MILLER-UREY KITCHEN SCIENCE

I found an old jar of kidney beans in the far corner of the fridge. It was draped in a strange milky webbing. It looked positively primordial! I bet if I got a couple electrodes and hooked them up to a battery - in lieu of lightening - I could create some organic compounds. And these amino acids might form chromosomes and they would make proteins. And then later, much later, if they got too supercilious, you know questioning my authority, I'd simply remind them how they sprung from spoiled kidney beans.

BOYS ON FLIM

The Steady and I went out on a bike ride today. For his 39th birthday I bought him a little camera that you can fix to your bike or your helmet or your hang glider or your peregrine falcon or whatever you like. It's a means to catch stunts on film. So we are biking along and I see my ex-husband (again!) jogging. And again we're going opposite directions at relatively fast velocities, so we don't stop to chat. So later I find out that The Steady had his little camera going and happened to catch my ex on film.

...How strange.

QUIZ BOWL

I have a friend who is a public high school teacher. Apparently, all his day students are "a bunch of haploids." So for mental stimulation and reward he coaches the school's knowledge bowl team. It's a supremely dorky past time, but in my world, nerds rule so of course I mean that in the best way possible. Since he had access to all the official knowledge bowl questions as well as the super cool buzzer/light equipment, it made complete sense that he should hold a Quiz Bowl Party. There were six teams of four and those that were not playing, were busy drinking. Well actually, those that were playing were also busy drinking. In any case, I had the opportunity to use information that I have not used in a very, very long time. I got to shout things like "endoplasmic reticulum!" and "endocytosis!" and "Albert Camu!" It made me feel like the thousands and thousands of dollars spent on college were not all for waste.

OH HO

Uh oh! Danger my friends. I just got the box set for the third season of Battle Star Galactica...

EGGPLANT PORN

This evening I went out with my friends the mycologists. When I got home I went straight to Google Images and googled the phrase 'eggplant varieties.' I don't know why.

HMPH

Wow. I guess I had my groutch pants on there for a few days. Hmph. Funny how that shit sneaks up on you.

SQUEAKY MC SQUEAKERTON

I have been sick. And not with the ‘Oh let's lounge in bed reading Tin Tin magazines while eating fruity pops’ kind of sick. It was more the ‘Oh let's contemplate death’ variety. It was truly the illness of the decade for me. For six consecutive days cycled in and out of fevered delirium. My friend Jane bought me a date bar and it sat on my counter unmolested for five whole days which is highly unusual. Now those demons have passed and I am left with some kind of strange bronchial coating that makes my voice squeak.

I liked my old voice. I was an alto and I could project my voice when I needed to. Now when I lecture in class, I sound like a 12 year old boy.

SUPERNOVAE SLEUTH

I have been slowly pushing my way through The Universe. Oh, I suppose I mean The Universe but I also mean The Complete First Season, a box set produced by the History Channel. It’s packed with amazing facts, but it’s also fantastically cheesy. Perhaps the writers were trying to cast a large net into the general audience.

The narrator is often exploding with arresting statements like, “He’s one of the galactic detectives trying to uncover the mysteries of gamma ray bursts!” Ha-ha. And then, “He and his cosmic bounty hunters search for potential killers lurking in our solar system – and put them on their most wanted list.” Cosmic bounty hunters, indeed!

…

But secretly, I want to be a cosmic bounty hunter.

RE: 1 COMMENT (SEE PREVIOUS POST)

Course I have. How else could I feel genuine sympathy for Silda Spitzer? If you're involved in cheating and lying first hand, you gain insight.

I've been thinking about my marriage every since I saw my ex husband at the grocery store last month. It was such a romantic relationship and by that I mean it was not at all grounded in reality. We met when I was twenty and I was married at twenty-two. I was far too immature to know what I needed in a life long partner let alone be able to articulate that in a constructive way. I fell out of love with him in about three years time and I was too much a coward to tell him so. Well actually, I tried once. I told him I didn't want to be his wife anymore, but he didn't believe me. Denial is a powerful force in his family. So instead I lied and let myself get involved with someone else.

I remember when I confessed. The guilt was driving me crazy. We were working together in China and we were on holiday in Shanghai. It was a dreary holiday. I don't think the sun came out for six days. I told him what I had done the first night we were there. After witnessing the pain in his face, I felt so much shame I slept on the floor for four days and stopped eating for a week. Even now, when I push my head into a toilet to purge (a habit I picked up at age twenty-five in order to cope with the fact that my marriage was falling apart), I dig back to that shame. It will stay with me forever, I'm sure.

So I'm no hypocrite. Eliot Spitzer should pay for his crimes.

POOR MRS. SPITZER

Eliot Spitzer held a news conference yesterday in New York. He said all the things other men in his position have said in the past. I can't say for sure since I had the television muted. But I couldn't take my eyes off his wife, Silda. The amount of mettle, the amount of pluck required to stand by your philandering husband (who spent over $80,000 on hookers over the last ten years) on national TV is truly awe inspiring.

If I were her I would have said, "Good luck with that news conference, asshole!" And then I would have taken my unfortunate brood to Spain. But you know, I'm a small person. I'm petty like that.

