Diarrhea Quotes

If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that 1 enjoys it?

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?" "I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?" "Yes," she said. "That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.

... We're just different." "Yeah," I say. "I'm mute and you have verbal diarrhea.

Have you ever noticed some of the worst sicknesses in history have a lyrical sound to them? Words like malaria, diarrhea, cholera

I like your boyfriend," Dahra said. "Not many guys volunteer to carry ten gallons of diarrhea and vomit." Lana laughed. "He's not my boyfriend." "Yeah, well, he can be mine if he wants to be. He's cute. And he carries crap.

You're an island of reality in an ocean of diarrhea.

Thanks from keeping me from being a liar," said Nikolai. "What?" "About your having diarrhea." "For you I'd get dysentery." "Now that's friendship.

I wish people would stop confusing the Magical Cleanse War with detox, as if it were a self-induced diarrhea and not a bloody battle. It is really not the same.

A person who gossips & talks too much may not suffer from Bipolar Disorder but may suffer from Verbal Diarrhea.:)

Oh, I bet you’d find that marvelous; all of us helpless women just smiling and nodding. Though I’m afraid it would never work on me.” “Of course not,” he deadpans. “I’m stuck next to the one afflicted with an apparently incurable case of verbal diarrhea.” “Says the man who is socially constipated.

It becomes evident that Olmo hasn't really been spotting his underwear, at least not with blood. Azzy has messed with his gullibility. Dad shoots Azzy a we'll-talk-about-this-later look. "Olmo, diarrhea and periods are very different things." Azzy smiles maliciously. "Diarrhea is hereditary; it runs in your jeans.

Like a man with diarrhea in a sandpaper factory, sometimes all available options are less than ideal.

Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea.

Well, MacKenzie, YOU’RE the expert on toilets! It’s only 8:00 a.m. and your BRAIN is completely CONSTIPATED while your MOUTH has a severe case of DIARRHEA! Please, go FLUSH!

Enough of this. Does every conversation with you have to be the director's cut? Get out of the car.

Cammie had diarrhea of the mouth. It was going to be all over the school and fast. I had now officially secured my front row seat on the train to Hell. Choo Choo!

There’s no way a person could have this much diarrhea and survive.

Dizziness?" "No." "Nausea? Vomiting? Diarrhea?" "No, no, and yuck," I said. "Dr. G, can I please be excused?" "Not yet. How many fingers am I holding up?" "Eleven." "Amelie." I scowled. (...) "Sir, I'm fine. Just let me go to class. Please?" Gunderman unhooked the blood pressure cuff from my arm and looked at me like I'd asked to borrow his credit card. "Young the lady, the fact you want to go to class gives me definite cause for concern.

What the fuck was wrong with me, I wondered. I wished there was a version of Pepto Bismol for verbal diarrhea, because I'd invest in it. My

…of constipation of the brain & diarrhea of the mouth.

My gut isn't wrong. Except when it has diarrhea. Then it is very, very wrong.

Should we tolerate the blatant incorrectness of religion? Tolerating ignorance, superstition and stupidity will not provide for a healthy advancement of our society. Religion is cancer for modern thought, rationality, and even common sense.

Revolutions are 90% social diarrhea.

FYI, this book is not that serious. This is meant to be read when super bored, then forgotten fifteen minutes later. It could be read cover-to-cover during one medium-to-severe case of diarrhea.

One minute you think you’ve got the world by the balls, the next minute you don’t know where the fuck the world’s balls are.” “Sure I do,” I say irritably. “Right next to the world’s big fat hairy asshole, upon which I seem to be stuck in superglue lately, waiting for it to have its next case of explosive diarrhea.

I’m of the belief that in most industries, women have to work twice as hard to get half the credit. After putting in so much effort to make a good movie, it felt pretty demeaning when they called it a “female comedy.” This meaningless label painted me into a corner and forced me to speak for all females, because I am the actual FEMALE who wrote the FEMALE comedy and then starred as the lead FEMALE in that FEMALE comedy. They don’t ask Seth Rogen to be ALL MEN! They don’t make “men’s comedies.” They don’t ask Ben Stiller, “Hey, Ben, what was your message for all male-kind when you pretended to have diarrhea and chased that ferret in Along Came Polly?

