The Shoofly - August 2015 - The Shoofly Magazine

The Shoofly - August 2015

8/2/2015

Citizens: Beware Boiled Brain Syndrome!

This month, a well-known coast writer using the pen name of Dr. Apollonios Balonios** confabulates a new theory about a syndrome that could be affecting many coast residents.

by Dr. Apollonios Balonios**

Author’s Motto: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
Dr. Bolonius is a puedonymous personality of the prolific but obscure Irish-American writer, (I)an O’Nymouswho lives in Pass Christian and delights in conversations with his multiple personality disorder.
***Mr. O’Nymous states that the letter "I" in his first name should always parenthesized because it is silent.

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Public health officials warn us that the July/August time period drastically heats up our chances of suffering heat prostration or heat stroke as we play or labour outdoors. But, until now, no one was aware of a hitherto undiagnosed malady now identified and defined by your writer in this very article for the very first time anywhere.

This calamity I have named Boiled Brain Syndrome. For your own safety you should understand the ramifications of this disease and immediately support my research for a cure.

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Boiled Brain Syndrome (hereafter, BBS; and not to be confused with BBs [as in air rifles], bb.s [base on balls {as in baseball}], or bbs [bulletin board systems {as in Computer Science}, or even BBS {as in British Babes Sexting}]; and, furthermore, anyone who pronounces BBS as bee-beez or bbbzzz probably has B-B-S and should seek air-conditioning immediately) is often a precursor to life-threatening conditions like heat exhaustion, heat stroke, or dogmatic catatonia (as in Rush Limbaugh).

Remember the once-popular bumper sticker: “It’s not the Heat - It’s the Stupidity”? The slogan was a comment on the mental machinations of politicians and bureaucrats in New Orleans and the MS Gulf Coast areas, where the highest humidity is trapped between the coastal wetlands and that long, wide ribbon of concrete known as I-10.

The slogan, of course, played on the popular saying, “Its not the heat. It’s the humidity” to explain the enervating meteorological effects on human life in our hostile natural environment. Recently I discovered that humidity really is a catalyst for the production of human stupidity. This may be symbolically presented in formulaic phrasing as follows:

Ht (Heat) + Hm (Humidity) = St (Stupidity).

Rather than confuse the reader with chemical/mathematical equations as proof of this theorem, I shall present as proof my very own practical observations with which any reader may easily identify and comprehend.

My unplanned discovery of BBS occurred during a research visit into that land of aridity, the Great American Southwest, specifically the Texas Panhandle (an area to which I had traveled to observe the economic effects of a localized economy populated entirely by panhandlers).

There I noted the effects of heat without any moisture in the air (save perhaps whatever H2O molecules briefly combine with the airborne molecules of methane, that most redolently olfactory by-product of the Texas region’s massive bovineal and porcineal meat processing agri-industry: Remember!: bovine and porcine effluviums are suspected causes of climate change!.

This research area (the Panhandle - not the methane) recently experienced torrential rains; however, no moisture may be felt in the air. Physical exertion fails to create the phenomenon that we Coastal dwellers of the Sweat Belt know so well.

Any individual who labors hard in this arid land will perspire as the human body naturally attempts to cool itself. Such perspiration, however, is absorbed into the arid air. The result? The individual smells of the dusty, dry land in which he labors. He fails to display the nasally piquant fugue-state of the BBS victim as that poor wretch toils in his liqui-humidifried climate.

We Sub-I-10-Coastians know that our outdoor physical exertions will quickly leave us soaking in sweat-drenched garments, stinking to high heaven, and incapable of manifesting an acute grasp of the obvious. In the resulting mental stupor, we are unable to comprehend our miserable and dangerous condition - BBS!

Here is what happens: a victim is exposed, while working outdoors, to prolonged periods of high air temperature and high humidity. The reader is no doubt familiar with the term for the relative temperature variance in relation to relative humidity (irrelative of the corresponding correlatives) commonly called the heat index.

For example, if it’s a really hot day and the weather thermometer outside registers 99 degrees F with a humidity approaching 100 percent, your local weatherperson, as he/she stands in the sun during a live broadcast and tells viewers, “The temperature out here is 99 F degrees on this thermometer, but the heat index says it really feels like 110 F-ing gazillion degrees, and I desperately want some AC now!”

(The F-in-degrees stands for the German term, “Faren’s height”, which in German means “hotter than hell”; I do not know why a German word is used for temperature degrees - Chagaitai is a much more mellifluous and scientific language, as I recently pointed out in my lecture at the International Colloquium to Differentiate Etymologists from Entomologists, but does anyone ever listen to me? Nooooo!)

I comprehended the existence of BBS when I got into an air-conditioned car in the Texas Panhandle, drove to the Coast, then exited said vehicle, and took a breath of air: I felt as though I were breathing through water. Sifting oxygen through gills water-walled. And I knew…

We here are all inspiring air molecules infiltrated with water. Our lungs filter out the moisture much as fish obtain oxygen filtered through their gills. In fact, sometimes I actually feel like a fish, but I don’t get hooked on the sensation. Like all sensible persons, I retreat to air conditioning.

But consider the plight of the poor, aforementioned BBS victim. Breathing hot, humid air allows the lungs to absorb water and heat into the body, specifically into our red and white blood cells (termed corpuscles; you remember at least that from your high school bio class, don’t you?).

These overheated-overhydrated blood corpuscles always rise with the heat and collect in the cranium. The intensified water-heat combination produces steam in the skull, all of which causes a temporary chemical conversion of the red and white corpuscles into, what I have termed, corpsucles (“pronounced “corp-suck-elz”), which suck the energy out of the body and decrease the oxygen needed in the brain for mental clarity.

The victim begins to wander about in a stupor, his actions are lethargic, and he says stupid things like “I feel all right. It’s not too hot. I want to keep on cutting the grass."

Yet only minutes before he was aware that the televised baseball game was about to start, there was cold beer in the fridge, and avoiding heat stroke is a good enough reason to give one’s spouse in order to quit work and go inside where it’s air conditioned. The victim is already a steam-baked dimwit.

Repeated exposure to corpsucular brain trauma often results in undiagnosed brain damage, causing hitherto sane individuals to engage in obviously foolish acts, such as reelecting politicians to Congress. Why, a corpsuckulated victim might not even be aware that he voted Republican. Or Democratic. And that there’s no difference between the two. They’re all on the take.

So far medical researchers, ever relying on government funding for their jobs, have overlooked the obvious threat of BBS. It remains for you, the individual, to take proper action.

The scientific community will be highly resistant to accepting my theory, but I will not cease in my efforts to save the human race from this threat to all of us, who must survive life in the Subtropical Humid Zone. Solutions await creation through creative genius.

Already I have devised an aqualung-type device that would—as an air conditioner does—filter out water content and cool the air we breathe. Thus, we might all walk about outside without experiencing BBS. But this practice, if widespread, would probably frighten away the tourists. Nevertheless, I will find the best solution.

Funds will never be forthcoming from our corrupt state and federal governments. We alone must stand against this deadly threat. Therefore, I urge you to save yourself and your loved ones: write a check for $1000 (or more) to Dr. Apollonios “Bubba” Balonios; send it care of this website’s postal address; or you could just send cash. But send it now. Climate change is unquestionably making our world hotter and humider! You may become the next victim of Boiled Brain Syndrome!