Maxim answers all your nagging, petty, eternal questions.

Maxim, Nov 2000

Got your own dumb-ass questions? Send them to “Ask Anything,” Maxim, 1040 Avenue of the Americas, 14th floor, New York, NY 10018, or E-mail them to rzepecki@mail.hartford.edu

Q: Were footballs ever really made from the skin of pigs?
A: Though it’d help explain why so few pro players are Jewish, the answer is no. “There are two theories why a football is referred to as a pigskin,” says Saleem Choudhry, a researcher at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The first explanation harks back to medieval England, when farmers, eager to distract themselves from the total bummer that was the Black Death, supposedly stuffed a pig’s bladder with straw and kicked it around a muddy field, thus inventing “soccer” (still played, it seems, by only the most remote civilizations, so don’t sweat it if you’ve never heard of it). The second explanation dates from the early 1800s, when rugby enthusiasts invented a ball that was soft inside, tough outside, and ovoid, thereby resembling a pig’s bladder (apparently a working visual reference in those dark times). For the record, footballs are made of a combination of leather and polyurethane; most diplomas are now made of high-grade cotton, not sheepskin (except at Notre Dame, where they still shun indoor plumbing); and tennis racket strings are made of nylon and cows’ intestines, not the guts of delicious, gentle kittens.

Q: When I get yellow stains on my undershirt, is it from sweat or from the deodorant I’m wearing?
A: Neither, believe it or not; they’re actually the nocturnal emissions of the little-understood but very real “butter fairies.” Oh, all right: Those stains come from your apocrine glands, the underarm pheromone factories that spritz your pits with lipfuscin, a chemical that can turn clothing yellow and, in super-mortifying cases, bluish green. Short of do-it-yourself surgery to remove the glands (and by the way, watch for our big feature in next month’s issue), there’s little you can do to stop this splotching, which tends to get worse when you’re stressed but eventually decreases with age. “Changing your diet won’t help,” says NYU Downtown Hospital dermatologist Barry Goldman. “Apocrine glands are larger than sweat glands, so you can’t block them with deodorants or antiperspirants.” Your options are few, and none of ’em are pretty: You can adopt a Charlie Brownesque wardrobe composed entirely of yellow shirts, scrub your clothes with Spray ’n Wash or vinegar diluted in water, or simply wear your man-stains with brazen pride, knowing they’re chock-full of secretions that surely drive the ladies loopy with desire.

Q: What makes fish float upside down when they die?
A: Like George W. Bush explaining his education reform program, it’s basically a lot of fishy-smelling hot air. Shortly after death, most fish obey logic and drift to the bottom of the tank. But the fish rise again, buoyed by the gases that bacteria belch out as they gobble the fish’s insides. “This gas is predominantly in the stomach, so that part of the body naturally floats to the surface,” says Alison Scarratt, an assistant curator of fishes at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. “Muscle mass is much denser in the back, and this also helps turn the fish upside down.” When the bacteria have nothing left to snack on and split for the nearest salad bar sneeze-guard, the fish’s skeleton sinks to the bottom again. Human corpses follow roughly the same pattern, filling with water and sinking, then resurfacing 36 to 72 hours later, full of belch bubbles, on their backs. Despite the swimming position (and oft forgotten Dairy Queen dish) known as the dead-man’s float, it’s actually a myth that most people float face-down for hours after they drown—especially if they were mob informants.

Q: What do you guys do when you run out of space on a page?

Q: Did the person who discovered the planet Uranus give it that name as a deliberate practical joke?

A: Sir William Herschel, the British scientist who first identified the bloated, gassy giant, in 1781, was just too dignified to make that sort of mischief. “Anus and Uranus have no etymological link,” explains Richard Lederer, author of The Bride of Anguished English. “While anus comes from the Latin word for ‘ring,’ Uranus was named for the Greek god of heaven and father of the Titans. The word, in Greek, was originally Ouranos, but the Romans changed it to Uranus.” Educated, monocle-wearing types use the slightly less snickering pronunciation “urine-us.” Still can’t distinguish between the planet and your own moon? Well, is your anus covered by a slushy blue layer of hydrogen mixed with helium and methane? Does it complete one rotation every 17 hours and boast 15 satellites and a mass 15 times that of Earth? If so, don’tcha bend over in the NASA visitors’ rest room.