Ration Reality

Cannibalism has been viewed, in Modern civilized society, through a surreal lens. From the Donner Party, to The Buoy’s upbeat cannibal anthem “Timothy”, to Ray Liotta being fed a piece of his own cerebrum by Anthony Hopkins, people feel that the very act of consuming human flesh is outlandish, regardless of how it’s done. One man, however, was determined to make the execution of his cannibalistic attempt as outrageous and unsettling as the act itself. His name: Armin Meiwes.

Born in Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany on Dec. 1, 1962, Armin Meiwes (pron. My’-vuhs) was a quiet, unassuming kind, by most accounts. He was raised by a mother described as cold and domineering. So domineering was his dear mutti, that he rarely was allowed to play with his school chums or otherwise engage in most forms of social intercourse (including intercourse, it turns out–Frau Meiwes accompanied her son on dates. No aktion for little Armin.) In fact, scarcely a day went by that Meiwes didn’t see his mom. She lived with him for her whole life and even forced her way into maneuvers with his army unit during his compulsory military service. He wasn’t rid of the bitch until the day she died. And, yet, she lived on…in his mind!

So how did Meiwes deal with the stifling tough-love? The same way any level-headed schizoid would: by creating an imaginary brother, “Frank”, who would “listen” to him and developing a need to find someone to become “a part of him”.

Fast-forward a few decades to the dawn of the new millennium. While the rest of the world was fretting about their electricity cutting off or their garage doors not opening, Meiwes was beginning to succumb to the notion of making someone a part of him, a dream he’d maintained since childhood. Now, you gotta admire someone who puts it all on the line and goes after that dream, but Armin had something different in mind from finding his soulmate and getting married. The 39-year old computer technician placed an ad on a fetish website called “The Cannibal Café“, asking for a “volunteer” to allow Meiwes to kill, cook and consume him. Improbably, someone actually responded. For male prostitute/mutilation aficionado Bernd Brandes, becoming someone’s entrée sounded like a good idea.

Brandes dutifully reported to Meiwes’ home in Rotenburg (near Frankfurt in the state of Hesse) on March 9, 2001. In short order, Meiwes had cut off Brandes’ penis and attempted to prepare it in time for the two to consume it. As he waited for Brandes to die from either the massive blood loss or the livestock-sized dose of barbiturates and alcohol he’d been given, Meiwes read a Star Wars novel. After 3 hours, an apparently impatient Meiwes decided to finish off the incredibly resilient Brandes with a knife in the throat. Afterward, Armin placed the corpse on a suspended meathook and gleefully began to fillet it. How do we know all these details? Why, it’s because Meiwes had been videotaping the incident. Duh!

After divulging details about his “meal” online, authorities were notified and Meiwes was arrested. On Jan. 30, 2004, Armin Meiwes was convicted of the German equivalent of manslaughter and was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison. Two years later, prosecutors were able to overturn his original conviction to that of murder, based on the premeditation involved in trolling for human food on a fetish site. Meiwes will serve a term of life in prison for his crime.

Fun Facts about Armin:

*At Brandes’ insistence, Meiwes attempted to bite the penis off. The proboscis proved to be too “tough” and, after several painful tries, a steak knife was ultimately used.

*German industrial metal band Rammstein wrote the song “Mein Teil” (English: “My Part”) with inspiration from the Meiwes case. The bridge includes the line “Du Bist, Was du isst” (literally, “you are what you eat”).

*Meiwes intended to sauté the penis with proper seasoning, allowing the 2 men to share it before Brandes died. Unfortunately, Meiwes burned it beyond the point of enjoyment. Way to go, Dumbass!

*The 2007 horror film Butterfly: a Grimm Love Story was loosely based on the Meiwes case. It was banned in Germany.

*As a commentary on the worldwide press response to the Meiwes case, Juggalo rapper Necro in the song “Human Consumption” wrote the line “It’s legal in Germany, believe me. Cannibals are Celebrities”.

*Over 10 months, Meiwes feasted upon nearly 50 pounds of his Victim’s flesh.

*Shortly after being locked up, Meiwes became a vegetarian!

Related posts: TLDR Biographies: Egon Schiele - Shirley Temple is Creepy - RIP-IA: Jeanne Tripplehorn

The media portrays serial killing as all glitz, glamour, and bludgening. I’ll admit, it is the best job I’ve ever had, but the downsides are killers. Oh, lookie! A pun! I kill me!

And you thought a sociopath couldn’t have a sense of humor! Doesn’t it just make you want to bite your face off?

Ok, enough good natured fun. Here’s my list.

12 things I hate about being a serial-killer

1.  Cheating ass maggots. Sure, they tickle my hoohoo lovingly when I’m riding a stiff corpse, but then they go and turn in to flies and fly away to find another body-closet keep them warm at night. Ungrateful fucking sluts.

2. Cheap, chinese made icepicks. I can’t tell you how many living dolls I’ve lost to inferior icepicks breaking off in the eyesocket. Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to… you know.

3. Charity Thrift Shop Workers. Serial killing is messy work. I often have to burn my clothes to expunge evidence. Also, I like to dress up my playthings. I have to replace my wardrobe several times over each year — that can be expensive! The Goodwill and Salvation Army are big helps, and I’m glad the money I spend goes to help the community, but the people there are seriously creepy.

