The Proposition

Just finished watching 'The Proposition' - Australian film written by the God of Music (in the world according to Mel, anyway!); Nick Cave. I was a little apprehensive about seeing it. I had heard some really bad responses to it. In particular, one scene, relating to a woman being raped. I hesitated in seeing the film based on this one scene.

I have now seen it. My opinion does not waver. Nick is the God of Music. I now have a new respect for the man... he can goddamned write! Great film. Violent and messy... what more can one expect about a film set in a country where the white man settled as convicts... christ, most of the constabulary were convicts for the time period this was written. It was an unpleasant time in Australian history, it was never going to be 'The Titanic'for fuck's sake!!!! :)

To end this... my final thought is; Am I so insensitive that what a normal woman finds disgusting? And I accept as normal? Can I watch such filth and find it the norm? Maybe. Maybe I have stared too long into the abyss, and now it stares long into me. Should I step back from my work and realise that normal people don't see or deal with the things I see. Am I so de-sensitised? The thought makes my blood run cold.

Perhaps my only saving grace is my son. I cried during this film ('The Proposition')because a young boy is sentenced to be tortured, and I saw it from a mother's point of view, and that made it a terrible thing to watch. Maybe there is some redemption for all of us. Still I tread carefully upon the abyss.

Monster

Just watched movie about Serial killer Aileen Wournos... how unusual for me, hey? She had a cruel childhood, and a hard life. That woman took every bit of cruelty that life had thrown at her and displaced it by shooting innocent men (well innocent in some respects, they had picked her up from Hwy's in Daytona and agreed to sleep with her, regardless, men that didn't deserve to die).

She was wrong in what she did, and she deserved to die. Don't get me wrong. But at the same time, how much should one human being have to put up with. She was allegedly raped by family members whilst growing up... and as a child, she felt it was far safer living in the woods and surviving than what it was to go home to sexual abuse. I guess you take it for granted how lucky you are to have a safe, wonderful childhood. I cannot image how such a childhood must cause a deep-seated hatred of life. How bitter it must make you to life in general to have been raped by your grandfather, burnt and permanently scarred as a child. Things that we who live life every day have no idea about.

So, does that excuse a serial killer. No, of course not. But does it make us understand the anger, the bitterness that consumes a person from the time they are a child - I think yes. Does this mean that every young child that has undergone this abuse becomes a serial killer? No.

However, majority of people that have dealt with such horror usually become - mentally ill (mainfesting in obssessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, sexual offenders) or drug addicts, and very occassionally normal members of society.

However, it was reported that she was the first female serial killer. I beg to differ on that. She certainly was not. There were many before her... and there will be many more after her. She was unique - yes. She took her anger out on the world. A life abused can caused horrific responses. Makes me think. Life is cruel... we all could have been the one borne into the hell-hole she grew up in. By the grace of god, I wasn't. I could, however, be the one borne to be a victim of such a person. You never know what life has waiting around the corner for you... it could be a hitchhiker named Aileen Wournos for all I know.

Now you know why I don't pick up hitch-hikers.

Psycho-household!

So, I finally get over my nightmarish-video-marathon... wherein I had numerous bad dreams. (The first of the lot being me waking up at 2.38am, totally paralyised... but awake! Feeling a warm hand stroke my face and arm) - this sensation remains until my wonderful son (PS- now that he saved me, I now longer think of him as the anti-Christ) cries... and suddenly, the feeling of restriction instantly vanishes entirely and I am able to move.

I have since found that there are alot of studies relating to sleep paralysis, here is a quote from a Harvard Study on the topic:

"Our bodies are paralyzed while we undergo REM sleep, and for good reason (lest we act out our dreams and injure ourselves). But in some small number of cases we can actually start to wake up before paralysis wears off, and yet still remain in a dreaming state. What results is hallucination, often of some extremely scary stuff. It appears that humans have always experienced sleep paralysis and sought to explain it, resulting in well known stories of incubi and succubi--demons thought to sexually attack people in their sleep--as well as related tales from other eras and cultures."

