Sunday, July 31, 2011

⅏Did You Know: Edward Theodore Gein - The True-life "Psycho" Killer


(18+)☠☠

Did You Know...

On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein, a serial killer infamous for skinning human corpses, dies of complications from cancer in a Wisconsin prison at age 77. Gein served as the inspiration for writer Robert Bloch's character Norman Bates in the 1959 novel "Psycho," which in 1960 was turned into a film starring Anthony Perkins and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.




Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, which he committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, garnered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin.

After police found body parts in his house in 1957, Gein confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957. Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility, he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital. The body of Bernice Worden was found in Gein's shed; her head and the head of Mary Hogan were found inside his house. Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the Gein case, wrote: "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder — that of Mrs. Worden."

With fewer than three murders attributed, Gein does not meet the traditional definition of a serial killer. Regardless, according to the creators Robert Bloch, Tobe Hooper and Thomas Harris, his real-life case influenced the creation of fictional serial killers Norman Bates from Psycho, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs.

Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, George and Augusta Gein, both natives of Wisconsin, had two sons: Henry George Gein, and his younger brother, Edward Theodore Gein. Despite Augusta's deep contempt for her husband, the marriage persisted because of the family's religious belief against divorce. Augusta Gein operated a small grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which then became the Gein family's permanent home.

Deaths and Arrest
Pic by Wiki user CyberGhostface
After George Gein died of a heart attack in 1940, the Gein brothers began working at odd jobs to help with expenses. Both brothers were considered reliable and honest by residents of the community. While both worked as handymen, Ed Gein also frequently babysat for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults. As he matured, Henry Gein began to reject his mother's view of the world and worried about his brother Ed's attachment to her. He spoke ill of her around his brother.
According to statements by Ed Gein, on May 16, 1944 his brother Henry decided to burn off a marsh on the property. Reportedly, the brothers were separated, and as night fell, Ed Gein lost sight of his brother. When the fire was extinguished, he reported to the police that his brother was missing. When a search party was organized, Gein led them directly to his missing brother, who lay dead on the ground. The police had concerns about the circumstances under which the body was discovered. The ground on which Henry Gein lay was untouched by fire, and he had bruises on his head. Despite this, the police dismissed the possibility of foul play and the county coroner listed asphyxiation as the cause of death. Although some investigators suspected that Ed Gein killed his brother, no charges were filed against him.

After his brother's death, Gein lived alone with his mother, who died on December 29, 1945, following a series of strokes. Gein was devastated by her death; in the words of biographer Harold Schechter, he had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."

Gein remained on the farm, supporting himself with earnings from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms used by his mother, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor, and living room, leaving them untouched. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen. Gein became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories.

On November 16, 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared and police had reason to suspect Gein. Worden's son had told investigators that Gein had been in the store the evening before the disappearance, saying he would return the following morning for a gallon of anti-freeze. A sales slip for a gallon of anti-freeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning she disappeared. Upon searching Gein's property, investigators discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was "dressed out" like that of a deer. She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations performed after death.

Between 1947 and 1952, Ed Gein made as many as 40 nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state. On about 30 of those visits, he said he had come out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order, and returned home empty handed. On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.
Searching the house, authorities found:
  • Four noses
  • Whole human bones and fragments
  • Nine masks of human skin
  • Bowls made from human skulls
  • Ten female heads with the tops sawn off
  • Human skin covering several chair seats
  • Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag
  • Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack
  • Nine vulvas in a shoe box
  • A belt made from human female nipples
  • Skulls on his bedposts
  • Organs in the refrigerator
  • A pair of lips on a draw string for a windowshade
  • A lampshade made from the skin from a human face
These artifacts were photographed at the crime lab and then were properly destroyed.










On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer in Stovall Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute.

