Fumes and Ghosts and Hagfish
I’ve stumbled across something interesting, while perusing the new blog, Angry Toxicologist:
“Fumes, vapors, mists, and gases mean very specific things to industrial hygienists and toxicologists. Fumes are solids that have turned into gas and re-solidify as small particles in the air. A vapor is matter that under normal conditions is a liquid or metal that is now a gas. A mist is pretty self explanatory as is a gas. I wouldn’t expect people to use this every day (‘gas fumes’ is about as wrong as you can get scientifically but is fine english), but it’s good to know there is a difference.”
Yes, very good. I love the story of fumes. Somehow, it reminds me of ghosts. Fumes are the ghosts of solids, except that, unlike ghosts, they are really there. I mean, really there in that you can, like, prove them with science and all that.
Ghosts. Man o man. Where do I stand on ghosts? I am an excellent ghost detector. I can suss out whether a place is haunted, and when I ask those who live/work in the haunted place, my suspicions are confirmed.
Still, there’s nothing as depressing as the idea of dying and then walking around some old bar or rickety house for five hundred plus years. I mean, yikes. That’s way more upsetting than dying.
I do not believe in ghosts that way. Even so, I enjoy acting as a ghost detector.
My friend, who I’ll call Chaz, proposed that I verify whether places are not haunted, when I feel them to not be haunted. This is an excellent suggestion, and would help to more scientifically establish whether I’m really picking up on ghosty goings-on.
I’ve tried it out once so far, in a non-haunted juice shop.
Asking people whether a place is not haunted…it’s a confusing thing to communicate.
There isn’t a word for not-haunted, is there?
Is there?
Boy, did I ever get off the topic of fumes!
Ahem. Yes. Back to science.
Today I learned that my friend, the hagfish, or Vampire of the Sea, as I like to call it, is considered to be an aphrodisiac.
There is nothing that gets me in the mood more than a bucketful of mucous.
Hagfish are so sweet. They tie themselves into knots so that they can better leverage their bodies while tearing into, like, whale carcasses at the bottom of the ocean. They also knot themselves and then pull their bodies through the knot as a way to wipe off any slime they have excreted.
Here is a picture of a hagfish mouth, courtesy of OceanLink:
If you’re looking for more info on hagfish, here’s another link.
If you’re looking for more info on ghosts, um…dunno what to tell you. If you think you’ve got a ghost, perhaps I can do a sweep. If you think that you do not have a ghost, I’ll check for that as well.
fumes, angry toxicologist, hagfish, ghosts, mucous
