Why I wrote "The secret of the elements"

It is about 3 years since I wrote 'The secret of the elements' and a year since it was published with Armida Publications. The question I am regularly asked by fans and friends is why I wrote the book. Apart from the obvious reason, because the book answers that question, I guess people want to know what mind-frame instigated the story, what was the spark of inspiration.

It begins with Mikhail Bakunin “if god exists I am legal opposition.”  And “Satan is the emancipator of man” It begins with Rimbaud’s Satan is light and God is darkness.

And me thinking Satan is complimentary of God and to use one to oppose the other may shock and help to prove a point but cancels the argument out completely.

It begins with me smoking a cigarette outside a student house at the University of Surrey thinking “is it possible for a mortal to trick Satan on a soul sale.” It begins with my optimism for the future of mankind agreeing with Isaac Asimov that one day we will colonize our galaxy and disagreeing that Earth will be a myth for that mankind.

But that is not all.

I grew up in superstition, in stories from the elder women in my mother’s village about ghosts and demons. I grew up with myths and religion. Then I discovered mathematics and nanotechnology. I discovered poetry and philosophy, scientific method and the arts and then it was light.

I read a great deal of books where human life is a tragedy and I tend to agree that yes life is a tragedy. Happiness is rare, optimism is wishful thinking and our death is certain. In orthodox Christianity Judaism is much stronger than Catholicism. Life on earth is a painful path, obedience to the dogma and God’s will, shall bring relief, eternal life and peace and happiness after death. Any deviation from it will lock the “soul” into earth, in purgatory, in hell.

Aristotle claimed that man has two natures of god and animal, of instinct and logic. I found that the religious dogma call for the suppression of instincts through illogical and irrational practices. It is impossible to escape your nature, and by refusing it or abstaining from it religion manages to fabricate an army of hypocrites with no escape from hell. Religionistas terrorize society with images of monsters that rape and kill the innocent. But that is part of human nature. Atheists will terrorize society with religious monsters that rape and kill those who do not believe. It is reasonable then to believe that there is no future for mankind. That mankind is a parasite driving other life forms to extinction and pretty much does the same to less dominant cultures.

This planet is destined to become a desert, a red dessert painted in blood.

What is also part of human nature is teamwork. Humans help each other instinctively, they recognize that in order to survive and adapt to their environment they require the help of others. Intelligence and rational thinking are the evolution tools of humanity.

When I was studying at University of Hull there was a rumor going on about the new Vice Chancellor. According to the libel in his thesis there was a claim that technology was society’s doom. I never read the thesis but many of the technology orientated staff used it to explain university’s decision not to co-fund their scientific projects. I do remember though our literature teacher in high-school telling us that we do not need any more technology, that we can stop producing more technology and freeze progress to live a life concentrated more on the arts. I also remember reading in Richard Feynman the argument he had with an artist that a scientist cannot see the poetic beauty of plant for example. Richard claimed that a scientist can see the building elements of the plant, the mechanisms in its chemistry, its atomic structure and there is beauty there in abundance.

I had enough of arguments between the arts and sciences, about poetic beauty in elements, enough of people arguing about politics, art, science and religion. I found them to be dogmatic. Dogma’s are congregative and promote segregation.

I isolated myself and dreamed of a world in a transition between death and biological or scientific immortality. In a world with no death, humanity evolves somewhat differently. I dreamed of a place where there are no questions unanswered. I dreamed of a world where the only missing element in construction is conquered. A world were time becomes a building block. I dreamed of an academic world where ideas come together to compliment one another, where music is the bridge between science and arts. I dreamed of one phantasmagoric human culture, of one language, of a unique organism. Then I wrote ‘The secret of the elements’. In the book an avant-garde composer Bartholomew Marshal has to negotiate with the devil that was tricked by his grand mother Basilica Marshal. He asked for the ‘Secret of the elements’ in exchange of her soul. Barto’s mind aged one million years in a week. He envisioned many parallel versions of the future of mankind; he managed to see the beginning, the end and the rebirth of the cosmos within the short time frame of one million years (of on week or one nanosecond). In this book Satan and God are competitors and both heads of large corporations fighting so hard for control in a soon to be obsolete market.

In this book I made man both immortal and a god, then god and its cronies seized to exist.

