The Tenant in 213

Dahmer mug shot -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
The name “Jeffrey Dahmer” is now one of legend, albeit the horrific, infamous variety. The name is used in moments of overzealous character shading, the same way one might toss out “Hitler” or “Jack the Ripper”. What’s interesting is that Dahmer was actually a soft-spoken slacker in his personal demeanor. His career consisted of stints in the US Army and at a candy factory (ironically the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory), interrupted by stints of unemployable alcoholic stupor.

Dahmer’s parents were Lionel and Joyce – an analytical chemist and a housewife. They were good parents to Jeff and his younger brother David – no Mommie Dearest tales to tell. Jeff spent most of his unremarkable childhood in Bath, Ohio. There were a couple of harbingers of trouble to come, but not so much that anyone spoke of anything like psychotherapy. Jeff was a preteen loner, riding his bike for miles around his neighborhood. Loners are certainly not always killers although a killer is seldom the life of the party. Jeff also had an unseemly fascination with dead animals, going so far as to dismember them and reposition the cadavers in unusual ways (a dog’s head on a stake). When a teenage boy exhibits any fascination with dead bodies it should be a red flag. Even to be overly enthused about hunting, splaying or butchering such creatures as fish or deer would raise my own eyebrows. I worry about someone who can’t see any spark of soul or suffering in animal kind.

Jeff’s pacific childhood did experience a serious bump – his parents divorced when he was 17. Jeff had already developed a problem with alcoholism in his teens; the drinking habit continued into college where he flunked out of his first semester at Ohio State University. His father urged him to join the Army, where Jeff excelled initially but washed out again (within a couple of years) due to his drinking. Jeff moved in with his grandmother in 1982. A grandmother’s love could not overcome Jeff’s bizarre behavior: he kept store mannequins and fire arms in his bedroom. He was arrested more than once for indecent exposure and public lewdness. Probably most alarming were strange foul odors coming from the basement which Jeff said was merely an experiment with a dead squirrel gone awry. He was trying to dissolve it chemically, he said. In fact, at this point Dahmer had already killed @ 5 men, four while staying at his grandmother’s house. That she never investigated the odors is amazing – probably some major denial at work. That she finally kicked his craziness to the curb (in 1988) is to her credit.

The next grisly chapter is the one so frequently played in our pop culture playbook (category “Horror”). Dahmer got a job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory and took Apartment 213 at the Oxford Apartments. He went on a 2-year killing binge where he picked up his young male victims at bars. He gave them sedatives or blindsided them with blunt instruments they were little expecting. There was never anything approaching a fair fight. The victims, primarily Asian and black, were summarily dismembered; some body parts were dissolved in acid, some were refrigerated as souvenirs and some were devoured as food. Some, it appears were kept for secret ceremonies using votive candles. The apartment managers and Milwaukee police turned deaf ears and blind eyes to the numerous accumulating clues. Neighbors complained of foul smells and sawing noises, occasional screams. The police believed Dahmer’s story over that of his young, drugged victim when the young man attempted an escape – they returned the boy to Dahmer’s “care”.

Finally in 1991, a young Tracy Edwards fought off Dahmer’s attempt to handcuff and subdue him. Edwards ran to the police (half-clothed and hand-cuffed). He brought them back to Dahmer’s apartment where at length and at last, they found his macabre butchery shop. Dahmer was tried and easily convicted in 15 of the 17 murders. He was given a life sentence at Columbia Correctional prison where he himself was finally murdered at age 34 by a fellow inmate, Christopher Scarver. Scarver was celebrated as a folk hero by some, probably people not knowing that he was a schizoid killer with nearly as many issues as Dahmer. Scarver also killed a bystander when he killed Dahmer, maybe collateral damage – who knows what goes on in any of their minds.

