Things We Learned So Far This Year

It’s that other type of lip filler.

Increasing numbers of women are getting their labia majora “puffed,” according to reliable sources who know about these things.  The procedure involves injecting dermal filler or transferring fat into their goodies to restore plumpness.  Groan if you like, but doctors claim the procedure could soon become as ubiquitous as boob jobs.

“One day it’s going to be a household type of thing, where we talk about it the way we talk about breast implants,” says board-certified urologist Dr. Fenwa Millhouse in an interview with Allure.  “Labia puffing has grown significantly in popularity in just the last year.”

The cosmetic procedure is meant to make dowdy old labia majora, the outermost part of the vulva more plump and youthful, according to Millhouse.  “I’ve had women in their twenties get this procedure because they feel their labia majora are very underwhelming, and certainly peri- and postmenopausal women get it as well.”

Dr. Shazia Malik, a UK-based obstetrician and gynecologist, told Metro UK that labia puffing is often desired by women looking to regain a youthful, fuller appearance after aging, weight loss or childbirth.  “Many women seem to address perceived imperfections or asymmetry,” she explained.  “Aside from the aesthetic improvement, labia puffing can also increase confidence, particularly in intimate situations.”

An anonymous 36-year-old puffette told Allure she underwent the procedure after giving birth to “restore volume and feel sexier.”  Another woman said she had it done because her vagina was “looking like a very old, worn-out gym sock.”  Nobody wants that, right?  Millhouse talks about one enthusiastic patient who was particularly ecstatic at the upshot of her procedure.  “She observed the results, turned around and said ‘I’m getting turned on just looking at myself.’  How do you beat that for a satisfied customer?”  Good question.  We can hardly wait to see the TV ads.  Hey, they did it with Charmin.

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?

Because the Thai police will come right over and lock you up, that’s why.  A Chinese couple, Oh Zhihang, 67 and his partner Lin Tingting, 35 found this out after setting up a tripod, stripping themselves naked and doing the Nasty Dance on the pavement in Pattaya, Thailand recently.  Shocked onlookers watched as the fun couple went to town in broad daylight in public view, police swooping in after being alerted by a busybody security guard who photographed the proceedings.

After the walk of shame to the police station, Zhihang protested that he did not know public sex was illegal in Thailand.  “I am a photographer,” he said, “and I travel around the world taking nude photos in various locations.  I have visited many countries where I have done the same thing.  I apologize to the Thai people for damaging the image of Pattaya.”  The shocking sex act comes just days after a feisty Russian couple was filmed in sexual acts on a beach in the same city.  “At least the Russians were halfway submerged in the water,” the cops report.

Pattaya is 100 kilometers from Bangkok and is widely known as a party town, apparently for good reason.  Nonetheless, the cops are appalled.  “The super circus comes to town this weekend,” reported a police spokesman.  “What’s next---the flying trapeze?”

Down The Stretch They Come!

Move over Kentucky Derby.  An enterprising startup has announced the launch of the world’s first sperm race, in which samples went head-to-head on April 25 in Los Angeles to raise awareness about declining male fertility.  The unusual contest was organized by Sperm Racing, a group of young moguls who raised over $1 million to back this veritable Breeders Cup of creative juices at the famous Hollywood Palladium before thousands of odd spectators.

Two competing schools, the University of Southern California and UCLA fielded microscopic swimmers for the inaugural, which took place under a tiny camera which tracked the progress of the sperms as they attempted to cross the finish line,  Three races were held to determine the overall winner, with play-by-play commentary provided during each heat.  There were also instant replays, leaderboards and betting through approved parlors.  “Sperm racing isn’t just about racing sperm,” reported startup co-founder Eric Zhu, author of The Sperm Racing Manifesto.  “It’s also about turning health into a competition.  It’s about making male fertility something people actually want to talk about, track and improve.”

Maybe some people, Eric.

“When You’re Dead, You’re Dead.”---Joe E. Brown

“Maybe not.”---Dannion Brinkley

Despite what you believe about an afterlife, nobody really knows, right?  Except maybe good old Dan Brinkley, who was struck by lightning and survived.  The chance of being struck by lightning is less than 1 in a million, but that’s only important when you’re the 1.  “It went into the side of my head above my ear,” Dan relates.  “It threw me up in the air, I see the ceiling, it slams me back down.  A ball of fire comes through the room and blinds me.  I am burning.  I am on fire.  I am paralyzed.”

Brinkley was taken to a hospital via ambulance and doctors there declared him dead.  He woke up 30 minutes later in the hospital morgue, always a disappointment.  He said his soul temporarily left his body.  While explaining what happened to him when he flatlined, Dan described what many people expect when they die---a light in the distance and a flashback of one’s entire life.  But Dan didn’t stay dead long, he recovered.  Two long years after the incident, Brinkley learned to walk again.

“There are signs of normal brain activity found up to one hour after resuscitation,” according to Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health.  “We are not only able to show the markers of lucid consciousness, but also that these experiences are unique and universal.  They’re different from dreams, illusions and delusions.”

Brinkley says he has learned “you don’t die, you learn you are a spiritual being, you’re not going to Hell.  Nobody dies, it never happens.  It’s not a part of the nature of reality.”  Okay, Dannion, if you say so.  You put a lightning deflector on your house, though, right?

What If They Opened A Zoo And Nobody Came?

Toco, the human collie, is sad today.  Alas, it seems that not many people share his interest in pet-amorphosis and Toco may have to close his bizarre zoo due to a lack of ticket sales.  The Lassie masquerader went viral in 2023 after dropping more than sixteen grand on a hyperrealistic custom collie suit to realize his dream of becoming man’s best friend.  He quickly amassed over 60,000 followers on YouTube where he frequently posts footage of himself going for walks, fetching sticks and frolicking on the lawn with other humans in sheepdog costumes.

All this led Toco to believe there was a market for a place where anyone could become an animal and “fulfill their wildest dreams,” according to the dog-man.  He opened the Tocotoco Zoo, where people can spend over $300 to don, say, a lifesize Alaskan Malamute costume with jaws than can open and close.  The zoo is located in Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo.  Initially, the attraction was a smash hit, booked months in advance, but sad to say the novelty seems to have worn off and reservations are…well…in the toilet. 

“Please come,” pleads Toco.  “If you’ve ever considered life as a dog, this is the time to find out if you have what it takes.  The cost is reasonable for 180 minutes of lifechanging bliss.  And after all, you can’t put a price on ecstasy.”

Don’t forget to bring a certified human to clean up after you.

Forget It!

Bullied in high school?  How about that weekend as a fraternity pledge where the members dressed you up like Olive Oyl, stuck a funnel up your butt and force-fed you a six-pack of Budweiser?  Remember the time you lost that winning $100,000 lottery ticket or washed your hands at the track, erasing the $50,000 winning trifecta you’d written on your left wrist?  Can you ever live down that humiliating date with Sarah Huckabee Sanders?  Try as you might to forget, you’ll be forever haunted by a boatload of life’s most devastating experiences, your ultimate punishment for naivete, carelessness or plain bad luck.  Or maybe not.

According to Dr. Johathan Rasouli, a neurosurgeon at Northwell Staten Island University Hospital, you---like Jim Carey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind---might be spared by a brand-spanking-new memory-erasing medical procedure.  There are now three cutting-edge methods that can mute and dampen traumatic memories now being used to help people with depression.

“Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is like wireless jumper cables for your brain, but a lot more precise,” says Rasouli.  “It’s a noninvasive treatment that uses magnetic fields like MRI to stimulate specific parts of the brain, usually targeting areas involved in mood regulation.”  Patients have a magnetic coil placed on their scalps, which sends pulses to specific areas of the brain.  “It is primarily used for treatment-resistant depression,” comments Rasouli, but researchers are now exploring its impact on memory recall, emotional processing and addiction.”  The theory is still in the early stages of testing, but doctors feel that targeting certain brain circuits can change how people access their memories.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a “brain pacemaker” which is currently used to treat Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, epilepsy, OCD and major depression.  Small electrodes are implanted directly into specific areas of the brain, where they send electrical impulses to the structures that are involved in movement and mood.  “Some studies show that DBS can influence emotional memory, reward processing and even reduce traumatic recall,” claims Rasouli.  In the future, it could be used to mute traumatic memories, though it’s invasive and unlikely to become a casual outpatient procedure anytime soon.

Finally, there is Propranolol Therapy, which uses a beta-blocker medication usually prescribed to treat high blood pressure.  Researchers have recently discovered that Propranolol can “dampen the emotional punch of memories and thus be used for therapeutic purposes,” claims Rasouli.  “This is probably the closest real-world analog to the Eternal Sunshine concept, but with no actual memory deletion.”  Instead of erasing the memory entirely, this “sleeper hit” makes it feel less vivid or depressing.  “When taken before recalling a traumatic event, propranolol reduces the intensity of the emotional response, essentially reconsolidating the memory with less emotional weight,” the doc asserts.  “Currently, it’s being used for PTSD, anxiety and phobias.”

Good to know.  Maybe I can finally dislodge those terrible memories of coming home from college to discover my mother had given away my entire comic book collection, which included Superboy, Volume 1, Number 1, which is worth a startling $23,000 today.  Maybe I can forget those ninth-inning rallies by opponents when the Red Sox closers forgot to throw baseballs and served up cantaloupes instead.  Maybe I can get rid of the day I tackled massive Paul Higgins on a kickoff return and was left motionless in a pile of dirt.

But then again, maybe I’ll keep those memories.  My mother told me adversity breeds character, and she was rarely wrong.  Considering the amount of disasters I’ve encountered, I should be banking an awful lot of the stuff.  If I could just get back that picture of Janis Joplin trying to teach me to play the autoharp….

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

Hair & Optimism

“I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratsy, matsy, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming streaming, flaxen, waxen…HAIR!”---Galt MacDermot

Who doesn’t?  By age sixty, 85% of men experience significant hair thinning, and no matter what Rogaine and Propecia tell you, there’s nothing you can do about it.  Ancient Greeks rubbed their bald heads with a mixture of dates, dog’s paw and donkey’s hoof.  Celtic cures involved mice in a jar.  Native Americans turned to yucca juice.  Throughout human history, there have been a number of existential quests---for knowledge, for peace, for riches---and for a cure for dreaded baldness.  So far we got nuttin’.

Don’t tell anybody, but those crafty devils out West at UCLA have been poking around in the abandoned Hair Gold Mine for a long time now and they finally dug up something that could be the mother lode.  The scientists have identified a small molecule that, when prompted, can waken long-slumbering but undamaged follicles.  The researchers have named the transporting molecule PP405.  In scientific terms, this molecule is isolated and applied to a protein in the follicle stem cells that keeps the cells dormant.  This inhibits the protein and the stem cells are moved to awaken.  Lab work on the molecule has been going on for a decade, only arriving at human trials in 2023.  In those trials, researchers found that application of PP405 as a topical medicine onto the scalp at bedtime produced promising results.  Though cautious with the actual data, UCLA labeled the results “statistically significant.”  Most important, they believe the treatment will produce full “terminal” hair rather than the peach fuzz produced by the current lotions.

The three scientists behind the breakthrough are William Lowry, professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology; Heather Christofk, professor of biological chemistry and Michael Jung, distinguished professor of chemistry.  All are bullish on the potential of the treatment to reverse pattern hair loss.  “At some point, most men and women suffer from thinning hair or lose it after chemotherapy, infections or other stressors” says Lowry, “and it affects them psychologically.”  The three scientists agree that no product will work for everyone, “but our first human trials in Orange County have been very encouraging.”

Through UCLA’s Technology Transfer Group, which transforms brilliant research into global market products, the scientists have co-founded a medical development company called Pelage Pharmaceuticals.  Backed by Google Ventures, last year the company raised $16.4 million in funding to shepherd further trials and win official clearances, assuming President Trumpy hasn’t dissolved the FDA by then.  “It might take a little while,” says Lowry, but it will be worth waiting for.”

No kidding.  We’re thinking of going back to barber school.

Saving The World

We know, you’re bumfuzzled by the likely plight of the world and your dad finally told you Mighty Mouse isn’t real.  But cheer up, the superhero called Emerging Technology will have a lot to say about the fate of the planet.  Here are some things which should help:

1. Solar Glass. What if every window in a skyscraper could generate energy?  That’s the promise of Solar Glass, an emerging technology getting a lot of buzz in design and sustainability circles, or so they tell us.  Just like it sounds, Solar Glass is suitably transparent window material which also captures the sun’s energy and converts it into electricity.  The big hurdle so far has been efficiency.  High-performance SG cells can achieve 25% efficiency or greater, but maintaining transparency means sacrificing the efficiency with which light is converted into electricity.  But chin up, a University of Michigan team is developing a Solar Glass product that offers 15% efficiency and climbing while letting 50% of light pass through.  According to projections from nearby Michigan State, 5 to 7 billion square meters of usable window space exists, enough to power a full 40% of U.S. energy needs with a Solar glass product.  That’s a big Wow!

2. Fake Meat. Calm down, this has nothing to do with penis enhancement.  It’s all about the atrocious damage to the planet caused by meat production.  The beef industry alone relies on 164 square meters of grazing land per 100 grams of meat and is one of the leading causes of deforestation in Central and South America.  Deforestation leads to unprecedented carbon release into the atmosphere.  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. believes livestock accounts for about 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.  Animals also use huge amounts of freshwater, while the contaminated runoff from industrial livestock operations pollutes local waterways.

We know---you don’t like artificial meat.  The original stuff tasted like bland cardboard, and that was the top of the line product.  The good news is that the latest imitations are surprisingly tasty, especially the newest alternatives from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.  As much credit as these companies get for technological achievement and advanced food science, their real triumph is that they’re making Fake Meat culturally hip, although probably not in Fort Worth.  You can even order meatless burgers now at Burger King and get a meat-free taco at Del Taco.  We’re fearfully awaiting the renovation of the sacred Fenway Frank at our favorite ballpark.

3. Super Batteries. Power is the limiting factor in holding back many green technologies.  Wind and solar, for example, are capable of generating vast amounts of electricity, but adoption of these technologies has been impeded by a major shortcoming; sometimes it’s not windy or sunny.  Electric cars are making huge strides, but until their range increases and charging times diminish, fossil fuels will rule.  Existing battery technology won’t cut it---for one thing, it’s too expensive.  According to the Clean Air Task Force, for California to meet ambitious goals of powering itself through renewables only, the state would need to spend $360 billion on energy storage systems.  But wait!  Is that Mighty Mouse come to save the day?

Actually, it’s a company called Form Energy, which is developing a miracle called the aqueous sulfur-flow battery, which will cost somewhere between $1 to $10 per kilowatt-hour compared with lithium’s $200 per KH cost.  Form’s solution could help Cali meet its energy targets before the middle of the century, providing a roadmap for the rest of the world.

