Nine Minutes In Heaven

I am a habitual binge-watcher of television shows. This includes both shows I've seen before and shows I have not. Last year for Halloween, I binge-watched the entire series of "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?" with the kids (something they wanna do again this year). In the last year, I've also gone through all 15 seasons of "ER", all 10 seasons of "Friends" and the entire series of "Breaking Bad" (the one show I didn't care for). Ideally, I'd like to pick one show a month and watch the entire thing, but I never seem to have the time to do that, so I take full advantage of the downtime I do have. Such was the case when I decided to watch all 5 seasons of "Six Feet Under". I was in love with this show when it first aired over a decade ago and have always meant to watch it again but never got around to it until the last couple of weeks. And boy, am I glad I finally got to see it again. I've said before that "Lost" is the pinnacle of a dramatic series finale for me, and that remains true, but SFU take the prize for being near-flawless throughout it's entire run. However, the series finale of SFU is just okay - up until the last nine minutes. The final sequence of SFU is FANTASTIC. It's brilliant, beautiful, haunting and sad all at the same time. Most series finales leave you to wonder what became of the characters you watched as their lives continued on. But SFU was a show about death and that's what made its ending all the more satisfying.
"Six Feet Under" centers on the Fisher family in Los Angeles who are gathering together around the holidays. Parents Ruth, the quiet and repressed matriarch of the clan, and her husband Nathaniel, who owns and operates Fisher & Sons Mortuary out of a portion of their home, await the arrival of their eldest son, Nate, for Christmas. Nate is the textbook prodigal son - he left not only the house but the state as soon as he was able and rarely makes it back home, having built a life for himself in Seattle where he manages a food co-op and seems to be enjoying a prolonged adolescence. At 35, he's never had a committed relationship that lasted more than a few months and he's content to keep it that way. Nate's younger brother David is the closeted middle child of the family who gave up his dream of being a lawyer to work alongside dad in the family business. David is in a relationship with Keith, although no one in his family knows he's gay, and is almost the polar opposite of his older brother. A part of him resents Nate for having been able to get out from under the funeral business. The youngest of the Fisher clan is 17-year-old Claire. A late in life baby who is considerably younger than her brothers, Claire has never quite figured out her place in the family. Her parents dote on Nate as their firstborn, but he left the house when Claire was a toddler and the two of them have yet to find any real connection as siblings. Everything changes for the family a few days before Christmas when Nathaniel is killed in a car accident on the way to the airport to retrieve his namesake son. Things are thrown into a chaos that propels the next five seasons of the show to greatness.
SFU is probably the closest anyone has ever gotten to capturing actual family dysfunction in a scripted show. They operate the way of a typical family the entire series run - relationships ebb and flow, people change for better and/or worse and grow together and/or apart, and they're never not dysfunctional in some way, both as individuals and as a whole. Nathaniel's death has repercussions that drastically affect his loved ones lives for many years; Nate moves back to L.A. and begins working in the business he never could stomach, David sets off on a series of dysfunctional hook ups to cope with having to become the head of the business, Claire and terrible decisions with equally terrible men become like a moth to a flame, and Ruth begins living her life as if for the first time, after having been a wife and mother from the age of 19. And dear old dad watches over all of this, appearing to various family members in all five seasons, sometimes just to be a jackass and other time to lend a guiding hand from the great beyond. You actually see everyone battling down their demons because the demons literally get up off the embalming table/out of the casket and try to get the best of each Fisher.
Every episode of SFU opens with a death of some sort, showing us how the person met their end and flashing their name and birth/death dates on the screen. Each of these people end up at Fisher & Sons for their final farewell and are prepared for burial or cremation throughout the episode. Using this format, and a pivotal story arch in the final season, SFU's finale wraps up all that familial drama in a nice little bow. You get the sense that things aren't going to magically become functional from then on, but that each family member has found a new direction and a new lease on life. It threatens to leave us the way so many others have, wondering what ultimately happened to the characters we followed for what was likely the five most important years of their lives. If the finale had ended there, it would've been among the so-so finales in TV history. I certainly wouldn't have felt like it was a good payoff for sticking with the show its entire run. But in its last nine minutes, "Six Feet Under" is at its absolute best. If you watch the entire run and don't cry during those last nine minutes, you is not human yo. I'm not one to even tear up at a lot of stuff and yet those last nine minutes never, ever fail to have me full on ugly crying. Instead of leaving the Fishers behind, we get to see how each met their own end and the lives they lived well, long after we stopped peeking in on a weekly basis. And everything about those scenes (which you can see on YouTube if you don't want to watch the whole show); the music, the makeup, the cinematography, is just absolutely gorgeous. And that's not a word I just throw around, ya'll.

