Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, and Life is a Limited Time Offer

February 18, 2015Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

I’m not sure which one(s) is (are) dead in the pic, but I’m pretty sure they all are by now.

It’s Ash Wednesday again- a day to reflect on personal mortality and the myriad imperfections of humanity, so here I am trotting out the postmortem pics collection. As macabre as it is, I know I’m not the only one who is fascinated with Victorian era postmortem photography. As for the kid in the above pic, he looks like he’s seen a ghost. Mom and Dad look pretty much comatose, which is why I can’t tell for sure who’s dead and who’s not. I’m pretty sure I would have the same expression on my face as the kid if I were required to sit that close to dead people, so that’s another reason why I wonder if the kid, the parents, just one or the other parent, or all three were dead when this pic was taken. The reality is, now anyway, that they are all dead, unless the kid is 120 or something. Physical death is a 100% probability- it’s going to happen- and it’s just a question of when.

I could even get into a little Southern Baptist soteriology (even though it’s a bit odd because SB’s don’t observe Ash Wednesday) right about now too. Turn or burn, baby. You are gonna be worm food, so now’s your time to Get Right with the Lawd-uh!

Somehow seeking salvation from a dog and pony show like this seems about as effective as taking driving lessons from Ted Kennedy.

I do like her wig though. If only it were black.

I have had a rather cynical relationship with organized religion through the years. When I decided to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which many self-proclaimed Catholics have not) I learned that if I am to be intellectually honest with myself and with God there is no way I can claim to be Roman Catholic. There is some Weird Stuff in there. I almost joined an SB church because their theology tends to be very black and white. Saved/not saved, sin/not sin, and so on. You can know if you’re IN or OUT. I love the Baptist emphasis on Bible study too- but- for me the big problem with Baptists in general is that they tend to put too much on human free will- such as we “choose” to believe. I’m here to say that I firmly believe it’s God doing the choosing, and I don’t claim to understand that.

I discovered confessional Lutheranism when I was in college, and of all the interpretations and expressions of Christianity, to me it makes the most sense. Lutheranism- in its classic sense, is not perfect, but it allows for the grey areas, and allows for intellectual honesty and questions. There is space for the mystery that is God. There is understanding for my lack of ability to comprehend.

I have a hard time understanding why you would take pics of a dead kid surrounded by paper angels, but it was a different time.

I wish I could believe spiritual things as black and white (and there are some things that are) but I find myself asking way too many questions- questions where I simply have to accept the mystery and be okay that the answer is either something I don’t know or can’t understand.

I’m glad that I’m not the one who makes the vast decisions of the cosmos. I’m doing good to decide what to wear or what to eat, and grateful to have both clothes and food.

I’m pretty sure no one is going to want to memorialize me in stained glass.

I have more questions than answers and more failures than successes, but I have to believe there is some reason why I am sucking up valuable oxygen for the time being, whether I get it or not.

(Jesus said:) “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21 (NRSV)

Today’s questions would be, “Where is my treasure? Where is my heart?”

I really have to think about both of those questions today.

Simply Unpredictable, and It’s Not Nice…

November 7, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Frequently I am accused of either changing the subject or coming up with weird stuff out of the clear blue sky. Of course the connections make sense to me, but my particular road map doesn’t have the freeways routed in the same places as yours. I can get to the same places- some faster, some slower, depending upon what freeways I have available to ride.

Oh, cool, there is an I-69! But, why, oh why, is it in Indiana? In the middle of the flat cornfields? Wonder how many of those signs have been stolen? Then again, truckers are probably the only ones on that road, and those boys ain’t stoppin’. Judging from the number of trucker bombs I see along I-270 (this is the Columbus outerbelt, where there are all kinds of exits and usable bathrooms) I can imagine the truckers out in BFE aren’t stopping for anything.

This is not apple juice, Mountain Dew, or lemonade. It’s PISS.

