nonlynnear

Nod to Mark Twain for the title.  I have traveled to many countries (upwards of 30 by now), and have used many different models of toilet*, yet I have never, ever seen toilets like these outside of Germany. To be brief and blunt — well, there’s this sort of viewing platform : a large, almost flat area in the bowl. It is almost impossible to Evacuate one’s Bowel without the opportunity to critically examine the product. Despite the ease with which this design permits collecting a stool sample for one’s gastroenterologist, I found (and still find) this quite repellent. But being of a somewhat imaginative bent, I thought that perhaps it would make sense to incorporate some 21st-century features into this ubiquitous model — something I would be tempted to call the ViewMeister 2000, for example. The new model would incorporate all the (waterproof) hardware necessary to facilitate a biometric readout of salient stool conditions (weight, density, laser-based “topographical” measurements). The

 (Let me toss in a Shakespearean “forsooth” here to counterbalance the LOL-cat title.) I didn’t post anything on January 5th. I thought I would, but got distracted (a) by a certain party (not me) who spilled her beverage onto a laptop keyboard (not mine), then (b) by cleanup (not particularly of laptop per se; Mr Mo kindly came back to Aix from Quinson, where he had driven just that very morning, to deal with this); then (c) by packing. But mostly, if truth be told, (d) by wanting to finish reading a book that I cannot take with me to Germany in a few hours. (I did not finish the book. It will keep.) And thus it is. Amen. I will cut myself some slack if I manage to post another entry later today (at some sane time this afternoon, that is; this is a wee hours’ “I cannot sleep anyway” extravaganza). Anyway, yes, back I go to Walldorf (the small one near Heidelberg where Johann Jakob Astor, aka John Jacob Astor of Walldorf Astoria fame, came from) to work for a few days. Too many technica

As Mr Mo knows all too well, I am apt to be teary-eyed and a bit surly after I emerge from another round of reading about the catastrophic BP gulf gusher, for all of the same reasons that other people are in tears of grief and outrage about the fish and birds and marine mammals killed, the beaches and wetlands irremediably destroyed. It isn’t just American shorelines and livelihoods that are mortally jeopardized: Mexican and Caribbean shores and workers stand to be victims as well. As I write this, the gusher is still going strong, with no solution in sight for weeks to come. With every passing day, the potential for damage beyond the limits of the Gulf increase exponentially: the eastern seaboard of the U.S. may be affected, and even Europe may get a taste of oil via the Gulf Stream. To all this, I add my memories of going to the beach after the much smaller, but still calamitous oil spill off of Santa Barbara in January 1969. We didn’t go to the beach more than a handful of times eac