Today’s Cursed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
As the British Mount Everest Expedition, including the doomed George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, prepared to head up the mountain, the head lama at the Rongbuk Monastery had taken to a hermit cell to meditate and was unavailable to bless the enterprise. In his stead, the other lamas sent the expedition off with this cheerless message: “Chomolungma, the awful and mighty Goddess Mother, will never allow any white man to climb her sacred heights. The demons of the snows will defeat you utterly.” Alas, the expedition paid the warning no mind…
Culled from: Ghosts of Everest
“Fuck all y’all” – Chomolungma
BTW – what is it with white men loving to desecrate holy sites? Mt. Rushmore comes to mind – asshole white men gotta thoroughly rub in their domination of the Native Americans by taking a holy mountain and carving the faces of their leaders on it? And then there’s Everest: the sherpas would never set foot on the mountain before the white men came along because it was a holy site. And now? That thing is covered with debris and bodies and has become another capitalist exploitation. Chomolungma must be fuming!
Of course, don’t get me wrong… I’m certainly happy that they climb the mountain against Chomolungma’s wishes because… morbid facts!
Morbid Mirth Du Jour!
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes by Harry Graham is a collection of delightfully morbid poems originally published in 1899. Harry was morbid before morbid was cool! He was most famous for popularizing a particularly hilarious type of poem called a “Little Willie”. “Little Willies” were condemned by parents because, well, Little Willie is a bad example for children. Here are a few vintage Little Willies:
Little Willie with a thirst for gore,
Nailed the baby to the door
Mother said, with humor quaint
“Willie, dear, don’t mar the paint.”
Into the cistern little Willie
Pushed his little sister Lily.
Father couldn’t find his daughter,
Now we sterilize our water.
Willie saw some dynamite,
Couldn’t understand it quite;
Curiosity never pays.
It rained Willie seven days.
Anyway, our own Aimee recently tried her hand at writing a Ruthless Rhyme of her own and I loved it so much I wanted to share it with you all:
Little Willie, on a dare,
Pushed his grandma down the stair.
Gram descended with a clatter
And at the end her hip did shatter.
Mother, alerted by the cries,
Said “No TV if Granny dies!”
MFDJ Flashback!
I was recently talking with John who wrote me about the grave of Julia Buccola Petta – the “Incorruptible Bride” who was buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Hillside back in 1921 and exhumed six years later and was found to have not decayed. A photo of her in her coffin was put on the gravesite.
I visited the grave last year and wrote a morbid fact about it and shared it. Since many of you weren’t following the newsletter when it was web-only, I thought I’d share it in case you’re interested in reading the full story and seeing all the photos:
I forget which mountain it is, but there is a peak in the Himalayas that still has not been climbed, though some have tried. However, if I’m remembering my reading, the main reason is that the locals hold the top of the mountain sacred and will not go near it.
Which proves that not everybody has a price; these guys appear not to have one, unlike the Sherpas of Everest who apparently were easily bought.