Vodka Clamato Isn't Dessert. Oh?!

Introduction

Hours after enjoying Korean barbecue with his friends on the slopes of western Japan’s Rokko-san, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi found himself in deep kimchi. After the barbecue on 7 October 2006, his friends took the cable car down to the base of the mountain. Mr. Uchikoshi, however, chose to walk. Whether smugness or soju inspired the 35-year-old civil servant’s solitary trudge down a 3,000-foot mountain in 50-degree weather, we may never know. But Mr. Uchikoshi, provisioned with nothing but water and barbecue sauce, bade his friends “Sayonara” and set off alone.
Trouble soon found him. While seeking the trail leading downward, Mr. Uchikoshi got lost. Then, while crossing a stream, he fell and fractured his pelvis. Somehow, despite pain, disability, and hemorrhage, he lived to see another day. Lying in a field, the sun weeping on his face, feeling strangely comfortable, Mr. Uchikoshi drifted off to sleep.

We have all heard this type of story before. In fact, this past December, a 9-day search for three climbers on Mount Hood produced only the frozen corpse of Kelly James in a snow cave. He, too, likely felt warm and comfortable as hypothermia set in and he lost consciousness for the last time.
When Mr. Uchikoshi’s body was found, 24 days later, it had almost no pulse, barely functioning organs, and a temperature of just 71 degrees. But he was alive. Doctors who treated him for hypothermia and blood loss at Kobe City General Hospital said he survived by lapsing into a state of hibernation, recovered fully, and suffers no physical or mental disability. Mr. Uchikoshi’s happy accident, however, begins my own tale of frustration, as I attempted to exploit this bizarre occurrence—for the betterment of mankind.

Reading Mr. Uchikoshi’s story, I thought: If only humans could hibernate at will using a serum based on Mr. Uchikoshi’s blood, soju, barbecue sauce, or some combination thereof. In tribute to the late Chris Farley, who showed its effectiveness against flu on Saturday Night Live, I would call it HiberNol.

Wilderness survival. Carried by all hikers, HiberNol could prevent needless non-combat American deaths like those on Mount Hood.

Domestic relations. Imagine, ladies, hibernating through NCAA playoff season; or, men, hibernating while seated outside the department store fitting room. Thanks to HiberNol, couples could increase their proportion of quality time together by eliminating situations in which one is tempted to gently pull his or her loved one aside and pluck out her or his eyeballs with a fondue fork.

Survival of the human species. With all but a skeleton crew HiberNollified during space travel, extra chips, beer, and video gear could be cut from payload. With the money saved, we could colonize Mars or another uninhabitable world before we finished rendering this one uninhabitable. Paris Hilton, the Waltons (from Wal-mart, not John Boy and his lame-o family), yours truly (the trillionaire CEO of Big HiberNol), and everyone else with the means would escape to Martian pleasure domes, leaving behind the rest (y’all, for instance) to eke out nasty, brutish, and short lives on a devastated planet. Poverty, global warming, and overpopulation, all remedied in one Gordian stroke.

Et cetera. The list is virtually endless and not subject to the fruitflyesque attention span of my cyber audience.

My research.

I started by consulting my science library, which is a copy of UFOs: The Complete Sightings. Not finding anything, I turned to the internets.

Starting with the “Mainstream” media, I read all newsbyte accounts of the incident; however, all rehashed or quoted the same three stories published by AP, BBC News, and Guardian. Each lacked complete explanations, such as the role of soju or barbecue sauce in inducing hibernation. Each also quoted Professor Hirohito Shiomi, studying hibernation at Fukuyama University in Hiroshima, who said:

This case is revolutionary if the patient truly survived at
such a low body temperature over such a long period of time. Researchers would
have to clarify whether Uchikoshi's body temperature dropped very quickly, or
whether he started losing body heat much later and was in fact dying when
rescuers found him.