Deep Thoughts

There's a show called "Married At First Sight" that uses scientific methods to pair two strangers with one another. These people don't meet until their wedding day and then they have to navigate all things relationship-y post-marriage. I mentioned the show to a friend and she took immediate interest, although our opinions about the overall concept were night and day. Frankly, I found it stupid to put your entire future into some scientific method and into the hands of total strangers, even if they were "experts" in their chosen fields. I also found it quite interesting that of the three couples they paired up, not a single one was interfaith or interracial. The friend says the reason for the lack of interfaith couples was because they had asked each person about their beliefs and what beliefs they desired in their partner, and that I can see as being a valid reason. But it still irked me that everyone got paired with their carbon copy. Anyway, the friend has apparently stuck with the show and its finale revealed that two of the three couples supposedly fell in love and remained married to one another. Given our difference of opinion, I'm sure she just couldn't wait to tell me that the experiment kinda, sorta worked...

Friend: Speaking of weddings
Friend: That "Marriage At First Sight" had their season finale and revealed that 2 out of the 3 couples ended up falling in love and are still married
Me: Good for them. Still think it's a dumb concept
Friend: They're looking for people for season 2. You should apply and tell them so yourself.
Me: Psssh, hellllll NO. I'm not interested in telling my kids I met their mother via a scientific method
Friend: I wouldn't care. I'd says "gather round now chillens...mom's really good at making poor choices...so she turned to science and here you is"
Me: I wouldn't even do that. Poor choices have a hand in making us who we are and leading us to who we're meant to be with. If you give your life over to some scientific method, you wipe out a huge part of what makes life worth living.
Friend: You're gonna make me cry, you surprisingly deep muhfucka
Me: LMAO. You know I love it when you compliment me and backhand me all at once.
Friend: lol that's what wives are for 

Dying Uphill Both Ways In The Snow

Gay Cousin: I just want the wedding over with already.
Crazy Aunt: You have to enjoy it, mijo. At least one of you wants to give me a wedding before I die...
Cousin: Um...you've had three weddings.
Crazy Aunt: You know what I mean! The rest of you don't care.
Me: Okay, it's not like you're dying or anything.
Crazy Aunt: You don't know. I could get hit by a bus or bitten by a rabid animal and that would be it.
Me: ...Where on earth would you get bitten by a rabid animal?
Crazy Aunt: The zoo maybe. I don't know.
Cousin: Zoo animals aren't rabid and I doubt you could scale their enclosures anyway.
Crazy Aunt: Fine, then...on a safari.
Me: LOL. Yeah cuz you go on soooo many safaris.
Crazy Aunt: The point is, I could catch fire right now and you'd feel guilty that you never married while I was alive.
Me: Fire? A minute ago you were being mauled by a rabid animal while on safari!
Crazy Aunt: I don't like your sass. And yes, you would feel guilty!
Me: Okay fine, if you caught fire from a rabid animal bite while on safari, I would feel guilty for never having gotten gay married while you were alive.
Cousin: LMAO. All bases covered.
Crazy Aunt: That's all I asked for, mijo.

There's Nowhere You Can Be That Isn't Where You're Meant To Be, It's Easy

It's been an incredibly...interesting past few days. Life is about to change in one way or another and it's equal parts intriguing and scary. Change and I are mortal enemies but, when given no other choice, I can learn to accept it as being a potentially good thing (although I will still gripe about it having to happen). I was thinking last night about when I acquired my "teenager" all those years ago. At the time, I was still a bit of a mess and in no position to tackle something like parenthood, especially of a kid already in her troublesome years. I still remember sitting down in my apartment contemplating whether or not I was going to let her stay and my girlfriend at the time breaking me out of my fog and asking what I was thinking about. She'd been working the entire day as this was happening and I didn't want to interrupt her during what was a pretty big work event so she knew nothing about anything going on. I told her that the teenager wanted to move here, finish high school and then start college and that whether any of that happened hinged on my decision. She sat down next to me in sort of stunned disbelief and didn't say anything. She got up and started to do something else and I asked her if she thought I could do this. The reply - "There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.". Then she kissed me and said, "it's easy". And it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. And it's stuck with me every time I come up against a difficult decision, or find myself in an undesirable situation. Life is completely unpredictable and, in many cases, it never goes according to plan. Sometimes you just gotta trust that what is happening is what's best for you, even if you disagree in the moment. My first instinct with the teenager situation was to say she couldn't live with me and send her home because I was afraid of how it would change my life. But I didn't go on my first instinct. I let it sit for a few and decided to jump in totally unprepared because a part of me believed there was a reason for it. And there was. I'm extremely thankful that things ended up the way they did because she and I are both better off for it. We were always meant to end up in that situation together. The same can be said for Miss N, MOC and I. It didn't happen the ideal way but that doesn't really bother me because everything is for a reason. And everything that is potentially on the horizon for me, everything that may be about to change, is happening for a reason. And for once, I'm quite content to let change take its course.

