Elinor:

    Rachel, Maggie and I were in the Grassroots bar after a reading. Paul Violi stood across the sawdust floor, gleaming like Apollo.
    “How the hell do you get that man out of his clothes?” Rachel said.
    “Let’s do a magazine,” I answered.
    “No one buys poetry magazines,” Maggie said. “They’re boring.”
    “They would buy it if Paul Violi was in it, naked,” Rachel said.
    “Violi’s too classy,” I said. “He’d never do anything like that. Let’s ask Brodey. He’ll do anything.”
    We staggered over to St. Mark’s books, where Brodey was stealing books, I mean working.
    “Sure, girls,” he agreed.
    “All right!” we said.
    “For $40,” he added.
    “Jesus, Jim, why buy a cow when the milk’s so cheap?” Maggie muttered. We skedaddled out of there.
    Who else would do it? we asked ourselves.
    “Ted’ll do it!” I said.
    “Yeah,” Maggie said, “You just have to rub up against him a couple more times.”
    But no matter how many times I rubbed up against him, we couldn’t get that man out of his clothes.
    “Let’s ask Frank O’Hara,” said Maggie
    “He’s dead!” Rachel said.
    “He can’t be,” Maggie said. “Wait a minute. Is he really? Then who was that I slept with last night?”

   Why do some words make me feel uncomfortable?
    “Rub her coke.”
-------------------
   Why didn’t I talk to my father?
   “I suffocate and I write I write/I write to please them”
-------------------
    I need an image for a story. Can you give me one?

   “Meaningless. The main thing is you’re going to get married.”

HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TAPAS BAR

Actually, I just made that up. Still though, at
some point that either did or will happen!

I would like to take five from my usual chemical world travelogue and contemplate a time of gifts.

“A Time of Gifts” is also the name of the first installment of the artfully told adventure of an English teenager named Patrick Leigh Fermor.  In 1933, after being dismissed from a boarding school in Canterbury--for being caught holding hands with the local grocer’s daughter--this high-spirited son of a distinguished British geologist decided to complete his education via “Independent Study”.  

You could say that he took the matter into his own feet, since he made extensive plans to walk across Europe--“from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople”.  The fact that the great Byzantine capital has been called Istanbul since 1453 is a hint to the reader that you are not about to begin a conventional travel guide.

Free Advice: Here's some free advice for new fathers: Never eat a diaper, even if you're starving.
                                  ;~~~
                                  '  @@\_
                                  C          _)
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Between the ages of 14 and 17 I saw Enter the Dragon 22 times before I stopped counting.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages.

And players flub their lines occasionally, as did President Barack Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts, just before the much-anticipated Inaugural Address of the 44th President of the United States of America.  It wasn’t to be, or not to be, a soliloquy, since on the one hand, Barack Obama was onstage speaking to the entire world, not just to himself.  But on the other hand, the inspiring theme of the preceding festivities was “We Are One”.

He has indeed brought profound change to the highest office in the land.  But, ironically, Barack Obama must now rely on the trickle down theory in order for his presidency to be successful. 

Congress must change the way it operates.  Federal departments must change the way they enforce national policies.  States must be free to change in their own ways.  Locally, we must change the way we educate our future workforce, especially in the areas of math and science.  If we do all of this, and more, then perhaps we will indeed be “the change that we have been waiting for.”

“A river of arctic air coming down from Canada” is how many weather reports have described the recent cold snap refreshing a huge swath of the country, from Minneapolis to Miami.  My nose told me that Murfreesboro was right in the middle of it.

On Tuesday morning in International Falls, Minnesota, the mercury set a record for that date when it went down to 40 below, on the Fahrenheit scale.  The “river” characterization accurately implied that there was also a good amount of wind-chill to dress for.

Coincidentally, 40 below is the same frigid temperature on both the Fahrenheit scale and the Celsius scale, which they use across the border from International Falls, in Fort Francis, Ontario.  Folks in Minnesota and Northern Ontario will agree that 40 below is definitely cold, but scientists will tell you that it is not absolutely cold.

Preston MacDougall is a chemistry professor at Middle Tennessee State University. His "Chemical Eye" commentaries are featured in the Arts and Public Affairs portion of the Murfreesboro/Nashville NPR station WMOT (www.wmot.org ) and now in Exquisite Corpse.

Chemical Synthetic Biology

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the Promethean protagonist that Mary Shelley created out of words in the early 1800s, has been back in the news lately.   But this time only letters were used - As, Cs, Gs and Ts, the nitrogenous bases that are in our DNA--and the creature is not a giant but a microbe.

AMERICA'S LAUNDROMAT
The other day I was walking around and saw a
place called "America's Laundromat." I thought
it would be much bigger.

@-@

BYOB: BREW YOUR OWN BEER: BANG-BANG
1. Go to jail.
2. Make in the stockade under the barracks.
3. Mix potato peelings, canned pineapple syrup,
and raisins.
4. Add yeast.
5. Brew in any kind of container you can get for
minimum 3 days.
6. Drink in latrine while bragging to others
about how tough you are.
7. Conversely, flush resulting slurry down the
toilet and forget it.

FLAG: We were pledging allegiance to the flag
and Dad caught me looking out the window.
Mom said she didn't think that was very
patriotic of me. I said I was looking at the flag
outside on the pole. Dad thought it over and
said that from now on we were to all look at the
flag inside.

INTERNET PORN. BE WARNED, these free
films are a FLIM FLAM that even the best of us get
snared in, MANY TIMES OVER.