Zombie Parasites

Zombie Parasite infected snail. The eyeballs! The eyeballs!

I looked into the parasite-snail thing I vaguely mentioned as a comparison to shopping with the ex in Selfridges a couple of weeks ago, and after a quick search I found the exact clip I was looking for on the interweb (although I’m sure the original clip was voiced by Attenborough.)

This little video has been on my mind for years. I can’t ever forget it.

So I’m passing it on. Enjoy

Shudder.

Goodbye Twitter. Hello Pinterest

My Pinterest Boards

Not satisfied with the scores of social media sites I’ve signed up to I’m now also on Pinterest.

Unlike Twitter, which I never really committed to (I’m a visual person, besides all those hash tags are annoying.) I have only 3 Pinterest boards: one for Arty-Farty stuff, a Home one and my work one. So I’m certain I can commit to updating them regularly.

I have also created another blog called 10 Years of Mediocre Photography where I’ll be posting 1 photo a day until I run out, which given my happy-go-lucky trigger finger is unlikely to happen until I die.

I’m starting off with all my black and white photos I took and developed in our college darkroom at Camberwell, then I’m afraid it’s largely digital.

The rubbish Motorola Razr phone camera first then on to the surprisingly decent Sony Ericsson phone /camera and after we’ve got through all those finally we’ll get to my new camera. God knows when I’ll get to those. I have bucket loads of photos. 

Camberwell was a marginally shoddy college however they had a great black and white darkroom that was open till 9:30 every evening. Having no social life at the time (it was a really anti social 2 years) I spent nearly all evenings in the darkroom.

Can’t say my photos are particularly good, but I like a couple. I do miss developing film. I miss the smell of darkroom chemicals (oddly like fried chicken), I miss watching your photo develop in the tray but it was a pretty expensive hobby.

There is a great photographic supply shop in Southwark called Silverprint where I used to buy lots of discount photographic paper.

I also used to buy cyanotype chemicals (toxic stuff but handy) from there and make up a batch in my tiny student hall room. (No gloves used either. Health & Safety? What’s that?)

Chest X-Ray Cyanotype

If you don’t know what a Cyanotype is, it’s very similar to a photogram.

You coat a piece of paper with this greenish chemical mix, but unlike a photogram this coating is only sensitive to UV light.

So it’s something you can easily do in your room as long as it has a window facing the sun or a sunny balcony.

Once your paper has been exposed to UV light, you then rinse it in water to develop the print and set the chemical coating.

The coating looks dark green once exposed but after the water bath it turns a vivid blue. You can also make these in a warm sepia tone. I’ve found the cheaper the paper (higher acidity) used the better the print quality.

Skull Cyanotype

The only way I could make these was by taping the piece of coated paper to my student hall room window for a couple of hours and the only thing I had that would stay up that long were a series of X-Rays. (Now and then I’d find the masking tape had worn off and the X-Ray and coated paper would fall off)

Some are mine, some are from various family members.

Hands Cyanotype

Rant For Today: Breeding Ethics

A non-developmental series of models made for medical science. Click for more info and the credit and all that.

Now here is a sensible blog post about breeding by Duchess.

It actually has citations from proper articles. It even the mentions a girl doing a PhD on the subject of the ethics of breeding. Unlike me, who can never be bothered to track down research and cite shit. I am too lazy to do any more than have an incoherent rant. This entire blog is one huge, incoherent rant.

I must confess I particularly enjoyed the timid disclaimer at the bottom about how the PhD girl who is writing about breeding morality loves children and isn’t having a go at any breeders. That made me snicker a little, the idea that there was a need for that disclaimer.

The article linked within the post from the New Yorker was also a very interesting read.

The size of your family helps determine how the world of the future will look. (Credit the New Yorker)

‘The case against kids: Is procreation immoral?’ Elizabeth Kolbert, 2012. in The New Yorker.

