A cold dark winter night is the perfect time to skulk around the cobbled alley ways of London’s infamous East End.  Not by yourself obviously, that would be weird.  We joined our tour guide on our Jack the Ripper tour and stepped back in time, to a dirty, grim East End.  Actually even with the East End being an up and coming area, it’s still dirty and grim, just a bit more expensive.

But we’re now imagining ourselves walking the streets that Jack walked over 120 years ago.  Times were tough, with unemployment figures record levels high and crimes even higher.  With no other means to support themselves, back in the days before women’s rights, some women had to make the choice between starvation and prostitution.  The going rate was 4 pence, which was also the price of a bed in a doss house.  Most women in this dire position were also alcoholics, spending their 4 pence before they got their bed for the night and being out until all hours trying to make some more money.

The conditions were ripe for a serial killer, able to take advantage of vulnerable women, in a badly lit and crime ridden area.  Although he did have a lot of luck on his side to get away with as many killings as he did.  He is credited with five killings, but there are eleven Whitechapel murders that could be attributed to him.  The murders were brutal, with entrails tossed over the victim’s shoulder and in some cases organs were removed.  Faces and torsos were slashed and some victims could hardly be identified.  There are many theories about who he is, with a doctor (due to the organs being removed so capably), a midwife (who else could get away with walking around at all hours covered in blood) and even a member of the royal family. 

We wandered around for two hours in the freezing cold, engrossed by the gory but intriguing tale that our storyteller spun.  I’m not sure why the world is still fascinated by these unsolved murders, but over 120 years later there were about 200 likeminded people traipsing around Whitechapel in different tour groups nervously looking into dark alleyways, imagining the unimaginable.

The tour guide we had was John and he is an avid historian, not just with Jack the Ripper, but the whole East End. He is a wealth of knowledge and most entertaining.  I’ve done another tour before but it wasn’t that good – you really need a good tour guide.  I highly recommend Jack the Ripper walks for a spine tingling experience.   

Oh, you look so tired
Mouth slack and wide 
Ill-housed and ill-advised
Your face is as mean
As your life has been

Crash into my arms
I want you
You don’t agree -
But you don’t refuse
I know you

You’re in for surprise
You’re in for a shock
In London town streets
When there’s darkness and fog
When you least expect me
And you turn your back
I’ll attack

I smile when I’m sneaking
Through shadows by the wall
I laugh when I’m creeping
But you won’t hear me at all

All hear my warning
Never turn your back
On the ripper

You’ll soon shake with fear
Never knowing if I’m near
I’m sly and I’m shameless
Nocturnal and nameless
Except for “The Ripper”
Or if you like “Jack The Knife”

Any back alley street
Is where we’ll probably meet
Underneath a gas lamp
Where the air’s cold and damp
I’m a nasty surprise
I’m a devil in disguise
I’m a footstep at night
I’m a scream of the fright

All hear my warning
Never turn your back
On the ripper…the ripper….the ripper

 The Ripper Judas Priest 1976

 Comment: The Ripper: One of the classical heavy metal songs and texts. The point of view-technique is used. An unobservant listener could identify with the aggressivity in sentences as

“When there’s darkness and fog
When you least expect me
And you turn your back
I’ll attack”

But when read properly it is obvious that the lyrics is meant to tell a scary story from the madmans perspective. Rob Halford plays the role of the infamous Jack the Ripper.

This is the author who, among other things, set out to determine the identity of Jack the Ripper, and reminded us that the face of evil would deceive almost all of us.  She has lost recently quite a bit of money due to neglect, and been interviewed in The Irish Times.  In that publication she speaks of her proletarian upbringing, and the need to fetch tennis balls out of a creek in order to maintain her skills on the court.

Despite her background of poverty and an indifferent public school education, Cornwell earned her place in the prestigious institution [Davidson College] because of her prowess at tennis. “I couldn’t even afford the tennis balls when I was growing up. I used to fish them outta the creek behind the courts,” she says. “I taught myself to play by watching people. I’d hit on the back board, wait for someone to ask me to play, ended up on the boys’ team in high school.”

I have terrible writer’s block so have decided to distract myself by beginning some tentative research for my next book, which will be about Mary Jane Kelly, the final canonical victim of Jack the Ripper.

I am VERY excited about this as it will involve spending time in Spitalfields and hopefully meeting up with some old friends for curry, gin and trips to All Saints.

Since I wake up this morning I felt an urge to think about “the choices people make”. The reason why I started thinking about this was because I remembered that it has been a while since I wrote in this blog or made a recording of my learnings. Over the last weeks there has been some very interesting learnings and things that made me think about choices.

Last week I was very pleased to attend a “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour” over the streets of London. Mostly done in the area of tower hill, aldgate, and the city.  I learned a  lot about life in london at that time, seen some areas of the city I never seen before, understood that Sherlock Holmes was not actually trying to investigate the deaths caused by Jack the Ripper (first one fiction the latter reality), that there is a weekend market in algate that I should visit, that there is a pub from Jack the Ripper times that it is still open near Spitafields that I most definitely visit. etc etc etc. That day I was grateful that I had said yes to a potentially boring “work do” but instead I was blessed and surprised with a very cool, entertaining and full of learnings night. I choose to go on a potentially boring thing (outside the comfort zone), instead of the comfort of warmth of my home, eating the lovely food in my house and doing  some bits and pieces (the easy comfortable decision). I was rewarded by it… and was very happy with my decision.

This week I had a very nice chat with my cousin Checho, he has been a breath of fresh air for us since he arrived in London and a true blessing to have around. I was very shocked and selfishly sad to hear his plans of going back to Colombia. As soon as he started telling me why, I had to stop myself from giving him reasons why to stay and decided to keep my mouth shut (first good choice). 2 1/2 pints of beer later and him doing all the talking, specially him telling me the choices he have and the choices he will make, I was left touched, inspired and very very happy for him. I know it wasnt an easy choice for him to go back to colombia, but it is the right thing in his heart AND is was not the most comfortable one.

Today when I got on the train I sat in between two blokes in the train. One was sleeping with his mouth open, the other one was very much looking down on his phone, with his earphones playing music. I was looking forward to reading my book on Chris Evans’ biography (which I am loving at the moment) but there was the smell of hangover breath and I couldn’t actually tell who it was coming from. The sleepy guy or the guy listening to music. For some reason the choices thing came back into my head… obviously one of them made a choice of going for a drink up the night before and obviously today he was suffering the consequences (in case it was the guy sleeping)… but I thought… hmm … it is probably the other guy… so when I looked with the corner of my eye,  he was playing solitaire on his phone.  Being in that scenario and thinking about choices I felt very happy to be reading my book, that I specifically choose as it fits with my quest to read about the lives of very successful people and try to see what they did that made them successful and try to learn something from them, instead of reading the metro every morning (like about 80% of londoners do) and feeling tired and scared and full of nothing after reading the metro. I thought about the guy next to me and the thought of being really hang over (probably feeling dizzy still), listening to loud music while I play solitaire and it made me cringe. That choice he made… I made a different one…. but I am happy, actually ecstatic to have made my own choices…

Every day we make choices and life is about choices… the universe has been teaching me  that normally the not-so-easy choices and the least popular choices are the ones that get you farther, teach you the most and make you a better person. Checho will get far because his choice is not the easy one… it is going to give him a lot of challenges, but is setting him very ambitious goals. The choice that the guy in the train made to get drunk and to play solitaire in his phone I am not entirely sure where that is going to lead him. The choice I made by reading from successful people and not feeding my mind with crap… is very likely going to take me to a different place as well. Only time will tell.

Ooh… so up my alley.  Totally makes me want to go to Korea.  The new musical, Jack the Ripper, is a story about Andrew (played by Ahn Jae Wook, Eom Ki Joon, Kim Moo Yeol, and Shin Suk Rok) and his search to save his true love, Gloria.  Jack, the Ripper tries to murder Gloria but Andrew saves her by seemingly killing Jack.  The musical traverses multiple decades, with Andrew leaving and returning to London, all the while trying to protect Gloria.

Just to clarify, Andrew isn’t played by all 4 men at once.  They take turns with Ahn Jae Wook taking most of the dates during the first phase.  If I was in Korea, I would definitely go watch when Eom Ki Joon is scheduled to perform.  He doesn’t have too many dates, since he’s simultaneously filming the drama, Hero.

This reminds me of Sweeney Todd, which I absolutely adore.  I even loved the movie version with Johnny Depp.  I can still hear the songs in my head:  “I feel you… Johanna…”  More posters of Jack the Ripper below, as well as the quartet version of the song “Johanna” which was sadly not included in the movie.

And here’s the 1982 cast of Sweeney Todd with the Johanna quartet starting at 2:50.  It’s pretty amazing what you can find on youtube!

Via Joynews

And heaven knows I’ve read enough books to make me wonder what exactly the Discovery Channel was playing at with “Jack the Ripper in America”. I was kind of looking forward to this “documentary” (what does one properly call the pseudo-scientific presentations on the Discovery and History Channels?), because I know a little about the Jack the Ripper murders. As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but here we go anyhow. I know enough to be aware that there were five murders associated with the same person, and then – they stopped; and I know enough to know that it’s extremely odd for the killings to have simply stopped. There have been attempts to link the end of the London murders to similar killings elsewhere after that time period … well, actually, from what I’ve seen just about every stabbing/slashing death that occurred in any city in the world after 1888 seems to have caused a flurry of “OMG! The Ripper’s here!” headlines. Still, it’s a reasonable explanation for the cessation of killing: he moved on.

