The Zodiac's April Fool's Letter to BTK
The following letter was found in the incoming mail box of a newspaper and shortly published in the Letters to the Editor section. The letter prompted a new and vigorous investigation into The Zodiac's identity and whereabouts. Although the letter is a clear indication of exactly how much time The Zodiac has on his hands, it is comforting to know he spends the majority of it apparently studying H. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and writing involved speils at other serial killers.(1)
There is much speculation that the Zodiac, whose spelling was notoriously awful, at some point proof read his former letters and now has such a rigid usage stick up his ass that he is now even more insufferable to be around.
"This is the Zodiac Having Spoken.
I am writing to BTK concerning his very poor choice of words for his sobriquette "BTK". I do not know whether he chose this name himself, or if it was given to him by some contraction-mad reporter. In the end it matters not.
I enjoy lampooning serial killers because they have no recourse to my raillerly other than what they can squeeze in the fifteen-second introduction to a Correctional-Facility collect-call. That is provided they have the inclination, they certainly have the time, to go through the alphabet of every phonebook in America calling everyone a "motherfucker". They don't have time to say anything else.(2)
BTK (bind, torture kill) is a clunky initialism. It's not even an acronym because we (3) very well don't call the NRA the "Nnnnrrraugh!" I do not know how attached BTK was to binding, torturing and killing. He was at any rate attached enough to think he was so good at it that all other serial killers would look like johnny-come-lately buffoons in comparison, so he forbade himself other grotesqueries and left the other 24 letters of the alphabet up for grabs.
I suppose now we have to call Jeffery Dahmer The KFC killer.
To simply spell "BTK" does not have onimous, dark and grisly connotations. It didn't in the Middle Ages (on those rare occasions when people spelled anything) when more binding and torturing and especially killing was going on than a thousand BTKs could accomplish as a poltical unit activiated for that very purpose. Even the movies about BTK are reluctant to call themselves that and go by Hostel or Saw instead. In twenty years BTK could just as easily stand for a sandwhich-based sexual position that, who knows, some seasoned porn star is maybe right now on the verge of discovering. Should that happen, w/r/t BTK and his current whereabouts, it would be very ill-advised indeed for him to bring any further attention to it.
BTK cannot sound menacing with the addition of vowels as well, even if the corresponding violent acts those vowels represent are publishable only as letters. There is a finite number of variations of acronyms one can invent for BTK with at least two or the four vowels (Y excluded: only a yokel would try yo-yo someone to death) and all of them sound about as scary as B.U.T.U.K. (4)
Binding and torturing are in fact redundant, since binding is necessary to getting any torturing done at all. Since the act of killing is the invariable end to the torture, a stronger verb such as "slay" or "murder" would help to distinguish BTK from other killers, i.e. Killer Klowns. Since "Torture" is a tricky word I've taken as a whole subtopic to complain about later, we (5) can contract BTK further to BS or BM (torture being implicit in the binding), which we can easily mistake for Bull Shit or Bowel Movement and write sentences like "When will the police stop the bullshit?" or "Six p.m. curfew enforced because of bowel movement".
If only BTK had a sense of humor he might have named himself ":", thus causing unresolvable ambguity w/r/t the schamtic grammar of news tickers nationwide. "Hillary Clinton Will Run in 2016: kills again". "Do Nothing Congress Passes No Bills: still at large". "Serial killer demands to be called: Justin Bieber phones in apology".
The "killer" in "The BTK killer" is the first clue to someone's clear lack of grammar, as if the "kill" in "BTK" needed to be distinquished from the "killer", the K involving a "kill" that cannot be defined with killing. I suppose that is how one is softly killed with a song, or a song is softly killed by a bad cover. This is only worse if "BTK" is not a "killer" but a technique, such as a suplex or charley horse, which is like naming a serial killer "The Five Finger Donkey Punch" and saying stupid shit like "The F.F.D.P. Donkey Puncher On Punch Drunk Binge", which would be disturbing because the F.F.D.P. Donkey Punchee would be an actual donkey.
The confusion that results when anyone tries to understand what the fuck they just said when they say "The BTK killer killed again" is not that it's redundant, but that "The BTK Killer" is a killer of killers and the killers he's killing are are also binding and torturing to boot. "Bind, torture kill" are all imperative verbs, so when we say "The Bind Torture Kill Killer killed again", the thing getting killed, BTK, is not a noun but a demand.
