Today’ is H. P. Lovecraft’s 120 birthday! You could celebrate the occasion by reading one of his great stories (The Whisperer in Darkness is my personal favourite) or maybe by pleasuring yourself with some tentacles? ;) Some very brave mind might even dare to do both at the same time, who knows…
19
Aug
16
Aug
Jean-Claude Auger; an anthropologist from the Basque country, was travelling alone across the Spanish Sahara (Rio de Oro) in 1960 when he met some Nemadi nomads, who told him about a wild child a day’s journey away. The next day, he followed the nomads’ directions. On the horizon he saw a naked child “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles”.
Auger found a small oasis of thorn bushes and date palms and waited for the herd. Three days later, his patience was rewarded, but it took several more days of sitting and playing his galoubet (Berber flute) to win the animals’ confidence. Eventually, the child approached him, showing “his lively, dark, almond-shaped eyes and a pleasant, open expression… he appears to be about 10 years old; his ankles are disproportionately thick and obviously powerful, his muscles firm and shivering; a scar, where a piece of flesh must have been torn from the arm, and some deep gashes mingled with light scratches (thorn bushes or marks of old struggles?) form a strange tattoo.”
The boy walked on all fours, but occasionally assumed an upright gait, suggesting to Auger that he was abandoned or lost at about seven or eight months, having already learnt to stand. He habitually twitched his muscles, scalp, nose and ears, much like the rest of the herd, in response to the slightest noise. Even in deepest sleep he seemed constantly alert, raising his head at unusual noises, however faint, and sniffing around him like the gazelles.
Auger describes how he gradually learnt to decipher the significance of every gazelle gesture and movement, which the boy shared with the herd. There was a complex code of stamping to indicate distance of food sources; and social interaction through exchanges of licking and sniffing, with the boy emitting a kind of mute cry from the back of his throat with his mouth closed. He had one word: kal (khah), meaning stone or rock. One senior female seemed to act as his adoptive mother. He would eat desert roots with his teeth, pucking his nostrils like the gazelles. He appeared to be herbivorous apart from the occasional agama lizard or worm when plant life was lacking. His teeth edges were level like those of a herbivorous animal.
Two years after his stay with the herd, Auger returned with a Spanish army captain and his aid-de-camp, who kept their distance to avoid frightening the herd off. Curiosity eventually overcame them and they chased the boy in a jeep to see how fast he could run. This frightened him off altogether, though he reached a speed of 32-34mph (52-54km/h), with continuous leaps of about 13ft (4m). Olympic sprinters can reach only 25mph (40km/h) in short bursts.
His pursuers failed to keep up across the rough terrain, and eventually the herd disappeared as the jeep sustained a puncture. In 1966 an unsuccessful attempt was made to catch the boy in a net suspended from a helicopter; unlike most of the feral children of whom we have records, the gazelle boy was never removed from his wild companions. Auger took no photographs of the boy, being more concerned with protecting him from human interference than providing evidence to convince the sceptics of his existence. Perhaps the whole thing is a fairy story…
More about the gazelle boy myth can be found at Dennis Cooper’s and an extensive article about feral children at ForteanTimes.
1
Aug
25
Jul
Gruesome Fairy Tales
Fairy tales weren’t always for kids. Back when these stories were first told around campfires and in taverns in some medieval village there were very few kids present. These were racy, violent parables to distract peasants after a hard day’s dirt farming, and some of them made Hostel look like, well, kid’s stuff.
Rumpelstiltskin
Dismemberment, Dead Toddlers
The Version You Know
There’s never been a Disney version of this one, but you’ve probably heard it before. A miller has a beautiful daughter who he claims can spin straw into gold. A passing noble decides to call the miller on his shit and takes the girl and locks her in a tower and tells her to get spinning, presumably hoping to cause a collapse in the precious metals market.
Fortunately she’s helped by a little gnome who shows up and offers to help in exchange for a small trinket. This goes on three nights, and by the third night the girl is promising the little man her first born child in return for his help. On the third morning, the king decides to marry this pretty girl who can produce gold out of dry grass.
They inevitably have a son, and the little gnome shows up demanding him. Being nothing if not fair, he’ll give the girl three days to guess his name. If she can, she keeps the kid. She tries everything but comes up short, until a passing woodsman overhears the gnome bragging about how he’s so clever no one will guess his name is Rumpelstiltskin. He immediately tells the queen, who springs it on Rumpelstiltskin, who’s so pissed off he throws a tantrum and runs away, presumably to ply his poorly thought-out scam in another town.
What Got Changed
In the Grimm brothers’ version, taken from the oral tradition, the little man is so pissed off he stamps the floor in his little hissy fit, and gets stuck. And then, like some insane version of a Will Ferrell skit, he pulls so hard to free himself that he tears himself in half. Now, if our names were Rumpelstiltskin and some dizzy miller’s daughter had just told the whole damn room, we’d be pissed too, but we don’t think we’d get dismemberment-angry.
