What smells in here?

My claim to literary fame has now become as moot as GMA’s foreign travels.

During the 30th National Book Awards held at the National Museum last Nov. 12, my third book collection — Is It Hot In Here Or is It Me? RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Flirting, Body Language and Pick-up Artists), a finalist in the “Leisure” category — lost to the only other finalist in that category: Celebrations: A Culinary Feast from the Roces-Reyes Table.

Now we can conclusively say that great pickup lines are no match for great recipes (and more tasteful, too). Congratulations to the seven winners behind Celebrations: Karla Prieto Delgado, Gianna Reyes Montinola, Cristina Roces-Garcia, Ginny Roces-de Guzman, Sylvia Roces-Montilla and Vicky Veloso-Barrera. And an even bigger congratulations to our mutual publisher, Anvil Publishing.

Stepping back, I think God knows better than to let a book with a middle-aged man wearing an unbuttoned floral shirt and plaid pants spread-eagled on the cover win an award of national merit. He also doesn’t want the apocalypse to come any earlier than December 2012.

Nonetheless, I would like to thank the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle for recognizing the leisure in humor, and that a good chuckle is award-worthy material. On behalf of those of us who spend half a day to craft a punch line, we are very grateful. Hwewewewe. 

And to my three female readers, put some jingle in my bells: make sure to hoard several hundred copies of my books so that the we can create an artificial shortage so jack up the book price, then I can take out an advance on the royalties and get a pony for my daughter this Christmas.

Do not fret, my three female readers, for I plan to make another bid for literary greatness soon with the release of my fourth book collection, It Only Hurts When I Pee: RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Bodily Gases, Hair Loss and Pink Parts.

And, may God have mercy on all of our souls, it may just qualify and win in the 31st National Book Awards in 2012 (unless I am up against another cookbook — and the end of the world will be stayed by another year).

While we’re on the subject of cooking, and since cooking is related to the use of gases, let me violate the laws of logic and talk about bodily gases. Bodily gases and topics of intestinal fortitude are probably the only things that I can talk about with a semblance of authority. So for those who want to take a peek at what could end the world in 2012, here are excerpts from the upcoming book:

Waste Not, Want Not

Men were not born with the ability to distinguish what is tasteful and what is plan gross. If men were left to our own devices, all our jokes would simply revolve around fart jokes. But why the big hullabaloo over real men reveling in their own waste? We don’t bother the women when they play with their lipstick and their hair removal cream and their scented sanitary napkins (why does it need a scent?). So why should they bother us when we like to play with our libag and our stomach lint and our longganisa-smelling belches? Shouldn’t picking our nose and flicking that little phlegm ball 30 feet away qualify as an athletic achievement? Does passing gas harm you in any way aside from contributing to the greenhouse effect? Bad breath has actually saved millions of bacteria from the murderous effects of mouthwash. What are men jeopardizing by entertaining ourselves with simple, self-generated forms of amusement?

According to Why Men Don’t Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes, the top of the list of men’s habits that make women wish they could reproduce asexually are nose-picking, burping, body odor, underwear that needs to be carbon-dated to get its actual age, and crotch adjustment with concurrent scratching. However, by leaps and bounds, the number one female repellant of the list is farting. 

But hey, my three female readers, it’s not like you don’t contribute to the greenhouse effect, too. In fact, while 96.3 percent of men admit that they fart, only 2.1 percent of women will admit that they fart. This only tells us one thing: women are much better liars than men. Men (and, yes, women) let loose an average of 1.5-2.5 liters of gas a day delivering an average of 12 farts a day, which is enough to fill a small balloon (something you must be wary of if you hire unscrupulous balloon vendors for children’s parties). 

But what’s so wrong with gas from the a$$? Flatulence (this is what farting is called when it is performed by the well-heeled) is an important signal of normal bowel activity and a healthy body. And judging by my emissions, I am probably one of the healthiest men alive. 

Pick On Someone Your Own Size

As a young, impressionable lad who was barred from watching Bad Bananas, I learned tastelessness through reading Gary Lising and his series of joke books (he continues to damage our youth with reprints of Green and Bear It and How Green Is Your Mind). This is the man who put the term D.O.M. into my vocabulary. The greatest sliver of advice that Gary has shared with my generation is this: “You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you cannot pick your friend’s nose.”   

Nose harvesting is an art, much like penekula movies in the ‘80s were art: it may offend civil society, but it never really offends other men (as long as another man’s harvest never gets flicked on them, then men are fine with it). And what has made nose exploration such an art is precisely because it is taboo to explore it in public places. Manicuring your nose in public requires grace, stealth and dexterity. But sometimes we let our guard down and pick our noses nonchalantly while in traffic, or in our cubicle or in a public toilet. Don’t forget that wherever you are and whatever you do, a true artist is always trying to hone his craft.    

Before you pick and flick, remember some ground rules. 

• Do not flick your pick towards other unsuspecting individuals, unless that individual is a D.O.M. You do not want to accidentally injure others. Remember, some of you nose missiles might be sizeable enough to knock out mosquitoes and low-flying aircrafts. 

• Avoid the use of tissue or panyo or discarded newspapers in dislodging your nose boulders. Those accessories are like prophylactics for your fingers. Don’t be afraid to take unprotected risks. True nose picking fulfillment is achieved only when flesh presses against the mucus membrane to gauge how large that nose boulder is and what type of force will be required to dislodge it. 

• Do not shove your finger too deep into your nose or else you may shovel out some brain matter. Too much nose mining may even cause some damage to the walls of your nostrils and result in bleeding. However, if you think that this is the only way that you can pick your nose, then you probably deserve to lose a few thousand neurons.   

