Tongue Tied

This morning I was exploring my tongue. In the mirror.

It really is a strange sort of body part. You know how sometimes you say a word over and over again and think about it really hard and it starts to lose its meaning? All of a sudden the word is just a group of letters. That's what happened to my tongue. Just a pound of flesh. No real purpose.

Since it lost all meaning, the tongue had to be compared to something, as we humans are wont to explain and categorize and compare everything. The best comparison I could come up with is to that of a leach. The tongue looks like a thick leach housing in our mouths, squirming around for blood. I wonder why we're so afraid of leaches when we carry one around in our mouths 24/7.

Tongue facts are always interesting:

• tongue cleaning is proven to prevent heart attacks, pneumonia, diabetes, infertility and first dates going down the tubes.
• women have shorter tongues than men - no comment.
• a blue whale's tongue is the size of an elephant, has a very good memory, and loves peanuts.
• it's fun to twist your tongue - try saying "Irish wrist watch" fast, or even once, after a few drinks.
• the rest of these interesting facts are on the tip of my tongue, where much of the bacteria in my body lives.

The tongue is so plain looking and pretty uncomplicated as far as design goes, but is amazingly important because we can't speak or swallow without it. The speaking function caught my attention. Far too many people in this world are allowed to use their tongues to speak nonsense.

I think we should issue licences to use our tongues for speaking. That way people who say really dumb things, like Kathy Lee Gifford (who wouldn't get a licence), would receive heavy fines or imprisonment if they used their tongue for speaking. They can use it for chewing and swallowing or whatever other purposes they can dream up, but if they utter one word, a tongue lashing, so to speak, it is.

There is, of course, a long list of people who wouldn't get licences, if I were running the licence office, that is. Just about every politician, on either side of the spectrum. I suppose the first person I would hunt down to revoke their licence is Anthony Weiner, in the U.S. Wow, I think I would keep Weiner and his tongue in separate jail cells for a while.

I'm amazed at the number of people who seem to think it's endearing or clever or interesting to show the world they have a tongue when their picture is taken. What is that? Perhaps they are dying to say something obnoxious, they can't because the photo doesn't record their voice, so their tongue wildly thrashes around in protest, reminding the world that, indeed, it had something important to say at that moment.

I think Miley Cyrus can be credited with bringing the tongue to new levels of grossness. I guess you can't really blame the tongue, though. It's Miley's brain, for lack of a better term, that controls it. I think she should give her tongue up for adoption to someone who can use it for a higher purpose. That would also stop the "singing".

I'm getting chest pains thinking about Miley Cyrus. Time for a tongue cleaning.