...hell's gates visited a darkness that was foraneous. -- James Joyce.

I'm getting too old to expect my friends to schlep all my stuff for beer and pizza. I'm hiring movers this time.

The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra have a rain-making ceremony which lasts a week. The men go about with bamboo squirts and the women with bowls of water, and they drench each other or throw the water into the air and cry, The rain has come, when it drips down on them.

An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic[…]real kidneys[…]. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time.