Pick Your God and Start a War

CATEGORY: Religious War

TAG: war, religion

COMMENTARY: The Good Reverend nails it - weep over real war, but make sure to wage your own war on a spiritual level where there can be no questioning or reasoning. The Satan bogeyman is always there, ready to take you on.

So what are you waiting for?! Pick your God and start fighting! Spiritual war makes the world go around. And the Modern Evil Company will be there to supply you with all your warfare needs.

We Have Special Weapons for the Fight Against Evil

By REV. JERRY FORTUNATO

Sat, Aug 05, 12:58 ET

THERE ARE times when we see evil so blatant, so powerful that we shudder with fear and weep in despair. The last several weeks our world has witnessed the horrific loss of lives and devastation in the Middle East as the battle between Israel and Lebanon has escalated and so many lives have been lost. Our world is filled with pain, suffering, cruelty, and exploitation - the result, directly or indirectly, of evil.

I have a declaration to make. You and I are at war right at the moment. In fact, we are engaged right now in the mother of all battles. No war in history can compare with the battle you and I are fighting. If you are a Christian, it can be either the cause of your greatest joy, or your deepest pain. The war I am talking about is the spiritual warfare that you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, became a part of the day you trusted him as your personal savior.

This war affects every area of our lives. There is no way we can avoid the conflict. There is no bunker or foxhole we can crawl into that will shield us from the effects of this battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan.

Since we are at war, how do we fight the battle and become successful? The apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus said: "For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms." (Eph. 6:12, NLT) So the real enemy then is demonic forces, not people, although we cannot excuse the wrong they do.

God has, however, placed at our disposal adequate spiritual weapons for the battle at hand and promises that we will not fight alone. And through faith in him we can be a victor and not a victim.

First, choose to live in truth. Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Truth is not knowledge, nor is it education. Education is the favored weapon of those attacking our problems today as the most effective way of solving them. However, we must be committed to truth, which is found only in God's Word. It is not only our responsibility to know the truth; we must demonstrate it as well. Our lives are to be characterized by openness and honesty.

The second weapon is love. What a tired word. We love our spouse, ice cream, our dog, and our children - all different feelings. Biblical love, though, is without self-interest and Paul describes it in detail in I Corinthians (13th chapter), "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

This is the way we must love others. Godly love is a mighty weapon. It is a powerful change agent that transforms people caught in webs of sin into saints who honor God.

The third weapon is righteousness. Paul reminded the Ephesians to "live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Translated: Allow the Lord to change your life for the better. We replace common human traits with the character of Christ who is tenderhearted, accepting, forgiving, and loving. Because of the Spirit in us, there should be a quality, a radiance, which cannot be explained except by the fact that God is at work in you.

The fourth weapon is prayer. Prayer is a mysterious way to become an agent of good in a world besieged by evil and suffering. What a mighty weapon is put in our hands when we pray and believe that God hears and answers.

Truth, love, righteousness and prayer, these four all work together. We cannot isolate one from the other: They are all necessary. And when we begin to major on these weapons, we will be a tremendously potent force for God and the kingdom of heaven.

There is no place we can go to escape the effect of spiritual warfare. We need to learn how to fight. We can be victorious. That is God's promise.

A Meetup via Modern Evil

CATEGORY: Pet Disposal

TAG: frozen, dog, pet, preparation, preservation

EDITORIAL: "One man's junk is another man's treasure". When we at Modern Evil can bring people together to share their interests, then we know that we've done our job right.

Woman Finds Frozen Dog in her Fridge

Mon Aug 7, 2006 8:32am ET143

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman found a frozen dead dog when she opened the refrigerator freezer compartment in her new apartment in the southwestern town of Trossingen, police said Saturday.

The previous tenant later told police in the town near Stuttgart that his greyhound pup had died of natural causes several months earlier but he did not have time to give it a proper burial before moving out of the apartment.

Police said the man faces prosecution for violating the "Tierkoerperbeseitigungsgesetz" (animal cadaver removal law).


Dog Meat Popular with N. Korean Women

Wed Aug 9, 4:19 PM ET

Dog meat is increasingly popular among women in North Korea because the traditional Korean delicacy is believed to be good for the skin, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan reported Wednesday.

Dog meat has long been regarded as a stamina food in both Koreas, widely consumed on hot summer days in particular.

North Korea is believed to have a greater variety of dishes with dog meat, known in the North as "sweet meat." South Korean gourmets who have tried the delicacy in the North, say Northern dishes taste better.

"Sweet meat has various vitamins, including Vitamin A and B and is good for digestion problems and fatigue," the Choson Sinbo newspaper said on its Web site seen in Seoul.

The paper quoted a cook at a dog meat restaurant in the North's capital, Pyongyang, as saying an increasing number of women are visiting the restaurant.

"Customers get convinced about the efficacy of sweet meat when they see the skin of our employees and cooks," the paper quoted the chef, Ryu Jong Mok, 47, as saying.

The paper said Ryu also has "resilient and fine" skin.

Dog meat is also widely consumed in South Korea, especially among middle-aged men on belief that it's good for stamina and virility. But women in the South are usually less willing to try the food.

Earlier this week, a poll showed that more than 35 percent of South Korean dog owners also eat dog soup.

Dog meat is also eaten in some other Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Laos.

Activists regularly criticize the practice and call for bans on eating dog meat.

Religious Supplies

CATEGORY: Santeria Sacrifice

TAG: animal, sacrifice, blood, offering

NOTE: For all your sacrificial duties, Modern Evil supplies the finest in cutlery and splayware - The EverSharp™ Line of Ceremonial and Traditional Tools [coming soon to our re-designed shopsite].

And for those looking for something beyond the local pet store offerings, be sure to call our 1-800 number and select "Service Exotique". There we specialize in fulfilling all your project demands with discretion.

Kill a Bird for Castro

Fri Aug 4, 2006 11:03 AM ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - The white dove looks warily at shopkeeper Oscar Osorio as he pulls it from a cage and holds it in his hands.