The Documentary Videos - Parts 1 - 6



















On March 20, 1958, while Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. When Gein learned of the incident, he shrugged and said, "Just as well."
In 1958, Gein's car, which he had used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at a public auction for $760 ($5,773 when accounting for inflation) to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons later charged carnival goers 25¢ admission to see it.




His grave site in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers chipped off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is now in a museum in Waushara County.




Saturday, July 30, 2011

☺On The Lighter Side... On A Very Cold Night


ON A VERY COLD NIGHT

On a very cold night, a young man dropped into the local brothel and the madam said, "You'll have to wait."


"But there's lots of girls that aren't busy right now."
"Yes, but several of the rooms are closed for repairs."

"Listen, I'm pretty desparate. I don't need a room."
So she takes his money and he goes upstairs with one of the staff and, after looking for a place to consummate the transaction, they decide to do it on the roof. But it's a very cold night, and they freeze to death and fall to the sidewalk.

A passing drunk looks them over, staggers to the door, and knocks. "Go away!" says the madam. "We don't allow drunks in here!" "I don't want in," says the drunk.

"I just wanted to tell you that your sign fell down."



Friday, July 29, 2011

ⓌⒽⒶⓉ Will ⓉⒽⒺⓎ Think of Ⓝ€✘Ⓣ: Tegon, the Glow-in-the-Dark.. Dog?






Researchers at Seoul National University have announced the creation of a genetically modified, glow-in-the-dark dog. The female beagle, named Tegon, glows fluorescent under ultraviolet light. But, perhaps surprisingly, glow-in-the-dark animals aren’t all that new since we’ve seen glowing pigs and fish before. (We have... where?)  What is particularly interesting about Tegon is that the glowing ability is capable of being turned on and off. (Say what?)

When ingested by the dog with food, the drug doxycycline can activate or deactivate the ability to glow. Led by Lee Byeong-chun, the researchers used the same somatic cell nuclear transfer technique to make Tegon glow that was used in 2005 to make the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy.

A foot of the cloned fluorescent three-month-old Tegon,
glowing in the dark under ultra-violet light (L)
and under normal lighting at
Seoul National University's College of Veterinary Medicine in 2009.

Published in the journal Genesis, the research shows that it is possible to successfully insert genes into a dog that allow it to express a specific trait that can be controlled, while not altering other functions. This isn’t earth shattering as far as human biomedical research goes, but finding the right pathway to do this could have important implications for research into the effects of some of the 268 illnesses shared by humans and dogs.
Lee Byeong-chun told the Yonhap news agency:
“The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases.”
But don’t expect glowing dogs to become all the rage. Creating Tegon and performing the necessary verification tests on the research cost the university $3 million (3.2 billion won). So, while the technology used to create a glowing dog may prove to be useful for biomedical research, there isn’t going to be a crazy commercial glowing dog trend. Tegon is one of a kind.


Well, I guess this is great news in terms of biomedical technology, but when or if it ever becomes the norm and therefore more affordable, I think they should also use it for other purposes other than genetics.  Say for example on........ I don't know... irrate women?

In the dark, glowing men aren't necessary - like dogs, you can hear them coming a mile away.  Women, on the other hand, are sneaky as hell, so any advantage a man can gain when a angry woman shows her scorn... well now that's a helpful, all-around achievement in health and well-being, sex and relationships, bio-science, chemistry, technology, peace of mind...


Resource(s):
geekosystem.com

Thursday, July 28, 2011

❏This vs That ❐: Rent vs Lease


Welcome to Thursday's





Rent is defined as:
  1. a payment made periodically by a tenant to a landlord in return for the use of land, a building, an apartment, an office, or other property.
  2. a payment or series of payments made by a lessee (user) to an owner in return for the use of machinery, equipment, etc.
Lease is defined as:
  1. a contract calling for the lessee (user) to pay the lessor (owner) for use of an asset.
So right off the top you can see one major difference between renting and leasing is the contract.

Rent and Lease are terms used mostly in regards to real estate or auto. The two differ in terms of the time period, payment and type of contract.




