World’s Oldest Vagina Retired

1/29/07


The world’s oldest woman died Sunday night in Connecticut at the ripe old age of 114. Squeezed out of her mother’s womb on November 22, 1892, her name was Emma Faust Tillman, and she was the daughter of former slaves, witnessed 21 U.S. presidencies, and had a lifespan that stretched over 3 centuries. Emma only held the world record as “World’s Oldest Living Person” for 4 days, and has now been replaced by Yone Minagawa of Fukuoka, Japan, born January 4, 1893.

Emma lived on her own until the staggering age of 110 when, I guess, she no longer had the strength to poke with a fork those relatives attempting to cart her desiccated old carcass off to the old folk’s home. Apparently Emma never smoked or drank and was powerfully religious; seeing as I am zero for three on that score, I doubt I’ll be threatening Emma’s record for tenure on this planet. I heard she was still lucid most of the time up until her death, and enjoyed many engaging hobbies such as explaining where things didn’t used to be, and complaining about how much things cost nowadays.

The oldest person ever fully documented was Jeanne Louise Calment (2/21/1875-8/4/1997) out of France, whose ticket got punched when she was a mind-numbing 122 years old. Jeanne makes even me look practically bed-ridden, as the old broad took up fencing at age 85 (in case of pirate attack, I guess) and could still ride a bicycle when her odometer rolled over 100. I doubt I could even ride a bicycle more than 100 yards now without a few sips off an oxygen tank.

What’s really interesting about the humans that God seemingly forgot is that, despite the fact that our average life spans are getting longer, our maximum life span isn’t increasing. By that I mean that overall we’re living longer lives through medical breakthroughs such as not using leaches to treat pneumonia, and healthier eating habits, but throughout recorded history the oldest of us have been in the 110-119 range. It’s possible our feeble little chassis just can’t manage longer than that without turning to powder. But we’re by no means the most ancient-lived animals on this little blue marble. The longest-lived vertebrates on this little blue marble include tortoises and whales, the records being 193 for a Galapagos Island tortoise and 210 years for a Bowhead Whale. If you eliminate the “backbone” category, coral and shellfish can live much longer. An Icelandic Cyprine mollusk finally gave up the ghost after 374 trips ‘round the Sun.

For a complete list of the oldest humans on record since 1955, when Guinness started keeping such stats, check out the Wikipedia article here.

I’m sure a great many of you out there are scrunching up your still-taught faces and saying, “Well I don’t want to live that long, good God.” For those of you who belong to this camp, I simply cannot understand your philosophy. I can only guess you’ll be singing a different tune when Death himself is breathing his fetid breath upon your craggy old neck. Hell, I’d sign up for immortality if I could; there’s just so much to do here! Yeah, yeah, you watch friends and family die, boo-hoo. I’d gladly watch the Grim Reaper pick off my nearest and dearest if it means I can stop a bullet with my face and be right as rain in time for lunch. Between cancer and being The Highlander, I’ll take the latter, thanks.

There can be only one.

Stroking Off Smoking

1/26/07

For those of us who've attempted to quit the old coffin nails and are left wanting, there is hope on the horizon. Although…it's not really what I had in mind.

As a slowly-weaning-myself-off-the-habit smoker, I can tell you that what everyone tells you is correct; it's bloody hard to stop smoking. Aside from just looking totally cool doing it, the habit is just so damned compulsive. Yes, there's the nicotine addiction and dopamine reward your brain gives you every time you suck sweet, sweet carcinogens deep into your lung tissue, but for me and many smokers, that's not the worst of the problem.

I half-assed tried to quit about six months ago. I bought "The Patch," wore it, and found that, yes, it totally alleviated my physical desire for the nicotine. Trouble was, it didn't make me not want to smoke. The urge was still there. I didn't need to light up, but I still wanted the cigarette between my fingers, and I still wanted the act of smoking. Unless I made some rather dramatic life decisions and took up blowing strangers on the street, I found it hard to imagine another habit which could simulate shoving that little paper cylinder between my lips ten or fifteen times a day. But recent information has come to light that a little well-placed brain damage could do the trick.

