I contain multitudes : unhappy macnam

Many people on this ride have been wondering how to put the President in maintenance mode today. Never imagined I'd be turning on extra lights and peering through my bifocals to find "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus," in a stack of dusty CDs. While the chief executive is a whirling vortex of contradictions, the general sense of his messages sinks lower and lower.

On lunch break I started reading Ed Yong's book, I Contain Multitudes. It is much less upsetting to my innards to imagine my body full of whirling microbes than it is to listen to the latest news. The gut microbes are my friends. With this President, who needs enemies?

Walt Whitman's quote from "Song of Myself" inspired the book's title:

Do I contradict myself? 

Very well, then I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.

On the gut scale between beneficial microbes and nauseating news there is the eerie experience of the remote I.T. contractor roaming around inside my work computer. I can watch the progress via a teeny tiny camera on the nose of a giant intestinal worm. Occasionally my physical effort is required to to reboot or type in a password. 

Are the billions of microbes within each of us the original I.T. department? Have they been making adjustments and corrections invisibly since we slithered from the cesspool?

I hold out small hope for Clem to say, "this is Worker speaking." If you don't know Firesign Theatre, it's not too late!

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder