Posts Tagged ‘pumpkin’

Like Attracting Like

Sunday, October 4th, 2015

Being drawn to people who look like ourselves is a common phenomenon firmly based in science. A number of recent articles provide an explanation, here, here, and here. When finding another person attractive, your standards will relate to aspects of your own appearance that you know best — your face, the shape of your head and body, your coloring, etc.

Does this “like attracted to like” phenomenon apply beyond our evaluation of other people?

I think so.

It’s often remarked how the pets people choose, especially dogs, look like their owners. From anecdotal evidence, and my practice as an armchair psychologist, I believe a strong case can be made that this gravitational pull extends even further — to inanimate things that catch our eye in the material world. I’ve posted about this subject once before, here. Yesterday brought to my sight another example.

At Costco there was an indoor display of pumpkins. It was huge, while maybe not yoogeWhen autumn arrives, who among us — whether a person or a cartoon character — can resist the spell of ripe pumpkins? The scene was worthy of being photographed and so I snapped several pictures of it.

Here’s one:

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Pumpkins at Costo

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Later at home, while looking through the full set of photos, one picture jumped out. It includes a woman who, amid the crowd attracted to this harvest of pumpkins, I remember reacted to the display with special delight:

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I rest my case.

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Halloween 2013

Friday, November 1st, 2013

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Some cell phone photos

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

My prior cell phone, an LG, could store 20 photos.  My iPhone can store, what, tens of thousands?  Here are four from 2008. 

1.  First up, a photo that could be titled “Museum Dog.”  A couple of years ago, while visiting the Getty Museum in LA, I saw a woman on a Segway roaming through the galleries.  From time to time she would pivot and halt in front of a painting that caught her eye.  I said to myself, “Now this is a museum with an enlightened admission policy; they’d never allow that back East.”  Well, here’s evidence that when it comes to disabled visitors, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in DC does “enlightened admissions policies” just as well.

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2.  Although probably not as museum-worthy as a Klee or Miro, the bold, primitive rendering below has, I believe, an equal claim to be trimmed with an explanatory label, like this:

Figure with Small Companion, created 2008, anonymous child artist, colored chalks on concrete, approx. 36 by 36 in. (destroyed 2008, by rain).”

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3.  Moving on to sculpture, in October I myself took a stab at carving Dick Cheney as a Halloween pumpkin.

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The day after his first night on the porch, Cheney suffered a cruel fate: extraordinary rendition into the paws of  ravenous squirrels.  Nibbled beyond repair, he had to be put down.

4.  Lastly, a photo of a parking garage at night.  In the corner rests a seductive red sports car, as if awaiting the start of her starring role in a film noir.

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