Interests Meme? Interested?
Jun. 25th, 2008 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.
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moonvoice requested:
The Body Farm & BodyworldsThese two interests kind of go hand-in-hand. I've had a 'morbid fascination' with death since I was a kid, even though rotting bodies & skeletons terrified me for years (basically until I got hit by the car). I've always had a good relationship with the dead in spirit. I once had a series of dreams in which I was an embalmer in Egypt... they were incredibly realistic dreams, but like most of my dreams it felt like I was just going to work, doing something I'd done so long that I could basically do it in my sleep, blindfolded, in the dark. Despite feeling like I'd always done it for a living, there was a deep sense of honor and reverence in the dreams, being given the privilege to prepare the dead for their final journey. I decided I really really wanted to be a coroner or medical examiner when I grew up. I found out that the school involved to become a medical examiner was basically a medical degree. Sometimes coroners are medical examiners w/a better paycheck, but sometimes they're an elected official who just signs paperwork. So, due to the sheer amount of schooling, I thought maybe I'd become a mortician. However, there are no schools in Nevada that offer Mortuary Science degrees - which was why me & Rob moved to N'Awlins back in 2000. There was no way I could afford to live there for a year to get my residency status so tuition would be lower. I still feel as though working with the dead is my true calling, and I've become sort of an armchair ME as a result. I started watching all the autopsy and medical examiner and mortuary-based shows on Discovery & the History Channel & Discovery Health & you name it. I read books, scads & scads of books about death and dying, the process of decomposition, the history of embalming... If I ever do end up living somewhere w/a mortuary science program, I could probably challenge the degree. I read mortuary textbooks for fun. My favorite phrase in the English language is 'blunt force trauma'.
The Body Farm is part of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Division. It's a patch of land where bodies are left to decay in various places and situations... People donate themselves to the University & places like it to help those who die alone and unnoticed find closure and those who are murdered and abandoned find justice and closure. I think one of the most noble causes is to donate your organs and body for purposes such as these. One of my heroes is Dr. Bill Bass, one of the founders of the Body Farm and NecroSearch International.
Whereas the Body Farm is dedicated to helping the dead find a voice in the legal system, Prof. Gunther von Hagen's BodyWorlds (KorperWelten) helps the dead communicate with the living, and helps the living communicate with their own bodies. Prof. von Hagen created a new method of preservation called 'plastination' in which bodies could be perfectly preserved. His museum staff dissects and poses bodies and prepares various specimens & mounts and puts them on display to the public. The plastination technique preserves color and shape better than any embalming technique. I got to go to the one in Los Angeles in 2005, and it is awe-inspiring. In a way it was almost too real - you can see all the gristle and the techs sort of glued people's eyebrows and lips back on to give them facial definition. Eyes also don't seem to survive plastination too well, so there were some definite taxidermy vibes. It still opens a window that most people never get to look through, and I think it's vitally important work.
There has been a lot of controversy over exactly where the bodies are coming from - many are donated, but the displays never tell you who the person was or what they died from, maintaining their mystery and anonymity. There has been speculation that he is obtaining the corpses of Chinese prisoners who were executed, and the knock-off 'Bodies: The Exhibition' show is being sued over the same thing & now has a disclaimer stating where the bodies are obtained. At any rate, when I went to BodyWorlds in L.A. I donated myself to them. A lot of different factors would determine if I'd actually end up on display - fat people are generally not suitable for scientific donation because of the limitations of embalming fluid, but plastination is different. I also don't know if I'll be 'healthy' enough when I die to be of use to any other living person - my eyes are fucked up, my heart's fucked up, I've got bad skin but my ass might make a decent skin graft for someone, lol.
