I was a little surprised yesterday to fire up my trusty Google Reader and see that some dude who lived 2 blocks over from me was stabbed in the side of the head with a corkscrew and killed. When I say surprised, I don’t mean the fact that someone was murdered in my neighborhood. People get killed or at least shot and stabbed on a fairly consistent basis in my neighborhood. Mostly, it’s gang-on-gang bullshit and/or drugs. Rather, I was surprised at the fact the crime made the news. Since violent crime in my area is 90% black-on-black violence and usually not involving children, the news never covers it. You can be sure this sudden attention was entirely due to the novelty factor of the corkscrew.

I’ve no shame in admitting that I burst out laughing at the mental picture of it all. Working for a wine magazine all I could think of was…

“THIS…*screw*…WINE…*screw*…IS…*screw*…FUCKING…PISS!!!!”

I’ve spent a chunk of the day reading about Ed Kemper, an incarcerated serial murderer from California. Based on what I’ve read, I’ve concluded that Ed’s one seriously fucked up dude. Some highlights, quotes and factoids from a few sources:

“Kemper’s testimony in court revealed his desire to punish his mother did not end with the fatal hammer blow. He cut off his mother’s head, “put it on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour … threw darts at it,” and ultimately, “smashed her face in,” he recalled for the horrified court.” [link]

“As I’m sitting there with a severed head in my hand, talking to it, or looking at it, and I’m about to go crazy, literally I’m about to go completely… flywheel loose and just fall apart. I say, ‘Wow, this is insane!’ and then I told myself, ‘No it isn’t. You’re saying that…and that makes it not insane.’ I said, ‘I’m sane and I’m looking at severed…’ [unintelligible]…Vikings heroes talking to severed heads and taking them to parties. Old enemies in leather bags…part of our heritage.” [painfully transcribed from audio testimony]

“When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things: One part of me wants to take her home, be real nice and treat her right; the other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick.” [link]
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In 1992, when I was seventeen years old, I came across the prison address of John Wayne Gacy, serial killer of thirty-three young men. Convicted and sentenced to die (he was executed in 1994 by lethal injection), I decided to send a letter to Gacy on death row, just to see if he would respond. I told two of my friends about the plan and together we drafted a letter and sent it off. I was too chickenshit to list my own address for reply, so we listed the address of my friend James and waited to see if he would write back to us.

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