Sorry, we don't allow you to control your life

Jason thought that was because they made a mess and were hard to bill for the cleanup.

Well, they always jump. I've got news for you. It's a little secret from the trade. They all jump.

There's a difference between "talk down a jumper" and "arrest him for trying to kill himself."

This is a conversation I had with my parents when I was six or seven and saw It's A Wonderful Life for the first time. I think that was the day I learned that you just don't have enough energy to worry about every dumb thing in this world.

Don't be silly. What do you think it is we're doing here?

Pedant dating site?

Trading pictures of birds?

I think the author of the article is exaggerating what happened to this inmate. From the description, it's pretty clear that he had a nasogastric tube placed. While it's not as pleasant as a foot massage, neither is it third-world torture. Lots of folks undergo this willingly every day. And lots of people also undergo it combatively every day, e.g. intoxicated trauma victims (used to empty the stomach, not fill it), children, and demented elderly. If it's ok for a doctor to hold down a kicking and screaming Grampa Louie in order to save his life, I can understand why the state is obligated to take a similar interest in its inmates.

A couple months ago when I was sitting in my car a guy took a swan dive off the parking garage in front of me. Well, kiddycorner actually. I sort of didn't notice it until a whole bunch of squad cars and ambulances flew past me and cordoned off the block. I had been busy looking up Van Halen facts. I'm not going to give you the runaround, but I don't consider the fact I was reading about 5150 Studios at the time a possibly mentally disturbed man dove down and turned himself into poundcake because he decided he couldn't wait til tomorrow to have been some magic moment I was meant to catch. I do wonder what he was thinking, where all his good times had gone, if he was facing the prospect of prison, and wanted to live life unchained, and why he couldn't have just run somewhere far away, like Bolivia or Panama. I mean obviously, this man was not standing on top of the world, so to speak, just a downtown parking garage. Then I thought about how he might have had a family. For a second I worried he was finishing what he started, and had already killed the women and children first. What if he went there to just think about it, and lost his balance?

No, in the aggregate, I have listened to one half of one podcast in my life. I will promise to listen to it if you promise not to ask me questions that demonstrate I failed to deliver and do not even know how to download them. All I know is that some of them cost money, and if it is even a dollar that is the same price as Fleetwood Mac's, "Seven Wonders," from their 1987 work, Tango in the Night. If it is one dollar and twenty nine cents, then I warn you, it is up against the Edge of Seventeen. What I am saying is that I know people really love podcasts, and sometimes I get to meet people with famous podcasts, but I am your grandpa and I would rather scream, "and the call, of a nightbird..." and then point to the left and to the right as the sound pans from speaker to speaker, "singin' come away, come away!" about fifteen hundred times for every minute of talk radio.

On a related note, and back to the topic of suicide, my wife doesn't understand how everyone around her loves Fleetwood Mac so much. Her friend Katie randomly rants about how awesome Mirage is, and our friend Sean recently confided in us that he is pretty sure that he loves Fleetwood Mac more than he loves his dog. God, that is a good band. I think if you have ears that work and you kill yourself you made a mistake and you should have just stuffed them with some Fleetwood Mac. I mean, what other band can you listen to and hear them staring at each other with such baleful eyes? Everytime I hear, "Go your Own Way," I feel like I am right there watching Lindsey Buckingham put the boot on Stevie Nick's patoot in front of seventy five thousand confused Singaporeans while he effortlessly grinds out one of the greatest solos in the history not just of rock, or guitar in general, but of all the things people have done by themselves. Even that lady who had a baby in the woods that turned out to be Einstein, or whatever happened in that truck stop bathroom right before Jackson Pollack walked into it and got the idea for splatter painting.

"Tusk" was used in the apparently period-sensitive musical accompaniment of the new FX series about Russian spies.

Yeah, my wife told me. She was watching it last night and was like, "awww shee-it!" Like an old moonshiner. Probably because my wife is an old moonshiner. I told her it was my new favorite show based on that and she immediately deleted it. Mississippi Jack Tommy, which is her moonshinin' name, might be able to run from the law, but ain't no bootleggers hotrod fast enough to get away from the sound of the woman that loved you.

Relevant:
http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/h31/index.html