osteo-odonto-what?

My brother David sends me a link to an article about an Irishman who, two years after having been blinded in a freak accident, has had his sight restored through a novel procedure, osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, that involves the insertion of a tooth into the eye.

I see the look on your face. Yeah-- me, too.

David's email started off with a quote from the David Lynch version of "Dune":

The tooth! The tooth!

I had a good laugh. This was the moment when Dean Stockwell's Dr. Yueh was whispering fiercely to Jürgen Prochnow's Duke Leto Atreides that he, the doctor, had replaced one of the duke's teeth with a poison-emitting device that the duke could activate when he was close enough to Baron Harkonnen. The camera was focused relentlessly on Stockwell's mouth as he uttered the line; this was one of a thousand unintentionally funny moments in that film.

Sandworms. Heh. Big, living turds. Turds that eat and turd in turn.

Dean Stockwell can be seen these days in the role of the Brother Cavil Cylon series on "Battlestar Galactica." He's had a good run in sci-fi TV shows ("Quantum Leap" et al.) and movies, and is among my favorite character actors.

Speaking of Irishmen and miracles, Jelly wrote in to note that Mark Boyle has made rather disappointing progress. He's gone back to the UK after having made it to the Continent and having been daunted by the challenge of-- among other problems-- crossing France without knowing much French. As I wrote back to Jelly: what's the man going to do when he hits a place like Afghanistan if France is enough to turn him back? I still wish Boyle well, despite his already having violated the central tenet of his walk: not accepting or handling money. He's going to have to rethink the parameters of his trip. I'm selfishly happy to see that he's having problems, because they're a reminder that I need to think through my own Walk as thoroughly as possible. My own setup takes better account of the nature of human compassion than does Boyle's, I think; what Boyle has been doing up to now strikes me as more of a "silly hippie" approach to a project that, while noble in terms of the big picture (he's walking to Gandhi's birthplace in the name of peace), deserves a lot more respect in terms of the details. Religious walkers do, after all, encounter the devil in that realm. As do we all, yes?

I woke up around 10:45AM today, well rested after having been awake for over 40 hours. I'm off to dinner and a concert this evening; ought to be an interesting time. It's rare that I get to see stage performances. Actually, one thing I'd like to see before I leave Korea is the Korean version of "Stomp," called "Nanta."


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