I'm hanging up my blogging hat for the time being. I'm moving on to bigger and better things. Or different things at least. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging. I'm fond of writing in all sorts of manners, and blogging is just like any other form of writing, a chance to stretch the mind, work the kinks out.

But I've written over a thousand blog posts in the past year and probably less than a dozen people have actually seen or read any of those posts. It gets depressing when I think of all that writing gone to utter waste. Each blog post I write is a little under a page. Half a page to a page lets say. That means if I'd been writing a novel, I'd have a 700 page novel by now. Admittedly not all of those 700 pages I've written are good content. But many of them are. I'd definitely say over half my posts are worth reading, entertaining, and amusing. And maybe 10% of the posts I've written have been some of my best material. But now it's all lost in the void of web 2.0. I couldn't even tell you how to find my best posts because I don't even remember where I published them to.

Ah well, that's the internet, keep on moving. So here' my final two health links. But, let's be honest. They're simply leading you to my other blog posts. Hopefully two of the good ones. They're one a day and the vitamin shop.

Cheerios launched a huge advertising campaign, a heart healthy campaign.

"Cheerios lowers your cholesterol!" shouts the advertisements. Sure enough, many friends believe that eating cheerios actually directly lowers your cholesterol levels, wherein the study that came up with this catchphrase had to do with replacing extremely high cholesterol breakfast foods with one bowl of cheerios per day proved to lower cholesterol over 8 months by a small amount.

That's a huge discrepency. That's like me eating five slices of cheesecake a day for half a year, then only eating one slice of cheesecake a day for half a year and claiming "Eating a slice of cheesecake a day lowers your weight!" It's simply not true.

Cheerios rests its head on a bed of "whole grain" marketing, yet you boil the grains down and all you've got is more carbs, which equals more converted fat to the belly which, yes Virginia, equals higher cholesterol.

I don't have a problem with breakfast cereals. I don't eat them because I'm on a paleo diet. But many people do, and are fine and healthy and have amazing metabolism. What I have a problem with is when unhealthy foods take a sliver of a factitious piece of information, and masquerade themselves as healthy products. Those are the real killers.

For more great information on the evils of grains, whole and otherwise, visit Mark Sisson's wonderful health blog, the Daily Apple.

Here's a little story. It's not about washboard abs. It's certainly not about damage control or the benefits of vitamins. It's a story about a hitman:

It’s the 1960’s in Nevada and JOE KREBS is a no-bullshit lonely hit man with a couple final contracts before he pulls out of the business. Joe is hired by JAKE ROTHSTEIN, right hand man to the infamous, rich EDDIE SANDS (future Casino owner).

Jake sends Joe to kill a Chinese businessman who unfairly won a sex slave from another Chinese businessman in one of Rothstein’s back room poker games. Joe carries out the hit with skill and efficiency and returns the sex slave. Joe’s final job isn’t a kill job. Jake wants Joe to track down a prostitute named STACY, who stole $20,000 from the big man, Eddie Sands. Eddie is infatuated with Stacy, he wants her back.

Joe tracks Stacy to a bar in San Francisco. The two develop a relationship as they drive back to Vegas. Before they reach city limits, Joe decides to skip town with the girl and head for Mexico.

Months later, Eddie Sands tracks down Joe and Stacy in Mexico. Joe and Stacy fly back to Vegas to confront Eddie. But, before they can, Joe is taken down by a squad of cops, arrested for a bogus charge set up by Eddie and Jake Rothstein.

Joe spends half a year in jail. He is finally freed on a technicality, only to discover Stacy has died of a drug overdose a few days before. Joe blames Stacy’s death on Eddie Sands and everyone in Eddie’s “circle.” Joe shacks up with Stacy’s hooker roommate, CARLY, and vows to kill every one of Eddie’s underlings.

Joe starts with Stacy’s pimp, PETEY BOB. Joe kills Petey Bob’s bodyguards and interrogates Petey Bob in the bathroom stall of a night club. Petey Bob confesses that Jake Rothstein was the person who set up Joe’s bogus arrest. Joe shoots Petey Bob dead in the stall.

Next Joe heads to a Vegas mansion where many of Jake Rothstein’s bodyguards as-well-as Joe’s old hit man buddies hang out. The goonish bodyguards help Joe stock up on weapons. Joe finishes loading the guns, then shoots and kills everyone in the mansion.

Joe finally catches up to Jake Rothstein, who meets him in an empty parking complex. Joe is overpowered and drugged by the rest of Rothstein’s henchmen.

Joe wakes up in an abandoned insane asylum on the outskirts of Vegas, where he is being held by Eddie Sands’ “interrogation” DOCTOR. Joe brakes free, knocks out the doctor, and kills the henchmen guarding the place.

Eddie Sands has had enough of Joe’s killing spree. Eddie is now infatuated with Carly, and he offers to fly Joe and Carly down to Mexico, where he’ll pay off Joe to deliver Carly to him. Joe and Carly head to Mexico, and Joe kills all of Eddie Sands’ Mexican henchmen.