A lot is made of the fact that Dahmer’s father was an evangelical Christian, and that Dahmer himself claimed the status of Born Again Christian in the last year of his life. A Church of Christ minister actually met with Dahmer and baptized him during Dahmer’s incarceration. I can’t claim to know the mind of other men, much less the mind of God. Nevertheless, blogSpotter will humbly guess what God might be thinking (assuming the existence of a God with man-like thought process)... I think that God probably, oddly, forgives just about everything because God himself is the architect of our brains – including our obsessions and all of our misfiring neurons. But – I think the Architect would figure in this case that the human containment was appropriate (minus Dahmer’s brutal murder in a prison lavatory), and that the free will mechanism sometimes goes off the track. That is blogSpotter’s reductionist viewpoint – I’m willing to hear anyone else’s viewpoint for comparing and contrasting.

Jeffrey Dahmer brought the lore of killer-maniacs to chilling new heights of gruesome goriness. The actual man probably doesn’t live up to his monstrous legend, but it doesn’t matter. People tend to embellish a story and this story invites embellishment. The strange details of Apartment 213 are scary enough that the unadorned story can give us all the willies for a lifetime.

© 2010 blogSpotter

Staring at Goats

I'm not that easily jarred -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter

Today’s blog entry will serve up two movie reviews -- one movie from 2009 and one from 1975. I’m enjoying one of my long, TimeOn weekends (every other Friday off) and have time to play like I’m Roger Ebert. (Okay, a poor man’s Ebert).

GOATS
Men Who Stare at Goats is about a secretive U.S. Army branch that experimented with “psychic warfare” back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. There has in fact been a psychological war unit for many years, which merely engages in war propaganda efforts (nothing supernatural). The film is loosely based on allegedly real events; apparently there was an experimental “New Earth Army” began in 1980, led by an LSD-influenced Viet Vet. This man (Jeff Bridges’ Bill Django in the film) believed that he could use various paranormal capacities -- invisibility, “phasing”, hypnotic psych moves and such to make enemies succumb to him. The movie gets its title from experiments where New Earth Army combatants could supposedly make a goat die of heart attack by intensely staring at it.

The military doesn’t strike me as a reservoir of extreme intellects. They are but a hop and skip from police authorities who’ve been known to hire psychics to locate dead bodies. The movie’s lead character is Lyn Cassady played by George Clooney; Cassady is a New Army veteran who’s been called back for an Iraq mission by Django. I won’t go into extreme plot details -- the movie is done in a type of comedic, documentary style. One might say it’s three scoops of Mash and one scoop of Big Lebowski. If you enjoy military farces you might like this. Men Who Stare at Goats does leave the door open to paranormal activity -- they suggest that Cassady really dispersed clouds in the sky telekinetically and also killed goats with his staring. They suggest that Django and Cassidy ascended into some alternate reality in a helicopter just because the ’copter was never seen again .... That’s the simplest explanation?

It seems to be a human yearning to believe in the paranormal and supernatural. Whether it’s the bending of spoons, talking to aliens or making psychic predictions, these activities are never reproduced in any type of scientifically controlled setting. It’s usually the third-hand accounts from people in the remote Dakotas or the Ozarks where the tales originate. Very interesting that a mainstream movie (and very possibly the US Army) would promulgate these ideas. I the author (Ebert for a day) will leave disappointed paranormal fans with another token to hold on to -- there is an already incredible reality. This universe has a lot that is genuinely weird and counter-intuitive -- we don’t need magic or the supernatural to make it any more interesting.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON
While Goats was (I think) lacking, Dog Day Afternoon was a fantastic blast from 1975. This movie is now rated in the AFI’s top 100 thrillers and Al Pacino’s portrayal of Sonny is rated by the British Film Institute as one of the best acting performances ever, in any film. Sonny is a disheveled, Viet Nam veteran with a family life in turmoil. His friend Sal is a none-to-bright but gentle soul, also down on his luck. Together they hatch a plan to rob a Brooklyn bank -- a very bumbling, stupid plan. They set off alarms immediately (probably by Sonny setting a wastebasket on fire) and are quickly surrounded by the police. What should’ve been a 10 minute heist turns into a twelve hour ordeal in which the bank manager and eight tellers are held hostage. The bravery and basic humanity of the characters is amazing. Sonny himself has a self-effacing manner and humility with hostages which portends that he’d never hurt them. To the crowd outside, he’s a preening, charismatic performer that rouses everyone to shouts of “Attica! Attica!”. The real event took place in August 1972, when Americans were still in a protest mode which would explain some of that.

