Dangling Eyeballs

I once knew a woman whose father was a mob fellow with a crew that specialized in dangling eyeballs. When someone disrespected the family, the crew would be dispatched to seize the miscreant, and then they would pop from its socket an eyeball. The eyeball would dangle there, on its stalk, arest against the cheek.

No permanent damage was done—the eyeball could fairly easily be reinserted—but because people are not accustomed to viewing the world from an eyeball dangling on the cheek, the procedure tended to firmly impress on the miscreant the necessity of de-miscreanting, and at once.

I learned of this discipline when a snake slithered up from the southland to become Oberfuhrer of the newspaper, and then ruin it. In protest of the ruination the writing staff and some of the other people quit en masse. I was one day rending my garments about these events when this woman spoke up, disclosed the family business, and offered that her father would be more than happy to dangle one or more of the Oberfuhrer's eyeballs, if she asked him to.

This was quite the generous offer. But I declined it. For three reasons.

First, I knew it wouldn't do any good. The Oberfuhrer would continue to ruin the newspaper, even if his eyeballs were dangling.

Second, if I asked that the eyeball(s) dangle, I would then owe a favor to this woman's father, that I might someday be asked to repay. Like, if I were to take a job at a funeral home, and then Sonny were to be shot on the causeway, I might be asked to use all of my powers to make him again look like a human, so his mother could view him once more, before he went into the boneyard.

Third, I had developed the pacifism problem. And so could not countenance any eyeballs dangling, on my behalf. If you and I were walking down the street, and someone jumped out and pummeled you to the ground and commenced choking you, I might reach out and dangle an eyeball. But I couldn't just order one up. Like lobster from the seafood menu.

As one goes through life, one will inevitably encounter people whose eyeballs really need to be dangled. But, in my view, it is better to cabin the dangling to interior imagining. Rather than let it loose, into the outer world of physical phenomena. Where there is pain and horror and screaming. Also, police. And prisons.

All of us have our crosses to bear, and at that time in this woman's life one of the crosses she bore was that her father dangled eyeballs. For, as she several times moaned to me, this seriously affected her love life. Because whenever a beau would learn of her father's profession, he would run from her faster than Richard Pryor with his body on fire. Because every boy instinctively knows that at some point in his relationship with a woman, he will inevitably commit some egregious boy blunder, one that virtually demands that one or more of his eyeballs be dangled. And so what a boy does not want, is to be entangled with a woman whose father actually goes around dangling them.

"He's a nice guy, really," she told me. "I don't think he would dangle any of their eyeballs." But the boys, they couldn't be sure. And so they ran and ran.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AgbLmjn5A]

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Eye see where this is going. First the eyes are on the table. Next thing you know they are dangling on the cheek. This is becoming eye-gore. As the all seeing lady once said, keep yo' eyes to yo' self. Speaking of bug eyes...

bugeyes_3a.jpg

The understatement in this picture book's subtitle, 'some of the more interesting days in my life so far', sets the ironic tone with which Bruno the bug-eyed cat narrates a series of daily episodes that are far from ordinary.

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@QMS

I'm series!!111!!

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@HenryAWallace Or are you just happy to see me Wink

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@QMS

(How Would Trump Answer?)

Some people might see that as threat. I don't, by the way, but people do-- and that is very appropriate, too. By the way, if I do make a threat--which I never do anyway--it's the best kind of threat, believe me. People who make threats ask me how to make them because they know my threats are the best. I just never make them.

Wink

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better than the so and so "sleeps with the fishes" message. Of course, with pollution having turned bodies of water into dead bodies of water, in which nothing has lived for decades, the message may have to be delivered, not with a dead fish, but with a pillow, meaning that so and so "sleeps, that's all she wrote."

But I do know of someone, let's call him M. M is now deceased. His father was a member of a US mob. As M grew up, M's family was either rolling in money or living on the dole, supplemented by modest amounts from the mob. (After all, why had M's Dad blown all the money when it was rolling in?)

Anyway, M's father was killed in the service of the mob. Meanwhile, M was living the most decent life he could. As a med student, he married a visiting nurse and they lived pretty much hand to mouth, with M donating blood for money as often as he could and his wife climbing stairs to visit patients practically right up until she gave birth.

Then, M got his license to practice medicine. A couple of mob members looked up M, allowing as how they felt obligated to M because of his dad. They were buying a life insurance company. It was going to be strictly legit so that they could pay income taxes on legit income, thereby avoiding questions from the government that they would be otherwise unable to answer.

As desperate as M and his wife were for money as he started out, M declined precisely because he knew he would forever be indebted, if not indentured, to the mob. And, sooner or later, he'd have to do something much more illegal than prettying up Sonny enough so his mother could look on him in his casket.

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hecate's picture

@HenryAWallace

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@hecate

when he had to be "the man of the house" while Dad was in prison, but he and his wife both had extra marital affairs with women and his son hung himself to death when the son was eighteen.

