bob Lee, where all of San Fransisco's VC & tech types took three seconds to unleash their latent fascist, raving about how it had to be a drug-addicted homeless person and the streets must be purged of undesirables and that liberal DAs have blood on their hands and how they should stage public hangings since "the lives of five hung drug dealers are worth the lives of everyone else"

Anyway it turns out Bob Lee was likely murdered by a fellow tech executive he knew, and all the people who rushed to advocate for mass state violence seem bound to never mention it again or going "yeah in this case it wasn't, BUT maybe next time". California is being invaded, say the invaders to the people they displaced