If this guy is wrong, I don't want to be right.

It's not that I don't realize that surreptitiously snipping the PJ's off of sleeping coeds is against the law or that it's somehow "wrong." I recognize that his intentions were prurient and probably downright perverse. But you have to admit his crime was unique. And maybe a little hilarious. It's like a lost scene from Porky's or Revenge of the Nerds in which the sisters of Eta Pi wake up, stand up, and watch their silkies fall to the floor just before the Tri Lamb flashbulbs go off.

We live in an age of hackneyed crime. Murderers use guns rather than elaborate, Goldbergian devices involving tripwires, hammers, and kiddy pools filled with lye. Burglars break windows instead of scaling walls with the aid of suction cup shoes. They take TV's rather than pets or panties. In a word, they're lazy. It's all about avoiding capture, not enjoying the crime.

In these days, when our enemies are so damn serious and, like, ideological or something, I think this Jeff Gelinas, the so-called "Serial Snipper," is exactly what we all need. We can't understand why someone might run into a coffee shop in a C4 vest and pull the ripcord, but figuring out the motive behind a little covert pajama snipping is easier. Sure, we're all against him, but we have to admit that he's a bit of a genius -- faulty and lame, but a mastermind of his own little criminal niche, nonetheless.

Perhaps there's a new day dawning -- a kind of criminal artistic renaissance heralded by the Serial Snipper and the still at-large Erie Pizza Bomb Bank Plot architect. Maybe the coming age is one in which we'll thrill at the bizarre criminal antics of a wacky cast of nutballs that are easily dismissed as loons rather than shuddering in our shelters for fear of the next wave of brown raiders piloting plague-laden planes into our Best Buys.

If the dawning of that new age means a few coeds get creeped-out, I'm OK with it.

Analogcabin @ 10:25 AM
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