My nose resembles a big shiny copper tap and I daresay, going by the pile of balled up tissues strategically placed within a tight ten inch radius of the tiny pretense of a wastebasket next to my table (yet not quite daring to venture inside the basket), my aim is a bit off today.
Oh for a tablet of cetirizine!
What wouldn’t I give just to roll it in my mouth.. To feel the molecules disperse and be absorbed and course through my bloodstream till they race to where I desperately need them and restore some semblance of sanity to the throbbing disarray inside my head..
Wait a bit.. lets not branch off on crack here..
Coming back to my glorious sneezes which would for once and all silence all those who shake their heads reprovingly and tell me that I sneeze like a lady and that that shall be the death of me (phffft! to you, Anupam); after having combed all medicine cabinets and dresser tops and peered behind shelves in search of a tablet in vain, I decided that there might be solace to be had in looking at their brand names on the internet (don’t even ask. I make no claims to sanity right now) and maybe I could find some foods with antihistaminergic properties. (Steam did provide some relief, but it was rather short lived and it felt much worse after)
I came across stinging nettles as a promising candidate antihistaminergic. The glaring ‘alternative medicine’ tag put me off a bit, but the old limerick about nettles (which seemed to point at it being histaminergic) from the storybook mum would read out to us had me hooked.
A few more searches, and this is what I came across.
Not what I came here looking for, but I am going to bed amused by the thought of how our surgery Profs would react if we were to quote these clinical trials at a viva:
Popa, G., et al. “Efficacy of a combined Sabal-urtica preparation in the symptomatic treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. Results of a placebo-controlled double-blind study.” MMW Fortschr. Med. 2005 Oct; 147 Suppl 3:103-8.
Lopatkin, N., et al. “Long-term efficacy and safety of a combination of sabal and urtica extract for lower urinary tract symptoms--a placebo-controlled, double-blind, multicenter trial.” World J. Urol. 2005 Jun; 23(2): 139-46.
Durak I, et al. “Aqueous extract of Urtica dioica makes significant inhibition on adenosine deaminase activity in prostate tissue from patients with prostate cancer.” Cancer Biol. Ther. 2004; 3(9): 855-7.
Sokeland, J. “Combined sabal and urtica extract compared with finasteride in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia: analysis of prostate volume and therapeutic outcome.” B. J. U. Int. 2000; 86(4): 439-42
nettles as a cure for benign prostatic hypertrophy.. I knew I'd get to wear my peace necklace and earth-mother smock someday.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Maddison Gabriel - Mama's little girl
All hands in the air for Maddison Gabriel! The Australian model who is the new "face" of the Gold Coast Fashion Week. And who turned thirteen the 16th of last month.
Modeling, apparently, is all she’s wanted to do since she was six. And she managed to get her mother to agree! Now that’s heartening. Makes me wonder if my mum would’ve let me be an elephant trainer at the circus if I had persisted with the demand till I was the green old age of 12. Nanu could’ve been a monkey like she always wanted to. One must keep in mind though that strutting your stuff (?) on the runway must pay a lot more than what monkeys or elephant trainers or monkeys that train elephants earn (maybe not that last one. I bet they’d pay an elephant training monkey a lot more.. hmmm…).
“I believe that I can fit into women’s clothes. I can model women’s clothes, so I should be able to do it,” says Madison. Of course she can fit into women’s clothes; they’re all made so the only people who can wear them without being in grade III malnutrition are flat chested prepubescent 12 year olds with no butt.
Every little girl loves to parade around in new clothes and have people tell her how pretty she looks, so it shouldn’t come as a life altering surprise when one declares that she wants to be a model. But modeling isn’t about grace or poise (you are confusing it with ballet), it is about sexuality, plain and simple. There is nothing innocent or alright about putting a twelve year old in clothes meant for women and making her walk down a ramp looking nonchalant and flipping her hair ‘just so’. It is deeply disturbing that a mother would allow her child to be viewed as a sexual object instead of protecting her; and try to justify it too: “She says she wants to be a model”. Mummy dearest is just helping her daughter fulfill her dreams. And hopefully taking spelling lessons while she’s painting her daughter’s blindingly bright future for her (MaDDison? What was she thinking).
