Friday Night in Frankenstein's La-BOR-atory

Another Friday night devoted to spreading news in the world of science.

PETA is strangely silent on this one.

Tadpoles can see through eyes on their tails. Now don't go jumping to rash conclusions. No matter what you read in the headlines, these tadpoles are not mutants. Nor are they exhibiting evidence of a homozygous recessive genotype. They did not sprout eyes on their tails like Aunt Edna sprouts whiskers on her chin. These tail-eyes were put there by scientists. Yep. They are frankentadpole peepers.

Again, don't go all weepy over the article's talk of "donor" tadpoles who gave their eyes for this experiment. They were not offered releases to sign. Didn't mark a box on their driver's license with a really bad picture. Donor tadpoles are not selfless amphibians who set out to give sight to friends without, like, "I have two eyes, so I will give my fellow tadpole one. I can live with one. Get a cool eye patch and ARRGH all the live-long day. And people will think I'm selfless." Nope. Scientist removed their eyes.

Oh, perhaps you didn't read that closely. Perhaps you didn't read at all, but tried to rent the movie and ended up at a stranger's apartment elbowing their teenage daughter away from the end of the white couch where you could reach your nuts while sipping grape juice and hushing the family discussion. If that was the case, you might have missed the detail that scientists removed the eyes of normal tadpoles, and grafted eye tissue onto the tails of the test subjects.

But wait! There's more here than meets the eye! (Heh, heh! See what I did there? I said, "meets the EYE" in a story about EYES!) Scientists REMOVED the normal eyes of the tail-eye tadpoles! Took out perfectly good eyes, made their test subjects blind, and stuck eye tissue on their tails to see if they could see! And in some convoluted manner involving red light and blue light and, oh yes, electric shock...about nineteen percent of their test subject blinded tadpoles avoided that red light shocking area.

Don't go thinking that a bunch of frogs will be released with eyes on their butts. Tadpoles absorb their tails as food. So they will be eating those eyes like Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain, and Amazing Race contestants experimenting with global cuisine.

PETA? No tadpole love? I'm sure you would have something to say about soft fluffy kittens with eyes on their tails. Perhaps some animals are more equal than others.

A Story Writes Itself on the Road Less Traveled

There are days when I have an idea for my evening blog posts from the minute I wake up. Stories simply too good to keep to myself. Then there are days when I have nothing. The pockets of my clown pants of tales are empty. I'd pull them out to show you, but some lint might escape. Today was almost lintworthy.

I was on the way home after taking my mom on an outing to pay my house bill. Yes. I'm a good daughter like that. Mom had only been out of the house once since the "big" storm hit last Thursday. I didn't want her to succumb to a bout of cabin fever that might progress to stircraziness. So I swung by out-of-my-way to pick her up. A good time was had by all. Mom was so grateful that she paid me $8.00 for my trouble. Yep. That's the going rate of good-daughterness in Backroads today. You would think that's enough of a tale in itself. But that's not the story.

I attempted a short cut to avoid two traffic lights. As Even Steven would have it, my haste was wasted behind a chap with the audacity to drive the speed limit. Not that I'm averse to law-abiding. I'm not. But this chap continued to obey the OLD 30 mph law even after we passed into the 45 mph law. A large white SUV came roaring up behind me. Feinted as if to pass. PUH-LEEEZE! Who do you think you're foolin'? as Paul Simon might have sung if he was being tailgated by a large white SUV while chugging up a 35-degree incline on twisting two-lane blacktop. So close was that large white SUV that I could not even see the brights of its eyes. THATCLOSE! Perhaps I've mentioned a time or two hundred how much I detest tailgaters. But even vengeful Val would not want that large white SUV to receive its comeuppance in the form of a head-on crash. And neither is that the story.

Our convoy, rolling through the evening, had just crossed back into a new 30 mph law inside the outer city limits of Backroads. We bumped over the railroad tracks. Coasted down the hill beside the lovely lake that most municipalities would call a pond, and then it happened! THE STORY!