Our human nature, the one I love so very much, comes forward in Basilica Marshal’s life, the epicenter of the book, the little village girl with a refreshing view on life. Basilica is the mother of three kids that met no father and grandmother of a very special boy. The story is told by a bipolar scientist friend of Barto, who fights his own demons daily. I wanted to write a story that respects our need for life and our need of a guardian in control of the unexpected. It is not an atheist manifesto. Maybe it is the opposite, maybe it is a theist manifesto with humanity as the new god. It is all written with a touch of humor in English by a non native speaker. European English, with odd phrases directly translated from a mind thinking in English and Greek.

Learning english.

The command of the English language came to me from scientific journals and the blues. Blues rock mainly.

Therefore I can use words like percolation and spinodal or decomposition in the same line with

"How unlucky can one man be  
Well every quarter I get now Lord, 
Blackjack takes it away from me"

I can even consider using precipitates and nucleation or shape control of 3d and 1d structures in 

"You don't wash your hair
You don't wash your clothes
What else you don't do
Baby, nobody knows"

Every now and then there is diffusion that jumps in 

"Sweet as sugar, love won't wash away
Rain or shine, it's always here to stay
All these years you and I've spent together
All this, we just couldn't stand the weather"

Imagine this, having a drink, talking randomly about excitation and not ionisation then dropping a line like 

"Ain't no use to hide
Ain't no use to run
'cause I got you in the sight
Of my girly gun"

I found nanotechnology to mingle quite good with the blues. Materials science too. You read and argue, conclude on graphs and analyses and in the end if a material performs differently than expected you add in the discussion something like 

" Got my mojo working, but it just won't work on you" 

Followed by "the results are promising".

Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements (just google the title)

Let's talk about Shit

I was invited to give a talk to young students with an interest in academic education. There was an initiative to promote the progressive and constructive thought of academics to inspire high school students to follow academic life. The scope stated clearly that academics and scientists were free to speak openly about anything that displays the philosophical and methodical thought of academia. We were to reference our talk and provide material, which students can easily access, to read further on the subject we talked about. We were not obliged to talk about our research; we were encouraged to demonstrate how academic thought extended in everyday life. For a moment I felt they wanted us to talk about how a mathematician shops for groceries. The aim was to promote original thinking and inspire young pupils to become academic scholars. 

I thought “great!” I love to talk about whatever. I finished my drink and sent an application to the program organiser. A week later I had a slot at 8 in the afternoon and was requested for a title and a short, one hundred words or less, abstract. 

I titled the talk "Talking about Kitsch"

Wikipedia was the first reference: Kitsch (/ˈkɪtʃ/; loanword from German) is an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value.

Of course I had a different thing in mind, something Kundera mentioned in the Unbearable Lightness of Being about the original meaning of Kitsch. That was my second reference.

In reality I wanted to talk about excrement and its literary value. I wanted to talk about the many references in literature on humans emptying their bowels and how it 'levels' man down to earth. There is a liberating feeling when reading the philosophical musings of writers on crap. How writers love it when they characters are doing it because they have to, doing it uncontrollably, how they  being embarrassed, how it is hidden, how sometimes they choose not to see it is there and it is happening. Some writers love to talk about wiping that hole, using that peristaltic pump to relief yourself. They use it to show that shit makes us equal. Man becomes one with every living thing on the planet. There is always the same thing in the mind of a writer when shit enters text. A person is exposed by their needs. One cannot control them; they are there whether they chose to show them or prefer not to talk about them. When it comes to shit we are all hidden in a closet. We become Kitsch by not talking about it. 

How many of us say to colleagues at work. "I woke up this morning took a shit had a shower and my breakfast and came to work." We might just say I did my morning toilet thingy or whatever I went to the loo. Nobody talks about public toilets the way Bukwoski talked. The public toilet where hundreds, thousands of people empty their intestines. Nobody thinks of the large underwater canals expanding for many miles carrying our produce to water treatment plants. Many also ignore that the water we drink in our cities may have passed through 15 people at least before we drunk it and it carried our shit with it.

We say I have a gut feeling. I suffer from an acute case of an expanding gut. I am constipated. Nobody says. I am so afraid I feel a watery turd leaking to my underpants or I need to shit immediately or I haven't crapped for days, to strangers. We keep it for our closed ones. It is not an expression you would use in an interview. It is taboo, a Kitsch taboo.