So, as I said, I was interested in the show when I saw the commercials. However. The only thing I can think having seen it is “hooey”. As in, what a load of. I’m sure that the cop they featured in this (whose name, I imagine he’d be glad to know, I didn’t note and now can’t track down) is perfectly brilliant in his own venue; they said he founded the NYC Cold Case division, and mentioned a ridiculous number of cold cases being solved in a ridiculously short period of time. And as he considers the solution of the Jack the Ripper murders to be “the Holy Grail” of cold cases he decided to look into it. And I don’t know, maybe every particle of evidence he turned up did support the suspect he “liked” so much and they simply didn’t have time to show enough in a 43-minute presentation to answer my questions. But they did a terrible job of showing what they did show. Again, I don’t know so very much, but I feel like I do know enough to cry foul.

OK, so the Ripper killings. Five murders are attributed to the same person, apparently (though there were about eleven in the relevant time period that could be counted, depending on who you ask), all prostitutes, all with throats cut, and with increasing levels of postmortem mutilation to the body, specifically to the abdomen and reproductive organs (which latter they never mentioned in this show – which, given that it was already rated for mature audiences, I thought peculiar), and then in the last victim the face. Most of what I know I learned from folks like Caleb Carr, but one thing that seems logical (insofar as sociopathic behavior can be logical) is that once a killer has progressed to increased levels of violence, they don’t go back: it only gets worse.

Which is rather counter to what this show posits: Jack the Ripper got scared and fled to NYC, where two and a half years later he kills and then mutilates the body of 56-year-old prostitute Carrie Brown. Okay, I see it: mutilation – except Carrie Brown was strangled. Now, the reason I find this so funny is that the cop who starred in this production stated that a serial killer’s MO is like his fingerprint: it identifies him. And then he goes on to take as a given that Carrie Brown was killed by Jack the Ripper. From what I’ve read, strangulation takes a completely different mindset from throat-cutting. And as to that mutilation… As I said, the postmortem violence in London was escalating: the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was so horribly cut apart they couldn’t show the crime scene photo. The killer had plenty of private time to spend on her, and … did: her face, her breasts, her thighs – all attacked in addition to her abdomen and organs. There was mutilation of Carrie Brown’s body, but only to her viscera, iirc: from that crime scene picture her face was certainly untouched, as were her breasts and thighs. Why would the killer regress to a lesser degree of defacement?

I missed about a minute of the show, in which I believe the cop sweepingly dismissed a huge number of the suspects usually discussed. Celebrity-type suspects I’ve heard of were Oscar Wilde (oh please), Lewis Carroll (there was a little basis for this one, but it’s still an oh-please), a grandson (I think) of Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill’s father (suffering from the mental deterioration associated with syphilis); I don’t know if they touched on Patricia Cornwell’s pet suspect, the artist Walter Sickert … All of these, evidently, and a good many others he called “absurd”. (Pot, meet kettle.) In fact, he jettisoned all but three suspects, and those three he looked into because they were known to have come to America, and therefore could have killed Carrie Brown. The hooey is starting to pile up … So, based on what I see as a flawed hypothesis to start with, the cop compounds his error by focusing on James Kelly as his favorite suspect. Why? Because the other two didn’t fit the profile or the evidence, or both, whereas Kelly killed his new young bride in a fit of rage and jealousy by stabbing her in the neck (with a pocket knife, is what I find), was sent to Broadmoor prison/insane asylum, and escaped in time to be in London to commit the Ripper murders. Oh, and then 40 years later he shows up back at the gates of Broadmoor, and gives a lengthy confession in which he says he came to the United States and traveled hither and yon about the continent before going back.

‘Kay. So. The theory is that you have a man who killed his wife, was declared insane, escaped from Broadmoor, went to London, killed five (or so) prostitutes, then fled to New York and killed another (or two) – and then, based on his confession when he returned, traveled the country committing a murder here and a murder there: California, Texas, etc. The timing is quite nice; the cop determines that the ship Kelly claimed to leave Europe on would have gotten him to NYC in time to kill Carrie Brown, and then he located “OMG! JtR!” newspaper articles in all of the cities that Kelly said he visited. Right.

I don’t buy it. I think the timing’s about all he’s got.

Yes, Kelly killed his wife, and used a blade. Thing is, the cop makes a major point of the fact that the knife used by the Ripper was about six inches long with a pointed tip. A minute’s worth of research showed me that Kelly stabbed his wife with a pocket knife. Stabbed, not slashed. No mutilation. And the reason he ended up in Broadmoor rather than being hanged – as they quoted from testimony on the show last night – is that he went a bit catatonic … Probably belated disclaimer: psychological terms are used in the popular sense, not in any attempt at diagnosis. By “catatonic” I mean he went into what sounded like a deep depression, shutting down and refusing to respond to … much of anything. The tiny bit of information given made it sound like he was a jealous, miserable man who thought his wife was being unfaithful, killed her with something he happened to have in his pocket, and then felt remorse either at having done it or at having ruined his own life. How do they explain a man going from what seems to me to have been a domestic crime of passion (combined with opportunity: he had the pocketknife on him) to the stalking and butchery of several women he (probably) didn’t know? No matter which way you look at it there doesn’t seem to be anything to tie it together: Mrs. Kelly: stabbed, end of sentence; the prostitutes: throats cut and (most) bodies mutilated; Carrie Brown: strangled and body mutilated. The similarities are too few to make up for the huge differences in MO.

About that six-inch long knife… The cop goes into raptures because he discovers that Kelly was an upholsterer (though they originally referred to him as a carpenter), and goes off to talk to one who shows him – and lets him use – a knife used in that craft that did match the type of weapon that made the wounds in the Ripper’s victims. Check. But he didn’t use it on his wife. Immaterial? We’ll go with that, sure. Thing is, one reason Patricia Cornwell so strongly favored Sickert was because as an artist he had a solid grounding in anatomy. Some of the damages inflicted on the bodies – removal of the womb in one case, of the kidney in another – required someone to know the difference between, say, the kidney and the liver (since it was identified correctly in a letter to the papers). There was enough certainty in the butchery that from what I’ve read the killer needed some knowledge of anatomy; James Kelly, upholsterer, had the knife, but did he have that?

And as for all of the “OMG!!” headlines… Seriously? First of all, there seemed to be no proof that Kelly was in all those cities in that order and with that specific timing. Secondly … since the autumn of 1888 any report of the murder of any woman involving any kind of blade will probably have “Ripper” somewhere in the article. If there’s more than one killing, or if the woman killed was a prostitute, or it’s a slow news day, the headline will very likely scream “Ripper!” And that’s today. Look at the newspaper headlines for any city in the world at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th (and probably up to today), and it was probably a pandemic. People were terrified. They didn’t know that Mary Jane Kelly was the last victim; they didn’t know whether the killings would start up again, or where, and maybe he wouldn’t limit himself to prostitutes this time … Whether there were a great many copycats out there, or there were always that many murders of this style that simply didn’t get attention (one word: prostitute), or whether it really was one man scampering madly about the globe with a dripping knife – dunno. My guess would (kind of obviously) be a combination of 1 and 2. Some of the newspaper articles the cop was taking as evidence that James Kelly’s confessed travels in America matched a trail of blood each appeared on screen for a few seconds, and from what I was able to read while they were up there was a wide variety of victim and MO… The killings were in no way that I could see in those glimpses identical to – or even a whole lot like – the killings in London, 1888.

Oh – one more thing where they failed miserably in this program: At one point they specifically say that there were no eyewitnesses to the murders (and they marvel at it… The moment in which the cop demonstrates the wonders of The Shadow was quite humerous). Twenty-odd minutes later they produce a sketch based on eyewitness descriptions which they miraculously match to an age-regressed photo of James Kelly. Huh? (There was also the fact, never mentioned here, that the lack of blood at the sites where most of the “canon” Ripper victims were found indicated that the killings were done elsewhere. There was a lot that wasn’t mentioned here. Exhaustive it was not.)

I guess my main question goes back to the beginning of this post: what were they playing at? Who was this supposed to be aimed at? I would think most anyone who would tune into this would have a basic working knowledge of the case(s). But this was such a superficial attempt at exposition and (*snicker*) solution that, to be honest, it casts doubt on every other show I’ve ever seen on Discovery, even the ones that seemed legitimate. I knew already that much of what they air is fluff… I just didn’t think it was quite that fluffy.

‘The Ninth of November 1888′ by William Logsdail, which depicts the Lord Mayor’s procession through the streets of London. Despite the glitz and splendour of the procession’s regalia, there is something very gloomy and menacing about this painting with the dark, wet streets, the sombre clothes of the crowd and the foreboding skies above.

It’s almost as though the artist wanted to evoke the fact that only a few miles away, in a squalid, dank hovel in Whitechapel, the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the most famous and final canonical victim of Jack the Ripper had just been discovered in a state of revolting, pitiful mutilation on her bed. While looking at the painting, you can almost sense the panicked, shocked whisper running through the ragged crowd – ‘There’s been another one in Spitalfields. A young Irish girl. She was left in pieces this time…’ while all the while the drums beat out a solemn, funereal rhythm as the Lord Mayor’s procession passes slowly by.

If you’ve never heard of the seminal American rock guitarist Link Wray, his Wiki page is here.

By way of remembering Wray, who died four years ago yesterday, I thought I’d share with you the below, which is a review I wrote of a show of his that I saw maybe ten years ago, at a club called The Casbah in San Diego. The video above could have been taken that night: that’s exactly how he looked. (Thanks for the link, Laura!)

