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hellandhighhorror · 4 years

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Richard Cottingham: The Times Square Ripper

The following is the most complete account of Richard Cottingham’s life and crimes as of February, 2020. It was written and researched by Austyn Castelli for Hell and High Horror Podcast.

Richard Francis Cottingham was born on November 25th, 1946 in the Bronx. He was the eldest of three children. At age 12, the Cottingham family relocated to River Vale, New Jersey, and Cottingham started 7th grade at St. Andrews parochial school. Cottingham had trouble adjusting to the move and many who knew him report that he was a loner with very few social connections. In 1958 he developed an interest in homing pigeons and helping his mother with gardening and housework. During his adolescence, Cottingham spent most of his free time alone in his bedroom, though he was more accepted by his peers when he entered Pascack Valley High School in Hillside, NJ. During his high school years, Cottingham cultivated an obsession with pornography, specifically pornographic images of bondage. He joined the track team and competed as a long-distance runner until he graduated in 1964. Cottingham was very interested in emerging technologies of the time period and began working as a computer operator right out of high school. He got a job working for his father at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and he took computer courses at night.

In 1966 he got a job at Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York also working as a computer operator. Four years later in 1970, he married his girlfriend, Janet, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, NY. The couple settled in Little Ferry, New Jersey and went on to have three children. Coming from a Catholic family, it seemed that Cottingham had done everything right; he finished his education, got a respectable job, married well, and was a good provider for his wife and children. Cottingham was 5 foot, 10 inches tall with fair skin, sandy brown hair, and hazel eyes. He had distinctive bushy eyebrows and several colorless moles on his face.

However, just two years before his marriage, 21-year-old Cottingham had secretly committed his first murder. In 1967, 29-year-old Nancy Schiava Vogel disappeared. Three days after she was last seen leaving a Bingo game at her church her nude body was discovered in her car in Ridgefield Park. The mother of two had been strangled and her body was still bound with rope when she was found. Investigators came to the conclusion that she had been murdered inside of the vehicle. Cottingham apparently knew Vogel, they both lived in Little Ferry, NJ, but it is unknown how well they knew each other. For decades, the murder of Nancy Vogel remained cold.

On October 10th, 1969, Cottingham was arrested for drunk driving in New York and served 10 days in jail and paid a fine of $50. His petty criminal record also included a shoplifting incident in 1972. He was convicted of stealing from Stern’s department store in Paramus, NJ and paid a $50 fine. The next year, Cottingham was arrested and charged with robbery, sodomy, and sexual assault in New York City, but the case was dismissed. His first child, Blair, was born on October 15th, 1973 and just four months later Cottingham was charged with unlawful imprisonment and robbery in New York City, but again the case was dismissed. Between the years of 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his family lived in the Ledgewood Terrace apartments in Little Ferry, NJ. They moved into a rented three-bedroom home at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, NJ in February of 1975. Janet and Cottingham’s second child, Scott, was born just one month later. Janet gave birth to their last child, Jenny, On October 13th, 1976. In the years the followed, Cottingham’s crimes escalated to drastic levels of sadism and violence.

On December 16th, 1977 at 7:00 in the morning, the body of 26-year-old Maryann Carr was discovered in Little Ferry. Carr, an X-Ray technician, was still wearing her uniform and was wedged between a chain-link fence and a parked van. The pants of her uniform had been cut to expose her left leg and a clump of her own hair was placed on her right leg and she was missing her shoes. She had lacerations to her chest and feet and showed signs of having been bound at the wrists and ankles. Traces of adhesive tape were present around her mouth and there was an imprint of a ligature around her neck. An autopsy revealed that she had a hemorrhage on her left occipital bone, indicating that a blunt instrument was used. Carr was approximately 5 foot 5 inches tall, 115lbs, and had dyed blonde hair.

Carr, a nurse, had been seen last in the parking lot of her apartment building, the Ledgewood Terrance Apartment, which was visible from the crime scene. A neighbor had seen her talking to a white male, about 32 years old with brown hair. Investigators suspected that Carr had been taken shortly after she arrived home from work. Cottingham had abducted her and taken her to a nearby hotel. Inside, he had raped, cut, beaten, and bit her for hours. He tied her up and strangled her before dumping the body where it was later found. Just like Nancy Vogel, Maryann Carr’s case would grow cold for several years. Meanwhile, Cottingham began a three-year-long affair with a woman named Barbara Lucas.

On March 22nd, 1978, Richard Cottingham was drinking at the Third Avenue Tavern in New York. He noticed a woman who was also drinking at the bar, 22-year-old Karen Schilt. Schilt, like Carr, was 5 foot 5 inches tall with artificially colored blonde hair. She weighed about 140lbs and had blue eyes. She had just finished a shift waiting tables at Tuesday’s restaurant on Third Avenue. She had gone home to have dinner with her boyfriend, and the father of her unborn child, at 6:00 pm. She had left work just after 8:00 pm and went straight to the tavern. Cottingham approached Schilt and introduced himself as John Schaefer. The two had a couple of drinks together and at one point in the conversation Cottingham asked Schilt if she was a “working girl”. She told him that she was not, but Cottingham kept hinting that he thought she was a sex worker. Cottingham told her that he lived in New Jersey, but liked to drink in the city.

After about an hour at the bar, Schilt left and started walking back to her apartment at 94 Third Avenue, which was a little under one mile away (14 blocks, near big daddy’s). She began to feel dizzy and ill and suspected that someone had drugged her drink. Cottingham had followed her out of the bar and offered to drive her home. Because of her physical state, Schilt agreed. They started driving and Schilt soon realized that they were not heading toward her apartment, but were instead en route out of Manhattan toward New Jersey.

Cottingham offered Schilt a pill to make her feel better. The drug was Tuinal, a barbiturate that depresses the nervous system. Schilt took the pill and fell asleep. Luckily, she would stay unconscious for the majority of her assault at the hands of Cottingham. He drove to a parking lot across from the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. There, he sexually assaulted Schilt. At one point, she briefly woke up to a searing pain on her breast. She remembered hearing Cottingham say that he had once lived where they currently were. Schilt quickly slipped back into unconsciousness.

She was found lying with her breasts and genitals exposed by Little Ferry patrolman Raymond Auger. Auger checked Schilt’s pulse and discovered that she was close to death. She was missing her coat, scarf, purse, and a silver ring. Her pulse was weak and her breathing was shallow. Auger called for an ambulance and Schilt was transported to Hackensack Hospital. Paramedics had to administer oxygen and cardiac massage to bring her heartbeat back before taking her to the hospital. Karen Schilt survived the horrific attack and blood testing confirmed that she had amobarbital and secobarbital in her system when she was attacked. Doctors noted extensive injuries on the young woman including bruises on her legs, cigarette burns on her left breast, trauma to her elbow, scratch marks on both breasts, and bite trauma to her chest.

Seven months later on October 10th, 1978 Cottingham set out on 8th avenue looking for his next victim. He found Susan Geiger, a sex worker who, like Karen Schilt, was pregnant at the time. Cottingham approached the 5 foot tall, 96 pound Geiger and asked if she was available. She told him that she was committed for the evening and he offered $200 for an appointment with her that night. She declined but gave Cottingham her telephone number and told him to call for a date. He called her the next day and arranged an appointment for that night, October 11th. Geiger met Cottingham in front of the Alpine Hotel at around midnight. Cottingham took her to Flanagan’s Tavern between 65th and 66th streets. He told Geiger that his name was Jim and that he was married with young children and lived in New Jersey. He also told her that he worked with computers in Manhattan. During their conversation, he boasted that he had recently won a substantial amount of money from gambling and produced a wad of cash, likely containing a few thousand dollars, to back up this story. At one point Geiger got up and when she returned Cottingham gave her a screwdriver cocktail that he had ordered for her. He told her to keep stirring it with a straw. She did so and soon after she took a few sips of the drink she began feeling dizzy and detached. Like Schilt, her memory of what happened that night was incomplete.

First, Cottingham put her in his car, which she remembered was a “light-colored, older thunderbird with a soiled interior”. She passed out in the vehicle and awoke only a few times before morning. She remembered snippets of Cottingham sexually assaulting her, but she was physically unable to fight back. She also remembered Cottingham using a length of green garden hose to whip her. She finally regained full consciousness in the early afternoon of October 12th. She awoke on the floor of a motel room. She later found out that she had spent the night in Room 28 of the Airport Motel in South Hackensack, NJ. She had been robbed by Cottingham, who had taken her handbag and everything in it as well as her gold earrings, which had been ripped downward from her ears, causing them to tear. She was severely injured and was bleeding from her vagina, rectum, face, mouth, and breasts. She had scratches on her swollen face and her lip was bleeding. Some of her fake nails were missing. Despite her horrific physical state, she got dressed in her torn blouse and left the motel room. She could barely walk and made it as far as the motel parking lot, where South Hackensack Police Captain John Agar noticed her. He pulled his patrol car into the parking lot of the motel and asked Geiger, who was wandering around frantically, to tell him her name. She was still impaired by the drugs she had been slipped and appeared confused. She told Captain Agar that her name was Susan Geiger and recounted as much of the last 24 hours as she could remember.

