Salt: Good Marriage and Tasty Foreplay

A Presentation from Father Patrick, the Hypertensive Friar.

As Mr. Zeff has just described, atoms often have an unequal number of protons and electrons. When there are more protons, the atom will attract electrons, and conversely, when an atom has more electrons it will attract protons.

But to be clearer, let’s put some faces on it. Say you’ve got an atom with 17 protons, who just nabbed another electron to fill out his shell. Let’s call him Chlorine.

Chlorine’s confident because while he knows he’s a bit negative, he is nevertheless attractive. In fact, his imperfection is his attraction: one cannot be attractive without some nuance, some special imperfect flare. He’s got that spark that someone would love to fix.

Cue Sodium. She’s got 11 of the most curvaceous protons around, and she’s looking awfully trim with just 10 valence electrons. She’s got her faults, true, but she’s positively charming.

Every bit of Chlorine bumps and shakes. Yes, yes, yes, jump her, jump her, jump her, he thinks as he floats to her on a river of his own drool. And then tasty stuff goes down! Chloe’s electrons reach over and pull on Sodium’s protons, and Chloe’s protons start jigglin Sodium’s electrons. Oh! Behave you two! This is foreplay that might last awhile...

---

Hah! I jest,

But blessed be this union, this marriage!

Theirs is a bond based on affection. 

What is a soul-mate but a complement 

for our lesser imperfections?

---

The truth is this sodium and chlorine bond will likely stay together longer than most real marriages. Better still, it will spread. Other NaCl couples, attracted by their love, will move in nearby and form a pretty suburb. It’s will be a spacious place, free from impropriety, and though all the Sodiums are attracted to the Chlorines, and the Chlorines are attracted to the Sodiums, every couple remains faithful.

This is why I coat my steaks in salt: in the hopes of inspiring uniform sexual fidelity! Divine ordinance has made salt the most sacred of seasonings!

Who was the first to bite?

There is a sheath around your eyeball.

The Choroid is a lovely thing,
like the "Chorion," its namer.
As wrap around the amnion --
its arteried and stable.
A bounty table so replete,
it's scraps feed all it can:
A mother to her baby girl;
A smile, a suck, a fable.

Less stable are the gripping arms
Of the Ciliary Body -
A crowd of hands on a rubber band
That yank and wrench so rawly!
Pull they do when things go dark
lustful for all they can,
But when the lights go on a-bright...
whistle, relax, no folly.

Too farfetched for you, these guys?
Not surprised am I.
As coated paint, the iris hides
them: colored, free-reside.
A heavy blanket, a lively girl,
Distracts you from their gropes.
But, ah, with color so lovely swirled
The dream is to forget.

All combined -- the mother dear,
the arms, the verdant gal --
Are as to me, it's safe to say,
beloved as my sight.
And yet we name them "uveal,"
Pertaining to the grape.
I'll ask my title to the Latin:
Who was the first to bite?

Edward Snowden: Puppet Master

Think about it.  After leaking information about the NSA, Edward Snowden runs to Russia - a misfit country bullied by the the popular powers for twenty-five years, and desperate for power to leverage.  Russia’s response is predictable: they mail Snowden’s asylum documents, paperclipped to a list of grievances.

Is Snowden a political weaver?

Look what happens next.  Syria uses chemical weapons (as it had and presumably would again); the US vows to bomb; Russia backs its ally, Assad; and Snowden stays safe in a very stretched political hammock.  Could Snowden predict this? Did he use the storm for shelter?
(Lies.)
Did he perhaps anticipate too much?  Maybe the US, as it vowed, was supposed to strike Syria.  Maybe there was supposed to be an international backlash against the United States, that Russia could milk for new (and former) allies, and that would evaporate the memory of Edward Snowden.

But there was no military strike, and the US and Russia began patching their differences without bloodshed.  What could Edward Snowden do now?
(This story lies like a magician. It points to distract you from the gaps. Is it a good or bad magician? Look now, look eutheos! Good god, sensationalism.)
Perhaps Snowden planned on exacerbating the US debt situation -- to derail their hypothetical war effort -- and now goes through with the plan, not for malevolence, but for self-preservation: if the US defaults, then its relationship with many countries (China, Egypt) would be strained, and he could improvise an escape from Russia.

You scoff, but consider: since the US is so contentious, how difficult would it really have been?  One top dog clogging the system at the right time, and the situation could domino.
(Consider: truth, consider: lies, consider, Stretch) 
The controversy over government subsidies to Congress’s health-care was gift-wrapped for Snowden’s needs.  All of the government wants their new health-care subsidized, but nobody wants to argue for subsidies and to incur a public frown.  Fortunately for Snowden though, politicians do like to flex and have the world quake, especially when it shakes their rivals.  Maybe he got Senator Reid to release information implicating Speaker Boehner in a plot to get subsidies. Boehner would, of course, shake back -- trying to drown the Democrats in their house by flooding the Senate with absurd anti-ObamaCare legislation, and salting a tempest of arguments for President Obama to weather.
(These are not men, they are power-mongers and puppets. The author tells them where to go -- up the floating steps; the logic is as caricatured as they are. Who is Snowden the man?)
This is of course what happened.  The storm is battering Obama and the Senate, and default is only days away.  Will Snowden evaporate when the storm breaks? Was he ever even there?
(All the lies end in “this,” a seductress, a gap for you to fill, amusing fragments collected.)
But such are stories and criticism: fragments begging you to form a visceral and total opinion. My thoughts? A story is lies, like faith is a lie, like a diagram is a lie. Yet, there are stories that give us a living, unconscious thought -- total and visceral -- engendered by artists and raised by criticism. These stories are pavement for our thoughts.
Is this story pavement? (Hint: Conspiracy) Are others?
We'll have to keep looking.

On Heaven

Yesterday I learned that “abdomen” comes from the words “ab” and “domini,” literally meaning from the lord. I told this to my girlfriend, who said, “that’s because 6 packs are heavenly.” It’s too bad that I’m a pagan.