The Department of Lateral Thinking

Corpus Callosum v.2

Posted on March 5, 2026 by George Gillson

Note: First posted on August 13, 2015

I know, I know. Every columnist on Earth has written about the differences between men and women, but I still feel the need to dip my oar into this particular literary pond. But don’t blame me; blame Downton Abbey.

Alert readers (all three of you) will recall that a while ago, I ditched my office chair and started standing up at work. This foray into standing all day was followed by working while walking on a treadmill all day but then I had to start watching Nashville every night to recover from walking all the time. I’m still walking on that treadmill but am faced with the problem of how to maintain my recovery strategy once Nashville finishes. (Damned Netflix!)

Happily, Signals catalogue came to the rescue. Over the past several years, every time I leafed through Signals catalogue I would see all this Downton Abbey paraphernalia such as T-shirts, snuff boxes, Keep Calm and Get a PhD in Neuroanatomy coffee mugs, and gold-embossed toilet paper. I kept thinking to myself: “What’s up with all this Downton Abbey paraphernalia?” So finally, out of sheer curiosity, my wife and I started watching Downton Abbey every night, which is probably why this post is overdue.

For those of you who just emerged after 62 years in an underground nuclear fallout shelter, Downton Abbey is an award-winning British television series which chronicles the saga of the nobility and the servants thereof, who inhabit a gigantic English manor house called Downton Abbey. The series starts circa 1912 but I don’t know when it ends because, so far, Netflix only goes up to Season IV.

My point in all this is that back in 1912, especially in England, men and women were still regarded as fundamentally different species, with drastically different proclivities, voting rights and sleeping quarters. In order to get to the bottom of this polarization, researchers at that time started peering at human brains (after the owners died) in order to decipher whether XX or XY chromosomes affected brain structure.

Speaking of brains, I can’t resist putting this in:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Where was I? Well, as we all know, the brain has two halves or hemispheres. The right hemisphere, conveniently located in the right side of your skull, is more concerned with verbal skills and intuition, e.g. the right brain might think to itself: “I have a hunch that my lawyer speaks Norwegian.” The left hemisphere, cozily ensconced in the left side of your skull, has more to do with logical thinking, but also football, so the left brain might think to itself: “I just can’t deduce, why in Heaven’s name, the Patriots underinflated all those footballs in the AFC Championship game. What were they thinking?”

Now, in addition to the “upstairs” brain in your head, some people including Michael Gershon MD think that the enteric nervous system or ENS, a collection of nervous tissue conveniently located in your midsection, qualifies as a sort of “downstairs” brain. By the way, this has nothing to do with that other British TV series called “Upstairs Downstairs” which also dealt with the goings-on between British nobility and their servants.I guess this just goes to show you that there’s nothing new under the stairs, or at the bottom of them, so to speak.

I don’t have a lot of space here to get into it, but the ENS is thought to be responsible for helping the colonic flora (aka microbiome) decide whether or not to have a second helping of dessert, and the ENS also helps decide whether the 16-mega-roll chamomile-scented pack of Charmin toilet paper is a better deal than the 48-roll pack of unscented steerage-class toilet paper. I guess it all depends on whether or not you like chamomile and possibly whether or not you’re out of sandpaper.

But let’s get back to when researchers started peering at the “upstairs” brain in earnest. A long time ago, somebody decided that it was probably a good idea if information could pass efficiently between the right and left halves of the brain, so the corpus callosum was invented. The corpus callosum (Latin for “tough body”) is a tough, wide, flat bundle or body of nerve fibers (several hundred million if you’re counting) which connects the two hemispheres, sort of like an I-80 for nerve impulses. I-80 is actually a great choice for a simile because it runs East-West across the United States. All East-West interstates end in even numbers whereas all North-South interstates end in odd numbers, in case you were wondering.

After a bit of peering at brains, these researchers managed to convince themselves that the corpus callosum in biological women is bigger than the corpus callosum in biological men. So for decades the corpus callosum shouldered a lot of the blame for silly stereotypes such as how women are supposedly better at multi-tasking, communicating with other human beings and devising ever more complicated schemes for sorting laundry, whereas men are supposedly better at giving intense focus to tasks like fixing the adaptive optics on the Gemini Planet Imager telescope out in the Atacamba desert in Chile. (That is, when they aren’t hiding out in their man-caves, thinking about nothing in particular, especially not how they feel.)

In 1992 author John Gray PhD wrote a book about male-female behavior differences and their relationship to brain structure, entitled “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” Despite his PhD in General Flakiness from the now-defunct, unaccredited distance learning institute: Columbia Pacific University, Gray’s book generated a storm of interest and even spawned a line of Mars-Venus dietary supplements.

Time went on and in 1997, Dave Barry PhD, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, astronomer and musician wrote a book entitled “Dave Barry is From Mars And Venus.” He did not, to my knowledge, develop a line of dietary supplements but you never know.

