Sensitive persons might want to look away.

The Biological Week In Review.

Look, I know it’s only Thursday, and it’s a bit early for a biological recounting of the week, but, I’m hoping tomorrow’s going to be a bit more theoretical.

• 1 tooth  – lost
• 6 nostrils – plugged
• 20 fingernails – cut
• 30 toenails trimmed
• the contents of one human stomach – heaved
• the contents of one feline stomach – heaved x 3
• one eye held up close to the light – peered at
• one eyelash – removed
• one finger – squashed
• many screams – scrummed
• 32 ablutions – performed
• 3 foreheads fevered
• one cervix cotton-budded
• one growing leg – nocturnally pained
• one mole – fretted over
• one – paw stood on
• much excrement – scooped
• 18 feelings – hurt
• little sleep -had.

*

*News flash! My pal Eolai has put a cool painting of his up for auction on ebay.  Shipping is free worldwide and 100% of the proceeds will go to  St. Patrick’s Hospital And Marymount Hospice and Rape Crisis Network Ireland. Go see! I’ve bought a few of Eolai’s paintings and I love them.  He’s a wonderful artist whose work is vibrant yet controlled; he makes Ireland look like it’s thrumming. *

For Lent this year I’ve been thinking of giving up leaning.  I’m also giving up having a filthy, horrible cur of a cold but I haven’t made a very good start at it.

“Half the town is down with it!” so they say. The other half, smugly, isn’t.  The problem children and I are in the woebegotten half of town, on the wrong sides of the tracks of pestilence.  The girls got it a week ahead of me and are getting over it now, but my head still leaks, a jaggedy bit of serrated virus is trying to saw my uvula off, and some sort of an iron giant appears to have his boot on my chest. I don’t like any of that stuff.

All I can do is lie around groaning, pasty and noodle-limp, in a foetal position, like an overcooked macaroni elbow.  Please send your best pity immediately.  And grapes.  I probably should be eating grapes or something.  They’re a good fruit in a tragedy.

Anyway, I’ll be waiting wanly but bravely by the casement window, sneezing softly, my hands, now lying limply in my lap, now, fluttering delicately to the lace at my throat; waiting, waiting for all the lovely, lovely pity you’re going to send me in trendy stationary the colours of jewels.

I feel my voice fading now…I grow weak again…it is all I can do to whine and moan…farewell…farewell…achoo…farewell…

The chidders are on vacation for a week so we are going down to San Diego for a few days, to the zoo and Sea World and stuff like that.

Yesterday, I told the girls that,  if they weren’t on their best not-running-away behaviour in the zoo park, we would feed them to the hippos. I said this in a loving way – there was really no need for the authorities to have become involved. The tear-gas was just uncalled for, and I told them last time that I need hypo-allergenic handcuffs, otherwise I come out in a terrible rash, forcing me to sue them again, which I hate having to do.  One is forced to ask the question: is having a Child Protection Agency really the best use of our tax dollars?

Anyway, this morning I had a conversation with ProblemChild 2 about what clothes to pack.

Me: Have you chosen some t-shirts to take with us?

PC2: I want to take the blue iceberg one.

Me: But you just put that out for washing last night.   Why don’t you take your green one?

PC2: No, mummy! I’ll look like lettuce and it might make an animal try to eat me.

Me: (laughs) Ah, sweetie-pie, just stay close to us and you’ll be fine.  There’s nothing going to eat you, I promise.  The animals can’t get out.

PC2 (Looks at me, clearly uncertain.)

Me:  We were only kidding about the hippos, you know.

PC2 (Looks at me as if she’s never been entirely sure about me)

Friends, I am now experiencing a rare moment of self-doubt.  Does such a look signify a maternal failure? Or should I continue with my current parental theory of Keeping Them On Their Toes?

CAVEAT LECTOR:  If you are offended by mild to moderate rude lewdness and/or The Bishop of Bath, please abandon your reading of this post.

Wrigley Bland lived a short but interesting life that is worth chronicling becasue his was a cautionary tale, but one only to be told in whispered hushes around the fireside on windy nights.  You have to whisper in case your mammy hears you and boxes your deserving ears, because, you see, Wrigley Bland was a Very Rude Man.

