Michael Kinsley wrote a great column, back in the day, about the most boring headlines ever written. The winner was, indeed, stupefyingly boring (“Worthwhile Canadian Initiative”), but what I recall about the piece were the rules he set out for determining degrees of boredom. One was about the story that informs us things are changing in a place nobody cared about in the first place; the example for this was, “Chill falls on warming relations between Australia, Indonesia.”
I think the following falls into that category, although not in the headline, but the lead:
Long a two-funeral home town, Kendallville recently got its third with David Funeral Home.
That’s from the Journal Gazette, in Fort Wayne. Kendallville is one of its, ahem, bedroom communities.
OK, so we’ve established the death theme. Agreed? I’m starting with death because I thought it would be sort of gross to kick off the week-ending blog entry with a discussion of…well, you’ll see.
Alan came home the other day and reported that the syndicated medical column he handled contained a remarkable question: “I hear Elvis Presley died with 37 pounds of impacted feces in his colon. Is this true?” Reader, I know you’ll be as relieved as I am to hear this is, indeed, not true. But it does reveal something about the credulousness of the average person who writes to syndicated medical columns, doesn’t it?
(The ask-the-doc column has been a rich source of newsroom amusement for years. In Fort Wayne an editor kept a computer file of the best questions. Here was my favorite: I seem to be bleeding internally. Sometimes blood will literally pour from my rectum. Could it be something in my diet?)
But back to Elvis and his 37 pounds of poo. If I were giving out MacArthur genius grants, I’d save one for the tireless folks at Snopes.com and their urban-legends reference page. Of course it was the first hit when I punched “elvis presley + ‘impacted fecal material'” into Google.
You should not be surprised to hear that the story didn’t start with Elvis. It was originally John Wayne, and it was 40 pounds, not 37. Snopes does its usual fine job pointing out that the very idea of a human colon packed with the equivalent of a large bag of topsoil is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. The Elvis angle has a germ of truth, in that the King died on the terlet and was massively constipated, mainly because of all the downers he was taking with those fried peanut-butter sandwiches. But they also point the finger of blame where it belongs — the reports of John Wayne’s intestinal problem is frequently followed by a pitch for colonic “cleansing.”
I dunno, maybe an enema might make you feel better. I’d prefer a bowl of raisin bran, a couple cups of hot coffee and a walk around the neighborhood.
The “spa” industry seems to enjoy propagating this crap. I have a very fine aesthetician who gives me an eyebrow wax once in a while. Since I am congenitally incapable of relaxing and not talking while in a room with another person, we make chitchat. She upsells various facial and skin-care services, many of which seem to involve the removal of “toxins.”
“What sort of toxins?” I ask.
“The body’s toxins,” she replies, calmly. Oh, those. She has a technique where she puts suction cups on your body, and “draws the toxins to the surface,” or something like that. It’s at this point I’m glad my eyes are closed and she can’t see me rolling them.
I wonder where the toxins go once they’ve been drawn to the surface. I suspect the colon. Beware.
Dorothy said on October 13, 2006 at 10:40 am
Add to shopping list: suction cups for chair-bound husband.
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Danny said on October 13, 2006 at 10:46 am
I wonder where the toxins go once they’ve been drawn to the surface. I suspect the colon. Beware.
You suspect, correctly. And then, the only thing that can help you is a jalapeno-habanero-cilantro suppository.
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Randy said on October 13, 2006 at 10:47 am
Sorry, my Canadian inferiority complex flared up again when I read mention of the fabled “Worthwhile Canadian Inititative” headline.
I guess it’s not a sense of inferiority, but befuddlement. I get that 99.9% of Americans spend .00001% of their lifetime even contemplating Canada for as much as a moment, and that is understandable. But it seems that one fleeting moment is used to tell Canadians how utterly insignificant we are to Americans and the world at large. I’m sure there’s more mirth than malice behind the comments, but they do become tiresome after awhile.
Sorry if I steered away from the original point, and please note, Nancy, I’m not meaning to bash you or any other Americans. I’m just invoking my right to be a whiny, irrelevant citizen of Canuckistan.
*Oh and with respect to colons, anyone remember the ad on SNL for “Colon Blow”? Funny stuff.
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colleen said on October 13, 2006 at 10:50 am
Ah snopes. Yeah, they are tireless and deserve much praise. All those “THIS IS TRUE! Don’t delete!” emails I get are replied to with the snopes web site.
