Mystery of Disgust (and Some Crazy Shit)

All excerpts below from excellent, interesting article by Erik D'Amato. Highly recommend reading in its entirety HERE. Parenthetical in post title is courtesy yours truly thanks to the opening story. You're welcome.

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Is there a common link that bridges such disgusting but seemingly unrelated notions as an unflushed toilet, a dead body, a visit to a slaughterhouse, and a neighbor who commits incest or cannibalism?

The answer, insist Rozin and his colleagues, is simple: each area of disgust is, in its own way, a jarring reminder of our animal nature. The things that most disgust us--defecating, dying, giving birth, eating dubious or unclean foods--are the very traits we most conspicuously share with other animals.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the only body product we generally don't find disgusting is tears--the only one considered uniquely human.

The reason such reminders of our "animality" are so harrowing may be equally uncomplicated: any reminder of our animal nature is also a reminder of our own mortality.

...

In the millennia since mankind domesticated itself, disgust has grown from a reflexive avoidance of unpleasant tastes into something much deeper. It has become an emotion as abstract and complicated as love and as uniquely human as guilt. We are socialized by our disgust and, in turn, use it to socialize others; what better way is there to stop people from doing something socially undesirable than to "make" that something--whether eating rancid meat or, in India, defying the caste system--disgusting.

However much it marks our humanity, our capacity for disgust signals our continuing denial of the animal interiors we carry within our human hulls.

Most cultures consume only a small subset of potential foods. But we North Americans are almost pathologically narrow in our tastes. For example, we almost totally avoid insects and reptiles, shy away from invertebrates, and, with the exception of a handful of herbivores like chickens and cows, pass on virtually all of our bird and mammal friends. And of these few unlucky finalists, we tend to either eat only a few "choice" parts or disguise the spurned bits in the form of, among other things, hot dogs and Spam.

we tend to avoid foods that call to mind our own beastly pedigree. So there go the heads, eyes, lips, testicles, and so forth--everything that reminds us of us. And the animals that we do eat tend to be shrouded by layers of disguise and deception: cooked even when safety and tastes doesn't require it, called names that obscure their origins--"veal," "venison," and "pork" instead of cow, deer, and pig--and hidden while alive from those about to chow down.

Mukashiwokaerimiru

"To look back upon the past"

Beautiful. Also reminded me of one of my top ten, Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano).

Le Barman de Satan

Trying to find more info about the above image, found this...



I can't get it out of my head now. Hate you, Google. Anyway, Pascal Comelade uses toy instruments in his music. As cool as that sounds to me, and as addictive as this particular song was, I did have to rip the headphones off for something called "Egyptian Reggae". No idea what compelled me to give that one a go but it was a bad baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad mistake.
I can't remember where I found this Flickr set: Le Cirque.

Re: Your Brains

(For Sis)

I can't sing but I can totally sign. Gonna learn this.

From Siberia, With Love

Curious Sofa

I want to live in this store. Do you think anyone would notice a permanent resident. I could be part of the display.

"Curious Sofa is a retail boutique located in Kansas City. Our style is a casual mix of comfortable furnishings, antiques and offbeat gifts."

2009 Halloween/Fall Open House

Halloween Carols!

It is a delightfully chilly grey, rainy day. I'm drinking spiced apple cider, watching horror movies, thinking about pumpkin pie and listening to the incredible Kristen Lawrence.

One of the Autumn people, organist/composer/singer Kristen Lawrence combines spooky Halloween tunes with Christmas carol style. Result? Perfection. Creepy organ, lots of strings, even a duet with her cat, Molly Macabre.

Is it October yet...

Her website is HERE

Hall of the Mountain King

Cotard Delusion

Imagine holding a belief in your mind that your every waking day was not real and you had infact died. Looking in the mirror and not recognising your own face, or worse, not even being able to see your own face.