Throwing up was no big deal. It was a lot less painful than hemorrhoids or tooth decay, and more refined than diarrhea

Not being able to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from Dirty Dancing on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it's over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is. At some point, I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing.

Everybody looked down on someone else. It didn´t matter that everybody shared the same sidewalk to spit on and suffered the same fast-moving diarrhea. We all had the same stink, but everybody complained someone else smelled the worst.

It was the kind of storm that suggests the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic.

Shit happens. Sometimes diarrhea happens.

He shuts up just one time after nearly a month of the verbal diarrhea.

I get diarrhea more often than the average Muslim.

The Bible says love your neighbor, not have nasty diarrhea of the mouth about your neighbor.

August said you row?” she asked. Her voice spilled over me like warm syrup. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the drugging sensation then realized she’d asked me a question. “Yeah,” I answered belatedly. Good. A short answer but it’s better than mouth diarrhea. “I row...a-uh-boat...with-uh-my teammates.” Superb! Just-uh-superb.

Siguro ganun talaga ang buhay. May mga bagay na kahit anong buhos mo ng effort o kahit gaano pa ang tindi ng kagustuhan mong makuha ay hindi mapapasaiyo kung hindi nakatakda sa isang invisible na script na kung tawagin ay tadhana.

Physical symptoms such as muscle tension, back problems, stomach distress, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, obesity or maybe even hypertension can be caused by suppressing your emotions. Suppressed anger may also cause you to overreact to people and situations or to act inappropriately. Unexpressed anger can cause you to become irritable, irrational, and prone to emotional outbursts and episodes of depression.

the hospital treated 11,602 patients, sixty-four a day, for injuries and ailments that suggest that the mundane sufferings of people have not changed very much over the ages. The list included: 820 cases of diarrhea; 154, constipation; 21, hemorrhoids; 434, indigestion; 365, foreign bodies in the eyes; 364, severe headaches; 594 episodes of fainting, syncope , and exhaustion; 1 case of extreme flatulence; and 169 involving teeth that hurt like hell.

I wouldn’t exactly say we were scraping the bottom of the barrel by date seven, but Josh did feel the need to fake diarrhea, and I readily rushed him out to the car, apologizing profusely to our confused dates over my shoulder.

They eat the sewage that floats on the surface of the mass culture, digest it, and then get creative diarrhea--all at once. The turd look and smell exactly alike, and we call them this year's fashions, hit shows, books, and movies.

I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn’s, filling out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn’t have to be Monte Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older.

This was Jonan's boat. She had helped Nan Seller dose his entire crew against the annual diarrhea outbreak known as the "winter runs

She's a parasite I can't seem to get rid of. Like a bad case of financial diarrhea.

Nose-hairs gone: runny nostrils. Constipation and diarrhea alternating

History my god. An incurable diarrhea of dead immortals.

Judging from the molten aspect of the diarrhea, it’d probably been something Mexican,

I was diarrhea and she was merely a bad case of indigestion.

you sound like a hen with diarrhea. There’s only one truth, and it’s annihilation.

Weird or someone with mouth diarrhea. Depends on people's point of view,

I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.

Getting naked feels better some days than others. (Good: when you are vaguely tan. Bad: when you have diarrhea.)

Often children came in with minor colds or coughs or diarrhea and then suddenly, they were dead.

I hate you more and hope you get diarrhea. Maybe you’ll shit out some of the ugly inside.

While I sat on the toilet, my intestines screamed in agony as I suffered ballistic diarrhea.

It’s hard to imagine an American sports team named the Diarrheas (“Gimme a ‘D’ …”).

Blood is thicker than water, and so is diarrhea

The last thing I need, in the midst of a lethal, perfectly orchestrated attack, is an attack of diarrhea.