"I don't think he trusts me," Osorio says while he gently rubs the dove's feathers and spreads its wings for a visitor to admire. "I think he knows what's coming."

The bird has reason to be nervous, because the illness of Cuban leader Fidel Castro has moved adherents of Santeria to appeal for divine help in hastening either Castro's demise or his recovery, depending on which side of the Florida Straits they live.

Santeria is the voodooish Afro-Cuban religion that uses animal sacrifice to communicate with the gods, which makes these tough times for favorite sacrificial creatures such as chickens, goats and, in this case, doves.

As many as 3 million people in Cuba and 60,000 people in Florida are believed to be involved in Santeria, according to religious experts.

Osorio said about 20 people a day are coming into his "botanica" in Miami's Little Havana section to buy birds, powders and jewelry for rituals in which they ask the gods to please finish off Castro so they can return home.

The white doves are most popular at the moment because, as traditional symbols of peace, their significance is as much political as religious.

"People want peace for Cuba," he said.

Unfortunately for the birds, which sell for $15 each, the price of peace includes their blood and feathers.

Sometimes, said Osorio, a genial man with a round belly, his customers prefer to just clean the birds and let them fly away. "Those are the lucky ones," he said.

While Osorio disagrees with the concept of asking gods to kill someone, even if it is the hated Castro, from whom he fled a year ago, he does not question his customers' motivations.

"I need the money. I need the money," he shouted.

After Cuba announced on Monday that Castro had stomach surgery and put brother Raul in charge, Rigoberto Zamora, a babalawo, or priest, of what he calls Yoruba, the African name for Santeria, performed a fact-finding ritual.

After sacrificing a couple of black hens and a rooster to satisfy the hunger of the gods, he got the word from them: Castro is already dead; he died on Monday.

"We were astonished by such good news. It made us happy because politically we are against Fidel," said Zamora, who left Cuba in 1980 and lives in the Miami neighborhood known as Little Havana.

The news from the gods was not all good. It turns out that Castro's demise will be followed by three months of intense fighting before peace is restored, he said.

While Cuban-Americans in Florida beseeched the gods to kill Castro, in Cuba the same gods were asked to make him well.

"We are praying for him because it's a very painful situation for everyone," said babalawo Guillermo Diago in Havana.

Members of the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba said they were collecting money to buy animals to sacrifice for Castro's health.

"Our position is to follow the plans of the gods, which are to understand and support the decisions taken by our maximum leader," the group said.

Santeristas are not the only religious types preoccupied with Castro's future.

In Miami's Roman Catholic churches with heavily Cuban congregations, priests spoke about the events in Cuba and urged patience.

But Little Havana shopkeeper Maria Vazquez, who sells toilet paper imprinted with Castro's image and T-shirts with anti-Castro messages, said, "We are praying every night that he is dead."

"It's probably not the Christian thing to do, but it is very human," said Vazquez, who fled Cuba with her family when Castro took power 47 years ago and longs to return.

The Modern Evil Medical Line

CATEGORY: Home Surgery

TAG: DIY, surgery

NOTE: Our Solo Surgery™ line of products and complete DIY kits would have greatly improved the success of this service. As demand for home medical procedures has rapidly increased, we at Modern Evil have expanded our Solo Surgery™ line to cover a variety of special interests: Quick-Re-Connect, Brain Drain, Organ Swap, Suck 'N Tuck, and the massively popular, Plastic4U.

All of these products are AMA Approval Pending and readily available through our 1-800 line, as well as our website [currently under reconstruction].

Basement Surgery Horror Story

Fri Aug 4, 11:52 AM EST

Much has been made about the rise of TB cases in Framingham and how the rising immigrant population is its source.

This week, the big story was the death of a Brazilian woman following illegal plastic surgery in the basement of a duplex. The unlicensed surgeon was from Brazil, here legally with a visa and apparently made the trips to Framingham with regularity in the past two to three years to perform liposuctions, Botox treatments and other aesthetic plastic surgery procedures.

Descriptions of the dingy basement where he cut into willing young women wanting to nip and tuck question both the greed of the physician and the women’s desperation and lack of judgment. Fabiola DePaula was not a fluke for Luiz Carlos Ribeiro as other women have told investigators they too were injured as a result of the basement doctor. Ribeiro, his wife Ana Maria Miranda Ribeiro and the woman who owned the apartment where the surgeries took place and also allegedly arranged the surgeries, Ana Celia Sielemann, have all been arrested.

The horror of this story is beyond words. A woman who almost had the same procedure described the basement in the following way:

In the apartment’s basement, said the woman, there were five other girls, including DePaula, waiting in line for their turn to be operated on by Ribeiro. There was a small bed where the operations were being performed. As for surgical tools, they were sterilized in a pot with boiling water in the kitchen upstairs, she said. And the doctor smoked between procedures, the woman said.

Investigators found plenty of evidence of blood on the basement floor.

Ribeiro was in the country legally on a 30-day visa. As a doctor in Brazil (he reportedly is a dermatologist) he is able to travel easily from his country to the United States. How else do you think foreign doctors attend special trainings, seminars, etc?

The most troubling aspects of the story are that his practice in the underground medical community was fairly well known by Brazilians. It was also reported that he taped a cable access show in Framingham warning immigrants about the dangers of having medical treatment done by unlicensed physicians.

One has to wonder where he obtained the equipment and drugs used in his procedures. The DAs office says the drugs were obtained by illegal means but these are the types of drugs (lidocaine, glucose, etc) that street dealers don’t sell. They are the kind of drugs found in hospitals and doctors offices.

Surely there will be some who will point the finger at this situation as another reason to crack down on illegal immigrants, specifically Brazilians.

Attempting to address a public heath problem as an immigration problem is inefficient and misguided. Instead of trying to crack down on illegal immigrants, public health officials should be trying to crack down on TB cases, bed bugs and underground plastic surgery operations. To try and make this into an immigration issue takes valuable time and energy away from stopping people from being injured, sickened and killed. It’s a classic example of misplaced energy.