On the jogging path, blocking a lithe shirtless shorts dude and a plugging sweatpantsed weightloser about fifty paces behind, was A GORILLA!!! Right there on the blacktop jogging path around the lake. Right beside the parking lot. Just across the street from the nursing home that used to be the hospital where I was born. A GORILLA! And it WAVED to me!

It was not a standard black gorilla with shiny hands and face. It was a brown gorilla. The shade of brown that looks really bad in a suit on a TV meteorologist. Kind of a gingerbread hue. I would love to have taken a blurry picture with my phone camera, but there was that messy business of the large white SUV crawling up my back hatch. My resident captive photographer, The Pony, was away at an academic team meet. So I was unable to bring you, in all its glory, the brown furry gorilla that waved to me from the jogging path of the lake that Backroads built.

You know how a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, today you get the thousand words. Not even that. How about 591? It's still better than clown pants lint, don't you think?

Sometimes, Making a Point is Morbid

Every morning, Genius stops by my classroom to grab a bottle of water out of the mini fridge. This behavior is in its fourth year. Ingrained. Extinction at this point would most likely be impossible.

Rats will continue a behavior that is rewarded only one-tenth of the time. Okay, I made that up to sound scientific. But somewhere, there is a statistic like that. I know, because I learned it in a psychology class during my first year of junior college. That's when we weren't discussing salivating dogs, and kids kicking the crap out of Bobo dolls. Or finding out the best way to respond to a liar who says something like, "My nine-month-old son just spoke his first words yesterday. He said, 'May I have a cookie, please?'" The correct response is: "Imagine that!" See how it works? You don't call them out for being a liar, and you don't pretend to believe their claims. "Imagine that." A companion phrase for the "breathtaking" ugly baby.

Now where was I...Oh, yes. Rats! I mean Genius. He came in yesterday and flung open my mini fridge. Let's just say that he met the fate of Old Mother Hubbard's mutt. "There's no water!"

"There's water. In the package under the table."

"It's not cold!"

"No. That's why we have the mini fridge." Genius stalked towards the door. "And you think, perhaps, that the next time you look, it will be full of cold water? Just like that?" He kept going. I swear. He's like me, watching An Officer and a Gentleman for the tenth time, still holding out hope that Sid will be okay. That Zach and Paula will open the door of his motel room at The Tides, and find him laid back on top of the bedspread in his skivvies, watching TV and swigging from his fifth of whiskey, waiting for that diamond engagement ring to pass through his digestive system.

This morning when I returned to my room after parking lot duty, the mini fridge was stocked with water. I think that sometime between yesterday afternoon and first bell this morning, Genius found Sid swinging from the shower head. A dose of reality is not always a bad thing.

Do Not Eat the Honey Mustard

The following public service announcement is brought to you by Val Thevictorian and Theodor Geisel. If he does not appreciate second billing, let's see him do something about it.

Do Not Eat the Honey Mustard

Do not eat the honey mustard.
It is not a tasty custard.
Do not eat it! You'll be flustered!

Do not eat that rotten fare.
Twas just last night I left it there!
I don't know why YOU give a care.
I really want my honey mustard.
Let me have it, you old horse-turd!

Would you like to catch ptomaine?
Eat it then! You'll writhe with pain.
I do not think I'll catch ptomaine.
It's still half-full. The best remains.
Chicken dipped in once, twice, thrice...
Ask Costanza. It's no vice.
Warm, uncovered, out all night?
I can't wait to grab a bite.

Would you slurp it, finger-lickin'?
Later on, you won't be kickin'.
Yes, finger-lickin'. I'll be kickin'.
First I will swirl. Then I will twirl.
I do so like it here and there.
Nom. Honey mustard everywhere!
Here, you try it. Take a bite.
I'm sure you'll say it tastes just right.