THE SUCCESS OF ANY parasite is proportional to its harmlessness. Some are intelligent; they avoid detection, allowing their carriers to lead healthy lives until obsolescence. Fewer, in brilliant acts of symbiosis, foster dependence in the host. But too many are loudmouths and fools, instigating aches, diarrhea, fatigue, bleeding, or other braggadocious symptoms. Most parasites cannot think far enough ahead to maintain the well-being of their host, much less their host’s entire species. Usually, such foresight is not necessary, unless humans are involved. They tend to hold grudges.

It would be an idyllic tropical paradise if not for the malaria, the insects, the constant diarrhea and resulting hemorrhoids, and the fact that the people are dirty and smell bad and eat each other and use human heads for decoration.

Pag mahal mo ang isang tao, palayain mo. Kapag bumalik siya, ibig sabihin wala siyang pamasahe.

Boys, men, old toothless women had run along beside the car when the train was again in motion, calling, offering bananas, guavas, mangoes, paper cones of flavored ice, Jello shimmering on the palm of a hand, lifting something up to him and fumbling his money, running faster to give him his change, or slower, grinning, shrugging, as the train pulled away. Somewhere he had bought half a roasted cow's head and eaten it held by the horn with a newspaper on his lap. What had caused the diarrhea he did not know.

she’d braved a trip to the supermarket that morning, where her fellow housewives were acting practically feral, grabbing for the last loaf of bread or gallon of milk or four-pack of toilet paper, as if everyone’s snow-day plans included French toast and diarrhea.

Well, my boss said that having a tummy ache—his words—wasn’t the kind of thing that most people find disabling, so I had to tell him I had diarrhea shooting out of my asshole faster than lies coming out of a Republican National Convention. And then I thanked him for caring.

They were trying to escape. They asked us "Where's the railway?" We'd never seen a railway. They asked "Where's Moscow? Leningrad?" They were asking the wrong people: we'd never heard of those places. We're Ostyaks. People were running away starving. They were given a handful of flour. They mixed it with water and drank it and then they immediately got diarrhea. The things we saw! People were dying everywhere; they were killing each other.... On the island there was a guard named Kostia Venikov, a young fellow. He was courting a pretty girl who had been sent there. He protected her. One day he had to be away for a while, and he told one of his comrades, "Take care of her," but with all the people there the comrade couldn't do much.... People caught the girl, tied her to a poplar tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything.... They were hungry, they had to eat. When Kostia came back, she was still alive. He tried to save her, but she had lost too much blood.

Dad climbs down from the table and sits on his cart. “Olmo, men don’t have periods.” “Eh? The brown spots I have in my underpants … Azzy told me I should get a tampon and—” Azalea plays innocent. “I never said such a thing.

If you eat a destroying angel, for the rest of the day you’ll feel fine. Later that night, or the next morning, you’ll start exhibiting cholera-like symptoms—vomiting, abdominal pain, and severe diarrhea. Then you start to feel better. At the point where you start to feel better, the damage is probably irreversible. Amanita mushrooms contain amatoxin, which binds to an enzyme that is used to read information from DNA. It hobbles the enzyme, effectively interrupting the process by which cells follow DNA’s instructions. Amatoxin causes irreversible damage to whatever cells it collects in. Since most of your body is made of cells,4 this is bad. Death is generally caused by liver or kidney failure, since those are the first sensitive organs in which the toxin accumulates. Sometimes intensive care and a liver transplant can be enough to save a patient, but a sizable percentage of those who eat Amanita mushrooms die.

Sydney, and I think you already know—” I try to hide my grin, gesturing to Swarley who continues to give a rude sniffing to Dr. Abbott’s crotch. “Swarley. Yes, I’ve been seeing him since he was just a pup.” Swarley’s magnetic attraction to a certain crotch is distracting. Although he’s not my dog, and I’m sure Dr. Abbott is used to it, I feel the need to explain his behavior. “He must think you have a big piece of meat in there.” The words come out of my mouth and my brain—that apparently has a two-second delay—catches up as I turn crimson ... Swarley has diarrhea of the ass and I have diarrhea of the mouth.

