Expansion

May 25th, 2008


June 6th, 2008


June 23rd, 2008


July 27th, 2008

Good graffiti versus bad graffiti

Here are a couple more examples of graffiti from around Dunedin. I like this first one. I think this is King Tutankhamen, but I'm not completely sure. I'm not an Egyptologist. Did you know Freud was? Anyway, whoever this is, he's an ancient Egyptian and he's hiding down the end of an otherwise anonymous alleyway near the medical school. It's like he's silently guarding the alley. There's something quite enjoyable about the size of it: it's probably about eight-feet-tall and it must have taken someone a while to finish.

This next one is a really good example of bad Dunedin graffiti. The medical school is not gay. And there's really nothing remotely artful about claiming that it is. It didn't take any time or creativity. It's vandalism. It's a poke in the eye of authority. It's anarchistic. It's childish. So why did I laugh so much when I saw it? It has the spirit of Dada about it, I suppose. Or maybe it's just funny. (ck)

Scuba!

Emeline and I haven't scuba dived in more than a year, since we swallowed our fears (and lots of sea water) and dived to depths of 60-feet off the coast of Borocay in the Philippines. Next week, we fly to Palm Cove in Northern Queensland for a week in the sun. I'm planning on scuba diving while Emeline basks in the sun and gets some rays on her rapidly-growing belly.

Today, I have a scuba refresher course at the local dive center. Even though it's in a 12-foot-deep pool and I've done it all before, I'm really scared. (ck)

Cravings

Over the past month or so, my pregnant wife has metamorphosed into a pancake monster. Every Sunday morning, we drive down the hill and into town for breakfast. I drink a lot of coffee and usually order something involving sausages and bacon and ketchup. I'm fairly flexible. But if Emeline doesn't get some pancakes, and quickly, someone is going to lose a finger. At least she's not eating coal or raw steak like some pregnant women. If her pancakes were served with coal or raw steak, she'd probably still eat them though. In fact, she might not even notice.

This Sunday: a steaming hot shortstack of blueberry pancakes, served with yogurt, standing in a pool of syrup.

At this rate, we might call our first child Pancake. (ck)

Scale

It's raining outside today, and not worth leaving the house. So, I'll post a recent picture instead. I like this photo of the vintage coalfed steamboat, the TSS Earnslaw, chugging across a flat and calm Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown. I took it a few months ago, and thought I'd put it up. I like the idea of scale: how small it appears in the vastness of the lake. (ck)

More graffiti: General Bengal

I like this one a lot. We walk past a delicatessen on the way to work and this advertisement for Tiger Tea takes up one wall. It's huge. I'm probably as tall as the tiger. Some cheeky young scamp has given the tiger a uniform and turned it into General Bengal: the vicious despotic leader of some war-torn imaginary country. It really reminds me of the dusty self-reverential billboards one might see in a country ruled by some thug who has adopted military garb and overthrown the government, calling himself something grandiose, like: The Beatific Leader.

General Bengal is ruthless. Like a shark, he is always moving, sleeping in a different bed, in a different safehouse, in a different city, every night, to avoid attack by counter-revolutionary forces.

I mean, would you buy tea from this tiger? I wouldn't. (ck)

Banksy in Dunedin

Dunedin has a graffiti problem. Taggers will add their mark to just about anything. For me, it's become a new obsession to find interesting graffiti around town, to become fluent in the nuances and subtleties of the art form. And there are some. A good graffito is like a flower in bloom: it could be gone the next day, painted over, lost forever.

People here really really hate it. Earlier this year, a 15-year-old tagger was stabbed and killed by a man who saw him spray painting his fence. And there isn't anything artful about spray painting the word Smoke on every house, wall, fence and public building you walk past. It's the visual equivalent of littering.

Nevertheless, some of the graffiti here are art. They have humor and irony and technique. Over the next few weeks, I'll share some. Here's a favorite, in the style of Banksy, half hidden down a damp forgotten alley on George Street. Could it be a Banksy original? Maybe. Banksy pops up everywhere from London and New York, to Rome, and the West Bank, but it's unlikely he found the time to claim a dark wet alley in Dunedin.

It's fun to imagine that perhaps he did. (ck)

Me and Emeline ...

... in the next life.

I'm the one on the left. Obviously. (ck)

Longer Days

Despite the recent hail, the days are noticeably longer now. The wind still whips loudly around the house but the extra few seconds of light each day brings are definitely appreciated. There is hope. The day we leave the house without wrapping ourselves in scarves and gloves and coats and hats is approaching. (ck)

Brain Adventures

This is what it's all about: here's the median eminence of a mouse brain. I stained one protein with a green fluorescent dye, and another protein with a red dye. Can you guess which proteins they are? No, of course you can't!

I'm very relieved to see the yellow areas, where both proteins are present. That makes it very cool. Looks like I've found a cure, folks! All I have to do is write this up and they'll award me a PhD. And a Nobel.

Kidding. (ck)

Welcome to the southern hemisphere

I heart second trimester.

Second trimester is just what most of the women I've spoken to and read from have said ... it's like magic!

All of the sudden, hocus pocus and poof! ... I feel like my former, pre-pregnant self again! (Almost!) It's amazing how pain and discomfort are feelings that aren't really committed to memory very well. If you're not sure what I mean, try this little thought exercise: Do you northern hemisphere folks remember what the blistering cold of last winter felt like? As I sit on the couch with a hot water bottle and blanket, in a room with the heater blasting, I am unable to remember what last year's extreme heat in Cincinnati felt like.

This is how I feel now that I'm in my second trimester. I can't seem to remember how nauseous and uncomfortable I felt in the first trimester. (And you better believe that I'll be savoring every moment until my third trimester.) I can barely remember thinking, "Is this what pregnancy is like? Those women who say "I love being pregnant" are liars. And nobody likes liars. Maybe they've all forgotten what the first trimester was like and only remember the magic of the second trimester.

What's also magic are my new pants. My new, elastic, maternity pants. I heart my maternity pants. Chris is jealous. He wants a pair, too. (ETK)

Sean Connery

Apparently, Baby Tolod-Kemp is now about the size of a beefsteak tomato. A couple of weeks ago, when we had our scan, it was the size of a small lemon. We're hoping that, one day, it will no longer be compared with fruit.

Our midwife gave us a book of baby photographs taken inside the womb for us to look at. I think there was a printing error: the first half of the book is full of photos of strange, bright-pink little cave fish, and hostile-looking aliens with gills. Emeline tells me this is what babies look like as they develop.

I'm not sure.

We have so much to look forward to; I don't know what our baby will look like, but the one on the right in this picture looks like it has a mustache and bushy white eyebrows, and shares more than a passing resemblance with Sean Connery ... so I'm guessing it'll look like that. (ck)