This movie runs for about 2 hours and 5 minutes -- you’ll be on your edge of the seat through most of it. There is a curve ball halfway through, in which it’s revealed that Sonny is robbing the bank to pay for his lover’s sex change. … Just your ordinary movie. The music, camera angles and edgy filming make Dog Day seem like a much newer movie.

There you have it -- two thought-provoking movies for the weekend. In the next week, I’ll be doing the Thanksgiving ritual in Round Rock, TX. If I don’t get back to this before that, happy turkey day to all my readers.

© 2010 blogSpotter

Tuning in to Google TV

Living room surf session? -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
It’s only 4 days since my previous post, but something caught my attention -- Google TV being showcased at Best Buy. It’s a visually engaging product, but it reminded me of WebTV and other technical curiosities (Linux) …am feeling the need to comment.

I’ve gone on about techie tools that require humans to change their nature to suit a techie purpose. One major example is Linux (any flavor). Linux really requires the user (or at least someone in the household) to hold a Masters degree in Computer Science. A casual user who wants to do ordinary things (email, web surf, on-line shop, download mp3’s) is going to be met with a wave of technical issues -- how do I unpack a tar file or a package, how do I play mp3’s, where’s iTunes? My techie coworkers would say there are no such issues -- but they hold advanced CS degrees (or equivalent knowledge). For the average user, there needs to be hand-holding -- some helpful agent to integrate the product lines and make it all work seamlessly.

Now we come to Google TV. Before I go there I’d like to briefly discuss my “two rooms” activity scenario as a backdrop... In my study, I do intensive Quicken accounting and business correspondence. In this mode, I am no-nonsense and serious. I have a bright light, a large desk, an upright chair and full keyboard. The chair is a hard, swivel style. I’m not here to have fun -- the office is deliberately set up this way so I’ll get off my duff and accomplish things.

My living room has a fat, overstuffed (not unlike its owner) couch, giant HD TV, and a couple of set top boxes (Apple TV and Sony blu-ray). In this room, I don’t want to think too hard about anything. Don’t want a keyboard or console in two hands -- I want a remote in one hand which frees the other hand to reach for Fritos and Diet DP. What I look at on that screen will fall into the category of 100% entertainment. I don’t want to read cnn.com, balance my budget or really (in my middle-aged case) play computer games. To the extent that I would want to do any of that the iPad works well. (Wham bam, thank you ma'am -- iPad answers my crossword question in 3 strokes).

Now along comes Google TV which allows you to mix the study and living room into maybe a “living study”. Google can make me a time managing maestro... I can read Time and watch 30 Rock at the same time. I can watch Netflix, play games and use my smart phone as a remote -- all at once if so desired. Some of these things are already doable with Wii and Apple TV. Others are things that I’d never want to do; I don’t want to read an internet site on a TV screen across the room. I really don’t want an overly tasked, busy TV screen -- I’d prefer that it display one show at a time, full screen. Between shows it should give me a very simple intuitive menu selection such as as we already get from Time Warner, Tivo, Apple, Netflix and other service providers.

An informative web site (with a lot of verbiage) is necessarily something that I want to peruse on my desktop HP or my iPad. I want to study it up close. Maybe I’m peculiar but I don’t really like my computer screen to be too busy, much less my TV screen. Picture-in-picture is a bold move for me. It still annoys me how a close friend channel surfs across the shows when I visit his house. Decide on one show, and stick with it dammit.

Is Google TV for you? If you’re a young, game-playing, multitasker who doesn’t mind looking at busy, multiple windows from across a room you’ll do fine. The Google TV user probably doesn't demand total regularity in home activity settings (and maybe it's obsessive on my part). Am not going to twist arms or try to argue that my preference is the only way. But I’m personally going to stick with my long-observed room designations; the living room is where I live and the study is where I study.