I thought this was very interesting. Apparently it is very commonly linked to people who claim alien abduction, and about 30% of the population suffer from it. A third of people suffer from this, and commonly report seeing all different kinds of things. I didn't know until I read this, but this is not the first time that I have experienced this feeling. I have often had a dog in the room when I have had this experience, which has occurred since I was a kid. I guess it was never something that frightened me in the past, so I never thought anything of it. I always took it that I was half-asleep/half awake when it happened.

But since this time, I can update on OTHER creepy happenings.

Christian and I decided to sell the dining suite on Ebay, under the pretence that we would buy a corner nook (dining USA Style!) Which meant taking a photo on the digital SLR. So, we did that. I took the photo. I used the flash.

So, imagine this, I am in the corner, all the blinds are shut (cause the table looks better like that) and digital is set to automatic... mainly because Christian doesn't trust me - ha, ha. With the flash at the ready. I take the shot, I look in the Camera's LCD... and nothing about that photo is right.

Naturally, I shit myself. I instantly take another shot. I look, and see a totally different view. Originally I see - a dark background with a large bright white light surrounding the room. The second shot - I see a fucking table.

We take the photo's, we download them, and we both decide we need a better opinion. They have been sent to 'paranormal australia'. I beg them for an explaination that won't scare the hell out of me.

My biggest problem is this. I have an imagination. And it's a fucking good one. Unfortunately, things end up way too vivid for my liking. As a side comment, I have two recurring dreams. The first: Serial killer from Britian whose surname is 'Christie' stands at the end of my bed (Christie murdered women, some of them pregnant, and stuffed their bodies under the floors, into the cupboards and into the wall cavities) just watching me sleep. unfortunately for me, he watches me sleep for nights on end. Doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything. He never is in possession of a weapon, but nonetheless, he scares the shit out of me when he decides to visit. He visits me a couple of times a month.

The second is of Richard Ramirez... the LA nightstalker... bad, bad man. I have a dream that I wake up, look down the hallway... and there he is. Ramirez, sitting at the end of the hall, with the mother of all knives in his hand. The instant I look at him. the instant he looks up from the ground, looks directly at me, and with knife in hand, he runs down the hall, straight at me, ready for the kill - and then I wake up. And I can't bring myself to look down the hallway.

I can guarantee, that psychologists would have a field day with me. As I have said before, I need to quit; reading police journals, books on serial killers, watching scary movies, reading the internet. Maybe then I can get a good night's sleep.

Spooky Moulder!

Just finished watching 'The Omen'... sitting here, by myself, with what I am now convinced is my evil son with '666' on his head, sleeping in his bedroom. Last night I watched the pilot for "Supernatural" by myself... that was great too - starts off with a mother going in to check on her son in his cot and finding a male figure standing over the cot. The mother, believing it is the father, leaves them to it, walks downstairs, only to find her husband asleep infront of the television. She runs back upstairs and is taken by some malevolent force. Excellent. Again, I was sitting here alone when I watched that. When my son began to cry, I shit myself. I had almost convinced myself that I would see some male figure soothing him in his room.

But you need to understand - there have really been weird things that have happened in this house since my son was born. It started right before he was born - I remember I was very, very pregnant.. cranky and hot. I was in bed with Christian, and we were watching T.V. I thought that he was kicking me under the blankets and began to yell at him for touching me - as only a pregnant woman can get away with! He told me I was crazy and ignored me. A short time later we went to sleep, both of us facing outwards. Christian says, 'That's really nice, I like it when you rub my back." Hmmm, but I wasn't touching him, infact, being overdue in my pregnancy, I couldn't be further from him and still remain in the bed! I told him I wasn't touching him, and that's when he realised that I was nowhere near him. He says, "I can feel someone rubbing my back. I can feel the warmth of their hand." He reaches over and -poof- sensation is gone. Obviously, he shits himself.

Not long after that, Ryan arrived (after 50 HOURS of contractions, five minutes apart whilst lying in the hospital!!!! - but that's another story) we get him home. We have no idea what to do with this lump of flesh they call a child. We can barely look after ourselves, and yet, here is this child, in our house, in our care - man, who needs scary movies, folks! I am out on the lounge watching telly. Christian went to bed early with the baby moniter... and here it is, Ryan begins to cry and then Christian hears a female voice through the monitor inside Ryan's room saying, "Shh, it will be alright." But it wasn't me, I was in the lounge room. I know, I know, it sounds far fetched, yet this is the truth.

