I usually try not to delve into macabre subjects on this here blog; others have shown us all what can happen when you admit to finding child mutilation hilarious. Aside from Dan O’Brien taking an immediate interest in you, I mean.
So when I say today’s post is about a lot of people getting killed in Japan, understand that I am only tackling the subject because it deeply concerns me, and is happening somewhere far away, to people I’ll probably never meet.
And yet, I am terrified. Terrified because near as I can tell, the Japanese people are in the throes of a massive Takashi Miike re-enactment. For those who aren’t familiar with Miike, he’s the Director of such gems as Audition, wherein a cute schoolgirl force-feeds a man a bowl of his own vomit and cuts his limbs off with wire.
And I think their steady diet of the most intense horror the world has ever known may have finally gotten to them, because they are currently having a rash of killings the likes of which Wes Craven can only masturbate to.
Here are some things that have happened in Japan, a country roughly the size of Madison, Wisconsin:
My heart goes out to the Japanese, and in order to keep that from becoming a literal reality, I am never going to Japan ever.
Of course I’m not saying that these murders are definitely the result of a culture soaked in the blood of a thousand filmed mutilations, but it’s easily the most compelling case for censorship I’ve run across since that children’s show Fucky and the Tits got canceled.
And, in a small way, it makes me proud to be an American, where our burgers are sold by the quarter pound, our cookies are double stuffed, and our murderers just shoot people instead of sawing their heads off and leaving them places.
Probably not what the Framers had in mind when they signed the Declaration, but an achievement nonetheless.
When not blogging for Cracked, Michael watches 3 Extremes through squinty eyes as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!
Last 5 posts by Michael Swaim
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September 17th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Agatha, I can perfectly well picture any of the Japanese natives I know, personally, saying that. Delightful people, great sense of humor.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Hey! Guess who was IN JAPAN WHEN THOSE HAPPENED.
According my teacher, Nagai Sensei- “Nihonjin usually do not do this. Please try not to get stabbed during free time in Shibuya today.”
…
June 24th, 2008 at 11:19 am
wiki is fun!
June 24th, 2008 at 11:19 am
and the words “the chicken” are said before the words “the egg”.
and call attention to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2001). Upon careful examination of the entries and accompanying definitions, one can accurately assert that “chicken” is found on page 232, while “egg” is not found until page 398. Therefore, according to this argument, chicken clearly comes before egg.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
dear bigfatspambot, go away.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:58 am
Don’t know why they created the games like this. For me, I never play such games. But I like to watch hot sexy photos&videos @@ Plusmeet.c o m___, where many big boobs girls, big booty women and big manful guys mingle for fun&love! every man like beauty, right/ LOL
June 21st, 2008 at 4:56 am
I don’t know which is funnier… The article or the comments.
…
Definatly the comments.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Laughed hysterically. Funny website. PWoT made a good choice.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
“They also had these huge fucking cell phones.”
they had to have big phones, they had such tiny arms..
presumably, the egg came before the dinosaur, as some proto-fish would likely have been egg laying.
before the fish was the single cell organism, which is by definition an egg. and the earth is a round thing with a hard shell an’ a gooey center, it has a tenuous link to eggs, some people subscribe to the idea the a meteor [possibly the moon] carried bacterial life, meaning the earth was an egg to a meteor’s sperm.
now which to eat first, the bacon or the egg..
June 17th, 2008 at 6:58 am
have anyone seen takashi miike’s GOZU? i died watching it.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Oh and that witty comeback about dinosaur eggs got used on me in fifth grade and I’ve been waiting 28 years to use it.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
They also had these huge fucking cell phones.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I assumed we were talking about the generic chicken egg/chicken argument. Yes, dinosaur eggs would likely have come long before chickens.
Unless you mean which came first, the dinosaur or the egg? There is apparently some debate that dinosaurs may have been warm blooded, so maybe they gave birth to live ones? I don’t know so much about dinosaurs.
Who would have thought that millennia-old bones would be such poor indicators of everything else about dinosaurs? Like, did you know that according to paleontologists, dinosaurs used cartridge based video games, having gotten fed up over loading times with CDs?
June 16th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Kingmonkey: NICE!!
June 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
All right smartass , well what about dinosaurs eggs didn’t they come first?
June 16th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Evolutionism: two birds with chicken-like genetic traits would have mated to create the first chicken egg (as the egg is also an adaptive hybrid, containing the specific mechanisms that the inner, first chicken will need). Thus the egg will be different from the predecessors previous eggs. This egg will then hatch, upon incubation, to give birth to the first chicken.
Religionism: the above remains true, but it’s because God made them evolve that way.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
That depends on what I’m doing at the time.
If I’m at home sitting on my ass waxing the philosophical I’m a believer in evolutionism.
