March Musings
Nothing really big here, just cleaning out the drafts notebook
So I've been doing a fair amount of writing lately but I'm not really pumping out the essays like I should. Lots of screenplay work and quick angry nervous notes that feel like they'll eventually turn into something real but never ever actually do. But I figured I'd drop a couple of these rough pieces in here and at least keep this Substack from falling apart.
The first piece is a bit I thought would make for a fun April Fools Day joke but it's not really growing. Let's check that out first.
Where is all the serial killing these days?
It's not really a hobby for people anymore. It used to be "don't take your phone, don't jizz on or in the bodies, don't send taunting notes to the police, you're good to go" but now we're all on camera 24/7 so is there even serial killers anymore?
I live in a village of 800 people and I'm still pretty sure that from when I leave my place to when I come back home I'm on some type of video. They can track your car on any highway. I don't know.
Pretty sure if you went to the deep south there's someone who could get some lot lizards, but whats the sport in that for today's modern serial killer? It's like playing Call of Duty against the computer with it set to Recruit.
There's probably a few still around but the lead poisoning sending people insane theory and technology and smarter police tactics likely has put paid to it.
Also, and not to sound like some boomer, but I just don't think we have the attention spans these days. They are more likely to be spree killers in a much shorter timeframe than decades of killing. Mossad doesn't count. But folks these days want their instant gratification.
With all the forensics nowadays it's kind of impressive how much work a good serial killer has to put in to get away with it for any length of time. You gotta kill 3 to even be a serial killer in the first place but that's about your top level these days. Unless you're constantly on the move and killing randoms, you're getting caught quite quickly.
I can't imagine how exhausting that shit must feel with post-cum clarity. Those fellas in the 70's didn't know how good they had it. You bust your nut then you're like "Fuck, I got like 16 hours of work ahead of me now".
It definitely peaked in the 70s/80s. I'm sure before the Golden Age of Serial Killing there were definitely people we've never heard of who notched up 100s in the 1500s or whatever, just riding from village to village and blaming the bodies on the local "witch" AKA an unmarried older woman.
But I fear the golden age of charismatic serial killers keeping the cities afraid is sadly behind us. Especially when you've got some busybody niece doing 23andme to find out she's 76% from here and 19% from across the street, with the added bonus of getting you busted.
Yes, being a serial killer is fine work if you can get it. There was a time where you could carve out a little niche for yourself. Hang your shingle, so to speak. Put in the hours. Build a reputation. Maybe not a good one, but a consistent one. Something with a throughline.
Unfortunately for Millennials and Gen Z, it’s just not a realistic career anymore.
There’s no path. No runway. No way to get your reps in without immediately getting flagged by six different systems that don’t even know what you’re doing, just that you’re doing it too consistently. "I saw that piece of luggage that we found the woman's body in was at the Council On Agings Garage Sale last weekend. Have them pull up thier camera footage." Is a not outlandishly improbable sentence anymore. It's like something out of Orwell for today's murderers.
You can’t apprentice. Heck your apprenticeship is just what gets you on the board, you've murdered 3. But that's when you get caught these days. You can’t develop. You can’t have a sloppy early phase where you figure things out and tighten up your process. You don’t get a “rough first album” or "sophomore slump" period where you’re still finding your sound. You get caught somewhere between your second and third attempt and that’s the end of it.
It used to be a trade. Now it’s basically an unpaid internship with immediate termination. It’s one of those careers where if you don’t succeed early, you don’t get to try again.
The standards didn't even get higher for the art form of slaughtering humans, it's just you can't make it through the learning curve like you could back when people still hitchhiked.
Nowadays a fair amount of guys who'd find a fun compelling career in serial slaughter are collecting Funko Pops or painting Warhammer figurines or playing Magic on Saturday nights instead of cruising in their vans, plotting the behavior that will briefly make them a God.
But keep this in mind. It's far less fulfilling when you're looking back at your life on your deathbed to have a store displays worth of Funkos your family will end up throwing in a landfill instead of a rubber banded stack of Jane Doe IDs.
So that was dark and silly, huh? Yeah, I know, it's not a real essay. That's what you're getting here. Let's check out another one!
