Today’s theme is: Your disgusting body. Sure, God gave you arms long enough to scratch yourself between the shoulder blades and touch yourself in an impure manner. But he also gave you a colon, the body’s own smelly sewer pipe, and do-gooders took it from there and gave us the Colossal Colon, billed as a 40-foot long crawl-through exhibit where you can look upon the price of bad eating, not to mention genetic bad luck — Crohn’s disease, polyps, cancer, whatever.
It passed through (sorry) Fort Wayne recently, and the medical writer at my alma mater wrote a story. She played it straight, probably because the last time she dared to insinuate that the health beat might have a lighter side, in a column poking fun at the endless (Your Disease Here) Awareness Months clogging her calendar, the paper got a bunch of pissy letters from porphyria sufferers.
Honestly, I don’t know how you write a story about the Colossal Colon without at least a whiff (sorry) of humor, but I guess it comes from being a grown-up and leaving the snickering over whoopee cushions and fart jokes to junior-high kids.
But some of us never do. So in the interest of brightening your day, here’s a picture of the Colossal Colon with a dog in it.
OK, one more: Nothing says “friends forever” like having your portrait taken in the Colossal Colon.
Moving right along.
I thought the Wendy’s/chili/finger story would go away when the woman who made the allegation turned out to be a lawsuit-crazy crackpot, but I guess not. The New York Times takes an interesting look at the sort of situation that makes “spokesman for a fast-food chain” a job where you never know what’s coming around the bend. How can you resist a story with the headline, “CSI: Wendy’s”? I can’t.
But can we continue with the body theme? We can. Eric Zorn has been all over the Our Lady of the Stained Underpass story, breaking out of Chicago, where thousands believe a Marian apparition has emerged in yet another unlikely place. What is it with these Marian apparitions? Grilled cheese sandwiches, toasted tortillas? Proof that God has a sense of humor.
Everyone says the stain looks like Mary, but I beg to differ: It’s a vagina. My Chicago source says others agree, and that in fact it’s being called the Vagina Mary, but you won’t read that in Professor Zorn’s column, because it appears in a family newspaper.
Further? Sure! It seems Mitch Albom, newspaper columnist, best-selling author, playwright, talented musician, radio-show host? Is also? Choose your body part: … the stories about Albom’s bad behavior, particularly to underlings, are legion. For example, Lessenberry says one of his students quit an internship at WJR radio after Albom threw a computer keyboard at her. Art Regner, co-host of a sports talk show on WXYT-AM, experienced Albom’s wrath firsthand. “I remember one time when I was his producer, he was unhappy with the way something had gone,” Regner says. “Even if they were upset, most people would have a few words and that would be it. But Mitch � Mitch screamed and screamed. It was a major tantrum.”
I can be a real asshole, too, but I don’t think I’ve ever thrown anything harder than a wad of paper at someone. So much for all that wise counsel at Morrie’s bedside.
With that, I think it’s time to wrap it up. I’ll take that fingerburger to go, because my stomach’s growlin’.
mary said on April 22, 2005 at 10:31 am
So Mitch is an asshole. I’m going to really get serious about developing a standard personality profile of “friends of Oprah.” She endorsed my current governor, fawning all over him on air when he was running. He’s a really big asshole, which he’s now proving to everyone who wasn’t aware of it earlier. Dr. Phil is, at least to me, an asshole in the making if not a full on one. Does she enjoy the company of and the promotion of assholes or do they become assholes after she endorses them?
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Nance said on April 22, 2005 at 10:38 am
Honestly, I don’t know how people in Oprah’s position know who their friends are. How ironic, to be a person genuinely interested in others, and to have a job where you can meet and get to know literally everyone from welfare moms to heads of state — but your wealth and influence is so great that you never know why, exactly, they’re your friends. I don’t resent her circle of black-Hollywood friends, but yeah, Dr. Phil? Please. I’ve only watched that show once, and it made my skin crawl.
I’ve been trying to keep an open mind on Mitch. I’ve heard all those stories, too, and I know how easy it is for a person that successful to arouse envy and resentment in others. But throwing keyboards at interns? An intern? Man. At least Bob Greene only tried to screw them.
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harry near indy said on April 22, 2005 at 10:42 am
hey mary, who is your current governor?
names, PLEASE. some of us want to know on whom to get snarky.
and nancy, lance mannion is a little bit peeved with references to the new pope as joey ratz.
and writing of colorful, soprano-influenced names, i believe joe pantoliano goes by the name of joey pants, and he doesn’t mind it, either.
