HOW YOUR BODY WORKS
Your body is like a superbly
engineered luxury automobile; if you don't use
it wisely and maintain it properly, it will
eventually break down, most likely in a bad
neighborhood. To understand why this is,
let's take a look inside this fascinating
"machine" called the 'human
body'.
The body is made up of billions and
billions of tiny cells, which are so small that
you cannot see them. The only people who can
see them are white-coated geeks called
"biologists". And they tell us that
the human body consists of billions of these
tiny cells, which combine to form organs such as
the heart, the kidney, the eyeball, the funny
bone, the clavichord, the pustule, and the
hernia, which in turn combine to form the body,
which in turn combine with other bodies to form
the squadron. The various fitness-related organs
are:
THE SKIN
Your skin
performs several vital functions. For example, it keeps people from
seeing the inside of your body, which is
repulsive, and it
prevents your organs from falling out onto the
ground, where careless pedestrians might
step on them. Also, without skin, your body
would have no place to form large facial zits on
the morning before your wedding.
But for
fitness-oriented persons like yourself, the
important thing about skin is that it acts as your Body's
Cooling System. Whenever you exercise or get
on an elevator, sweat oozes out of millions of
tiny skin holes so it can evaporate and cool the
area.
Unfortunately, virtually all of these holes
are located in your armpits, which is stupid. I
mean, you hardly ever hear people complaining
about having hot armpits. So what we seem to
have here is one of those cases where Mother
Nature really screwed up, like when she
developed the concept of nasal hair.
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THE MUSCLES SYSTEM
Your
muscles are what enable you to perform all of
your basic movements, such as bowling, sniping,
pandering, carping, and contacting your
attorney.
Basically,
there are two kinds of muscle tissue: the kind
that people in advertisements for fitness
centers have, which forms units that look like
sleek and powerful pythons writhing just beneath
the surface of the skin, and the kind you have,
which looks more like deceased baby rabbits.
The beauty
of muscle tissue, however, is that it responds
to exercise.
Using
modern exercise equipment such as the Nautilus
machine, you can stretch those pudgy little
muscle tissues of yours to the point where you
won't even be able to scream for help
without the aid of powerful painkilling drugs.
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THE SKELETAL SYSTEM
How many
bones do you think your skeletal system has?
Would you say 50? 150? 250? 300? More than 300?
If you
guessed 50, you're WRONG. There would be
around 250, but its not all that important. The
only important part of your skeleton, for
fitness purposes, is your knees.
Knees are
God's way of telling mankind that He
doesn't want us to do anaything really
strenuous. When we do, our knees punish us by
becoming injured, as you know if you've
ever watched professional football on
television:
COMMENTATOR:
Looks like a knee injury, from the way that bone
there is sticking out of his knee.
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THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Your
digestive system is your body's Fun House,
whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride,
taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns,
being attacked by vicious secretions along the
way, and not knowing until the last minute
whether it will be turned into a useful body
part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister
Sphincter.
You must be
careful about what you eat, unless you want your
body making heart valves out of things like bean
dip
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THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
The Central
Nervous system is your body's Messenger,
always letting your brain know what's
going on elsewhere in your body. "Your
nose itches" it tells your brain. Or,
"Your foot is falling asleep!" Or,
"You're hungry!!!"
All day
long, your brain hears messages like these,
thousands of them, hour after hour, until
finally it deliberately rests your hand on a
red-hot stove just for the pleasure of hearing
your nervous system scream in pain
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THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
Your
respiratory system takes in oxygen and gives off
carbon monoxide, a deadly gas, by a process
called "photosynthesis." This takes
place in your lungs, yam-shaped organs in your
chest containing millions of tiny little air
sacs, called "Bernice."
In a normal
person, these sacs are healthy and pink, whereas
in smokers they have the wretched,
soot-stained, anguished look of the people
fleeing Atlanta in 'Gone with the Wind'.
This has
led many noted medical researchers to conclude
that smoking is unhealthy, but we must weigh
this against the fact that most of the people in
cigarette advertisements are generally
horse-riding, helicopter-flying hunks of
major-league manhood, whereas your noted medical
researchers tend to be pasty little wimps of the
variety that you routinely held upside down over
the toilet in junior high school.
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THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM
This is, of
course, your heart, a fist-sized muscle in your
chest with a two-inch-thick layer of greasy fat
clinging to it consisting of every Milky Way you
ever ate. Your heart's job is to pump your
blood, which appears to be nothing more than a
red liquid but which, according to biologists
(this should come as no surprise), is actually
teeming with millions of organisms, some of them
with tentacles so they can teem more
efficiently.
The only
organisms that actually belong in your blood are
the red cells and the white cells. The red cells are your
body's Room Service, carrying tiny
particles of food and oxygen to the other
organs, which snork them up without so much as a
"thank you." The only reward the
red cells get is iron in the form of prunes,
which the other cells don't want anyway.
If you don't eat enough prunes, your red
cells get tired-a condition doctors call
"tired blood" -and you have to
lie down and watch "All My Children."
The white cells are your
body's House Detectives. Most of the
time they lounge around the bloodstream, telling
jokes and forming the occasional cyst. But they
swing into action the instant your body is
invaded by one of the many enemy organisms that
can get into your bloodstream, these being
bacteria, viruses, rotifers, conifers,
parameciums, cholesterol, tiny little lockjaw
germs that dwell on the ends of all sharp
objects, antacids, riboflavin, and the plague.
As soon as the white cells spot one of these,
they drop whatever they're doing and
pursue it on a wild and often hilarious chase
through your various organs, which sometimes
results in damage to innocent tissue. Eventually
they catch the invader and tie its tentacles
behind its back with antibodies which are the
body's Handcuffs, and deport it via the
bowel.
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