Submission
Ahhh, sweet submission. I found, through many experiences with many people, that I take direction well in bed. I prefer more physical submission through bondage and S&M than mental submission through humiliation. I like pain. Not necessarily constant grinding achey pain like my knees and back, but a good sharp unexpected pain - now that's the stuff, at least in the right context - I don't get off on stubbing my toes or slamming my fingers in drawers. Rob and I have been experimenting w/some light mental dom/sub things, but he's too passive, and I've been having some difficulties these past few years (well, mainly my interest in true crime ruined my ability to trust someone enough to let them tie me up) w/the whole bondage thing. I can't just let myself go enough to enjoy something unless I'm tied up, because my hands are constantly stopping someone from touching me in certain ways. I'm not creative or imaginative, so it's hard for me to role-play or cyber, but I do love to read erotica, especially BDSM erotica. I'm kind of stereotypical in that I'm a control freak who can only let go during sex.
Psychoative Substances
Along w/being an armchair ME, I'm an armchair botanist. I love plants. I really love poisonous plants. Most of my favorite poisonous plants do things to people before they kill them - usually make them see things. Common mode of plant-based death - confusion, hallucination, respiratory paralysis, convulsions and death. I love tropane alkaloids - atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine, cardiac glycosides, tryptamines, phenethylamines... It started out w/me trying to decode recipes for 'Flying Ointment' and then as I got older and made more connections it has led to an outright fascination with how humans as a species got to know which plants did what and how and why. The fact that from ancient times, humans knew the only way to activate the hallucinogenic and deliriant properties of Psychotria viridis was by using it with Banisteriopsis caapi - chemists know that the active portions of Psychotria spp. need an MAOI in order to hit the bloodstream w/out the MAO enzymes breaking it down in the stomach - but how did the native Amazonians know it? And the psychotropic plants specifically, moreso than other medicinal herbs... why did they evolve to impact the human brain in the ways they do? Why did the human brain evolve opioid receptors or cannabinoid receptors or even nicotinic receptors?
Psychotropic plants are also the fastest and most guaranteed way of achieving an altered state of consciousness. I personally do not believe that plant-based ASC's are invalid, as long as they are done w/intent, preparation and training. I don't support recreational drug use, including smoking cigarettes, and I've had a lot of trouble managing my own relationship with alcohol. All the plants used for shamanic purposes are strong medicine with strong spirits, and the average person today isn't equipped to deal with that relationship in a recreational manner, which is why we have so many addicts and alcoholics with ruined lives. I watch Rob fight with the angry jaguar we know as tobacco on a daily basis - he has more trouble with that particular medicine than I've ever had with the randy lush Gods of alcohol.
Peter Gabriel
Gods, I love that man's music! He is so cool! It's not just the music, though - it's the man. Peter Gabriel is so progressive and experimental, astoundingly creative - there's a lot of his music I can't stand to listen to because it's just weird, but it's still amazing. He's also been active in Human Rights Movements around the world, being a founder of WOMAD, co-founder of Witness (providing cameras and computers to activists), and The Elders (a group of global elders including Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Bishop Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi), and he's a recipient of the Man of Peace Prize from the Nobel laureates. There are a lot of celebrities out there that do charity work, like Bono & Brangelina, but Peter Gabriel seems to do everything so quietly, and the work he's doing is making a difference and changing things. Everytime I buy a CD of his, I know that some portion of that money is going to support one of those groups directly, no middle-man because Gabriel is the middle-man. I know it's not a lot, but he's getting a message out there that people will listen to.
Minoa
Along with Persephone and Hades, another ancient Greek couple have influenced my Pagan growth - Ariadne and Dionysus. Ariadne was one of the few strong-minded strong-willed and independent females in more modern retellings of Greek mythology, and she was who she was without being villified as a sorceress or deviant. After Theseus abandoned her on Naxos due to her falling in with a bad crowd (the Maenads), she hooked up with Dionysus, often portrayed as a bull. There is no real proof of the existence of a cult of Ariadne as Goddess, but there are the little figurines of wide-eyed priestesses holding aloft snakes, priestesses cavorting with animals, priestesses wearing corseted dresses striped like bees - the Melissae. Since the very first time I saw one of the serpent-priestesses I have felt very at home, both spiritually and physically, when looking at images of Minoa and Crete. I can see the layout of palaces and temples in my head, I know the watery mosaics, the bird-like language, the Minotaur, the woman with her ball of string, the bees, the opium-laced honey cakes. If I was to win an all-expenses paid trip to Europe, my choice of destinations would definitely be Greece. I have this thing about modern sanitation practices, though, so I'll probably never leave North America.