There's an article published in Science where researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Iowa lay out how a man they call "Nathan" kicked a 2-pack a day habit without even trying. Oh, by the way, that was 40 unfiltered cigarettes every single day for 14 years. But at age 28 Nathan suffered a stroke which damaged a part of his brain called the insula or insular cortex. Nathan smoked his last grit the night he was carted off to the hospital. You have to be a real pillar of health to have a stroke at 28, wouldn't you think? After his insula went "pop" Nathan showed absolutely no inclination or craving to smoke. One of the authors of the study, Antoine Bechara, had this to say,

"When asked about his reason for quitting, he stated, 'I forgot that I was a smoker,'…he said he did not forget the fact that he was a smoker, but rather that his body forgot the urge to smoke."

The insula is thought to be responsible for transmitting emotional, subjective feelings as well as cravings, such as for food or drugs. These particular cravings are not physical, but rather linked to behavior, such as smelling something baking and craving chocolate, or seeing someone light up and craving a cigarette. For adolescents addiction is much more about the physical sensations your brain rewards you with for bad behavior, but adults are more fixated on the action or habit itself.


The insula is the middle section in blue.

The researchers wanted to know why Nathan underwent this sudden about-face, since people the world-over are ravenous for answers about how to kick a habit without having to do anything whatsoever. Of the 69 patients they studied with brain damage who smoked before their injury, 32 had quit. Out of that 32, it had been difficult for half of them to quit, but 16 patients just up and stopped spontaneously. [1] Not only did they not need to smoke, but they had absolutely no desire to do it either.

What does all this math mean? Essentially, if your insula is damaged, your odds of quitting with smoking addiction disruption go up 130 fold. Before you go bashing yourself in the head with a hammer to satisfy that New Year's resolution, I should point out that addiction specialists have heretofore largely ignored the insula in favor of the sexier parts of the brain, so tangible results from this discovery are probably better than a decade away. My best suggestion is to smoke until you eventually have a stroke, and pray like hell that it targets the insular cortex part of your crazy little mind.



[1] VOA News
Other Sources: NPR.org

Whale of a Tale

1/22/07


I used to think that few things could be more savagely boring than watching fishing on TV. Maybe reading a book about fishing, that might do it. But today I was treated to another dreary medium of the "sport;" someone telling a fishing story. I wasn't the one to whom they were speaking, but unfortunately I overheard it, despite my best efforts at distraction by repeatedly punching myself in the testicles.

You know those people that start conversations as if you were already speaking to them? It was rather like that when this woman turned to her cubicle neighbor and said "So we went out this weekend…" and launched into some tale which was a non-sequitor preamble setting up her glorious fish story, which it turns out happened to someone else. What's more mind-liquefying than a fishing story? A fishing third-hand fishing story about people you don't know, and events that could only be considered interesting and exciting if stacked up against watching a banana turn black.

Apparently this champion of all yarn-spinners came home Saturday night and was told by…someone…that "oh you just have to call Jake*, he's got quite a fishing story to tell you! So I called up and said 'I hear you got quite a fish story to tell me…"

I shit you not that's almost verbatim. Up to this point we have:

A. A fishing story
B. That happened to someone else
C. Involves the detail that the genesis of the tale came from a fucking phone conversation.

And what, I know you're all asking, was the core of this amazing anecdote? Well, it seems some guys went fishing and caught a 3-pound and a 4-pound catfish. Wow. I know, I already checked Google News to see if there was a more in depth account of it, maybe off the AP wire or something, but no luck. Just some crap about Iraq or something. Oh! I forgot to tell you! They used cut-up perch for bait. HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA! Holy shit! Pass the Tylenol!

For the record, that is not a story. That is nothing. Unless you hauled up something that looked like this…



…you can save me a lot of pain and just go see how long you can stare at the Sun.

