the uplifting quality of death

We just started renting Dexter now that I am out of the grips of Tony Soprano; apparently I have an affinity for murderous stories - who knew? Okay, maybe the clerks at the store where I always sat on the magazine rack when I was a kid reading "True Crime" while my mom was in line. Or all the theater attendants who lifted eyebrows when my dad took me to see Phantasm and The Exorcist and Halloween. And now the workers at Blockbuster who've watched me peruse the shelves in the TV section, stopping to pick up Six Feet Under before settling on the show about a serial killer. After finishing a series about a ruthless mob family.

Huh.

Besides being attracted to the gruesome tales (and the accompanying grim, grainy black & white police shots) at the check-out stand or my willingness to risk weeks of nightmares for a couple hours of horror movie thrills, I've also always been intrigued by forensic science & the psychological profiles of deviants. I can't figure out if this speaks to a latent dark side or is simply an indication of how very calm, clean, and trouble-free my childhood was; my psyche can afford to dabble in the shadowy underbelly of society for entertainment.

To top off all my gleeful gloom, I got in the car after school just in time for this song:

This is the life.