14.10.21: So today I learned that my haircut is actually pretty fancy! In
spring this year I switched from booking with the salon owner to one of her
colleagues, who did the amazing colour work I’ve had for the past six
months or so. But she left! Fabienne, the owner, is booked out months in
advance, so I got a slot with Mathilde the 3rd-yr apprentice. End result is
pretty great. Amusement was that along the way I goy to discover all the
hair related French I don’t have (or had forgotten: brain keeps
substituting kurz for court, etc), and just how many decisions go into this
cut. I make, like… four (undercut, shape/length of each side, length at
back). Hairdresser has to make a lot more decisions than that, it turns out…
.
Early next year I want to go back to significantly shorter & close to my
natural colour (easier for travel) but until then it can be experiment
time! Maybe I should finally get the Sydney Side-Shave.
26.8.20, Kulturmuseum Basel: in an exhibition on collection provenance and
priorities, the Kulturmuseum Basel with two complicated strategies for
discussing objects of ritual significance: first an empty spot marking an
Arrente ritual item they no longer display (the sign notes that the
traditional owners are aware of this object & in contact with the museum -
I don’t know why it hasn’t been repatriated yet); secondly, rather than
excavating anonymous skulls in Hallstatt, the local authorities will only
allow excavation of skulls by direct descendants - instead the museum
provided its own skulls, which were then painted in Hallstatt. But whose
skulls? It’s really striking that while talking about ethically gaining
work from Hallstatt they just gloss over the q of where they got skulls of
unknown origin in the first place!
26.9.20: catacomb saint, Basel Museum der Kulturen. This was a whole
exhibit on the history and provenance of the anthropological collection,
and they get points for including in the section on cult objects some
European stuff, as well as the usual anthropological museum fare.
29.8.21: I appreciate this reinforcement from the Natural History Museum that both puns and trains are queer culture.
Front panel: says "nicht binär", not binary, in German, w/ french
translation. But as anyone who's caught a train in Switzerland knows,
'binari' is Italian for railway tracks. A fine visual pun, since there are
clearly binari pictured in the image.
Back panel: there are more non-binary people (in CH) than salaried workers
of the SBB (national railways). Fun fact!
In non-cat news, went to ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nmbern , discovered some niche genders. Some bits
made me grumble (not least the description of the cassowary as a ‘caring
househusband’, as opposed to
‘caring househusband and noted murderbird’. Cassowaries have depth!) Some
bits seemed clunky (no, gender and sex were not ‘longtemps’ available in
two and only two types, do I have to mail them a copy of Laquer?) but the
net sum of it was pretty damn good. And well translated into French, so
although I needed friends to gloss the more obscure animal names and
clarify implications a few times, I was able to pick up a lot of really
useful to me language in German and reinforce the topic in French at the
same time.
Some choice local graffiti from 14.8.21. I’m partial to ‘Otto and Heinrich’
the conjoined ‘Octopuses (f pl)’. The use of ‘Siamese’ is a blight on an
otherwise fascinating piece of art: the pl form is very clearly f, but
they’re Otto and Heinrich. Otto and Heinrich have too many limbs to be
constrained by gender!
