I’m confused. Granted, I’m not the human bondage experts that you guys are, so maybe you can help me. Yesterday, I was only allowed out with half of my range. That means either (1) the prisoners on the other half of the range are too dangerous to be around me and the guys on my half of the range, or (2) the guys on my half of the range and I are too dangerous to be around them.
I’d like to think that it’s the second one, as that gives me a great deal of “resistance cred” with the molotov-chucking, machete-weilding savage-cannibal-swainiacs out there. All five of them.
But, after some of us were too dangerous to be around the others, just hours later, at breakfast, you guys unlock all the cell doors in the entire block and let all of us, top range, bottom range, go out to chow… all willy-nilly at the same time.
That’s four times the capacity you otherwise allowed in the dayroom… just yesterday…
So, I have to ask, given that all the violence seems to happen to and from chow, what is it that makes you think that we are less dangerous when going to and from chow than when we are sitting in the dayroom minding our own business? Do you have some kind of covert mind-control device from the X-Files in the chow hall that makes all of us docile and passive? Because, three quarters of those guys sitting at breakfast with me couldn’t be around me yesterday.
Curious.
Also, I noticed that the legionaires from the Foreign Legion, with no identification, escorting us today didn’t have rifles to wave around. Just yesterday, our escorts wearing throw-back uniforms from “Platoon” or “Full Metal Jacket” waved around two plastic AK-knock-offs as we went to chow. And there were two more Gomer Pyles with rifles in the chow hall when we got there. This morning, nobody had weapons escorting us and there was only one Pyle in the chow hall. Where was everyone else? Getting inspiration from watching “Full Metal Jacket” in the shift office? (“What do we have HERE…? It’s a JELLY DONUT… CHOKE yourself, Pyle…”)
Were we more dangerous yesterday on the way to chow when there was half of us than we are today when there is all of us?
Again, curious.
But what’s really confusing is that, this morning, after you had all of us walk together to and from chow (which is when all the violence seems to happen), you brought us back to the block and locked us back in our cells to resume having only half a range in the dayroom again (where none of the violence happens). So that means that after chow ended, and no violence occurred, either (1) those other prisoners became too dangerous to be around me again, or (2) I again became too dangerous to be around them.
Please tell me it’s the second one. Please, please, please.
But, at any rate, by what you’re doing with us, it would seem that it is your belief that at meal times something cosmic occurs that makes us 25% as dangerous as we otherwise are when we are sitting around in the dayroom and then, suddenly, upon return from chow, we become insanely dangerous again and have to get locked down.
Or, maybe, you already know there’s no real danger at all and you guys are just too lazy to string-out chow for hours so you drop the pretense and rush all of us through the chow hall and then resume the manicky-panicky nonsense as soon as we get back to the block so you can all go back to the shift office and watch “Full Metal Jacket” again (“…a JELLY DONUT…”) while those on union-scale get hazard pay and time-and-a-half.
Okay. Figured it out. No need to respond.
At least, not to me…

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Sean Swain
DOC #A243-205