Jack The Stripper

I've been having a problem here that I also had when I started at College Park. And I call it the "shoulds". I don't want to waste any time here but I always feel like I *should* be doing something other than what I'm doing at the moment. Should I be at museums? Bonding with my roommates? Clubbing with people on my program? Out meeting Brits at pubs? Spending more time in the Jewish areas? I never feel like I'm doing the right thing. And it's pretty frustrating.

Yesterday I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at the cute little theater down my block. I am used to giant multiplexes in New York that play 12 movies at a time. This one had two screens and had three showings a day.

Even though people had said this movie was amazing and the best film of the year....I did not understand ANY of it. I like to think that I'm pretty clever when it comes to following movie plots but 20 min into the movie, I already knew I would not be able to get it.

Also because I fell asleep for 10 min, and took a bathroom break, and the old lady next to me was crumpling paper the whole time. Not because she was trying to unwrap a candy or anything, she was just compulsively twisting paper. So it's official. Old people are universally annoying in movie theaters.

At 7, my friend and I went to the Jack The Ripper tour (Yay I did something I said I would do!). The tour takes you around the East End, to the places JTR murdered prostitutes, the actual taverns they worked around, the places he left clues, the history of the area. It was fascinating (since I seem to have a little of an obsession with serial killers) but our tour guide was this tiny Irish girl who was a little too chipper when describing the gruesome murders. She had this portable projector that she used to show us pictures of what the area looked like 130 years ago, or what the cut up hooker bodies looked like. The best part of the tour was seeing a barber shop called Jack The Clipper. What's next? A club called Jack The Stripper?
It was a cool tour, especially since that area isn't so great even now, so you really DO feel like you could also be murdered at any second.

I had never learned that Jack had tried to blame the Jews for his murders. I didn't know there was any connection between Jews and him so that was a little weird for her to show a slide of what JTR wrote in chalk on the wall after a kill, "THE JUWES ARE THE MEN THAT WILL NOT BE BLAMED FOR NOTHING." If a serial killer told me that I would be like "wait, that's a double negative. Are you saying they will be blamed? Also, you might want to check your spelling in your cryptic murder clues. That's just a suggestion."

Anyways it's Friday Friday (gotta get down on Friday) and that means another Shabbat at people's houses I don't know. But it's my sister's friend so I'm excited. Soon I'll be using Shabbat.com to find places and that'll be really interesting.

Everyone wants a Shabbat guest who likes to talk about serial killers, right?