Link Wray is arguably the first—and unarguably one of the finest—American rock guitarists. On his four-million selling 1958 single “Rumble” (the only purely instrumental tune ever to be banned from radio: it instigated rumbles, don’t you know) Link introduced the Rock God guitar sound that later inspired Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix—to name just six who have named Wray a primary influence on their own work.

It’s legitimate to wonder what American rock would sound like today if it weren’t for the galvanizing guitar genius of Link Wray.

Today Mr. Wray is a thin, pale, 70-year-old with one lung (he lost the other decades ago to tuberculosis contracted during his service in the Korean war). You’d think that would slow him up a little. Think again. With his flowing black ponytail, sleeveless black T-shirt, bluejeans and ever-donned Ray-Bans, Link is still every bit the sort of feral, menacing punk your mother begs you not to hang out with. From the opening chord of “Rumble”—routinely referred to as the most important D chord in history—through his shingle-shaking encore some ninety minutes later, Ray prowled around the Casbah stage like a caged puma, executing the kind of blindingly fast fretboard work and maelstroms of precise phrasing that for the past forty-five or so years have proven so crucial in the development of everything from rockabilly to punk.

If this is old, bring on the Geritol.

Backed by a ferociously talented young bass player, and perhaps the only drummer in rock ‘n roll capable of simultaneously driving a beat and playing a trumpet, Link pretty much stuck to the sound for which he is most revered: the dirty, hickory-flavored, reverberating guitar tones that made “Rumble” such a hormone-generating menace to society.

Serving up steaming slabs of such trademark tunes as “Jack the Ripper,” “Ace of Spades,” “Raw-Hide,” and “Branded,” Ray played merciless hailstorms of fiery notes, seamlessly interspersed with the chord chunks laid down just behind the beat for which he is renowned. Challenging his delighted bass player to keep up with him, letting audience members in the front row strum his guitar while he coolly worked the frets, and constantly imploring the sound man to “Turn up the guitar, man! Turn it up!” Link Wray gave the mostly under-30 crowd something new to forever associate with the term “Rock of Ages.”

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Why would someone have the most evil thoughts alive, without actu

ally having the urge to carry them out?

Total evil akin to the devil himself!

Hurting others – Murder, Rape, Abuse (Child or oth

er), basically things that would lock you up for the rest of your life.

Why would these come to someone’s mind without actually having those mentioned above or other thoughts actually done to themselves.

Do these thoughts mean you’re evil like Jack The Ripper?

Or is there something else to them!

What accounts for this kind of sub zero negative thinking?

Alexander McQueen.  Fall 2009 Menswear show.

(Shirlock Holmes, meets Jack The Ripper, meets Mayfair Gentleman..)

      It is the year of Our Lord 1888, in the Country of England the Capital of London and the district known as White Chapel. This area is known for its atmosphere of destitute, poor, overcrowded, and death. Families live with the livestock, children are born and die shortly after birth, husbands and wives leave each other. Women turn to alcohol and prostitution for relief and earnings. In this environment, a series of murders occurred that have never been solved. Although, there has been much speculation as to whom the famous “Ripper” was and why he did these things.

     This is where the fun starts. In order to know who he was and why he did the things he did, one has to know the nature of the crimes he committed and on whom he committed them. He has been attributed to committing at least five of the murders that were committed in the area of White Chapel. Though there is speculation that he could have committed others. The crimes started abruptly on Friday August 31, 1888 and ended just as abruptly on Friday November 9,1888. (Jack the Ripper Casebook). There were five women murdered in Whitechapel within a mile of each other and while each woman was different, they all shared similarities. Each was known as prostitutes, alcoholics, divorced, very poor, and some if not all had some sort of illness from syphilis to Brights Disease and TB. All of the victims were between 5’and 5’7” tall. (www.casebook.org) This is where it gets really strange. Four of the victims were dark headed and in their forties. The last victim was 25 years old and blond. All of the victims had their throats slashed, and with each new murder the violence was enhanced. Two of the victims had their faces slashed beyond recognition, causing speculation that these women may have tried to fight him, knew him or both. The mutilation of the face was a statement to the fact that he was in charge and they infuriated him. It was a fit of extreme rage on his part.

        Many theories have been written about the Ripper and who he was. But few have been written, if any about why he did what he did. This could be because he was never caught and there were no known facts about him. That being said, I will try to put to paper my opinion about this elusive criminal. Based on the physical evidence, that being, the women, who they were, where they lived and what they did for a living, one could assume that he felt that they were a drain on society and were not fit to live. Based on the brutality of the murders and the fact that he strangled them before he mutilated them showed that he did not want them to cry out and thereby bring attention to himself, even though he committed all but one of these crimes in a public place. He wanted the thrill of possible detection without the verbal possibility of detection. He did not have relations with these women even though he had approached them for sexual intentions.

      My theory is that he possibly could not perform sexually. The Ripper was in all probability a psychopath .He appeared to have no fear of detection. He was able to charm these women and lure them into a false sense of security resulting in their death in a very public place. With each murder he became more ruthless; it was as if he could not get satisfaction without more and more mutilation. This was more than likely his release of sexual frustration. It was as if he needed not only the thrill of possible detection, but to completely humiliate these women by the mutilations. He committed these crimes within a four month period suggesting that he could not get enough satisfaction from the first one. He had to continue making each one more horrid. He appeared to know what type of female he was looking for and it is my belief that he stalked them, watching them before he committed the crimes.

      The last one was probably not one he had planned. She may have been an impulse, especially if he noticed that she was pregnant. She did not fit the profile that he had set. The Ripper was more than likely a very attractive man, who was well educated and probably had knowledge of a surgeon or mortician. The way he arranged the body parts of the last victim suggested that he wanted to achieve satisfaction; but in his demented way he was leaving a calling card of laughter. This murder and mutilation had to take at least two hours to complete. From the appearance of the hands, he may not have strangled her before he started carving. He appeared to have taken his time and enjoyed the sense of power and control because he did not have to fear detection. (johnno.casebook.org/ripper.html).

         There were no more killings after the murder of Mary Kelly. It appears as if she was his swan song. He had accomplished that which his twisted mind had germinated. He had not only fulfilled his sexual fantasy and rid the world of one more unnecessary female, he had also taken the very life she carried and spared it the pain of living in the same squalid conditions that she was living in.

       Probably, in The Ripper’s mind, he had paid his dues for his crimes. Was he abused as a child? Was his mother a prostitute? Was he a witness to the things that his mother did? These questions are pure speculation and continue to haunt those that study this unsolved crime. However, based on the evidence of the crime scenes and the bodies of the women, one could probably safely assume that this man had no conscience. He killed and mutilated to satisfy the evil from within. He cared not for anything or any one. He enjoyed the thrill of possible detection, yet he took great care not to get bloodied by his deeds.

      All of the victims were already lying down with their head turned to the left side. (www.casebook.org) Whitechapel Murders Mary Ann Nicholls age 43 Annie Chapman age 47 Murdered August 31,1888 Murdered September 27,1888 Place of Murder Place of Murder Bucks Row No 29 Hanbury Street DOB 8/26/1845 DOB 9/1841 Height 5′2′ Height 5′ Hair Brown Hair Brown clothing Clothing Back Straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet Reddish brown ulster with seven large brass buttons bearing the pattern of a woman on horse back accompanied by a man Brown linsey frock apparently new according to Sugden White flannel chest cloth Black ribbed wool stockings Two petticoats, one grey wool, one flannel. Both stenciled on bands “Lambeth Workhouse” Brown Stays (short), Flannel Drawers Men’s elastic (spring) sided boots with the upper cut and steel tips on the heels (merlyn555.bravepages.com/jack/polly.htm) long black figured coat that came down to her knees, black skirt, brown bodice, another bodice, 2 pettiecoats, a large pocket worn under the skirt and tied about the waist with string, lace up boots, red and white striped woolen stockings, neckerchief white with a wide red border (merlyn555.bravepages.com) Prostitute Prostitute Alocholic Alocholic TB Time of Death approx 3:30 AM Time of Death approx 5:30 AM Injuries Injuries Lying lengthways along street, her left hand touching the gate. Blood was oozing from a wound in the throat. She was lying on her back with her clothes disarragned. Her arm was quite warm from the joints upwards, her eyes were wide open. Five of front teeth are missing, slight laceration of the tongue. On right side of face there is a bruise running along the lower part of the jaw. It might have been caused by a blow with fist or pressure of the thumb. On the left side of the face there was a circular bruise. which also might have been done by the pressure of the fingers. On the left side of the neck about an inch below the jaw, there was an incision about four inches long and running from a point immediately below the ear. An inch below on the same side and commencing about an inch in front of it was a circular incision terminatin at a point about three inches below the right jaw.

       This incisions completely severs all the tissues down to the vertabrae. The large vessels of the neck on both sides were severed. The incision is about eight inches long. There were no injuries about the body till just about the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a wound running in a jagged manner. It was a very deep wound and the tissues were cut through. There were several incisions running across the abdmon On the right side there were also three or four similar cuts running downwards. (merlyn555.bravepages.com/jack/polly.htm) lying on her back on the ground. her head was towards the back of the wall of the house, nearl two feet from the wall, at the bottom of the steps, but six or nine inches away from them.

      The face was turned to the right side and the left arm was resting on the left brest. the right hand was lying down the right side.Deceased’s legs were drawn up and the clothing was above the knees. A portion of intestines still connected with the body,were lying above the right shoulder, with some pieces of skin. There were also some pieces of skin on the left shoulder. The body was lying parallel with the fencing dividing the two yards.The face was swollen and turned on the right side and the tongue protruded between the front teeth,but not beyond the lips, it was much swollen. There was a large quantity of blood, with a part of the stomach above the left shoulder. The body was cold,except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body. Stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing.

