September, 2006
|
September 1, 2006 Today's Naked Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In 1786, the Comtesse Jeanne de la Motte Valois stole and sold a magnificent diamond necklace that Louis XV had ordered, before his death, for his mistress Madame du Barry. She was sentenced to be birched naked in public, and then branded on each shoulder with the letter 'V', for voleuse (thief). However, after one shoulder had been marked she twisted violently, and the hot iron fell on her naked breast. Culled
from: The
History of Torture ********************************************************************** The poor Comtesse!!! Such a terrible indignity!! However enticing it may be, I certainly hope it's one that never befalls THIS Comtesse! Morbid Dream Du Jour! Which reminds me - I had the most fascinating dream last night. I had in my possession a number of corpses that were given to me by a murderous, yet generous, casual acquaintance. I was dissecting them and posing them for photographs and the like. You know, normal everyday stuff that anyone would do if given the chance. And then some woman peeks in and sees what I'm up to and gets away. As I fully possessed all my senses, I realized that she was most likely going to the police rather than doing the sensible thing and keeping her mouth shut (or joining in), so I sojourned to England. In the meantime, the police did their research, and the story of the sick Comtesse DeSpair from the internet who murdered all these innocent people and dissected them and photographed them for fun spread all over the news. I saw that I was on the front of Esquire, in my blue Elastica t-shirt with the fetching headline "The Comtesse Of Death". "My goodness," I thought, "it's such an unflattering photograph, I'm most embarrassed! But it is kind of cool to be getting all this publicity. I wonder what the morbids [my pet name for you all] are thinking?" Eventually, the law caught me and told me that I was under arrest for the murder of the corpses. I protested: "I didn't kill them! Granted, I probably shouldn't have dissected their bodies like that, but I didn't murder them." Can you believe that they didn't believe me? Of course,
I awoke with a smile on my face. What a lovely dream! ******* Wretched Recommendations! NightRaven has an addition to the Grim Gaming list: "Got a new game to go on the Grim Gaming list, Ghost Master. This game is really really cool. You take on the role of a ghost master, the person that puts all the ghosts and spirits in a haunted house, and your mission is to help mortals along with a task, i.e. summoning a new spirit, or to scare everyone out of a particular building, or drive them all insane. "Each level allows you to pick several spirits from your list to take to 'work'. They each then must bind to a particular item to use their powers. Some bind just anywhere inside or outside, some have to bind to things that have been murdered like stuffed deer heads or corpses hidden behind walls, still others bind to water items or electrical items. Their powers range from the mundane rattling of chains, to a rain of spiders, to the 'danse macabre' where every mortal in the room with your ghost becomes a puppet under his control. "The levels on this game take you everywhere from a sorority house, to an old sanitarium (where you have to battle the ghostbusters) to the house from poltergeist (where you have to battle that funny talking short lady). After each level you're allowed to buy more powers for your ghosts to make them even scarier for your next mission. "The graphics in this game are quite good. The view is like that of The Sims, but the graphics are 100 times better and some of the ghost power effects are really well done. I think the best thing about it is that you can go into first person mode for both the ghosts and the mortals and see through the people's eyes what it looks like when you walk around a corner and someone is standing there ripping their head in half laughing at you. "I highly recommend you check this game out." Sounds fascinating! ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Janice stumbled across something of interest: "I came across a new invention (seeking patent) that will be used to assist in doing brain autopsy. Basically, this is a bone cutting device designed to quickly open the brain case for the autopsy. Normally they just draw a line around the head and then use a hand held instrument to cut. However, the designer of this device presents his invention as a fairly obvious can opener.... I thought you might be interested. Just reading about it is sufficiently morbid enough to gain my attention." |
|
September 2, 2006 Today's Heated Yet Truly Morbid Fact! An elderly Serb ended a heated argument with his neighbor by lobbing a hand grenade and severing the man's arm. Milan Djokic, 70, was charged with attempted murder and illegal weapons possession after attacking Slavko Grujic, also 70, in the northern town of Zrenjanin on July 15, 2003. Grujic first caught the grenade and threw it back, but the device exploded on a second try by Djokic. Culled
from: Reuters ********************************************************************** Sheesh,
has this guy never seen a horror movie before? You NEVER give a killer
a second chance!! Especially with a hand grenade - the one weapon where
close DOES count! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Jeanine has a book recommendation: "I wanted to let you know that there is a beautiful book called 'Beautiful Death - Art of the Cemetary' by David Robinson that you might want to check out." This book does look like a good one, based on the Amazon reviews. Beautiful
Death: The Art Of The Cemetery ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Ken sends a very interesting link to a site featuring videos of various plane crashes (some of them fatal) and near misses, which includes three different views of the 747's hitting the WTC towers on 9-11. I wasted about an hour here looking at the various videos. Hope you enjoy it too! http://alexisparkinn.com/aviation_videos.htm
|
|
September 3, 2006 Today's Forbidden Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In California, execution witnesses are forbidden from wearing "blue, black, or grey denim clothing, or yellow raincoats". Culled
from: Last
Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row ********************************************************************** The yellow raincoats I can understand, but blue, black, and grey are my favorite colors! It would be a pity not to see them in my final moments.
