People have been accusing the media of needlessly hyping the swine flu, but the truth is that they had no choice. Prior to the CDC declaring a world-wide aporkalypse, pundits were exhausting themselves in an indignation marathon in response to the Bush Torture Memos. Self-righteous posturing burns a lot of calories after all. It’s how Keith Olbermann keeps so trim.
The torture memo details advanced interrogation techniques only to be used in dire circumstances, such as preventing imminent danger to the public or a detainee not responding to “Pretty please?”. These vile techniques include such horrors as making prisoners stand for a long time and slapping their belly. Seriously. The best my government can conjure up for torture is simulating a long amusement park line or ritual abuse from older siblings who caught you in their room.
We may be content to leave our bronze age ideas behind, but we have abandoned the golden age of torture. Back then people understood advancement of truth was more valuable than the sanctity of any rectum. Let’s take a quick look back at the torture devices that make waterboarding sound like a trip to the dayspa.
Poor Judas. All he did is sell out ONE messiah and his name has been reviled ever since. If naming this unholy reamer after him isn’t sufficient penance, I don’t know what is.
The guilty party (and lets face it, why else wouldn’t they have confessed?) was supported by a series of ropes and pulleys and lowered until the metal pyramid was inserted into one of the two regrettably non-pyramidal orifices. They could be left sitting on a gravity-powered ass lathe for hours or repeatedly dunked, depending on how bored the puppeteer was.
The next time you’re visited at your home by religious missionaries, invite them in. Allow them to share their worldview. Provide them with light refreshment. When they are done, politely inform them that while you believe them to be nuttier than squirrel shit, you appreciate them not obliterating your cranium to deliver the message.
This quaint bit of Inquisition memorabilia doesn’t really mince words with its name. Using the same technology that smoothie emporiums leverage to juice the shit out of whole oranges, the tightening of the screw would result in teeth shattering into the jaw, eyes squirting out of their sockets and ultimately death. Other than that you’d be fine.
Not to be confused with the Apple Of Infinite Sorrow or the Kumquat Of Imminent Destruction, this device was a sort of a multipurpose tool. It was designed to be inserted into any opening that didn’t like being stretched 4 times its normal diameter (read: all of them) to teach it a lesson.
This was sort of an apéritif for further torture to come and wasn’t generally used to kill. However, since liars and blasphemers knew full well it was going in their mouth after just being extracted from a series of 40 different colons, they would probably offer to kick things off quickly and jump in the headcrusher first.
For those already recoiling in fear, let me assure you that this one of very few medieval torture devices not designed to go in your ass. The brank was actually targeted at humiliating women with a tendency to gossip. It would enclose their head and prevent speech with a metal bar in the mouth or appropriately placed spikes.
I don’t want to validate this torture with some sexist statement about women’s tendency to prattle on, but consider how much more enjoyable this Cathy cartoon is when she’s outfitted with a brank:
This one’s for you, Irving
The woman could be forced to wear the brank for a matter of hours or months on end. It depended on the severity of her crime or whether or not she was fit to look at in the first place.
The prisoner would have their head clamped into the pillory on the right, exposing their underbelly to the rotating bed of spikes beneath. Then the interrogators would begin their “Good cop, Belched Out The Deepest Fiery Pits Of Hell cop” routine, punishing wrong answers with a full rotation of the drum. This would continue until you were disemboweled or you admitted your guilt, the punishment for which was disembowelment.
Ian Cheesman is certain that if you enjoy torture, you’ll enjoy looking at his brand new site iancheesman.wordpress.com. It’s like a blog without all of that pesky writing cluttering things up.
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