Tuesday, Simptempter 12, 41 A.B.



"I'm not a fathead, I'm just big-skulled."

- One of the four things I always try to make clear
during a job interview, when meeting a potential mate
for the first time, and while attempting to engage
a grocery store cashier in small talk


 
 

Dear Reader:

I'm sorry.  I really didn't intend to keep you waiting two whole days for the continuation of the description of the amazing books which have recently come into my home.
It's just that, well... first I got side-tracked by The Hunt for Great Biretta.  And then....

And THEN...

I had the opportunity to go to Columbus and buy more books and HOW THE HELL COULD I RESIST???

I'm only one little guy, after all.  It's really amazing that I can resist as many impulses as I do, given my size.

Anyway, the bottom line is I found and purchased 17 more Ambassadors from the Land of Magical Dead Wood Pulp, and I refuse to apologize for bringing them home with me even though it does push my total number of such things perilously close to 1700 - and me with a mere 9 fingers to count them on!

No, wait - make that 10 fingers.  (I keep forgetting about the one on sabbatical this semester.)

Amazingly, those 17 books add up to exactly 17 pounds!

Even more amazingly: One of those books is "The Face."

YES!  Last week I had absolutely no books about the human face.  I didn't even know such books existed.  Now - just a very  few days since last week - I suddenly have TWO!!

Suddenly I know why we have hairless faces, how people as different as Mao and Marilyn came to possess iconic faces, and what the evolution of the mirror has been.  From Nelson Mandela's eyelids to the face of God, from a history of the theories of laughter to complex delusions of ugliness, it's all here thanks to author Daniel McNeill's tireless efforts to enlighten ignorant folks like me.

True, his book is not quite as special a find as last year's 734-page "The Puppet Theatre in America: 1524-1948" but the back cover alone puts to shame almost every other book ever written by a man whose name contains a "J" or hyphen.

BEHOLD!

"The number of possible human faces may exceed the number of subatomic particles in the universe....  The true human face emerged at the end of a deep ice age 130,000 years ago....  Our eyes are white to highlight their movements, which send a constant stream of messages.... Most birthmarks are not there at birth....  Powhatan Indians pierced their ears and lodged living snakes in them....  Apes can recognize themselves in mirrors, but monkeys cannot....  Humans have more facial muscles than any other animal....  Racial characteristics are mainly a response to latitude....  The Maori smoked the tattooed heads of their dead and traded them to Europeans for guns....  Blinking makes us lose 23 minutes of every waking day....  Veiled women in Saudi Arabia can see the sun so rarely that they get rickets....  Judges give good-looking people lighter penalties...."

Ohh...  OHH!  OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Sorry....  Brain orgasm.

*Blush*

I need to go get some food, then take a nap.... ... .. .
 
 

WARNING!
Explicit Neocortex Foreplay!

 

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 (Or Maybe The Day After)

 
 

(©Now by D. Birtcher, if only in his exhausted imagination)