a girl, a house on the beach, and a one-way ticket...day 22

I woke up this morning with the grim suspicion that Naples may be getting to me, as in making me--if not exactly stupid--then at least slightly duller than usual. This suspicion was confirmed just moments later when I threw my car keys instead of my pajamas down the laundry shoot on my way out.

I blame my strenuous schedule.

9 am: Coffee on the veranda duhling with all of the other Neopolitans with strenuous schedules.
10 am: Sitting by the Gulf
11 am: Boating on the Gulf
12 pm: Swimming in the Gulf
2 pm: Sitting by the pool
3 pm: Reading by the pool
4 pm: Swimming in the pool
5 pm: Oprah (yes, by the pool)
6 pm: Reading by the pool
7 pm: Swimming in the pool
9 pm: Still swimming in the pool

So, I wondered...

Could it be that my new summer reading schedule, which consists of paging through other people's left behind, dog eared Vanity Fairs and Cosmos (please note here that I have been doing this not only by the pool but also whilst in the pool, as I'm aiming to be not a TOTAL slacker) is not quite as academically rigorous as, say, lecturing on Mamet?

Could it be that my current preoccupation with timing my strolls along the beach with the sunsets is not as mentally demanding or invigorating as, say, trying to OK ONE MORE TIME, PEOPLE explain that YOU DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EXTENUATING (well, Aubry, look it up if you don't know what it means)OR OTHERWISE, USE "U," "BTW," "WINCYSIMGIS" (whatever that means) or any other textual shorthand in college English classes?

Could it be that coordinating my various bikini tops with my various bikini bottoms* does not provide the same quotidian calisthenics for the mind as, say, explaining the difference between "lie" and "lay?**"

Luckily for me--just as I thought my worst nightmare was coming true***--I came across a revelatory book entitled The Book of General Ignorance, which was fortuitously left behind at Starbucks this morning by a comparatively less ignorant person than myself (at the time). I've spent the majority of the afternoon reading it, and doing so has without a doubt constituted the greatest (and only) intellectual effort I have put forth thus far to not turn dumb while I am here.

And in one word, the book is fascinating...

1. The blue whale is 105 feet long, three times bigger than the biggest dinosaur, and weighs as much as 2,700 people. Its tongue weighs more than an elephant and its heart is bigger than the average family car.

2. A chicken can live up to two years without its head. There was a chicken in Colorado named Mike who did just that.

3. 45 billion people have been killed by a mosquito bite.

4. Not all frogs "ribbit." In Thailand they "ob ob," in Algeria they "gar gar," and in Bengali they "gangor gangor."

5. (Initially I read this one with much anticipation) If you happen to come face to face with a crocodile, your best best is a rubber band. While the downward force of its jaw closing is equivalent to the downward force of a truck falling off the side of a mountain, the upward force of its jaw opening is almost nil and can easily be contained by wrapping a rubber band around its mouth (Yeah, this is real helpful because I'm pretty sure your real trouble is over before it is time for the jaw to open).

6. Work kills three times more people on the planet every year than alcohol, drugs, and war combined. Phew...at least here's one I don't need to presently worry about.

7. 10% of your body weight is the bacteria that lives on you and in you (and they don't care about your carb intake or your P90X).

8. Gorillas sleep in nests.

9. Shrimp make the loudest natural sound by any individual animal on land or in the sea. Their sound, which is produced by the popping of the bubbles that form when they snap their claws, can white out a submarine's sonar and are waaaaay beyond the human threshold for pain. Also, when the bubbles pop, they do so so loudly that they also produce light in the rare phenomenon called sonoluminescence.

10. The largest living thing in the world is a mushroom. The largest recorded specimen of Armillaria ostoyae is in Oregon and covers 2,200 acres.


*In my defense: I am not nor ever was depressed. Multi-colored wardrobes are overrated, and now I know why. While mixing and matching bathing suit tops and bottoms is not traditionally an intellectually fruitful endeavor, over the weekend I did make an interesting connection hitherto unbeknown to me while doing exactly this: New Yorkers (present and former) and generally intense people everywhere (artists, nuns, etc.) wear all black or some shade of it to save their precious mental stores for more pressing tasks than trying to determine whether the canary yellow paisley in their bandeau top off sets nicely or sets off poorly the emerald thread in their bathing suit bottom. In other words, the variance found in the wardrobe palette of a particular demographic is directly proportional to how seriously it takes its work (or at least itself).

**Eh, on second thought…I’ll return to this come September.

***Contrary to what you may believe due to my previous posts on my fear of aliens, gorillas, raisins, and cantaloupes, waking up really, really dumb is actually my worst nightmare.