Cue up Johann’s Ode to Joy, all us Pollyannas are off to the picnic.

The Demise Of Organized Religion

“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”---Napoleon Bonaparte

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”---George Bernard Shaw

Virtually all wars are caused by one of two things---the desire to gain more land or the foolishness of organized religion.  It’s difficult to imagine that tyrants will ever completely disappear, but OR is already on the ropes.  In America, the percentage of citizens with no religious affiliation has risen to 21% in 2021 to 2023, up from a mere 9% in 2000-2003.  In the Western world, Christianity is experiencing a significant decline, with projections indicating a potential decrease in its share of the population.  While other religions are also facing challenges, the extent and speed of decline, particularly in Christian-majority regions, make it a prominent case.

Why is this happening?  There seem to be four primary motivations.  First, many people leave because of cultural stagnation.  They are becoming more ideologically progressive, but their religious organizations are not.  Often, people report intellectual reasons for leaving religions or say they simply outgrew their faith.  Other times, respondents indicate that they cannot endorse the values of their religious organization, including their views on LGBTQ+ individuals, stances on gender or sexuality or pervasive sexism and racism.

Second, some people leave because of religious or spiritual trauma or abuse.  A number have experienced this abuse firsthand, others have witnessed people they love experience trauma.  Still others have left organized religion because of abuses perpetrated at an institutional level (for example, by Catholic priests).  For many, walking away is a bold act of courage.

Third, some walk away from their faith because they have been given theologically thin accounts for the existence of evil in the world or insufficient explanations for why adversity strikes them.  They cannot make sense of what they were taught and their own life experiences, especially if their previous beliefs were framed in a just world beliefs system, which teaches that people get what they deserve.  If there is an omniscient being, you serve it well and something terrible happens to you anyway, what’s the use?  Life seems unfair, god or no god.  Simplistic views of suffering can lead people to leave religion.

While there are undoubtedly many more reasons to get off the bus, Gus, all of the above share a common underlying feature; they involve cognitive dissonance, the disorienting feeling we get when our beliefs don’t line up with our actions.  For many, the tenets they believed no longer fit with their experiences of the world.  Although some people are able to fit these discrepant beliefs into existing belief structures, if the discrepancy is too great, many will abandon their beliefs altogether and look for something completely new.

When you’re mulling it over, you could do worse than to consider Tlazolteotl, the Aztec god of vice, purification, steam baths, lust, filth, and a patroness of adulterers.  Not many requirements and no church on Sundays.

You’ll Live Longer If You Keep On Truckin’.

A groundbreaking study utilizing precise accelerometer data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of the CDC has unveiled a remarkable finding: our daily movement patterns serve as the single most powerful indicator of longevity, outweighing conventional factors such as age, smoking habits and chronic conditions.  The research, which monitored 3,600 participants aged 50-80, delivers an empowering message---it’s not merely about structured exercise sessions, but rather the cumulative effect of movement throughout our daily activities that significantly influences our lifespan.  And you thought Robert Crumb was just fooling around when he told us to Keep On Truckin’.

So Walk on By (don’t wait on the corner), Walk Like an Egyptian, Walk the Line, Walk Away Renee, start Walkin’ to New Orleans, Walk Right In, consider Walking On Sunshine, Take a Walk On the Wild Side, get some Boots that Were Made For Walkin’ and walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown; walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.  Don’t just stand there, do something!

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Addenda: The column was nestled all snug in its bed, then Dawn Stephenson went and died.

 “Blue skies, smilin’ at me…nothin’ but blue skies do I see.”---Irving Berlin

In these harrowing years of The Great Obliteration, old friends pass daily.  What was different about Dawn Stevenson is she took us with her on the rollercoaster ride that was the last couple of years of her life.  We shared the big dips, the scary turns, the intoxicating full-speed-ahead moments when the car was firmly on the tracks.  Dawn’s last year was like a horror novel you couldn’t put down---the monster was rapping on her window at midnight, then he wasn’t, but as soon as you got comfortable, there he was back again, scraping his fingernails on the glass.  Dawn got every terrifying second down in print.

We rooted hard for her because she was younger than her years and because she was brave and because she got the short end of the stick.  How many people in the midst of a vicious cancer siege have their houses blown apart by a hurricane?  And we rooted for her because she was us, rising and falling and getting back up again to battle a reaper who won’t take no for an answer.

Nobody knows exactly what happened on the final page, or if they do, nobody is talking about it, and that’s as it should be.  Whether you take the final corner on two wheels or sink softly into the sea is nobody’s business but your own.  We will remember Dawn and her desperate fight for a long time because of her frightening skill in depicting the fear that pulsed through her, the exhilaration of her unexpected escapes and her fervent appreciation for the wonders of life.  See you soon, Dawn.  Somewhere over the blue skies of Micanopy, right?

    

     

The Brain---An Owner’s Manual

“The brain is wider than the sky.”---Emily Dickinson

Remember when you were in grade school and Frederick Fotheringay-Phipps, the smartest kid in your class walked in?  “He’s a brain,” someone might say.  It was not meant to be a compliment.  When you were “a brain” at St. Patrick’s Elementary, it meant you were intelligent to the exclusion of everything else…savoir faire, street sense, romantic possibilities and athleticism.  Especially athleticism.  In later years, a brain became a dork, a nerd and a weenie.  The brains didn’t care, they had bigger fish to fry.  And fry ‘em they did, to the eventual tune of higher salaries, bigger houses and cuter wives than their tormentors.  Somebody even made a movie called Revenge of the Brains.

You might want to remember all this because we’re back in grade school again with the same no-neck bullies and nincompoops and troublemakers.  Somehow, they got one of their guys elected President of the United States, for crying out loud, and now, at long last, they’re trying to get rid of the brains.  They’re taking away their public radio programs, bankrupting their fine arts hangouts, wiping out their debate teams.  Don’t worry, though, it won’t work, just like their plans in grade school.  Stupid is Forever.  Sooner or later---and it’s looking like sooner---the principal will catch them waxing his car windows or pantsing a first grader in the men’s room or looking up Nancy O’Connell’s dress, and they’ll be cast off to shop class at trade school or an entry-level job at Jiffy Lube.  It’s coming.  It’s only a matter of time.  The brains are gathering their forces.  As Doctor Seuss famously said, “I like nonsense.  It wakes up the brain cells.” 

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet…More Powerful Than A Locomotive!…

Your brain is the most powerful and mysterious organ in your body.  It controls everything from your thoughts to your emotions and processes information at lightning speed.  The average person (not you, Pam Bondi) has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts a day; granted 95% of them are the same ones they had yesterday.  80% of them tend to be negative, but that’s a good thing---our brains are wired for survival, constantly analyzing threats to ourselves or the body politic.  You know that sharp pain you get when you drink something way too cold?  We call it brain freeze or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia if you’re fussy.  That’s the captain up there telling you to knock it off, he doesn’t like the abrupt temperature change.  Interestingly, the brain, itself, feels no pain because it has no pain receptors, but the membranes and tissues surrounding it do and they don’t mind complaining about it.

Even though it makes up only 2% of your body weight, your brain employs a major quantity of energy, consuming 20% of your oxygen and blood supply, making it the most demanding organ in your body.  If your brain goes without oxygen for just four minutes, you begin getting images of Marco Rubio doing the Time Warp.  Five minutes and brain cells start dying, leading to irreversible damage.  That’s why your brain celebrates when you do deep breathing and/or cardiovascular exercises.