Much talk was made of how Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World was such a badass in high school, but this was ultimately a kid who didn't lose his virginity until senior prom at the earliest (and possibly not until college), never smoked or did drugs, seldom got into fights, and got drunk like twice in his life.
Much was also made of the supposed coolness of Arthur Fonzerelli. The dude who only hung out with high schoolers, lived above one of the high schoolers parents garages, helped Mrs. C carry in groceries, and forced Potsie and Ralph into his toilet stall "office" to smell piss and shit while he gave them lessons in how to be cool.
On the subject of annoying sitcom stuff, if I was Tim the Toolman Taylor I'd kinda hate Wilson. Every time I want to bitch about something my fuckin neighbor tried to put on airs and act like I'm some nitwits because I don't know his esoteric thing. "Tim, have you ever heard of the I Ching?" Or "Are you familiar with what Aristotle said about Plato?" so he can act like an intellectual teaching his caveman neighbor to not judge ballet or whatever. I'd be like "One time can you say something like Hey neighbor are you familiar with the dynamic of the Three Stooges? So I could say Yeah I do know about the Three Stooges!"
"Tim, are you familiar with the William Shakespeare play Othello"
"No. But I got a semi popular television show and a family who loves me so I'm doing pretty good despite not knowing that."
It's like when Milhouses dad is showing Homer his apartment after the divorce and he's like "My bed is a racecar! Do YOU sleep in a racecar, Homer?" And Homer says "No. I sleep in a big bed with my wife."
"Neighbor, are you aware what Socrates had to say about-"
"Dude, I'm building you a fucking deck right now, can we just talk about the Pistons or music or something?"
"Well, Genghis Khan said-"
"I really don't need to know what Genghis Khan or Socrates or even Jesus said. I can rebuild a hot rod from scratch without knowing that shit."
It's weird that after Twin Peaks we still had this safe sanitized characterization on television and it could carry for a dozen seasons.
That's not to say things need to contain a bunch of adult content, I'm just saying "at-risk teen" should probably be more than "surly with a shaggy haircut but good natured"
HBO original programming before Oz/Sex and the City/Sopranos was overwhelmingly horny and not really great. Tales from the Crypt, Mr Show, Larry Sanders and Dennis Miller were good, but mostly it sucked ass. Arliss was awful. Taxicab Confessions and Real Sex were just trash. Adolescent. I see it as a trend in post-Mtv pre-internet programming. For a while between 1993 and 1997 all the channels were too horny. Wrestling was too horny. USA and TNT and TBS and SciFi Channel were too horny. It was childish. It was a time period where we pretended that Larry Flynt was some First Amendment hero and victim of censorship, like he was George Carlin or Jello Biafra. Lexx was a big show. Jenny McCarthy was a giant celebrity. It's like the channels were all run by 15 year old pervs.
Here's another one!
Stuttering John was drunk and rambling on YouTube last night about how when you die there is no Heaven and you just rot in the ground. It was not very funny for a supposedly comedic podcast, but it was also mostly childish.
What's the prize for being right and believing there's no Heaven? There's no downside to believing, and living life in such a way as to not dread an afterlife. I don't have any doubt there is, I just wonder what the point of someone who believes like John to even bother talking about it.
Like if us "dumb believers" are wrong, then it’s a big nothing. If he’s wrong, then he’s going to experience pure hell. No, like, literally. And as a man who is constantly trolled and has an 89 year old mother, he's just setting himself up to receive a bunch of messages about how he'll never see her again and she's just rotting when she inevitably passes away.
We all know that John is actually a really dumb person who likes to pretend to be smart but his rant tonight really shows how childish his thinking is, "For any of you that think there is a Heaven, do cows go to Heaven? If so, it would be crowded and stinky." He really said that tonight. He thinks like a child. Just more proof his mind never matured past childhood. He still thinks it’s cool being an edgy atheist beating up on religion. He still thinks he’s the cool counter culture going up against the “machine” that’s controlled by religion. When he made up the story about spraying the pigs blood all over at the battle of the bands thing he made it up because he still thinks that’s cool at 60 years old. He thinks spraying blood would be edgy and cool and not just try hard cringe today. If a did that as a teen and sprayed pigs blood everywhere I’d look back and cringe at the thought of me thinking that was cool, he not only still thinks that’s cool but hes making up fantasies about doing it at 60 years old. He still thinks things like rock and roll is edgy to society. He’s literally a child stuck in a completely different time. Like, Heaven isn't a finite space like a bus station. There's no such thing as "crowded" in paradise.
