Cancer Chronicles 5: A Refusal.

This won’t be my first time ranting about ostomy bags. They are badly designed, with little thought, and they are spectacularly ugly. You have 3 colour choices: beige and clear, beige all the way, or beige and white. Let’s not pretend people are this ugly ass shade of beige, they aren’t. Medical supply companies are apparently still on the colonial system too: one shade fits all. It doesn’t. Why in the fuckety fuck don’t they make them in colours? People who are using these things have gone through a big change in their life, they aren’t dead, and many of us refuse to start walking about in ugly ass smocks or shirts 2 sizes too big to try and hide them, and we happen to like colour. A range of solid colours would be good. Good in every way, because colours are cheerful, and they tend to make people feel better. It’s not enough I get to deal with a colostomy, I have to deal with deadly ugly and depressing too? No, I refuse. I also refuse to be complicit in helping medical supply companies keep the stigma of such procedures alive and well. Who in the fuck wouldn’t be trying to cover up that level of ugly? So…

© C. Ford.

enter Sharpie Markers. :D A couple of the bags are gessoed, a couple are not. The markers need a small amount of dry time, after that, they’re golden, no smears. This is all quick and dirty, nothing fantastic, but it’s not deadly beige. Fuck beige, I never want to see it again. It should be struck off the official colour list. These are, of course, my out and about bags. I can’t be arsed to do this for when I’m just working at home, but when I do have to go out, I’ll feel much better about them. If you’re stuck with a deadly ugly beige medical appliance which is fabric, Sharpie makes a lovely range of fabric markers, and there’s a whole lot of fabric paint out there too, all of it stable and washable! I say it’s time for a full on revolt against the standard, racist, ugly ass beige medical supply sticks everyone with. Fuck that noise. Fuck cancer, too.

And a huge shout out to Sharpie for some great products!

A Movie Spells The End of Civilisation As We Know It!

Kevin Swanson has worked himself up into a fine froth over The Shape of Water. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve probably watched the trailer too often, and I am so looking forward to seeing it. I still remember seeing The Creature from the Black Lagoon when I was around 5 or 6, and all my sympathies lay with the Creature.

Extremist anti-LGBTQ pastor Kevin Swanson declared that the new film “The Shape Of Water” represents “the end of civilization as we know it.”

Oooh, yeah. Wars, the disaster of climate change coming to get us all, nah, they don’t matter. But a movie, oooh, it’s the end of everything! It’s a true pity that someone can become a complete caricature and not be able to realize that.

Swanson fumed that the film about a woman who falls in love with a mysterious sea creature is an explicit violation of Leviticus 20:15, which declares that “if a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.”

Er, you missed by one, Mr. Swanson. I think you want Lev. 20:16: And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

This doesn’t apply, it’s not like Elisa went out looking for a nice horse or something. The ‘creature’ is a humanoid, just amphibious. Obviously intelligent, displaying humour and compassion, much like Elisa herself. Elisa didn’t see the ‘creature’, jump in the tank with the thought of “hey, beast sex!”

“It’s hard to even describe what goes on” in the film, Swanson said, “but, of course, the death penalty crime of Leviticus 20:15 had to do with the absolute lowest, most depraved activity that humans have ever engaged in at all and it’s only the most depraved people in the world that even want to mention this stuff, let alone sit there and watch it for two and a half hours on the movie screen.”

Speaking for myself, I’m more likely to find the actions of those involved in the cold war to be depraved, rather than two beings finding a way to successfully communicate. How would you know what goes on in the film, Mr. Swanson? You didn’t go watch it now, did you? Tsk, bad boy.

“The movie itself is completely centered around cross-species mating,” he continued. “The movie [approvingly] presents the Leviticus 20:15 sinful habit that really has only been part of the most depraved people, the most insane people that ever lived in the history of mankind.”

“This is the end of culture,” Swanson said. “This is the end of civilization as we know it.”

Actually, I think it’s centered on love and compassion, a couple of powerless beings fighting against the war centered powers that be, and they manage to escape, yay them! And y’know, in the end, they are basically the same kind of beings, amphibian in nature. As for the most depraved, insane people that ever lived, well, if you find humanoid amphibians living in a South American river somewhere, let us know. Pretty sure that part is fiction, something you seem to have trouble distinguishing, Mr. Swanson. So, after Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, and probably a zillion other flicks, we have yet another movie which spells the end of “culture” and civilisation.  Just which ‘culture’ is being destroyed here? Personally, I hope it’s the asshole christian one. We’d all be better off.

Via RWW.

Swan.

