"Be honest. I'm overdoing it with the sunglasses, right?"
Ed Gein used his victims' skin as lampshades. Jeffrey Dahmer boiled and ate chunks of his victims. The Zodiac sent cryptic messages to the San Fransisco Police Department. Jack the Ripper began his letters with a foreboding, "From Hell." And in an act of life imitating Jesus-fucking-Christ-are-you-serious-fucking-nightmares, John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown named Pogo for children's parties. Hell, Ted Bundy told police that there were only six steps to becoming a serial killer: 1. peeking through people's windows 2. watching softcore porn 3. stalking people 4. watching hardcore porn 5. violently attacking strangers 6. killing strangers. Subsequently, I have stopped masturbating cold turkey, as I was already up to number four on Ted Bundy's Six Easy Steps to Becoming a Serial Killer. Anyway, as I am sure that most of my readers are sick fucks like myself, I am willing to bet that most of us are familiar with the names that I mentioned above. Even if we don't know the details of their crimes, we at least know the names. Hollywood has made biopics on each person listed. The dude from Hurt Locker played Dahmer for Christ's sake. Serial killers hold a certain fascination for a lot of people. Not in a creepy let-me-rub-my-flaccid-penis-on-this-mugshot type way. Just in a rather, how-could-one-person-do-this-to-another type way. What are a killer's motivations? Who are the victims? Where are the clues? I'm sure we have all seen episodes of City Confidential or Cold Case Files or The First 48. CSI and Law and Order are still two of the most popular franchises on TV. Everybody finds true crime interesting, whether you start your own website to try to solve the Keddie Murders (http://keddiemurdersfilm.com/), or you just turn the sound up on your TV whenever Se7en comes on (Question: Did anyone care that John Doe cut off Gwyneth Paltrow's head and shoved it in a box at the end? I pretty much wanted to do that shit to her the entire movie). I, of course, am no exception. True crime has always fascinated me, and to be honest, movies about serial killers are some of my favorites. Se7en is a classic, The Bone Collector is creepy as hell, and Silence of the Lambs is the undisputed heavyweight of horror flicks. I read Robert Graysmith's profile on the Zodiac killer. I read Patricia Cornwell's excellent book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed (SPOILER ALERT: Walter Sickert was the murderer). I read Ann Rule's sensational book on Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me. And I also own a sizable tome entitled The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton. Now, it is the latter that I wish to speak about more thoroughly. You see, those other books I listed are neat, compact little books that fit well on a shelf, and are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It gives me the appearance of an amateur criminologist, I think. Or, maybe it looks like I have been studying the modi operandi of some notorious killers and am at this very moment planning a visceral assault on the minds and bodies of a goddamn town that has thwarted me at every turn! But soon, very soon I will have my vengeance, for it has been foretold that a golden dragon will......excuse me. I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes. You see, those other books are basically novels, whereas Mr. Newton's Encyclopedia is comprised of brief biographies on a couple hundred serial killers. It is a large and awkward text, and does not fit on any bookshelf that I own. So where did I think a good alternative to put it would be? I put it in my shitter. I have a little collection of reading material in my shitter, and I thought the macabre book would be a good addition. The other books in my bathroom are an encyclopedia on Batman, an encyclopedia on Spider-Man (PRETENTIOUS NERD TANGENT: Did you know that Stan Lee inserted a hyphen into Spider-Man's name so people would not confuse the webslinger with Superman?), a collection of Gary Larson's Far Side volumes, some Calvin and Hobbes books, a few old issues of Rolling Stone, even a big book of brain teasers. So I thought, regarding the serial killer book, "Here's a book with a bunch of short articles. I could read one or two of these while dropping a deuce." To me, it seemed pretty reasonable. Most guys (GIRLS DON'T SHIT! GIRLS DON'T SHIT! THEY WEAR THONGS AND HAVE BIG BEWBS AND LIKE TO GIVE BLOWJOBS! GIRLS DON'T SHIT!) like to read while they're on the toilet. In fact, I would argue that the majority of men's reading habits occur while taking a dump. Anytime a guy says, "I read this in a magazine..." he read it while pooping. Well, apparently, I was grossly mistaken when it came to adding The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers to my bathroom library. Here's what happened. One night, my girlfriend goes in to use the bathroom. When she comes out, she sits silently on the couch, staring at the TV, wearing a look restrained terror. The absence of her typical jovial behavior is apparent to me, so I says to Steph, I says, "What's wrong?" She can only shake her head mildly. Well, it's obvious now that something is wrong. "Steph, what is it?" Again, she says nothing. Now, I'm curious. Like, fucking Altoids curious. So, I get up, walk into the bathroom and take a look around. Maybe I left a streaker? I lift the lid to the toilet and find no such evidence. I look in the shower, in the medicine cabinet, under the sink. I even flip through my shitterature (bathroom literature), but to no avail. Everything looks to be in its place. I walk back out to the couch and sit next to my beloved, who still wears an expression of repressed discomfort, like she stuck her tampon in sideways. So, once again, I says to her, "Steph, what is wrong. Don't say nothing, because I know something is wrong." Finally, though reluctantly, she breaks down for me. "Eric," she begins, "I was going through your bathroom books, and I noticed something disturbing." Even though I new for a fact that I didn't count porn amongst my shitterature, I briefly felt the pang of guilt like she had somehow managed to find a hardcore fuck magazine in between my precious Calvin and Hobbes collections. "What was it, my dear?" She looked at me, but could barely hold my gaze. "It was...it was...a book on serial killers!" And with that she burst into tears and flung herself into my arms. I was confused by this sudden outburst, to be sure, so I replied, "What do you mean?" "You have a book about serial killers in your bathroom!" She cried. "Yes. So?" She stared up at me, tears racing down her face. "That's fucked up!" I shook my head in disbelief. "I don't understand." "You study serial killers while you take a dump? Do you realize how creepy that is?" To be honest, I had no idea this was considered creepy. I mean, to me the book was just one more piece of quick bathroom reading that I could add to my collection. Variety is the spice of life after all (oh, God, nothing spicy, please. My asshole will feel like Mt. Saint Helens). I tried explaining this to Steph, but she would have none of it. Her reasoning was this: books in the shitter are OK. Books about serial killers are OK. Books about serial killers in the shitter NOT OK. "I can't help but picturing you there, sitting on the toilet with your pants around your ankles, your pasty ass tucked into the pot like a robin's egg in a nest, that fucking book spread across your lap, while your hairy, sweaty face looms over it. It's disturbing!" Well, when you put it like that...I mean, her distaste for the book in the bathroom probably has to do with the fact that the only time I'm reading it I am half nude (fully nude if it's pre-shower), and dealing with bodily fluids. Put into that context it is kind of creepy. Here I am reading of their terrible exploits during one's most private moments. OK, I get it. So, I relinquished The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers' place in my stack of shitterature, and forced it into a lonely corner of our bookshelf. I didn't really want to do it, but, anything for my Stephy-Poo. She later made the suggestion that maybe she should put some of her books in the bathroom, so she isn't stuck having to read about secrets of the Batcave. Great! Now, whenever I run out of toilet paper, I just rip a page from one of her shitty Nicholas Sparks books.
The Moore You Know: Thanks to Wikipedia it is easier than ever to meet women! You don't even need to resort to lame pick-up lines or spending your money buying a girl a drink. All you do is tell a beautiful girl at the bar to visit your Wikipedia page, and it will tell her everything she needs to know about you. For instance, according to my Wikipedia page, I'm a rugged 1930s archaeologist, who battles Nazis while searching for long-lost religious artifacts. I also have a thirteen inch penis.
© Eric Moore - 2010
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