Why do I read things that make me feel sick?

[ceebeegee]

This afternoon, I looked up images of bubonic plague. I know all about the Black Death and how disgusting it was, and yet have never actually seen what it looked like. Yeah. Pret-ty disgusting. The foot picture is the worst. Can you just imagine being surrounded by that in 1349 (and the SMELL)?

And this evening I started thinking about the 1989 Romanian Revolution and Nicolei Ceausescu. So interesting--the Austerity Plan was unbelievable. People can hardly cook? One 40-watt light bulb, for three hours a night? And you expect women to bear 5+ children? (For anyone who wants to overturn abortion and birth control, read about how well that worked out for the Romanians.) Unbelievable. (It also explains why all those Romanian gymnasts were so thin--EVERYONE was thin in Romania. The Austerity Diet, on bookshelves now.) It's also interesting because he started off as something of a good guy, and stood up to Moscow many times (Romania defied the '84 Eastern bloc Olympic boycott, and also Ceausescu criticized the '68 invasion of Czechoslovakia). I've always found Romania fascinating--the people seem so stoic, and yet their revolution was so different from the rest of Eastern Europe, so vivid and brutal. I always remembered that the Ceausescus were captured, tried and then immediately executed, on Christmas Day. There was a video made, and pictures. And now I feel kind of sick.

Comments

[foulpost.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I nearly hurled on my just repaired laptop. Never do that again.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you missed the subject line...

[minstrel70.livejournal.com]

The Christmas Day execution was poetic justice, and not the least bit unearned. The video was overkill, I agree.

The Romanians' 1984 Olympic appearance is my most cherished Olympic moment ever -- and I watched the Miracle on Ice in 1980 when it happened. The Romanian team got a standing ovation from every single person in the Los Angeles Coliseum, all 120,000 of them, something the USA team didn't get.

I cried when I saw that.

But the Ceaucescu regime, despite occasional brilliant flashes of humanity, was still nothing more than a desperate, failing socialist dictatorship.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

The only thing that bothers me about the fate of the Ceausescus was how quickly it happened--it was a kangaroo court, and may taint the results based on procedural grounds. But of course they would've been found guilty anyway, and should've been. They were terrible people. When I said I felt sick, it was because I was looking at the screen caps from the video, not because I thought they were innocent or really had any sympathy for them. But still...what a way to go. Looking at the pictures, how this terrible dictator and his wife-accomplice terrorized this country for so long...and this is how they end up. Just a weird feeling. It's like looking at what happened to Mussolini.

[dje2004.livejournal.com]

And this evening I started thinking about the 1989 Romanian Revolution and Nicolei Ceausescu.

This sentence made me laugh for reasons I can't quite articulate. I don't know, I just hear it as "This evening I was just thinking about switching my long-distance plan, picking up the dry-cleaning, and the Spanish-American War." It's funnier if you imagine it as a Monty Python skit.

[kellygirlnyc.livejournal.com]

I have never known either what the beubonicc plague looked like. My goodness. That's ever so slightly atrocious.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Isn't it repulsive? Apparently the buboes hurt like hell too. What a terrible way to die.