Colouring Books
I love to color. I always have. My mother used to get these artsy coloring books, I think they were published by Bellerophon Books, but the drawings were so detailed and life-like compared to a 'little kid' coloring book w/its cartoony figures and simple thick black lines. My mother had coloring books of the California missions, she had them on trolls, faeries, giants, mythical creatures, she had period costume coloring books... there was a whole series she picked up from truck stops involving Southwest tribes - katchina dolls, clothing... these were some high-quality coloring books. The paper was thick so you could use markers or water colors w/out worrying about bleed through. So now, as a grown-up, it's the one thing my mother did that I actively do (besides crossword puzzles). I collect high-quality grown-up coloring books (from Dover Publications mostly). My mother would horde her coloring books but sometimes she'd give me a page of my own - I remember one time I picked a picture of leprechauns because it had a pony in it - everyone was horrified when I colored it green. I'm like, hey, it was a leprechaun pony! I can't draw so I color. I also scan my coloring books into my computer so if I want to keep the unsullied original I can. I've got markers and colored pencils and water colors and crayons galore. I also like colorable posters and 'stained-glass' coloring books. I love crayons, too, especially the way they smell. I love to lay on my living room floor on an overcast day and color - it's soothing and playful, and it's even better if I have hot chocolate. I'm also trying to retrain my left hand, so I use it for that, too - laying on the living room floor w/two different pictures & coloring one with each hand. Or trying to.
moonvoice requested:The Body Farm & BodyworldsThese two interests kind of go hand-in-hand. I've had a 'morbid fascination' with death since I was a kid, even though rotting bodies & skeletons terrified me for years (basically until I got hit by the car). I've always had a good relationship with the dead in spirit. I once had a series of dreams in which I was an embalmer in Egypt... they were incredibly realistic dreams, but like most of my dreams it felt like I was just going to work, doing something I'd done so long that I could basically do it in my sleep, blindfolded, in the dark. Despite feeling like I'd always done it for a living, there was a deep sense of honor and reverence in the dreams, being given the privilege to prepare the dead for their final journey. I decided I really really wanted to be a coroner or medical examiner when I grew up. I found out that the school involved to become a medical examiner was basically a medical degree. Sometimes coroners are medical examiners w/a better paycheck, but sometimes they're an elected official who just signs paperwork. So, due to the sheer amount of schooling, I thought maybe I'd become a mortician. However, there are no schools in Nevada that offer Mortuary Science degrees - which was why me & Rob moved to N'Awlins back in 2000. There was no way I could afford to live there for a year to get my residency status so tuition would be lower. I still feel as though working with the dead is my true calling, and I've become sort of an armchair ME as a result. I started watching all the autopsy and medical examiner and mortuary-based shows on Discovery & the History Channel & Discovery Health & you name it. I read books, scads & scads of books about death and dying, the process of decomposition, the history of embalming... If I ever do end up living somewhere w/a mortuary science program, I could probably challenge the degree. I read mortuary textbooks for fun. My favorite phrase in the English language is 'blunt force trauma'.
The Body Farm is part of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Division. It's a patch of land where bodies are left to decay in various places and situations... People donate themselves to the University & places like it to help those who die alone and unnoticed find closure and those who are murdered and abandoned find justice and closure. I think one of the most noble causes is to donate your organs and body for purposes such as these. One of my heroes is Dr. Bill Bass, one of the founders of the Body Farm and NecroSearch International.
Whereas the Body Farm is dedicated to helping the dead find a voice in the legal system, Prof. Gunther von Hagen's BodyWorlds (KorperWelten) helps the dead communicate with the living, and helps the living communicate with their own bodies. Prof. von Hagen created a new method of preservation called 'plastination' in which bodies could be perfectly preserved. His museum staff dissects and poses bodies and prepares various specimens & mounts and puts them on display to the public. The plastination technique preserves color and shape better than any embalming technique. I got to go to the one in Los Angeles in 2005, and it is awe-inspiring. In a way it was almost too real - you can see all the gristle and the techs sort of glued people's eyebrows and lips back on to give them facial definition. Eyes also don't seem to survive plastination too well, so there were some definite taxidermy vibes. It still opens a window that most people never get to look through, and I think it's vitally important work.
