TWIL: Some bio lab experiments require recently dead specimens

I was threatening Gary with a really bad haircut, and when he said he could do it himself, I scoffed. 

“No, really,” he said, “I am very good at fine detail work like that. One of my biology professors was so impressed with the precision I used to kill my lab specimens that she offered to let me come work in her lab after I graduated.”

“You killed your lab specimens?” I was horrified. My high school fetal pig was long dead by the time I got to know him.

“Oh sure,” he said. “Lots of experiments require freshly dead animals.” 

(Like the ones where you re-animate freshly dead animals? I wondered.)

Then he said one time he did have to “pith” a frog, which sounded like giving a frog a little frog lobotomy, so the frog has to survive. He also went on to add that quite a few women in rhe labs didn’t have the heart to straight-up murder their Little Fetal Piggies or whatever, so they would come to him to be Dr. Death.

It just does not correspond to the man I married, a man too soft-hearted to set a spring-loaded mouse trap, but I have to believe what he tells me.

Comments

[KC]

I used to find killing bugs easy, and now I don't (aside from fruit flies and mosquitoes and sugar ants), so, eh, yeah, I can see it, esp. a difference between College Not Quite All Your Brain Is There Yet vs. later.

That said: I would not have been able to kill lab stuff in college. But also I am not a dude.

And WHAT experiments??? now I am curious.

(... also prooobably he was not killing fetal piglets, since that would presumably also require him to perform a c-section on a live pig which seems unlikely to be performed by undergrads. Frog is weird enough...)

I would also note, however, that detail work in ideal postures for detail work, vs. detail work at a super weird angle with inadequate visual feedback are two different things. (As someone who was also good at detail work. Miniatures would be my jam if there were easier but non-wasteful ways to get rid of the finished products...)

[theQueen]

KC - I didn’t ask what experiments beyond pithing the frog. And now I am curious -- so are you saying you make miniatures, like for dollhouses, but then have nothing to do with the actual finished miniature? Or are these game-playing miniatures? I would certainly understand that as someone with entirely too many finished paintings in her basement.

[KC]

Miniatures as for dollhouses, like knitting a part of something with thread using sewing pins as knitting needles and then staging it [except that one was a real vision strainer; this is maybe a hobby for the Under 40s instead of the 40 And Aboves or maybe I just need better light]. Sometimes they are Christmas ornaments [as per the tiny staged knitting] and then giving them away is easier, but lots of things would be really fun to make but would not work as Christmas ornaments. (and I am vigorously anti-dusting-small-objects, and not huge on displaying small objects past the "makes it feel homey" level of small objects, so keeping things is... meh... to some degree.)

But figuring out how to do something tiny (materials, etc.) and then doing it and it existing in the real world, especially when it is sort of at the edge of what is considered feasible where people start going "... wait, is that *actually knitted*???": very fun. (nowhere near the "carve the tops of toothpicks into characters and paint them with a single hair as a paintbrush" tiny, but, for normal person hobbies, pretty tiny.)

I think my ideal situation would be to find dollhouse owners or model railway owners who wanted fairly specific things they couldn't make or buy and then make them. But I'd need absurd amounts of time to finish things because I have to think up *how* to do it [what objects/shapes could be reused, for the things I can't as-convincingly make] and also do it and there is a chronic illness in play. But: it'd be fun.

(I also like repairing beloved stuffed animals, which is also detail work, but structural in addition.)

[theQueen]

KC - could you make a tiny art project? Like a display with small glass half-domes placed over little tableaus? Perhaps one that tells a story?
Also, you've read about the famous heiress miniature maker who fashioned teeny crime scenes?

[KC]

I've considered whether it'd be feasible to make a "blog"-like entity that, say, once a month, posts images of miniatures of one point at one scene from a play and then mail them to whoever guesses the play+scene+line most correctly. But it'd be a lot of admin.

I don't think I want to display my own stuff, generally, in a way that makes it look like I think it is worth displaying. I suspect cultural gender garbage is involved, as is Tall Poppy Syndrome (don't look like you think your talents matter or people will Take You Down), and I do not feel this way about *other* peoples' stuff, but I suspect the fear is likely not one to most easily lose via doing the thing, esp. since I overreact to people doing the take-down bit. Definitely a thing for me to work on, though.

TEENY CRIME SCENES LADY IS AMAZING.

[theQueen]

KC - I suppose you could have a Facebook page that displays a miniature once a month? And then nothing else?

[KC]

Aside from a visceral loathing of Facebook and a total lack of a Facebook page or login, yes! That sort of a thing! Maybe Bluesky would work.

[KC]

(but getting the page to peoples' attention and then doing the contacting of correct guesser for mailing address (and then second person if the first never replies, etc.) and then actually packing the thing up and mailing it *to the correct address* while housebound: a decent quantity of admin.)

[theQueen]

KC - True. Perhaps not worth it. I read abiut a man who mailed his finished paintings to random people.

[KC]

... yeah I would definitely want people to *opt in* instead of just "here you go!"

Now wondering, though, whether low-income local nursing home residents might appreciate a rotation of oil paintings? Those walls are sometimes... bleak... and paintings could be hung on 3m hooks/stuff and then swapped out occasionally...

(we have several oil paintings made by a relative, and we have a rack in the living room where they all are and where the one "on top" gets swapped out at intervals and it is lovely.)