I don't know how much the behemoth in the above picture weighed, but just for comparison's sake, this is a photo of a 3-pound bass:


So...you know...way to go, guys I'll never meet but now hate by virtue of your friend relating your harrowing tale of fighting to a draw what a tiny child seems mildly unimpressed with.

I can only assume that, for most of the population, talking to other people about inane, small-talk bull-hockey evokes some kind of pleasure, and this woman was just sitting around wracking her brain for something to say to someone, and this was the best she could do. According to my informal analysis, 75% of America is afraid that if they don't speak at least once every twenty minutes their bowels will fall out and be eaten by zombies.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do a mountain of cocaine to attempt to damage my brain enough so I lose all long term memory of that story.


*Name has been changed because I don't remember the real name.

The Perfect Storm

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but several metric tons of frozen bullshit went down this weekend in Springfield.

1/17/07

Civilization has been restored! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, your friendly, neighborhood scrivener has come through the worst ice storm in some 20 years with minimal mental scarring. Missouri has been crippled in the wake of this bitch, in a line of damage running from Springfield through St. Louis and Illinois. The New York area is getting this band of demonic weather as we speak. The whole horrible debacle started Friday night.

Granted, I may have underestimated just how bad the icy spanking some vengeful god delivered to us was going to be. Our apartment went dark around midnight. We really had no worry about the cold; we’re on the bottom floor and sunken in the ground; we retain heat like a 300-lb menopausal woman. There are, however, few things quite as boring as sitting in your house in the dead of night, ice pinging off every surface outside with your upstairs neighbors apparently doing some interpretive boot-dancing. By the way, I don’t recommend trying to read by candlelight; there’s something depressing about getting drunk on a Friday night when you’re rocking it like the Pilgrims. It’s about as pleasurable as trying to watch a movie through the hole in a toilet paper roll while someone beats you about the face with a sock dampened with something that smells dangerously un-like water. And don’t even get me started on attempting to accomplish masturbation under such circumstances.

No cable. No computer. No internet. Not even any ability to distract myself with cooking. The time before Christ, in a nutshell. Technophile Ryan was sad, dear readers.

Saturday morning the homestead was still a respectable 68˚, but after taking all the perishables out of the fridge and freezer and socking them away in coolers on the porch Hanni and I were left with precious little to actually do. The outside world looked as if a tornado had torn through all of Springfield leaving savaged trees encased in ice in its wake. It was all quite beautiful, actually, if you ignored the carnage. It’s difficult for me to even describe the devastation; branches the size of Cadillacs were absolutely everywhere and no tree was undamaged. Telephone poles were snapped in numerous places and we saw one that had punched straight through the roof of a warehouse. 65,000* people in Springfield alone were without power. At the worst of it some 80% of the city was dead. Nixa, Billings, Clever, Republic and more were out, too, plus parts of St. Louis and Illinois.

Around the time Gov. Matt Blunt was mobilizing the Missouri National Guard, we decided to pack up and migrate to her parent’s house in Billings because at least they had a wood burning stove for heat and gas range for hot food. We’re in full-on apocalypse survival mode because word on the street was the worst of it hadn’t hit yet; Sunday was expected to carry another 1-2” of freezing rain.

On the way Hanni and I stopped at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Republic, which still had power at the time, for a few food staples. The aisles looked like a war was on:

Our “Survival Kit” shopping list included such necessities as Vienna sausages, sternos, whiskey and champagne.

I can say without exaggeration that her parents’ yard looked like it had been the site of an artillery bombardment. Just when I thought I’d be forced to interact with people, Hanni’s dad got a line on a portable generator. I think I actually got an erection when we cranked that puppy up and basked in the tender glow of satellite television. I didn’t even care that we were watching possibly the worst rip-off of the already questionable Top Gun, Firebirds. (That’s another blog.) I drank 7&7s and watched several episodes of Iron Chef America after everyone went to bed.

