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2:15 p.m. | September 06, 2001
rambling about rape and murder i read this book called endless night by richard laymon. it's just a trashy horror book mostly, you know, sex and extreme violence. it wasn't too bad though because the author was actually decent. (unlike john saul, never read him unless you like wanting to throw a book across the room when you are finished with it). anyway, the point of this entry isn't to recommend the book. i've just been pondering this one sort of theme that occurred. to bring you up to speed the book is about this gang of guys (been together since junior high) who go around killing people (mostly women) and doing horrible thomas harris serial killer sort of things to them. The plot begins when a young girl and boy witness them doing their thing and so the gang wants them dead. it focuses mainly on one member of the gang and the girl. ok so here is the thing. in the parts of the book where things are written from the killer's perspective he mentions that he doesn't feel abnormal because most of the guys he knew or knew of at school had a facination with violence and sex together. slasher books, books about nazi concentration camps with pictures of naked and dead or about to be dead women, a facination with guns and weapons related to naked girls in porn. that sort of thing. also, the boy who witnessed the crime talked about how it was cool that he saw a picture in a book of a lamp made out of human skin(more nazi stuff) and that it had pictures of naked women who thought they were going to shower but it was really a gas chamber. he thought it was cool and exciting. there was mention of this picture in a restuarant they were at were this woman had no nose and the adult male in the book figured the boy would like it. the question why would he like it was asked, the answer was, it's a guy thing. finally, at the end of the book after the boy was killed by the serial killer and the serial killer himself was dead, the girl and her father are talking about things and the father says i'm sorry about andy (the boy). the girl replies thanks but he had plenty of chances. (ok so i have to explain that. the boy has a gun, the serial killer has the girl. the serial killer is trying to convince the boy to help him rape the girl. the boy has a crush on the girl, plus he's only 12 and he hesitates to shoot the killer. when he finally does he botches it and gets himself killed. what she means by chances is that the killer was touching her and showing the boy her naked body which turned him on and made him freeze and not shoot when he "should" have.) I have a problem with that statement because not only was the boy 12 and had a huge crush on this girl. It was probably the first time he saw a live woman naked not to mention the first time he had ever shot at anyone. I say give him a break. However that's not my point. The point is not even the facination between sex and violence, thought i'm curious (well not really) as to why it's a "guy thing". I can understand that. This is the point. The gang of killers didn't have any problem finding new recruits to join them. Do potential serial killers walk around in great numbers? Also, that the killer, at the end, thought it would be so easy to get the boy to help him. I am wondering, whether the author thinks that most guys in their teenage years have so little regard for human life that they easily bring sex and violence together into reality. i.e. forcing women (and/or men) to have sex with them, adding torture and murder. Of course, once you cross one sort of line, the other lines don't seem so bad. They did have a leader that was obviously a sociopath, which tends to explain the followers. i watched a show once where they did a poll of college males and 60% of them said they would rape a girl if they thought they could get away with it. what the hell? i know that that most of rape is about control and very little to do with sex. so do men feel that they have so little control over women that they need to demean and humiliate them to make them excited? are they so clueless that they can't tell when a woman really wants sex and when they really fight them they can't actually stop? i mean come on. what on earth is wrong with people? this book i read is obviously an extreme and probably a bit unrealistic (though who really knows if it is), but it brings to my mind the fact that it's accepted for men to be out of control sexually. That using force or violence to get sex is only looked down upon if you get caught at it. I think i've started rambling here, so i'll end off. However, i'd like to say that we live in a very scary society.
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This is my blogchalk:
Canada, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, , English, , Female, 26-30, Reading.