sm62704's Journal: Murder at the Sangammon County Jail

What goes up must come down. I should have figured I was going to have a really shitty day pretty soon after Friday's luck.

It started when the Chicago guy asked if any ladies ever went to Farley's.

"No," I said. "Lots of women but no ladies." Of course, two attractive ladies walked in and heard me just as I was saying it. I took my foot out of my mouth, finished my beer and slunk off after attempting to recover with "damn, first time for everything."

I hadn't checked the mail Saturday so I brought it in. Several pieces of bad news dampened my spirits. I hate the mail, all I get is people wanting money - bills and junk mail.

Grr.

The cat puked in my shoe. I spilled stuff all over the kitchen trying to cook. I was glad I was stone cold sober, imagine what I'd have been like drunk!

I went to back the car into the garage and somehow managed to hit the door and ruined it. The car is OK, but my garage is now just a big shed.

I was not having a good day.

I remembered that I owed Ralph twenty bucks so I decided to just write him a check, and drove over there.

Ralph is my oldest friend. I've been friends with other people longer than I have with Ralph, but at 86 he's the oldest. Ralph served in the Navy in World War Two. He gave me a beer.

His favorite is a "tall blonde" except what he had at his house was in a can. If a Miller High Life in a bottle is a tall blonde, what is it in a can? A Puta Gorda?

"Did you know Moe?" He asked.

"Yeah, what do you mean 'did'?" Moe was a good guy, five years younger than me. He's helped Ralph out quite a bit with some odd jobs that are pretty hard to do after surviving eighty six years. Moe would give you the shirt off his back.

Ralph handed me a newspaper.

The younger Burris said his father started complaining about stomach pain on Dec. 2. On Dec. 4, a jail doctor looked at him, and the jail staff put Burris in the medical unit. He collapsed the next day.

When Burris reached the hospital, he had flatlined. Doctors worked 25 minutes to resuscitate him and then operated on a perforated bowel.

"The surgery was successful, but there was a lack of oxygen to the brain, and that caused a lot of complications," Jake Burris said last week.

"Everyone feels, even the doctors, that if he'd gotten help, he'd still be OK."

It seems that the Ministry Of Truth has been working on the online version of the paper, because the paper version said "Everyone feels, even the doctors, that if he'd gotten help a half hour earlier we'd be talking to him instead of talking about him."

The charges against Maurice Burris were dropped two days after Burris was taken to the hospital, a move that released the jail from being liable for Burris' medical bills.

Meaning an innocent man was murdered by jail staff's negligence.

An earlier journal used black humor to highlight the rediculousness of the media's attempts to demonize the internet, having you fear predators on the internet who are after your children rather than being careful of people who actually have physical contact with them and are far more of a threat than some stranger a thousand miles away. The journal in question was Klutzo the Clown tasered to death, although it later became apparent that he was killed by neither a taser nor heart problems but by an obese jail guard sitting on his back until his toes turned purple.

"Klitzo", whose real name was A. Paul Carlock, is mentioned in the story about Moe. Unlike Moe, Carlock, who was formerly a policeman, Christian preacher, day care worker, and clown, really was a menace to society - he was a baby-fucker.

Moe's "crime" was having his marriage unravel, which really fucked up his mind. He and I had drank and talked about how fucked up it made one; I was on Paxil for quite some time after my ex left me and my two then-teenaged daughters for another man.

Moe's death was nothing short of negligent homicide. Moe was murdered. Someone should go to prison for killing him.

Maurice "Moe" Burris, 1957-2007. May he rest in peace.