Into the Fray

Students invent powdered booze

This is the headline, provided by the outrageously cute Alison, that met me when I fired up the computer yesterday afternoon. Confused, I clicked on the link. Why ever would the precious time of 'students' be taken up with such a task as creating powdered alcohol?

"'Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16,' said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

The students said companies interested in making the product commercially could avoid taxes because the alcohol was in powder form. A number of companies are interested, they said."

The minds that will run the world tomorrow, ensuring that their mental contemporaries will be too fucked up to know that the world is on the skids.

Locally (i.e. Milwaukee, WI), I was informed by my lovely sister that my hometown is as patently strange and unexplainable as usual. In one local news blotter, this:

Man Bites Other Man’s Tongue During Fight
A 40-year-old man bit a 41-year-old’s man tongue during a fight over property. The tongue was not completely severed. Police do not know the logistics of how the victim’s tongue got in the suspect’s mouth. The suspect is custody on charges of “mayhem,” which covers criminal incidents involving severed extremities. It happened in the 3900 block of S. Howell late Monday night.

Italics are mine. Because how could an innocent reader know enough to question the complete oddness of that statement?

Then, the following, with video goodness through the link provided on the page:

"MILWAUKEE COUNTY - A man was hit by a car on northbound I-94 near the Rawson Ave. ramp in southern Milwaukee County early Monday.

Unconfirmed reports say a man drove off the freeway into a ditch around 3 a.m., and then was hit by another vehicle after he left the car.

The 21-year-old man, identified by his brother-in-law as Leomel Engstrom(does that name not beg to be Tuckerized in a short story?), was reportedly only semi-clothed when authorities arrived.

He apparently suffered a broken leg. He was expected to undergo extensive surgery for it Tuesday.

Authorities were investigating the possibility of drug use or mental instability.

The Journal Sentinel reports that detectives were attempting to track down the owner of the vehicle that the man was driving. The paper also reported that the man was still unidentified and could not coherently answer questions."

This is my town. My home. The source of my own inherent weirdness.

Today, I head out into the midst of it for my work. My attempts to park will be thwarted. The dumbest catcalls in the nation will fill my ears. And it will be so damn hot, I'll feel like I'm write back in Javits for BEA. Except for the severe lack of books. And a line for the bathroom. And overpriced food. And grown men dressed as deities.

Wish me well today. I face 35 mph winds as I work in a green house.