Well think that Obama wipes his ass. Merkel too (I mean her ass and not Obama's). Those who control the world wipe their own assess. Now surely that makes them somehow similar to us and every animal who shits all over the place. You will not hear the President in a speech saying. "Well I was taking a shit today and I thought 'Good god we have to do something about education' (glunk!)"

Hollywood rarely shows protagonists taking a crap. They only show people who are about to die on the crapper. As if it is humiliating to die with your pants down, reading a poop book/magazine/newspaper. Some of our needs are glorified while others are a humiliating reminder of our fragile nature.

A sack of shit. A sack of intestines full of shit.

Shit, however in literature has great value. It shows how Kitsch we are. We would love to have some needs wiped out from our everyday life and by doing so we wish to destroy our true nature and replace it with an inferior, tasteless copy of man, or a worthless imitation of man that which gains popular value. We lose our substance, refraining to acknowledge that everybody shits.

I walked in the room with the presentation title projected on a screen above my head. The students were tired and yawning, some were texting on their cell phones, others chatted. I had to act quickly to win the audience, so I said. 

“There is small subtitle to my presentation. Tonight I would like to talk to you about Shit.”
There was laughter. Some had a disgusted look on them, I bet they thought I was going to show them slides of turds floating in the toilet.
“That’s right, Shit, the smelly thing we do.”
Nobody left though, and nobody spoke a word for half an hour or so. I must have won them over. They had questions too. I am pretty sure that they left imagining me wiping my ass. Now that is something to aspire to.


 (Christos Tsotsos is the author of "The secret of the elements")

God Killer!

Receiving hate mail from religious fanatics is not something you get used to. It can be funny though when you read things like “...you will be rapped in Hell”. I immediately got this mental picture of me in a black-and-white film beaten in dialogue by my companion’s wit. My drinking buddy said that the man who sent me the email was not thinking of repartee. Maybe he had in mind something different, like me being strapped to a chair in the middle of a white room waiting for Tupac and Biggie. They will enter and take turns to perform and when they finish they will make me choose who I liked best. Regardless of who I select I will get the other to punish me for all eternity. If I select Tupac I might get to carry Biggie up a hill then just before I reach the top he will jump and run back down hill, I will have to go after him, catch him and carry him up the hill over and over again until the end of time. If I chose Biggie, Tupac may have me standing on an open beer barrel next to a buffet of steak sandwiches. Every time I would reach for a sandwich the buffet will move away from me, and every time I will reach for a drink of beer the liquid will draw away from my hand.

Then again, they may force me to take a test on styles of rap I have no clue about. They will put me in a room where crews will rap non stop old ‘skool’, hip hop, chicano rap, indie rap, I-have-no-idea-what-else rap. After the class I will be alone in the room with a sheet of paper and a pensil on a desk in front of me. Speakers will blast the sound at me, surrounding me, engulfing me. I will float in music, my belly will resonate, my head will explode and my body will wear an astral suit and I will be cannonballed through interstellar gates into the beat. Once the music stops I will have to identify the style, the date the song was recorded and released and, of course, the artist. If I fail the test, which I probably will, Tupac and Biggie will tantalize my ass for eternity.

Speaking of “ass” my drinking buddy said that the emailer probably means “raped in hell” instead of “rapped in hell”. Ah! Now. That makes more sense. It’s a little p that trickled down and escaped editing. So he threatens me with anal sex. He thinks of me as a heterosexual male who shares his homophobic views and therefore I should feel insulted or be terrified by the thought. I told my buddy that I found it kinda sweet. This man thinks we have something in common, he considers that my process of thinking is dictated by feelings similar to his. Someone who wishes eternal sodomy for me identifies himself with me. I felt a part of this world, a part of humanity. My buddy on the other hand stopped pouring me whisky and claimed that the emailer most likely hopes to have sex with other men in this, and not the imaginary after, life. He went on to explain that the person is projecting his wants in his threats. I looked at him with the admiration of a drunken pupil, he argued for a good ten minutes and concluded that my hate emailer is a frustrated homosexual, closeted, in his late forties, married with kids in their teens, who lives in an extremely conservative and religious community and that he is, probably, torn apart by his sexual desires that contradict his imposed upon “ethics”. I burped an alcohol bubble then added. “Nonsense, what you say is science fiction.”

