What's going on in your surgeon's brain?

I guess eventually I'll get over the Imax Crisis, and go back to blogging about my kitty-cat Snuffles, and why relationships are so difficult, but I got to tell this True Story first.

I used to be a newspaper reporter in Miami, and the reporter who sat next to me was this really nice, smart, funny older lady who was suing the paper for employment discrimination, so the paper was punishing her by making her the Religion Reporter. (She liked fires and hurricanes and corpses and cocaine smugglers and other ghastly disruptions of civic life just like I did.)

At just about this time, Creationism started rearing its questionable head in the public dialogue. Alice liked that, because unlike most Religion Stories, this one had strife and anger and bitterness and controversy, and Holy People cursing and damning members of the school board and accusing them of being Heathen Atheists. Creationism was bumping her stories off the Religion Page (Saturday Page 12, surrounded by all the Sunday church service ads) and right onto Page One, Above The Fold, on Tuesday or Thursday or any damn day they happened. Creationism was making Religion Fun for Alice -- a genuine miracle on that beat.

But Creationism was very new and just beginning to get organized, and the only Creationism Spokesperson Alice could find to interview was out in Southern Califormia. He was thrilled to talk to her, and the paper was delighted to pay the long-distance phone bill for these hot, controversial stories.

But the stories would be much better for our readers if Alice could find a Local Hook, somebody who actually lived in South Florida who was trying to shove Creationism up the asses of Florida school systems, some nearby Floridian who was trying to delete all references to that vile and blasphemous Evolution falsehood from the Dade and Broward County kiddies' textbooks.

Meanwhile, one of Alice's knees was starting to give out. Eventually she was referred to an M.D. orthopedic surgeon, and he slapped her into the hospital, put her under, carved on her and replaced her old bum knee with a new artificial titanium knee. A month later she was getting around pretty well, another satisfied new knee customer. And back sitting next to me on the Religion Beat, and back on the phone with Creationism Guy out in Southern California.

Finally she told Creationism Guy, "I really appreciate all the help you've given me, but is there anyone in Florida who I can talk to about what's going on locally with your movement?"

"Why, yes!" Creationism Guy said. And he proceeded to give her the name and phone number of the doctor who had just carved on her knee while she was under anesthesia for an hour. Her very own surgeon, who had been messing around inside her body, believed that God made every creature in the sea and the air and the land in five days, on the sixth he made Adam, and because Adam was lonely, He made Eve out of one of his ribs, and then on the seventh day He rested. That's how we all got here, believed the leading-edge state-of-the-art Medical Scientist who'd just replaced her knee.