Macro Secrets 154

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Now you have the means to mesmerize

MAGIC MOMENTS 202

Tunes for Travelers 8
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No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
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It always leads me here, lead me to your door
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OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

YODA
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Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: George Lucas

Corpo e Alma: Movimento e voz de Frank Oz

Nacionalidade: Desconhecida

Profissão: Mestre Jedi

Naturalidade: Desconhecida

Habilitações: Sábio. Pequeno. Mas grande. Prudente. Paciente. Generoso. Linguista sui generis. Curto e grosso. Não é de muitas palavras, mas as que diz ficam sempre na memória de quem as ouve ... embora trocadas ... Arrebitado. Irónico. Nunca cínico. Exigente. Nunca sádico. Jamais desonesto ou dissimulado, embora engane muito boa gente que o toma por velho e limitado. Grande Mestre Jedi, do coração, da mente, do físico. Inultrapassável. Inigualável. Irrepetível.

Filosofia de Vida: "Do or do not... there is no try."

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DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 23

The Serial Killer - Part XIII
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The next werewolf of our chronicle is Gilles Garnier, a french hermit from the XVI century, known as the "Werewolf of Dole". Gilles was also a child lover, murdering young children and cannibalizing their corpses claiming that he used a magic ointment to transform into a werewolf to make it easier to hunt. This ointment had been given to him by a spectre.

Apparentely it all started because Gilles married and, being unaccustomed to feeding more than just himself, he found it difficult to provide for his wife causing discontent between them. It was then that several children went misteriously missing or were found dead and the authorities of the Franche-Comté province issued an edict encouraging and allowing the people to apprehend and kill the werewolf responsible. One evening a group of workers traveling from a neighboring town came upon what they thought in the dim light to be a wolf but what some recognized as the hermit with the body of a dead child. Soon after Giles Garnier was arrested.
Garnier confessed to have stalked and murdered at least four children between the ages of 9 and 12. In October 1572, his first victim was a 10-year-old girl whom he dragged into a vineyard outside of Dole. He strangled her, removed her clothes, and ate the flesh from her thighs and arms. When he had finished he removed some flesh and took it home to his wife. Weeks later Garnier savagely attacked another girl, biting and clawing her, but was interrupted by passersby and fled. The girl succumbed to her injuries a few days later. In November, Garnier killed a 10-year-old boy, again cannibalizing him by eating from his thighs and belly and tearing off a leg to save for later. Finally, he strangled another boy but was interrupted for the second time by a group of passersby. He had to abandon his prey before he could eat from it.
Garnier was not found guilty of murder, but of “crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft” and was burned at the stake. I find it interesting to note a particular aspect of these cases of lycanthropy - the criminals themselves wanted the world to believe they had some sort of relationship with some kind of supernatural entity. They felt the need to justify their strange preferences with some kind of connection to outside world beings, common to their age. This is a phenomenon that extends all times. I recall that Ted Bundy, one of the most prolific serial killers in America, and one we will be dealing with later, justified his blood lust by blaming pornography magazines and the culture of obscenity that prevailed in the seventies.

Which brings me to two realizations, neither shared by this one who writes you - either they are ashamed of what they did and do not want the world to know the full measure of their desires, or they are cowards seeking for a last, desperate justification, and finding it in the madness of the world that surrounds them.

Macro Secrets 153

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You don't even see me

PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 77

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"This is life, not heaven. You don't have to be perfect."
Francesco Scavullo para Gia Carangi

MAGIC MOMENTS 201

Tunes for Travelers 7
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No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
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Here I go again on my ownkjhkl
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DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 22

The Serial Killer - Part XII
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Peter liked children. He especially liked to eat them. He consumed 14, none less. I guess when you get the taste of it, it gets hard to quit. I never had the curiosity to try human flesh, myself. I am not a man eater. Nor a man lover, in the global scence. I hate people, every kind of people, so eating them would be, at the least, a paradox, at the most a masochistic experience. And I am certainly not a masochist. A sadist, perhaps. Although I do struggle sometimes with the definition of that concept. But we are not talking about me now.

Peter. Peter Stumpp. A german, born in 1564, nicknamed "The Werewolf of Bedburg of Danvill." The surname Stumpp may have been related to the fact that his left hand was cut off leaving only a stump. Peter was (again) a wealthy farmer and influential member of the rural community. For twenty-five years, Stumpp was allegedly an "insatiable bloodsucker" who gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, and sheep, as well as men, women, and children. Being threatened with torture he confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, and their fetuses. One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured. Not only was Stumpp accused of being a serial murderer and cannibal, but also of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, who was sentenced to die with him, and he coupled with a distant relative, which was also considered to be incestuous according to the law. In addition to this he confessed to having had intercourse with a succubus sent to him by the Devil. In fact, he confessed to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He also claimed that the Devil himself had given him a magical girdle, which enabled him to metamorphose into "the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws." Removing his belt, he said, made him transform back to his human form.