       The throat was dissevered deeply. The incision of the skin was jagged and reached right around the neck. There was a bruise over the right temple.There was a burise under the clavicle and there were two distinct bruises each the size of man’s thumg on the fore part of the chest. The throat had beenn severed. The incisions of the skin indicated that they had been made from the left side of the neck on a line with the angle of the jaw, carried entirely round and again in front of the neck and ending at a point about midway between the jaw and the sternum or breast bone There were two distinct clean cuts on the body of the vertebrae on the left side of the spin. They were parallel to each other and separated by about half an inch. The muscular structures between the side processes of bone of the vertebrae had an appearance as if an attempt had been made to separate the bones of the neck. (merlyn555.bravepages.com)

         In the case of Annie Chapman the abdomen had been entirely laid open , the intestines were severed from their mesenteric attachments, and had been lifted out of the body and placed on the shoulder of the corpse. While from the pelvis the uterus and it appendages with the upper portion of the vagina and the posterior two thirds of the bladder had been entirely removed. None of these parts were ever found. These incisions were cleanly cut avoiding the rectum and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid injury to the cervix uteri. ( www. pathguy.com)

       Elizabeth Stride 45 Catherine Eddowes age 46 Murdered September 30,1888 Murdered September 30,1888 Place of Murder Place of Murder 40 Berner St Mitre Square DOB November 27,1843 DOB April 14,1842 Height 5′ 9′ Height 5′ Hair Brown Hair Brown Clothing Clothing Long black cloth jacket, fur timmed around the bottom with a red rose and white maiden hair fern pinned to it. (she was not wearing the flowers when she left the lodging house.) Black skirt, blakc crepe bonnet, checked neck scarf knotted on left side,dark brown velveteen bodice, 2 light serge petticoats, 1 white chemise, white stockings, spring sided boots (merlyn555.bravepages.com) Black straw bonnet trimmed in green and black velvet with black beads, Black strings, worn tied to the head, Black cloth jacket trimmed around the collar and cuffs with imitation fur and around the pockets in black silk braid and fur, large metal buttons, dark green chintz, skirt, 3 flounces, brown button on waist band.

       The skirt is patterned with Michaelmas daisies and golden lillies, Man’s white vest, matching buttons down front, Brown linsey bodice, black velvet collar with brown buttons down front, Gray stuffed petticoat with white waistband Very old green alpaca skirt(worn as an under garment) very old ragged blue skirt with red flounces, light twill lining (worn as undergarment) White calico chemise, nor drawers or stays, Pair of men’s lace up boots, mohair laces, right boot repairedwith red thread,(merlyn555.bravepages.com)

        Prostitute, Alocholic, Alocholic Brights Disease Time of Death Approx 1:00AM Time of Death approx 1:40AM Injuries Injuries throat cut, lying on left side with her left hand on the ground. the right arm was across the breast. Her face was not more than five or six inches away from the club wall.The legs were drawn up feet close to the wall,body still warm,face warm, hands cold, legs quite warm,silk handkerchief around throat slightly torn. corresponded to the right angle of the jaw, the throat was deeply gashed and there was an abrasion of the skin about an inch and a quarter in diameter, under the right clavicle.Over both shoulders especially the right arm, from the front aspect under colar bonesand in front of chest there is a blusih discolouration. on neck fron left to right there is a clean cut incision six inches in length, incision commencing two and a half inches in a straight line belwo the angle of the jaw. Three-quarters of an inch over undivided muscle, then becoming deeper about an inch dividing the sheath and the vessels, ascending a little and then grazing the muscle outside the cartilages on the left side of the neck.

      The carotid artery on the left side and the other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through, save the posteriorportion of the carotid, to a line about 1-1/2 inch in extent, which prevented the separation of the upper and lower portion of the artery. the cut through the tissues on the right side of the cartilages is more superficial and tails off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. It is evident that hte hemmorrage which produced death was cause through the partial severance of the left carotid artery.(merlyn555.bravepages.com)

       Body its back, head turned to left shoulder, arms by side, palms upwards, fingers sligthly bent, left leg extenteed ,in a line with body. Abdomen exposed. Right leg bent at the thigh and knee. Throat cut across. Intestines were drawn out to a large extent and place over the right shoulder – were smeared over with some feculent matter. Piece of about two feet were guite detached from the body and placed between the body and left arm. The lobe and aruricle of the right ear were cut obliquely through. Face much mutliated. cut about 1/4 of an inch thrrough the lower left eyelid, dividing the structure completery through upper eyelid on that side.

      Scratch through the skin on the left upper eyelid near to the angle of the nose.Right eyelid ws cut through to about 1/2 ” Deep cut over bridge of nose,extending from left border of nasal bone down to near angle fo jaw on right side of cheek. Cut went into the bone and divided all structures of the cheek except mucous membrane of the mouth. Tip of noes was quite detached from an oblique cut from bottom of nasal bone to point wings of nose join the face. Cut from this divided upper lip and extended throught substrance of gum over right upper lateral incisor tooth. 1/2″ from top of nose was another oblique cut.

         Cut on right angle of mouth as if cut of a point of knife. Cut extended 1-1/2″ parallel with lower lip. on each side of cheek a cut which peeled up skin forming triangular flap about 1-1/2″ on left check two abrasions of epithelium under left ear. Throat cut across to extent of about 6-7 “. Superficial cut commenced about 1-1/2″ below lobe below and 2-1/2″ behind left ear and extened across throat. about 3″ below lobe of right ear. Big muscle of throat was divided on left side. large vessels on left side of neck was severed. larynx was severed below vocal chord. all deep structures were severed to bone, knife marking intervertebral cartilages. sheeth of vessel on right side was just opened. cartoid artery had fine hole opeing , internal jugular vein opened 1-1/2″

        Mary Kelly age 25 Murdered November 9,1888 Place of Murder Millers Square DOB 1865 Height 5′7″ Hair Blond Clothing This victim was found in her bed naked. She was the only victim found this way in in a house the others were all killed and left outside. Prostitute Alcoholic Three months pregnant Time of Death between 1-2AM injuries Body was lying naked in middle of bed with the shoulders flat but the axis of body inclined to left side of bed. Head was turned on left cheek. Left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at right angle and lying across abdomen. Right arm was slightly abducted from body and rested on mattress.

      Elbow was bent forearm supine with fingers clenched. Legs were wide apart, left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes. Whole surface of abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity empted of its viscera. Breasts were cut off, arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of features. Viscera were found in various parts viz: uterus, and kidney with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body.

       The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table. Face was gashed in all directions, nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. Lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all features. Neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the 5th,6th being deeply notched. Skin cuts in front of neck showed distinct ecchymosis.

      Air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through cricoid cartilage. Both breasts were more or less removed by circular incisions, the muscle down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the 4th,5th and 6th ribs were cut through and contents of thorax visible through openings. Skin and tissues of abdomen from costal arch to pubes were removed in three large flaps. Right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin including the external organs of generation, and part of right buttock. Left thigh was stripped of skin fascia, and muscle as far as knee. Left calf showed long gash through skin and tissue to the deep muscles and reaching from knee to five inches above ankle.

       Both arms and forearms had extensive jagged wounds. Right thumb show a small superficial incision about one inch long with extravastion of blood in the skin and there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing same condition. On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. Lower part of lung was broken and torn away. Left lung was intact. It was adherent at the apex and there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung there were several nodules of consolidation. Pericardium was open below and heart absent. (merlyn555.bravepages.com)

This article written by Yvonne Mason and no part of it may be reprinted, redistributed without express permission of the author

Even as a local, London has so much to discover that it is often worth it to check out some of top tours that London has to offer. These are MyMetropole’s Top 5 recommendations. Some of them I have been on, some I want to go on and one I think I will need to seriously start training for before I begin!

Number 5: The Original Jack the Ripper Tours

I just recently did this tour, and I noticed three things:

a. Once you set off on the Original Jack the Ripper tours, it becomes clear  that Mr. Ripper was not a modern days mass murderer, only on record for killing 5 ladies back in 1888, though his killing style was gruesome.

b. There are a LOT of Jack the Ripper tours – the Original tours meet outside Aldgate East, the copycats meet at Aldgate station, and you will pass hundreds of shuffling feet all taking part in the tours between 7-9pm any given night of the week.

c. The tours are a fabulous way to learn about East London! You walk from Aldgate East, through Whitechapel, Petticoat Lane Market, you learn the history of Spitalfields, you walk through the City and a bit on Shoreditch. I would highly recommend the walk!

Number 4:  Flirting Tours of London

It’s a jungle out there in the London flirting scene, say Allure Seminars, who offer survival tours on Thursday and Friday nights. Survival? For the London dating scene, of course. See the sights of London while learning from a cultural anthropologist who teaches you to catch the eye of potential partners. (This is where I am so happy that I have a partner and don’t need to do all of this!!)

“The Flirting & Walking Tour of London” takes you on a 90 minute tour of ‘unrecognised’ flirting highlights of Central London’s art galleries, bookstores and supermarkets, with practical tuition and theoretical guidance from Cultural Anthropologist and Flirting Expert, Jean Smith.

Number 3: Urban Running Tours

I have not yet done this tour (hm, I wonder why?!) but for those who would like to pack in a real workout while checking out the sights of London, the Urban Running Tours are a great way to pack in more bang for your buck as you sprint through the streets of London. The website ensures a comfortable pace, but in this case comfortable is most certainly relative!