Weight Watchers won’t like this but your brain might be the fattest organ in your body if you’re not Jabba the Hutt.  The brain consists of at least 60% fat, which is why consuming healthy fats like omega-3s and 6s in fish starts your brain doing its Happy Dance.  Healthy fats stabilize brain cell walls, reduce inflammation and support cognitive function, so don’t sweat the avocado toast.  Another villain, cholesterol, is always getting bad grades in school but your brain actually depends on it.  In fact 25% of your body’s cholesterol is stored in your brain, where it helps with learning and memory.  Alas, the brain can’t absorb cholesterol from the blood, it has to produce its own, so while too much cholesterol in the body can be harmful, the right amount is vital for brain function.  Tell your doctor this the next time he chastises you for eating at Cheeseburger Cheeseburger! 

Cognitive Reserve

And then there’s (trumpets blare) cognitive reserve, the brain’s ability to improvise and find alternate ways of getting a job done, like figuring out why some people like Ted Nugent.  It reflects how agile your brain is in pulling up skills and capacities to solve problems and cope with challenges.  Cognitive Reserve is developed by a lifetime of education and curiosity.  Nobody talks much about CR but the concept manifested in the 1980s when researchers described individuals with no apparent symptoms of dementia who were nonetheless found at autopsy to have brain changes consistent with advanced Alzheimer’s disease.  These individuals did not show symptoms of that disease while they were alive because they had a large enough cognitive reserve to offset the damage and continue to function as usual.

Since then, research has shown that people with greater cognitive reserve are better able to stave off symptoms of degenerative brain changes associated with dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis or stroke.  A more robust cognitive reserve can also help you function better for longer if you’re exposed to unexpected life events such as surgery, stress or the heartbreak of psoriasis.  Such circumstances demand extra effort from the brain, similar to changing gears in your race car.

So how do I get more of this cognitive reserve stuff, you ask?  There must be a secret nectar or some magic beans involved, right?  Sorry, but it’s the same old advice---you have to engage.  Researchers at Harvard Medical School, the biggest of brains, want you to do the following things.  All of them.  No cheating---your brain will know.

1. Eat a plant-based diet like your hippie aunt Hilda told you to years ago.

2. Exercise regularly.

3. Get enough sleep.

4. Manage your stress.

5. Nurture social contacts

6. Continue to challenge your brain.  (And that doesn’t mean answering those ten questions in Facebook that will guarantee you’re a genius.  “What color were Dorothy’s slippers?”  Please.)

Yeah, we know.  You’ve heard all this before.  You heard it before because it’s the real megillah.  The Harvard braintrust advises that these factors are equal parts of a cohesive plan, they don’t work in isolation.  You knew about them years ago, you just wouldn’t cooperate.  And now you’re brain is getting pissed.  So wake up, it’s now or never.

The Care And Feeding Of Your Brain

The speed at which you walk can reveal profound insights into your brain’s rate of aging.  Slower walkers apparently have smaller brains and fundamental differences in crucial structures.  How quickly you can walk from Point A to Point B can reveal a great deal about the inner workings of your body and mind.  New research has shown that the speed at which you walk to class, to the mall from the parking lot or to your seat at the ballgame can predict your odds of hospitalization, heart attack and even (gulp) death.  In fact, a person’s gait speed can even be used to show his or her rate of cognitive aging.  Who knew?  And what does this mean for the pitiful turtle?

Sure, it’s normal for people to slow down as they age, but a precipitous decline in the speed of someone’s gait can indicate that something serious is going on.  “When a person’s normal walking pace declines, it’s often associated with underlying health declines,” says Christina Dieli-Conwright, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

“Walking seems like such a simple thing---most of us don’t think about it,” says Line Rasmussen, a senior researcher in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.  “But walking actually relies on many different body systems working together.  Your bones and muscles carry and move you, your eyes help you see where you’re going, your heart and lungs circulate blood and oxygen, your brain and nerves coordinate it all.”

According to Rasmussen, as we age, the function of these systems starts to slow down.  A slower walking speed can reflect this overall decline and be a sign of advanced aging.  This doesn’t just apply to older adults.  In a 2019 study, Rasmussen and colleagues found that even among 45-year-olds, walking speed could predict the rate at which the brain and body were aging.  “What surprised me most was finding a link between how fast people walked at age 45 and their cognitive abilities all the way back in early childhood, said Rasmussen.

The Duke University researchers looked at 904 people aged 45 who were part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a longitudinal research project which has followed the lives of over 1,000 people born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand.  Individuals in that cohort have had their health and cognitive function assessed regularly over their entire lifespans.

“I was surprised by how much variation there was in walking speed among people who were all the same age,” says Rasmussen.  “You might expect everyone at 45 to be somewhere in the middle, but some walked as quickly as healthy 20-year-olds while others walked as slowly as much older adults.”

The study revealed that 45-year-olds with slower gait speeds showed signs of “accelerated aging,” in their lungs, teeth and immune systems, comparing poorly with those who walked faster.  They also had biomarkers associated with a faster rate of aging, such as raised blood pressure, high cholesterol and lower cardiorespiratory fitness.  The slow walkers had other signs of physical ill health, too, such as weaker hand-grip strength and more difficulty rising from a chair.

Rasmussen and colleagues also found that slow walkers showed signs of cognitive aging, scoring lower on IQ tests, performing worse on tests of memory, processing speed and other cognitive functions.  MRI scans showed that this cognitive deterioration was accompanied by observable changes in the participants’ brains.  Slower walkers had smaller brains, a thinner neocortex (the outermost layer of the brain which controls thinking and higher information processing) and more white matter.  Even the faces of the slow walkers were rated as aging at a faster rate than other participants.  Dang!

“Well, that’s all well and good,” said Tommy Tortoise of the Benevolent & Protective Order of Loggerheads.  “But some of our guys have been hanging around for 150 years or more.  Our motto is ‘Slow and Steady Wins the Race.  Except…you know…on the Interstate.”

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com     bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Kathygrams

Apparently, we live in The Age of Breaking News…to hear the TV networks tell it, there seems to be no other kind.  This is a serious challenge for your smaller news organizations like The Flying Pie, which occasionally must depend on the kindness of strangers to discover newsworthy events and some not so newsworthy but funny to talk about.  Fortunately for us, we have the services of ace reporter Kathleen Knight, who prowls the Earth for all of the above, compiles the particulars in her spartan News Cave and sends them in on an irregular basis.  We just apply the frosting, put the icing on the cake and light the candle.  Here’s the latest:

Exploding Manhole Covers Terrorize America

On April 21 of this year, a family in Poughkeepsie, New York had a close call from a new danger lurking in America’s city streets….the dreaded “exploding manhole.”  The fam was strolling down the boulevard after a nice Easter egg hunt when suddenly a manhole exploded, sending a raft of scary concrete and other debris flying through the air.”I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know where to go,’ it was awful,” testified grandma Lisa Davis, who dodged the flying detritus.  “It just barely missed us.  I grabbed up the grandkids and ran for the hills.  I couldn’t really run straight ahead of me to the corner because the manhole there blew up, too.”  At least three manholes joined in the chain reaction.  Videos of the explosion show flying debris missing Davis and the kids by less than one foot.  Firefighters responding to the call found high levels of gas in the craters left in the pavement.

