Let me offer a quick addendum to last weeks article, because I’m concerned that it might have given readers the wrong impression.  Despite the cavalier tone I’ve taken on this material, I want the kids out there to know that torture is NOT cool.  It is a brutal and savage enterprise that reveals the darkest compulsions of human nature.  There is no practice of torture that should ever be glorified.  Except this one:

Goddamnit, this is how I want to go

The Inquisition Chair

Say what you will about the backwards nature of medieval health care – they understood the benefits of maintaining good posture.   This chair fucking DARES you to slouch.

If this chair looks like a particularly inspired torture device, it’s not by mistake.  One day during the Inquisition a couple of cardinals were shooting the shit by the watercooler, talking shop when Cardinal Bob offered  "The thing is so much of the time these heretics are just sitting around waiting to be purged of sin via ass to mouth impalement, but we never have time to get to them!"

"Seriously." moaned Cardinal Fictional.  "And the Pope is gonna have our ass if we don’t get the numbers up.  We can’t all be workaholics like those jagoffs in the Seville office."

"Haha…yeah. Hell, we couldn’t keep up with those guys if the chairs were doing the torturing for us!"

One mutual flash of "Eureka!" later, this chair was on its way to being born.  The cardinals celebrated their innovation over some sacrificial wine and a couple of doe-eyed altar boys.

The chair is pretty self-explanatory, but each torturer knew how to make the experience their own.  They could selectively apply pressure or weight to the seated invididual or even stoke a fire underneath it.  The standard of application basically hinged on how big of a dick the torturer was.

I know this is where I put a scorecard for the fuckedupometer last time, but I just can’t do it.  The horrors of it all have begun to weigh on me.  How about a little something cleanse the palette a bit?

OCD Kitten will clean its way right into your heart

The Iron Maiden

When I originally started writing this section, I had worked out a good number of puns involving the musical standards from Iron Maiden.  They were real gems too.  There were gags like "If someone tries to slap you in one of these, you’d be well-advised to Run To The Hills."  However, I’ve decided to side-step those punchlines in favor just declaring "Hey Internet, I’m really fucking old".  You’d reach the same conclusion anyway.

The Iron Maiden was a device worthy of shrill metal commemoration.  This cabinet was lined with sharp metal spikes designed to do everything but kill you.  They’d impale your eyes and chest, but usually avoid all major organs.  On the upside, the accoustics were ideal for recording vocals.

 "You know what torture is?  Waiting for you to play with me."  Awwww!

The Lead Sprinkler

This will probably look familiar to any Catholics in the audience.  It is reminiscent of a device that is dipped in holy water and whipped about so groups of churchgoers can get a refreshing spritz of the Holy Spirit.  For a brief period these were retired in favor of the more modern overhead sprinklers, but the priests found that the resulting wet t-shirts were too conducive to lust.  

This operated in much the same way, opting for a more robust holy molten metal instead of water.  The annointed were so invigorated by the blessing they would loudly thank God by screaming at the top of their lungs.  A more savage application involved slowing dripping silver directly into their eyes, proving torturers didn’t always need to leverage the anus for the big finale.

Lookit!  Good Charlotte is trying to rock!  Awwwww! 

The Heretics Fork

Torturers have to put up with a lot of hassles.  When people aren’t preemptively howling for mercy they’re shouting defiantly about how they will never be broken.  It’s like dealing with bipolar Tweens all day!  As if that isn’t trying enough, just when the torturer is really in the groove of flaying the skin off some sinner with a spanish tickler (one of few torture devices whose name doubles quite nicely for a sex toy), their victims callously pass out from blinding pain.  Ingrates.

The Heretics Fork eliminated both the chatter and the nodding off.  It also doubled as the world’s most dangerous novelty bowtie at parties, though it never caught on in that respect.

  Lookit!  Mommy made me the lil’est whore ever! Awwww!

The Knee Splitter

As hellacious as all the other devices were, this is the only one that was made from Satan’s dental mold.  Or Jewel‘s.  They’re equally terrifying, really.

The name of this device is something of a misnomer.  While it could be ratcheted down to brutalize the knee and render the leg largely useless, it was used on elbows and other sections of the extremeties.  I postulate it was actually given that name to impart a false sense of security in the torturee.  As bad as their leg would be savaged, they could always console themselves knowing that it was pretty much over after their knee split.     Afraid not.

Lookit!  Robert Pattsion is still asserting his heterosexuality!  Awwwwww! 

The Rack

On the downside, you would be tethered to this apparatus, helpless to resist.  If your answers didn’t satisfy, the ropes would coil so tight that every single joint in your body would be torn out of their socket as you writhe in agony.

On the upside, if you could convince them to untether you afterward, odds are pretty good you’d be able to perform oral sex on yourself. 

I’m calling that cup officially half full.

Lookit!  Amazon still thinks it can unload its HD DVD stock!  Awwwww!

Ian Cheesman is happy to get away from writing about torture so he can focus on more life-affirming scatalogical humor.  Speaking of funny pieces of shit, check out iancheesman.wordpress.com.

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.

The Judas Cradle

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 Head Crusher

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.

The Pear Of Anguish

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.

The Brank

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 Rotating Drum

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.