Number 2: Street Art Tours

Fellow Chicago native RJ Rushmore runs occassional street art tours of the East End’s graffiti scene. These 90-minute tours run between Old Street and Liverpool Street, stopping at the latest works of street art on walls and in galleries.

Number 1:  Insider London Tours

Uncover a place in London where cars drive on the right, a futuristic ‘floating’ staircase that weighs 5 tonnes, a chance to sample London’s glamorous egg toilets, a shimmering cave made from real gold and more quirky London spots with Insider London Tours. By far the coolest tours in London, these tour guides tailor the tours to you, running Modern Architecture, Street Art, Ethical Shopping, Amazing Places and foodie tours. They’ll bespoke tours for you as well!

Enjoy and let me know how any of the tours went if you heard it from me first!!!

I as a giant banana for Halloween.  This gorilla showed up!

Here are some of the other pics from the Halloween party!
CLUE!

Banana and David Bowie.

Lady Gaga… twice….

Billy Mays and Conan O’Brien
 
Tupac and Little Red Riding Hood
(that ink is some of my work.)

Dharma Initiative

Robin, Banana, Bowie, and Dharma

Ketchup


Jack The Ripper and Prostitute…

Dr. Horrible

Bill Clinton and Monica
 

I just put a few… you would have to check out facebook to see the rest.

dear granny,
today is sunday.
and I haven’t updated in about two weeks.
that’s kind of sad, isn’t it.
Today I did all kinds of things.
I left for breakfast and there was Christmas music blaring from a window into the general area surrounding my dorm. I sort of snickered in disbelief. Then, several guys started to belt the chorus of Sleigh Ride along with the music and they proceeded to skip/run past me :] it was very entertaining and distracted me from how silly it is to play Christmas music this early.
Then I ate breakfast/lunch, which was pretty good.
Then I went to the Jack the Ripper ballet, which was okay, but I didn’t understand much more than the historical background they gave in the program. which, incidentally, was not much.
I did a little bit of homework, but I’ve still got a ton to go.
I went to church and it reminded me just how much I love the chapel here :]

In boy news, my friends are having a crappy time of it, but I’m getting butterflies from someone who isn’t even here because he talks to me on facebook chat. lame, right?
oh well, it is what it is and I’ll deal with it as I go.

Now to do humanities and communications homework. Which isn’t going to be very fun.

love,
<3 marah

Holy mother of Moses, there were a lot of good comments in October.

The October 2009 Comment of the Month is a tie between last month’s winner, Doug1, who argues against date rape:

The whole effort to make intoxication sex rape at the girls option after the fact is an abomination and must be thoroughly and vehemently rejected by men.

The large majority of causal sex, particularly first time casual sex between a pair, involves some degree of drinking on both parties part. That’s our social custom among most groups in this country and has been for a very long time. If a girl’s judgment is loosened up when she drinks in ways she may regret later, then it’s her responsibility to not drink so much, or not drink at all, or not do so and then flirt re: having having sex with a new partner. If all other areas drinking does not absolve the drinking person of responsibility for their actions when they’ve been drinking. It should even less so in this one.

The whole date rape campaign of campus and radical feminists is at BEST a concerted campaign to make all but the most gentlemanly conduct on the part of men that involves sexual contact (even though not rejected), a VERY VERY SERIOUS CRIME. I.e. rape. That’s ridiculous.

At the same time a great many women, way over half and probably lots many more than that have rape fantasies. Now they don’t have fantasies about some unattractive schmuck raping them, it’s true. It’s also not true, despite what feminists say, that women never actually want to act out any of those fantasies. Plenty of women do. I know this first hand. plenty have wanted to with me.

In the case of date rape, the man is by definition almost, or certainly a guy can and should be forgiven for assuming so until there’s good evidence to the contrary that the girl did find at least tentatively attractive. She went on some kind of date, or engaged in flirting behavior, with him. No that doesn’t entitle him to then pull a knife and despite her screams rape her. Of course not. But these circumstances do mean that if a woman starts down the road towards indicating an interest in having sex with her date, the BURDEN SHIFTS TO HER TO MAKE IT VERY CLEAR THAT SHE DOESN’T WANT FULL ON SEX if she doesn’t..

It’s not even as clear as a mere no. Because against despite feminist lying, and lesbian feminist lying is what it usually is, women DO often mean yes when they say no, or really more maybe when they say no, maybe, if you can make me feel it enough that my hindbrain passion overcomes my forebrain restraint and go slower, cause that kind of overwhelming is like just one of the hottest sexual feelings a girl can have, and is in fact at the core of a lot of rape fantasies or “was that rape” fantasies. Which later are EVEN MORE COMMON. Ask e.g. Bhetti, romance novel glutton.

Of course there are ways of saying no that do mean no, and I for one can nearly always tell the difference. But can a jury when the woman lies about it afterwards, when her forebrain ego and superego, are coldly evaluating the loss to reputation of putting out so easily with someone less than the number one stud on campus (and sometimes even if to him, esp. if he didn’t call the next day or week).

Actually feminist date rape extremism and climate of hysteria is moving me back to thinking that a women should have to do a lot more than say no to make it rape. She should have to actually physcially struggle and show clear evidence that she has. If that means risking some degree of injury, tough. Rape is a VERY serious charge and brings serious jail time and total loss of male reputation in all decent circles. THe incidence of false date rape accusations is just too high.

IN THIS ATMOSPHERE OF DATE RAPE HYSTERIA that campus and radical feminists have created WOMEN DO LIE ABOUT RAPE, especially acquaitance rape ALL THE TIME NOW. Maybe they didn’t used to. But times have changed. They sure do now.

…and Leopold II, King of the Belgians, who opines on the insidious evil of SWPLness:

Obsidian has the half of it.

I do enjoy the classlessness (in both senses of the word) of North America. There’s something romantic about a country where the wealthiest financiers and the poorest laborers sat next to each other in the bleachers at the games and fought shoulder to shoulder in the trenches.

This is the one of the few places on earth where a kid from nowhere can make great wealth, and perhaps the only place where making your wealth from nothing is more respected than inheriting it.

This is not merely a great story, it is my father’s story – the story of a man who came from a dirt poor country, came here with nothing. He had little “culture” of the high-brow sort, and never cared much for it. He loved the prole legends of the old country, and he loved Coca-Cola.

it is not perfect, not by half. But half of it works, and that’s more than anywhere else in this world.

—

But what is the other half? The other half are those who try to destroy it.

SWPLs who want “class” and “substance” are merely those who wish to be our aristocracy attempting to insert social barriers between the rich and the poor. Those are most SWPL are the ones with the greatest status anxiety – neither plutocrats nor working men are SWPL.

It is those who transplant to cities, those with wealthy parents but little skill, and urban white women desperate to reassure themselves of high social position, who most fear slipping in status. They fear men like my father, blue-collar men with funny accents, will overtake them. Thus, they throw up barriers, they use their obscure indie bands and their useless diplomas to give them a reason to feel superior.

For in a world where some kid writing software in garage, some high school dropout driving a front-loader in Fort Mac, some Indian immigrant who borrows money from his family to buy a gas station, all can gain entry to the middle class, how do those born into privilege set themselves apart? SWPLism, the ersatz Europhilia, the smugness about foreign travel, the obsession with obscure bands, all this is an attempt to set hard class boundaries. Thus, they create these SWPL shibboleths to set themselves apart.

Make no mistake, this is a dagger aimed at the heart of the American Dream and the middle class.

It is attempt to create a hereditary aristocracy.

Sheer awesomeness. Great work.

Runners-up include Hermes on female solipsism:

Remember that season of The Bachelor a few years back, where the bachelor was a doctor, and one of the female contestants, who was a doctor as well, lamented “my eggs are rotting!” She also kept talking about the fact that she was a doctor, as though she thought it was unfair that he wasn’t impressed by that. (That was one of my first glimpses of sex-realism: I remember some blogger writing, “news flash ladies–we don’t care about your resumes!”)

Another important example of this is how women judge other women’s attractiveness by the same standards by which they judge men’s (personality, style, etc.) Thursday wrote a good comment explaining this. I’ve seen this so many times in my own social circles, where girls will get all jealous around the girl who dresses and does her hair really stylishly and wears lots of makeup, but whose raw materials are only so-so, and then be utterly flummoxed when men display interest in the jeans-sneakers-and-ponytail girl-next-door who just has a prettier face and better body.

…Marquis on women and game:

i’m always amazed at women with knowledge of “game” theory, who admit it works, but then in the same breath will talk about what women “say they want”…if women wanted what they SAY they wanted, more beta males would get laid, there’d be less divorces, less alimony/child support payments…and chicks would be happy. to quote Chris Rock: “I never met a happy woman in my life.”

…Obsidian on asshole game:

While I definitely have my problems with Tucker Max, and will delve into that issue a great deal more in the coming weeks (Obsidian: The Blog, launching Oct 31 2009), I have to openly and freely admit that Asshole Game WORKS.

Yes, that’s right. It works. Emphatically. And one need not be a PUA or a Dating Advice columinist of whatever stripe to see and know this-all you need are your lying eyes. We’ve all known complete and utter jerks who get more ass than the proverbial toilet seat, while the nice guys not ending up finishing last, but they’re feverishly working it out w/the Five Fingers Of Death on a lonely Saturday night in Anywhere USA.

And, as you rightly put it Ferdi, its in the genes. Women are indeed hardwired for this sort of thing, *especially when they’re younger*, ie, btw say, 20 and 30 or so. Truthfully, I think its a lifelong thing. A few examples, ripped from the Obsidian Files, will suffice.

