You may have heard the disturbing news story about the Oklahoma murderer/pedophile/cannibal—just to make it a little creepier, he had a blog. (I don’t expect it will stay up for too long, so read The Insomnia Report for excerpts.)
He says things like this:
I mean it, I really need a girlfriend. It’s not just depressing anymore, it’s actually starting to have a negative effect on my mental state I think. For example, my fantasies are just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird. If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away. No probably about it, I know I would be.
Mostly, though, he comes off as pathetic and banal.
Ooh. This one is creepy:
Sounds mentally ill.
We can look forward to the fact that he had a blog being cited as “evidence” that blogging correlates with murder and/or mental illness.
Brace yourself.
Note to self: when blogging about future crimes, do so anonymously.
RickD, great point. Someone in a comment on his blog pointed out that the fact that someone blogs is evidence that the person is anti-social (and damn it, I can’t find the comment now). Scary.
The January 15th posting – http://futureworldruler.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_futureworldruler_archive.html is particularly creepy.
Did you check out his Blogger profile:
If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?
The skin of last night’s main course.
Is this for real???
Someone in a comment on his blog pointed out that the fact that someone blogs is evidence that the person is anti-social
So if blogging is evidence that someone is anti-social, what is it when you comment on someone else’s blog? The irony in that is so thick you could cut with a knife.
Speaking of creepy, Ann Coulter will be speaking at Cornell on April 24.
And it’s all because he was an atheist with an interest in evolution, apparantly…
link
This man’s love goes through his stomach indeed :-/
BTK was a church-going Lutheran, and how many did he kill?
I know this is PZ’s blog, and he can write about anything which grabs his interest … but why this? I come here for news about evolution and entertaining smack-downs of theocratic nutjobs. How is this ‘on-topic’?
I wonder whether his recent posts attacking Christianity in fairly outspoken terms have left PZ feeling vulnerable to the charge that atheists don’t possess moral feeling and, if left to their own devices (as, in fact, they are, without an imagined God scrutinizing their every action and thought) they will commit atrocities such as this? But, even if that line of thought has become depressingly current in American culture, it is hardly one that needs refuting here. Even those of us who do not share PZ’s uncompromising atheism realize that morality is utterly distinct from religious sensibility – and, in fact, it is more often the case that immorality coincides with religious zealotry.
Perhaps, though, he’s anticipating a firestorm from the creationist right, once they notice that the most recent posting on the murderer’s blog – made, I believe, after the child’s abduction – related to Tiktaalik (as someone has already noted in this thread).
I do not mean to second-guess PZ’s intentions here. I am only raising a mild complaint because I first read the story here, and then made the mistake of clicking through to the monster’s blog. I have spent the rest of the morning shaken and distressed, occasionally in tears. What makes some of us capable of things that our orangutan cousins would never do, still less any ‘lower’ animal? The poor, poor child.
Don’t read too much into it. I was browsing some of our local Minnesota blogs, one linked to it, and I had the same appalled reaction you did — so I linked to it.
His last post was about Tiktaalik, with the body already in his house, and that thread has collected about 1000 comments of pure vent. So, of course, expect the creationist spin machine soon with the ‘evolution made him do’ idiocy.
Speaking of creepy, Rick Santorum has managed to pool $9M for his senate campaign
“Sounds mentally ill.”
Ya think?
That Terry Bisson story is actually pretty good. It also appears in the beginning of this handy Intro to Cognitive Science text.