Disappointed that “real” journalists had not followed up on this statement, I e-mailed the “Contact us” address at Fukuyama University:

Sorry about using English, but I don’t know any Japanese; and who won the
war,
anyhow? Based on his statement on the subject case, I have the
following questions for Professor Shiomi:
1. If you’re such a big-deal
hibernation expert, why weren’t you consulted in this case before the press
contacted you?
2. You question whether Mr. Uchikoshi’s temperature dropped
soon after he was injured or just before he was rescued. If the latter, how did
he survive for the other 22 or so days on nothing but water and barbecue sauce?
Huh? Huh?

Despite my deferential posturing and including my blog’s title so he would know I was a cyberjournalist and not some random jerk, Professor Shiomi did not respond to my request for comment. Draw your own conclusions.

So I entered the blogosphere. A lot of people look down their noses at blogs, saying any idiot can publish a blog. I know that’s not true, because I have two of them. One blog I found, BigDaikon.org, had a post (by Meganekko) that suggested that hibernation among Japanese civil servants is actually pretty common. At uplink.space.com, the discussion was more erudite, raising other explanations, such as— a coma induced by the fall (Billslug); a combination of hypometabolism and hypothermia (Stevehw33); or volcanically produced hydrogen sulfide, which, combined with hypothermia, can produce suspended animation and a 90% reduction in cellular metabolism (DocM). All interesting theories, yet ignoring the soju and barbecue sauce.

Clearly, to learn anything useful, I must conduct my own experiments. I consider my lack of scientific or medical training, special equipment, and experimental subjects other than me not a limitation, but a liberation from preconceptions born of training, experience, and observation. After all, Pierre and Marie Curie, who never graduated from an accredited U.S. University, shared the Nobel Prize for physics. Further, they cooked up polonium and radium in their apartment in violation of their lease, simultaneously exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation and potential homelessness. If they risked all for science, how could I do less?

Conclusion

As I headed out to the woods behind the house, lugging 20 pounds of sliced beef, a jar of barbecue sauce, and a case of soju, my wife met me at the door and asked what I was doing. “Experimenting,” I answered, eyeing the fondue fork in her clenched fist. “You know, the Japanese hibernation guy.” Having read the article, she nodded and stepped aside. “Go ahead. I’m changing the locks. I’ll send someone out in 24 days to check on you.” Fine; see if I share the Nobel Prize with her.

Scenario: The three of us are at home. Suddenly, a Hexapod, Chelicerate, or Myriapod (a beetle, spider, or centipede to anyone who hasn’t recently consulted an encyclopedia) becomes apparent. Before George can check it out with his nose or ascertain its edibility, the closer human reaches for what? Fly swatter? Newspaper? Claw hammer? No, a medicine vial. Not to cure it, but to trap it and transport it outside. Submitted for your consideration and possible deriseration: the why, the how, and the who of this admittedly unconventional method of dealing with the arthropods (aka “bugs”) who share our home.

After a succession of one- and two-bedroom apartments during my army, law school, and clerkship days, the Missus and I went just a little nuts three years ago, going from 1250 SF on a quarter-acre in suburban Springfield to 2700 SF on 1.7 acres in rural Clifton. Each of the three of us could, if he or she wanted, have one bedroom, with one left over for a guest. Add living room, dining room, family room, rec room, and library, and we have rooms that we might not enter for months at a time.

I say this, certainly, not to brag (As I suggested, it was not our most thoroughly thought-through decision.), but to suggest that this situation creates two conditions:

First, an often uncomfortable awareness that we take up a lot of space once the exclusive province of a vast array of wildlife, from bears to bugs, but mostly the latter.

Second, a surplus of unoccupied, relatively quiet, temperate spaces to which certain individuals, in search of venues for their buggy business, might find themselves drawn.

Having created these conditions, we hesitate to treat our guests with (as the quaint saying goes) “extreme prejudice.” Thus, the wildlife relocation program. How?