4. The police artist sketch makes me look fat. Also, like a man.   Read the rest of this entry »

Hypnotist Gives New Meaning to Phrase “Italian Job”

At times, checkout counters can have a hypnotic effect on us. There’s a rack of tabloid gossip rags shouting in our faces. The dissonant screams and bellows of kids that create waveforms that turn our minds inside-out. There’s the elderly lady in front of the line who’s trying to haggle the cashier over a dented soup tin and the scary revelation of just how many types of gum there are. No wonder our brains try to take us away from the horror of it all.

To wit, a customer in Italy is trying to further enhance the otherworldly checkout experience for his own fun and profit. Closed Circuit Television footage taken from a supermarket and a bank in Italy’s Marche region have shown a patron placing tellers into a suggestive hypnotic state and defrauding them of hundreds of Euros each. So effective was the trance that many of the employees didn’t realize what had happened until they were ready to count their tills at the end of their shifts. Read the rest of this entry »

 
Michigan Police Search for Stolen Beer Costume

Detroit–Metro cops are uniting behind a heinous case the likes of which haven’t been seen in the notorious city before. Could they be investigating a septuple-homicide on the west end? A massive drug ring? A serial arsonist? Nahhh! This is Detroit we’re talking about. There aren’t enough police resources in the whole department to handle all the “serious” crimes that happen in this unfortunate city, plus the cops there know that those things usually take care of themselves, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Boone, NC– An Appalachian State University student admitted that he lied about an alleged armed robbery that disrupted nearly the entire campus for the better part of a day.  Matthew Haney, a 22-year old English major, came clean about his mistruth on Tuesday, after reporting an armed burglary at his residence a day earlier.

With the hair-triggered environment surrounding most colleges after the Virginia Tech massacre last year, the report of a nearby armed gunman shut down the entire campus, sent alerts to students and flooded the grounds with law enforcement officers. The student reported that he returned to his off-campus apartment to find an armed n’er-do-well pilfering his television. He described the non-existent suspect as being a white male in a “black Pink Floyd shirt” with a dark ski mask and “small black handgun”. Read the rest of this entry »

Wheeling, WV– For those cynics among us who say that romance is dead comes this heartwarming story of felonies, nuptials and… awkward irony.

On September 5, Mr. Kevin Felder robbed the Wheeling Island Convenience Store, an idiotic feat, especially for someone planning soon to wed. Well, the heist netted him $340, which would have been enough for a honeymoon in, say, exotic Youngstown or hire that DJ for the reception. Did I mention his bad decision was a violation of his probation? Probation resulting from a domestic violence trial involving his bride-to-be? Well, it was. Earlier this month, Felder was sentenced to 5-18 years imprisonment for his actions. But that’s not where the story ends, for there, inside the the Ohio County courthouse, love would rule the day! Read the rest of this entry »

January 17, Somewhere in Michigan:

Jean Mansel says her husband “got a phone call in a real graspy voice, over the phone, saying check your mailbox.”

Naturally, she ran right out and opened the mailbox, where she didn’t find a bomb– that wouldn’t be nearly as funny as the letter she did find :

We are holding Jesus ransom until you clean up the poopie from your wieners and trust us we see you take your wieners for long walks w/out picking up their poopie in our yards. This has upset us dearly so please clean up all the weiner poopie, if you want to see Jesus unharmed.

Sincerely,
Lindy Lane Residents

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re back from vacay! We missed you so very much! I’ve got a little piece of original fiction for you, and this time, it’s family-friendly. 

“Please take me home.”

Jasper continued watching the late movie.

“I miss my family. Please take me home.”

Jasper tried to not hear the voice. He told himself it was his conscience. Maybe he’d snapped, gone nuts, flipped. Somehow, that made him feel better. But he knew that wasn’t right, because if he had gone crazy, then he’d believe that the television was crying, which it most certainly was not. It couldn’t be. TVs don’t care if they’re stolen. And if they did care, they wouldn’t keep you up all night whining about it.

“I want to go home. It’s no fun being stolen.”

The television wasn’t aware of anything. It didn’t know when Jasper was in the room, or when he went to bed. And it most definitely did not know when he spoke to it. No way, no how. It was all just coincidence. Or guilt. Or he was crazy. Jasper wanted so much for someone to come and tell him he was crazy, so he could stop worrying about it. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all had days when it seemed to be raining shit on our heads. Days when everything seemed to go wrong for us in every possible way. Still, it takes a story like this to put things into perspective for us:

Earlier this month, an unidentified man was driving through a residential area of Memphis in the early hours of the morning. Around 3:30 AM, the mystery motorist crashed his car into a utility pole. Staggering from the wreckage, the man mad a beeline to the home of Mr. Leroy Bruce.

The unidentified man began banging on Bruce’s front door. Bruce wisely refused him entry and, at this point, the man thought it would be a good idea to kick in one of Bruce’s windows. When the man began to insert his leg through the broken window into the living room, Bruce produced a gun and shot the man in the leg. Struggling to extricate himself from the busted window, the unidentified offender had to remove his shoes and pants.

The man eventually made his way to a McDonald’s Read the rest of this entry »

Wannabe “rock star” Pete Doherty used to merely annoy me with his posturing. His insistence of following the well-worn rock ‘n’ roll chemical highway traveled by Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop before him is neither original nor particularly noteworthy. Getting busted, overdosing and getting tossed out of bands for excessive drug abuse is by no measure new in the world of popular music, circa now.

It’s his perogative to fuck up his body and mind and, at least in Britain, it’s given the model/poet/musician/fuckup an assload of publicity courtesy of the insidious red-ink press. However, Doherty crossed a major line recently, and his offense should not be ignored. Read the rest of this entry »