• Do not perform a visual examination of your nose treasure in public. This is a very amateurish move that may solicit the attention of nosy onlookers. Instead, keep that treasure in your panyo or your pockets and savor for private viewing later. 

• Hand washing after nose exploration is optional. If you do not usually wash your hands after taking a pee, then I don’t see why you have to wash your hands after picking your nose. 

It’s A Goldmine In There

And the question remains: To pick or not to pick our earwax? Unlike other organs, do our ears really need that much self-love? Won’t that much poking and prodding possibly lead to infection and confession? Should we really pick our ears in the first place? Isn’t our nose a jealous mistress as it is? According to my otalaryntolgist Dr. Ariston Bautista, the ear is a self-cleaning organ (Don’t you just wish that all of our other orifices were as considerate?) Apparently, the best solution is to leave our tutuli where it is. 

Aside from sheer tastelessness, our earwax is also there for reasons of posterity. Just imagine the number of foreign objects that are encased in your tutuli as they accidentally swoop into your ear canal. Those foreign objects may be annoying for now. But in a few million years, when future biologists are looking for ways to replicate DNA to create their own version of Jurassic Park, they needn’t look further than that insect which waded into your ear glue. And if they cannot find that fossilized mosquito in your ear canal, they can still look underneath your fingernail. 

But mind you: even if your earwax picking is an addiction, it needn’t be as unproductive as a Senate hearing. For those of you who have been following the “GoNegosyo” section of The Philippine STAR, I am sure they can figure out how to turn this hobby into a profession.  After all, ear picking is all the rage in Asia.

Right now, there are Indian street ear-pickers drowning in rupees as they extract earwax from a billion-strong population. I spied a video on the Internet that featured a busy street corner in New Delhi lined with ear pickers who were scooping out dollops and dollops of earwax. There were customers impatiently lining the streets waiting to get their own dollops scooped.

Just to meet the customer demand, the street ear cleaners were forced to develop an efficient way of cleaning their “utensils.” After deftly scooping out a serving of wax, the cleaners would quickly dab the wax on the outer side of the web of their palm, then blow at their instrument to shoo away traces of any waxy remnants before finally reinserting the instrument for further extraction. That video of the street ear-pickers also had the added benefit of helping me lose weight as it left me without an appetite for the next several days. 

In China, specialty teahouses are clogged with clients who sip their herbal teas while ear-pickers nimbly spear away at elaborately formed earwax formations. Teahouse owners have been reportedly more tight-lipped than Romulo Neri as to what special ingredient gives their herbal tea that soothing aroma and pungent taste. But I am sure it is not MSG.

Are wee there yet?

According to my wife, there are three basic things that a husband must learn to survive marriage:

Training in emotional sensitivity;

Watching chick flicks; and

Aiming your pee directly into the toilet.

Emotional sensitivity is developed through constant exposure to menstrual cramps, bloating and bad hair days. Meanwhile, chick flicks are tolerable as long as you get testosterone injections right after the movie. But I draw the line at peeing. And, like any man will tell you, it is hard to draw any line with your pee. 

Do women assume that men have some built-in computer guidance system with a radar-lock system implanted in our member that will assure we hit the center of the toilet bowl (although that would be welcome enhancement)? If such a computer guidance system had been developed, wouldn’t our military have used the technology to make our offensives a wee wee bit more precise? If such a technology had been developed, wouldn’t we have found a way to get Internet access, a global positioning system (GPS) and cable TV implanted into is as well?

Aiming dead center for the toilet bowl is not a simple task. There are a number of variables that come into play. Hand-eye coordination. The temperature of the room. The phases of the moon. The size of your bladder. The constriction of the blood vessels. The length of your, uhm, urethra. These involve complex sciences that your average urea-producing laymen will not easily comprehend — fluid dynamics, organic chemistry and, in extreme cases, genetic mutation. A degree in physics or civil engineering may help, but it does not guarantee a bull’s eye. And sometimes peeing doesn’t follow the laws of traditional physics. The more you look at it, the more the observer is changing the direction of his corrosive liquid. Sometimes there are multiple streams. Sometimes there is backflow. Sometimes it hits you on the chin. And sometimes it goes back in time.  

To better understand pee dynamics, a Dutch psycholinguist named Dr. Jan Peter de Ruiter wrote a compelling essay called “Why Men Can’t Pee Straight.” And what makes it even more compelling is that Dr. Ruiter’s medical background has nothing to do with urination.

In his essay, Dr. Ruiter wants you to play with a common household device that can serve as doppelganger for your urine expulsion machine. No, no not that industrial-size vacuum cleaner, but the garden hose. By natural law, men need to cover a certain horizontal distance when peeing. But I doubt there is a man alive who can stand over a toilet bowl with his legs spread wide apart and pee straight down between his legs unless he has had surgical enhancements.

Now let us return to the garden hose. Put a bucket approximately two meters in front of the garden hose. Aim the nozzle forward, and then open a faucet in one abrupt motion. Chances are you will not hit the bucket at first try. In fact, you will need to keep on adjusting the faucet until you get the correct pressure to shoot directly in the bucket. Now, if you can’t even adjust the water pressure of a faucet to hit a bull’s eye the first time out, do you think that a man can do any better with his bladder? There are no body parts that a man can press, twist, jiggle or shake to get the correct bladder pressure the first time around. Believe me, I have tried pressing as many parts of mine as possible and the only thing that I have achieved from that was a flogging from my father confessor.

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It Only Hurts When I Pee will be available in National Bookstore, Power Books and Best Sellers nationwide this December. For comments, suggestions, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net or follow rjled on Twitter.