This was a man who was so rude he was born on the 6th of September, 1969, a date that made even God blush when an embarrassed Gabriel explained to Him. From the start, Wrigley Bland was a … a fiddler of things.  As he grew, this only got worse, or better, depending on whether or not you were Wrigley. At 6 he was expelled from Primary School for doing a potato print in the shape of something very rude indeed.

At 13, pimpley and portly, he was expelled from Seconday school for a series of rather thoughtfully composed photos he had taken, over several months, of his thick-ankled headmistress and the Sean Beany school janitor as they conducted their regular nude Tuesday afternoon meetings about corridor maintenance.

School officials agreed that the photos were really technically very good, especially when one considered the
difficult conditions under which they were taken: standing on a dustbin, with a long angle lens trained through a frayed patch in the closed office blinds, leading to all sorts of problems with exposure and lighting.  For this reason they recommended Wrigley Bland be sent, not to Borstal, but to a School For Gifted Young Perverts, for rehabilitation through the arts.  Besides, quite apart from the photos, and the repeated incidents in the gym and the canteen and the physics lab and the sports field and the toilets and the library and underneath the stage, he was thought to be “really a very nice boy” whom everybody wanted to see do well in life.

Most of these schools for young perverts are located around Aberdeen, for obvious reasons, and so  Wrigley found himself packed off on the train with a note from his mother pinned on to his duffel coat, the contents of which included the words “jubilee teaspoons”, “salmon en croute,” “The Complete Works of A.A. Milne”, “never, ever ever” and “if you’re smart.”

Wrigley found boarding school-life difficult.  Regular counseling sessions taught him he was a bad and wicked boy, and, while he never really believed that, it did leave its mark on him.  From thereon in, he would assume a far more furtive role in his mild-to-moderate rude activities, operating only at night, and using a system of rotating wellie-boots to confuse the police about the footprints they found in area flower-beds.  Most of all, what the School for Gifted Young Perverts gave him was a very thorough schooling in Sneakiness and a child he would never know of, with Mrs. McCuish the 5th Form Pervert Counselor.

After school, there was university and a degree in Divinity, where it was much easier to pass off his obsession with sex as the mere exuberance of a youthful young priest.  This was the happiest time in young Bland’s life, despite having to deal with all the God stuff which he just didn’t buy at all. Surrounded by the similarly giggly, he could drink all the Bristol Sherry he wanted, and enjoy long relaxing evenings of saying words like “thigh” and “autoerotic-asphyxiation” with his friends, after a tense day of bible study.

Wrigley Bland, met his death, one early grey morning in his 4th year of uni. It was one of these stupid accidents, these things that make you scratch your head and hold your loved ones close as you contemplate the randomness of Fate, as cold violent and unfathomable as the universe.

Wrigley was out on his bicycle getting some early morning perving in.  He had stolen three substantial pairs of knickers, a bra with daisies on, and some sort of spiked rubber harness from the washing-line in the garden of a well-known upper-level Tory who has paid me handsomely to keep his name out of this.  On his way back to his student digs, he decided to cut across the park, admire the statuary and take some brass rubbings of the angel’s boobs to enjoy later, between Holy Mary, Mother Of God Studies and lunch.

The park at that hour was deserted, apart from the rustle a few local councilmen and woman enjoying brief leafy flings in the undergrowth before getting back into their estate cars and off to assume the mantle of municiple concern for the day.  And look!  There was the bishop of Bath up early and giving…what looked like…alms – yes alms, to an urchin!  God bless him!

Spotting a marble angel with a really good rack, Wrigley Bland dismounted his bike and approached her, clutching his brass rubbing supplies in excitment.  Looking around him furtively, he climbed the statue’s plinth,  giving that a quick rub on his way. (Because, if you’re a pervert, you can’t really not take a brass rubbing of something called a plinth, can you?)  Then, clutching at a boob for balance, he hauled himself up til his eyes were level with the statue’s cleavage.

