GMA versus FPJ. Nora versus Vilma. Bea versus Wendy. But there is no topic that has generated as much polarity among Pogi readers as the Pinoy male’s penchant for flaunting, flicking and sometimes recycling his self-generated waste products.
On the one hand, scores of gas-producing men who have accelerated their destruction of the ozone layer have started to send me text messages proclaiming, “You have given my life new meaning.” On the other hand, one of my three female readers expressed her distaste for the subject of human waste management by wrapping up the regurgitated remains of her breakfast during last week’s edition of the “M” section and sending it over to the STAR offices. (That was a waste of your daing, my dear.)
“Aren’t you even the slightest bit embarrassed about this topic!?” this female reader scribbled in dried blood all over the vomit-encrusted newspaper. “Does your mom even read the drivel that you write?” How dare she! How dare she insinuate that my mom reads this column!
If you must know, like administration allies clinging to newfound cabinet positions, my shame is merely conceptual. A man has to be true to himself. A man is as a man does. And what a man does is to cup his hand over his gas pipe, let it blow, and then shove his hand beside his nose to savor the aroma of his own creation.
When it comes to human trash disposal, I think I’ve hit the proverbial goldmine. I can continue to write about topics like squeezing the goo out of my blackheads and making it punas all over my yaya until Raymart and Claudine’s baby is old enough to run for public office. But, alas, for the sake of preserving my dwindling female readership, I will limit myself to one topic that is just ripe for the picking.
Good grooming begins with yourself. As a young impressionable lad who was barred from watching Bad Bananas, I had to learn tastelessness through reading. And the person who was responsible for sending me to the grade school guidance counselor several times a week was the local specimen of off-color comedy, 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 introduced the term “D.O.M.” to my vocabulary. The greatest sliver of advice that Gary has shared with my generation is that “You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you cannot pick your friend’s nose.” Thank you for planting the seeds in my head to germinate a column of such ill repute, Mr. Lising. My mom will never forgive you.
Ah, the simple joys of nose picking. It ranks up there with adjusting your crotch. And just like good ol’ Mr. Lising oh-so-subtly implied, sometimes there isn’t even enough kulangot stuffed up your proboscis to fulfill your nose-picking requirements. The great thing about nose quarrying is that it doesn’t require a license. It doesn’t require you to be ambidextrous. And it doesn’t require DOH approval. The ilong exploration is only as disgusting a habit as your mom makes you think it is.
If you think about it, are you making yourself any dirtier by shoveling away at your nose? You’re actually cleaning yourself up by removing bodily waste with some digital manipulation. Don’t you use your hands to clean up after you move your bowels?
And what are you really picking away at, anyway? According to Why Do Men Have Nipples, a valuable collection of male FAQs, kulangot, phlegm, snot, uhog, spit, boogers, sputum, dura — these are all fancy-shmancy terms to describe the same product manufactured by our nostril factory. (You know, I, too, have often wondered: why do men have nipples and not full-out breasts? Is it because we’d be too distracted by our own breasts to get any work done? Maybe. But I digress.) All those lovely euphemisms are used to describe the different terms for mucus, a slimy material that lines the membranes of the body, including the lungs. Mucus is composed chiefly of mucins (lubricating proteins) and inorganic salts suspended in water. When mucus is of a slimy consistency, it is colloquially known as uhog. And, incidentally, the type of buko meat that people enjoy slurping down is also described as mala-uhog. Which, in turn, indicates that ingesting your uhog is not as foreign a concept as my three (or maybe now two) female readers might think.
Uhog aids in the protection of the lungs by trapping irritants like dust, bacteria and kotong cops that enter the nose during normal breathing. Mucus dries around the offensive particle and eventually hardens into a solid or semi-solid sticky object. At this point, the mucus has evolved into the popular bite-sized protein known as kulangot.
When kulangot dries up inside the nostril, it can be more irritating than an administration congressman and we just need to find a way to dislodge that itch. So how do we get rid of that irritant? Do we hold recall elections? Do we wait for an archeologist to mine our noses for fossil remains? In situations like these, men should follow the old adage that they lived by during their teenage years: sariling sikap. I say you just burrow into that nose with your finger like you’re searching for buried treasure. Think of your kulangot as a pearl forming around an oyster. And for those who are more enterprising, you can actually turn those olfactory pearls of yours into a couture jewelry line that you can sell in selected tiangges around Metro Manila (it’ll fit in right beside the booth that sells those, ahem, secondhand cellphones).
And after you’ve excavated from your nozzle all the booger pearls you can find, fret not because there are still other crevices in your body that you can pillage. Aside from your nose, you can also find mucus in your lungs, in your stomach, and in a woman’s cervix. But remember, you cannot pick mucus anywhere near a woman’s cervix, and this applies even if you have a valid marriage license.