Captain Agar went to examine the motel room and found several articles of Geiger’s clothing that she was unable to put on, some of her broken fake fingernails, an unmade bed, and two discarded motel towels. Agar made sure that these items were recovered for examination. Agar drove Geiger to the Hackensack Hospital, where Karen Schilt had also been treated. They tested Geiger’s blood and the same drugs that were in Schilt’s system were found in Geiger’s. Doctors took note of all of her injuries, which included lacerations over her right eye, on her lips, abdomen, thorax, and in her mouth. She had bruises on her left thigh and buttocks, as well as abrasions on her right thigh. Her breasts had been violently bitten and had contusions and abrasions. Geiger, like Schilt, was treated and her case was opened but remained inactive. The towels from the motel room were tested and forensic scientists found seminal fluid on the fabric. They tested the secretion and were able to determine that the offender had type O blood.

On November 29tt, 1979, Richard Cottingham checked in to the Travel Inn Motor Lodge at 515 West 42nd Street in Manhattan. He booked room 417 under the name Carl Wilson. He said he lived on Anderson Place in Merlin, NJ (Merlin NJ doesn’t exist). After arriving at his room, Cottingham hung a “do not disturb” sign on his door. Staff reported that he rarely left his room after checking in. Then, on December 2nd, 1979, at 9:00 in the morning smoke and ash started drifting through the hallway on the fourth floor of the Travel Inn Motor Lodge. The fire department was called and the firefighters found that the smoke was coming from Room 417. Mere minutes before the emergency call was made, a man with bushy brown eyebrows, a clean-shaven face, and sandy hair parted to the right rushed out of the hotel lobby. He was carrying a large bag.

After Cottingham left the hotel, he got in his car and began driving away. He was pulled over by police, who asked him what he was doing out at 3:30 in the morning. He told them that he was staying at a nearby hotel and was driving to get something to eat. The officers never asked to see inside of the bag and took Cottingham at his word. He then disposed of the contents of the bag.

Meanwhile, the firefighters entered Room 417, they identified two figures through the thick smoke. One fireman, who had been with the New York Fire Department for 15 years, was able to drag one of the unconscious people out of the room and into the hallway. He got on his knees to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but when he lowered his face toward the person he discovered that there was no head. When he could finally make out the person’s body, he was horrified to see that the body was also missing its hands. That firefighter was so traumatized that he sought out trauma counseling after this incident.

Another body was removed from the room, also missing its head and hands. Firefighters were able to put out the flames and the police were called to investigate the crime scene. The room had been cleaned of fingerprints and most evidence, although blood remained on the mattress. The victims’ clothing was found folded in the bathtub. Each woman’s outfit was folded with her shoes on top. The heads and hands of the victims were not recovered from the room, nor was the dismemberment tool, although Cottingham later revealed that he used a hacksaw to sever the six body parts before stashing them in his bag and leaving the building. It was later determined that the woman had been sexually assaulted and beaten while still alive. The bodies had cigarette burn marks, bruises, and bite marks around the breasts. Each woman had been placed on a twin bed and Cottingham had attempted to destroy the bodies by setting the bedsheets on fire. The bodies were charred where the flames had touched them, but the trauma inflicted by the killer was visually evident. The amount of blood left on the mattresses indicated that the decapitations occurred on the beds. Hotel staff told authorities that the man staying in that room was around 35 years old, with light hair and pale skin.

Autopsies determined that the women had been killed at different times, though the identities of the victims were unknown. One victim was thought to be in her late teens. The other was eventually identified as 23-year-old Deedeh Goodarzi. Goodarzi was an immigrant from Kuwait. She was a sex worker and had been living in Trenton, NJ and commuted to Manhattan by train. Goodarzi was known to be a “high-class” sex worker who did business in much fancier hotels than the one she was killed in. The other victim is still a Jane Doe.

On May 5th, 1980 the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street was found by Maryann Sancanelli, a housekeeper at the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn in NJ. Sancanelli was cleaning Room 132 and found it unusual that one bed had not been slept in by the previous night’s guest. The bedspread was slightly askew, though, and the other bed had been slept in. She began vacuuming the room and when she went to clean under the unmade bed, the vacuum hit something behind the hanging bedspread. She lifted the fabric and found Street’s corpse. Sancanelli called the police. Like the previous victims, Street had suffered a brutal death. She had been handcuffed behind her back and the handcuffs had cut into the flesh of her wrists. She had been gagged with adhesive tape, which left residue around her moth. Two deep ligature marks were found on her neck. She had bite marks, bruises, and scratches on her breasts and had been hit in the shins of both legs. No clothing or personal items were found in the room. Street was 5 foot 4 inches tall, weighed 135 pounds, had blue eyes, and had dyed strawberry blonde hair.

Police were able to isolate a fingerprint from the ratchet side of the handcuffs. An autopsy was performed and the Bergen County Medical Examiner stated that Street’s injuries were “bizarre and startling”. She had been hit with a blunt instrument so hard that she had contusions to her brain. The murder weapon was likely a thin cord that had been tied around her neck and pulled upward from the right side. Street had checked into the hotel under the false name Shelly Dudley. She had listed Florida as her home state, which was partially true. Valerie Street had arrived in New York just 6 days earlier. On May 4th between 4 and 4:30 pm, Street had checked in to the hotel. She was heard from at 10:00 the next morning when she called the front desk to tell them she wanted to keep the room for one more day. She was likely murdered immediately after making that phone call.

Fingerprints finally revealed Street’s real identity. She had been convicted of prostitution in Florida and the fingerprints on the arrest record matched the body. Another sex worker told police that she had last seen Street on May 3rd at 1 am on the corner of 32nd Street and Madison Avenue. Although authorities now knew her identity, Valerie Street’s murder would go unsolved for over a month, but would eventually be linked to the murder of Maryann Carr, who had been found near the same hotel.

On May 12th, Cottingham picked up sex worker Pamela Weisenfeld in New York City. Cottingham likely drugged Weisenfeld as he had Schilt and Geiger. He drove her to Teaneck, NJ where he beat, tortured, and raped her. She was left in a parking lot where police found her the next morning, covered in bruises and bite marks on her chest. Weisenfeld was treated at a local hospital and survived.

On May 15th, 1980, just 10 days after Valerie Street’s body was found, the FDNY was called to the Hotel Seville located at 22 East 29th Street off of 5th avenue. A fire had been set in one of the hotel rooms. Firefighters were able to put out the flames and found the severely mutilated remains of 25-year-old Jean Reyner. Reyner, like Goodarzi, was a sex worker who catered to upper-class clients. It was unusual for her to be working in a hotel as seedy as the Seville. Unlike the other victims found at the Travel Lodge, Reyner still had her head and hands intact. However, Cottingham had dissected both of Reyner’s breasts and had placed them next to one another on the headboard for police to find. Signs of bondage and torture were found in the room and on the body. Police almost immediately linked this murder with the Midtown Torso Cases, as they had been dubbed.

One week later on May 22nd, 1980 Cottingham solicited the services of 18-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell. O’Dell stood at 5 feet 4 inches tall and had blonde hair. She had arrived in New York from Washington State just four days prior and had quickly been trafficked by bus station pimps. Cottingham told O’Dell that his name was Tommy and took her to a bar, where the two drank for a couple of hours. He told O’Dell that he was going to drive them to New Jersey where they could get a hotel room and have sex. On the way, they stopped to have dinner at the New Star Diner in South Hackensack, NJ. The diner is located half a mile from the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. From there, Cottingham and O’Dell went to the Quality Inn where Valerie Street had been murdered 17 days earlier.

Cottingham made O’Dell wait in the car while he checked in at the front entrance. He then came out to get her and their belongings from the trunk of his car. They entered Room 117 and Cottingham briefly left to move the car. O’Dell waited for him to return, completely unaware that she was about to be tortured in unimaginable ways. When Cottingham returned, he was brandishing a knife and told her to undress and lay face down on the bed. He got on top of her and used the knife to threaten her. He told her that he would slit her throat if she made any sound. He swiftly handcuffed her wrists behind her back, as he had done to Valerie Street. He told O’Dell that he was sexually aroused by torturing and beating women and that he had done this to other women before her. He ranted at her about how she was a “whore” and had to be punished. He reportedly scraped her Pre-sacral region with the knife (internal or external?) before raping her. He lacerated her sternum and scraped, bit, stabbed, and cut her breasts. He then forced her to perform oral sex on him. Throughout the entire ordeal, Cottingham verbally threatened and abused O’Dell.

Cottingham later used another pair of handcuffs to shackle O’Dell’s ankles before removing the handcuffs around her wrists. He then ordered her to perform a variety of nauseating acts, including licking his entire body, kissing and licking his feet, and enduring sodomy. At one point, O’Dell instinctively screamed and Cottingham immediately threw her on the bed and started strangling her. O’Dell was convinced that she was about to die. Luckily, motel staff had heard her scream and called the police, not wanting to take any chances after Valerie Street’s murder. Before police arrived, staff members attempted to enter the room. Cottingham told O’Dell what to say to make them go away and held her at knifepoint while she spoke through the slightly open door. The hotel employee asked O’Dell if everything was alright and she responded “yes”, but moved her eyes side-to-side in an attempt to communicate that she was in danger. Cottingham fled, but police intercepted him and took him into custody. He had an opened roll of adhesive tape, two leather slave collars, a leather gag, a fake gun a knife, liquor, handcuffs, and Tunial capsules in his possession when he was arrested. According to the officers who interrogated Cottingham, he uttered only one sentence, “I have a problem with women”. He then asked for an attorney and the interview ended.

