The Making of Frankenstein's Monster: Post-Golem, Pre-Robot

"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses. . . . I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I?" (Shelley 121)

Titelsidan till Frankenstein av Theodor von Holst, en av de första illustrationerna till romanen.

Interesting essay by Norma Rowen about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as one in a whole series of embodiments of one of man's oldest dreams -- that of making a creature of his own, referring to the Golem story as one of the most ancient ones.

Another 'making a creature story', interesting from a gender perspective, is the medieval, alchemist recipe of Paracelsus in the Philosophia Sagax (1536).
"If the sperm, enclosed in a hermetically-sealed glass, is buried in horse manure for about forty days and properly "magnetized," it begins to live and to move. After such a time it bears the form and resemblance of a human being, but it will be transparent and without a corpus. If it is now artificially fed with the arcanum sanguinis hominis until it is about forty weeks old, and if allowed to remain during that time in the horse manure, in a continually even temperature, it will grow into a human child, with all its members developed like any other child, such as may have been born of a woman, only it will be much smaller. We call such a being a homunculus, and he may be raised and educated like any other child, until he grows older and obtains reason and intellect, and is able to take care of himself. (Pachter 278)"
Imagine that - making a baby out of a sperm without using a woman.

Read the full essay here.

The Residents live show

Small clip from the opening song by The Residents, yesterday 2013-05-09 at Södra teatern in Stockholm. I enjoyed the show a lot, despite some weird in between talk about King dongs and failed porncareers. Meant to be artistic statements I guess, underlining the cheesyness of the Paul Mccarthy-figure like singer and alter ego Randy. It was funny when he encouraged willing groupies to contact the tour manager outside, given the fact the audience were 95% men with a minimum age of 40 or so. I beleived they would balance the male chauvinism by singing their hit song and James Brown cover It,s a mans mans world in the end - but no, that would probably have been below the dignity line of Randy's. (Swenglish expression?)

I found the music great, the performance tight and the remarkable voice and voice effetcts of Randy is still ringing in my head. Go and see if you get the chance.

Ray Harryhausen R.I.P.

Hard choice between Talos or the skeletons from the 'Jason and the argonauts' movie so here's both.