Send a letter to a mass murderer.
Depending on my mood, I always have on some sort of background noise when I'm getting ready to go out. Most of the time I shuffle my Giggity Gizzle iPod playlist, aka my Look-like-a-stunna,-play-like-a-beast mix. However, when I keep the TV on, it usually means that even though there is nothing remotely entertaining on the boob at 9:30pm on a Friday night, I would rather stay home burrowed in a barcalouger. This particular day in Berkeley, I had spent a in a DVR haze, my treat after an especially gruelling week of essays and midterms. Those of my friends who hadn't come down off their week-long diet of 8-hour energy shots were, of course, ready to paint the town. Initially insisting on remaining in, yet having deleted the last of my shows, I switched to a documentary of the 1960s and jumped in the shower to get ready for the bars. In other words, I crumble to peer pressure.
As I was laquering my face with makeup, the documentary began taking a look at the dark side of the decade of free love. Hippies took to the streets, combining their penchant for LSD with heavier narcotics, and eventually turning the once emblematic Haight-Ashbury district into a slum. Drug dens and cults developed from the leftovers of the broken flower children. Throughout California, the days of love were becoming no more.
Among the ashes was Charles Mason, my chosen mass murderer pen pal so it seems. In the late sixties he moved to Berkeley where he met Mary Brunner, a 23-year-old librarian at UC Berkeley. He convinced her that polyamory was the way to go and they soon had 18 other women living in their apartment. Soon Manson's drug-induced groupies were trailing him all over the western US, agreeing to his every whim, either acting as servants or playing sex slave upwards of 20 times per day. His cult vision coupled with his newly recorded album and musical interest caused him to name his movement, Helter Skelter, after a Beatles album. Manson participated in and instructed his followers to initiate several mass murders over the course of a few weeks, the most famous of which came to be known as the Tate murders.
As of now, Manson is 75 years old and serving a life sentence in San Quentin. After reading this condensed bio and watching the following video clip, I'm sure you'll come to realize why I refuse to spend the cost of a postage stamp on this particular assignment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uhmtAmwnDQ
