My CYS Nomination
Andrew Solberg
I have done many stupid and injurious things to myself and others. There
is no point to listing them, though, because they pale in comparison to
the stupid and injurious thing done by my old friend Jeff.
Jeff and I went to college together. Jeff had this party trick which he
did at the drop of a hat. This is the party trick:
* Procure a tube of epoxy cement, such as standard model glue.
* Squeeze a droplet onto your skin. A small amount will do fine.
* Using a match, lighter, two sticks, a battery and some steel wool,
or any other acceptable method of making flame, set the droplet of
cement on fire.
* Wave the flaming droplet around, saying, "Look, everybody, I just
set myself on fire!"
* Amaze and confuse friends. Delight in their frantic attempts to
wrestle you to the ground. Suffer no pain at all.
Believe it or not, this trick works when properly done.[1] Jeff did this
trick many times, and did so without suffering any injury at all. Personally,
I believe he did the trick so damned much because he was a certifiable
pyromaniac -- a theory supported by the evidence of the time when he filled
a styrofoam cup with gasoline, set it on my coffee table, and lit it. He
claimed he wanted to see what would happen.[2] However, I digress.
How does the trick work? simple. You see,
DOCTOR'S MASK [ X ]
STETHOSCOPE [ X ]
LATEX GLOVES [ X ]
GYNECOLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS FOR MUTANT WOMEN [ X ]
CRAZY BACKLIGHTING [ X ]
OTHER [ X ] :______full_color_diagram_______
when you light the epoxy, only the surface is on fire. The flaming bits
heat up the rest of the stuff from the top down. Now, an interesting
property of epoxy is that it vaporizes very nicely. This is why kids like
to sniff glue: it fumes easily. Hence, when the epoxy gets hot, it tries
to evaporate. It evaporates most readily at its various surfaces. The
outside surface of the glue is vaporizing, for instance, but the flames
are combusting it almost as quickly as the fumes are produced. On the skin
side, however, you have another story. Next slide. [CHICK-CHACK!]
On the skin side, the vaporizing epoxy creates a thin layer of gas that
actually holds the liquid part of the glue off the skin. It's like an
insulator that forms a barrier between your skin and the terribly hot
epoxy. In effect, the epoxy separates the burning stuff from you and keeps
you from being burned.
Got that? lights, please.
Now, that's how it's supposed to work.
Once, however, Jeff did it WRONG.
We were at a party, of course. I say 'of course' because, as everybody
knows, boozy parties are where roughly 56% of all silly life-threatening
injuries are accrued. At this party, Jeff got drunk. Seeing the world
through his bleary, beery, whackamole eyes, Jeff decided that his WURLD
FAYMUS TRIK du PAR-TAY should be dredged up ONCE AGAIN to inspire fear,
loathing and disgust in his peers. Out comes the glue and the Bic.
Jeff erred in that he applied too much glue to his hand. A big, wompin'
dollop o' epoxy. This is not the right way to do the trick. A little
dab'll do ya.
Does anybody know WHY it's bad to use too much glue?
Anybody?
anybody at all?
Oh dear. LIGHTS PLEASE! [CHICK-CHACK!]
As I mentioned earlier, the epoxy wants to vaporize when it heats up. Now,
with a thin layer of glue, there is essentially the outer side, which is
on fire, and the inner layer, which is on your skin, and there is very
little between the two. This means that if an epoxy molecule wants to
vaporize REALLY REALLY bad, no matter where in the bead it is, it doesn't
have very far to go. It can escape to a surface easily and vent to the
atmosphere, where it is surely contributing to environmental damage of
some kind, but fuck that where was I?! oh yes.
With a BIG blobbo of epoxy, though, we have a problem. There's glue
heating up in the center, and it wants to evaporate, but there's noplace
for the fumage to go. So, it accretes, and makes pockets of gas inside
the bead, and before you know it,
H E Y P R E S T O !!!!!
you've got a lump of boiling glue on your finger.
Now, a micron-thick layer of vaporizing glue is fine and dandy for keeping
a thin, laminar layer of model glue from torching your meathooks. But a
great, manly gout of roiling, stinking goo? I think not.
So, like, Jeff was, like, suddenly in extreme agony. "Hey!" cried the
voice in his head that controlled the Bonehead Error sectors of his brain.
"We really *did* set our fucking hand on fire! I feel pain!"
"You don't fucking say!" screamed the Big Ouch department head. "I don't
know what you did, you moron, but you pegged my gauges! Hello, Panic
Reflex? DO SOMETHING!"
You got to hand it to the Panic Reflex bureau: in a crisis they act quickly,
efficiently, and (above all) dumbly. Deftly issuing orders to major muscle
groups, the boys in Panic HQ guided Jeff's body through a regimen of
exercises, including shouting, arm-waving, and falling over a sofa. It
took outside sources to think to do something about the pain source, such
as dousing it.
Jeff's hand was placed inside a drink, possibly a large Hurricane. This
did not seem to ease Jeff's agony. Eventually the glue was rubbed physically
off Jeff's hand. It was not until later that a Chemistry prof explained to
me that epoxy glue has limited ability to burn anaerobically.
The sad part of this story was when we took Jeff to the emergency room.
There was a lonely intern on duty, filling out data on his clipboard.
Never once did he look up from his clipboard during this dialogue:
INTERN: Name?
JEFF: Jeff ******.
INTERN: Complaint?
JEFF: I burned my hand.
INTERN: How did you do that?
JEFF: (no pause at all) I put some model glue on my hand and set it on fire.
INTERN: (also no pause) Rice student?
--
HWRNMNBSOL