Sadly, the gods would not smile upon us for long. Sunday morning the mighty generator fell quiet and nobody could discover what was wrong with it. Her family is perfectly nice, but I can scarcely go more than 5 or 6 hours with anyone if I don’t have a few hours to detox and recharge alone. Huddling around a wood stove with six other people, 3 of who remember the Truman Administration and clearly believe themselves to be amateur meteorologists, is a special type of hell for an introvert.

What was it like overnight on Sunday? Imagine a darkness so pure it’s as if a sleeping bag has been wrapped around your face, and all around you are sounds like unseen, crackling gunshots every 30 seconds, shortly followed by a phantom chandelier slamming into a concrete floor as trees gave up their limbs to the irresistible power of gravity.

I called into work on Monday and for lack of anything else to do, Hanni and I went over to her grandmother’s house and, sporting axes and clippers, hacked through the jungle of fallen wood to clear her driveway. It took 3 hours but was actually pretty fun because everything sounded like breaking glass when we hit it.

Threatening Hanni with the fact that the police would find a 29-year old functional alcoholic trying to stuff 6 people-worth of body parts into a wood stove if we had to stay there another night, we headed back to Springfield. Our apartment was still out of power (and down to 58˚) so we went over to stay the night at our friend’s house who was lucky enough to get power back Monday. It got down to 6˚ that night. Ye gods.

I came to work yesterday morning as people are finally getting the hang of dead stoplights that have become 4-way stops, and Hanni informed me that THE JUICE IS BACK ON AT HOME! Not only that, the delicious cable TV was waiting for me, wagging its tail when I got home. Full power hasn’t been restored; we have dim lights and no major appliances, but TV, man! We’re one of the lucky; 35,000 residents were still without electricity.

Worst MLK weekend ever. I am so ready to watch TV, use my computer, and not be talked to I can barely stand it.




*There are approximately 160,000 people in Springfield. That’s 40% of the city dark, for those of you keeping score at home.

One Person’s Junk…

1/10/07

Whenever shopping for gifts for the other human beings in my life more oft than not I’ll go to flea markets than brave the MTV of retail which is The Mall. I just find that picking out something with an actual history to it, which may be a one-of-a-kind present for my friends and family has a bit more feeling than the mass-produced cookie-cutter products from major department stores. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course; sometimes you’re out for a specific gift and, let’s be honest, when shopping at an antique store it’s pretty hit-and-miss as to whether you’re going to find something worthwhile, or perhaps come back and wrap up a metal pencil sharpener from the Eisenhower administration. I myself have a hard time getting out of a Macy’s Culinary Department without ruining the interior of my pants with delight.

But for ambiance nothing can match a good old fashioned flea market. The best part of the whole experience is that you get to see some really bizarre shit which could only be purchased for someone you either never want to see again, or want to creep out beyond all repair. In the spirit of crazy-ass presents to give your loved ones, I bring you a photo show of some of the strangest stuff I saw this shopping season.

(Click on pics to Super Size 'em!)




What Is It?

Do you know? Can you tell me what this monstrosity is supposed to be? It stands about 5 feet tall and looks like a lamp but has no port for a light bulb. My other guess was a really dangerous sprinkler, given the weird spike-things sticking out of its sexy little hourglass middle. I don’t know what this is, but I was harshly tempted to buy it just to find out. I think Hanni would have been less than pleased were I to spend $30 for the world’s largest paperweight.















Gamble of a Lifetime

Hands-down my favorite thing to look through at the flea markets is the enormous bin of movies that seems to be in almost every aisle. This one was far and away my favorite. Just in case you didn’t notice, here’s why:











“For Brad” is what that says, ladies and gentlemen. Is it an episode of Veggie Tales or down-home amateur porn? Who knows! Spend the quarter and take the ride, m’man.