******* Recommendations From The Library Eclectica Incidentally, I just finished reading the above referenced book Last Suppers, and I must say it is a most entertaining read! Not only does it list the often quite entertaining final meals of many death row inmates (inspired of course by the Texas Department of Justice which used to list the final meals on its execution page before sadly taking them down a couple of years ago), but it also provides many fun facts about executions, such as the one above. The book is filled with short little snippets which makes it the perfect bathroom reader. I highly recommend putting one in yours today! Last
Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row ******* Wretched Recommendations! Desmodus has a book recommendation for us: "The
Encyclopedia of Preserved People: Pickled, Frozed, and Mummified Corpses
from Around the World" "It's
written for kids but I still found it entertaining and informative.
Lots of good color pictures of mummies, bog people and Now, why
didn't they have books like this when I was a kid? But then again, I
guess that's what National Geographic was for... Hey, some people used
it to see tits, I used it to see decaying corpses! ******* "My Brush With Morbidity" by Jenn "I had a dinner party one night and had just sent my friends off when one of them called to tell me there's been a horrible accident in front of my apartment complex. I ran to the gates hoping it wasn't the other car I'd just sent off and thankfully she was okay. But the accident was still very shocking. "The road in front of my complex is six lanes plus a turning lane dividing the traffic, and the lanes closest to my complex were swarming with cops and paramedics. The entire street was blocked off as they collected evidence of the accident scene. Part of the evidence included the lumps of bloody meat that had been a pedestrian hit by an oncoming vehicle; it seems that the poor guy was hit in front of my driveway and parts of him landed near there, while other parts of him landed several meters further up the road. "One of the dinner guests who called me minutes before described how she had seen them scoop up remains with what looked like a shovel and put it into a plastic bag. She was completely calm in describing the details of it, how the remains were so badly mutilated that she couldn't tell what sex or race the pedestrian had been. A morbid woman after my own heart if ever there was one, but I digress... "We stood among several other spectators and watched the authorities work; we commented on the large pool of blood in the middle of the road. The event made the news and my clinically descriptive friend informed me tonight of what exactly had happened. The deceased had been driving while intoxicated and, for unknown reasons, pulled his car into the turning lane, parked, and attempted to cross the street towards my complex. The oncoming vehicle wasn't able to stop in time and hit him at a high rate of speed after he's stepped into traffic. "I've heard those turning lanes called 'suicide lanes' but I never thought much about the nickname before last night. When I pulled out to go to work today it was all I could think about." |
|
September 4, 2006 Today's Grisly Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In early 1926, Philadelphia chiropractor David Marshall hired chauffeur E.J. Barry to take away parcels from his office. As Barry picked up one of the packages,a human leg fell out. Marshall attempted to pay off Barry to dispose of the bags, but the driver refused. Still, Barry did not immediately go to the authorities after this grisly encounter with Marshall. He only revealed this information after newspapers reported the mysterious disappearance of Anna May Dietrich. Dietrich was reported missing January 19 by her family. Alexander Schul, her brother-in-law, had told police that they should check out David Marshall, whom Dietrich had known for many years. However, Marshall claimed that he hadn't seen her in weeks. It wasn't until January 21 that the case hit the headlines. A woman found a bundle in a Philadelphia suburb containing the headless and legless torso of a woman, later identified as Dietrich. Separate bags containing her head and legs were subsequently found. Finally, the chauffeur Barry came forward with his information about Marshall. Marshall was taken into custody, brought to the morgue, and confronted with the gruesome remains. But he calmly denied any involvement. After intense interrogation by the police, Marshall changed his story. He then claimed that Dietrich had killed herself with poison in his office and that he cut up the body to hide his affair with the girl. Speedy trials being the order of the day, Marshall's began on March 8, 1926. Testimony at the trial focused on the medical evidence and Dietrich's morals in sleeping with a married man. The jury convicted Marshall of only second-degree murder, probably because of their disapproval of the victim, and Marshall was paroled in 10 years. Generously submitted by: Ms Rutybear ********************************************************************** Okay, yesterday's
morbid fact, which stated simply that it is illegal in California for