People who live like John don't want an afterlife or a reincarnation because deep down inside they know they fucked up and they dont want to deal with "this" again, and they just know that the finale judgement would not go in their favor, so rather than play a game they know they'll lose, they flip the table and choose to say they always win instead. It's what Bill W says in the opening of Chapter 5 of the Big Book about how the only people who the program won't work for us those who are incapable of being honest with themselves. John claims he's not an alcoholic because he's never had a DUI. I never had a DUI but I was definitely an alcoholic. The thing is when we get sober we have to review the wreckage of our past, be able to apologize, humble ourselves, and most importantly self reflect. I don't believe John is capable of that. He convinces himself with his lies.
Atheists use suffering-based questions to challenge Christianity. However, the emotional and philosophical structure of these questions is not unique to atheism. These concerns were first deeply articulated within the faith tradition itself.
The book of Job is one long protest... Psalms, Ecclesiastes... Christ echoes everyone's sentiment "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"
While many of the questions people pose are rhetorical or accusatory, if God is truly God, standing before Him may not primarily provoke interrogation but perspective. The scale of understanding would shift, and our categories may appear smaller than we imagined.
The fact that many people ache for justice reflects an underlying assumption that suffering should not be ultimate. The expectation that goodness should prevail is itself a theological intuition. The questions arise from a belief that God ought to be good and therefore ought to provide an answer that reconciles suffering with goodness.
There is a deep human expectation that reality should be morally intelligible. The very act of asking “Why suffering?” assumes that suffering is somehow out of place rather than the final or defining state of existence.
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
My working theory: Life is supposed to be a roller-coaster to help us grow emotionally and spiritually so we can make mature, rational and informed choices about accepting Jesus or rejecting Him.
I believe many hardships / trials are answered prayers to help strengthen us to achieve what we want rather what we think we want.
Imagine how spoiled, rotten and lacking a child would be if their parents said, "Yes" to everything: they'd become the vapid and spiritually bankrupt monsters no better than the children from My Super Sweet 16 who cry because their million dollar sports-car birthday present isn't the "correct" shade of pink.
Some of those vapid children likely pray for the most expensive diamonds and the most expensive cars but what they really want is inner peace, confidence and purpose that humility brings after God curb-stomps them with hardships.
"The difference between me and God is if I had the power to stop a little girl from being raped I would."
Think about this though. Every sin deserves death. The blasphemous thought you had when you were a teenager you don't even remember, by the Biblical and holy standard you'd be killed on the spot and be sent to hell.
If God dealt with sin immediately, no human would survive a second once we reached the point of accountability because of God's holy standard.
All people are closer in evil to the child rapist than we are close to the holiness of God.
The standard is sinless perfection. And we see throughout scripture that God gives people the chance to repent and sometimes people do. He also in His sovereignty uses horrible things for the best outcome.
With Joseph, Joseph was a good man, was wrongfully imprisoned, enslaved for most of the first half of his life, finally things start going well and he gets falsely accused of rape and has to go back to prison until eventually Joseph gets into a position of power through God's sovereign hand.
God used all of this to eventually save his homeland from famine once Joseph got into the position of power in Israel. After all as said and done, when Joseph confronted his brothers who enslaved him, he forgave them and said "what you meant for evil, God meant for good". God can use any evil for ultimate good.
Take the child rapist example. A child rapist could repent and be saved once they get to prison and then save others. He can have a testimony of how much grace the Lord can have that some others don't. Someone who's in prison who cheated on their taxes might be thinking "I'm basically a good person", but hearing the testimony of a changed man who was a horrible pedophile reaches a different set of people entirely.
Likewise the little girl could be traumatized and that trauma puts her on a different path in life that eventually leads her to the cross.
