"MIT receives a $50 million foundation grant to study brain."

— Boston Globe, May 10

FRIDAY, MAY 10, 2002 — It’s been a year since the Brain arrived at MIT, but researchers say they are still a long way from fully understanding its depths. Indeed, it has been a rocky path to discovery for MIT’s Pickering Mangrove and his crack team of researchers.

"The Brain is not a bicycle," said Mangrove, during a press conference last year. "But we are making significant headway." Mangrove went on to say that he hoped his study would rival Yale’s groundbreaking work on unraveling the mysteries of the human foot. Onlookers gasped in horror, however, as Mangrove, who had been holding the Brain up for media photographers, dropped it on the steps of the Arthur D. Little building.

"The Brain does not bounce," he announced afterwards. "That much we now know."

From the beginning, MIT’s brain study was embroiled in controversy. Some members of the research team said the Brain had the consistency of a veggie omelet, while others insisted it was more like seared tofu. In the end, the team reached an uneasy accord, publishing a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine titled: "The Brain: A Soggy Waffle with Raspberries Wrapped in Cling Film." Then, in November of last year, researcher Quigley Kawasaki stirred up yet more controversy when he described the brain as having a "Burger Kingy" odor. Kawasaki was removed from his position.

One of the first challenges the team faced was determining what, exactly, made the Brain tick, despite Mangrove’s repeated assertion that "the Brain is not a clock." Indeed, researchers spent the first three months of their study just poking at the Brain with a pencil. A breakthrough came in August, when researcher Umbriglio Lazzatitti discovered what he described as "gray matter" buried beneath the Brain’s now-crusty surface. At a press conference announcing the finding, MIT president Charles Vest marveled at the fact that, to date, the research team had spent a mere $314.73 of their $50 million grant. Vest did add, however, holding up a stack of dry-cleaning bills to make his point, that the team could be even more diligent with their spending.

"Gray matter causes stubborn stains," Mangrove reported. "That much we now know."

In January, Mangrove’s team enjoyed another breakthrough when researcher Margot Blaupickt found that the Brain did not respond well to being placed in a blender. In February, Brain magazine published Blaupickt’s findings. "We have determined that a person’s intellect will likely be greatly hindered when his or her brain is reduced to a liquefied state," Blaupickt wrote. "Such deliquescence may lead to severe depression, sluggishness, and a morbid interest in the restaurant industry." Critics immediately blasted the article as inflammatory.

"Mangrove is making significant headway," said Bunker Hill Community College researcher Brian O’Callaghan. "But he should not get ahead of himself." O’Callaghan added that he himself can name the owner-chefs of at least seven area restaurants.

The media, meanwhile, scrambled to discover who, exactly, the Brain belonged to. In the face of relentless questioning, Mangrove insisted that he had "no clue" as to whose Brain his team had recently liquefied. Neither could he be sure, he added, that the Brain was a human brain. "The Brain is not a frappe," he proclaimed. "But we are making significant headway." Mangrove eventually initiated a lawsuit against the Boston Herald after Howie Carr wrote a column claiming that the Brain was not really a brain at all, but a piece of "common or garden-variety brisket."

In March of this year, Mangrove’s study suffered what appeared to be its most serious setback to date. In the midst of an experiment to determine the effects of heating on a liquefied brain, an MIT janitor named Harry Cragg mistook the steaming potion for a pot of Hormel beef stew and ate it. An apoplectic Mangrove, at a news conference to announce the mishap, berated Mwyxlvry Zbrynyvskkyk, the researcher who had left the simmering Brain unattended. He saved his most virulent ire for Cragg, however, threatening to "send the bastard to Harvard."

But then, as we all know by now, something extraordinary happened. Immediately after eating the Brain, Harry Cragg began to feel, as he describes it, "funny." Three weeks later, he lost the ability to pronounce the word "Afghanistan." A week after that, he was overheard saying, "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." Mangrove was beside himself with joy.

"Eating a parboiled brain turns you into a jabbering idiot," he declared. "That much we now know."

Cragg, for his part, refuses to confirm or deny rumors he is thinking of running for political office.