Authorities searched his home and discovered a private room that he did not allow his wife or children to go into. In that basement room, investigators found various trophies from Cottingham’s murders. Deedeh Goodarzi’s earrings, Maryann Carr’s keys, and dozens of pieces of clothing jewelry from victims. News of Cottingham’s crimes and court proceedings were plastered across newspapers all over the tri-state area. The media dubbed him “The Torso Killer”, “The Times Square Ripper”, “The Butcher of Times Square”, “The New York Ripper”, and “The Times Square Torso Ripper”. In April of 1978, Janet Cottingham had filed for divorce from Cottingham, citing “extreme cruelty” and noting that Cottingham had refused to have sex with her since 1976. Throughout early 1980, Cottingham had another affair with Jean Connelly until his arrest. After Cottingham’s arrest in 1980, Janet withdrew her petition for divorce and moved to upstate New York with the couple’s three children.

On August 15th, Cottingham was charged with triple homicide in New York City for the murders of Jean Reyner, Deedeh Goodarzi, and the Jane Doe. In September, Karen Schilt and Susan Geiger identified Cottingham in a police lineup. Two days later the Bergen County Prosecutor's office in NJ indicted Cottingham on 21 counts. Cottingham’s trial in New Jersey began in June of 1981. Throughout the trial, Cottingham took copious notes. The District Attorney, Dennis Calo, remembers him as a very intelligent man who was extremely involved in his own defense. He was often seen passing notes to his attorneys with suggestions for them. Cottingham never confessed to the murders, instead opting to drag jury members and the loved ones of his victims through a trial. Several family members of the victims were called to the stand to identify the victims from the crime scene photos.

On June 6th Cottingham testified at his trial. He told the court that he had a predilection toward bondage pornography but that he did not enjoy hurting others. He denied knowing any of the living victims besides Leslie O’Dell since he was caught with her in the hotel. On June 11th he was convicted of 15 out of 20 counts. 3 days later Cottingham attempted suicide by drinking six ounces of liquid antidepressant medication in his Bergen County jail cell. The next month Cottingham was sentenced to 173-197 years in state prison for his crimes. He was also fined $2,350.

On February 25th, 1982 Cottingham collapsed while being escorted back to his cell while waiting for the Maryann Carr trial to begin. He was taken to a hospital and was diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. Because of Cottingham’s illness, a mistrial was declared. When the trial for the murder of Maryann Carr began again in the fall of 1982, Cottingham attempted to escape but was captured quickly. On October 10th, he was convicted of second-degree murder in a nonjury trial and was sentenced to 25 years to life with a minimum of 30 years to be served concurrently with his previous sentence. In March of 1983, Cottingham was transferred to a men’s detention center in Manhattan to await his trial for the murders of Deedeh Goodarzi, “Jane Doe”, and Jean Reyner. On July 5th, 1984, Cottingham smashed his eyeglasses and attempted to cut his wrists with the shards in front of the jury. 4 days later he was convicted for all three murders and was sentenced to 75 years to life.

Cottingham was incarcerated in the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. In 2010, Cottingham confessed to the 1967 murder of Nancy Shiava Vogel. Cottingham was tried for Vogel’s murder and received a new concurrent life sentence.

In the first week of January 2020, Cottingham broke his decades-long silence and confessed to three murders committed in the 1960s. Cottingham claims that he murdered Jacalyn Harp on July 17th, 1968. 13-year-old Harp was walking home from band practice in Midland Park when Cottingham pulled his car up next to her. He asked her if she wanted a ride and she declined. She began walking forward, but Cottingham drove ahead of her and got out of the car. Harp began running and Cottingham caught up to her. He dragged her to an area of bushes and sexually assaulted her before strangling the young teen to death. Jacqueline Harp’s murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed in 2020.

On April 7th, 1969, Cottingham claims that he observed 18-year-old Irene Blase shopping in Hackensack, NJ. He approached her and asked her if she wanted to get a drink with him. Blase and Cottingham took a bus to a bar. After a couple of hours, Cottingham offered to drive Blase back to the bus station and she accepted. Blase was found the next day laying face down in four feet of water in Saddle River. She had been strangled with a thin cord, possibly a length of wire or the chain of her crucifix necklace.

On July 14th, 1969, at around 9:00 pm 15-year-old Denise Falasca was walking on Old Hook Road in Emerson, NJ. She was on her way to meet friends in Westwood, NJ and was expected to be home at 11:00 pm. Cottingham pulled his car up beside her and offered to drive her to her destination. Falasca accepted the ride. The next day, Tuesday, July 15th, Denise Falasca’s body was found near a cemetery on Westminster Place in Saddle Brook, NJ. All three of his newly named victims were High School students in Bergen County, NJ.

Cottingham has nine confirmed murders to his name as of February 2020. It is estimated that he could have many more. His early murders were all committed via strangulation of the victim, and all of his victims were white women between the ages of 13 and 29. His later victims were typically between 5 foot and 5’5” tall, weighed between 95 and 140lbs, and had dyed or naturally blonde hair.

Richard Cottingham is classified as a power-assertive killer. His actions indicate a need to dominate and control his victims. Unlike the vast majority of serial killers, Cottingham experienced no abuse as a child. He had no history of head trauma or brain damage nor did he have physical of mental deficiencies. He had an average IQ, no history of mental health issues or drug abuse in his immediate family, and had no psychological issues surrounding his sexuality. In 2011, journalist Nadia Fezzani interviewed Cottingham for a French documentary. Cottingham had not agreed to an interview before accepting Fezzani’s request after two years of negotiation and correspondence. In his letters, Cottingham claimed to have begun killing 12 years before the murder of Maryann Carr, placing his first murder in 1965, before Nancy Vogel’s slaying. He claimed to have over 85, but under 100 victims, total. In the interview, Cottingham appears in his tan prison uniform with a full, white beard and mustache, his signature bushy eyebrows, and now lightened hair in the same style it had been upon his arrest. He walks with a cane on his right side and although he was always a stocky man, he appears to weight around 300 pounds.

Cottingham told Fezzani “I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. And I wanted to be the best serial killer”. He chuckled and continued on “I’ve probably done anything a man would want to do with a woman. Obviously, I must be sick somehow, normal people don’t do what I did.” When asked why he had cut off Jean Reyner’s breasts, he responded: “to do something different...to create some sensationalism”. He told her that he had no feelings when he committed his crimes. He said that he could put himself into a mental state that was like “remote control”. Cottingham admitted that the “power of holding someone’s fate in your hands” sexually aroused him. He told Fezzani that he enjoyed torturing his victims and inciting fear in them and that he would go only one or two weeks in between murders over a span of 10-15 years. However, this figure would place his victim count at around 390 victims, which is far out of his estimation. (An average of one victim every 10 weeks would align more with Cottingham’s estimation.)

Richard Francis Cottingham is now 73 years old and is eligible for parole in August 2025, although it is unknown how his latest confessions will affect that date. Investigators are still trying to elicit additional confessions from Cottingham, as they have been since 2004.

Sources:

Serial Violence: Analysis of Modus Operandi and Signature Characteristics of Killers by Robert D. Keppel and William J. Birnes.

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters by Peter Vronsky

Richard Francis Cottingham “The Torso Killer”: Information researched and summarized by Jacklyn Cowin, Jenna Leonette, and The Phan of Radford University

Serial Killers: Richard Cottingham by Patrick Spica Productions.

Profile of Serial Killer Richard Cottingham by Charles Montaldo on ThoughtCo

N.J. serial killer now linked to 9 victims, but will his murder toll rise? The timeline of the ‘Torso Killer’ by Rodrigo Torrejon for NJ.com

Cold cases solved: Bergen serial killer confesses to three more deaths by Joshua Jongsma for NorthJersey.com

Infamous New Jersey ‘Torso Killer’ confesses to 3 cold case murders by Gabrielle Fonrouge and Natalie Musumeci for New York Post.

#richard cottingham #serial killers #murder #murderer #the times square ripper #the torso kiler #the butcher of times square #true crime #Hell and High Horror Podcast #hell and High Horror #true crime podcast #tw murder #tw torture #tw gore #tw violence

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a-woman-apart · 7 years

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Desperation

I wish that I had a goal in writing this. I should probably be in bed, since I get to bed so late every night and it really affects my ability to get up in the morning. The problem is that I feel somewhat disturbed underneath my haze of tiredness, and I want to get it out of my system before I try to go to sleep.

Today I slept until noon, so I really didn’t get up and get going until pretty late. Ideally I would go to sleep early and wake up early, as opposed to sleeping late and waking up very late, but that’s just one of the things that I’m bad about. I read about delayed sleep phase syndrome, and while I am not going to self-diagnose, I think that I would not be surprised if I had at least a mild form of that. If I don’t set any alarms or establish a strict bedtime, my natural sleep cycle has me waking up around 11am on average, and falling asleep at 1am or later. It is something that I have modified before, however, when responsibilities require me to do so. Changes have never been permanent, though.

