This Just In

Gum chewing improves memory. Now where did I hear that? Kidding. Click on the link. Okay, maybe it wasn't just in -- but I just found it. Been doing a lot of chewing lately, on my new diet regimen. Lots of leaves, lots of gum. Makes for a tight face, with all those strong jaw muscles under the surface. I wonder when they'll write the article about gum chewing substituting for a facelift?

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If anyone's interested in viewing relics of the Buddha, including those pearls enlightened beings are said to create in their bodies, you can take a look here. The exhibition is making its way around the world. Hey, I've seen sacred relics around the world. The pearls beat Saint Catherine's finger any day in the week. No grisly factor.

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More from Wallace Stevens. Why do I find his use of arcane words so delicious, where in other poets it's just plain irritating. For your dictionary hunt of the day, I offer "lacrustine" (Google it):

The Doctor of Geneva

The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.

Lacustrine man had never been assailed
By such long-rolling opulent cataracts,
Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.

He did not quail. A man who used to plumb
The multifarious heavens felt no awe
Before these visible, voluble delugings,

Which yet found means to set his simmering mind
Spinning and hissing with oracular
Notations of the wild, the ruinous waste,

Until the steeples of his city clanked and sprang
In an unburgherly apocalypse.
The doctor used his handkerchief and sighed.