This is a rather grotesque story.  If you have a sensitive constitution and/or a hair-trigger gag reflex…you’ve been warned.

Nicolas Cocaign has just been sentenced by a French court to 30 years in prison for (…wait for it…) murdering his cellmate, cutting open his chest and “cooking [part of] the man’s left lung with shallots, garlic and some left over rice.”

Now, a number of interesting questions come to mind (we’ll get to the one about what would motivate anyone to do such a thing in a minute).  First, where the fuck were the guards while all this was happening?  (Answer: No one has explained this that I have heard.)  Second, what kind of prisoner has access to cooking utensils, shallots, garlic and rice?  (Answer: French ones.)

One morbidly hilarious aspect to this incident is that Cocaign actually intended to eat the victim’s heart.  It’s hard to see how he could make such a mistake,  I mean, I’m no expert, but I think it’s pretty much common knowledge that lung tastes like lung, and heart…tastes just like chicken.

Finally, what would motivate someone to do such a thing?  According to Cocaign, he had convinced himself there was no god and he could indulge himself with impunity. Ah, who am I kidding?  He murdered his cellmate in order to “take his soul.”

I know I’ve beaten this drum before, but once again I have to wonder why it is that profoundly delusional people almost always have religious delusions?  Why are there no psychotics who obsess over the lack of an afterlife and take things to the (il)logical extreme?  Is there some connection between run-of-the-mill religious belief and (not to put too fine a point on it) insanity?