Gray Matters
by Kip Storm
192 pages, 6 x 9, $14.95 Trade Paper ISBN 1-59663-523-1
Special Price: $12.95

 

What would have happened if Woody Allen and Dave Barry had gotten together with Professor Irwin Corey?

Well, they didn’t, so get over it

However, if they had, the result might have been Gray Matters, an irreverent and hilarious look at one man’s family through the distorted lens of science. Gray Matters is required reading for anyone who has suffered the indignity and profound embarrassment of realizing that he shares the same gene pool as his family but who still holds out hope that the cool rationality of science might offer an explanation involving the possibility of adoption. This is the book for anyone who wants desperately to immerse himself in the search for Ultimate Truth while lying on the couch with easy access to junk food and occasional little naps.

From a random chapter:  Avoidance 101 --The Science of Parental Time:

. . . I have long known that time flows much more slowly when I am at my parents’ house than it does anywhere else in the known universe . . . In fact, the longer I am forced to spend with my father, the more energy I must expend simply to hold up my end of the conversation. This is due to Einstein’s famous E = MC² equation in which energy and mass are interchangeable — although under certain conditions all you can get is merchandise credit. Viewed in the illumination of Einstein’s mathematics, it is easy to see why, even with the assistance of alcohol, a conversation with my father requires that I expend as much energy thinking of things to say as is produced by a small nuclear generating plant in a year. As the minutes drag on, I must dig ever deeper into my energy reserves, even though more and more of the energy I dredge up is transformed not into words but into an invisible yet massive wall that rapidly forms between us . . . I forge ahead into one of my father’s favorite topics: the relative merits of latex vs. oil based paints. I silently thank God that I read that July 1999 issue of Consumer Reports while the Speedy Lube man changed my oil

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kip Storm is a true renaissance man: a noted physicist, poet, and large animal veterinarian, Mr. Storm has, despite his considerable achievements, managed to maintain a remarkably low profile. Seldom seen in public, except on that embarrassing and clearly unfair "flashing" charge, Mr. Storm shuns notoriety, instead preferring the anonymity of the truly humble. As Kip so eloquently puts it, "I see myself more as a concept than as a flesh and blood man; more as a 3-dimensional holographic representation of a 4-dimensional super-being than as, you know … an actual person." Kip lives and works just south and to the left of E4 on most topographical maps.