I do love the richness of the self-description. Serial killers tend to be narcisistic. But that is a subject we will come to again later.

If Peter led a brutal life, his execution was none less one of the most brutal on record: he was put to the wheel, where "flesh was torn from his body", in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been "flayed, raped, and strangled" and were burned alive along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.
However, just as in the case of the "Blood Countess", it seems Peter might have been wrongly accused. The years in which Stumpp was supposed to have committed most of his crimes (1582-1589) were marked by internal wars in the Electorate of Cologne after the abortive introduction of Protestantism by the former Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg. He had been supported by Adolf, Count of Neuenahr, who was also the lord of Bedburg. Stumpp was most certainly a convert to Protestantism. The war brought the invasion of armies of either side, the assaults by marauding soldiers and eventually an outbreak of the plague. Murder and violence were the rule. When the Protestants were defeated in 1587, Bedburg Castle became the headquarters of Catholic mercenaries under the command of the new lord of Bedburg - Werner, Count of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, who was a staunch Catholic determined to re-establish the Roman faith.
So it is not inconceivable that the werewolf trial was but a barely concealed political trial, with the help of which the new lord of Bedburg planned to bully the Protestants of the territory back into Catholicism. If it had only been just another execution of a werewolf and a couple of witches, as sprang up around this time in various parts of Germany, the attendance of members of the high aristocracy – maybe including the new Archbishop and Elector of Cologne – would be surprising. Furthermore, the trial remained a singular event, nor did the judges refer to the new paradigma of werewolfism (explaining the animal transformation as an infernal delusion).

Werewolf or not, again the interesting part of the story here remains the imagination of those who might have made it up. People always had a fascination in general for the gruesome, the horrid, the unspeakable. Maybe because everyone has a little part inside them which just might be able, if given the right circumstances and motives, to do the gruesome, the horrid, the unspeakable.

OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

VITO CORLEONE
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Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: Mario Puzo

Corpo e Alma: Marlon Brando

Nacionalidade: Siciliana

Profissão: Padrinho da Máfia

Naturalidade: Corleone - Sicília

Habilitações: Fugitivo. Pequeno criminoso. Desenrascado. Inteligente. Aventureiro. Corajoso. Dono e senhor de uma auto-estima grande. Despachado. Com olho para o negócio. Dominador. Homem de família. Tradicional. Aproveitador. Protector. Resistente. Avô extremoso. Marido presente. Pai exigente. Assassino. De mãos próprias e mandante. Barão. Padrinho de beija-mão. Honrado. Íntegro. Criminoso? Aos seus olhos não.

Filosofia de Vida: "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."

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Macro Secrets 152

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Odorless, tasteless and colorless

MAGIC MOMENTS 200

Tunes for Travelers 6
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No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
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Hit the road, Jack!

kjhkl

OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

TWO SOCKS
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Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: Michael Blake

Corpo e Alma: Teddy e Buck

Nacionalidade: Americana

Profissão: Lobo solitário

Naturalidade: Algures na Fronteira Oeste

Habilitações: Solitário. Só. Desconfiado. Esfomeado. Leal. Two Socks é a versão moderna da raposa de Saint-Exupéry, trasladada para a fronteira oeste dos EUA. Curioso. Autónomo. Amigo. Fiel. Sensível. Maroto. Brincalhão. Mudo. Feroz. Tímido. Atrevido. Doce. Livre. Um verdadeiro símbolo de liberdade, numa terra e numa gente que a iria perder irremediavelmente.

Filosofia de Vida: Se me respeitares e ao meu território, eu farei o mesmo por ti.

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DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 21

The Serial Killer - Part XI
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One of my favourites ever is Elizabeth Báthory or, as she would later be known, the "Blood Countess of Transylvania". Considered to be the most prolific female serial killer in history, the hungarian aristocrat allegedly tortured and killed 650 girls and young women, daughters of local peasants, many of whom were lured to Csejte Castle by offers of well-paid work as maidservants. Later, she is said to have begun to kill daughters of the lesser gentry, who were sent to her gynaeceum by their parents to learn courtly etiquette, in a search for better blood.
Although the descriptions of torture that emerged during the trials were often based on hearsay. nevertheless the atrocities described most consistently included severe beatings, burning, mutilation and starvation. Some witnesses reported having seen traces of torture on dead bodies, some of which were buried in graveyards, and others in unmarked locations. Later writings about the case have led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth.

We do not know why she did what she did. I like to think that she did it because she could, because she thought it was fun. Maybe envy moved her. Envy of youth. She was married with the age of 14 to a man 4 years older than her and probably for political reasons within the circles of aristocracy. Her husband left her alone most of the time, while he studied in Vienna. It was only after his death, at the age of 47, that Elizabeth began her murdering spree. Maybe she wanted to get revenge, because she knew her youth was for ever lost and wasted.