This is Cotard delusion, a rare neuropsychiatric disorder. It is also known as Walking Corpse Syndrome, Cotard’s syndrome or negation delusion. An individual suffering from this will hold a delusional belief that they are dead (either figuratively or literally), are putrefying or have lost their blood or internal organs.

It is believed that Cotard’s syndrome is the result of a disconnection between the brain areas that recognize faces and the areas that associate emotions with that recognition. The familiarity of their own face is lacking due to this disconnection, which results in the sense that they do not exist.

Dialectical behaviour therapy may prove more effective, along with other talking cures. Therapists tend to take this route in curing because the syndrome is as much intellectual and linguistic based as it is biological.

Source -- I Do Not Exist: A Look Into Cotard Delusion

Horrors of Spider Island

Scold's Bridle

Via Listverse, "10 Additional Gruesome Torture Devices". Follow the link to read about the Heretic's Fork and the Intestinal Crank, among others...

The Scold's Bridle

This portable instrument of torture was popular in England and Scotland during the 1500′s, but was seen as late as the nineteenth century. The scold’s bridle (also known as branks) was a cage that was locked around a woman’s head as punishment for nagging and gossiping too often. Attached to this iron muzzle was a curb-plate inserted into a woman’s mouth to, literally, subdue her treacherous tongue. Most of these metal curb-plates were spiked, averaging in length of about half an inch to an inch. The smaller spikes were a mild discomfort while the longer ones pierced the tongue and caused the victim to bleed continuously.

To make matters worse, some curb-plates had an additional round gag at the end which, when the device was worn, rested in the back of the mouth, irritating the throat. Some of these gags were shaped as animal heads to symbolically refer to her crime (e.g. donkey meant fool).

Wearing the scold’s bridle was far from a private affair. Women were taken through town, led by a leash, for people to see and know of her transgressions so that she may be ridiculed for them. If the verbal assaults weren’t enough, women were stoned and beaten by the townspeople.

Quick Picking

Recently I saw the most amazing concert (live!) featuring a quick-picking fiddler. So went tromping about on youtube to try to find examples and came across this: Reason #643 Why Russia Is Awesome.

More Panzram

This fella is not (quite) as witty and articulate as Ian Brady but the stuff he writes is still diamond sharp. Notably his very (embarrassingly) accurate, scathing criticisms of the prison system. At the time (turn of the 20th century thru 1920s) prisons were defined by such corruption and conditions that would make Hell look like a Disneyland vacation. From severe over-crowding to rat feces infested "food" to the punishments and torture of inmates (euphemistically referred to as "corrections"), it is a completely foreign country. I would like to do some additional reading on Clinton and Leavenworth from this era. Also reminded that I haven't posted examples from the Burns photo collection, Deadly Intent, yet. I think that would fit nicely into the general theme here.

I'm almost done with the book proper and will then delve into a very extensive "Notes" section. Meanwhile, here are a few more quotes that struck me. All Panzram.

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I used to spend all my time figuring how I could murder the most people with the least harm and expense to myself, and I finally thought of a way to kill off the whole town: men, women, children, and even the cats and dogs. I intended to buy up about a barrel of arsenic poison. Then I was going to get me six or eight hogs, starve them until they were all ravenously hungry and then I would give them all a big feed of flour, water, mash and arsenic poison, all mixed in one mess. They would all dive into it and fill themselves full, and in an hour or two the poison would begin to work through their systems. Then I was going to hang them all up by their hind legs with a wash tub under them to let the slimey poison and froth drain out of them into the wash tubs. Then I would strain and dry out, and then I intended to get some clay and make three big clay pots, each one to fit inside the other and each one a little bit harder than the next one. Then I was going to fill all three pots with poison. I was going to put the lot all in one and put that in the bottom of a small creek that flows into the reservoir that supplies the town and poison all their water. That would have fixed a hell of a big bunch of them at one time, for by the time they found out what was wrong with them it would be too late for all of the damn doctors in the world to cure 'em. Lucretia Borgia used this racket on a small scale but I figured on a few extra improvements so that I could do a better job than the Borgias done. They were pikers. They didn't kill half enough. They should have killed everybody and left this world for the only good thing in it, Nature. This would be a damn fine world if man was out of it. (101)