Many Christians have the testimony of "this horrible thing happened, and if it didn't, I would have done x, y, and z, and I might have been happier, but I would have never found the forgiveness found in Christ. That pain led me to the foot of the cross"
If God killed a person the moment they committed some standard of sin or stopped it, you'd have a net worse results.
Take Paul. God could have prevented Paul from killing all those Christians.
But because God didn't Paul could proclaim the richness of God's mercy because He forgave even a man who put Christians to death and Paul became the biggest spreader of Christianity in the New Testament.
Likewise with Solomon. God could have stopped Solomon from having 1000 concubines, but it was Solomon's excess that allowed him to write with pure conviction in Ecclesiastes that all the things of the world, all it's pleasures are meaningless and empty.
There are other sins which had the death penalty in the old testament that God has given times of mercy in order that people would repent. Take homosexuality. That would get you put to death in the old testament.
Yet we see in the new testament 1 Corinthians, it says "neither fornicators, nor homosexuals, nor (long list) will inherit the kingdom of God. As were some of you. But you've been washed, justified, sanctified, etc in Christ.
It's saying you, did things that deserve the death penalty under God's law, just like the raping of the little girl, but you have been justified.
People see Jeffery Dahmer becoming seemingly saved in prison as unfair and don't want to accept it. I don't know if his salvation was genuine, but I know it can be, but people don't want to accept it because they think people are mostly good deep down, with wicked exceptions. But the truth is "there but by the grace of God go I".
Jesus rebuts this accusation of unfairness with the analogy of some get for working the fields who were working all day, the same as those who showed up at the last hour, and Jesus says "you have no right to complain. The gift of salvation is not merit based." Some live that Christian life of struggle their whole life, and others are like the thief on the cross, and that's why the world finds Christianity offensive because God sometimes does forgive the child rapist and that child rapist goes to heaven under the forgiving blood of Jesus.
But the reason it offends us is because we have a mismatched understanding of the depth of depravity of our own sin, and the extreme holiness of God.
When that gap is seen with the correct perspective we see that all human beings are like pond scum, whether you're mister rogers or the most heinous rapist or murderer. It's all a scale of not matching up to the holy standard of God and deserving of God's wrath.
So when God extends mercy to the child rapist, because God's delayed wrath is meant to cause people to repent and recognize His mercy as the Bible says, He's extending the same mercy that He extends to you or me, it's just because we're in the fallen state we don't see how bad we are and how equally undeserving of mercy we are. God is not a respecter of persons as the Bible says, meaning he doesn't give favor to one person or another on the basis of their human sinful flesh, but only by His divine sovereign choice of mercy which ALL are undeserving of.
Then there's the other factor, which is God's glory is also demonstrated in His execution of justice.
God's glory is demonstrated in how with the Pharoah we see chance after chance given and then finally God punishes with wrath. The Bible says people store up wrath for the coming judgement.
Sometimes God allows people like the child rapist to continue because He's essentially demonstrating to that child rapist that never repents that on that day of judgement he is absolutely guilty and deserving of wrath, and God is glorified even by having people store up wrath for themselves so that the righteous aspect of God is displayed.
The Bible says "Do not be fooled, what you reap you will sow" and it also says "the Lord will not be mocked" and it says that one day all that was done in the dark will be brought to light.
So anyone who is not repentant is only "getting away with it" for a short time. Life ls like a vapor. In the eternal perspective those who commit heinous things are doing so barely for a fraction of a second, and those who are forgiven are forgiven on a scale insignificant to the scale of Christ's perfection.
And those who suffer, it says that God collects all of our tears. He is tender, He mourns with us, as we see Jesus cried over the death of Lazerus even though He knew He was about to raise Him.
And as Paul says the suffering in this current time is not even worth comparing to the glory of the age to come.
Little headier. You still here? I'm sharing this for you!
So on February 28th we had two working cars that were great. Our 2011 Dodge Durango with a little under 200,000 miles and our 2009 Pontiac G6 with 41,500 miles. That Pontiac was a crazy find. It was sitting on 16,000 when we found it. A ridiculously cherry car for as old as it is. Im pretty sure it still had factory brakes on it. Most banks don’t want to finance a 17 year old car but they made an exception because of the mileage and we got a good loan on it.
