“Weird Stuff”
I’d like to start a contest with
the few of you out there who have been classified by society as senior citizens.
What I need you to do is start exercising moderately. Nothing rigorous. Do that
for five years, while I continue my regimen of not exercising for five years.
At the
end of that time, someone at the University of Miami will see which one of our
brains looks 10 years younger. Considering the brain autopsy, I know this is a
whale of a sacrifice, but I need it to prove a point. Point being: is it true
that exercise is conducive to a young brain?
That’s
what scientists at the U of Miami think they’ve proved. They picked 876 senior
citizens and had half of them exercise for five years, and the other half
replace the exercise program with naps. Something tells me they started out
with 1000 senior citizens. The exercisers who survived the test, had brains
that looked 10 years younger than the nappers. (I was joking about the
dissection thing. I imagine they used an MRI instead of a skull-saw to inspect
the brains.)
Each day I try to read weird stuff
like that in my attempt to learn new things. I’m failing miserably in my
attempt, because the only way I can remember stuff is to write it down. I’ve
got it bad, but not as bad as Frankie Muniz. Muniz is the boy who played the
lead role in the TV serious “Malcolm in the Middle”.
This
week I learned that Muniz has had a total of 9 concussions while playing
soccer, basketball, football, and while racing cars. Since 2012 he’s had 15
mini-strokes. The young man (early 30s) is still active and healthy, but he’s
lost much of his long-term memory, including the part about when he was on
“Malcolm in the Middle.” I now consider it a blessing that I was a lousy
basketball player, never played soccer, and only got my bell rung a half dozen
times in football. Oh, and I’ve yet to wreck my race car.
Speaking
of exercise, look at this: Barbells and dumbbells in a gym have 362 times more
bacteria on them than a toilet seat. The only thing with more bacteria would be
the toilet seat in a gym. I’m just guessing at that. At times when I think we
have nothing left to contribute to society, somebody comes up with staggering
info like that.
Here’s a
fact I discovered on my own: British impersonators aren’t nearly as funny as
American impersonators. While looking on YouTube for a girl who sang one of the
songs on the sound track of the movie about the three billboards in Missouri, I
got hung up on comedian impressionists. The Brit comedians would speak in an
accent that sounded to me like any other British accent, yet the audience would
go wild. I had no idea who they sounded like. What a waste of talent.
I
also saw some Americans impersonate Country Western singers. One guy did 20
impersonations in four minutes. I only recognized the names of eight of ‘em. It
was obvious that each impersonator had a lot of talent, in that they could play
a guitar and sing in a multitude of different twangs, but it’s wasted on a
person who doesn’t know the person they’re impersonating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GXzqWFaN2s&list=RDH3GN8lHfYhg&index=3
By
the way, the lady singer I was searching for was Iris DeMent. She has the
twangiest female country voice on the planet. Turns out she wasn’t the one
singing the song on the billboard movie. Still, I love her song “Our Town.” (Here it is) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghVAH_WX-9I
I
wrote down on my note pad the words “soil improver.” It came from a commercial
about a garden fertilizer. It took me too long to find the remote to
fast-forward through the commercial, so I had to hear the commercial voice say
that the fertilizer contained a “soil improver.” Do advertisers have so little
respect for us that they think we’d fall for something like that? Now the people who make canned chili will throw in a line about
their chili having an additional chili improver in each can. Just beats all.
Oops.
This just in. “All Bran contains only 87% bran.” I have yet to run across
anything that shows the amount of bran in 40% Bran, so I shall withhold my
judgment. But, I’ve gotta say, if All Bran only has 87% bran in it, I don’t
want to taste the stuff that has the full 100%.
Do
you tend to forget a person’s name right after he tells you? What you’re
experiencing is something called the next-in-line effect. After asking a person
his or her name, my mind instantly starts searching for something to follow,
thus not taking time to register the person’s name in your brain… which rhymes
with train and stands for fool. Regardless, from now on, we’ll listen for the
name and then take a five-second pause to think up something to say.
Okay,
here’s the one you’ve been looking for. The last one. After a seven year study,
scientists at the University of Alberta, found that human urine contains 3,079
chemical compounds. Those Canadians aren’t sitting on their laurels. Not to be
outdone, professors at Northeastern Southern University in Central TX,
discovered that the number of chemical compounds in urine shoots up to 3218 for
those using the restroom in a gym. (I’m fairly sure that the NES University
finding was the only fabricated fact.)
end
Mark can be contacted at hayter.mark@gmail.com.
An archive of Hayter’s articles can be found at http://markhayterscolumn.blogspot.com
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