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I expected to smell better than two boys who had not washed for 40 days.
I did not expect to be deemed less attractive than an orang-utan.
“You will never live this down,” my best friend grinned.
The things we do for science.
At the Feast of Stenches at the Secret Garden Party with my side project Guerilla Science this past July, we presented our audience with an array of human scents for them to sample, judge and rate: two boys, a woman (myself), and an ape (Hannah, a female orang-utan, only revealed to be non-human after the judging).
More than 50 eager noses took turns sniffing our Smell Stations, plastic boxes containing ripped shreds of fabric from t-shirts worn by our four research subjects.
This was a Guerilla Science take on the famous t-shirt experiments, which investigate the molecular basis of attraction and by examining how humans preferentially rate the smells of other people.
To get a better look at the electricity inside my head, and more precisely, the “jagged waves” emanating from my right temporal lobe (which as I’ve always said, is rather a rock and roll way to describe a neurological condition), I was sent for a 36 hour EEG to get a sense for how my brain waves change over day and night.
I went out to Chiltern to have the kit put on, and then was sent back to London. I was not comfortable. The electrodes were secured to my head with firm glue. I looked a bit cyborgish. No fun
So I figured – why not make an outing of it so all my friends could come and marvel at my freakish state? Being English, of course they suggested we meet at the pub.
Measure this.
(And yes MOM, I asked the neurologist if it was ok – he said a few pints was fine, but not to get smashed.
Sitting outside the pub with this shit strapped to my head, my friends tittered and marveled. Then a bum came to ask for change. But when he saw the wires, he could only stare, and said “Oh my god… your head… do you need help?”
“Ah, no, I’m fine.”
“Really? Can I help you?”
“Ah no that’s kind, I have my friends with me.”
He wandered off, sad and confused.
In a way, it was incredibly touching.
For two weeks this November as part of the Secret Cinema’s rendition of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I played the role of a physician instructing her students in the fine art of the transorbital lobotomy.
Over the eyeball, under the eyelid, and straight on till morning.
The London-based Secret Cinema creates homages to classic films: they take over abandoned buildings (in this case, a disused hospital) and recreate the set, with actors playing the roles, art installations celebrating the plot, live bands, bars and food. Punters spend two hours scrambling around the space getting sauced and getting in the spirit, before sitting down to watch the film.
My side project Guerilla Science, which brings scientific events into cultural spaces, hosted the Experimental Ward: psychiatric assessments, electroconvulsive treatments, and lobotomy lectures. Read more on our website in two extensive posts I wrote about the history and theory behind electroconvulsive therapy and the transorbital lobotomy – Neural Renovation and a kind of Surgery for the Soul, one could say.
Taking our place alongside bona fide actors and artists, we try to bring content with real historical and scientific meaning into what is essentially a theatrical performance. We think we don’t do too badly – our performances with OFOTCN saw us broadcast on Russian television. Not bad.
Truth be told, the whole experience made me lose my marbles just a little bit. Thinking about invasive and debilitating brain surgery inside an unheated building surrounded by dozens of actors playing mental patients can do that to a girl.
In Amsterdam, I had the chance to visit a “consumption room” – a place where homeless injection drug users can come not only to obtain clean needles, but also to use them. There are only a handful of such places all over Europe, but they are becoming more common as the evidence that they reduce the spread of HIV and hepatitis becomes increasingly clear.
Amazing that the term “harm reduction” was only used in official EU documents for the very first time in 2004, considering how obvious it is that rooms like this save lives. As the directors of Correlation, the charity housed in the same building as the room, told me: “Hepatitis C is a cruel disease.” And it is one which almost solely affects drug users (read: homeless people and prisoners), because it is passed via blood.
The experience here was an interesting one: I did not know beforehand that there would be such a room in the building. There is no mention on the website. But when I entered the door downstairs, I clocked it: that smell of burnt rubber oatmeal. Unmistakable.
Original art for the 2005 fall issue of Shameless by Renée Nault.
I wrote my very first glossy magazine feature five years ago about vaginas. Or, to be more precise, about the growing trend for labiaplasties: cosmetic modification of the vulva, undertaken in over 90 per cent of cases for aesthetic reasons (rather than for pain or other medical concerns). Some like to call them “designer vaginas.”
This was published not in one of the innumerable “women’s” magazines, amid tedious diet tips and guides to “The Five Shades of Lipstick That Will Save Your Relationship,” but for Shameless, the world’s first feminist magazine for teenagers.
