How Bored are you?

My co-worker and I walked down the steps. She was carrying an IBM R60 laptop and a yellow ethernet cable; I was holding a single pink post-it note with technical details. We hit the landing of the steps and rounded a corner. We were discussing the aspects of our mission (Top Secret!) and as we turned, we stopped. In between us and our destination was an impenetrable mass of children, each small enough for me to start hucking over my shoulder.

Though I have been asked to repress that particular urge.

After some deliberation with my associate, we decided that she should continue on and I should return to our base of operations. She quickly straightened her arms into a plow and charged forward. Those children in the back of the group were pushed aside like ice chunks on the prow of an arctic whaling ship. Those in the front heard the screams and moved, fearful.

What you see above was really just a distraction for myself. Now that school is out and summer is in, it takes a sharp mind not to go crazy with boredom working at the help desk. For eight hours a day I sit and look at a screen in front of me. Even now I almost wish for the phone on my desk to ring just so I could have something...anything...to occupy my time. I have become so bored - just in a single week - that I have actually started a list of words or phrases that people should use more often:

Sadly
Affront
Pomp
Frou-frou
Never you mind
Behest
Oh my goodness Justin Bieber grow a pair of testicles

Guess which one gave me the most pleasure to type? But I digress. One of the things I have been doing in earnest is research of a certain type. Some time ago I was listening to an album that features several songs on mental disturbances, such as PTSD, Schizophrenia, and Depression. While in the course of this, I began to get an idea for a story. It featured a boy who had personality disorder, and was capable of both shining good, and darkest evil. I sat down to write the beginning, and liked what was being put on the page. I was having trouble figuring out exactly what would happen, as well as how the boy would function, but I liked what was there.

While doing something completely unrelated, I was reading a story and was guided via hyperlink to Ted Bundy's Wikipedia page. I had never heard the name before, and decided that it was important enough in the context of the story for a look

It held me captured for over an hour. It wasn't that it was it was interesting, more so morbidly fascinating. It was a mild wake-up call that not only do people and actions of this kind truly exist, but more common in our age and more common in the U.S. than ever before. It was also a surprise to me the specific difference between serial killers, of which Ted Bundy is maybe the most infamous, and mass murderers.

Serial killers usually have a specific target. Woman with hair this long or boys this old. Their actions are also usually sexually driven, and they have mental inhibitions that cause them to act on this. One of the most common traits was that their childhood was mangled and twisted (exception). It was these facts and others that turned my story about a terrible boy into a book-length story about a terrible person. I was struck by different ideas even as I read Bundy's page, and wanted to incorporate them into the story. However, I decided against much of what I had developed because of the parallels between my ideas and true-life events, which might have caused families distress with just the wrong type of luck

Mass murderers, on the other hand, usually have an agenda or reason, no matter how evil that agenda is. The most famous mass murderer is Hitler, carried out by the Nazis and dubbed the horrifying Holocaust. There is also Mao Zedong and Stalin. It is defined as a systematic killing of many people over a short amount of time. In a way this could be carpet bombing, spree killers, and even the ultimate bombing of Japan by the U.S. in WWII.

After taking in the information about serial killers, I decided that I was lucky enough to be able to use what I already written as the start of my project. The most important part, I believe, will be the beginning. The reason for this is that as previously mentioned the childhood of these twisted minds are the critical time for development. There are also specific, linked details such as serial killers have a hard time holding down jobs or relationships, they are either above average intelligence or very below average, and, I noticed, tend to do anything they can to avoid death.

It's good to have a hobby, I suppose. But most people just build models.


5,900 pieces.