My Mouth Is An Anarchist Jurisdiction

 

I've got crooked teeth. There's not enough room in my face for them all, even though my face isn't all that large on the inside. It's a regular game of musical chairs in there and has been for years. My second molar got the last seat. My lower canines have barked my incisors sideways. There's been a stampede for the exits. The bicuspids are overtaking the skinny ones in the front.

My molars mostly match up if I ask them to, but I could slide a small woodland creature through the front with my teeth clenched and not even rumple its fur. We've got a situation.

So it occurred to me the other day that as long as I was going to have to have this unsightliness I might as well find something to blame it on, and I decided to accuse my British heritage. According to the DNA wizards I'm about half British. And everybody knows British people have crooked teeth. And obviously the 4% of me that runs Neanderthal didn't come to the fore in the tooth department, and while we're at it, it didn't do much for my eyebrows either.

But the internet said the British thing wasn't so. In fact--and there were several scientific articles that agreed on this--the crooked teeth can be blamed on modernity. Specifically, it's been a while since we humans did a lot of chewing.

So most modern people have crooked teeth. I don't know what percentage get braces. Those used to be a lot worse. When I was growing up the braces looked like something you'd surround a penitentiary with. It doesn't make a lot of sense, species-wise. I mean, why even have an extra molar in the back that they just have to rip out later? You suppose God flang it in there so dentists could buy a boat? The answer is, of course, that it isn't extra. It's supposed to be there. There's supposed to be plenty of room in the jaw. But in most cultures we haven't worked our jaws properly for a thousand years, and if it keeps up we'll just end up with a cat-butt pucker-hole of a mouth and have to suck strained peas through a straw.

People used to really reef on things with their teeth. You've seen the dioramas. Everyone's sitting on their haunches ripping mastodon meat with their faces and crunching on the bones for marrow. Then just for fun they chew on some animal hide until it's pliable enough to make a canoe out of, or at least a nice lanyard. And because they are working those jaws, the bone is strengthened and lengthened. But without that exercise during the growth years, the jawbone never gets to be the proper size. Who knows? If I hadn't grown up on overcooked vegetables and gummable meatloaf, I might have had a real jawline, and my chin wouldn't be embedded in my neck like the button in an overstuffed chair.

So cooking is one of the big culprits. And my mom, a 1950s housewife with a Norwegian heritage to boot, never served us anything that was a challenge to chew. Tuna hot dish. Jell-O salad with tiny marshmallows. The only thing that gave me a chance was Bonomo Turkish Taffy. You get hold of one of those bad boys with your teeth, and you had to pull down and sideways on it with both of your little hands to torque off a piece. Then chew and chew. Hours later you were still sucking on it where it mortared your teeth together. I should've had the jaw of a Neanderthal.

The eyebrows still would have been a problem, but nobody would notice, if I added the wax lips.

Grok Say 'Uff Da'

Hans and Petra Skari

I went ahead and sent my spit to a DNA company, because I feel there is such a thing as too much privacy, and also because I was curious about my genetic heritage. Lots of you have done the same thing, including some 589 close relatives of mine, which is extraordinary, inasmuch as I thought my family tree had been reduced to a stump with a few of us suckers coming out of it. (I haven't paid the extra to be introduced to these people, because of the risk they'd be a lot like me.)

I generally describe myself as half Norwegian. Americans like to do that. We have only the single citizenship and no familiarity with other languages or cultures or anything but you ask any of your basic paler Americans what they "are" and they'll start ticking countries off their fingers. We're real proud of our immigrant heritage as long as it has at least a few decades of antiquity to it. So I say I'm half Norwegian because my mom's parents were both from the old country and it was assumed their parents were too, and so on and so forth. I describe the other half as a dull mixture of pasty peoples in the English realm, but don't get too specific. I figure they're all interchangeable anyway.

But I was surprised to discover that I actually am 43.7% Norwegian. Surprised, because this DNA business goes back a long way and it seems to me people should have moved around a bit more than that, or, in the case of the Vikings, conquered more people than that, and so I would have expected my DNA to reflect inferior vanquished overrun peoples' DNA. Your Russian, your French, Spanish, Welsh, Irish, Greek, Italian, maybe even some Mi'kmaq from Newfoundland. Could I possibly have come from Viking stock? Oh looky there! I'm 0.4% Northern African! The Vikings conquered Morocco in 845. Boo-yah!