BEST TIMES EVER

The kids are out of school this week. Since these days are considered 'non-instructional' our dress policy has relaxed. Not only do I plan to wear jeans all week long, I plan to wear the exact same pair of jeans.

All week long!

Yeah, that's right.

MY HERO

Clair Patterson, is my new hero. Click here to find out why.

OMG! HAVE YOU HEARD?

Propel has finally come out with a low calorie bottled water!

CURIOUS

You know a curious thing about cats is, they'll be strutting around, la-dee-daah, like everything's cool. And then suddenly, without warning, they will stop dead in their tracks, sit down (right in the middle of the room!) and lick their own buttholes.

What's that all about, huh?

VESTIGIAL POCKET

I was talking to Prada the other day about tighty whities. * He said no man before pissing bothers to thread his dick through that byzantine pocket hole thing in the front of briefs and boxer briefs. He insisted all men simply stretch the underwear elastic below the necessary boy parts before going to the bathroom. From what I have seen of men pissing, I guess I would have to agree.

Naturally, I asked him why underwear designers put that complicated business into the garment in the first place. I mean it must be a hassle to sew the pocket, right? He answered before I could even complete the question. Because if men's underwear didn't have that pocket it would look too much like women's underwear. And that would be completely unacceptable.

And so there you go.

* These odds and ends seem to rule our conversations. About a week ago we were talking about pubic hair; who trims and why. He is one of few straight male friends and when we get together, we swap secrets about our respective genders like informers.

RE: MY WHITE MATTER

The Steady made fresh limeade the other day. He poured me a glass. Upon first taste my brain shouted, CORPUSCLE! Although I could not remember exactly what corpuscles were, I knew there was some connection to the drink. So I looked it up on Wikipedia and found the following definition: small free floating biological cell, especially ones occurring in blood.

This made complete sense because the drink was beautifully sweet and sour balanced with an emulsive layer of juice filled pulp at the top.

BICYCLE COMMUTE

So I got one of those REI credit cards and I put just about everything except my mortgage on it. I pay my balance every month and in the process rack up a tidy little dividend. This year it was about $170. So I blew it on a nice set of waterproof panniers and (wincing) a pair of bike shorts. Now usually I make fun of people who purchase special gear in order to make themselves feel like they're elite members of some sport scene. I especially like to attack people who wear expensive brand name jerseys covered with faux endorsements and walk clickity-click-click into coffee shops teetering on fancy clipless pedal shoes whilst squinting at the menu through custom fit Oakley sunglasses.

Dude. Hey dude? Whatever.

BRAILLE

I woke up this morning, scratching.
A tiny constellation of bumps on my abdomen.
Just slightly north and east of my belly button.
I hired a blind person to translate the message.

It read: Stop scratching.

SHOW ME YOURS

I went to a topless bar last night. It was my first. I can’t hold strong opinions about the sex industry without firsthand knowledge, right?

In a nutshell (as I've said before) I regard the sex industry the same way I regard the meat industry. There is nothing inherently evil or shameful about eating animals and there is nothing evil or shameful about getting your rocks off. Both impulses are intrinsically human and they should be celebrated. It’s industry that warps these two basic pleasures. Once you start to mass produce things like lamb chops and pornography for profit, the essential components are objectified and exploited until they are unrecognizable.

Now I don't consider my friends cads, but I really couldn’t get behind their arguments defending this kind of entertainment. If those women weren’t getting paid for stripping, I wouldn’t have a problem. I mean, why can’t we all just get naked at the bar? Think about it. What a great time that would be! You'd show me yours, I'd show you mine, and we would spend all those dollar bills on beer!

But my friend insisted women don’t want to see men naked. I laughed at the absurdity of a straight man telling me what women want and don’t want. A straight man who hasn't been laid in a really long time. I poked him in the chest and said, “I want to see men naked.” But where can I go to glimpse set of cock and balls? Why, another establishment designed for and by men: a gay club. I did the whole, we live in a sexist society song/dance, but I think my anecdotes were lost on him. Later in the conversation he admitted he doesn’t want women to want to see men naked. I had to cogitate on that one for a bit. I have since arrived at the following conclusion: Men feel uncomfortable when it comes to women’s sexuality and in order to make up for this insecurity, they are more strident about their own.

HOT HEAD

I play Ultimate Frisbee. I play on a summer league and then a winter/fall league. I'm not so bad. I usually catch the disc and I am pretty mean on defense. My throws, I will admit, could stand to be more accurate. I play because I like the people on my team and I like the new people I meet. It's also fun to hone a skill, even it if it's one as pointless as this.

So last week I botched a throw. Shit happens. But when I got back to the sideline, The Steady starts giving me this full on tutorial about throwing technique. I guess he was well meaning and I'm usually amenable to the advice of others, but for some reason I was annoyed by him getting all pedagogical on my ass. I say, if you're going to dish advice, observe the correct time and place and do it with delicacy and tact. Anyway, I told him to can it. I actually put my hand up and said , "Ah, ah, ah, na-na!"

I don't know if it's related but I hussled up two points during that game. Which was one third of our total points (the opposing team was simply better). Um, so there.