This feature remains very close to my heart for two reasons: one, it netted me my very first National Magazine Award nomination (and the first for Shameless). And two, I received letters from readers – young girls suffering the agonising insecurities of adolescence – telling me that I had genuinely made them feel better about their bodies. One wrote to say she actually had started to feel that her vulva was a thing to love, rather than to feel embarrassed about. This still brings me an incredible amount of pride.
So it was with a keen interest that I received the following email (I shall not disclose the name and email address of the sender for litigious reasons).
* * *
February 6, 2010
Hello Zoe,
Would you consider placing a promotional link on your page: http://www.zoecormier.com/freelance/making-the-cut/? The link would be for a website which offers cosmetic surgery and vaser liposuction.
My budget isn’t enormous, but I am hoping there is a reasonable price we could arrange since it’s just a tiny piece of screen real estate I’m interested in.
Please let me know if you’re open to this, and if not I appreciate your time and wish you the best of luck with your site.
Thank You!
* * *
My response:
February 6, 2010
Hello,
Thanks for your inquiry. Quick question – did you actually read the article in question?
Kind Regards
Zoe
* * *
Her response:
February 8, 2010
Hello Zoe,
Yes, it mentions about cosmetic surgery so I find it interesting.
I would like to place a simple promotional text link on your page http://www.zoecormier.com/freelance/making-the-cut/ to link to [a cosmetic surgery clinic].
If possible I would really want to place that link within a sentence or two that I could write up so that it reads well (it won’t be overly promotional or lengthy).
I can pay you $70 USD for the link, for the whole year paid upfront with the assumption that you’ll leave it live on that page for at least 12 months, or longer if you prefer.
If that arrangement isn’t agreeable perhaps we could come up with something different for a couple additional links or some way in which we both benefit more (you more money, me more opportunity to get visits), let me know and I will see what I can do.
Please get back to me if interested and include your paypal account ID (just your email of course) for payment. I look forward to your positive response.
Thanks!
* * *
February 10, 2010
Hello,
Thanks again for your email – your proposal is certainly very interesting.
But again, I have to ask, did you actually read the article? Have a look at the last three paragraphs and please let me know if you think it is still a suitable place for the advertising in question.
All the best
Zoe
* * *
February 16, 2010
Hello,
I did read. Are you still interested? Let me know.
Thanks.
* * *
My response:
February 20, 2010
Hello,
I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. I feel that advertising for the services in question would not harmonise with the spirit of the article. My intention was to celebrate the natural diversity of women’s bodies, rather than promote the belief that there is a ‘right’ or ‘ideal’ way to look.
I wish you all the best in your endeavours.
Kind Regards
Zoe
I am a writer. Not just in my trade, but in my bones. When I told my grandfather that I was going to study zoology at university, not literature (like everyone else in his family), he looked a bit baffled, and a tad disappointed. He said, “OK, but don’t you ever forget: You are a Writer.”
I love to write. I love to script things in my head. I love to scribble with a pen. I love to type on a keyboard – it is physically soothing. And, like pianists, I’m picky about keyboards – ones that are too stiff and clunky hurt my hands and make the act of writing unnaturally cumbersome and unpleasant.
I love to write. But before I could write, I could ski.
Not because I come from privilege. Mine was not a family that skied because we had tons of cash, who could afford to jet to France or Italy or Whistler. I’ve never skied in any of those places.
We skied because we ski. It’s in our blood. My dad was a ski instructor as a teen. My uncle runs a ski shop. My grandfather – who worked in coal mines as a young boy in Cape Breton – skied until he was, I shit you not, in his late 70s, and realized that a fall could kill him. The day he decided he needed to give it up was a sad day. In my mind he will always wear his “SHUT UP AND SKI” shirt.
My father taught all of us to ski almost as soon as we could walk, starting with a bungee cord tied around our waists, tethering us to him so we wouldn’t fall. I could ski before I capably hold a pencil. So I’m not being hyperbolic: I could read first, but I could ski before I could write.
This year, for the first time in six years, I got back on my planks. For financial and scheduling reasons, I just haven’t made it out to the family time share in Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont since 2002. But this year I decided, come hell or high water, despite piles of work and the cost of flying all the way back out to Canada, I was going to go.
I knew I missed it – but I’d forgotten how much I love it. The freedom. The fresh air. The snow and the sparkle. The SPEED.