Desist, desist, I say, desist!
Why is it that you can't resist?
I can't desist. I love it so!
I'll eat it first, and then I'll blow.
I grip it, dip it, in the sauce.
Watch me! I'll show you who's boss!
Give that back! Not in the trash!
Let's think this through! Don't be rash!
Set it on that magazine.
I'll sneak it. Yeah. I won't be seen.
I truly love my honey mustard
Look how blobs of it have clustered...

Not-Heaven hath no fury like a teenager kept from his left-out-all-night plastic tub of honey mustard, teeming with mouth bacteria, finger-cooties, and partially-digested by chicken-strip-clinging saliva. It matters not that the smooth golden yellow had turned to a shiny metallic gold.

It's incidents like this that make Homer Simpson look perfectly rational in grabbing his sub sandwich out of the garbage can and stroking it like a puppy while microbes dance about his head like so many species of fly in the town dump.

There's a reason people pay big money for refrigerators.

There's a Reason That Cutlery is Limited

You know today was the full moon, right?

Any teacher would be able to tell you that simple fact, even without a calendar, Google, or the Farmer's Almanac. We just know. It's as clear as the bad haircuts that frame our dark-under-eye-circled faces. Kids kick up their flip-flop-shod heels on full moon day. Oh, Missouri denizens...you need to be showed?

Exhibit A: Genius arrived home after robot practice, sniffing about the kitchen for edibles. He scored a leftover chicken sandwich from yesterday's lunch, a chicken strip, and a vat of honey mustard. The salad was met with a turned-up nose. I casually asked if one of his friends was playing baseball this year. They were starting practice today, a coincidence that has nothing to do with the full moon. Genius, a robot boy, not a baseballer, said that he did not know. I asked about another. "I'm not sure, but he stabbed me with a fork at lunch today."

Oh, he lobbed that one in there like a slow-pitch softball for me to hit out of the kitchen. I SO wanted to say, "Stuck a fork in you? You're DONE!" A clever baseball taunt, you know. But I refrained. Not because I am above such clever repartee. But because that little story hit home concerning MY lunch period.

Exhibit B: A certain table was noted to be acting hinky near the end of the lunch period. It's not like they're on our watch list. It's our sixth sense. Or, you might say, our first-period-lunch sense. We have the younger kids. Freshmen and sophomores. Who sometimes are observed acting positively sophomoric. Like today. One leaned toward the dude sitting next to him, brandishing two white plastic spoons near the neck area. If I didn't know better, I might have suspected he was practicing applying defibrillator paddles to restart a heart. However, because I am smarter than Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted, when she declared that she was going to use an ink pen to rip out her aorta, and jabbed it at her neck...I know that, like the aorta, the heart is in the chest. Good to know.

The duty teacher went to investigate. A not-so-innocent by-sitter inquired, "You mean he can't finish popping that pimple?" Uh huh. At lunch. Check your appetite at the door.

Thank goodness we don't give them white plastic knives. The gash Genius was sporting from the fork was deep enough. Since he wasn't raising a ruckus, I imagine that his forking did not materialize out of thin air. Perhaps he attempted to snag a tasty morsel off the tray of another. He does it regularly around here. But we are not armed with white plastic forks. Nor do we live by the state penitentiary code.

Maybe I need to check Genius's room for a poster of Rita Hayworth. The Shawshank Redemption was on TV Saturday night while he was away at a friend's house for movie night. Not that I want to thwart his escape. I might leave a metal spoon in plain sight.

Val on Your Side

Another brainteaser solved by Val. And without even the help of Mystery, Inc.

The convenience store where I regularly buy my eighty-cent or FREE 44 oz. Diet Coke, which shall be referred to as the Voice of the Village, has exhibited a curious trend on days after a snowfall. Black plastic milk crates are placed in the parking spaces. Middle, as in right smack dab in the.

Being a curious sort, this got my attention last December when we had our, ahem, first unforecast eight inches of snow. Oh, I thought. They're keeping people from becoming impaled by icicles falling from the roof overhang. That's how my mind works, you see. It jumps to the goriest, most human-carnage-resulting conclusion. Next, I supposed that maybe the management did not want people slipping on ice that may form on the parking lot. Which was silly, because they did not block off the sidewalk, or even scatter chunks of salt over the lot by the gas pumps.

