August 18, 2003
Just the right amount of stupefaction
It's a conversation that we (the maintainers of this site) have had a few times already - are we being too preachy? Too flippant? How do we find the right balance? On one hand, we don't want to come across as pretentious moralizers, but on the other hand, we really don't feel like being misconstrued as glorifying the behavior we post about. I guess this is our way of saying that we're still trying to find our voice, so please bear with us.
On to the news: Italian tourists in Florida last week got an unwelcome surprise - they discovered a body, wrapped in chains, that had washed up on the shore. Houston police were also unpleasantly surprised to find the dismembered corpse of a 71-year old man in a freezer with a chainsaw nearby. And no one is pleased with the prospect of dealing with a copycat of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper that may be operating in West Virginia.
Some common interests in a relationship shouldn't be explored. A married couple in Washington is accused of killing off their boarders and a boyfriend/girlfriend in Maryland have been convicted of killing another couple just for fun. To top it off, a pair of teens in Washington state may finally be brought to justice for bludgeoning one of their families to death (including an autistic girl).
This muder/suicide in Indiana seems pretty clear-cut, but it's impossible to know if a Japanese woman and her two daughters seen hugging on a train track before being hit and killed were willing partners, or if the children were coerced.
Let's hope more can be learned about these child deaths - a 6-year old boy in California who was strangled to death after being sexually assaulted, and a 2-year old boy in Georgia who died 6 days after sustaining supposedly "accidental" injuries - then perhaps justice will be served.
What's the point of being a Satanist these days, now that it's been revealed that the mysterious Mr. Cho (now to be referred to only as "the Almighty") defeated Satan in 1980? This triumph naturally led him to form a cult in Korea known as the Eternal Life Church. Apparently, the name is more for effect than anything else, as several members of the cult have been discovering that their lives are ending somewhat short of eternity - investigators now believe many members of the cult were killed and buried secretly.
Despite Satan's stunning loss to Mr. Cho, self-proclaimed Satanists (and vampires) still exist, some of whom are wrapped up in a murder investigation in New Orleans. It appears that the stereotypes associated with their Goth appearance aren't helping them, since it's adding validity in some people's minds to the theory that the murder was some sort of evil rite.
Speaking of psuedo-Satanic rituals, it seems likely that the people who murdered this cat in a drainpipe with "666" painted in it were trying to perform one, but it's not as clear why someone in Georgia would want to kill a cat by removing its head and front legs, and then repeat the process with a dog (although Satan has been mentioned as a possible accomplice in these crimes too). Japan thinks that committing acts of animal cruelty is a sign you're going to be a more serious criminal; we just think it's completely abhorrent.
Posted by stupefied
01:37 PM