Good evening. Gigi the parti poodle here to wish you Happy Holidays and discuss the Christmas shopping season. I have wanted to address my adoring fans by taking a trip to the mall and allowing them to fawn over my beauty and occasionally even shake paws with them. But my dreams have been dashed as…Him does not like malls. I do not understand why…Him prefers shopping online when there are fans out there for me to meet and greet. My novelist falls somewhere in between. She likes to do some holiday shopping online and some out at the stores which she did this season. So, I was briefly adored by fans who were constantly asking me for my pawprint for which I gladly took out my portable ink pad and provided them with.

But alas, my moments of adoration were brief and I long to bask in the spotlight. Not to mention how much I love being out and about. I relish looking at the decorations and the store windows and gazing at my spectacular reflection. I love hopping up in Santa’s lap and providing him with a more efficient way to deliver presents as an elf takes our photo for posterity. I love getting free treats at the boutique pet store and being told how adorable I am because I am adorable. Hopefully I will be able to get out more and receive the admiration I so vehemetly deserve this time of year. Until next week I hope you enjoy this most magical season.

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: WOMAN OF THE HOUR (2024)-NETFLIX

One of the best movies I’ve seen this year so far is this film directed by Anna Kendrick who also stars in the lead role. And she does a terrific job in both. When I prepared to write one of my novels which I have finished but not yet published, I had to do research on psychopaths. I read several books, watched a lot of documentaries, and studied many research papers. Some of the books were difficult to get my hands on at the time as they were out of print or hard to find. One of the more obscure ones was The Rapist File: Interviews with Convicted Rapists by Les Sussman, Sally Bordwell and Ellen Frankfort. It is an interesting collection of interviews done by Sussman and Bordwell who spoke with a variety of incarcerated rapists. They went into prisons and talked to these criminals, recorded the conversations and printed what they said. And what most of these men loved to do was plan their hunt, stalk their game, bag their kill, and perfect their skills.

I remember being at one of the zoos here in the Pacific Northwest and watching this leopard pace back and forth in its cage, its eyes never leaving the children standing outside. Open that cage and see what happens. The leopard’s not so alluring anymore, is it? When interviewers ask actors how they find humanity in a character like Rodney, I roll my eyes. The answer is simple: they are playing a predatory animal. A predatory animal has no humanity.

Half of repeat or recidivist rapists are psychopaths. 20-25% of prisoners are psychopaths. And approximately 15-25% of serial killers are psychopaths. They may look like a person, talk like a person, and appear to act like a person. But are they human? Do they even have emotions past anger and irritation?

The word “psychopath” essentially means “suffering soul”. Psychopaths are missing 21% grey matter in their prefrontal lobe and 5-10% grey matter in their paralimbic system. And psychopathy is genetic. In fact, a psychopath has a 50/50 chance of siring or giving birth to another psychopath. A psychopath has four to six of the following genetic alleles:

AKK1

DRD2

DRD4

MAOA

COMT

5-HTTLPR

These alleles cause them to have the following traits:

Heavy and/or pronounced Eyebrows

Heightened reactivity involving the forehead and eye socket muscles when criticized (an angry stare)

Wide faces

Disfluencies in speech (um, uh, etc.)

Doubled words in speech (the-the, he-he, she-she, etc.)

Abnormal White Matter Integrity

Use an excessive of subordinate conjunctions (because, so that, therefore, etc.)

Tend to whistle or make repetitive noise

Talk incessantly about sex, money and/or food

Dislike pets and may have killed one or more

Drink black coffee

Drink gin and tonics

Likes to eat bitter foods like radishes

Are nomadic

Enjoy listening to rap music such as “Lose Yourself”

Do not like music with changes in tempo like “My Sharona” and “Titanium”

Were a chronic bed wetter late into youth

Has Grandiose/Extreme Narcissism

May have been misdiagnosed with ADD

Have physical ticks

Appear charming

Quick to anger and irritation

Are a pathological liar

Are always an extroverted personality type and often test as an ENTP (mad scientist), ESTP (con artist) or ENTJ (evil overlord)

Sport a quasi-smile

Are highly manipulative

Will copy body language during conversation

They gravitate towards occupations like CEO, Lawyer, Media, Sales, Surgeon, Journalist, Police Officer, Clergy, Chef, Public Servant (usually involving government positions like politicians). One might note all ten of these occupations often require working strange hours.

Dr. Robert Hare created the Psychopathy checklist (PCL-R) which is considered the gold standard. He created a list of twenty items which can only be administered by a professional. Each question is worth either 0, 1 or 2 points which simply translates to does not apply, partial match or mixed information, or a reasonably good match to the offender. In America, if you score a 30 or higher on this checklist, you are a psychopath. In the United Kingdom 25 or higher indicates a psychopath. If you score above 34…well, then you’re Rodney Alcala. Or Jeffrey Dahmer. Or Ted Bundy. Essentially what is known as a Super Psychopath.

It is important to note most psychopaths are male. In fact, a man is ten times more likely to be psychopath than a woman. 1 in 150 men is a psychopath. 1 in 1050 women is a psychopath meaning that testosterone plays a large part in psychopathy. And so those books like Gone, Girl, are a little misleading. Female psychopaths exist, of course. They’re just rare. Presently, FMRI tests (MRI tests done with FMRI software which allow the doctors to see movement in the brain when introduced to stimuli) can determine a psychopath. Eventually, as science advances, I imagine this will be done with a blood test due to the genetic nature of the condition. Which leads us to this week’s film:

Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) uses an unusual weapon: a camera. He wields it to manipulate the vanity of his prey. And it works. He finds people, often young women, who interest him and tells them he is an award-winning photographer, drives them off into an isolated area, takes their pictures, strangles them, revives them, rapes them, and kills them. And he does it a lot.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick), a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts has moved out to Hollywood and is scrambling to get jobs. She has a would-be friend and fellow neighbor in her apartment building named Terry (Pete Holms), who makes the appearance of wanting to help her but ultimately is somewhat parasitic and is not above using vague psychological warfare to try and win her affections. Cheryl gets a call from her agent one day who tells her she has booked her on The Dating Game. Cheryl realizes it’s just a one-day gig and she really isn’t all that interested, but she agrees anyway and goes on the show where she encounters subtle hints of sexism which make her uncomfortable. But nothing makes her more uncomfortable than meeting Bachelor Number Three who turns out to be Rodney Alcala.