Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” – Luke, 20-21

I have a cousin who is a born-again Christian. I haven’t seen her in years, but she is, of course, on Facebook. Recently, I came across one of her status updates, compelling the OWS protesters to “occupy a job,” and poking fun at the mass arrests. Now, this sentiment doesn’t seem particularly Jesus-like to me, but then again, I am entirely confused by contemporary interpretations of the New Testament.

I’m also fascinated by the shift from the social gospel and its emphasis on community and cooperation to the me-first, “Jesus-as-life-coach” culture of modern evangelicals. And I’m scared shitless by their political influence. (There is some great literature on the subject, including a book I’ve recommended before, The Family, by Jeff Sharlet.)

Even more mind-boggling to me is that another Facebook acquaintance, a self-professed LaVeyan Satanist, made a comment on my wall in defense of my cousin’s initial statement. He used five economical words: “She’s right. Deal with it.” Then he proceeded to unfriend me.

Isn’t it interesting that the contemporary evangelical movement espouses the same moral perspective as a religion whose express purpose is to eliminate Christianity? Both groups owe a tremendous amount to Ayn Rand, and preach individuality above self-sacrifice. That’s fine for Satanists, as their beliefs reflect no internal contradictions. But how does any of this jive with the Gospel of Christ?

Clearly, it doesn’t.

The Jesus of the Bible railed against money-lenders and “redistributed” loaves and fish to the hungry. He tended to the needy and sick. Moreover, he encouraged others to do the same.

Compare that to the sweeping push by those aligned with the evangelical movement to eliminate social programs meant to aid our society’s most needy. These are the same folks who loudly and proudly tout their so-called “Christian values” and claim a moral high ground.

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” – Mark, 10:21-25

Let’s see here… Jesus instructed his disciples to redistribute their personal, material wealth to the poor as a key means to entering the Kingdom of God. It’s right there in the Bible. I hope I don’t need to mention that Jesus freely healed the sick with no regard to “pre-existing conditions” like leprosy.

These teachings were carried on by the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion. It would be amazing if the Christians of today were to take them to heart instead of celebrating the suppression of speech and liberty.

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong? – James, 2:1-7

To me, the more frustrating thing than the outright hypocrisy is the unwillingness to engage in even moderate self-reflection. No need to account for your actions, no reason to adjust your personal behavior to be more in line with the articles of your supposed faith. The act of becoming “born-again” simply guarantees your place at the Lord’s table. I can see why this belief system is attractive, as it requires practically zero effort. But it is absolutely not in keeping with Jesus’ actual teachings.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is deluded or disingenuous.

Look, I have some sympathies with the OWS movement. I certainly think that my cousin’s statement is ignorant, and that there are hundreds of reasons why people in an economic depression (when one in 16 are below the poverty line, that’s what it is) may want to publicly demonstrate their dissatisfaction with wealth inequality in the United States. But this isn’t about my political views. It’s about the tendency of the modern evangelical movement to mask their disgust for their brothers and sisters behind a veneer of faith.

I don’t care if you happen to be related to me. I’m calling bullshit.

Is it over? Looks like.

Early Tuesday morning, NYPD swept through the original Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York City, clearing out people and belongings, and arresting demonstrators. Journalists, too, were rounded up and carted away. And we’re not just talking bloggers here: reporters from AP, New York Times, NPR and NY Daily News were among those arrested.

Anecdotal reports include the deliberate destruction of the books in the OWS library (they had a library!), as well as personal items and gear.

The journalists themselves were not immune from violence. From New York Times reporter Brian Stelter‘s Twitter feed:

I’m w/ a NY Post reporter who says he was roughed up by riot police as Zuccotti was cleared. He thinks violence was “completely deliberate.”

Per @LindseyChrist, riot police didn’t distinguish between media & protesters. “They took a Post reporter and threw him in a choke hold.”

Even the airspace above the park was restricted. On the ground, reporters from Village Voice, Mother Jones, Byline Beat, Brooklyn Ink, the New York Observer and others were told by NYPD their credentials did not matter; they would not be allowed to cover the raid in any fashion.

The crackdown is apparently not unique to Zuccotti Park; varying reports indicate at least 18 mayors across the country have issued similar orders, most likely in coordination.

I’ve refrained from weighing in directly on the OWS movement, as I wasn’t able to observe the protests firsthand even in my hometown of Washington, DC. But the deliberate targeting of the media is unconscionable in a free society. What is happening here is no different than when more oppressive states quash the dissemination of information.