execution witnesses to wear blue, Makes perfect sense to me now that you explain it that way... ******* Wretched Recommendations! Nikki has a rather unusual recommendation for us: "I saw the movie 'Punch Drunk Love' this weekend. It's not exactly 'morbid' but it certainly was creepy and I LOVED it. It really puts you into the mind of a utterly horrifying bi-polar person. It's disjointed and the speed of the movie fluctuates so frequently, it leaves you a little on edge. "Throughout the entire movie there's some form of music or noise in the background. Sometimes it grows so loud you can barely hear the actors. The music really adds to the delirium of the movie. I had an awful feeling of uneasiness through the whole movie, which I believe was the point. I really enjoyed how this movie focused on really putting you in the mind of the main character, instead of just letting your glimpse at the outside of them. "Adam Sandler is not an actor I enjoy much, but his performance in this movie was definitely not bad. He did well portraying someone who seems disturbed to a point no one could understand. He plays a range of emotions, from Forrest Gump-like simplicity to completely over the edge insane rage. "If you enjoy a movie that makes you feel edgy or uneasy, and really puts you into the mind of a psychotic, this is a great movie. If you want a movie with continuity and flow, this might not be the best movie for you." Well, I actually need movies more to ESCAPE FROM the mind of a psychotic than put myself in one, but I am definitely intrigued! Punch-Drunk
Love (2002) ******* "My Weird Near Brush With Morbidity" by Zubrovka "Awhile back, there was a bad single vehicle accident in front of my home. It happened early in the morning, about 1:30 am on the coldest night of the year. I was in bed asleep. Our home is on top of a ridge above the road, with a steeply sloping front slope of about 100 feet. I have about 20 -30 ft of flat front yard and then it slopes off to the road below. "A young woman, drunk, was driving her Jeep and when she crested the hill where my driveway leaves the road, she must of lost control. About 50 feet past my driveway she left the road, hit the ditch, flipped up the slope at least twice and then flipped back down the slope a couple of times and landed in the ditch. If you stood in the road, facing my property, it looked like a huge triangle had been drawn out on the front slope. Somewhere in all that flipping, she had been thrown clear of the Jeep and lay out on the slope. "Well, my wife and I slept through all that and my wife woke up when all the emergency and sheriff cars showed up. There were about 10 to 15 vehicles with flashing lights out there. My wife and I stood at the bedroom window and looked below to the roadway as people stood around and stared in the wreck and then back up the slope. We finally decided it was a dark colored Jeep and my wife said, 'you don't suppose that's Nicos' Jeep' (my god daughter) to which I replied, 'no she lives over in Missouri, what would she be doing over here at this time of night?' Suddenly the people below emerged from the shadows to the road, carrying a limp body, which they lay on a stretcher and covered over with a sheet and loaded into the ambulance. I was thinking, 'oh no, someone has been killed out there', and my wife said aloud, 'Oh hell, now someone will be putting up one of those roadside memorials in our yard!' "The ambulance slowly drove away and it took the law enforcement about another 2 hours to figure everything out and get the Jeep on a wrecker, The following day, I called my good friend Q to tell him about the wreck and his daughter Nico answered the phone. It WAS her Jeep and she had been driving. (She had an argument with her bf and had put him out, about a mile back up the road before the accident.) "The ER people thought she was dead until she awoke in the ambulance on the way to town. She had spent the night in the hospital and had escaped injuries with only a broken arm and bruises. Very lucky I think. My wife called her and told her the next time she was thinking of dropping by, to use the driveway! I told Q I was thinking of putting up a sign out there that read, Near Miss... I helped him sell the totaled Jeep on eBay." Two thoughts: 1) Zubrovka's wife's comment is hysterical and sounds exactly like something I would think; 2) What does it say about the state of emergency response when they mistake a broken arm and bruises for death? |
|
September 6, 2006 Today's Heartless Yet Truly Morbid Fact! On November 1, 2002 a Nanaimo woman slit her two-year-old daughter's throat before cutting up the body, cooking it with other ingredients and eating the soup. Laurina Marie Aune cannibalized her daughter "so Kyla would be with me forever." Justice James Taylor ruled that while Ms. Aune knew she killed her daughter, she was not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder -- she didn't know it was morally wrong. Ms. Aune, 26, was remanded to the Forensic Psychiatric Institute in Port Coquitlam, as she suffers from schizophrenia. According to court documents Ms. Aune was said to have told officers she killed her daughter because she felt manipulated to do so. "I almost felt like I didn't have any control over myself at the time ... I never wanted to hurt her." Ms. Aune told police she and Kyla had just returned from taking her mother to the airport on Nov. 1, 2002 when it happened. "I couldn't help think that she was hurting all the time. I don't really know what I was thinking at that point. I know that I just wanted to be closer to her," she said. She told police she cooked the bones "to have Kyla with me forever." Police said Aune told them she ate a piece of the heart because she felt that's where her child's spirit was. The child's head was found in Ms. Aune's bedroom. Culled
