It’s been a while since my Crack Team of Researchers and Investigators has produced anything, but rest assured they have been hard at work. Today, after months of intensive scientific exploration, I am pleased to present their report explaining some of life’s heretofore most puzzling mysteries.
Mystery #1 – Missing Socks: It’s a cliché by now that you never get the same matching pairs of socks out of the laundry that you put in. A sock or two always goes missing and even more oddly, strange new socks appear – socks with stripes or cartoon characters you don’t ever remember owning.
Explanation #1: When humans first began hunting, capturing and using socks to cover the most abominable part of their anatomy, socks began to develop survival techniques. Socks do not thrive in captivity; their live spans are shortened considerably and they are unable to reproduce. So, over the centuries socks have developed shape-shifting abilities which are triggered by extreme moisture followed by extreme dry heat. They can change colour, texture, design and even become invisible. To the human owner it then looks like one or more socks no longer have mates and they are then tucked away and forgotten in the back of some drawer in hopes that the mate will eventually show up. Left alone, without stress socks can then plan and make their escape back to the wild.
Mystery #2 – Dust Bunnies: Every week we vacuum and every week new ethereal wisps of unknown material appear in corners of our bedrooms, living rooms and dens — behind dressers, beds. What are these things? My Crack Team took some back to the lab for analysis.
Explanation #2: It turns out that dust bunnies are in fact something the Crack Team calls “paranormal hairballs”. It seems that spirits of the dear departed must linger on earth until they have divested themselves of all of their earthly humanness. This doesn’t happen all at once, so they wait on ghostly benches in people’s homes, like travellers at a train station, coughing up these remnants of their corporal being. Once they’ve spewed out the last bit they’re free and are allowed to go into the light.
Mystery #3 – Stuff that goes missing only to turn up in a spot you’ve already checked seventeen times. You’re on your way out the door and you can’t find your keys. They’re not where you always leave them, so you frantically turn the house upside down looking for them. They’re nowhere. You end up taking your spare key or another family member’s key. At the end of the day, you get home and there are your keys – where you always leave them.
Explanation #3: Aliens. Yes, aliens do exist and they do come to earth once in a while. They come not to abduct and probe humans, however. No, they come to take our stuff. They examine it, see how it works, what it does, maybe make copies for their own use and then give it back. Think about it – if you were going to a strange planet would you take some loud, obnoxious, sweaty alien to poke or would you take some of their cool gadgets? What good is an alien when you could have a phaser? Or a tricorder? Or a transporter?
Mystery #4 – The Smell of Subway Restaurants: You know that smell is supposed to be their “freshly baking” sub buns, but if you’ve ever actually smelled real bread baking you know this smell is nothing like real bread baking. For about one half of a second Subway Restaurants smell good and then the smell starts to make your stomach churn.
Explanation #4: Of course, as you’ve no doubt guessed it has something to do with the flour used in the baking. The base for every Subway Restaurant bun is something they call “special subway flour,” which is actually that greyish-black dust that collects between subway rails. Cities with subways pay Subway Restaurants a substantial fee for collecting this dust on a monthly basis. It is then cleaned and bleached through a special, top-secret Subway Restaurant cleaning and bleaching process, combined with salt, yeast and the special flavours unique to Subway Restaurants (honey, oregano, whole grain) and baked up fresh daily at every Subway Restaurant location. And, because they aren’t subject to fluctuating wheat prices, Subway Restaurants can continue to offer affordable, low calorie (and gluten-free) lunches to its customers.
Mystery #5 – Corn. Yummy, crisp, buttery corn. Right off the cob, frozen niblets or even canned and creamed. The corn goes in your mouth. You chew the corn up with your teeth. You swallow the corn. It travels down to your stomach where it’s exposed to acids corrosive enough to take the paint off your car. The corn then continues its journey through a few miles of intestines. Then out it comes – completely intact. What the hell?
Explanation #5: This one had the Crack Team stumped for months until; upon microscopic examination they discovered that corn was actually not food at all, but a plastic polymer with amazing attributes. (Native North Americans referred to it as Amaize for that very reason. And also because they were amazed to see white people actually eating it. That made for some raucous stories and speculation around the camp fire on many an evening, let me tell you) Anyway, each kernel is compose of two flexible, pliable plastic parts – an inner and outer portion. We can mash them up with our teeth or even a blender and they separate and look like they’ve been masticated. Once they hit stomach acids, however, they resort back to their original shapes AND develop strong magnetic properties that allow the inside of each kernel to be reunited with the exact outside of the kernel from which they were originally separated. It’s a miracle of nature. It really is.