We laughed and switched the laptop off. Jazz from Hell was playing in the background. Then my friend said something which really hurt me. His unintentend rhetorical question fired through me while he was lighting a cigarette. “Why he calls you a god killer?" That's it he never read my book. I said with a frown "he is a confused individual that jumps into conclusions misunderstanding the context of the written word". He sensed he said something wrong and swiftly opened the bottle of whisky again. I drank. Spicy, thick, single malt. Your sins are forgiven my son.

(Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements.)

Losing my job.

 (Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements)

A year ago I became the father of a beautiful baby girl living with my wife on a warm Mediterranean island. I was enjoying family life in a warm laid back climate.  For the past three years I was working on a very prestigious European science award considering how to “burn” neoplastic growth of tissue in bone without chemically raising the patient’s body temperature to avoid risking organ failure. This was a dream job for an engineer. It was nanotechnology at its best. I was over the moon, results were promising and although we were years before in-vivo tests I felt that I was contributing to a greater cause. I was oblivious to the political war that the Head of the lab was having with the rest of the department, and felt that my specialist skills had my job secured over the looming economic crisis.

A year ago to this day I was living the dream when the phone rang.

“Hey chief! Ok give me a minute to compile some data and I’ll be right there.”

It was my boss asking me for a meeting. The university campus was near a park full of pine trees. It had paths for joking and cycling, a stream, a football field and a café under the shade of sycamores. During the hot summer days we used to have our meetings there.

He and a cold coffee were waiting for me at our regular table. I sat down, we chatted about the weather, about family life and then, out of the blue, he landed a bomb.

“We have a serious problem. Iker’s project in the US was dropped and he is in serious need for some money.” He assumed a grave look.

“No shit! What happened?”

“Prof Sammie had his National grant stopped just like that”

“Can they do that?”

“I do not know the details but apparently they can and now Iker is without a job.”

I imagined him in the shit and empathized with the guy “Sorry to hear, what he is going to do?”

“I was thinking maybe you can help him.” I jumped at the opportunity being more than happy to help. “Sure but I can possibly spare about 500 euros a month from the project for as long as it is needed. He can do some theoretical calculations. Will that be enough?”

“Not really.” He pulled a paper out of his pocket and started doing some arithmetic. He added figures and after a few seconds said “I was thinking, since you were away for a couple of months that you could possibly ‘donate’ about… 3 to 4k to him.” It felt as if the birdsong from the nearby tree branches stopped.

“Sorry!! What?” I managed to say nearly drowning on my coffee.

He continued coldly “If you take out the amount you were paid during your absence…”

“You mean my paternity leave…” I protested.

“Well there is no contract agreement.” He cut in.

“In academia? Where we are sensitive about a person’s needs?” I said with arms flapping like the wings of a bird in distress.

“It is not like you are a mother!” he said avoiding looking me directly in the eye. I could not believe my ears. “You imply that I can only take a paternity leave if it is negotiated in my contract or if have a vagina?”

“You are over reacting.” I waved goodbye to the sound of his voice with a flick of the hand. Around us kids were playing with their mothers watching over them. There was a pit full of toddlers that dag trenches and raised sand castles fighting invisible dragons and pirates. A young couple kissed like there was no tomorrow, old men and women in training suits walked fast past them. It was such a beautiful day. I could have been at home holding my daughter in my arms. I could just drop everything and take my family to the beach, swim, drink beer and eat cold sandwiches, sail a dinghy. I could do a million other things than listening to this clown.

“Listen.” He interrupted my daydreaming “Your project should not have started in the first place and you know why.”

“Yes because the university should match the amount, but no university ever does physically match it. Instead they offer access to facilities and equipment that miraculously equals to the sum they should match. But that is ok. The Agency knows and they do not care.”

“Administration does.”

“What are you implying?” I had a terrifying thought and his look reassured me I was thinking right. “Oh no you don’t! Do I have an option here? You mean that if I do not ‘donate’ money you will pull the plug? This is blackmail.”

“Oh stop being melodramatic. It is not blackmail.”

 “It is. There are no other options. We are not looking for a solution. You are going to use a technicality to stop the program if I do not give you money.”

“Not to me. To help a colleague.”

“To help a colleague that works for you through a contact elsewhere. I do want to help a colleague but the option I am offering is not considered. You do not want money from my project for work on the project; you want money out of my pocket.”

“Which you were paid from the project but you were not there to do the work.”

“You are referring to my salary and my paternity leave. I am not the one who is breaking the law here.”

