I swear that I don’t do drugs. But my eyes flashed across this, I read it as “glacially bloody minted” and then had this mental image of Jessica Fletcher with an iced and minted bloody mary (with real blood) in her hands, smiling with secret inner glee as she thought murderous thoughts.
Godzilla will smash through power lines, growl a lot, crush buildings and create quite a ruckus, what with the Japanese Army trying to stop him.
Jessica Fletcher on the other hand, will have you over for lunch a couple of times, serve you tea, discuss her latest novel, ask about your grandchildren and in general make you feel so comfortable and liked that you’ll never see it coming.
Sure, we all have to die, but at least we can be civilized about it!
I’m going with Godzilla here. Sure he went on the occasional rampage when he was a teenager (who hasn’t?) but more recently, he’s been fighting off alien invaders (often themselves monsters), which is a big comfort. In other words, if you think Tokyo had it bad, you should see the cities he wasn’t protecting.
I don’t see JF as a serial killer though. You’re attributing causation where there is only correlation. Still, I’m not inviting her over for dinner.
I don’t think Jessica Fletcher’s AMERICA is so bad, as long as you don’t live in Cabot Cove, Maine. That town clearly has the highest per capita murder rate of any city on earth. I mean, it has a population of about 600, but EVERY DARNED WEEK anywhere from one to five people buy the farm. That would be the equivalent of 41,666 people being killed every week in a city of 5 million.* And only one cop- Ritchie Cunningham’s father- to police the whole shebang. Scary.
*Or in a place like Mexico City with a population of 21.2 million, that rate would yield 176,666 murders per week. Hmmm… they’re just about there, eh?
Not really. There is a hypothesis that given an infinite universe, all possible arrangements of atoms of any given scale will eventually appear an infinite number of times. Mrs Fletcher is perhaps one of the following:
a) Merely the victim of coincidence on a cosmic scale.
b) An inhabitant of an Earth where murder is rather more common than on our own. Think of all the towns on that Earth that don’t have a Jessica Fletcher, but still have murders at that rate!
In fact, in our universe there may be infinite Jessicas Fletcher living lives in towns called Cabot Cove, Maine, which exactly correspond to the events portrayed in the entire run of Murder, She Wrote (except as where contradictions would make that logically impossible). Some who are merely stumbling into horrible coincidence and coping, some who are on worlds where such murder really is as common as on our television dramas, & some that are as Skald says, forces of evil in a bag of kindly old lady.
And of course, there are infinite worlds watching fictional programs which describe life on our Earth more accurately than any documentary, but which are rightly considered unrealistic tripe in their own worlds.
I already live in a world with pointless human evil, so I’ll take my chances in the land of magical beasts they told me in school couldn’t exist. Who knows what delightfull things might await.
I live here and I consider it unrealistic tripe. I continue to suspect we’re in a computer game. I’m just not so sure that I’m willing to steal cars to get around a la Grand Theft Auto.
But how will you know that she’s there? It’s not like visitors have to sign in a giant guest book whenever they stay at a friend’s. You won’t know she’s coming, until suddenly you feel a bit ill and there’s this old lady watching you…
Whereas it’s pretty much impossible not to notice Godzilla.
Don’t you realize he was in on the whole deal? The man made his own son disappear completely from reality. How else do the people of Cabot Cove manage not to flee screaming from the town like Tokyo citizens from a giant monster? He makes them forget all about the many, many, friends, relatives, and tourists that are gone. Then one day Jessica calls them up and invites them to a game of Solitaire, and it’s all over for them too.
This is the horror of Ms. Fletcher’s America - not only will you be unaware of when your death will come, but you don’t even know you’re in danger.
I can’t vote til I have more information. Am I aware of JF’s activities or just another yokel who’s stumbled into her web?
If I’m aware, I can endear myself to her and arrange to be the first and most obvious suspect in the murders. This will irresistibly compel her to meddle and prove my innocence, buying me more time. If I play my cards right, a family history of heart disease and diabetes will catch up with me long before she does.
Otherwise, Tokyo. At least the big guy isn’t smug when he wins.