Taking A Stand

One of the first things I ever wore once I was escaped the womb was a Denver Broncos shirt. I didn't have a choice in which team to root for, I was immediately thrown into the deep end of the Broncos fandom. And really, I got lucky. The Broncos are one of the NFL's classiest teams and one of its most competitive. Pat Bowlen, who sadly can no longer be at the helm of the team he loved due to Alzheimers disease, only ever wanted one thing and that was to win. But it was never at any cost. Throughout the years there have been a handful of incidents involving players antics off the field that he did not stand for. Most of the time, those players were either traded or allowed to walk via free agency. Fortunately for the Broncos, they don't tend to sign many players with questionable character, especially since Peyton Manning took over as QB. He demands that everyone around him be totally focused on and committed to the game, something that can't happen if your off the field distractions are too much. Each team has their own policies and handles their personnel differently. But what punishment they can dish out for player offenses comes down from the league. And the NFL doesn't have the best track record of making the punishment fit the crime.
The NFL as a whole has always had issues dealing with its problem child players. The latest grouping of controversies is not the first time Commissioner Roger Goodell has played with fire, but he has never been this close to the actual flame before. Many are calling for him to lose his job, something that seems unlikely as more time goes by, and I can't say I disagree. But firing him is not going to solve the problem. The entire culture of the NFL is what needs to change. This has always been a league that's been soft on punishment and has dealt with everything from drug charges to gun charges and now domestic and child abuse charges. It is a league that has taken an "ignore it and it will go away" stance far too many times and on way too many issues. It is also a league that has grown in popularity among women over the last decade or so, ironic considering how little value the NFL seems to place on women in general. Ray Rice is not the first NFL player accused of beating his wife (O.J. Simpson, anyone?). But he is one of the first to have the entire incident of domestic violence captured on video and shown to the world. Domestic violence is typically a he said/she said type of crime, as evidenced by the NFL's apparent lack of investigation into the matter. According to law enforcement, the NFL received the tape of Rice punching his then-fiancee in the face in an elevator before dragging her unconscious body out of the casino as passersby watched but did nothing to help the woman. Goodell says he never saw the full tape, choosing instead to take Rice and his wife at their word when they both claimed she initiated the fight and he was simply defending himself. Common sense should have told him that was not the way to handle the situation. What is a battered woman going to say while sitting next to her abuser? Of course she said it was her fault and defended him, for what I'm sure was not the first time. I don't care what a woman comes at you with, you do not clock her in the face the way he did. He is an NFL player, by definition bigger and stronger than most men, and he used all of that physical strength against her. Even if a longer tape exists where she took a swing at him or pushed him, it still does not justify what he did to her. Either Goodell knew of the tape but didn't want to make a big deal of it and chose to trust Rice's version of events (and even more sickening, he condoned it by not punishing him all that severely), or he did not know about it and has little control over what goes on in his own offices. Either way, he is not qualified to be Commissioner anymore. But I do not think he will lose that position as he has the support of many NFL owners, most of them men of his age or older who would likely rather not rock the boat and thus will not vote him out.
As if the NFL needed more negative publicity, another high-profile player, Adrian Peterson, was arrested and charged with child abuse over the weekend. While he was inactive for yesterday's game, word broke today that no suspension is forthcoming and he will be allowed to continue playing as his case makes its way through the legal system. The Rice issue was very black and white in terms of public opinion, although some people still try to defend him, but the Peterson abuse charges are having a much different effect. Some people seem to think he was justified in hitting his son with a switch (for those not familiar, that's a branch off of a small tree), even after seeing the photos of the injuries and hearing testimony from the boy saying he was afraid of his father. Others, myself included, believe that it does fall under the umbrella of child abuse and the D.A. is doing the right thing in charging him. Will his NFL status get him off? Probably, so all of this is a moot point. His defense, as well as what others are using to defend him, is that he simply punished the boy the same way he was punished while growing up and so there's nothing wrong with it. The problem with that argument is that the times have changed, and for the better in that there are now laws protecting little ones from overzealous punishment. What was perfectly legal and not frowned upon a decade or two ago is now considered abuse. Just because it was legal when you were growing up doesn't mean it's automatically going to be okay for you to do to your own kid now. I was hit on a few occasions as a child, but never anything close to abuse. However, I did witness abuse while growing up (both domestic and child) and I've seen what it does to those kids and how they react. If the kid is saying he's terrified of his father, that's a sign that it is not just an occasional use of force as discipline. Kids who are just disciplined every now and then by spanking are not afraid of their parents. Also, just because you were punished in a certain way does not mean you have to do the same with your child. While I got a few spankings in my youth, Miss N has never known that form and discipline. it will be interesting to see how this plays out, but the fact that he is not even drawing a suspension after having criminal charges filed against him pretty much tells you the league doesn't intend to do a damn thing about his situation.
So what does the NFL need now? To conduct an independent investigation into the league's practices and policies and, if necessary, oust Goodell. Yes, there's supposedly an investigation taking place but it is being run by two NFL owners, an absurd conflict of interest. Someone from the outside with total credibility and absolutely nothing to lose needs to come in, go through everything and make a recommendation for what comes next. Let us not forget, we don't just have the abuse allegations here, there's also the league's drug policy, whether they're taking proper safety measures and the numerous player/former player suicides that have been attributed to brain damage sustained on the field. Everything about this league screams mismanagement and it's not something that should be ignored, it's been too long now. How many more women have to be beaten, or even killed, before something changes? How many more players have to die? The NFL needs to take a page out of the book of other leagues in how they deal with things. The NHL, for example, has a strict policy when it comes to drugs of any kind. Just this year a player was pulled over blocks away from his team's arena and found to be under the influence of something, as well as carrying cocaine in his vehicle. Before the ink was dry on his arrest form, he was suspended indefinitely and put into the league's substance abuse program. Furthermore, the NFL needs to start teaching their players how to be men when they come into the league. By many accounts, there is little more than a day of lectures about finances and who to call when you get in trouble for rookies. They are essentially handing young men a pile of money, most of whom have never seen that much money before in their lives, and letting them operate under the impression that they are the gladiators of our times and as such can have/do/buy whatever they want. It's obvious that is going to lead to trouble, there's absolutely no direction given to them. In the NHL, every rookie is required to live with the family of a veteran teammate for at least a season. For example, the Avalanche's top rookie last year lived with our backup goaltender, who has a wife and three kids, the youngest of whom was a newborn. He had a curfew and was expected to help out around the house, babysit, etc. He was taught responsibility and how to manage his money even before he got the big contract (NHL rookies make less than a million dollars for their first two years in the league). This program has been around for eons in the NHL and they've had few problems with their players when it comes to abuse of either drugs or women. Don't get me wrong, there are NHL playboys and dudes who are not good humans in general, but that is true of any league and any profession. But when those matter do flare up, the NHL dishes out meaningful punishment. The NFL needs to start doing the same thing and I don't think Goodell is the man to get that done. Anything he does from here on out is a joke and all of this is overshadowing what should have been a great start to a new football season.

I Got 99 Womensz And Bicker With Every One

Me: So Miss N is upset with me because she didn't get new shoes and Y is annoyed because I didn't edit something to her liking.
G: lol Remember when you only had one woman's feelings/demands/needs to juggle?
Me: G, I juggled my mother and my sister for 9 months. I gained a Y three months after I exited the womb, along with my grandma, aunts and cousins. Then Miss N and MOC were added to the equation. So no, I don't remember when I only had to juggle one woman lol.
G: LOL. You know...I'd never thought about that. But now it's like you were never destined to have just one woman. Like you're genetically prone to juggling more women than a clown at a carnival.
Me: lol Pretty much