Not to mention, in the really early versions of the tale, Rumpelstiltskin launches himself at the girl in a rage and gets stuck … um … in her lady parts. Seriously. The palace guards all have to come and pull him out, which must have made for some awkward looks afterwards.
Also, in a depressingly large number of versions, the child is killed anyway, either by Rumpelstiltskin himself, or the guards, or someone. They weren’t big on happy endings in the Dark Ages. Plague will do that.
18
Jul
Click the headline to go to the full story
Man dies, then his mom, then both get eaten by cats
Humane officials removed a dozen cats from a northwestern Pennsylvania home where a deputy coroner says the animals started eating the foot of an elderly man found dead there with his mother.
Boy likens murder of younger brother to wanting a hamburger
When asked why he strangled his little brother to death, 17-year old Andrew Conley of Rising Sun, Indiana said: "Like, I had to. It’s like when people have something like when they’re hungry and there’s a hamburger sitting there and they knew they had to have it."
Barefoot Bandit loves Bare Boys, watched gay porn on computer of a victim
The so-called barefoot burglar used the internet connection to purchase three containers of bear mace (presumably to avoid being Grizzly Man’d), a computer program called Evidence Eraser and membership with an online gay male pornography site called barelytwinks.com
Nanny, 30, died from sexual arousal while watching pornography
A 30-year-old woman’s death as she used a sex toy while watching pornography was probably due to her state of sexual excitement, an inquest heard today.
Mom of 3 accused of molesting 4 teen male friends of daughter
A secretary for the Village of Chicago Ridge is accused of molesting four of her daughter’s 14- and 15-year-old male friends and giving them alcohol and marijuana.
On 26 June, the German town of Hamelin celebrated Rat Catcher’s Day. But what really happened there, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?
Last year, the town of Hamelin in Germany celebrated the 725th anniversary of a macabre event still familiar through children’s fairytales more than seven centuries later. But beyond the musical Rats and the colourful souvenirs and tourist attractions, the town of the Pied Piper is full of references to a real tragedy – one recorded on the walls of the so-called Rattenfängerhaus, or House of the Piper:
“In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.”
The town of Hamelin hasn’t forgotten this loss. The street where, supposedly, the children were last seen is called Bungelosenstrasse: street without drums”. Even so many years after the event, no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Oral tradition preserved and enriched the story until the Brothers Grimm included it in their compilation of German legends, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).
In the Grimms’ version, mediæval Hamelin is hit by a plague of rats. A seemingly hero-like figure appears, in the shape of a mysterious stranger dressed in red and yellow clothes. He promises to rid the town of the vermin, and the townsmen promise him money in exchange. The rat-catcher has a strange, almost supernatural gift: he plays a tune on his pipe that lures the rats into the river Weser, where they all drown. But, blinded by their greed, the townsmen refuse to honour their promise and pay the Piper his fee. The Piper leaves the town, plotting his revenge. When he returns to Hamelin, he wears the attire of a hunter. He plays a melody that hypnotises the children, who follow him to the mountains, never to be seen again.
The cruelty of the denouément strikes us doubly, because it surpasses our expectations. What initially looks like a classic ‘Overcoming the Monster’ plot turns into a nightmarish tale of disproportionate revenge. The Piper’s retribution oversteps the boundaries, suggesting society’s ultimate taboo: child murder. This twist is so shocking that many versions have been tempered, with the Piper orchestrating the disappearance of the children only to get the money he is owed; the children go back to Hamelin and the townsfolk learn their lesson. Far from simplifying the story, this presents the Piper as a more interesting hero, a complex, modern one – someone who has to challenge the establishment in order to survive in difficult times.
And yet the tale’s elements of greed, revenge and infanticide send us back to the Middle Ages, a violent period of deep contrasts. The legend contains enough material to have inspired the popular and the poetic imagination for centuries – but what really happened on that fateful day in 1284, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?
4
Jul
1
Jul
The trailer foe the US remake of the Swedish queer vampire film "Let the Right One in" was juts released. You can cross out the "queer" for this version of course since Eli, the vampire, is now a girl.
27
Jun
Gruesome Fairy Tales
Fairy tales weren’t always for kids. Back when these stories were first told around campfires and in taverns in some medieval village there were very few kids present. These were racy, violent parables to distract peasants after a hard day’s dirt farming, and some of them made Hostel look like, well, kid’s stuff.
Snow White
Prince Paedophile, Cannibalism
The Version You Know
Well, you’ve all seen the film, you know how this goes. Evil step-mom hates that her daughter who’s prettier than her so she tells one of her men to take out to the woods and kill her and bring back her heart as proof. He can’t follow through, so he tells her to run away and never returns. Snow White flees, and she falls in with seven friendly dwarves. The step-mom finds out and sneaks her a poison apple. Snow goes into a coma until a handsome prince rescues her and they live happily ever after.
