Most of you don't know this about me, but I started college with the intent of becoming a forensic pathologist. This probably says something about my inability to deal with actual living people…I know, a real shocker, right? Although I ended up abandoning that road for a more traditional scientific medical path, that doesn't mean I don't still enjoy CSI, horror movies, and bizarre experiments done in the basement of dark medical buildings and science labs, because I do…I really do. I just don't want to be $300,000 in debt to perform those experiments when I can get paid a salary to do them debt-free anyway.
I also spent a large amount of my high school years in an organization called Explorer Search and Rescue. Growing up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, this usually meant getting woken up in the middle of the night and climbing a mountain to extract some drunk idiot who got lost or maimed himself. More often than not, these little midnight trips started out as "searches" and ended up as "body evacuations," which made for a hell of a story the next day at school.
Random classmate: I went to the movies last night, what did you do?
Me: I pulled a dead hiker off the face of a 5,000 foot mountain after he fell 900 vertical feet and tried to stick the landing. His femurs telescoped out his shoulders. What a dumbass, everyone knows you should try and land flat to distribute your weight evenly.
Random classmate: (long awkward pause) Dude, is that blood on your shirt?!
Me: Yeah, I didn't have time to change before first period, don't worry, It's not mine.
Random classmate: (stares in silence)
Me: How was the movie?
Random classmate: (more silence)
Me: Um…okay, I guess I'll catch you later then….(mumbles)…you catatonic freak.
Random classmate: (more silence)
Needless to say, I wasn't captain of the football team, or class president in high school, but I still maintain that I had WAY more fun than they did. All they ever seemed to do with their spare time was hang out in our small town's gas station parking lot, staring at each others' crappy cars—every night.
The most intriguing searches I went on were "evidence searches," which usually meant scouring the woods for anything from a bloody weapon to some dead hooker's missing teeth. What? Don't look at me like that. In case you haven't heard, Washington state has a lot of serial killers and they always seem to target prostitutes as a matter of moral principle or something. I've spent more then a few evenings on my hands and knees for the sake of a hooker. Ah, the reverse irony of it all. Did I mention that I developed one hell of a sick, twisted sense of humor in order to cope with all I've seen?
Nothing ever seems to stay weighted down in a lake, and who the hell has access to enough acid to fill a bathtub?The point of all this is that I look at the world more through the eyes of Gil Grissom, and not just because I also thought Lady Heather was smoking hot. However, I take things a step further and add a touch of reality to my view of the world that isn't tainted through the lens of a Hollywood camera. For instance, I have been to New York and Miami and neither one is entirely blue or yellow respectively, as the CSI spin offs would have you believe. I also have never seen a centrifuge that gives you a printout of any kind nor a PCR machine that gives you results in 5 minutes. No, this is all Hollywood crap and one of the primary reasons everyone is so goddamn impatient about everything, because we are being spoonfed a bullshit view of how things are actually done.
To elucidate my point, please let me clarify some more Hollywood crap for you. Blood detected in a shower/tub/bathroom doesn't mean someone was killed there. I mean think about it for a second from a perspective of real life events. Where is the first place you go when you get a bloody nose? That's right, to the bathroom, and every time you shove a new tissue up your nostril because the first one didn't stop the bleeding, you do it over the sink, basically bathing the sink in traces of your own blood. Every razor blade used by a man or a woman eventually ends up with blood on it no matter how careful a shaver you are. So you can rule that out as a clear indicator of homicide as well, or perhaps list a straight razor as your number one murder weapon of choice, since you could always argue reasonable doubt.
"MIDOL, NOW!!"Now I know what you're all thinking, "That's a tiny amount of blood," so let me bring you into my world a little further and get really graphic. Once a month, a woman gets her period, and several times during that week she gets into the shower without a pad or a tampon, bleeding all over the bathtub floor—it all goes down the drain into the plumbing. I know, I'm starting to scare you a little, but welcome to my mind, it's fucking terrifying in here. Yes, my future little homicide suspects, the bathroom, when tested with luminol, looks not unlike the shower scene from Psycho, and not just from all the blood you unwittingly leave in there. Luminol has several drawbacks in that it also reacts with bleach and fecal matter, both of which are almost never found in bathrooms….oh wait…nevermind.
So now you're thinking, "Okay, the bathroom is the place to commit the crime, but how the hell do I dispose of the body?" Therein lies the problem with every homicide, my little psychopaths— you now have this entire ex-person to somehow dispose of. In all the movies and shows, the authorities always seem to find the bodies that lead them back to their killer. Nothing ever seems to stay weighted down in a lake, an animal always digs them up in the woods, and who the hell has access to enough acid to fill a bathtub? Well, I do, and chloroform too, but I meant OTHER than me.