Apart from the late start, the day actually went pretty well. I was able to work on the song that I would be singing for the recital, and I went out for a few hours and shopped for things for my sister-in-law’s baby shower. Fortunately, I was able to get everything that I needed before the traffic really got too bad (even though I feel like I pretty much got stopped at every traffic light that there was). When I got home, I had a pretty low-key evening. I just finished a season of an anime that I had been watching. I did end up also watching some politically-themed and anti-capitalist videos on YouTube, but I don’t think that I “broke my brain” with “serious stuff.”

That being said, it is pretty depressing to think that the democratic system that we live under in this country really isn’t free and fair for everyone. Sometimes the alternatives aren’t very appealing either, but I know that something has to be done. I consider myself a socialist, in that I believe in more government regulation on corporations and that the government should care for the basic needs of its citizens. I will also admit that confronting the flaws in our government system is extremely daunting and overwhelming, and very often I complain without taking direct action against them. I was taught from an early age that capitalism was the best and most moral system that there was. Now I can see that in many ways that is wrong, but I couldn’t just quit my job and stop working. I’m forced to participate for my own survival, even if I don’t agree.

The lie that is pedaled in capitalist propaganda is that there are equal opportunities for everyone, and that as long as someone works hard they will gradually ascend to the top. The problem with this is that this also means that there is always going to be a hierarchy, with someone at the very top and other people below them. This also fails to take into account inequalities between people across geographical and racial divides, and the persistence of class in the capitalist system. It is often not the hardest working person who prevails, otherwise there would be no one who had to work two or three jobs and still struggle to make ends meet for them and their families. Also, while it is true that obtaining a good education helps to break the cycle of poverty, education is not freely available to all people in the U.S. and the ability to get a good education is still based upon those same geographical and class factors. In other words, very often the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, because the rich are in a position to obtain better education for themselves and their offspring, as well as already having more capital to invest into economic ventures. Additionally, those who are already better off financially can afford medical treatment that can give them increased ability to remain a part of the workforce.

Until we somehow put everyone on a level playing field by making education and healthcare accessible to everyone, we do not have a right to smugly criticize someone who is running into difficulty financially. The whole idea that someone is only as valuable as the work that they can put out is not something that I think that we want to propagate. No one should have to live on the streets, and no one should have to die of treatable illnesses because they cannot afford to be treated. No child should go hungry in this country, and every child deserves access to a good education. Without regulation, corporations would raise the prices of goods to whatever they desired, while at the same time lowering the wages of the people that work for them. It’s happened before, and it could easily happen again without government interference.

Maybe that is part of what bothers me on a daily basis. I have all of these new ideas taking up space in my head. A lot of the things that I once believed in are being challenged. I know that in the end it is something that is good, and that it is much better to be informed about things than not. For example, right now I am really hesitant about giving to charities that say they are helping people, because some “charities” have been shown to participate in unethical practices (I’m looking at you, Susan G. Komen and Salvation Army). Even charities that may have every intention to help, like charities for children in third world nations, sometimes destabilize the economies of those countries by flooding the economy with foreign goods. Sometimes someone panhandling on the side of the road is a crook. Ultimately, this doesn’t stop me from giving because it’s in my heart to help people, but I want to make sure that the help that I am offering isn’t causing harm instead.

Then there’s the ever-present matter of religion. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Christianity has helped people, but it has also hurt a lot of people as well, especially with regards to sexuality. Also, the Christian teaching that wives are to be submissive to their husbands has been used by many men to justify horrific abuse and subjugation of their wives. The shame that people have regarding gender and sexuality in some Evangelical Christian circles is immense, to the point where people are unable to talk about their fears and concerns. LGBTQ+ people are unwelcome in church. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, addiction to pornography is rampant because individual sexuality is so repressed. It has actually become so prevalent that it is rising to the surface and there are many ministries and groups within the church for men dealing with pornography addiction and sexual deviance.

Christianity and science often butt heads, as well. Evangelical Christianity has very much been the enemy of the theory of evolution. Also, many Evangelicals are proponents of conversion therapy or some sort of spiritual “deliverance” for LGBT+ people, whereas science shows that sexuality is hard-wired into the brain. You cannot “cure” homosexuality through therapy or rituals. Christianity in general, including- if not especially- the Catholic Church has historically stood against scientific progress and technology.

God hasn’t personally failed me. If I am being honest, if I look at my life it actually seems like I have been experiencing divine protection over the years. Things have always fallen into place for me, even though I have my struggles. Maybe I do have the option to be angry at God that I have schizoaffective/bipolar disorder, or that I had such a miserable childhood, but I am not. My problem with the God of Christianity lies in the fact that I am supposed to believe that despite his infinite power, the only way that he could forgive my sins was to horrifically torture and kill his only son. This also requires me to believe that each human being is born in sin in the first place, that somehow things that you do- or in this case, didn’t do- somehow stain your soul beyond all hope of redemption. I am also expected to believe that this redemption was held back for thousands of years, all so that humanity could “learn its lesson” and “know how much they needed Christ.” I am also expected to believe that after this horrific death, Jesus was raised back to life and ascended in physical form to sit at the right hand of said all-powerful God in heaven. I am supposed to believe that unless I believe all of this I am going to go to a place that no one has any evidence of, a place of “utter darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”, a place of fire where people will burn forever.

Finally, I am supposed to believe that despite 2000 years of being absent, Jesus will one day finally return in all of his glory and smite the wicked, killing so many unbelievers that “the blood reaches to the horse’s bridle”. Never mind that this is an action that seems in opposition to his previous character. The great part is that there are even more difficult things to believe than that, like stars falling from the sky, and a seven-headed dragon arising from the sea.

I don’t care if you say that most of it is allegorical. In my opinion, the things that I mainly have problems with are the basic tenants and concepts of the Christian faith. There is no way for me to get back to it, because the very basic concept of sin and redemption is one that is lost on me. I just don’t believe it anymore, pure and simple. I have not fully given up on the idea of God, however, and I still believe in miracles. I can’t explain why it seems like people get answers to prayer, but I know that for everyone who gets their answer, there are others to whom the heavens are silent. Either God plays favorites, he/she/it doesn’t have ultimate power, or there’s no God really listening and breakthroughs are coincidental.

I’m not going to lie and say that it’s easy, but it’s not. Sometimes I “want” to believe. It would certainly make things with my family so much easier. It would also give me comfort to think that I was specially created and that God has a special plan just for me. Whenever I think this, though, I just think of the incredible human suffering that exists in this world, suffering that cannot be explained away if God is both all-merciful and all-powerful. I think of how unlikely it is that the miracles in the Bible really happened, when there is no parallel for them today. Ross Blocher from the “Oh No Ross and Carrie” podcast described a “veil of time” that people create by thinking that fantastical things are more likely to have happened if they occurred a long time ago.

So yeah, there are a lot of heavy thoughts in the back of my mind at any given moment. Maybe getting older has helped me to put some things into perspective. I know I have a fairly high dose of naivete, but not when it comes to things like this. I think that people are generally good, but I do not think that it is religion that makes them so. My hope is that I can continue to be fortunate enough to see mainly the good side of humanity and experience mainly good things. I also hope that I will one day be able to use my knowledge of the dark side of things to help me stay on the path of good.

Okay, that’s it for my late-night rant.

#late night ramblings #deconversion #ex-christian #ex-evangelical #capitalism #socialism #privilege #veil of time #bipolar depression #delayed sleep phase syndrome #delayed sleep phase #late nights #late mornings #tired as hell #charities #bad charities

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motherfoxing · 7 years

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Arturo Pérez-Reverte// Teachers with Hiyab and other nonsense

Arturo dearest is one of the most popular intellectuals in Spain. Loved by franquist grandparents and parents, he is slaundered periodically by anything with a functioning brain.

This is his newest article, that I took the liberty to traduct to the best of my abilites. i don’t know the publishing date of this script, but with everything that has been happening, both in Spain and in the world, I felt the need to denounce this privileged moron to you.

If you, please, catch any mistakes in the english traduction, please tell me and I will review it. Be kind, and slander to your hearts desire

In a couple of years –if it hasn’t already happened- a promotion of young Pre-School and Primary Education degree holders from Spain, will graduate. Some of them will –they use it now, but as students- use a muslim head scarf named hiyab: a garment that, following the preceps of Ortodox Islam, covers the women’s hair with the finality of preserving her modesty, preventing that a excessive exhibition of her physical charms will awaken a man’s desire.

This future socio-educative event, so exemplarily multicultural, means that in a short span of time this teacher with covered heads will be imparting class to toodlers ans children of both sexes. Also they will do so with non-muslim children, in public schools, paid by you and me. So, this teachers will be presenting themselves to their students, with deliberated naturality, carrying in theis heads an unmistakable sign of submision and opression of men over women. And don’t try to tell me it’s a freedom act, because i will laugh. A religious simbol, mark this, in the same classrooms in wich, luckily and not without fight, crucifixes got banned. As an example.

