arsenic

Victorian Death, Memento Mori, and the Stop and Gawk Factor

4 Comments

I don’t know about “useful” or “reliable,” at least not today, but I’m sure fascinating would be an appropriate adjective.

I know that I’ve more than a passing interest in history- especially the Victorian era and the 1940’s- but as I was watching (yet another) documentary on Abraham Lincoln I learned where some of America’s most bizarre funerary traditions come from.  Being the curious sort that I can be (especially on the macabre or just plain weird) I decided to research a bit more.

Embalming is not a new science, and wasn’t a new science in Victorian times either.  The ancient Egyptians and some other desert cultures were into embalming due to their beliefs concerning the afterlife, but until the 19th century it was seldom practiced in European cultures.  In the US, embalming was a common practice during the Civil War (a whole industry sprung up around preserving dead soldiers so they could be sent home and buried) and even President Lincoln   was embalmed (the only way he would have survived the train ride back to Springfield in sort of one piece) but it fell out of favor here in the US until the early 20th century, when open casket funerals became popular.  Some of the chemicals used in 19th century embalming would certainly not be looked upon favorably by today’s regulatory agencies.  Arsenic was one of the more popular preservatives.

The Victorians were big on postmortem pictures too, which if nothing else, to the modern eye are nice little reminders of the concept of memento mori (remember your own mortality.)  It’s hard enough for us today to grasp the concept of mortality because most people die shoved off into a hospital or nursing home.  It would offend most modern sensibilities to go around taking pics of dead people.  Why the open casket funeral – a custom I find distasteful- is so popular in a culture that denies the reality of death, I’ll never know.  Jessica Mitford offered her insight on the subject in the book, The American Way of Death, which I highly recommend.

Most of us find the idea of taking pics of dead people to be creepy, but if you couldn’t afford to take a pic of your loved one when he/she was alive, you’d find the scratch to have someone take the pic when your loved one died, because that would be the only tangible memory left.  Hopefully the photographer would make it before the loved one started to rot.  Some photographers were very skillful in the art of “restoration”- retouching the pictures to make the subject look a little less dead, while others weren’t so good.

The eyes!!!!  Zombie Baby’s gonna eat me!

I think some photographers tried to feign “life likeness” by the angle of the shot, etc.  I can’t tell if this little girl is dead or not:

If she is alive, she’s not too thrilled about having her pic taken.

For me these kind of visuals are in the same category as the impulse to stop and gawk when driving by an accident on the freeway.  Everyone does it.  It’s not a phenomenon reserved for Central Ohio during rush hour.

I live just down the road from a Moose club, a VFW and two bars.  I get to witness DWI busts every freaking weekend (and sometimes during the week) from the comfort of my front porch.  Last week the cops nabbed some poor dude in a Chevy Cobalt who had gotten stuck in the small ditch just a few yards from my house.  Cobalt Dude was so blitzed he couldn’t touch his nose with his finger, (let alone walk the line) and upon inspection he had a pocket full of drug paraphenalia that was splayed across the decklid of the cruiser and photographed.  It was the same cop who, a few years ago, had dragged Steve-o in at 2AM- the one who’s about 6’8″, and I’d say a good 300#, and has a bit of an attitude.  So it was no surprise when Officer Titan asked this unfortunate lush and/or stoner to lean up against the cruiser, then to hold out his right hand (promptly cuffed) and then his left hand (brought together with the right and also promptly cuffed.)  Cobalt Dude not only got to ride in a police car, he got to go to jail too.

Arguing with Officer Titan is a Bad Idea.

I need a video camera, though I’ve not bothered to acquire one. The temptation to film Jerry in his oft-performed role as Tipsy Mc NumbNuts is irresistable, and if I had the camera I would do it.  Cruel and inhumane as it may sound, it would be a blast to record his incidents for posterity, as well as the DWI busts I get to witness right in front of my house.  My life is surrounded by YouTube gold.

