Everything has wheat in it. Seriously.

Sooner or later, every non-fatal syndrome that a body can have makes it into my DNA. Neurological, dermatological, gastronomical; if it is mildly severe and mostly just annoying, I have it. I am to genetic disorders what Aquaman is to superpowers.

I can't eat gluten. It destroys my intestinal lining, which brings a lot of unpleasantness to what should be an enjoyable and refreshing activity.

*Ahem*

It also causes tiny painful blisters to spring up all my hands and feet, and gives me intense migraines.

So, here's the thing about gluten, and I mean darn near its defining characteristic. Almost nobody knows what it is. Tell someone you're lactose intolerant, no problem. They know what that means: no milk, no cheese, not Satan. Tell someone you are gluten intolerant, and unless they are a chef, the response is something along the lines of, "Oh, right... so... what are you a vegetarian or something?"

Your next step is to explain that you can't eat wheat. You would think that this would be a sufficient explanation. Unless you have had any experience explaining things to people before. It particularly becomes an issue when they cater lunch at work and well meaning managers try to make sure that those with special dietary requirements are not forgotten. Allow me to give you a sampling of some of the things you hear when those without understanding try to be understanding.

"Instead of pizza we got you spaghetti with no meat in it."
Some variation of this happens quite a bit. Some people believe that all food allergies and intolerances can be summed up as vegetarianism.

"We know you can't have wheat, so we got you white bread instead of wheat bread."
One assumes that somewhere there is a farmer harvesting a vast field of white.

"So, why did you decide to stop eating wheat?"
I have a moral objection to sitting on the toilet for an hour and then having to crawl out of the bathroom on all fours because my legs fell asleep.

Of course, people are becoming more aware of gluten intolerance. I've noticed grocery stores going out of their way to stock gluten free foods. Just the other day I was shopping and found quite a few products clearly labeled as gluten free. Chocolate. Honey. Strawberries. Peanut Butter. All are now gluten free. Of course, all of them have always been gluten free, on account of them not being made of wheat.

1. Lists 2. Indexes 3. Catalogues 4. Tables 5. Enumerations

I like lists. One might have noticed that many of my blog entries are written in the form of lists. Lists are wonderful, because you can sift through the information without having to deal with personality. It has been said that my love of lists is a symptom of the fact that I am merely an automaton who's life goal is to understand emotion in order to truly become "human." In response to that I say:

01010111.01101000.01100101.01101110.00100000.01001001.00100000.
01100111.01100001.01101001.01101110.00100000.01110011.01100101.
01101110.01110100.01101001.01100101.01101110.01100011.01100101.
00100000.01001001.00100000.01110111.01101001.01101100.01101100.
00100000.01100100.01100101.01110011.01110100.01110010.01101111.
01111001.00100000.01111001.01101111.01110101.00100000.01100001.
01101100.01101100.00100001.

So anyway, one of my favorite browsing sites when I'm bored or should be working or both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists

Today I'm looking at lists of phobias. It's for a story I'm working on. As I go through the list I have to wonder about some of these. It would seem to me that there are cases where the exclusion of a particular phobia would be reason to doubt a person's sanity. Let me put it another way.

Here are some proper phobias:

Arachibutyrophobia- fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia- fear of long words.
Nomophobia - fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Irrational. Debilitating. If we are being simultaneously honest and callous: really kind of stupid. That is what we, as Americans raised to believe that our uneducated opinions are somehow valid, have come to expect from phobias. It gets a little iffier* when you have phobias like

Algophobia — fear of pain.

July 22, 1973 - Have tested subject by exposing to multiple stimuli including electrical current, angry bees, combination of sandpaper and lemon juice, etc. In all cases, response has been the same - "Please stop hurting me! what is wrong with you people!" We have concluded that the subject appears to be afraid of pain. Fascinating.

Agraphobia - fear of sexual abuse

I can only imagine this one was thought up by a newly graduated psychiatrist who spent most of his college career studying "brewski's" and calling other guys "bra."

Tomophobia - fear or anxiety of surgeries/surgical operations

Also known as fear of being sliced open by a complete stranger. It's an offshoot of another phobia that was very common in the middle ages, particularly among soldiers. For more information, see Braveheart.

Radiophobia - fear of radioactivity or X-rays.

Again, not so much a phobia as a survival skill. Presumably, Madame Curie was being totally rational when she soaked herself in radiation till it killed her.

One final note:

Phobophobia — fear of having a phobia.

Not sure if this one fits into either of the above categories. However, we have been told time and time again** that this one is actually admirable to have, so I think it's inclusion in a list of phobias is somewhat unfair.

(Discovered in the course of writing this post

I like to think of this page as the shortest essay ever written on the subject of modern society.)


*Spellcheck agrees that this is in fact a word. Though it does not seem to think that "spellcheck" is.

** Both Franklin Roosevelt and Professor Lupin say so.

Small Disasters

- Slamming her face into a piano bench
- Falling out of a chair
- Closing her head in a car door

These are the ways our youngest daughter says good morning. She's like a loud bruise with a sunny disposition and an Oxford English Dictionary that constantly leaks out of her mouth. She has yet to develop career aspirations, but were I to wager on them I'd guess auctioneer, crash-test dummy, or fire alarm.



Like all 2 year olds, the boy possesses a supernatural affinity for stickiness. He can actually spontaneously generate it. Wash him, put clean jammies on him, and put him to bed in a clean crib, and in the morning he will wake up covered in corn syrup and coffee grounds. He loves wearing helmets, which is lucky really, because he also loves climbing up bookshelves and standing on kitchen tables. Other interests include the sound of wooden spoons on furniture, the tinkle of breaking glass, and urinating in baskets of clean laundry. When he gets older he'll be an insurance nightmare.

Same nurture, different nature

This is my oldest daughter. She says she wants to be a nurse and missionary when she grows up. She regularly takes charge of the household and makes sure that none of her siblings do anything that she deems inappropriate. She is a born manager.

This is my middle daughter. She says that when she grows up she wants to be a passport. She regularly asks questions like, "How do I know if I'm really awake or dreaming?" and "How old was I before I was born?" She is really good with animals and smaller children.

It's interesting. Especially since the first two children so closely mirror my brother and I. Before our third daughter was born I could already see how the older was just like my older brother, and the younger was just like me. I was very curious about how the third daughter would turn out, because both poles were already covered. I still haven't worked out who she will be. The boy will grow up to be Tarzan. He likes to swing on doorknobs, naked.