Pick pick pick pick pick picka-picka. This is probably the only male habit that will make your fiancée contemplate single blessedness. But this is only if you pick your nose compulsively. If you pick it less than three times a day, she will only ask for an escape clause from the marriage agreement. Compulsive nose-picking is known as rhinotillexomania (rhino = nose, tillexis = habit of picking at something, mania = obsession with something), so someone who picks his nose and still wants to pick his friends’ noses as well is called a rhinotillexomaniac. Being called a maniac is something that you can grow accustomed to, believe you me. And being a rhinotillexomaniac is more prevalent than you might think.
Boogie Wonderland
After asking a thousand people to burrow into their breathing apparatuses at the University of Wisconsin, the Journal of Psychiatry in February 1995 picked out these interesting facts.
• 91 percent of subjects have practiced and continue to practice nose-quarrying.
• 25.6 percent quarry their noses daily, 22.3 percent do it two to five times each day, and three people admitted to doing it at least hourly.
• 55.5 percent spent one to five minutes, 23.5 percent spent five to 15 minutes, and 0.8 percent spent 15-30 minutes each day on nose grooming. One respondent claimed that he devoted two hours daily to his mania (at least that’s what he says he does when he locks himself in the bathroom).
• 82.8 percent said they’d dredged their noses to “unclog the passages,” 66.4 percent claimed to have done it to relieve discomfort or itchiness, 35.7 percent said it was to dispose of low-hanging mucus fruit among their nose hairs, 34 percent fsaid it was for personal hygiene (hygiene for the nose, not for the finger), and 17.2 percent picked out of habit. Meanwhile, 2.1 percent claimed to pick solely for entertainment. And one person with a case of mistaken orifice said he picked his nose for “sexual stimulation.” (There is a reason they call them “maniacs.”)
Other fun facts:
• 65.1 percent use their index finger, 20.2 percent use their pinkie finger, and 16.4 percent use their thumb (I wonder what else can fit in their nostrils) as their instrument of choice. Surprisingly, no one used instruments from the lower half of the anatomy. Like the big toe.
• 90.3 percent disposed of the nose poop in a tissue or panyo, while 28.6 percent used the floor, and 7.6 percent stuck it to the furniture (i.e. walls, chairs, tables, chandeliers).
What have we learned from this study? Aside from the fact that people will shovel their noses for money, it is that you should really avoid touching the undersides of tables in public places.
Finger-painting. 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, in our office 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.
So before you pick and flick, remember some of the 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 your nose missiles might be sizeable enough to knock out mosquitoes.
• Avoid the use of tissue or panyo or discarded newspapers when 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 deeply 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 it for later private viewing.
• Hand washing after nose exploration is optional. If you do not usually wash your hands after taking a pee, then I don’t see whey you have to wash your hands after picking your nose.
When you learn to pick and flick your nose waste with ease, cunning and subtlety, you may be in line to become the next Speaker of the House.
The road to becoming a nose-picking savant takes time, practice and a pitcher-full of desiccated mucus. These artisans have developed techniques with their thumb or index finger to deftly swoosh into their olfactory- challenged member, clamp on to a fossilized blockage and swoop it out of there while making sure that there is no arcing trail of uhog left in its wake. They then quickly knead that little bugger into a more aerodynamic form and flick it 15 feet away onto the rug where it resembles another piece of carpet lint that a swarm of ants can chew on. What a masterpiece.
You eat oysters, so why can’t you eat the pearl? Instead of letting a swarm of ants chow down on your man-made protein, you should be the one chowing down on your own nose poop. In the end, you’ll be eating it anyway. The average person produces a cup of nose juice every day. And most of it is actually swallowed without your knowing it. (I think, at this point, I may have lost my two remaining female readers). So go on! Even doctors say it’s good for you.
According to Austrian doctor and lung specialist Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, nose picking and booger consumption make people healthier, happier and more in tune with their bodies. And eating your local delicacy doesn’t require BFAD approval. “With the finger you can get to places you just can’t reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system,” he said while proudly grooming der schleim. “Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system, the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected… When this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.”
Once the corpses of dried germs are devoured, the body absorbs these agents and builds up even more antibodies to protect itself from invisible invaders. “Modern medicine is constantly trying to do the same thing through far more complicated methods, people who pick their nose and eat it get a natural boost to their immune system for free,” he claimed while munching down on his favorite immune-boosting snack.
He pointed out that children happily pick their noses, yet by the time they have become adults they have stopped completely under pressure from a fascist society that has branded the practice as disgusting and antisocial. He said: “I would recommend a new approach where children are encouraged to pick their noses. It is a completely natural response and medically a good idea as well.” (I am not making this is up, as much as I would like to be.)
It has even been theorized that children who eat their own nose gold may in fact grow up with stronger bodies due to the immunity-boosting effects. This could save us all quite a bit of money in terms of medical bills. You can forget all about multivitamins, you can forget about herbal medicine, and you forget about virgin coconut oil. All you need is your fingers, a runny nose and a plate of rice (so your nose gold won’t taste too salty).
Hay naku, if only my mom left me to my own devices as a child, I’d have become Superman by now.
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For comments, suggestions or if you like to share your own nose excavation techniques, please text PM POGI <message> and send it to 2948 for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers. Or e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com.