Monday, January 4, 2016

Instances of the usage of 'stotious' abound in the oeuvre of Flann O'Brien.
"Stotious" is my new favourite word, which I am endeavouring to engineer opportunities in the conversation to use. Along with "bletted","squinch", "hallux" (and pollex), and "taupue". That last one is a combination of 'tapu' and 'taupe', and denotes a certain shade of brown-grey that is FORBIDDEN. Do not attempt to imagine 'taupue', it is not for your puny minds, what part of FORBIDDEN is unclear?

"Does this have anything to do with the excuses one makes when found behind the wheel of a car in a state of incapacity, touched by the magic wands of the Shitfaced Fairy and the Ratarsed Fairy, I swear Your Honour that not a drop of Christmas Ale has passed my abstemious lips?" asked Evangeline van Holsterin, head barmaid at the Old Entomologist.

"This is the meeting of the Editorial Board of Bernouli's Encyclopedia of Imaginary Diseases," I explained. "We were re-litigating the status of "gut fermentation syndrome".


"The last time you litigated it," said Evangeline in a tone of no-enthusiasm, declining to notice our empty pints, "you reckoned that you had -- and I quote verbatim -- 'Dealt to it'. 'Squinched it flatter than Penelope Planarian and Halibut Haldane after their regrettable encounter with the steamroller', were your words if I recall. But it's back! People will think they can pixillate themselves without recourse to the pub! This is not good for business!"

"At least the principal player is still Barbara Cordell, self-publicist, naturopath and aromatherapy grifter," I pointed out.
The condition was first documented in the U.S. by Barbara Cordell of Panola College in Texas, who published a case study in 2013 of a 61-year-old man who had been experiencing episodes of debilitating drunkenness without drinking liquor.

Marusak contacted Cordell for help with his client who insisted she hadn't had more than three drinks in the six hours before she was pulled over for erratic driving Oct. 11, 2014. The woman was charged with driving while intoxicated when a Breathalyzer test showed her blood-alcohol content to be 0.33 percent.

Cordell referred Marusak to Dr. Anup Kanodia of Columbus, Ohio, who eventually diagnosed the woman with auto-brewery syndrome and prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet that brought the situation under control. She is currently free to drive without restrictions.
"So not an independent rediscovery," Another Kiwi vouchsafed (prompted by a gentle subtabular shinkick), "so no danger of the morphogenic resonance field wearing ruts deeper in the fictive domain and turning a fake disease into a real one."

Cordell remains the go-to authority on "auto-brewery syndrome", having established her usefulness to lazy journamalists, and having squeezed out multiple publications through fraudulent vanity presses. The good thing about expertise in a fictitious condition is that there are no rival experts to challenge your dixits and snatch the laurels from your brow.


Thinking of Dr Kanodia (Quantumpathic Therapist), it must be a shameful thing for a physician to be reduced to pimping out his profession and regurging pitiful trash science to provide his patients with exculpatory diagnoses when their freedom to drunk-drive is under threat. Especially when the 'exculpatory diagnoses' scam becomes the defining specialty of his practice. On the other hand, the remuneration from grateful patients must go some way to assuage his self-contempt, assuming that they stay sober for long enough to sign the cheques.

"I'll have another bowl of the Vanilla," I ordered.

"Make mine a double Hokey-Pokey," said AK.

2 comments:

Trevor said...

Esteemed Sir,

I realise that this is OT, but you mention on numerous occasions such things as coffee enemas (which I would personally find gross, especially if one likes milky froth on top) and I take you to be an expert in such matters.

Could you please tell me whether or not anyone has patented the "shit enema"? Ideal, I feel, for the constipated.

Smut Clyde said...

I believe the term of choice is "fecal transplant".