Apparently, the Poughkeepsie blast wasn’t a one-time phenomenon.  Current estimates suggest there are between 3000 and 5000 manhole events in the United States annually.  In New York City alone, Con Edison reports over 2000 incidents a year with many being explosions.  There is a famous 2014 video of a taxi driver being injured when a manhole cover flew through his window without so much as a fare-thee-well.  In January, 2025, there were several internet videos of exploding manhole covers in Worcester, Mass.  Other large cities have been the victims of similar blasts, perhaps occurring due to aging infrastructure and corrosion from road salt and gas buildup.  Traffic vibrations, rodents biting wires and severe weather can also contribute to these incidents.  Police advise caution in known manhole problem areas and “under no circumstances should pedestrians ever stand on manholes,” according to the National Safety Council (before it was dissolved by President Donald Trump, a notorious patron of chaos).

It’s Against The Law (Somewhere)!

Some of us think there are too many laws.  Why should it be illegal to smoke agricultural products or dance naked in public or take your guns to town, Bill?  As an infamous vice-president once said, “We have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.”  It’s difficult keeping track of all these laws.  A person could be doing something completely natural and the next thing you know the long arm of the law reaches down and plucks them up, which explains why your friends Pancho and Lefty are sitting in the calaboose merely for sucking down a few mushrooms. The Flying Pie has researched this sordid matter and come up with a raft of dubious crimes nobody knows about.  Herewith:

1. In Alabama, you may not chain your alligator to a fire hydrant.  We Floridians have no such foolish regulations, of course, since we are well aware that sometimes a person might need to go to the bathroom while walking his alligator.  It’s the height of rudeness to bring your reptile into the lavatory, so measures must be taken.  Under no circumstances, however, should an alligator ever be chained to a baby carriage.

Coincidentally, it is also against the law in Georgia to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole.  This obviously makes far more sense.

2. In Minnesota, it’s illegal to cross state lines with a duck on your head.  Well, you know those Minnesotans, always minding someone else’s business.  That said, all ducks must be kept at eye level or below when entering or exiting the Dakotas, Wisconsin or Iowa.  The law does not apply to people visiting Canada, where ducks are held in high esteem.

3. In North Carolina, it’s illegal to plow a field with an elephant.  This makes no sense at all.  Pachyderms are big and strong and perfectly cut out for the practice.  The American Federation of Elephant Labor bemoans the loss of job opportunities for its constituents and has taken this foolish law to court.

4. In Connecticut, a pickle must bounce to be legal.  No arguing with this one, which resulted from a 1940s scandal where disreputable vendors were selling bogus pickles, a heinous crime if ever there was one.  Here you are ready to bite into your delicious peanut butter and pickle sandwich and UGH!---a rubber pickle rears its ugly head.  Technically, if your pickle doesn’t bounce, it’s a cucumber.

5. In Arizona, it’s illegal to let a donkey sleep in a bathtub.  Well, who would, you might ask?  Alas, back in the 1920s, a careless asskeeper did this and the bathtub washed away in a flood, causing valiant but costly attempts at rescue.  Not wanting a repeat of the shenanigans, the legislature put its collective foot down.

6. In Alabama (again), you can’t keep an ice cream cone in your back pocket.  No, really.  Apparently, back in the 1800s, horse thieves would steal horses by using cones to lure them away, claiming the horses followed them home and their mothers said they could keep them.

7. In Sarasota, Florida, you may not sing while wearing a swimsuit.  No one can explain this one, but you know how fussy those Sarasotans are.  Maybe the law is the result of a riot at a karaoke bar on the beach or some infidels wearing their swim togs to church.  Nobody knows.  But it’s the law.

8. In Oklahoma, making ugly faces at dogs is a crime.  And punishable by a fine or even jail time if the face is particularly scary.  “We like our dogs in Oklahoma,” said Odell Cox, of Enid.  “If your pug gives you the stinkeye, just smile and toss him a biscuit.”

9. In Alaska, no pushing moose out of aircraft.  Alaskan police want you to know they take this law very seriously, even though it only happened once.  On that occasion, the moose pusher was extremely inebriated and fell out of the plane with the moose.  “We don’t want this thing happening on a regular basis,” said Sergeant Ralph Preston of the Alaska Mounted Police.  “It’s a real mess.” 

It’s Flush

If you happen to be passing through The Colony, Texas around 11 p.m. any night of the week and your fun options don’t look too perky, you might want to drive over to Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum at the Truck Yard brewpub.  The Museum showcases the life work of  Mr. Barney, who opened the place in 2019 when he was a sprightly 97 years old and it contains 1400 painted toilet seats of all descriptions.  Barney passed on to his heavenly reward at age 98, but the toilet seats linger on.  Smith opened his original museum in 1992 in a large garage in his backyard, garnering national attention and plenty of tourists.  His impending retirement brought the Truck Yard boys into the picture.  “I appreciated them wanting to put my work on display and to show the world what I did for 97 years of my life,” said Barney.  I’d like to be remembered for how a person could save a lot of stuff that is being destroyed and showing there’s something you can do with it,”

The Truck Yard has picked up the ball and carried it down the field.  One of their ads reads, “DON’T LET YOUR NEXT EVENT BE CRAPPY!  Host your corporate event, birthday party or shindig in the Toilet Seat Museum, which can seat up to 60 people with additional standing room on the outside balcony.”  The art, by the way, is fabulous.  

“Quick, Robin---The Goatmobile!”

In dusty 1937, a Columbus, Ohio farmer anxious to emulate his more wealthy neighbors in possessing an easygoing conveyance created the Goatmobile.  A.W. Nelson was short on assets but long on imagination, not to mention being the proud owner of one large he-goat.  After considerable cogitation at the local alehouse, A.W. conceived the clever scheme of powering his new vehicle by hooking his goat up to a bottomless cage with four wheels; the cage would have a seat atop for the driver and a sort of steering wheel attached to the goat’s harness.  (Alas, Mr. Nelson neglected to protect his brilliant idea by patent, leaving the invention open to manipulation by scurrilous fortune-seekers not averse to chicanery, so go to it all you knockoff artists.)  The Goatmobile was born in an era marked by innovation and experimentation, a time of hardship fostered by the Great Depression.  And well before the rise of the American Society to Prevent Conniving with Goats (ASPCG).

The Ultimate Ant Farm

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Brussels, a couple of Belgian peckerheads were kiboshed by Nairobi police for trying to smuggle 5000 Kenyan ants out of the country,  Oh, the shame!  Teenagers Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, a likely alias, were given a choice of paying a $7700 fine or serving 12 months in prison for violating wildlife conservation laws.  Authorities claimed the ants were destined for European and Asian ant markets (There are ANT markets?  How about RED ants?  Come and take a few thousand of ours, please) in an emerging trend of trafficking lesser-known wildlife species.  Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court of Kenya’s main airport said the species included some valuable messor cephalotes, a distinctive large red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.  “These critters are all the rage with snotty European ant galleries,” she sniffed.  Mr. Dennis Ng’ang’a, who was supposed to pick up the ants from the lawbreakers claimed he didn’t know ant traffic was illegal because many ants are sold and eaten locally.

Crazy Guys

You may not have noticed, but in the rolling hills outside Williamstown, Kentucky there is a massive wooden structure which looks a lot like the Bible’s description of Noah’s Ark.  The thing is 510 feet long and 85 feet wide, lots bigger than your local football field, and is said to be the largest timber-frame critter in the world.  The entire construct, including piers that raise the ark about 15 feet above the earth (like Noah’s) is about 10 stories tall.  It even has cages in it just like the original.  It’s sitting there because a crazy guy named Ken Ham decided it would be a good idea to build it.  Snicker if you will, but even Zippy the Pinhead would have to admit Ken is having fun now.

