RECOMMENDED WEBSITE
brought to our attention by an anonymous TRAVESTY
reader
(This is all I can tell you about him, in his own
words:
"I have all the manual dexterity of a chimpanzee
and I can't add.")
http://www.shocking.com/~despair/morbid.htm
Go
here to get your Morbid Fact du Jour
For example: January 13, 2000
The Hsi-yuan-li ("Records of the
Redressing of Wrongs" or "Instructions to Coroners") is a collection of
ancient Chinese forensic science manuscripts that was written in the
1200's. In this book, one of the important places a coroner is advised
to examine when presented with a dead body is the top of the head. A
favorite method of murder was to hammer a nail into the top of the victim's
head, where the hair would hide the nail head, particularly if the nail head was
touched with a little black stain. This theme was something of a favorite
in Chinese crime novels as far back as the middle of the seventeenth century,
one such novel depicting the "investigator"
being baffled by the way a man met his death until he notices flies congregating
about the head of the corpse, parts the hair and discovers an inserted
nail.
This sharp and truly morbid fact was culled from Crimes And Punishment: The
Illustrated Crime
Encyclopedia, Volume
13.
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***Everything in THE DAILY
TRAVESTY is uncopyrighted and untrademarked unless otherwise
specified. Feel free to reprint and circulate anything within our pages,
although if something has a quoted source, it would probably be savvy of you to
also quote that source.***
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Survey: U.S. Thirty Times More
Civilized
A recent survey by the Tax Foundation estimated
that Americans "will spend
more per capita fnord in 1999 on taxes ($10,298)
than on food ($2,693), clothing ($1,404), and shelter ($5,833) combined,
fnord."In 1904, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. made his
famous statement that "taxes
fnord are what we pay for a civilized society." The
Tax Foundation points out that we must be awfully civilized by now - taxes are
fully 30 times greater (in 1999 dollars) than when Holmes
spoke.
(Sources: Tax Foundation, as reported in "CEI
UpDate," Competitive
Enterprise Institute)__________________________________________________________________________________
SOME BITCHING AND GRIPING, sent in by Mike
Y.
ok, now what the fuck is up with people and
weather. i refuse to call a few
inches of snow "bad" weather... im from new
england.... they have bad
weather, you guys down here, you have
snow.... anyway, first off, why must
everyone on the road go about
5 miles per hour... is that really necessary???
is your driving that bad you
cant control your vehicle at higher speeds???
especially you yuppie wannabe
"mountaineers" who buy your suv's and never
take them offroad... get some
fucking use outta that vehicle people...
anyways, i digress, back to my
point..... also, why is it that whenever a
snow flurry hits the ground,
every supermarket within 30 miles is then sold
out of milk, eggs, and
bread??? first off, i doubt you'll be stranded for
weeks, and if you were,
why milk and eggs and bread??? myself, if i were
going to be stranded, id
stock up on beer and cigarettes and porn, but then,
thats just me. (but i
bet id have more fun stuck in my house than yours)
anyways, im done now... i
leave you with one piece of advice.... grow some
balls, play in the snow,
and stop being such a baby about it, for christ
sake....
Editor: **thunderous applause** People are
bored. It is my opinion that we excessively dramatize schmaltz
because we won't let ourselves feel alive in any other
way. I mean think about it-- life used to be much more exciting.
There were physical threats everywhere as a part of daily existence.
These days the average person lives in relative comfort and
security and is hardly concerned with survival. I think
subconsciously, people miss the adrenaline rush and harbor a secret
urge to recreate it and the "crisis" situation. I know I do.
Or maybe it's just that we misinterpret and/or
distort that little voice inside our heads which is always trying to
tell us that death is eminent anyway (because it is the nature of things to
change) and not such a bad thing after all, so we might as well stop
hiding from the present behind our mental constructs, running away
from the fact that we are dead, and live it up with all we've got.
Maybe.
***Please send your own bitch-fests to
the editor to be printed. We do not consider it our place to
judge said bitch-fests, so please send in whatever makes your blood
boil even if it seems "wrong" or "selfish." We are only here to
applaud your naturally aggressive instincts. Feel free to inject as much
primal force as needed-- the more raw energy we feel, the louder we are
likely to cheer. Plus, we think you'll feel better in proportion to how
honest you are.
Thanks this issue to the
Advocates For Self-Government.
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Travesty,
Travesty bo-bavesty, banana-fanna fo-favesty, mi, my, mo-mavesty.