Texting + Driving = Death!
August 25th, 2009
You may have seen the Welsh PSA that is shocking people all over the internets. Of course, it’s pretty tame to the likes of us sickos, but still well worth a gander.
Archive
Archive for the ‘Ghastly!’ Category
Signal 30
July 26th, 2009
Stella sends a wonderful link to the classic 1959 driver safety film “Signal 30″. Watch in shock and horror as mangled bodies of inattentive drivers are pulled from their massive hunks of twisted metal!! It’s a splendid way to spend a half-hour! (There are two parts – it should automatically start part 2 once you’ve finished part 1.)
Incidentally, I thought I’d post an old review of one of my favorite ghastly books: Car
Crashes and Other Sad Stories.
Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories
Text by Jennifer Dumas
Photos by Mell Kilpatrick
This is the perfect book for the ambulance chaser in all of us: a collection of car crash photos from the 40’s and 50’s. There’s something deeply tragic about these stark black and white images of destruction. It’s fascinating to try and piece together these shattered lives from the scant clues available – the letters strewn beside a well-dressed corpse, the cans of beer strewn from an overturned and demolished car – or, if you’re morbid like moi, you might try and figure out exactly how the bodies came to lie in those odd positions. Of course, in these days prior to seat belts, bodies flew every which way, so the variations are really quite amazing.
More ghastly books available from The Library Eclectica’s Ghastly Gore aisle.
Michael Jackson Catches Fire!
July 15th, 2009
US magazine has released footage of the 1984 Pepsi commercial filming accident when Michael Jackson’s hair caught fire due to an ill-timed explosion. Kinda frightening. Supposedly, this accident was the beginning of the end for MJ, since he became addicted to pain killers to cope with his second and third degree burns.
Ghastly Surgery Manual!!
July 7th, 2009
Danny was kind enough to send me a link to a wonderful 1921-era book entitled “Manual Of Surgery” by Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles. Chockfull of ghastly photos, it’s quite priceless. This particular image sent a quiver of wonderment through The Comtesse, so I thought I’d share.
Here’s the book in all its wacky morbid glory:
Manual Of Surgery
There They Go Again…
May 9th, 2009
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!
May 8th, 2009
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.
A Mother’s Journey
March 10th, 2009
Rene posted this link in the comments of the post about Jade Goody, and I wanted to make sure everyone saw it. It’s a fascinating Pulitzer Prize winning photo-essay about a mother and her dying son. Compelling stuff.
Drugs Are Bad, M’kay?
March 2nd, 2009
Amy sent me a link to some videos produced by something called the “Montana Meth Project” whose mission appears to be to stop bored rural teenagers from adding some drama to their tedious lives. They have produced a number of graphic videos with the message “Meth: Not Even Once” because, as we all know, it’s impossible to experiment with drugs without getting sucked into a hollow-eyed, abscess-ridden, blackened tooth, dead-in-a-gutter fate. Anyway, despite the obnoxiousness of the message, some of the videos are well-done and worth a gander, though they get more predictable and dumb as you go along.
When Chimps Attack
February 19th, 2009
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the woman who was defaced (quite literally) by a “pet” chimpanzee in Connecticut a few days ago, right? Well, if you haven’t given it a listen, the audio of the 911 call is quite chilling in its own right. You can access it here:
UPDATE: The poor woman attacked by the chimp lost both eyes, her nose, and her jaw in the attack. Can you even imagine? How do you cope with something like that? You can’t see and you can’t talk. I have to imagine that in the same circumstance, I would feel like I’d rather die than live with injuries like that. You?
“Everything’s Coming To A Grinding Halt”
February 11th, 2009
Back in my carnivorous childhood years, my mother used to make us a treat every Christmas Eve. She’d take bacon, onion, and velveeta cheese, grind it through an old metal hand-crank meat grinder, slather the mixture onto buns, and toast them. It was a disgustingly nummy treat, and I was always fascinated by the mechanism of the meat grinder. I used to imagine what it would be like to get my hand stuck inside it. Well, thanks to the kindness of Ken who forwarded me the attached link, now I know.
(Warning: Very Squeam-inducing.)