Laaaaaday, From The Moment I Ordered Youuuuu

Y: I'm watching this show with the competing weddings...this Indian woman married a Mexican guy. This is what our wedding would've been like. If we didn't think getting married to each other was gross.
Me: lol Instead, you're marrying a Swede. Haha, your wedding is gonna be boring!
Y: OMG that's true! This lady's was great, traditional Indian and then they had food from both heritages at the reception. Dammit.
Me: *points and laughs*
Y: Hey Clooney, at least someone wants to marry ME
Me: Yeah. A SWEDE. The only person who wants to marry you is from the land of Ikea.
Y: lol Ass. Ikea happens to make very functional furniture!
Me: Functional...but exciting? I think not.
Y: lol You know, you keep badmouthing him and I'm gonna force you down an aisle with me just for the kick ass reception that we could have.
Me: *shudder*
Y: *GASP* It makes you shudder to think of  spending your life with me?!
Me: No, it makes me shudder to think of walking down an aisle. I've been dealing with you for 33 years, 60 more is no big deal lol.
Y: lol Awww. You'll make such a good husband someday.
Me: Ew, no.
Y: You have all the makings of a wonderful husband! It's gonna happen!
Me: Stop it!!
Y: lol *points and laughs*
Me: Oh yeah, well I'd marry someone from a better country than you!
Y: I don't think so, love. Mail-order brides tend to come from poor countries that are worse than Sweden. Nice try though.
Me: How dare you say that about my bride! [Country to be determined] is a beautiful/fantastic/vibrant/drug-addled country!!
Y: LMAO