So I am quite tickled about the results,  because mild-mannered folk like myself like to imagine we harbor an inner Viking. Robust! Hearty! Swinging a broadsword through a cranium like it was butter! In fact--if we are what we eat--buttery! And that includes us womenfolk, with our fat blond braids tucked into our belts alongside our battle axes, ready to bash people over the head with our krumkake irons. Uff da!

All I've got to threaten people with is writing them into my novels.

Anyway, sure enough, the rest of the story was mixed and pasty. Until we get to the good stuff. The stuff I was most interested in.

Yes, folks, read it and weep. I have way more Neanderthal in me than most of you. Nearly 4%. The reconstructions of Neanderthal skeletons are not as dreadful-looking as most people imagine, I'll have you know. The Neanderthal is short and stocky and has thicker, denser facial bones than their skinny-ass compatriots in the H. sapiens school. I can relate. I am short and--oh, let's substitute "sturdy" for "stocky," why don't we--and I have empirical evidence that my head is not fragile, because I keep falling on it, and nothing has spilled out. Between my inner Vikings and Neanderthals I'm pretty sure I could keep my smug inner Irish and English portions in line. I like to think they didn't contribute much to the wonder that is me.

Maybe just the eyebrows.

It's CroMagnificent!

Have you tried to lose weight, but the pounds keep coming back? Sure you have, you big fatty! But you haven't tried the CroMagnificent Plan! Eat anything you want and watch the pounds literally melt away. Yes, the CroMagnificent Plan is based on the scientifically proven fact that we all have a little Neanderthal in us. And were the Neanderthals fat? No! A little roomy through the hips, maybe, but they were strong and sturdy and well-defined, often with attractive collarbones, because they literally melted fat away with the fire in their loins. All we need to do is get back in touch with our loins.

Loins are something our ancient forebears had--that's what they put cloths on. But we still have loins today, buried deep within our trousers, and with the CroMagnificent Plan we too can learn to light a fire in them.

But Murr, you say. Did ancient people eat genetically modified, hybridized, antibiotic-laced Frankenfoods? No, they did not, because they didn't have any. But they would have been scarf-city if they had. Remember, it's not what we eat. Mankind is blessed with a big brain that instantly analyzes all new food items and sends new instructions to the metabolism accordingly. As long as the fire in the loins is going, fat will simply melt away.

The ancients did it by hunting the largest animal they could find--the mastodon. Mastodons were pleasant-natured beasts but they could be made irritable with enough spear points and the danger always existed that they could fall over on the hunter at any time. The mastodon-hunting man had loins aflame.

But Murr, you say. We no longer have any mastodons. What can we do to light the fire?

Glad you asked! First we need to realign ourselves with the magnetic field as it existed in the Pleistocene. The poles have changed several times since the Legacy People were lighting fires in their loins, and in order to recalibrate our systems we need to eat while facing the north pole and hopping 180 degrees clockwise to the south pole, repeating until a fire is kindled. (For our friends in the southern hemisphere, do just the reverse; equatorial people may spin in place.)

Then we can summon the fat-melting loin fire by using our big brains to imagine the mastodon. We need to develop our fears, using the power of gullibility. So grab your nuts and Cheez Doodles and start ruminating! Begin with our starter package. Here's how it works: Obama and all the other Muslims are actually holograms created by the CIA to distract us from domestic affairs so that we begin to consider single-payer health care every time we feel a little cancer coming on. And once we have been herded into government health care we will all be given mandatory vaccinations that will weaken our resolve until we voluntarily turn in our guns and then it's game over, send in the comet.

Feel the burn yet? Sure you do!

That's it! That's how simple it is. Anyone can learn to do this on their own, but you can jump-start your fat-melting powers by ordering the Muslo-Pac* for five easy payments of $19.95. Act now and we'll throw in a bottle of loin-kindling supplements absolutely free. Hurry!

*Also available in Roswell and Leviticus.