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mary said on April 22, 2005 at 10:50 am
Harry, I have the Terminator for Governor. Governor Ahnuld. He’s toning down the “I’ll be bahck” and “hasta la vista baby” stuff in his political appearances because it was getting on peoples’ nerves. He really stepped in it the other day suggesting the US close its borders. He’s claiming now that he no speak the English so good, and he didn’t really mean “close” the borders. He even has commercials for himself on television, where an offscreen voice attacks the nurses union as being only interested in financial gain. It then says, “only one leader works in the interest of the state.” This sounds a bit too “Ein Staat, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer” for me, but perhaps my dislike of action movies colors my opinion.
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brian stouder said on April 22, 2005 at 11:01 am
“But throwing keyboards at interns? An intern? Man. At least Bob Greene only tried to screw them.”
Agreed, if it is true.
Looking at the currently progressing demolition job being done to John Bolton, though (by a person he alledgedly acted terribly toward, a decade ago, and who just happens to be a somewhat rabid W-hater), one wonders.
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Dwight Brown said on April 22, 2005 at 11:09 am
“I thought the Wendy’s/chili/finger story would go away when the woman who made the allegation turned out to be a lawsuit-crazy crackpot, but I guess not.”
And, in a nice bit of irony, the lawsuit-crazy crackpot was apparently arrested last night, after the *NYT* story went to bed. Not many details yet, but FARK has a link to local news coverage.
“and nancy, lance mannion is a little bit peeved with references to the new pope as joey ratz.”
I agree. We should show a little respect: Pope Joey the Rat, if you please.
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Nance said on April 22, 2005 at 11:17 am
And here I thought the Colossal Colon would be the hey-Martha link of the morning. Shows what I know.
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4dbirds said on April 22, 2005 at 11:20 am
Well Nance, I would tell you my colonoscopy experience but it is all behind me. Hahahah. I slay me.
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brian stouder said on April 22, 2005 at 11:27 am
by the way, regarding the underpass vagina(!), didja ever see the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray’s mom does a sculpture of a huge vagina, and Ray gets stuck with it in his living room?
It was pretty funny…and I kept wondering how they got it onto over-the-air tv!
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brian stouder said on April 22, 2005 at 11:41 am
“And here I thought the Colossal Colon would be the hey-Martha link of the morning. Shows what I know.”
For what it’s worth, when I read the following article this morning, I thought of NN.C, what with all the avid fans of The Wire hereabouts.
Granted, the story is pretty rough – one witness a month gets ‘chalked’, on average – so that murder convictions in Baltimore are FALLING even as the murder rate keeps CLIMBING….
but think of all the great tv drama potential!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7927-2005Apr21.html?referrer=email
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Dorothy said on April 22, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Brian, I’m almost positive the Everybody Loves Raymond episode you referenced was before the Janet Jackson debacle. That probably says enough about how it got on the air. I saw it, and it was funny, and I can’t recall if they ever actually said the word vagina. Didn’t they do a lot of whispering?
And I don’t recall a moment of my colonoscopy experience. I was asleep the whole time and blessedly unaware of the entire thing! When I woke up the nurses were asking me where I got the cute bag I used to carry my clothing (I made it). I made the doctor wait while I dished to the nurses about the stores where I bought the pattern and the fabric. They loved it when I shushed the doctor!! The look on his face was priceless.
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Cynthia said on April 22, 2005 at 1:54 pm
If I were that intern, I would have thrown that keyboard right back at that jerk. I bet I would have scored a direct hit on that giant head of his.
Why do people take this sort of crap? I’m tired of people not fighting back.
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mary said on April 22, 2005 at 2:15 pm
I did call my son over to see the colossal colon photos and he sort of liked them. He’s home from school with a stomach flu, so they were less amusing than they might be on some other day.
There are Paula Abdul stories on both CNN and MSN’s sites today, but not the same one. One says she sleeps with the teenaged boy contestants and the other has her saying she isn’t addicted to pills.
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Dick Walker said on April 22, 2005 at 2:19 pm
I was handed Albom’s Five People You Meet in Heaven by a normally bright friend who insisted I drop everything and read it right away. I actually did just that and the farther I got into it the more my jaw dropped toward the floor. “Sorry,” I told my friend. “Strikes me as a p.o.s. written by a poseur.”
But then, one of the biggest assholes I know writes exquisitely beautiful and meaningful songs. How does that work?
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alex said on April 22, 2005 at 7:10 pm
Our Lady of the Stained Underpants. I swear, hold up a Rohrschach to the faithful and they’ll find Marian devotionalism in it. What a shitty post you have up today, Nance, and I mean it in the best possible way. You scooped me on the big poop chute at the mall, but then I haven’t had time to write all week. The picture in the paper I caught a glance of the other day in passing had me friggin’ flabergasted. There’s feces all over the inside of that thing. Smeared on the sugar walls, natch. Been kind of a shitty week elsewise, and that includes the snow happening tomorrow. And the half of a chocolate bunny I found on the floor in my dog’s wake. Not like the one Spriggy devoured. This one had hair and bones.
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