There has been a lot of controversy over exactly where the bodies are coming from - many are donated, but the displays never tell you who the person was or what they died from, maintaining their mystery and anonymity. There has been speculation that he is obtaining the corpses of Chinese prisoners who were executed, and the knock-off 'Bodies: The Exhibition' show is being sued over the same thing & now has a disclaimer stating where the bodies are obtained. At any rate, when I went to BodyWorlds in L.A. I donated myself to them. A lot of different factors would determine if I'd actually end up on display - fat people are generally not suitable for scientific donation because of the limitations of embalming fluid, but plastination is different. I also don't know if I'll be 'healthy' enough when I die to be of use to any other living person - my eyes are fucked up, my heart's fucked up, I've got bad skin but my ass might make a decent skin graft for someone, lol.
Submission
Ahhh, sweet submission. I found, through many experiences with many people, that I take direction well in bed. I prefer more physical submission through bondage and S&M than mental submission through humiliation. I like pain. Not necessarily constant grinding achey pain like my knees and back, but a good sharp unexpected pain - now that's the stuff, at least in the right context - I don't get off on stubbing my toes or slamming my fingers in drawers. Rob and I have been experimenting w/some light mental dom/sub things, but he's too passive, and I've been having some difficulties these past few years (well, mainly my interest in true crime ruined my ability to trust someone enough to let them tie me up) w/the whole bondage thing. I can't just let myself go enough to enjoy something unless I'm tied up, because my hands are constantly stopping someone from touching me in certain ways. I'm not creative or imaginative, so it's hard for me to role-play or cyber, but I do love to read erotica, especially BDSM erotica. I'm kind of stereotypical in that I'm a control freak who can only let go during sex.
Psychoative Substances
Along w/being an armchair ME, I'm an armchair botanist. I love plants. I really love poisonous plants. Most of my favorite poisonous plants do things to people before they kill them - usually make them see things. Common mode of plant-based death - confusion, hallucination, respiratory paralysis, convulsions and death. I love tropane alkaloids - atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine, cardiac glycosides, tryptamines, phenethylamines... It started out w/me trying to decode recipes for 'Flying Ointment' and then as I got older and made more connections it has led to an outright fascination with how humans as a species got to know which plants did what and how and why. The fact that from ancient times, humans knew the only way to activate the hallucinogenic and deliriant properties of Psychotria viridis was by using it with Banisteriopsis caapi - chemists know that the active portions of Psychotria spp. need an MAOI in order to hit the bloodstream w/out the MAO enzymes breaking it down in the stomach - but how did the native Amazonians know it? And the psychotropic plants specifically, moreso than other medicinal herbs... why did they evolve to impact the human brain in the ways they do? Why did the human brain evolve opioid receptors or cannabinoid receptors or even nicotinic receptors?
Psychotropic plants are also the fastest and most guaranteed way of achieving an altered state of consciousness. I personally do not believe that plant-based ASC's are invalid, as long as they are done w/intent, preparation and training. I don't support recreational drug use, including smoking cigarettes, and I've had a lot of trouble managing my own relationship with alcohol. All the plants used for shamanic purposes are strong medicine with strong spirits, and the average person today isn't equipped to deal with that relationship in a recreational manner, which is why we have so many addicts and alcoholics with ruined lives. I watch Rob fight with the angry jaguar we know as tobacco on a daily basis - he has more trouble with that particular medicine than I've ever had with the randy lush Gods of alcohol.
