It's been one of those weeks that has afforded me plenty of opportunity to practice patience, compassion, and restraint.
And how.
I caught the Bodyworlds2 show (Wikipedia entry) tonight, its final night at the Ontario Science Centre. I hauled myself out early yesterday morning (!), hoping to get in before it got too crowded, but it was still too late. The only available ticket slots were for 3.30am last night/this morning, and 7.30pm today.
So, I enjoyed it (flashbacks to 3rd year anatomy class at UofT and all). The exhibit has not been without controversy, whatwith all the posing and manipulations of the corpses, but in a way I think it shows that developer Gunther von Hagens and his team have a deep understanding and appreciation of how the body works in order to portray it so wonderfully and imaginatively. I did find it bothersome that one of the signs referred its accompanying exhibit as a "plastinate" -- no, it's a person, and should be recognized and respected accordingly.
During the inevitable gift shop stop at the end of the exhibit, I did briefly ponder picking up one of the souvenir exhibition catalogues, but then remembered that I have a perfectly good set of anatomy textbooks kicking around somewhere that I haven't read in a gazillion years anyway.
I also wound up seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger (IMDb info), starring Jack Nicholson, yesteday. The premise is certainly enticing enough -- escape your life by exchanging your identity with someone else's. I thought it was OK. The narrative is vague and highly symbolic, which -- if you like that sort of thing -- makes this film worthwhile. But it's not really a thriller. (PopMatters review here. Metacritic roundup here.)
Other than that, it's more of the same. Got an achy-head-and-scratchy-throat thing going on, that I'm hoping will not tip over into a full-blown cold. We'll see...