If I’m pinned downed somewhere and some jackass is trying to shoot me, you bet your ass I’m a big believer in religionism or any other kind of ism that will keep me breathing.
So there you go.
June 16th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
That depends if you believe in evolutionism or religionism.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Oh and you’re just gonna leave us in suspense.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Ah, but edc, could it not be said that violent video games, movies, etc., exist only because that desire for violence already existed? Which came first; the metaphorical chicken, or the symbolic egg?
(For the record, yes, I do know which came first in the actual chicken and egg debate. I’m just using the adage to illustrate.)
June 16th, 2008 at 1:27 am
and live-action hypnotoad ftw
June 16th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Mechafox:
yeah, because your environments has no outcome on your life, right?
I mean, you just happen to have an american accent because you CHOSE to, not because you hear it a lot, right?
or to put it in a way you atrophied video game destroyed brain can comprehend, your head would CHOSE to explode if hit by a bullet, the bullet itself is ineffectual, right?
violence in movies, comics and videogames causes violent tendencies*, deal with it.
*I remember reading in some stupid game magazine some loser saying “video games do not cause violence! I want to rip jack thompson’s head off!”
morons.
June 15th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I have a great deal of respect for the Japanese, but, damn…when they flip out, they do it in a big way.
June 15th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
WWWWEEEEEEAAAAK!
What about the guy who ate his wife and daughter while they were still alive?
Or the guy who ripped out his own guts?
Cmon people, we can do better than that. This puts notorious japanese killers to shame.
June 14th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Sorry I didn’t have a chance to say so sooner: Swaim, that was an excellent read.
June 14th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Wish I was still alive….I’d like to try one of them there yeller guys…..I’ll bet they taste like chicken. I did eat the brains of a Hmong once….but got hungry again in an hour. Wouldn’t recommend them.
All this food talk is makin me hungry! Watch yer heads.
June 14th, 2008 at 5:32 am
I am meet many hot squid men and squid women and big booty squid people on http://www.meetsquidpeople.come
June 13th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Don’t know why they created the games like this. For me, I never play such games. But I am addicted to hot online dating club @@ Plusmeet.c o m___, where many big boob women, big booty women and big manful guys mingle and seek fun&love! many fun stuff there: videos, photos, winks, emails, chat, blogs, forum…
June 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I was hungry when I wrote that, and drunk, whatever excuses the error… murderous asians make me hungry. merh ah.. shit.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Holland has a real problem with squid people, they arrived just before the Germans invaded in 1941 and took a pro-Nazi stance, betraying several Resistance factions and through unreported claims may have cost the Allies failure during Operation Market Garden.
The reason they couldn’t get a firm foothold through the parachute attack? Squid ink. Fucking everywhere.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Well the best thing about squid people is contrary to what you would think they taste like chicken.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Cute is subjective and I just expect that frog to say ” So Mr. Bond” any damn minute.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Fuckin’ squid people, coming here illegally and taking our jobs…
June 12th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
@Purplestar
Yeah, and people that walk or ride bikes aren’t concidered “people” either.
I guess that just leaves the parapleigics… and squid people.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
AS for the Dutch link,
“A person could fall into this, but also a dog, a child, people walking, bikers, motorcyclists — anybody,”
I just thought it was funny that they don’t group children and all the rest in with simply “person”. Language barrier, I guess.
The frog is cute.
Japan is scary.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
@ phoenixxx I thought that frog was creepy and scary looking too.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
@Benihana, I believe we can all agree there is way too much depraved, violent, disgusting shitty horrifying, perverted, demented stuff going on, way too often, in our country, perpetrated by white people, for example police, lynch mobs, serial killers, child abusers, and just psycho killers who leave people hacked up in the yard . . . so calm down. I don’t think this post was meant to leave any segment of society out of the depraved equation. We can see some of the depraved, demented stuff of everyone, everywhere, right here, written on these posts, by internet folks who know they will remain anonymous. We should all get a grip on our hostility. Communication is still communication, it still means something. Benihana, I get your point, but it is really hidden in your vulgar hostility. So calm down.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Right this coming from the verrrry same fucktards who celebrate the last words of serial kilers and WHY NOT?!! Since you shitholes are just p-e-r-f-e-c-t fucking angels no matter WHAT your sick,demented,depraved,violent,disgusting,shitty,horrifying,perverted behavior as looooong as they are WHITE it’s all right,right?!! BITCHES!
June 12th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
they must REALLY love breakfast in madison, WI
June 12th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I’ve noticed you’ve brought up Madison, WI a couple times now, any reason for this? I ask cause that is the city of my birth and also, coincidently, the capitol of Wisconsin, which I’m sure you’re aware has the highest cereal killer per capita rate of any state in the union. Something I’ll find myself declaring proudly when I’ve had a few to many to drink and people start making fun of my cheese head and love of brandy.
