WebMaD (as renamed herein) and The Return To 2nd Grade

WebMD (as renamed herein) and The Return to 2nd Grade

Once you reach a certain age, your email is often filled up with regular appearances by providers of unnecessary information you never asked for, and find generally useless.  They arrive in the form of newsletters from people like WebMD, AARP, and more.  They often have messages aimed at "enlightening" you in some form by answering questions you never asked.  Just such a message arrived in my email recently, and its title made me set it aside for exploration when I had nothing else to do.  It was a WebMD newsletter with a title that editorial policy in my little column here forbids directly relating directly here.  Suffice to say that its subtitle, "The Truth About Body Noises," gives you a hint, but it could be misunderstood.  For example you might say to yourself, "Oh, it's probably about snoring and creaking, cracking joints," or. if you are someone who suffers from--or lives with someone who suffers from--seasonal allergies, you might even say "it's probably about coughing and sneezing, etc."  Nope.

It's really about something associated with digestion, and--more specifically--its leading headline deals with certain malodorous events that are associated with the intestinal tract.  Yes, it's flatulence, but, just to make sure the headline has the maximum impact, they scorn the use of the medical term and actually use the word.  It begins with "F" and rhymes with "That smarts," which is usually what you might have said after Sister Mary Borgia has smacked the back of your hand with a ruler for using the word in her classroom or even in the schoolyard during recess.  Our editorial board here is populated by people who were taught not to use certain expressions by the Sister Mary Borgias of this world--probably during the previous century to this one.  WebMD's editorial board, on the other hand, is probably populated with 2nd graders or those whose vocabulary remains thrilled with the same expressions they enjoyed in the 2nd grade.  This is much like what one imagines the editorial board of Mad Magazine to be, hence the suggested renaming of "WebMD" as "WebMad" cited  above.     

At any rate, the title drew me in and I set aside their newsletter--engagingly entitled "Gurgles, F-----, and More Body Noises."   When I got around to opening it, the page linked to it contained a number of exciting tools and "facts."  The most unsurprising of these "facts" was the following observation; "Working out will help you f--- less."  Yes the people who constantly nag you about the benefits of regular exercise "push up" the notion that "Exercise reduces unnecessary air anywhere in your body."  Hah! " They have never been to yoga class" is all I am going to say about that one.

Oh, and get this, "Air travel increases the amount of f---ing you do."  I am not making this up, they loftily point out that "the change in air pressure can affect more than your ears."  I am pretty sure that was true for the people that flew with me and I believe them, although I don't recall any unfortunate incidents I was responsible for.  There is another "benefit" of travel I don't miss.

Their engaging way of conveying these "facts about f----" was to offer an online quiz.  I took it and scored a 40%.  Now I have heard some talk about the lowering educational standards these days, and when I went to school 40% was an "F," (no, the "F" is just a coincidence, really--it stands for failure).  WebMaD gave me a "pass on the gas!"  How can you trust these people?

Oh, by the way, the next quiz offered after completing the one I took was entitled "The Scoop On Poop."  I did not even go there.

At A Losss For Words: A Doggie Reference Letter

At A Loss For Words: A Doggie Referece Letter

Recently a good friend of ours was talking about one of her favorite subjects, her dog.  Tucker, an English Black Labrador, is a nice, quiet, lovable mass of black hair and muscle, weighing in at eighty-five pounds or so.  Her favorite greeting is to approach you and run the entire length of her body against your legs.  My guess is Tucker is offering with this subtle "nudge,"an opportunity to give her a lengthy pat and scratch anywhere at all, as long as you wish, and  she will appreciate it just the same; whether it is at her head or above her tail, or anywhere in between.  But you had better act fast, as she plans to make this offer to anyone else who has arrived with you, so you will have to get in line if you miss your first opportunity.

Anyway, a friend of our friend (not the dog, our other friend), is looking for a dog, and, surprise-surprise, she is looking for a Black Labrador as well.  My guess is Tucker has charmed her too with a few of those aforementioned end-to-end extended nudges that Tucker will give to just about anybody.  Now, you may not have realized this, but Labrador pups are in great demand, and not just anyone can get their arms around one--and that's not because of their size, they aren't eighty to one hundred pound bundles of joy as puppies.  It takes a couple of years or so to eat enough of the food you haul before one of these friends/adopted family members before the grow into that eighty to one hundred pound territory.

The dog-seeking friend was describing the trials of finding a breeder willing to even return your calls, let alone grant her the opportunity to see one of the available pups.  The prices are too astounding to mention (ok, ok, I'll give you a hint--they run into the thousands of dollars--and I'm not talking about the cost of the food they will eat, the furniture they will befriend--giving the legs of your couch an occasional chew apparently is a gesture of friendship--or even the shoes of any and all household members to whom your new pup takes a "shine."  Oh, not the shoes, they will likely never shine again as you, like me, probably aren't willing to spend time and energy polishing shoes that have been chewed to pieces.