I am trying to curb the temptation to engage in a sort of mental victory dance regarding the Republican sweep of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Obama is now muzzled to a degree, which is definitely a plus, but my worry is whether or not the newly elected Republicans will stand their ground and do what the American people want them to do, which is to stop Obama’s insanity. Republicans should not in any way “cooperate” with the moonbats who are actively destroying this country with overregulation and over taxation. They should close the borders immediately to illegal immigration, and end taxpayer funded payouts to illegals, as well as to terrorist harboring countries and the perennially lazy. They must revitalize and strengthen our military, and put an end to insane political correctness. We who voted for them have to hold their feet to the fire. These affronts to the Constitution and to American people need to be addressed, rooted out, and corrected NOW. Even so, as much as I loathe Obama and what he stands for, and much as I would love to see him rode out on a rail, now he sits as the ultimate poster child for “Why Not to Vote for Democrats.” At this point it would be better to let Obama ride out his term pretty much impotent and toothless and completely bonkers than to impeach him. Hopefully the rancid taste Obama has left in this country’s mouth will extend to Hillary and Obama’s other moonbat crazy cronies in 2016. I have a very strong hope that it will.

I know I engage in sarcasm. All the time. It’s one of the things that keeps me somewhat sane. I am not politically correct. I would not even consider myself to be particularly “nice.” Most of the time, if I’m being overly nice, it’s because I hear my mother (sort of like a Jiminy Cricket) telling me I’m being rude, or that I’m staring again.

I know I’m not nice. Neither is anyone else, should we all be honest about it. That age-old human conflict of good vs. evil is always there, even when I pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.” “Thy will,” is very seldom “my will,” save for divine intervention.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…

I know it was mean to let him keep on shoveling in the cat food, but it was funny. And he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.

I haven’t been trolling in the postmortem pics a whole lot lately, but I know how wildly popular old pictures of dead people are, as creepy as that is. I had one sitting in my personal archives that I am still sort of wondering about:

Let’s play “Spot the Dead Dude.”

I think they’re both dead, which makes this pic extra creepy. Dude on the right is most certainly dead, or else he’s really, really stoned. As you can see, he’s being propped up on one of those Keith Richards guitar stand type frames. The dude on the left is a bit harder to determine. If he’s not dead, he seems to be way too pleasant for standing that close to a dead dude. Either that or he’s being held up by a broom handle stuck up his ass. You decide.

Coping Mechanisms, Dark Pragmatism and More Postmortem Pics

September 23, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I did draw hatchets, skulls and heavy metal band logos in my extensive high school boredom doodlings. This is why I know not to do it now.

When I get bored, I scribble and doodle. Sometimes I do it in a more figurative sense- typing is so much faster than writing long hand, at least for me- but drawing can only really be done the old fashioned way, with pens and pencils and markers.

The psychologists and guidance counselors had a field day with me in middle school and high school because of my rather dark themed scribblings and doodlings. When your primary emotion is “terror,” the secondary is almost always “rage.” (Repressed anger, anyone?- and this was decades before Columbine.) I would buy plain notebooks (even better if they had a canvas finish) and then I would draw macabre scenes all over them in a variety of colors. If the discussion went too slow or I got bored in class (pretty much every day) then I would write little snippets of prose or poetry along with whatever notes I was pretending to take inside the notebook. I didn’t have the advantage of having a laptop or a tablet or a smart phone in school. I graduated in 1986, when the entire school had three computers, all of which had a cassette player serving as a hard drive. By comparison, the Note 3 smart phone I have today would have been a supercomputer.

I should have learned my lesson regarding concealing incriminating evidence of my twisted thought life when I was in 8th grade. One of the boys decided to appropriate one of my more risqué notebooks and share its contents with the other boys. This was Not a Good Thing. The notebook got confiscated by a nosy teacher who wondered what the boys were laughing about. I ended up in an extremely awkward and embarrassing meeting with the guidance counselor that led to several months of camping out in the psychologist’s office every Tuesday afternoon. Since my mother worked for the school system and knew every single one of the teachers and staff, the repercussions of that indiscretion really sucked.

I still kept my funky notebooks with the outlandish scribbles on them, but I was more careful about what I wrote in them in high school, just in case someone would dare to screw with them. No one ever dared to. In high school, I found that when I ended up with large friends, who took a special delight in beating the daylights out of people who screwed with me, that my confidential items remained that way. I didn’t receive any unauthorized touching, spindling or mutilation to my person either, not after one unfortunate thug got her head shaved for spitting Skoal in my hair. The Skoal Incident- which took place toward the end of my freshman year in high school- marked the end of many years of harassment and beatings from my cohorts in school.

Some of my friends liked to fight. I didn’t. But by the time I had a car and smokes, I didn’t have to fight.

