Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Vegetable Sideshow

Step right up ladies & gentlemen...
The Elephant Man
'Blunt-rooted Guerande' or 'Oxheart', the catalogue said "this unique stump rooted variety may grow as wide as it is long."

The Siamese Twins

Amazing Half Man

The Bearded Lady

Tom Thumb

About 10 years ago I saw Todd Brownings 1932 film 'Freaks' when the censors finally allowed it to be shown on TV. During the course of the one hour film, the so-called circus 'freaks' become the protagonists we all root for and the 'normal' people end up behaving and then looking like monsters/freaks.
I guess I start to look at those uniformly shaped clones in the carrot department of the supermarket in just the same way now. Vive la difference !

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

did you know vegetable comes from the latin vegetare= 'to animate, enliven'??
thus to 'vegetate' is not what you think....




siamese twins carrots are really a pair of bloomers..

Rebsie Fairholm said...

Blimey!!!

If I grew any as wonderful as that I'd probably want to have them stuffed and put in a glass case on the mantelpiece.

Misshathorn said...

Funny you should say that, it was my thought exactly. I phoned the Natural History Museum for tips on preserving or sources for formaldehyde and all they could recommend was white spirits. The down side being eventual loss of colour. So I made a mould of the 'Elephant man' and cast him in resin. It makes a rather unique paperweight.

Elliot Cowan said...

I have now read every post.
Wonderful!