examining the husband

***In Gratian’s Decretum, published in 1140,  impotence was declared grounds for annulment. Nearly all clerics agreed that nonfunctioning husbands had to be examined. In the “cold water” test, a man’s penis was submerged in ice water after which the veins in his scrotum were checked for constriction. Even more humiliating was a test in which an examiner known as an “honest woman” bared her breasts before the accused man, kissed and fondled him, stroked his penis, and did whatever else she thought might entice an erection. This was typically done in the presence of the man’s wife and priest.

Priest Lie Detector found here

According to the Chirugia Magna, a couple had to lie together on successive days in the presence of a matron used to such procedures. The matron had to administer spices and aromatics, comfort and anoint them with warm oils, massage them near the fire, order them to talk to each other and embrace.

“Ooh Matron” found here

In Book 6 of the Viatacum, Constantinus Africanus recommended this stimulating potion for those in need

“Take the brains of 30 male sparrows and steep them for a very long time in a glass pot; take an equal amount of the grease surrounding the kidneys of a freshly killed billy goat, dissolve it on the fire, add the brains and as much honey as needed, mix it in the dish and cook until it becomes hard. Make it into pills like filberts and give one before intercourse.”

(This advice came from a monk who believed that an erect penis was filled with air not blood)

*** extract from “A Mind of its Own” by David M. Friedman

go ahead and bite me

We have the occasional shark attack in Australia. If you’re planning a trip here perhaps you should invest in one of these first

The Neptunic C Suit made from steel mesh, high-tech fibre, titanium and hybrid laminates can withstand shark bites — but will make a $23,000 hole in your wallet.

Back in 1986 Sydney shark expert, Valerie Taylor, tested a $2000 version her husband made from the steel mesh used for butchers’ gloves. She has this advice if you forget your $23,000 suit and get attacked.

I learnt a lot about how sharks attack, how they bite, and how they feed, just by wearing the chain mail suit with all different species of sharks and letting them chew away,” she recently told the ABC. “The most difficult thing was to get the sharks to bite. I had to put tuna fillets under the mesh.”

She said going for the gills was more effective than the common advice to poke a shark’s eyes. “But push or punch them anywhere if they are that close, don’t be passive. You’ve heard of tennis elbow? I’ve been in the water with so many of them and had to push them away so often I got shark arm,”

In May 1989, Nelson and Rosette Fox filed this patent for a Shark Protector Suit

The suit and helmet have a plurality of spikes extending outward therefrom to prevent a shark from clamping its jaws over the wearer. Figs 1 & 2 show a plurality of zip fasteners, figs 3 & 4 show an alternative arrangement of zips. Other means of watertight fastenings and arrangement of fasteners will be apparent to one skilled in the art

An alternative is to tickle them. According to Mike Rutzen, you can induce a state of “tonic immobility” by turning a shark on its head and massaging its snout.

The effects last for around 15 minutes and has proved a useful tool for scientists wanting to study shark behaviour. Being able to get so close to the Great White, Mike discovered that they do not have beady black eyes, as previously thought, but they are actually a startling blue.

blue eyed koala found here

wait near the rear end

We’ve delved into the fear of being buried alive before at the Gimcrack. If you want to refresh your memory you can read about it here and here. Or you could just read this post instead…..

image by Rubex found here

John Snark wrote the Thesaurus of Horror in 1817.

“Terror, despair, horror seizes on him who is buried alive. The heart is rent asunder by unusual impulses. The emunctories choked by surcharge of faeces, rendered viscid by incalescence. The office of inosculation tries in vain to force its valves and runs retrograde bathing the poor grappling victim in extravasated blood in this dreadful scuffle till coagulation’s influence stagnates and he becomes a fermentable mass of murdered senseless decomposing matter.”

He urged physicians to try the Sphincter Test to confirm death.

“The test used by Turkish physicians seems very simple and natural, for they never think a subject dead while there is irritability or contractile power in the sphincter anus muscle. The test requires a tube to be inserted into the mouth of the deceased. The doctor then squeezes on a balloon-like bladder, to force air into the throat. One lucky assistant holds the nose and lips closed while another waits near the rear end. Death is confirmed if the air blast shoots out of the anus with a clap, the conclusion being that if the sphincter muscle has lost its contractability the person is really gone.”

spell this

Lady Jane Wilde was not only the mother of Oscar, she was also the compiler of Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions. One of her cures for sore breasts is to rub them all over with butter.

Here is her advice for those who wish they had more money

“Kill a black cock, and go to the meeting of three cross-roads where a murderer is buried. Throw the dead bird over your left shoulder then and there, after nightfall, in the name of the devil, holding a piece of money in your hand all the while. And ever after, no matter what you spend, you will always find the same piece of money undiminished in your pocket.”

Her recipe for the lovelorn is even more gruesome

“Go to a graveyard at night, exhume a corpse that has been nine days buried and tear down a strip of the skin from head to foot. Tie this around the leg or the arm of the one you love while he sleeps, but remove it before he wakes. As long as you keep this secret strip hidden from all eyes you will retain his love.”

