Some time ago, despite hesitation, I continued on my way through Patricia Cornwell's recently diminishing Kay Scarpetta forensic series. The emphasis on science softened the graphic crime scenes and subsequent autopsy details, effectively keeping the wounds intellectualized through the written word. I justified my repeated witnessing of such violence with my accompanied scientific gains. As my natural affinity for written mystery evolved toward thriller, so did an unanticipated interest in literary portrayals of psychopathy including the point of view of the profoundly disturbed. I joined Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander in her single minded quest to seek a gruesome revenge of equal depravity. Then I discovered Jo Nesbo's stolid recovering alcoholic detective Harry Hole. With Nesbo, each murder is more frighteningly described than the next and frankly, creeps me out quite effectively, enough so that I have to read Nesbo only in the daylight. (This also happens when I view The Walking Dead). I have spent an enormous amount of time reading authors who specialize in the myriad ways to kill human beings: Karin Fossum, Chelsea Cain, Lars Kepler, Linda Fairstein, Tess Gerritsen, to name just a few more.
Recently a few literary explorations of human depravity also caught my attention, including Koch's fictional family case study The Dinner, Gillian Flynn's operatic twisted relationship study Gone Girl and the dysfunctional family memoir We Are Animals. My fascination with psychology justified these choices. Enter the slow TV movement with the freakish American Horror Story: Asylum, the prequel to the movie Psycho, Bates Motel, and now Hannibal, loosely based on the novel Red Dragon. I can't seem to look away despite having been moved in the past by horror and gore to fear, nightmares, and depression. Something about the macabre draws me in. My latest foray is HBO's True Detective series, an astonishing exploration of the human psyche on the individual level which quickly expands to the universal. It asks what went wrong with a humanity capable of such indifference to one another.
After a two week binge on Criminal Minds reruns and a pretty consistent gross out from American Horror Story: Coven, I began to cut back. Feeling cranky and depressed, I also felt that as a woman I had a big target on my back screaming out "Prey" for all psychopaths to see. I wonder how much my and so many others' readings, watchings of these TV shows, and fascinations with movies of the like function as collusion with the master criminals. By consuming such dark tales with great ferocity, are we ourselves contributing to their own feeding off of the macabre, virtual or otherwise?
I still plan to watch Hannibal season 2 in a few weeks time. I am also in for the last three episodes of True Detective. I need to know what message we are supposed to be decoding. Despite given what I've just recounted. I remain endlessly fascinated by the human mind and its anticipation, sense of suspense, thrill, and yes, horror, particular emotional. Maybe the creatives count on us to be there, to witness their macabre purge of such dark desires. Maybe such witnessing holds some potential inflictors at bay. Maybe indifference to the macabre is in itself, macabre.
About Me
- KSchmidt Writes
- Writer, Library Media Specialist, flautist, member of the Twitterverse
Monday, February 17, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Regret
I don't want to be one of those people lying on her deathbed running through the litany of regrets. But to be honest, at this point in my life I already have such a list and I run through it upon occasion. Today is one such occasion.
I heard from an old friend who really should have been a better friend in the sense that over the years, we should have spent more time together and known each other better. Circumstances being what they were that didn't happen, and it makes me consider the other people who would have been worth knowing and worth knowing better who have entered and exited my life fleetingly. Conversely, there are people for whom I am that fleeting apparition. And I regret what we missed. How can I not?
I have much to offer a colleague, a student, a friend or a lover. Kind, compassionate, smart, but flawed like all of us, I can offer my time, my attention, my care, my love, as can they. Anyone worth his or her salt has figured out that it is connection to others, whether platonic or romantic, global or local, human or other, which matters most during our existence on earth. It is everything else in fact, that is fleeting. But sometimes we spend our lives focused on the wrong things and the wrong people. Our laser locks just slightly off center and we give a whole lot of energy and attention to not quite the right thing.
I blew a large bulk of my attention on a person who didn't warrant it. At first, I didn't know it but later, later there were signs and I should have redirected that care a lot earlier than I did. Because I didn't, I missed out. Because I got hurt, I continued to miss out. Because I then closed off, I missed out even more.
Sometimes it takes an old friend to remind us of who we were before the regrets began to pile up. To remind us of what it was like to be in the moment, young and enthusiastic, unguarded and a little naïve. To remind us that we don't want to be lying on the deathbed regretting.