Just last night I had to resort to a bit of Asshole Game w/my Woman, Brown Sugah. Like virtually every Woman I’ve ever had, she goes off the rails at least once a month, and I have to set things straight again. Last night was no exception. After giving me a day’s worth of snarky text messages and playing “hide and seek makeout”, I abruptly ended the session and turned to watch the tv. When she tried to touch me, I violently shrugged her off and kept watching the tv (btw, Michael Clayton is a very interesting movie, check it out if you haven’t already). In Game parlance, this is known as a “Freeze Out”, and trust me when I tell ya fellas, IT WORKS.

Brown Sugah sat there, befuddled for a few minutes, then slowly rose up from the bed and walked aimlessly around the house. Then, as she washed dishes, she started crying.

I wasn’t moved in the slightest. I let her stew in her shit for an hour, then went back to Good Cop and consoled her. The resultant hummer rivaled Vanessa Del Rio’s.

Second story…a true one:

My grandfather was a Good Man in every sense of the word; a true Virgo Gentleman. But he happened to be married to a firecracker of a lady in my grandmother, and I could only imagine what she was like when they were youner and courting. He should have gotten an award just for simply marrying her in the first place, and I say that out of sheer love for both of em, lol.

Anyway, one day while at the dinner table, my grandmother was really on the rag and on a tear, bithing up a storm. She had been at it nonstop for at least a half and hour. When it got to the 45 minute mark, my grandfather, a Man I’d known all my life, who didn’t believe in whipping his own kids (RARE in the Black community let me tell you, especially bck in the 50s-60s) and was always, always, always a most concilliatory guy-turned into the Incredible Hulk.

Out of nowhere, he smashed his fist on the glass dinner table and bellowed “ENOUGH!!!” the table? Toast. Had a big assed crack that ran the full length of it. My grandmother? That was the first and only time I saw a Black Woman turn as white as a sheet. Her haughty, snarky tone was completely gone, replaced w/a barely audible mousy whisper, begging my grandfather to calm down and that she was sorry. I could see the veins in my grandfather’s neck bulging. That shit scared me.

We ate in silence, and directly afterward, my grandad got up from the table and went upstairs, followed closely behind by my grandmother.

I don’t know if old folks screw or not, and I certainly wasn’t trying to find out if my grandparents did, but I do know this: had they been my age at the time, and knowing what I do today about Human Nature, they’d be humping like rabbits.

My point? That you simply cannot be too nice w/Women. They can and will see it as a fundamental weakness, even though, in a modern and advanced world, such reasoning, if one can call it that, makes about as much sense as their liking for exclusively tall guys. Nevertheless, its TRUE. And the Freeway of Love is littered with the corpses of Nice Guys who didn’t know the rules of the road.

I am philosophically opposed to Asshole Game; at heart, I’m a chip off the ole block that was my grandfather. But I see and realize a simple, yet profound truth: Nice Guy=Supplication=Beta Male=Five Fingers Of Death. The ONLY way you can be a nice guy and get away with it, is to, every once in awhile, let your Woman know that you can and will go Rambo on her or anyone else who fucks with you. Not only do Women respect this, it makes them dripping wet.

Women like the one you wrote about above Ferdi, can afford to write the things they do, because it in no way is connected with their ability to get Dick On Demand; simply put, there’s a reason why Witchcraft and the Paranormal are such hue draws for Women, while hard sciences and High-Tech are such huge draws for Men, and Game is no different. The reasons why are simple: Women really don’t need “Game”-all they need is to be hot, be feminine, and be available, and the line will soon form to the left.

For guys, unless they were born w/the rarified Alpha Gene, they need to figure out ways and methods that actually net him poon and the chance to win the evolutionary arms race-or, he’s toast. Game exists because Men HAVE to figure Women out. Women don’t HAVE to figure Men out, at least until they hit their Wile E. Coyote Moment. All a Woman’s gotta do, as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton showed the world so very well, is lay back, and spread her legs.

As we all know here, but ladies like the topic of this post either don’t, can’t, or won’t accept, is that the sexual marketplace is as real, and for my money, even moreso, than anything Wall Street could cobble together. Because the stakes are so high and impactful, not a lot of abstract concepts and Fed Chairman speak. And when it comes to the sexual marketplace, Women set the price-Men, mostof them anyway, have really only one of two options: “buy” at the going rate, or, refuse to buy. Like most consumers, most Men would rather pay a little more than go without.

Natural Alphas and Men w/Game, though, have a third option-they can haggle over the price that Women set. In fact, that’s how I see Game-the extent to which you, as a Man, can negotiate for a better deal with the seller. Until very recently in the sexual marketplace history, it was a Seller’s Market. Noawadays, with the advent of Game, things done changed-it’s a Buyer’s Market for those who are saavy enough.

Asshole Game, much as I may personally dislike it, is the “negotiations with a lightsaber” of the entire system. And again, I have to say, it works.

No doubt.

If Women don’t want assholes winning out, they can change that situation overnight. But, as you said Ferdi, we guys and the only ones that are led around by their nether regions.

…Bhetti on male body language:

When I was exposed to the explicit idea that men could be gym rats and not get any female attention to speak of, I started trying to really see the men around me and their likely ability to elicit female attraction.

Time and again, I would see tall and even muscled out gentlemen utterly compromise themselves by ‘I’m going to make myself look smaller and as least threatening as possible’ body language. This practically makes them invisible to a woman, I think.

…Gunslingergregi on niceness and cowardice:

Plus I found out my dad is nice but not kind. Definetly a distinction poignant shit you wrote there. Really good stuff. A ton of guys thinking they are so nice and wondering whats wrong and why they got fucked up. It is because you are a pussy that you where being nice. Not out of kindness because you could personnally make the scenerio go either way.

…MNL on Shakespeare’s alphaness:

Shakespeare clearly understood asshole game. He had it down cold (as he did so many other social roles and situations). But it’s important to remember in this Youtube clip–as well as in other modern re-enactments of historic social relations–that what we’re seeing is not 16th century game per se. What we’re seeing instead is some modern, Hollywood-influenced writer’s INTERPRETATION or spin on those historic social relations. What we often see is a characterization of historic game–washed through an (often unconscious) lens of modern social agenda. And there’s no guarantee that agenda matched Shakespeare’s. (This comes out most apparently when one sees a clip of some obviously feminist-motivated historic re-enactment.)

Nevertheless, Richard Burton here appears to be perfect for the role. He plays it to the hilt. The guy (Burton) was alpha in real life.

So, to make sure you’re not being spoon-fed some agenda, it helps to keep the original in mind below. In fact, you’ve gotta love, where Katherina bitches that Petruchio just wants to play the field: “He’ll woo a thousand, ‘point the day of marriage”

Says Katharina:
No shame but mine: I must, forsooth, be forced
To give my hand opposed against my heart
Unto a mad-brain rudesby full of spleen;
Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure.
I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,
Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behavior:
And, to be noted for a merry man,
He’ll woo a thousand, ‘point the day of marriage,
Make feasts, invite friends, and proclaim the banns;
Yet never means to wed where he hath woo’d.
Now must the world point at poor Katharina,
And say, ‘Lo, there is mad Petruchio’s wife,
If it would please him come and marry her!’

Shakespeare = uber alpha.

…Max on the nature of morality:

When people talk about “moral superiority” it makes me cringe.

There is this lingering Bronze Age belief that morality is a universal code of +/- that exists in a vacuum.

Morality is an abstract system of relative value judgements based on the human physiological experience of the world.

Hot stove: Ouch! Hot stove bad.

Infidelity: Sad. Infidelity bad.

The reason morality -seems- universal is because is is based on our very similar individual human experiences of stimuli.

. . . Of course women have a slightly different experience of the world then men, hence their cock-eyed circle-logic morals.

…Mike T for finding a Biblical justification for game:

Auster also seems to have forgotten God’s curse on Eve: “your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Far from enjoying a higher position in the world, women enjoy one of subordination to men. The very reason why game works on women is because God ordained that part of the curse on the entire gender through Eve would be domination by men.

…and for these two comments on “Sluts Against Rape“:

Women like this are the ones who jump into big cat exhibits at zoos to take close up shots and then act incredulous that the big cat mauls them. They are so addled by the poison of tabula rasa that it never occurs to them that things operate according to their nature, and that predators, by nature harm that which they perceive as weaker and a target ripe for predation. It is in the nature of a lion to hunt and kill, even humans; it is in the nature of a rapist to rape women.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with some white, middle class undergrads about 9/11 while I was in college. They said we need to “educate people like the 9/11 hijackers.” I looked at them and said, “you damn fools, these people have advanced degrees from some of the most elite universities in the world, whereas we are getting undergrad degrees from an above-average state university… what do you think you could say to them that would ‘educate them?’”

It shut them up and made them very uncomfortable. It was like the sub plot in From Hell when the upper class couldn’t believe that Jack the Ripper was a gentile, educated man… that education had absolutely not a single impact on his nature or character.

…and finally, Thursday on the varieties of game-haters:

People dislike game for different reasons. Just calling them haters doesn’t tell us much about their motivations or what arguments they are using.

There seem to me three varieties of haters:

1. Pedastalizers – Don’t like their view of women as morally superior beings disturbed. Often religious and/or socially conservative.

2. Equalists – Don’t like that women are attracted to men who are dominant over them. Often liberal whether right liberal (libertarian or neoconservative) or left liberal.

3. Hyper-Moralists – Don’t like the fact that the main discoverers and theorists of game are almost all libertines and/or nihlists. They also don’t like that game contains techniques for getting women to have premarital/extramarital sex, and that it seems too consciously manipulative.

