The Creation of the Human Neck
“…And to finish, let’s just put this hollow, damp, easily-infected tube right there, in the middle of the neck. That should do it.”
“Just one?”
“Just the one.”
“For breathing and for eating, both?”
“Yep. Two functions for the price of one.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, almost certainly.”
“What if you accidentally used it for one function when you meant to use it for the other?”
“Oh, something terrible would likely happen.”
“Wouldn’t it feel awful 100% of the time if it did get infected, given that they’ll be both eating and breathing out of it?”
“Oh, my, yes.”
“But you’re sure about just using one.”
“Absolutely. One’s good enough.”
“Okay. What should we do in the way of protection?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Well, this is the only scrap of flesh connecting the head to — to anything else, really.
It’s got all the most important bits in it, for breathing and for eating and for controlling the rest of the body. Should we put some more ribs in the neck, or something?”
“It’s fine. Just leave it.”
“With just — just regular skin on? Just leave it, as-is? So just…just anything could crush it, or fill it with germs, or food, or anything?”
“It’s fine.”
“And you’re still sold on keeping the inside warm and wet all of the time, like a swamp-nest perfectly designed for incubating disease.”
“Yes.” “Seems awfully dangerous.”
“Look, I want to get out of here in time for happy hour. It’s fine. Just leave it.”
The Creation of the Stupid Useless Human Neck
Tags: committee decisions, design flaws, mallory is still sick, necks, the human body
“I have some ideas for connecting the arm to the torso… you remember the perfectly reasonable joints we designed for the hip and knee? Well…”
“Nope. Just gonna strap it on with some meat-strips. Call it a shoulder.”
we are not a well-put-together species
NOTHING COULD GO WRONG
see also: menstruation.
“I know!!!! Lets just have women drip blood and globs of tissue out of their vaginas every month!!!!!! And we can even make it like pretty horribly uncomfortable just for good measure.”
“It’s a fabulous, efficient way to do…stuff. Things. Those things that require dripping blood.”
Any piece of fantasy fiction I write, it’s safe to assume that menstruation doesn’t exist in that world. Because Mother Nature has yet to provide me with a convincing argument in favor of it.
I AM ON MY PERIOD AND PRETTY FURIOUS ABOUT IT. I would deal with the cramps but ugh, so sick of bloodstained underwear. Heavy periods are awful.
Yeah, my comment was fueled by menstru-anger. I would take bloodstained underwear over cramps any day.
My opinion varies, but lately there hasn’t been much cramping (at least not if I take a bit of ibuprofen or tylenol.) I just don’t like the day or so when it’s like “change your tampon every three hours or you will be changing your pants six times a day” and I only own like two pairs of jeans that fit anymore and then it’s a the social anxiety of “oh god what if it soaked through to my pants and everyone can tell” “okay no it didn’t” “…OH GOD DID SOMEONE SEE MY CROTCH-CHECK”
I used to work at a call center and couldn’t always get to the bathroom to change my tampon when I needed to, so I started wearing tampon + pad to deal with the problem. And I will say that the Always Infinity pads do seem to keep things much drier than traditional pads while still being thin and un-diaperlike. Maybe give that a try?
I have had what sounds like very much the same thing for weeks [sore throat, coughing, congestion of nose and ears, etc.], but I finally went to the doctor a couple days ago and started antibiotics and have been feeling much better. I fear the advent of antibiotic-resistent bacteria more than ever.
I am however, curious about a discussion that must have taken place between actual human doctors at some point:
“We have this great drug that will be frequently prescribed for people with really terrible sore throats. How should we dispense it?”
“How about the most giant pills ever?”
“And make them take two a day for over a week?”
“Great! Let’s go to market!”
Antibiotics are the neck/throat of the medical world.
“So we’ve got these pills and they do GREAT stuff if you’re sick.”
“Sounds good! What’s the catch?”
“It’s only for certain kinds of sick. And they mess with birth control for some unspecified period of time. And they completely fuck up that whole stomach business. And they’ll probably cause yeast infections in a lot of people. And if you don’t take all of them you will become a breeding ground for horrible mutant supergerms.”
“Sounds good, send ’em out.”
Yeah, my post-antibiotic fear just kicked up several notches about five minutes ago when I learned that a suburban hospital about 30 miles away from me is currently host to the largest U.S. outbreak of CRE, also known as the “nightmare bacteria.” o.O
Flee.