The Tools. As we developed this practice, we at first started leaving small vials, or even empty Pop-Fizz containers, staged strategically about the house. However, as one of our neighbors, who moved to Clifton from nearby Centreville, phrased it, “When my ZIP code increased by three numbers, the spiders increased by three sizes.” What I’m saying is, these are not just stretch spiders, but toy tarantulas. Thus, the wide mouth vial.

The Capture. The easiest method is to lay the vial on its side, allow the animal to enter of its own volition, and then right the vial, trap the bug in the bottom, and put on the lid. This, however, is frustrated by Man’s dominion over creation. Over many generations, Man has destroyed the stupid and the slow, bidding the clever and the quick to “be fruitful and multiply.” Thus, for most, one must drop the vial on them, slide the lid up under the edge, and nudge the captive toward the bottom. The ceiling capture is the easiest: Bring the vial up from below, dislodge the interloper, and then cap the vial before it can climb up from the bottom.

The Release. Most of our guests are escorted briskly to the deck and dropped off on the rail. Biters and stingers merit special treatment. As I carry a spider toward the deck, I examine it closely, looking for the violin marking of the brown recluse or a fixed, homicidal glare in what I think are its eyes, suggesting that he intends us harm at the next opportunity. When in doubt, I stand on the deck with the wind to my back, uncap the vial, and throw the intruder about one spider mile from the house. For the hornets we sometimes catch starting nests between the screen and the window, we provide door-to-hollow-tree service in our woods.

Based on what I have told you, you may have concluded that we are bug-huggers, and that vermin of every description are eligible for our catch-and-release program. The truth is more complex. We use a sort of utility assessment: Every form of life presumably has some function to perform in our ecology, and to eradicate one form could upset the balance of nature. For example, the spiders and mantises keep other species in check; kill them off, and their prey species become too numerous. However, the function of some bugs eludes us. Flies? Mosquitoes? The only function I perceive is as a mass transit system for microbes. So, although everyone gets to go outside, not everyone arrives alive. Some, like the flies and mosquitoes, leave by way of the trash can. For the rest, we employ the golden rule, treating them as we would want to be treated, were we born bugs.

The late Richard Vaughn, 20th-Century journalist and humorist, wrote: “We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.” I do not believe the arthropods will take over during the age of humans. If bugs become dominant, it will be because we have added homo sapiens to the list of species we have eradicated from the earth, and the justice we face will not be that of bugs. I fear more that we will someday encounter a species who, by virtue of its physical, mental, or mechanical prowess, could dominate humans as humans now dominate bugs.

I hope that such a species would engage in the same utilitarian calculus in which we engage daily. But even if it does—as it attempts to divine our function, to weigh our utility, by observing how we interact with one other, with other species, and with the earth—will we qualify as the spider or the fly; the mantis or the mosquito?

Labels: "homo sapiens", "Richard Vaughn", "utility assessment", beetle, bugs, catch-and-release, centipede, Chelicerate, extraterrestrials, exurbs, flies, Hexapod, mosquitoes, Myriapod, picnic, spider, spiders, suburbs

Some men dream things that never were and say, “Why not?” I see things as they are and obsess endlessly about “Why?!”

Sunday, 17 September, I flew to Seattle to meet the train from St. Paul, which was carrying my mom, the younger of my two sisters (both of them younger than I) and my baby brother (about a foot taller than I).

After cramming myself into the center seat, I checked the in-flight magazine for movies. I was disappointed that X-Men 2 was showing on the way out: I had missed the original; also, I have little interest in transsexuals. Though I had to sleep on Wednesday night’s return flight, I noticed that movie would be Nacho Libre, which the accompanying Spanish synopsis called Super Nacho. My complex thought process went something like this:

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?

Though 8th grade Algebra cost me a stretch in summer school, I can work this simple equation.

First cancel out the common denominators. That would be the “Nacho”s.

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?
Libre = Super?

Next, simplify to English [“Libre” to “Free” and “Super” to “Super.”]