Death Email

CATEGORY: Obituary Database

TAG: death, technology

EDITORIAL: A Death Database is useful in more ways than just planning a funeral. The mash-up potential with florists, real estate sellers, charity donations, retirement centers and dozens of other related businesses is tremendous. The Modern Evil Company is looking to acquire this technology.

"Welcome...You've Got Death..."

Tue Aug 1, 8:49 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A social networking Web site for Americans aged 50-plus went live on Monday -- complete with an online obituary database that sends out alerts when someone you may know dies and that plans to set up a do-it-yourself funeral service.

The founder of Internet job site Monster.com, Jeff Taylor, launched Eons.com, a similar site to the popular online teen hang-outs MySpace or Facebook for the 50-plus crowd.

Instead of career and school sections, Eons.com has interactive games to build brain strength, news on entertainment and hobbies for older people, a personalized longevity calculator and tips to live longer.

It also has a nationwide database of obituaries dating back to the 1930s to which people can add photos and comments.

"The death business is growing," Taylor told Reuters, offering figures showing the number of deaths in the United States rose to 2.4 million in 2005 from 2.2 million in 2000, and was projected to rise to 4.1 million by 2040.

In addition to adding photos and videos to obituaries, members of Eons.com can sign up to receive an alert when someone from a particular area dies or in response to pre-defined keywords such as a company or school name.

This is similar to e-mail services offered by various other Web sites that alert people when a friend or colleague signs onto a certain site.

"Many people no longer live where they grew up so the idea of a rich story about someone's life in a local newspaper is often lost," said Taylor, who sees online obituaries replacing the traditional death announcements in newspapers.

He said baby boomers, the 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, also wanted to have a greater input into their own funerals. This prompted Eons.com to look into a service where people could plan for their favorite songs to be played at their funeral and where friends and family can go afterward for food and drink.

But Taylor, who quit Monster.com last year, said Eons.com's main focus was not death but celebrating turning the Big 5-0 and living the grandest life possible.

Taylor, who is only 45, said he saw the need for Eons.com, for about 44 million of the 86 million Americans aged over 50 are online, but only a few use social networking sites.

This is also a wealthy group, controlling about 67 percent of the nation's wealth -- and with plenty of time ahead.

"We now live about 20 years longer than our grandparents," said Taylor. "These are people who want to spend money to save time rather then spend their time trying to save money."

The Amputation Business

CATEGORY: Profitable Amputations

TAG: amputation, business, doctor, ethics

COMMENTARY: This poses the question - "Which body part would you be willing to give up and for what amount of money/power?".

Doctors Offer to Maim Beggars in TV Sting

Tue Aug 1, 1:58 PM ET

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Three Indian doctors caught on camera apparently agreeing to amputate the healthy limbs of beggars are to be questioned by the Indian Medical Council, an official said Tuesday.

Secretly filmed footage taken by the CNN-IBN news channel and broadcast Saturday showed one of the doctors asking for 10,000 rupees (about $215) to amputate a lower leg, leaving a stump that may draw sympathy -- and a few rupees -- from passersby.

He then suggests chopping off three fingers from the man's left hand.

Police said one of the three doctors had been questioned and denied the allegations, but that no arrests had been made.

The doctor, from Ghaziabad in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and a satellite town of the capital, New Delhi, explains how he can stitch up blood vessels in a healthy limb, causing it to blacken with gangrene over a few days.

A prospective beggar can be booked into the doctor's claiming to have had an accident, and then have the amputation carried out without raising eyebrows, he explains.

"Believe me if there are two beggars in front of you and one of them is lame, you will give the money to the lame beggar," the station recorded him as saying in Hindi.

Dr Indrajit Ray, who chairs the Medical Council of India's ethics committee, said the three doctors would be summoned to appear before the committee later this month but was unable to say whether they were registered with the council.

If found guilty, they would almost certainly be permanently banned from practicing in India, he said.

"This is a very painful situation for me as a member of the medical profession," he said. "This is most uncivilized and butcher-like activity. It cannot be supported under any circumstances."

The TV station sent a "fake beggar" along to see the doctor at his Ghaziabad clinic after hearing he offered the amputations. Their meeting was secretly filmed.

CNN-IBN said it was trying to expose the activities of a country-wide network of "beggar mafia dons" who exploit the destitute, forcing beggars working in their patch to hand over their alms, and maiming them to maximize revenue.

A beggar in New Delhi told the channel he had been tricked into going for a medical check-up on the promise of a job. He came round after an injection to find one of his legs missing.

People Love Skulls

CATEGORY: Skull Collecting

TAG: skulls, hoarding, human remains, collecting

EDITORIAL: As previous posted news stories have verified, people of all walks of life enjoy skulls. Modern Evil encourages proper authentication and handling of any body part or series of parts. Collect responsibly.

Six Skulls Found In Stripper's Home

Macabre New Jersey scene also included human hand in a jar

Jul 25, 9:09 AM ET

Linda Kay, a New Jersey stripper, was charged last week with improper disposition of human remains after South Plainfield cops discovered a hand and six human skulls in her home. According to police, the remains were out in the open when they showed up in response to a call from a man on Friday threatening to kill himself with a hammer.

Kay, 31, who works as a dancer at the all-nude BYOB club "Hott 22," was released from jail Saturday after posing for her mug shot and posting $100,000 bail. While the investigation into where the body parts came from continues, she is scheduled for her first court appearance tomorrow.

Evil Market Mainstream

CATEGORY: Consumer Skulls

TAG: consumer, skulls, fashion, mainstream

COMMENTARY: Our VP of Customer Centricity agrees - not only should consumers be offered skull products at $11.99, but also at many other affordable and premium price points. We welcome Ralph Lauren and other competitors to the evil market. The real question is - what took you so long?

The Heyday of the Dead

Jul 27, 4:34 PM ET

YES, it’s July. The sun’s shining. People are heading to the beach or just out, to catch some UV, drink some Mountain Dew and indulge in some good clean summer fun.

