The Loudest Sound

The Skinny, a local San Francisco publication, was kind enough to include this sci-fi/humor short story by yours truly in its debut issue. And they illustrated it using a graphic from my Web site! I originally wrote this piece for an evening of prose honoring John Cage. For my reading, I asked audience members to turn on their cell phones. If you read it, you'll see why.

The sponge is back

In a March 2000 article for Salon.com about the long-awaited return of the Today Sponge, I wrote:
It's been five long years since the Today Sponge sat on drugstore shelves. In March 1999, the newly formed Allendale Pharmaceutical Co. Announced it would bring back the sponge, possibly as soon as fall 1999.
Fall came and went, then winter. Now Allendale predicts its resurrected product will be released in Canada sometime this month, and in the United States no later than May. For fans of the contraceptive sponge it can't happen soon enough.
(Incidentally, I've been informed by family members of the sponges inventor that he was eventually cleared of the insurance fraud mentioned in my article.)

Five years later ... the sponge really is back! But here's my question: You have a safe, reliable product that was pulled off the market due to a factory issue. You have a respected pharmaceutical company purchase the product. You've got an entire Seinfeld episode dedicated to the damn thing. And it still takes the FDA ten years to allow it back on the market? Meanwhile, Bextra, Vioxx and Celebrex ... I don't claim to know the intricacies of the FDA approval process, but I find this troubling.

Ancient popcorn mystery revealed

Researchers have solved the age-old riddle: why won't all the popcorn kernels pop!

The key popability factor, it turned out, is the kernel's cellulose hull, known as the pericarp. Chandrasekaran, a crystallographer, found that the pericarp in the better performers had a stronger crystalline structure than the pericarp in the losers. "With a better-organized crystal structure, the kernel retains moisture better," Chandrasekaran said in a telephone interview. The kernel swells as it heats up, until it finally explodes, creating popcorn. If the moisture leaks out prematurely, or the pericarp collapses, the pressure will not build, and the frustrated consumer is left with old maids.

Incidentally, I got my pyramid yesterday, and it says I should gorge myself on all the popcorn I want. Yay! If it's not drowned in salt and butter. Boo.

Monkey Island!

My friend, Bryan Davidson, is playwright in residence at the William Inge Festival in Independence, Kansas. He’s been sending out regular updates on his stay in this small, unassuming town which just happens to be home to Monkey Island.

He writes:
Yes, Independence is famous for being the birthplace of playwright William Inge. But how many of us knew that it was also the home of Miss Able, the First Monkey in Space?

Miss Able was born on Monkey Island. Monkey Island was built in 1932 as part of the Independence Zoo, and included a castle, a main street with storefronts, and (yes, really) a jail. The very informative sign did not discuss the criteria or process by which monkeys were sent to jail. It did say how Miss Able was put into the tip of a Jupiter rocket and shot into space.

I am very worried about how monkeys will survive on Monkey Island in Kansas' winter cold. But I guess if hey can survive in outer space... right?

Today, the jail and main street are gone. All that remains is the crumbling castle, a sad remnant of Monkey Island's glory days. It is a metaphor for the town in general, in its decline from oil production center to struggling Main Street, USA.

But it is still an amusing attraction.

For an informative slide show about Monkey Island, go to:
http://www.forpaz.com/monkeyisle.htm

More on Bryan’s work and Monkey Island, his new obsession, here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~amynbryan/updatesfromindependence/

Dead Musician Registry

Solve office wagers in one keyboard stroke! Dead musicians are categorized by how they met their ultimate demise. Fuller Up: The Dead Musician Directory is “NAMED FOR THE GASOLINE SWALLOWING EVENT THAT TOOK THE LIFE OF YOUNG ROCKER, BOBBY FULLER.”

Therapy for the flesh-eating-bacteria phobic?

GIANTmicrobes, my new favorite company in Canada, makes a Necrotizing Fasciitis plush toy!!!! This is the closest you'll ever want to get to this scary disease, which is popularly known as "flesh-eating bacteria."

Since reading Atul Gawande’s harrowing account in “Complications” of treating a woman who got the deadly bacteria while dancing barefoot in grass at a wedding, it’s topped my personal phobia list. Well, the New England Journal of Medicine reported earlier this month that drug-resistant staph infections are not only on the rise outside of their usual health-care facility milieu, but they’ve acquired flesh-eating capabilities, too. The bacteria claimed another victim just today, a 10-year-old girl in the Bronx.

Topix.net keeps an up-to-date compendium of flesh-eating-bacteria news from around the world. There’s even a National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation, through which survivors of the disease can get together and socialize.

I need a hug.