We have, therefore, a killer who wants to kill a demand he makes of other killers before he kills them. The only logical alternative is that "the BTK killer" is a killer who goes around killing everyone who demands that he bind, torture and kill himself or other people. In order to be a serial killer, there would have to be a lot of people who would want him to do this.
The only other option is that "The BTK Killer" is killing the present tense verbs of "bind" "torture" and "kill". Therefore when we say "The BTK Killer killed again" (which we must if "The BTK Killer" is a serial killer, unless we abandon the meaning altogether and start calling people like Charles Manson, who hasn't killed anyone, serial killers) this means two different and contradictory things. The first thing it means is that "The BTK killer" has already killed B. T. or K. He must necessarily have killed one of the three before and must be now called "The B Killer" or "The T Killer", depending on which two of the three he decided to kill later and whether or not he's dyslexic. To to call him "The BTK killer" after he has killed B or T is to impy that he hasn't killed again because he never killed in the first place. The other thing it means is that "The BTK killer" is at some point going to have to kill "killing", which would result in someone who has killed the only verb to describe what he just did.
"The BTK killer" therefore means: the killer of his own killing technique; a killer of other killers he demands to kill so he can kill them; the person who kills a confederacy of people who demand him to kill; or a killer of the words used to describe the killing of the words he kills.
Perhaps "BTK" was merely named that by the press and he could not get them to change it. This brings me to the loaded word "torture" that is above all the worst word choice in this whole debacle.
Strictly speaking "torture" is any act right up to killing someone, which can be anything under the sun that is generally unpleasant. So the word "torture" in "BTK" is actually shorthand for a variety of acts BTK and the community at large agree are torture or we would deprive him of his "torture" and start calling him "The Bind Tickle Killer". What the "torture" was "BTK" was up to I don't know- The Zodiak does not indulge in obscurities- but I guess they can be described with words and BTK could be expanded with those words even if the result is BEUTEEK.
I make this point because BTK never once changed or elaborated on his initialism even as, it's supposed here, the press labled him with it.
If a serial killer does not want to get caught and wakes up one morning and sees "BTK Strikes Again" on the front page of his paper, then goes on to read and discover that he is apparently now the BTK Killer who has struck, he has two options to stay uncaught.
He could (A): stop being BTK and let some copycat become BTK for a while and get caught, then proceed to a more civilized country were the media doesn't name serial murderers BTK.
He could (B) explode "torture" to include a list of tortures so long the press would eventually have to abandon the initialism strategy because they now have to say "BUTUK" with a straight face or appear to be giggling at serial muder.
So if option (A) is out of the question B.T.K. would have to enhance his M.O. to include chronologically exlusive torture tactics that would lead the police to think that (A) they have two serial killers working at cross puposes, or (B) one hell of a multi-tasking savant.
BTK did none of these things. Instead he sent a diskette with some incriminating shit on it to the police after asking them if they could incriminate him further with it, and then believed them when they said they couldn't, which they could and did.
Yours Truly,
The Z.O.D.I.A.C."
Notes:
1. Although a Fowleresque salvo on BTK's abusage of English might seem odd coming from anyone, most of all another serial killer, there are elements of The Zodiac's grammatical attack that apply equally to other vapid words in ignoramus use. For example, MILF, which is so concerned with being an acronym it sacrifces the initial T that connects "I'd like" to "Fuck" and therefore means "Moms I'd Love Fuck" and it's not like MILF already has enough Oedipal baggage as it is.
2. The Zodiac makes this crack knowing he is impervious to such a call, because of course there is no entry for The Zodiac Killer in any phonebook The Editors are aware of.
3. The Zodiac's penchant for using the Royal "We" has led some psychologists to diagnos him with Multi-Personality Disorder, and therefore it's always a question at any given time as to which of the several "Zodiacs" it is that is "speaking".
4. After this The Zodiac launches into several paragraphs on synonyms for "bind" "torture" and "kill" which, despite the Zodiak's impressive vocabularly and delight in the eytmology of verbs like "disembowel", were found by the Editors to be too gory and unfunny and removed. The jist of the paragraphs can be paraphrased that "bind" "torture" and "kill" are weak verbs, which does not exaclty require exposition from sentences that are clearly the Zodiac's attempt, despite all the put downs on "BTK", to get the reader to assocciate etymology with Zodiak instead of the perhaps now defunct cryptology he was formerly wild about.
