The paper cut is a mysterious thing. For instance, I could lop off an entire arm, leaving a gaping hole with a fountain of arterial blood squirting forth, and it would not hurt as much as a paper cut. Albeit, the limb-removal is more likely to cause me to scream in horror, pass out, or perhaps, die. But I bet the paper cut–especially one along a bending seam like a knuckle–would instill greater pain. Not that I’d sacrifice a limb to prove my point. After all, I was a kid who named my hands and feet. It would be like cutting off a friend. Left hand=Petty. Right hand=Loyalist. (yup, Loyalist). Right foot=Snowy. (Maybe I had perpetually cold feet). Left foot=Mildred. I was a strange child.
Forget waging war with machine guns and tanks. We should simply throw shards of paper at the enemy. Maybe we should be dropping bombs of 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets of photocopy stock on them. And, if they are looking up, we may even be lucky enough to deal out a paper cut to the eye. Yee-ouch! That’s gotta hurt.
One of my many occupations is a part-time job in a book store. I am no stranger to paper cuts. You see, part of the problem is that space on the shelves is tight, so we regularly have to use Houdini-like feats to make new stock fit. It does not matter that customers can barely pry a book loose from the Jenga-ish wall that we have created. Our goal is to simply get the inventory out. This leads to a lot of paper cuts.
Honest, all I did was pull out one book!
But I have never bled on the merchandise. That would simply be disgusting. Although, I did sneeze on a book once. I hope the pages didn’t stick together.
1) Speaking of fingers, does it not strike anyone else as strange that prolonged exposure to water actually makes our skin wrinkle? The moisture gets sucked right out. Look at this thing. It doesn’t even look like a finger anymore. It looks like a dehydrated carrot or a really old hot dog.
According to researchers at Newcastle University, prune-fingers actually serve a purpose. Apparently, digit wrinkles allow us to grab on to wet objects. All-season radials for our fingers.
I thought this was a cool little fact. Even if the picture does remind me of the episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer eats a really old, theatre hot dog. Blick. I almost throw up in my mouth thinking about it. After all, I hate hot dogs–new or old.
Check out the clip, if you’d like a good laugh:
Everytime I watch it, I get the dry heaves a little.
2) Like I’ve said once before, extra fingers run in my family. And, despite my mother’s sigh of relief when she discovered that I had the requisite 10, I have always wished that I had been born with extras. It would have been a great conversation starter. Plus, I wear mitts instead of gloves, so that never would have been a problem. I probably could have conned some doting elderly person to knit me some six fingered gloves, anyway. Plus, I think I would be able to type much faster.
I now introduce you to the feet of a six-year-old, Chinese boy who was born with 16 toes and 15 fingers. I’m amazed at how perfect each little piggy looks. After a 6 1/2 hour operation, the little lad now has ten fingers and ten toes. And he has cut his risk for paper cuts in half.
3) Stocking the bookstore shelves is not always exciting. It seems like I am forever putting out new offerings by Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts. Ack. How in the hell does Nora Roberts possibly find the time to write what feels like a book a week under her own name AND under her mystery-writing pseudonym J.D. Robb? Has she undergone cloning? Or is she not an individual at all, but rather a writing team? Hm. I really want to know. If she is a real person, I suddenly feel like a lazy, non-productive writer.
I would love to stock the shelves with bizarre titles like these puppies that I found at Amazon.com. Yes, these are real books.
Even some of the descriptions are hilarious. The “Lesbian Hair” author refers to children as pets with thumbs. The coffin book claims that this is one project you will not want to put off and that it is perfect for people who want to be buried in their work.
And I didn’t know that horses could be Lesbian.
Photo credits: finger (www.popsci.com), toes (www.dailymail.co.uk), books (amazon.com).
The Embiggens Project 