Could I be wrong about all this? Very possibly -- I once thought the iPod nano would bomb because you can get twice as much memory on the iPod Classic for the same price. I was flat-out wrong about that -- who can read the next trend. We’ll just wait and see I guess. Linux has never gained more than a single digit market penetration after years of being touted as the open systems answer to everyone’s prayers. People are people, always and ever.

© 2010 blogSpotter

Barack at 21 Months

Obama giving a weekly address -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
This is Election Eve, November 2, 2010. All signs point to a Democratic drubbing – if the Democrats are lucky, they’ll keep a Senate majority, and barely that. They’re almost certain to lose the House as well as several governorships to the GOP. The pundits are working overtime to figure, “How did we get to this point?”. In his piece today, Beware the GOP Coronation, Howard Kurtz provides us with a recent historical contrast. At 100 days, the media was having a slobbering love fest over Obama, painting him as something between FDR and Jesus. Now at 21 months, the tide has turned and many of those same pundits (e.g., Howard Fineman, Jonathon Alter) are more restrained in their glowing Obama tributes. Meanwhile, a lily white Tea Party has energized the GOP rightwing flank; they’ve promised to “take back America” (I have to guess, from socialist people of color?).

I’m in Obama’s corner, I think, but have to wonder at points if Obama is even in Obama’s corner. Let’s consider 3 things that occupy the air waves now:

Afghanistan – Obama authorized a big troop surge but tied it to a near-term withdrawal date. Military analysts everywhere feel like Obama hedged his bet in a coy, duplicitous way. He probably should’ve soft-pedaled the withdrawal date, pending major military milestones. I’m not opposed to Obama’s Afghanistan strategy per se – I think Afghanistan is a quicksand pit that offers little hope of a meaningful Democratic resolution. But his presentation was too equivocal for his conservative audience – he could have framed it better.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – Obama has successfully straddled the fence with acrobatic finesse. He at once has said soothing words to the LGBT community while giving senior military officials and homophobic Congressional chairmen the free hand they need to maintain the status quo. In fact, the Federal government (headed by O’Man himself?) is now in the bizarre position of fighting a judicial stay of DADT.

Stimulus – The Tea Party has vilified deficit spending as the ‘poison tonic’ in our current economy. We’ve had one sip of the tonic and now we’re ready to declare it a failure. There hasn’t been an adequate stimulus effort to set any wheels in motion. There is also some question about how it was administered -- TARP funds going to business executives versus federal project funds paid directly to federal employees. Obama needs to give assurance to his own policies and back up his advisors – not timidly withdraw when it meets a first wave of resistance. Is there a confident, committed doctor in the house?

The stimulus shyness is Obama’s biggest stumbling point, and brings me to the “dismal science”, economics. Economics doesn’t have to be dismal – it can be very rational and precise if you’re dealing with logical, fair, level-headed people. The very people who want to scramble the topic as some kind of impenetrable, mysterious fog are rich people who stand to lose if the public gets wise to it all. Obama needs to make it clear what he envisions and (sorry to borrow from Bush) “stay the course”. He’s now more like a disengaged Herbert Hoover circa 1930, serving bland aphorisms when people want action. What we need is an impassioned leader, bringing in the sheaves with some Old Time fervor and vitality. Obama’s collegial, cool style is a quality that American people disdain in a politician, especially in times of crisis.

What of tonight’s election? The American people are acting reactively, emotionally and angrily to a situation they think can right itself with a simple “throw the bums out” gesture. Obama didn’t do anything wrong so much as he did it incompletely and without great resolve. America’s reaction is both spastic and misdirected. The GOP will restore the policies which gave us 2008’s financial crisis and this will yield us a slow trudge further into the mud. Let’s hope that someone projecting strength and clarity can eventually get us out of the mud. Who he is and when he appears is anyone’s guess – it could even be a reinvigorated Obama.

© 2010 blogSpotter