A... B... C's....

Ashlee Simpson was in town last week to promote her new album and had a bit of a rough day in the process. When she went to MuchMusic, a crowd had gathered outside the windows to boo her and there was no doubt that she couldn't not have heard it, because of the way the speaker system is rigged and the fact that there were VJ's indoors and outdoors gauging audience reactions. I feel kind of bad, but at the same time, it is amusing that some people took time out to humiliate her on national television. I guess she was feeling so bad that later that night she went drinking and had a nice little public incident at a McDonald's at Bay & Bloor (it's right across from the ROM). If you want to see what liquid truth, aka alcohol, makes Ashlee Simpson do, check out the video here. She seems like a lovely person...
On a side note, has anyone noticed her preoccupation with herself? Her first album is called 'Autobiography' and this new one is called 'I am Me'. There has to be a better way for her to vent her feelings, like perhaps in a personal journal. I don't think many people really care what she has to say, unless she will be giving commentary on the alleged failure of her sister's marriage.



The Bodyworlds 2 exhibit of plastinated human bodies put together by the German doctor Gunther von Hagens is on right now at the Ontario Science Centre, so Michaela and I went to check it out on Saturday evening. It is actually a really cool exhibit to see although I didn't learn too much more about the human body than what I had learned in High School Phys. Ed. (which, at my highschool, was like an Intro to Kinesiology course).
It was kind of weird because the organs and models of the bodies are plastinated so they seem kind of fake but at the same time they are so vividly real that it's kind of freaky to know they were once alive and that these people chose to donate their bodies to science. It kind of felt like the first time I saw the Acropolis in Athens, or went to Mycenae and I realized that the way my textbooks at school presented these places visually was quite accurate. Seeing the bodies and their systems is like seeing an anatomy textbook open in front of you and realizing how accurate the facts presented to you really are. I know it sounds ridiculous to explain it like that, but until you have a personal experience related to what you are reading, sometimes it is just hard to visualize the reality of what is being described.
The most interesting part of the exhibit for me was a section devoted to the stages of pregnancy. There were samples of human embryos from Week 4 through 23, and it is absolutely astonishing to see how quickly the fetus develops in that amount of time. Actually, the embryos grow so quickly in the first trimester of pregnancy that the display presented the stages of growth as 'beginning', 'middle', and 'end' of weeks 4, 5, and 6.
I think the saddest part of this area was that a woman who was 5 months pregnant at the time of her death had donated her body to the exhibit. Her body model had her stomach opened so that the fetus in utero could be viewed, and since she was placed in a corner, a mirror was put behind her so we could see her chest cavity that had been opened from behind to view her blackened lung. She had died from lung cancer.

Now that it has been a few days, the fact that these are real bodies keeps coming back to me, so that I think the entire exhibition really freaked me out more than I realized at the time being. It is such a bizarre exhibit, definitely worth seeing, but I am not sure if I would be interested in going again.
As an archaeologist, I definitely have an interest in the human body and human life, but generally speaking, what I deal with on a day to day basis in the field are bones and not organs or other body systems. It seemed really personal to see what these people had died from but not know any other details like their age or where they were from. I guess it is still something that intrigues me, an unsolved mystery, but at the same time it keeps me feeling a little distressed. I wonder if future Bodyworlds exhibits will feature displays of people who don't mind basic biographical facts about themselves to be listed. I think I would appreciate it, but on the other hand, maybe it would disturb me even more. If I don't know the details about these people's lives than I can't worry too much about other pointless info.
So anyways, despite what I have written here, if you get a chance to view a Bodyworlds exhibit, take the chance to see it. It's worth it if you have the interest.


And now, in a totally inappropriate way to end this post, this morning on the way to work, N. and I were listening to the radio in the car as the radio hosts were talking about the tornadoes that hit Kentucky and Indiana on the weekend. They were discussing how tornadoes are attracted to mobile homes and that 22 people had died. At one point in the conversation, one of the hosts just shrugged off the entire incident as being nature's way of "culling the mullet". And, as inappropriate as that comment was, I laughed my ass off for 5 minutes. I guess the thing that I want to know now is, of the 22 people who died, how many actually had a mullet?
I know, I'm a bad person. Maybe that's why I have had this cold for exactly one month today. I'm going to drink some neo-citran, watch Prison Break, and go to bed early, which means 10pm sharp. I may be going to hell tonight for inappropriate laughter. Hopefully, I'll live to write another post.