<\/p>\n
So some high school kids round these parts (put a twang on that, would
\nyou?) stole mercury from their school lab. Okay, bravo. Those supply
\nrooms for the labs are a fool’s paradise and, trust me, I’m a fool. I
\nknow. I have a box in the basement full of corks, those little knife
\nthings and a bottle of acid that I fully intend to throw in George
\nBush’s face one day. We don’t have enough acid attacks these days.<\/p>\n
So these yahoos, to use an official term, took, like, lots of mercury
\nand stuff. That’s about what everyone says. I’ve been waiting and
\nwaiting for someone to say how much they stole. A vat? A jar? A wee
\nlittle thimbleful? We don’t get it. We get, “They stole mercury.” NPR
\ngagged up the story I think. Then, the newscaster said the kids were
\nthrowing mercury around and, briefly, I became concerned about the
\norder of things in the solar system. Get it? Because Mercury is also a
\nplanet.<\/p>\n
Well, laugh.<\/p>\n
Then again, I was hungover. Hard to say if I missed key words in the newscast. Hard to say if it really happened.<\/p>\n
These kids steal themselves a bunch of mercury and what’s the first That’s not why you steal mercury. That’s why you steal industrial But, wait, mercury fucks up buildings in 2003! That’s right. The high Oddly enough, the students remain at large. With…da-da-dum…more mercury. Watch out for your daughters, America! Vote Bush!<\/p>\n Now, back in my day, when high schoolers were real<\/em> Our parents came back and said, “What the fuck are you doing? Mercury Ha, ha, ha. No, really.<\/p>\n That’s my high school experience. Asbestos, lead, mercury, pesticide So mi qestin is wat do murkry vayprs do to u? oh no! algernon iz ded!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[111,353],"class_list":["post-2458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-commentary","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2871,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthing they do? Instead of playing the mercury games that we all played
\n(watch it roll down my arm! HAHAHAHA! Here, can I put it in your mouth?
\nOkay! Hold still! HAHAHAHA!) they fling<\/em> it all over the place. Like open the jar and spin around as if it were paint or something.<\/p>\n
\nrailroad paint. Mercury is a neato toy that behaves oddly when you poke
\nit, industrial railroad paint has one purpose: fucking up buildings.<\/p>\n
\nschool is closed down because of dem dere mercury fumes. Men in white
\nsuits have to go clean it out. Then the police trace the mercury to an
\napartment and they close that down to.<\/p>\n
\nhigh schoolers, we were given mercury in Earth Science Lab. There was
\nnothing about it. Here’s your Petri dish with a little dollop of
\nmercury. Be careful, class. I’m going to hit the bathroom for a few
\nminutes. NO SPITBALLS! And we all sat there and said, hey, watch how
\nthis mercury rolls around this open cut in my arm, tee hee! When teach
\ncame back, we did various experiments that I can’t remember because I
\nwas poisoned and… No, wait, because it was long ago. Yeah, that’s it.
\nNot being satisfied with that, we all went home and smashed open
\nthermometers. Mercury games at home!<\/p>\n
\ngames? Jesus Christ, the thermometer will be replaced…out of your
\nallowance!” Da-da-dum! Then we’d smash open the replacement
\nthermometers. See, the allowance threat doesn’t work. You have to go to
\nstage two, which is extreme physical abuse. That’s the problem with
\nAmerica today. Nobody moves to stage two. But let me tell you, in all
\nthese years, I have not broken a third thermometer. Though, whenever I
\nsee a thermometer, I fall to the floor crying and clawing at my face.<\/p>\n
\nover-application, carbon monoxide, windows painted shut… And I turned
\nout okay!<\/p>\n