I am very sad to say that very word I have posted about M on this thread is true, or at least true to the story a relative of M told me.

BTW, your OP gives a whole new meaning to songs like

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcJm1pOswfM]

and

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMMurru_M4k]

and

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBBeHJZTUd4]

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hecate's picture

@HenryAWallace
"Bette Davis Eyes," and the notorious parody, "Sammy Davis Eye." And "I Only Have Eyes For You," "Eyes Without A Face," etc. The list is endless.

I currently know a woman whose father dangles eyeballs. Because everything repeats. He is not a mobster, though, but a freelancer. Occasionally he has Fights, and in one of them he dangled an eyeball. The law disapproved. He was placed on probation, and went to some classes, where they told him he should not do any more dangling.

The woman had a beau who was boy-blundering, and the father went to his house, and explained to the boy about how he should not be misbehaving, and explored some of the consequences. The boy moved to another state.

I have nothing but respect and affection for this woman. I favor her in all things.

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@hecate

she appears in films. And she said, "Getting old is not for sissies," which may be the most succinct and unforgettable preview of aging ever given in the English language, Shakespeare and other literary legends included.

I decided against including Bette Davis Eyes in my earlier post,though, because (1) plural, as opposed to a single dangling eye, as you described; and (2) while Ms. Davis' eyes bulged some, they didn't dangle. So, I tried for "eye" (singular) songs, rather than "eyes" songs. However, I included Can't Take My Eyes Off You, despite the plural. The mental image of someone's dangling eye(s) resting on his or lover was irresistible, especially with Halloween so near.

All that said, what the hell:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPOIS5taqA8]

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hecate's picture

@HenryAWallace
we're talking solo eyes, there's that "Eye Of The Tiger" song. But it would be a bold idiot, who tried to dangle a tiger eyeball.

On reflection, "Eyes Without A Face" is entirely too grisly. It denotes amateur hour. Where, rather than artfully dangling the eyeball arest upon a cheek, far too much force is applied, and the eyeballs whoosh right out of the head, and go flying across the land.

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Lookout's picture

Was common in early America. An eye for an eye - which might explain our blindness....and certainly speaks to our violent culture.

"I would advise you when You do fight Not to act like Tygers and Bears as these Virginians do - Biting one anothers Lips and Noses off, and gowging one another - that is, thrusting out one anothers Eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the Great damage of many a Poor Woman." Thus, Charles Woodmason, an itinerant Anglican minister born of English gentry stock, described the brutal form of combat he found in the Virginia backcountry shortly before the American Revolution. Although historians are more likely to study people thinking, governing, worshiping, or working, how men fight -- who participates, who observes, which rules are followed, what is at stake, what tactics are allowed - reveals much about past cultures and societies.

The evolution of southern backwoods brawling from the late eighteenth century through the antebellum era can be reconstructed from oral traditions and travelers' accounts. As in most cultural history, broad patterns and uneven trends rather than specific dates mark the way. The sources are often problematic and must be used with care; some speculation is required. But the lives of common people cannot be ignored merely because they leave few records. "To feel for a feller's eyestrings and make him tell the news" was not just mayhem but an act freighted with significance for both social and cultural history

https://ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2001/jmanlyart_gorn_0401.htm

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

hecate's picture

@Lookout
lovely people. : /

Dangling, however, is different from gouging. Gouging permanently destroys the eye. Dangling, by contrast, vacations the eye from its usual residence in the socket, but, if performed artfully, the eye can be returned to its home, without permanent damage. Or so I understand.

In the law, gouging is classified as mayhem, which for centuries has punished, for example, sepraration of the limbs from the body, or permanent destruction of various portions of the face. (Comes from sword days.) Dangling, however, in that it inflicts no permanent destruction, is not mayhem. Or so it has been argued.

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@hecate
tell us the key distinction: Gouging? Torture. Dangling. Not torture.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

hecate's picture

@UntimelyRippd
rapey boy Burnt Kadaver has made it very clear that whatever act the (Republican) executive may engage in, the law cannot touch him.

I would say him/her, but Kadaver does not want any hers, serving as chief of the executive.

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janis b's picture

Is that something like resting comfortably on the plumpness of a cheek?

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hecate's picture

@janis b
Is arest not a Real word? I've been using it so long I've forgotten whether it's actually Allowed. I think it is. I believe the Law is you to Get to put an a in front of the words to signify on, or in, or, really, lots of things. As in awash, afloat, awake, asleep, ashore, aboard, afield, afiddling, aroving, abonesawing. Like in the famous poem:

so we'll go no more abonesawing
so late into the night
though the heart be still as rat bastard
and the moon be still as bright

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janis b's picture

@hecate

then I can say you went aslaying a perfectly good poem.

You’re no Leonard are you ; ).

[video:https://youtu.be/uX9EVnbYjhI]

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hecate's picture

@janis b
is a Real poem! The Hairball and his pal, Desert Hairball, they are reciting it. For they are in mourning. They really liked the bonesawing! But now people are Complaining. : (

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