“Could it think, the heart would stop beating.”
– Fernando Pessoa (died 1935)

NOTE: THIS CONTEST IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED. However, you can still post a ‘pithy morbid thought’ — a dark quotable quote from a dead person — if you wish, in the form of a comment to this post. View the winners here.

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What is a “Pithy Morbid Thought”?

A brief philosophical quip — often ironic — about death, disease, horror, torment, fear, terror, etc. I collect them for inspiration and uncomfortable moments at dinner parties. They also serve as “curtains” which close out each e-mail issue of The Goreletter. Here’s an example of one of my favorites (from Goreletter 2.7):

Peace Meal

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism.
If people were forced to eat what they killed,
there would be no more wars.” — Abbie Hoffman (died 1989)

I want YOUR pith. Give me a good one to use in a future issue of The Goreletter. If I like it a lot, you can win one of five free prizes:
Five different people will win one of these prizes:

a FREE signed copy of PLAY DEAD hardcover
a FREE signed copy of PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS softcover
a FREE signed copy of 100 JOLTS softcover
a FREE signed copy of AUDIOVILE cd
a FREE signed copy of FREAKCIDENTS softcover

The rules are simple:

a) post a comment to this message that includes your favorite “Pithy Morbid Thought” from a dead person. You must include their name, the title of the work you’re drawing it from (if available) and the year they died. You can give it a title if you want (like I did with “Peace Meal” above). For more inspiration, see the previous Pithy Morbid Thoughts in The Goreletter.

b) only ONE entry per contestant, so choose wisely!

c) be sure to include your e-mail address when you enter, so I will be able to contact you for delivery should you win a prize. If you include a link to your website, too, all the better, because I can include that in my newsletter.

d) understand that posting an entry is no guarantee of a prize or publication. I may or may not use your PMT in future issues of The Goreletter. Also submit with the understanding that I will delete any entries that I deem offensive to junior web visitors or legally problematic due to copyright or obscenity law.

Chosen winners will be the TOP FIVE ENTRIES with the pithiest of quotations, in my personal opinion, with one prize going per contestant. CONTEST ENDS JULY 1st AT MIDNIGHT, EST. I will announce winners in the e-mail edition of The Goreletter and in the blog. The winning entries may also be reprinted in The Goreletter blog column by the same name.

[This contest is a substitute for the one that was running last month on The Haunt... they lost their forum pages and the entries that were posted originally there, without a backup. So Haunt members should repost their entries here.]

“Terror is as much a part of the concept of truth as runniness is of the concept of jam. We wouldn’t like jam if it didn’t, by its very nature, ooze. We wouldn’t like truth if it wasn’t sticky, if, from time to time, it didn’t ooze blood.”
– Jean Baudrillard (died 2007)

“Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.”
– George Carlin (died June 2008)

“You are more useful to Nature dead than alive.”
– U.G. Krishnamurti (died 2007)

“If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.”
–Emile M. Cioran (died 1995)

“When the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, ‘If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.’…So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

– Benjamin Franklin (died 1790)

“In an aversion to animals the predominant feeling is fear of being recognized by them through contact. The horror that stirs deep in man is an obscure awareness that in him something lives so akin to the animal that it might be recognized. All disgust is originally disgust at touching.”
– Walter Benjamin (died 1940)

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.”
– Maurice Maeterlinck (died 1949)

“After being struck on the head by an axe, it is a positive pleasure to be beaten about the body with a wooden club.”
– Anonymous (Chinese Proverb)