Sorry, but I HAD to share this. This just cracked me up
From Universal Press Syndicate
Salt Lake City fashion designer Jared Gold recently began
offering jeweled brooches featuring brightly colored Swarovski
crystals affixed to a live, 3-inch-long Madagascar hissing
cockroach that a woman can allow to roam a short distance
around her dress or jacket via a silver chain affixed to the
roach’s back. The brooch sells fro $80 at Gold’s web site. An
April New York Post story quoted an animal rights spokesman as
calling the bauble “just the gift” for the “person who doesn’t
mind a small animal excreting on them throughout the day.”
Folks - I feel that I look at many thing for inspiration and ideas
but I just don’t think I’m ready to explore QUITE this far.
Rrrrroaches ! a HISSING one at that !!
Saw this at work on the Web and cracked up myself… Person in the
next cubie thought I had finally dropped off the deep end, until I
explained…
The part about the hissing, pooping critter…
Wonder if the seller gives instructions on feeding… Of course if
you don’t feed it, it won’t poop on you…and that will affect the
durability of the piece… There was a picture…and I guess beauty
is in the eyes of the beholder…
Also…if it should be pregnant, and gets stored with other
jewelry… Why…won’t be a rarity either, just needs some
Swarovski and a chain attached to the roach kiddies…
I don't know which is freakier...............the roach or the model
on the web site. Personally I preferred the Roach.
So…is this item a roach? A brooch? Or does this make it a
rooch? Do you wear it 'til it croaks? Then what? Is a LIVING hissing
roach mandatory, or can you just dangle a dead one off of a cord? Do
you feed it? Knit it booties? In any case I believe this constitutes
roach abuse…or model abuse…or stupid customer abuse? Just say
ICK!!! Uh…I mean…NO! At least we are clear as to why the roach
is hissing. I’m hissing too. Don’t you just love “original ideas”?
Lisa, (Still making jewelry out of metal and
stone…saaaaaaayyyyyy…wonder what the goats would look like
with Swarovski encrusted horns???) Topanga, CA, USA
I saw these on America’s Next Top Model where they part of the runway
competition. Obvously some shreaked and other’s prevailed. The girl
that kidded her’s on the head won. Non of the net pics I’ve googled
look as big as the ones on the show. Not only were they 3 inches long
but at least 1 1/2 inches wide. They were huge. Don’t roaches eat
anything? What if they were fed something that contained
melee…designer poop.
This idea has been around for a while. People would wear live (not
jewel-encrusted) anole lizards tethered on tiny chains pinned to
their lapels. Live, gem encrusted beetles too. The best I’ve come
across though were the live snails. Their shells were covered w/
mellee and a pin back was glued to their shells. When placed in water
the snails would feed and move about. When left to dry, however the
snails went dormant and sealed themselves up tight in their shells.
They could then be worn indefinitely, storing water in their sealed
shells… They wouldn’t wake up until soaked in water.
There’s something wonderful, though, about the cockroaches. A
reviled thing redefined and recontextualized. Check out the
photography of Catherine Chalmers. She took the same huge Madagascar
Hissing Roaches and flocked them with pink felt flocking in patterns
similar to insects we generally consider to be charming, such as
ladybugs. Peoples’ reactions were quite different in regard to these
"improved" roaches.
There is nothing “wonderful” about capturing a living creature and
for amusement or shock value wear it as a piece of jewelry. It is so
arrogant to think we have a right to do what ever we want to other
living things. Vile is a word I would reserve for anyone who makes
or
There's something wonderful, though, about the cockroaches. A
reviled thing redefined and recontextualized.
Please! To paraphrase the poet, Gertrude Stein…A cockroach is a
cockroach is a cockroach…and the only thing admirable about
decorating one (especially the ubiquitous German variety)…is the
skill in catching it and keeping it alive while bejeweling it. Ugh !!
Ya know, I lived in Florida my teenage years, and somehow, I think I
can do without wearing a jewel-encrusted cockroach. The Florida
palmetto bugs are enough to make anyone dry-heave.
Ms Chalmers uses the large Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches which she
raises herself. They are often sold as exotic pets in pet shops.(I
grew up w/ the German roach and these babies are nothing like
that…) She calms them down by putting them in the fridge which
makes them sleepy and she flocks them while they are in this “slowed
down” state.
I don’t think the German Roach is big enough to get a good coating
of bling going…
This is probably not a nice thought…but if a precious stone had
been attached to the cockroach, and the chain somehow broke, that
would have really been newsworthy.
I took a look at the pictures of the jeweled cockroaches and have
been reading the posts regarding them. I do not believe roaches of
any kind will ever be refifined or recontextualized enough for me. I
can (and this is a true story) remember when at the age of two, with
my two sisters, being put in the center of my parents bed and covered
with a sheet to enable us to eat. The sheet was in order to keep the
cockroaches from falling on our food as they dropped from the
ceiling. I can close my eyes and still see how enormously hugh they
looked through the sheet from the flashlights reflection. And I can
still hear the thud as they dropped all around us. No, in my opinion,
they can never be encrusted in enough jewels to make me want to get
anywhere near them.
Ps. we didn’t live there more than a month or so but those awful
memories will stay with me forever.