You asked if I get a kick out of killing people. Sure I do. If you don't think so, you do as I had done to me, 5 or 6 huskies walk in on you and let 'em hammer you unconscious, then drag you down in a cellar and chain you up to a post and work you over some more, and then if you feel like forgiving and forgetting all about it, write and tell me about it, will you. I have had 22 years of this kind of stuff, and you know it, and yet you're chump enough to wonder why I am what I am. Don't be so dumb. Judging by the tone of your letter, you now figure I am a bug of some kind. A fire bug or a homicidal maniac. That's where you're wrong. I am no bug, even if I do get a kick out of things which would have the direct opposite effect on you. (169)

Obscura Antiques & Oddities

Inspired by an article Mr. O. posted Elsewhere regarding "New Antiquarians". I'm still admittedly confused by how this aesthetic can be commodified (As home decor. It seems like a very private personalized sort of thing so I don't understand how it can be bottled and sold) but I certainly share the fascination. I, too, enjoy taxidermy, medical specimens, vintage toys and the like. I wonder why. I've always collected old stuff. From painfully expensive antiques to gutter gems. I mentioned Elsewhere that they are all so ghost-drenched they seem to have a tune of their own, a life of their own. They are an odd kind of company to keep.

Anyway. First spied Obscura on Morbid Anatomy. I would love to visit this store some day.

The BLOG has a series of photos of the interior. Curious Expeditions also has a nice little FLICKR SET of same.

Tetris & The Soviet Union

Saw this on Neatorama yesterday and OF COURSE loved it.

My Space

I like my blog, come here often to look over my collection, listen to stuff. Best to stay here in my own sandbox, surrounded by the stuff I like. Get so tired of People and trying to puzzle them out. Wish it didn't exhaust me so much but the effort kind of bleeds all of the color out of the world. I get numb and glum. It's odd; being alone doesn't do it, only other people can make me feel lonely.

Shocker (a dog, aussie shepherd, guest at the kennel I work at) may go home today. His dad died in Iraq and mom isn't sure she can continue to care for him. So he may not go home, he may be put up for adoption as soon as she pays his bill. I hope not. He needs a family so desperately.

He bounds. Really. Like Tigger. One of those dogs with a weird kind of contagious happiness. I love being around him even when he damn near knocks me over. I call him Shockerama.

They're Coming To Take Me Away

Halloween Shopping Part 2

Gothic Rose Antiques

I really like this site. And not just for the music. Some of this stuff is a little on the expensive side but oh. Oh ho ho ho. It is so beautiful...

Panzram: A Journal of Murder

Panzram's story also makes hash of another widely embraced delusion promoted by an army of bluenoses, demagogues, and self-appointed moral watchdogs. Anyone looking for proof that there is a link between juvenile crime and media violence will search these pages in vain. In fact, the only work that figured prominently in Panzram's upbringing was the Bible, and - like the fictional character he so closely resembles, Flannery O'Connor's sociopathic Misfit - all Panzram derived from his religious instruction was a lifelong nihilistic hatred of sniveling humanity. Indeed, it is striking how often the Bible figures in the background of serial killers, from the fanatical child-killer Albert Fish to the Wisconsin ghoul, Edward Gein (a product, like Panzram, of a harsh German Lutheran upbringing on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm.)