From Hell

As you may have read over the weekend, an author has claimed to have "definitively" identified who Jack The Ripper really was via DNA testing. According to this author, the killer was a 23-year-old Polish immigrant who was on the (very long) list of suspects at the time of the murders, and who later died in an asylum. Reading the comments on some of the reports of this so-called monumental identification tells you two things; those familiar with the case and particularly Ripperologists, are quite reluctant to accept this as gospel, while those who have only ever heard of the case a few times have already accepted it as gospel. Someone said, "This is Jack The Ripper, here's his DNA" and everyone who either doesn't care much about the case or doesn't know much about it said, "Oh, well that's good to know".
For those not familiar, Jack The Ripper was likely the world's first serial killer, murdering four (and possibly five) women in the seedier side of London in 1888. Most of the victims were prostitutes, all of them had their throats slit and were mutilated post-mortem with most of the damage being inflicted on their sexual organs. The brutality with the crimes, combined with how each victim was posed, led many to believe the killer had an intense hatred of women, and possibly of prostitutes. It was also rumored that he possessed great anatomical knowledge and surgical skills because of the way he cut open the victims and exposed, and in some cases removed, their internal organs. The murders took place over a three month span, during which the police were desperately trying to identify the killer and the public was equal parts alarmed and fascinated by the case. The name "Jack The Ripper" originates from one of three letters sent to the police and media, only one of which is believed to be authentic (and there's even debate over that). Ironically, the name does not come from the authentic letter, but a fake that gained media attention when it spoke of cutting off a victim's ear, something that did indeed happen to the next victim (but it was believed to be an incidental nick inflicted during the frenzy, not an intentional attempt to cut off her ear). The letter that was believed to be from the actual killer included half of a human kidney, an organ that was missing from another victim. In November of 1888, the murders curiously stopped altogether and the case itself also stalled. Little has changed since then. Every few years, somebody comes along with a TV special or a new book and claims they have solved the mystery, and there's no shortage of suspects to choose from. Everyone from the Queen's personal physician to a number of immigrants were named as potential suspects in the case.
This author is getting more attention than previous identifiers of Jack The Ripper because he has DNA evidence to back up his claim. DNA is a powerful thing when it comes to identifying criminals, even those from hundreds of years ago. But with older DNA, the conditions have to be near perfect to get a match because DNA degrades over time, especially if it is not kept in the best of conditions. This author says he got his DNA match from a scarf that belonged to one of the victims. This blood-stained scarf was taken from evidence by an officer assigned to the case and, for reasons I don't think I even want to know, he gave it to his wife as a gift. She was understandably creeped out by the gesture and put the scarf in a closet, where it remained until her death. It was later passed on through the generations of the family until it came up for auction in 2007, where this author paid quite a bit for it. Eventually, a DNA expert was able to extract a sample of DNA that did not belong to the victim and, using DNA samples from the descendants of both her and the alleged killer, got a match. Curiously, the author chose to partner with the Daily Mail newspaper to finance and announce all of this, rather than publish in a peer journal for review. And that has only added to the disbelief that he has actually solved the 126-year-old mystery. One would think if you legitimately want to put forth your findings, and aren't in it just for the cash and notoriety, you would go the route of credibility instead of teaming with a newspaper of questionable repute. But that's not the only problem with his declaration that he has solved the mystery and anyone who doubts his findings does so only to "perpetuate the myth" of Jack The Ripper.
I'm one of those is not drinking the Kool-Aid just yet. I've read countless books on the Ripper murders and while this potentially adds an intriguing chapter to the story, I find some issues with certain things. First, and this would be as big an issue in 1888 as it is now, the chain of custody for the scarf is ridiculous. You have a nobody officer (not even a detective) who stole evidence from the biggest case the world had ever seen and gave it to his wife as a gift. She shoved it into a box and it's touched Fonz knows how many hands since then; family members, friends of family members, other people attempting to solve the crime. The touch DNA on that thing has to be in the hundreds, if not thousands. There is no way to tell where it has been, or what the officer did with it prior to giving it to his wife. A jury would have a HUGE problem with that, to the point where it's likely this would not be admitted as evidence and, even if it were, it would be of value only to the defense. Furthermore, the DNA belonging to this immigrant is semen - and the victim was a prostitute. For all we know, he could've just been another john on the night her life came to an end. Hell, he could've been a john sometime before that since most of these women stayed in boarding houses or lived on