Leaders in America need a reality check. They criticize foreign governments for the silencing of speech and then act in coordination to block journalists from reporting on what is essentially an exercise in martial law. Constitutional interpretations regarding the right to assemble and public welfare aside, the deliberate suppression of a free press must be recognized as counter to our nation’s ideals.

These are hardly the last tent cities America will see, I’m afraid. We might just not hear about them through “official” channels.

WARNING: If your vehicle has one of these saccharine-sweet, stick-figure family stickers on it, it is a portent of DOOM and must be removed and destroyed immediately! I know, you probably thought it was just a whimsical, 21st-century way of saying “Baby on Board,” but as it turns out, the Universe is not such a whimsical place. I’d advise removing these stickers at once to avoid attracting your worst nightmares. If you have the clever ‘parody’ version where the family is all skeletons, I’m afraid this doesn’t make much difference — you have invited the same horror, only in a marginally more ironic manner.

Take care, and beware. If it’s any condolence, there’s still nothing out there that cares about your honor student.

Welcome to another edition of our sometime-series, The Contrarian’s Old-Time Conspiracy Hour! Today, we’re going to look at a pair of subjects closer to the truth than your average intrigue: The Great Pirates and the Gross Universal Cash Heist (GRUNCH). These two concepts were originally put forth by intellectual rapscallion R. Buckminster Fuller, a man whose genius knew few bounds.

Devised decades ago, Bucky’s hypotheses have never been more timely, what with the Occupy Wall Street protests and a tottering global economy. Great Pirates and GRUNCH are best taken as informed allegory, not hard fact. This is why they often get slapped with the “conspiracy” label. But unlike, say, reptilian shapeshifters who secretly run the world, the Great Pirates and GRUNCH are based on actual dynamics in trade, information and governance.

Let’s start with GRUNCH. Basically, this is the overarching strategy of the Great Pirates (more on them in a second). The theory posits that the nations of the world are actually “sponsored entities” of a few select financial networks. World governments (and their subjects) are kept in place through debts, which is why politicians are always going to raise taxes, no matter what they promise — they have to contain rising interest. Of course, even in politics, you have to pay to play. In 1980, Bucky estimated that it cost $100 million to run for president, $30 million to run for Senate and $10 million for the House of representatives. Obviously, the price tag is much higher now, but the story is the same: politicians are “sponsored” by the financial networks and their overlords, who invest in campaigns. The Supreme Court supports this arrangement, as demonstrated by the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission ruling.

Now, Bucky didn’t think that there was any single gang of Great Pirates running the show; he believed that there were likely a number of them, often tugging in different directions. As an engineer, he found such shoddy staging inefficient, and therefore unacceptable.

So who are these Great Pirates? The late, great, Robert Anton Wilson has a typically elegant summation:

The Great Pirates signify those men combining elements of what ethologists call the alpha male, historians call the despot and sociologists call the sociopath… our primitive ancestors, Fuller says, were conquered by wave after wave of these despotic-sociopathic Great Pirates, until all humans became accustomed to being ruled by Great Pirates, since the only other choice was to be murdered by them.

The Great Pirates then discovered that other people were working at science, and hired the scientists to produce gadgets to suit their own needs. Therefore, Bucky says, science knows more about weaponry than about “livingry.” Fuller’s experimental geometry and housing were attempts to contribute to the livingry he felt science had largely ignored.

If you to accept the basic outline here — and I do, to a fair degree — you’ll quickly recognize where the far right and far left get it wrong. The right sees government as invasive and liberty-depriving, but they fail to grok that the majority of today’s governments are merely puppets of a corporate behemoth that seeks only increased profits. Today’s left views government as the only entity that can tame the corporate beast, completely missing that policymakers are already ensnared by the financial/corporate apparatus.

Until a critical mass of people realize the nexus of criminality here, we are likely to remain in bondage. So listen up, lefties and Tea Partiers: you can yell about freedom or the corporatocracy until you’re blue in the face — the fact of the matter is, you are only dividing yourselves. And guess who benefits from that? Why do you think “wedge issues” exist? Because the people running the campaigns don’t want you to pay attention to the real issues.

Is Occupy Wall Street the commencement of a new understanding? I have no idea, but the cynic in me highly doubts it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

If you want to learn more about the Great Pirates and GRUNCH, I recommend you check out Bucky’s book GRUNCH of Giants — available free at the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

So stop asking, dammit!