“In “Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate” (M.I.T. Press), Christine Overall tries to subject that decision to morally rigorous analysis. Overall, who teaches philosophy at Queen’s University, in Ontario, dismisses the notion that childbearing is “natural” and therefore needs no justification.

“There are many urges apparently arising from our biological nature that we nonetheless should choose not to act upon,” she observes. If we’re going to keep having kids, we ought to be able to come up with a reason.”

I had a huge argument with a friend of the ex’s back in Bombay last December. We met him and his now fiancée at this hotel near the airport for dinner (Don’t know why we chose a place near the airport. The airport is in the middle of nowhere, the food was so-so and was massively over priced). We got into a heated debate over our Paan Pasand flavoured Shesha, or perhaps even a sequence of debates.

The first one was about breeding dogs to develop or enhance certain genetic traits. (I’m totally against this. It seems cruel and unnecessary to actively cultivate a squashed pug nose if that nose results in limited or poor ability to breathe.)

Or those genetically bred cows that have so much muscle (It’s for people who want really lean, low-fat meat) that they can’t even have sex without a human manually having to inserting the bull’s penis. Here I’ve even attached an article. See? I’m being so good and almost semi-researched. Maybe I should do a PhD.

This argument then morphed into:

“If you know you and your partner both have a high chance of passing on a debilitating genetic condition to any offspring would you still have a baby?”

I’d like to say that I presented a good defence of the ‘No’ stance, but some of his arguments (especially no.4 below) were so maddening that after a point I just got enraged and incoherent. Also the ex was on my left, acting like an atrocious little troll, constantly interrupting rudely in trying to change the subject and derail the debate. The ex doesn’t enjoy debates.

So this guy’s response to the question above was “Yes” and these were the core reasons listed below (My arguments underneath)

Venus in Flames. Click for info about this Votive drawing on the Wellcome collection. (and the artist credits and stuff)

1.

“All procreation carries some risk.”

Of course it does. What a redundant point. Everything we ever do carries risk. Walking across a street carries risk. But most people also have the capacity to assess the risk and make an informed decision based on that assessment.

If there is a high risk when running across a train track when the signal is red that you will get hit, then most people would avoid running across a train track. I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to breeding. In fact I should think this should especially apply to breeding in the circumstances mentioned above.

“Dark-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum. Click through for more info from the blog I nicked it from.

2.

“Doctors don’t know everything and can’t predict the outcome accurately. Even if they tell you the chances of this kid having a horrific incurable condition is high, like a 50/50 chance. Even if its 80%. Even if its 99.9%. They can’t know everything. So I’d have this kid anyway and take that 0.01% chance.”

What an idiot.

Again, sure part of the statement is true to a degree. (Doctors don’t know everything.) However it is also insane.

Firstly doctors don’t claim to know everything. They are presenting you with the chances of a certain outcome that you are free to then take or leave. However their inaccuracy will be a good deal less inaccurate than yours.

Secondly if using the logic above, you refuse to listen to a professional who may have spent a several years studying to give you solutions, why bother going to see a doctor at all? Just visit a Homeopath. Or a yogi. Just as good. In fact better – You’ll won’t have to think about the risks at all – They’ll tell you to pray harder, swallow a special herbal remedy when the Moon is in Vishnu and everything will be just dandy.

But reading between the lines here’s what I think this guy was actually saying,

“I’m willing to take the risk, even if it’s very high because the person who would suffer the most is this child but that’s ok because what I want is a baby and getting what I want is more important to me and besides I can easily rationalise it.”

In fact if he just said that I’d be fine with the whole thing. I’d still think he was a selfish, amoral, butthead but at least he’d be an honest one. This whole ‘I’m bringing a child into the world for its benefit and the benefit of the world’ is such a crock of shit. I want to vomit every time some deluded breeder or to-be breeder says it. (Unlike the Duchess I have no disclaimer)

Wood carved fetus model set (circa 1877) - Toyota Collection. Click through for more info from the blog I nicked it from.

3.