from: Canada.Com ********************************************************************** I had a horrifying experience over the weekend. My dog (yes, I do have a couple, surprisingly enough) was put on a bland diet of boiled chicken and rice to counter intestinal problems. As a vegetarian, I found that having to boil flesh was a very disgusting task, and I felt like a serial killer with my victims' hearts on the boil. Alas, it appears that I could never have the stomach to be one of those imaginative and exotic killers like Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer who make clothing, altars, and cookware out of the remains. Yet another dream dashed... ;-) ******* Wretched Recommendations! Ogre has a musical recommendation for us: "Although their music is not for everyone, the Tiger Lillies, an English folk/rock/punk/jazz/classical band, always seem to have a morbid musical viewpoint... Albums like 'Shockheaded Peter' and 'The Gorey End' all deal with death in just about every song. Some might think the music is comical or silly, but I always thought that if I was going to die, then this is the kind of music I would hear as I went to the great beyond..." They sound very intriguing! The
Gorey End (based on the work of Edward Gorey) Shockheaded
Peter: A Junk Opera ******* Morbid Trinket Du Jour! Looking for a perfectly demonic shirt to wear to your next concert? Check out the delightfully demonic duds available at Vampire.co.uk! I'm particularly fond of the Raven hoodie: http://www.vampire.co.uk/acatalog/spidt114800.jpg Enjoy! |
|
September 7, 2006 Today's
Artistic Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Most were the work of an enthusiastic French anarchist, Alphonse Laurencic, who invented a form of "psychotechnic" torture, according to the research of the historian Jose Milicua. The cells, built in 1938 and reportedly hidden from foreign journalists who visited the makeshift jails on Vallmajor and Saragossa streets, were as inspired by ideas of geometric abstraction and surrealism as they were by avant garde art theories on the psychological properties of colours. Beds were placed at a 20 degree angle, making them near-impossible to sleep on, and the floors of the 6ft by 3ft cells was scattered with bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent prisoners from walking backwards and forwards, according to the account of Laurencic's trial. The only option left to prisoners was staring at the walls, which were curved and covered with mind-altering patterns of cubes, squares, straight lines and spirals which utilised tricks of colour, perspective and scale to cause mental confusion and distress. Lighting effects gave the impression that the dizzying patterns on the wall were moving. A stone bench was similarly designed to send a prisoner sliding to the floor when he or she sat down, Mr Milicua said. Some cells were painted with tar so that they would warm up in the sun and produce asphyxiating heat. Mr Milicua has claimed that Laurencic preferred to use the colour green because, according to his theory of the psychological effects of various colours, it produced melancholy and sadness in prisoners. Culled
from: The Guardian ********************************************************************** Fantastic! I shall have to build a guest room like that at The Castle DeSpair. By the way, in case you are interested (though lord only knows why you would be), here's my idea of Modern Art As Torture: I will
have nightmares for weeks! (Absolute murderous hatred to Michelle for
the link!)
******* Wretched Recommendations! Nep has an intriguing film recommendation for us! "There is a movie about Fritz Haarman (besides M) called 'Tenderness of the Wolves' that Anchor Bay has re-issued. It was originally made in 1973 and it's actually pretty good, as well as surprisingly sympathetic toward him. At least I thought so, anyway. "Amazon.com has this to say about it: "'Based on the same true story that inspired Fritz Lang's M, Ulli Lommel's Tenderness of the Wolves takes an unsettling look at the life of murderer, black marketeer, and police informant Fritz Haarman, a pedophile who used his position to sweep the train stations and pick up young runaway boys. Living in the depression of post-WWI Germany, Haarman lured the boys to his attic apartment with the promise of a warm meal and bed, only to emerge alone the next morning with secondhand clothes and black market "pork." Lommel melds images from M and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu with the elegant camerawork, evocative sets, and tableaux-style direction associated with the films of New German cinema auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who produced the film and appears in a small role. Screenwriter/star Kurt Raab suggests Peter Lorre by way of the vampire Nosferatu with his shaved head, child-like smile and hunched walk, an insidiously beguiling boy-man who strangles his innocent young victims and feasts on their blood. The film is handsomely photographed and well performed by a cast made up of Fassbinder's regular troupe, but becomes muddled toward the middle, tangling the many threads before finally winding them together in a bold, baroque climax. Though lacking in the rich irony of Fassbinder's works, it's a striking, often startling film dominated by Raab's unsettling performance. --Sean Axmaker --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.'" Sounds fascinating to me! Fritz Haarman is one of the great monsters of our times. Here's the Amazon link if you'd like to read more about it: ******* "My Brush With Morbidity" by The Goltls "This was a couple of years ago. We live in the country, so seeing flashing lights and firetrucks and ambulances is a big deal. Well, they were all converging at a railroad crossing about 2 miles from our house. We drove over there. There was a potato chip truck smashed and in the ditch. We turned right and drove along the highway. About 100 feet from the crossing, there was the body (not the head) of the driver. They were covering it as we drove by. My husband said it was a deer. My 11 year old daughter said, 'No, it wasn't. There is his head.' His head, from midway through the eyes to the chin, was lying in the ditch, staring at us. The top part of his head was never found (they think coyotes or souvenir hunters got it)." |
|
