Decidedly Grim

This is a pretty cool animation:

Sundry

Today’s Crazy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

“It was pretty bizarre,” said neighbor Ramon Rodriguez. Rodriguez was one of the first to discover 34-year-old Angelo Mendoza on April 28, 2009 after police said Mendoza bit an eyeball out of his 4- year-old son’s face and ate it. “The guy was crazy. Real bug-eyed; he had to be on drugs,” said Rodriguez. Court documents said neighbors checked on Mendoza’s son, Angelo Jr., after they noticed the father acting nervously and fleeing from his east Bakersfield apartment in his wheelchair. Inside, they found little Angelo naked and bleeding. Police said the boy had numerous bites to his hands and his eyes were swollen shut. Doctors said the boy’s left eye and muscle were completely missing. His other eye was mutilated beyond repair. The boy told them, “My daddy ate my eyes out.” Rodriguez said meanwhile Mendoza approached him at a neighbor’s vacant house down the street. Rodriguez said the boy’s father wheeled himself into the front yard and asked Rodriguez to play with him and a pet dog. He was wearing boxers and a sweater. When Rodriguez refused, Mendoza got off his wheelchair and dragged himself into a back yard, where he found an ax. By then Mendoza had stripped naked. He chained himself to a tree in the back yard and began hacking at his leg with a pickax while yelling incoherently. “He told me to look into the sun and pray with him. I was kinda scared for a minute,” said Rodriguez. Then Rodriguez jumped on Mendoza and wrestled the ax away. As soon as I grabbed the ax he tried to bite me, and I had to hold him down with my knee. There was dry blood around his mouth. I don’t know if it was his own, but I’m pretty sure it was his son’s now that I hear the story,” said Rodriguez. The police report said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP. Rodriguez said had he known about little Angelo, the outcome would have been different. “I would’ve just let him cut his leg off. What happened to his son is not right. I would’ve left him alone,” said Rodriguez. Mendoza was arrested on charges of torture, aggravated mayhem, and cruelty to a child. The toddler is now in the custody of Child Protective Services. Mendoza is due in court May 20. His bail is set at $1 million.

Culled from: turnto23.com
Generously submitted by: Katchaya

When will people learn not to smoke PCP? As soon as I heard the story years ago of the man who cut his own face off and fed it to his dogs, I knew that stuff was NOT to be messed with… now THIS! Poor kid. Maybe the father thought he was The Sandman?

Facts

As you may recall, earlier this year I followed the decline and death of British reality star Jade Goody religiously, fascinated at her emotional exhibitionism at allowing the most vulnerable and painful time of her life to be captured by the cameras. When the cancer eventually extinguished her life, I was sad but also disappointed that I couldn’t take part in her journey any longer.

Enter Farrah Fawcett. I have never really held much opinion one way or the other for Farrah, except I thought she was a bit of a wack-job based on that Letterman interview from a few years back. However, when I heard that she had been having a friend film her battle with terminal cancer and that the documentary was set to be shown, I was immediately captivated. The documentary ran the other night and if you missed it, as I did, you can watch it online (link below). I can say that, having watched it, I now have a very high opinion of her and I also am genuinely saddened at her plight. The documentary shows her undergoing unanesthetized procedures that I only hope I never have to endure, and handling them with strength. She keeps fighting long after I would have tossed in the towel, and she seems incredibly well-grounded for a celebrity.

There is something so moving and fascinating about joining along in someone else’s journey from life to death, and wondering how you would cope if the same situation were to happen to you. Far from being exploitative, I think taking part in such journeys make us better people by reminding us of the short flicker of time that we have here on earth, and prodding us to make better use of it while we’re here. I am always grateful for people like Jade and Farrah for allowing us to join them on that very difficult journey. Since yesterday would have been my mother’s 80th birthday, had cancer that metastasized to her liver not claimed her life 5 1/2 years ago, there was a special sting in watching Farrah’s liver scans provide grim news about her survival prospects. Cancer is, indeed, a formidable foe.

If you haven’t watched the documentary, you can view it online here:
Farrah’s Story

Sundry

Today’s Piggish Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In 1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth turned 29 children at Boston’s Children’s Hospital into human guinea pigs when he performed spinal taps on them, just to test whether the procedure was harmful.

