Psychos and nuts and sickos, oh my.

[lemon_says]

I'll grant I watch entirely too many crime programs. Real crime, fake crime--I'm currently on a Criminal Minds kick, as they are running all the episodes in order on ION network at night and there are worse ways to go to sleep than watching Shemar Moore furrow his brow--crime documentaries, whatever. Pip claims my biggest obsession is bizarre diseases, but that's not necessarily true. I also have a thing about crime, and I've wondered why I didn't do something with that, something useful. (I have a thing with being aware of my own lack of usefulness, don't I? Yes, I know that.)

Sometimes, though, I watch these things and I wonder if sometimes there isn't some comfort in being the nutcase, the scariest person out there. If you know you're the sniper, does that provide some insulation from the evils of the world? Are you less likely to get mugged or burgled if you're the serial killer?

No, I'm not going on a spree or anything. Given my overdeveloped sense of justice and gruesome conscience I'd make a terrible criminal. I just wonder if people could lose their conscience first, or the conscience is a casualty of some more pragmatic motivation.

Comments

[lemon-says.livejournal.com]

I think I would be good at it, but it's one of those things where I think I missed the chance, you know? I wouldn't even know where to begin. And the only subject I ever hated was chemistry, so I certainly shouldn't be a lab person. :)

My mother thinks my dad and I read the most horrible books because we've traded these great tomes about polio, typhus, plague, you name it. I just think they're so interesting! Both in how they're spread and how it affects culture and everything. I need to get that cancer one that came out a couple years ago.

[drizzle.livejournal.com]

Which book is that? This one? If so, it was a great and fascinating read. I have some stained HeLa cells in my collection and it was so strange to actually read about the life of the woman that they came from. It put a lot of things in perspective.

I am always looking for interesting reads. What were the books on typhus and the plague?

[lemon-says.livejournal.com]

No, this one. (http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/dp/1439107955/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305836941&sr=1-1) I read about the HeLa cells in a long magazine article a while ago, but haven't read the book.

I cannot remember the typhus one. I'll see if I can find it. There's also cholera (http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Map-Steven-Johnson/dp/1594489254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305837023&sr=1-1), and the plague one was The Great Mortality. (http://www.amazon.com/Great-Mortality-Intimate-History-Devastating/dp/0060006935/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305837082&sr=1-1) Ghost Map is a really interesting story, but not the most well-written because the writer gets a little repetitive about some things.