Why I'm reading the Wikipedia article, "History of poison."

1. Here's the article. Excerpt: "Grooves for storing or holding poisons such as tubocurarine have been plainly found in [ancient] hunting weapons and tools.... Once the use and danger of poison was realized, it became apparent that something had to be done. Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (an ancient Hellenistic state of northern Anatolia), from around 114–63 BC, ... was paranoid to the point that he administered daily amounts of poisons in an attempt to make himself immune to as many poisons as he could.... Pliny the Elder describes over 7000 different poisons. One he describes as 'The blood of a duck found in a certain district of Pontus, which was supposed to live on poisonous food, and the blood of this duck was afterwards used in the preparation of the Mithridatum, because it fed on poisonous plants and suffered no harm.'"

2. What made me look up the history of poison was a passage in "The Tricky Art of Co-Existing: How to Behave Decently No Matter What Life Throws Your Way" by Sandi Toksvig:

3. That quote about tasting food for poison just happened to come up on the same page as the phrase I was googling, "the size of a baby's head," which I remember being much more common years ago. Whatever happened to that comic trope? I was thinking about it because I read the phrase used to describe an apple fritter eaten by Bill Clinton in 1994, in the 1994 NYT piece, "Did Clinton Slip on Astroturf?"

4. That piece about Bill Clinton was dredged up looking for this: "Ever since he spoke last week of his fond recollections of his El Camino pickup, his audience at a Louisiana truck plant and those who watched his comments replayed on television have been left in titillated confusion. Mr. Clinton confided that he had lined the truck bed with Astroturf, adding with a sly grin, 'You don't want to know why, but I did.' On a New York talk radio program this morning, Mr. Clinton jokingly tried to put the speculation to rest. 'It wasn't for what everybody thought it was for when I made the comment, I'll tell you that,' he protested. 'I'm guilty of a lot of things, but I didn't ever do that.'"

5. I was interested in Bill Clinton's El Camino with astroturf because somebody I know on Facebook said that if he had $40,000 to spend on a bed it would be a $500 mattress in the back of a new Chevy pickup truck.

6. The subject of a $40,000 mattress came up because I'd written (on Facebook): "How much would you pay for a new mattress? I found what I wanted, but there was no price tag attached. I was saying things like 'I could see paying $4,000, but not 10,000.' Later, deeply into the explanation of horsetail hair and hand-crafting, I kept a straight face at the number $40,000 and proceeded to compare buying a bed to buying a car. $40,000 is what I paid for my Audi TT 12 years ago. But I wasn't even joking about a bed as expensive as the most expensive car I ever bought. I was seriously thinking about the argument that going for high quality in a bed makes more sense than paying extra for a more comfortable, beautiful car."