I’m currently working on a piece that involves gall stones and while doing some research I drifted off topic in true peripatetic googler form and arrived at this beauty - the tobacco smoke enema. Apparently, a tobacco smoke enema can be used to stimulate respiration. It was originally employed in this manner by native americans [...]

The older one gets the faster time goes, or so it seems. But we are not talking about absolute time here, for how can we? We are talking about an experience of time. As the percentage of one’s life represented by a year grows smaller, so our experience of that interval of time feels [...]

Scribbling notes, thoughts, rambles on random scraps of paper is a habit that dies hard despite the many notebooks that I have bought over the years to try and bribe myself into a more regular pattern of expression. I always put off sorting through these scraps until the end of the yearly filing extravaganza - [...]

Its summer in the northern hemisphere, which as of the current location seems to mean that the break neck speed of the nine previous months is suddenly interrupted by the urgency of global travel, road trips, residencies and a general being ‘elsewhere’. Grounded as I am by my broken heel, I have had no other [...]

Ever since I started working with toasters I have been thinking a lot about toast.
Following on from my washing machine obsession I had been keen to continue exploring the material and metaphorical opportunities represented in the transformative functions of everyday devices. The opportunity subsequently presented to me in the form of a toasting [...]

Well I seem to be extremely accident prone this year. In January a (minor) head injury and now I have broken my heel bone. However, there are always things to be learned in the process. Indeed it could be argued that my interest in learning from the novelty of each new catastrophe prevents me from [...]

I was in the ubiquitous Walgreens yesterday on an unsuccessful hunt for tampons without applicators - apparently American women don’t like to touch themselves - and I came across this glorious branding phenomenon. Unfortunately, I only had my (non -i)phone with me so the image quality is not great but you get the general idea…

I [...]

I don’t quite remember how it came up but I was discussing Braille porn with a friend the other day. While it doesn’t really qualify as porn in my book, Playboy has been translated into Braille since 1970 and we started to wonder how the centrefolds would work - would they be rendered as countours? [...]

No time for rumination here at Stanford where the quarter system is something akin to force feeding a goose for academic pâté. And that is how I feel nearing the end of my second ten week stretch - like paste. Scrape me up and take me camping once I’m done…
But I did just come across [...]

Socialism bring it on! Equal access and equal opportunity in Extremadura, Spain.
The region’s socialist government has launched a €14,000 (£12,600) campaign aimed at teaching young people how best to set about “sexual self-exploration and the discovery of self-pleasure” – or to put it less delicately: masturbation.
I can’t say I remember my sex ed classes being [...]