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Weak XLI

9 October 2010

No. 8,445 (cartoon)

You appear to be somewhat inebriated.

Don’t worry; I’ll soon be unambiguously drunk.

10.10.10

Another Lovely Binary Day

Three thousand five hundred and sixty-nine days ago it was 01.01.01, and now it’s 10.10.10. Arbitrary dates are irrelevant to almost everything except arbitrary dates.

(As a curious aside, I’m twenty-thousand days old today. I don’t keep track of such things, but my computer does.)

11 October 2010

Writing to Drink

I asked Sonja why she became a writer; her answer surprised me.

“I drink a lot, and I have a fair amount of self respect,” she said as she refilled our wine glasses. “That’s why being a writer came naturally.”

“I’m not following your logic,” I admitted.

“Well, if you’re a drunk banker or a drunk teacher or a drunk mechanic, you’re perceived to be just a drunk,” she explained. “But if you’re a drunk writer, you’re a writer.”

“Sounds like you’re perpetuating the stereotype,” I replied. “Or is it the other way around?”

We treated that as a rhetorical question, and went on to talk about more substantive matters.

12 October 2010

Be The Mop

I don’t know why some men ask what women want when the answer is obvious: they want clean men who clean. That’s why I volunteered to help Selena clean her kitchen.

“No no no!” she shrieked when she saw me working, “that’s not the way to mop!”

I was confused. No one had ever critiqued—let alone criticized—my mopping technique before.

“Should I be pushing the mop?” I asked. “Swirling it? What?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Selena said accusingly. “Don’t push the mop, be the mop!”

Be the mop; got it. I don’t think the kitchen floor looked better using Selena’s approach than mine, but I didn’t think about it; I didn’t think about it even once. And that’s the beauty of her method; mops don’t think.

13 October 2010

Prestidigitation

I’ve been thinking a lot about prestidigitation recently. I haven’t been considering prestidigitation as such, but rather the word and its etymology. My piss-poor dictionary describes prestidigitation thusly:

1. Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.

2. A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

3. Magic tricks performed as entertainment.

My only interest in prestidigitation comes from my amputated right index finger. Having a third of a finger provides for all sorts of prestidigitation mischief, and, on rare occasions, mayhem. I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as an apotemnophiliac, but missing most of a finger is a great way to meet paraphiliacs.

14 October 2010

Fecal Transplant Love Story

Clarissa almost died from diarrhea. But, thanks to her partner, she didn’t. I’m glad, both because I’d miss her, and because ending one’s life in diapers confined to a wheelchair has to be one of the worst ways to end one’s life.

She lost over twenty-five kilograms over the last eight months. That sounds like a case study from the mythical “Shit Yourself Thin” diet, but it’s actually all about bacteria, or, more accurately, lack of same.

We Homo sapiens have ten times as many microbes in our bodies than human cells. Or, more accurately, most of us do. Clarissa’s guts were mostly barren of the microbes she needed to process food.

Enter Charlie. Literally.

Clarissa’s partner had a full complement of the hardworking bacteria most of us take for granted, so a clever gastroenterologist performed a fecal transplant from Charlie to Clarissa.

Et voilà!

Clarissa’s Clostridium difficile infection vanished, and now she’s fine. And modestly famous as well; she was profiled in The Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.

Charlie’s also better off. Now, whenever Clarissa tells him he’s full of shit, he knows that she means it in a loving way.

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©2010 David Glenn Rinehart