Overhead, Wrigley completely failed to notice the naked nun and that was too bad, because she was to be the naked nun of his doom.  Her name was Sister Agatha Thaddeus, and she was fond of climbing trees in the nude.   She liked the feel of the bark against her thighs as she straddled a thick limb, feeling the sap and life of it flowing right between her legs. Her friends, Sisters Constance and Effie, were off straddling poplar limbs in another part of the park, but this morning Sister Agatha had fancied a nice bit of oak.

Sister Agatha was a larger Sister, and and intrepid one too.  Farther and farther out on the branch she ventured, huffing and puffing and enjoying nature.  Suddenly, the branch beneath her round, pink flesh snapped!  Down she fell!  Down, down onto the statue below, where Wrigley had just started his brass-rubbing…

He never knew anything about it. 300lbs of falling Sister Agatha was no match for mere solid marble, and the statue, breaking off at the ankles, toppled slowly forward, as Wrigley Bland held onto her waist and prepared to meet his Maker.

The cause of death was listed as “trauma to the head with a blunt object”, but this was misleading because the statue had an unusually pronounced left nipple and it was this that had pierced Wrigley ’s skull. The Divinity College did their best to distance themselves from the incident and so Wrigley Bland’s funeral was
sparsely attended.

Sister Agatha, suffering no more than a few bruises, declared her survival a miracle and went on the breakfast television circuit.  There, her talent for contralto singing was noticed and she gave up nunhood for a life in Parisian burlesque.

*

If you’re looking for a moral to this story, then I’m afraid you shall have to find it yourself.  Me? I merely presentthe facts; I just record life as it really, truly happens.   And if any of you should doubt the veracity of my tale, I shan’t mind, no not at all.  But I’ll know. I’ll know who the doubters are.

I have a friend who made a new Year’s Resolution to master the art of raising one eyebrow.  I value loyalty and discretion amongst my friends above all other things, except money, obviously, so let’s call this friend, who is in no way me, Sally.

RESOLUTE

“Sally” has been taking her resolution very seriously.  She knows the value of a disciplined training regime. In
her quest for amused superiority, she rises before dawn and takes her eyebrow running round the park.  On a
typical day she will do a good three miles and as she does them, she flexes her glabellar muscles vigourously. At this point in the training she doesn’t know which eyebrow will look most archly devastating when raised, so, for this early part of the day’s training, she’s working on muscle development in both.  I think this is a good call and on many occasions have said to her “Good call” even on those days it wasn’t.  I really feel a sensitive support-network is crucial for her at this stage.

Admittedly, it makes for a curious sight, a 30-something woman jogging around, her expression oscillating
floridly between classic mild runner’s resignation and apparent sudden astonishment at dustbins and squirrels and other wholly unastonishing things.  This is why she trains so early, before many people are about. In the past, lunchtime jogs have left her tearful, and really quite dismayed by rude comments thrown at her by her fellow recreators.

“Ahooohooahhoo ahoo ahhoooohoo”  She often sobs. And remembers every slight and slur.  Some have been barbarous in the extreme.

“I never even knew that was possible with a stiff, wire brush!”, I recall her remarking to me, once, in quite genuine wonderment, about a particularly unseemly suggestion lobbed by an uncouth sort of fellow.  There were not tears about that one though; she was more intellectually curious about it than shocked, as I remember.  Her voice was very high and quiet.

Anyway, back from her workout, Sally showers, massages her glabellar region with stinky oils, recommended to her as “real professional-performance grade” and “highly illegal” by her friend, “Bill”, from the online eyebrow chat forum in which she often passes her evenings.

Next, she will usually breakfast on a lean protein item and some complex carbohydrates, from time to time
startling at the increasingly nervous cat the better to glabellarly tone.  Off-schedule exercises are not mandated but she really is committed.

THE CARROT AND STICK AND FISHING-LINE APPROACH

After breakfast, the training begins in earnest.  Sally favours a carrot and stick and fishing-line approach with her eyebrows, although other individuals will find other techniques are better for theirs.  It depends on the eyebrow, its age, haircount, willingness to try new things etc.  Sitting in front of a wall-size mirror, Sally’s eyebrows are given a pep talk.  She tells them they can do it, they really can, if only they believe in themselves.  This is America, she tells them, anythingis possible with hard work and a can-do attitude!  She urges them to dream big and reach for the stars.  At this point, if she feel her eyebrow is skeptical, she may show a video of Lance Armstrong or a particularly encouraging episode of Barney, who “really possesses a lot of life-wisdom if you know how to listen” (Bill) . This is THE CARROT part.

However, on some not-so-good days – and doesn’t the questionably good Lord know we all have those – she might fall to her knees and stroke her eyebrows cajollingly, pleading either one of them to rise independently, just this once, please!  One eyebrow, hairier than its fellow, responds to this stroking a little better than the other, and some raising does indeed take place.  Sally was once told by a seaside psychic that that eyebrow had a strong masculine aura, so this doesn’t surprise her but – ever hard on herself ho ho – she doesn’t count this as an actual bona fide eyebrow raise.  At this point, wretched with shame at her lack of control with the stroking business, Sally, has often contemplating shaving her eyebrows right off and giving up, ending her battle.  But someone once told her she had nice ones, and some small foolish vanity has never allowed her to go through with it because they said her eyebrows were nice too.

THE STICK is an actual stick, with which she beats herself about eyebrows if she suspects they are not trying hard enough. It’s quite tiny but it really smarts when thwacked by someone who means it. There is also a little whip, I’m told, but it rarely used; she is not a monster.  She mentions it quite a lot though, just to keep these eyebrows on their hairy little toes.

THE FISHING-LINE approach consists mainly of hooking a fishing-line to the eyebrow and jerking it in an upward motion.  This imprints a “muscle memory” according to Bill, and Sally trusts his advice implicitly – he has been in the Unibrowular-Lifting Training Program now, longer than anyone she knows, and has amassed a wealth of knowledge, despite not ever actually managing to raise just the one eyebrow.

A variation on this is the weighted eyebrow lift, where the fishing line is attached to a series of small lead weights and the eyebrow works to lift them; but that method is only really for actors, body-builders and the professionally supercilious.  It is not advised for amateurs.

STAPLED

After a hard morning at it, Sally changes and readies herself for her part-time job as a basic-cable, viewer-send-in video-bloopers television show host.  She was given the job despite her lack of formal eyebrow qualifications because she was sleeping with the producer at the time. That producer was later found slain in his car with the note “You shan’t have her, she’s mine!” stapled to his forehead.  Investigators were led, via a fallen pair of used tweezers, back to “Bill” from eyebrow-group and he was questioned at length, but in Bill’s own triumphant words “They couldn’t get me for nuffing!” Even though nobody had accused him of nuffing anybody.

Anyway, the long and the less-long of it is that the new producer is demanding that Sally be able to raise one eyebrow or she will be thrown off the show. So you can see then, why she is so keen to acquire her eyebrow-raising skills as soon as she can.  If she loses this show it is going to be a major setback in working up to being a MSNBC news analyst.  It is Sally’s dream to one day replace Wall-Street whizzkid and famous beauty, Maria Bartiromo, as television’s most popular “Honey On the Money” or “Econobabe.”

DROPPED SCONES

And so, at the end of a busy day, Sally, her head swimming with theory, her eyebrows often aching, ignores Bill’s on average 14 texts with great new training ideas, and finally sinks into her bed.  But there is no rest for poor Sally even now. Before she can sleep, she studies publicity shots of her idol, Roger Moore for his breathtaking artistry and sheer technical virtuosity.  A small sigh will often escape as she contemplates the poetry of his rising arch, the profundity of his downward sweep.  He is a Unilevitus Glabellar God.  He is her Unilevitus Glabellar God. O to be born with such a gift!

LOVELY HAIR

Sally might weep hysterically a little at her own facial ineptitude before she sleeps, rending her sheets and tearing at her lovely hair, but let’s leave her there, shall we, friends?  Trying to comfort her now would only lead to her screaming and continued distress over strangers off the internet seeing her in her nightie.

I leave you too then, gentle blogging types, with this question: for what goal would you sacrifice your mental health?  And what goal would you sacrifice someone else’s for?  (If you are now, or have ever worked at either Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, please do not respond to that last one. Also, if you are called Candy or Biff, it might be better if you don’t answer either.)