Posted by NL on March 03, 2008 at 09:29:05:
The Serial Killer Chronicles End
Have you heard the one about the guy who took up a career as a serial killer (or multiple sex murderer) because he couldn't be cool? I hope not because I don't think anyone ever did that. But it's hard to underestimate the importance of being cool. If you can't be cool you might as well be dead. Or, if you aren't up to being dead, you can at least make others be dead. All those stuck-up busty gals, with their twitching butts and jiggling boobs! Think you're too cool to go out with a guy just because he has more than his fair share of scabs and scales, huh? I'll show you! Or maybe a fellow would be judged foxy by many women but some internal deformity causes him to cross his aryan blue eyes when the going gets tuff, or stammer, or whatever. Maybe the problem is just some odd way that the brain cells got wired, so that the only thing that can really turn a guy on is the drip drip of blood leaking from a freshly murdered dame, and the only thing that feels like real fucking, real sex, is sex with a dead body. Maybe all else palls by comparison! We can't venture too far into the territory of determinism because a great many delight in killing offenders and love the thrill that comes of stamping out "evil" and crushing those who have "chosen" to stray. By far the greatest number of killers are those who kill with a sense of rightness and being on the side of God. These murderers are rarely held in low esteem. These murderers make civilization as we know it possible. No, it's the loner with a tic we focus on here, and not the man or woman with a rationale, embedded in a matrix of justification, like war. Or heresy. And the operating assumption must be that the lone killer is EVIL. So here's the story: I heard about a guy who was so desperate to be cool that he made the snappy comeback the be all and end all of his life. But he had no real talent for the quick putdown or comeback. A man walked up to him and grinned and said "why, you low-down yallerbellied sapsucker-- what you doin' a takin' up the very air I be breathin'?" And old Mutt Mooply turned green and red and purple and St Elmo's fire cracked about his closely cropped head, so mad he was but by the time he thought of something to say the other had laughed and walked on by and all the pretty ladies in their short shorts and halter tops tittered and the moment was gone. But even so Mutt cried out, "Oh yeah, that goes double for me!" See, that was the best he could do. The worst time was when a woman, a woman for the love of God! put him down! He spotted this lovely female on a street corner, and she was just bulging out all over-- spandex oozed here and there and then flesh oozed out over the spandex and Mutt decided to try his luck so he sauntered over as casual as he could, with one leg going up and down straight out to the side and the other leg doing some kind of circular dance and his face twisted into a rictus and his feet went backward and yet he made progress and at last he stood toe to toe with the point of his nose level with her thrusting boobs and he said "Got a match?" And the lady said, "Yeah, mah butt and yo BRAIN! My ASS and your FACE!" What a moment! Obviously, Mutt walked funny not because he was wired up all wrong, but because he was EVIL! If he was wired up all wrong not only would his creater be revealed as a piece of crap, there would be no culpability! The moral order would be shivered to its very foundation! And so we have to imagine that a MORAL struggle ensued in Mutt. He tried very hard to master the snappy comeback. He longed for someone to ask him for a match. At last, he begged a man to ask him for a match, and the man, as EVIL as Mutt, for he had a poor complexion and a weak jaw, said, oh, all right: "Got a match?" And a crowd of tuffs, touts, and tarts had assembled by this time for all had to see this. And in his moment of triumph Mutt opened his mouth, allowing great gusts of foul air from rotting teeth to escape, and he cried out in a loud voice: "YEAH, I GOT A MATCH! MY FACE AND YOUR BUTT!" A stunned silence followed. Mutt felt the evil grow in him and he turned and ran, ran like the wind, followed by gusts of hearty laughter! He fucked up so bad!
Later, Mutt bought a Glock and a couple of clips of ammo and
gunned down everybody he could find, shooting at random. He got a few
busty babes before somebody big and brave subdued him. It gave him a
good feeling when he pointed his Glock at a busty babe and shot her and
saw her drop like a puppet with cut strings, flopping down on the
sidewalk and being suddenly a dead thing. He shot like he never shot
before. And in his head he heard the refrain, your ass and my face!
Your ass and my face! He never did get it right.
But Mutt
wasn't the kind guy I had in mind. In fact, none of the people I've
spoken of have been quite the sort of creature I imagined at the
outset. Mutt, for instance, was just a killer with no proper rationale,
doing his deeds in the absence of a proper context, and so instead of
being hailed as a great hero he was written off as a mere fuckup. The
kind of guy I had in mind is wired differently. He's like the rich, who
are not like you and me-- but only in one dimension. And the serial
killers are much like the rest of us but for the lack of any moral
rationale for their killing. They are wired to kill (like us) but wired
to do it for mere lust, or for thrills, and the killings aren't taking
place in a wide and meaningful social context of war, ideology,
doctrinal purity, racial purity. And the predominance of sexual
gratification in such killings is embarrassing. Those true and genuine
serial killer stories can't be told truly and justly because they have
to be draped with the tapestries of good and evil, choice and
culpability. We dare not suggest that the Ethical Kosmos might be a
myth and no more, and even worse, we'd better not suggest that the
putative Great Architect might be a fuckup, like Mutt!