• Serial killer of the week. The Zodiac Killer! “Oh, yawn,” you say, “I already know ALL about that old thing.” Oh really, smartass? Well did you know that this dude thinks he cracked another cipher letter which reveals the killer’s name? And this lady says it was someone else — her dad. (However, she also thinks she is the biological daughter of JFK.) But wait, there’s yet another suspect fingered in this guy’s autobiography!
• Religion of the week. You’ve all eaten with Oneida silverware, right? Well now you can think about this wacky cougar sex and eugenics religion every time you see the Oneida logo. I don’t envy the person who had to write this carefully worded company history on their website. I want to visit the old homestead and ask the staff about every aspect of the sexcapades.
• Fetish of the week. Speaking of cougars, I guess the contemporary celebration of cougarism is probably good because it might break down some of the culturally enforced ideas about womanly beauty being the sole province of the young. My problem is when the cougar scenario becomes uneasily Freudian and just makes me think of mommy fetishists. I know I wrote about infantalists once before, but that was the non-sexual kind. Remember Stanley? Well, Senator Tom Coburn thinks he smells disability fraud. Apparently Senator Coburn is able to do full medical and psychiatric assessments based on a few minutes of television programming.
• Links!

Another diapered man in the news.

I love the show “Deadliest Warrior.” Yeah, I know it’s silly, but I frankly can’t get enough of weapons and fighting and watching things go smash and boom. I love mayhem, duh! This show is like an organized, televised, somewhat scientific version of the drunken conversation tradition of debating who would win in a fight between X and Y. Spetsnaz vs. Special Forces? Waffen-SS vs. Viet Cong? Shaka Zulu vs. William Wallace? Ninja vs. Spartan? Craziness! God bless television!

Looking back at Alien while looking forward to Prometheus.

Miscellaneous nasty facts with pictures.

What is the hum?

He boiled for your sins.

Drunkeys!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk

Did you know that you can die from having sex with time-traveling sea monkeys? Well now you do. You’re welcome.

Let me just say up front that I’m thinking of starting a “free ideas for Hollywood” series. I have a lot of concepts for movies and TV shows, but little interest in shopping them. Plus, some of these ideas are really dumb. Which means they’re perfect for any major motion picture studio.

Hollywood is pushing hard for stronger intellectual property enforcement due to “rampant piracy” on “the internet.” But instead of feeling bad for them (or entertaining their more ludicrous proposals to lock down the web), I’m giving them free, unfettered use of my own intellectual property. Hey, it’s the least I can do!

The following is an idea for a movie that I think will be boffo at the box office. It pulls something from the world of telecom policy, but as they say, “write what you know…”

SPECTRUM: A HORROR FILM TREATMENT

Possible tag lines: “Beware of early termination.” “He’s dialed into your fearquency.” “Meet Buzz: He’s a real dead wire.”

Premise: Cody “Buzz” Maddick is an occultist serial killer condemned to death for the ritualistic slaying of more than two dozen people. Along with his co-conspirator girlfriend, Devina, Buzz is a member of a deranged satanic cult that believes that blood sacrifice is key to immense power in the etheric plane. Devina explains how all this works in an early flashback scene, where the two are preparing to murder a teenage girl. She tells Buzz that, by positioning electromagnetic devices around the victim, their connection to the etheric plane will be amplified. When enough astral doors have been opened, they will be able to cross the threshold and dwell in a perpetual state of evil exultation.

When Buzz is arrested for his crimes and sentenced to death, his girlfriend (who has thus far evaded any charges) tells him that she will cast a powerful spell at the precise moment of his execution. But nobody except the prison warden knows that Buzz is to be killed using an untested new method: powerful microwave radiation. A bill has passed in the Texas state legislature that would make this means of execution legal. Yet due to political pressure, the governor has yet to sign it. The governor and the warden go way back — they’re part of the same secessionist group — and the warden has been assured that he can go ahead and flip the switch on Buzz and everything will be just dandy. He tells his execution staff that the killing is a go. “You boys will just love it,” he says. “The beauty is, no mess! Them my-crow-waves cook ‘em right from the inside, just like a reheated burrito!”

Buzz is executed as planned, and his girlfriend casts her spell. At the moment of his death, we see his murderous soul converted to electromagnetic energy, which shoots up through the walls to the top floor of the building, blasting skyward via a huge radio antenna on the prison roof. We hear demoniacal laughter.