“Existing but being in incredible pain is better than not existing at all.”

I couldn’t even be bothered to argue this at dinner. It’s too … exhausting. Non existing creatures won’t care that they don’t exist. Plus creating something when you know it will suffer (and not in the existential angsty sort of way, while listening to a Morrissey album, but really suffer.) seems like nothing short of torture to me.

I think this guy had religious leanings. People with religious leanings never seem to mind creating things that will suffer. They have a million ways of justifying it. So that’s always a dead-end. I stopped bothering with it a while ago. Religion I mean. If I’m going to argue about fiction I’d rather it was a debate about The Hobbit and whether Gandalf was a bit gay. (I think he might have been)

Image from the Wellcome collection "Draw your own votive". Click through for the story behind it on the Wellcome collection. (and the artist credits and stuff)

4.

“I’d love this child. My love would be better than it having good health.”

Actual statement. I’m not even paraphrasing.

Oh yes yes of course, your love would compensate for all this baby suffers even though you chose to procreate in the face of medical advice, even though you could have adopted. What a saint.

He then presented us with 2 theoretical situations:

One a baby is born to a large but poor family. They neglect the child and probably they won’t be able to give him/her any of the good things in life but this kid would be totally healthy.

Or two, a baby is born to this genetically dodge couple, he has a terrible incurable chronic illness and disability but his parents would really, really love it and give it whatever it wanted.

If you had the power to decide into which family this baby would be born which would you choose?

Even the ex who normally NEVER agrees with me picked the first option. Who the fuck wouldn’t?? I’d imagine that most parents just want their kids to be born healthy.

This particular argument really blew my mind. The sheer deluded arrogance of it. The amazing selfishness. My love will conquer all. Even genetic illness. Even suffering. I mean seriously. Who does this guy think he is? Mother Teresa?

Even now, months after this dinner my mind reels.

Drawings of pregnancy to guide clinical examination. Click for more info & credits. The grossly distended tummy over the vagina in last image makes me feel a bit queasy.

“Benatar’s case rests on a critical but, in his view, unappreciated asymmetry. Consider two couples, the A’s and the B’s. The A’s are young, healthy, and rich. If they had children, they could give them the best of everything—schools, clothes, electronic gaming devices. Even so, we would not say that the A’s have a moral obligation to reproduce.

The B’s are just as young and rich. But both have a genetic disease, and, were they to have a child together, that child would suffer terribly. We would say, using Benatar’s logic, that the B’s have an ethical obligation not to procreate.

The case of the A’s and the B’s shows that we regard pleasure and pain differently. Pleasure missed out on by the nonexistent doesn’t count as a harm. Yet suffering avoided counts as a good, even when the recipient is a nonexistent one.”

I’m totally on board with this Bentar guy. In fact I wish he was with me at this dinner. Just him, his huge thesis (not a euphemism) and his beautiful logic.

The ex was very annoyed about this entire debate and refused to take part, except by trying to stop it by occasionally yelling at me. (Being the incredibly rude person the ex is).

For once though I was perfectly happy to comply and wrap the thing up. (It wasn’t going anywhere this debate, although I did get quite annoyed when the ex was being particularly trollish. We were both sitting there hissing at each other now and then.) but the ex’s friend really wanted to carry on. He just wouldn’t drop it. The ex lectured me all the way home. I didn’t pay any attention.

In other news, I just got back from holiday in the Caribbean. I feel terribly smug.

I’m brown as a nut and looking more like an Indian than I’ve looked in ages.

So I’m asking Punjab to send over a crate of Fair & Lovely. It seems to be all the rage these days. 

Clocks & Cranes Photo Series

Shopper Euphoria

Selfridges Window (Rather good their windows. This series was showcasing rising young talent.)

I went shopping with the ex to Selfridges on Saturday. (Well a Saturday a couple of weeks ago anyway. I’m on holiday now.)

It was an eye-opening experience.

