Damn

This restructuring is not working. It doesn't follow through, anymore -- just seems lumpy with events deliberately placed where they are because that's what has to happen there for the story to continue.

And yet...what I have in the story, where events happen feels right, intellectually. It's just my sense of rhythm that's offended by the changes. Maybe I'm making too drastic of changes. Maybe I need to keep some of the structure I had and merely adjust it to fit these new parameters. Brain grows confused and Brendan is being of no help, whatsoever.

Fortunately, I found out about that holding center on the Strand Road -- it's specifically called an "interrogation centre" for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (not a jail or gaol or prison or anything else) but is also referred to as the Strabane Road Barracks and has a nice history of torture and abuse. Thanks to this place, Gough Barracks and Castlereagh, the British government was taken before the World Court and ordered to stop torturing suspects into confessions in 1998. The Army and RUC (and their replacement organization, the PSNI) ignored the order...and it's still happening. A man held at the Strabane Road Police Station (as it's now called) hanged himself back in October, under very suspicious circumstances. Apparently the PSNI was refusing to release him even though it had been shown he could not have committed the "terrorist" offense he was accused of. He was kept four years without trial under certain "Special Powers Acts" and finally either took matters into his own hands...or, as is suspected, was helped along.

Of course, the British aren't alone in this casual attitude about torture. Washington ignored evidence of torture against the Bush administration, even with a flat-out admission by Cheney that they DID have prisoners tortured, something which the current administration has not only refused to investigate (despite Federal law requiring them to) but has, in fact, continued to allow. And jails in America are not known for giving a damn about their prisoners. In this infamous case in Huntsville about 10-15 years ago, a 17 year-old male inmate was being raped, daily, and asked for help. The guards laughed and told him to find a "husband" to protect him. He killed himself and the warden shrugged it off. And the SOB kept his job.

Okay, I need to break my brain, for a moment. I finally undissed "Shaun of the Dead" and it was fun. I also watched the press kit interviews and am now willing to see the new "Star Trek" because Simon Pegg IS Scotty (I was close to seeing it when I saw Zachary Quinto done up as Spock, but something about Chris Pine irritated me and I got busy and it shifted farther and farther down my list of priorities till it was gone).

I think I'll go Japanese, tonight. "Seven Samurai", anyone?