But what is that little black cloud drifting across the sun? Will it ruin our picnic, like ants or a motorcycle gang? Heaven protect us ... a skull? Not one, but a sea of them! Ah, but ere it comes near, it is clear: it will barely cast a pall.

If it was not clear a year or two ago, when the skull motif cropped up on battered Herman-Melville-meets-Edgar-Allan-Poe T-shirts made by Rogues Gallery, on costly cashmere sweaters by Lucien Pellat-Finet, on the perforated uppers of the wingtips made by the men’s wear line Barker Black, it is now. What only recently seemed clever and stylish — I’m wearing a skull! I’m baaaaad! — has shifted into overdrive, if not overkill.

Beyond the sea of skull wear — belts, T-shirts, ties — there are umbrellas, sneakers, swimsuits, packing tape, party lights, even a skull-branded line of hand tools. One company has made a skull toilet brush and caddy (with a molded-plastic femur bone for a handle). This summer Damien Hirst announced that he will make a life-size skull, cast in platinum and adorned with 8,000 diamonds.

If it seems harmless, well, there you have it. With the full force of the American consumer marketing establishment behind it, the skull has lost virtually all of its fearsome outsider meaning. It has become the Happy Face of the 2000’s. When the mid-1980’s proto-Goth group the Ministry sang “Every Day Is Halloween,” this was not quite what they had in mind.

“This is such a huge gripe of mine,” said Voltaire, a musician in New York and the author of “What is Goth?” (Weiser Books, 2004), a kind of “Preppy Handbook” for the living dead. “Throughout hundreds of years of history, what the skull has communicated is, ‘I am dangerous.’ That’s where the irony is. You can buy dangerous for $11.99 at Kmart.”

For years Voltaire was the happy owner of several skull-motif sweaters hand-knit by an eccentric Englishwoman. He recounted that a woman stopped him the other day on an East Village street to admire the one he was wearing. “She said: ‘I love your sweater. Is it Ralph Lauren?’ Then I found out that Ralph Lauren has a whole store that sells skull stuff.”

Well, not for long he doesn’t. At Rugby, the chain of collegiate-style stores Mr. Lauren rolled out only last year, the shirts are embroidered not with a polo player but a skull. However, the logo is already being scaled back (though not dropped entirely), a spokesman said.

“It’s a pity it’s so commercial now,” Mr. Pellat-Finet said. For more than five years, he has splashed oversize skull graphics — sporting, say, Mickey Mouse ears — on his sweaters. “Maybe Wal-Mart will replace their smiley-face with a tête de mort,” he added, using the French term for skull. “It’s lost its meaning.”

Well, it still has one meaning for Mr. Pellat-Finet, whose latest skull sweaters are embellished with Afros and top hats, among other images. Asked if he will stop using the motif, he responded with a chuckle: “No, no, no. It’s my best seller!”

Other designers appear to have similarly mixed feelings: on one hand, they are confronted with skull saturation; on the other, skulls are ringing the dinner bell louder than ever. Alexander McQueen’s fall men’s wear show did not play up skull imagery on the runway — surely the critics would be bored — but there are plenty back in the showroom, on sports coats, polo shirts and trousers. His $210 skull-print silk scarf is one of the best-selling items on the men’s designer floor at Barneys New York.

“We’ve sold 400 since May,” said Timothy Elliott, a Barneys spokesman. “We sell them as fast as they come in.”

Many people point to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise as fuel for skullmania. But the skull’s ascent to the logo throne has more to it and behind it than a Disney marketing campaign. Reminiscent of the vogue for angels a decade or more ago — remember how the little winged creatures were everywhere? — the skull neatly encapsulates a cultural moment in terms both precise and vague.

It is also the product of potent economic forces. The proliferation of skulls has paralleled the rise of the Hot Topic clothing chain. Begun 17 years ago in Southern California, Hot Topic is a 680-stores-in-50-states phenomenon based on the simple idea of selling music-related clothing and accessories — punk studded wristbands, heavy-metal T-shirts and lately, lots and lots of skulls — to suburban teenagers who would otherwise have to visit an urban clothing boutique for such goodies.

“Have we brought skulls to the mall?” said Cindy Levitt, the vice president for marketing at Hot Topic. “Absolutely. But skulls are a rock icon. We’ve always had them. We see this as more of a fashion trend.”

Still, Ms. Levitt agreed that the skull is not what it used to be. “It’s no longer threatening,” she said. “Anyone will wear a skull now.”

The inventory at Hot Topic, which caters to music fans of all stripes, points up another facet of the skull’s allure, its vagueness. Cherished as an icon by several rock genres, it communicates many potential meanings without specifying any single one: the skull as style hedge.

“The skull is all-purpose,” said Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker. “It simultaneously refers to horror movies, to the Misfits and, by extension, all punk rock, and to a generalized culture of blackness and spookiness and the larger, mall-Goth culture.” So, he said, “if you’re really at heart a Goth, but you have friends who are into metal and punk, you can rock the skulls and be friends with all of them.”

Or in fashionspeak: skulls — fun, flexible, easy, breezy!

It is a different way of thinking of one of history’s most formidable images, seen in thousands of years of art and a symbol integral to Mexican culture. Robert Rosenblum, a professor of fine arts at New York University, explained that the skull is central to the vanitas, a genre of still-life painting in which temporal pleasures are juxtaposed with a skull. “The vanitas includes the skull as a reminder that death is everywhere,” he said, “as a cutting edge to too much contentment with the here and now.”

Perhaps the Manhattan hostess who bought a $4,140 set of 12 sterling-silver skull place-card holders by the jeweler Douglas Little wanted to convey that message to her guests. (Supercute touch: the place cards are clenched between the hinged jaws.) Or maybe not; she declined to be interviewed.

The skull as memento mori is important to Philip Crangi, a fashionable jeweler in Manhattan known for a pared-down modernized take on 19th-century morbidity. “I use it in a Victorian or Latin sense,” he said, “where it meant that life is short and death is the great equalizer, so stop your whining and get on with it.”