Not because I hadn’t gone to Selfridges before but because of the dramatic and noticeable personality overhaul the ex underwent while in the store.

I’m quite manic when I visit shops that have a lot of things to look at and I have no fixed agenda

i.e. I’m not thinking

“I want a kettle and then I’m leaving.”

I look at everything. I cannot talk or concentrate. I want to go through all the racks methodically one by one, sifting through the multitude of products. I need to be dragged around because I have ceased to function aside from browsing.

Muji, for example, is particularly irresistible. It’s like a pricey charity shop. I like to read all the labels and then mentally debate with myself whether I need anything. I desperately want to need something but the problem with Muji is that all of its products only look appealing en mass. Once you get them home you realise what a pile of junk it is.

Like those stupid plastic trays they always have. I love the clear acrylic compartments. I don’t know why. In my mind I’m filling them with things. What things? No idea, but just … some things that might fill an acrylic compartment.

After a while I reach a state of total shopper hypnosis and have sudden uncontrollable urges to buy things that have become crucial to my happiness.

JUST BUY IT!! BUY IT NOW!

YOU NEED IT!

YOU’LL USE IT!

YOU’LL USE IT EVERY DAY.

EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE!

IT’LL BE AWESOME!

DO IT NOW!”

That’s my internal monologue. I’m not walking around Muji yelling. (Yet)

Occasionally the sensible quiet part in my brain says,

“Yes, yes, that’s very nice. Very nice.

But let’s not be hasty shall we?

You remember all the trouble we’ve had with things like this in the past don’t you?

You don’t want to be buying something only to return it do you? Think of how much unnecessary work that would be.

Why don’t we just look around a bit and come back in a little while?”

But the shouty part usually yells over the sensible guy, in a dastardly attempt to drown him out. (I don’t know why it’s a ‘him’. Its sexless really.)

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! JUST BUY IT!

COMING BACK IS BORING. COMING BACK IS FOR LOSERS!

YOU’LL WASTE TIME. TIME IS MONEY EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.

DON’T BE SUCH A SQUARE. YOU NEED IT.

WE HAVE MONEY. YOU DESERVE A TREAT. YOU HARDLY EVEN DRINK!! GO ON BUY IT!

THERE WONT BE ANYTHING BETTER ANYWAY! YOU’LL JUST HAVE MORE HASSLE COMING BACK.

ONCE YOU HAVE IT, IT’LL BE DONE. DON’T YOU WANT TO BE DONE??

JUST BUY IT. PICK IT UP AND PUT IT IN YOUR HAND. TAKE IT TO THE COUNTER NOW!!!!

NOOOOOOOOWWW!!!!!”

Eventually I get really tired and cranky. If I’m lucky I don’t buy anything.

If I succumb I come home with something useless, a lighter wallet and an agenda to rationalize my purchase. This is why I avoid shopping as much as possible.

So back to the ex: The ex’s personality underwent a remarkable and really quite odd change. You know those documentaries where some parasite crawls into the eye-ball of a snail, and then makes the snail change its entire behaviour so the snail crawls up on a branch so a bird can eat it, only so the parasite can live in the bird’s gut to complete its life cycle?

That’s what happened to the ex.

Well not literally. The ex wasn’t infected by a parasite that made the ex crawl up a branch on the look out for a bird, (You’ll be relieved to hear that) but what I mean is the behavioural pattern changes were comparable.

1. The ex became very relaxed. - Now the ex is not a relaxed person.
Sober. Not a relaxed person sober.
I felt I needed to add the ‘sober’ part. Un-sober the ex is suuuuper relaxed.

2. The ex seemed to be filled with a calm sense of inner well-being and benevolence.
The ex is quite benevolent in general, but the benevolence seemed more heightened than usual.

3. The ex also became surprisingly susceptible. Really susceptible.
Every time I pointed out something out there was a discussion, in some depth, of whether we could or should buy it.
New wine glasses, decanters, complete dinner sets. A new couch. We were both on some euphoric bender.