Granted, I was probably buying friends, (often with cigarettes) which isn’t a healthy thing to do, but it did save me from more than one ass-thumping, I’m sure. I was in survival mode back then, and it was refreshing to be able to go to school without being dumped head-first into garbage cans, having my hair set on fire, or being shoved up the stairs. The thought of being shoved up the stairs (concrete stairs with metal caps on the edges) makes my knee caps hurt even now.

Survival is what it is.

I probably shouldn’t have such a fascination for postmortem pics and/or the plight of the unfortunates of Walmart, but I do.

Pictures are expensive- sooooo- jump right on in there with the stiff!

She doesn’t look terribly fresh, but then again, she’s DEAD. How fast can the photographer get there on a horse?

The Victorians did pathos and high drama in a way that we just can’t stomach today, but as I’ve said before, back in the times before flush toilets and Clorox, death was in your living room. Death was your bunkie in more ways than one.

Maybe I should consider it an improvement in my emotional health that my primary emotion is “fear” opposed to “terror.” That might just be the mitigating effect of Prozac. I’ve noticed that my secondary emotion- “rage” – has sort of settled into a pragmatic anger. I try not to get angry unless that anger will do some good, but there are times when I just plain get pissed for no apparent reason.

I actually have some ivory tower time scheduled, although it seems sort of shitty that I have to schedule it in advance rather than just being able to drop off the planet for awhile, unannounced. This time I hope Jerry leaves me alone for at least a day or two. I could really use some peace and quiet with just Clara as company for a few days (months…yeah right) but I know Jerry too well. If I go to the campground he will feel compelled to follow me so I can fetch beer and make trips into town for KFC and so forth.

Man, that sounds good.

More Central Ohio White Death, More Funky Victorian Pics, and Other Odds and Ends

February 7, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I’m still trying to figure out this Rube Goldberg device.

This contraption, which I think is some kind of spinal correction device (?) could also have afforded some tactical advantage when other kids are chasing you down to kick your ass. I can see where it could be a sort of almost skateboard without the board. I love Victorian ingenuity. Strange thing is that even in the early 1980’s (and I’m not sure whether or not this is still being done in schools) all the girls had to get checked for scoliosis in 7th and 8th grade.

The scoliosis check was not what I’d call a good time. All the 7th and 8th grade girls were herded into the gym, (wearing those hideous gym suits, or in my case, since I had a Doctor’s Note permanently freeing me from gym class, a t-shirt and shorts) lined up in alphabetical order, then we either had to unzip the gym suit or pull up our t-shirt and let (supposedly) a nurse trace our spines with her finger and verify that our spines were straight.

If you were found to have scoliosis (a couple of girls did have it) then you were sent to an orthopedist who would fit you with a full torso brace with metal stays and tie up straps that you had to wear 24/7 for two or three years unless you wanted to become a hideously deformed hunchback.

Imagine having to wear this continuously – all through high summer. Oh, the stink!

I’m glad my spine stayed straight.

This is one of the snow piles outside of Target. It’s 5°.

But, as always, they set up the swimsuit racks the week after New Year’s!

The City of Columbus, I must say has been doing an abysmal job in clearing the snow. ODOT got the freeways cleared right away, but the major through roads that are the city’s responsibility, by and large haven’t been touched. I have to wonder what the hell they’re doing with all that income tax money, since the state and the surrounding localities are seeming to cope pretty well with snow removal. I know that corruption and graft and union thuggery run amok in Mayor Coleman’s hizzy. I’m surprised he didn’t ask for emergency money from his homeboy Obama to clear out Downtown.

It didn’t used to be that way, and it’s sad. The illustrious Mayor-for-Life Coleman has ran the police department into the ground, presided over (and approved of) the corruption and vice and absolute lack of accountability in the schools, and now the city can’t seem to get the crews out to clear the freaking snow. Coleman will keep on getting re-elected though, because a.) there’s no term limit, and b.) he kisses up to the gimme crowd. While everyone (me included) who can moves to the freaking suburbs because of the uncontrolled druggies and rampant crime-but if you work in the city limits (I do) you still have to pay income tax so this gimme-appeaser and cronies can keep on subsidizing the gimme crowd. The worst thing about living in the suburbs is that I can’t vote against this shyster when he runs for (and gets elected) mayor again.

So much for the Things-I-Can’t-Change.

