Rachael, a sales team assistant, told me she hated heating her foodstuffs in the lunch room microwave because microwaving food was not a natural process. At first I accepted this, but later, thinking on it, I'm not sure we could classify any cooking as a "natural" process and singling out the microwave seems a bit illogical. What, aside from tackling your food and biting into it on the hoof, would be considered natural? Without human intervention, few animals are considerate enough to toss themselves into fire. Those few animals that are willing to leap boldly into flames tend to be either too small to provide us with a decent meal (moths) or fall into special restricted-dining categories that most of us avoid as a rule (firemen).
    I guess, one could argue that the application of fire to food was a natural outgrowth of our naturally developed brains; but, by that line of thinking, then so are microwaves, so that doesn't get us much of anywhere.

Guy with a Cat on His Head

    Last night, picking up coffee beans for the house, at Gorilla on 5th.
    Man walked into the shop. He was walking with the stiff-backed gait that John Cleese uses to indicate the character he's adopted is an ass, but he is also completely oblivious to his own ass-ishness. It is a walk were the legs and arms move; but the body stays frozen, like it's restrained by Victorian stays.
    In the left hand of this man there was a leash. The leash trailed up the left side of his body, past his face. It terminated in the collar of a small gray and white cat that was perched atop his hat. Except for the occasional flicker of its tail, the cat was motionless.

Reading

    Started this oral history of the Chernobyl disaster. Opens with an extended story by this woman, the Wife. Her husband was a fireman, so let's call him the Fireman. They had a bun in the oven – we'll call this potential character the Child.

    When the plant went up, he rushed to the local firehouse. Turns out nobody informed the firemen about the radioactive leak, so her husband and several other firemen showed up in street clothes. Unaware of the danger, they fought the flames unprotected for the rest of the night. Before the night was over, several had succumbed to the heat and radiation. Those firemen were taken to the hospital by soldiers and put under guard. Those that did get back hope were desperately ill over the course of the next day. All the firemen ended up at the hospital.
    The Wife remembers that she and other family members were prevented from seeing them once they were admitted. Nobody would explain anything. It was clear they were sick, but nobody would say how bad things were.
    Doctors came out and explained that the firemen were going to be moved to a hospital in Moscow.
    The wives complained that they should be taken to Moscow as well.
    The doctors agreed, but requested that the women go home and gather any clothes or personal affects the firemen may have had with them while battling the fire at the power plant. The wives went home to pack and gather the things the doctors requested.
    Turned out it was a trick. The army moved the firefighters out of town while the wives were gone.

    It took the Wife several months to locate the hospital her husband was in. When the army brought the Firemen and his comrades to the hospital, they had to clear the floor an entire three floors for them: the floor the firemen were on, the floor above it, the floor below it. See, the degree of poisoning they received made them a cancer hazard for other patients.
    The Wife begged to see her husband, but the risk to her and her unborn child was too great. Eventually she bribed a couple of nurses and was given full access. In fact, once it was realized that this woman would do all the standard care procedures, procedures that were now dangerous for nurses because their patients were crackling with radioactivity, it became the policy of the hospital to let this woman and her unborn child take the risks and spare trained, important hospital staff the danger.

    She was there for months as her husband rotted away. At the end, the Fireman would cough and the wife would have to clear his mouth of bloody chunks of his internal organs. He was literally falling apart.
    One day, when he was well gone, he convinced the nurses to hide carnations under his pillow so that the Wife would find them when she lifted him up to clear his mouth of organ-fragments.
    Eventually he lapsed into a coma and died.

    To prevent foreign press from swarming the funeral, he was buried in secret. Most of his family didn't even know he'd died. The Wife remembers he was buried in a firefighter's dress uniform that was too small for him. A final insult, he looked absurd when they buried him.

    After the funeral, the Wife was admitted into the hospital. Doctors were worried she'd die of radiation poisoning. She got a clean bill of health, but her child was not so lucky. When it was born, they took it from her. When she demanded to see it, they told her it was dead. She wanted to see it anyway and they informed her that the child was already cremated. It died during birth and they immediately cremated it and put it in a special zinc container.
    It was buried with her father. The tombstone has no names. The Fireman's name was left off to avoid press attention and the chance the grave would be used to rally political support against state policies. The Child got no name because they never named the child.

    The Wife told the author that she feels the baby saved her; despite what doctors told her, the baby somehow absorbed radiation meant for her. It died for her. Medically speaking, this is impossible, but she feels it to be true.

    The book's page after page of this sort of thing. I don't know that I'll be able to finish it.