The ex started offering to buy me all sort of things. Just things I liked for no reason.

It was like Selfridges was some evil narcotic, some parasitic worm.

I didn’t take advantage of this, because I knew the ex wasn’t their normal aggravated self and I’m just not that kind of girl, believe it or not.

The ex bought me lunch (This was planned before our Selfridges jaunt. It was incentive to get me there in the first place you see. So no narcotic inducement)

I succumbed (dammit!) to Selfridges wicked wiles and bought myself 2 miniature bell jars things on stands.

Look. I need them. I’m going to use them. Really, I am. I’m going to put some drawings in there, like tiny cut-out things. I don’t know what yet but I swear I’m going to do it.

Both bell jars are now lying on the bedroom window-sill.

We finally walked out of Selfridges. It was raining and crowded on the grey pavement. Within mere minutes the hypnotic effect of Selfridges had worn off. The state of euphoria was palpably evaporating.

Back on the bus ride home though the hell of Oxford street, and the ex was back to

“GET BACK IN YOUR CORNER! BE QUIET! DON’T ANNOY ME. I KILL YOU!”

Fastest come down ever.

Borough Market Photos

Took the new camera out last Saturday since it was the hottest weekend of the year. Gloriously sunny and not a cloud in sight.

I still wore a thermal and a coat.

I don’t trust these meteorologists and their optimistic predictions. I especially don’t trust the British weather.

Rule of thumb – always carry a jacket and/or a sweater.

I haven’t been to Borough market since I was a fresh-faced foreigner just off the boat, although there are shots of it on nearly every cooking show – Masterchef and Market Kitchen especially.

I was shamelessly taking photos like a tourist all over the shop. I don’t even look kosher because the camera is so small and clearly not the camera of a professional photographer, but it does the job and 12 Mega Pixels (not just regular big pixels, but ‘Mega’ pixels. I wonder who named it? It’s rather lame.) is a lot of pixels for someone who never prints but likes to imagine she will one day.

A friend bought some Pate and got another one free since the seller was closing for the evening which she then bestowed on to me. So I got some free pate! Better than that Sainsbury’s crap. Smooth, creamy and utterly spreadable on toast. I ate it 2 days in a row.

Anyway here you go, lots of photos. I rarely am able to exercise restraint with a camera in hand.

Market light under dome

Parsley & Blood Orange

Free Taste Girl. The Free taste was way too salty. Horrid stuff. I pretended to like it.

Free Taste Green Curry. They were loudly yelling 'Free Taste' for ages. I don't know who was buying.

Pork & Liver. Mmmmm liver looks so good raw.

Colourful Chalkboard at the Juice Stall

Purple Flower. Not sure what flower this is.

Herbs, Flowers and a Stall Lady

Veg Boxes

Lily at posh Florist

In Season painted board & Lavender

Flowers by wall

Apples, Pears and Pimms. There really couldn't be a better combo.

Walk back via London Bridge southbank walk

Tower Bridge with Tree

The London 2012 Olympics

I’d like to get right to the heart of the upcoming olympics and say a few unpoetic, yet pertinent words, through that powerful medium the poster.

The London 2012 Olympics

Fuck the Olympics, Fuck the tube delays, Fuck the huge waste of money, Fuck the swimming team, Fuck the canoeists team, Fuck the curling team, Fuck the horse jumping team, Fuck the yachting team, Fuck the rowing team, Fuck the javelin, Fuck the shot put, Fuck the discus, Fuck the hurdles, Fuck the long jump, the short jump and the high jump, Fuck the opening event, Fuck the Olympic committee, Fuck the sponsors, Fuck the McCartney ‘designed’ slutty outfits that look like the bottom half will ride up all the athletes butts, Fuck the shitty advertising (except the illustrated tube posters. Those are rather good), Fuck the crappy logo designed by a group of morons trying to be ‘street’, Fuck the athletes going on talk shows to constantly bore us with their ‘training schedule’ stories, Like anyone gives a crap, Fuck the sponsors, Fuck the mascots, Fuck the raise in prices, Fuck the cuts to the arts, Fuck the BS, Fuck it. All of it.