I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest - your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure. But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.

from our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are “symptoms of disease.” From a germ’s point of view, they’re clever evolutionary strategies to broadcast the germ. That’s why it’s in the germ’s interests to “make us sick.” But why should a germ evolve the apparently self-defeating strategy of killing its host?

The first thing I noticed about East Shoal High School was that it didn't have a bike rack. You know a school is run by stuck-up sons of bitches when it doesn't even have a bike rack. I shoved Erwin behind the blocky green shrubs lining the school's front walk and stepped back to make sure the tires and handlebars were hidden. I didn't expect anyone to steal, touch, or notice him, since his rusty diarrhea color made people subconsciously avert their eyes, but I felt better knowing he was out of harm's way.

Nothing reminds one of how shitty inequality is more often than the fact that there are companies who make and people who use 1-ply toilet papers.

Sorry—I get word vomit. You know, where you can’t stop talking? It’s like diarrhea, but vomit? You know?

I’d rather lie under an elephant suffering from diarrhea with my mouth open wide.

It wasn’t until three shitloads of diarrhea were out of my mouth

that stage of drunkenness where you’re as wide awake as an owl with diarrhea and you just don’t give a care about anything.

Maybe Jesus had no bacteria in his body, being the Son of Man, virgin-born from the immaculately conceived Mary. But then Jesus would’ve had diarrhea.)

A fast bout of flatulence and diarrhea was a simple way of showing him he wasn’t omnipotent. But he was about to be potent in a minute.

A few words in defense of military scientists. I agree that squad leaders are in the best position to know what and how much their men and women need to bring on a given mission. But you want those squad leaders to be armed with knowledge, and not all knowledge comes from experience. Sometimes it comes from a pogue at USUHS who’s been investigating the specific and potentially deadly consequences of a bodybuilding supplement. Or an army physiologist who puts men adrift in life rafts off the dock at a Florida air base and discovers that wetting your uniform cools you enough to conserve 74 percent more of your body fluids per hour. Or the Navy researcher who comes up with a way to speed the recovery time from travelers’ diarrhea. These things matter when it’s 115 degrees and you’re trying to keep your troops from dehydrating to the point of collapse. There’s no glory in the work. No one wins a medal. And maybe someone should.

comparing traditional bouillon with gelatin-based broth. The latter was “more distasteful, more putrescible, less digestible, less nutritious, and . . . moreover, it often brought on diarrhea.

Chauncy made a huge effort to control himself. “I had lunch at Maisie’s Diner.” “And?” “And what? It was the most revolting lunch it has been my misfortune to consume.” “And after?” “Diarrhea, of course.

Who exactly are we?' I asked. The American Dreamers. There aren't too many of us left.' I don't know if I qualify.' You an American? Or want to be an American?' I am an American.' You said you were having a dream.' It's true, I did.' Was it the one where you're inside the girl and you are pumping her and pumping her and you are so happy but then it turns out it's not a girl, it's really one of those super poisonous box jellyfish, and it stings you and you are screaming and screaming and the sky rains the diarrhea of babies?' The...no, I don't think so.' I get that sometimes. Anyway, see you around.

Many people infected with C. diff are sick with diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, and weight loss. Others are “carriers” of C. diff with no signs or symptoms of disease. Some of these carriers have been recently infected with C. diff but have recovered and now feel well. But carriers still have the C. diff organism in their stools and can serve as a silent reservoir of infection in hospitals and nursing homes.

There ain’t many people out there who have my respect. Respect needs to be earned. Preppy’s got mine. The man might have a case of verbal diarrhea there ain’t no cure for, but he’s been through hell and back. He’s been tortured and brutalized the likes of which most folks can’t begin to imagine. Most men, the strongest of men, in both body and spirit would’ve caved after that. Not Preppy. Not Samuel Motherfucking Clearwater.

The Dordogne in 1984 was the nadir. Diarrhea, moths like flying hamsters, the blowtorch heat. Awake at three in the morning on a damp and lumpy mattress. Then the storm. Like someone hammering sheets of tin. Lightning so bright it came through the pillow. In the morning sixty, seventy dead frogs turning slowly in the pool. And at the far end something larger and furrier, a cat perhaps, or the Franzetti's dog, which Katie was poking with a snorkel.

