As gruesome counterpoint to Law and Order, where the stories are ripped from the headlines, a Canadian man was arrested trying to plagiarize a a page out of Michael C. Hall's book when he allegedly lured a man into his garage and killed him in a style similar to Showtime's anti-hero serial killer, Dexter.

The story came out around Halloween and it was weird enough to warrant a post, but there was all that election fervor and it got lost in the wayside. So here's the deal: Canadian "filmmaker" Peter Twitchell convinced Johnny Altinger that he was meeting a woman he met on an Internet dating site. But Twitchell was actually making his own movie, that was a sequel to the Star Wars franchise, included a member of the original cast, and apparently necessitated a snuff scene.

Ripped from the headlines, people:

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When Dexter premiered on Showtime in 2006, it was a chance for fans of HBO's Six Feet Under to refuel their Michael C. Hall obsession, but also prompt viewers with an interesting experiment: Can you love a serial killer? Generally, television audiences are trained to route for the good guys. On Law & Order, you want Det. Green to nail the suspect, not the other way around. So, after two seasons of blood spatter analysis and following Harry's code, the answer was abundantly simple: Absolutely.

And then in came Season Three this year, where serial killer Dexter is rewriting his own rules for who he takes out, which means he can kill any bad person, even non-murders. And that begets the question: Can you still love a serial killer? Or, as Daily Intel put it, "Are you ready to dislike Dexter again?"

As it turns out: Hell fucking yeah. Because the latest Q score data shows that Dexter is the most lovable guy on television right now, even if he does cut people into duffel-bag-sized pieces.

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Last month, it was just Wired and Rolling Stone that the marketing kiddies behind Dexter showed the world. Now, a full-blown newsstand: The New Yorker (with a cover from actual New Yorker illustrator Edward Sorel), GQ, and Esquire get the treatment. This comes, supposedly, on the heels of a marketing trend, where advertisers are using mock magazines to push their product — even though print is dying and everyone is using The Twitter!

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We've already seen the marketing genius behind Showtime's excellent serial thriller Dexter at work: Blood-flushing urinals, dead guys on the street, body parts in the butcher's display window.

To market the series' third season, which kicks off Sept. 28, Showtime has produced a series of Dexter magazine covers. We've got Rolling Stone here, and below, Wired. So they're marketing these to … savvy media types? Because general audiences are going to prefer more severed body parts.

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Because vampires are all the rage right now, HBO is getting in on the act with its new fall series True Blood. It's show about a group of vampires living in modern society, and they will probably address all those questions about silver bullets, crosses, and daylight. But what makes the show worth even being interested in, of course, is the marketing leading up to it. HBO's main gimmick for the show is Tru Blood, an "energy drink" made of your favorite O or AB- platelets. Perhaps you've seen advertisements for it on billboards or websites like ours. There's also the website BloodCopy.com, a faux news blog for all things vampires. And some tube of synthetic blood that will likely appear in the mailboxes of television critics.

Which is all well and good, but when it comes to marketing a show about bloodsports, HBO's True Blood has a worth adversary.

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With all the fuss being made over J.C. Penney's real-but-not video spot that won a Cannes Bronze Lion, we were pleased yesterday when some actual marketing stunts arrived from Dexter, the Michael C. Hall series about a lovable serial killer.

First, there was Dexter’s Wrapping Paper ("Due to its impermeability and adhesion keeps the victim well wrapped and the floor free of blood splatter. Avoiding leaving clues and traces of any crimes."), which carried information about the series printed on the plastic wrap itself.

Then there was this guerilla stunt, with a piece of fake meat on display in a butcher's window.

And then came two truly captivating stunts: One involving a urinal, the other involving a dead guy on the street.

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The Parents Television Council is going to have something new to complain about. After lashing out at CBS for broadcasting a toned down version of the Showtime serial killer series Dexter, we suggest they turn their sights on Mark Ecko's entertainment company, which will produce a video game based on Michael C. Hall's sympathetic character. Just please, please let there be a scenario that involves that annoying bitch Lila to be slayed.