But there’s something worse. More intolerable that the simbols. In their schools –and we’ll see who denies this teachers their right to a job and to teach- thei’ll be the responsables, with their head-scarf, and all the social and religious meaning behind it, the ones that shall answer to the students doubts and questions. They will be the ones to broach trascendental things, such as social morality, sexual identity, sexuality, relationships between men and women and other important matters; in wich we include, of course, the visión this younglings will have of the occidental culture, from the greek philosophers, democracy, the Humanism, the Illustration and the rights and freedoms of Mankind – that Islam ignores with sadening frequency-, to the more advanced ideas of the present.

This issue of teachers with veils is not a banal anecdote, like some demagogues short of both, lights and books, may sostain. Like it wasn’t what, a few weeks ago, a judge –woman, to my stupefaction- found in favor of a muslim woman who complained about her corporation, an airline company, not letting her wear the muslim head-scarf in a costumer service position. In this sentence, that in addition contradicts the Tribunal of Justice of the EU doctrine, is saif that forcing an employee to follow the rules of a corporation that demands both men and women wear uniforms and compeled to not wear religious or politic simbols of any kind, violates the religious and individual freedom. Which means, to my understanding –even if I know little of jurisprudence- that a integrist catholic flight assistant, for example, invoking this sentence, could wear, if her religious ideals compell her to, a crucifix as big as her hand over her uniform, giving public testimony of her faith. Or, evolving effortlessly into absurdity,that the follower of a lapp-norwegian sect, for example, could use his religious freedom to wear a couple of stuffed reinder antlers for Christmas while he checks the luggage o to attend the passengers mid-flight.

And so, it’s not about Islam or not Islam. Tolerating such uses is giving a step back; backtrack the many we have taken in the conquer of rights and freedoms, of breacking free of the chains that for centuries opressed humanity in the name of God. Is contradicting the progress and a fundamental modernity, to wich we know turn our backs in the name of complexes, the goodness-y, the cowardice or the stupidity. Like those puppets that every anniversary of the taking of Granada, afirm thar Spain would have been better off remaining muslim.

Meanwhile, oh progidy, the feminist most ultrarradical, so propense to garbage, remains silent about all of this like prostitutes –old popular saying, not mine- or better, like graves, it sounds less sexist. They are too busy in more imperative things, like affirming that bees and chickens are exploted females, that Quevedo should be banned from the classrooms because he’s mysoginist, or that Sabina’s songs are sexist and he should backtrack if he wants to remain be considered to be from the left.

And here we remain. Throwing overboard centuries of fight. Letting through the backdoor the things we had to kick out, with blood, intelligence and sacrifice through the main door. Committing suicide like idiots.

A/T: In Spain we use the term left to refer to socialist or democrats and right to refer to republican sor fascists.

ORIGINAL TEXT IN SPANISH:

De aquí a un par de años –si es que no ha ocurrido ya– saldrá de las facultades españolas una promoción de jóvenes graduadas en Educación Infantil y Primaria, entre las que algunas llevarán –lo usan ahora, como estudiantes– el pañuelo musulmán llamado hiyab: esa prenda que, según los preceptos del Islam ortodoxo, oculta el cabello de la mujer a fin de preservar su recato, impidiendo que una exhibición excesiva de encantos físicos despierte la lujuria de los hombres.

Ese próximo acontecimiento socioeducativo, tan ejemplarmente multicultural, significa que en poco tiempo esas profesoras con la cabeza cubierta estarán dando clase a niños pequeños de ambos sexos. También a niños no musulmanes, y eso en colegios públicos, pagados por ustedes y yo. O sea, que esas profesoras estarán mostrándose ante sus alumnos, con deliberada naturalidad, llevando en la cabeza un símbolo inequívoco de sumisión y de opresión del hombre sobre la mujer –y no me digan que es un acto de libertad, porque me parto–. Un símbolo religioso, ojo al dato, en esas aulas de las que, por fortuna y no con facilidad, quedaron desterrados hace tiempo los crucifijos. Por ejemplo.

Pero hay algo más grave. Más intolerable que los símbolos. En sus colegios –y a ver quién les niega a esas profesoras el derecho a tener trabajo y a enseñar– serán ellas, con su pañuelo y cuanto el pañuelo significa en ideas sociales y religiosas, las que atenderán las dudas y preguntas de sus alumnos de Infantil y Primaria. Ellas tratarán con esos niños asuntos de tanta trascendencia como moral social, identidad sexual, sexualidad, relaciones entre hombres y mujeres y otros asuntos de importancia; incluida, claro, la visión que esos jovencitos tendrán sobre los valores de la cultura occidental, desde los filósofos griegos, la democracia, el Humanismo, la Ilustración y los derechos y libertades del Hombre –que el Islam ignora con triste frecuencia–, hasta las más avanzadas ideas del presente.

Lo de las profesoras con velo no es una anécdota banal, como pueden sostener algunos demagogos cortos de luces y de libros. Como tampoco lo es que, hace unas semanas, una juez –mujer, para estupefacción mía– diera la razón a una musulmana que denunció a su empresa, una compañía aérea, por impedirle llevar el pañuelo islámico en un lugar de atención al público. Según la sentencia, que además contradice la doctrina del Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea, obligar en España a una empleada a acatar las normas de una empresa donde hombres y mujeres van uniformados y sin símbolos religiosos ni políticos externos, vulnera la libertad individual y religiosa. Lo que significa, a mi entender –aunque de jurisprudencia sé poco–, que una azafata católica integrista, por ejemplo, acogiéndose a esa sentencia, podría llevar, si sus ideas religiosas se lo aconsejan, un crucifijo de palmo y medio encima del uniforme, dando así público testimonio de su fe. O, yéndonos sin mucho esfuerzo al disparate, que la integrante de una secta religiosa de rito noruego lapón, por ejemplo, pueda ejercer su libertad religiosa poniéndose unos cuernos de reno de peluche en la cabeza, por Navidad, para hacer chequeo de equipajes o para atender a los pasajeros en pleno vuelo.

Y es que no se trata de Islam o no Islam. Tolerar tales usos es dar un paso atrás; desandar los muchos que dimos en la larga conquista de derechos y libertades, de rotura de las cadenas que durante siglos oprimieron al ser humano en nombre de Dios. Es contradecir un progreso y una modernidad fundamentales, a los que ahora renunciamos en nombre de los complejos, el buenismo, la cobardía o la estupidez. Como esos estólidos fantoches que, cada aniversario de la toma de Granada, afirman que España sería mejor de haberse mantenido musulmana.

Y mientras tanto, oh prodigio, las feministas más ultrarradicales, tan propensas a chorradas, callan en todo esto como meretrices –viejo dicho popular, no cosa mía– o como tumbas, que suena menos machista. Están demasiado ocupadas en cosas indispensables, como afirmar que las abejas y las gallinas también son hembras explotadas, que a Quevedo hay que borrarlo de las aulas por misógino, o que las canciones de Sabina son machistas y éste debe corregirse si quiere que lo sigan considerando de izquierdas.

Y aquí seguimos, oigan. Tirando por la borda siglos de lucha. Admitiendo por la puerta de atrás lo que echamos a patadas, con sangre, inteligencia y sacrificio, por la puerta principal. Suicidándonos como idiotas.

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avanneman · 6 years

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First Things First: Uncle Reno’s Just So Stories

What do you get when you click on an article in First Things, that heady brew of theological harrumphing first set in motion by frenzied spiritual striver Richard John Neuhaus, about whom I (mostly) snickered here? Well, judging from this piece by the site’s editor, R.R. (Richard Russell) Reno, “End Times Anxiety”, you’ll learn a little, you’ll laugh a little, and you’ll conclude with a piece of sustained derision.

Surprisingly (or not), the Catholic Dr. Reno and I have a similar reaction to “Modern Times”, at least in part:

“Our present cultural moment is one of suspicion, anxiety, and worries about vulnerability. Many, perhaps most, fear that they are being discriminated against and marginalized. And those who don’t? They often live in the fear that they will be accused of white privilege or some other sin. Perhaps this is to be expected. Patriarchy, racism, heteronormativity—they are said to infect everything. One area of public discourse immune from the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion is wonkish policy debate. But this is dominated by economistic thinking, which takes as its first premise rational self-interest. Here, too, we’re pictured as eyeing each other with competitive suspicion.

“The anxiety baffles me. Our society works pretty well. In many cities, crime is down dramatically, reaching historically low levels. The economy grows, both here at home and globally. American war-making has settled into a pattern of limited engagement that leaves most of us undisturbed. Meanwhile, public culture rings with warnings that things are heading toward disaster—global warming, resurgent racism, populism. Every week our office receives review copies of another book that promises to show us how to “save liberal democracy.”

Okay, I could do without the snicker about “postmodern hermeneutics” and the cutesy putdown of “rational self-interest”, but, hey, the guy’s Catholic. RR rumbles on a bit—well, more than a bit, actually—and then quotes to good effect someone I usually don’t care for much at all, Peggy Noonan, to wit:

“When at least half the country no longer trusts its political leaders, when people see the detached, cynical and uncaring refusal to handle such problems as illegal immigration, when those leaders commit a great nation to wars they blithely assume will be quickly won because we’re good and they’re bad and we’re the Jetsons and they’re the Flintstones, and while they were doing that they neglected to notice there was something hinky going on with the financial sector, something to do with mortgages, and then the courts decide to direct the culture, and the IRS abuses its power, and a bunch of nuns have to file a lawsuit because the government orders them to violate their conscience. . . .”