Culinary Hints from the Space Age

There is probably no recent invention so simultaneously useless and essential in the kitchen as The Microwave. I find that our atom-exiting friend completely vital when defrosting something quickly, or heating up leftovers. Other than that, it’s pretty much just food-encrusted window dressing. I mean, unless you like your food to come out rubbery with the color of something that has sat on the ocean floor for several decades, you’re not really using the nuke box to cook your food. This wasn’t always so, it seems, as not a single flea market contains no less than forty “Microwave Cookbooks.” Except that they’re called “Radio-Range” or “Electronic Oven” cookbooks, because it took less time for the common name for these appliances to emerge than it did for housewives of the 60’s and 70’s to figure out cooking in the microwave was gross.

MMMmmmm…soggy, gray steak! Thanks, Mom, but I think I’ll just have an aspirin and suck on the wrappers from the local fast food dumpster.




Why Would You Do That?

Sometimes the things in the booths are so strange you just can’t imagine why a just supreme being would allow them to exist. As proof I offer you the creepiest doll in the universe. Why would you make a rag doll with real, human, cut-out eyes? I’m not sure, but if you can’t find that perfect gift for the woman you’re stalking, this is the winner.













A Touch of the Perverse

Even if you aren’t possessed of a mind which is constantly finding the dirty sexiness inherent in every single aspect of human life such as mine, I challenge you to not see the hot, wet undertones in these items.


















Agent Orange

I want this coat. Florescent orange leather with matching gloves? How can you lose?
















Following Directions

It’s so hard to find good help these days. And if you’ve seen the proprietors of many flea markets, you understand what I mean. Only carnies can top the “antique store” employee for sheer creepiness.









Chain Store Hilarity

It’s usually impossible to find everything you’re looking for at a flea market. I very much doubt if my 5-year-old niece would jump up and down over a crab-shaped ashtray or a lighted “Pabst” sign. My sojourn to Toys ‘R Us turned up the following.

It’s pretty much impossible to avoid gender-specific presents, though the situation seems to be getting better. I like the caption on this vacuum that says “Just like Mom and Dad’s!” Sort of feels forced when they repeat it twice like that, huh? What they don’t say is that Dad bought it for Mom so she could do some goddamn work around the house while drinking tequila and eating bon-bons all day long. He wouldn’t have to hit her if she did what she told her.













Did you miss why this one was funny? Take a closer look at the disclaimer.










“Also, do not play with or pick up dolls.”















Well that’s all for today, ladies and gentlemen. If you’ll excuse me, I think the Nyquil PM I took with a magnum of whiskey is starting to kick in, so I have to take me a lay-down. Adieu.

A Jones for the Knife

1/8/06


Everybody hates local commercials. Whether it’s the lunatic car salesman bouncing up and down as if his ass is spring-loaded, the doe-eyed children hawking for the area’s psych center, or attorney’s with haircuts that resemble something created by a defective Flowbee, local commercials are the bane of all of our television watching existence.

Sometimes they’re just mildly annoying, like the one that has popped up around my stamping grounds for a community college. I’m not sure what two vaguely unattractive people dancing around like drunken toddlers in front of placard signs has to do with getting an education, but at least the commercial is ridiculously long. Like, almost a minute. Not to mention that it has an error in the middle of it where the tape stops for a full three seconds just as Tweedledum and Tweedledee are about to high-five. Just awful is what it is.

But then, once in awhile a commercial comes along that just makes me stare at the screen like a dog doing subtraction in his head. I sit there, watching the fever dream before me unfold and have to ask myself whether the director survived the amount of narcotics he had to ingest in order to make this monstrosity of advertising. The most recent commercial from Carol Jones is one such example.

Ms. Jones owns Carol Jones Realtors, one of the local bigwig firms around Springfield. Her commercial features Carol herself on a sped-up film set to music like a Benny Hill sketch. I guess she’s helping the family move out of their house, but they all look vaguely afraid and it sort of gives the impression that Carol is maybe forcibly evicting these people so she can sell their home out from under them. The psychotic circus theme music is the only sound, thereby topping off the drug haze feel of this marketing disaster. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is the mere fact that Carol appears in these TV ads, because Ms. Jones gives Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers a run for their money on unnecessarily excessive plastic surgery.