September 8, 2006 Today's
Foul Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: Snopes.Com ********************************************************************** Jody sent me an update regarding yesterday's MFDJ about surreal anarchist prisons. Alas, it appears that there may be some factual difficulties with this tale... "Today's morbid fact made my eyes goggle. Anarchists building _prisons_?! Apparently some modern anarchists have questioned Jose Milicua's credibility... the story is here if you're curious." ******* Wretched Recommendations! Sunflower has a few book recommendations for us. "The first is Cruddy by Lynda Barry. A really good book. A total page turner! I was cheering for the main character." I can second Sunflower's enthusiasm for this book - it's one of the best works of fiction I've ever read. I rate this one five skulls! Cruddy
"Next is Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite. Most books by her are excellent, but this happens to be my favorite. Way twisted and, at the risk of being looked at as a total lunatic, it gets better every time I read it." Exquisite
Corpse "The last is The Art of Suicide by Ron M. Brown. In all honesty, I haven't read it entirely yet, but it has some of the most incredible paintings and drawings... everything from ancient Greece to the early 20th century, even an odd photo of the Heaven's Gate thing." The
Art Of Suicide ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! For all you biker dudes and babes, here is the answer to your funeral prayers: a motorcycle sidebar hearse! "For a dignified final ride." http://www.motorcyclefunerals.com/index.htm Thanks to Steve O' for the link. |
|
September 10, 2006 Today's
Crumpled Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Now, as Melvin Purvis and his agents waited outside the movie theater, a police car suddenly drew up. The cinema cashier had noticed the plain clothes cops, assumed they were planning to stage a robbery, and rang the local police station. A Federal agent rushed up to the car, showed his idetnfication, and ordered the police to move on fast. A few minutes later, John Dillinger walked out of the cinema with the two women, one of them wearing a bright red dress, so the police could identify her. To Purvis's relief, Dillinger pushed clear of the crowd, and started along an empty stretch of pavement. Purvis yelled: "Stick 'em up, John, you're surrounded." Dillinger went for his gun; dozens of shots sounded, and he crumpled to the pavement. Culled from: Crimes and Punishment: The Illustrated Crime Encyclopedia, Volume 10 ********************************************************************** Of course, as with many historic buildings associated with Chicago's gangster-era, the Biograph Theater has been virtually destroyed through renovation. Here's a site with some info about the current state of the theater: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/273/
******* Wretched Recommendations! L. has a film recommendation for us: "I wanted to recommend a film to you if you haven't seen it yet: 'Titus'. Stars Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, and Alan Cumming to name a few. It is Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus directed by Julie Taymor who had been running the production on stages all over until she was offered the chance to create the film. I haven't read all of Shakepeare's works but by far I would say that this is the only story I've ever seen weave grace, beauty, mutilation, death, and insanity into such a complex and exemplary representation of human capacity... or incapacity... if you can tolerate the verse of Shakespeare please do watch the film as soon as you can." Titus
(2000) ******* Ghastly! Alf has some gruesome images from those wacky Thai tabloids. Er... "enjoy"! |
|
September 11, 2006 Today's
Fattening Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: Daily News ********************************************************************** Wretched Recommendations! Bad Kitty recommends a book that sounds positively fascinating! Hunting
the Devil "[I] happened to stumble upon a wonderful book. The book, by Richard Lourie, is titled Hunting the Devil. I am not much of a reader, but this book is to my delight very entertaining. It is about 'the pursuit, capture, and confession of the most savage serial killer in history.' That killer is none other than the sexual cannibal himself, Andrei Chikatilo. "This
story goes back into Chikatilo's younger days and also into the life
of the investigator that caught him and made him confess to his crimes,
Issa Kostoev. All these wonderful murders took place only a couple of
decades ago in Russia. And to think that I knew nothing about them until
recently! I have to study up on my serial killer memory for I am getting
a bit rusty these days (and to think I am still oh so young!). I will
have to do just that! ******* Morbid Phrase Du Jour! Lennis has an excellent morbid phrase for us: Cold Cook
- one who has to deal with 'cold meat,' i.e. a lifeless body. An undertaker.
