1. Trying to help your child with math homework.
2. Telemarketers who call early on Sunday morning.
3. The map of red states and blue states.
4. Being stuck in traffic when the only clear radio station is playing an Ashlee Simpson marathon.
To begin with, it is important to understand that the delicious artificial strawberry or cherry product that we happily eat in movie theaters is not true licorice. True licorice is black and contains glycyrrhizic acid. Therefore we cannot answer the more important East Coast versus West Coast debate about whether Red Vines are better than Twizzlers.
Medical literature contains a great deal of information about the link between licorice and high blood pressure, and if you happened to be reading the English-language abstract of an article from the Norwegian journalTidsskrift for Den Norske Laegeforening in 2002, you might have found out that “the active component of liqorice is glycyrrhizic acid, which inhibits the enzyme 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase. This enzyme promotes the conversion of cortisol to cortisone and is thereby responsible for the specificity of the mineralocorticoid receptor to aldosterone in the collecting tubules. Inhibition of the enzyme allows cortisol to act as the major endogenous mineralocorticoid producing a marked elevation in mineralocorticoid activity, resulting in hypertension, hypokalemia, and metabolic alkalosis.” I can’t understand why candy companies don’t use this as a slogan. Imagine the catchy jingles, funny commercials, and booming sales of black jelly beans.
CHAPTER 2. BODY ODDITIES
I amable to finally escape from the torture of Jeremy’s food inquisition, and I look around and can’t find Leyner anywhere. The bottle of Don Julio is missing and there is a trail of shrimp tails that leads to the elevator. I find him sitting in the hallway, playing Chutes and Ladders with the neighbor’s children, and devouring cocktail sauce with a straw. I try to get him back inside and he snarls, “Are you out of your mind? I’m down a hundred and fifty bucks.” His bark is heard inside and several revelers come outside to watch the action. A crowd has formed around the game and Mark is becoming surly with the children as his losses mount. It doesn’t help that the children are mocking him by singing “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. The tides turn and Leyner has soon wrestled the weekly allowances and the school lunch money from the kids, who disperse crestfallen while muttering to themselves. Triumphantly, Leyner rises and shouts, “Punk-ass suckers go crying to your mommy. We’re going to bring this party back inside and play some strip Candyland.” He pockets his winnings, swigs the Don Julio, and we are off.
Back inside, Wendy Thurston, a senior editor at Half-a-Dozen Ponds Press, has fallen victim to Leyner’s shrewd, merciless gamesmanship. She is down to her bra, thong, and socks. As Leyner wins another point, she removes her left sock, revealing the most beautiful alabaster-hued foot and immaculately pedicured webbed toes. Teary-eyed, Leyner turns to me and in a choir boy’s piping, soprano weeps, “I have found my Cinderella!”
This romantic outburst leaves the party in stunned silence, and then I’m again besieged by a slew of body-related questions. What is it about sideshow body oddities that awakens our most primal desires and curiosities?
As I, Billy, was sitting on the beach, relaxing and leafing through an old copy of theJournal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, I came across the answer to this age-old question. I also wish my father had known this, because maybe he would have yelled at my brother less. Cracking your knuckles is not as bad as people think. The usual argument is that knuckle popping causes arthritis. This does not happen. Chronic knuckle cracking may cause other types of damage, including stretching of the surrounding ligaments and a decrease in grip strength, but not arthritis.
So what causes the pop? The sound is produced in the joint when bubbles burst in the synovial fluid surrounding the joint. Really interesting, huh?
I didn’t have the answer to this question until I delivered my first baby. I always believed that you had an “innie” if the doctor tied a good knot, and if he didn’t, you were cursed with that funny-looking “outie.” Well, there is no knot tying at all. We just put on a clip, cut, and wait for the umbilical cord to dry up and fall off. It is all random.
Sometimes someone can develop an “outie” because they have a hernia at this site. This also has nothing to do with the doctor’s Boy Scout skills. I have recently heard of plastic surgeons removing an “outie” for belly beauty. How sad.
One question that cannot be answered, however, is why some belly buttons collect so much lint.
In Australia, the “poo fairy” comes at night to take a dump in your mouth. In England, they say a long night at the pub leaves your breath “tasting like the vulture’s dinner.” And a Scottish friend with a new Hawaiian bride reports that a late-night fridge-binge of haggis and poi will leave you with the worst morning breath of your life.
So, given all these tales, we should probably start with the anaerobic bacteria, the xerostomia (a fancy word for dry mouth), or the volatile sulfur compounds (which are actually waste products from the bacteria). All these combine to give you that wonderful get-up-in-the-morning feeling of garbage mouth.
Other things also contribute to this oral smorgasbord: medications, alcohol, sugar, smoking, caffeine, and dairy products.
But don’t run off and have your tongue sandblasted; there are simple things that you can do to fight morning breath. Brush regularly (don’t forget the tongue), floss, and drink plenty of water.
Gberg: I was just thinking that the more chaotic this is, the harder it is for Carrie to edit. It might even induce a seizure.
Leyner: That’s funny!! I think tormenting her is always a good sort of compass for us when we’re lost and floundering.
Leyner: What is a seizure, actually?
Gberg: Is that the way it usually works in the creative process? Is your genius always fueled by torment?
Gberg: Abnormal electrical activity in the brain, why?
Leyner: My creative process is fueled by a sense of Nietzschean aristocracy and a simultaneous feeling that I’m an abject fraud.
Gberg: I think everyone feels like a fraud. What about me, trying to answer these unanswerable questions?
Leyner: Coupled with torment and an overwhelming need to be loved and liked (even) AND horniness AND creditors calling ALL THE FUCKING DAY LONG. Didn’t you go to medical school in Ingushetia? You are a fraud.
Gberg: Where the hell is Ingushetia?
Leyner: Directly east of Chechnya. Check MapQuest.
Gberg: Enough of your Chechen obsession. Let’s talk about the book.
Leyner: I told you… with the amount of money we’re getting paid for this book, Mercedes and I are getting a time-share summer dacha in Chechnya.
Here are several things we can be thankful arenot contagious: