Voce del Bambino

It's so hard to find the middle ground sometimes, don't you think?

Life's topography is just so unpredictable and in such a constant state of flux, you can really addle your brain searching for moderation, striving for consistency, and aiming for the center often just lands you quite off target.

There are times where I feel like I take life far too seriously-- I worry constantly about my job performance, for instance, and whether or not there will be enough money to sustain and support eventual procreation and child-rearing. I fret about relationships and ethics and logistics that, in the end, probably won't matter all that much. It's a good thing I don't bite my nails because, by now, I'd probably only have gnarled knuckles left.

Then there are times where I feel guilty because I don't take life seriously enough. I often make light of serious issues, the plight of my fellow man is oftentimes amusing to me-- and not even in a schadenfreude kind of way like enjoying YouTube clips of people falling into rivers or tumbling down flights of stairs-- but the petty melodramas that seem to envelop people I know or with whom I associate are often comical to me.

And I laugh. Verily, I do laugh.

Sometimes, if my mood is approaching serious, I'll feel guilty for laughing. Other times, I don't give a shit, and I'll just laugh because, damnit, it feels good, like peeing in the shower.

(NB: I say this, but I don't actually know if that feels good or not. I suppose there's really no reason to think it wouldn't feel good. Interestingly enough, peeing in the shower is a pretty hot topic at work, and seems to be discussed with disquieting regularity. I have at least four coworkers who have openly admitted to urinating in their showers. I suppose, one day, I'll try it, out of just plain curiosity and/or the eventual gerontological incontinence.)

Yesterday morning, I was listening to NPR on my way to work, as I often do, more out of habit than out of a desire to stay informed about the often esoteric and far-removed events of the globe and its insipid inhabitants. As I mentioned on Facebook in a moment of pure drollery, it's amazing that I can listen to the news on the radio for a full hour and, at the conclusion of that hour, still have no idea what the hell is going on in the world.

But, I listen, because I think I ought to listen.

So, yesterday, I was listening to Morning Edition, because I'm white and wear glasses and drive a Scandinavian sedan and have a job where I get health benefits, and a particular story struck my ear in a very discordant and unfamiliar way. It was a story by reporter Kelly McEvers, about Bahrain detaining a physician who administered aid to protestors. McEvers described the circumstances surrounding the detention of the doctor, and then proceeded to introduce audio recordings of an interview done with one of the doctor's female relatives. McEvers explained, "We've altered her voice so authorities won't recognize her."

Which is good that she mentioned that, otherwise I would have thought this woman was a card-carrying member of the Lollipop Guild.

Honest to God, they made her voice sound like Alvin and the goddamned Chipmunks. It was ridiculous. It was Monty Python. It was... fucking hysterical. Of course, what she was saying wasn't hysterical at all-- it wasn't even mildly funny, like in an ABC sitcom sort of way-- it was very serious, in fact. For instance, she said,

"The guy who took him said just you can just wait outside. And then they waited for a very long time."

I mean, that's not even grammatically correct. It's not funny at all. It sounds like poorly-translated dialogue from "Dinner with André".

And yet, try to imagine it said in a voice that sounds like a three-year-old who's been sucking down helium for the past five minutes, and you'll be rolling around on the floor with your pancreas about to burst. Honestly, there were fucking tears streaming down my cheeks. And they kept quoting her, and it got even funnier. I was begging McEvers to stop, but she couldn't hear me. Because she was on the radio. With the helium woman.

It just goes to show you that even a vaunted news organization like NPR makes poor choices and/or outright mistakes. Like in their article announcing the death of Jack Kevorkian, where they talk about the first assisted suicide he ever performed:

"That's when Janet Adkins climbed into the back of his VW van in a suburban Detroit park, laid down and waited as Kevorkian put a needle into her arm."

An unbelievably pedantic and uncommonly helpful reader named Lili Fuller replied with a comment, writing:

"Within the text of this story, the writer has confused the past tense of lay and lie. Janet Adkins lay down, she didn't put anything down. Please, NPR, ask your reporters to pay attention to their usage. After all, your listeners expect you to perform to a higher standard than the rest of the media."

And if you think Lili Fuller is a stitch, just think about her saying that fucking annoying shit with her voice altered to sound like a baby.

Doctor, Doctor: Gimme My Designer Vaginer

People who still read the newspaper, I think, do so for lots of different reasons.

I think a lot of people who read the newspaper do so mainly so they can feel superior to those who don't. (Isn't that an obnoxious thing to say? If you want more, raid the archives.)

Of course, nobody feels more superior than the people who still read the newspaper in print. But we know what they're up to. They're the kind of people who refuse to get cable and microwaves, just so they can stand on ceremony and talk about what purists they are and how they delight in and concurrently suffer for their insistence on eschewing technology.

People like, oh, my parents.

Dickheads.

Some people read the newspaper to find out who got shot or stabbed or raped or arsoned overnight. If you're not a nightowl, you know that a lot happens in the smaller and larger world after you've rubbed Noxzema onto your hands and/or onto your lover's erect penis and gone to bed. Waking up and checking out the newspaper is like finding a veritable gold mine of stray bullets, sirens, semen, and aggravated battery.

Other people read the newspaper to see what that bald-ass motherfucker, Ziggy, is up to, and to see if he's been hired by Ikea to star in a new series of their Ektorp instruction manuals with the strange-looking potato people.

I read the newspaper. Kind of. Over the course of the last year, I consult http://www.philly.com/ and http://www.nytimes.com/ mostly to see if there is appropriate blog fodder, but I'm also semi-interested in who got gang-banged and bang-ganged overnight. In Philadelphia, lots of people do, so it's good to try to keep track if you can. It's not easy.

Sometimes, though, I'll check out a feature article or two if a title piques my interest. That is, after all, what titles are supposed to do, as I learned in 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th grades, and again in Journalism 210: "Media for the Chromosomally-Challenged" intro class in college. You never know what you're going to find. A local high school's scabby, bespectacled tech gurus are secretly webcam photographing young, lithe students doing homework on their laptops in their tank-tops and underoos... two rabid raccoons are on the loose causing havoc with ritzy resident's toy poodles and pomeranians... some crazy white woman is recruiting for the Taliban...

Oh, and friendly, resourceful, creative plastic surgeons in my neighborhood are helping out women with deep pocketbooks by giving them "designer vaginas."

apussysayswhat?

That's right, Pussy. You heard me. Designer vaginas.

Here's how it started...

Like all things that are now absurd, ridiculous and ethically dubious, this particular practice started out innocuously enough as a way to assist women with actual medical problems, like a vagina that looked like it had been put through a wheat thresher due to the passing of obese triplets or a panther child. Women with certain urinary tract conditions have been helped by physicians who have reconstructed various components of both the interior and exterior urogenital system.

And that's very nice.

But, just like facial plastic surgery, which was originally intended for burn victims and car crash survivors and people who stood too close to turbo-prop plane propellers, the practice of vagectomies (my word-- patent-pending) has gone, well, awry.

Enter: financial crisis.

Now, if you're a wealthy individual, and you've been advised by your Wealth Management Consultant that you need to tighten your purse-strings, what's the first thing you're going to cut, after downsizing from a Maserati to a Maybach, donating a small selection of your mink stole collection to science, and selling off your least attractive female child to a hairy-chested guy named Manolo?

You're going to give your plastic surgery budget a little nip and tuck.

After all, you've probably had your ass lifted and your cheekbones cracked and your eyelids stapled and your tits re-woodblocked-- so, really, there couldn't be that much left to do besides sandpapering and varnishing your forehead.

Enter: the vagina.

"Because of the recession, most cosmetic surgeons are doing far less [business] than they have in previous years, but I'm busier than ever," said one area plastic surgeon who partially credits vaginoplasties and labiaplasties with his practice's success. "Women want to look good all over and feel better, too."

Well, doc, they sure do, don't they?

Now, if you want the "perfect vagina" you can get one that's totally made-to-measure. Your dumb-ass, lumbering ox of a lover can't find your G-Spot? Apparently, some plastic surgeons can give you a "G-Shot" which is exactly what you're hoping it isn't: a shot of collagen to surgically enlarge your G-Spot. Maybe they can even coat it in neon reflective paint to make it easier to see in the dark, too.

If that image isn't disturbing enough, what pops into your cooch when you think of the word "hymenoplasty?"

That's right: they can make you a brand new hymen, so no one will ever have to know. Think of the possibilities! It's positively clit-boggling.

Critics say that these practices are tantamount to genital mutilation but, surprisingly, the plastic surgeons don't seem to phased by the critique. It must be all that money they're making from desperate housewives who want their "vaginal area to feel like a teenager, really. It's like back to its original state," one local hausfrau said.