5. The Zodiac speaking now might be a different one from the Zodiak who started the sentence.
There is much speculation that the Zodiac, whose spelling was notoriously awful, at some point proof read his former letters and now has such a rigid usage stick up his ass that he is now even more insufferable to be around.
"This is the Zodiac Having Spoken.
I am writing to BTK concerning his very poor choice of words for his sobriquette "BTK". I do not know whether he chose this name himself, or if it was given to him by some contraction-mad reporter. In the end it matters not.
I enjoy lampooning serial killers because they have no recourse to my raillerly other than what they can squeeze in the fifteen-second introduction to a Correctional-Facility collect-call. That is provided they have the inclination, they certainly have the time, to go through the alphabet of every phonebook in America calling everyone a "motherfucker". They don't have time to say anything else.(2)
BTK (bind, torture kill) is a clunky initialism. It's not even an acronym because we (3) very well don't call the NRA the "Nnnnrrraugh!" I do not know how attached BTK was to binding, torturing and killing. He was at any rate attached enough to think he was so good at it that all other serial killers would look like johnny-come-lately buffoons in comparison, so he forbade himself other grotesqueries and left the other 24 letters of the alphabet up for grabs.
I suppose now we have to call Jeffery Dahmer The KFC killer.
To simply spell "BTK" does not have onimous, dark and grisly connotations. It didn't in the Middle Ages (on those rare occasions when people spelled anything) when more binding and torturing and especially killing was going on than a thousand BTKs could accomplish as a poltical unit activiated for that very purpose. Even the movies about BTK are reluctant to call themselves that and go by Hostel or Saw instead. In twenty years BTK could just as easily stand for a sandwhich-based sexual position that, who knows, some seasoned porn star is maybe right now on the verge of discovering. Should that happen, w/r/t BTK and his current whereabouts, it would be very ill-advised indeed for him to bring any further attention to it.
BTK cannot sound menacing with the addition of vowels as well, even if the corresponding violent acts those vowels represent are publishable only as letters. There is a finite number of variations of acronyms one can invent for BTK with at least two or the four vowels (Y excluded: only a yokel would try yo-yo someone to death) and all of them sound about as scary as B.U.T.U.K. (4)
Binding and torturing are in fact redundant, since binding is necessary to getting any torturing done at all. Since the act of killing is the invariable end to the torture, a stronger verb such as "slay" or "murder" would help to distinguish BTK from other killers, i.e. Killer Klowns. Since "Torture" is a tricky word I've taken as a whole subtopic to complain about later, we (5) can contract BTK further to BS or BM (torture being implicit in the binding), which we can easily mistake for Bull Shit or Bowel Movement and write sentences like "When will the police stop the bullshit?" or "Six p.m. curfew enforced because of bowel movement".
If only BTK had a sense of humor he might have named himself ":", thus causing unresolvable ambguity w/r/t the schamtic grammar of news tickers nationwide. "Hillary Clinton Will Run in 2016: kills again". "Do Nothing Congress Passes No Bills: still at large". "Serial killer demands to be called: Justin Bieber phones in apology".
The "killer" in "The BTK killer" is the first clue to someone's clear lack of grammar, as if the "kill" in "BTK" needed to be distinquished from the "killer", the K involving a "kill" that cannot be defined with killing. I suppose that is how one is softly killed with a song, or a song is softly killed by a bad cover. This is only worse if "BTK" is not a "killer" but a technique, such as a suplex or charley horse, which is like naming a serial killer "The Five Finger Donkey Punch" and saying stupid shit like "The F.F.D.P. Donkey Puncher On Punch Drunk Binge", which would be disturbing because the F.F.D.P. Donkey Punchee would be an actual donkey.
The confusion that results when anyone tries to understand what the fuck they just said when they say "The BTK killer killed again" is not that it's redundant, but that "The BTK Killer" is a killer of killers and the killers he's killing are are also binding and torturing to boot. "Bind, torture kill" are all imperative verbs, so when we say "The Bind Torture Kill Killer killed again", the thing getting killed, BTK, is not a noun but a demand.