I have been somewhat remiss as of late in not posting more of those postmortems that people just can’t help gawking at. It’s bad that I am so bored that I’m trolling postmortems again, but it is February. What else am I supposed to do? February always makes me think about death. Maybe it’s because I have to go to the BMV to get my car registration, and that’s always depressing.

The only way I’d ever been that close to either of my sisters, voluntarily, is if I’d been dead– which I think these two are.

Generally, if either of my sisters had been that close to me when I was a little kid, it was because they had me in a headlock, pounding me with whatever sort of pointy or heavy object that was handy.

I am surprised that I actually survived childhood with only minor scarring and disfigurement. The psychological damage- well, the Prozac does help.

Gam-Gam died in 1890, but those eyes are still watching you!

I know it’s morbid, but I think the postmortem pics are a forerunner of the Open Casket Funeral, which I find most distasteful in almost every instance. I can’t get the images of my grandmothers in their coffins with badly done makeup, in those awful pink nighties out of my head, let alone the image of Aunt Ellen (the non-makeup wearing Pentecostal) slathered down with day-glo orange lipstick and all dolled up as if she were headed for the Oompa-Loompa Prom.

I told Steve-o to cremate me when I die, but knowing him (and I’ve said this before) he will have me taxidermied and made into a coffee table.

“Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide”- Pink Floyd, “High Hopes”

Perhaps it is true that one can never really go back home again, but in another sense it’s also true that one can never really leave. It’s amazing how our society forgets the past so quickly, and repeats its mistakes so readily. Memory, if anything, should serve as both a harbinger and a teacher.

I think we do ourselves a disservice when we neglect the study of history. It may not be a good idea to continually live in the past, and I have to guard against this, but to deliberately seek a sort of live-in-the-now amnesia isn’t very healthy either.

I’ve learned to be careful which bridges to burn and which ones to leave standing, although I can’t say I’ve mastered the art of moving forward, or of knowing which pieces of the past are worth holding on to, and which pieces are things I need to let go.

I’ll have to remember to check the empty seats in my car for Hitler before I go.

I think I’d be hella nervous if I were approached by a giant talking frog. But I’m paranoid like that.

Today is a New Day, the Hardest Things to Do, and More Victorian Post Mortems

May 3, 2013Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

As much as I dreaded what I had to do last night, I have an odd sense of peace about it. Sheena’s not suffering anymore. Even until the end she was herself- conscious, aware, but trapped in a body that couldn’t work right anymore. She lost the use of her back legs Wednesday afternoon. All we could do for her until the vet could come last night was to try to keep her clean and offer her water as she wanted it (she was not interested in food.)

I know all too well the scientific/medical reasons for Sheena’s rapid decline. She’d had mammary growths removed twice. The first time I didn’t send out for pathology, (there is only one veterinary pathology lab in Ohio, at Ohio State, and it’s expensive and time consuming to get results) but the second time I did, and the lab said those were benign, but then the growths came back with a vengeance. More than likely- at least the third go-round, anyway- it was mammary cancer, which can be virulent and spreads quickly in dogs. By the time I had noticed the mammary growths again (round 3) there were growths in her “armpits” or more accurately, under her forelegs, (lymph nodes abide there in dogs, just as they do in humans) and I decided that I would not subject her to more surgery. If anyone can gain anything from this experience it is that spaying dogs early can help prevent mammary cancer. Sheena had several litters of pups before we found her. We had her spayed, but spaying a 5 year old who’s had several litters doesn’t prevent cancer as effectively as spaying before the first heat.

Sheena didn’t have a good luck of the draw. She was deaf. She was without a doubt inbred. She had severe HD to the point of pretty much not having hip sockets at all. Her teeth were a disaster from the cage biting. Her physical coordination was worse than mine. By all accounts, Sheena was “defective merchandise.” But she was my dog, and she had a heart of gold. Part of me wanted to end her suffering, but another part of me finds it hard to let her go.

Clara and Lilo know where she’s buried. The two of them (they are both older than Sheena was) are still in good health, for which I am thankful. Clara and Lilo have always been close, but as soon as they figured out Sheena was dying they have been almost joined at the hip. Lilo has been carrying Sheena’s favorite toys around, and Clara has been rolling in the places that still must smell like her. Dogs grieve, too.