The animal depicted is the mute swan. The characteristic knob at the base of the beak should be black instead of white as shown here. The white paint is covered with a thick coat of glair (made from egg white) which gives the feathers a luxurious sheen.

The animal depicted is the mute swan. The characteristic knob at the base of the beak should be black instead of white as shown here. The white paint is covered with a thick coat of glair (made from egg white) which gives the feathers a luxurious sheen.

Text Translation:

Of the swan. The swan, olor, is the bird which the Greeks call cygnus. It is called olor because its plumage is wholly white; no-one can recall seeing a black swan. In Greek olos means ‘entire’. The swan is called cignus, from its singing; it pours forth the sweetness of song in a melodious voice. They say that the swan sings so sweetly because it has a long, curved neck; inevitably, a voice forcing its way through a long, flexible passage produces a variety of tones. They say, moreover, that in the far north, when bards are singing to their lyres, large numbers of swans are summoned by the sound and sing in harmony with them. The Latin name for the swan, I repeat, is olor; the Greeks call it cignus. Sailors say that seeing a swan is a good omen for them; Emilianus said: ‘When you are observing birds for omens, the swan is always the most favorable bird to see; sailors set great store by it because it does not plunge beneath the waves’.

The swan has snow-white plumage and dark flesh. In a moral sense, the white colour of its plumage signifies the effect of deception, whereby the dark flesh is hidden, in the same way that a sin of the flesh is concealed by pretence. When the swan swims in a river, it holds its neck and head high, as a proud man is led astray by transitory things and even glories at the time in his temporary possessions. They say that in the far north, when bards are singing to their lyres, large numbers of swans fly there and sing in harmony with them. In the same way those who long for sensuous pleasure with all their hearts, like the swans flying north, harmonise with other pleasure-seekers. But when, at the very end, the swan dies, it is said to sing very sweetly as it is dying.

Likewise, when the proud man departs this life, he still delights in the sweetness of this present world and, dying, remembers the evil he has done. When the swan is plucked of its white plumage, it is set on the spit and roasted at the fire. Likewise, when a rich, proud man is stripped at death of his worldly glory, he will descend to the fires of hell where he will be tormented; he who used to seek food in the lowest places, descending into the abyss, is fed into the fire.

Folio 58v – the crow, continued. De cigno; Of the swan.

Crows on the Railing.

From Ice Swimmer: These crows were relatively unconcerned of being photographed. The place is the bridge to the island Seurasaari, home to an open-air museum in which there are traditional wooden buildings transplanted from all over Finland, which would have been demolished otherwise. Click for full size!

© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.

Crow.

Portrait of the Crow in a Roundel.

Portrait of the Crow in a Roundel.

Text Translation:

Of the crow The crow is a long-lived bird, called cornix in Latin and Greek. Soothsayers assert that the crow can represent by signs the concerns of men, show where an ambush is laid and foretell the future. It is a great crime to believe this – that God confides his intentions to crows. Among the many omens attributed to crows is that of presaging by their caws the coming of rain. Hence the line: ‘Then the crow loudly cries for rain’ (Virgil, Georgics, 1, 388).

Another strike against the christian god. What’s wrong with confiding in crows?

Let men learn from the crow’s example and its sense of duty, to love their children. Crows follow their young in flight, escorting them attentively; they feed them anxiously in case they weaken. A very long time passes before they give up their responsibility for feeding their offspring. In contrast, women of our human race wean their babies as soon as they can, even the ones they love. Rich women are altogether averse to breastfeeding. If the women are poor, they cast out their infants, expose them and, when the babies are found, deny all knowledge of them. The rich themselves also kill their children in the womb, to avoid dividing their estate among many heirs; and with murderous concoctions they destroy in the uterus the children of their own womb; they would rather take away life than transmit it. What creature but man has taken the view that children can be renounced? What creature but man has endowed parents with such barbarous rights? What creature but man, in the brotherhood created by nature, has made brothers unequal? Different fates befall the sons of a single rich man. One enjoys in abundance the rights and titles of his father’s entire heritage; the other complains bitterly at receiving an exhausted and impoverished share of his rich patrimony. Did nature distinguish between what each son should receive? Nature has shared things equally among everyone, giving them what they need to be born and survive. Let nature teach you to make no distinction, when dividing your patrimony, between those whom you have made equal by the title bestowed by brotherhood; for truly as you have bestowed on them the equal possession of the fact of their birth, so you should not grudge them the equal enjoyment of their status of brotherhood.

Folio 58r – the quail, continued. De cornice ; Of the crow.