Mortuaries are sometimes referred to as cold cookshops. |
|
September 12, 2006 Today's
Explosive Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Reports
from witnesses state that the walls of the school bulged, and then the
roof briefly lifted off the building. The roof then crashed back down
and the building collapsed. A 2 ton concrete block was thrown clear
of the building and crushed a 1936 Chevrolet parked nearby. Estimates
of the number dead vary from 296 to 319, but that number could be much
higher, as many of the residents of New London at the time were transient
oilfield workers, and there is no way to determine for certain how many
of these roughnecks collected the bodies of their children in the days
following the disaster, and returned them to their respective homes
for burial. Approximately 600 students and 40 teachers were in the building
at the time. Only about 130 escaped without serious injury. Culled
from: Wikipedia ********************************************************************** As an interesting aside, after this incident Texas (and eventually the rest of the world) began adding a smelly chemical compound called thiol or mercaptan to natural gas so that leaks could be detected. Good thing too! I can't tell you how many times the burner has gone out and if not for that familiar smell of danger, I would never have noticed that I was being enveloped in natural gas. Hmmmm... on second thought, life might be a tad bit more exciting if that were the case... ******* Wretched Recommendations! Bruce recommends a book that is a must-have as far as I'm concerned. I recently purchased this one but I haven't read it yet... but I am looking forward to it! Dark
Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 The Amazon
synopsis: ******* Morbid Word Du Jour! Lynne sends a delightful morbid word: CATAFALQUE
|
|
September 13, 2006 Today's
Unconscious Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: WorldOnline.Co.Za ********************************************************************** But I want to know about the piglet!! Damned lousy news service! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Jason has a fiction recommendation for us: "Have you read Chuck Palahniuk's 'Lullaby'? I think you might like it -- if for nothing else, for the paramedic with a penchant for necrophilic romps with dead models prior to loading them into the ambulance." Ah, brings back lovely memories of the movie Aftermath... Lullaby ******* "My Brushes With Morbidity" by Shelley "I guess I have been 'blessed' more than most. "#1. It was a really windy day a couple of years later and I and some friends were stuck in traffic in the middle lane of a suburban main street. We were watching a girl, a young teen, walk down the sidewalk - she was so jaunty and smiling it was a pleasure to see her. As she walked under a tree, the wind broke a branch and it fell, hitting her in the the head. It caved in the back of her head and she fell to the sidewalk dead, right in front of us. [Now you know why she was so jaunty and smiling! - despair] We couldn't even get out of the car, we were so locked in, but a police car in the jam called an ambulance. "#2. A decade later a friend and I were driving home on a little curvy hilly New England 2-lane highway when a man in a little red sportscar driving like he was in the Indy passed us on a curve and left us in the dust. About a mile down the road we came on a major car accident, the red car had run head-on into a truck hard enough to knock the truck off the road. The people inside the truck were dazed and bleeding and the windshield was shattered. "But the red car was about half as long as it had been, with the engine in the front seat. The driver's top half was folded sideways and crushed flat under the engine, his bottom half was sitting upright with his legs out of the car. One leg was gouged raw the whole length right through his pants leg and had denim strips embedded in it. The other had a severe compound fracture with the thigh bone sticking up out of his jeans and muscle meat hanging off of it like flags. Weird thing was, there was no blood under his legs. We figured he must have bled out at the top end when the engine hit him and the damage to his legs happed after that when the car was rebounding across the road." |
|
September 14, 2006 Today's
Overcrowded Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: The
Pessimist's Guide To History ********************************************************************** Well, there's a quick cure for that overcrowding problem!! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Keith recommends what sounds like an excellent book! Mutants:
On Genetic Variety and the Human Body "Mutants is rapidly becoming one of my favorite books. The book covers all sorts of human genetic mutations and what causes them. It is both readable and entertaining. Although it does not actually explain how to recreate the mutations in lab animals, it does explain how the experiments were performed. I whole-heartedly recommend it, although I wish there were more pictures." ******* Morbid Trinket Du Jour! I always wondered whether vampires ever bother with anything as lively as having sex. Well, apparently, they do! And here are the condoms to prove it: http://www.vampirecondoms.com/ Thanks to VenusNightShadow for the link. |
|
September 15, 2006 Today's
Overcrowded Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Benner, who climbed the steps alone, was married on Saturday. It was not known where the couple had married or where they were staying. Benner's wife did not know that he was climbing the lighthouse, and had no idea of his intentions. "There was no indication given to predict this behavior," Doll said, "either from his wife, or the folks who saw him at the lighthouse. Everyone said he was acting perfectly normal." Doll said that park service officials were not aware of any history of mental illness in Benner, who worked as a mechanic. Hardgrove said that Benner made no statement, or even a shout or cry, before he jumped off the backside of the tower at about 2:20 p.m., landing face-first on the grass inside a fenced area. Culled
from: HamptonRoads.Com ********************************************************************** See, this is why you don't "save yourself for when you're married". The disappointment of the first time is too much to bear. ******* Wretched Recommendations! Although you know that I don't tend to read fiction, I just might have to break that mold for this one! Geek
Love Robin has the following to say about it: "Might I recommend *Geek Love* by Katharine Dunn? The horribly-grossed-out negative Amazon reviews are worth a gander, at the very least. "The main review reads: 'A wild, often horrifying, novel about freaks, geeks and other aberrancies of the human condition who travel together (a whole family of them) as a circus. It's a solipsistic funhouse world that makes "normal" people seem bland and pitiful. Arturo the Aqua-Boy, who has flippers and an enormous need to be loved. A museum of sacred monsters that didn't make it. An endearing "little beetle" of a heroine. Sort of like Tod Browning's Freaks crossed with David Lynch and John Irving and perhaps George Eliot -- the latter for the power of the emotions evoked." ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Suzanne sends a link to a wonderfully freaky website for Elizabeth J. Anderson, an artist who makes wonderful replicas of freak show canvases. The website also includes an abundance of excellent information of freak show stars from the past. Highly recommended! |
|
September 17, 2006 Today's
Vile Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: The