You’re not better yet then? Sympathy!
My fever is down, and for that I am grateful. But I am still a pitiful mewling wreck of a human woman.
“and the head is preeeeety heavy, shouldn’t we bolster the neck a little bit, so it’s less prone to injury?”
“naaaah. if people aren’t strong enough they deserve to suffer”
you know how sometimes you feel your heart pounding in your chest and you feel unbearably aware that this is a muscle that never stops working even when you are asleep or have been hit on the head and passed out, and that it can never rest, never ever, and if it puts down its work when it thinks no one is looking, not to quit just to stretch a little bit and recover, you will die and be dead? like when you are at the gym or something doing a bicep curl and you think, well, twelve is enough, my arm is sore now, and then you ponder, if I were a human heart, I could not stop at twelve, I could not stop at a thousand, my arm hurts, why doesn’t my heart hurt, isn’t it tired, HAS MY HEART STOPPED?
well, that is how I feel about my neck holding my head up. which it doesn’t even do all the time, only maybe 16 hours a day. but that is sooo long and my head is soooo heavy. god.
Sometimes, my neck gets sore.
Why?
Because my brain is so big.
oh yeah, that’s a problem. I am too smart to wear hats in more ways than one
“hey do you think this human skull is big enough”
“I don’t know man I guess it looks like a woman could give birth without too much pain and blood, not a lot of screaming you know”
“oh yeah ok I’ll make it bigger”
“somebody says do we want to do like a marsupial thing here where the head can finish getting ginormous when it is already out of the body mostly
“lol no”
Anecdote: my mom has a teeny head. I mean, she does not look it, but she wears hats from the children’s section with ease.
i also have a pinhead.
Making an account JUST TO SAY did you know that the same innovation that allows articulated speech is the one that makes it possible to choke to death on food? Something called “laryngeal descent.”
Exactly!
“But you put the mechanisms for speech in the neck, too, so if something goes wrong, they won’t even be able to communicate that to others.”
“It’s fine, they can just cough and gag a lot, people will figure it out eventually.”
Sometimes I think we’re not meant to survive.
I DID NOT KNOW. But now I do and I am pleased.
Flat Sprite and unsalted saltines until you’re better, young lady.
I guess I knew that unsalted saltines were a thing but looking at it spelled out is amusing. That is all.
I had the same thought while writing, like, they are “ines”, basically. Whizz are you on Twitter?
I stopped twitter for 6 months, although the first time I checked it in a while was on Sunday and Mallory was looking to hangout with a lost phone, so we did. Now she has strep and my throat really hurts, all we did was eat pasta and watch Galaxy Quest. ANYWAY I go by soundandnoise for twitter, tumblr, and instagram. Maybe I’ll start twittering again.
It is now my lifelong dream to eat pasta and watch Galaxy Quest with Mallory Ortberg. Also I followed you on Twitter 🙂
I knew I shouldn’t have licked all of your silverware.
Can I steal your “ines” punchline for my dramatic return to twitter?
haha of course
I am so uncomfortably aware of my neck and throat now.
Shortly after this conversation, Speaker Two was let go (“not a team player”) and Speaker One was promoted to head of the Genitalia Department.
“How many holes did you say?”
“Three for some, two for others.”
“And for HOW many functions?”
“…many. They’ll figure it out.”
Just wait until they get bought out by Microsoft or Yahoo! and everyone is transferred to Assholes & Elbows.
“Yes, yes. Let’s place this pleasure hole/baby chute in between two waste holes rife with bacteria WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.”
Also: tonsils, my least favourite part of the whole neck/throat thing. They’re part of your immune system, protecting you from infections! But for some people they themselves will get horrifically infected on a regular (6 weekly) basis until they are surgically removed! If you are an adult, then this will be unbelievably painful.
Ugh, yes. I had a weird strain of strep for six months straight. Would not go away no matter how many courses of antibiotics I took or how many salt water rinses I gargled or how many steroid shots I was given to keep me from suffocating on cherry-sized lumps of flesh in my sleep. Eventually I had to have my tonsils taken out at age 26. And most painkillers don’t work on me.
I contracted the strep while having a threesome.
I keep trying to figure out a way to write that story, because of course I contracted weird incurable strep while having a threesome. Of course I did.
I suppose if you’ve got to get it, you may as well at least get it having fun. I hope it was the best threesome ever!