We have seen people walking through our house, heard bells ringing when we walk through doorways, heard people soothing our son through the baby monitor... and yet the house we live in is 6 years old, and we bought it from the couple that built it.

So now, the question is: Was this house built on some ancient aboriginal burial site... by the way, we have a pool, and I hope that bodies aren't going to start floating to the surface... Or, is our son marked with the sign of Satan. Tomorrow I might shave his head to see if I can find the '666'. In the meantime, there will be no sleep for me... I have officially spooked myself!

Blog Virgin...

First Blog... didn't think there would be so much pressure to write. I sit here with a blinking cursor mocking me, waiting for some epiphany to come leaping out of my brain and onto the keyboard. No such luck. Just boring old me. So maybe I should at least explain the name of my blog link. Dahmer and Gein. To those who know me, they know these guys well, too. Serial killers. I have a self-confessed fascination with serial killers - naming my Dog 'Dahmer' (most people think he's a female because they think I named him after Dhamer and Greg; how cute! Not.) However, I have not since been allowed to name any other pet - or my son for that matter - by any other serial killer's name. Lord knows I tried though.

Gein - Ed Gein lived with his cruel mother until she mysteriously died. He then lived in his farmhouse alone, leaving his mother's room as a shrine to her, going to the cemetry at night and digging up bodies to commit the sins of necrophilia and removed parts of the flesh to make human suits to wear, and masks which he would use to dress up and dance in the moonlight. He also began to take women from the town, hang them and gut them like deers. Is truth stranger than fiction - my word it is. Not even Buffalo Bill or Norman Bates (both characters were derived from the lovely Ed) could convey the depravity that was Ed Gein. He truly was a anomaly upon humanity. The worst of it was, he would go around telling the other people from the town that he had committed these crimes, and they would laugh and say 'mad old Ed Gein!' He lived in a time when such things weren't even thought of, let alone become a reality, in a small town in America. They couldn't be blamed for their disbelief, it would have been incomprehensible to think such things.

And then there was Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer, whose fractured home life destroyed a child and nurtured a monster. He first killed at the age of 16 when his mother decided to go on holidays with her new partner and forgot to tell her son. She left him alone without food or money. The abandonment was too much for the child after an already bitter divorce between his parents - he met a boy, invited him home where they drank and smoked pot. When the boy said he was going to leave, Dahmer's fragile existence shattered. He killed the poor boy, thus keeping his new playmate, and not have to deal with the idea that once again someone was leaving him. He killed many boys and men after this time, preserving body parts, boiling skulls, removing their flesh so that he could eat it. He even experimented with the drugged men by drilling holes into the top of their skulls and pouring water into their heads. They were left alive, but in a zombie-like state, so that Dahmer could keep them alive and close to him. I am of the inclination that Dahmer ate the flesh of these men so that in some twisted way he could be closer to them, that there was no better way to be fully with another person. It was almost like the consumption of their flesh meant that Jeffrey would never have to be alone. Prior to killing many of these men, he was caught drugging men in a pool and lying with their limp bodies. He was banned from the pool after this. Had he not been caught, would this have been enough to keep him from committing all those murders? I would say no, I think that he would have eventually ended up committing muurder, he was too destroyed long before all of this. As for the families of Dahmer's victim's - he created misery for many people. The grief and hatred he caused these people - with undertones of racial issues - cannot be imagined by ordinary people. Many of these people lost sons who were still babies to this monster... and one family losing two sons to this monster. By saying this, I wish it to be known, I do not condone the actions of serial killers. I have an interest in why these people commit such crimes, and how the offences relate purely to their frame of mind. How do such monsters reside in the community undetected for so long? It is a question that has become an obsession for me.

Now before anyone wishes to argue with me on my knowledge of these two serial killers - here is the small print. This is not meant to be an exact biography of either man... there is much I have left out and I know it. This is just me rambling about something that interests me.

So, my first blog became a brief synopsis of serial killers. Interesting. Was not expecting that. And there it is, I am no longer a Blog Virgin!