Getting Away With Murder

Apr 8, 2010

Being a Buddhist, the idea of killing someone sends chills down my spine. Even hurting someone’s feelings gives me knots in my stomach, regardless of how bitchy I might seem from time to time.

But as a writer, plotter, and imaginatique (no clue what that “word” means…I just made it up. But I like it!), I do sometimes consider how to get away with murder. The thing is, I think the only really reliable method is to be a complete psychopath, and yet have the sense to only do it once. That’s the problem with bank robbers too. If they’d rob one  bank, I think they’d likely get away with it, but too many of these numbskulls decide that five million between six people isn’t really that much money. By their sixth robbery, the FBI knows their names, addresses, what they had for breakfast and has their mom on speed-dial. Rookies.

So, in reality I think getting away with murder is a lot harder than it looks on TV. However! If I were to commit murder on TV, I’d so get away with it. Why? Because my house is a mess and the notes on my desk make no sense.

You know how on something like NCIS, an investigator sits down at the suspects (or victim’s) desk, looks up at a poster on the wall and says, Aha! Their password must be Death Tongue, after the lead singer of their favourite band! And sure enough, after 3 attempts (to keep it from being too easy *snork*) they discover that in fact the password is actually the drummer’s name, but they were close. Now, my passwords are unfigureoutable, but that’s another story … what would really bamboozle them is the notebooks.

I tend to write and scribble in notebooks. I’ve found it difficult to break the handwriting habit. Right now I would say I could lay my hands on at least two dozen (3/4 used up) steno pads scattered all over the house, bearing notes from this morning, all the way back to 2003. Going through the mountain of shit on my desk would keep cryptographers in the employ of prosecutors busy for 3 years. And even then they wouldn’t make sense.

I decided yesterday to get rid of some of the notebooks, especially the older ones, mostly because I was looking for some story brainstorming I did about 5 years ago. I thought if I transcribed some of the important stuff from said notebooks to my computer and tossed the paper copies, I’d have a better chance that I’d someday find it.

Here’s an example of the contents of one pad:

• notes about e-publishers
• lists of domain names I’ve considered buying
• various admin usernames and passwords
• “script for peter” (no clue)
• notes on hosting options for adult websites (heh)
• “get recipe for jill” (hrm, only know one person named Jill, and she doesn’t cook.)
• phone numbers
• book titles (not books I’ve read, so no idea what this was)
• “my colony = 40,000″ ???
• a doodle picture of an angry bunny and beneath that: “e a i uh uh a a ue”, beneath that: “18.305″
• “eel, turtle, shark, bananas”
• a list of colours followed by numbers
• notes on a self-hypnosis script I wrote for my morning meditations
• a list of 4 women’s names (no clue who they are. not character names, and not names of people I know.)
• ebooks websites followed by numbers (no idea what the numbers are… not prices and not ISBN’s)
• “taking, spine, unholy, hidden, enticed, so sp, howto” ???
• “mango, orange, keep people coming back, trackback, pingback, etiquette, contextual links are obnoxious”
• “Dear Dorian. I’m finding”…. That’s crossed out, and below it I wrote: “I just realised I’m supposed to reply.”
• A page of tallies under the headings: “bitter”, “about”, and “naked”
• a list of usernames of people I don’t remember… not my own for sure because they were things like: TheOctave and SohoSusie
• a grocery list
• a relational database chart
• a list of things like: “tootsie soul = hot coffy + walkin nancy + lucy van pelt”
• a chart of numbers like: 1-6, 2-7, 3-8, 2-6, 4-8, 5-9, 6-10, 1-4, 7-10 (no clue)
• a triangle next to the word ‘anti’, a filled in triangle next to the word ‘clock’ and various other symbols next to words,…. a lightning bolt next to the number 3
• a chicago area code phone number (no idea whose)
• database passwords (I recognised what they were… to someone else they’d look like a list of random groupings of numbers and letters between 8 and 12 characters long)
• a list of people (not sure what the list was for, except that they all live locally)
• an address with no name. No clue whose address it is
• a list of names followed by 16 digit numbers (no idea who the people are)
• A five page handwritten hierarchy of angels in my paranormal novel and also what their powers and limitations are followed by charts and a note that God goes by the name ‘Troy’.
• “remove metro windows”

And this is why I’d either get away with murder, or I’d be wrongly convicted. I cannot explain things I wrote down as recently as a month ago. This is also why TV detective stories are cleaner than real life. If my life were an episode of Criminal Minds, I’m not sure if I’d be the detective, the murderer, or some chick they’d find wrapped in neoprene. Either way, I’d keep Garcia busy for a year before she realised that I’m really only a very minor character.