Drawings for Your Boobs

I tried submitting my Gola print to this T-shirt company.

They didn’t want that but liked the font, so asked if I could do some lyrics or quotes in that font.

I really HATE having text that some company has decided represents them stretched across my breasts. I don’t know why so many desi companies think this is a good idea. Stuff that some idiot will tilt his head 45 degrees trying to read.

But what the heck! I figured I’d do it anyway. This lyrics/quotes thing is a bit cheese-balls for my taste but I decided to treat it like it was a challenge (or a procrastination opportunity from my work) to make it interesting for myself somehow.

And on the plus side, if it does get approved, maybe some day I’ll be reading lyrics I picked off someone else’s boobs.  (Whee!)

The chosen theme was ‘Summer’. So I choose the only 2 lyrics I could think of (see below), because all the quotes I found on the internet just were just way too poncy to write on a tee.

Stuff like

“A life without love is like a year without summer.”

You can’t wear that on your boobs!

Paul Weller Weller Weller HUH!

I like to sing this to myself now and then. Mostly I sing the Adam Buxton version.

I did think about Zombie Nazi Penises while I was drawing it though.

I know, I know.

I know.

My ex M.A teachers would be so disappointed in me.

But I rather enjoyed drawing it. Soothing. Un-confrontational. No rape. No bird people. All nice, all happy.

Now I really need to get cracking on my 2012 Drawing To Do list that is nearly as long as my arm.

First things on the list.

1. Finish certain incomplete parts of Arsonist’s Ball.

I sometimes get bored just before the end of a drawing and then it lies with tiny parts incomplete for ages.

2. Scan Picnic & Goddesses.

3. Make Olympic’s poster.

Coming soon.

New Camera! Test Run! Exclamations!

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Test run from the photos I took with my new Camera. That’s camera with a capital ‘C’.

Very exciting.

It’s an expensive birthday present to myself.

I finally figured out how to use manual mode.

Barbara Cartland Margin Note

I love the way he's drawn her dress. (Francis Marshall)

Click to view large - Someone had marked a section in red, leaving a comment below.

The plot is that the beautiful and delicate heroine has been kidnapped by an evil Russian nobleman (obviously, since nearly all Russians are evil in BCs) who has run off into the desert with her. (I forget where this is set)

She is placed in a tent and after telling her how he plans to ‘de-flower’ her, he claps his hands imperiously to summon a serving woman to dress his fragile flower in an outfit of suitably flimsy eastern robes.

She is then told that if she thinks about trying to escape by bribing her, the serving woman is a deaf-mute and won’t understand her.

In the margins, some unknown reader before me has underlined ‘deaf-mute’ and noted in red in the margin,

“How did she hear him clap his hands?”

By golly that’s a good point! I would never have noticed that.

I really enjoyed that little note. It really perked up the book.

Someone was telling me about this artist (can never remember names) who had a project where volunteers had to take romance novels and read them very openly on public transport.

They couldn’t hide it, they had to sit up, holding the book high at eye level with the cover facing outside.

The idea being to gauge the reaction of strangers (Or so I vaguely remember being told) and later the participants would fill out some form describing how they felt and what they felt other people were thinking about them.

What a great idea for a project. I feel slightly embarrassed about reading the Barbara Cartland’s on the tube.

The Heyer’s have a little more cred, but there can only be shame in BC titles such as “Pirate of Love”

I fear the judgement of strangers. I don’t know why, but I do.

So I use various mechanisms of hiding the title. Mostly I fold the cover over, which I don’t like doing because it ruins the spine.

Really what I need is a dust jacket.

I believe someone created a series of dust jackets designed to look like serious books of literary merit like Tolstoy’s War & Peace.

I saw someone reading this on the tube once. What a show-off.