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?
Libre = Super?
Free = Super?

Finally, factor “Free” and “Super” into their definitions.

Free =

1. “Not imprisoned or enslaved[;]
2. “Not controlled by
obligation or the will of another[;]
3. “Having political independence.”

Super =

1. “Above; over; upon[;]
2. “Superior. . . .”

So then what? I guess, total the definitions of “Free” and those of “Super.”

3 ≠ 2

Therefore—

Free ≠ Super
Libre ≠ Super
Nacho Libre ≠ Super Nacho

It didn’t add up: Why take one Spanish title and “translate” it to another Spanish title with a different meaning?

Nothing in my half century provided a ready answer. St. Matthew’s, where I survived fourth through sixth grades under the mailed fist of the Sisters of Notre Dame, gave me a rudimentary facility with Spanish and a pathological terror of penguins. But, though I could tell “b de burro” from “v de vaca,” request directions to the bibliotheque, and even know what a bibliotheque is, I’d learned naught of the duplicity and depravity of Hollywood.

So I must research. For the tech-savvy, couch-potative researcher, the Internet is the bibliotheque of first and last resort. Since 1980, I’ve moved far beyond the young—well, younger—court reporter who scoffed at using a “word processor” for court-martial transcripts: “I don’t need no stinking word processor; I am a word processor.” My personal computer is now a great time-saver: Time I once spent sleeping, rough-housing with my German Shepherd dog of four years, or conversing with my Korean-born wife of 14 years, I now spend blogging my rabid views, reconnecting with old friends (and sometimes remembering why we lost touch), and reading news and opinion from across the English-speaking world. A Google search for “nacho libre super nacho” yielded a synopsis on La Butaca (“the armchair”) that, obligingly translated by the same Google, tells us:

“Nacho . . . is a man without talent. One grew up in a monastery in
Mexico of which now he is the cook, but does not seem to fit. Nacho loves the
orphans for whom it cooks, but everything what lets knows fatal. According to
him, because it has a terrible raw material. Account occurs of which it must
ingeniar them to it to cook something better for “the orphaned poor men who do
not have anything”… and, of step, to impress to the precious Sister Incarnation
(Ana of the Reguera). The idea is happened to him to make money in the free
fight and there it discovers that it has an innate gift. It is united to a
little conventional companion, Skeleton (Héctor Jiménez), a man delgadísimo, and
it feels for the first time that it has an objective in the life. But the nuns
of the monastery are totally against the free fight and to Nacho does not have
left more remedy than to take it one double life. It hides his identity behind a
blue mask and one faces the most famous fighters of Mexico, decided to that the
orphans live better.”

Well, that raised more questions than it answered. A direct answer is not out there.

I then thought: Some products must be rebranded for export: For example, Chevy’s Nova translates to “It does not go.” I wondered whether “free nacho” had some negative connotation for Spanish speakers. Maybe the word “nacho” provided a clue. I checked Bartleby.com for “nacho.”

“NOUN: . . . A small, often triangular piece of tortilla topped
with cheese or chili-pepper sauce and broiled.
“ETYMOLOGY: American Spanish,
possibly [an] alteration of ñato, pug-nosed, ugly, poor . . . . .” “

After becoming all I could be in the U.S. court-martial system, I labored a year in the New Jersey court-marital system, clerking for a Burlington County family part judge, encountering many volatile people and many bizarre causes for domestic strife. Still, I never met a party of any cultural background, no matter how hypersensitive, who might have taken offense at being called “Free Nacho.”

“Independent Burrito”? “Uncontrolled Taco”? Could be fighting words. But “Willful triangular piece of tortilla topped with cheese or chili-pepper sauce and broiled”? No problema. “Impulsive, pug-nosed, ugly, or poor?” Not high praise, but not a marital tort, either.

So here I am, older, more knowledgeable, yet no wiser. And that, as my own long-suffering spouse often tells me, is the story of my life.