SRI LANKA LOOKING FOR A HANGMAN

Sri Lanka is looking for hangmen. Prison officials in the Indian Ocean island nation placed an ad in the state-run Daily News for two executioners now that the country’s president Maithripala Sirisena has ended a 43-year moratorium on capital punishment. Sirisena said executions will resume in the next two months for condemned drug traffickers. Criminals in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country, are regularly given death sentences for murder, rape and drug-related crimes but their punishments have been routinely commuted to life in prison. To be a hangman, you must be a Sri Lankan man between 18 and 45. The ad calls for candidates to have “an excellent moral character” and pass a test conducted to check your “mind and mental strength.” The monthly salary would be equivalent of about $200 and you’re eligible for a state pension. The country has 1,299 prisoners facing death sentences.
* So you’ll have to be free nights and weekends because of the backlog.
* “Do you think you’d be a good hangman?” “Good? I’d kill it!”
* Like they say in Sri Lanka, no noose is good noose.
* Right now, the condemned prisoners are just hangin’ out. But soon it’ll be “hang-n-out!”.
* As far as capital punishment is concerned, all we can do is hope that Sri Lanka will one day become so enlightened, women can be hangmen.