Really? Back to its original state? That sounds a far lot younger than "teenager" to me, and that makes me positively ill. Your husband must be a very sick individual if he thinks your vagina going back to its "original state" is a good thing.

Life's funny, you know? I went to the vet yesterday to have our new puppy, Molly, all checked out. The vet was all but awestruck as he entered the room, spending a moment or two just to gaze at her.

"You know," he said, "she's just beautiful. I'll bet her genetic make-up would be very interesting."

I smiled and rolled my eyes at the same time, to indicate how I felt about pursuing that particular avenue of financial ruin.

"Well," he said, "if you ever run into a large sum of money that's just burning a hole in your pocket, and you can't think of absolutely anything else reasonable or prudent to spend it on, maybe you'll spring for it-- just for the heck of it."

I nodded my head and stroked Molly's head.

Or maybe I'll just get cockectomy to make the tip of my penis resemble the head of a bald eagle.

Prescribing Information

If you ever want to scare the happy shit out of yourself, read the "Prescribing Information" for any prescription drug you happen to be taking.

My mother-in-law was visiting this weekend, so, consequently, I spent an inordinate amount of time locked in the bathroom. With scant reading material from which to choose, I decided to open up a trial sample of Xopenex, my rescue inhaler, and read the prescribing information. I'll never feel the need to watch a horror film in the dark ever again.

First off, there's the stuff I didn't understand, which is good, because you can't be scared of what you don't understand. For example, the following:

"The active component of Xopenex HFA (levalbuterol tartrate) Inhalation Aerosol is levalbuterol tartrate, the (R)-enantiomer of albuterol. Levalbuterol tartrate is a relatively selective beta2-adrenrgic receptor agonist. Levalbuterol tartrate has the chemical name (R)-(x1-[[(1,1 -dimethylethyl)amino]methyl]-4-hydroxy-1,3-benzenedimethanol L-tartrate(2:1 salt)."

Oh. Okay.

My 10th grade chemistry teacher drove to work in a rusted-out Chevrolet Chevette, wore broken glasses held together with scotch-tape and opined regularly on the joys of "butt-bumping," so, needless to say the aforementioned jargon holds no meaning for me whatsoever.

If you turn the paper over, you'll read about the joys of drug interactions, complications, side effects, the ability of the drug to be excreted in breast milk and, now my personal favorite: "Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, and Imprairment of Fertility." Ready?

"In a 2-year study in Sprague-Dawley rats, racemic albuterol sulfate caused a significant dose-related increase in the incidence of benign leiomyomas of the mesovarium at, and above, dietary doses of 2mg/kg/day (approximately 30 times the maximum recommended daily inhalation dose of levalbuterol tartrate for adults on a mg/m2 basis and approximately 15 times the maximum recommended daily inhalation dose of levalbuterol tartrate for children on a mg/m2 basis)."

There are also discussions of this product being used on "Golden hamsters, mice, pregnant rats, rabbits and dogs." 5 out of 111 of the mice born to mothers who used my inhaler were born with cleft palate. They will be teased in school.

I also enjoy the side-effects portion of the informational packet, because now I think I have all of them, even though I use this inhaler maybe eight times a year:

"cyst, flu syndrome, viral infection, constipation, gastroenteritis, myalgia, hypertension, epistaxsis, lung disorder, acne, herpes simplex, conjunctivitis, ear pain, dysmenorrhea, hematuria, and vaginal monilasis."

Yes, I even think I have that.

Funnily enough, they also include "asthma" as a possible side-effect stemming from the use of this inhaler.

People usually think about "TMI" as your co-worker telling you about the time she found poop schmear on her thong bikini in Key West or the time you jerked off your high school boyfriend nine times in one weekend and his cock bled all over your parent's sheets, but TMI comes in all shapes and sizes, and, sometimes, it comes in a levalbuterol tartrate suspension.

I like to stay informed, and, as a former healthcare professional, I enjoy conversing with medical professionals on a relatively intelligent level, but, really, there's no reason for anybody to read their prescribing information, unless they're particularly starved for a way to pass the time in the bathroom. Just know that, after you read it, you may very well wish you hadn't.

I just hope that, the next time I'm in the midst of an asthma attack, I don't start thinking about chemical compounds or Smoot-Hawley rats with fucked up mouths.