Tuesday, June 07, 2005

This Is Why My Friends Always Run Away

Have I mentioned my childlike awe surrounding small shiny objects? Fascinating I assure you.

Such as yesterday. I took a break from working* to use the latrine yesterday. I was sitting there (as girls do) looking at the floor, and I noticed some little tiny silver pieces of something I couldn't identify.

Which obviously made me think of mercury. You know, the mysteriously expanding-with-heat, in a liquid state at room temperature metallic element, formerly of thermometers**? That's what tiny silver specks on the bathroom floor remind you of right? Right?

So anyway, I'm in the can, pondering mercury. I once spilled some mercury by dropping a thermometer on the floor. And immediately panicked because, you see, I have a cat. A special one. A young one. Who, like many young animals of various species, likes to put things in her mouth. And completely brain-addled person that I am, in my head I start picturing my cat, floating in water upside-down with x-shaped eyes. Because that's how they always draw mercury-poisoned fish, so I figured Kristen would eat some, draw x's on her eyelids, find a body of water, willingly get in it, and keel over dead if I didn't do something to clean up the mercury right then.

Have you ever tried to clean up mercury? It's hard. It beads up all weird-like and rolls around on the floor. Eventually I discovered that if I blew on it, the whole mess would gather as one large quivering silvery bead. Once I did that, all I had to do was get a paper towel and mop it up right? Because, hey, liquid!

But that didn't work - I did successfully get the mercury bead on top of the paper towel, but instead of absorbing, it just rolled around on top like a spineless marble.

All of this went through my head while I looked at the shiny metal things on the floor of the bathroom. When I got back to my desk I asked my friend Fish via AIM what he thought about my bead of mercury, and his take was the same as mine: that the molecular structure of the mercury must simply be too big to fit into the holes in my paper towel. It is a metal after all, despite it's viscosity. But then, as always happens, Fish wanted to know where I even came up with such a question.

And that is why my friends consistently end up running away.

*carrying on multiple IM conversations with Fish, Vicodin Jim and PGS JoE.
** Hot Heather informed me last night that thermometers are now made with alcohol instead of mercury, assuming you can even find one that isn't digital.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

If stupidity would hurt, you would all be in a coma.

Mos said...

gnarley

TheJesusFish said...

First they take the led out of paint and now they are taking the fun out of thermometer.

Where would the world be without Wall Candy and Mercury?

As for Anonymous: Next time you are trolling blogs anonymously (because of your fear of internet retribution I assume) I would recommend actually forming a sentence that makes sense. Pain and Comas have very little to do with each other... I'd get into the science of it but my guess is it would be difficult for you to understand. Judging by your comment I assume you must be in quite a bit of pain =).

Tara said...

yeah, only if you go to an underfunded inner city public school do you still have access to mercury thermometers. but breaking them purposely is how some D.C. teenagers recently got the whole school out of school for a few weeks, while the HAZMAT crews worked on cleaning up the schools.

Pronto said...

"rolled along the top like a spineless marble" ???????

wtf??????

google says marbles don't have spines......

amberance said...

It was meant to illustrative of it not being solid. Too florid?

amberance said...

I knew, I KNEW, that you would find me an answer Timmy. You are, as always, the Man.

Pronto said...

Sure, florid.

I'll settle for that until I can find some spines for my marbles....

Anonymous said...

"Pronto" stole my comment... i'm late on my reading and came across "spinless marbles" and had the same thought... marbles are already spineless... hahahaha i don't know why i find that funny