On March 1st, a dumbass deer ran in front of the Pontiac as my wife and I were driving to town. Thank God no one was hurt (except for the venison) but Allstate decided that it was scrap worthy after talking to us on the phone. I disagreed. I thought it was fixable. The frame wasn’t all fucked up. It’d need a new radiator and headlights, some body work, a new hood, but it was definitely not fucked. They sent a tow truck to our home to take it. They said they were going to total it and auction it. I said “nope. Im taking it to a shop for an estimate.”
That estimate was about 6,000 bucks. The shop didn’t even call me, they called Allstate, who called me and said that is too much and they’re totalling it. They offered me $4600 before my $1000 deductible. I refused. Not only do I still owe the bank 7k on it, their comps were 300 miles away with double the mileage. I found numerous closer comps in location and mileage. After a week they upped it to $7100 before deductible. So I figured I’d get $6100 and only be underwater about $900 on it, which I could live with.
Then the Durango check engine light comes on. Hook it to a computer, I need a new Oil Cooler. I also needed an oil change so I go to the Dodge dealership. The car was initially bought there by my uncle, and they’re the only ones who’ve ever serviced it. When I bought it from Uncle Steve I continued going there. Sure they’re three times more expensive than anyone else, but they specialize in Dodge... Or so I thought.
So $1200 later the Dodge comes back home. We got it back and there was no sticker indicating when our next oil change was due. Also the code was never cleared, because it immediately told me I needed an oil change again. I drive 150 miles away to take the kids to the closest orthodontist that’s covered on our shitty health plan and suddenly the check engine light comes back on. I hook it to the computer. Says Ignition Coil 4 is misfiring. I figure I can swap that out fairly easily. Pop the hood, it’s under the upper intake manifold...
I see my intake manifold is overtightened and cracked and also missing a bolt. This is causing a vacuum leak. This leans out the fuel-to-air ratio, which often triggers misfire codes (like the Cylinder 4 ignition coil code) because the engine isn’t getting the sealed air pressure it expects.
So my wife went to get another copy of our bill and got to talking to Jason Plummel, who wants to replace the coil. When I came in after a few minutes and mentioned the intake manifold, Jason (who according to the bill was not the technician, Joseph Brown was) insisted the upper intake manifold was never removed.
If the technician didn’t even have the situational awareness to place a service sticker or reset the dash, how can I trust they used a torque wrench and not an impact driver on my plastic intake manifold? It did not kick the P0304 code before it was serviced, which a vacuum issue certainly would have.
The Mopar service manual for a 2011 Durango 3.6L Pentastar explicitly states the upper intake manifold must be removed to access the oil cooler. Are you telling me your technician performed a $1,200 repair by defying the laws of physics or by ignoring the manufacturer’s own service requirements?
The manifold is now cracked and missing a bolt, issues that did not exist before this repair, and it is triggering a lean-condition misfire on Cylinder 4.
The technician replaced the oil filter adapter housing (oil cooler) on my Pentastar V6. According to the Mopar Service Manual, the Upper Intake Manifold must be removed to access that housing. My manifold now has a missing bolt and a crack from over-torqueing that is causing a vacuum leak and a Cylinder 4 misfire. Claiming the manifold wasn’t touched is a factual impossibility, and I’m not paying to fix damage your shop caused.
If it was already cracked, why wasn’t this noted on the Multi-Point Inspection they almost certainly performed during a $1,200 job? If they missed a “missing bolt” and a “loud vacuum leak” last week, they weren’t doing their jobs properly.
Because the manifold was cracked and a bolt is missing directly at the Cylinder 4 runner, it’s been pulling unmetered air and causing a misfire. To make this right and ensure my Durango is back to the condition it was in before you touched it, I expect a new OEM manifold AND a replacement ignition coil for Cylinder 4 at no cost. I’m not paying for ‘parts and labor’ on a misfire that didn’t exist until your tech cracked my engine’s intake. The coil didn’t fail on its own; it’s throwing a code because of the air leak YOU created. I’m not paying for a ‘consequential damage’ repair caused by shop negligence.