Some say she was a victim of a politically motivated conspiracy. At the time, there was great conflict between religions, including Protestant ones, and this was related to the extension of Habsburg power over Hungary. As a Transylvanian Protestant aristocrat, Elizabeth belonged to a group generally opposed to the Habsburgs. This may very well be true. Sometimes the best stories live only in the people's imagination and that is even more telling than reality. It tells us more about humans than anything else. It shows us they enjoy the vivid and bloody gruesome details of violence and vice. Maybe because they are not sufficiently brave to commit it themselves.
No public trial was held, for fear of tarnishing the aristocracy. Elizabeth, was imprisoned in a room of her own castle until her death, four years later. She was not forgotten, though, and that may very well be her greatest victory over time and decay. She still remains the Blood Queen.

Macro Secrets 151

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The road keeps calling ... ever more insistent

MAGIC MOMENTS 199

Tunes for Travelers 5
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No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
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I'm an excellent driver

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PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 76

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"Os nossos utensílios de escrita participam na elaboração das nossas ideias."
Friedrich Nietzsche

OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

TERRY MALLOY
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Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: Budd Schulberg e Marlon Brando

Corpo e Alma: Marlon Brando (e nenhum outro, jamais)

Nacionalidade: Americana

Profissão: Estivador

Naturalidade: New Jersey

Habilitações: Perdido. Descarrilado. Enganado. Encurralado. Protegido. Abandonado. Perseguido. Apaixonado. Frágil. Terry não sabe o que quer da vida, ou sabia mas entretanto alguém lhe destruiu o sonho. Terry queria ser um jogador de boxe, ele sabe que se o tivessem deixado, teria ido longe. Outros valores cifrados se levantaram mais alto e o sonho de Terry escorreu pela valeta abaixo até ir parar à sarjeta, pela mão do seu irmão, que ele ainda assim ama. Pau-mandado. Terry não quer chatices, não se quer envolver, não quer ter opinião. É cobarde ou apenas preguiçoso? A paixão despertá-lo-á e fará dele outro homem, aquele que ficou em potência esquecido há anos atrás. Herói. Corajoso. Homem com H grande. Terry salvará a honra do convento.

Filosofia de Vida: "Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you."

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Macro Secrets 150

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Change! Change! Change!

DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 20

The Serial Killer - Part X
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Of course we all make mistakes. It happens to the best. If Joan of Arc knew that her former companion-in-arms Gilles de Rais would sexually assault and kill an estimated 800 peasant boys whom he abducted from surrounding villages to take to his castle, I doubt if she would ever want to have been associated with such a demon. We are always someone's neighbour, as Agatha Christie would put it.
Gilles was one of the wealthiest man in europe in the 15th Century. Money and vices usually walk hand in hand, which is the same as saying that human beings are all the same, the only difference lies in their possessions. When one has the possibility, one does, regardless of moral or ethical principles.
Gilles faught with Joan for the independence of France during the Hundred Years' War, against the English. He then retired from military life, wasted his imense wealth on an extravagant thearical spectacle and became engaged in the occult. He was particularly interested in alchemy and demon summoning. My belief is that he wanted to recover his depleted fortune by discovering the secret of making gold or doing a pact with the Devil himself. His wanderings must have taken a toll on his already fragile sanity - Gilles was known to be extravagant, spending everything on his lunatic theatrical creation and designing his own church robes for the Chapel of the Holy Innocents he built.
The demon summons were not successfull and the summoner asked for parts of a child to satisfie it. This did not work, but it seems Gilles developed a taste for the little ones from then on. I suspect he kept trying to appease the demon, in order to get his gold, but at the same time he must have found he enjoyed sodomizing innocent boys.
Sometimes this happens. You have a purpose, but you find that in the process something else teases your imagination. It happened to me. At first what drove me was anger, but then I found I took pleasure in watching the several stages of death. I particularly enjoy the way Gilles describes his own pleasure: “when the children were dead, I kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads I held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the children were dying I sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed."
The killings ended when a violent dispute with a clergyman led to an ecclesiastical investigation which uncovered Gilles crimes. Some say he was framed for political reasons, but I don't think that makes any sense. No one would describe with such delight and wonder someone else's crimes. He confessed under torture, as costumary, was condemned to death and hanged at Nantes on 26 October 1440.

Fortunately for Joan, she never even knew what her brother in arms did. She was burnt alive even before Gilles started murdering children, in 1431.

MAGIC MOMENTS 198

Tunes for Travelers 4
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No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

Honey, I just wonder what you're doin' in the back of your Pink Cadillac

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