the street at the time. I'd like to know what other DNA samples, both from the 1800's and later years, were actually on that shawl. And also, why was this guy's family the only ones tested for DNA? There were numerous suspects, all of whom presumably have descendants that are still alive today. Are we to believe this guy said the Polish immigrant was the one, took only his DNA and managed to hit the jackpot? That's some one in a million type odds there, if so. For this to be a believable comparison/elimination of all other suspects, he would have to get DNA from the descendants of those suspects and take any and all samples that exist on the scarf. And even then, you're left with the fact that she was a prostitute and he could've been a customer. It should also be noted that no shawl appears on the police list of effects found with this particular victim's body.
Another potential issue has to do with the letter(s) sent to the media and police. This man was a young Polish immigrant in an area that was chock full of other immigrants. The letter that's believed to be authentic was not exactly written in perfect English, but that's not unusual given the time. But despite the misspelled words, it doesn't show any telltale signs of being written by someone who was not a native English speaker. Would this immigrant, who no doubt spent at least some of his time with others who had immigrated from his own country, have a good enough grasp on the language to write such a letter? Immigrants were discriminated against often back then so I'd also question whether he'd have the balls to challenge the cops in such a way. Committing murders is one thing, but risking that you may lead the police right to your door is quite another.
Finally, there's the fact that the murders lasted only three months and then abruptly stopped. We didn't know what a serial killer was back then, or how they operated but we know now that they are driven to kill and they only stop for two reasons - they die or they get caught. There were rumors that Jack moved to the U.S. and continued to kill, and I read a book on these murders, but the M.O. is completely different. Jack killed five women, two of them in one night, and as far as we know the police were nowhere close to apprehending him. There was no reason for him to change anything about his M.O. and it is extremely rare a serial killer does so, even if they should (for example, Ted Bundy came close to getting caught several times and still never changed the way he did business, which eventually did get him caught). With each murder the adrenaline rush grows, as does the feeling of invincibility. It's no longer, "I hope I don't get caught", it's, "They can't/won't catch me". And thus there's no reason to change what you're doing. Serial killers are creatures of habit. And that also makes the night that two murders were committed a bit curious, leading many to believe the reason there were two victims in one night was because he was interrupted during the first murder. He wasn't "done" and needed to find another victim, one could say. You can compare serial killers to any other predator in the sense that they attack when they get hungry, when the impulse strikes them. That hunger is different for each one; Bundy's was ignited when he saw women with a certain hair color and style, the Zodiac killer went after couples, Jack The Ripper targeted prostitutes. Part of the definition of a serial killer is that they have lulls in between their kills, and those lulls can last any period of time. But they always kill again. That means Jack either died in November of 1888, was caught or committed, or he moved and continued killing and no one else caught on. Given the media attention at the time, the last theory is highly unlikely. Any murders with the same kind of brutality as the London killings would have made news, especially if there were a number of them. If this man was the Ripper, then why did he suddenly stop killing? We know he was not committed until 1891, which leaves a three-year period where he could've continued his reign of terror. There are only two reports of violent incidents during his time in the asylum, where he died in 1919 at the age of 53. One these incidents involved him threatening his sister with a knife, but I don't think there's much to read into that. Someone with the kind of hatred and aggression likely isn't going to be able to keep it in check, particularly after they have let it consume them a handful of times. But, if the actual Ripper was apprehended for, say, another crime then why didn't he come clean while in prison? Maybe he only did a short stint, or only intended to do a short one and died while in custody. The one thing that seems to be true of every serial killer is that once they are caught, they absolutely love to talk about their crimes and how they got away with them for so long. It's unlikely the Ripper would've wanted to let the mystery continue if he was in a situation where he was never going to get out of prison. I think the most likely scenario is that he died.
The idea that Jack The Ripper has been identified is an intriguing one but I don't think anyone can say it has definitively happened. This man was and still remains a suspect, one of dozens, none of whom will likely ever be proven to be the actual killer. There's also always the possibility that the killer wasn't even on the radar of the police. I think it's one of those things that we will never really know for sure. People will continue to surface with stories and claims but after 126 years, it's next to impossible to get enough evidence against anybody. Short of a detailed account of each murder written by the killer himself, I doubt the mystery will ever be solved.

