*Siddur finger" is an obscure medical condition Jews get when they leave their
finger in their prayer book to keep their
place for a half hour or longer and the end of "der finger" gets painfully squeezed.
(See "The Mendy Report")
by
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
What, me worry? Alfred E. Neuman is the
fictional mascot of Mad magazine.
You know his now-familiar signature
phrase,
"What, me worry?"
There are a lot of people out there who display this attitude. I'm not
one of them.
THERE IS PLENTY to be alarmed about:
My family physician now has a "boutique"/"concierge" practice. I
call
it "Club Med"! In return for a retainer fee,
I'm guaranteed same day or next day
appointments, and around-the-clock access. Yes, an extra $75 a month,
as Julie
Andrews would sing, "helps my medicine
go down."
The newspaper headlines read:
"EXPENSIVE" PLACEBOS WORK BETTER
THAN "CHEAP" ONES
A new study published in the American
Medical Association reports just how much
your perception becomes your reality when
it come to prices. People in the study
thought they were trying out a new kind
of pain "meditsin." Instead, they got sugar
pills However, some were told their sugar
pills cost $2.50, and the others were told
that the pills cost $0.l0. People with the
"tayer" (pricey/expensive) sugar pill had
their pain reduced much more than the
people who took the "bilik" (cheap) sugar pill.
A Las Vegas (AKA "Sin City") clinic was
found to be reusing syringes and vials of
medication for nearly four years. The
shoddy practice may have led to an outbreak of Hepatitis C and exposed
patients to HIV, too.
Tommy John ligament surgery, an elbow
procedure named after the Los Angeles
Dodgers pitcher who was the first to
undergo it, used to be limited to players
in their 20s and older. It is now being
performed on kids as young as 13--not
surprising if they started pitching excessively at age 8 or 9. In
addition, stress fractures in the backs of middle
school football and soccer players have
nearly doubled over the past decade as a
result of overtraining.
FEMA'S TOXIC TRAILERS
Some 38,000 families still dis-
paced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita live in FEMA trailers. Large
numbers of these people have been experiencing
breathing difficulties and nosebleeds.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that some of the trailers
contained an average of about FIVE TIMES
the acceptable level of formaldehyde gas.
On a less serious note.....
OBAMA-MANIA
People have been fainting at campaign
rallies and weeping over their screens
while watching Obama videos.
BLAHNIK FATIGUE SYNDROME
The disease that sets in when too many TV
series rely on glamorous women in expensive shoes to pick up where "Sex and
the City" left off.
CHINESE FORTUNE COOKIE SYNDROME
Fear that your fortune cookie will read,
"May your pastrami never have mayonnaise
on it."
REFRIGERATOR DOOR DISEASE (RDD)
This disease is characterized by standing
in front of "der fridzhider" with the doors
wide open, staring blankly into a collection
of fuzzy jars of grape jelly, half-eaten
margarine tubs with bread crumbs, and
something that used to resemble fresh
"frukht" (fruit) but might actually be
meatloaf. This disease strikes only at "nakht" (night), and is
accompanied by
light sensitivity that makes the refrigerator
seem ten times brighter than normal so
that it pierces closed eyelids like the
flashlight of God himself.
LANGUAGE OBFUSCATION DISORDER
(LOD)
Striking mostly doctors, surgeons and
oncologists, LOD causes its victims to speak
in unintelligible medi-babble while
imagining their words make perfect sense.
People afflicted with this disease literally
speak in Greek, substituting normal-sounding English words (like "liver" and
"inflamed") with words made of Greek
elements ("hepato" and "itis" or just
hepatitis.) Interestingly, two or more
victims of LOD seem to be able to understand each other perfectly well,
although no one else has any idea what
they're saying.
OBSESSIVE HOSIERY DISLOCATION
DISORDER (OHDD)
OHDD is characterized by a frantic household search for the other sock
("zok")
of any given sock pairs. Victims of this
disease, when finding only one sock from a
pair, feel the universe has falled into a state
of great imbalance that can only be restored through the recovery of the
missing sock. Victims also become sock-
dependent, whereby they repeatedly buy
new socks in the hopes that sheer sock
volume will make up for the universal
imbalance caused by dislocated socks. In
advanced stages, this disease causes people
to safety-pin their socks together in the
wash.
COMMERCE ANXIETY DISORDER (CAD)
Characterized by heightened worry over
whether your credit card ("kredit-kartl")
charge will be declined at the cash
register. CAD afflicts primarily people
under 35. Victims of CAD frequently
experience sweaty palms and heart ("harts") palpitations at any checkout
counter, and they often carry three or
four cards or debit cards in order to have
a backup plan should one piece of plastic
fail the transaction.
OBSESSIVE WARDROBE CHANGE
DISORDER (OWCD)
This fascinating disease afflicts mostly
women and is characterized by the
incessant changing of clothing before a
planned event (for which the victim is
usually late). OWCD victims have been
known to change clothes up to nine
("nayn") times before deciding on
something to wear--which is usually the
initial item the victim tried on in the first
place. Women with OWCD are often
married to men with Repetitive Remote
Disorder (RRD), which actually works out
nicely because it gives the husband ("der
man") something to do while waiting for
the OWCD victim to work out her wardrobe
obsession.
REPETITIVE POCKET SEARCHING SYNDROME (RPSS)
This frustrating condition is characterized
by repeated searching of one's own pockets
following the misplacement of some small
item such as car keys. The victim of RPSS
frantically and repeatedly searches the
pockets of the clothes they are wearing,
irrationally hoping that the missing object
will somehow appear after the third or
fourth search. When this proves futile, the
RPSS victim will turn to yesterday's clothes
and start searching those pockets.
Additionally, pockets of jackets and coats
will be desperately searched for the missing
item. In extreme cases of RPSS, the person
will search the pockets of other people's
clothing.
Note: RDD, LOD, OHDD, CAD, RPSS, and OWCD, are all new made-up diseases
found in an article on
NaturalNews.com, and written by Mike
Adams. It was originally published
Sept. 9, 2005.
______________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe says "Gezunthayt
iz beser vi krankhayt"--Health is better
than illness.
___________________________________________ Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of
two books:
"Yiddish for Dog & Cat Lovers" and
"Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction? Yiddish
Trivia." To order a copy, go to her
website: MarjorieGottliebWolfe.com
