DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I took off my sunglasses and reached out to shake my dentist’s hand. He reached out but froze halfway, aghast. “What happened?!” he said, his eyes wide above the paper nose-mask. “Your nose is all red — it looks like somebody hit you!”

“Oh,” I said, “my sunglasses leave red marks. It’s nothing.” I mentally dismissed the alarm that had started adrenaline boiling through my veins.

“No, really!” he continued, as he handed me a mirror, “see how you’re all blue under your eyes, and your nose is red.”

He was right. I looked ghoulish. I felt like a cartoon, looking in a mirror to see some grotesque monster-head peering back at me. I shook my head and felt reality snap back into place — it’s just my face, colors distorted by sun, wind, lack of sleep, and the green fluorescent light in the dentist’s office. If you stare at anything too closely it will begin to look bizarre, an unfamiliar collection of lines and textures. Still, he’d made me self-conscious and unsettled in my own skin, and I wasn’t happy about it.

A couple of minutes later, I bit him.

I haven’t seen Holes yet, but I will, even though (a) it’s a Disney film, and (b) I do not have teenaged children who could learn the value of a hard day’s work in the hot sun.

The book was really great. Read my review: Holes, by Louis Sachar

Of the movie, Mick LaSalle writes,

It was directed by Andrew Davis, who has made too many good movies for it to be a coincidence… He allows for outlandish characterizations but keeps the movie real, not permitting it to degenerate into silliness despite the inclusion of typical kid-movie jokes about smelly feet and flatulence.

What’s wrong with silly jokes about smelly feet and flatulence? If these are really just a kid-movie phenomenon, maybe I’ve been seeing all the wrong movies.

Apple’s Movie Trailers site hosts the Holes trailer in 3 stream sizes.

In an article about the transmission of SARS, Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Rob Stein of the Washington Post writes:

…although the primary route of SARS transmission is through droplets that infected people spray out when they sneeze or cough, scientists had detected evidence of the virus in feces and urine… That would provide an alternative explanation for how the disease spread rapidly through a Hong Kong apartment tower…

What sort of nasty plumbing problem allows for that leap of logic? Am I misreading something, or does the statement above imply that residents of the infected apartment building are exposed to neighbors’ toilet outflow on a regular basis?

The Voice of America confirms this disgusting hypothesis, in an article called Researchers Say Plumbing Helped Spread of SARS in Hong Kong:

Secretary for Health Yeoh Eng-kiong says most residents in the Amoy Gardens complex probably picked up the virus in their bathrooms, that large amounts of human waste carrying the virus went into the sewage system and leaked into apartments connected by toilet pipes.

I find this disturbing: camo paint on a jeep is bad enough, in terms of promoting violence and the sort of chest-thumping too-many-Y-chromosomes machismo that got us into Iraq to try to kill a bunch of people who we’ll now chase into Syria and any other neighboring country that had not-coincidentally already been targeted for American invasion by the Project for a New American Century memo back in 1998… but even worse, in my opinion, is painting mock bullet holes into the camouflage.

War is arguably necessary sometimes, but celebrating it like this seems demented to me.

I had occasion to have my pulse measured yesterday. The nurse had just taken my blood pressure, which I’m told actually raises one’s pulse temporarily, due to fears that one’s arm is about to be pinched off just above the elbow. Also, insofar as I was sitting in a doctor’s office, surrounded by gleaming instruments of stainless-steel discomfort and the aroma of disinfectant barely masking the odors of horrific procedures taking place on the still-warm examination table every half-hour, I felt sure my pulse would be abnormally high. Not that I was worried, no. Really, I don’t mind going to see the doctor.

While she took hold of my wrist, I tried something I’ve never done — biofeedback. I started thinking “low pulse, heart slowing down, relaxing, no need to panic, I’m sure they’d never use that speculum on me” although my heart seemed to be pounding away like it always does, in complete ignorance of my conscious directions.

The nurse counted up the beats while the seconds ticked by. And then she said, “wow.” I took a deep breath. Maybe she’d finally diagnose the family mitral-valve prolapse or put in an emergency page to the staff cardiologist. (I wonder if it’s entirely healthy to always expect the worst. At least, this way, I’m rarely disappointed.)

But she said, “you have a very low pulse. Has anyone ever told you that before?” I admitted that I’d heard that before; I had a vague recollection that my resting heartrate was in the low 60s, which is at the low end of the normal range (60-100). I asked, “What number did you get?”

She said, “52.” That’s a solid 8 bpm lower than I’ve ever known it to be. Until this morning when, convinced that she’d miscounted, I measured it myself… and came up with 48.

I researched this today. The condition is called bradycardia. Its possible causes are an unpleasant lot, including:

• serious head injury
• shock
• heroin overdose

Here’s the icing on this dysfunctional cake: “If this is left untreated, it can result in death.”

It could be true that I’m healthy and just happen to have a low heartrate. I suppose it’s unlikely I’d be getting through my days if I was in shock, or had a serious head injury. I believe I’ve never used heroin, but isn’t denial one of the first symptoms of abuse? Perhaps someone’s been slipping some junk into my rice milk.

On the other hand, life (whether treated or not) can also result in death. I’m hoping for an exception, but there’s definitely a strong probability I’ll end up pickled and boxed and stuck in the ground, just like the rest of you. Perhaps sooner than later, if my pulse keeps dropping.