edith zimmerman

Did you see the article in the Times about the two guys whose friend died? It turns out the dead man, Virgilio Cintron, had an uncashed Social Security check, so his good best friends put his pants onto his body casually and not all the way, draped the naked parts with a jacket, placed him in a rolly chair, and wheeled him to a bank. Then they left him on the sidewalk in his chair while they went inside and said, “Cash this check, please,” but the bank attendant said, “Where is Mr. Cintron?” so they pointed to the sidewalk, where Mr. Cintron was lying in his rolly chair, as he typically did during check-cashing procedures.

Unfortunately for Mr. Cintron’s friends, however, passers-by suspected something was up because Mr. Cintron was dead. But the guys were like, No, no, he’s fine, we’ve just got to bring him into the check-cashing store so they can see that everything’s fine, because everyone knows that to get a check cashed it either has to be you signing it or people who are touching your body.

Which is true, so they cashed the check and donated it to charity.

Also, look! There’s a link at the end that goes to this.

On three different radio stations this morning I was reminded to “make sure to check on pets and the elderly.”

I’d like to say that I’ll end it all when I get so old and incapacitated that someone listening to Hot 97 has to make sure I haven’t locked myself in the car without cracking the window, but unfortunately I know that my interest in crosswords and dragonflies will keep me going.

“Make sure to check on pets and the elderly.”

AGING: HAVING MOLES MAY MEAN YOUNGER SKIN CELLS

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

People with many moles may be more susceptible to skin cancer [and are uglier], but a new study suggests that their cells may age more slowly than those of people with fewer moles [rendering them vaguely more attractive as elderly people].

As cells age, telomeres, the DNA at the ends of chromosomes, become shorter. Shorter telomere length has been linked to chronic diseases like diabetes and atherosclerosis. The number of moles a person has [positively correlates with how ugly their skin looks, but apparently they will look] also decreases with age.

The researchers, led by Dr. Véronique Bataille, a consultant dermatologist at King’s College London, measured the number of moles and the telomere length of the white blood cells of more than 1,800 women ages 18 to 79.

After adjusting for age, they found that the women with the most moles also had the longest telomeres — the equivalent of a difference of six to seven years less [busted than their hot friends] cell aging compared with those who had the fewest moles [but this is when they are all old and disgusting and it doesn’t matter]. The paper appears in the July issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.

“I haven’t found the elixir of youth,” Dr. Bataille said. “The next step is [to make being covered with hideous moles popular among teenagers] research to find out if this has clinical implications.”

The authors acknowledge that moles are [ugly and that this is therefore an unusual and borderline depressing finding] influenced by environmental and genetic factors, and that this study does not prove that longer telomeres cause moles to endure.

Moreo [Howe]ver, Dr. Bataille said, this does not mean[s] that having moles is necessarily a good thing. “As a dermatologist,” she said, “I want to emphasize that if a mole changes in size, shape, or color, you should see a [modeling agent because you are going to live forever] doctor.”

I went to dinner with my dad and his girlfriend (as seen in Siblings or Couple? Part I), who are in town for some fancy chiropractice. After dinner we went back to the girlfriend’s apartment for birthday cake (belated because my dad forgot my actual birthday, which, of course, happened recently and has touched all of our hearts) and then after cake they started reading the phone book.

I’m not even sure how to make a joke about this. It started because the girlfriend mentioned she hadn’t been able to find her name when she had been reading the phone book earlier in the day. (?) So they broke it out and started reading it, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently.

I kept talking about other stuff, thinking that eventually they would stop reading the phone book, but they just kept reading it.

“Ian Zimmerman. Isaac Zimmerman. Ivan Zimmerman! I know someone named Ivan. Tara Zimmerman! Ezekiel Zimmerman. I’m jumping around here. GABRIELLE Zimmerman. Five Stuart Zimmermans. I wonder why there’re so many? MARVIN Zimmerman!”

And then I went home. I’m not sure what to make of this.