Milk, Tits, Caryatids

above: A billboard advertising against genetic engineering food, in Auckland, New Zealand, 200310, according to this news article from Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food (http://www.madge.net.nz/news/prel/pr_1oct.asp , url defunct) (local copy)

Personally, i find this ad and the prospect engaging. One day i might suckle on wenches with a quadruple of udders. And, for the ladies, there might be double dicked men.

above: A sculpture of Romulus and Remus↗. «Left to drown at the edge of the flooding Tiber River, the legendary twins Romulus and Remus were found and raised by a she-wolf. As men, the brothers returned to the spot where they had been abandoned and founded the city of Rome. The Romans celebrated the festival of Parilia, today called the Natalis Romae, or the birth of Rome, on April 21 to commemorate the day the brothers founded the city.» Source: Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003.

A enticing sculpture from Encarta. As far as i know, rearing alien species happens in nature. As some village farmers or pet raisers might attest, bitch or doe suckle kittens or puppies or kids or otherwise cubs are sometimes reported with love. A world as one.

But also note the prologue in the story: “Left to drown”. The general term for such behavior is called murdering, which is a recurring theme in animal behavior among carnivores. The motive is often subsistence or power. Fighting for a mating partner comes immediately behind.

Among human animals, a recurring intrique is the “left to drown” instead of “outright kill”, as we can see in this Remus n Romulus legend. This intriguing behavior is not just legendary but i suppose also reflect some reality. From evolutionary psychology point of view, perhaps not wiping out foe in toto is beneficial to the specie as a whole, because it preserves varieties in seeding. On the other note, such behavior in legends always come back against all odds and bring death to the doer. (In Remus'n'Romulus, their uncle killed their dad to gain power and left the twin to drown. The outcome of not killing outright is the twin not dead; who came back and killed the uncle, built Rome.) This recurring element in human legends perhaps reflect the fact, that the human animals like to think of themselves as different, by hinting a possession of a sophisticated emotion “mercy” not perceived in other brutes. And this is emphasized by the story's ending where mercy is incompatible with the merciless nature, where the survivor always win againts odds and came back to mete out vengeance.

In Chinese, a idiom of this theme says: 暫草要除根。暫草不除根，春風吹又生。 (“Weeding must uproot; weeding without uproot, spring brings it on”). A similar saying in English goes like this: “If you strike the king, you had better kill him”.

Stanford University Gate Stature

above: A stature on the Gate of the main entrance to Stanford University↗, the name of my pain. (in the early 1990s i applied twice but failed twice.). (Stanford U is one of the Ivy League universities, located at Palo Alto, California, which is about 60 kilometers south of San Francisco. Ivy League refers to the following colleges: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, U of Pennsylvania, Yale.) Those well-to-do schoolers, such as those Ph D tag wearers churned out yearly by Ivy League schooling institutions, are the names of my pain. I want to ram my head with their heads, and see their heads crushed bloody.

I wonder who or what these two lasses are or represent. There's no caption or inscription around the two rises, nor a name for this main gate as far as i know.

Caryatid

Recently i also learned that a sculptured pillar in a figure of a female is called caryatid↗. The male counterpart is called Atlas↗. The sculpture at the prow of ships, often female or bestiary, is called Figurehead↗.

The etymology of Caryatid is from Latin caryatides and Greek karutides, literally “maidens of Karuai”, refering to the priestesses of Artemis, a village of Laconia in southern Greece with a famous temple to Artemis. (Artemis is a Greek goddess of hunting and wild-animals and fertility. She is the twin sister of Apollo, and is daughter of Zeus and Leto.)

Porch of Maidens, Erechtheum

above: Porch of Maidens, Erechtheum. The Erechtheum is an Ionic temple on Athens' Acropolis north of the Parthenon. Challenged by uneven ground and by the fear of destroying former religious sanctuaries, the architect was forced to construct it with a complicated asymmetrical floor plan. The entablature, or top, of the porch is supported by six statues of maidens, called caryatids, instead of by columns. Sculptures from the Erechtheum, the Parthenon, and other buildings of ancient Athens are preserved as the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum in London. ( Photo Researchers, Inc./Carl Purcell).

(see close up and overview photos of the area. Photos by Adam Carr↗, 2002. Used with permission.)

Harisu

above: This semi-nude demi-goddess in the photos above is a Korean transgender “actress” Harisu↗ (河莉秀).