“We wanted to show the feasibility of the Biblical account,” says Ham, a fervid Creationist.  “We wanted to make our case that the story of Noah could really be true.  We wanted to take people out of the modern world and into Noah’s.”  Mission accomplished, Mr. Ken.

The awesome project cost Ham a salty $101 million, almost enough to hire Billy Strings’ band for the whole weekend.  Don’t cry for him, Argentina, because he’s getting plenty of it back from zealots who want to savor Ark Encounter, the Christian Disneyland in the mountains.  On Deck 1, you’ll be introduced to “the kinds of animals that were on Noah’s Ark,” including dinosaurs, pakicetids and a sort of long-necked giraffe.  Um, Ken…about those dinos…

On Deck 2, you get to learn why God sent the flood, how Noah’s family cared for the animals, what ark life was like and how to load a T. Rex onto a boat (very carefully).  You can also get your photo taken by the ark door, which features a picture of God’s salvation.  If you’re in a big hurry, you can get a bird’s-eye view of the whole shebang by soaring past the ark on Zip Line Canopy Tours.

Not satisfied with a mere 510-foot ark, Ken is now building an enormous replica of the first-century city of Jerusalem, scheduled to open sometime in 2026 just south of Cincinnati.  Now all you Reds fans can schedule the ultimate doubleheader.  Unfortunately, however, due to circumstances beyond Ham’s control, the City of Jerusalem will have no major dinosaurs.  As Emily Litella once said, it’s always something.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Austin, 1962; The Way We Were

Those of us who hit the ground in 1940 lived in authoritarian times.  You heeded your parents, obeyed the nuns (mostly), respected the mayor and admired the President.  If your mother got a note from the principal, you were wrong and she was right, case closed.  The most dreaded sentence you could hear after a lapse in judgment was “Wait until your father gets home.”  To make matters worse, we had four (count ‘em 4) cops living in the neighborhood.  We either toed the line or kept our transgressions on the downlow.  It wasn’t any different in other neighborhoods, or cities, for that matter.  We were under the heel of the boot, and even the soft slippers of the monsignor.  Still, there were occasional murmurs of resistance.  A few of us in Catholic high schools started noting some inconsistencies in our religious tenets.  When we  dutifully brought them to the attention of the Marist Brothers who taught us, we were given short shrift rather than deft explanations.  I can recall one particularly grumpy conversation about God being an “uncaused cause.”  It ended with “Sit down, Mr. Killeen, we’ve heard enough out of you today.”

About this time, the Beatnik Era began picking up speed despite its adherents’ disheveled lifestyle and disagreeable attitudes.  What started with a few disenchanted writers and novelists like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac blossomed into a full-scale phenomenon by 1957 when Kerouac’s occasional stream-of-consciousness On The Road novel introduced us to a cast of characters who were playing a very different ballgame.  Every adventurous young boy in America suddenly imagined hitting the road, living off the land and exploring the country with Sal Paradise.  Sal took his orders from noone, flew by the seat of his pants, shot first and asked questions later.  Nobody cared when the once iconic J. Edgar Hoover railed against “Communists, Eggheads and Beatniks.”  Slim tolerance for beatniks morphed into further investigation, amusement and gradual acceptance.  The original beats even became a tourist attraction in San Francisco’s North Beach.  Everyday people started using words like “cool,” “crazy,” “dig” and “like.”  Suddenly, it was alright to challenge authority…maybe even cool.

Despite being accepted by a dozen colleges, most of them closer to home, I opted for relative independence, getting on a train and heading for Stillwater, Oklahoma.  It wasn’t as much fun as hopping a boxcar but sometimes you have to compromise with the mother who’s footing the bills.  By this time, many of us in college recognized some fraying in the system.  The once-admired college president was often now more of a political appointee than an educational leader, a peace-keeper inserted to deter the natives from getting restless.

At Oklahoma State, I sought to revive the moribund campus humor magazine and was introduced to the novel concept of red tape.  Rather than simply telling you no, the administration employed a tool called a “committee” to pass judgment on unsavory projects.  Apparently, the OSU Alumni Association found the previous magazine raunchy and disagreeable and wasn’t in the mood for a do-over.  I decided to publish the Charlatan anyway and sell it illegally in the dorms.  That’s what Sal Paradise would have done.

Now back in those days, universities had “advisors,” trusty old academicians familiar with the system who would help new students adjust to college life.  My adviser called and said we needed to have a little meeting about my new project.  He was a kindly old fellow, a mellow ex-journalist counting off his days and truly sympathetic with his advisees.  We’ll call him Mr. Mann.  Mr. Mann smilingly advised that the University had weaponry in their arsenal.  They could kick you out of school if you became too much of a problem.  It’s fine to be a rebel when there’s nothing to lose, a whole different story when someone can “revoke your privileges.”  He didn’t exactly ask what would Mother think if OSU kicked me out on my ass, but he made his points clear enough.  I told him that in a few years Franki Valli was going to write a song telling me to walk like a man, talk like a man, so I might as well get an early start.  He smiled and wished me good luck.  Nobody kicked me out of school, but they became very testy when I printed a “University Is Going To Hell” issue.  Sometimes it just takes one person to start the ball rolling.  After the dawn of the Charlatan, the OSU college newspaper started calling out the administration on several fronts.  Nobody threw them out, either.

In the process of running the Charlatan, I ran across other college humor mags across the country who were fighting their own battles.  The best of these was the exceptional University of Texas Ranger in Austin, edited by Bill Helmer, who maintained a clever balance between being outrageous and infuriating the UT magazine censors.  Gilbert Shelton, a cartoonist on the Ranger staff, began a correspondence which lasted many months, and eventually visited me at my Massachusetts home one Thanksgiving.  It was there the first rumblings of a Wonder Wart Hog comic strip took place.  I wrote the script for the first one and it was published the following year.  Shelton said he would be returning to Austin as Ranger editor in 1962, following Helmer’s reign, and he invited me to come, sleep on his hair couch and help him put out the magazine.  In mid-summer of that year, I pulled up in his driveway in my Cadillac Superior Model Hearse, which was on its last legs, the victim of a disagreeable radiator.  As I pulled to a stop at his door, the radiator gave one giant heave of smoke and its last breath of hot water flew into the blue Texas skies.  Gilbert Shelton emerged from his condemned apartment with a smile.  “Well, Killeen,” he said, “you sure know how to make an entrance.”

Austin-town 

To say the following weeks were revelatory, exciting and productive would be a gross understatement.  The Ranger staff was seriously deranged, especially one Joe E. Brown, who got drunk one night, climbed to the top of Austin’s tallest building and scrawled “Fuck You, Sky King!” in yellow paint. on the roof.  I asked him why.  “Because I want to make sure he sees it when he flies over,” said Joe.  Oh, okay, I get it now.

Then there was Ranger poet-laureate Lieuen Adkins, a master punster and heavy drinker, who still lived at home with his parents.  Adkins had a curfew and if he didn’t make it home in time, he slept on a sofa on the porch.  Lieuen was like the coyote to Shelton’s Roadrunner in the old cartoons, always just a little too inept to fool the master, as a story in Shelton’s letter below illustrates.  On one occasion, Lieuen finally attracted a girlfriend, a wild high-school girl named Tami Dean, who plotted to interrupt his virginity one night when her parents were out of town.  All went well until the father unexpectedly returned to find his daughter en flagrante delicto.  Which would have been bad enough if he hadn’t been a prominent member of the English Department faculty.  By now you can easily guess what Adkin’s major was.