Good Old Days — They Were Terrible! ********************************************************************** I highly recommend checking out the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York to get a good feel for the awful conditions that the immigrant families had to weather. It's very enlightening! http://www.tenement.org/ ******* Wretched Recommendations! Jim recommends his favorite series of movies: Basket Case. Basket
Case Basket
Case II Basket
Case III "In brief, the plot line is that a child is born with a head attached to his side. The father has the head amputated and tossed into a trash bin. The head survives and later on it and its' 'twin brother' reunite. They go on a rampage against society in general and the father in particular. In one of the sequels they find refuge in a conclave of similar freikazoids. I have all three movies on tape but haven't looked at them in at least 10 years, so my memory of the details may not be 100% accurate. Definitely worth checking out by you and all your morbid fans." ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Suzanne sends a link to a wonderfully freaky website for Elizabeth J. Anderson, an artist who makes wonderful replicas of freak show canvases. The website also includes an abundance of excellent information of freak show stars from the past. Highly recommended! |
|
September 18, 2006 Today's
Illegible Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: Columbine-Angels.Com ********************************************************************** The Comtesse Recommends... Mütter
Museum If you don't have the calendars, this is an excellent way to get some of the delightfully artistic photographs of the creepy exhibits at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. My primary complaint is that the text is often a bit short on detail, but it could very well be that not that much is known about some of the specimens. Also, the lack of photographs of some of the most interesting exhibits - such as the Soap Lady and the Giant Colon - is annoying, especially since they don't let you take pictures yourself at the museum. But there are more than enough fascinating photographs to make this a worthwhile addition to morbid coffee tables everywhere! Alf scanned
some of the pictures from the book and presents them on his site for
your enjoyment: You may
also be interested in my travelogue to the museum: ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! I've featured this game before, but it's been quite awhile, and it IS a classic of the genre... so why not visit Five Finger Fillet again? Thanks to M3m3s3 for the link. |
|
September 19, 2006 Today's
Fatal Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: Air
Disasters ********************************************************************** I just finished reading the book Air Disasters (linked above) by Leo Marriott, Stanley Stewart, and Michael Sharpe. It's a fairly good book, although it tends to get bogged down in so much technical detail that unless you're an aviation enthusiast you might not have a clue what the author is talking about. If you're into learning all the technical details behind various air crashes, you may find it quite fascinating, but I found myself skipping pages at times to get to the interesting stuff (ie. the CVR transcripts and body counts). Still, I learned some very interesting tidbits about crashes that I was not previously aware of, so the book definitely has its value. I'd have to rate it three skulls out of five. ******* Morbid Phrase Du Jour! Hey, looks like people like us are making an impact on society after all! They even have an expression for us now: grief tourists! Here's what Word Spy has to say about it: grief tourist
n. Here's
the link to Word Spy: Thanks to Brian Sidlo for passing along "grief tourist" and some of the related phrases. ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Here's the website of an artist who obviously has a great appreciation for the finer things in life. Like freaks! Thanks to vaness for the link. |
|
September 20, 2006 Today's
Stinging Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled
from: Ananova.Com ********************************************************************** "The Stupid Things Drunken People Do" - sounds like the title of a best-seller! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Amber has a fiction recommendation for us: Year
Of Wonders "This is a very nicely written novel based on the village of Eyam's plight during the Black Death. It is told in the first person of a young widow and servant whose boarder is the tailor who brought the fabric from London. I thoroughly enjoyed it." Here is Amazon's synopsis of the book: "Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack up and leave. The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighboring towns and villages, and prevent the contagion from spreading. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. With Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, she tends to the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence, and superstition. All is complicated by the intense, inexpressible feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Year of Wonders sometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction; Anna and Mompellion occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. However, there is no mistaking the power of Brooks's imagination or the skill with which she constructs her story of ordinary people struggling to cope with extraordinary circumstances." ******* "My Brushes With Morbidity" by Seb "Hi
there, I just thought I'd share these with you... The three most morbid
things that ever happened to me. "The train I was sitting in passed a school. Nothing special, right? Wrong, my friend, verrrry wrong.... You see, in Holland the youngsters are really fanatical about their mopeds (50cc motorbikes, you don't need a license for those), so now we can add one 17-year old guy on a souped-up 'Puch Maxi'-moped to the equation. "Train
+ 16 yr. old stoner + level crossing + 17 yr. old boy on a moped thinking
'F*ck those lights, I'm gonna make it!' = a seriously FUBAR'ed train-schedule
for the remainder of the day. "He
had climbed into a tree and fell down. Not a terribly large distance,
just some 12 feet. Unfortunately enough he went down head-first and
impacted on the huge container we used as a tool-shed. He bounced off
and went into the ditch next to our club-house, he had been bobbing
in the water for at least 10 minutes. One of the grown-ups found him,
he jumped into the ditch, pulled Eric out of the water, looked at what
he had landed and started screaming like a banshee. "I
never really got over this, but at least I'm able to make sick jokes
about it today... :)" |
|
September 22, 2006 Today's
Dangling Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A team of firefighters managed to get the body from the window and onto a backboard, which was then slid onto a ladder. Eight men held the board while the ladder was removed. Only discarded rubber gloves, lying on a small patch of lawn, remained. Neighbors told police that Mills frequently climbed through the window when he didn't have his keys. Detectives were still trying to piece together the sequence of events leading to his death. It was unclear if alcohol played a role in his death. Culled
from: NorthJersey.com ********************************************************************** Wretched Recommendations! Scott has an educational book recommendation for us about Elizabeth Bathory, the "Blood Countess": Countess
Dracula "This book is fantastic. It explains that [Elizabeth] was no worse at mistreating her employees than any other noble person in those turbulent times in Central Europe. It explains that she was, in fact, persecuted for being a woman - her male rivals engineered trumped up charges to enrich themselves with her property. The book is quite fascinating and contains information on how brutal times were then... which would no doubt interest you! But, unfortunately for lovers of gore, Elizabeth Bathory was not a monster." Damn!!
