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Winter Break

I am so ready for winter break. I’m getting burnt out by these kids. The other day I had five kids enter on the same day. They have all been bouncing up and down on my last nerve. They are just as anxious to get out for winter break as I am. What makes it worse is these are middle schoolers. Middle schoolers don’t know how to control themselves (yes, that’s a sweeping generalization but it’s one that is true, for the most part, of every middle school-aged child).

I don’t really have plans for winter break. Maybe I’ll finish up Super Mario Galaxy, finish a couple books I’m reading, and probably sleep a lot and wish I didn’t have to come back. Ok, maybe not that last part, but right now, that’s what is on my mind. I really can’t wait for tonight’s happy hour and then my sister’s Christmas party. They should be fun and a good way to relax and let off a little steam.

Tupac: The Best of…

Interscope Records recently released two separate Tupac CDs entitled 2pac: Best of Thug and 2pac Best of Life. I love Tupac’s music. I have been a fan of his for years and have every album he’s released, as well as numerous books on him. This is getting out of hand. I’m tired of record labels milking his legacy for all it’s worth. I mean, it’s one thing to continually put out new material, but when you release two Best of cds that have almost the exact same track listing as the Greatest Hits cd that was released a few years ago you are destroying his legacy. Quit trying to make money off of him. Quit trying to sucker consumers into thinking they are buying something new. It’s getting old. Also, quit putting out really shitty remix albums of his music. The Nu Mix Classics albums are completely horrible. Stop paring up crappy would-be producers with Pac’s music. That’s just wrong. If you want to get into Pac’s music, buy the Greatest Hits double album and not the Best of two separate discs.

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Testing a New Design

I’m testing a new design here. Things can (and probably will) break off and on today. I really like this design and hope I can get it to do everything I want it to do.

An Absolute Gentleman

I was browsing some best books of 2007 lists and found one by an author named R.M. Kinder that lives in Missouri. The book, entitled An Absolute Gentleman is about a serial killer. I went to Amazon.com and searched for it and was instantly hooked and had to buy it.

Inspired by her own brush with a serial killer, Kinder has created a fictional representation that is chilling in its normalcy, haunting in its intensity, and stunning in its portrayal of sheer, sadistic madness. Taciturn English professor Arthur Blume launches his narrative by boldly stating that he is believed to have murdered as many as 17 women. Yet what most outrages him, now that he has been incarcerated, is that journalists are depicting him as a monster. He pens a memoir to correct this impression. In it, he describes in lavish detail the outfitting of his newly rented rooms in the small university town of Mason, Missouri; demurs over particulars of his illicit love affair with a fellow professor; and shares self-deprecating anecdotes about his gallant championing of a maligned colleague. Tucked among these decorous tidbits, however, are tantalizing clues to the demon within, one Kinder allows to emerge as stealthily as a cobra sliding from its bamboo basket. The addition of a self-explanatory epilogue regarding her personal experience detracts only slightly from Kinder’s otherwise spellbinding debut novel, a pitch-perfect rendition of the cunning malevolence that can lie hidden beneath the guise of refined civility.

The book was great. It was an easy read and kept me interested the entire time. It wasn’t a bloody, gory story, even though it was about a serial killer. When you think about it, it makes sense that it wasn’t, since the story was told through the eyes of the killer. She taps into this character so well, his coldness without showing cruelty, his calm monotone manner of speaking. You can see and hear this guy speak. He’s right in front of you and what makes it chilling is how so matter-of-factly he describes everything. Near the end of the book, it’s even more surprising that you start to feel sorry for this guy. We don’t hate him for being a murderer, in fact, when he does murder someone in the book it’s hardly an event, but more of just a happenstance that occurs between talking about life in the fictional town of Mason, Missouri. What made it even better was the descriptions of Union Station in St. Louis, giving descriptions of the mall and the fudge factory where the candy makers sing. This made the character of Arthur Blume even more real. This book was so good, I highly recommend it, once you start reading it, you won’t be able to put it down.

St. Louis History: Jack the Ripper Died in St. Louis?

One of the most infamous serial killers ever might have come to St. Louis. Jack the Ripper, the serial killer that terrorized London could have been an American and he might have died here in St. Louis.

In 1903, St. John’s Hospital stood at the corner of 22nd & Morgan Streets. On May 28 of that year a man came here to die. Many believe that man was really Jack The Ripper.

Francis Tumblety lived in St. Louis in the 1860s. “Casebook.org” a website dedicated to “Jack The Ripper” states “Tumblety moved to St. Louis, setting up his ‘medical’ practice, and again promenading himself around the city with arrogant splendor. It was here that another aspect of Tumblety’s character emerges — his paranoia. He was arrested in St. Louis for wearing military garb and medals he did not deserve, but Tumblety himself took it as persecution from his medical competitors. Soon after her traveled to Carondelet, Missouri and was again imprisoned for a time on the same charge.”

In the 1880s he was living both in the U.S. and Europe.

“He evidently lived in London and lived in a boarding house. There are some witnesses who say they saw him coming and going at suspicious times and behaving suspiciously around the time these murders were taking place,” said Missouri History Museum Librarian Emily Jacox.

On November 12, 1888, Tumblety was charged on suspicions of being the “Jack The Ripper” killer. He secured bail four days later. A December 10 trial date was set, but Tumblety didn’t wait around. He fled to France under an alias and eventually boarded a steamer for New York City.

Casebook.org says, “New York officials knew of his impending arrival in the city and had the ports watched for the suspect, but to no avail. New York City’s Chief Inspector Byrnes soon discovered Tumblety was lodging at 79 East Tenth Street at the home of a Mrs. McNamara, and he had him under surveillance for some days following. Byrnes could not arrest Tumblety because, in his own words, ‘there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable.”

Before Christmas of 1888, Tumblety disappeared again, surfacing again Rochester in 1893. He would die a decade later in St. Louis at St. John’s Hospital.

Tumblety’s further connection to the Ripper case emerged nearly 90 years later when author Stewart Evans acquired what has now become known as the Littlechild Letter.

In 1913, Chief Inspector John Littlechild of Scotland Yard, in response to some questions asked of him by a British journalist, wrote in a letter that Tumblety as ‘a very likely suspect,’ and provided the first insight into a Scotland Yard suspect whose name was lost for 105 years. From KSDK’s series on St. Louis history.