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.
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.
Jim Carrey’s Grinch Feet
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.
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.
“Clean-up in Aisle Seven”
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
Om, Om, Om…
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.”
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.
Our cat, Zoe, as a kitten
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.
Cat and Fern: Trouble Brewing
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:
Note raised eyebrow
P.S. In case you are curious, curiosity only has one “u”. Check it out.
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:
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.
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.
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?
“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.
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.”
In my last post, I mentioned that Dave Barry has a Substack and in his most recent offering he wrote about his lifelong battle with his hairstyle, which he says, at times resembles this coconut:
At least he still has his hair.
Thank you, Dave, for bringing this issue to my attention, as it opens the door to discuss men’s grooming issues in general. Men have been problematic for women for a long time. Most of the complaints undoubtedly revolved around bathing and routine maintenance and this has led to the invention of many things including shaving cream, soap, scissors, razor blades, deodorant, tweezers, nose hair trimmers, toenail clippers, dental floss and SAXX underwear.
Cro-magnon wife: “Pheee-ew. Honey you need a bath, a haircut and you have to do something about those eyebrows.”
Clearly, based on his expression, you can see that this guy is basically OK with how he looks.
Cro-magnon husband (inside voice): “I’m not listening. I’m not listening.”
Apparently, some men ARE listening though, because now “brow servicing” for men is a thing. Especially for men over forty.
Man over forty in salon: “Hello, I’m here for my bi-monthly eyebrow servicing. And pest spraying. The eyelash mite situation is getting out of control.”
This now brings us to our destination, which is the “Particle 6-In-One Face Cream for Men” commercial. This commercial has to be a serious contender for the list of the World’s top ten most annoying commercials. You should watch it now. Then we’ll talk.
A few days ago I had nothing better to do so I went over my To-Do list which includes things like rearranging my sock drawer, trying to figure out witty comments to make about the posts that Dave Barry is putting up on his new Substack and last but not least, updating my Alien Abduction Checklist.
With the threatened disclosure of sealed UFO files from the 1950’s and also the discovery of things like ancient Mesopotamian Cylinder Seals, you can’t be too careful these days. Everyone needs to be aware of the possibility that you, your accountant or maybe even your Congressperson/Member of the Legislative Assembly has been the victim of an alien abduction.
Ancient Mesopotamian Cylinder Seal
See that creature to the right that looks like the love child of a praying mantis and a donkey? That is almost for sure an alien, getting ready to probe the unsuspecting Mesopotamians. Or it might just be another Mesopotamian standing on his/her/their head. How can anybody know for sure?
The Daily Mirror may know for sure because it recently featured an article listing six signs that might point to an alien abduction. The signs are: tiny bumps under the skin (possibly indicative of implantation of sensors), nosebleeds, strangely realistic memories such as being “probed” by reptilians, time gaps/lost time, and development of psychic powers such as the ability to know when your dog wants to go outside.
That’s all fine but I have my own list, which I feel is way more accurate than the Daily Mirror’s list-not that I’m biased. The key is to look for abrupt changes in behavior and the acquisition of new abilities other than mind-reading.
Here goes:
One of the most common indicators is when a SOAP (Survivor Of Alien Probing) abruptly ditches their pet for a new, more menacing, more alien-looking creature. One example would be swapping out a goldfish for an alligator gar. Clearly, the alligator gar (on right) did not originate on Planet Earth. It can be found in Texas, though. And Texas isn’t all that far from Nevada. (Note: these fish are disgusting, They can be 7 feet long, weigh over 200 lbs and will eat small mammals including unsuspecting toddlers. I’m probably lying about the toddlers.)
Anyway, Geography aside, another example of abrupt pet-upgrading would be ditching an innocent, normal-weight zebra finch for an imposing, underfed shoebill crane. Equally clearly, the shoebill is also not of Planet Earth. It is not found in Texas, either.
OK, enough about pets. Yet another behavioral clue is an abrupt change in handedness which can happen any time the person in question is under acute stress such as being in the middle of a sword fight. Jut don’t make the mistake of accusing someone who is ambidextrous of being a SOAP. Also, please watch The Princess Bride if you don’t know what the hell I am talking about.
What about food? Take cheese for example. There are many well-documented cases of sudden changes in cheese preference following an alien abduction, e.g. switching from Velveeta to Casu Marsu, a soft cheese which requires living cheese fly larvae (Piophila casei ) for its taste and liquidity . This cheese is banned on most planets but not California. Which explains a lot. If you need to throw up in your mouth, go ahead. I’ll wait…
SOAPs have also occasionally displayed a sudden hankering for a dessert featuring dried elephant dung. I swear on Julia Child’s gastroenterologist that I’m not feeding you B.S.
E.S. maybe but not B.S.
I could go on with a few more random SOAP “tells” and in fact, I’m going to do that right now. It’s too late to turn back.
Abruptly gaining the ability to sort laundry to your spouse’s satisfaction will probably lead to this comment. “Who are you and what planet are you from, even?”
A sudden propensity to start wearing a curlew costume and then walking 53 miles is another dead giveaway. The 53 miles is very significant because the B-52s wrote a song called “53 Miles West of Venus.” Coincidence? I think not.
If you get the following message when you open a Fortune Cookie, it might also raise your index of suspicion that you yourself are a SOAP:
The “others” are deeply moved-read unsettled-because they probably feel kind of naked: they know you are reading their minds. And their dogs minds.
Lastly, finding a copy of an alien abduction insurance policy on the desk of a SOAP suspect at the office would pretty much clinch things in my book. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to broker Allan McNulty, commenting on a potential new offering by the Apollo on-line insurance company:
“Similar to key man or key woman life insurance coverages, if you lose an essential contributor to your organization — potentially to another galaxy — this could be disastrous for your business,” commented LeGear Pelling Agencies commercial & specialty markets broker Alan McNulty.
McNulty added that alien abduction coverage would bridge the “intergalactic personal risk gap challenge.”
Like I said at the start, you can’t be too careful these days.
With that admonition, I’ll wrap this post up. I have to go wipe my nose anyway. It just started bleeding for no reason. Plus I think my dog is telling me he wants to go outside.
The other day I was leafing through the latest edition of Plate Tectonics magazine when I came across an interesting article.
Alert readers know that Plate Tectonics is not about dinnerware.
Plate Tectonics is the branch of science that concerns “the structure of the Earth’s crust and many associated phenomena resulting from the interaction of rigid lithospheric plates which move slowly over the underlying mantle, minding their own business most of the time, voting in favor of fiscal responsibility and fewer pronouns, when need arises, and occasionally crashing into each other, causing earthquakes, eruption of deep sea hydrothermal vents and last but not least, toilet paper shortages.”
Actually, I’m lying. First of all, there is no “Plate Tectonics” magazine. If there was, no one would read it. There’s a lot of stuff going on down below the Earth’s surface but most of it is happening extremely slowly. Reading a magazine devoted to Plate Tectonics would be like reading a magazine devoted to what you can learn by watching your toenails grow.
The Department of Lateral Thinking 
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