June 9 2021 - Butt Size X

 

Middle name X didn't cause all those photoshopped articles to show up.  I am sure it was the optical illusion t-shirts.  The female bust optical illusion is likely the start of things.  And then the big butts showed up in the image feed.  I can't imagine what makes women want really large butts, so went down the research path.  This is the evolutionary rationale: “The reason narrow waists and broad hips are so prized -- the reason males rate these as being attractive, even though they don’t have any insight into why they do -- is two-fold. It means, if a woman has a narrow waist, she’s not pregnant. And if she has broad hips it means that the underlying skeletal morphology is probably such that she’d be able to have a relatively unencumbered childbirth." This is quite an obsession - articles start pouring in around 2015 onwards.  The Daily Mail UK had an in-depth article on the topic. A marketing assistant has 30 minute treatments that, week by week, is bringing her closer to her dream of a "perkier, peachier behind."  A picture of Kim Karashian's bikini'd bottom shows up in the article and it is a big - really big.  You can scroll down the Daily Mail article to see it HERE.  It is too ugly for me to include in the post.  I found another post in the Guardian.com and Kim's butt is on display HERE.  It is shown in a see-through lace evening gown so not as alarming. There is lots to read about her butt - including her "fake'" photoshopped butt compared to her real butt photographed by paparazzi. And then there are the Butt-focused gym celebrities.  The two that pop up are Tammy Hembrow, in her 20s with 10 million fans.  The other butt celebrity is Katya Elise Henry - with most recent Instagram post of her big butt and baby bulge making an S curve.  The picture has some sort of photoshopping quirk to emphasizes the S, sort of strange given the Kardashian photoshopped images.  These Instagram posts seem to be more soft porn than physical fitness. That seems to be the point. To go along with this, the butt fashion industry is in full swing - 2021 had Amazon's butt-crack leggings with the built-in butt-crack. They are known as tik tok leggings.  Lots of reviews with accompanying pictures. This is all new to me - it is like I woke up today and found out I'd missed 7 years of popular culture.  I blame the Globe and Mail - these stories don't show up in the Globe and Mail headlines. Lilycrest Gardens - the original picture was taken in 2008, on a rainy, misty day in Lilycrest Gardens' hybridizing field. To grow a blue lily will require some significant genetic work.  I relied on Photoshop.

Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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The Oldest Joke

There are so many traditions this time of year - including Christmas crackers with their tired old jokes.  This got me thinking about old jokes and I wondered what is the oldest joke.  Of course there's an answer available in a flash.  The oldest joke was recorded around 1900 BC and is a lowbrow Sumerian toilet joke.  Here it is: 'Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap' A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second -- “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.” These two oldest jokes are ok.  However, I refrain from spreading any more ancient jokes given how crude they are.  And then they aren't very funny.  Just as well, then, that Christmas cracker jokes are only old and not ancient.  Christmas crackers  were first made in Victorian times in the early 1850's.  A London confectioner invented them when he added a motto to his sugared almond bonbons.  These were sold wrapped in a twisted paper package - and he got the idea of adding a 'bang'. This turned out to be a hit and a successful business.   The paper crown was added by his sons in the early 1900s. By the end of the 1930's love poems were replaced by jokes or limericks.  And so our tired old jokes probably come from the vaudeville era of jokes.  I found a few more Christmas jokes from the U.K.  The brussels sprouts joke was voted the funniest joke last year in Britain.  How will Christmas dinner be different after Brexit? No Brussels. What do workers at Sports Direct get for Christmas dinner? About 5 minutes. What do you get if you cross Donald Trump with a Christmas Carol? O Comb Over Ye Faithful.

Searching for Wisdom, Finding the Absurd

In the late 80's, we worked on the information technology strategic planning methodology.   We distinguished between data, information, knowledge and wisdom, showing the logical relationship between them.  Wikipedia has these graphical representations - often we did it as a pyramid with wisdom the peak - a pinnacle of thinking processes.  If we achieved wisdom with technology, we would achieve the ultimate.  The components are described here. The Wikipedia article continues with a section on criticisms:  Rafael Capurro, a philosopher based in Germany, argues that ... any impression of a logical hierarchy between these concepts "is a fairytale". What do others say in this discussion?  In my search,  I found this very fun and quotable assertion.  It was my "morning smile". "Owning a state-of-the-art CD player is pointless if you use it only to listen to polkas played by a kazoo ensemble." - T.H. Davenport and L.Prusak in "What do we talk about when we talk about knowledge?" Our picture today brings together the bizarre and the beautiful.  The bizarre is that this is a fasciated lily in the Lilycrest hybridizing field this year.  It is a mutation caused by growing conditions that cause a flattened stem which produces dozens of flowers crowded together in a 'bouquet'.  The beautiful is the blue lily - it's been given a blue wash in one of my photography filter programs. A blue lily isn't achievable with its normal dna. Likely a Delphinium will need to get spliced into it to get this colour range.

That Elusive Blue in Flowers

What makes blue so beautiful... This is what I think of as a traditional, species lily.  It it a tall plant for the garden.  It has the traditional orange colour with dark spots, the pendant flowers with recurved petals and the delicate hanging, suspended stamens.  This stem in the picture is a Ontario Regional Lily Society show winner from a few years ago, so it is perfection as this lily goes.  I think it is a Lilium Pardalinum.   This is the second in the series on Blue Lilies, the elusive colour that is missing in the genes of lilies.