Salome Decapitated

“I am in great anxiety. I write these things to you, that when you have heard them you may be grieved for me. For as my daughter Herodias, who is dear to me, was playing upon a pool of water that had ice upon it, it broke under her and all her body went down, and her head was cut off and remained on the surface of the ice. And behold, her mother is holding her head upon her knees in her lap, and my whole house is in great sorrow.”

–From “Letter of Herod to Pilate the Governor“, in a manuscript of the 6th or 7th century BCE

–Drawing by André Breton

Tigah Grillz

La Bibliothèque Infernale

Diablerie

If the sun don’t come…

Riot Goin’ On

Trust a Berliner to demonstrate in a get-up like this!

via

The Werewolf

A Werewolf, troubled by his name,
Left wife and brood one night and came
To a hidden graveyard to enlist
The aid of a long-dead philologist.

“Oh sage, wake up, please don’t berate me,”
He howled sadly, “Just conjugate me.”
The seer arose a bit unsteady
Yawned twice, wheezed once, and then was ready.

“Well, `Werewolf’ is your plural past,
While `Waswolf’ is singularly cast:
There’s `Amwolf’ too, the present tense,
And `Iswolf,’ `Arewolf’ in this same sense.”

“I know that–I’m no mental cripple–
The future form and participle
Are what I crave,” the beast replied.
The scholar paused–again he tried:

“A `Will-be-wolf?’ It’s just too long:
`Shall-be-wolf?’ `Has-been-wolf?’ Utterly wrong!
Such words are wounds beyond all suture–
I’m sorry, but you have no future.”

The Werewolf knew better–his sons still slept
At home, and homewards now he crept,
Happy, humble, without apology
For such folly of philology.

–Christian Morgenstern, translation by Alexander Gross

Blackbeard’s Pirate Flag

Edward Teach AKA Blackbeard was killed on this day in 1718.

Anna Csillag

via

Strong Lady

Sex Bomb

An array of bombs, with Rita Hayworth for scale.

Via Retrogasm