Decidedly Grim

Here’s something you can do with those disembodied baby doll parts you have lying around your pad.

Babydoll Coat Rack

Thanks to Faith for the link.

Sundry

Here’s a great word that has sadly fallen into disuse:

Weird Words: Patibulary
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Of or relating to a gallows or hanging.

This turned up in a book of curious and interesting words, whose author took its meaning from Winter’s Tale, a futuristic work of magical realism of 1983 by Mark Helprin. Mr Helprin defined it as meaning “delicate in motion, graceful and muffled as in the quiet sound made by ballet slippers. Only to be used in winter and at night.” The words-book author clearly didn’t check in the Oxford English Dictionary, where he would have found far less pleasant associations.

The word is from Latin “patibulum”, originally a fork-shaped yoke that was put on the necks of criminals or a fork-shaped gibbet in the shape of a vertical letter Y. It could also mean the horizontal bar of the crucifixion cross, or a forked prop to support vines.

Despite the solemn and religious associations its etymology brings to mind, the Oxford English Dictionary says “patibulary” has mainly been used humorously in English. That’s based on citations such as this, from the Sporting Magazine in 1801: “A certain Corn-Buyer, which had undergone the discipline of a patibulary suspension on a gallows.” But others were deathly serious: in The French Revolution (1837) Thomas Carlyle wrote of the gibbet as “the grim Patibulary Fork ‘forty feet high’”.

The word is now extremely rare. There’s one appearance in a work by Samuel Beckett (“the patibulary melancholy of the lemon of lemons”) and an occasional historical reference, such as this in a book by Edward Payson Evans about the one-time habit of executing animals:
“Hangmen often indulged in capricious and supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions.”

http://www.worldwidewords.org

Thanks to Liz D-M for bringing this to my attention.

Sundry

Okay, I know how much you all hate Oprah. We all do. But if ever there was a time to tune in to Her Royal Majesty it is tomorrow – as the CHIMP VICTIM makes her first public appearance since losing her eyes, nose, hands, lips, etc. to the angry simian. You know you can’t miss this!

Woman Attacked By Chimp To Appear On Oprah

Sundry

I have been a horribly busy Comtesse lately – literally running around non-stop for the last few weeks – which explains why I haven’t been keeping up with the facts. It probably won’t get much better until the beginning of October when my life finally settles down. However, I will try to get a few random updates in between now and then…

I spent four hours this morning wandering through dew-covered, burr-infested meadows and woodlands in the Midlothian Meadows forest preserve near Chicago looking for a friend of my girlfriend’s who has been missing since last Sunday. There was a huge turnout – maybe about 100 people or more – and it was a well-organized search. He apparently just walked out of his house on Sunday night and hasn’t been seen since. Search dogs tracked him to the railroad tracks near his house, that run through the woods, and then lost his scent.

We didn’t find any trace of him, though I did find some other creepy artifacts in the woods (several of which I photographed), including the foundation of an old house, a creepy rocking horse and teddy bear in a clearing, an empty suitcase (you know I looked in it!), and a deer humerus that I thought at first might be human. (It will become a decoration on my bookshelf now.) I thought for sure we’d stumble across some human remains, even if we didn’t find the man we were looking for, but alas… we came home empty-handed. Every plastic bag was opened, every piece of canvas was overturned, and I am completely exhausted now. I’m off to sleep for a thousand years.

Here’s information on Tariq. I hope he turns up soon.
Tariq Ali

UPDATE: Tariq’s body was found in another nearby forest preserve about a week after our search. He had committed suicide by shotgun blast to the face. R.I.P.

Sundry

Aimee sends the following delightful euphemisms to add to the collection:

“I was reading a ‘Dictionary of Euphemisms’ and came across these:

Hemp Quinsy or Hempen Fever: death by hanging.
Hemp Widow: a woman whose husband was hanged
Hempshire Gentleman: the man who was hanged.”

Sundry

I apologize for my absence the last couple of weeks. My surgical leave ended and I went back to a maelstrom at work, which has zapped much of my free time. In addition, I’ve been working on a photo project for an upcoming Chicago ghost book by Ursula Bielski, so there hasn’t been much time for the blog. However, the oppressive heat appears set to lift this week and I can see a comforting fog beginning to roll in very soon. I’ll make it up to you with some nifty goodies in the near future.