Latro, California: "Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better." Parkington, Texas: "Terrible diarrhea..." "Take these pills..." Hainesport, Louisiana: "Terrible..." "Take..." Baker Bay, Florida... Washington, DC... Philadelphia, Pennsylvania... New York, New York... Boston, Massachusetts... Chicago, Illinois: "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye." EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis.

Other players and at least one great composer—Beethoven—had lived with deafness, but hearing loss wasn’t where Hugh’s woes ended. There was the vertigo, the trembling, the periodic loss of vision. There was nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, galloping pulse. Worst of all was the almost constant tinnitus. He had always thought deafness meant silence. This was not true, at least not in his case. Hugh Yates had a constantly braying burglar alarm in the middle of his head.

The extraordinary triumph of the cellphone among India’s poor stemmed from its ability to enable a most mundane human need, which is to chat with other people. And when the poor chat, it is not always about curing a child of diarrhea.

The Place Faidherbe had the characteristic atmosphere, the overdone décor, the floral and verbal excess, of a subprefecture in southern France gone mad. The ten cars left the Place Faidherbe only to come back five minutes later, having once more completed the same circuit with their cargo of anemic Europeans, dressed in unbleached linen, fragile creatures as wobbly as melting sherbet. For weeks and years these colonials passed the same forms and faces until they were so sick of hating them that they didn’t even look at one another. The officers now and then would take their families out for a walk, paying close attention to military salutes and civilian greetings, the wives swaddled in their special sanitary napkins, the children, unbearably plump European maggots, wilted by the heat and constant diarrhea. To command, you need more than a kepi; you also need troops. In the climate of Fort-Gono the European cadres melted faster than butter. A battalion was like a lump of sugar in your coffee; the longer you looked the less you saw. Most of the white conscripts were permanently in the hospital, sleeping off their malaria, riddled with parasites made to order fo every nook and cranny of the body, whole squads stretched out flat between cigarettes and flies, masturbating under moldy sheets, spinning endless yarns between fits of painstakingly provoked and coddled fever.

Matagal na din akong naghintay dito sa bus stop sa pag-aakalang babalik sya, na muli siyang dadaan at sabay kaming aalis. Lumipas na ang ulan. Mataas na ang sikat ng araw. Pero mag-isa pa rin ako dito. Siguro naman, ito na ang tamang panahon para sumakay, umalis at lumayo. Paunti-unti. Hindi naman biglaan. Konting andar. Konting lakad. Konting kembot pakanan. Darating din ako doon.Kung saan maaliwalas na ang lahat.

Which is something to be thankful for,” says Danielle Reed, Rawson’s former colleague at Monell. Otherwise you’d be tasting things like bile and pancreatic enzymes. (Intestinal taste receptors are thought to trigger hormonal responses to molecules, such as salt and sugar, and defensive reactions—vomiting, diarrhea—to dangerous bitter items.)

At a family occasion in the 1990s, I met a relative by marriage who had spent time in Auschwitz. Within seconds of meeting me he clenched my wrist and recounted this story. A group of men had been eating in silence when one of them slumped over dead. The others fell on his body, still covered in diarrhea, and pried a piece of bread from his fingers. As they divided it, a fierce argument broke out when some of the men felt their share was an imperceptible crumb smaller than the others’. To tell a story of such degradation requires extraordinary courage, backed by a confidence that the hearer will understand it as an accounting of the circumstances and not of the men’s characters.