Little Maddison can legally do what her heart desires; unlike in the European Union where models under 16 have been banned from the runways, Australia has no laws preventing young teens from modeling and Maddison’s mother has demanded an apology from the Australian prime minister John Howard for having expressed his distaste about the matter. One wonders if this wouldn’t rightly come under the territory of child labour laws though.
Will it affect her overall growth as a person, assuming she can deal with the pressures of a real job and that she is blessed with enough brains to not lag behind at geography and PE? (Let’s not be so grandiose as to talk about math.) Brooke Shields survived, as did Kate Moss and as we all know they are both Very well adjusted adults, if you leave out the trips to the shrink, the clinical depression and the coke.
Will she be able to stand the pressures of the job? For starters she’ll surely have to resort to anorexia or at least to bulimia once puberty hits. And that nose! That had better be under the scalpel soon if she plans on getting any real work. Her chin looks something awful at the moment, but let’s give her the benefit of doubt, after all, can you really see her chin under all that puppy fat? One wonders what the judges at the Gold Coast fashion week were thinking. I’m going to go with ‘free publicity’, on a wild guess.
Oh, and, Love the hair!
Modeling, apparently, is all she’s wanted to do since she was six. And she managed to get her mother to agree! Now that’s heartening. Makes me wonder if my mum would’ve let me be an elephant trainer at the circus if I had persisted with the demand till I was the green old age of 12. Nanu could’ve been a monkey like she always wanted to. One must keep in mind though that strutting your stuff (?) on the runway must pay a lot more than what monkeys or elephant trainers or monkeys that train elephants earn (maybe not that last one. I bet they’d pay an elephant training monkey a lot more.. hmmm…).
“I believe that I can fit into women’s clothes. I can model women’s clothes, so I should be able to do it,” says Madison. Of course she can fit into women’s clothes; they’re all made so the only people who can wear them without being in grade III malnutrition are flat chested prepubescent 12 year olds with no butt.
Every little girl loves to parade around in new clothes and have people tell her how pretty she looks, so it shouldn’t come as a life altering surprise when one declares that she wants to be a model. But modeling isn’t about grace or poise (you are confusing it with ballet), it is about sexuality, plain and simple. There is nothing innocent or alright about putting a twelve year old in clothes meant for women and making her walk down a ramp looking nonchalant and flipping her hair ‘just so’. It is deeply disturbing that a mother would allow her child to be viewed as a sexual object instead of protecting her; and try to justify it too: “She says she wants to be a model”. Mummy dearest is just helping her daughter fulfill her dreams. And hopefully taking spelling lessons while she’s painting her daughter’s blindingly bright future for her (MaDDison? What was she thinking).
Little Maddison can legally do what her heart desires; unlike in the European Union where models under 16 have been banned from the runways, Australia has no laws preventing young teens from modeling and Maddison’s mother has demanded an apology from the Australian prime minister John Howard for having expressed his distaste about the matter. One wonders if this wouldn’t rightly come under the territory of child labour laws though.
Will it affect her overall growth as a person, assuming she can deal with the pressures of a real job and that she is blessed with enough brains to not lag behind at geography and PE? (Let’s not be so grandiose as to talk about math.) Brooke Shields survived, as did Kate Moss and as we all know they are both Very well adjusted adults, if you leave out the trips to the shrink, the clinical depression and the coke.
Will she be able to stand the pressures of the job? For starters she’ll surely have to resort to anorexia or at least to bulimia once puberty hits. And that nose! That had better be under the scalpel soon if she plans on getting any real work. Her chin looks something awful at the moment, but let’s give her the benefit of doubt, after all, can you really see her chin under all that puppy fat? One wonders what the judges at the Gold Coast fashion week were thinking. I’m going to go with ‘free publicity’, on a wild guess.
Oh, and, Love the hair!
Sunday, May 27, 2007
' See, we don’t love like flowers,
with only one season behind us;
when we love, a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl,
it's like this: inside us we have loved
not just some one to come, but a fermenting tribe ; not just one
child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins
of mountains, the dry riverbeds
of those who were mothers, yes, and all that
soundless landscape under its clouded
or clear destiny - girl, all this came before you.'
Rainer Maria Rilke
Duino elegies, the third elegy.
with only one season behind us;
when we love, a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl,
it's like this: inside us we have loved
not just some one to come, but a fermenting tribe ; not just one
child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins
of mountains, the dry riverbeds
of those who were mothers, yes, and all that
soundless landscape under its clouded
or clear destiny - girl, all this came before you.'