Unfortunately, we will probably have to wait for the Mars Mission to launch sometime in the 2030’s, to figure out exactly who is from what planet but meanwhile, we’re starting to get a better grip on our neuroanatomy.

The results of recent well-designed research, involving detailed magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of large numbers of (living) males and females of all ages, is taking some heat off the corpus callosum. Turns out there are definite gender differences in the shape of the darned thing but these differences may not mean a whole lot. Instead, we’re starting to look at general brain wiring patterns: how much traffic is on I-80 (left-to-right) and how much is on I-75 (front to back if you’re facing north), regardless of biological sex.

Turns out we’re all different: some people have more cross-brain wiring and some people are wired for more communication within each hemisphere. Any given man or woman can have a unique blend of both “wiring diagrams” which may have more to do with early experience, genetics and what sign of the Zodiac you were born under. (I may have made this last bit up.)

I could go on at length here, but I’m tired of writing about this topic, and even if I wasn’t tired of it, I can’t really think of anything else to say. I’m also feeling a bit jumpy: I can’t decide if I should walk on the treadmill some more, sort some laundry, or fix the adaptive optics in my telescope. I should probably take a page out of Satchel Paige’s book. Paige, a revered Major League baseball pitcher (or possibly it was Winnie the Pooh), once said:

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

I think I’ll just sit and stare blankly into space (pun intended) for a while. Or maybe I’ll make a spot of tea. I hear they do that a lot at Downton Abbey.

zany, offbeat humor

Prostate Blues

Posted on February 18, 2026 by George Gillson

Here in The Department of Secretory Organs, the prostate gland has been at the top of my list lately. Being the proud owner of Y chromosomes, both I and my dog, Sarge, happen to have a prostate. To be clear, each of us has their own prostate.

Warning: salacious material ahead. Keep reading!1

zany, offbeat humor

Treadmill Desks v.2

Posted on February 10, 2026 by George Gillson

This was originally posted July 2, 2015. At that time it was a little overdue because it took me longer than anticipated to get those pesky RFID chips that I mentioned last post out of my distal colon. But that’s all behind (!) me now and it’s time to move on and talk about moving in general and treadmill desks in particular.

A few months ago I was sitting at my office desk when I was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable urge to start standing at my desk all day instead of sitting at it all day. This wasn’t a random obsession like some other random obsessions I’ve had but was actually driven by my having just read a book by Dr. James Levine MD PhD entitled: “Get Up! Why your chair is killing you and what you can do about it.”

To be clear, Dr. Levine has nothing against chairs. He is an endocrinologist and an obesity researcher as well as the Director of the Mayo Clinic/Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative. One of the key messages in Dr. Levine’s book is basically that humans weren’t meant to sit down all day, and regular workouts can’t compensate for the amount of time we spend in our chairs. He is also noted for coining the phrase “Stuffed Burrowing Owls are the New Furbys”.

Actually, I’m lying. Levine coined the phrase: “Sitting is the New Smoking.”

Anyway, the rationale for why sitting is bad for you revolves around explaining why standing is good for you. When you are standing, the large muscles in your legs are more active (unless you are duct-taped upright to a tree or lamp-post) and will absorb lots of glucose (sugar) from your blood. Standing also increases your basal metabolic rate. Conversely, when you are sitting around all the time, your basal metabolic rate is lower, it’s more difficult for your body to clear glucose from your blood and your pancreas has to produce more insulin to compensate. Over time this leads to Type II diabetes.

The pancreas doesn’t get a lot of air time because, to be honest, as far as organs go, it’s pretty unfortunate-looking (Exhibit A). It’s also quite a shy organ and doesn’t get out much as it’s closeted between the stomach and the spine and surrounded by the liver, the spleen and the small intestine.

Burning glucose simply by standing is called NEAT or Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Not that it matters, but NEAT can easily be rearranged to ETNA, meaning maybe your insurance premium will go down next year if you stand all day but don’t bet on it. Alert readers will note that I shamelessly borrowed here from Dave Barry’s lexicon of literary devices which include rearranging a seemingly normal acronym to make a funnier, or at least a more interesting one.

Anyway, more NEAT means your pancreas doesn’t have to make as much insulin, and the insulin you do make will work better. This will reduce your risk of diabetes but the jury is still out regarding the effect on other degenerative conditions such as birdwatching and reselling stuff you bought at garage sales on Facebook Marketplace.

Long story short, standing at least intermittently throughout the day is much better for you than sitting for 8 hours straight. However, the shine eventually wore off just standing there, immobile, day after day. Fortunately, I was seized by yet another urge which involved converting my desk into a treadmill desk. A treadmill desk is exactly like an ordinary desk, except it’s higher and has a treadmill in front of it. Levine says walking slowly on a treadmill is a great way to increase NEAT.