Rent vs Lease - HOME

In terms of residency, standard rental agreements are usually month-to-month, and there is no set period of residence. Both the landlord and tenant are free at the end of each 30-day period to make changes to the rental agreement, subject to any rent control laws.
A lease has a finite term, which is often a long period of time, generally in years. During this time period, also known as the duration of the lease, the tenant and the landlord are bound to uphold the terms of the written agreement.

A lease may not automatically be renewed after the expiry of the time period, unless specified in the agreement. Rental agreement, on the other hand is automatically renewed every month unless either parties give notice to vacate the place.


Summary of Residential Renting vs Residential Leasing
  1. Renting is flexible, leasing is not.
  2. Renting is usually short-term, leasing is long-term.
  3. Renting agreements are usually oral/written, leasing agreements are always written.
  4. Rental agreements are automatically renewed every month unless either parties give notice to vacate the place, a lease agreement, on the other hand, may not automatically be renewed after the expiry of the time period, unless specified in the agreement.





Rent vs Lease - AUTO

Car rental companies exist to fulfill the short-term automobile use needs of traveling business people, vacationers, or those who might need a particular type of vehicle for temporary use.

Rental cars are owned by a rental company and are made available to customers for relatively short-term use. The company maintains and services its vehicles and carries basic insurance. Customers agree to not damage the vehicle, to buy gas, to purchase additional insurance if personal auto insurance is not applicable, and to return the vehicle within a specified time. All maintenance is handled by the rental company.

Rent rates are determined by the car rental company, based on a daily or weekly fee, and includes either unlimited mileage or an additional mileage rate. The method by which rates are determined is not revealed to customers and can vary widely, even within the same rental company, based on various discount schemes.

Rental companies make money by renting the same car over and over again.

Car renting is not a form of financing, as is leasing.

Car renting is much the same as apartment renting or leasing.

On the other hand, leasing a vehicle is very similar to loan financing. A lease company — or manufacturer's finance company – only gets involved after a customer decides he wants lease financing. The lease company buys the car from the dealer at the customer-negotiated price and loans it back to the customer.

The "loan" in this case is not money, but a vehicle. Since the lease company has invested money in the vehicle, they expect to be paid interest on that money. Since all cars depreciate in value, they also want to be compensated for the reduced value of the vehicle as the customer adds miles to it and as the vehicle becomes older. It will not be worth as much when it's returned to them as when it was new.

At lease-end, vehicles are returned to the lease company as the final payment of the "loan." Lease payments are easy to calculate using a well-defined formula used throughout the leasing industry, unlike car renting for which there is no way for customers to calculate rental rates.

In short, lease payments are determined by the negotiated selling price of the vehicle, anticipated depreciated value at lease-end (residual value), term (length of lease), and the money factor (financing rate, similar to interest rate).

A leased vehicle is usually only leased once, when it's new, not over and over again like a rental car.



Summary of Car Renting vs Car Leasing
  1. Leasing is a form of 'loan' financing; renting is not.
  2. Leasing is usually long-term dealing in years, renting is always short-term and can be for as little as a day or less.
  3. You may be able to swap cars in the middle of a rental; not so with leasing. Since leasing is a form of financing, customer credit scores, income, and debt are important; not so with renting.
  4. Leasing appears on your credit report just like a loan; renting does not. Defaulting on a lease damages your credit score; defaulting on a rental does not.
  5. With renting, you choose your vehicle from rental companies' available makes and models. With leasing, you can lease any new vehicle make and model you want.
  6. With renting a vehicle, you can simply return it when you want to.  On the other hand, returning a vehicle before the end of a lease can be very costly, since it's a long-term contract.
For the same length of time, renting a vehicle would be much more expensive than leasing a vehicleWhen you've leased a vehicle you've paid 30%-60% less than loan payments for the same car, and you have specifically paid for your car's depreciation, and only the depreciation, not the entire vehicle cost.

