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Nasal Bones and Tequila Worms

    

   As anyone who has ever met me will readily attest, I have, among many other equally annoying personality quirks, a rather large number of pet peeves. Oooh! There's one right there! Why 'pet' peeve? If they were pets, one well placed 'Free to good home' ad would quickly rid us of all those little irritants that clutter up our daily lives, keeping us away from seriously important things. Like finding tiny little things that annoy us and writing about them. Like I'm doing. Now.

    Let's get back to the top of the page. Nestled smack dead-center in my ever increasing collection of peeves, pet or other, are those two … those TWO … massive assaults against logic and reason, cold blooded murderers of common sense and rational thought, and the two peeves that disturb me beyond all others. Why do they vex me so? Allow me to explain. These two, found in the 'everybody knows' category of common knowledge, (as everybody should already know), are the two that have been blown into my face, with accompanying sour booze breath, by every single loud mouthed know-it-all drunken brain-dead mouth-breather genetic anomaly I have ever met, at any party I have ever been to, in my entire life. Ever. And what I find so offensive about these two is not the fetal alcohol poster boy spewing them, nor is it the fact that they are members of the 'everybody knows' family of pseudo information. No, the intense disgust and contempt these two pieces of 'information' generate within me result from this: if one takes the time to think one or two words past their file names – Nasal Bones and Tequila Worms – these tales, usually told with such certainty and unwavering authority, will actually prove themselves wrong to anyone capable of even base-level cognitive processing. Let's brutally dissect them, one by one, shall we? Oh, yes! Let's do!!

Our first bit of 'knowledge' runs thus:

If you slam someone in the nose with the heel of your hand, it will drive the nasal bones into the brain, killing them instantly.

Now, there's a couple of things of a physiological nature that I feel compelled to point out, but first, look at this for a minute:

    See, here's the thing, folks; the sphenoid, parietal, occipital, temporal and nasal bones are all far thinner than the frontal bone. The frontal bone is the thickest part of the human skull, and is also the area that thin, eggshell-like nasal bones are said to be punched through. The greater likelihood, however, is that the entire situation would play itself out in the other direction, resulting in a very small piece of the victim's nasal bone becoming imbedded in the assailant's hand.

    Before you come after me with documented evidence, let me say this: Yes, it is entirely possible to kill someone with the smack to the beak maneuver, but you have to realize that the person is killed by transfer shock (look it up) to the brain, and not a spontaneous nasal bone assisted pre-frontal lobotomy. In truth, a blow of the same force, delivered to ANY area of the skull, would have ended the same way - an early grave for one guy, and a great 'Hands of Death' story for another.      Also, if some part of the nasal bone (the nose is actually mostly cartilage) did, by fluke, manage to find itself driven into the brain, it would be far too short to cause any appreciable damage, let alone death. Plus, consider the area of the brain that would be pierced by said nasal bone – the frontal lobes. Possible result? Well, a somewhat calmer, more zombie-like victim springs to mind, having been the lucky recipient of a free pre-frontal lobotomy.

    Right. Enough about the nasal bone method of terminating one's foes, let's get on to the Tequila Worm. This is another one that gets me steaming, screaming stung, again due to the lack of just enough common sense to go one step further when thinking this one through. Our 'everybody knows' item:

If you drink a bottle of Tequila, and you eat the worm at the bottom, you get completely fucked up.

   I have even heard people likening the worm experience to Acid or Mescaline in intensity and hallucinogenic properties, but here's the real deal. The worm, which is not found in all Tequila, is an Agave worm. The Agave worm lives only in … the Agave cactus. The Agave cactus is used in the manufacture of certain types of … Tequila. Starting to see where I'm headed with this? The worm is included in the bottle merely as proof that the Tequila was made using the Agave. That's it. It does NOT have a mescaline content, as claimed by some, nor does it somehow “concentrate the alcohol”, an assertion made by others. The only thing the worm does, apart from it's intended function as proof, is this: NOTHING!

    So why do you get so wasted? Think about it. You've just drunk a bottle of Tequila, you're already wasted. In fact, you are already so shitfaced that you're about to eat a fucking WORM. Not only are you about to eat a fucking worm, you're trashed enough to think it's a good idea! The next time you are treated to some drunken buffoon gassing on about the 'hallucinogenic, almost spiritual experience' of dining on the pickled cadaver of some poor little Agave worm, you can do what I do – call bullshit on the story, then offer to eat the worm without drinking any Tequila, as I have MANY times (love to prove a point). I have eaten untold Agave worms, and the only sensation I have ever experienced is a mild, sort of queasy, disgust at having just put a maggot in my mouth without even the dubious benefit of being ratted on a nice bottle of Mescal. Stick with me, kiddies, you won't be popular with the 'everybody knows' crowd, but then again, who wants to be, huh?

Until next time, as always, be safe.

TRS