Which reminds me, I need to try to find a replacement for the magazine tube for his .22 that he lost whilst attempting to clean it while completely effed up.   I tried to tell him that it’s not appropriate to attempt to clean one’s gun after chugging the better part of a NattyPack (30 twelve ounce beers) but what the hell do I know?

Drunks-n-guns: It never turns out good.

For the Love of Ephemera, Victorian Fashion Torture, and I Want My Car Back

Leave a comment

Ok, for the second bloody time now.  Why, oh, why did this damned thing zap the whole body of this post?   I am glad I don’t have to wear clothing like this.  I like the prices and I like the coverage, but I need a waist a tad bit larger than the circumference of my spine.   Corsets had to be nasty things to wear.

Now I know why these women died young.  They couldn’t breathe.

So, should I choose to design my own fashion,  to achieve the goals of comfort and coverage, and not rely on today’s dismal offerings from gay fashion designers who manage to only come up with clothes suitable for those with an exhibition fetish and the proportions of a 12 year old boy, I would have to come up with something like this ensemble:

The illustrious Steve-o has my car this week, which sucks.  He only has it because no one else had a reliable vehicle for him to drive whilst the infinitesimal intermittent miss he claims to hear in his Audi-  when a laundry list of conditions are met- is being checked out by his high-faluting buddies down in Cinci.  So I’m driving Dad’s nasty ’92 Mazda van that does, to its credit, have nice cold A/C, but I’m having my doubts about the ball joints, tie rods and that rather disturbing lifter noise.  Steve-o is the most anal dude on the planet (and I’ve seen some very anal car enthusiasts in my time) when it comes to his own car.  I just hope that he doesn’t think that because he’s using my car- for free- that it’s party time.

It’s not a Mazerati, but it does have nice cold A/C, a decent stereo and 5 on the floor.  Damn, I miss my car.

I feel sort of sorry for Dad.  He’s stuck in that nursing home rehab center, and the food is just plain frightening.  What’s worse is he’s going to get enough scary food when he goes home and Mom attempts to cook.  On the plus side he is losing weight, but it’s sort of sad to lose weight just because you can’t identify what’s on your plate and you’re afraid to eat it.  Dad wanted me to drive his van- he can’t drive at all for at least another three weeks while his sternum heals- rather than Steve-o driving it, because Steve-o has a 40 mile drive through the middle of nowhere to get to work.  I can get retrieved a little easier should Dad’s ancient Mazda decide not to start, or if the steering and/or suspension fails.  I hope it holds together, but I can always commandeer Jerry’s Tacoma, and probably should anyway.  The Tacoma has a manual transmission and Jerry hasn’t managed to blow the speakers in it.  The Mazda would have a good stereo- if not for all the speakers being blown to hell.

Better living through chemicals, especially when they’re in pastries!

Greetings from Nattyvana- Wish You Were Here!- and Sometimes The Possum Really is Dead

2 Comments

 

Nattyvana: That drunk-and-stupid state of mind one reaches after consuming a 12 pack or more of Jerry’s favorite Anheuser-Busch product- Natural Lite.

Never mind that Natty is only 4.2% alcohol. Never mind, but I can only imagine that horse piss has more flavor.  It is a “value priced” beer after all.  It takes persistence, but if you drink enough of it, you can get shitfaced.   Personally if my aim were to get shitfaced, I’d go for something with a lot more punch, like Jägermeister (35%- 70 proof)- if you can get past the fact it tastes just like Formula 44-  or just plain straight vodka (Stolichnaya is 40% or 80 proof.) 

To me drinking beer to get drunk is like driving through the ghetto to get to work.  You’ll get there eventually, but it takes longer, smells worse, and carries a higher element of danger than taking the freeway.  I don’t like the taste of beer anyway.  Natty isn’t the worst beer out there (take it from someone who used to party with people who drank Schaefer Light) but it’s pretty nasty even for beer.   It’s chock full of all-natural formaldehyde, with a wispy aroma vaguely reminscent of onion-tainted sweat socks and a despondent resignation to a life of obscurity and ignominy.  Whether or not Natural Lite is derived from anything “natural” I don’t know.  I do know that “all-natural” does not always mean “beneficial” or “healthy.”