“But you were not working in the lab”

I wanted to punch the guy.

“I do not see how literature work from home while helping my wife with our new born baby justifies your claims? It certainly does not give you the right for extortion” My heart was drumming and a fat soprano sang inside my head. It was Wagner. I hate Wagner. What was it that Woody Allen said about Wagner? Any thought to take me far away from my anger would do. Any thought. That’s when I realized I had no to proof that he is blackmailing me.

“We are playing with words here.”

“You are right we do and this innocent chat between colleagues appears like an illegal activity.” There we are in the park, surrounded by people who do not hear what we are talking about. Man I am a fool. I am a stupid little fool that thinks he is smart. I should hear but not speak what I think. I had to buy some time.

“Ok I will help. But give me a few months to gather the money.”

“Impossible. We need to have about 2k by the end of the week and another 2k by the end of the month. Iker has no money.” He said. The bastard once you are down he tries to step all over you, but I had nothing. “Ok I will let you know by the end of the week.” Even a few days buying time to think how to deal with the situation is enough. “I have to toughen up with absence. These are hard times. Others would give an arm and a leg to have a job like yours in the middle of the crisis. If there is anymore absence similar penalties will be imposed in the future.” He was ruthless.

“But you are not my employer. You are just a coordinator. I am employed by the Agency on a scientific project proposal I submitted. You are not paying any part of my salary.” I said as calm as I could.

“Yes but I am coordinator and have obligations.”

That night I did not sleep. I said nothing to my wife. Stress during breast feeding was not something I wanted to impose on her. I had to suffer it alone. I had no other option but to decline his insulting offer. Of course he will follow the rules and use his position to suspend the project. I would report him and while he is under investigation I will be without a job. The whole thing could take a year. I checked our savings account. It was not enough. After paying for hospital bills, items for the baby and mother, health plan for the family, there was not enough to go by for a year. There was only one option left. Return home to Athens. There is a flat there we can occupy and save on rent and I could try and work freelance. It seemed like a good idea at five in the morning when she got up to feed the baby. I fell asleep. The next day in the office an email came like manna from heaven with the donation request and the bank details of the beneficiary. At least now I had something of a proof. I walked in his office this time and denied to pay any money. He picked up the phone threatening to call accounts and stop the project. I warned him that I would report him if he did. Two months later I was avoiding contact, eventually I received an email from administration that the project was suspended. The bastard finally did it. 

I do not care that much about it now, but at the time it was like a war. Emails went to and from the head of the department. Nothing happened for months. In the meantime I worked odd jobs to make a living had interviews and waited for my project to be re instated. Nothing happened. I worked installing tvs, washing machines, air conditions, cleaning fuel tanks, gathering grapes. Out of all these jobs I loved gathering grapes. The work was hard and my hands and arms will go numb during night-time keeping me awake. My wife was there by me, my daughter gave me hope. I cared very little about my 15 years of scientific work going to waste. I did not want to leave the country and did not want to work in industry. It was either this research of the fields.

One day the Dean called. He wanted a scientific report. I was clipping grapes. I wanted to help but was not sure if his intentions to help me were honest. He then sent me an email.

Dear Dr Tomas Sarris

It is imperative that we have a scientific report as required by the Agency, otherwise the university will have to return a considerable amount of the funding. This will damage the University’s progress in its quest for Excellence in Research. 

Furthermore I cannot stretch out how significant this funding is during the economic crisis.

Regards

The Dean of Research Affairs

They say never answer an email when you are mad, angry or drunk. I rarely follow that rule.

Dear Dean of Research Affairs

I am more than aware of the financial pressure felt by the looming economic crisis on both myself and my family. Please allow me to take a little bit of your time to make my intentions clear. To explain better I would like to take you on a journey in Vietnam during the war, many, many years ago. In the US force camp in Phan Rang there was a neighborhood full of beautiful French colonial houses and mansions. That was the same neighborhood that General Ky used to live. In one of these houses a brothel operated to entertain the Ground Infantry troops during their break from war, napalm and mayhem. In that brothel worked a Vietnamese girl named Honey. Her beauty and skill was legendary among the troops and was the most popular whore in the whole of Vietnam and Laos. She used to waltz her way along the tables at the bar and GIs will call out to her “Come here Honey! We love you Honey! Marry me tonight Honey!” With a smirk and a posture that could yield any man she replied to them “Honey loves to please long time. Show me the money, I give you Honey!” Then she would let her head drop on her shoulder, lift her skirt a tad and with an apologetic look followed by a flick of her eyelids she would sing “No Money – No Honey!” making the GIs go crazy. The men clapped frantically, whistling and opening their wallets to wave their money at her.

