Psycho Killers

I recently had cause to watch the DVD version of a P.D. James novel. I had been a big fan of P.D. James writings way back when I was a kid - some classic reads they were. Since those days of childhood book burns on my nose, I gave up mysteries. "Why?" you might ask. Go ahead, ask - I just wait over here until you are done talking to yourself.

I gave up mysteries because they weren't. It was always obvious who did it and why, within the first chapter. I believe I mentioned this before in other blog posts, for all of you who fell for the "go ahead and ask me why" trick in the previous paragraph.

Recently, I decided that I haven't hit my head into a wall enough recently, so I should give them a try again. I bought some Solar Pons books, but had to give up for the aforementioned "no real mystery" reason. Then I started watching the DVD versions of novels, and in doing so, I noticed something that I had never noticed before - the murderers are always psycho killers.

I read something the other day about WWII (ie World War 2) - something like 90% of the guns used during that war were never fired. 90% of the people who stormed the beaches died because they just couldn't shoot a fellow human. The idea of the article was that wars are actually fought by the small part of humanity that are actually psychotic - people who do not see their fellow humans as fellow humans.

Something else that I had read a long time ago also came into play: there is an easy way for the police to tell who committed a crime. If you accuse two people of a crime, one of whom actually did it, and lock them both up, only one of them will sleep that night. An innocent person will not sleep, because they worry that justice might not prevail or something to that effect. While the guilty person will have had been worrying about getting caught, and now that he/she has been caught, they can finally rest.

Putting this all together, the thing that bothered me about this P.D. James DVD was that there was a murder. The person who committed the murder was just trying to blackmail someone, but was found out, so he killed her. Throughout the entire movie, the guilty party was fun and friendly. He suffered no guilt from the murder, even though murder wasn't his original intent. He was basically a psychopath. That is when it struck me that all of the murder mysteries are about psychopaths - all of them seem to have the attributes of them rather than of a normal person who just committed a crime beyond their intent. Just because someone is willing to steal, does that mean that they would kill someone? Actually, no, but yet that always seems to be the plot in stories.

So, I now have another reason to stick with my previous No More Mysteries rule - not only do they give it away in chapter one, but they do not understand criminals who aren't psychotic.

The Edward

PS Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against psychotics - some of my favorite companies are run by them. But all of them in the books are of the pedestrian type. Where are the crime novels about people being beaten to death with a giant clown shoe? Poisoned with larks' vomit? Wrapped in springs and thrown off a roof to see if they bounce? Criminally Insane? More like Criminally Lame!

Yeah Obama!

Hard to believe, but I just heard it on the radio, as I am sure that you have as well. Finally, some good news! And after all of these years of denial, we are finally going to be treated like adults instead of scared little children.

I admit, when I had heard that Obama was going to be the man to do it, I was surprised, just as much as you probably were. Clinton had the chance to do it, but I think that phrase meant something else to him. And W... But Obama, he's our man!

The government waste involved - it will sure be a grand day to get that money back into our budget so that we can do something better with it, like feed the homeless. I would say upgrade our schools, but none of that matters now! With all of that influx of technology... wow.

I heard about it on KSFO - they spent the last hour talking about it, and for this next after midnight hour, they say that they will continue talking about it. They just finished off the hour saying that the money being wasted over the past 70 years on this program will finally be over. Good news, everybody.

I wonder how they are going to report it around the world? Will each government tell its populous at the same time? Now that I think about it, why would they leak it to late night talk around... unless they have already started officially telling people in other countries - that must be it!

Hard to believe that Obama will go down in history as the president who finally stopped wasting time and money covering up the UFO/alien conspiracy. As they just finished saying, this will be the greatest event in human history.

Wait, the next hour started... they are now saying that they hope Obama will be the person who tells us the truth. We should all send him emails asking him to disclose the truth. They say he is a good honest man, so once he is in, he will spill the beans... Hmmm... not quite the same, but still... - could late night talk radio be wrong?!

The Edward

Whom counts?

I started writing about this over year ago - time, where does it all go! Since I can not go back and really write what I had started, I'll have to do it with shadows and mist, hoping that the real message isn't lost...

Back then, there was a suicide bomber. I know, I know, it is hard to believe that we still had them only last year - it seems like an eternity since the alien invasion put an end to all of that nonsense, but hear me out anyway. The thing I considered way back in those darkened ages when we still said "ook, ook" all of the time: who mourns for the suicide bomber?