Because I'm a curious sort, I noticed that the widely-corrugated green metal roofs of the prison outbuildings that I pass twice every day harbor great sheets of compacted snow that sit complacently all the live-long day, until that instant they decide to slide over the edge in a spectacular show of exploding white crystal smithereens.

Aha! I thought. Voice of the Village does not want people bombarded with stealthy ice-pancakes from their metal roof. Still. They left the sidewalk unblockaded. I suppose business would be hurt if they did not allow entrance into their facility. Today, I voiced my theory to The Pony.

"Uh. No. They are worried about it hitting people's cars. Not people."

The intention was revealed when I paid for my precious elixir. Yes, paid. I startled my soda-giving clerk, he so deep in contemplation, sitting on a stool behind the register, that he did not recognize it was me until he had already reached his hand out for my three quarters and nickel. Val always pays for her 44 oz. with correct change.

"Hey, do you block off the parking spaces so people won't get hit by the falling ice chunks, or the cars?"

"Oh, the CARS!"

"We had a disagreement. I said it was the people, but my son said, 'Duh. People might get mad if they get hit, but they will SUE if their car gets damaged.' "

"That's right! People can get out of the way, but their CARS are something else!"

Any mysteries keeping you awake at night? Allow Val to investigate.

Maybe We Should Bury Them in Shallow Graves

Hey, remember that storm we had here in Missouri on Thursday? Yeah. That one. This still reminds me of it. It's a picture of our gravel road today at noon.

But getting back to when the storm was but a pup...I was getting a little upset with the TV meteorologists. They just couldn't predict any time or numbers until about...um...I don't know...THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SLEET HIT THE ATMOSPHERE. They kept hemming and hawing about it being a southern storm, which is SO unpredictable here in Missouri. What they're being paid for if not for predicting weather, I don't know.

The day OF the storm's arrival, the event we had been waiting for some TEN LOOOOONG DAYS, I started hearing that my county was going to get the worst of the freezing rain. Puh-leeze! All that time, this tiny tidbit had been glossed over. We would be getting more sleet and freezing rain than snow, sure. But what those TV meteorologists had accidentally failed to mention was that this could be a slight problem for us folks here in Backroads. Not in the slippery-road-problem kind of way. In the ICEPOCALYPSE of '06 kind of way.

I listened to those ice-cryers, proclaiming that utility crews from out-of-state were traveling here to await our depowering, and thought of the monster-shouter in The Stand. Until I remembered that he was kind of right. Here it was, sleet already falling, and freezing rain coming, and me not knowing how to hook up the generator and keep from frying all of our electrical circuits. Wasn't THAT a fine how-do-you-do? Lucky for me, Genius was lolling around like Axl on The Middle. Luckier for me, we had power until 7:38 p.m. Lucky for you, I had posted to my blogs a bit early due to my SNOW DAY.

It really wasn't that bad. I had just settled into my basement recliner with 236 Pounds of Class Vice President. I was on the final few pounds. The part where author Jason Mulgrew dons a fur cape to give his vice-presidential candidate speech. And the power went out. I grabbed my green and red and white fleece blanket, The Pony fetched me one of his book lights, we lit two hazelnut cream candles, and settled in for a bit of a wait.

After thirty minutes, Hick and Genius went to the garage to fire up the generator. Gennie was having none of it. Nothing like having your vital machinery in working condition, ready to assume the load when needed. It took them another thirty minutes to make Gennie power up. Then The Pony and I were able to watch King of the Nerds, and become one step closer to seeing who prevailed in the house called Nerdvana, to eventually ascend  the Throne of Games.

Luckier for us, the power returned after only ninety minutes. Sometimes, I think Missouri needs to bury its power lines in a shallow grave like my telephone line from pole to house. Or like cat poop in a sandbox.