Well, there is some evidence that the less “real” socialization you do, the more bizzare your fantasies get. The real issue is when/if that reaches the point where the person goes really seriously nuts, instead of just collecting a few odd pictures of some strange fetish. This is one reason why sexual surrogates and legal (and safe) prostitution is probably a good idea. Then you eliminate the, “I need a girlfriend and am going nuts”, types. Unfortunately, you still end up with the religious nuts that pull a Jack the Ripper, because they can’t and won’t condone a “saner” solution. I haven’t bothered to read this guys stuff, but let me make a completely off the wall guess.. White, obviously male, social outcast with poor skills at direct human interaction, with at least a represive, if not strict and borderline obsessive religious background. Most, save for the religion, which could maybe have been solved with sexual surrogacy, which combines psychology into the mix, or just a decent brothel, assuming religion didn’t make going to either appear “more” socially negative than slowly evolving into a raving lunatic. How far off am I?
I don’t know, Kagehi…obviously repression, depression and desperation screw people up badly, but this is a whole new level of crazy. The process you describe would produce cannibal killers so very rarely (at least, I assume they’re rare) that another explanation for their…instability would be just as likely.
How did they catch this guy? Did he have any prior contact with the victim?
I don’t know, Kagehi…obviously repression, depression and desperation screw people up badly, but this is a whole new level of crazy. The process you describe would produce cannibal killers so very rarely (at least, I assume they’re rare) that another explanation for their…instability would be just as likely.
As disturbing as it is to contemplate, people like that are not necessarily qualitatively different from the rest of us — they could just be the extreme end of a distribution of socialization/alienation and/or a combination of traits which by themselves are not pathological, but merely “odd”.
Something else that disturbs me are the comments on one of the linked blogs, from people looking forward to this guy getting the death penalty and going to hell. As horrific as the crime was, the sentiments expressed are supposed to be strictly verboten to Christians. For some people, the positive bits of the religion are only skin-deep….
He was their downstairs neighbour. According to the MSNBC article, “Investigators searched his apartment after he aroused their suspicions at a checkpoint…”
almost makes me want to eat vegtables. only
Jason says:
His last post was actually about the Australopithecus anamensis finds. But same deal…clearly evolution made him do it.
An evil category, huh? I’m a little amazed that Bro. Bart hasn’t jumped in here declaring that none of us acually believe in evil because we’re icky bad atheists who stew puppies alive just to hear their cries of anguish.
I’m betting that this is another OK trial that’s going to get moved to Denver.
I should not have read his blog. This is the kind of material that will keep me awake for days. However, in the comment thread there are gems of pure nonsense and hilarity:
“BUT WHEN SATIN IS LET INTO YOUR LIFE, AND GOD IS SHUT OUT YOU CAN DO DOME PRETTY STUPID SHIT!!!”
Yes, watch out for that satin. It’s deadly. I’d love to search for more, but I think I should get out before I am traumatized.
The scariest thing for me is that his movie and book tastes are very similar to mine.
Of course, I’m happy and well adjusted with a beautiful girlfriend to keep me occupied, so I’m not worried.
Just out of curiosity, how long did Dahmer last in the slammer? Was it even a year before the rest of the cons did him in?
-jcr
The scariest thing for me is that his movie and book tastes are very similar to mine.
I gather he had what you might call “typical geek” tastes: Monty Python, Terry Pratchett, science stuff, and the online game Kingdom of Loathing (which my wife and younger son also play. Notwithstanding the name, it’s really a very non-serious MUD-type game — more like a send-up of the genre, with lots of silly word-plays).
He also seems to have had serious and poorly managed depression. As I said previously, there doesn’t seem to be anything radically exceptional about him — just an extreme case and combination of traits shared by many people on the intravert side of the sociality curve.
It’s worrying, really. He could be any one of a million geeks (even the depression is common, and the poor socialization is legendary)… except that the other 999999 of us will not make elaborate plans to kill and eat people, let alone actually do it. Unless I missed it he didn’t seem to have any significant skills, which probably accounts for the depression and the fantastically irritating self-pitying whining.
But not even low-skilled introverted depressed sexually frustrated people generally make elaborate plans to kill and eat people. Not even ones who are also stalkers.
He seems to have been a normal guy, if you ignore the cannibalism and murder.
There but for the grace of neural states go I, and you, and all of us. *shiver*