In his view skulls are not less threatening because a chic jeweler is casting them in precious metal but because, in an age when slasher films are top grossers, death itself has become less threatening. “In the 19th century, when people died, they were laid out in the living room,” he said. “I think we’ve lost that connection to death.”

For others, the skull is about youth, not death, losing its sting. Banks Violette, an artist whose fascination with heavy metal imagery won him a show at the Whitney Museum last summer, is never happy to see cherished symbols of teen angst treated blithely.

“It’s always an inward flinch,” he said. “People create this little world where they try to negotiate their own sense of alienation, then it gets pulled apart.” He added that because such symbols are associated with youth culture, they are often viewed as superficial and treated cynically by companies that market to young people.

Yet as consumers young and old tire of being marketed to, the skull appears to offer a kind of antidote: the ultimate unbrand, one that belongs to no one. Curiously, then, what began as an outlaw anti-logo may as well be viewed as the death rattle of an underground aesthetic.

“The skull was one of the last frontiers,” said Rick Owens, the designer known for his glamorized Goth style. “There’s no way to make yourself edgy anymore.”

Even so, he is planning on selling skulls — real ones — in “natural and black” in his new Paris boutique. “Skulls are kind of timeless,” he said, deadpan as it gets.

Ah, well. Eat, drink and be trendy. Tomorrow we die.

Ralph Reed Corruption Kills Career

CATEGORY: Ralph Reed Loses Election

TAG: Ralph Reed, corruption, election, loss

EDITORIAL: The Modern Evil Company regretfully announces the defeat of Ralph Reed in his bid for Lieutenant Governorship of Georgia. We have admired is unethical drive and hypocrisy for years. This time though his corruption came to the surface through his illegal deals with republican felon Jack Abramoff. Even raising the liberal bogeyman couldn't save Ralph again.

From all of us to you and your family, we hope that you consider another run for public office, Ralph. We suggest a "Swaggart Strategy" of public penance to brim your coffers and set you up for 2008. You have our support.

What Next for Ralph Reed?

Jul 22, 11:16 AM PT

WASHINGTON, July 21 — As a seasoned political strategist, Ralph Reed knew from the first returns on Tuesday night that the news was bad and even laughed at the television pundits who suggested that the race was still up for grabs.

But this time the loss he was assessing was not a client’s but his own first bid to win elective office — the lieutenant governorship of Georgia. It would have been the next big step in a seemingly unstoppable career that had already vaulted him to the head of the Christian Coalition at the age of 29, to the cover of Time magazine at the age of 33, and to the inner circle of President Bush’s political advisers by the age of 39.

His campaign had struggled for months to overcome the disclosure of e-mail correspondence between Mr. Reed and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff that suggested a mercenary streak at odds with Mr. Reed’s Christian image. When the evangelical newsmagazine World carried a series of reports on the subject, the accusations became impossible to dismiss as mere liberal media bias.

And from the first returns in the Republican primary, Mr. Reed knew that the suburban Atlanta precincts with the biggest megachurches, the conservative Christian strongholds essential to his campaign, had turned against him, friends who watched with him said.

“Our own publication did this hatchet job on him, and we lost that core base of people,” said his friend Tim Echols, founder of TeenPact, a Christian conservative youth group. “It was very hurtful to Ralph.”

Now, a dozen years after Time proclaimed him “The Right Hand of God,” some are preparing Mr. Reed’s political obituary, wondering what he will do after his rejection by the evangelical churchgoers whose support formed the foundation of his reputation as a political activist and his personal fortune as a political consultant.

“Ralph will have to totally reinvent himself,” said Matt Towery, a political analyst based in Atlanta who once worked as campaign chairman for Newt Gingrich.

Friends say it is too soon to write off Mr. Reed, who is now 45. Deal Hudson, a Catholic conservative who worked closely with Mr. Reed on the last two presidential campaigns and watched the returns with him in an Atlanta hotel suite, said Mr. Reed was already talking about how he might play a role in the 2008 race even on the night of his own defeat.

“We forget that there is nobody who is able to craft a message for religious conservatives better than Ralph Reed, and the ability to craft a message does not depend on Ralph Reed and how high his bona fides are,” Mr. Hudson said, noting that Mr. Reed could still work on direct mail, radio and television commercials, speeches and the like from behind the scenes.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Reed said he was proud of his campaign and glad that he had run. “I have been building the Republican Party and the pro-family movement for over 25 years, and I am looking forward to continuing that important work,” he said.

In his concession speech, Mr. Reed said he was not “not focused on being a candidate in the future.”

In the interview, however, he said, “First bids for elected office are always tough, and I am not the first person to lose a first campaign,” noting several examples, including Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mr. Gingrich, who went on to become speaker of the House.

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Friday that he was sticking by Mr. Reed. In an e-mail message, he said Mr. Reed had “played a vital role” in building the party’s grass-roots networks in Georgia and around the country. He added, “I look forward to continuing to work with him and value his friendship.”

Mr. Reed has retained his communications and consulting firm, Century Strategies, which in the nine years since he founded it has enabled him to amass a net worth of $4.5 million, according to financial disclosure forms filed during the campaign.

It remains to be seen how the revelations about his ties to Mr. Abramoff will affect Mr. Reed’s relationships with Christian conservative candidates or leaders. A Senate committee’s investigation into Mr. Abramoff’s double-dealing with his Indian gambling clients determined that he had paid Mr. Reed’s firm more than $4 million to organize Christian opposition to new Indian casinos on behalf of tribes with casinos who hoped to avoid competition.

Mr. Reed, who says he opposes gambling as immoral, has maintained that he did not know the fees came from gambling proceeds. But e-mail disclosed by the Senate committee suggested that Mr. Abramoff did not keep it a secret.

In April 1999, for example, Mr. Abramoff e-mailed Mr. Reed to propose a direct payment to him from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, a gambling client, without bothering to move the money through a third party. “Any chance that a wire from Choctaw directly would be OK?” Mr. Abramoff wrote.

