Saturday, June 2, 2012

Rudy Eugene and our unhealthy obsession with cannibals




It was a normal sort of day in the neighborhood. The sun was shining.

Rudy's girlfriend said he woke up early, made coffee etc.  She said he looked in a closet and left home to go catch up to a "homeboy."

He left home with a Bible in his hand. She didn't say if he waved goodbye as he headed down the street or patted the Labrador on the head.

But some time later that day, things took a slight turn for the worse when Rudy was shot dead by cops for eating the face off a homeless man, while naked, on a causeway in Miami.

The case of Rudy Eugene is truly horrific even for Florida but it has fascinated a prurient public as much as it has appalled.

Before the attack Eugene's criminal record had been limited to a few misdemeanors for smoking pot, although there were some pointers toward a violent nature.

Bruce Baker writing in examiner.com says Eugene's girlfriend believed he may have been under a Haitian Voodoo curse and subject to a ""zombie apocalypse" at the time.

That or he had taken too many bath salts. Do you believe an apocalypse involving zombies is nigh? asks Baker before suggesting we follow him on Pinterest. See it's not just for girls.

Whatever the cause it's clear we have an unhealthy obsession with cannibals be they the small guys deep in the forest who shrink heads or Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the sinister character played by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, that won the Welsh actor an Oscar.

Implausibly we are invited to start liking the cold blooded cannibal as he helps find another serial killer. We can't understand cannibals. It's the last taboo. We are horrified but we are also fascinated.

Because Rudy Eugene is dead we will probably never know what caused this appalling attack. But we'd be safe in assuming he wasn't reading the nice, touchy feely parts of his Bible.








13 comments:

  1. It would have made for an interesting interview and I expect he would have quoted a few carefully chosen verses from the Bible supporting the offending actions... which would of course make it ok because "It's in the Bible" - isn't that how it goes for some people?

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    1. probably Sue and there's a lot of violent stuff in there.

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  2. Yeah this was just a horrific incident. It's the bath salts. Yet there are a surprising amount of people who seem to believe in this zombie uprising thing. My exhusband was one of them.

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    1. really JoJo, skeptical about that theory but it seems to be taking off.

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  3. He was probably reading Leviticus! (and doing too many bath salts...)

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    1. Yes a combination that would drive most people loopy.

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  4. I avoid the news like it's math, so I was only dimly aware of this. But then my kid came home last night, going on about the impending zombie apocalypse, and this story, and one about a dude flinging bits of his entrails out at cops, etc...totally wigged me out. Makes me want to re-read Max Brooks' "The Zombie Survival Guide." He totally wrote it as a joke (I think) but his advice about machetes is spot-on, I find. (Well, I'm guessing.) (And hope to never have to know for sure.)
    Some Dark Romantic

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    1. lord I think so, Mina. Not really au fait with machete advice but sounds like I should check out this light reading.

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  5. I personally never found Hannibal Lecter scary, but rather funny. I was more scared by Buffalo Bill, which is kinda ruining my watching of Kiss of the Spider Woman. Really, cannibals sound so fictional I'm googling his name just to make sure he's real, though I trust you.

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    1. fraid so Starla - but maybe he didn't make it big in your end of the woods.

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  6. That news story haunted me beyond belief this weekend. It is one of those stories I'll never forget. Kind of like the one where the gorilla ate that woman's face off in Connecticut (?) and she had to get a face transplant. Ugggggh. :S

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    1. ick - missed the gorilla one Jen but sounds grim. Yes am trying not to dwell too much on the finer points of the Florida incident, which makes me wonder why I wrote about it really.

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  7. I read about this incident. According to WebMd, bath salts can cause agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain, and suicidality. It is beyond my scope of understanding why people would want to use these drugs and do these things to themselves. It makes no sense to me.

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On Blog PTSD

Now then. What the heck. It seems I had forgotten about my blog completely rather than just neglecting it this time. To return after so long...