I hadn’t forgotten that I love to ski, I’d just forgotten just how much I love it.
But there was one thing I had truly and completely forgotten about: the beauty of silence.
I have a difficult time with silence. It makes me restless. I bore very easily. When people sit around saying nothing, I can’t help but find it awkward.
I desire constant stimulation in my life. Whether it be verbal, written, musical, gustatory or tactile, I like to have my senses constantly poked and prodded. My friends find it very amusing sometimes, how much I babble and chat. Though, as I always point out, I might talk a lot, but I’m a very good listener.
I just require constant stimulation, that’s all. if I’m not talking, reading, or writing, I’m usually listening to music, cooking, eating or all of the above. When I was a teenager I watched about six hours of TV a day – and I would watch it all while doing my homework. One on its own was too boring – I needed both at the same time.
You know those people who sit on planes, not talking, not watching films, not reading, not doing ANYTHING? You know those people? They freak the crap out of me. What on earth is wrong with them? Aren’t they BORED? How can they just SIT there, staring, for hours on end? Downright creepy.
These days I don’t watch much TV, but I listen to music almost constantly. I grew up in the house of a promoter, so music has always been a constant. Almost always when traveling on the subway, I listen to my ipod while reading a magazine. In my house, I can’t bear to cook or clean without tunes. I simply don’t understand how people lived before the advent of the stereo.
But, for some reason, the first day I went skiing, I decided to leave my ipod at home. Partially because I couldn’t bear the thought of dropping it in the snow. But mostly because I figured, well, I listen to music all day, every day. Maybe I could use a day without.
I skied by myself that day. And the slopes were deserted – for some reason the fog drove the crowds away.
For the first time, in six years, I spent a day in silence. No talking. No listening. No words, no newspapers, no books. No music. No company. Nothing.
Nothing but the wind in the trees, the swish of my skis on the snow, and occasionally the squeak of the chair lift.
But above all: the sound of silence. Seven hours of actual silence. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. Soothing. Calming. Therapeutic.
I’m a writer: But I can’t really put into words how good it made me feel to spend seven hours not having to think, speak or listen. I can’t really explain it. All I know is that going up the chair lift at the end of the day, staring up at the slopes I’d skied on all my life, slowing drifting up the hillside, I felt warmth, happiness and peace. Like being in love – but with a mountain. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s the only way I know how to explain it.
Makes sense, though, doesn’t it: humans didn’t evolve in a world of traffic and sirens and speakers and chaos. We need company, and conversation, and culture to live – but we also need some peace and quiet now and then.
The leaves are changing colour and the air is getting cooler everyday, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for your body to fall apart.
I don’t know about you, but I always, ALWAYS get sick when the season changes from summer into fall – not in the depths of winter as you might expect. Your brain is still stuck in summer mode, so you forget to wear a cozy sweater, and (in my case) you still think you can prance around town in a short skirt ’til the middle of the night. Then, BOOM, you wake up the next day with tonsils the size of golf balls, covered in white mountainous caps of pus, and you spend the next three weeks cursing your body for betraying you (when you should be cursing yourself for betraying your body).
They say “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” which is indeed true. A very good friend of mine however came up with a better analogy, which he related to me two weeks ago as I was languishing with strep throat:
“Immune systems are like toilets: you shit into them all day long taking them completely for granted. Then they break, and it’s like ‘OH MY GOD, THERE’S SHIT EVERYWHERE, WHY DID I NOT LOOK AFTER MY TOILET BETTER, I’M SUCH A DAMN FOOL…’”
This gave me a good chuckle, which I needed, because being sick makes you very, very unhappy. In fact, you always forget how much being ill affects your mood until you become ill. So you take your good health for granted. Then you become ill, and you despair. You feel like you’ve always been ill, you can’t remember what it’s like to be happy and healthy, and you feel like you’re never going to be happy and healthy again. So you swear to yourself that if you do by some stroke of luck become healthy again, you’re going to take incredibly good care of your body. And then time goes by, and you forget all about what it’s like to be sick and you take your body for granted – so you get sick. On and on it goes, round and round.
Coincidentally, my friend reassured me that my sad mood was largely due to the fact that I was sick, and he boasted that one of the reasons he had been so happy for the past month was because he was so healthy.
Then I got better, we got together on the weekend and made mischief.
Then he woke up on Monday sick as a dog. And now he’s miserable. On and on it goes, round and round.