I heard from an old friend who really should have been a better friend in the sense that over the years, we should have spent more time together and known each other better. Circumstances being what they were that didn't happen, and it makes me consider the other people who would have been worth knowing and worth knowing better who have entered and exited my life fleetingly. Conversely, there are people for whom I am that fleeting apparition. And I regret what we missed. How can I not?
I have much to offer a colleague, a student, a friend or a lover. Kind, compassionate, smart, but flawed like all of us, I can offer my time, my attention, my care, my love, as can they. Anyone worth his or her salt has figured out that it is connection to others, whether platonic or romantic, global or local, human or other, which matters most during our existence on earth. It is everything else in fact, that is fleeting. But sometimes we spend our lives focused on the wrong things and the wrong people. Our laser locks just slightly off center and we give a whole lot of energy and attention to not quite the right thing.
I blew a large bulk of my attention on a person who didn't warrant it. At first, I didn't know it but later, later there were signs and I should have redirected that care a lot earlier than I did. Because I didn't, I missed out. Because I got hurt, I continued to miss out. Because I then closed off, I missed out even more.
Sometimes it takes an old friend to remind us of who we were before the regrets began to pile up. To remind us of what it was like to be in the moment, young and enthusiastic, unguarded and a little naïve. To remind us that we don't want to be lying on the deathbed regretting.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time
We had a snow day today, again. I did not go to work, again. I did not get dressed, again.
Welcome to Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time. I spend my snow days reading, on the computer, snuggling with the cats, watching TV or Netflix, and napping, each of which can be expertly executed while in pajamas, especially the napping.
The pajama pants I favor are a drawstringed soft, fleecy purple with white polka dots. They match almost nothing I own except for the lavender fleecy top they came with, which I rarely wear. I choose instead random T-shirts and a navy blue zip-up hoodie. I bottom off with black fur-lined fleecy booties to complete this Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time fashion moment.
Because of the number of snow days this year, and the plethora of frigid temperature days, I have taken to replicating Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time on days other than snow days. When I do work, it seems that the moment I return home I greet each cat by name giving each one a solid, then walk directly to wherever I last left my pajama pants. There I transform, venturing back into Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time Zen mode and there I remain until it is time for bed. There is an entire wardrobe going to waste but I don't envision a change soon.
If the forecast manifests as described, and school is cancelled tomorrow followed by another storm Saturday, I could manage an epic (or epidemic?) run of Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time lasting five days. I'm ready.
Welcome to Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time. I spend my snow days reading, on the computer, snuggling with the cats, watching TV or Netflix, and napping, each of which can be expertly executed while in pajamas, especially the napping.
The pajama pants I favor are a drawstringed soft, fleecy purple with white polka dots. They match almost nothing I own except for the lavender fleecy top they came with, which I rarely wear. I choose instead random T-shirts and a navy blue zip-up hoodie. I bottom off with black fur-lined fleecy booties to complete this Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time fashion moment.
Because of the number of snow days this year, and the plethora of frigid temperature days, I have taken to replicating Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time on days other than snow days. When I do work, it seems that the moment I return home I greet each cat by name giving each one a solid, then walk directly to wherever I last left my pajama pants. There I transform, venturing back into Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time Zen mode and there I remain until it is time for bed. There is an entire wardrobe going to waste but I don't envision a change soon.
If the forecast manifests as described, and school is cancelled tomorrow followed by another storm Saturday, I could manage an epic (or epidemic?) run of Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time lasting five days. I'm ready.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Conflicted
Well campers, I'm conflicted. On this, the holiest of holy sports days, the one in which it is all about teamwork and talent and will, stories of underdogs and loyalty and heart, I'm about to lay one big Debbie Downer on you regarding that oh so ultra American past time, football. In particular, the Superbowl. In the process I'm sure I'll be accused by some of being in simplest form, antisocial or "a hater," on up to the more complex unpatriotic, traitor, or gasp! socialist, in effect preemptively ruining any chance of my ever running for office successfully given this blog's existence. I can live with that because who could effectively argue that the Superbowl is anything but one big win for all?
Hooray for our winning economy with roughly 5 billion dollars generated by this spectacle and its collateral. I'm sure a big bunch of that dough is going right back into yours and my neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and small business pockets and not instead to some tax free corporate entity and its CEOs. I'm definitely sure none of it is going to the $745 million dollar fund (that a federal judge rejected for being too small a figure) for former NFL players suffering from health injuries related to their careers. Speaking of which, even Brett Favre is now reporting such post career memory loss. (If he starts to claim it regarding his sexted weiner, I'm calling bullshit.) And I can almost guarantee none of that 5 billion is going toward the baseline salaries and earned benefits of some of our most important and vital community workers: physicians and nurses, police and firefighters, teachers and child care workers.