The money you've lost to depreciation is exactly the same money that is lost by someone who has purchased the same car with a loan. His car depreciates exactly the same amount as your leased car, but he pays for the entire vehicle. He therefore has nothing to show for that part of the money that is lost to depreciation if he sells or trades. That money is gone, for both a buyer and a leaser.


Conclusion
Overall, renting or leasing both have their advantages and disadvantages and all depends on your needs.
  • Renting is more flexible than leasing and requires no long-term contract.   A lease — usually written for one year or more, although it can be shorter — is a binding legal contract between two parties.  However, when you sign a lease contract for say, a year,  the monthly payment cannot be increased at anytime throughout the lease period, whereas with renting - the landlord can increase the monthly rental payment  at anytime he feels the need to if improvements were made to the building.  
  • Renting a car is only good if it is needed for a short term, otherwise leasing it would be much better financially in the end.






Resource(s):
leaseguide.comdefen.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

✈Worldwide Wednesdays: Burial Rituals - Famadihana Ceremony in Madagascar

Where shall we travel to today?....


Famadihana, MADAGASCAR
When you go to a foreign place, sightseeing is sometimes not enough if you want to learn about the place’s culture, or how the people there live. Visiting during a festival or a celebration of any kind can bring out the best in any destination. You’ll still be able to visit sights, but you’ll also have the backup option of participating to an important event in the lives of the inhabitants, and learning about their customs and traditions. And if you’re in Madagascar, you might want to take a peek to how Famadihana, one of the biggest festivals in the country, is celebrated.

About the ceremony
For the Western mind of the traveler, Famadihana might seem like a downright gruesome event. Famadihana is also known as the turning of the bones, literally. The dead are taken out of the family crypts, wrapped in new shrouds, while people dance and listen to music. These repeated ceremonies are the designed to help the spirit of the dead join the spirits of the ancestors in the otherworld, and the entire extended family of the deceased gathers from all over the country in order to help their kin. Famadihana is not an old festival in historical terms, and it dates back to around the 17th century (supposedly it evolved from other local funerary customs), but it is one of the most popular festivals in Madagascar. Despite the fact that it is a festival of the dead, Famadihana is often anything but sad. The relatives of the deceased sing the favourite songs of the deceased, they dance and they feast. Although Famadihana occurs every 2 to 7 years only, Malagasy people save funds for year in order to afford a proper Famadihana for their dead loved ones.


Preparations and celebration

One of the key elements in the festival is the silk shroud in which the corpse was buried. During Famadihana, the shroud must be changed, and it is customary that it is made of silk (which is why some Malagasy need to save up for quite a while in order to afford it). When a person dies, the relatives and the friends of the grieving family offer money in order to help buy the lambamena, and wealthy relations might even offer it as a gift. The deceased is wrapped in all the shrouds he/she receives, and the number is an indicator of their popularity during their lifetimes.
First the casket is dug out of the ground...
This is four years after the woman's death.
Pic by glowingz
When the festival begins, the dead are taken out of their tombs, and laid out in tents so that the family can start celebrating. The festivities can take up to days, and all the relatives who are not busy partying and dancing, help out with cooking for the guests. The tent of a family can fill with hundreds of people: neighbors, friends, relatives. The celebration is lively and jolly until the moment of the shroud change, when the deceased has to be laid back to their resting place.




This is a temporary grave for the years between the death of family
and famadihana (exhumation). Accessible caves are chosen and
noted that the site belongs to a family near the entrance,
leaving an empty coffin, as the image.
Pic by copepodo

During the dry winter months (June to September), famadihana ceremonies take place among Madagascar's Merino and Betsileo people.

Pic by copepodo



Pic by bass_nroll
Pic by chronowizard
Pic by chronowizard

During the ceremony, mountains of rice and meat are washed down with countless litres of spirits. Musicians play and sing relentlessly, their piercing bamboo pipes and mesmerising drumbeats summoning any spirits who may be out wandering, so they don't miss the celebrations arranged in their honour. Guests will chat and sing to the corpses, informing them of all the latest happenings in the family and village, touching them and even dancing with them. Overwhelming feelings of togetherness and love are not uncommon, dissolving boundaries between the living and the dead.

