Other stuff I did and will be doing

[petronia]

Went to the Body Worlds 2 exhibition last Monday, with sororial unit. There seem to be only two reactions to the thing: "ZOMG how horrible, dead bodies on display!" and "ZOMG how cool, dead bodies on display!" Definitely I fall within the cool camp but it was... not traumatic, precisely, but one was very much aware of the fact that these are Actual Dead People who have been flayed and preserved, not plastic models. Sort of the feeling of performing pig fetus dissections in high school, coupled incongruously with a heightened awareness of shared humanity - there's nothing like seeing a person with their skin and outer layer of muscle/fat peeled off to get one wondering about him/her. XD; This one was an athlete with a bull's neck; this one had lovely hands; this one was retirement age with a beer belly; this one must have been a ballet dancer for real, the way her toes are compressed out of shape. And so on.

There's a certain serial-killer-esque humour value to the set pieces too, what with the chest-of-drawers man and the woman holding her own glutes in place and the figure skaters and the mother with a 5-month-old plastinated fetus in her womb and blackened smoker's lungs. Not to mention the various diseased and cancerous organs that are terrifying to behold (after seeing arterial sclerosis on plasticized display I felt like never eating a French fry again). Some of the displays were whole, some were in transversal or longitudinal sections. I have to say in retrospect I applaud Araki Hirohiko's good taste in not naming that part 5 assassin who got sent home in sliced-up blocks "Proscuitto", because that's exactly what they look like. I'm one of those people who habitually pay attention to how animals are put together when I eat them (as opposed to pretending they're consuming mysterious blocks of protein), so... yeah. >_>

On Friday I went to the garden design exhibit in the Old Port, because I hadn't gotten around to it all summer. The empty areas were planted with immense banks of lavender and mint that hummed with a prodigious quantity of bees, and butterflies too. Something to keep in mind if one were planning a garden, I suppose; other plants attract wasps and flies. ^^; Other than that the exhibit wasn't all that different from last year, except I got to see the late-August flowers (last year I went early, in June I think).

I like clambering vines and decorative grasses but have a prejudice against scentless flowers, especially if they are really bracts, like hydrangeas. Although I'm coming around to dahlias.

I've never gardened - it doesn't feel like I'm in the right time of life for it, in the same way as one might not be in the right time of life to have children. I know I will someday, though. Actually the idea of spending the last thirty years of one's life reading, writing and gardening doesn't sound bad at all. XD

Tomorrow smurfmatic is driving dipping_sauce and me as well as himself out to Lac Brome and Lac Memphrémagog, in search of wine and cheese festivals and farmer's markets. Urgent + key: music, camera, cash.

Comments

[lazulisong.livejournal.com]

Amy's volunteering with that in Portland! she says it's pretty awesome but we're also disposed to like things like that.

I, I want to see it too. ._.

[troisroyaumes]

Body Worlds 2 was in Boston last year, so my roommates and I went to see it then. Of course, being all bio majors, we thought it was completely awesome, although I did find the preserved fetuses disconcerting. ^_^ Actually, it was pretty interesting to see how organized all the organs were; textbook diagrams really don't do the human body justice.

[vampireborg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm volunteering at Body Worlds 3 while it's at OMSI, it's REALLY COOL. :D

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I never thought I'd be into gardening either, but as I got older (and bought property), it becomes more and more of interest. (Unfortunately, as I get older, the physical capabilities lessen as well...)