November 19, 2005

• This story made me so angry at everyone around him.
• It sickens me that people can prefer this to admitting the fact that he's depressed/schizo/whatever and treating him for it.
• Fifty dollar fine in Arkansas.
• Isn't rap over and done with yet?
• Isn't christianity over and done with yet?
• I am told that the end is nigh.
• If thine own eye offends thee ...
• ... stop looking at my bumhole.
• Another eye cast up to Mim but the well of wisdom has run dry.
• Mark 9:47:

  And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

• Oh, he only took out one of them. Boo-hoo... no depth perception... Big deal. Probably a publicity stunt.
• Perhaps I just have a morbid curiosity for celebrities who mutilate themselves, but I think you should post a link to the pics. Well marked and disclaimed, of course.
• It seems that Odin, through his sorcery, divined that the secret the Aesir needed to overcome the Frost Giants at the Ragnarok was held by a certain witch. When Odin approached the witch and asked her the price of the secret, she said "Your left eye." The All-Father, knowing better than to try to bargain, promptly plucked out his left eye and laid it on the table between them, demanding the secret. The witch replied: 'Watch with both eyes.'
• Hadn't heard that one, Stan, where'd you find it?
• This is a 21-year-old. The only people who give a shit about him are people no longer making any money from him. His family is fleecing him of his money and refusing to accept he has a psychiatric illness. To do so would stop the money train. They want the quick money to be made after his "I Like That" more than they give a shit if this kid dies. He's already made suicide attempts and he gouged out his own fucking eye. The refusal to admit he has a corrosive mental illness, and thus get him properly treated regardless of its effect on his income, is going to kill him. His family is hiding killing him for money behind killing him for God. Whooo. Laugh riot. Publicity stunt. Yeehaaaaw!
• I agree with moneyjane. I'm all for inappropriate humor, but come on monkeys, show a trace of compassion for a fellow human being.
• Well I can bet we can all agree this was an eye opening experience... eh? eh?
• I agree with moneyjane. I'm all for inappropriate humor, but come on monkeys, show a trace of compassion for a fellow human being. Well obviously he's not feeling to well right now, and we shouldn't joke I admit. I am just happy he didn't kill himself or someone else.
• Here's your picture. I have serious misgivings about posting this photo, but maybe it'll illuminate what evidently doesn't come through in words. Disclaimer: This is a photo of a real person who did this after being stopped from jumping from a thirteenth floor hotel room and locked in a room to keep him from trying to jump again. It's extremely graphic. Think about what it must have taken for him to do this to himself.
• ...and another thing this is REALLY OLD NEWS
• >Hadn't heard that one, Stan, where'd you find it? Having read or heard it years ago- I'm not sure where- I googled something like 'odin watch with both eyes' and picked the best-rendered version. I'm not convinced it's really from Norse mythology, though- Odin is supposed to have sacrificed an eye for a drink from a fountain that conferred wisdom, but the 'watch with both eyes' bit may be a modern twist on the story. It's a great line, though.
• Yeah, well, there's been a number of threads lately on the topic of mental illness, stigma, religion and the pros and cons of psychiatric medication so it works for me.
• I didn't hear about it the first time around because I don't really stay up on music news so it was new to me. My first reaction before I read the story was an oedipus joke, but after reading everything it was so horrifying. Schizophrenia is a horrific mental illness that requires intense care and medication. The fact that his sister worried about his freakin' image and money flow to the extent that his safety is secondary to her completely disgusts me. I felt a little queezy reading the flippant comments on here as well. The man is seriously mentally ill and the people who should be protecting him are exploiting him. It's just not funny.
• Chilling. I have a hard time reading accounts of people like his family, being I was raised by an entire family (meaning aunts, uncles, grandparents included) of fundamentalist Christians. It's one of those things that never fails to take a pick axe to my faith in humanity. They really, really do put their blinkered beliefs above everything -- when I nearly died from a burst ovarian cyst five years ago, the first thing my mother said was not "are you okay?" but "why did you get operated? It's obvious God was punishing you for being a whore, you deserved to die." The rest of the family, minus my brother, agreed. (I was "living in sin" with my boyfriend. My first and only boyfriend. At age 24.) Hel-lo "unconditional love" and "Jesus died for your sins"... I can only imagine what this poor man's family must be saying to him about his mental problems behind closed doors. And I have no problem understanding how he'd reach such extremes -- hell, schizophrenia seems like a pretty logical result of being torn between a family like that and the rest of society. .
• I appreciate you posting the pic, and to be more clear I appreciate it for multiple reasons on multiple levels simultaneously. Firstly, we're (presumably) all adults, here, and though there's a fine line between unflinching portrayal of an actual awful event and titillation, in this case I think the actual nasty photo isn't violence-porn (a la rotten.com), but an accurate if graphic example of the lengths to which the human mind can go when in a truly distressed state -- this is no context-free image of someone who took a shotgun blast to the head, or lost a game of chicken to a train. Secondly, as you mentioned, it illuminates in real visceral terms what can otherwise only be imagined. To be sure, though this is a disturbing image, I honestly was imagining much worse. Thirdly, I think this image goes a long way toward dispersing whatever sense of schadenfreude some people may be feeling. I admit to a small amount of that (a moment of "rich celebrity goes off deep end, film at 11"), but I see a real person in that picture and feel sorrow on his behalf. For his delusions, for his desperation, and for his determination to undertake a violent, life-changing action to escape -- whatever it was he was trying to escape from. His companions and his family threw him to the proverbial lions, apparently concerned more for a little coin than for his welfare. There's something to be learned here about who one can truly trust. And what Livewire said: better that he lost an eye than his life, or far worse than either, took the life or eye of someone else.