Luckily for you, Consumer Reports has solved the problem of body disposal with their strict adherence to the scientific principle. You see, my darling sociopaths, recently, while making dinner, I noticed that my garbage disposal was broken. (Oh, here is a great tip for the ladies: all science geeks can cook. If they tell you they can't, then they're either a boldface liar or they really suck at what they do—either way, you should dump them. I mean after all, a recipe is just a protocol you follow in your kitchen where you get to eat your results. At the very least they should be able to follow it to the letter and come up with a wide array of yummies for you both to enjoy.) Anyway, my garbage disposal broke and like any good scientist, before I ventured out to the hardware store for a new one, I did a little research on which one to buy. I went straight to Consumer Reports and took a look at all the different models and how they rated their performance. It was there that I came across this video and the glorious realization that I could easily "OFF" and dispose of any one of you little fuckers that have anonymously commented anything other then what a brilliant writer I am.
They're almost begging you to use them for malicious purposes. I mean, just look at the red screen coupled with the eerie music playing when Bob Carpel (almost sounds like carpal) introduces the "Digestor" contraption they have built to test the different models of garbage disposers. They are testing it with cow bones, which apparently "is something manufacturers say you can use in these garbage disposal units." Really? Why would anyone be putting cow bones down the garbage disposal when they could just throw them in the trash? That just seems odd to me unless they're suggesting an alternative, homicidal use for these disposers. Especially since, forensically speaking, cow bones are WAY denser then human bones, so they're really making a strong point here for easy bone disposal.
Carpel continues using little subtle wordplay like, "Just as you might in your own home, getting ready, cleaning up, after the dinner table." The way he says it makes it seem like all one thing, but upon further forensic linguistic analysis, you can see these are really separate events. No one puts bones down the drain to get ready to clean up after the dinner table, because that IS part of cleaning up after the dinner table. In addition, people don't usually have bones to dispose of when getting ready for dinner, because the bones usually appear AFTER dinner has been eaten. No, the true way he meant it, is clearly that there are several different scenarios in which you would be disposing of bones, getting ready (to face the world after a homicide), cleaning up (after committing the homicide), AND after the dinner table (even Jeffrey Dahmer had to eat, killing made him famished).
Hands down, the best place to get rid of evidence.Carpel goes on to talk about how it only took 5 minutes to grind up ALL those bones, but he also stated that it only took one minute to grind up 150 grams earlier. Thus we can assume he's implying you have a shit-ton of bones to dispose of fast. And in that case, faster and finer ground is really important, because that's how easily it goes through the pipes in your house and out to the sewer system. This is very important to distance yourself from the evidence and make it impossible for skeletal reconstruction, which is always done when bones are actually found. Furthermore, the weapon of choice is now fairly irrelevant since tool marks and wound identification are kind of a moot point.
The Incinerator, your own personal crematorium.So after checking their best disposer recommendations, I went right over to Lowe's and paid $320 for the "InSinkErator" which is the quietest yet most efficient bone disposal unit on the market, and just happens to be the exact same model in the video. What? Don't judge, I thought the chrome look was really quite pretty and Consumer Reports couldn't simply come right out and tell me to buy that one for unethical reasons. Regardless, I received their subtle video suggestion loud and clear. By the way, did you get the clever joke in the manufacturer's name? The InSinkErator (a pun on Incinerator)—I'm telling you, it's not only pretty but it's like having your very own crematorium right in your kitchen! Gone are the days of neighbors complaining about all the black smoke and the awful smell when you "cook." Hell, gone are the neighbors for that matter!
Installation of the InSinkErator wasn't hard either, but don't forget to pick up fresh plumber's putty before you leave the store, lest you find yourself back within the hour feeling homicidal—and you don't want that before getting that bad boy installed. I personally hate having to make that return trip to the hardware store for the item I didn't know I needed until halfway through my home improvement project. Although, I have some serious issues with hardware stores, as you know from my previous Home Depot article.
Now you may be a little paranoid as to how you're going to explain any blood traces in your kitchen if someone goes snooping around with a spray bottle of lumiol. However, I recommend with ALL garbage disposals that you clean them regularly with a bleach solution to help remove the invariable odor they'll end up with. Just be careful not to cut yourself—although that just adds to the reasonable doubt of why there was bleach and degraded traces of blood in the kitchen in the first place.
So despite what the classic board game Clue would have you believe, there is really only one place in the house to commit a homicide. Although technically Mr. Body should promptly be disposed of in the kitchen, the lavatory is really the place for the crime. (Ironically, this room was left off the game board.) Thanks to the InSinkErator and the guys at Consumer Reports, the "who" and "with what" will continue to remain a mystery forever.