Oddly enough though, with all that standing and slow walking, I found myself constantly fighting the urge to go outside and nibble grass for some reason.

Levine is widely credited as the inventor of treadmill desks but that distinction likely should belong to Nathan Edelson, who patented a design for a portable desk intended to be used with a treadmill back in 1993. Dr. Levine does get credit though, for helping to popularize working while walking on a treadmill via his Get UP! book but also via his other book: If These Boots Are Good Enough For Nancy, They’re Good Enough For You.

I bought a used treadmill, removed the handrails, slid it under my desk, built a platform for my phone, computer, stuffed Burrowing Owl, etc. and off I went. In his book, Dr. Levine cautions the neophyte treadmilling worker, saying: “There’s a tendency to want to jump on the treadmill and walk for hours and hours a day. Don’t do that. Certainly, at the absolute maximum, do half-hour on, half an hour off, for two to three hours a day.” He also suggests a top speed of 0.5 to1.5 mph.

So naturally, being the possessor of a Y chromosome (trillions, actually), I began walking for 8 hours straight, on Day One, which happened to be a Monday. By the following Thursday afternoon I was happily clocking along at 2.5 mph and by Friday afternoon, I had acute pain and tenderness in my lateral left lower extremity, six inches above the ankle. I could barely walk. I swear on my podiatrists medical license that I am not making this up.

But several weeks later, after I ditched the crutches, I was back at treadmilling and settled into a steady 1.5 mph, still fighting the urge to nibble grass and stopping only to go to the bathroom. Typing and mousing took a while to master but I got there.

Fast forward a few months. My FitBit kept flashing the “Full” symbol but I’m a few pounds lighter and my belt is several notches tighter. Tracy, one of the two people I share my office with, goes around with a hunted look in her eyes most of the time and has taken to muttering and wearing earplugs. Martin, my other office mate, is pretty blasé about the whole thing. He thinks that the electrically-grounded, tinfoil lined hat I’m wearing (to prevent static buildup) is a bit weird but otherwise he’s cool with the incessant low-grade droning of the treadmill.

Levine was certainly right about the thermogenesis bit. I had to install a couple of fans trained on my head and torso, once summer arrived. I haven’t gotten any bloodwork to check on my metabolic parameters since I started treadmilling but one of these days I will. I just have to amble on over to the nearest Alberta Health Services lab. It’s 14.3 miles one way but somehow I think I’m up to the walk.

zany, offbeat humor

Topology For Beginners v.2

Posted on January 29, 2026 by George Gillson

What follows is the Lateral Thinking Department inaugural post, written in June of 2015. I felt like I should dust it off and spruce it up a bit.

One day in June 2015, my wife Jeanette and I found ourselves sitting in an outdoor bar in downtown Austin, Texas. Austin is well known as a cultural center but also for the large number (more than a million) of Free-Tailed Bats which spend part of each year living under the Congress Avenue Bridge (also downtown).

They are renowned for their aerial abilities, stamina, and long tails which, unlike those of other bats, extend beyond the membrane that stretches between their hind legs: hence the free-tailed apellation. These bats can reach speeds approaching 100 miles per hour in level flight and can cruise at 10,000 feet. When they aren’t in Austin they are probably equipped with tiny cameras and are flying surveillance missions for the U.S. government. Or maybe the IMF. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise actually trained with these bats.

For the record, my wife Jeanette loathes bats and refers to them as “flying mice”.

Flying monkeys might be closer to the mark. Bats actually belong to the order Chiroptera which is related to primates including lemurs, monkeys, nuns, apes and chiropractors. I might have more to say about these bats later, but right now I need to get to Topology. This will require discussing Microbiomes.

to find out what the heck microbiomes have to do with topology, keep reading

zany, offbeat humor

A Christmas Tail of Grinch Feet and Radiator Coolant Problems (not to be confused with Champagne Problems)

Posted on January 18, 2026 by George Gillson

Several weeks before Christmas, the morning temperature here in Calgary was dipping well down into the minus double digits. (Calgary Civic Motto: “The temperature here in Calgary often dips well down into the minus double digits. We call this “double dipping”. In our defense we must remind you that we get more days of sunshine than any other city in Canada, except Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. And we also don’t need the Hubble telescope to see the mountains. So. Take that, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.”)

At the same time, as we were enjoying this double-dipping and also the sunshine, I noticed that the low coolant light in my wife’s aging-but-well-preserved Range Rover Sport began to light up when the engine was started in the mornings. The light would go off after a few minutes of driving, once the Rover warmed up. I reckoned that the issue would resolve when the double-dipping stopped.

Coolant indicator light aside, we also noted that our Bernese Mountain Dog, Sarge, was developing Grinch feet; all four paws were starting to look like they belonged to Jim Carrey.