Well, again, I don’t think the IRS is abusing its power, and I don’t think the Little Sisters of the Poor should complain about being required to offer health care plans to their employees that provide free birth control pills,1 but the fact that Wall Street was rewarded for blowing up the economy,2 and that neither the Bush nor the Obama Administration had the nerve to walk away from a series of disastrous and counterproductive wars,3 not to mention occasional bloody acts of terrorism in the U.S. by isolated individuals (and not al Qaeda or ISIS or any other international terrorist group), are fundamental contributors to our national malaise.

I could go on in this vein for some time, but I already have, well, almost constantly for the past ten years, but my most recent “big picture” outburst, “Paging Dr. Yeats! Paging Dr. Yeats!, appeared only a couple of weeks ago, so I won’t belabor the point, except (and, okay, this is a pretty big “except”) it would be nice if Peggy, and maybe R.R. would admit that 1) the Republican Party started all these goddamn useless foreign wars and keeps looking for new ones (e.g., Ukraine, Syria, Iran, China) and 2) did their level best to not only prevent President Obama from countering the effects of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression but actually sought to wreck the U.S. economy in the hopes of driving Obama from power.4

Well, enough of that. Suffice to say that the failure of the center has strengthened the extremes, and encouraged the notion that “truth” resides there. The more “passionate” you are, regardless of substance, the more valid. You can read either R.R. or myself on the fine points.

R.R. has something more satisfying to say, about which I’ll also carp, mourning the death of “the most significant influence on my intellectual life,” George Lindbeck (this article is my introduction to both men). Lindbeck was a Lutheran, who taught at Yale Divinity School and, according to Wikipedia, is one of the founders of “postliberal theology”, whatever that is. Wikipedia’s writeup highlights Lindbeck’s involvement in the movement and “explains” that many second-gen postliberal types, including R.R. himself, left the Protestant faith and joined the Catholic Church, quite in the manner (as Wikipedia also notes) of the Oxford “Tractarian Movement” in Victorian England.

R.R. tells us that “[Limbeck] was and remained a Lutheran, and he had only a small degree of sympathy for my conservative political leanings. But I can’t imagine thinking about theology the way I do without his example”:

“Lindbeck taught me this lesson [something about theology, obviously] when lecturing on an early medieval controversy between two monks, Radbertus and Ratramnus. Their dispute concerned whether or not the consecrated bread and wine is Christ’s physical body or his spiritual body. His patient unpacking of this controversy allowed me to understand his metaphor of “grammar.” Both monks wanted to affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the consensus affirmation for almost all Christians, not just in the twelfth century, but in our time as well. However, there is no consensus about what makes things real—a metaphysical question. As a consequence, it’s possible for someone to treat spiritual presence as more real than physical presence. Platonism encourages this way of thinking. The Pythagorean theorem is more “real” than any particular right-angle triangle. Others find this dissatisfying and emphasize the thatness of things, which is to say, their physical presence. This, moreover, is not just a matter of differing philosophical intuitions. The Bible suggests divergent metaphysical affirmations. The opening chapters of Genesis encourage a focus on physical presence, but Jesus’s statement that his kingdom is not of this world points toward the view that the spiritual is more real than things we can see and touch.”

Well, if you’re still with me, I just want to chuckle, amidst all this learnedness, about the line “Both monks wanted to affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the consensus affirmation for almost all Christians, not just in the twelfth century, but in our time as well.” That is so not true. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, is rejected by the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation (both bread and body and wine and blood), the Eastern Orthodox notion of “mystery”, which explicitly and unsurprisingly rejects the Catholic doctrine (in his “twelfth century” reference, R.R. forgets, as so many Catholics do, the very existence of the Eastern Orthodox Church), the Anglican Church’s “whatever”, and the Calvinist rejection of any “magic” at all, part of the basic Protestant thrust to strip the priests of divine authority.5 And today, among the majority of American Protestants—the Evangelicals—the Eucharist plays no role in their faith whatsoever.

Furthermore, R.R. could have chosen, but of course did not, a topic that would prove more obviously divisive, such as the existence of Purgatory, which is rejected by all Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox, or, most divisive of all for Catholics and Lutherans—even more so the infallibility of the Pope when speaking on matters of faith—the question of free will versus predestination. What R.R.’s affection for Lindbeck signifies is the flocking together of all those who fancy metaphysical reveries, which, like the brook, can go on forever.

According to Wikipedia, Lindbeck and his fellow postliberal pals went back to Karl Barth, among others, for inspiration, which makes sense because Barth was one of the early twentieth-century enemies of “Whiggery”, ridiculing the idea that Christ was the first socialist (as Leopold Bloom called him). By my wildly casual reading, Barth took Kant’s categories, designed to secularize Protestant values, and reworked them to justify the metaphysical theology that Kant felt he had disassembled, naturally making it even more rigorous, and “postliberal/antiliberal” as he did so. Progress? Bah! Enlightenment? Nonsense!

Wikipedia informs me that the seminal event in Lindbeck’s career was serving as a guest observer at the famous/infamous “Vatican II” council,6 running from 1962 to 1965, which opened up for Lindbeck, one can be sure, whole new worlds (an infinite number, in fact) of metaphysical speculation. “Why can’t we have this?” he must have exclaimed.

Wikipedia further informs me that Lindbeck and his followers were heavily influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953 and written largely to reject the ideas expressed in the only work that Wittgenstein published in his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.7 The notion that one has to master Wittgenstein to get into heaven strikes me as a little strict and just a bit off point. Wittgenstein, though heavily influenced by Christianity personally, certainly never belonged to a church, and moreover always encouraged his students not to pursue a career in philosophy but rather to serve humanity via medicine. The point of philosophy, Wittgenstein thought, was to prove that the study of philosophy led nowhere—though of course that was all he ever thought about.

Wittgenstein’s thought strongly echoes the ideas expressed in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which “explains” why all traditional metaphysics are false—because it applies concepts that effectively describe the finite world to “infinite” realms, where they are out of place. Unfortunately, finite concepts are the only ones we have. Wittgenstein’s favorite philosopher was Artur Schopenhauer, who saw himself as Kant’s disciple. Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, a substantially simpler work than the “thorny” Critique, effectively explains, to my mind, why the theological hairsplitting that so engages both Lindbeck and Reno never ends. And why would they want it to, since they enjoy it so much? Of course, the larger doctrinal divisions between “confessions” are very largely the result of power struggles between entrenched groups, not spontaneous musings, which is why such groups always find ways to disagree with, not to mention burn, one another.

Yeah, this is a long post. Well, you’re here, aren’t you? After bidding farewell to his Lutheran mentor, R.R. throws a few random punches, at modernizing Catholics and free-market know nothings, before coming up with the riff that set me off in the first place, “explaining” how Ronald Reagan engineered morality by cutting taxes, thus encouraging hard work instead of dissipation:

“This was brought home to me decades ago when I was watching John Updike being interviewed on Book TV. He was asked what he thought of his early novels. The celebrated author adopted an amused look and allowed that they were to some degree dated. He recounted a recent trip to an elite university. The students told him that his stories, many of which revolve around afternoon martinis and sexual escapades, ring false. It was not as though life in upscale America had become more buttoned up in the interval between the publication of Rabbit, Run (1960) and their adolescent years in the 1990s. Rather, they told Updike, no adults were home in the early evenings, and their parents were too tired to throw the sorts of cocktail parties that provide the occasions for the alcohol-fueled transgressions that figure prominently in Updike’s fiction. As Updike told the interviewer, he had to inform these hard-charging, high-achieving kids that upper-middle-class grown-ups didn’t work so hard in the 1950s. People had more time on their hands.”

I could point out—and I will—that Rabbit, Run was not about upper-middle-class grown-ups. “Rabbit”, saddled with the ludicrously “loaded” last name of “Angstrom”,8 is a former high-school jock who sells a kitchen “gadget” called the “MagiPeeler” for a living. Updike wrote quite consciously, and conscientiously, about the middle class. Couples, his raunchy blockbuster, which came out in 1968, had more of a mixed group—everyone from a “contractor” to a nuclear physicist, but I think we’re hardly in Don Draper territory.9

More importantly, if we look at the actual data, instead of a novelist’s musings, we find, well, a mixed bag. According to *Measuring Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Decades, published in 2006 by Mark Aguiar and Eric Hurst for the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, hours worked by individuals with more than a high school degree declined from 1965 to 2003, from 52 to 43 hours per week. Another study, The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979-2004, by Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano for the National Bureau Of Economic Research, did find an increase, but dated the origin from 1970, 12 long years before Ronnie’s big cuts took effect.

Most importantly of all, wasn’t there a fair amount of hanky-panky going on in the eighties and nineties, alcohol-fueled or no? How about Donald Trump, hangin’ in Studio 54, aka “Cocaine Alley”, watching supermodels bangin’ n’ snortin’ in public? And what about soon to be chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors Larry Kudlow, who blew up his Wall Street career and his marriage via the White Lady back in 1995? And how about Wall Street “Wolf” Jordan Belfort, whose lifestyle was even more obscene than the hours he worked? Seems like this postliberal theology stuff might not be all it’s cracked to be. In fact, I wonder what either Barth or Wittgenstein might think of R.R.’s “logic”.