~ Harold Schecter, Introduction

The Paint Shop was a very ingenious contrivance for inflicting the worst punishment where it would do the least harm and the most good. They used to have a large wooden block which we were bent over and tied face downward after first being stripped naked. Then a large towel was soaked in salt water and spread on our backs from the shoulders to the knees. Then the man who was to do the whipping took a large strap about 1/4 inch thick by 4 inches and about two feet long. This strap had a lot of little round holes punched through it. Every time that whip came down on the body the skin would come up through these little holes in the strap and after 25 or 30 times of this, little blisters would form and then burst, and right there and then hell began. The salt water would do the rest. About a week or two later a boy might be able to sit down. Maybe, if he didn't sit down on anything harder than a feather pillow. I used to get this racket regularly, and when I was too ill to be given that sort of medicine, they used to take a smaller strap and beat me on the open palms of my hands. While the other boys were playing ball, skating or swimming, I used to be given a Sunday school lesson and made to stand at attention with my arms folded and my back to the field where the boys were all playing and enjoying themselves. Sometimes a dozen of us at a time would be lined up like that. We were all supposed to go to school a half a day and work half a day and the rest of the time learn how to love Jesus and be good boys. Naturally, I now love Jesus very much. Yes, I love him so damn much that I would like to crucify him all over again.

(19)

Chernobyl

Reason #206 Why Russia (Ukraine, USSR, whatever) Is Awesome:



"The reactor still contains enough radioactive material to destroy Europe. The only thing stopping this is a decaying sarcophagus."

I read somewhere that people are currently living there. Or "people". That conjures up all kinds of Descent-like images...

Loss of Innocence

The Residents



Amusement parks are caked with sounds
A solid hunk of meat
A barker's sweat flings from his tongue
His tattoo shines with heat

A wary stranger stands and sways
Enraptured by his stance
Two-headed goats come stumbling by
And give a troubled glance

The barker looks into the eyes
The stranger tries to bend
The barker swears to more delights
For all who seek within

The stranger enters canvas doors
And smells the fresh cut hay
The barker points to Siamese twins
The stranger looks away

The eyes of horse faced women
Watch the few who wander through
They sense the tension in the air
And smell the sweet taboo

A heart beats fast against a chest
The stranger leaves the tent
The waves of people drown the sounds
Of loss of innocence

Jekyll

Yum.

Announcing: VALHALLA

When Ari first told me he was writing a sci-fi novel I was somewhat dubious. I'd met plenty of people claiming to be, to have been, or to have plans to write a book. And all of the attempts I'd seen were juvenile and tedious.

This guy was one of my favorite things in the world though -- an ANOMALY.

A. would send me chapter installments as he wrote them. I came to cherish getting these. I loved printing off each segment, curling up in my favorite chair with a mug of sweet cream coffee and sinking into one of the best, most riveting stories I'd ever read. Here was a guy who was writing a real (really REAL) science fiction book!

Even at first draft stages with all of its (not obvious to me) flaws and bumps, it was still brilliant and fun and exciting and everything I'd want in a story. Now, a few drafts later, with bright shiny polish and editing Valhalla is available for sale on Lulu. It is with great joy I highly recommend buying your very own copy today!

Blurble:

The year is 2230 and of the millions of people crowding northern Scotland, there are none so aimless as Violet MacRae. In a world where war has gone obsolete and only brilliant minds are valued, she's emerging into adulthood with more brawn than brains and a propensity for violence. People might dismiss her as a relic, but world peace is more fragile than they know. Only an underground of outcasts just like Violet keep it from falling apart. Valhalla is the story of her induction into that underground, where she'll learn the craft and face genetically enhanced criminals, traitors from within and more. A story of action and spycraft, futuristic settings and weaponry, romance and satirical wit. Basically it's Star Wars meets Harry Potter meets James Bond. You should really read it. See concept and character art at aribach.deviantart.com/gallery

Click HERE to order!

Ad art, feast your eyes...

Magic Mummy

Halloween Shopping

Inspired by Pumpkinrot, I've been doing some Halloween window shopping. Also looking on evil eBay (evil because it's so addictive) and will post photos of anything I can't live without. This will undoubtedly be the first of many Halloween shopping posts.

Victorian Trading Co.








Pottery Barn













Grandin Road