In Memorium

In Search of Isis is saddened to report the tragic death of Herbert M. Frizenberg, lately of Flatulencia Township, Nebraska. The Unassociated Press reports that Mr. Frizenberg was on vacation in Slovakia when he accidently drove over the border into the Autonomous Region of Amazonia, populated only by women.

No foul play was involved in his demise. It appears that Frizenberg drove off an unfinished bridge after becoming hopelessly lost.

The last person to see Frizenberg alive may have been Amazonia resident Sublima Sucrose, who lives near the bridge under construction.

“We would have been glad to help. But the d$#%^d fool wouldn’t stop to ask anyone for directions,” Sucrose said.

However, upon further questioning, Sucrose admitted that, had Frizenberg stopped to ask her assistance, he might not have received the answer he wanted – or any answer at all.

“Yah, I probably would have told him to take a right, not a left,” she said. “A man should know that right means left. And for that matter, he should have known what I was thinking in the first place without me having to say anything at all. Men!”

Mr. Frizenberg leaves to cherish his memory one flea-bitten dog, one tired wife, and an extensive collection of useless sports memorabilia that she has probably already thrown out.

Personal hygiene in hell

As I lay shivering in my living room on Friday, wrapped in a blanket, wondering what the hell was wrong with my internal thermostat, I turned on a program that I like: Man vs. Wild.

This episode should have helped, if anything could, to warm me back up. The survivalist hero, Bear Grylls, jumped out of a helicopter into the scorching sands of the Sahara Desert, where he proceeded to survive for several days by eating raw lizards and spiders and by licking rocks for water.

Now Mr. Grylls does take pains to inform the viewers of his show that “he is occasionally [deliberately] presented with situations” in order to demonstrate to said viewers how to survive them. But otherwise, we are supposed to believe that we are witnessing reality -- no snacks slipped to him on the sly, no moleskin dropped in a care package for his blisters if he forgot to pack any.

For example, a cobra that popped up at some point was dropped off in his vicinity, he said, so that he could explain how a person stranded in the Sahara should behave in the presence of such a beast.

True it is that all of us manly men in the world like to think that such a situation is entirely possible in our lives, whether we bag groceries in Cleveland or fix trucks in Texas and that of course we need to know how to respond in a cool, manly fashion. In this, we differ from Women, who are quite cognizant that They will never encounter a Sahara serpent, and who wish that Their damn fool husbands would watch some other show instead, that doesn’t involve a guy chewing on a raw lizard and remarking that it tastes like blood and guts and scales.

As the episode wore on and Mr. Grylls continued his agonizing stumble across the sands of hell, I began to wonder about something. Now I am not the world’s most hirsuite guy but I do have dark hair and even after just a few hours away from my razor, I’m sporting a pretty noticeable facial shadow.

But Mr. Grylls, who was so desperate for water during the trek that, as I said, he licked rocks and squeezed damp sand through his tshirt, day after day, never seemed to grow a beard. Did he carry an electric razor with him? Or did he just shave dry, in a most incredible, manly way?