When people praise her abilities as a coach, they often talk about her strategic and analytical skills, but her greatest talent is actually that she is very rarely surprised. That's because she interprets information as it is, not as what she wants it to be. She's seen too many other coaches give a player too many chances, or not give a player any chances at all, based on what they think could happen. Those same coaches talk about "instinct" and "gut feeling," but the only gut feeling Zackell worries about is diarrhea.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, old age was defined as sixty-five years, yet estimated life expectancy in the United States at the time was sixty-one years for males and sixty-four years for females.62 A senior citizen today, however, can expect to live eighteen to twenty years longer. The downside is that he or she also should expect to die more slowly. The two most common causes of death in 1935 America were respiratory diseases (pneumonia and influenza) and infectious diarrhea, both of which kill rapidly. In contrast, the two most common causes of death in 2007 America were heart disease and cancer (each accounted for about 25 percent of total deaths). Some heart attack victims die within minutes or hours, but most elderly people with heart disease survive for years while coping with complications such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, general weakness, and peripheral vascular disease. Many cancer patients also remain alive for several years following their diagnosis because of chemo-therapy, radiation, surgery, and other treatments. In addition, many of the other leading causes of death today are chronic illnesses such as asthma, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease, and there has been an upsurge in the occurrence of nonfatal but chronic illnesses such as osteoarthritis, gout, dementia, and hearing loss.63 Altogether, the growing prevalence of chronic illness among middle-aged and elderly individuals is contributing to a health-care crisis because the children born during the post–World War II baby boom are now entering old age, and an unprecedented percentage of them are suffering from lingering, disabling, and costly diseases. The term epidemiologists coined for this phenomenon is the “extension of morbidity.

I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size." This angered me. I tried to speak, but I couldn't get my thoughts together. The person went on, “I am the stone under your foot. I am the bug that bites you in the ass. I am the fart that comes when you are introduced to the important visiting professor. I am menstrual cramps and diarrhea." I kept getting angrier. “My tools are lies and tricks, misunderstandings and accidents. Everything stupid and undignified happens because of me. Hola! I am something!

Consider this scenario: A man gets a stomachache after each meal. To “treat” this problem, he takes (either by prescription or by self-medication) some antacid or other nostrum. Then he gets a headache (which may or may not be a side effect of the stomach medication); to “treat” the headache he takes aspirin, which further irritates his stomach. Three years later he develops an ulcer, for which he takes another medication, plus large amounts of milk and cream (although an outmoded treatment, it is still being used today). Meanwhile, he is still taking antacids for his indigestion and eating the same way he always had. Eventually, he has an operation to remove his ulcer. He continues with his high-dairy diet. Soon thereafter he develops arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure and begins to take antihypertensive medication. The side effects of the latter include headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, diarrhea, slow heart rate, mental confusion, hallucinations, weight gain, and impotence. When his wife leaves him for a younger man, he takes antidepressants and sleeping pills. He has a heart attack and undergoes an operation to repair a heart valve. Painkillers keep him going as he slowly recuperates. A year or two later, he finds himself with an irreversible neurological disease such as ALS or Alzheimer’s, and he wonders what could have gone wrong. All that’s left for him to do is wait to die, which he can do in a nursing home, drugged into complaisance and painlessness.

I know that everyone in this room, Bernie Fain included, thinks I'm some kind of a nut with my so-called fixation on this vampire thing. OK, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he only thinks he is. But there are things here that can't be explained away by so-called common sense. Not even Bernie's report can explain some of them. 'I was at the hospital yesterday.' I looked directly at Butcher. 'Your own people fired maybe fifty or sixty rounds at him, some at point-blank range. How come this man never even slowed down? How come a man seventy years old can outrun police cars for more than fifteen blocks? How come when he gets clubbed on the head he doesn't bleed like other people? Look at these photos! There's a gash on his forehead... and whatever is trickling down from the cut is clear... it isn't blood. 'How come three great, big, burly hospital orderlies weighing an estimated total of nearly seven-hundred fifty pounds couldn't bring one, skinny one-hundred sixty pound man to his knees? How come an ex-boxer, a light-heavyweight not long out of the ring, couldn't even faze him with his best punch, a right hook that should have broken his jaw? 'Face it. Whether it's science, witchcraft or black magic, this character has got something going for him you don't know anything about. He doesn't seem to feel pain. Or get winded. And he doesn't seem to be very frightened by guns, or discouraged by your efforts to trap him. 'Look at these photos! Look at that face! That isn't fear there. It's hate. Pure hate! This man is evil incarnate. He is insane and he may be something even worse although you'd laugh at me because I have no scientific documentation to back me up. Hell, even Regenhaus and Mokurji have all but confirmed that he sucks blood. 'Whatever he is, he's been around a long time and this seems to be the closest any police force has come to putting the finger on him. If you want to go on operating the way you've been doing by treating him like an ordinary man, go ahead. But, I'll bet you any amount of money you come up empty handed again. If you try to catch him at night he'll get away just like he did last night. He'll...' 'Jesus Christ!' bellowed Butcher. 'This son of a bitch has diarrhea of the mouth. Can't one of you people shut him up?