It was a small bombing, they only counted something like five dead. The question in my mind at that time, those five dead (or as they say, they found five bodies, I guess the people had already left since they were never mentioned, just their bodies), who were they? Not individually, since realistically it wouldn't matter to me unless I personally knew them. I didn't see anyone I know shedding a tear for them while chowing down at Mr. Steer that night. No, my question was more, I don't know... well, enough pussyfooting around, here is the question:

Of the five bodies, did they count the suicide bomber? I assume that said bomber's body would have been amongst those aforementioned bodies found at the scene, but did they separate him out? Did five people die that day and the bomber, or did four people and a suicider? Was the news reporter counting the suicide bomber as a person, I guess is the crux of my thoughts. Why, one might ask, well...

Is all life sacred? If so, isn't the tragic death of the person wearing the bomb just as sad as the people who were in the blast area? He died in a bomb blast just like the other people did, and none of them are complaining about who actually pulled the trigger, so why should we? Realistically, for the vast majority of people in the world, the impact of his death weighed the same in their minds as the deaths of the other people, which is pretty much: none.

Since we do not know anything about the lives of any of the people who died that day, who was really good and who was really evil (how many were going to go home that night and do something nasty and evil, but were stopped by that event? we will never know...), how can were mourn for any of them? Can you really mourn someone that you do not know?

The Edward

By the time...

By the time you read this, I will be gone. I am writing these words Monday night, and Google's blog software will not post them until the time I listed as the post time, which will be Wednesday morning.

I would like to see that Wednesday sunrise with you, but I know that I will not be able, because of that aforementioned gone-ness. Then again, you will be gone too by then, "now" for you. In fact, all of us will be gone by the time that these words are posted. How do I know this...

But wait, if you are reading these words, how can you be gone, you are probably asking yourself. But you will be mistaken, for the you that exists right now as I type these words, will not be the person who is reading these words, just as the person who will be there as me will not be me. He and I will share some memories...

Every new memory changes me, as it changes it you and everyone else in this world. If you are happy now as I type this on Monday, aliens may attack on Tuesday, and by the time power is restored on Wednesday, you will be different - your view of the world will be different. If I could ask you some questions now, like "Do you think aliens will attack on Tuesday?" you would probably answer "Are you mad? Of course not. No way. Impossible!" And yet, if they did attack on Tuesday, by the time these words have found you, if I asked that future you (future to me now, present to you when you are reading this) that same question, you would say "Are you mad? Of course they already did. So possible that it happened." So, unless you are mad and answer questions differently every time asked, the person answering on Wednesday must be different from who you are right now.

Therefore, the person I want to talk with right now will be gone by now, I will have missed my chance to talk with you. I'm sorry to have missed you. I hope that the person in your place will want to talk with me, even though the alien attack will have had probably been my fault.

The Edward

How can you watch this?

There is movie club, see. I have been a moderator for it for over a decade now, see. It sometimes befalls me to select the movie that the club sees, see. See, I can use three sees in a row, but that is a topic for a different time and place.

I tend to not watch dramas. I enjoy movies, though I often ask myself, "Why?". What is a movie, really? Is it trying to tell me a story? Should it try to represent reality? Should it be wacky and try to make me laugh? What makes a SciFi realistic? Fine questions, but not the topic for right now either, see.

As I see it, people are acting, and yet they are themselves. No matter how much one tries, parts of oneself show through, especially in short skirts. If one is presented with a surprising event in real life, there are automatic reactions - blood flows to certain places, slight changes in pupils, subtle movements in the corners of the mouth, which direction the eyes go, etc. Actors, when in their role, are trying to make the audience believe that they are this other person experiencing these events. The problem for me is that I can tell that they are not, which is why I hate dramas.

Dramas I believe are supposed to best represent real situations. Subtle emotional plays. And yet, they will look right at the person they are talking too - something most people do not do in real life dramas, or they will look away, dramatically. How can one feel that what one is watching is "real" when the person on screen is supposed to be recalling a visual tragic event when they are looking level and to the right, which is obviously the dialog recollection eye position? See.

The Edward

Party Foul

So, the elections are over. Looks like the Democratic Party swept the elections. And yet, if that were true, why did all of the socially liberal laws fail? Look at California. Gay people here believe that the Democratic Party represents them. The party says that they want to take eveyone's money and distribute it equally - and they will probably do that. They say that they stand up for the rights of all equally, and yet in California, a state that they handily carried in the election, none this passed. The Democrats voted away the rights of some citizens.

What does this mean about the Democratic Party? Are they really a party of the common man, a party of the people, a party looking out for you?

Libertarians claim to be socially liberal and financially conservative. I used to think that they had some beliefs from each major party, but after this election, I'd have to say that the Democratic Party is the opposite of the Libertarian Party - they share no common ground, sadly.

-Edward