Figleaf Sculpture Junkie

Ma was a sculpture junkie. She'd travel anywhere to find a museum with a birthday suit statue. She'd snap away with her Kodak, eight on a roll, camera and then deliver the film to the local Bogsville pharmacy to get it developed and printed. There was none of that point and shoot and play it back through the computer monitor or TV in those days. We are talking serious 127 black and white roll film here.

She never once got the full eight prints back. If she was lucky she'd get a couple of prints and the eight negatives.
"Sorry Mrs B. but we're only allowed to print two off this roll. Nothing personal. Company policy on nudity you know."

In the end Pa bought a photographic enlarger and set up a darkroom so that we could print out her snaps of statues and their cement figleaves. It was too late for Ma by then, she'd given up in disgust and gone back to reading. At least no one could censor her imagination.

She was an enlightened woman living in an age that still wasn't ready for her. Well either that or she had a thing about nude statues and figleaves.

Giving up

Mickey at Widows Walk is giving up smoking. Correction, she has not had a cigarette for three days. As she rightly points out the biggest problem is what to do with your hands and more significantly, what to do with your mouth when there isn't a damn cigarette to stick in it.

I haven't had a cigarette for about four minutes now and already I've had a thumb nail banging against my teeth, half a dozen slurps at my coffee and eyed up a pencil to estimate its oral potential. I worked out years ago that the only patch that would help me would be one stuck firmly over my kisser so that I couldn't get a cigarette in there.

I guess smokers tend to be orally centred people.

Best of luck Mickey. You could always try sticking a saxophone in there, involves fingers and mouth simultaneously, but I have to point out that there are plenty of sax players who can play sax and keep a cigarette going at the same time. You don't want to know this but one of the best ways to test a sax for air leaks is to block up the bell end with a duster, light up a cigarette and blow smoke through the sax with all the pads closed. If there's an air leak you can see a very small and delicate swirl of blue smoke rising from the offending pad. Oh bliss!

Still got time to kill?

Try this Mystical Ball page and then explain to Dumbo here how it does that.