Sundry

Today’s Sharp Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A woman who lived with an 8-centimeter (3.1-inch) pencil lodged in her brain for 55 years has had most of it removed in a complex operation in August, 2007. She is now looking forward to a life without headaches and nosebleeds and hopes to also regain her sense of smell. “When I was four years old I fell down in Dessau with a pencil in my hand. The pencil bored its way through my skin — and disappeared in my head,” Margret Wegner, 59, told the mass circulation newspaper Bild. “It was incredibly painful.” The pencil missed her optic nerve and a major artery by just millimeters. A doctor treated the wound, but no one dared to operate on her brain. She decided to have the life-threatening operation after 55 years, and it was successfully carried out by a surgeon in a Berlin hospital. Most of the pencil — six centimeters of it — was removed but the 2-centimeter-long tip has grown in so tightly that it will remain lodged in her brain.

Culled from: Spiegel Online
Generously donated by: Lady Morgana

Sundry

It’s always exciting to spot someone wearing one of my morbid creations, so I was especially excited to learn that not only does the appropriately-named God Of Awesome have a photograph of himself wearing my Team Satan shirt (complete with fu manchu mustache), there’s also a video!

And here’s the Norwegian death metal-themed video:

You can get your own Team Satan t-shirt (as well as other exquisite designs) at the MFDJ Etsy Store!

Sundry

By popular demand, the blog is now on Facebook. Please become a fan if you’re interested in following all the action there.

Sundry

Hello again! I want to thank everyone for the well-wishes I received while I was recuperating from my hysterectomy. I had the surgery on June 16th and I’m now virtually recovered – except that I’m still not allowed to lift anything, to perform vigorous exercise (as if), or to return to work (such a pity). The surgery went (in my doctor’s words) “smashingly” – but, sadly, I wasn’t able to keep the uterus because, due to my pre-cancerous condition, it had to be sliced up like a loaf of bread for detailed analysis. The pathology report came back showing various benign conditions, but no cancer. Such a waste of an organ…

I spent two days in the hospital and had a reasonably pain-free recovery (thanks to the fentanyl pump I was hooked up to), but it was hardly a peaceful environment. A man next door to me had crushed his leg in a fall from scaffolding and I quickly named him “The Moaner”. The moaner would start in softly… “oh… oh… oh… oh…” and then after a few hours would be loudly expressing his pain, “Ooooooooooh!!!!!!!!! Oooooohhhhh!!!!! Oh My God!!!!!!! Ooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!” I walked past him the second morning I was there and saw that his entire leg was in a cast and his foot looked like it was encased in six inches of styrofoam on all sides. I felt really bad for the guy, because it was obvious that his pain was excrutiating. (Or he was a terrible wimp. Either way, I feel bad for him.) They finally gave him a shot of morphine which quieted him down. Thank goodness… because it’s hard to heal in an environment like that!

I wanted to share one delightful brush with morbidity I had at the hospital. It happened on the second morning, after they removed the catheter and I had to attempt to go to the bathroom myself. (Which isn’t as easy as it sounds! The nurse told me that sometimes it can take up to 6 hours before you can pee after having a catheter removed.) The nurse disconnected me from the IV stand so that I could go in the bathroom unimpeded. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), she forgot to block the IV tube coming out of my arm. As I sat on the toilet, I suddenly noticed that a puddle of blood was forming at my feet. I looked over at my arm and saw that blood was streaming out of my IV onto the floor. I immediately stemmed the flow with my finger and hit the emergency assistance button. Of course, it took the nurse awhile to finally respond as I stood there in my room holding my blood in. It’s a good thing that I’m not the type to faint at the sight of my own blood or I could have been completely drained by the time the nurse arrived!

So, that was fun… but, like I said, the rest of the recovery has been uneventful. I’m glad I got the surgery over with, but I kinda feel sad now because I have no surgeries to look forward to in the near future. That is, unless my aching shoulder acts up worse than it currently is. I start physical therapy next week for a rotator cuff injury in my right arm. I saw a specialist about it last week and he actually had the gall to tell me that my “posture is horrible” and that I need to have “posture training”! So, I start that on Tuesday. I guess it’s not surprising that I’m falling apart when you consider that I’ve exceeded my life expectancy for a non-modern Homo sapiens sapiens. If it were 1850, I’d be dead several times over by now.

Anyway, I will now set about getting back to updating the blog on a regular basis. Thank you for your patience.

Sundry