Fnord is evaporated herbal tea without the herbs.
Fnord is that funny feeling you get when you reach for the
Snickers bar and come back holding a slurpee.
Fnord is the 43 1/3rd state, next to Wyoming.
Fnord is this really, really tall mountain.
Fnord is the reason boxes of condoms carry twelve instead of ten.
Fnord is the blue stripes in the road that never get painted.
Fnord is place where those socks vanish off to in the laundry.
Fnord is an arcade game like Pacman without the little dots.
Fnord is a little pufflike cloud you see at 5pm.
Fnord is the tool the dentist uses on unruly patients.
Fnord is the blank paper that cassette labels are printed on.
Fnord is where the buses hide at night.
Fnord is the empty pages at the end of the book.
Fnord is the screw that falls from the car for no reason.
Fnord is why Burger King uses paper instead of foam.
Fnord is the little green pebble in your shoe.
Fnord is the orange print in the yellow pages.
Fnord is a pickle without the bumps.
Fnord is why ducks eat trees.
Fnord is toast without bread.
Fnord is a venetian blind without the slats.
Fnord is the lint in the navel of the mites that eat the lint in the navel of the mites that eat the lint in Fnord’s navel.
Fnord is an apostrophe on drugs.
Fnord is the bucket where they keep the unused serifs for H*lvetica.
Fnord is the gunk that sticks to the inside of your car’s fenders.
Fnord is the source of all the zero bits in your computer.
Fnord is the echo of silence.
Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness.
Fnord is the preposition at the end of sixpence.
Fnord is the feeling in your brain when you hold your breath too long.
Fnord is the reason latent homosexuals stay latent.
Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is the whole donut.
Fnord is an annoying series of email messages.
Fnord is the color only blind people can see.
Fnord is the serial number on a box of cereal.
Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.
Fnord is a naked woman with herpes simplex 428.
Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is a pyrotumescent retrograde onyx obelisk.
Fnord is why lisp has so many parentheses.
Fnord is the the four-leaf clover with a missing leaf.
Fnord is double-jointed and has a cubic spline.
Fnord never sleeps.
Fnord is the “een” in baleen whale.
Fnord is neither a particle nor a wave.
Fnord is the space in between the pixels on your screen.
Fnord is the guy that writes the Infiniti ads.
Fnord is the nut in peanut butter and jelly.
Fnord is an antebellum flagellum fella.
Fnord is a sentient vacuum cleaner.
Fnord is the smallest number greater than zero.
Fnord lives in the empty space above a decimal point.
Fnord is the odd-colored scale on a dragon’s back.
Fnord is the redundant coin slot on arcade games.
Fnord was last seen in Omaha, Nebraska.
Fnord is the founding father of the phrase “founding father”.
Fnord is the last bit of sand you can’t get out of your shoe.
Fnord is Jesus’s speech advisor.
Fnord keeps a spare eyebrow in his pocket.
Fnord invented the green hubcap.
Fnord is why doctors ask you to cough.
Fnord is the “ooo” in varooom of race cars.
Fnord uses two bathtubs at once.
I cannot escape them
No matter how I try
They wait for me everywhere
I cannot pass them by.
Driving down the street
I see “Jesus Is Lord”
And then immediately after
I hear the word “FNORD!”
Innocuous sayings and parables
And on the evening news
I hear the word “FNORD!”
And suddenly I’m confused
I sit alone in my room
And I’m feeling rather bored
I turn on the tube and guess what
I hear the word “FNORD!”
“Don’t see the fnords and they won’t eat you”
That’s what I’ve heard the wisemen say
But I can’t get away from those beasties
There’s just no fucking way.
Dear Cecil:
Two related questions: As a cat owner, I’ve been a little concerned recently about rumors that cat poop can cause schizophrenic behavior in people who are overexposed to the waste. How much truth is in this–and if there is any truth to it, what amount can possibly count as overexposure? I’m also bothered by the supposed risk to pregnant women that changing the litter box can cause–not so much to them as to the fetus, through bacteria and whatnot. If that’s really true, then with a third of all Americans owning cats, why don’t we see higher rates of these dreadful birth defects? Certainly some of these women must get pregnant sometime, and I doubt they all know the dangers posed to them by cleaning up what Puss left behind. What gives?