Carly heads back to Vegas and Joe “disappears.” When Carly gets home, Eddie Sands sends his bodyguards to pick her up at her apartment. She is taken to Sands’ warehouse where he keeps a white tiger. Eddie likes to play a game where he locks naked women in the cage with his tiger for 24 hours. He’s about to do this to Carly when Joe appears, having followed the bodyguards to the warehouse. Joe locks Eddie in the cage with the tiger. Joe hands Carly a wad full of cash and then walks off into the night.

Serial Killing is tasteful. Artful. It requires hard work, skill, practice, ambition, diabolical planning, wits, and sinister ego.

Watch a movie like "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

Unfortunately, serial killing doesn't play out with such refinement in today's video games.

Grand Theft Auto IV (or is it V or VI, I don't keep count) has just been released. The game celebrates the exploits of pimps, thugs, and of course grand larceny. Unfortunately the game really makes a mockery of killing. Killing is rewarded with points, killing is easy, no planning is necessary, and most of who you kill is prostitutes, and that's after you steal your money.

What has the world come to when kids don't take murder for the high art it is?! I say enough of this Grand Theft Auto, learn to make some video games with a bit more class.

Now head on over to this orthorexia website, and then go to a website where you can search people for stuff, how delightful, oh yeah.

A good book often opens with a great kill. Here's my shallow attempt:

Two desks stood in the corner, facing one another. The mahogany of one desk was ink splotched and scratched, bent at the corners, and even had a few cigarette burn marks lining the legs. The other desk was untouched, new.

David took his lunch in this room, always sitting at the chiseled, ruined desk. He wrote nasty things into the wood with a fountain pen.

Today David had killed a girl, a woman really, older than him, at least fourteen. He had no notion of what to do with a dead girl, so he'd brought her down to the river, whacked her head against a tree near the shallows, and then let her face drop down into the mud.

David opened his lunch box and walked over to the two desks. He sat at the clean one.

---

Well, that's it. Just a little diddy really, not meant for anything but brief amusement. If you're looking for some more amusement, check out this vitamin information on the damage control master formula.

One of the first famous historical serial killers was Jack the Ripper.

Jack had the bad habit of ending the lives of young prostitutes on the streets of London. Prostitutes have been the go-to choice of murder victim ever since biblical days. The profession of night walker carries with it the inherit risk of danger, and people aren't particularly surprised when another lady of the night is put to rest. But Jack didn't just kill his ladies, he disemboweled them, surgically. he even skillfully removed their uterus's. Not only fascinating, but significant. That these women were killed by a man with the knowledge of surgery, and that there were multiple victims, added up to more than murder, it added up to evil. And for these reasons...

The knowledge of surgery suggested a liberated, educated, high society man. A doctor. Someone who had been through college, probably had excelled, and was most likely well respected among the community. Society's upper crust do not MURDER people. Murder is the act of the common, the base, the primal, those who work the docks and drink to much. The young poor man who may fly into a fit of jealous rage could murder, or the beggar who can't live without the barrister's wallet. But why would an upper class man need to vent such anger? It wasn't natural.

And then there were the repititions. If he had killed one woman, it could have been said to be a brief loss of character, a sudden fear, a sudden anger or panic. A loss of wits. But the planned and calculated way in which victim after victim was slaughtered proves that Jack had bearing of his soul. He had full realizations of the act he wanted to commit, and what's more, he didn't even need a reason.

The lack of a simple, primal, urgent reason. And the planned and calculated repitition is what really frightened people, it's what sank the act of murder beyond human (for murder is a very human act) and became the workings of the unnatural, of the evil.

Tired of serial killers yet? Get yourself some vitamins. More specifically, how to deal with stress and damage control are a couple places you can go if you're looking for vitamin information or if you want to buy vitamin supplements.

I recently watched Mr. Brooks on DVD and was truly impressed. Kevin Costner plays a sociopathic serial killer, who must shed a neophyte voyeur trying to accompany him for his kills. He must also deal with the balls-hard cop played by Demi Moore, and clumsy serial killing daughter played by some cute, bland actress. The film is wicked, and cool, and evil, a real wonder.

Kevin Costner is at the top of the game, but there is one unfortunate aspect of the movie. The style of killings is boring. Kevin shoots his victims in the head then places the victims' thumb prints on a piece of furniture. The cover up is detailed, meticulous, and fascinating, but the killings just aren't very creative.

Nevertheless, I was drawn to the world of murdering and that is why I started this blog.

I don't have any real desire to kill a person, or even see a person dead for that matter. But I do relish in creative homicide. So once a month or so, I'll post a little tidbit about serial killers, either historical or fictitious, or perhaps just ponder over various ways to kill. Yes, this may be morbid, but know that it's more of an entertainment, like reading Sartre or the Marquie de Sade, rather than promoting homicide.