Larry Auster and Conor F. are a mix of pedastalizer and hyper-moralist.

Will Wilkinson is an equalist.

Todd White, Anakin Niceguy and his commenter Justin are hyper-moralists.

I would also point out that Save Western Civ guys aren’t identical with Social Conservatives who aren’t identlical with haters. Lots of Save Western Civ guys do accept game.

Good comments, everybody.

Mike T scores a record FOUR-FER with the LMAO Award for this remark on the male biological clock:

3 minutes past the hour: Get laid
6 minutes past the hour: Get laid
9 minutes past the hour: Get laid

The male biological clock >:)

A lot closer to reality then the mainstream claims.

njartist49 wins the Zinger Award for this line directed at Kirsten Gillibrand’s detractors:

Did I just walk into a blind men’s dicussion of who is hot?

Heh, heh, heh.

Titter wins the Good Advice Award for this remark on Meghan McCain’s boobs:

The stats don’t lie.

Big, luscious tits sell. Forget about all your intellectual content-driven drivel. The real content that counts is pics of hot chicks.

That was lesson 1 in advertising. Out of 1 lesson total.

Rule 5 rules your ass.

Professor Hale wins the Funny ‘Cause It’s True Award for sharing this bathroom graffiti:

Written on the porta-john wall in Kuwait:

Army women… one plane ride away from being ugly again.

And it is true.

Finally, David Alexander wins the Sacklessness Award for outdoing himself:

I’ve generally felt that the politeness is a sign of a proper, well civilized culture that suppresses it’s meanness for the sake of creating a safe environment for everybody. Politeness is what separates us from the savages, and it’s a great way to avoid being threatening to whites (and women)…

Wow. Just wow. I am in awe of your lameness, Lord of the Betas.

The Lodger, starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Shane West and Simon Baker

Detective Chandler Manning  (Molina) and his rookie partner Street Wilkenson (Shane West) have stumbled upon a disturbing case: brutal murders of hookers, which resemble the crimes of  the infamous Jack the Ripper and also a serial killer who Manning caught behind bars and was executed years ago.

Married couple Ellen (Hope Davis) and Bunting (Donal Logue) are having financial troubles. Their marriage doesn’t also seem that solid either: Their relationship is strained and the husband constantly refers to the medication Ellen should be taking. We are tipped- at the very beginning of the movie- that Ellen may not be mentally very stable and that she doesn’t like her husband spending so much time away from home, especially at night.

Manning’s private life isn’t that great either. He has a wife staying at a mental hospital, after an attempted suicide and his daughter holds him responsible. She believes that his compulsiveness and possessive actions  have caused this.

Ellen’s life, on the other hand, seems to get interesting. Their guest house finally gets rented, by a mysterious stranger (Simon Baker). Now this guy is dark, he keeps to himself and is obsessed with his privacy. He refuses to meet her husband and keeps disappearing at night…

The movie has a lot of suspicious characters so we are never sure to trust Manning, Ellen, her husband and especially not the lodger. Now the movie is a remake and is not boring. It has its moments and Manning’s obsession with Jack The Ripper gives the movie edge. However the twists and turns and the camera work don’t amount too much when some things are too obvious. It is an OK movie with some wasted potential. After all, the movie has wonderful actors. Hope Davis is wonderful as the edgy Ellen who is very attracted to her new lodger. I have always enjoyed watching Molina since he portrayed the uptight mayor in Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat in 2000. Simon Baker has always pleasantly surprised me with the wide arrange of roles he  has taken and this is by far the darkest. Shane West makes a good rookie. But as I said, it has wasted potential. It doesn’t add anything new to the guess-who-is-the-killer game. It is worth a watch if you like the actors. Frankly, the poster looks good and it is cooler than the movie. I actually half-expected a story with vampires when I first saw it.

]]> http://trickygirl.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-ghostly-tales-for-halloween/ Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:40:52 +0000 trickygirl http://trickygirl.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-ghostly-tales-for-halloween/

All Saints' churchyard, Old Isleworth

“I’ll haunt you, haunt your bed/Tap the windows, awake in dread/Pray that you’d loved me instead/I’ll haunt you, haunt your bed/And I’ll haunt you, sleep in fear…” – Seth Lakeman, ‘I’ll Haunt You’

Whether you are a true believer in the existence of ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night or you are a complete sceptic on the subject, Halloween has always been a good time for telling a few scary ghost stories. This time of the year has long been associated with the supernatural; nights are getting longer and colder and the boundaries between this world and the next become more and more amorphous… Or something.

I confess that, personally, I fall in between these two extremes – I come from a family which claims some psychic ability and grew up fascinated by tales of haunted houses and spooky legends. I still love ghost stories, whether fictional or ‘real’, and I’ve had quite a few strange and seemingly inexplicable experiences over the years, but I am a bit too cynical and sceptical to immediately and unquestioningly accept these as being supernatural.

However, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe – and Halloween is as good an opportunity as any to suspend that disbelief and try to scare the crap out of you all…

Problem is, some ghostly goings-on are more silly than scary. Some spirits appear to have a slightly strange sense of humour, as bizarre as that may sound. How else can you explain the toilet-flushing ghosts reported in a Manchester hospital and the old AA building in Guildford during the 1970s? Or the more contemporary ghost which chooses – for some strange reason – to haunt a branch of Tesco in Bury St Edmunds? Or the giggling ghost that haunts the gym of a Lancashire school and has been heard telling people to ‘get off my foot’?

But some hauntings really do sound terrifying, and some ghosts are most definitely not the kind of entities you would want to meet on a dark night (if at all). Seriously.

This is the real scary stuff…

One of the most haunted places in Britain is the Tower of London, where many a poor soul met a violent end at the sharpened point of the executioner’s axe. Unsurprisingly, a good few of these individuals have become restless, earthbound spirits, doomed to walk the earth or repeat their final moments for all eternity.

Probably the most disturbing of these tragic shades is that of Lady Margaret Pole, 8^th Countess of Salisbury, who was condemned to death by Henry VIII in 1541 because she was the last surviving legitimate member of the Plantagenet dynasty and thus seen as a threat to his relatively tenuous hold on power.

Aged 67 when she was dragged off to be executed, Lady Margaret was a tough old bird and refused to place her neck on the block. A number of accounts describe how the executioner had to chase her round the block, resulting in her being brutally hacked to death. The ghostly re-enactment of her horrific and bloody end has been seen on several occasions since, terrifying witnesses.

Unsurprisingly, considering its long and often bloody history, London itself is full of ghosts, ranging from the classic disappearing phantom hitchhiker who accosts bikers in the Blackwall Tunnel and the sound of a highwayman’s ghostly horse galloping invisibly through the night, to mischievous poltergeists who take great delight in chucking objects around ancient pubs and the unfortunate shades of prisoners who escaped from the notorious Newgate jail only to be recaptured and executed.

Strangely enough, the London Underground has far more than its fair share of ghostly activity, some of which is very creepy indeed. Possibly the most tragic of all the tube ghost stories is associated with Bethnal Green station, which, in 1943, was the site of the worst loss of life in a single incident on the Underground when a panic during an air-raid alert caused a crush that killed 173 people, including 62 children – a tragedy which took fifty years to be fully publically acknowledged.

Since that night in March 1943, station staff have heard the ghostly cries and screams of women and children trapped by the crush, which terrified and upset one station manager so much that he ran from his office and refused to return. I can’t say I blame him.

Even sadder still are the cases of the poor women whose ghosts are still occasionally seen in other areas of the East End of London, where they have become part of the mythology of the city – and the stories of their short lives and posthumous infamy stretch through London’s history to this day. It is said that the tragic spirits of Mary Kelly, Mary Ann Nichols and Catherine Eddowes, victims of the mysterious Jack the Ripper, can still sometimes be seen in and around the areas where they met their brutal ends in 1888.

Even spookier is the tale that every New Year’s Eve at midnight a shadowy figure leaps from Westminster Bridge into the Thames – this ever-repeating suicide is said to be the ghost of Jack the Ripper himself, ending it all over again at the beginning of every new year….

Have a happy Halloween, and stay safe and warm if you are out trick-or-treating this evening. And don’t forget to check under the bed and behind the door before you go to sleep tonight – you never known what might be hiding there…

Sleep tight, my pretties, and dream sweet dreams.

If you can, that is.

Apic/Getty Images

Hello there, friends. I hope everyone in the SYSK Army has had a nice pre-Halloween week. Things around the office are buzzing with activity — people dressed up in weird costumes, Josh shirtless. Actually, it’s about like any other Friday morning, come to think of it.

This week on the SYSK podcast program, Josh and I covered a couple of crime oriented topics. Tuesday’s show was about the witness protection program. There are programs in many countries, but the one in the United States is the measuring stick against all others, maybe because we’ve been at it longer. Or maybe because of all of the organized crime we’ve seen over the years thanks to the mafia and gang activity. If you decide to turn states evidence and rat on some former criminal cohorts, you can get protection and possibly even relocation, complete with name change, from the federal government. Not only that, but you can also pull in a cool $60k per year as long as you abide by the rules of not trying to contact anyone from your former life.

Yesterday we covered the grizzly crimes of one Jack the Ripper — the notorious murderer in 19th century London. Old Jack did his dirty work on alcoholic prostitutes, and while there have been more than 150 people named as possible suspects over the years, nobody has ever proven who Jack was. There are some good theories out there, but if you’re like me, many of them sound like plausible suspects. Ripperologists, the folks who are still REALLY into researching Jack, take all this pretty seriously and we can’t wait for fan mail trashing our research!