I hate when the truth is less morbid than fiction! ******* Morbid Word Du Jour! Ms Jukes submits an interesting entry from http://www.askoxford.com/ : zabernism |
|
September 23, 2006 Today's
Fiery Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Culled from: Time Out Chicago, December 8-15, 2005 ********************************************************************** Banned
from operating commercial flights? Why, that's nonsense!! These days
dirigibles are nothing BUT commercials in flight! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Bruce has a graphic novel recommendation for us - sounds brilliant. I can't believe I'd never heard of this before! Apparently, for several years, Rick Geary has been creating graphic novels based on Victorian-era crime stories, entitled "Treasury of Victorian Murder". Bruce specifically recommends one of his more recent episodes, "dealing with the so-called 'H. H. Holmes', aka The Beast of Chicago. Geary's an excellent illustrator and has done a fine job on the earlier titles (I most enjoyed the Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper ones)." As you might imagine, I moved these to my Wish List immediately! A
Treasury of Victorian Murder Jack
the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders 1888-1889 The
Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River,
Mass., 1892 ******* Evileeta writes to tell us about the dark art of Naoto Hattori: "I have a link to some delightfully disturbing and dark art by a gent named Naoto Hattori. When I'm feeling too good, I like to go to his site and view his terribly twisted creations. It reminds me of the darkness that lives in us all. This is the address: "I know the address looks odd but go there and treat yourself to some not so sweet eye candy. I wish I had extra funds to purchase these vile visions but alas, I have children." The art is, indeed, quite wonderful! |
|
September 24, 2006 Today's
Steaming Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Czinski said Sarovic landed with his feet higher than his head in the pit, and was buried from the knees up. Only his legs from his knees to his feet were visible when rescue workers arrived. Police on the scene believed at first that Sarovic might also have been burned, either by heat from the sludge or by lime, a caustic chemical often used to treat sludge. Czinski said the sludge was steaming. But Thoren said the sludge, from the city of Toronto, was not treated with lime and might have appeared to steam because, as a decomposing biological, it was slightly warmer than the air temperature. Most of the biological component in the sludge is eliminated using microorganisms added to it. The resulting material is not hazardous. Culled
from: Ann Arbor News ********************************************************************** As KSH
says, What do you wanna guess his last words were? Anyway, you know
I only used this as a fact because I wanted to gross you out with the
details of sludge! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Bill has a book recommendation for us: "I highly recommend Flyboys by James Bradley. This is a disturbing look at Japanese war atrocities during WWII, replete with interviews of both the veterans that survived them and their Japanese captors. This is NOT just another boring war history book; I have been reading the MFDJ as long as I can remember (and have occasionally drawn scorn from guests for serving foie gras and liver pate during 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'Real Autopsy' viewings), but I actually had to put the book down on several occasions to keep my lunch down!" Sounds excellent! Another one to add to the Wish List! Flyboys ******* KT has a morbid sightseeing recommendation: "I spent some time in Vienna last summer and that's a fun town to visit. From the statue of Madonna of the Plague to the actual mummies in the crypt of Saint Michael's which you can go down and see up close and personally, they lock the door behind you. The guide has a nice big flashlight so you get to see everything up close and personally. "There's also a tour in the crypts of Stephensdom... that's more about atmosphere and less about anything else. They walk you through this ridiculously ill lit passageway so you can see shadowy skulls in the plague pits. The tour guide gave some lovely stories though. Apparently there was a large death boom in Vienna so all the dead were crammed under Stephensdom which is the main cathedral the stench was so bad that the church was unusable so they took convicts from the local jail sent them down into the crypts and set them to work opening the coffins, undressing the corpses and then scraping all the flesh off the bones and then stacking them against the walls. So you get to see through little grills into rooms the walls of which are covered in bones sorted by type. "There is a Museum of Medical Oddities. I didn't see it, but I met another tourist who had... she claimed it to be quite intense but then she took to chattering about paintings by TB patients so I don't know the range of weirdness at the museum. It has odd open hours though. There is also a Museum of Funerary Customs. This requires an appointment and a knowledge of German. Unfortunately the friend I was touring with, who was also my German translator gets freaked out by such places so I didn't get to go. "The Haspburgs, the royal family, is buried there in three pla |