All-Natural Ways to Die (for instance)

*Arsenic is an all-natural heavy-metal poison. (not to be confused with the 80’s heavy-metal band, Poison, though I can cite far better examples of that music genre)

*Ebola is an all-natural deadly virus.

*Black Mamba venom is an all-natural venomous poison.

*You can be eaten by an all-natural shark, should you choose to go into the water.

*You can be mauled and partially devoured by an all-natural grizzly bear.

*You can fall off of an all-natural cliff, or asphyxiate on all-natural bat guano fumes in an all-natural bat cave.

If you’re a possum, you can have the (mostly) all-natural Lilo the GSD/Chow mix snap your neck for you.

I’m glad I don’t get drunk anymore, if only because I have to be somewhat aware and sane to handle stuff like this.  The dogs do occasionally bring home some rather grisly finds. 

I really do feel sorry for the woodland creatures who dare to venture into our back yard.  This I think is probably Possum #4 for Lilo.  Her possum kill rate is rather surprising given that Lilo is 1. crosseyed, 2. bow-legged, and 3. slow.  Yet Lilo (unlike most dogs) is primarily an ambush hunter.  She lies in wait and then springs on her prey when they are unaware.  Clara and Sheena hunt like regular dogs- flushing and chasing.  Perhaps Lilo has had success with possums because they too are slow and low to the ground and can’t see that well.  I still feel sorry for the critters, though.

This poor unfortunate beast was immobile but still appeared to be breathing when Lilo deposited it in front of the kitchen door.  Jerry assumed that it was simply “playing possum” and acting dead so he scooped it up and put it back outside.  Sadly I found it the following morning, deader than a doornail.  Apparently it wasn’t just an act, or it was too badly injured to recover.  I tried to tell Jerry that I thought Lilo had snapped its neck, but hope springs eternal.  I was hoping she hadn’t mortally wounded it. If it did wake up I wanted it to be outside in its natural habitat, so if it were just stunned or playing possum it wouldn’t be waking up out in the foyer.  That’s all I need, some wild critter staring up at me with a mouthful (possums have 50 teeth- 8 more than dogs- which is a scary thought) of razor sharp teeth snarling at me as I’m trying to let the dogs out for their morning constitutional.

I very seldom drink anyway, and when I do, I drink wine, because I like the taste of wine.  Just a small glass will take me on a trip to mellow town. I don’t need to get shitfaced on it.  The last time I was truly shitfaced was almost 20 years ago, and I have no desire to wake up submerged in freezing water in a motel room bathtub with a half-eaten Domino’s pizza sitting on the ledge. 

It’s good that my health pretty much forbids me from doing much drinking.  I’m on enough blood pressure meds to kill most people outright, so I usually fall asleep before I can really start pounding ’em.  When I did drink to excess, back in the day, I was a forget-it-all drunk.  All I remember about one drinking party I went to in college was that yes- I did finish the whole fifth of MD 20/20, but I couldn’t remember whether or not I had slept with one of my friends’ skanky, geeky twin brother.  Nobody would enlighten me as to whether or not he had gotten lucky either- not until after I knew the coast was clear.  Since I had given up hope and let my birth control pill script run out, I had a rather harrowing two weeks of “waiting for Aunt Flo.”  Once everyone knew I was “safe”-then they told me what really happened- that he had passed out before I did, so I was never even subjected to the possibility of actually contributing to passing on that particular freakazoid’s genes.  Thanks, guys.  But at least they didn’t leave me passed out with my drawers down and my butt hanging out of the bathtub like what happened to one of my other friends.  When you weigh over 300# it is never a good thing to pass out on the toilet, especially if that’s the only toilet in the house.  Just saying.

It’s a lot safer to observe and let everyone else get drunk and stupid.  If only there had been such a thing as YouTube in the mid-80’s.  It’s probably a good thing that we were too poor for video cameras back then.