My body for science

My invitation... to science.

Oil & D
After 45 years of waiting, it's happened. I've been drafted by science to be a subject in a long term health study. If my completed questionnaire doesn't eliminate me, I have agreed to eat large amounts of both vitamin D and fish oil (or one or two placebos) for five years. The hypothesis given by the investigating institutions (Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital) is that these supplements might prevent heart disease, stroke, and cancer. So here's the ethical question. What's stopping me from getting my package of pills analyzed to see if I've been put in the placebo group? I mean, it wouldn't necessarily mess up the research to, upon finding my pills are placebos, toss them in the trash and say I ate them. And wouldn't you have to make a fish-oil placebo smell and taste like fish? What could be ethical about that? They could at least use gummy-fish for the placebo group. I guess I could be undermining the possible finding that all it really takes to prevent disease is a good, daily whiff of fish smell.

Backyard archeology

Unearthed: the portrait of Garage Baby. 

The time has come to replace our 1930's era garage building. Built atop of a schmear of cement rather than any kind of real foundation and constructed from things like scabbed-together door jambs, there's not a lot to save. But we will be saving the "Garage Baby." Sometime around 2004/5, I noticed a painter's canvas nailed backwards onto the exposed studs between some larger pieces of plywood shearing. I pulled the nails, flipped the canvas, and voila! It was nothing to cart off to the Antiques Roadshow but the mid twentieth century studio portrait of fourish year-old boy  was definitely a mystery to be investigated--or at least invented. Would some neighbors recognize him as the teenager who broke all those windows in 1949? There had to be a reason his image was nailed backward onto the cobwebs and soot. And despite decades facing darkness, countless cycles of freezing and thawing, and the monotonous silence occasionally broken by the creak and whistle of icy winds, Garage Baby is an eerily compelling presence. Ella, Ivy, and Jack were about 8, 8, and 5 when we made the discovery. With my help, we decided that GB had probably disappeared when he was very young. Because his parents couldn't be reminded of their grief, they had to hide his image in what was now our garage. Certainly, GB's unknown tragic experience lived on as his ghost in and around the garage. In fact, I'm pretty sure I once heard someone howl, "noooooooo" as I started to re-mount the crank on by bike backwards. And there have been pranks. Somebody recently pulled the plug to the garage refrigerator.

Alas, the ghost stories we've enjoyed over the years are false. Thanks to a new feature on Google's image search, I was able to upload the original image of Garage Baby (above), find visually similar images from the entire World Wide Web, and in no time at all, construct a timeline of Garage Baby's  life.

Garage Baby: A visual chronology of a life well lived.

Despite the revelations via Google, our garage will forever be a more spirited place because of GB.

My upcoming children's books
Due to my obvious knack for turning mundanities into stories that prevent young people from thinking clearly, I've decided to write a children's book -- maybe two.

I stumbled across the first plot about eight years ago during a conversation with friends about what  should determine when a girl can pierce her ears. Thus, The Piercing Elf is a modern fairy/faerie/small-weird-person tale about a girl (or boy) who's too young, in her/his parent's (s')/guardian's opinion, to have her/his ear(s) pierced (or otherwise mutilated). Rather than deny their daughter (or son) directly they/he/she say(s) tries to frighten their child out of the idea by announcing that  they/he/she will have to summon the Piercing Elf, the tiny bearded man/woman with one long sharp tooth who visits children while they sleep and bites a small hole into their precious little lobe(s). Alas, the smart child's questions force the parent(s) deeper into a string lies until the end of the story turns a tad disturbing.

Following on the heels of The Piercing Elf will be another story of modern parental struggle. Daddy Wears Sweatpants Now is a middle aged man's commentary on other middle aged men's struggle with economic downturn as told from the fabricated perspective of a bemused seven year old. While the first pages can be a bit wrenching, Daddy's eventual switch to yoga-pants proves catalytic for a complete, albeit ironic, reinvention. (hard cover only, sorry)

Pre-orders accepted (it might be a while)