No, not the musical instrument organ.

I am referring to what happens when old friends (the term is used literally here) get together for an evening out.

“My back” laments one. “Your back?  “My back.” “How’s your knee holding up?” “Since my back started acting up, my knees have quieted down.”

And so it goes, a discourse that starts somewhere around the head and shoulders, and works it way down the body describing, in minute detail, all the woes and ails ending finally with the description of  the tingling, numbness, hammer, bunion, hangnail, possibly a neuroma, of the toes.

An Organ recital.

Thinking that she could have a twofer, Shirley made an appointment with the urologist.

You see, there are trials going on, as you read this and I type this, that has to do with the latest use of Botox.

It seems that some doctors are experimenting with using botox to combat incontinence.  I kid you not. I couldn't even fathom making that up.

Back to Shirley. Whipping off her Depends, she hopped up on the examining table. Barely moving her mouth, unable to furrow her brow, but maintaining a steady, non crows feet, eye contact with her Doctor, she steeled herself for the injection of Botox right into her bladder.

"And the side effects are"? " Well", said the doctor, "we don't know enough about the migration of Botox to other muscles in your body. If you are lucky, your stomach will become taut. Alternatively, your heart may freeze up and stop beating."

So Shirley thought about this for a minute, looked down at her ever widening gut and said "inject away."

As for her heart, after years of hearing both her spouse and her children tell her that they thought she was heartless, she couldn't imagine the consequence of migrating botox would be an issue.

If I had any power of concentration, scientific aptitude, and the ability to pronounce multisyllabic words, I might have considered being a scientific researcher.

Knowing that I possess none of the above qualities I am content to read about what scientists are doing, the questions they pose for themselves and the swipes they take at other scientists who are going down a different road to achieve the same results.

Anti aging is a biggie.

Tests begin on drugs that may slow aging reported the Times, confirmed my thoughts about a day in the life of being a researcher. For example, as the scientists looked at caloric restriction and longevity, they "needed to decide whether life extension by caloric restriction is an artifact of mice in captivity,  (so) why not try it on wild mice?" 

Try it on wild mice?

How does one do that? Close the mouse 7/11, so it is no longer a 24/7? Put an incredibly well built, Madonnesque mouse in the midst of the chubbette mice, causing a flurry of crash diets so as to compete for the more desirable male mice? Open up a Jenny Craig with endorsements by Minnie Mouse?

The results of this wild vs. lab mice question, ultimately and predictably, were interpreted differently. Why? The reasons for wanting to be the first on your block with a new and improved drug are pretty clear. Maybe making $720 million dollars, which was the sum paid to a doctor and scientific entrepreneur to own the rights to Sirtris, a company that will explore the effects of how to activate sirtuins, would be a motivator to be the first on your block to identify a drug that promises something, anything, to staid off aging.

Sadly, the mice, who donated their bodies to science, calorically restricted or not, made not a dime. The upside, I suspect, is that for some of them, they looked YEARS younger then their actual mouse age, and after all, wasn't that a perk?

Where Thin People Roam, a recent article in the NY Times, suggested that "certain" Manhattanites are  quite thin due to walking, (even subway riders need to climb stairs, they claimed), store front yoga studios and pedestrian friendly streets.

Yeah, sure, there is a sub sub culture of Manhattanites (confined, I think, to 2 or 3 neighborhoods) where being REALLY thin is a requisite for residency in that specific 'hood.

For the rest of the mere mortals inhabiting the borough, or anywhere else for that matter, not so much.

Prevention magazine, for example, has rarely published an issue of their magazine without an article, or multiple articles claiming, " How You Can Walk Yourself Thin." Based upon the statistics mentioned in the Times article, the nation is really really overweight. Walking is clearly not the antidote.

So I thought about this and found correlating evidence to support why walking doesn't work.

Let's take a look at Postal Workers. They probably clock an enormous amount of walking, right? But, I've yet to see them, or consider them a svelte group.

I figured out why.

Have you seen the summer uniforms? Knee socks (black or dark grey) ill fitting bermuda shorts, a short sleeved shirt, and in some cases a pith helmet, or alternatively a rakish, safarish, or australian outbackish looking chapeau.

I suspect that being mortified by how one looks must correlate to how many calories one can possibly burn.

Yeah, that is it. Confirmed by the Times article. "Fashion, indeed, is merciless."