Quite Handy

Courtesy: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Tattoo

Well, what can I say? I want a tattoo but haven't gotten one in the longest time because I keep having second thoughts about the location. Having to wear a saree every now and then eliminates many candidate spots which are likely to remain unseen. Or I am left with areas that are right on the bone and I might just die of pain getting inked there.

Either way, for the past three years, I have at least had the design in my head. The word "Ishq" written in arabic. Ishq because it means love without lust. I felt that was a pretty vital part of my life, my thriving, and that having it written on some part of me would only make it more beautiful to live a life full of love without lust.

However, reassessing myself, the person I am, my ambitions, and my life so far, I've changed my mind. Memento Mori, or "remember your mortality" when translated from Latin (or "remember that you will die") resonates more with my soul than Ishq. Living a life remembering that you have to die is perhaps the biggest challenge to face. Yet, it is something one can never figure out and one must perform an act of courage and resolve to believe in the flow of life, to trust it to take you where you need to go, and to lead that life in such a way that when you are dead, you can be at peace. Find your own nirvana. 

My Life = A Musical?

Who wants to have a conversation with me using these?

Yeah!
Noooo!
::dramatic sound::
Womp womp

Amedeo Modigliani

Modigliani's paintings capture emotion in quite a unique way, though there are many that disagree. I sometimes marvel at myself for seeing emotion in these elongated, caricature-like faces. But then that's the skill of the painter. He can show you the things you want to see with the lines and colors of his choosing.
Perhaps the reason he did mostly (if not all) portraits is because the act of presenting another human being to the viewer and trying to elicit feeling and thought, is both easy and difficult. Perhaps he was really good at it and exhilarated at this challenge, or perhaps people were merely more interesting and spectacular to him than all of nature and its grandeur.
A especially intriguing observation, for me, being that in most paintings, he wouldn't paint the subject's eyes. Empty eyes. One of the feature films on his life seems to suggest that he would paint the eyes of only those subjects when he claimed to be able to "see their soul." The truth, of course, is something we will never know. His motivations are as much debatable, as I dare say, his talent (or as some claim, the lack thereof).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfBo7AYfTIE

Bonus points for anyone who can name the track in the background.

More Drosophila genes

Courtesy Frank Macabenta, our resident Drosophiliac. I mean, er...

"embargoed."  Phenotype: Mutants display nuclear export defects.

"dissatisfaction" (dsf). Phenotype: Female flies display increased resistance to courtship.