–Onnie in Baltimore
Cecil replies:
Buckle up, friend. This one’s bizarre.
While you’re surely right that not everyone has gotten the word, the medical profession and hopefully most women of childbearing age know that if you’re pregnant you don’t want to get near cat feces. The problem is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, for which cats are the principal host. The microscopic parasites reproduce in the cat’s gut, the eggs are excreted, and by a process I’m not about to describe the critters wind up in your brain and muscles, where they create tiny cysts, leading to a condition known as toxoplasmosis. Unpromising as this sounds, the symptoms of toxoplasmosis are generally mild to nonexistent in adults, which is good, because roughly a third of all humans are infected, with the rate in some tropical countries approaching 100 percent.
For some, though, things are less benign. If a woman initially becomes infected while pregnant, there’s a fair chance the T. gondii will migrate across the placenta to her unborn child, with ghastly results ranging from cerebral palsy, seizures, and mental retardation to death. Women infected prior to pregnancy don’t run the same risk, which no doubt explains why we haven’t seen an epidemic of toxo-induced birth defects–the parasite’s ubiquitousness confers a sort of immunity. I’ve seen no research suggesting there’s a threshold exposure below which there’s no danger, and in my opinion it’d be foolish to assume there is one. Besides, you’ll never get a better excuse to make somebody else clean the litter box.
Here’s where things get strange. While the link between toxoplasmosis and birth defects has long been recognized, scientists now suspect that T. gondii may cause schizophrenia too. That in itself represents a major change in thinking–till recently the assumption, based on twin studies and the like, has been that schizophrenia is transmitted genetically. No way, scoffers say: schizophrenia is so profoundly disabling that sufferers tend not to reproduce. Germs are a likelier candidate. Studies typically have found T. gondii antibodies occurring in schizophrenics at twice the rate seen in control groups.
But get this. Forty-five percent of schizophrenics tested positive in one study for both T. gondii and D-lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. To quote a recent paper: “These results support the hypothesis that T. gondii may cause schizophrenia and may do so by producing or triggering the production of an hallucinogenic chemical” (“Genes, Germs, and Schizophrenia,” Ledgerwood et al, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2003). Mindful that rodents are often an intermediate host for the parasite, the authors go on to say, “Production of such a compound may have been favored by natural selection because an infected, hallucinating rodent would be more easily captured by a cat.” In other words, schizophrenia in humans may be a side effect of T. gondii’s attempt to set cats up with a steady supply of tripping mice, the better to ensure its own reproductive success. Told you this was bizarre.
A word of caution: our authors’ impressive theoretical edifice is built on some pretty thin evidence. It’s simplistic to say T. gondii works by triggering the production of LSD–among other problems with the idea, acid mainly gives rise to visual hallucinations, whereas the delusions of schizophrenics are primarily auditory (e.g., hearing voices). No doubt genetics plays some role in schizophrenia, if only by establishing a predisposition to the condition. Still, even without the hallucinogen angle, this is a promising line of research. If germs are in fact a cause of schizophrenia, which afflicts more than two million Americans, there’s a better chance we’ll be able to come up with a method of prevention if not a cure.
–CECIL ADAMS
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BLUES are motivated by INTIMACY, seek opportunities to genuinely connect with others, and need to be appreciated. They do everything with quality and are devoted and loyal friends and employers/employees. Whatever or whomever they commit to are their sole (and soul) focus. They love to serve and will give freely of themselves in order to nurture others lives.
BLUES, however, do need to be understood. They have distinct preferences and occasionally the somewhat controlling (but always fair) personality of a confident leader. Their code of ethics is remarkably strong and they expect others to live honest, committed lives as well. They enjoy sharing meaningful moments in conversation as well as remembering special life events (i.e., birthdays and anniversaries). BLUES are dependable, thoughtful, nurturing, and can also be self-righteous, a bit worry-prone, and emotionally intense. They are like sainted pit-bulls who never let go of something once they are committed. When you deal with a BLUE, be sincere, make an effort to truly understand them, and truly appreciate them.