They continued to insist they never removed the intake but agreed to replace it for free as a gesture of goodwill. This took about five days for them to do. Every day they tried to rope me into a different $600-$800 thing, like a tune up or a fuel system analysis. I said I just want my car back with the new upper intake manifold. But I got it back.
Still no oil change sticker. Not that I was shocked.
So I had my new coil and plug and when I pop the hood I see my new upper intake and smile. Then I get the sockets out.
The upper bolts to the lower and the spots where it does were also clearly impacted. It’s stripped out. So now I need a new LOWER intake to keep from getting a problem. But more than that, there’s this bracket that attached the upper intake to the block. It’s not connected to anything. There’s literally no bolts. It’s nestled into some vacuum lines to keep it quiet.
I finish the job and now it’s rattling like a pocketful of change and the dealership won’t fix it for free now.
Plus Allstate only gave us $5500, because the remaining $600 is for “taxes and title fees for a new car” and they won’t release it unless we buy another car (which we can’t afford to do).
My leathery asshole keeps getting stretched out, financially.
It’s funny, you see 100 commercials a day saying “We’re the cheapest car insurance” but zero that say “your asshole is safe if you ever need to file a claim.”
It’s funny, there’s 100 commercials an hour about “Get our insurance, we’re the cheapest in town!” But not one that says “Hey if you ever need to file a claim your booty hole will remain unmolested.”
Update: I went to a mom and pop shop that fixed it for $42. Fuck a dealership. Fuck Allstate and their good hands. Hands, might I add, that they probably wiped with and are now shoving in your eyes and mouth.
Yeah, this isn't my A material, it's just what I'm writing at the moment.
Growing up, there's a good chance I could have become a waifu guy. I was uncomfortable around girls and any time I asked one out id humiliate myself and fuck up the friendship. So I had this pathetic lame ass imaginary relationship. Every night as I went to sleep if hug a pillow and pretend it was Kitty Pryde. I did this literally for my entire high school existence, until I finally got some pussy right before graduation. I'm really lucky it didn't go further than that.
But if that girl hadn't decided to give me a taste right after my 18th birthday I could see it continuing until I was one of those guys with anime girl posters and figurines and shit. The kind of people they make KiwiFarms pages about. I could have just unplugged, leaned into my self loathing to the point that no girl had an ounce of interest in me became a self fulfilling prophecy and would now be a 39 year old who's apartment stinks like cum and a retail job that only covered bills and toys instead of a married guy with a career and a family and a home.
Im gonna tell you something that I wouldn't admit to my wife or best friend or therapist. Some nights, when I can't sleep, I fall back into that teenage Shadowcat relationship mentally instead of counting sheep.
But I'm almost a forty year old man. Why is my go to fantasy chilling in the X Mansion with my pretend girlfriend who can walk through walls and thinks I'm the coolest? It's not like we're fighting Morlocks or Apocalypse, we're just laying in bed and talking about adventures.
It's never a sex thing. It was when I was a teenager. Hell I made my way through the entire X Mansion of babes in my head as a freshman. But since I "put that away" around the time I started binge drinking, it hasn't been masterbatory, and once I quit drinking at 23, it still didn't reappear until I was in the whole occasional insomnia.
I'm phrasing it this way because it feels like an odd strange mentally unwell delusional fantasy to recede into. Even if it's not every night or even once a month. It's incredibly troon adjacent. When I first saw a guy with an anime girlfriend body pillow I thought "There but for the grace of God go I". It's very strange and sort of shameful.
I even occasionally, not every time I do this but only when I do this, have dreams that continue the story in low stakes ways. Danger Room simulations, peace summits with Magneto or the Brotherhood, diplomatic trips to Genosha, etc, where I don't have any powers but I'm very welcomed and universally competent and even the bad guys like me.
But still, if body pillows had realistic hooters I doubt I'd have even kept trying.
And one last one.
Is anything more uninteresting than someone talking about how good food is from the city they moved from?
It’s worse you just can’t help but be polite and act interested which keeps the person talking.
That’s cool man. The restaurant that’s 1,800 miles away sounds awesome.
Fucking losers.
Especially when they try to hook you into being intrigued
Oh we have something called a garbage plate.......(pause)
Fuck off!