In internal e-mail messages, Mr. Abramoff and his associates referred to Mr. Reed as an ideologue “as far as the cash goes.” In his own e-mail, meanwhile, Mr. Reed pressed for millions in payments and boasted of mobilizing prominent Christian conservatives to lobby government officials at his request. Many of those conservatives, including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, have publicly distanced themselves from Mr. Reed in recent months.

World, an influential evangelical magazine edited by Marvin Olasky, who helped Mr. Bush develop his “compassionate conservative” philosophy, concluded, “The portrait that emerges is one of a shrewd businessman who has spent years leveraging his evangelical and conservative contacts to promote the economic interests of his clients, rather than the principles of the political movement he once led.”

Some Republicans said the election results themselves had cast a new light on Mr. Reed’s past talk of turning out an “army” of grass-roots churchgoers. “For years, we have sat back and said, ‘O.K., Ralph, tell us again how you are going to turn out your army,’ ” said Mr. Towery, the Georgia political analyst. “But when it came to turning out his army for himself, they didn’t turn out.”

Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who founded the Christian Coalition, said in an interview last year that he considered Mr. Reed one of the most ambitious people he had ever known, suggesting that Mr. Reed had compromised his principles along the way. Many of Mr. Reed’s allies have suggested that his bid for lieutenant governor was to be a stop on a carefully plotted career path toward governor, senator or president.

Mr. Towery, who has known Mr. Reed since his days as a Senate intern, said that he and others tried to dissuade Mr. Reed from running while the Abramoff investigation was looming in the background, but that Mr. Reed was in a hurry.

“He felt that the timetable for his career could not be interrupted, and this was part of the timing,” Mr. Towery said.

About seven months ago, Mr. Reed began to respond more directly to the accusations about Mr. Abramoff, telling audiences that he regretted his involvement and had learned from the experience. “I am a better man and a better leader as a result,” he told a meeting of TeenPact, the Christian youth group. “God uses our mistakes to draw us closer to him.”

His contrition was not enough to win the race, but there were some signs that Georgia’s evangelical Christians might be willing to give him another chance. In the last days of the campaign, Clint Austin, a Christian lobbyist who had previously worked for Mr. Reed, circulated a public letter among Georgia Republicans explaining why he had turned against him over what he considered his deceptive tactics.

“It is time for Christians to confront and rebuke Ralph Reed, not make apologies for him,” Mr. Austin wrote. “If he truly repents (not just at election time), he can be a leader of unlimited potential.”

Modern Evil Endorsement

CATEGORY: Christian Video Games

TAG: video game, Left Behind, violence, Christianity

EDITORIAL: We solidly endorse the coming Left Behind video game and particularly enjoy the shout of "Praise the Lord!" after you kill another person. This is a wonderful artifact of the Christian religion. In fairness, we would extend the same right to other religions, and encourage them to praise their god when successfully killing non-believers and other evil-doers.

Like the makers of this game, we also have never seen violence as a problem. It is a useful tool and a normal part of everyday life. The quicker it is embraced and embedded into children's perspectives, the better.

A full review of the game will appear when it is released in the fall.

Kids Kill In Violent Christian Videogame

Fri Jul 21, 9:11 AM ET

The Rapture is headed for New York City, and just in time for Christmas. In Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a Christian-themed videogame due out this October, the New York skyline smolders during the End of Days, the faithful have been called up to heaven, and the remaining New Yorkers are engaged in an epic clash between the Tribulation Forces and the Antichrist's army of Global Community Peacekeepers (aka UN Peacekeepers).

Evangelical videogame makers are praying that Eternal Forces will finally enable them to tap into the $25 billion global videogame market. They hope their "Christian" values-themed game will capture the same audience that has made bestsellers out of violent standards like Grand Theft Auto and Halo 2.

The Left Behind: Eternal Forces videogame is based upon the wildly profitable "Left Behind" series, written by Rev. Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The "Left Behind" books have sold roughly 65 million copies and are second only to the Bible in sales of Christian texts. The series revolves around an eccentric interpretation of the Bible that sets the Armageddon in Iraq and refers to Saddam Hussein as a servant of Satan. President Bush is a big fan of Rev. LaHaye's brand of dominionism. Prior to the 2000 election, Bush met with LaHaye and other Christian fundamentalist leaders to cultivate the support of the religious right.

Game Point, Spirit Point-

Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy videogame, meaning that a player manipulates an entire army simultaneously, as opposed to the common first-person shooter games in which a player controls only one character. In essence, the player becomes the commander of a virtual army, deciding when to unleash weapons from an arsenal of guns, tanks and helicopters. Of course, since this is an evangelical game, soldiers lose "spirit points" each time they kill an opponent, leaving them prey to the Antichrist's forces and in dire need of replenishment through prayer. To top it off, each time a soldier slays one of the Antichrist's soldiers (who are UN Peacekeepers, remember), he triumphantly cries, "Praise the Lord!"

Eternal Forces caught the media's attention in May, when it premiered at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The Los Angeles Times reported that in order to foster buzz for the videogame, the game's co-creators, Troy Lyndon and Jeffrey Frichner, plan to issue a million advanced copies to churches nationwide. That announcement galvanized Jonathan Hutchinson of Talk To Action, a forum for discussing the religious right, into action. Hutchinson, who identifies himself as a Christian and a patriot, said by phone, "I'm offended by a game that allows children to rehearse mass killing in the name of Christ or the Antichrist."

In several lengthy blog posts, Hutchinson charged that Left Behind: Eternal Forces usurps the now iconic imagery of 9/11 because it is set in a post-apocalyptic New York. "Why are the ambulances patrolling the streets with '911' written on their roofs instead of a normal paramedic star or cross?" Hutchinson questioned. "It's outrageous to exploit September 11th to make a buck!" Hutchinson also alleged the game's "Praise the Lord!" battle cry is not far from the "God is great!" words of the World Trade Center terrorists. (Left Behind Games was formed in October 2001.)

