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Life on Earth will never be the same. Not for me, and not for you |
I am having a pity party because I had six X-rays this morning. I didn't want to glow in the dark, but I do. It is a shade of pale lime green.
This really bothers me. I pouted most of the afternoon. I'd had my own personal Three-Mile-Island. The X-rays were to see how twisted my spine was after my bike versus car accident. But couldn't my chiropractor have just felt around my body and trusted his own eyes to determine his diagnosis? Sonny, you don't know much about modern medicine do you? Doctors, even witch doctors, want big billings, and they need to have proof in their files so you can't sue them. Besides, X-rays are lovely works of art, aren't they? They give new meanings to the old song, "I'm Looking Through You." There should be a gallery with only X-rays on the walls. There was Man Ray, wasn't there? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray why not be even more avant garde?
Ad copy idea: "Ladies, looking for that special glow that lights up a room? Try our fabulous mud facial formula (imported from Japan and Russia), 'Eau de Madame Curie.' Now you can have the look that says 'Oh darling - fallout - and shelter me!"
I have been so out of the loop since my childhood experience with being zapped by my family's drill happy, radiation relishing dentist. Actual conversation remembered from my childhood in the dentist chair: "Open wide, Denny. Jane, stuff the lead shield further into his mouth! More cotton. Hold your breath, boy, here come the cosmic messengers! And spit. Good. One more time, Janie, and crank that dosage up, this kid has a whole bunch of filling free teeth! Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee!"
Even years ago, when I went to my first chiropractor after a terrible car wreck in San Francisco, I never had X-rays. Now it is de rigueur. OMG, I need to go to a place far away that has no fruits with radiation, somewhere underground perhaps, on a lost island that has no bananas or Brazil nuts. Somewhere in a parallel universe perhaps, where bad things here will be good things there. An antimatter planet.
But the sad reality is we get dosed with radiation not only by dentists and medical practitioners, but by simply by going to work each day. Or by eating food. And if we are sick and stay home? There too! And while we are sleeping. . .zap, zap, zap. . .the cosmic rays are breaking us down, cell by cell until one day we get up and look in our mirrors and we look old. Tired. Worn out. Ruined. Ready for a face lift. Prune city. Kaput.
But hold on. Isn't radiation essential to something? Can't we be open-minded and consider that radiation may sometimes be our friend and not our foe? After all, isn't it good for mutations? Let's say you were a simple fish-like creature a million years ago, and as a result of the random bombardment by radioactive particles from outer space, or the very mud you were flopping in, you grew yourself a flipper that helped you survive. Why, that would be good, wouldn't it? So not all radiation is bad. On the one hand my X-rays showed my chiropractor what was wrong with my bones, but on the other hand the X-rays possibly made cancer cells in the bone, or soft tissues, and I will die ten years earlier because of it. But we all have to go sometime, don't we? I just want to keel over one day after hitting a winning serve on the tennis court. That would be grand.
My father, a man who inherited fish-like scales for skin on parts of his body, benefited greatly from being out in the sun during the summer. In Denmark, the land from where my ancestors embarked, they have lakes where scaly naked Danes soak, to let little carnivorous fishes nibble their dead skin off. Isn't that a fun party fact? Try using it at a party when you run out of things to talk about. Thus, the sun, which is a ball of enormously hot radioactivity, can be the giver of life to skin-hungry fishes, and the sun-hungry skin of human beings. Confused? Me too.
I am okay with radiation in low dosages. Just don't screw around with my DNA. I am not a simple organism. Thank you, I don't need an extra flipper or triple lead lined eyelids to protect me from highly charged radioactive particles. I don't want to look like Swiss cheese. As appealing as it might be to someone, I don't aspire to have a myopic comic book artist make a graphic novel based on my mutation story. http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/3428/
Mostly, I have remorse that my sudden cravings for Brazil nuts and bananas have aged me. It is right out of a science fiction novel where I become a swamp thing because some dumb kid lost his watch with the glow in the dark hands and it made an ordinary polliwog into a big green seething angry thing. Hmm. Well, check out the foods you should avoid. But in reality, most of the radiation isn't absorbed by our bodies. It goes down into the sewers and there it affects pleasant creatures who are minding their own businesses. Like rats, worms, bugs, or polliwogs. http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/08/radioactive_foods.php?page=1
I don't mean to diminish the joy you have about your frequent flyer mileage. But seriously, flying will make you a human glow worm. From being scanned before you board the plane, and also while in the air. The higher you go up in the atmosphere the less protection you will have. You are doomed. So cash in your mileage and take one last trip and be done with it. Personally, I highly recommend Tahiti. Why? Well, I have my reasons. They speak French there, for one thing. Oops, but wait! Tahiti has four types of bananas. Well, I guess I have to scratch it off my list. Is there any place safe from radiation? No. Even the Earth wears a radiation belt. Again, let me be redundate here: WE ARE DOOMED. Q: Why does the Earth need a radiation belt? A: To keep its pants from falling down, of course! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
Okay, relax. False alarm. You won't die. Not today. Soon though. You don't have to go to Lead Is Us to buy a lead suit, or Lowe's for a lead roof. But maybe think about building a bunker. Yes, a gigantic concrete bunker hundreds of feet underground. Then, and only then will you and your children, and your grandparents will be safe. But wait, is concrete radioactive? Oh dear. Sorry, it is.
But what about our pets? Can't we pet darling Foo-Foo after the rain? Nope. Rainwater will get you too.
Doomed, doomed, doomed. But what about lipstick or makeup in general? Is it safe to kiss the wife? Maybe. But to be safe, hire someone you don't like to do it. Makeup used to be radioactive. You thought I was kidding about the mud, didn't you? Sorry, I wasn't. It is a mad, mad, world. http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/glowing-complexion.php
Doomed. We are all doomed. Surrender, Earthlings!
Ahem. I hope I didn't ruin your day. Pet the dog. Kiss your wife. Bath in a lead-free tub. Soak in the X-rays. I am kidding again. Here, let me be serious. To be safe, maybe you should read up on setting your own bones and doing your own dental work. Seriously, how hard could it be?
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