American

This blog is a big fan of music and of literature, and it's an odd day when the two end up at pitted ends of this blog's opinion scale.  Alas, losing sleep does not behoove this blog, so let's clear the blog air on an entirely personal-beef, arts soapbox topic--the conceptual rubber-match: hip-hop artist, Dessa v. author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

Dessa's 2010 album, "A Badly Broken Code" struck me, rhythmically, lyrically and creatively.  I also respect that she's a she in a game that's almost entirely all he's.  After several loops of her album and humming along, certain segments began to surface.  For example, in her song, "Matches to Paper Dolls" she says "Now we're lost/Between love and cholera/Saccharine read.../Such a sentimental novel/Give you cavities"...lyrically it flows, it's clever, and it sounds good.  But stop the Dessa train right there.  I'm a Gabriel Garcia Marquez fan, and she just took some pretty heavy swings at, perhaps his most infamous novel, Love In the Time of Cholera.  Of course, we're all entitled to our opinions, but, Dessa, dear Dessa from Minnesota even if you went to Columbia, I think your red white and blue stripes bleed perhaps a bit ignorantly.

#1: The English language severely lacks in words, terms or phrases that address emotions and feelings.  Just in using the word "emotion" there is, literally, figuratively and culturally, baggage that is attached to it.  Considering that GGM's work is Latin American in origin, the original language was one of the Romance category, and not as a justification, excuse or explanation, I proffer that perhaps the tone was "lost in translation" on dear Ms. Dessa.
#2:  The author of the book Dessa's lyrics deem so distastefully sweet is practically, if not, solely responsible for the genre "magical realism".  Your literal cavities are holes to your brain, Dessa, if that aesthetic is really so lost on you.

It seems ironically trite that in a song titled, ironically and tritely, "Matches to Paper Dolls", the verbiage of the lyrics makes blatantly American use of the problematic term "sentimental" on a piece of work that is neither American nor literal.

Life sometimes can be American.
  American: --adjective
of or pertaining to the United States of America

Acrocephalosyndactyly

Apert syndrome is a congenital disorder; characteristics include skull malformations and fusing of the hands and feet.  Eugene Apert is the French physician who, in 1906, first documented patients presenting symptoms of this syndrome.  The BBC reported on "Finley", a one-year old, who underwent skull surgery for his Apert's.  The surgery was described involving removal of the skull and, like a 3D puzzle, breaking it apart and putting it back together again.  With Apert's the sutures that typically enable the skull's brain growth get fused together in utero.  So, Finley had a bit of a horn effect because the plates weren't allowed room to grow around his brain, so they moved up and out.  Yet, skilled surgeons corrected this in about four hours.

The disorder is thought to possibly be autosomal, which means that the mutation is a trait which hangs out on the X and Y chromosomes (these combos being the place where sex is determined).  While the sex-determining chromosomes are thought to be the loci for the trait, males and females are equally affected.

While Finley will need additional surgeries in the future as his facial features require room for growth, it is admittedly pretty amazing that in the span of a little more than a century, when Monsieur Apert first "documented" the disorder and perhaps could best advise a beret to hide the atypical bone growth, to now when his physician successors can literally remove the skull and reconfigure it--simply, remarkably a human puzzle, which, of course, we all are, pieces upon pieces of ourselves, unique and alike simultaneously.

Life sometimes can be acrocephalosyndactyly.
acrocephalosyndactyly:  --noun
  a congenital syndrome characterized by a peaked head and webbed or fused fingers and toes

Ironic

If you're a lobster, welcome to the seventh ring of hell.  The below is an up close of a lobster vending machine.  If you're a lobster, presumably, there are several man-made contraptions you hope you never see, like wire cages, over-sized pots, and, of course, the lobster vending machine.

As should be evident from the graphic, the lobster vending machine works much like its stuffed toy in arcades counterpart.  Whereas, a clawing attempt to win your sweet a fuzzy bear may cost a few dollars, if your sweet has champagne taste and wants a lobster, a try with the claw will dent you 20 bucks, and that's assuming you catch it.  One would think the water factor complicates things. 

Supremely, if you are among the lobsters awaiting the inevitable, you sigh relief every time some overzealous hotshot comes up with empty claws.  Yours (your claws), of course, are rubber banded.  You are dually precluded from challenging the metal claw or from succumbing and hitching a ride out voluntarily.  A fate worse than death?  Just ask a lobster in a lobster vending machine; they may be practically boiling over with the irony of it all.

Life sometimes can be ironic.
Ironic: --adjective
  containing or exemplifying irony