Pic by chronowizard

Pic by chronowizard

Pic by chronowizard

Pic by chronowizard





This is a "final" tomb where they are placed and to honor the bodies
of relatives after famadihana. Inaccessible caves are chosen to be
higher and closer to the sky and mediate more easily with the living.
Pic by copepodo

Pic by copepodo

Pic by copepodo


The practice of Famadihana is on the decline due to the expense of silk shrouds and opposition from some Christian organizations. Evangelical Protestants discourage the custom, although the Catholic Church no longer objects because it regards Famadihana as purely cultural rather than religious. As one Malagasy man explained to the BBC, It's important because it's our way of respecting the dead. It is also a chance for the whole family, from across the country, to come together.

Resources:
travelgrove.comwikipedia

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

✍ FYI: The Death Clock(s)


For Your Information...
The Death Clock(s)!

Ok, so we've all heard it before - "The only 2 things certain in life are death and taxes.." 

We all know we're going to die someday, but next to 'how', wouldn't it be great to know 'when'?  Maybe great is not the best word to use here so I'll rephrase that... wouldn't it be interesting to know when?

Well, The Death Clock site should be able to give you a rough idea.


It seems they base their results on 7 questions:

Day of Birth

Month of Birth

Year of Birth

Sex (Male or Female)

Mode (Normal, Pessimistic, Sadistic or Optomistic)

BMI (Body Max Index, which you can calculate on the same page)

Smoking Status (Non-smoker or Smoker)


And that's it!  So I gave it a try and ... well, it said I was already DEAD, .... almost 6 years ago.... 





So I'm thinking either my entire life was just one big 'make-believe' and I'm not really here, which means I'm a ghost and my friends and relatives are not really here also which means they are also ghosts and ... shit, or maybe they made a mistake. So, I tried again...  with much better results, (phew!)...



So all this dying and death got me thinking.. Are there other sites out there that do the same thing and if so, how do the times of death compare?


death-clock.org:
Predicting the demise of others since 2006

This site basically asks the same questions as the above site but with 2 extras

Alcohol consumption (Never, Once a Month, 2-4 times per Month, 2 times a Week, Daily and I'm Constantly Blotto (whatever that means, lol)) and

Country

The results:



The Death Clock Prediction

You will live to be 84 years, 10 months and 28 days old!
14514 Days, 01 Hours, 08 Minutes, 22 Seconds...
Avg life expectancy of other Female testers from Canada with your BMI: 79.9 years old





findyourfate.com/deathmeter

This site asked waaaaaaaaaaay too many questions for my liking but I guess in the end it gave better results, lol.  Actually the more tests I took, the longer my life expectancy seem to be!
Some of the questions this site asked were:

Place of birth / life spent more than 75%

Do you engage in unprotected sex with different partners?

Do you share needles during drug usage?

How much time do you spend in the Sun?

How often do you Exercise?

How often do you eat Processed Meat, Poultry?

How often do you Brush/Floss your Teeth?

By now, I'm like "WTF?"... but I reluctantly went on and finally got my results:






My Armageddon day was Feb 2nd, 2053!

There's also your Death Calculator - the Original Longevity Death Calculator © by doctor David Demko which has a 55-Question Quiz and claims to be continually updated based on scientific, peer-reviewed research.

My results:

"Your score is an estimate of how long you can expect to live. A score less than 79 years is a "wake-up call" alerting you to take positive action."


So I guess I'm in a whole heap of trouble here!






Anyways, that's enough for me!  In the end, we all know our time's up.. when our time's up!  These sites, by no means, claim to predict actual date of death.
But wasn't it fun trying to find out?







Source:  MFS-UsefulLinks