An Executioner’s Christmas Wishlist

One of the perks to the holiday season is spending time with your family watching 24 hours of A Christmas Story, with an occasional switch-over to It’s a Wonderful Life. This is a time-honored tradition that predates even television, going back all the way back to public executions. But, even that may not last much longer: the European Union has tightened restrictions on selling lethal injection drugs to nations that still perform capital punishment (leading to an obvious question: what does a nation that doesn’t execute prisoners use lethal injection juices for?)

I could spend time answering that parenthetical, but who cares what a bunch of Europeans do with sodium thiopental or pentobarbital? The United States is in a real pickle here. If we don’t figure out a way to humanely execute our citizens, then we might have to actually consider the ramifications of a government that kills its citizens.

Fortunately, I’ve done some research and believe I may have found some alternatives so that we can get back to killing people without hangings or beheadings.

Neti Pots

If there’s one thing that we don’t have a shortage of, it’s the Neti pot. For the unfamiliar, it’s a little watering can that you stick in one nostril and pour salt water until it comes out the other side or you drown. Either way, you can kiss post-nasal drip goodbye.

And, according to the Louisiana Department Health and Hospitals, Neti pots are also an excellent way to sneak brain-eating amoebae past the bouncers and into your sinuses. All it would take for prisons to turn this into prison depopulation is to not boil the water, which would finally let George Carlin rest after wondering why we swab the prisoner’s arm before administering a lethal injection.

Raw Cookie Dough

I hate to beat a dead horse here, but it is the holidays, and what’s more humane that killing inmates with deliciousness? Again, like with the lethal injection and brain-eating amobae, this solution is still medical, which makes it humane.

Working with Children

Children are so contagious that schoolteachers invented a fake medicine to ward off their evil spirits like our ancient ancestors did with rose pedals against the bubonic plague. And we know that prisoners are capable of training service animals, so why not let them also prepare our nation’s greatest resource (other than coal) for our future work force?

Even if there’s no economy in the future to hire said service children, they will at least have an in with the Aryan Brotherhood and MS-13 to rove the Mad Max dystopia-scape with.

I recommend testing the latter program in California where unimmunized children are more to carry measles and whooping cough.