Warning: This post contains strong imagery that is inappropriate for the dinner table, especially when your flatmates are trying to eat their Turkish sausages and sauerkraut in peace.

Over at The Awl, Josh Kurp offers a brief and rather disturbing history of how the internet has helped facilitate our cannibalistic fantasies:

After turning on a video camera to record the entire process, he cut off Brandes’ penis around 6:30 p.m

Brandes, who had taken cold medicine and sleeping pills to lessen the pain, picked up half of his severed penis and attempted to bite into it, a fantasy of his for years. It didn’t work because the meat was too thick, so Meiwes boiled the halves and seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic.

At 8 p.m., Meiwes ran a bath at Brandes’ request so that his guest could pass away peacefully as the blood drained out of his body. Brandes fell asleep in the tub as Meiwes sat in another room reading a Star Trek novel. A couple hours later, he called out for Meiwes, climbed out of the tub, and collapsed. Meiwes supported him to the bedroom. He lived a few more hours. Then, at 3:30 am, he attempted to rise out of bed and again collapsed. It was his last physical action; his whispered last words were “I have to piss.”