Bernese Mountain Dog (not Sarge) at serious risk of developing Grinch Feet

This was a fairly dire situation because we were going away for Christmas and Sarge was going to stay with a friend of Jeanette’s while we were away. Jeanette wanted Sarge to be presentable. I think there might be mention of this in the Bible and it probably goes like this: “If thou art a woman, thou shalt not drop off thy dog for boarding at another woman’s house if thy dog hath full-on Grinch Feet or incipient Grinch Feet, and especially if there is a significant probability that thy dog might appeareth in that other woman’s Christmas photos.”

Clearly, grooming was unavoidable.

I secretly hoped that our groomer, inconveniently located in the historic town of Okotoks, a few miles south of Calgary, wouldn’t have any slots available before Christmas and I would be able to weasel out of a grooming run.

(Note: Okotoks Motto: “Historic Past, Sustainable Future, Bernice Mountain Dogs Welcome, Grinch-Feet or Not. P.S. Also, our motto is way shorter than Calgary’s stupid motto.”)

“Never try to weasel out of a grooming run” is one of the five things.

Fast forward to the Saturday before Christmas when a last-minute grooming slot opens up, I find myself preparing to head out to Okotoks. At the same time Jeanette is just finishing a conversation with a fellow named Mike, in the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) service department. Mike tells Jeanette that most likely the level of coolant fluid in the radiator overflow reservoir is a bit low and all we need to do is add no more than a cup of fluid. Mike specifies that we use “pink or orange” coolant but doesn’t tell Jeanette what brand to use.

I leave, feeling a bit mystified but also visualizing fluids of various colors. I proceed uneventfully to Okotoks, dropping Sarge off and proceeding to Canadian Tire. The only coolant brand they have is Prestone in an opaque yellow plastic jug. I want to ask the guy at the Automotive Service desk if he knows what color the Prestone is but there are a bunch of people waiting. They probably want to ask him the same question. I decide to call JLR myself and wind up talking to a guy whose name I can’t remember so I’ll call him Jake.

“Jake” tells me that you can’t mix just any coolant with the OEM coolant that’s in the radiator. I tell Jake that Mike simply said that we could add pink or orange coolant. I’m still thinking about the color of the liquid. I ask Jake what brands of coolant are pink or orange. He doesn’t know but tells me that if I come by the JLR dealership (3 days journey on horseback) they will be happy to top the coolant up for us. I feel like things shouldn’t have to be this complicated so I hang up and leave Canadian Tire feeling somewhat peevish.

I stew on this for bit and then decide to call JLR again and this time I get Mike on the line. I reiterate to him that he told Jeanette to use pink or possibly orange coolant but Jake says we should definitely use the OEM brand. Mike says I don’t have to use the OEM stuff. Then he says, “DO NOT USE GREEN under any circumstances.” I’m still thinking of the color of the liquid and also thinking to myself: whaaaat? Is green coolant hypergolic? Will it explode on contact with the OEM coolant? Like a rocket engine?

So many unanswered questions.

Anyway, I ask Mike if I should just go to a gas station/convenience store and get some pink (or possibly orange) coolant. He says go for it, so I go to the nearest gas station. They only have one brand, which is in an opaque black jug, on display in a rack outside the store, so I don’t know what color its contents are. I’m seeing a pattern develop here, but I press on.

I take the black jug inside, show it to the kid at the counter and ask him if he knows what color the liquid is. He draws a blank.

I take the jug back outside open it, unscrew the cap, break the seal and pour some of the coolant into the cap. The coolant looks yellow enough but when I empty the cap into the snow, it now looks more greenish than yellow. At least it didn’t explode on contact but I am now paralyzed by indecision.

I ponder my next move for a few seconds, then shrug. If I put the jug back on the rack and someone else buys it they are going to be cheesed off when they find out it’s been opened. The kid at the counter might get some undeserved grief. (No one wants undeserved grief, or hypergolic liquids, for that matter. ) I take the high road, go back in the store and buy it – the yellowish-green coolant – not the store.

I tell the kid what I’ve been going through and that I’m most likely going to go to the JLR dealer. I also tell him I’m convinced that a Range Rover has the ability to read your mind, discern your intent, scan your credit card and bill a service charge to your card before you even set foot in the dealership door. This is known as a Pre-Service Charge and is a lot like Pre-Crime in that movie, Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. In the movie people were arrested while they were still just thinking about committing a crime. I can’t remember if there was any sprinting involved.

At this point, you might be wondering how my coolant problem was resolved.

So read on.

Sarge was groomed. I picked him up. His paws were sleek and trim. We drove back to Calgary and went to another Canadian Tire store (Motto: We have way more coolant than that other store in Okotoks.) Sure enough, inside there was a vast forest of radiator coolant jugs to choose from. One brand, specifically intended for high end cars including Rovers, came with labels in nine colors. I suddenly realize that the service guys were talking about the colors of the labels not the liquids. I also suddenly realize that having a PhD in Chemistry can lead to overthinking the problem.