At the end of the day, we all get sick, one way or another. So what are you to do?
In my case, I went right for the penicillin. By the next day I felt human again. God bless white man’s medicine.
Pharmaceutical painkillers and antibiotics are pretty new to me – my hippy mum raised me on herbal and homeopathic medicine, I only really discovered the joys of acetaminophen in my twenties. So my mother of course feels pained – even betrayed – whenever I go to a pharmacist instead of a naturopath.
Without fail, when I get sick, she tries to hand me a bottle of sugar pills. And without fail I roll my eyes, tell her that although I’ll happily take an herbal preparation now and then, please stop trying to give me homeopathic remedies, I’m fed up with her trying to give them to me. And then without fail she pouts, and gets all quiet, taking my aversion to homeopathics as a personal affront to her entire way of living. And then without fail I get frustrated, tell her that it’s not personal, can you please just accept the fact that my brother and I don’t ‘dig’ homeopathy, it doesn’t have anything to do with how much we love or respect you, can you please just let it go? And then without fail she says OK, but remains quiet and pouty, and I sigh and roll my eyes and stomp off to the pharmacist.
Anyways. Where was I? Oh right – white man’s medicine rules. Sometimes it really does just the trick. But of course the distinction between “herbal remedies” and “pharmaceutical medicine” is not so clear as many would believe. Many (if not most) of modern meds are based on plants and other living organisms: morphine and codeine come from poppies, derivatives made from rosy periwinkle are widely used to treat leukemia, and penicillin, as we know, is just mouldy bread.
And non-biological materials from the natural world can also work wonders: Agricur, an antiseptic made from French clay, could one day replace conventional antibiotics in the treatment of bacteria, which are increasingly becoming antibiotic resistant.
Of course, modern medicine still has infamously been defeated by one of our oldest enemies: the common cold.
There’s just about only one thing that everybody agrees you need when you’re sick: sleep. But sometimes, when your sinuses are clogged, your throat is swollen shut and you’re ramping up a fever of 102, it can be incredibly hard to fall asleep.
One scientist, a Dr. Chris Idzikowski at the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, believes he has come up with the perfect formula for solving this problem:
i4 + (x * t3) + (y * i1) – a1 – t4 + t2 – i3 + (2 * (p+p2)) + L1 = sleep
Click here for a piece in The Independent about this algebraical concoction.
I, however, have my own formula for dealing with the common cold:
Loud Whining + Very Patient Mother/Boyfriend/Roommate + Chris Rock/Wanda Sykes Standup DVDs + Skipping Work + Whiskey + Hot Bath + More Whiskey = Partial Relief
I think I should patent it.
Billy Connolly once remarked that there were two non-fatal conditions that were, in his opinion, worse than all others: fish odour syndrome and jet-lag.
Fish odour syndrome, unlike jet lag, is permanent: sufferers with this genetic anomaly – techincally called trimethylaminuria – are unable to break down the chemical trimethylamine normally. So trimethylamine oozes through their sweat, urine and breath, and they perpetually smell like rotting fish.
Sounds awful, and it is. I have actually met somebody with this condition. My aunt had a tenant for a couple of years who was one of these unfortunate souls. The poor guy, and all his belongings, smelled so bad that my aunt, about a month after he moved in, decided to inspect his room to make sure he didn’t have a dead body in there. One sniff of his shoes almost made her faint. (Funnily enough, the guy had an ex-wife and children. Go fig.)
I would reckon that trimethylaminuria is much worse than jet-lag.
But jet-lag still really, really sucks. I’m suffering from it right now.
As Connolly described it, in his case on tour in Australia: you’re lying there fast asleep. All of a sudden at four in the morning, no matter how little sleep you’ve had, BANG, you’re awake. Your brain shouts at you,
“WAKEY WAKEY! IT’S MORNING, IT’S MORNING!”
And there’s nothing you can do. Argh… My head hurts.
So there are three main things that will make me lose my temper:
1. Bad production. I worked at a nightclub for a long time and my father is a promoter – I hate seeing bad gigs, poor sound quality or crap lectures.
2. Rude crowds. I get claustrophobic easily and I hate it when dense crowds of people bump into me.
And,
3. Airports.
I had forgotten just how much I hate airports until yesterday. I took a 14 hour flight from London to Saskatoon (via Calgary). Those three hours in Heathrow airport made me angrier, crankier, and more unhappy than anything since I don’t know when. Airports in general are no fun, and Heathrow is unbearable.