We have, therefore, a killer who wants to kill a demand he makes of other killers before he kills them. The only logical alternative is that "the BTK killer" is a killer who goes around killing everyone who demands that he bind, torture and kill himself or other people. In order to be a serial killer, there would have to be a lot of people who would want him to do this.
The only other option is that "The BTK Killer" is killing the present tense verbs of "bind" "torture" and "kill". Therefore when we say "The BTK Killer killed again" (which we must if "The BTK Killer" is a serial killer, unless we abandon the meaning altogether and start calling people like Charles Manson, who hasn't killed anyone, serial killers) this means two different and contradictory things. The first thing it means is that "The BTK killer" has already killed B. T. or K. He must necessarily have killed one of the three before and must be now called "The B Killer" or "The T Killer", depending on which two of the three he decided to kill later and whether or not he's dyslexic. To to call him "The BTK killer" after he has killed B or T is to impy that he hasn't killed again because he never killed in the first place. The other thing it means is that "The BTK killer" is at some point going to have to kill "killing", which would result in someone who has killed the only verb to describe what he just did.
"The BTK killer" therefore means: the killer of his own killing technique; a killer of other killers he demands to kill so he can kill them; the person who kills a confederacy of people who demand him to kill; or a killer of the words used to describe the killing of the words he kills.
Perhaps "BTK" was merely named that by the press and he could not get them to change it. This brings me to the loaded word "torture" that is above all the worst word choice in this whole debacle.
Strictly speaking "torture" is any act right up to killing someone, which can be anything under the sun that is generally unpleasant. So the word "torture" in "BTK" is actually shorthand for a variety of acts BTK and the community at large agree are torture or we would deprive him of his "torture" and start calling him "The Bind Tickle Killer". What the "torture" was "BTK" was up to I don't know- The Zodiak does not indulge in obscurities- but I guess they can be described with words and BTK could be expanded with those words even if the result is BEUTEEK.
I make this point because BTK never once changed or elaborated on his initialism even as, it's supposed here, the press labled him with it.
If a serial killer does not want to get caught and wakes up one morning and sees "BTK Strikes Again" on the front page of his paper, then goes on to read and discover that he is apparently now the BTK Killer who has struck, he has two options to stay uncaught.
He could (A): stop being BTK and let some copycat become BTK for a while and get caught, then proceed to a more civilized country were the media doesn't name serial murderers BTK.
He could (B) explode "torture" to include a list of tortures so long the press would eventually have to abandon the initialism strategy because they now have to say "BUTUK" with a straight face or appear to be giggling at serial muder.
So if option (A) is out of the question B.T.K. would have to enhance his M.O. to include chronologically exlusive torture tactics that would lead the police to think that (A) they have two serial killers working at cross puposes, or (B) one hell of a multi-tasking savant.
BTK did none of these things. Instead he sent a diskette with some incriminating shit on it to the police after asking them if they could incriminate him further with it, and then believed them when they said they couldn't, which they could and did.
Yours Truly,
The Z.O.D.I.A.C."
Notes:
1. Although a Fowleresque salvo on BTK's abusage of English might seem odd coming from anyone, most of all another serial killer, there are elements of The Zodiac's grammatical attack that apply equally to other vapid words in ignoramus use. For example, MILF, which is so concerned with being an acronym it sacrifces the initial T that connects "I'd like" to "Fuck" and therefore means "Moms I'd Love Fuck" and it's not like MILF already has enough Oedipal baggage as it is.
2. The Zodiac makes this crack knowing he is impervious to such a call, because of course there is no entry for The Zodiac Killer in any phonebook The Editors are aware of.
3. The Zodiac's penchant for using the Royal "We" has led some psychologists to diagnos him with Multi-Personality Disorder, and therefore it's always a question at any given time as to which of the several "Zodiacs" it is that is "speaking".
4. After this The Zodiac launches into several paragraphs on synonyms for "bind" "torture" and "kill" which, despite the Zodiak's impressive vocabularly and delight in the eytmology of verbs like "disembowel", were found by the Editors to be too gory and unfunny and removed. The jist of the paragraphs can be paraphrased that "bind" "torture" and "kill" are weak verbs, which does not exaclty require exposition from sentences that are clearly the Zodiac's attempt, despite all the put downs on "BTK", to get the reader to assocciate etymology with Zodiak instead of the perhaps now defunct cryptology he was formerly wild about.
5. The Zodiac speaking now might be a different one from the Zodiak who started the sentence.