Gods. The woman looks like a Gremlin. I had to take this screen shot directly from the TV because, shockingly there is one and only one picture online that shows here clearly. It’s this one.

I can only assume that picture was taken awhile ago, because it seems like she’s a bit less hacked in it. I’d be curious to see a true “before” picture of her, just to get an idea of how far her surgeon had to chuck his ethics out the window in order to turn Ms. Jones into the Halloween mask we see before us. Up until this new TV ad came out Carol seemed to keep herself pretty much out of the spotlight. It’s clear the woman is very, very deranged and terrified of what people think about her appearance, because not only has she chopped her face to bejezzus and back, but the only picture of her on her home page is one a mere 82 pixels across and so blurred it makes the Zapruder film look crisp.

I don’t mean to pick on Carol for the simple fact that she’s so dramatically vain and terrified of aging that she turned herself into a living skull, but some of us like to develop a personality so we don’t go out of our minds obsessing over our looks. And should we decide to remove all the skin from our faces, I doubt most of us would be mugging for the camera inside a horrible commercial, with a smile that doesn’t so much say “buy my properties” as it says “I’ll eat your children while they sleep!” I mean, unless you wanted to buy a house from The Crypt Keeper, it just seems like an odd move, is what I’m saying.

Pat-Shit Insane

1/3/07

Salutations and welcome to the beginning of another arbitrary year, dear readers! These long holiday weekends have gotten your friendly, neighborhood reporter a bit lazy, it seems, and so I’m sort of trying to ease back into it slowly, like a bear just rising from her winter torpor. In the vein of finding things which are easy to make fun of, today we go to everyone’s favorite go-to guy for crazy God shit, Pat “Leg Press” Robertson.


For those of you not fortunate enough to flip past “The 700 Club” while looking for soft-core cable porn, Pat Robertson is the evangelist extraordinaire who claims to not only leg-press a literal ton, but has a direct line to God Almighty. And if that’s true, ladies and gentlemen, one of two other things is also true: either God is a psychotic, raving lunatic, or Pat Robertson is the worst player of that “Telephone” game to ever live. (Check out my previous post about old Patty for some of his greatest hits)

The turning of the new year always brings out predictions for the upcoming days and once again Pat has released news for 2007, presumably directly from the horse’s mouth. The horse in this case being the big G. Robertson isn’t afraid of the “big sell,” either. I suppose after convincing millions of people across the world to send you money because you can heal their hemorrhoids through the television set, prognosticating a massive terrorist attack in late 2007 is just another day at the office. What sort of attack? Well…

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear…The Lord didn't say
nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Pat went on to say that this will be a “mass killing,” sometime after September. So, y’know, don’t worry too much about saving up for Christmas presents this year, odds are you’ll have a lot less loved ones to buy for. Non-radioactive loved ones, that is. But don’t lose heart, fellow travelers; Pat’s track record on these things ranks right up there with using a Magic 8 Ball, even when he’s being deliberately vague. Here are a few of his past predictions:

2006: “If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms.”

2005: “The Lord has some very encouraging news for George Bush…Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory and his second term is going to be one of triumph…He will have Social Security reform passed, that he will have tax reform passed… and that basically he is positioned for a series of dramatic victories.”

2004: “I think George Bush is going to win in a walk…I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004…The Lord has just blessed him.”

So, yeah…don’t rush out and get your “Patriot Pack” emergency kits full of duct tape, plastic wrap and cyanide capsules just yet. I do wish Pat would do us the courtesy of wrapping a towel around his head and rub a crystal ball when he says shit like this; if I’m going to listen to bullshit at least give me a show, Robertson. Pat Robertson, ladies and gentlemen; what a crazy fuck.