As Christmas approaches our thoughts naturally turn to violence, death, and catastrophe. These thoughts are similar to our death-related thoughts at other times of the year, but with a nice pine scent and a seasonal air of grim inevitability. I am certainly capable of murder, as are most people. No question about it. I probably couldn't kill someone in a rage, however, or in any sort of gruesome manner. I suppose it's more damnable to say that I could only see myself committing murder in a cold and calculating fashion. A crime of passion is viewed more leniently by the law and the average citizen, but what about intellectual passion, the stirring drama of a great idea? Like if I think about someone really carefully and get more and more excited by the idea of that person being dead. I think it's unimaginative of the legal system to define passion so narrowly.

I could never stab or slice or hack or shoot anyone to death, nothing involving violation of the flesh. I just don't have the stomach for it. I couldn't even choke someone if it involved a lot of struggling and gasping and all that business. I could maybe choke a child or an infirm older person, or a quadriplegic or a person in an iron lung, someone easily choked. That doesn't mean I don't care, it's just a little quirk of mine. No one I kill should take that personally, as indicating a lack of emotion or zeal or deep personal involvement. I mean if you're being murdered you certainly want to feel like your killer has some emotional stake in the proceedings, otherwise it's pretty much an empty experience. If you ever see my name in a murder-related headline it would probably be something like Area Man Apprehended In Connection With String of Painless Hot Cocoa Poisonings And Gentle Suffocations. I could see myself quoted as saying, "I asked him repeatedly to stop living, there are several witnesses who will back me up on that. But he wouldn't, he persisted in existing. This went on for a long time, it became a source of frustration to me. So I felt this was the only way to make him stop. Living I mean."