The ‘Rule of Thumb’ is known all over the world, and a common myth is that it came from the size of stick one was legally allowed to use in wife beatings. In one language it’s called, ‘Regola del police.’ In another it’s, ‘Tommelfingerregel.’ Basically though, and in whatever language, it loosely defines ‘an idea or procedure that works in most circumstances.’ And this is where it starts to get a little sideways.

For example, if you were trying to build a fire, and you put wadded newspaper as your base, then placed kindling on top, you may be using a ‘Rule of Thumb’ for fire building. However, you might bypass the newspaper, and douse the tinder with gasoline. That might also be a ‘Rule of Thumb.’ One might be a rule for indoor fires while the other for outdoor fires, or maybe fuel is reserved for burning wood that’s a little damp. You see, there is no set rule for a procedure so old that cave people were doing it thousands of years before Jesus!

And, this applies to nearly everything! There’s a ‘Rule of Thumb’ for cooking an oven-bake pizza, for mowing your lawn, for baiting a fishhook, and for filling out your taxes! And, what this really means, is that there are no rules at all, because everyone does shit the way they think is going to work best for them in the particular circumstance in which they’re dealing!
Even in sports, where it seems like there’s a rule for everything, there are ‘Rules of Thumb’ within those rules. How to best pitch a curve ball, how to return a serve, how to exaggerate a fall so the refs will call a foul. The list goes on and on!

Now, the ‘Rule of Thumb’ actually comes from before the invention of set measurements like inches and centimeters. People measured things with their fingers and thumbs, and other parts, which makes no sense because people’s fingers, thumbs and other parts were, and still are, different sizes, which means there was no real rule for measuring shit! It was all what someone thought was going to work best for the particular situation. And isn’t that the way life really is?

In fact, because the ‘Rule of Thumb’ really means no set rules at all, doesn’t that make ‘The Rule of Thumb’ an oxymoron? Because, if there’s a rule that says there are no rules, then how can there really be a rule about no rules in the first place? Now I’m getting confused. I’m just glad they didn’t name it, ‘The Rule of Scrotum.’

OM

As I’ve grown older, and a little more aware of my limits, I’ve realized I don’t suffer from as many of the grievances I did as a young man. Any broken bones, I know where they’ve come from. Apology phone calls about the night before are no longer a weekly thing. Monogamy has ended sporadic trips to the clinic for VD tests. But, the beer shits still get me!

We all know the morning cup o’ joe can knock a few things loose up in there. Add a cigarette, and no one better get in your way as you do the clinched-butt shuffle to take care of business! That’s because caffeine and nicotine both contain stimulants that accelerate poop movement through the system. These vices have nothing to do with beer-related diarrhea, however, they can definitely make a bad situation worse!

Our digestive tracts are pretty amazing. They can take all the crap we shove into our mouths, get as much nutritional value from it that they can, then plop out the rest. One of the key factors in keeping this system running smoothly is water. That’s where alcohol comes in and starts messing things up.

As alcohol is introduced to the intestines, they quit absorbing water as well as they should. Therefore, we have an excess of water in our digestive tract that has nowhere to go but out. Also, alcohol being a depressant, the muscles that keep the food digesting correctly slow way down, leaving us with a lot of recognizable stuff the next morning.

So, you take a bunch of water and poorly digested food, mix them together in a thirty foot tube that usually takes hours to process, and presto, major diarrhea!

Next time you wake up hungover and stumble to the coffee maker, then step outside for that cig fix, try to remember what you ate the night before. If you can’t, you’ll find out soon enough.

Be careful farting!

OM

​Here’s a re-visit to a blog I posted several months ago titled, ‘Farts 101’. After publishing it, I got into an interesting conversation with a nurse friend of mine, Sabrina, about how far back the word fart goes and how it may be one of the older words of our language, maybe reaching all the way back to cavemen. Her reply was that cavemen did not fart. I was astounded at the idea, and somewhat reminded of Ed’s line in Shawn of the Dead, ‘Dogs don’t look up.’

​Ludicrous as it may have sounded to me at the time, I did promise to go back and do a little more research. Here’s what I discovered:

​Many natural foods such as apples and pears, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, onions, whole grains, and certain dairy products all can contribute to your own personal ‘Farty Party!’ This is because many of these foods contain fiber, sugars and starches your body isn’t going to easily digest.

Now, we know cavemen didn’t eat much ice cream, but they were foragers, which means they knew the plants and seeds they could safely eat, and plants do contain fiber, sugars, and starches. This also means, unless their digestive tract was entirely different than ours, these sugary, fibrous, starchy, fart-making foods made caveman fart.

Interestingly enough, many foods in the meat group cause less gas in the digestive tract than plant foods, and cavemen hunted. Furthermore, we know many primitive people depended on, and migrated with, certain animals so they could always have a fresh supply of protein. But, meat alone isn’t going to keep people healthy enough to survive in the wild. For a month or two, maybe. For their whole thirty-year lives, no way!

Farts created through digestion actually happen as partially digested food travels into the large intestine. That’s where bacteria start working at it, making carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane. It’s natural! But lots of farts happen just by swallowing small amounts of air. This occurs pretty much every time you swallow. That air isn’t going to stay inside you for long though. Our bodies make sure of that! It’s going to go out one end or the other. I can probably point out the likeliness that most cavemen swallowed food and water, at least from time to time.

Common knowledge, and maybe owning a dog, lets us know that humans aren’t the only animals that pass the gas. Many reptiles like snakes and turtles fart, and I guess they’re pretty stinky. Some fish, like herring and sand sharks fart. The beaded lacewing butterfly, in the larval stage, actually uses its farts to stun its termite prey! Strangely enough, Termites might be the most fart-happy animal on earth and could be contributing to global warming! Insect fart wars! Birds, on the other hand, don’t have enough time to make farts! Apparently, their digestive tract is too short to build up much gas, and they don’t use the same kind of gas forming digestive bacteria that are in many farting animals. Sorry birds… Needless to say, many animals, who have been on Earth a long time, fart, and they fart a lot!

So, to my nurse friend Sabrina, thank you for lively conversation! I think cavemen fart-quantities, like all homo sapiens, and homo erectus, and homo whatever, depend on diet and individual chemical makeup. I don’t think our digestive tracts are so far removed from prehistoric times that we are the ‘farting generation’ of our species. After researching farts again, I believe, and will continue to believe, in aliens, ghosts, and caveman farts.

​OM