Peter Gabriel
Gods, I love that man's music! He is so cool! It's not just the music, though - it's the man. Peter Gabriel is so progressive and experimental, astoundingly creative - there's a lot of his music I can't stand to listen to because it's just weird, but it's still amazing. He's also been active in Human Rights Movements around the world, being a founder of WOMAD, co-founder of Witness (providing cameras and computers to activists), and The Elders (a group of global elders including Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Bishop Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi), and he's a recipient of the Man of Peace Prize from the Nobel laureates. There are a lot of celebrities out there that do charity work, like Bono & Brangelina, but Peter Gabriel seems to do everything so quietly, and the work he's doing is making a difference and changing things. Everytime I buy a CD of his, I know that some portion of that money is going to support one of those groups directly, no middle-man because Gabriel is the middle-man. I know it's not a lot, but he's getting a message out there that people will listen to.
Minoa
Along with Persephone and Hades, another ancient Greek couple have influenced my Pagan growth - Ariadne and Dionysus. Ariadne was one of the few strong-minded strong-willed and independent females in more modern retellings of Greek mythology, and she was who she was without being villified as a sorceress or deviant. After Theseus abandoned her on Naxos due to her falling in with a bad crowd (the Maenads), she hooked up with Dionysus, often portrayed as a bull. There is no real proof of the existence of a cult of Ariadne as Goddess, but there are the little figurines of wide-eyed priestesses holding aloft snakes, priestesses cavorting with animals, priestesses wearing corseted dresses striped like bees - the Melissae. Since the very first time I saw one of the serpent-priestesses I have felt very at home, both spiritually and physically, when looking at images of Minoa and Crete. I can see the layout of palaces and temples in my head, I know the watery mosaics, the bird-like language, the Minotaur, the woman with her ball of string, the bees, the opium-laced honey cakes. If I was to win an all-expenses paid trip to Europe, my choice of destinations would definitely be Greece. I have this thing about modern sanitation practices, though, so I'll probably never leave North America.
Colouring Books
I love to color. I always have. My mother used to get these artsy coloring books, I think they were published by Bellerophon Books, but the drawings were so detailed and life-like compared to a 'little kid' coloring book w/its cartoony figures and simple thick black lines. My mother had coloring books of the California missions, she had them on trolls, faeries, giants, mythical creatures, she had period costume coloring books... there was a whole series she picked up from truck stops involving Southwest tribes - katchina dolls, clothing... these were some high-quality coloring books. The paper was thick so you could use markers or water colors w/out worrying about bleed through. So now, as a grown-up, it's the one thing my mother did that I actively do (besides crossword puzzles). I collect high-quality grown-up coloring books (from Dover Publications mostly). My mother would horde her coloring books but sometimes she'd give me a page of my own - I remember one time I picked a picture of leprechauns because it had a pony in it - everyone was horrified when I colored it green. I'm like, hey, it was a leprechaun pony! I can't draw so I color. I also scan my coloring books into my computer so if I want to keep the unsullied original I can. I've got markers and colored pencils and water colors and crayons galore. I also like colorable posters and 'stained-glass' coloring books. I love crayons, too, especially the way they smell. I love to lay on my living room floor on an overcast day and color - it's soothing and playful, and it's even better if I have hot chocolate. I'm also trying to retrain my left hand, so I use it for that, too - laying on the living room floor w/two different pictures & coloring one with each hand. Or trying to.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 04:24 pm (UTC)I'll repost the meme if you'd like to make a comment on it.
Seven Interests
Date: 2008-06-26 05:40 pm (UTC)Archery
Cruxshadows
Quantum Mechanics
Otep
Garbage? That one really intrigues me. Is it the band? Recycling? Putting the unwanted to good use? Composting?
Dark Cabaret
Voltaire
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 05:47 pm (UTC)Here's what I would like very much to know about, ie- where did your interest in these things come from?
1. Altered Consciousness-
2. Ariadne- (I love the legend of this girl/goddess; what of her do you relate to?)
3. Ayida Wedo/Weddo- (have you done much research into the Rainbow Serpent? If so or even if not, I have a book I may give you about the subject)
4. Eclectic Paganism-
5. Future Lives-
6. Poppy Z. Brite (I Heart Ghost)-
7. Tao-
Thank you. I really like this meme.