First Person: What’s new?
Second Person: [Reading newspaper] A guy killed a guy and ate his brain.
First Person: Yeah, I just read about that online.
First Person: Crazy.
Second Person: Mmm hmm.
First Person: Seriously crazy.
First Person: Good way to catch Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
First Person: Mad cow disease or something.
First Person: I mean, that was in a homeless shelter, right?
First Person: [Ponders] Although, gee, whose brain IS it safe to eat?
First Person: Nowadays.
Second Person: Mmm hmm.
[Later]
Third Person: Dad! Someone killed someone and ate their brain!
First Person: Yeah.
First Person: Good morning.
Third Person: They say there was a hole this big and the brain was coming out.
First Person: You had breakfast yet?
First Person: What you having, scrambled eggs? Mwahahaha.
First Person: Are you even old enough to be reading this stuff?
First Person: Don’t you have to be sixteen to read that sort of stuff?
Third Person: This is the NEWSPAPER. That’s okay. It’s true.
First Person: Oh, okay.
First Person: In that case.
Sheesh, when I was a kid we lived off hearsay and rumor-mongering.
Is anybody old enough?
Good point.
Headlines from turkish news (where I am supposed to be on vacation and not reading the news):
– mentally ill youth stabs mother and chops her head off
– Arson: thieves burnt down the house with the family still in it…
I guess the more gory details, the better… And always better to read about them than first hand experience !!!! Z.
Most articles* on the cannibal case here stress the fact that he is German.
*at least, in a certain newspaper that shall remain nameless.
This reminds me of a patient I had years ago who required daily visits for wound care. I’d no sooner get my coat off than her elderly alcholic husband would be saying, “Jann, listen to this: woman killed and chopped up with an axe.” He would then read me the story from the morning newspaper, which he would save, so that he could read it again if a different nurse visited. I remember wondering vaguely why he never read us stories about men who hat met gruesome demises.
had. h-a-d.