As this prospective adoptive parent was describing her plight, she mentioned the name of one breeder who had not even returned her calls, and it turned out to be our friend's source for Tucker--yes the dog breeder who had blessed my friends with Tucker still raises Labrador pups, apparently needing to add a few hundred thousand dollars or so to his own retirement nest egg.  On hearing this, the Labrador Puppy Parent Wannabe pleaded with our friend, asking that Tucker's "Mommy" provide a "letter of reference" for her to help her get the breeder to sell them a puppy (in case it is not obvious, she was asking Tucker's adoptive "Mommy," and not her real mother, who is apparently a tramp, making her living by giving birth to dozens of puppies; besides which she cannot hold a pen in her paws or tap keys on a keyboard worth a hoot--if she is the kind of dog who hoots--I should look that up).  My friend agreed, which was why she was telling us the story.  She was asking for our help.  As I am sure if you have ever been asked to write a letter of reference for someone attempting to undertake a career, for example, you might have struggled for the right things to say, composing this letter of reference had indeed left her at a loss for words.

Driftwood and Me

Driftwood And Me

When I woke up this morning, driftwood was on my mind.  I can't say why, maybe I was feeling windburned from the beach yesterday, struggling to keep beach umbrellas upright in a stiff breeze.  

I went to google to learn some things about it, and found myself tossed upon the waves in much the same way the very subject itself is.  (When I write my first allegory, driftwood will play an important part.)  But back to my journey of discovery on driftwood.  I was bounced from page to page as I started looking.  I was sent to Wikipedia, of course.  There I learned that driftwood is "wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. It is a form of marine debris or tide wrack."

Sounds simple enough, but I also learned it isn't just created for our amusement--as in art, or aquariums, or as a nuisance where it sometimes completely covers a beach.
  

It also forms an important part of the food chain for sea creatures.  It seems that gribblesi, shipworms and other bacteria climb aboard and consume the insides, decomposing it and turning them into nutrients for the smallest of fish, who in turn are gobbled up by bigger fish, and so on, ad nauseam.  Or maybe not "ad nauseam," I've enjoyed some pretty tasty seafood around here, and it doesn't taste like bark to me--not to be confused with the cuisine of certain Asian countries who have been known to eat certain kinds of animals we treat as pets, but that's another story.  

Back to driftwood,   While the majority of driftwood is said to have formed as trees, roots and storm-damaged limbs are washed from our shores into the sea, a fairly large proportion is formed from flotsam and jetsam, from man-made wooden objects.  Jetsam and flotsam are two distinctly different things--jetsam sounds like the country cousin-- the result of deliberately discarded wood used as dunnage, while flotsam is the more dignified-sounding one.  Flotsam is the result of shipwrecked or storm damaged wooden boats and ships.  I can imagine large groups of driftwood floating on the seas.  If they are anything like humans, they are labeling each other and "making statements" about themselves by studying their heritage.  Imagine the "Daughters of the Sunken Ships of the American Revolution" or the "Sons of the Shipwrecked Colonials."  Then, think of all those who would consider themselves superior because they were organically-grown and formed, then washed into the sea as opposed to being sawed, hammered and planed into a man-made object.  If they are anything like humans, I now know why driftwood looks so haggard and torn when it land on the shore--all that time sniping at each other about whose heritage is better than whose.  Don't even get me started on the competition about the sort of passengers they allow on board--"Don't you know those Gribbles smell so much better than those old Shipworms, or, mercy-me, those stinky bacteria!" 

Anyway, it was a long trip just wading through Wikipedia on driftwood.  I soon found myself tossed among a sea of other entries--take this one for example:  Norse mythology has it that the first humans were formed by the gods not from clay or the rib of the opposite gender, noooo...They were formed out of driftwood and called "Ask" and "Embria" (note the "A" and "E" like "Adam" and "Eve."  Hmm, some connection there--but get this, they were formed out of the best kind of trees for driftwood--Ash and Elms, yes, "A" and "E" again; I am not making this up.      

It turns out there's a new novel (2014) entitled Driftwood, and a folk music group of the same name.  Look them up on YouTube, they are really pretty good.  In the process of exploring that link, I found the Driftwood band performing a song also covered by the Chieftains.  From there I arrived at a collection of recordings made by the Chieftains (a traditional Irish Band) and some of the better-known ladies of country and folk music (Martina McBride, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krause, et al.).  

Shortly after that I floated my way to a site that offered a guide to making my own driftwood--it's a lot of work, and can take months.  Finally I surfaced in familiar territory.  I washed up on Amazon which offered to sell me a piece for just $16.09--with free "shipping," no less.  I bought one.  It arrives in two days (how they know it will wash up that soon I don't know.  I can't wait.