Sadly, it was so completely not worth six months of strep and a tonsillectomy. But it was enough fun that I did it a few more times, so there’s that, I guess.
So how goes the Plague, Mallory?
(I am currently hacking and sneezing a lot and hating my own neck and throat. Let us do away with them.)
So…I really want to know what the official diagnosis is on mystery disease, so that if I ever fall victim to it I can immediately form some sort of drug addiction that will make me unconscious of the whole thing and will immediately go away one the disease has left my body.
Also, taking applications for said “miracle” drug.
“Hey, I’ve got this new image-processing stuff to help you see patterns! Where do you want it?”
“Put it in that big pile of neurons, right in front of the part of the eye that actually senses light.”
“Huh. Isn’t it harder to see things, with the pile in the way?”
“Yeah, I guess. But that’s where the pile is.”
Sorry you’re still sick, Mallory! Bodies are pretty weird, but the fact that this weird neck thing lets us speak is so cool. Let me go on a tangent! My linguistics degree has authorized me to post a link to these videos of the inside of the throat of a speaking/singing human being. It’s SO COOL (and also a little gross and weird-looking, consider that first). First video (gross warning): a lady singing and talking over the recording so you can’t hear the sounds she’s producing, but still cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2okeYVclQo
Second video (also gross warning) is ACTUALLY speech but not as good quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ZGqn1tZn8
ALSO this is less gross and actually cooler: an x-ray of a person’s mouth while speaking. Did you know your tongue and velum (the flap at the back of your throat) do CRAZY things? Are you uncomfortably aware of them right now? It’s my favorite video in the world. You’re welcome! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcNMCB-Gsn8
(end of lecture)
It’s a wonder that humans were/are able to figure out this whole speech thing. So complicated.
In that last video, the tongue (and whatever meat it’s attached to going down the throat) looks like the head and long neck of some angrily posturing bird.
I remember vividly being totally unable to speak and being hugely aware of my uvula and velum for hours at a time after phonetics tutorials. *shudder*
Thanks for the reminder that I haven’t checked in with the amazing Tumblr, WTF, Evolution?, in way too long!
Mallory, have you been drinking lots of hot toddies? they are the best cure for a sore throat. ginger tea and honey and lemon, bourbon optional but recommended.
I drank some hot honey-and-apple-cider-vinegar water, was duly appalled, poured out the other half, and went back to weak tea.
well that sounds wretched.
it does. Ginger tea with a massive slug of cinnamon whisky?
GINGER tea. Thank you. I’ve been coughing, groaning, and staring at Mr. September’s bottle of Fireball for two weeks trying to figure out what I could mix it with to make an appropriate alcoholic sore-throat remedy.
It is my pleasure to help. Mine also goes down well with cinnamon tea (with a glug of maple syrup because otherwise it tastes a bit like sticks), or hot apple juice. Mmmm, fireball…
In the future, artificial neck-ribs implants will be a big industry. Actually that’s not a bad idea, brb, drawing up patent.
When I visited the Smithsonian human origins exhibit they had something about the evolution of the neck, mentioning how babies are able to swallow and breath at the same time. Couldn’t our bodies have figured out how to hang onto that one?
I got as far as “neck ribs” and stopped, entranced by the possibilities, for about ten minutes.
Neck ribs are a really good idea.
And they would look so good! Like un-gills.
“So we’ll just put all the nerves in through here as well-”
“Wait, what? We’re going to have to completely redo the infrastructure to protect those.”
“No no, it will be fine, there are a few bones at the back, here.”
“So if those bones are damaged in some way-”
“Ah yes, that is very likely to happen, I’m afraid. No limbs bending toward the back or anything like that, and I’ve used up all the shock-absorbing fat in the rear section here, to protect no vital organs whatsoever. But look how good it looks! Anyway, let’s move on.”
Finally! A blog post where I can pose this question: does a sore throat ever feel like being hungry to you? This happens to me and it’s baffling.
Do you get the thing where you can tell when you’re hungry because your esophagus closes up so you have a painful cramping sensation in your chest/throat? Because that’s what hunger feels like to me, so yes, sometimes a swollen sore throat feels like hunger…but I’ve been told that not everyone feels this when they’re hungry, some people just feel “empty” (though what that would mean I have NO idea).
This is so perfect! Necks/throats are the worst, especially during a cold, but still in general.