Afterwords R.R.’s affectionate tribute to his mentor Lindberg suggests that genial companionship is more highly valued than mere “ideas”. Although both men surely took all their high-flying metaphysics seriously—believed they were necessary for salvation, which is pretty important after all—one can bet that neither ever tried to “convert” the other. How gauche can you be? If he could have done so, would Ross have journeyed to Lindberg’s deathbed, priest in tow, to save his friend’s soul? I think not. But wasn’t it his Christian duty to do so? Just sayin’.

Yeah, the gals don’t want to spend their money on birth control. But health care is “compensation”. Could the Little Sisters forbid their employees from using their wages to buy birth control pills? Then why should the employees be denied the opportunity to select a health care plan that offered them for “free”? ↩︎

The federal bailout was necessary, but in the past when the International Monetary Fund bailed out “bad” nations like South Korea they were required to “reform”. Far from requiring Wall Street to “reform”, the Obama Administration, led by Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner, rewarded them. Furthermore, while Wall Street bankers drank their own Kool-Aid during the Boom (making the same investments they advised their clients to make), when things were falling apart there was a great deal of criminal deceit, as might be expected. The Obama Administration swept this under the rug. “Do you want us to put everyone in jail?” ↩︎

The Bush Administration, of course, could hardly abandon its “Mission Accomplished” swagger without looking like losers. The possibility that the Obama Administration would pursue a policy of military withdrawal was destroyed by the rise of ISIS and Putin’s seizure of the Crimea. It is “arguable” (I know it is, because I’ve done it a lot) that Hillary Clinton’s aggressively anti-Russian policy in Eastern Europe, and her general contempt for Russian “interests”, led directly to the Ukrainian crisis that precipitated Putin’s decision to invade land that had been part of Russia for several centuries. ↩︎

After 9/11, the Democrats accepted the need for national unity and led President Bush set the national agenda, which he did with a clear eye towards partisan advantage. Under Obama, the Republicans furiously resisted every presidential proposal and were determined to undermine every possibility of economic recovery, because Obama. ↩︎

Voltaire, that shallow, shallow fellow, put it more succinctly: “The Catholics say they eat God, and no bread. The Lutherans say they eat God and bread. And the Calvinists say they eat bread and no God.” Luther invented the “theory” of consubstantiation because he had to be different from the Catholic Church, yet, having one foot still in the Catholic Church, couldn’t go “full Calvin”. Luther’s affection for the “traditional” Eucharist is “interesting” because he stripped away all other elements of priestly “magic” (holy relics, extreme unction, etc.). ↩︎

As Ross Douthat shrewdly observed, Vatican II was largely intended to make the Catholic faith palatable to the American establishment, which, the Vatican shrewdly reckoned, was the only force that could save them from communism. Among other things, Vatican II abolished the Index  Librorum Prohibitorum, the “Index of Prohibited Books”, which had been updated as recently as 1948 and embarrassingly included such classics as Galileo (of course), Montesquieu (the “celebrated Montesquieu”, as the Founding Fathers always called him), and “even” Blaise Pascal (I guess for making fun of the Jesuits and for not renouncing the evil Cornelius Jansen). ↩︎

It’s a little shocking that Word can’t spell “tractatus”. I’ll bet that Bill Gates has read Wittgenstein. ↩︎

You can learn all about Angstroms here. It’s possible, I guess, that Updike met someone named “Angstrom” (it’s a Scandinavian surname as well as a unit of measurement equal to one ten-billionth of a meter) and therefore felt entitled to use it. ↩︎

I wrote an “homage” of sorts to Updike in my little book Author! Author! Auden, Oates, and Updike, though I doubt if he would appreciate “The Apotheosis of John Updike: A Modern Triptych”, which “he” narrates in the first person. ↩︎

#R. R. Reno #First Things #Peggy Noonan #Michael Lindbeck #postliberal theology

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enravel-blog · 7 years

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meanwhile, in salt lake: who will mummify whom?

We take our coffee in the mummification room. Ron, a professorial salesman, regally crosses one leg over the other. He’s a harmless but incendiary sexagenarian, an up-rolled-sleeves raconteur. His silent counterpart Bernie is a bit younger, swathed in an army-green sweater the size of a dirigible and palming loose change somewhere inside of it. There’s a hidden slink of ten nickels while a thick chemistry slides down my throat. Ron says, “That formula you smell is our trade secret. It has an extremely small molecule. If I put a drop on your finger you’ll taste it within 30 seconds.” I resist the deep urge to request a sample. The pair seems capable of soft-selling me my own death.

Next door in the pyramid, Montu, newly dead, calls out from the altar. His blue parrot body is tucked into a Tupperware container with a motion-sensing device, which has a recording of him saying his own name. Ofrenda, cage trinkets and birdseed, earthly glees he left behind, are laid out. White plush carpets the 27-foot-high copper pyramid oriented true north next to a highway underpass. The vaulted ceiling is a galaxy of vaguely Egyptian icons. There are white leather sofas and, to my delight and fear, a Panasonic camera on tripod next to a steel pasteurization tank.

Ron and Bernie are going to mummify Montu when he’s procedurally ready for transference. His future state dots the room in a collection of dignified mummiform pets, including a standard gold poodle, a Doberman named Butch, and several stray cats.

How sure, we have to wonder, are Ron and Bernie, leaning over the long table to start each fresh evisceration, that a neighbor isn’t missing a calico? They seem like the kind of folks who might embalm anything that strolls past the live peacock in the yard.

I send my friend the pyramid’s address. If I don’t circle back this afternoon, she could go ahead and call over to the Salt Lake City authorities, tell them I had an appointment at Summum.

Like name suggests, Ron and Bernie practice the sum total of all religions. As Ron leans back in a rolling office chair and constellates dogma across continents, languages, time—he’s clearly spent whole days in certain Santa Monica bookstores— he takes luxurious nasal in-breaths between string theorizing Greco-Roman archetypes and meditation rituals. He scatter plots the mechanics of all beliefs about consciousness onto one another in a very logical story of the impossibility of their singularity. In Hermeticism, all religions flower from one true theology. As above, so below, and back again. With Ron as guide I envision the flagship Summums at the mouth of the new age, gathered round a dish of lavender crystals, asking what comes first. They’re asking how to revere and shatter a charge simultaneously. Bernie has yet to speak, while Ron is wrapping up somewhere near Joseph Campbell and pure math.

In the mummification room (where Montu will join us shortly) pet bodies wait with looped rubber hoses and neat rows of metal tools. This chrysalis lab of lanolin, gauze and resin, down the street from a Panera and the Church of Latter Day Saints, is also where Bernie keeps the books. Summum requests and accepts donations, in the several thousands, for pet mummification services.

“Let me show you something,” Ron says, as we cross the yard and he hand-cranks open a garage door on the pyramid. June light falls onto Corky Ra's fifteen-hundred-pound gold sarcophagus. “We mummified him ourselves,” Bernie says nostalgically of Summum’s founder. We gaze at the towering Corky and Ron moves an empty wine bottle behind the sofa.

“Corky could walk through walls. His favorite word was consider,” Ron begins, the word in his mouth like a macaroon. We sit in the comfortable leather sofas and Bernie takes a corner of the pyramid. Ron would have made an excellent academic or bible peddler.

Romanticism, idolizing the hero, leads to nationalism. To borders, walls.

“In 1975, Corky was doing his relaxations in his basement den when a sound, which came for several months as a ringing in his ears, began to move to the center of his mind. The next thing he knew he was transported to a pyramid and was speaking with divine extracelestial beings, totally different mind you from extraterrestrials, who expressed soundlessly to him that they were the Summa, the highest Individuals who exist on all planes within the different universes that are going on right now.”

In a first-person zine Corky later penned about the encounter, he writes: “I had never seen such extremely attractive people before.” See Corky sprawled in astral gel on a clay floor, jetlagged from interdimensional flight, entranced by androgynous cheekbones. Divine lips are delivering seven ancient principles to an anxious Mormon.

“No, no no, the Mormon church was definitely not happy with master Corky,” Ron says. At the word master I scan the room. “But he had to break from them. He was the appointed catalyst, the new Moses. A messenger comes along every so often when the brew is just right, and they of course then have to take the hero’s journey.”

When he got back to his basement Corky rewrote the Kybalion, an existing 1908 text hinging on the idea that everything happens as a result of one’s mental state. He kept the book’s main principles: vibration (everything is in motion), the rhythm in motion swings between opposites (to every cause an effect), and gender is a mental state not connected to physical sex. The only thing he added, based on what the Summa told him, was the principle of Creation: nothing and possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.

“Montu, hi Montu!” the dead bird calls out. Bernie is walking past the altar to join us on the frothy penthouse sofa, where I’ve spread my belongings into a purposeful moat around my body. I take the break in Ron’s portraiture to admire the milk silo and video setup.

“The camera is for Summum TV. We broadcast meditations on the internet,” Ron says without elaboration. “And we use the tank to ferment wine, which becomes nectars, or publications of consciousness. We imbue them with different meditative vibrations, like sexual ecstasy and such, the way the Catholic church transmutes wine with the blood of Christ and then they can give it to children, to anybody, and not get into trouble.”