The killings begin anew. Buzz is now a spectral being who manifests through radio-capable devices, just long enough to dispatch his victims in clever ways. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Devina, is finally brought in by the law and imprisoned while awaiting trial. Buzz now has a reason to eliminate key witnesses, including family members of his original victims.

Death scenes might include the following:

Buzz comes through a victim’s tablet computer. She is using an eReader when Buzz appears in a social network chatbox. “Buzz wants to chat,” the message says. The victim keeps trying to close the window, to no avail. Eventually, Buzz’s face looms large in the device’s screen, until he managers to stick his head out and bite the victim on the lower lip. He pulls several times, smashing the victim’s head repeatedly into the screen until she dies in a burst of plasma (blood and electronic) and glass. As the screen goes dark, we hear Buzz’s disembodied voice: “That’s my kind of face book.”

A couple is getting frisky in bed in a remote lakeside cottage. An old boom box is positioned on a bedside table. An upbeat pop song comes on, something along the lines of Katy Perry. The girl interrupts the foreplay to turn up the radio. “I love this song,” she says. The boy looks annoyed for a second, then they get back to business. Suddenly, the Katy Perry track is interrupted by crackling, then a scratchy vision of “Walking After Midnight” comes on. Annoyed, the girl shoves the guy aside and starts fiddling with the dial. The song is on every station. “What is this shit?” she exclaims in desperation. Buzz’s voice cuts through the airwaves. “What’s the matter? You don’t like the classics? Maybe you prefer something more… cutting edge.” Weird light begins to emanate from the speakers, until Buzz appears before them, with whirring, electric saw blades for hands. He does his sick business and then disappears.

A day trader is using a cellphone. He’s trying to tell his wife he’ll miss his kid’s soccer game, while firing a useless subordinate on the other line. While switching between calls, he ends up on a channel with Buzz. “Please hold while I disconnect you,” Buzz says. The day trader stares at his smartphone in disbelief. At that moment, buzz appears on all of the many computer monitors in his office. Buzz then manifests at the center of the room, with the Wall Street index flashing all over his semi-corporeal body. “Buy low, die lower,” Buzz says, as he crushes the day trader to a pulpy, mangled mass on the floor that briefly gives off sparks.

Meanwhile, an investigator is banging his head over these new murders. But he begins to discern a pattern. In each killing, he notices the presence of spectrum-powered technology. On a hunch alone, he reaches out to an expert in wireless telecommunications, who comes along to a fresh murder scene. At a key point, the expert says, “I think he’s traveling from place to place using the electromagnetic spectrum.” Not wanting to accept what he’s hearing, the detective replies, “Is that even possible?” Without missing a beat, the wireless expert answers, “It is now.”

And that’s basically all I have. Surely that’s enough for some studio-contracted screenwriting hacks to thread together into something marginally cohesive. Like I said, it’s pretty fucking dumb. But that doesn’t mean it’s not potentially profitable!

So c’mon, Hollywood, why not bring Buzz to life and start a whole new horror franchise? I promise I won’t sue…

I don’t know what is happening in this photo. It seems like it might be rapture related?

• Serial Killer of the Week. Sorry I’m late. It was because I decided to make some changes to the serial killer feature this week. I am so alarmed and sickened by the blatant Islamophobia displayed by Republican primary candidates like the simpleton hate monger Herman Cain. Why should all Muslims have to apologize for the actions of some fringe extremists? Have Christians in this country ever been called on to apologize for explicitly Christian terrorist organizations or individuals? All the rape, murder, assaults, bombings, lynchings, arson, pedophilia, and intimidation that white, Christian extremists have perpetrated? Of course not. Anyway, I’m so annoyed that instead of featuring a serial killer this week I’m going to highlight some general American Christian atrocities. I want to make sure good Christians like Cain get all the points they deserve for their homegrown terrorism!

The Ku Klux Klan: America’s original terrorist group — formed just after the Civil War and still around today. They’re known for their violence and bigotry, but what rarely comes up is the fact that the KKK is a Christian organization that considers their faith and interpretations of the Bible to be the root of their beliefs.

The Army of God

Mormons

The Lambs of Christ

Concerned Christians

Hutaree, and more about Hutaree and Christian terrorism in general

The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord

The Montana Freemen

Phineas Priesthood

“Patriot” conspiracy theorists and militias.

The Order

Operation Rescue

Aryan Nations -- I doubt it was a Muslim who planted this bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. parade route.