Culled from: Natural News
Generously submitted by: twistedprincess69

Oh, come on – children don’t have developed nervous systems – they’ll hardly feel it. And they won’t remember it anyway. Sheesh!

Facts

This Is Photobomb is possibly one of the funniest websites I’ve ever stumbled upon. This is my personal favorite – can this be touched?

Mirth

So I found out recently that I need to have my disease-ridden, malfunctioning uterus ripped out of my body. In one sense, I’m actually quite pleased to part ways with the unpleasant organ since I have absolutely no interest in procreation whatsoever (and we’ll say nothing about my advanced age). To be finished with it will be a relief.

However, in another way, I do NOT want to part with the organ at all! In fact, I would love to pickle it in a jar and display it with my other curios. And I’m distressed because I just know they won’t let me! They’ll say something about needing to do pathology tests on it to rule out cancer blah blah blah – as if they couldn’t take a look at it then give it back to me! And they will probably think I’m certifiable for even asking… which is true, but that’s beside the point. Shouldn’t I be able to keep my own organ if I want to? It just seems so unfair!

But I am grateful, at least, that I’m not having this particular surgery done (though it would be fun to make small children cry… oh, what am I saying? I do that already):

(Thanks to Katchaya for the link.)

Sundry

Today’s Muffled Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

When English prison reformer John Howard visited the prison in Hanover, Germany, in 1778, he found each prisoner secured to the walls by chains around their ankles, their wrists manacled to each end of a two-foot long bar of iron. And on going to Munich he inspected La Prison de la Cour. This he found to incorporate fifteen cells, each about twelve feet by seven. An adjoining room was, conveniently, the torture chamber within which, on a raised platform at one end, stood a table draped with black fringed cloth. Behind the table were placed six black chairs for the magistrates and secretaries, while the rest of the room contained instruments of torture, some stained with blood. Shutters to muffle victims’ cries covered the windows, and two crucifixes mounted on the wall doubtless brought some little solace to those poor wretches being put to the question.

Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers

Somehow, I think that Mel Gibson would give anything to be one of those magistrates overseeing the torture, don’t you?

Facts

It appears the Catsouras family is at it again. You might recall Nikki Catsouras – the girl who stole her Daddy’s car and crashed it into a tollbooth at an extremely high rate of speed, thus rendering her head into a faceless shell? Photographs of her highly public death made it onto the internet, and many of the morbidly curious (present company included) spent time gazing at her hideous corpse and reflecting about how important it is to drive carefully, lest one end up sharing the same fate.

Unfortunately, the family found out about the photos when some cruel asshole sent one of them to Nikki’s father, thereby causing the family to try to eliminate the photos from the web. They contracted with a group called Reputation Defender that located the photos on the internet and sent “cease and desist” letters to try and encourage the webmasters to take the pictures down. I received one of their e-mails myself, and replied that I would not take down the photos because I felt that they were public domain and I also felt that they were important to see. In fact, I’d had several people write to me to say that they showed the photos to their teenage family members as a deterrent to speeding. Nikki was dead – why not use the photos to help other young people avoid her tragic fate?

Last year I was contacted by 20/20 to do an interview about the Catsouras case, but I declined. Good thing too, because the show, like most of them, was severely stacked against the morbidly curious and in favor of the censorship impulses of the family. I figured after that show, they would finally let Nikki rest in peace… but I guess I was wrong because Newsweek had a story about the family’s “legal struggles” recently:

A Tragedy That Won’t Fade Away (Gee, maybe because you, the family, keep talking about it???)

Naturally, I’ve had several people write to ask about whether I have the pictures, which I do, but I don’t need to send you to my version of the images because Encyclopedia Dramatica conveniently has the full story, with all the photos, online. Not for the squeamish, of course.

Thanks to Amos Quito for the links.

Ghastly!

Here’s a perfectly ghastly animated gif that XTC (I’m guessing it’s not the band) sent to me showing the results of a decidedly grim car accident. Not for the squeamish, of course.

My Head Is Hanging Upside Down

Ghastly!

Thomas Scott Kuebler is a sculptor who crafts amazingly realistic likenesses of freaks, witches, monsters, super heroes, and other extremely creepy humans. Take a look at his gallery – you won’t be disappointed!

Amazing! Astounding! Absolutely Alive!

Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.

Art