Prison Day Room
The prison day-room. What an enchanting little oasis of relaxation and leisure... Let me explain this paradise of the Michigan Department of Corrections.
The prison day-room is designed to be a sort of 'recreation/common area' for the inmates in each unit. A place to watch TV, play cards, use the microwaves, and send emails (like this) on the J-pay kiosks. They're relatively small rooms, considering they're expected to accommodate the needs of nearly 200 of our societies least manageable members, (about the size of a 3 car garage).
Though the intended purposes of the day-room are basic and reasonable, they tend to take a back seat to it's preferred usage, which is a venue to hold "debates." And by debates I mean numerous and simultaneous hollering matches, held at levels that dwarf the volume of the mostly decorative TV hanging on the wall.
The chaos, aggressive chess games, and especially the constant yelling matches are completely unnecessary and are nearly always about some nonsensical bullshit with no relevance to anyone actually holding the fevered "debates". More ridiculous is the fact that these day-room debates are rarely over anything provable. These geniuses are arguing opinions as facts. Opinions based on nothing more than a general feeling….
So when you're in the need to send an email or use the microwave, or god forbid you don't have your own TV and want to watch something in the day room, it comes at a price.
You'll have to pop your popcorn in the industrial microwave spackled with a Jackson Pollack spray of some unknown substance while listening to the age old debate of who's a better rapper; Cardi-B or Nikki Minaj.
If you want to check your email, it'll be on a screen behind shatter resistant plexiglass, encased in brushed steel, while two natural born winners argue about K Michelle's ass being real or fake.
And if you want to catch the latest TED Talk, or an episode of Basketball Wives (thank God I have my own TV) , you'll have to put up with a discussion (much louder than the TV) about the differences between German and French existentialist philosophers...Just kidding, if you want to watch TV the day-room then you'll have to listen to a guy, who stands in the med line twice a day, tell another guy who stands in the med line three times a day, that Halle Barry is actually having sex in all of her sex scenes. (This guy doesn't know that he still has ear plugs in from the night before and a wad of balled up toilet paper in one of his nostrils, how could he possible have this type of Hollywood insider info?!)
BTW, there has yet to be anything created, in the history of television or motion pictures, that is worth putting up with such loud, aggressive, and utterly pointless nonsense...except maybe Arrested Development or Fight Club...Nope, still not quite good enough.
In my worst moments, when I'm forced to deal with this parade of idiocy I catch myself mentally willing an asteroid to slam into earth ending all life on this planet. Eventually I come to my senses and just secretly hope that we're slowly being poisoned to death from cyanide laced Kool-Aid in the chow hall. Sure I'd die too but sacrifices have to be made to save the world from such inconsiderate, proud, and grandiose stupidity. There's enough of that going on out there as it is, there's no need to add the stupidity of convicted felons to the more than capable rally bound idiots in red baseball hats. And if I have to die for some greater good, then so be it….
OK I should send this and get outta here before an asteroid kills us all....