The girly-grotesque

Time for a little subversion of the ultrafem? Liz Wolfe is an artist who photographs things out of Lisa Frank's nightmares. Pretty popsicles. Candy, flowers and cupcakes. Dolls and...tentacles? Tea parties and meat tea? Sure, why not.

-Theresa

Two Unrelated Pictures

The first picture is a photoshop but just looking at it really creeps me out. I remember having a nightmare about something like that when I was a kid and when I came across it I had to post it to share.

The second one is a frozen homeless man in Detroit. I wish I had more information, like the year and the circumstances, but it's a shame there was nothing we could do for him and he had to die in such a terrible way.

We are Siamese (if you please...)

I was watching some show about "medical mysteries" and came across this one particular Indian girl who was born with 8 limbs. It turns out the other four limbs belong to a parasitic twin who had not fully developed a head... they were attached at the pelvis if you can believe it. Imagine giving birth to that. Ouch.

Anywho, her village thought that she was the reincarnation of the goddess Lakshmi, the patron of wealth and prosperity. Obviously, they named the baby "Lakshmi" and were very hesitant when TLC came into their village with cameras, hoping to make a profit off this baby.

Eventually, she underwent surgery to remove her parasitic twin. It took 27 hours of surgery and a team of thirty doctors, but eventually they removed all the parasitic limbs, broke and reset her pelvis and clubbed feet.

The coolest part of this whole story is the photos... obviously.

- Ali blum

Sexual Cannibalism

No fun pictures, today. Just thought the idea of sexual cannibalism is pretty interesting. The most common example is probably that of the praying mantis, although it's really an overstated issue for the vast majority of mantises (although one breed does engage in it often). If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll summarize it like this: Basically, the male mantis will sneak up on a female mantis in an attempt to mate with her. If she is quick enough, she'll turn around in time to bite his head off and eat it. Not before the male has mounted her and is in prime position, though. From there, his headless body continues to copulate, inseminating the female mantis.

A few other species engage in sexual cannibalism. Here's the (entire) page of one type of mite:

Serromyia femorata is a species of biting midge in the subfamily Ceratopogoninae. The species is noted for its peculiar mating practice: during mating, the ventral surfaces and mouthparts of the partners touch. After copulation, the female sucks out the body fluid of her mate through the mouth, thereby killing it (sexual cannibalism).

Another interesting, if slightly less cannibalistic, mating ritual is commonly performed by the ant:

"When the mating urge comes, something pretty stupendous happens--by human standards. 'Both the queen [female] and the prince [male] have wings,' Levine [ant tycoon] said. 'They fly 100 feet straight up in the air and mate.' After the quick tryst, several things happen, all bad in the case of the male. 'His wings fall off and he drops dead,' Levine said. 'The female also sheds her wings and falls to the ground. Then she begins laying eggs almost immediately. For possibly as long as the next 15 years after that single mating, she lays eggs almost continuously. Hundreds of thousands of them. The survivors become her colony.'"

Rent-a-family

I've heard about this in a couple of different places. New companies are renting out family, that is strangers pretending to be family, to people in Japan, who for some reason or another don't get sufficient meaningful time with their own families. People can also rent bosses or colleagues, or people to boost attendance at their wedding. Apparently, business is booming. I find this both fascinating and creepy. The family unit is not what it used to be. Will such things spread to other parts of the world?

Here are a couple articles about it.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920513&slug=1491524

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/articles/20090608/wedding-japan-recession.htm

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53953,news-comment,news-politics,the-fear-behind-japan-flourishing-rent-a-friend-business-psychology

Zdzislaw Beksinski

I am a huge fan of the fantasy genre as well as some post apocalyptic stuff so Beksinski's art is something I really enjoy. His website contains a lot more pieces. I thought he was a very good surrealist artist as well. He was murdered in 2005. The last picture is my favorite. His style reminds me of that Triumph of Death painting by Pieter Bruegel, another piece that I enjoy. http://www.beksinski.pl/

The Fog of War

This is a collection of photographs of people wounded in war before the advent of modern plastic surgery. I know I've heard about how modern surgery has been able to save a lot of people in Iraq who would have died in previous wars. The flip side is that more soldiers are coming home disfigured. These pictures were somewhat sobering in revealing that this isn't solely a modern problem. Its seems grotesque to me how monstrous these soldier appear. Its easy as an observer to comfort one's by reasoning that these soldiers should be happy to just be alive given their injuries. I think the scary question that always lingers in the back of your head is how possible is it for these people to return to any form of normalcy?

-Christian