Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.

Babydoll Coat Rack

Thanks to Faith for the link.

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one appearance in a work by Samuel Beckett (“the patibulary melancholy of the lemon of lemons”) and an occasional historical reference, such as this in a book by Edward Payson Evans about the one-time habit of executing animals: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.

Woman Attacked By Chimp To Appear On Oprah

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.

“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.”

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

And here’s the Norwegian death metal-themed video:
Click here to view the embedded video.

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