Saturday, Mar. 24, 2007 2:05 p.m.

a bewitching VU song full of imageries. read the lyrics. look at all the magical images emerging in your head...

music seems to be able to touch the human heart more easily than any other medium. i wonder. let's find out.

The Ocean
Velvet Underground
1969
Peel Slowly And See Version

Here comes the ocean
And the waves
Down by the sea
Here comes the Ocean
And the waves
Where have they been?

Silver and black with night
Heres to a summers night
An empty splendid castle
Glowering alone at night
The princess has had a fright
Madness seeks out the lover

And here come the waves down by the shore
Washing the soul of the body
That comes from the depths of the sea

Here comes the ocean
and the waves down by the sea
Here comes the ocean
and the waves, where have they been
Don't swim tonight my love
The tide is out my love
Malcom's curse haunts our family
Oh yes, loud in which, ruler of filthy seas, revelling heaven's justice

And here come the waves
And save for a scream
Theres much like a song
To be heard, in the wind, that blows by the sea.

Like the wind

Here come the waves,
Here come the waves,
Here come the waves...

disturbing contents below. u can stop here.

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my classmate told me about a man doing research on cannabalism in hku library. curiosity is always overwhelming. the curious me ended up looking up info on cannabalism on the net for the whole night from 11pm to 2am.

there's a piece of news i read together with my dgs classmates some years ago about a german man looking for men to be slaughtered and eaten. this man, armin meiwes, was a web administrator. he posted some messages on the net (i could still read them last night) using the pseudonym Franky, asking for well-built young men aged 18-30 to be killed and eaten.

another men called brandes, also a web administrator, responded to his ad. brandes sold his properties before going to meiwes' home. clearly he had prepared to die. the two met in meiwes' home. meiwes videotaped the whole process. brandes actually asked meiwes to bite his penis off, but it's too difficult to bite it off. so meiwes cut it off with a knife instead. they tried to eat it together, but it's too rubbery. so meiwes cooked it and they ate it again. then meiwes killed brandes by cutting his throat. the dead body was hung up, and meiwes took out the internal organs and ate more.

the evil man was arrested when he posted another ad online and was reported to the police by other surfers. there has been some debates going on in germany as there was no law stating cannabalism was illegal. meiwes was than charged manslaughter instead of murder and was sent to 8-year imprisonment. the court took out the case again more recently. meiwes was sent to life imprisonment this time.

the most controversial issue in this case was not the fact that one man ate another, but the fact that brandes agreed to be killed and eaten. is this some form of mercy killing?

there were many other cases that i had not heard of before. there's another japanese cannabal called isssei sagawa. a rich, intelligent but physically unattractive man, sagawa had fantasies of eating beautiful white women sinse he was small. he finally realized his dream when he studied in paris. he killed a dutch classmate he loved and consumed her day by day. in that way, he thought he could possess her. and the thought of having her body in his stomach excited him so much that he could get an orgasm.

sagawa was imprisoned for a while, then freed and sent back to japan probably with his rich and powerful father's help. he published a biography, some fictions, and would lecture in universities.

the controversial point here is also not cannabalism, but the fact that sagawa was not criticized in japan. media gave him so much attention that he didn't think he was wrong. they crowned him with the title father of cannabalism, and kept asking him to comment on food and share his experience. the fact that he ate a white woman also stirs up a strange sense of national superiority.