Later that year, Lieuen decided for some reason to become a candidate for the Student Senate, despite no previous political experience.  He somehow talked himself into thinking he had a realistic chance.  On the night of the election, he squirreled himself away with a bottle of whiskey while the ballots were being tabulated, only mounting the steps of the counting-house when the results were posted on a giant green chalkboard.  When he saw the sad vote totals, he went into a disappointed rage and ran at the board, trying to punch a hole in it.  “He failed, of course.” wrote Shelton.

The Summer of 1962 was filled with glorious events like the Great Waterballoon Wars, which began when Joe E. Brown and the West Side Boys invaded the impregnable fortress of the East Side Boys, also known as Shelton’s apartment.  Seeking to place Lieuen Adkins in a safe place where he could do no harm, Shelton posted him upstairs, guarding the ammunition dump.  Spies of the West Side Boys learned of this folly, sneaked in early and tied up Lieuen.  When the battle started, they began picking off East Side Boys below from the ammunition dump balcony to the befuddlement of all, leading to yet another verse in the eventual Ballad of Lieuen Adkins.

The Summer of ‘62 was an awakening for many of us, a jailbreak, a first attempt to push the envelope to its limits.  After all, who among us had ever before enjoyed gagging down peyote, traipsing through bridge tunnels listening for bats or sailing across Lake Travis, picking off errant floating detritus with pistols?  Not many.  Due to the blessings of good fortune, we recently stumbled upon an antique missive from Gilbert Shelton to Bill Helmer, a genuine relic recalling recalling some of the pleasures of those good old days.  You’ll laugh until you cry. 

A Letter From Gilbert Shelton To Bill Helmer, August 1962

”Greetings, Helmer.  A wild summer season has just come to a close this morning with the departures of Joe Brown and Karen Kirkland, Joe home to Oklahoma and K.K. to San Antone, leaving a destitute Shelton in Austin to live on other folks’ charity.  Tony Bell went home about a week ago, Bill Killeen hitchhiked to Houston yesterday to start a new era in the Adventures of Poddy in the city of his birth.  My brother went home to College Station simultaneously.  And here is Shelton, trapped in Austin with only the birds and Lieuen Adkins, the Super-Sparrow, to talk to.  It’s been a good time,though---old Shelton’s got lots of prizes.

Looks like I’ll not be able to make it to N.Y.---only  twenty days left before registration and I have to write a Ranger and a delinquent seminar paper in the interim.  And besides, I’m broker’n a doodlebug.  Cashed a check for $1.50 at Faulkner’s this morning and the guy said he sure hated to take the fifteen-cent check-cashing charge but he had to.  I ate and drank for free yesterday at a foreign student picnic out at Ted Klein’s new lake house, but unfortunately they started opening the beer early in the afternoon and didn’t get the food until late, resulting in the near destruction of Shelton and his crew, who hadn’t eaten since noon the day before. 

The Great Gin Bottle Caper

For the two days before that, Lieuen had unwittingly supplied much liquor for Gilbert, Karen and Joe: he started buying gin, which unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be) looks just like water, so when he hid his still-unfinished bottle in the closet when he left (still can’t take liquor home) we found it after a diligent search and drank it all up and filled the bottle back up with water.  Lieuen came in the next day, got his bottle, mixed a drink and had drunk about half of it when Killeen, aware of the plot, walked over and picked up the gin bottle, asking Lieuen what he’d give him if he’d swill it, straight, hot and completely, and Lieuen promised free meals for all if such a deed were to be accomplished, knowing Killeen to be a teetotaler. Killeen drank it down.  Lieuen continued to gape in wonder for several minutes before a dim light of realization started to appear.  We made him buy us hot dogs.  And Lieuen, plans of vengeance rapidly forming in his pea mind, got another bottle of gin, drank part of it, switched the remainder to another bottle, and filled the original bottle up with water and hid it again in the closet, bidding us farewell with a smug grin.  We found both bottles, drank the gin, replaced it with water and re-hid them.  The first rule of war, Lieuen, is never to underestimate your foe.

Days Of Wine & Peyote

Karen missed the midnight bus to San Antone and had to catch the 5:00 one, at which time it was discovered that between us there was not enough money for a single ticket, so we had to go wake up Joe in the middle of the night to borrow 50 cents, and then the bus was late so we both sat on the benches in front of the capitol and played Nothingville.  Joe left later this morning in his ailing Renault with nothing but one dime and a credit card to sustain him.

Ted Klein and Co. seem to be happy as can be.  Ted has gained fifteen pounds.  They’ve got another artist living with them, somebody I didn’t recognize from the old days.  Frank and Robbie Stack were in town for a few days and we had a beer-bust over at Jon Bracker’s house, but I didn’t have much of a chance to talk to Stack.

Right after school was out, Joe and Tony and Hugh Lowe and I whupped up a big batch of peyote, simmering it on the stove and then straining the bilious green juice through a cloth.  You only have to drink 2 to 4 ounces of this juice for a good high.  Maybe I’ll do it again tonight---Joe left some behind.  Anyway, we split up into teams, Joe and Hugh at their house and Tony and I at mine, so that when we got sick the lavatory facilities wouldn’t be overcrowded.  Gilbert got sick first and worst: I could only hold the mixture and my soda-pop down for fifteen minutes, and then during the next 45 minutes I had four great retching-sprees, while Tony only had two.  I certainly wished I were dead there for a few minutes: peyote makes you sick from vertigo, motion-sickness, rather than just stomach irritation.  Yecchh.  But then after I had finished being sick and lain thrashing on the bed for a while, everything became all right and I had a good high that lasted for six or eight hours, during which time we walked all over town marveling at things.

And then there was the day that Tony and I, following the example of The Great Helmer, boarded up the bathroom door and made a swimming pool out of Shelton’s bathroom.  The water only got about 18 inches deep, though.

Finally finished up the first Ranger.  It looks pretty good, although it is primarily cartoons.  There’s a picture of ol’ Helmer in it.

Ah hell.  Nothing else has happened newsworthy.  And I’m not expecting much of anything to happen, either.  Maybe now I can get some work done.  I’m writing a book of amazing adventures, deriving my inspiration from Gilbert’s adventures of the past year, which, I might add, never ceased to amaze old Gilbert himself.  Aw hell damn.  Drop a line.  Ranger address.  I might even be sleeping in the Ranger office from now on if it doesn’t cool off here.  Later….Shelton”

Epilogue/bill killeen

Well, it didn’t cool off one bit, didn’t even rain for 55 straight days.  When it finally did early one evening, the UT powers-that-be lit up the Texas Tower a bright orange in celebration and Janis Joplin pulled off her upper garments and ran around a parking lot half-naked in the rain.

As for not expecting anything to happen…well, Gilbert was pretty much incorrect about that.  There was the very exciting First Annual Bicycle Race and Treasure Hunt (which Gilbert won) where clues were left in busy places like the Austin Police Station, Scholz Garten, etc., in which the three dozen competitors had to dash through rowdy mobs to find them.  There were the non-stop antics of disaster songwriter John Clay, who penned Road To Mingus (“A decent person ain’t got no chance against a reckless, speedin’ train”) and (Anson Runaway (“As they got bigger, they took bigger things, becoming a juvenile criminal ring”).   There was the propitious discovery of Threadgill’s music room and cheese bar, where pickers from the UT English Department meshed comfortably with rednecks.  And there were the weekly Wednesday Folksings at the UT Student Union, so spectacular they caused Janis to quit her waitress job at the Pancake House to participate.  Janis later hosted the ultimate late-night party at her digs where a songfest broke out, drawing carloads of police and the best one-liner of the summer.  When asked by the cops if she knew there was a little old lady dying next door, Janis said, “No, but hum a few bars and we’ll fake it.”