Here are the labels:

Green was conspicuously absent.

I chose purple.

Merry Belated Non-explosive Christmas!

zany, offbeat humor

Raccoon Tales

Posted on December 16, 2025 by George Gillson

Here in the Department of Occasionally Thinking About Raccoons, business has been kind of slow and there hasn’t been any decent raccoon-related news since I wrote about that raccoon in Minnesota who spent two days free-climbing a building that was over 20 storeys high.

Raccoon recently bitten by radioactive spider

All that changed when, once again my son, Drew, sent me a link to a newsfeed featuring Barney (not his real name), a raccoon who raided a liquor store in Ashland, Virginia, over-imbibed and then passed out in the bathroom. Ashland City Motto: We need 12-step programs that are more diverse, equitable and inclusive; furthermore, we also need more raccoon traps.

This raccoon behavior makes perfect sense according to what University of Arkansas at Little Rock researcher Raffaela Lesch PhD, zoologist and bioacoustician, has uncovered. Dr. Lesch says that the local Little Rock raccoons (Little Rock City Motto: We have a lot of rocks here but they’re all little; furthermore, we currently have no shortage of raccoons.) may be showing an early sign of domestication, following the path taken by ancient wild canines.

According to Dr. Lesch, the snouts of urban raccoons are getting shorter by a whopping 3.6%, compared to rural raccoons. This is a well-recognized sign of domestication. Other emergent raccoon behavioral traits that point to domestication include beekeeping, free-climbing buildings, stamp collecting, breaking and entering, and making an atrocious racket at night by purring, chittering, growling, snarling, hissing, whimpering, screeching and retching-when they drink too much.

Abuse of alcohol is another emerging sign.

As you can see from the carnage in Aisle Seven, Barney went on a bit of a rampage, probably because he couldn’t find his favorite brands of beer. Here’s one of them:

The Swedesboro Brewing Company is the proud recipient of the Beverage Testing Institute’s World Championship gold medal. No wonder Barney likes it. And in case you were wondering, Swedesboro is a town in New Jersey. Motto: We used to have a lot of Swedes here but now there are only about twelve of us left; furthermore, and Swedes aside, we have a crap-ton of raccoons: and of course, great beer.

Here’s another one of Barney’s favorites:

Streets of Toronto Raccoon Lager is unique as a neighbourhood-inspired charity beer. What’s not to like about that? And since you’re probably wondering, Toronto is quite Swedeworthy. Motto: “Last time we checked, we had about 16,000 Swedes according to the 2021 Census; furthermore, and like Swedesboro, we too, have a crap-ton of raccoons.”

For the record, I just want you to know that I am not Swedish. One of my posts, however, did contain a document entitled “Secrets of the Swedish Furniture Industry Revealed.”

Moving right along, I now relay a nugget of information given to me by John O’Sullivan, my former accomplice in the Emo Clinic. John spent several years in Uganda and he once told me that the locals there would brew their own beer by fermenting a mixture of mashed bananas, millet and water. The end result was known as Pombe or Banana Beer. A more potent hootch, known as Waragi and resembling gin, was made by distilling Pombe.

This propensity toward moonshinery might have been spontaneous but may also have arisen from the observation that elephants occasionally eat large amounts of overripe fermented fruits such as bananas and marula fruit, becoming somewhat tipsy.

From Newsbreak:

“Observers have reported elephants displaying a range of unusual behaviors after consuming marula or other fermented fruits. These include swaying and stumbling. Raccoon-like, the elephants would generally make a huge racket by vocalization aka trumpeting, often with a preference for “The Lion Sleeps Tonight aka Wimoweh.” These behaviors are reminiscent of mild intoxication. Some elephants appear more playful, chasing each other in circles, engaging in mock fights, gambling online and drunk-trunk dialing. Or is it trunk drunk-dialing? Others simply collapse for a nap in the shade, seemingly content and relaxed.”

Intoxicated Elephant Husband (trumpeting): “Doo doo doo-doo, doo doo doo doot doo, doo doodoo doo doo-doo. Doo doo doo doo-doo, doo doo doo-doo doo doo doo-doo doodoo, etc.”

Elephant Spouse: “Here! Grab my tail. I’m leading the way home. Why do you have to gobble 50 kilos of over-ripe fermented bananas every time we go to a party? And another thing. If you don’t shut your trunk and stop trumpeting The Lion Sleeps Tonight I’m going to trample you senseless.”