What I want to say by that is. Ever since the professor decided to blackmail me and suspend my project I am no longer employed by the university. For the past 15 years I devoted my life to scientific research with crappy salaries and many hours, weeks and months of unpaid work. Enough is enough. The phrase of the Vietnamese prostitute fully expresses me. You could ask for a scientific report from my blackmailer, last time I checked he is still on your payroll.

Regards

Tomas

It was Sunday. On Monday we were going to gather wine grapes. They were sweet and ripe; wine was promising this year, promising to be full in texture and body and of course rich in aroma and strong.

(The above is a short story inspired by life although any resemblance to real events and people is purely coincidental) 

(Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements)

Spunk-mouth Vaginas and The Anointed Pussy

(Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements.)

I was over the moon. I had a copy of my first poem published in a literature magazine, which I held in hand like some precious trophy. I entered my house overinflated with pride calling for my wife. I found her in front of her laptop at the kitchen table. 

"I am officially a published poet" said grinning and flicked the page open for her where my poem was printed. 

"I'm so proud of you" she said and started reading it right away. This was the first time I was showing it to her. I observed her facial expressions while she read. I followed the rhythm of her breathing, exhaled when she did, smirked when she smiled, counting the minutes during her long pauses. Finally! She was done. My eyes were asking 'well, what do you think?'

"I don't get it" she said.

"What do you mean?" Her respond startled me.

"That is exactly my question. What does it mean? There is some beautiful imagery but they don't seem connected. It is almost incoherent. Sorry, I don't like it."

I took the poem and read it once more. She was shutting down her laptop. It was the same poem as the one I wrote a few months ago that made perfect sense to me. There was the emotion of the protestors, shouts, explosions, and the ripples their voices made on the fabric of history. It was all there. I began explaining it to her while she was tiding up her workspace/kitchen table. She laughed at my analysis. 

"Really? Is that what it means? Sorry I still do not see it." She sensed that I was hurt and added "Your other poem was much more beautiful, why you didn’t send that one?"

"I couldn't. I had that published on my blog. I never thought of it to be good enough for this literature magazine."

"That was silly, it was so much better."

I demanded she elaborates on her judgment. She picked the poem and went on scrutinizing it, tearing it appart like a tigress does with its victim. Picking up word for word.

"Here you use the word 'odour', it sounds awful, you could have used 'smell', such a nice common word, it sounds better in the context"

"But it is not a smell is it now? It is an odour. There is a big difference." I was loosing my patience

"How so?"

"Pfft"

"How about this one: ’burst'?  What on earth were you thinking? It reads like the effect of a bad meal. And then you use 'pavements'.  It is a protest for fuck's shake it happens on the streets. Why not use 'streets' instead? It sounds more appropriate." She was getting more into the role of the editor and I felt like I was getting whiplashed.

"Well, the protesters break the pavements and throw the pieces at the police, the street tarmac is not good enough. I suppose it is not as easy to break it into pieces... Oh hell, I don't know the aesthetics of the words sounded like the best ones to use."

I turned my back on her and filled a glass with water when I heard "Oh no!" I turned around and was greeted with a horrified look. "Tell me you didn't use that name!" She waved the magazine under my nose. I took it off her hands and read it. My name should mean golden-mouth in Greek but there was a typo in it, instead it now translated to spunk-mouth. 

"Nobody will notice that." I said in a desperate attempt to avoid the conversation. 

"Maybe not, but when you think about it there is bound to be Greeks that will read it and instantly see it. Now you have them as well as the Spanish." I looked at her wondering. 

"You do know about your suname right?"

"What is wrong with my surname?" I demanded.

"Come on, you know it means vaginas in Spanish slang." She winked.

"So? It is spelled differently. You can say the same for Koontz but only those in yorkshire will find that funny." I finally managed to have a drink of the water I pured. I was feeling flustered.

"True. But the combination is staggering. There is bound to be a Greek and a Spanish friend, somewhere in the world, who could put both together and have a good laugh about it."