If he surrendered the advantage of the gun he would find himself floating in the gutters of an inhuman world, a part of the daily flotsam and jetsam of a hundred thousand abortions whooshing down the wormhole drain, drowning in a sea of pus-streaked semen and warm piss and menstrual juice and dead fetuses and radiator fluid and bloody diarrhea, seeking refuge inside the cathedral ruins of an embryonic sac, curling up to say his prayers then whispering goodnight, God speed, good riddance, gadzooks, the sac shrinking, disappearing into the frigid, humpbacked void of sodomized angels, wingless now, lecherous gargoyles sporting skeletal appendages without feathers, it would be a birth in reverse, the collapse of the universal soul. He wasn't sure how to save himself.

The next day we booked a three-hundred pound sow for a most unusual photoshoot. She was chauffeured to Hollywood from a farm in Central Valley, and arrived in style at the soundstage bright and early, ready for her close-up. She was a perfect pig, straight from the animal equivalent of Central casting: pink, with gray spots and a sweet disposition. Like Wilbur from Charlotte's Web, but all grown up. I called her "Rhonda." In a pristine studio with white walls and a white floor, I watched as Rhonda was coaxed up a ramp that led to the top of a white pedestal, four feet off the ground. Once she was situated, the ramp was removed, and I took my place beside her. It was a simple setup. Standing next to Rhonda, I would look into the camera and riff about the unsung heroes of Dirty Jobs. I'd conclude with a pointed question: "So, what's on your pedestal?" It was a play on that credit card campaign: "What's in your wallet?" I nailed it on the first take, in front of a roomful of nervous executives. Unfortunately, Rhonda nailed it, too. Just as I asked, "What's on your pedestal?" she crapped all over hers. It was an enormous dump, delivered with impeccable timing. During the second take, Rhonda did it again, right on cue. This time, with a frightful spray of diarrhea that filled the studio with a sulfurous funk, blackening the white walls of the pristine set, and transforming my blue jeans into something browner. I could only marvel at the stench, while the horrified executives backed into a corner - a huddled mass, if you will, yearning to breath free. But Rhonda wasn't done. She crapped on every subsequent take. And when she could crap no more, she began to pee. She peed on my cameraman, She peed on her handler. She peed on me. Finally, when her bladder was empty, we got the take the network could use, along with a commercial that won several awards for "Excellence in Promos." (Yes, they have trophies for such things.) Interestingly, the footage that went viral was not the footage that aired, but the footage Mary encouraged me to release on YouTube after the fact. The outtakes of Rhonda at her incontinent finest. Those were hysterical, and viewed more times than the actual commercial. Go figure. Looking back, putting a pig on a pedestal was maybe the smartest thing I ever did. Not only did it make Rhonda famous, it established me as the nontraditional host of a nontraditional show. One whose primary job was to appear more like a guest, and less like a host. And, whenever possible, not at all like an asshole.

