by BJ Beauchamp
Been pondering about what to write for the Dreams and Nightmares edition of Exterminating Angel Press, and the love of my life got me thinking. He told me some years ago he went to Matamoros, Mexico as he was mesmerized by the story of Mark Kilroy – the young American who was abducted and brutally murdered in 1989. He toured the area where Mark’s last hours of life took place (bar-hopping, as Mark was on spring break). I wonder about the love of my life being mesmerized by such a tale. He did note it was creepy, but logic screams out in my brain, “of course it was.”
If you look up Mark Kilroy, a pre-med student from Texas University, you’ll see the details of who his killer was, and that the point of his abduction was that of a sacrifice. I don’t name killers as they don’t deserve to be remembered, except as a cautionary tale. Today gruesome murders are frequent in Mexico. Entire police forces quit before being killed after the chief has been murdered. Mass graves are found. Decapitated heads are stuck on poles as a warning to others.
Drugs are the business and murder is simply a method of control. They don’t care if they kill innocent bystanders, children, or anyone else — it’s just business (don’t start me). But the story of Mark Kilroy is still grotesque and brutal even by the same standards twenty-two years later. A sacrifice to the devil, he was abducted by a religious cult and brought to the leader who had asked for someone who would “scream.”
Everything after that becomes hearsay. What was found and dug up later was fact. Mark’s skull had been split open, his legs were hacked off, his heart and spinal cord ripped out, but his genitals and brain were missing. I’ve read it somewhere that it was thought Mark was sexually abused and dismembered while he was still alive because it was important to the ceremony that he screamed a lot.
Police did find parts of his brain in a cauldron along with blood, animal parts, and scorpions. That’s a real life nightmare, one that friends and family of the victim are living still.
It’s not that far a horrific tragedy from whole families dying trying to get out of worn-torn Somalia – deaths are in unspeakable numbers from hunger and cholera. But that’s not business, that’s war. Somalia is the place where the Battle of Mogadishu happened in 1993, and where US Soldiers’ bodies were drug around the town and mutilated (see Black Hawk Down). Somalia is also the base of current day pirates (aka murderers).
In Darfur as part of the ethnic cleansing, rape and sexual violence of women and girls does two things — humiliate the woman or girl in public and by doing so you also succeed in humiliating the entire community. A female who was unfortunate enough to become pregnant as a result of the rape could find herself killed by her own people as she carried a child of the enemy.
It is not just a one-time event either, as females are captured, legs broken so they can’t escape, and kept as sex slaves for the Janjawid military — gang raped, repeatedly day after day.
What’s that got to do with Los Angeles? Nothing… I hope. But knowing the nightmares that go on in the world tend to keep things in perspective for me here in LA. My nightmare like so many others is unemployment. California is noted as being the bankrupt state and whose employers and jobs are going to other states like Texas, Colorado, Utah, and of course other countries – anywhere they aren’t being taxed and regulated into insolvency.
I’d like to say the company I worked for, whose doors closed, had been a victim of California, but it was more due to being unwise. Unemployment in California is 11.8 percent in June 2011, which doesn’t count the people who have fallen off the grid after unemployment runs out, who weren’t eligible for unemployment to begin with, are underemployed (i.e., part time, freelance – hello, that one is me), or simply have given up. One in seven families in Southern California is currently on food stamps.
Recently I had the president of international television at a Hollywood studio (one of the biggies), and another studio exec (a heavy hitter in children’s programming) tell a Vice President in Business Affairs (television) at another studio that he should hire me. At one time if just one of those guys had called on your behalf, you were assured a job. Now, you’re lucky to get an interview let alone a job.
A former Executive Vice President and Controller of Production Accounting of a studio sent in a letter of recommendation telling the tale of how hard I had worked when my boss was ill – long story shorter, my boss had cancer, and when she went out on disability for the final time I was told that as long as I did my job and her job, and didn’t have to hire any additional help, then my boss would be able to die with full benefits. For nine months I did the boss’ job, and mine — as second in command of the department I also covered for the paralegal, contract administrators and file clerks when they got sick, went on vacation, or maternity leave. Boss died with full benefits, which was important as the boss was a single parent to a nine year old boy.
No I did not get the job. Was told I didn’t connect with one of the negotiators.
I have been told I was over qualified. Told I had been out of a studio executive job for too long to be considered. Mind you I have not had a frontal lobotomy and the business hasn’t changed that much, plus I’ve kept up on digital, Red Cameras, tax incentives, apps, webisodes and streaming delivery by attending various seminars and conferences. I’ve also been told I should go back to school… And incur huge debts for what? I know many unemployed engineers, IT professionals and people with a JD or Master’s degree.
I have seen advertisements for jobs that specifically state the applicant must be a digital native. Just so you know that means someone who was born into the digital age, or is 20 something, i.e., young. Last time I checked age discrimination was against the law… Maybe it doesn’t apply in Los Angeles.
So I’m a digital immigrant meaning old, and I learned the computer when it had a 32 mg hard drive, and a floppy was used to store a file and sometimes just one file depending on its size. It also means that when I first went online there were no GUI (point and click graphics) so if you wanted to go anywhere on the world wide web, you had to type out the entire address with no errors, or you’d end up in Timbuktu looking at a porn site (not everyone wanted to look at porn at 3200 baud speed).
I remember advising producers of a television show they needed to have a website for their show and that the show’s web address should be in the end credits and promotions. At one time this simply wasn’t done. Bringing actors online in chat rooms to talk to the fans was unheard of, but I pushed people into it.
I’m PC literate, used to write code, and in the nineties built a computer with one of the first Pentium II chips. I worked on a Mac when they first came out, and I’ve worked on them since the Tiger and Snow Leopard operating systems came out. I have had an iPhone since version 1.0 came out, but at 47, 48 and now 49 the world is waiting while tapping a toe of impatience, for me to just die and get out of the way. Can’t find work at anything I’m qualified for, or over qualified for. Maybe I just smell bad or look funny to the working folk.
I also know how to figure out 10/13ths of all shows produced without using a calculator, but instead with paper, pencil and my brain.
Unemployment and no substantial income is my nightmare. Looking for work is harder than a real job. It’s also hard on your soul. I can think of many people who should be unemployed, and I’m hoping to vote them all out of office come 2012 — that’s my dream, if I survive that long.