Today is a new day, but saying goodbye to a friend is always one of the hardest things to do. It’s got to be the hardest thing about life with dogs and cats. They just don’t live that long. For me, while it’s painful to say goodbye, it’s even more painful and empty to choose not to share life with dogs and cats. No, I am not looking for another #3- I think I’ll let Clara and Lilo enjoy things with just two dogs. I have four cats, after all.

The problem is, I know those are the famous last words. If I know Jerry, we will be back to three dogs within the month.

While I’m in the realm of the macabre, and still feeling a bit melancholy, I’ve found a few more of everyone’s favorites: Victorian-era post mortem pics. Yeah, I know it’s creepy, but as popular as these things are I can’t be the only one who finds them grotesquely fascinating.

I think this one was a mob hit- got the entire family, which was sort of sick.

This one is more tragic than anything. It’s bad enough these twins were likely stillborn, but for someone to want $756 for the original print?

This one sort of leads me to wonder if this child was OD’d on one of the many patent medicines of the day- that contained opium and alcohol?

I bet it happened a lot more than was ever found out.

From the unnatural position of the legs and arms, I almost thought this was a kid’s doll,

but then in Victorian times nobody would have wasted an expensive photograph on a doll.

Better Living Through Technology and Chemistry, and Disturbing Thoughts

March 5, 2013Tonya Lanthron 3 Comments

No one is more anti-smoking than an ex-smoker.

Even though back in the day I smoked the cowboy killers, (yes, I chain smoked the cowboy killers) today I find few of other people’s habits more annoying. The exception to that would be Jerry’s uncanny ability to spot either puke or shit combined with his complete unwillingness to actually clean up said puke, shit or other noxious mess.

On one hand, since cigarettes are legal and the government makes money on them, people should be allowed to smoke up- anywhere and everywhere- should they so desire. On the other, I am not a fan of having my airspace polluted by some jackwagon’s cig smoke.

I know it’s too complicated for Jerry. But there may be hope for others.

The above illustration doesn’t mention the damned cellophanes, but then again most smokers don’t just toss the foil and cellophane on the floor to clog up the vacuum cleaner, either. No matter how you scour the floor for cellophanes, there’s at least one that avoids detection and ends up clogging the vacuum cleaner, which begs one question and one statement.

1. What’s the bloody point of having a vacuum cleaner if you have to pick up half the shit on the floor before you vacuum so it doesn’t clog the machine?

2. Jerry was raised by wolves, which is why there is unauthorized detritus on the floor that shouldn’t be there to begin with. I should be grateful he knows how to wipe his ass.

I think some of the really weird Victorian artwork actually is drug-inspired. I mean, this dude was even impaired in his fashion choices. Elton John wouldn’t even wear this ensemble. When alcohol, opium and God only knows what else were readily available in just about every patent medicine in existence, I’m sure there were plenty of guys who wore bad clothes and thought they were riding around on (stoned) giant white pigeons.

I’m thinking duct tape would have kept this poor dead kid’s head up for the pic.

I’m assuming the little girl in the very front of this pic is dead by the vacuous stare and the way her head is flopped over. However, her mother is hanging on to her hair in a manner that would make an old-time Catholic mother proud. The expression on the mother’s face seems to be one of those “You will sit still dammit,” expressions rather than a mournful pose. Perhaps the two boys in the background were getting on her nerves, or maybe she was peeved because the dead one kept on flopping over. Maybe she grabbed the dead kid by the hair just to keep her steady in one place.

I have to wonder how many child deaths buried in the overwhelmingly high infant mortality rate of the Victorian era were actually inflicted by the mothers?

It would be easy enough to cover up one’s crime. Lots of kids died, and died suddenly from everything from typhoid to a good old fashioned case of the runs. An autopsy of that time – should anyone insist one be conducted- probably wouldn’t reveal poisoning or suffocation.

Just put it in their drink.

emetic:

adjective

1.causing vomiting, as a medicinal substance.

noun

2.an emetic medicine or agent.

I can think of a lot of things that have emetic qualities:

Obama. Just thinking about him and his illegal squatting in the White House makes me want to puke.

Exposed hairy butt cracks. Wrong on many levels, and tacky on either male or female.

I don’t throw up easily, which in this world is probably a good thing.

Party Like It’s 1895, Late Winter Apathy, and More Victorian Death

March 4, 2013Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

Dead? Nah, it’s just early March in Central Ohio.

