Holiday Snaps!

[MetalMilitia]

I just got back from my Amsterdam excursion and I have some pictures!

We went to the....

Torture Museum

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30428.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30427.jpg


The Zoo

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30445.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30452.jpg


A really bizarre cat museum full of pictures like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30460.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30461.jpg
(this was taken in the middle of the day)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30462.jpg
^ Best picture ever. It was about 12 feet wide. Spot the cat.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30464.jpg
(no idea what the point of this was)

This art gallery (which I cannot pronounce/spell the name of)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30466.jpg

Though it was kind of a let-down as the building was HUGE and the guides said it housed over a million pieces but the actual gallery only took ~40 minutes to walk around. I guess the rest is just storage.

We went to several other places as well but I don't have any good pictures.

And before anyone says it... yes. I was in the sex and drugs capital of the world and I spent my time at a Zoo and cat museum.

We did accidentally end up in a red light district at some point but it was a little bit frightening. We went to the coffee shops too (coffee shop = place you smoke/buy dope) but neither I nor my girlfriend are big smokers so we only had a few joints.

[Dr. Octogonopus]

Amsterdam is terrifying. Who builds a torture museum?

[Pub Lover]

Who builds a torture museum?

The type of people that would visit a torture museum + motivation & time.

[MetalMilitia]

The Dutch, in general, are some of the nicest people I've ever met. It's the English you tourists need to watch out for.

They are the worst people I've ever met.

[Pub Lover]

Agreed.

MM, those pictures are lacking something.

I mean, I know what a lion looks like, I've seen them before, but what I haven't seen is a picture of a lion with MetalMilitia standing in the foreground screaming "OH MY GOD, THERE ARE FUCKING LIONS OVER HERE!"

[Dr. Octogonopus]

Did the English invent the anal torture cone?

[MetalMilitia]

Agreed.

MM, those pictures are lacking something.

I mean, I know what a lion looks like, I've seen them before, but what I haven't seen is a picture of a lion with MetalMilitia standing in the foreground screaming "OH MY GOD, THERE ARE FUCKING LIONS OVER HERE!"

Yeah I always feel self concious about posing in photographs. There are some with me in but they're the less interesting ones so I left them out. Though here is one of me in front of the cat museum. As you can see their logo is a cat's butt. :x

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/176659.9/SNV30465.jpg

[The Leader]

Aww, you look so bashful! :3

Did the torture museum have a pear of anguish? That has to be my favorite torture device.

[Esuohlim]

The cat museum sounds more like a torture museum to me than the actual torture museum.

[MetalMilitia]

Aww, you look so bashful! :3

Did the torture museum have a pear of anguish? That has to be my favorite torture device.

Yeah, I did see that. Can't remember much about it though. Just that it looked like a small pear shaped metal thingy. :/

[The Leader]

Yeah, I did see that. Can't remember much about it though. Just that it looked like a small pear shaped metal thingy. :/

You insert it into any orifice of your choosing, often related to the crime, and twist the pear open, tearing apart the yielding flesh. Delicious.

[Pub Lover]

The cat museum sounds more like a torture museum to me than the actual torture museum.

That museum proves that stupid photoshops of cats existed before the internet.

MM, did you take any pictures in the Longcat Gallery or the mezzanine de baguette la chat?

[Mockery]

Damn, I'd love to go to that cat museum. What was the official name of it anyway, do you know? That logo is fantastic, as are all the cat paintings.

[MetalMilitia]

What was the official name of it anyway, do you know?

It's the kattenkabinet. (http://www.kattenkabinet.nl/html/index_engels_dhtml.html) (website sucks)

It would've been better if it were larger but for ~5 euros it's worth it. If for the wall-sized-godzilla-cat painting alone.

[Tadao]

I want a print of that painting.

[Chojin]

i thought this was going to be a thread about cookies :<

the cat museum is cool, you could never get away with a cat's butthole as your trademark here in the US. someone would have a heart attack.

[Dr. Octogonopus]

I can practically hear the monocles breaking already. :rolleyes

[executioneer]

i thought this was going to be a thread about cookies :<

the cat museum is cool, you could never get away with a cat's butthole as your trademark here in the US. someone would have a heart attack.

i thought it was gonna be yo momma jokes but like christmas themed or something

santa so fat, you gotta have a missile silo for a chimney to get any presents

[Dr. Octogonopus]

You cut that shit out! Santa is a hero! With the exception of the child labor, he is a caring man!
Also, is it just me or does the guy on the anal torture cone look like he's pretty indifferent to it all?

[Zomboid]

That cat museum really is cool looking. I wish you'd taken more pictures of it though.

[Sethomas]

I kinda want to go to the torture museum just to evaluate the opinion I already have of it based on televised tours I've seen. At least, on at least one History Channel special they went through it and the curator was showing off things and talking about them as if they were legitimate pieces of historical torture when a number of them were the product of latter-day imagination. I've seen that museum referenced in high regard, so I would HOPE that they take historicity seriously.

What I mean is that a huge number of torture devices purportedly dating to the Middle Ages never showed up in descriptions, allusions, drawings, or actual examples until hundreds of years later and in the totally wrong area for their purported uses. Even as these things are taken seriously by macabre enthusiasts and textbooks, most historians believe that the vast majority of them were invented mostly in Prussia and Flanders during the Enlightenment either as curiosities or propaganda. It was a popular practice to discredit institutions at that time, most often the Catholic Church or specific royal dynasties, to poke at their history of brutality. When the historical record was missing to help out, they'd just make shit up. You'd have people in Holland suddenly "discovering" relics all the time from three hundred years earlier and half the continent away with no attempt at an explanation of why some random guy had them in his basement.

This is frustrating for academia because it makes it very hard to discern what is historical and what's not in terms of torture, especially with the Spanish Inquisition. We can read the fairly-well documented Inquisition records and get some idea, but even though the vast majority of torture victims in that episode did survive (later redactors of the records didn't distinguish between people burned "at the stake" and people burned "in effigy") we don't really have much word on what happened outside of these records. So, we have to wonder how honest they were. Since the Spanish Inquisition took all of maybe five years to be (sadly, ineffectually) denounced by the Church, it wouldn't surprise me if things were worse than they admitted to--but we have no way of knowing.

[Dr. Octogonopus]

I still can't take that anal torture cone seriously. That guy is practically cackling at their futile attempts to deter his witchy ways.

[Terra]

Did the English invent the anal torture cone?

I'm warped. This had me peeing my shorts.

MM that was a cool holiday. You've gotten older though. It becomes you.

srsly

[MetalMilitia]

I kinda want to go to the torture museum just to evaluate the opinion I already have of it based on televised tours I've seen. At least, on at least one History Channel special they went through it and the curator was showing off things and talking about them as if they were legitimate pieces of historical torture when a number of them were the product of latter-day imagination. I've seen that museum referenced in high regard, so I would HOPE that they take historicity seriously...

Many of the descriptions did note that some of the devices were used primarily as a deterrent and indeed a few were later inventions which probably weren't ever used on people (I believe the Iron Maiden falls into this category).
Some of the grislier contraptions such as the rack did get used but most commonly people would just be shown the rack and that'd be enough to persuade them to talk.