I'm in a generous mood.

I wrote a whiny entry about how I felt my writing style was becoming terrible while I wrote my Daria fic. Then I realized it was a lame rant, privated that shit, and I give you this in its stead. Enjoy.

serial killers & anxiety

Okay so today one of my English professors told me that he was one of the nation's top experts in serial killers, and he told me about the books he published and although this all sounds very pretentious (and he did indeed preface it with "not to sound pretentious, but..."), that is FUCKING awesome.

Just to be clear I am not one of those soulless people who gleefully delights in the depravity and statistics of serial killers. My obsession is very on and off because I am way too empathetic to indulge my morbid cravings for too long. And I am very adamant in my disgust towards their crimes and sympathy for the victims. I've written a very long rant about this on my livejournal which doesn't really need to be repeated. But I can't help but harbor a fascination for the psychology of these types of people, and what kind of external forces may or may not have an effect on them.

My anxiety also triples when I read things like this because, like I was telling my professor, I am a girl... and... yeah. (Edit: Just to be clear, when I say it's because I'm a girl, it's because girls are targeted a lot. I didn't mean to imply that girls can't defend themselves, although I certainly could not. =/) He did say people like Ted Bundy are one in a million (one of the biggest predators of young females, particularly those with long brown hair parted in the middle... pretty much my hair *sigh*), but STILL.

I told him I've noticed it's either girls they prey on or boys, in a sexual way (Like Gacy, Dahmer, Nilsen, etc). Although, whenever I talk about things I like with people I don't know well, I come off as an awkward dweeb and phrase things in an idiotic way, so I ended up saying something like they either kill females or they're gay and kill males (and it didn't help that he's like, going deaf, so I ended up practically yelling it, along with other inanities), and then of course I spent the rest of the class wondering if I sounded like a complete idiot or not. Leave it to me to talk to a leading expert on a subject that has fascinated/terrified me since high school, and then feel worried that I sounded like a total tool.

Next item on my list of unimportant things to worry about: If I buy his book, is it totally tacky to tell him, because he's my professor? I'm doing well in his class (A on the midterm, I participate a lot), so... it's not like I'm doing it for the grade. But still, I dunno. Is that like, a faux pas or something? Sometimes I'm really socially dense. And I know I shouldn't care what people think, but I can imagine someone overhearing me and just giving me evil shifty eyes because I'm that person.