• Religion of the Week. Christian Identity. One-stop shopping! It’s a religious movement, white supremacy group, apocalypse cult, and terrorist organization all wrapped up in one convenient ideology. “Conquer we must, for our cause is just.” Don’t forget to stop at the gift shop.
• Fetish of the Week. Gut flopping. An aspect of fat fetishism.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rglg4lsdWl8

• Links!

Did you hear what has happened to Harold Camping? Kinda sounds like the work of a vengeful God, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Too bad it didn’t happen sooner, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Or this. Or this. Or this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vj8-_jhFAA

Nothing the FCC can do about it. People are on their own to figure out who is credible and who is looney tunes. Like our future Mrs. President.

Who wants to learn about a singing penis?

And an inflatable shark!

And here’s your feel-good story: an update about the Nazi twins.

]]> http://www.thecontrarianmedia.com/2011/07/sex-mayhem-report-5/feed/ 0 http://www.thecontrarianmedia.com/2011/07/sex-and-mayhem-report-4/ http://www.thecontrarianmedia.com/2011/07/sex-and-mayhem-report-4/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:53:53 +0000 Miss Molly http://www.thecontrarianmedia.com/?p=14185

• Serial Killer of the Week. There is a series about female serial killers called “Lady Killers” airing on BBC Knowledge right now. But BBC Knowledge doesn’t air in the U.S. so I’ll just have to wait for it to show up elsewhere. In the meantime, I can feature one of the murderesses from the show, Myra Hindley, England’s first convicted female serial killer. You might recognize Hindley’s photo, as it has been used in many forms of popular art, from t-shirts to album covers.

Maybe you’ve wondered who those people were on this Sonic Youth record?

It is an artist’s rendering of a photo of the two key witness in Hindley’s trial. The woman is Myra’s younger sister Maureen Hindley with her first husband David Smith. Smith was friends with Myra’s boyfriend and co-murderer Ian Brady. He was actually somewhat complicit in one of the murders, but shortly after the act he freaked out and confessed to the police. It’s a good thing he had this attack of conscience because it resulted in the arrest and conviction of Hindley and Brady.

• Fetish of the Week. Vorarephilia aka “vore.” A vore fetishist is sexually aroused by the idea of humans eating and being eaten by each other. Not every vore fetishist likes the same stuff, though. There are distinct subcategories. It would be very interesting to me to find out what your first thoughts or mental images were upon reading the first sentence of this fetish entry! If you are willing to share, please post in the comments. I was imagining cannibalism like Hannibal Lecter or that time Moss tried to take a German cooking class.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij0d0t1fDv0

Here are the two main vore types — there are more out there. Human deviance is so gloriously abundant and diverse.

Soft vore: Being swallowed alive and whole, orally. Sometimes they get digested, rescued, suffocated, vomited back up, or survive a trip through the entire digestive tract (called “full tour”), but as far as I can tell the fantasy most often ends with the subject being warm and moist, happily nestled inside a stomach. Like most vore, this is purely fantasy and exists only in art, fiction and animation because it is not practically possible. A form of soft vore is a fetish I’ve covered before, macrophilia, but a lot of the artwork seems to depict cartoon creatures and furries, not humans. Here’s a collection of soft vore furry art:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r83TtcfRKc

Hard vore: In hard vore fantasy the idea of consumption is the same, but the tone is very different. The prey is not swallowed whole but rather violently eaten. There is typically a great deal of blood — biting, tearing, slashing, etc.. This seems to show up in human more than furry forms.

• Religion of the Week. Iglesia Maradoniana: the Maradonian Church. This a relatively small religion in Argentina which reveres former Argentine footballer Diego Maradona as a deity on earth. They have their own commandments and use his autobiography as their Bible!
• Links!

Trepanning is an ancient and obsolete… or is it?

I posted a list of improbable deaths, now here’s the Tudor version.

FOX News might have run a phony story about poop burgers? Here’s one more humble contribution to Rupert Murdoch‘s troubles. Ha ha haaaa evil fucker! I hope he dies broke and alone of slow, wasting stomach cancer.

We recently got cable and it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever had it. I’ve come to the conclusion that SpongeBob Squarepants is the best role model on television.

Cool art thingy wow!

There is a guy who lives near us who painted in huge letters across the front of his house “Cut consumption not foreskins.” No, really! Lookit:

I bring this up because I wonder if he’s heard of Foreskin Man.