Ron and Bernie don’t keep membership records, but based on the number of wine nectars they’ve distributed, they assume about 250,000 people have received Summum.

Bernie, like the night-blooming cereus sometimes called Christ in the Manger or Princess of the Night, opens now.

“I consider Corky a contemporary of Buddha or Jesus, or Osho, any of these masters. He was hard. He wouldn’t cut you any slack. He would call you out, get way down in there to the motivations going on behind the things we do. Corky took honesty to a level that most people couldn’t deal with.”

I ask him to tell me about the first time they met.

“I was coming out of a screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and there was a business card on my windshield with a note that said, I’ve been in touch with advanced beings and I present on it at the University of Utah.”

“Corky believed that the mummification process is crucial to stewarding the transference of the spirit when the body retires. When you’re going to make a journey, you can prepare for that journey, like arrangements for a trip. You’re going to find yourself in very weird surroundings when you die. But if you are being mummified, people are going to be communicating to you, saying, ‘You’ve passed away. You’ll be seeing weird things now, but just relax, be calm. We’re going to read to you your spiritual will, something you wrote when you were alive. It will help guide you. We’re going to be taking care of you.’ And the preserved body is very important. It guides you from this address to the next one.”

Ron, who was a ski buddy of Corky’s, adds, “Plus your spirit can come back to that body any time for information. If I take your body down to the crematorium”— he mentions his day-job as a funeral director--“if I burn your body up, it’s gone. It makes it a little bit more difficult.”

In the eighties, when grooming in general reached new heights, Corky was conditioning Ron for mortuary school in California. To date, Corky is the only human that Summum has mummified.

“When Ron and I are mummified, Corky says he’ll be there on the other side to help with the transition,” Bernie says.

Who will mummify whom?

“We’ll mummify each other,” they both say.

Mathematically, two quantities are in the Golden Ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Everyone in the pyramid is calculating. We come in and out of bond infinite times. It begins to feel like a lovers’ spat.

“Who knows though honestly, I’m the oldest out of everybody, I’m the ancient dog around here,” Ron says, and Bernie starts in, “I mean you never know what can happen, I could get hit by a bus or whatever. As long as I’m not smooshed all over the place and you have something to work with.”

“What-ever. Either way,” Ron says generously, “at some point in time we’ll all die, and there will be a choice. It’s each individual soul’s right to take their boat wherever they want. Creation is going to give you your heart’s desire, it doesn’t really matter what it is, but at some point you won’t have desires, and you’re able to walk away from this life and move on down the river.”

We’re standing in front of the altar. Montu’s batteries are on the fritz, as if he’s gotten the message and has moved on.

Ron says, “Anyway, that’s an old story Corky told us a long time ago.”

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leemdixon · 7 years

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New media added to my tablet and phone to listen, read and watch over the next month or so…

Tv Shows.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Although bellhop Todd Brotzman doesn’t have a lot going on in his life, the worst awaits him. It begins when he arrives at work one day and is sent up to the hotel’s penthouse, where he discovers millionaire Patrick Spring has been murdered. An odd chain of events that unfolds leads to Todd becoming a person of interest in the crime and losing his job. That is when he meets Dirk Gently, a fast-talking, eccentric detective who has been hired to investigate the murder. He believes that he and Todd are destined to solve the mystery together. Once Dirk is able to convince Todd to work with him, the latter is visited by wild, dangerous characters — all associated with Dirk — who complicate his life further. Dirk, meanwhile, is being hunted by seemingly deranged assassin Bart, who almost kills a man she mistakenly believes to be the detective.

Van Helsing: In this reimagining of the classic Dracula story, the world is dominated by vampires, requiring humans to work together to survive. The series centers on Vanessa Helsing, daughter of famed vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, who wakes up after a five-year coma to discover a vampire-controlled world. She soon learns that she possesses a unique blood composition that makes her immune to vampires and able to turn the creatures into humans. That power puts humanity’s last hope to return the world to how it once was before the vampires took over in Vanessa’s hands.

Films.

Assassin’s Creed: Cal Lynch travels back in time to 15th-century Spain through a revolutionary technology that unlocks the genetic memories contained in his DNA. There, he lives out the experiences of Aguilar de Nerha, a distant relative who’s also a member of the Assassins, a secret society that fights to protect free will from the power-hungry Templar Order. Transformed by the past, Cal begins to gain the knowledge and physical skills necessary to battle the oppressive organization in the present.

Justice League Dark: Batman forms Justice League Dark, a new team of dark arts specialists that is led by John Constantine. The team must unravel the mystery of a supernatural plague and contend with the rising, powerful villainous forces behind the siege.

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract: The young super groups get a new member who seems to have ulterior motives as they take on the mercenary Deathstroke.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: The T-virus unleashed by the evil Umbrella Corp. has spread to every corner of the globe, infesting the planet with zombies, demons and monsters. Alice (Milla Jovovich), a former Umbrella employee turned rogue warrior, joins her friends on a last-chance mission to storm the company’s headquarters located deep underneath what used to be Raccoon City. But the Red Queen (Ever Anderson) knows that Alice is coming, and the final battle will determine if the rest of mankind lives or dies.

MASH: Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, “M*A*S*H” follows a group of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital officers at they perform surgery and pass the time just miles from the front lines of the Korean Conflict. Led by Captains Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould), they add to the chaos and hilarity of the situation.

Audiobooks.

The Gods Themselves Novel by Isaac Asimov The main plot-line is a project by aliens who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter with Earth, they seek to exploit these differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy in their dying Universe. However, the exchange of physical laws will have the ultimate result of turning the Earth’s Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar. This is the alien’s ultimate goal, as it would provide more energy for the para-Universe.

Red Mars Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists – hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert – ‘Red Mars’ is the story of a new genesis. It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams; before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising and violence is brewing – for civilization can be very uncivilized.

Altered Carbon Novel by Richard Morgan In the novel’s somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel’s plot, to allow the authorities to sleeve a deceased Catholic woman temporarily to testify in a murder trial.

Mogworld Novel by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn’t be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He’s awfully grumpy. Plus, he’s been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all. On his side, he’s got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he’s up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams — and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI.

Graphic Novels.

Blackest Night: “Blackest Night” involves Nekron, a personified force of death who reanimates deceased superheroes and seeks to eliminate all life and emotion from the universe.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FILM BLADE RUNNER COMES TO COMICS! Worldwide best-selling sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s award-winning DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? has been called “a masterpiece ahead of its time, even today” and served as the basis for the film BLADE RUNNER. BOOM! Studios is honored to present the complete novel transplanted into the comic book medium, mixing all new panel-to-panel continuity with the actual text from the novel in an innovative, ground-breaking 24-issue maxi-series experiment.

Alias- Jessica Jones:

Alias is a comic book series created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos. It was published by Marvel Comics under Marvel’s MAX imprint for a total of 28 issues from 2001 to 2004. The protagonist of Alias is Jessica Jones, a former costumed superhero named Jewel who left that life behind to become a private investigator. The running thread is Jessica’s character development, as the layers of her past and personality are revealed to the reader while, simultaneously, she tries to come to terms with them herself. The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower comics follow the adventures and trials of Roland Deschain, son of Steven Deschain, dinh of Gilead. At the outset of our tale, Roland is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger apprentice, goaded by his father’s treacherous sorcerer into taking his test of manhood years too early. Roland thinks that he is fighting for his father’s honor, but in truth Marten Broadcloak is in league with Gilead’s enemy, John Farson, and wants nothing less than to have Roland—the final descendant of Arthur Eld, the ancient King of All-World—sent west in disgrace. Roland wins his guns, but the price is high. With Farson’s assassins haunting the streets of Gilead, Roland and his tet-mates Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns must leave the city. Steven Deschain sends the boys to the Outer Arc town of Hambry, but Roland and his tet-mates soon discover that Hambry is not a quiet backwater but the heart of Farson’s war-machine—a obliterating juggernaut which has its sights set on Gilead. So begins the epic war between Roland’s gunslingers and John Farson’s forces, a conflict whose battlefield moves from the Outer Arc to In-World and finally to the gunslingers’ heroic but doomed last stand at the Battle of Jericho Hill. Over the course of the story, Roland transforms from the dinh of a faithful ka-tet to a war-hardened loner, searching for the Dark Tower and for his ultimate enemies—a many-faced sorcerer and his master, an immortal were-spider who wants nothing less than to destroy the Tower and swallow the wreckage of the multiverse.

How do I consume my media?

Tablet:

Sony Z1 10inch.

16gb with a 64gb sd

Android 5.1.1

Phone:

Huawei P9

32gb with a 32gb sd

Android 6.0

Video app:

Mizuu for organizing.

MX Player Pro.

VLC just incase I need another.

AudioBooks:

Smart Audiobooks.

Podcasts:

Pocket Casts.

Ebooks:

Moon+ reader Pro.

Play Books.

Comics/Graphic Novels:

ComicRack.

New blog post is up-New Media Added To Watch, Listen and Read-May 2017 New media added to my tablet and phone to listen, read and watch over the next month or so...

#audiobooks #films #tv

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