Sometimes I can’t believe how gullible people are. 37 pounds of poo, money from Bill Gates, hypodermics in coin return slots….
But that story about the people going parking, and the escaped mental patient, and the prosthetic hand hanging from the car? That’s real. Happened to a stepsister’s of a cousin’s mother’s boyfriend’s daughter…
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Marcia said on October 13, 2006 at 10:53 am
“I seem to be bleeding internally. Sometimes blood will literally pour from my rectum. Could it be something in my diet?”
Okay, I literally snorted.
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Danny said on October 13, 2006 at 10:54 am
Oh and with respect to colons, anyone remember the ad on SNL for “Colon Blow�?? Funny stuff.
Yes, I do. I remember the piles of cereal. Hilarious. Always reminds me that Colin Powell’s name lent itself to that joke. I think he has a future in laxative advertising to older folks.
By the way, how is the weather today up there in America-Junior? LOL! Forgive me.
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alex said on October 13, 2006 at 11:06 am
Speaking of shit, when did the Journal-Gazette start publishing puff pieces as news? Even the suburban free papers in my mailbox don’t fawn over funeral homes this gushingly.
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Jim said on October 13, 2006 at 11:16 am
Hey, I’ve worked in Kendallville. Calling it a bedroom community for Fort Wayne is being a bit too charitable. They didn’t call it “Kendalltucky” for nothing. Yeesh.
As for the doctor columns, I can sympathize. When I was at The Goshen News, one of my duties was editing the “Ask Dr. Gott” column. I remember one letter distinctly: A man wrote to say that when he ejaculated, he noticed blood in his semen and wondered what could cause that. I remember thinking at the time, “And in response to this, you decided to take out a pen and paper and write a snail-mail letter to a newspaper columnist???” I’d be on the phone with my doctor that day.
Colleen, I’m glad I’m not the only one who replies to the multi-forwarded e-mail with Snopes. I usually go look up the article, hit “reply all” and paste the link. And the funny thing is, I usually don’t hear back from anybody after that.
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nancy said on October 13, 2006 at 11:16 am
Marcia, I always thought that newspaper doc missed a shot at a Pulitzer when he failed to answer, “Yes. Knock off the fiberglas for breakfast.”
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nancy said on October 13, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Jim, I was trying to keep his name out of it, but the bleeding-butt letter was, indeed, from Dr. Gott. And I had precisely the same reaction. I figured the letter-writer was dead by the time the column appeared.
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brian stouder said on October 13, 2006 at 12:32 pm
I figured the letter-writer was dead by the time the column appeared
and the paper lost yet ANOTHER subscriber!
That story nicely bookends the other nn.c one about retired autoworkers’ prolific prescriptions and so on.
urban legends revolving around ‘colonic cleansing’ and ‘bodily toxins’ (etc) are first-cousins to the un-ending stream of accredited reports that ________(fill in the blank; coffee, sugar, meats, salt, alcohol, carrots, peas, Post Toasties, etc etc) will KILL you….no wait – will ADD QUALITY YEARS TO YOUR LIFE
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Mindy said on October 13, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Randy — Last year I drove to a yarn shop outside of my regular stomping grounds to visit the Yarn Harlot, the great Candadian knitter and blogger, and get my copies of her books signed during her book tour. She was polite enough to mention my knitting project and asked what yarn I was using. “Patons Classic Wool,” I replied. She was overjoyed to finally meet an American who could correctly pronounce the name of Canada’s most famous yarn company and said so. Then came a few strained comments about being the also-ran neighbor to the north peppered with a dash of bash. This was my first experience with this sentiment and I’ll never forget it. (For anyone who might care, Patons = PAY-tons, not puh-TUNS or puh-TONES, etc. that seems to injure this poor woman every time she makes an appearance in the U.S.)
As for Elivs and his impacted colon, I’ve heard it was 60 pounds of poo in his gut and 40 pounds for John Wayne. I run across this repeatedly in my search for ways to beat chronic fatigue. Princess Di was supposedly a huge fan of colonics. No word on how much poo was in her gut at the time of her demise, though.
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Jane said on October 13, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I wonder if I’ll ever be famous enough that people will care how impacted my colon is when I die.