***This is not what she meant……..

*** Not to be viewed while eating

corset friday 5.2.2010

all photos taken by syncopated eyeball

Ooooh…. I’ve got a player this week. Sabrina is rocking a t shirt and heels

gilding the lily

If you’ve got a couple of extra dead bodies hanging around (hey, what do I really know about you guys anyway?) ,  here’s a few ideas on what to do with them

When D.H. Lawrence died his lover Frieda had his ashes tipped into a concrete mixer and incorporated into her new mantlepiece.

In 1891 French surgeon Dr Varlot developed a method of preserving corpses by covering them with a thin layer or metal (in effect, he was electroplating the dead). Dr Varlot’s technique involved making the body conductive by exposing it to silver nitrate, then immersing it in a galvanic bath of copper sulphate, producing a millimeter thick coating of copper “a brilliant copper finish or exceptional strength and durability.”

image found here

In ancient Rome, where human blood was prescribed for epilepsy, epileptics hung around near the exit gates of public arenas so they could drink the blood of slain gladiators as they were dragged out.

Mosaic of the Gladiators found here

British farmers were “processing” human corpses to create raw materials long before the Nazis thought of it. On November 18, 1822 the Observer reported that the Napoleonic battlefields of Leipzig, Austerlitz and Waterloo had been “swept alike of the bones of the hero and the horse which he rode” and that hundreds of tons of bones had been shipped to Yorkshire bone-grinders to make fertilizer for farmers. After the siege of Plevna in 1877 a newspaper casually reported that “30 tons of human bones, comprising of 30,000 skeletons, have just landed at Bristol from Plevna.”

found at Married To The Sea

When the mistress of 19th century novelist Eugene Sue died, she willed him her skin, with instructions that he should bind a book with it….. He did.

I did a quick check on this mistress to be sure the story was correct. Apparently Eugene used the skin from her lily white shoulders to bind a complete set of his books. Maybe he wasn’t a very prolific writer.

Image found here

“A contributor to The Lion in 1829 revealed the instructions he had left in his will: his body was to be anatomized and the skull given to the Phrenological Society, the skin was to be tanned and used to upholster an armchair, his bones were to be crafted into knife handles and buttons and his flesh was to be used to fertilise a rose bush.

Watch carved from bone found here

Surgeon Richard Selzer muses about, but has probably not formalized, his plans for the treatment of his own remains after death “Upon the wall of some quiet library, ensconce my skull. Place oil and a wick in my brainpan. And there let me light with endless affection the pages of books for men to read.

skull light found here

please sir I want some more

Oliver Heaviside has been described as a sad misunderstood genius.  He was a self taught mathematician, physicist, inventor and engineer. You can read about his admirable achievements here – they are way too complicated for me to explain adequately anyway.

image found here

Like many brilliant men, he had his unorthodox side too.

His neighbours related stories of Heaviside as a strange and embittered hermit who replaced his furniture with granite blocks which stood about in the bare rooms like the furnishings of some Neolithic giant. Through those fantastic rooms he wandered, growing dirtier and dirtier, and more and more unkempt – with one exception. His nails were always exquisitely manicured, and painted a glistening cherry pink.

Mario nails found here

His diet was also rather unusual

“When I get home at 1:00 pm I put on the potatoes, then eat a first course of a slice of cake and a glass of milk. Read paper. Eat second course of potatoes and butter. Butter essential. Sometimes I have a treat. A cauliflower.”

cosmic cauliflower found here

His long suffering housekeeper, Mary Way, had a lot to put up with too. She was kept a virtual prisoner in her own home and even had to sign a contract stating she would not marry a (?expletive deleted?), would always wear warm underclothing, not go out without his permission and not give anything away without asking him first. He wrote this about her in a letter to a friend:

“The middle aged virgin has had a stroke! Pretty piece of work. But she is getting over it nicely, and I think will be fit for work again.”

Her nieces eventually took poor Mary away and Oliver began cooking for himself again

“Quite independent, and have made whatever I like for dinner. Stone broth, ditchwater soup. Made several discoveries. Parsnips cook easily. Carrots don’t.”

image found here

Other interesting aspects of his behaviour included a love of working in an overheated atmosphere (thermophilia), a great affinity with birds and the strange habit of adding the appendage W.O.R.M. to his signature.

Heaviside was not the only genius who formed a deep attachment to a feathered friend. Nikola Tesla even developed his own special feed

recipe found here

Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: “Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.” If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.

the engastration of a helmeted cock

Engastration is the technical term for the process of stuffing a bird inside a bird inside a bird. It is derived from Greek words meaning “in the belly”

“A well-known English example of the nineteenth century was Pandora’s Cushion, a boned goose stuffed with a boned chicken, which was stuffed with a boned pheasant, itself stuffed with a boned quail.”

image found here

Going back further in time to the Middle Ages, people were eating fanciful creations such as the cockentrice and the helmeted cock.

image found here

Cockentrice: take a capon, scald it, drain it clean, then cut it in half at the waist; take a pig, scald it, drain it as the capon, and also cut it in half at the at the waist; take needle and thread and sew the front part of the capon to the back part of the pig; and the front part of the pig to the back part of the capon, and then stuff it as you would stuff a pig; put it on a spit, and roast it: and when it is done, gild it on the outside with egg yolks, ginger, saffron, and parsley juice; and then serve it forth for a royal meat.