Hutchinson's primary objection to Eternal Forces is Left Behind's proposed marketing campaign. The strategy of advanced distribution through mega-churches and pastoral networks has been employed in the past few years with resounding results. Both The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia were screened in churches throughout the country before theatrical release. A more notable example is The Purpose-Driven Life, the bestseller by evangelical pastor Rick Warren. Prior to publication in 2002, Warren distributed a million copies through his Purpose Driven Network of mega-churches with congregations in 162 countries worldwide. The book went on to sell over 22 million copies to become the all-time best-selling nonfiction hardback.

While Left Behind's decision to follow a proven business model isn't particularly surprising, Hutchinson discovered a startling level of collusion between Left Behind and Rick Warren.

Mark Carver, the executive director of Purpose Driven Ministries in every region except North America, turned out to be the business advisor to Left Behind Games. Hutchinson was incensed by this apparent conflict of interest, which he termed "endorsement by association." He challenged, "Where is the pastoral leadership while a bigoted videogame is being networked and marketed through mega-churches?" After two heated posts on Talk To Action that echoed across the blogosphere from the Huffington Post to BlondeSense to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Mark Carver resigned on June 5. A day later, Hutchinson received official word from Purpose Driven notifying him of Carver's resignation and declaring that Warren and Purpose Driven had no plans to endorse Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

Pop-Culture Sewage-

Hutchinson isn't the only one outraged by Left Behind: Eternal Forces. When Jack Thompson, an attorney and crusader against videogame violence, learned that Tyndale Publishers permitted Left Behind Games to adapt the Left Behind series, he dissolved his relationship with the publishing company. In addition to the Left Behind books, Tyndale also publishes James Dobson and Thompson's own manifesto on the dangers of videogames, Out of Harm's Way.

Thompson said he hadn't read the "Left Behind" series, but says there is a difference between the books, which are targeted toward adults, and the book-based videogame for adolescents. "[Left Behind Games] is taking adult-themed violence and marketing directly to kids," Thompson said from his Miami office. "It's a perfect example of how we're exporting pop-culture sewage to the rest of the world."

Thompson cited brain scan studies by Harvard and Indiana University that he claimed illustrate a link between witnessing videogame violence and copycat crimes. "There's an inherent, emotion-driven impulse in juveniles," he said. "Every parent knows that what kids get in their heads has behavioral consequences." Thompson said Left Behind's decision to distribute a million advance copies of their videogame to mega-churches nationwide is "a dangerous, hypocritical, non-Christian thing to do, and an example of how pop culture is transforming the church."

Level of Violence-

Jonathan Hutchinson says he wasn't opposed to videogame violence per se. "The level of violence in this videogame is not at issue," he said. "Rather, it's the indoctrination in Christian supremacy because the game rehearses and instructs children in the mass killing of New Yorkers for the sake of Christ and that is an abomination." He also said he was appalled that in Eternal Forces, corpses are left on the streets. "It's outrageous that this game has a feature to allow cold corpses of New Yorkers to pile up on the streets. No one gives them a decent burial."

While Left Behind denied repeated requests for an interview, it did issue a formal statement. The company dismissed Hutchinson's remarks, insisting that he was unqualified to comment on the game because he hadn't played it. Left Behind did, however, verify that LaHaye's anti-government philosophy had found its way into the videogame. "The Antichrist's forces are on the warpath, actively hunting down and exterminating all resistance to his one-world government. This includes the good guys -- the Tribulation Force -- defending themselves against Satan."

Left Behind maintained that while there is violence in the game, it's not bloody or graphic, and it anticipates getting a Teen (T) rating from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

The question remains whether Left Behind can justify its videogame violence with the Bible. If a player's only penalty for killing New Yorkers is a loss in spiritual points, then violence actually goes less punished in Eternal Forces than in seemingly more violent competition like Grand Theft Auto, in which homicide results in being pursued and arrested by the police. And in Grand Theft Auto, bodies disappear shortly after being killed.

Evangelical Gamers Fire Back-

Although Left Behind wasn't eager to discuss its videogame, other evangelical videogame developers regard Eternal Forces as the breakthrough they've been waiting for to bring Christian games into the mainstream. Ralph Bagley, the godfather of Christian gaming, runs Christian Game Developers Foundation. Until now, its titles Catechumen and Ominous Horizons have been the darlings of the Christian videogame industry, having sold about 80,000 and 70,000 copies, respectively. "We've fought the perception that if it's a Christian videogame," Bagley said, "then it has to be cheesy with sub-par graphics."

Bagley hopes Left Behind: Eternal Forces will prove that Christian videogames can be both high-quality tools to reach people through ministry and entertaining alternatives to current videogame hits. He is not alone. Greg Schumsky, CEO of Covenant Studios, knows there are not a lot of Christian games out there for older audiences. Following in the wake of Eternal Forces, Covenant plans to release a game next spring called Journey of the Time Pilots, which involves traveling through time to catch Nazis who have stolen religious artifacts for Hitler.

"I think this game is going to open the doors for other games to get into the mainstream market," Schumsky said of Eternal Forces. Like Schumsky, most Christian game developers covet the mainstream audience and feel the reason they haven't broken through is because videogame critics compare their games to more successful market standards like Grand Theft Auto. Christian game developers say the comparison is unfair because they believe their games are morally superior.

Neither Schumsky nor Bagley seem too worried about violence in videogames.

"'Revelations' is pretty darn violent to begin with," Schumsky said, "so how do you candycoat that?" In the past, however, Bagley has spoken out against violence in games like Grand Theft Auto and Narc. When I asked Bagley whether he would mind gamers playing as the Antichrist, he replied, "As long as Christ wins out in the end, I'm open as long as it doesn't go overboard, though the last thing I would want to see is people getting on there just to kill."

Bagley said there was a distinction between running street gangs in videogames and commanding the anti-Tribulation force in Left Behind. He thinks this violence can be portrayed in a "tasteful manner," if done within the storyline. Unlike Jack Thompson, Bagley doesn't believe that videogame violence invariably leads to enhanced aggression in game players. "I think maybe 99.9% of kids playing Grand Theft Auto and other games probably won't be affected. I pray the rest won't be affected by the violence."

