For Christmas, the Gift of Liposuction
Perhaps you’re still racking your brain for gift ideas; perhaps you’re considering giving your nearest and dearest something homemade this holiday season. How fondly I remember in my school days making festive ceramic ashtrays for my folks. (My daughter informs me that they don’t do this at schools anymore.)
And a dear friend of mine once gave a gift consisting of all the proteins of his blood--obtained by pricking his finger--neatly separated with lab equipment, then blotted onto paper to make a nice, spotty pattern.
Can’t quite see Uncle Harry or Aunt Mary getting excited about that one? We’ve received plenty of festive-themed releases from various publicists, who are never so attentive as during the holiday season. (I have Christmas cards from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and one from a San Francisco sex therapist sitting right on my desk! Nice of them to remember me.)
Most of their gift ideas, however, tend to be ones you can give to yourself.
“Holidays without the turkey neck” and “Christmas without the stuffing” tastefully proclaims one publicist’s release containing ideas from a plastic-surgeon client. Christmas, we’re told, is a popular time to have liposuction and neck tightening. That way, you can be born anew in the new year.
“Finance your face,” proclaims the same release. That’s right. If you can’t afford a face lift, you can now get one on layaway. Laser surgery! Weight-loss pills! Miracle workout plans! All are available, we’re told, to help get rid of that “Santa belly” so you can have a “fantastic February fanny.” Another item offers a healthy fruitcake recipe. (Yum!) Another reports that--according to a survey--people tend to lose their sense of humor during these festive months. (No!) Yet another offers 10 tips for recognizing stress-induced “holiday desk rage” in co-workers.
The Academy of General Dentistry, meanwhile, offers consumers a sobering reminder. “Exchanging kisses underneath the mistletoe may leave them with more than just memories, friendship and goodwill tidings,” it warns us. With each kiss, we can exchange up to 500 different germ species--including ones causing gum disease. Thus, suggests the academy, those who have gum disease should refrain from mistletoe kisses.
The academy also suggests stocking stuffers of toothbrushes and travel-size floss.
A very merry yule to you all.
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Every so often, we come across something that astounds us. The other day, for instance, we read an article by a UC San Francisco professor about the use of earwax in art down the ages. (If you happen to be in a medical library, check out the article in an ear journal called the American Journal of Otology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2000).
Earwax, writes author Nicholas Petrakis, has been used in illuminated manuscripts since at least the 13th century. Here’s why.
Often, manuscript illuminators would use egg whites to suspend the various pigments they used. (The mix was called “glair.”) Trouble was, the whites--when mixed--would froth up. And that meant the colors wouldn’t spread uniformly.
Enter human ingenuity. Or a fortuitous event wherein earwax accidentally ended up in the paint. (Not all of these monks went to finishing school, we’ll wager.) But however it happened, some clever illuminator eventually discovered that adding a teensy bit of earwax to the mix broke the egg-white surface tension and stopped the frothing--so the pigment would now spread cleanly on the parchment.
Thus, it’s written in a 14th century treatise: “And if the glair makes a froth, human earwax will break it up at once, if you put in a little of it; and this is a secret.”
You have to have the right kind of earwax, though: the wet kind, which is predominant in people of European lineages, not the dryer kind predominant among Asians. But perhaps we’ll save the genetics of earwax for another column--one very far in the future.
If you have an idea for a topic, write or e-mail Rosie Mestel at L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st. St., L.A., CA 90012, rosie.mestel@latimes.com.