Helmeted Cocks: A piglet and poultry such as a cock are roasted, the poultry should be stuffed – without skinning it then glazed with an egg batter. And when it is glazed it should be seated astride the piglet; and it needs a helmet of glued paper and a lance couched at the breast of the bird, and these should be covered with gold-or-silver-leaf for lords, or with white, red or green tin-leaf. The combination of pig as noble steed & chicken as knight-errant had many amusing connotations.

Helmeted cock found here

Other exotic dishes one could expect to eat in the Middle Ages include Brewet of Stag Testicles, Pettitoes and Spanish Farts***

image found here

*** boiled egg whites stuffed with meatballs and glazed with batter

playtime in Burgundy

Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy hosted the party of the century in 1454.

On one table, there was a church with bells, stained-glass windows, and a working pipe organ and choir, which provided musical interludes throughout the evening as well as a silver ship filled with rose water.

image found here

A larger table was far more elaborate. Eight-and-twenty musicians, baked in a giant meat pie, accompanied the interludes of the church choir on the previous table. In addition, the towers of a castle squirted orange punch into its moat. A trick barrel could give either sweet or sour wine: “Take some, if you want!” was written on the scroll of a man standing nearby.

image found here

There are no dimensions or proportions mentioned in the chronicles, but it is a reasonable assumption that with the exception of the meat pie, all of these “entremets” (as they were called) were scale models.  Five more ”entremets” adorned this same table: a tiger fighting a serpent; a wildman on a camel; an amorous couple eating the birds that a man was beating out of a bush with a stick; there was also a jester on the back of a bear and a ship floating back and forth between cities.

image found here

Elsewhere in the hall, a living lion was chained to a pillar protecting a statue of a nude woman who served “hypocras” from her right breast. Above the lion, it was written, “Ne touchez a ma dame.”

Dishes (Entremets) that were intended to be eaten as well as entertain can be traced back at least to the early Roman Empire.

The cook to Amadeus VIII described an entremet entitled Castle of Love in his 15th century culinary treatise Du fait de cuisine. It consisted of a giant castle model with four towers, carried in by four men. The castle contained, among other things, a roast piglet, a swan cooked and redressed in its own plumage, a roast boar’s head and a pike cooked and sauced in three different ways without having been cut into pieces, all of them breathing fire. The battlements of the castle were adorned with the banners of the Duke and his guests, manned by miniature archers, and inside the castle there was a fountain that gushed rosewater and spiced wine.

edible castle found here

shades of shame

My father was a plasterer by trade and he built the home I grew up in. He actually made the cement blocks himself, and he and my mother laid them together, on weekends and after work. It took two years to build and another ten before they adopted first my brother and then me. My mother had plenty of time to decorate.

image found here

All rooms were wallpapered in patterns that would induce a migraine if I were to still live there. The lounge had four walls of embossed yellow daisies and one feature wall of black paper with penny farthing bicycles racing across the top of the piece de resistance – a pale blue and white fireplace shaped like a cloud and sprinkled with micadust.

image found here

The summer I turned 13 I begged to be allowed to paint my bedroom wall. Long nights were spent discussing this preposterous idea, my mother objected strongly, my father not so much but in the end I gained a hollow victory. Hollow because my father chose the paint, I believe it was called shocking pink.

image found here

I can’t recall how long I endured those walls but I think it was 1974 when I defied my mother and covered them with posters. My favourite was from a movie I’d never seen starring a dark and brooding boy called Mark Frechette

image found here

“Mark Frechette, the actor who seemed to carry into his private life much of the tortured soul he portrayed in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film, Zabriskie Point, is dead at age 27. He was the apparent victim of a bizarre accident in a recreation room at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, where he had been serving a sentence for a 1973 Boston bank robbery.

image of Daria and Mark found here

Frechette’s body was discovered by a fellow inmate early on the morning of September 27th pinned beneath a 150-pound set of weights, the bar resting on his throat. An autopsy revealed he had died of asphyxiation and the official explanation is that the weights slipped from his hands while he was trying to bench press them, killing him instantly. A source in the county DA’s office, which is investigating the incident, termed the circumstances “a little strange,” especially since the bar left no mark on Frechette’s neck.”

The video is a little long but it’s an interesting glimpse into the past. Daria Halprin lived on, married and divorced Dennis Hopper, and now involves herself in creative arts therapy. I still haven’t seen Zabriskie Point.

What happened to your teenage pinup crushes…..?