• As we go back in time with fundamentalism on the rise, I imagine we'll eventually go back to burning them as witches. Good times a-comin'. You nailed it about the photo chimaera. There's something about this story that makes it feel like a story that has been told with minor changes in all times and cultures rather than a celebrity weirdo factoid. God hates you if you're different. It sounds like his family is telling him God is punishing him for his part in the wickedness of the music industry all the way to the bank.
• "why did you get operated? It's obvious God was punishing you for being a whore, you deserved to die." Man that's fucked up. Sorry to hear that fraise ; I consider that just as fucked up or even more so than Houston taking out his eye. I sincearly hope that you cut those people out of your life.
• I second that. In all the shit I see and hear, some things still take my breath away. Good on you fraise for making it over to the other side.
• Tragic. I don't know anything about this chap beyond what I've just read, but it seems to me that he needs support, help, and some good psychiatric attention. I certainly don't think that he needs any fire-and-brimstone self-hate-inducing religion. fraise's story also upsets me. I wonder where some of the values claimed by some so-called Christians come from; it certainly isn't from Yeshua bin Yusuf. I have an instinctive distrust of any kind of religious moralising for the reason that external morality scares me. To me, morals are an obvious extrapolation of the philosophical realisation that we live on a crowded planet with lots of other, similar creatures, and that certain kinds of behaviour are less congenial to your fellows than others. If that's not obvious to someone - or, worse, if such free thought is overridden by a rigid, didactic system - they'll inevitably misinterpret what they're told. Perhaps I could express it in another way: religious morals represent a kind of philosophical autism, predicated upon the suppression of humans' innate compassion. I find the conflation of morality and mythology very disturbing: it undermines the exploration of what represents moral behaviour itself, and leads people to acts that make no objective sense, to the detriment of themselves and those around them. I still hope to live in an enlightened society one day, but I'm not optimistic about it.
• Well at least it's better than the Jhon the baptist one. On reflection an ain't so bad. Cheers
• Oh yeah, eye for an eye tooth for a tooth...
• Well at least it's better than the Jhon the baptist one. On reflection an ain't so bad. Cheers
• oops. I didn't mean to post that twice.
• This isn't the only young, talented and troubled person who is being victimized by their predator families.
• My mother was a Jehovah's Witness and was trying to raise us in that religion. Luckily my father wouldn't have it, and I became the spiritual agnostic I am today. In any case, one of the things about being a JW is that it's a sin to have a blood transfusion. In one Watchtower magazine (the crazy propaganda rag they print) there was an article about a young woman who had a very large ovarian cyst. When she went to the doctor the doctor informed her to do the surgery he would probably have to transfuse blood. She said no. They got into a huge argument, the doctor refused to operate and they had to find a new doctor (while this poor girl was dying in a hospital bed awaiting the operation). Finally they found a doctor willing to do the operation without doing blood transfusion. She survives and the last part of the article is basically a "thank you Jehovah" bit about how He protected her and made it so that she did not need the blood transfusion. Sure... maybe... Or she could have died on the operating table and the family would have said "it's God's will". God helps those who help themselves, and to refuse to help yourself by ignoring sane medical advice because you think that the imperfect mistranslated thousand-year-old texts of prophets is more correct, and trusting that God will protect you from your own stupidity is the most sinful and prideful thing you can do.
• "Spiritual agnostic," I like that. My case was similar, it was friends, their parents, and teachers who accepted me as I was, whose influence saved me (and my brother) from fundamentalism. The blatant contrast between unconditional compassion and the loveless power plays of fundamentalism was so obvious, we knew their "god" was not ours from a very young age. (Which was dangerous for us, and we knew it -- we had to play the game for a looong time.) It sounds like Houston has people who care about him too; I only hope that he's still sane enough that his family's inevitably bad private reaction to this will be enough to jolt him out of their influence, and he can get back on his feet.
• Let's all make fun of the xian. Weeee! Insert Link Here.
• NSFW ads, techsmith. I find it plausible that his family simplly finds this a sane course of action. Fundies aren't really know for their imaginative interpretations of the bible. If Jesus says 'sometimes you gotta tear out your eye to be good' they're not ones to say that's little too crazy sounding to be literal.
• Thank you, techsmith, for reminding me why I don't watch TV. :) fraise, ever tried to read the Bible? I did, and got bored during Genesis, so I jumped right to Luke. (iirc... I can't find my Bible right now). And I really liked Luke and Paul (I think). And then suddenly when you hit John things just... change. A lot of the compasion and acceptance of Jesus just falls of. Like John corrects Jesus' words. And I thought, "wow, three books in and Jesus' message has already been corrupted." So I guess by "spiritual agnostic" what I mean is that I believe that there is spirituality and a higher morality and way of life that will enable us to be at peace. We can discover this collaboratively, but there is always the danger that someone with the lust for power will corrupt the group, and this happens over and over again. The spiritual feeling itself is entirely a personal experience.
• there is spirituality and a higher morality and way of life that will enable us to be at peace. We can discover this collaboratively, but there is always the danger that someone with the lust for power will corrupt the group, and this happens over and over again. The spiritual feeling itself is entirely a personal experience. This is a wonderful little piece of writing.
• If only I had a heart.
• And if I only had a ... you know, inside-head thing. Spongy thing, grey .. ha ha sponge is a funny word-thing. Ha ha. Mmm. Huh?
• NSFW ads, techsmith. My apologies. I sincerely meant to add a warning for that link.
• I'd ask for courage, but I'm too scared.
• NSFW ads, techsmith. So many lovely ladies! And they all live where I live! Jealous?