I hate crowds, I hate being told what to do, I hate the stress, I hate having to walk half an hour from check-in to the gate, and I hate being stuck in a big nasty corporate machine full of nasty perfumes and shiny make-up and giant bottles of booze. I especially hate it when you have to wait two more hours than you thought. I hate the whole process.
First you line up for an excruciatingly long time. Then some dead-eyed woman checks you in without even really looking at you, which is always kind of spooky and disconcerting. Then you go through security, somebody barks at you to take off your shoes, and they ask you to turn your laptop on (who the hell is going to disguise a bomb as a computer?). THEN you wander through packed crowds of rude people, none of the signs seem to tell you where you’re going, and none of the security guards or stewards are helpful – none of them give a shit, you’re the zillionth person they’ve seen all day, and they’re never going to see you again, they couldn’t care less.
Ack. I HATE Heathrow. It stressed me out to the max.
Six weeks ago I read in the news about a study that had found Heathrow to cause you “more stress than sky diving.” I chuckled at the time at the hyperbole of journalists. Now I think that that sounds about right.
But then, when I got to Calgary, it was all different.
No crowds. No rude people. No horrible inconveniences.
Yeah, the architecture out west is pretty boring, and I of course have reservations about Alabertan economics and politics.
But it was so chilled. And everyone was so NICE. I felt a rush of placid serenity, and I knew I was back in the country of my birth.
Then I saw a Harveys. JOY. And I ordered a poutine.
Mmmm. Tastes like familiarity.
While waiting for my connection, a random middle aged woman asked me where I was going. I said Saskatoon. She was going to Regina, but used to live in Saskatoon – she told me to go to the Berry Barn and get some pie with a friend of mine who lives in Saskatoon. I said I’m sure my friend knew where it was, as Saskatoon was such a small city (pop 200,000). She said “Oh no, Saskatoon is a very big city,” and opened her eyes wide. I almost burst out “Oh my GOD you are SO CUTE can I have you?” It was too adorable for words.
I’m really enjoying Saskatoon. There’s a really chilled out, relaxed vibe over the whole city. Nobody seems to be in a rush. And everyone is nice.
It’s far too small for me to ever imagine living here – I crave the big, bustling behemoth of a city like London or New York, I love having different things to do and people to see every day.
But just for a few days, it’s really really nice to be somewhere quiet, peaceful and serenely nice. It reminds me of what London lacks. I don’t feel like I belong in Canada, but I sure love that it’s there for me when I need it.
September 18, addendum:
Recently a friend remarked to me that I posted too many things on my blog commenting on the differences between people of different nationalities, and that I discussed the topic in general too much, and that it was boring. (My friend, by the way, is French, so he can be a bit of a cold bastard until you get to know him better.)
I was miffed. Not just because I don’t like to be criticized. But also because, damnit, you do see funny differences between people depending on where they come from. It’s called culture. And if people from the same culture didn’t share quirky similarities, there would be no such thing as anthropology. I’m not saying everyone is the same – obviously not, if there’s one thing biology teaches us it’s that everybody is unique. I’m just saying that people from certain places share certain qualities.
This morning I read this piece in The Observer’s music review about Leslie Feist, Canadian singer-songwriter, from the Toronto scene. She used to do more punk and electroclash, but now her music is described as “mature,” “exuberant,” and “pretty.”
Feist says, of her gigs, “The vibe is positive…I feel benevolent safety.” Really reminds me of what I wrote above about arriving in Calgary (where Feist is originally from).
Then the reporter writes this:
“Feist really does talk like this, in an energetic, upbeat way, like a Canadian tourist trying to make friends on the tube.”
I think I’ve made my point.
Yet again, I have found myself too busy to post properly. So here are some things that have come to my attention that I find interesting/hilarious/scary as hell.
1. Scientists have apparently figured out just how bad being a rocker is for you: if you score a hit record, for the next five years you will be three times more likely to die than your average prole. Usually from, well, you can imagine: suicide, drugs, accidents, drug-induced accidents, rap-induced gunshot wounds, etc.
Aw, I love it when scientists try to prove what we already know. It’s adorable. It’s even more adorable when they apparently say that their research “could be used to prevent rock’n’roll deaths,” as the Guardian reports.
Guys. Come ON. Science isn’t going to make them stop. Dying of a smack overdose in a trashed hotel room is COOL, everybody knows that. Being a complete mess is helping Amy Winehouse sell more records – and she knows it.