Early March in Ohio is about the same as late February. It’s cold. It’s windy. There is at least one form of precipitation happening at any given time. The season of Snowbooger Grey lingers on. Sometimes it lingers on until May.

So I figure I’ll go back to some of my favorite art (yes, photography is an art) and dig into some postmortem scans. I don’t know why I find 100 + year old pictures of dead people fascinating, except maybe to underscore that death is a constant and to remember that one’s time above ground is short, unless of course, you’re at the BMV.

“Lifetone” Embalming Fluid- for keeping stiffs fresher longer!

Someday, if I am ever free to determine my own décor, without having to worry about things getting ruined, broken or permeated with cigarette stink and dust, I would furnish my entire house in bizarre ephemera and trinkets that have a macabre twist- like the kinds of stuff featured on the show Oddities. The only problem with that (other than Jerry is as messy and destructive as a horde of hogs, so valuables have to be kept out of his reach) is that stuff is generally expensive if you don’t procure it in strange places like yard sales and flea markets and such.

I probably should go with Jerry more often when he goes to estate sales and yard sales and auctions but I really don’t have the attention span. I’m looking for completely different stuff than he is. He generally looks for redneck crap (lawn mowers, tools, beer-related ephemera, camping and fishing stuff, and occasionally firearms) to resell, while I look for the cool antique conversational items that are a bit harder to find.

For a generation of people who were prone to maudlin sentiment, I find it interesting that some Victorian era greeting cards were just plain emotionless. Maybe it’s like today, where you save the formal cards for obscure relatives and business connections with whom you wish to remain cordial, but not necessarily friendly.

Translation: I like you less than Neal Schon, but more than the Quaker Oat Box Guy.

The nice thing about this card is that I could pretty much say that about anyone who hasn’t gone out of his or her way to piss me off. I could design my own Victorian cards.

This is nice and neutral, but it begs the question:

Upon which list do you appear?

I’ve never really been the greeting card type. I like cards if they’re funny, and if they are relevant to the one getting the card. I don’t do maudlin sentiment well though, and I tend to be a bit of a wise ass if given the opportunity.

If they can walk on two legs, then they can carry AR15s. Just sayin’.

It’s bad that I’m this bored. However, it’s good that I am entertaining myself in a quasi-constructive way. The guys I work with really don’t like it when I put their faces on fat bikers, hippos, or even bimbos with really big boobs in bikinis. The bad thing is with the rise of both the easily concealed digital camera and WalMart, there is no end to just plain awful pics.

Some fashion statements are better left unsaid.

Tonight I have to drop Jezebel off to be spayed and declawed. I am always somewhat ambivalent about declawing cats, but Jezebel has a rather destructive habit of scratching on the door frames instead of the scratching post (F.B. also has claws, but she’s older, very sedate, lets me clip her claws, and actually uses the post.) Jezebel also gets caught in the curtains and on the furniture, and even though she will take medication without going spaz, she will not allow me to clip her claws. Isabel was a curtain climber when she was little as well as she had a rather disturbing habit of climbing people so she could ride around on your shoulder. Fanny almost destroyed one end of a chair arm, and almost gave me a really nasty cat bite when I tried to trim her claws, before she was old enough to be declawed. Cat bites are serious business. The only thing worse than being bitten by a house cat is being bitten by an AIDS or hepatitis infected human. Cats have bacteria in their saliva that can literally infect your blood and eat your flesh.

Jezebel won’t be contributing to the feral cat overpopulation issue.

Some cats can learn to use the post and/or deal with having their claws clipped. I have had a few cats who I didn’t need to declaw, and I don’t do it capriciously, because I know it’s not a fun surgery. But if a cat is strictly indoors, and it’s an issue of declawing vs. the cat being homeless, I’ll go with declawing. I know. Mean cat mom, I know, but it would be more cruel for Jerry to catch her going to town on a door frame and drop kick her across the house. When he’s five sheets to the wind I wouldn’t put anything past his drunk ass. The plus side to declawing, if there is one, is that our vet is a very good surgeon and she has always done a fantastic job on declaws. I still hate doing it.

Creepy. Not a good retouch job on the eyes at all.

Of course, I don’t even care for open casket funerals. The idea of old-hen relatives of the deceased filing by the coffin and making commentary is rather distasteful to me. I still remember my relatives’ commentary when Aunt Ellen died. “Doesn’t Ellen look lovely?”

