From: Ace Lightning <acelightning@excaliber.net.spam.sucks> Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: golf ball headache Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 00:28:38 -0500 Organization: Purple Pentagram Productions Lines: 41 Message-ID: <34824B06.A84@excaliber.net.spam.sucks> Reply-To: acelightning@excaliber.net.spam.sucks X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) golf ball headache: (no, it has nothing to do with being hit in the head by a golf ball.) when you remove the outer covering from a golf ball, you find what looks like a mass of rubber bands. the surface will consist of many fragments, since the rubber will have adhered to the inside of the shell. but once those are cleared away, you will find that the mass of rubber bands is, in fact, one continuous strand of long thin elastic, wound into a spherical shape. if you have nothing better to do with your spare time, unwind all that elastic. at the center of the golf ball is a somewhat pliable sac that seems to be filled with a thick liquid. puncturing this sac reveals a viscous, foul-smelling ooze. when i was a child in grade school, we firmly believed that this liquid was the most toxic substance ever invented, and that the mere sight of it would instantly kill an entire roomful of schoolchildren; it's nothing more than a form of liquid latex, though, and just smells terrible. what does all this have to do with a headache? imagine that the long continuous rubber band is wound so tightly that, instead of feeling springy and elastic, it feels rigid, taut as bridge support cables. that's the tension in the muscles in your neck and shoulders and the back of your head. imagine that the thick, foul liquid latex inside the sac is under tremendous overpressure which needs to be relieved. but the sac is so tough that it cannot rupture and release the pressure. that's your sinuses. golf ball headache. -- http://www.excaliber.net/ace/index.htm