June 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
“A 17-year-old cut off his mother’s head while she slept, wrapped it, and delivered it to a police box, whatever that is.”
What the fuck? Was the little bastard delivering a particularly gruesome gift to Doctor Who? I didn’t even know it was his birthday. Or that he had a thing for disembodied heads.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
i love Ninja scroll!!
BTW michael- that frog does not “defray the natural horror of this post” It is creepy and weird! and it looks like it is plotting my death, or maybe he just looks stoned. In that case- awesome.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:06 am
It’s all that freaking Manga dude. Ninja Scroll makes me want to slice half bee-men in HALF!!!
June 12th, 2008 at 6:24 am
maybe if it wasn’t for takashi miike movies there would be twice as many bizarro murders?If only because he would have to find something else to do than pump out batshit crazy movies at an unbelievable rate
June 12th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Man… I miss ‘Fucky and the Tits’
June 12th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Don’t know why they created the games like this. For me, I never play such games. But I like to watch hot sexy photos&videos @@ Plusmeet.c o m___, where many big boob women, big booty women and big manful guys mingle and seek fun&love! every man like beauty, right/ LOL
June 12th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Don’t you get it? It’s highlander syndrome. There can be only one. And considering how many people live in japan it’s only gonna get worse from here on out.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
We can’t be #1 if our massive murder rate becomes mundane and boring! That’s why Japan makes CNN.com and Cracked.com! It’s clear what we must do. Creative crimes. It should be in every Bachelor of Arts program. (The B.S. kids are just stuck with actually being able to get jobs but remaining virgins. Or so I’ve heard from the hobos with which I congregate.)
June 11th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
We’re #1, We’re #1, We’re # 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 11th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Damn right we beat the pants off other countries in murdering our own. USA! USA!
June 11th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
seriously Japan, what the fuck?
June 11th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Oh, I know I’m way more likely to be killed living in the US. I’m just pointing out that for whatever reason, their slayings seem to be just plain more horrifying/imaginative. America still beats the pants off of nearly any country when it comes to murdering its own citizens.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I lived in Tokyo for 2 years. Its a great city, I always felt safe. That being said, some friends and I did have a Yakuza member come after us in Shibuya while leaving a club, and in the resulting fracas he broke my jaw. I would still go back, and would still feel perfectly safe. Such crimes are extremely rare, just like these stabbings are. They are just so wild they get tons of attention. Murder in America, and other countries as well, is more common than any of us would like to think, its just the sensational stories that grab the headlines.
Also, while I don’t believe that videogames and movies make people violent, its clear that people with mental problems do get ideas from them. As anime can be crazy violent, people with pre existing conditions can get some pretty horrific ideas from it. But the vast majority of anime watchers, video gamers, and movie goers aren’t going to kill people.
All that said, Swaim, top notch work as usual.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I think the Dutch can blame video games. Damn you, Pitfall.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
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June 11th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
put the head on a fencepost? What, was he trying to warn traitors that Japan is the new 14th century England?
June 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Wow Dan, that was actually very insightful and well thought out. When did I leave cracked.com?
Regardless of what website I might be at now (or what alternate universe I’ve been sucked into) you’re absolutely right. And as a bonus the lack of firearm availability in Japan forces outbursts into a different direction than you would see here in the States. I wonder if that applies to some of the creepy crimes I’ve been hearing about in England lately as well.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Can anyone post a video of fucky and the tits
June 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Really? You’re scared of a country that, according to your own posted link, is “one of the safest countries in the developed world?”
Sure they don’t keep as tight of a lid on their freaky nasty stuff, but all of it is just as available to any member of the myspace generation who wants to look. The reason for Japan’s low crime rate is their long tradition of honor which has resulted in tight social cohesion; crime is not only punished by law but also looked down upon by your social circle (unless they happen to be criminals themselves, like yakuza).
The downside to such a tight knit society is that it deeply alienates outsiders, those who do not conform can be made to feel hopeless and disconnected from the rest of society. In a land where mental instability is ignored and counseling unavailable, random outburts are bound to happen.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I was really all excited to go to Japan in the coming year or so and now I am not so sure. I also find it odd that there is a whole subculture in America that thrives off the table scraps of Japan’s insane gruesome multimedia empire. Should we start worrying about them? Maybe Homeland Security can go all Spec-Ops on Otakon. Ha! Great Post Swaim.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Now, if ever get to Japan, I’ll be shooting anyone who comes near me.
Ya know, to be safe.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Has anyone considered blaming videogames? Maybe we can ship Jack Thompson to Japan. It’s a win/win.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Edgy, bold, hilarious. Your post was good too Michael.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Wow
June 11th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times. It all starts off as innocently cooking mushrooms while naked wearing a horse-mask and the next thing you know you’re in an intersection with a knife and blood everywhere.