I was tired of her laughing at my expense. "I don't see it."

"You see meaning in a crappy poem that uses odour, pavements and burst, but cannot see the irony of a pen name that, combining Greek and Spanish, means Spunk-mouth Vaginas?"

"No."

I took the magazine in my study and shoved it in a drawer. Outside the sun was setting. It was meant to be a glorious day, spring was around the corner and I was supposed to be a published author and poet. Instead I was an idiot with a pornographic pen name and the wrong idea on words and their aesthetic value in prose and poetry. She walked past me on her way to our room.

"Shall we go out to celebrate?"

"Sure." I mumbled absentminded. "What if I change my pen name to Christos?"

"Heh! If you drop the s at the end of your last name too then you can become The Anointed Pussy. That is a good pen name for a poet. Don't you think? Come on don't sulk the pub is waiting. First round’s on me."

(Christos Tsotsos is the author of The secret of the elements.)

Fact fails to excite our imagination, nonsense does it effortlessly.

 (by C. Tsotsos author of The secret of the elements)

It is easy to depict Nobel laureates, hard working and devoted scientists as plain fools when we compare their efforts against a superstition that reigns for millennia, or against tampered television footage of a flying pancake. Scientist are immediately handicapped because they cannot prove the existence of either god or aliens visiting earth, without proper facts. But there is always someone who is willing to exploit this and attempt with smoke and mirrors to convince, those who want to believe, that UFOs grab people and return cows, or vice versa, in a cornfield. These people will set up a profitable TV show that exploits some poor "soul" interpreting the symptoms of his/hers illness as paranormal activity.

True scientists choose to speak or publicise their findings only when they know for sure, firstly amongst their peers and refuse to talk when they do not grasp the exact reason or reasons behind a phenomenon either within their field or publicaly. A true scientist will say “we do not know for the time being, we cannot be certain yet”, but the cunning voice of opposition waits. A smoke and mirrors person will most likely respond along the lines: “Haha! Here it is. All you people know shiiiit. The universe was actually created by a gigantic purple squid and this man saw its tentacle in the desert one day, about 5k years ago.” We are easy to believe the latter than to accept our lack of knowledge and refrain from jumping into conclusions, and when scientists do explain we feel disappointed by the obvious. There are many examples. It is long since archaeologists, sociologists, anthropologists, men and women of science explained the reasons behind a number of myths like the Nazca lines. Their findings and conclusions are published in the appropriate scientific journals and periodicals. Now these men and women are hard working people, clever people that devoted their lives doing research with shitty pay in some university. Most are bright and persevering scholars, trying to pin their place in the map of their scientific community. Why are we then more inclined not to pay any attention to them? Why are we disappointed to find out that the Nazca lines and the pyramids were made by humans, and not by aliens? This demonstrates a gullible nature, an inner need to accept the irrational, the metaphysical and the paranormal. This is a weakness that can be exploited for power and profit. Some do it for millenia, while others for only a few decades.

Marketing and media exposure to the masses is a great tool, maybe more so than age of an idea. It is amazing how any person who appears on trash-TV channels inspires more confidence than your average geeky academic, which hides in universities and gets exited over algae. It is a pity that the not so popular ‘look’ of the scientist prevents many of us from listening to them. The Dicovery Channel knows about this and wastes a great effort to find the most photogenic or ‘cool’ Doctor Mike/Lucy/Tod/Rita. Unfortunately when Doctor Tod/Rita shows a hideous bug and, almost orgasmic, proclaims ‘beautiful specimen’ he/she looks weird and eccentric to the masses. I too am influenced by that media look. When I give the tour of the labs to students I copy their mannerisms, acting exited over some insignificant, to them, piece of lab kit. They look at me, some astonished, others yawning and many laughing at the media wannabe, eagerly trying to spice up facts. Most people look at acting-cool science geeks and undermine the fact that through their work, can explain our natural world. We have a habit to consider the obvious boring. A multi-cell organism taking light and converting it in chemical energy is boring. Flying on a magic carpet is cool. A methane bubble rising from the bottom of the ocean to the top and then exploding is geeky useless information, or to those who believe in aliens an oversimplified excuse by scientists who try to disguise the fact that alien vessels hidden in the ocean rise from the sea with a loud bang.

Fact fails to excite our imagination, nonsense does it effortlessly.

 (by C. Tsotsos author of The secret of the elements)