Hellions

Friend: I don't have a damn thing but I'm gonna have a pre-nup anyway to protect my mom's houses
Me: I'm going to protect my Xbox and my TV lol
Me: But really, I'd probably get one to protect my kids because you never know
Friend: lol I'm gonna protect my car and Commodore 64 gaming system. 
Me: lol Which will both prob last longer than the marriage
Friend: 'Scuse you I'm plannin' to mate fo life yo 
Me: BUT...if I marry rich and negotiate a good pre-nup...then divorce...you can come live in my McMansion. I'd build you an entire herbivore wing
Friend: lol Did I say mate for life? I meant hitch my wagon to yours 
Me: lol Wow, that took a lot less than I thought it would
Me: I was prepared to throw in your own personal Starbucks too
Friend: I would have abandoned ship sooner but I was driving lol 
Me: LOL I had you at "if I marry rich" huh
Friend: lol Ho yeah 
Me: G was talking about how he doesn't think being super rich would make him happy. I agreed it wouldn't take only money to make me happy. But it'd sure allow me to buy what does make me happy
Me: #HoHosAndCoffee #HookersAndBlow
Friend: lol and how
Me: I remember way back when on MTV Cribs...I think it was Tommy Lee had a Starbucks in his house
Me: Although I'd need like an on call barista. Or a live-in barista. But both of those kind of sound like slavery so nevermind
Friend: lol Um, not if you PAY them Giuseppe
Me: lol Like I said, it woulda been slavery
Me: "Amo Pice! Babu wants a mocha!"
Friend: Soooo, you'd refer to yourself in the third person, by your slave name? 
Friend: Wait, was Amo Pice my slave name or yours? 
Me: It was yours
Me: lol And now we know you can't be by barista since you don't know your own name
Friend: Please, I'd be an amazing barista! I can draw you a middle finger in the foam 
Me: Hmmmm
Me: Oh alriiiiiight
Me: You can be 12 years Giuseppe's slave
Friend: LOL 
Me: lol I'm going to hell for that joke but I already had a ticket anyway so oh well
Friend: You and me both. I was gonna cheer by yelling out "kunte kinte" 
Me: lol we're horrible and it's amazing that Fonz would allow us to find one another
Me: It's like a perfect storm of debauchery and offensiveness
Friend: Told you, soul patnahs

Me And My Openis

Me: It looks like Brad Pitt's wedding band is gold. I didn't know they still made those
Friend: Why? Cuz people be gettin' all fancy now?
Me: Idk. I think the gold ones look tacky
Me: Says the dude who wild gnaw his own hand off before choosing a wedding band
Friend: Zaaaackly
Me: I can still have an opinion and make fun of others! This is 'Murricah
Friend: You and your penis are what's wing with this country!!
Me: LOL well I wouldn't say it's a wing
Friend: ***OPINIONS AND WRONG!!!!
Me: LMAO. How does opinions become penis??
Friend: The Swype keyboard did it
Friend: (Though it ain't completely wrong)
Me: lol wow
Friend: I blame your gizmo for err'thang
Me: Well that's probably acc'urate
Me: I'm posting this to my blog.
Friend: lol oh lovely