This fermented-fruit intoxication narrative seems a little too easy to swallow (!); however, there are alternate explanations. High blood sugar is one of them. Another explanation is that the elephants might be experiencing side effects from eating the pupae of beetles that live under the bark of the marula trees. These same beetles are used to make poisoned arrows. In case you were wondering.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that raccoons aren’t the only critters who like to take a nip now and then. Or maybe I meant nap.

zany, offbeat humor

Keeping Down With the Homo Sapiens

Posted on November 27, 2025November 27, 2025 by George Gillson

I was sitting around for the first half of November, wondering what I was going to write about; nothing was leaping out at me when suddenly I received a text from my son Drew. It was a link to an article describing the fashion preferences of chimpanzees. Just so we’re clear, a chimpanzee is not a monkey: it’s an ape. Almost all monkeys have tails: apes do not. The only reason this matters is because I was going to use “Monkey See: Monkey Do” as the title for this post.

Good thing I checked out the ape-monkey thing. The last thing you want to do is tick off a chimp by calling it a monkey. A chimp could easily rip your arm clean off if you so much as looked at it sideways. Ditto hippopotamuses. Tail or not, never trust a hippo, even if it looks like it is peacefully meditating. It will crush you like a potato chip if you disturb it.

And since you asked, I would also recommend giving Komodo Dragons a wide berth, especially if you happen to resemble a deer.

It seems I’m getting a bit off topic here. This is supposed to be about fashion trends amongst chimps. It turns out that chimpanzees are a lot like humans when it comes to fashion. (Not surprising, since we share about 99% of our DNA with them.)

This is how it works: say that you have a kid who is in the habit of wearing regular jeans with straight legs and a belt around his waist.

If you just now actually spoke that phrase out loud: “that you have a kid who is in the habit of wearing regular jeans with straight legs and a belt around his waist” then I suggest you stop reading this post immediately. You are probably suggestible and very easily hypnotized.

Anyway, one day your kid comes back from “The Mall” wearing sagging jeans: jeans that are buckled somewhere just below the butt. Your kid may now be shuffling along like he is in a chain gang but that’s not my point.

My point is that there is a high probability that your kid saw ANOTHER kid wearing sagging jeans and Sneetch-like, decided to join the club.

Chimps are no different. In 2010, a chimp named Julie, in the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, decided to stick a blade of grass in her ear and leave it dangling for no apparent reason. Shortly after that, seven other chimps started doing the same thing.

Julie died in 2013, but the trend didn’t die with her. A new study was commissioned around 2023 and into 2024 and revealed that two of the original seven copycat chimps (not to mix metaphors) were still festooning their ears with stalks of grass.

But wait! There’s more. Sometime prior to 2025, a different group of chimps who had never seen the other group, picked up the grass-blade-in-the-auditory-canal trick. And some other out-of-the-box chimp thinkers used small sticks instead of blades of grass.

Remember that these two groups of chimps had never overlapped. However, what they did have in common was that they had been exposed to the same caretakers who had been in the habit of sometimes using blades of grass or match sticks to clean their ears when working at the sanctuary. The chimps evidently mimicked what they saw.

Anybody got a Q-tip? I think I have a tick in my left ear.

Now enter Juma The Innovator, a male chimp who took a notion to insert a blade of grass into his NBA, aka Nethermost Bodily Aperture, and leave it there. Apparently this Anal Probing Propensity (APP for short) spread rapidly to other members of the group. Who knows where Juma got that idea? I doubt that the caretakers were wandering around with blades of grass sticking out of their butts but you never know.

Primatologist Julie Teichroeb at the University of Toronto (Motto: We need more Primatologists) made this observation regarding the grass blade insertions: “It just looks like an earring, you know, like a fashionable way to present yourself.”

If so, those are the weirdest earrings I’ve ever seen. More like antennae if you ask me.

Teichroeb then moved on to the NBA insertions and opined that it’s possible that the chimps were doing it to make themselves more attractive to potential mates. (Chimps spend a lot of time peering at each other’s backsides.) She noted that females, in particular, display a swelling on their rear ends to indicate when they’re receptive to a little hanky panky. Sort of like the neon “OPEN” signs you see in store windows.

Professor Teichroeb says that because the Chimfunshi chimps are fed by humans, they may have more free time to develop social trends.

“We think of, like silly, little pointless cultural ideas like auto theft, returning stuff to Work Wearhouse three years after it was purchased, and wearing a pineapple on your head, that spread amongst people,” she said.

“Learning that animals have these kinds of same, pointless little behaviours that become fads and become viral, I think it really shows how closely related we are to them, how much kinship we actually share. Or it may be that there are a lot of aliens disguised as runway models among us. Time will tell.”

Disturbingly, Jake Brooker, a psychologist and great ape researcher at Durham University in England said that the chimpanzee behaviour reminded him of the behaviour of orcas (aka Killer Whales) first spotted in the 1980’s wearing salmon on their heads like hats. This behaviour has resurfaced-no pun intended- and scientists are still scratching their heads about what it all means.

The director of the University of British Columbia’s Marine Mammal Research Unit, Andrew Trites, saw no obvious reason for the behaviour and speculated that it might be to impress other pod members or “maybe they just like the smell of dead fish.”

