DeadRooster.com

As I write this the FBI is analyzing new evidence in the long unsolved Zodiac murder case. The Zodiac, second only to Jack the Ripper in terms of serial killer speculation, could finally be solved after four decades.

I was eight years-old when the murders began in December of 1968, and although I lived hundreds of miles down the coast from where they took place, The Zodiac still managed to creep into my nightmares. Even after the final murder in October of 1969, the killer continued to hide in my bedroom closet for at least two more years.

Back then my vivid imagination took an even greater toll on David, my little brother. He could often be heard calling out, “Mom! Billy’s being the Zodiac again!” To which my mom would yell back at me, “Billy, stop murdering your brother…”

Of course I wasn’t really hurting him, but applying—as sibling rivals often do—what the U.S. Government would later call, “Enhanced Interrogation.”

Good times.

Like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer is credited with five known murders. He also attempted to gain publicity—just like the Ripper—by taunting police in cryptic, hand written letters sent to local newspapers.

Although as many as 2,500 suspects were interviewed by police, no evidence exists linking any of them to the murders or the letters. Even the most compelling suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, who was all but convicted by a mountain of circumstantial evidence as documented in Robert Graysmith’s books [Zodiac, Zodiac Unmasked] and David Finchers’ movie [Zodiac: Director's Cut, 2007], could never be matched to any physical evidence. The case has been baffling expert and amateur sleuths ever since.

But all that may be about to change; last week, a northern California man claims not only to know the killer’s identity, but has presented the FBI with evidence to prove it.

“The identity of the Zodiac Killer is Jack Tarrance,” said Dennis Kaufman. “He’s my stepfather.”

Kaufman, who had suspected his stepfather for many years and spent the last eight trying to verify his theory, says he’s found the ultimate piece of physical evidence hidden in an old P.A. amplifier while going through the dead man’s things (Tarrance died in 2006). He found a hand-crafted black hood with the Zodiac symbol sewn into it identical to the one the killer was described as wearing during the September 1969 slaying of Cecelia Ann Shepard and the attempted slaying of Bryan Calvin Hartnell.

Along with the hood, Kaufman also found a knife stained with what looked like dried blood and a tin box containing rolls of undeveloped film—one in which he did have processed revealed such gruesome scenes that a local news station covering the story refused to air them. All of this is currently in the hands of the FBI and the results of their testing could come any day.

Hopefully, we will have definitive proof that Jack Tarrance was, in deed, the Zodiac Killer. Just knowing that The Zodiac is no longer out there will allow me to finally sleep without a Mickey Mouse nightlight.

Hey, I’ve got to go; I think I just saw something move in my closet.

Photo credit: randombit

I would be a much more prolific blogger if I didn’t own cats. Of course, a catless world would be nearly impossible for me since I have always had a cat and wouldn’t know how to function without one. But, these cats are absolutely brutal on me in the morning.

I wake up early, usually about 4:00 am, put on the coffee and let the cats in from the garage before they knock the door down. I sit down at the computer and begin to type. My calico cat “Cookie” jumps up on my lap, fixes her claws into my leg, purrs and drools. After a few minutes she realizes I’m typing which is her queue to attack my fingers. I stop typing because it is just impossible. I watch her type for a few minutes while I’m waiting for the coffee.

I check to see what she has written and, although it is substantial, it is not good enough to add to my blog.

Around 4:15 the coffee is done, so I push Cookie off my lap and pour a cup.

I sit back down at the computer and begin to type. My big fat orange cat, Punky, starts sharpening his claws on the fancy area rug, “Punk! Knock that off!” I yell. He howls back at me in disrespect then demands to be let outside. I jump up and let him out right away because at least now one of them will be out of my hair.

Again, I start typing. Cookie wants out. This is great news because she is the worst when it comes to working my nerves. I let her out and Punky runs back in. Now, I know if I pick him up and throw him out Cookie will run back in and everything will become much worse, so I just let Punky run-off into the dark part of the house and try to forget about him.

It is now about 5:00 am and nothing has been written.

Cookie wants back in. I can’t just leave her out because then she will start climbing the screens to get my attention. So, I let her in.

Now the fun begins.

The cats start chasing each other through the house at top speed—periodically stopping to hunch-up in a “Halloween Cat” pose at each other. Pretty soon it gets so bad with them scrambling all over the furniture that I’m forced to chase after them with a squirt-gun and blast them into submission.

Another hour slips by and the inspiration to write has taken a detour. Even though my favorite time to write is first thing in the morning, I usually wind-up postponing it until after breakfast. At least, by this time, the cats have settled down.

Going through all this every morning makes me wonder what kinds of illegal drugs you’d have to abuse in order to come up with the new game show set to air on GSN November 15th called, Think Like a Cat: The Meow Mix Game Show.

The show—which I swear on Dave Barry’s grave I am not making up—will highlight humans and cats competing for a chance to win $1 million dollars and $100,000 for their favorite cat-related charity. The show will also feature—get this—interactive challenges in which “cats and humans must work together to succeed.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to watch this just for the gore. Can you imagine trying to “work together” with your cat on stage when the live audience erupts into applause? If your cat is anything like mine, this will instantly transform it into a highly-effective runaway buzz-saw.

Hey! I just got a great idea for a drinking game: every time the host (Chuck Woolery) runs away screaming, “Not in the face!” you have to do a shot of tequila.

Photo credit: NeonMan

The recent Silence The Rooster ad campaign to promote the popular sleep aid, AmbienCR, has proved to be a wild success—not necessarily for the company selling the drug—but for completely unrelated humor-oriented blogs such as the one you are reading right now.

See, bloggers, such as myself, will latch on to nearly anything that might bring extra exposure without actually having to do any real work. Because, let’s face it, writing interesting content is hard. So, when a dim-witted ad campaign comes along featuring an obnoxious rooster, I’m all over it.

To give you an idea of how effective this “easy exposure” technique can be, let me show you the noticeable jump in traffic I received after writing a simple related article:

DeadRooster.com’s average daily traffic before ad campaign: 1

DeadRooster.com’s average daily traffic after ad campaign: 265,789

Ha! OK, I was only kidding. Dead Rooster’s average daily traffic before the ad campaign was around 1,000 visitors per day and after taking advantage of the Silence The Rooster ad running on TV’s across America (The ad does not run outside the US), I’ve pulled in about 5,500 extra visitors per day for the past three days. That’s more than a 600% increase!

Of course, after the ad stops running and people lose interest, I will once again be forced to write something interesting in order to inspire traffic; a welcome concept, I’m sure, to my regular readers.

So, this will be the last crappy post for a while—from now on, it’s back to the chain-fighting Elvis impersonators and cream-corn-filled llamas you’ve come to expect here at Dead Rooster.

Note: After I get back into the humor grove for a while, and you’ve forgiven me for pimping my blog out to the easy search-engine keyword grab, I will explain how I was able to steal the top spot on the front page of several search engines for the most popular key phrase at the time. It was pure genius. LOL

By the way, I know it’s Silence “Your” Rooster and not Silence “The” Rooster, but there’s a lot of traffic I’m missing out on…