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brian stouder said on October 13, 2006 at 2:34 pm
I suspect the colon. Beware.
that line sounds like it escaped from a haiku –
People are wary –
‘Free’; ‘trust me’; ‘that dog don’t bite’.
I suspect the colon
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Tom said on October 13, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Randy: To this day, I think of an, um, especially productive session on the Porcelain Vortex as a “Super Colon Blow.” Phil Hartman’s legacy endures!
If there’s anything that gives credence to any of Freud’s theories, it’s the ongoing obsession that some people have with their butts, what comes out of them, and what they decide to put in them. Even given the continued reliance of a certain segment of the American cinema on toilet humor, I was mildly astonished at the trailer for The Road To Wellville, which included a snippet of a scene in which Dr. Kellogg (played by Anthony Hopkins; apparently the real-life Kellogg–yes, the corn flakes guy–was every bit as nutty) is “prescribing” something like a gallon of yogurt to Matthew Broderick’s character, who protests that he can’t possibly eat that much. “Oh, it’s not going in that end,” quoth Hopkins. Thank you, Alan Parker & Co., for that mental image.
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nancy said on October 13, 2006 at 2:59 pm
I remember reading that about Princess Di. Some people find the browneye to be an erogenous zone, so I guess I can see how one might enjoy a little recreational cleanse, but what about the long-term effects? Your colon has a job to do, and if you’re always helping it along, so to speak, aren’t you going to be messing up the works?
Also, this reminds me of a story I have in a file labeled “weird,” about a guy who died in a colonics establishment (called, sweetly, Colonique). Police estimate his buttshower was administered at approximately the same pressure as a firehose. He perforated, went septic, and died with what was surely the world’s cleanest large intestine.
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mary said on October 13, 2006 at 3:22 pm
“…and died with what was surely the world’s cleanest large intestine.”
Unlike Elvis.
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alex said on October 13, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Not sure I’d want to take my yogurt that way, but I remember reading a fascinating article about how tobacco was first taken in Europe and colonial America after it was discovered in the New World. Yes. The mucous membranes down there made it deliver quite a thrill. (Maybe not a bad idea for those who want to conceal their chaw habit. At least the brown stains won’t give you away.)
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Rich B said on October 13, 2006 at 5:56 pm
I wonder if I’ll ever be famous enough that people will care how impacted my colon is when I die.
I’ll care Jane, for all the little people.
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Dorothy said on October 13, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Just when I think Nancy has covered every interesting topic under the sun ….
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Jane said on October 13, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Thank you, Randy. I appreciate that.
“Colonique” made me laugh out loud at a very inopportune time.
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Beastman said on October 14, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I had a colonoscopy a while back and got to watch the whole thing on the screen. What I found interesting was that, after hearing for years about how the colon gets crudded up, and coating with toxins etc (like the inside of an old car engine, or a sewer pipe, to name two of the favorite analogies) and must be periodically cleaned, that mine after just a day of purging to get ready, using cheap over-the-counter products, was squeaky-clean and pink. So even if one accepts that it needs occasional flushing, extended purges, diets or elaborate colonics would seem to be unecessary.
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Jason said on October 14, 2006 at 1:46 pm
> I was mildly astonished at the trailer for The Road To Wellville, which
> included a snippet of a scene in which Dr. Kellogg (played by
> Anthony Hopkins; apparently the real-life Kellogg–yes, the corn
> flakes guy–was every bit as nutty) is “prescribing�? something like a
> gallon of yogurt to Matthew Broderick’s character, who protests that
> he can’t possibly eat that much. “Oh, it’s not going in that end,�?
> quoth Hopkins. Thank you, Alan Parker & Co., for that mental image.
I didn’t see the movie, but the novel “Road to Wellville,” by T.C. Boyle is surreal, bizarre and (at times) crying, snorting, pounding-your-fist-on-the-floor funny. It’s historical fiction, but it supposedly accurately captures the doctor behind the “Kellogg Sanitarium” in Battle Creek.
(I believe it was his brother, W.K. Kellogg, who started the cereal factory, and in Boyle’s version, Dr. John Kellogg detests him because he adds frivolous items — like raisins — to the cereals.)
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joodyb said on October 14, 2006 at 6:21 pm
thank you for the most entertainment i’ve had in weeks. only confirms the fact that i have the sense of humor of a 13-year-old male.
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