Blog posts, like dead fish, shouldn’t linger on so I’m winding this up but I’ll leave you with this old adage: “He who weareth a pineapple on his head shalt not frequenteth the chimpanzee enclosure.”

zany, offbeat humor

Curiosity Doesn’t Always Kill The Cat

Posted on October 13, 2025 by George Gillson

Recently, an article drifted into the Inbox here at The Department of Wondering About All Kinds Of Stuff. The article, penned by Makai Allbert, was about curiosity. This was the intro:

“Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do lists were like no one else’s.

His journals reveal an impressive range of ideas, from sketches of hearts and how blood circulates to questions about a woodpecker’s tongue and also how to make liquid soap. Nothing was beneath his attention. For da Vinci, curiosity did not wait for permission. It is what made him “the most relentlessly curious man in history,” as described by art historian Kenneth (We don’t need any more art critics thank you very much) Clark.

We’re all born with that same drive. No other species asks ‘why’ the way we do. The more researchers look, the more they find that this mental itch is more than just a childish phase or a taste for the unfamiliar. Curiosity supercharges your memory, slows down the aging process, and even makes hostile relationships harmonious.”

Overall it’s a fascinating article but I don’t think there’s much mystery surrounding the fact that no other species ask ‘why’ the way we do. Hello? It’s because they can’t talk.

Nevertheless, although they can’t talk, lots of critters besides we humans demonstrate that they are pretty darned curious. Take goats for example. Say you just bought a new pickup truck. The first thing that your goat will do is climb up and stand on the roof of that truck, to check out the view. And it will tell its friends to join in.

Maybe you don’t have a goat. Doesn’t matter. Your neighbour’s goat will eventually wander over to check things out.

Octopi are just as curious as goats. Maybe more so. If you leave your guitar unattended anywhere in the house, you can bet that your octopus will find it and will be strumming away on the thing sooner or later. I hope you like The Beatles.

Octopus practicing the chords for “Octopuse’s Garden”

Dogs aren’t necessarily noted for their curiosity but it’s clear that this dog is wondering what the heck that owl is doing in the drainpipe. And for its part, the owl was probably investigating the pipe and got stuck in it.

This brings us to cats. If an empty cardboard box is left undefended anywhere in your house, a cat will get inside it. Even if it’s not your cat.

I knew just by looking at Zoe, that she was going to be trouble. She was way too innocent-looking. Later in life she somehow got into the cold air return duct in the ceiling of the furnace room and we subsequently had to extract her from a return duct opening on the first floor after hearing plaintive meowing emanating from the walls. We thought the place was haunted.

Zoe would also wander across the street to visit our neighbors, probably looking to see if they had any cardboard boxes to explore.

Here she is, 12 years later, looking innocent as always but I know she is going to attempt to try to get up under that newly-arrived fern and she will probably knock the thing over, eventually. Cats are notorious for investigating things but also pushing these same things off a table, a countertop or other flat surface, just to see what will happen.

The good news is that people (and cats) continue to be curious as they age. And research shows that curiosity is very beneficial. We should continue to “follow our noses”, keep on reading, socialize, meet new people, ask them probing questions, play Mah Jong frequently, learn a few languages, spy on our neighbors and take up new hobbies such as tunnelling, investigative journalism, beekeeping and the like. This will benefit our brains by boosting our dopamine, increasing activity in the nucleus accumbens-whatever that is- and the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (located near Area 51). Our memory may improve, and we may reduce our risk of dementia and also our tendency to write run-on sentences.

What’s not to like?

I’m going to wrap this up now because I suddenly became curious about why certain types of metal files are called “flat bastards”, “mill bastards” and “round bastards” and I want to go find out.

I hope I can pique your curiosity too, by leaving you with two things: a vignette and a photo of a graphic T-shirt.

Here’s the vignette:

My Dad’s non-Grecian mother lived in a cozy apartment on the third floor of our old house. I was a frequent visitor up there before Grade 1 started. We’d play cards, have tea and my “upstairs” Grandma would pump me for information about what was going on below-decks. (My other grandparents were Greek. They lived on the first floor of our house and hence a continual stream of Greeks was coming and going all the time. There was a lot to keep tabs on down there.)

Anyway, one morning, during an information-gathering session on the third floor, I inquired, “Grandma, how come you’re so snoopy?”

She replied, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never find out.”

So true.

Here’s the T-shirt:

P.S. In case you are curious, curiosity only has one “u”. Check it out.

zany, offbeat humor

Going, Going, Gone

Posted on September 13, 2025 by George Gillson

Recently, my wife and I emerged from a renovation at our house and we’re now confronted by all the stuff we kept over the course of twenty years but wish we hadn’t. (If that in any way reminds you of certain Lume full body deodorant commercial tag lines, don’t even go there. I repeat, do not even think about those commercials.)