Hey…you okay?” Marlboro Man repeated. My heart fluttered in horror. I wanted to jump out of the bathroom window, scale down the trellis, and hightail it out of there, forgetting I’d ever met any of these people. Only there wasn’t a trellis. And outside the window, down below, were 150 wedding guests. And I was sweating enough for all of them combined. I was naked and alone, enduring the flop sweat attack of my life. It figured. It was usually the times I felt and looked my absolute best when I wound up being humbled in some colossally bizarre way. There was the time I traveled to my godmother’s son’s senior prom in a distant city and partied for an hour before realizing the back of my dress was stuck inside my panty hose. And the time I entered the after-party for my final Nutcracker performance and tripped on a rug, falling on one of the guest performers and knocking an older lady’s wineglass out of her frail arms. You’d think I would have come to expect this kind of humiliation on occasions when it seemed like everything should be going my way. “You need anything?” Marlboro Man continued. A drop of sweat trickled down my upper lip. “Oh, no…I’m fine!” I answered. “I’ll be right out! You go on back to the party!” Go on, now. Run along. Please. I beg you. “I’ll be out here,” he replied. Dammit. I heard his boots travel a few steps down the hall and stop. I had to get dressed; this was getting ridiculous. Then, as I stuck my big toe into the drenched leg of my panty hose, I heard what I recognized as Marlboro Man’s brother Tim’s voice. “What’s she doing in there?” Tim whispered loudly, placing particularly uncomfortable emphasis on “doing.” I closed my eyes and prayed fervently. Lord, please take me now. I no longer want to be here. I want to be in Heaven with you, where there’s zero humidity and people aren’t punished for their poor fabric choices. “I’m not sure,” Marlboro Man answered. The geyser began spraying again. I had no choice but to surge on, to get dressed, to face the music in all my drippy, salty glory. It was better than staying in the upstairs bathroom of his grandmother’s house all night. God forbid Marlboro Man or Tim start to think I had some kind of feminine problem, or even worse, constipation or diarrhea! I’d sooner move to another country and never return than to have them think such thoughts about me.

All the substances that are the main drugs of abuse today originate in natural plant products and have been known to human beings for thousands of years. Opium, the basis of heroin, is an extract of the Asian poppy Papaver somniferum. Four thousand years ago, the Sumerians and Egyptians were already familiar with its usefulness in treating pain and diarrhea and also with its powers to affect a person’s psychological state. Cocaine is an extract of the leaves of Erythroxyolon coca, a small tree that thrives on the eastern slopes of the Andes in western South America. Amazon Indians chewed coca long before the Conquest, as an antidote to fatigue and to reduce the need to eat on long, arduous mountain journeys. Coca was also venerated in spiritual practices: Native people called it the Divine Plant of the Incas. In what was probably the first ideological “War on Drugs” in the New World, the Spanish invaders denounced coca’s effects as a “delusion from the devil.” The hemp plant, from which marijuana is derived, first grew on the Indian subcontinent and was christened Cannabis sativa by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It was also known to ancient Persians, Arabs and Chinese, and its earliest recorded pharmaceutical use appears in a Chinese compendium of medicine written nearly three thousand years ago. Stimulants derived from plants were also used by the ancient Chinese, for example in the treatment of nasal and bronchial congestion. Alcohol, produced by fermentation that depends on microscopic fungi, is such an indelible part of human history and joy making that in many traditions it is honoured as a gift from the gods. Contrary to its present reputation, it has also been viewed as a giver of wisdom. The Greek historian Herodotus tells of a tribe in the Near East whose council of elders would never sustain a decision they made when sober unless they also confirmed it under the influence of strong wine. Or, if they came up with something while intoxicated, they would also have to agree with themselves after sobering up. None of these substances could affect us unless they worked on natural processes in the human brain and made use of the brain’s innate chemical apparatus. Drugs influence and alter how we act and feel because they resemble the brain’s own natural chemicals. This likeness allows them to occupy receptor sites on our cells and interact with the brain’s intrinsic messenger systems. But why is the human brain so receptive to drugs of abuse? Nature couldn’t have taken millions of years to develop the incredibly intricate system of brain circuits, neurotransmitters and receptors that become involved in addiction just so people could get “high” to escape their troubles or have a wild time on a Saturday night. These circuits and systems, writes a leading neuroscientist and addiction researcher, Professor Jaak Panksepp, must “serve some critical purpose other than promoting the vigorous intake of highly purified chemical compounds recently developed by humans.” Addiction may not be a natural state, but the brain regions it subverts are part of our central machinery of survival.