• Serial Killer of the Week. For the third year in a row, Scott and I spent the Fourth of July holiday with family at my parents’ camp on Chateaugay Lake in northern New York State. My parents chose to buy land on this particular lake because it is quiet, pretty and dirt cheap. Why so cheap? Because there is nothing, nothing around for many, many miles in every direction except a big, scary, maximum security prison — Dannemora. The prison is actually called the Clinton Correctional Facility, but everyone calls it Dannemora after the town that hosts it (take the street tour down main street between the prison’s giant cement wall and the dilapidated abandoned buildings and liquor mart that face it) or “Little Siberia,” because a lot of its residents are convicts from NYC who feel very far from home in this remote locale. It was while driving past Dannemora’s beautifully imposing stone architecture twice today that I decided to feature the prison itself and some its more notable guests this week. Tupac Shakur and Ol’ Dirty Bastard both did time here, but today I’ve selected a few fellows whose celebrity comes entirely from their crimes.

Vincent Johnson, the Brooklyn Strangler.

John Jamelske. A sadistic prick who kidnapped several girls and women and held them as his captive sex slaves in a bunker beneath his home in Syracuse.

David Berkowitz.

Carl Panzram. This one is the most interesting to me because he had a surprisingly long career as a violent, angry, misanthropic psychopath. He hated people and expressed that in a wide variety of antisocial behaviors ranging from arson and B&E to rape and murder. At least two movies have been made about him, one starring James Woods. Still, very few people have heard of him. Have you?

Eric Smith. When Smith was 13 years old he killed and sodomized a four year-old neighborhood boy. Today, he is 31 and has been denied parole five times.

• Fetish of the Week. Plushophilia. “Plushies” are aroused by stuffed animals.

• Religion of the Week. Woodism. A religion devoted to and inspired by Ed Wood, of course!

• Links!

All hail Florida!

No, Jesus, fuck, no, no, no.

World’s most pierced woman got married! Sweet story.

Please sterilize these fucking people.

Freak bear crash (not a typo).

And I’ll just wrap up with one more upstate New York story: a new local celebrity! This homeless guy who is pushing his “wife” in a wheelchair camping trek.

Which of the MythBusters do you think would be the best lover? My boyfriend and I both immediately thought Jamie because he seems like intense endurance guy, but a few seconds later our thoughts turned to Tory. He just seems so… enthusiastic. What do you think?

• Serial Killer of the Week. This week I have for you the Vampire of Sacramento: Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980). Chase is one of those killers whose story made me feel like he was truly mentally ill. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic suffering from clinical vampirism (AKA Renfield syndrome). Not conscientiously evil like so many serial killers, I think Chase was an example of someone who was so genuinely turned around inside his own delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic world that he did not know right from wrong. The vast majority of serial killers appear (and self report) to understand consensus reality and the relative morality of their actions, but their defense lawyers would have you believe they were so mentally infirm that they didn’t understand what they were doing. Then there are those who really are living in a phantasmagorical, demonic world of delusion. I think Richard Chase was one of the latter.
• Fetish of the Week. Sex with ghosts! Spectrophilia. Dr. Barry Taff discusses it in a blog post here. But this is funnier.
• Religion of the Week. When I was in high school someone tried to get me to play Dungeons & Dragons. I never got into it, but I did fall in love with the whole “alignment” concept and found it hard not to consider the nine categories in later years when studying human evil in college. When choosing an alignment for myself I didn’t pause – chaotic neutral. I loved the idea of being an anarchic rascal, ricocheting around like an equal opportunity wrecking ball. I was in it for the LULZ before LULZ even existed. In reality I’m probably chaotic good (you can debate amongst yourselves) but chaotic neutral will always have a dark appeal to me. This brings me to my religion of the week: Discordianism. Discordianism is considered by many to be a joke religion like the Church of the Subgenius or Flying Spaghetti Monster, but as a religion which is devoted to the concept and deities of chaos, it only makes sense that nobody can or will ever know how “serious” its adherents might be.
• Links!

Mascot malfunction.

Fake crime scene, real stiff.

Use brain waves to control… wheelchairs for paralyzed people? Nope, kitty ears.

Why are some people who freeze to death found stark naked?

You know the old chestnut that says if you die in your dreams you die in real life? Well, apparently it really happens sometimes.

This could keep me entertained for hours: a list of unusual deaths!

No kissing the bigots!

Good for you, lady! I just hope you don’t get any bugs from his nasty tongue.