Let’s hear about your Halloween plans, folks. What cool traditions do you take part in?

Have a great weekend!

Read:
How Jack the Ripper Worked
How Witness Protection Works
Could Jack the Ripper have been an artist?

I went to Chicago this weekend to help celebrate my sister’s (and her husband’s) birthdays, and my other sister was there, too, so all my four nephews were in one place, and as always it was great, and there are lots of pictures somewhere, but not any with me in it because I only pose for money. (Or maybe because I’m not nearly as cute as four boys aged six months to three years. It’s a possibility.)

Today, I’m going to be in Brooklyn to help my friend Steven research beers for his soon-to-open bar in Sunset Park. It’s going to be a retro bar (you can tweet him ideas for retro drinks you’d like to see — via his Twitter page). It’s also going to be an experimental jazz venue because Steven was bummed when the Tonic Jazz Club in Manhattan shut down, as Steven (for some unfathomable reason) really likes experimental jazz. I’m more about the drinks than the jazz, but then my favorite songwriter is Taylor Swift, so what do you expect… I don’t know what Steven’s having tonight, but I’m going to go for dark beers, my favorites.

(I’m posting this from Southside Coffee in Brooklyn, by the way, where I’m waiting for Steven to get past whatever traffic snarl is keeping him and which I chose because they have wireless and serve Intelligentsia Coffee, a Chicago brand some consider the best in the States and that I pay too much money for when I get it, but there you go – Chicago beats Brooklyn so far in my day. On the other hand, a man with a string bass just walked in.)

Speaking of irrational decisions, I flew out of Newark to Chicago, and because I knew how depressing that would be I remembered this video in which John Green gets really excited because his book Paper Towns made first place in the 2009 YALSA popularity contest, which is a contest where teens vote on their favorite book, and he beat out Stephenie Meyer, which recommends him strongly as far as I’m concerned. Oh, and his book was presented by the Bella Twins, which also recommends him, in a way. Also his nerdiness is off the chain. So I read the book. It’s not half bad, if you’re just wanting some light entertainment, which I did – something about a high school’s most nerdy guy crushing on the high school’s queen bee after she breaks into his room one night dressed as a ninja and makes him be her getaway driver while she wreaks vengeance on lots of other popular kids and then disappears and maybe is dead, but she leaves weird clues that only he and his nerdy friends can decipher before it’s too late, and he has to do it all before prom, and it ends in a road trip. That sort of light entertainment. On the way back I read Lyndsay Faye’s Dust and Shadow, which is about Sherlock Holmes taking on Jack the Ripper.

As my friend the poetry critic Everett Reed pointed out to me earlier, one of my favorite poets, Ted Hughes, died eleven years ago today. Most people remember him for being British Poet Laureate or his unfortunate marriage to that suicidal poetaster Sylvia Plath, but I’ve always liked him best for his poem “Pike” (not the pointy stick, rather the ugly and very predatory river fish):

“Pike”

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.

Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,

Over a bed of emerald, silhouette

Of submarine delicacy and horror.

A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-

Gloom of their stillness:

Logged on last year’s black leaves, watching upwards.

Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs

Not to be changed at this date:

A life subdued to its instrument;

The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,

Jungled in weed: three inches, four,

And four and a half: red fry to them-

Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.

And indeed they spare nobody.

Two, six pounds each, over two feet long

High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet:

The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-

The same iron in this eye

Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,

Whose lilies and muscular tench

Had outlasted every visible stone

Of the monastery that planted them-

Stilled legendary depth:

It was as deep as England. It held

Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old

That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished

With the hair frozen on my head

For what might move, for what eye might move.

The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods

Frail on my ear against the dream

Darkness beneath night’s darkness had freed,

That rose slowly toward me, watching.

It’s from his book New Selected Poems 1957- 1994 (Faber, 1995). You can’t just buy the one poem, but, if you were so inclined, you could buy the entire collection here and put it on your bookshelf and look all literate and impress your bookish and artsy friends next time they are bored at your party and are scanning the bookshelf so as not to seem like losers who stare into space since they’ve already looked at all the photos on your refrigerator and captioned them with your magnetic poetry magnets and can’t stay and stare at the Monet print in the bathroom because someone else is worshiping the porcelain god in there.

Finally, as promised, here are the links for the complete Held by the Taliban series from the New York Times. I’d be surprised if David Rohde doesn’t receive a Pulitzer for these. There are a bunch of interactive features there as well.

Held By the Taliban (Part One): “7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity”

Held By the Taliban (Part Two): “Inside the Islamic Emirate”

Held By the Taliban (Part Three): “You Have Atomic Bombs, but We Have Suicide Bombers”

Held By the Taliban (Part Four): “A Drone Strike and Dwindling Hope”

Held By the Taliban (Part Five): “A Rope and A Prayer”

Held By the Taliban: “Epilogue”

I love the series not just because it’s well-written and entertaining, but also because it unwittingly hits all the stereotypes we know and love from adventure novels written in colonial times – and all that’s different, really, is that the serious tone of Victorian Manifest Destiny is replaced by the just-as-serious tone of Postmodern Manifest Destiny. Others with interesting questions/ insights about the series and what it reveals have been brought up my friends in the wider intelligence community (Small Wars Journal twice, Abu Muqawama, Baghdad Bureau, Danger Room twice, and Interesting Times), as well as religion reporters who address the question that nags me the most: Do the Taliban really believe that wearing a necktie is a secret signal that the necktie-wearer is a Christian?

Odwiedzając dziś komiksiarnie w Katowicach, mój wzrok przyciągnęła taka oto okładka:

/Edit: Przydałoby się napisać więcej na temat samego wydania, co też wykonuję pod wtrąceniem

Tytu, wydawcał i data wydania oryginału: Batman – Gotham by Gaslight, DC (luty 1989)
Tytu, wydawcał i data wydania w Polsce: Batman – Gotham w świetle lamp gazowych, Egmont Polska (czerwiec 2004)
scenariusz: Brian Augustyn
rysunek: Mike Mignola
Liczba stron: 48
Format: B5
Okładka: miękka, kolorowa
Papier: kredowy
Druk: kolorowy

Notka wydawcy:
Jak mogłoby wyglądać Gotham City, miasto Batmana, gdybyśmy spróboali je sobie wyobrazić w scenerii końca XIX wieku? Niektórzy zapewne żyliby w strachu. Inni odetchnęliby z ulgą. Tylko jeden człowiek nie zwróciłby uwagi na to całe zamieszanie. Człowiek, który miałby ważniejsze sprawy na głowie. To Kuba Rozpruwacz.

Warto dodać, że Gotham by Gaslight było pierwszą historią z serii Elsewords

Moja ocena:
Zajebisty.

Znalazłem również fantastyczną serię figurek sprzedawanych z okazji wydania powyższego komiksu, wykonanych przez zainspirowanego komiksem Sillof’a

Muszę mieć chociaż Batmana, definitywnie!

Na koniec rysunek popełniony przez Michaela L. Peters’a

oraz 3d art, który stworzył Marc Tan

tutaj rendery z powstawania modelu

Sssssmokin’!

In the late 1880’s, a lone man held a city in his grasp with fear, torture and murder. The city was London and the man was only known as Jack.

Johnny Depp stars as Insp. Fred Abberline, a reclusive and methodical detective who harbors a tormented past. Abberline ends up in the wrong place at the right time, deep in the heart of London’s White Chapel district. Abberline becomes caught up in the “Jack the Ripper” murders and the plight of London’s women of the night, which include Mary Kelly (Heather Graham). It seems that the “Ripper” is focusing on Mary’s cropping of friends. The mystery deepens and the murders become more intense as Abberline must give up every ounce he has left in his mortal soul to bring in the “Ripper”.

The film’s title is derived from the return address penned on the “Ripper” letters to the police of London. The Hughes Brothers, who directed this film, bring us knee-deep into the hell so that they can tell their story. From the flaming skies of London’s evening skies to the animal lusts of the people in the alleys of White Chapel, hell is definitely evident. The Brothers’ direction is so intense at times that I felt I could smell the decaying corpses of the slain women. But for these directors that wasn’t enough as they showed the killings with oodles and oodles of blood. You never fully see the “Ripper’s” blade pierce his victim’s flesh but it’s what you don’t see and know that makes your stomach upset. This grotesque direction makes the film powerful but will definitely make you think twice about having another handful of popcorn.

Within this macabre fest is a brilliant performance by Johnny Depp who continues to impress me with every film he does. He is one of the best actors of his generation. He has the encompassing power to electrify an audience with a look or expression.

The character of Abberline has a lot of similarities to other characters Depp has played but here he is able to bring a new angle on an old concept. It is flawless.

The saddest thing about the film is the casting of Heather Graham. Graham is way out of her element and proves she has a tough time adapting to challenging roles. Behind the eyes of Graham there is no depth and this is really needed if she is supposed to be the film’s leading lady. I really had a hard time seeing her being able to fall in love Depp’s Abberline.

The character of Mary needed an actress who could display sensuality, torment, and an ounce of innocence in her scenes with Abberline. Graham couldn’t do any of them. She was excellent in “Boogie Nights” but I haven’t really seen her in anything since that shows that she can display the detailed emotions needed to flesh out Mary further. It is also hard to take her performance when her accent flickers instead of sticking.

I found the blood and gore very rich and very gratuitous. I know its great to have as much realism when doing a historical film but there is such thing as overkill. I really liked the mystery of the case and the performance of Depp but that is about all. The film displays a very bold, clever and interesting take on the “Ripper” murders even if it’s not the theory I fully believe.

This film will definitely alienate some moviegoers.

3.5 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.