Devilishly Gorey

I haven't posted in a couple days which feels really weird. Work has been crazy these last two days and I haven't been feeling great. Yeah I know, want a little cheese to go with that whine? Needless to say I'm feeling better and thing should be a little more back to normal tomorrow. My job tends to be feast or famine and this week is beyond feast. Which wipes my brain and doesn't allow for thoughts beyond just home, food, sleep. Even this won't be my best post, but hey, at least it's something.

I could say that my mood has been a bit dark. But that could just be the the Gorey stuff I've been reading. Not horror novels, although they can be fun. Instead I've been reading a lot of Edward Gorey. Even if you don't know the name you know his style. Gorey is known for cross-hatched artwork that combines old fashioned images with a wonderfully morbid sense of humor. Gorey's characters often die in unusual ways. His stories are like little comic strips that only run a couple of pages. His most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, is an alphabet book where each child dies in a strange or unusual way. (A is for Agnes Who Fell Down the Stairs). His cartoons are not for everyone but there is definitely a sense of humor about them. I was shocked to learn that Gorey died just nine years ago. Looking at his illustration work I would have assumed that he had written at the turn of the century.


I've been picking up his books from the library and have been enjoying the brief stories and dark images. Over the weekend I read Gashlycrumb Tinies, Amphigorey Too, and Amphigorey Also. Not sure why this is appealing to me suddenly although Cabinet of Wonders did mention him recently. But I was raised on Gorey along with Chas Addams (creator of the Addams Family), Gahan Wilson, and Gary Larson. We had all kinds of reading material but I tended to gravitate towards some of the more unusual ones. There is a darkness to these cartoonists and a humor that make them perfect for me. I tend to have a bit of a morbid sense of humor. Comes from having a doctor for a father. And Gorey is just too devilishly fun to pass up.

Disgusting Dinner Discussions

Warning: If you are squeamish you might want to pass this entry up. Or if you would still like to think of me as a normal sane person. :-) 

I grew up in a family of doctors so it takes an awful lot to turn my stomach. Dad would come home from work and tell us about all the organs he cut up that day. We'd listen attentively to the sometimes gruesome details while chewing on dinner. I remember the night he brought home pictures of the baby born without a skull. We looked at them right after dessert. Kind of icky but interesting in a bizarre way. My brother John would tell us all about his cadaver that he was working on in med school and my mother would tell us interesting serial killer stories. Needless to say I have a fairly strong stomach. 

My problem though is that I often forget how strong a stomach I have when eating with others. Jeff has gotten used to me. But others make strange faces at some of my dinner conversations. If you eat with me often enough eventually you will be grossed out by something I say. So I try really hard to remind myself not to talk about anything too terrible. Most of the time that helps. 

I went out for dinner tonight with a friend from my previous place of work. We try to get together once a month to have dinner, talk books, and share stories. She and I have some of the most interesting discussions about religion and family and children (she's childfree too). And then she brought up decomposing bodies. And I was shocked. She and I have talked a little about death before but this was a hard core what happens after you die talk. As we worked on a plate of Mexican food and beers, we discussed cremation versus burial, donating bodies to science, and the length of time needed to completely decompose a body. I was in my element. 

We tried really hard to talk quietly but I feel bad for any of the tables sitting near us that heard our conversation. Very few people can handle discussions about the Body Farm and embalming without at least getting a little green. And all I could think was here was a friend where I didn't have to pull any punches. I didn't have to censor myself. It was almost freeing. We sat at the restaurant and talked for 2 and a half hours (not all of it was decomposing bodies). The waiters probably hated us by the end. But the conversation was just too stimulating to leave. And it reminded me of growing up...well growing up and Chas Addams.