Shoes.

On examining my poor knee yesterday, I found that it was still red and scrapped looking from a minor fall on Thursday. I can’t remember what I was laughing about, but that was exactly what I was doing before screeching loudly and tripping on the uneven tar between the Computing/Business Faculty and the Arts canteen. I had been wearing a pair of sandals which I detested and which on further examination, looked as though the shoemaker had never met a physicist during the designing stage. The base is narrower than the top. Which means that the centre of gravity is high. Which means said object topples at the merest whim. Possibly at the slightest thought too. So of course the wearer, and a careless one (me) at that is going to stumble around quite a bit, twist ankles, fall ungracefully and scrape knees. The thing is, I didn’t even know I had been bleeding until I rolled up jeans in the lift on the way home 5 hours later. Then, yesterday, I sat in front of the shoe cupboard at home and whined about my lack of footwear. My old flats had given way months back, and I was left with a pair of smelly brown ones which make my toes curl if worn for extended periods of time. I bought a new pair of shoes, and after giving me a bruising under my left toe nail, gave way not two weeks later. The rest of my shoes are heels, which are wrong for revising exams in, and both my pairs of slippers are in dismal shape. PY has seen the newer pair looking holier-than-thou and the older pair still survives in a semi-retired state out of some exaggerated sentimentalism on my part. My blue slippers have been all the way to Venus Drive, trudged through forest mud and river water and remained intact in spite of me having bought them since I was in upper primary.
Oh God.
That’s how long it has been???
Yes. And they cost me only 3 dollars. The newer pair cost 19 bucks and expired less than 6 months later. They just don’t make footwear the way they used to. So yes, I am now trudging around in borrowed slippers, which is upsetting because my mom’s feet are slightly smaller than mine, and I keep stepping on the edge of the slipper. The poor (this part is through. I feel miserable revising) starving (BK is eating all my money) artist (as in, I am from Arts) look is but a poor excuse for the embarrassing footwear I have at home.

Blognality

The Rhetoric Room according to the tests.

We think http://midnightmuttery.blogspot.com is written by a woman (67%).

link: Gender Analyzer

But according to their poll, they get almost as many misses as hits, so it's a debatable thing.

And according to uClassify, my blog is my evil twin. This would have been funny if it wasn't also just as distressing. Maybe I should stop laughing at engineers so much.

The analysis indicates that the author ofhttp://midnightmuttery.blogspot.com/is of the type:
ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

And it looks as though me, or rather my blog (I sound just like Wemmick), is OCD.

Attention to details? What? I wander around half blind, and I can never find the stuff I need after I dump them in my cupboard. And I have a goldfish memory. However, clearly the test says otherwise.

Eye Candy: The Many Faces of Alice

Who is Alice?

And, because one gets fascinated by the oddest things, here are more pretty pictures to look at. There are plenty here by various artists over a stretch of time, and the list is certainly not inexhaustible:

Fig 1: John Tenniel's Alice. Tenniel is the original illustrator of the Alice books.

In class yesterday, we talked about visual archives, and how technology has helped to build this visual memory bank of images that become part of how we look at history and culture too. It's interesting that the artists below incorporate easily recognizable aspects of alice into their drawings, such that we know what they are referencing even if they are out of context.
A note before wonderland kicks in: The sources of the images are linked via the labelling for the pictures.

Arthur Rackham:

Fig 2: A series of Alices. Don't know if it's me over-reading, but two of the scenes are inverted horizontally (like through a mirror). The first Alice with all the cards faces left in Tenniel's version, while the mock-turtle and griffin in the 3rd picture faces right.

Lisbeth Zwerger: And except for the Wizard's coat in NYEDC'S OZ (which was modelled after The Matrix's Morpheus), Zwerger also provided some nice background ideas for an alternative Oz, though due to money constraints and the way the script was headed, idea got abandoned.

Fig 3: Her Alice is pretty darn unique too. Not blonde?

Ralph Steadman: The druggie version. And he wouldn't be half wrong too as somewhere along the way, Alice becomes symbolic of the phantasmogorical and amoral, though he keeps the satirical legacy from Tenniel:

Fig 4a, b: Seriously. the mad hatter is a yogi bear like creature?!

It's not all blue pinafores...
Yup. Even though the Alices all bear some resemblance to the original, artists have focused on more than just her dressing, which is one of the first few things artists are determined not to copy directly. Rackham, who is a famous children's books illustrator from the 19th, early 20th century has his Alice in a pink flowery dress, as if in opposition of the traditional Alice in blue. On the other hand, the striped stockings, crown, pinafore, bushy hair , cards, chess set, Victorian-esque setting and associate white rabbit are often retained in some form to remind the viewer that this alludes to the books.

In fact, moving away from Tenniel's political caricature roots, the Alice of today is definitely more of an icon of fantasy, gothic and Victorian periodization which subsequently fits nicely into consumer culture quite nicely - be it for gaming and video culture, manga, food, or films.

Fig 5: Miaki Kari. Looks like it ought to go on a chocolate box. Also looks like this:

Fig 6: Tenniel's original illustration. Also compare Rackham's above.

Some artists, and in particular those from pop culture, appropriates the Alice figure for themselves. For example, the topsy-turvy game-like rules of Wonderland and questing style of the Alice text adapts itself nicely into gothicky pop art well.

Fig 5a, b: The red or blue debate goes beyond existentialism...

Then there is Tim Burton, master of the macabre and wacky:

Fig 6: Mia Wasikowska as Alice. Very Victorian. Very pop culture. Very blue.

The stockings. As I said....

Fig 7: Vintage Classics edition of the book

Then there is the pinafore, which gives some people odd ideas.

Fig 8: The Internet is for porn. And for everything else.

And just for the heck of it...

Why indeed.

F.g 9: Stuio I.G. and CLAMP.

What kinds of cultural cache is there in the Alice? I wouldn't know. But it does make for a convenient signfier for the weird and precarious nature of society...

And in the end, there is no other Alice like Alice.

Fig 10: Drawn by E.T. Reed, one of Tenniel's successors at Punch, in response to the many imitators out there. Spot Rackham's? A detailed account of Tenniel's illustrations and the new illustrators after him can be found here.

Essaying at breakfast does odd things to the mind

I have 5000 words to write. I have to bake my breakfast. Which will probably double as lunch.

The Pizza Rant

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This pizza would be no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To bake and cook and take all day.
Thou by the kitchen’s side
Shouldst slowly knives find: I by the tide
Of morn’s passing would complain. I would
Wait ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
To bake till the conversion of the Jews.
My patience should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
The crisp golden doughy paste;
Two hundred to adore each slice,
But thirty thousand to turkey ham diced;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, pizza, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy goodness shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy oven vault, shall sound
200 degrees! Ding!: then worms shall
The preservative filled pizza try,
And its quaint honour turn to dust,
And into dustbin goes it must:
The bin’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on pizza still,
And while it transpires
That oven still has warm fires,
Let me if I may,
Assay my essay like birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us our brainwaves roll and all
Our depression up into a ball,
And bear this academic strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we can at least have fun.

-- Missfickle.
Adapted from Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

Postmodernism runs rank and anybody who takes this seriously can't see my point. Sigh. Breakfast smells too good though.

Updated: I realise that the last line didn't make any sense. Hence the change. It in all probability still doesn't, but what do I know?