Instead, listen to “Drugs In My Pocket”, a 1979 song by The Monks. If you were a teenager in the late 1970’s and already know this song, its lyrics and its cadence, I still think you should listen to it anyway. (BTW, if you ever listened to the Strawbs band-initially known as The Strawberry Hill Boys back in 1964 -you might be interested to know that three of the Strawbs went on to start The Monks.)

I couldn’t help it. That song just popped into my head when I sat down to write about getting rid of all our old stuff:

to find out where i’m going with this, keep reading…

zany, offbeat humor

Information Gathering

Posted on July 26, 2025July 27, 2025 by George Gillson

So.

Here at the Department of Pulling Random Blog Post Topics Out Of Thin Air, this post is about a week overdue. Sometimes I have a topic at hand but sometimes I don’t have the first clue what I’m going to write about. When this happens, I usually turn to Dave Barry’s blog for inspiration. He has a legion of followers and every day they send Dave links to unusual events. Dave then dutifully posts them. Invariably, one of the links will catch my attention and suddenly an idea swirls up from the murky depths of my subconscious, like a bubble of gas that suddenly rises from the decaying plant material that lies at the bottom of a swamp. Today was no exception.

swamp — It’s not raining; those are gas bubbles aka “Swamp Farts”. Come to think of it, that might be a good name for a band.

Check this out: California serial butt sniffer Calese Carron Crowder arrested again

If you didn’t bother to follow the link, I’m quoting from it. Nobody could make this up:

“California resident Calese Carron Crowder, 36, was arrested Tuesday after he was captured on security cams crouching near a woman and sniffing her rear end in the women’s section of the Burbank Empire Center department store, according to the Burbank Police Department.…Crowder made national headlines in August 2023 after a viral TikTok video showed him sneaking up behind women at a Burbank Barnes & Noble and sniffing their derrières.

He was also arrested later that month for peeping into a family home in Glendale — and then released. Crowder has been arrested numerous times for this behaviour and has also made himself a nuisance at local dog parks.”

I may be lying about the dog parks but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true. I’m a serial dog owner and both of my male dogs immediately sniffed the nether regions of every dog they happened to encounter, male or female.

Why do they do this?

I reckon it’s information gathering. Plain and simple. Dogs reputedly can smell thousands of times better than humans. Who knows what kind of information they’re gathering from their canine acquaintances?

Information about food? Is there a dead badger in the vicinity? What was for dinner last night? The badger? Can I have some?

Dead badgers aside, there’s little doubt that this canine bum-sniffing is providing information on reproductive status. Open for business? Closed until next Tuesday? Chapter 11 aka permanently closed thanks to the vet? Does this dog I’m sniffing have a headache?

dog investigating other dog's bum — “Hello, I love you, can you tell me your name? Hello, I love you, can I junp in your game?”

So many questions…

The other thing that my dog, Sarge, likes to do is lick and sniff inside the ears of all the dogs he runs into.

dog probing another dog's ear — Hello? Hello? Anybody home? I think I see a tick in here.

I’m pretty sure I know what’s up with the ear-probing; Sarge is gathering more information on the overall health of the probee. (I might have made that word up.)

It turns out that the nethermost bodily aperture aka NBA isn’t the only source of information that is available. I swear on the medical license of famous Canadian Internist, spelunker and part-time welder, Sir William Osler MD RIP, that I am not making up the following newsflash. (I checked and omitting a period after each letter in acronyms like RIP is OK.) Not that I’m nitpicking. Or being anally-retentive.

Nitpicking and anal retentiveness aside, let’s hear what cardiologist Mauricio Waingarten MD PhD has to say. (I checked and it’s OK to not hyphenate nitpicking, again, not that I’m nitpicking.)

Editor’s Note: You have to watch these MD PhD types. Most of them are nitpicky and anally retentive, not to mention borderline crazy.

Dang it! I keep digressing. Here’s an interesting tip pertaining to earwax: or maybe a Q-tip. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)

Never try to put anything smaller than the point of your elbow into your ear-unless you are double-jointed.

A small sample of earwax/aka cerumen can provide valuable insights into health. A novel assay called the cerumenogram has been developed to measure trace amounts of volatile molecules given off by the sample. This facilitates the detection of various conditions, including cancer, a tendency toward early voting in Federal Elections, neurologic diseases, habitual use of Particle Face Cream For Men and other metabolic disorders such as diabetes, refusing to put ice cubes in your drinking water and peppering your prose with blatant falsehoods.

Who knew?

Anyway, time to wrap this up. All this business about gathering information makes me think of the old proverb:

“The man who tooteth not his own horn, that same horn shall remain untooted. The dog who smelleth not his neighbour’s bum, nor probeth not his neighbour’s ear canals, that same dog shall remain untutored. The woman who stayeth the hell out of California, stayeth the hell out of Nordstrom’s and giveth Barnes and Noble a wide berth, that same woman’s derriere shall remain unsniffed.”

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