Ellen did NOT look lovely. She looked pretty damned dead. She was so orange she looked like she passed out at the Oompa Loompa Prom. And she had to be dead to be wearing all that day-glo orange lipstick. She was a Pentecostal, which means she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, but she did have to wear dresses when in public.

When I die, I hope Steve-o honors my wishes and has me cremated, but he has the same sick sense of humor I do. He will probably have me taxidermied and use me for a coffee table.

Genealogy is Addicting, So Far So Bad, the February Funk

February 3, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I don’t know why I find long-dead relatives intriguing, but investigating my own personal history becomes a lot more interesting on the rare occasions in which I find pictures. I stumbled upon this pic when I was actually looking for pics of my relatives’ grave markers of all things. This picture is of my great-grandfather, Wert, his first wife, Ethel (who died at the age of 31, in 1910, several years before he married my great-grandmother) and their daughter, Nellie (I would assume she would have been considered by great-aunt?), who died just a few days before her sixteenth birthday in 1913. They also had a son, Harold, (born in 1907) who died at four years old in 1911. They were married when he was 22 and she was 16. I’ve not been able to figure out what they all died of. I’d always thought there’d been some sort of epidemic or something- but not when the deaths are a year or more apart- unless they had TB or some other condition that doesn’t kill you right away. In the early 20th century you could die from stuff that is generally curable today, and I know there were several cholera and diphtheria epidemics in Marion County back then- along with all the common stuff like strep or pneumonia that people get all the time but can get a script for and get rid of today. I know full well I would have been dead many years ago (probably in infancy, considering I was born with pneumonia) had it not been for antibiotics and modern surgical technology. I guess I could figure it out if I were willing to pay the state of Ohio $16 for each death certificate, but I don’t have that kind of money just floating about. If I had to take a guess though, I would probably bet on the contagious disease du jour.

My great-grandfather died in 1942 at the age of 69. He and my great-grandmother had four kids including my grandfather. Anna, my great-grandmother, had five kids already from her first husband, who died young- so there was a house full of kids. Anna died in 1970 at the age of 88. Grandpa outlived all of his brothers and sisters and half-siblings by many years. I think he had one brother- Maurice- who made to 1997. Maurice was younger than him too, but Grandpa was 91 when he died.

I don’t know how bad it would screw with your head to lose your spouse and two kids in the span of three years, but I would have to believe it would be a serious blow to one’s sanity.

Pictures of long-dead people are fascinating even when you don’t have any background information on them. The pics become even more interesting when you can put a name with the face and even a bit of history to go along with it. I would estimate that the above pic was probably taken in or around 1898. Nellie looks as if she is about a year old or so. It’s kind of sad, really, to look at that pic knowing she never made it to her sixteenth birthday. What is even more sobering is realizing that her mother was only 17 when that pic was taken. They had been married over a year before Nellie was born. I was too young to get married when I was 21 and for that matter, too young the second time I got married at 26. Hindsight being 20/20 I’d have been better off to remain an old maid living quite happily in the company of dogs.

I am glad that Nellie was very much alive when the pic was taken. In that time period photography was extremely expensive, so they must have been somewhat affluent. From the clothing I gather they weren’t exactly poor. In that era, pics were often only taken of children when they died. There is an entire category on E-Bay: postmortem photography dedicated to (primarily) Victorian-era dead people pics. They go for big money, too, even if the seller has no clue who the dead person is, which is sort of macabre when you think about it. Some of the postmortem pics are pretty graphic, especially when you can tell they painted on the eyes or that the body has started to rot in places. In high summer, without benefit of embalming, I would assume dead bodies wouldn’t stay terribly fresh for long.

Being that it is February, and the weather is a major contributor to the February funk right now, death and dead relatives are appropriate topics. Oddly enough, none of the relatives for whom I know their date of death died in February, even though there are more deaths on average in February than in every other month.

It bothers me sometimes the lack of information I have on my relatives. Some of what I do have is rather frightening, some of it enlightening, and some of it downright sad.

So much gets forgotten over time. Then again, if some descendant of mine happens upon my name and statistics a hundred years from now, I wonder how they would see me? Would they see my pictures and then realize why they’re coyote ugly? Would I be regarded as one of those shithouse rat crazy skeletons in the closet?

Then again, I don’t think I’ll be here to care.

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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