Rainer Maria Rilke
Duino elegies, the third elegy.
The nanny named Fran!
Let me state at the outset that I’ve been watching television at nine in the morning only because clinics don’t begin till ten. really.
If you are home (and awake) at nine a.m. on a weekday by some weird turn of events, watch the 1990s sitcom The Nanny currently airing on Hallmark and you would see.. Janice (recall that one possibly just woke up at five to nine.)
The similarity between the lead character, played by the inimitable Fran Drescher, and Janice from Friends is way too obvious to miss. Granted , Fran Fine’s character is sweet, funny and endearing while Chandler's on again off again girlfriend Janice Litman Goralnik (née Hosenstein) is mostly plain insufferable,
but as far as appearances go the likeness is undeniable, be it the very.. individual dressing sense, the hair hitched up in a late fifties-ish bouffant or the trademark nasal voice. (and that they're both jewish.)
I wouldn’t call it a cut&paste job, but it is very much possible for Janice’s character to have been inspired from ‘the nanny named Fran’. The Nanny was originally broadcast from 1993 to 1999 on CBS while Maggie Wheeler first appeared as Janice on the fifth episode of season one of Friends (The One with the East German Laundry Detergent) which aired in 1994 on CBS. And one of the first few names that shows up in the credits to The Nanny is that of associate producer Janice Minsberg.
Coincidence? Just another one of those conspiracy theories?
Oh who knows.
I’ve been watching way too much television.
If you are home (and awake) at nine a.m. on a weekday by some weird turn of events, watch the 1990s sitcom The Nanny currently airing on Hallmark and you would see.. Janice (recall that one possibly just woke up at five to nine.)The similarity between the lead character, played by the inimitable Fran Drescher, and Janice from Friends is way too obvious to miss. Granted , Fran Fine’s character is sweet, funny and endearing while Chandler's on again off again girlfriend Janice Litman Goralnik (née Hosenstein) is mostly plain insufferable,
but as far as appearances go the likeness is undeniable, be it the very.. individual dressing sense, the hair hitched up in a late fifties-ish bouffant or the trademark nasal voice. (and that they're both jewish.)
I wouldn’t call it a cut&paste job, but it is very much possible for Janice’s character to have been inspired from ‘the nanny named Fran’. The Nanny was originally broadcast from 1993 to 1999 on CBS while Maggie Wheeler first appeared as Janice on the fifth episode of season one of Friends (The One with the East German Laundry Detergent) which aired in 1994 on CBS. And one of the first few names that shows up in the credits to The Nanny is that of associate producer Janice Minsberg.
Coincidence? Just another one of those conspiracy theories?
Oh who knows.
I’ve been watching way too much television.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"Respect our hard work for uploading the media.
Do not use this media for your own site.
If you do, and we find out about it, we will take measurements."
- dbz-media.nl
Be a sweetheart and fry my perisylvian cortex with a blowtorch while you're at it, wontcha?
Do not use this media for your own site.
If you do, and we find out about it, we will take measurements."
- dbz-media.nl
Be a sweetheart and fry my perisylvian cortex with a blowtorch while you're at it, wontcha?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
New template!! whee!
watch this space for a mind numbingly detailed account of the making of the new template. :D
update, oct 2007
google went behind my back and tarted up all the blog design tools right after i spent ages pouring over html and css and putting up the template. which means there are many simple things like rss feeds and new post pages which one can't get to easily. which sucks. shall fix it all once the univs are over. The pictures below were the chief contenders for the banner graphic. Jennifer Apple's brilliant photoshop tutorials were a great help. And in line with my fascination with frogs, do check out Ryo Takagi's Frog meets Dog art print.
update, oct 2007
google went behind my back and tarted up all the blog design tools right after i spent ages pouring over html and css and putting up the template. which means there are many simple things like rss feeds and new post pages which one can't get to easily. which sucks. shall fix it all once the univs are over. The pictures below were the chief contenders for the banner graphic. Jennifer Apple's brilliant photoshop tutorials were a great help. And in line with my fascination with frogs, do check out Ryo Takagi's Frog meets Dog art print.
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