reasonablenut

Fron the NY Times yesterday you, have this redeeming quality:

"Hmong Hunter Charged With 6 Murders is Said to Be a Shaman"

The accused, Chai Soua Vang of St. Paul, seeks "the other world" when he tries to cure sick people or invoke divine protection for those who request it, said his friend and former hunting companion Ber Xiong.

If he cures sick people he seems to be adept at killing healthy ones. I'm glad Mr. Vang was an upstanding pillar of the community. None of this has anything to do with the act he committed.

"He is a special person," Mr. Xiong said. "Chai speaks to the other side. He asks the spirits there to release people who are suffering on earth."

I guess on this particular broadcast the spirits were chanting "Kill, kill, kill."

"He danced on a small table for about two hours," said Mr. Xiong, an employee of an audio technology business in nearby Bloomington. "He was calling out the whole time, not to the people in the room, but to the other world. My job was to sit near the table and make sure he did not fall off."

The more I read this story, the less I see it has to do with murder. He was talented; he loved to hunt; he did a pretty good table dance; who fucking cares. He killed a lot of people. I don't give a shit if he has red phone to God.

It is unclear whether Mr. Vang's role as a shaman is in any way connected to the shootings. But Vincent Her, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin who studies traditional Hmong culture, said he did not believe that shamans could go into a trance so deep that they would lose touch with the physical world, even in a situation of extreme stress.

Thanks for that analysis, college guy. And if he did go into a trance that deep and killed 6 people, that would have made it any more palatable?

"That would make him or her unable to mediate between the two worlds, which is the core of the shaman's role," Mr. Her said.

He seems to be unable to mediate anything, including reality. That other world is one I have no experience in, so I will leave it to the experts.

Editor's note: given the wacked out comments I've been receiving, this should be the last post on this issue. If you want to kill me, just email me and we can set a date and time. If nothing else, I am courteous, though often late.