2. Why have your face immortalized in paint when you can have an image of your DNA glowing above your mantelpiece?
Starting at $400, Ottawa based company DNA 11 will blow up an image of your DNA, in your choice of eight different colour schemes, all with sexy names like “Bronzage,” “Firesky,” and “Positiv.” You can even get complete family portraits, with up to four people’s genetic material placed side by side. Aaaww…
Now, if you thought DNA looks like those spiral staircases the little animated DNA cowboy taught you about in Jurassic Park, and would be disappointed to see your genetic material take the form of a bunch of lame little lines, FYI: these images are of DNA agarose gels, not DNA per se. If DNA 11 could actually offer you an image of your own DNA up close, it would cost a King’s ransom, and it would look like this:
To create a DNA agarose gel, in a nutshell, some guy in a lab coat takes your DNA, cuts it up with enzymes into a bunch of different-sized little bits, sticks those little bits at the end of a sheet of high-tech Jell-O, then runs a current of electricity through it. The shorter bits will travel farther than the longer bits (‘cause they weigh less), giving you this series of lines. Everybody’s should (in theory) look different. The Wikipedia entry on this process is disappointingly inaccessible and technical for you non-bio geeks. I did however find this fun little tool from the University of Utah, which lets you do a little bit of virtual electrophoresizing – complete with neato sound effects. Whee!
3. Last week I wrote about how fast the polar ice caps could melt in the next century, which some scientists think could happen waaay faster than was previously thought. Now researchers say that the ice has melted this summer waaay faster than they had expected, and that an area the “size of Britain” has disappeared in the past week alone – the Arctic could in fact be ice free by 2030.
Apparently the Arctic has lost a third of its ice in the past 30 years, and that the rate of melting is accelerating – giving credence to the idea that “positive feedback effects” would cause the caps to melt faster and faster as the years go by. Great.
4. I’m really, really glad I have never suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome (a.k.a. ME to Limeys). Due to hormonal and neural circuitry gone haywire, a fever progresses into complete and total paralytic exhaustion, sometimes for years at a time – one of my best friends was physically crippled for four years. You can’t read books or watch movies to escape your misery – it makes you too tired (and usually your vision and hearing are messed up). Nor can you find solace in sleep – chronic, restless insomnia is the norm. It is complete and utter hell. I’m really, really grateful I have never suffered from it. Every time I feel sorry for myself for something, I think about CFS, and tell myself to stop whining.
But then I read about Fatal Familial Insomnia. I am really, really, REALLY grateful that I don’t have this. Check out this long, depressing, and fascinating piece in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine (extracted from a new book) about a Venetian family that is seriously cursed. Round about middle age, if they carry FFI, they stop sleeping. They sweat, they ache. Over a couple of years they become more and more tired, eventually paralyzed. They begin to spasm, foam at the mouth, slip into complete insanity. Then finally – mercifully – they die.
It took about two hundred years for somebody to figure out that the family carries a prion disease, very similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, bovine-spongiform encephalitis (aka mad cow disease), and kuru. Instead of being caused by viruses or bacteria, the illness comes from the sufferers themselves – they are born carrying erroneous bits of protein, called “prions.” Prions are evil little bastards. They somehow make other, normal bits of proteins transform into prions. They enlist more and more of themselves, infect the spinal fluid, and then destroy the brain from the inside out.
There is no cure. Although it is not contagious, and having eaten contaminated beef will not put you at risk (unlike the roughly 4,000 Britons who are infected with BSE prions), there are an estimated 40 families worldwide who suffer from FFI.
And I am bloody glad I do not belong to one of them.
5. If you haven’t already read about it, you should know about the Creation Museum, based just outside Cincinnati, a $27 million haven where Bible thumpers can learn all about how God created the universe 10,000 years ago, humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and evolution is a fraud – as illustrated by snazzy CGI animations, interactive Edens, and colourful, animatronic dinos.
My response to creationists is much like Chris Rock’s response to women who don’t give head: They still MAKE you? You’re like a Betamax or something.
Well, apparently they do: a recent poll suggests that half – yes, HALF – of Americans believe “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” Damn.
Check out this BBC news piece for a chuckle:
So apparently in the world of creationists, kids could have had dinosaur PETS! Wow.
Being a nutso, repressed Christian is starting to look like fun (for a change). And that, frankly, is kind of scary.
