Asparagus, Pee and You

Have you ever noticed after you've eaten asparagus that your pee stinks? It doesn't happen to everyone, and apparently that's genetic. What it means for those of you who don't have the gene is that your body isn't breaking down an enzyme properly, which means, of course, that you're genetically inferior.

WHY DOES YOUR PEE SMELL WHEN YOU EAT ASPARAGUS? Asparagus contains a sulfur compound called mercaptan. It is also found in onions, garlic, rotten eggs, and in the secretions of skunks. The signature smell occurs when this substance is broken down in your digestive system. Not all people have the gene for the enzyme that breaks down mercaptan, so some of you can eat all the asparagus you want without stinking up the place. One study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that only 46 percent of British people tested produced the odor while 100 percent of French people tested did. Insert your favorite French joke here________________________________.

Saturday night while we were at Mark and Candice's, Mark made some righteous beercan chicken and grilled asparagus. I know many of you will find this a shock, but grilled asparagus is one of the few cooked vegetables I'll eat.

I know what you're thinking. "But, it's sorta like straight, long Broccoli, and we all know broccoli is of the devil!"

Don't know what to tell you, other than if you ever go to a Morton's Steakhouse, be sure to order the asparagus.

So anyway, I was prepared for the attack of the stinky pee. Everyone had gone to bed and I'd just finished packing away my xbox and laptop and all that crap so I wouldn't have to do it the sunday morning before the drive home. I went back to sitting on the couch, swaddled deep in the recesses of my Boba Fett hoodie and surfed the channels for awhile before giving up an agreeing with myself to go to bed.

Got up from the couch, stuck my phone in the pocket of my hoodie, then headed to the can. Proceeded to deliver the stinky asparagus payload to the basin when I feel something shift in the hoodie's pocket. I look down just in time to see my iphone plunge from the pocket toward the water.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

You remember that scene in the last film version of The Count of Monte Cristo (the one with Caviezel?) where he's in the prison and Richard Harris is teaching him how to suck less? In particular, I'm thinking of that scene where he's snapping his hand in and out of the water drops without getting wet.

Well, as the phone dropped through the air, I'd already started moving. I guess I'd stopped the stream, though I don't remember doing that. My hand hit the water and jerked the phone back out. I'm not sure if it'd had time to hit the porcelain.

Only then did I realize what I'd done. In the back of my head, I heard Bear Grylls telling me that urine is sterile, so I didn't overly freak out about it, but I did, against my better judgment, run a small stream of water over the phone (at that point, what difference did it make), then dried it with the handtowel.

I gave the phone a shake and some water (water, urine, asparagus juice ... whatever) came out of the headphone jack, so I decided I'd better really shake the thing out. First shake, the phone shot out of my hand and bounced off the tile as though it had been shotput. Case: cracked!

And yet.... the phone stayed on. Sorta. I mean, the touchscreen worked, but no sound would come out of the speakers. It thought the headphones were plugged in, which they weren't. I tried my iphone headphones, and they worked, though the jack was now loose.

I went to sleep trying to think of ways to buy a new phone.

The next day, however, some of that had sorted itself out. It rings now, which means it no longer thinks it has a headphone plugged in. I can also answer the phone and hear music (from the onboard speaker), but I haven't had the guts to try plugging in a headset again to see if it actually functions properly. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope it's got another nine months in it.

Btw, as of Oct. 3, AT&T charges a $200 early upgrade fee if you're allowed to upgrade your phone ahead of your scheduled upgrade date. So... it'd be $200 + $199 for the new iPhone.

Yay!