Un-Neighborly Use of Black Magic

CATEGORY: Robbery and Toture by Ghosts

TAG: ghost, torture, robbery

COMMENTARY: The police will be able to do little in this case, and the courts will not solve Mr. Das' problem. Discounting the affair as superstitious is the easy way out, however we take this assault and theft very seriously. We have notified our respresentatives in New Delhi and will look into this matter. Updates to be issued with progress.

Indian Cops Called to Investigate Ghosts

Tue Jul 11, 10:08 AM ET

Malevolent ghosts stealing your chickens and torturing you in the night? Who you gonna call? For farmer Sunil Das, his first call was the police, who laughed at what they thought was a joke, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

But a judge in India's northeastern state of Assam saw little humor in Das' allegation that ghosts controlled by his neighbors were making off with his poultry at night. Instead of laughing, the judge ordered police to get to work and find the culprits, the newspaper reported.

In his complaint, Sunil Das accused his neighbors of using their "obedient but malevolent" ghosts, "subjecting me to physical and mental torture," the newspaper reported.

Das said his neighbors were notorious for using black magic against people they had a grudge against.

Superstitions and belief in ghosts are widespread across India, particularly in rural villages.

Nevertheless, police working the case said it was a first for them.

"We have dealt with hardcore criminals and armed militants but this is the first time we are required to pursue a case with a spooky angle to it," the newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying.

"We are yet to crack the case but investigations are on," said the unidentified officer.

Modern Evil Supplier Update - China

CATEGORY: Body Donation

TAG: corpse, sales, aftermarket, organs, transplant

NOTICE: Due to the new regulations, our Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai offices will no longer accept unregistered body donations. Please notify all suppliers. Thank you.









Commercial Trade in Corpses Banned

Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:57am ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is to ban the trade and commercial use of corpses, further tightening controls on a transplant market that critics say has been beset by illegal trade in organs, often involving executed prisoners.

The rules, which take effect on August 1, bar all use of donated bodies except for medical research and require burial once research is complete.

"No organization or individual is allowed to accept body donations except medical institutes, medical schools, medical research institutes and forensic research institutes," Xinhua news agency said Saturday.

Transport of bodies into and out of China for interment would require approval from civil affairs departments, customs and inspection and quarantine authorities, it said.

Transport for medical research into and out of the country must adhere to regulations of the State Council, or cabinet, the Health Ministry and quarantine administration, it said. All other use was banned.

The new regulation followed another which took effect on July 1 banning the sale of human organs, requiring written consent from donors and restricting the number of hospitals performing transplant operations.

The World Health Organization welcomed that ban, announced in March, saying it was a positive step and would help target brokers who had exploited loopholes in China's legal framework to arrange the sale of organs from executed prisoners.

Rights groups have criticized the use of organs from executed prisoners in China and hospitals alleged to have turned to organ sales and transplants to raise funds. They estimate 5,000 to 12,000 are put to death in China each year, more than anywhere else in the world.

China's Foreign Ministry has said the organs had been used without the executed prisoner's consent in only a few cases, and that doing so was illegal.

About 2 million Chinese need transplants each year, but only 20,000 receive them due to a shortage of donors, spurring illegal trade in some regions, state media said.

Quotidian Evil - Snakes in a Car

CATEGORY: Snakes

TAG: snake, car, cold-blooded reptile

EDITORIAL: This is a common occurance. However, we question the authenticity and timing of the "reporting" of this incident due to its media play and possible relation to the release of the Hollywood moviepicture, Snakes on a Plane. Evil does come in the form of shameless marketers. Further investigation is needed.

Woman Finds More Than 20 Snakes Inside Car

Fri Jul 14, 7:44 AM ET

It was either a prank or the work of Mother Nature — either way, Sherry Hart got a slithery surprise in her car.

Sherry Hart found a pair of garter snakes in the back seat of her car on a recent shopping trip to the grocery store, then found more under a floor mat.

"This lady was freaking out next to her car," says Will Brinkerhoff, 17, an employee at the North Coast Fred Meyer.

Eventually more than 20 of the harmless snakes were found inside the car, some pencil-thin and one the diameter of a quarter and 3 feet long.

Brinkerhoff, another employee and several customers helped clean out the car.

One man dumped out his groceries and gave Hart the plastic carrying bags she could fill them with snakes.

When Warrenton police Officer Jim Gaebel arrived he guessed that one snake must have gotten into the car and had babies. Gaebel later told Hart that in all his years in police work, this was his first snake call.

But Hart believes it was a prank.

"Who did it? We don't know," she said. But she believes her car was chosen because a window stuck in the open position made it an easy target in the big parking lot.

Personal Crisis - Revenue and Repair

CATEGORY: Body Part Failure

TAG: skull, scalping, slough, medical

EDITORIAL: If this man would have come to us first, we could have helped to monetize his tragedy and repair his head. We do have representation in Kolkata [Calcutta].

Piece of Man's Skull Falls Off, Draws Crowds

Wed Jul 5, 2006 8:33 AM ET

By Bappa Majumdar

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off.

Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy's skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood.

"When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull," Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy told Reuters Wednesday.

"Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to lack of blood supply to the affected area, which can happen in such extensive burn cases."

The piece came off Sunday and hundreds of people and dozens of doctors now crowd around his bed, where he lies holding the bone.

Bandyopadhyay said the skull's inner covering and the membrane which helps produce bone was miraculously unaffected, allowing fresh bone to grow.

"When the skull came off, I thought he will die, but we noticed a new covering on his head forming and that might have pushed the 'dead skull' out," he said.

While possible, such cases are extremely rare.

Roy was injured and almost killed when he was electrocuted while repairing a high voltage wire last October.

"Doctors say a new skull covering has replaced the old one, but I am not letting go of this one," he told Reuters.

He intends to keep his prized possession for life and not hand it over to the hospital when he leaves: "My skull has made me famous," he says.