The World’s Most Annoying Coffee Shop Neighbor sits down at the next table and says “hello” in a way that makes you worry it’s an apology-in-advance for something. She takes a cell phone call immediately and talks very loudly. She appears to notice that it’s annoying everyone around her, so she gets up and makes to leave the room, but stops right in the doorway — which puts her within a foot or two of your right ear. You can’t help but overhear that she plans to spend the next five hours here, doing work, which isn’t annoying when _you_ do it but seems somehow obtrusive in her case.

After hanging up, the World’s Most Annoying Coffee Shop Neighbor sits back down and takes a bottle of water from her briefcase. It’s mostly filled with ice shavings, and the only actual water in it is the stuff that’s recently melted. She tips it back to get a swallow of the water, which makes the ice crackle loudly (and, need it be said, annoyingly) as it scrapes the sides of the plastic bottle. She pulls the bottle from her lips and says “Aaaaaah.” Then she does it again. Then she keeps doing it, over and over, for two minutes.

This is when you decide to move to a different place in the coffee shop. Hours later, from your new vantage, you can see her talking on her cell phone outside. She climbs up on the concrete pylon that supports the green lightpole that lights the tables out front. Perched there, she keeps talking for another half an hour, all the while tiptoeing around the pole, occasionally splaying one of her legs out in an approximation of a stretch. This is only annoying because you’re choosing to look at it, and yet, you find you can’t take your eyes away, which annoys you even more, and only confirms the notion, fully formed now in your mind, that she is the World’s Most Annoying Coffee Shop Neighbor.

Are you the kind of person who reads superhero comics and thinks that they aren’t nearly influenced enough by Thai art?

Or are you the sort who, upon viewing the “Ramakien”:http://www.usmta.com/MYTHS%20&%20LEGENDS.htm murals at Wat Phra Kaew, really wishes that they had worked Spider Man in there somewhere?

Then you’ll want to buy a painting by “Jirapat Tasanasomboon”:http://www.picassomio.com/artist-portfolio/987/en/. My favorites are “Sita being Abducted by Superman” and “Darth Maul with Thai Headdress.”

A prank involving mercury has “caused quite a hubbub”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36989-2003Oct2.html at a local school. Here’s a health official’s advice:

Etter said that anyone who had touched the mercury should wash with cold water and soap, noting that cold water closes the pores, and then see a doctor. Anyone who finds mercury at home should call 911, he said. The school system said parents who believe their children’s clothes are contaminated should place the items in a plastic bag, take it outdoors and call the fire department.

Considering mercury’s “harmful effects”:http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/mercury/properties_health.html, none of this counts as overreaction. But, having just read the bits in _Quicksilver_ where members of the Royal Society routinely _drink_ the stuff, just to see what would happen, I’m reminded that people haven’t always been quite so sensible. They did it in the good ol’ spirit of scientific inquiry, but also because half of them were alchemists — mercury is one of the seven elements of alchemy.

It was a routine ingredient in cosmetics dating back to classical times. It was certainly in the stuff that “Queen Elizabeth”:http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/eliza3b.jpg famously wore on her face, hiding blemishes and keeping the skin nice and soft — by eating away at her pores like acid.

Of course, the most famous victim of mercury poisoning was the “Mad Hatter”:http://www.student.kun.nl/l.derooy/pics/hatter.jpg of Tea Party fame. Hatters “really did go mad”:http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmadhatter.html from their exposure to the element when curing felt.

What? “Man, it’s been awhile since I’ve read Alice in Wonderland,” you say? Have no fear! Just read on.

‘Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

‘You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alice said with some severity; ‘it’s very rude.’

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, ‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’

‘Come, we shall have some fun now!’ thought Alice. ‘I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles.–I believe I can guess that,’ she added aloud.

‘Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said the March Hare.

‘Exactly so,’ said Alice.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’

‘It is the same thing with you,’ said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much.

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. ‘What day of the month is it?’ he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said ‘The fourth.’

‘Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter. ‘I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!’ . . .

‘What a funny watch!’ she remarked. ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’

‘Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. ‘Does your watch tell you what year it is?’

‘Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’

‘Which is just the case with mine,’ said the Hatter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.

(“keep reading”:http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext97/alice30h.htm, if you like)

As a relatively new blogger, I’m still in that phase where I pore over every stat in my server logs on a near-daily basis. (This goes away after a while, right? Right?) I quickly discovered that the “keyphrases used on search engines” section has incredible entertainment value. And while I’m certainly “not the”:http://www.godofthemachine.com/archives/00000482.html “first”:http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_eve-tushnet_archive.html#106279472252715591 to do this, I thought I’d share some of the search strings that a person or persons entered into Google that led them, somehow, to Polytropos.

Obvious Which Entry It Came From Dept.

thom yorke tool
nate yoga instructor [someday . . .]
step by step levitation
fans of the 1979 chrysler lebaron [we like to stick together]
kate beckinsdale hair in underworld
did the cia put charles taylor in power?
get rid of jai [yesss!]
girls of gencon 2003
hidden connotation in Harry Potter
hermione and harry love stories sex kissing marriage

Probably Came From My “Thailand Travelogue”:http://www.polytropos.org/web/thailand.html Dept.

travelogue burma brothel
masseuses popped anything that could
tourists having servants in thailand

Dept. of WTF?

inlay back garfunkel across america
portugese sliver coins [sic]
bare club iranian
counteracted or frills or carved or divider or anthem
duel legal country dueling where banned
the history of any kind of catfish seen by professional divers several years ago diving at the smith mountain lake dam invirginia [yes, that’s all one phrase]

The Internet is a very big place. Some of those people could only have found Polytropos by looking on the fifth or sixth page of Google results (I checked). It’s also pretty clear that hardly anyone knows to use quotations marks in search field to set off a phrase — unless maybe those just don’t come up on the server logs.

So, I’m about halfway through “Quicksilver”:http://www.nealstephenson.com/, and the first thing I want to say is that —

Aargh! Must resist . . . temptation . . . to comment before . . . I’m . . . done . . . words would be . . . premature . . . must . . . have focus . . . discipline . . . fight it . . . fight . . . there . . . winning . . . inner battle . . .

Phew. Best to wait. I’ve been maintaining a blackout on other reviews and commentary. It’s not easy. But in another week or two I hope to have a proper review, followed by plenty of other notes and comments. Until then, I’ll just try to stay focused on _reading_ the dang thing, and reserve judgment until I turn the last page.

P.S. It’s really, really good.

“Josh Marshall interviews Wesley Clark”:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/oct0301.html#1001031244pm.

Josh doesn’t throw him any curveballs, and for the first few questions Clark sounds a bit too much like . . . well, like a campaigning politician. But once they get into foreign policy it gets good.

. . . in the odd kind of geopolitical chess board game this administration seemed to want to play, they seemed to assume that you could get your forces into Iraq, and, like a game of checkers, you could skip across the Middle East–plop, plop, plop–as though in some metaphysical sense, it was easier to come ashore up through the Euphrates and Tigris valleys into the heart of the Middle East and southwest Asia, and then cross into the mountains of Iraq–excuse me, of Iran–or pivot and go towards Syria. It was analytically, geometrically satisfying, even though those of us who understood the situation at the time said it made little sense. It was old-think. It was 19th century geostrategy . . . It was the Great Game with modern equipment, and hypermodern risks. And, in reality, the problems with Osama bin Laden were not problems of states. They were problems of a supranational organization which alighted in states, used states, manipulated elements of states, but wasn’t going to be contained and destroyed by attacking and replacing governments.

The whole thing’s worth a read.