I just watched a Dateline report about Joran van der Sloot and how he’s locked up in a Peruvian prison where he befriended another murderer and they work out together using barbells fashioned from sticks and water bottles. Which made me think – these guys don’t have to do shit.
First off, they’re in a maximum-security prison, which means they’ve committed some sort of sick, heinous, crime. And if watching Lifetime movies has taught me anything, they had a blast doing it. These sickos are really living it up out there while I’m updating my boss’s Outlook contacts. Then they get caught and sent to prison where they are forced to spend all of their time sitting in a cell reading books or going outside to play basketball. Where am I during all this? Oh that’s right, sitting in my cubicle under the same lighting they used to film Alien Autopsy. According to an interview on CBS with prison expert Larry Levine “…in this prison, if you can get money on the inside, you can get drugs, you can get special food, you can get a woman in your cell. You can get just about anything you want.” Imagine that. I can’t even get a decent cup of coffee. And let’s not forget that they get all their meals served to them. For free. Granted, you are under a constant threat of getting stabbed or raped by another man, but hey, you’re a murderer. You can take it. It’s like someone telling me if I volunteered to get punched in the stomach once a week I would never have to work again. Where do I sign up?
Of course there is the whole issue of eternal damnation and having your soul roast in hell for all time. I suppose that’s where I draw the line and say “Hey, I’m just going to stay here at my desk, probably for the rest of my life, with my dictaphone and my Frappuchino and type this 5,000th letter to some boring old jerk who I don’t care about.” Because while Peruvian prison may seem like a paradise to the average office worker, at least we get to rest when we’re dead.