So it must be going to something worthy then, right? Like maybe a study of what concussions do to even the youngest of players, those in middle and high schools? And/or injury prevention programs which you know, might cause us to question even allowing young adults to play the sport when all scientific evidence reveals that the frontal lobe of the brain, the one most important for organization, decision making, and impulse control, hasn't fully finished forming until around age 25. But that would mean we would also have to call into question college play, scholarships and television and advertising contracts based on such play, alumni contributions and university donations and even players who can't read and write beyond an elementary level. Poof! There goes your 5 billion. Clearly it's not economically worth it, so hooray Superbowl for making us forget all that.
Hooray also for the 90,000 hot dogs consumed at the stadium during the game. If everyone of those fans also signed a whitehouse.gov petition, we could make massive changes in education, poverty and gun control. Did you know that in the first 14 school days of 2014, there were at least seven school shootings, an average of one every other week? There were 28 in all of 2013. It's only been four weeks but we're one quarter of the way there already! I know it's hard to mobilize that many people over one looming issue. Look how hard it was to mobilize them over something far less important, one nineteen year old celebrity behaving badly who threw eggs at his neighbor's house, drag raced in Miami while high, and assaulted his limo driver? What? One day you say? One day to get 100,000 signatures? Oh.
Well then hooray for the super entertaining and clever commercials we all love and laugh at, except for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, and Cialis. And hooray for politicians who support insurance companies covering four hour erections for men but think twice about covering the possible prevention of a pregnancy triggered by one of those monumental four hour stints.
And hooray for the super entertaining and clever half time shows we all love, excerpt for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, Cialis, and objectified women.
Conflicted? Don't be. Yay, rah. Gorge on the 90 million chicken wings. Don't think twice about the 45 million wingless chickens left behind. Enjoy. It's all a distraction designed specifically for you.
Hooray for our winning economy with roughly 5 billion dollars generated by this spectacle and its collateral. I'm sure a big bunch of that dough is going right back into yours and my neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and small business pockets and not instead to some tax free corporate entity and its CEOs. I'm definitely sure none of it is going to the $745 million dollar fund (that a federal judge rejected for being too small a figure) for former NFL players suffering from health injuries related to their careers. Speaking of which, even Brett Favre is now reporting such post career memory loss. (If he starts to claim it regarding his sexted weiner, I'm calling bullshit.) And I can almost guarantee none of that 5 billion is going toward the baseline salaries and earned benefits of some of our most important and vital community workers: physicians and nurses, police and firefighters, teachers and child care workers.
So it must be going to something worthy then, right? Like maybe a study of what concussions do to even the youngest of players, those in middle and high schools? And/or injury prevention programs which you know, might cause us to question even allowing young adults to play the sport when all scientific evidence reveals that the frontal lobe of the brain, the one most important for organization, decision making, and impulse control, hasn't fully finished forming until around age 25. But that would mean we would also have to call into question college play, scholarships and television and advertising contracts based on such play, alumni contributions and university donations and even players who can't read and write beyond an elementary level. Poof! There goes your 5 billion. Clearly it's not economically worth it, so hooray Superbowl for making us forget all that.
Hooray also for the 90,000 hot dogs consumed at the stadium during the game. If everyone of those fans also signed a whitehouse.gov petition, we could make massive changes in education, poverty and gun control. Did you know that in the first 14 school days of 2014, there were at least seven school shootings, an average of one every other week? There were 28 in all of 2013. It's only been four weeks but we're one quarter of the way there already! I know it's hard to mobilize that many people over one looming issue. Look how hard it was to mobilize them over something far less important, one nineteen year old celebrity behaving badly who threw eggs at his neighbor's house, drag raced in Miami while high, and assaulted his limo driver? What? One day you say? One day to get 100,000 signatures? Oh.
Well then hooray for the super entertaining and clever commercials we all love and laugh at, except for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, and Cialis. And hooray for politicians who support insurance companies covering four hour erections for men but think twice about covering the possible prevention of a pregnancy triggered by one of those monumental four hour stints.
And hooray for the super entertaining and clever half time shows we all love, excerpt for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, Cialis, and objectified women.
Conflicted? Don't be. Yay, rah. Gorge on the 90 million chicken wings. Don't think twice about the 45 million wingless chickens left behind. Enjoy. It's all a distraction designed specifically for you.
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