Fun Names for Stuff
Bean bag, nut sack, huevos, cajaones, family jewels, balls, nuts… even testicles is fun. Yet, when I was talking to my nurse practitioner about my testis (not for fun but for medical reasons – even I have a line), she called the ovaries: things.
Now, this kicked off a weird philosophical inquiry for myself. I assume the average person wouldn’t have tossed into a sea of doubt because ovaries are indeed: things. But, it bothers me on a weird level.
For one, testicles and ovaries start as the same thing and during the formation of a human being they transform. Now, I am not a medical professional, but I did take a health class in Junior High. Also, I have the internet, and in my search for validation, I realized I missed one of my favorite terms: gonads. Also, I did confirm the above statement – all of our gonads start off as the same thing and then morph into other our bits.
So, why all the talk about our happy bits? Simple, during my time with the medical professional I could rattle off multiple names for the testis but nothing fun for ovaries. Ovaries are the female version of balls, but I have no fun names to call them. So I set on a quest to understand why this is the case; I didn’t try very hard in my adventure.
Many folks pointed out that they aren’t an external form of genitalia so they don’t get the screen time of say: breasts. Which makes sense to me but still bothers me. Of all the genitals testis have countless names, we even can leverage slang from foreign languages (there are two at the top of this post), and a huge tell is that our cute names aren’t demeaning (breasts aren’t bags).
So, why don’t we have fun names for ovaries? And if we do and I am just missing them, fire a tweet at me. If you also can’t think of some, let’s start a thing; I’ll go first egg holsters.
Theodore is back in the saddle and asking the simple questions.
Read MoreSmall Questions – Young Adult
It is kind of insane that we have different age groups broken up by key identifiers. Like a tiny human that can walk and talk, but kind of walks around like a drunk, is a toddler. While a newborn is human who is fresh to the world and covered in that womb smell (new baby). While a few arbitrary measures of time (days/weeks/months) later that newborn transforms into an infant. So on and so on.
So for the first 18 years of life, humans are sliced and diced into categories based on age – newborn, toddler, kindergartener, middle schooler, teenager, young adult. I probably missed some.
Now, I know that this because we experience the greatest level of growth in those first 18 years. But it kind of sucks as an adult who is young, that I can’t call myself a young adult. Instead we have to call ourselves by our age bracket: twenties, thirties, forties, fifties… ageless… elderly.
So my small question: Why don’t I get to call myself a young adult? Who makes these arbitrary rules?
Theodore, just asking the hard questions.
Read MoreSmall Questions: Who Gets to Define Things?
I’ve got some beef. It has weighed heavily on me for sometime and I just want to know who gets to define things? Here’s where the beef comes from, there are things called scientists, and they create categorizations for things in our world. This organization of the world’s chaos has been a practice of humanity since Aristotle (probably way before him too). However, somehow we end up with crazy shit like pizza being considered a vegetable (cause of tomato sauce) or, even worse, watermelon being categorized as vegetable. That’s right, in the great state of Oklahoma, the humble watermelon is considered a vegetable – why… no one may ever know. And if you are wondering if the watermelon was made the state’s vegetable back in the 1800s, no… Oklahoma’s state congress just decided to vote and make it the state vegetable in 2007.
Now, I am not one to be bent out of shape for categorizing the world. I believe we don’t really need definitions around every little thing in society. However, if we are going to put something in a specific category, we really should follow some form of designation.
So, who gets to define things? Law makers or the scientists who hold higher level degrees in the field. I am going to go with the scientists, cause congress is playing too fast and loose with the designation of a watermelon to really be effective in a situation that is more serious.
Read MoreSmall Questions: Trash Bags
Everyone I know works their asses off to make money. Stinginess appears at all weird times and it seems like we arbitrarily get frugal in certain circumstances (for many, this is when it comes time to tip). Yet, garbage bags, am I right? I guess I should clarify. Garbage bags are things we spend money on to exclusively throw out. That means, we take money, convert it into a garbage bag, and then throw out the garbage bag (a representation of our capital in bag form). Isn’t that insane? In this specific situation, we are buying trash. That’s fascinating to me, but I still do it.
Perhaps, we should just get canisters with zero bags in them, and just dump our trash directly into the dump. It is probably better for the environment, but then you would have to take time to clean the canister that was holding the trash (and it would probably stink); so I guess we use trash bags to hold trash so we don’t have to clean our garbage cans.
But in the end, are garbage bags just us throwing out money?
Theodore asking the tough questions.
Read MoreSmall Questions | Pandas
I’ve seen Sparkles (Post about my cat: Meet Sparkles) do some incredible things. She is truly an inspiration for evolution’s ability to produce a serial killer. For example: leaping six feet in the air and landing without making a noise or when she catches bats out of the air. I am awe struck by her ability to climb anything with her claws and her capability to understand what is safe to use as a perch.
Then, you juxtapose her incredible feats with a panda and your brain will break. I’ve seen a panda pee on another panda, it just lays there and takes it, another panda poop an avocado of a turd onto another panda’s head, it also just lays there and take it, and I am stuck wondering: “how are these animals still alive?” Okay, so those aren’t great examples of the panda as a failed evolutionary experiment. But just search “panda falls” and you will be greeted by mind blowing moments where pandas fail to do basic tasks… like climb a tree (a necessary function of an animal that eats… leaves). If aliens showed up tomorrow, they would go and see a panda – at which point – they would leave our planet because Earth clearly hasn’t evolved enough for intergalactic politics. Listen, I know they are adorable and cute, but they are also a giant failure of an animal. Their camouflage is black and white… and they live in bamboo forests.
Perhaps, I am being too harsh on the panda. But my simple question is this: How have pandas survived this long?
~Theodore, asking the hard questions. (I also didn’t research pandas, so I know there are reasons they are still alive but I don’t care, I just watch too many videos of pandas failing to climb trees or randomly fall out of trees).
Read MoreSmall Questions: What Should You Never Microwave at Lunch?
So I walk into the little lunch area at work and I am grabbing some water. You know, just my fourth liter of water by lunch. My foot begins tapping against the tiles and then I get a whiff of something foul, perhaps it was fowl, but I am cannot be 100% sure of the contents of the microwave at this time. Based on the funk and the potency, my best bet was a can of tuna, but this is a hypothesis. Perhaps we will never know.
Yet, it did prompt me with some small questions:
So, are there certain foods you shouldn’t eat at work because of their funk? It it your place to tell your coworkers what they cannot eat? Or did you notice I said microwaving a can of tuna and clue into the fact that you shouldn’t ever microwave metal? Cause if you caught that piece, then you are correct. Eat whatever you want, just don’t microwave metal (no one was actually microwaving metal) but the definitely deployed a solid tuna melt funk all over that area.
Once again, Theodore Maestranzi asking the tough questions.
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