Austin, 1962---The Way We Were.  There was no place like it.  Ever.  Oh, and yes, there is now a song titled “There’s A Little Old Lady Dying Next Door.”  But you already figured that one out, didn’t you?

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com    

 

ALS---The Gift That Keeps On Giving

If you’re ever given the choice of having your brains beat out and your testicles stomped by the Hairy Organ Motorcycle gang or contracting a disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, take the beatdown.  At the end of the first ordeal, chances are you’ll still be alive, even if it’s with one less kidney.  At the end of the second, you most certainly won’t.

Like the fog, ALS creeps in on little cat feet, you barely can tell it’s taken up residence in your motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement.  Then one day, you get an odd twitch in your calf muscle or your ankle turns in or you throw the dog’s ball the wrong way.  No big deal until it happens a couple more times or you unexplainably trip and fall.  You go to the doctor, but a casual inspection finds nothing.  About 40% of the victims of ALS are initially misdiagnosed as suffering from another condition.  The disease puts on oversized eyebrows, a fake nose and glasses and is often mistaken for Groucho Marx.  You begin to wonder if you’re going nuts.

Eventually you hire a better detective and he gives you the bad news.  Stunned, you wobble home and turn on old tapes of Lou Gehrig, an early victim, retiring from baseball and telling a sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd he considers himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” which he is not.  Merit points to Lou for putting on a brave face, but he had no idea what he was in for.  Nobody really knows until they sit inside a broken-down vehicle where none of the controls work.

Early symptoms can include difficulty with fine motor skills, muscle cramping and fatigue.  As the disease progresses, it can affect speech, swallowing and breathing.  Eventually, the walker morphs into a wheelchair and then a bed.  Muscle weakness spreads to more parts of the body, muscles shrink from lack of use, dysphagia leads to weight loss and nutritional deficiencies.  Weakening respiratory muscles cause shortness of breath and eventually require ventilation.  Bouts of random laughing and crying can occur.  The emotional baggage that comes with the disease wouldn’t fit in the cargo bay of an Airbus 380, mirroring the stages of intense grief---initial shock and denial followed by anger, bargaining and profound depression as individuals struggle to cope with the implications of a shortened lifespan and constant physical decline, all the while knowing The Lone Ranger will not be dramatically showing up with an antidote.  Take how bad you think you might feel and multiply by 100.  It’s the ultimate shitstorm.  What did I do to deserve this?

“Incurable” Is A Frustrating Word

Okay, doc, I’ve got ALS---there must be something we can do.  Sorry pal, it’s a long walk off a short pier.  Nobody gets out alive.  The lack of a cure stems from a complex interplay of factors, including the relative rarity of the disease, the diverse range of genetic and environmental factors that can contribute to its development and the difficulty in targeting the specific mechanisms of motor neuron degeneration.  Despite more than 85 years of scientific struggling, there are still no drugs that can stop or reverse the progression of ALS.  For bacterial infections, we’ve got antibiotics, for viruses we have medicines that reduce the viral load, for cancer we have surgery, chemotherapy or both in tandem.  For Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, we’ve got bupkus.

Terrible news, Doc, so how do we avoid getting it?  Hard to say.  Only about 15% of ALS cases are known to have a genetic origin.  Most cases are sporadic with no known cause.  Many researchers believe a combination of genetics and environmental factors are at play in both genetic and sporadic ALS, but there is still little understanding of how the two influence the onset of the disease.

Because of the modest numbers of people with the disease and a long, dreary history of failed research, Big Pharma has little interest in throwing big money at the problem, and make no mistake, solving enigmas like ALS has always required big money.  Nonetheless, in her small backyard laboratory in tiny Fairfield, Florida, a stubborn scientist named Siobhan Ellison may have detected a ray of sunshine.  Ellison, along with Dr. Robert Naviaux of San Diego State University and a small coterie of collaborators at Neurodegenerative Disease Research (NDR), a nonprofit, have recently finished an analysis of Naviaux’s metabolomics study in normal people and others with ALS.  Metobolomics is the comprehensive study of small molecules known as metabolites within a biological system.  It analyzes the complete set of metabolites (the metabolome) in cells, tissues or organisms, providing insights into the physiological state and biochemical activity.  Essentially, it’s like taking a snapshot of all the chemical reactions happening within a biological system at a specific moment.

Dr. Naviaux’s new study illustrates that ALS leaves a metabolomic signature which clearly distinguishes between the two populations.  The signature reveals biomarkers for disease and may predict a response to drugs or supplements which could be used to fight ALS.  This signature can change in three months and thus be used to assess the impact any treatment is making.  This is the first time such an advance in ALS research has occurred.  Naviaux’s scientific paper on these remarkable findings will be published in the Fall.  Until then, NDR is hard at work on an asset everyone can help with.

The Kit

A small young San Francisco company called iollo is using AI to analyze multimodal data to discover new biology in hours, work that typically takes teams of scientists years to process.  iollo can measure 500+ molecules in your blood, determine where the train is edging off the track and give you a personalized action plan involving dietary, behavioral and therapeutic interventions to keep you on the straight and narrow.  Think CBC test on steroids.  Your CBC results usually measure from 10-30 markers, but none of the large collection of molecules called the metabolome.  iollo captures imbalances in your blood that are relevant to your overall health and how fast you’re aging.  Studying iollo’s results, Dr. Naviaux realized that utilizing this test could be invaluable to the team’s work.  Individual biochemical reactions converge into a pattern leaving the ALS signature.  The signature reveals biomarkers for disease and may predict a response to drugs or supplements which could be used to fight ALS,  The signature can change in three months and be used to assess the impact of treatments.

Here’s where you come in.  If you’re financially able and so inclined, Siobhan Ellison would like you to buy one of iollo’s tests ($359, and a second one in three months to measure your changes) and become a part of her new study.  She doesn’t make a nickel on the deal but the information garnered is invaluable.  We know it’s not cheap and it’s not for everybody.  The objective is to sign up 200 people with ALS and another 200 who do not have the disease.  Anyone who wants to assist but not  participate personally in the study can help by purchasing kits for people with ALS.

The test uses an innovative collection device currently in use in studies at Stanford, Cornell and various pharmaceutical companies.  Users of the the device report it to be relatively painless.  The sample is collected in the comfort of your own home.  The collection device contains a stabilizing substance that allows the dried sample to be returned without the need for refrigeration.

The iollo machine learning methods analyze your data and the results are then generated by comparing your personalized report to iollo’s database built from a curated list of peer-reviewed scientific research, domain knowledge from their team of scientists, previous testing and user feedback.

Participants in the study may be rewarded not only by the knowledge they are helping move forward research and an eventual cure for a truly heinous disease, but also by revelations in the testing results of their own personal health issues that may need attention and advice on how to proceed in correcting the problems.  How often do you get a chance at a twofer?  And if that’s not enough, the names of all testees will be placed in a hat and one winner picked out by our Prize Patrol.  The lucky duck gets a visit from the iconic NDR Trio.  Chuck LeMasters will come to your house and roll you a big one, Gina Hawkins will sing Stardust and Will Thacker will let you hold his snake.

Siobhan with Laura Benedetti in San Antonio.  First we cure the horses, then we deal with the humans.

Addenda

Please direct all requests for test kits or questions about the process to Siobhan Ellison at the email address below.  Her operators are standing by.

contact@ndrinc.org

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com