What Got Changed
In the Disney film the wicked step-mother winds up dead (she falls off a cliff). So that’s pretty hardcore, hey? It’s got nothing on the Grimm version, though, where the step-mother is tortured by being forced to wear red-hot iron shoes, and made to dance until she falls down dead (you can picture the puppet thing from Saw spelling this out for her over a closed-circuit monitor).
The issue of Snow’s actual age is a point of contention as well. The Grimm’s explicitly refer to her as being seven years old when the story starts, and while there’s no firm indication of how much time has passed, it’s no more than a couple of years. So unless that’s an eight-year-old Prince Charming who comes along and rescues Snow, we’re backing away from this one before we become the subject of an NBC reality show.
The biggest change, and the bloodiest, is step-mom’s… unusual eating habits. Namely,when she asks for the heart of Snow White, she isn’t just after proof the girl’s dead. She wants to eat it. Depending on the version, she asks for Snow’s liver, lungs, intestines and pretty much every other internal organ, up to & including one gruesome version where she asks for a bottle of Snow’s blood stoppered with her toe.
And if you think the fairy tales were gruesome back then, you should have seen the merchandising tie-ins.
24
Jun
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
20
Jun
This is the Buckley Family. The children’s names were Susan &John. As a Halloween joke, the kids in the neighborhood were going to get a dummy & pretend to chop its head off. The Buckley children thought it would be hilarious to actually kill their mum, so when the kids walked up the door they got an axe and slaughtered her. Once everyone figured out what they had done, they called the police, but the kids were long gone by then. The only picture of them was this photo, taken by a trick or treater. The mothers body was found half eaten.
19
Jun
Artist Helnwein speaks about blood and violence in the fine arts. The video is a clip from a documentary about him, entitled "Die Stille der Unschuld" (The Silence of Innocence).
17
Jun
On June 17, 1462, Vlad III, prince of Wallachia, attacked the Ottoman army by night. He later impaled 20,000 prisoners; shocked by the carnage, the Turks retreated.
The small principality of Wallachia lay between two powers, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Its leader, Vlad II Dracul (the Dragon), agreed to send his younger two sons, Vlad and Radu, to the Turks as a sign of good faith in 1443. In his five years as a virtual prisoner, young Vlad developed an intense hatred of Islam and the Turks.
Vlad III, or Vlad Dracula, was installed as the ruler of Wallachia in 1448, following the death of his father. His reign was brief, but he returned to the throne in 1456. He employed brutal methods to consolidate his control; he was especially fond of impalement as punishment, later earning the name Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad the Impaler). The Turks, under Mehmed II, had conquered Constantinople and land in Eastern Europe. He gathered his army—probably consisting of 60,000 soldiers and 20,000 auxiliaries, though historians have estimated the number as high as 300,000—at the Danube River in the spring of 1462 and prepared to invade Wallachia. Vlad’s outnumbered army engaged in battle around the Danube, then launched a strategic retreat to the capital of Targoviste. Vlad employed a scorched-earth policy, ordering food stores to be burned and wells to be poisoned. His men launched guerilla attacks on Mehmed’s tired, hungry army as they advanced to Targoviste.
On the night of June 17, as Mehmed was camped south of Targoviste, Vlad decided to strike. Between 7,000 and 10,000 of his soldiers attacked the Turkish camp, intending to assassinate Mehmed. Though they could not kill the sultan, the “Night Attack” inflicted further damage on his army. Mehmed decided to continue his army’s advance to Targoviste. When they arrived, they were greeted with a gruesome sight. Vlad, as a psychological warfare tactic, had ordered the impalement of the 20,000 mostly Turkish prisoners outside the capital.
Laonicus Chalcondyles, a 15th century Greek historian, described: “the Sultan’s army came across a field with stakes, about three kilometers long and one kilometer wide. And there were large stakes on which they could see the impaled bodies of men, women, and children, about twenty thousand of them, as they said; quite a spectacle for the Turks and the Sultan himself! The Sultan, in wonder, kept saying that he could not conquer the country of a man who could do such terrible and unnatural things.” Read on…
16
Jun
Click the headline to go to the full story
Daughter cooks Father’s Penis in Incest Castration Murder
A woman who bound and castrated her own father, cooking his penis “to prevent it from being reattached,” and killing him in the process, has been found guilty of manslaughter.
10 Year-Old “Rapists” convicted on 8-Year-Old’s Accusation
Two boys aged 10 and 11 have been convicted of attempted rape based solely on the accusations of an 8-year-old girl, despite the girl withdrawing her claims in court, and there being no physical evidence of any assault.
Bestiality Boy forced to marry Cow which seduced him
A boy accused of having sex with a cow was forced to marry the beast despite his protestations that the cow seduced him with honeyed words.
Monk seduces Boys with Wii
A 46-year-old Taiwanese monk has been arrested for sexually assaulting a young boy, luring him into his home and seducing him with his Wii.
