Drunk Anatomy


...Hey. So...this is awkward. I know I haven't been around much lately and that is due in equal parts to forgetting and being a garbage pail. I wanna make up for it, though!!! As they say on Tumblr, it's garbage can, not garbage cannot.

I am making a TENTATIVE pledge that will likely be abandoned to post a Drunk Anatomy every day of the music festival portion of SXSW. (Because I will be in attendance! I have a wristband! From my boss! Because she's the best! Let's call her my bost- get it?) But TENTATIVELY. Like, it's very up in the air as to whether or not I will honor this pledge. Just stay tuned, my dearest darlings.

Also, I got a dog a couple weeks back!!!!!!! His name is Hunx and it's like "Halo" is playing every time I look at his little face. The vet at Emancipet exclaimed, "I have never seen a dog like that before--oh my god, are you a fairy?" when I took him to get a booster shot. You get it.

Is this a blog about anatomy or your livejournal?

Touché. The muscle of this post is the palmaris longis!

Oooooh. Aaaaaah. Wowwwwwww. Geeee willllikers.

Seems like it'd be in your hand based on the name, huh? Well, it's not because that would be too easy.

It's near the hand, though, it's not like a butt muscle with some outlandish explanation like, "It's the palm of the butt" or what have you. The palmaris longis is located along the edge of the forearm along the pinky finger side. PRETTY FASCINATING FACT: the pl is missing in 14% of the population. How? What? Why? Etc?

Wanna know if you have one? Touch your pinky to your thumb and if you do, then a tendon will rise in your wrist. I did it and I honestly can't tell.

This leads me to believe the palmaris longis is not a terribly important muscle, no offense palmaris enthusiasts! Please don't drag me for this observation. I know you probably thought, "Finally, some recognition for the unsung hero of the forearm" and now I'm just letting you down all over the place. Well, I'm used to being the source of disappointment so let's move onward and upward! Or just laterally!

The shape of the pl is just your run of the mill long, thin strip formation. Before I started doing this, I guess I thought muscles came in an assortment of shapes, but that's really not the case.

So if you don't even automatically come equipped with a palmaris longis, does it really even do anything?

Sensing a lot of hostility in this question and I am not here for it. AT ALL. The palmaris longis may not be as exciting as the glutes or the delts but it takes all kinds, okay? The palmaris longis is actually a special snowflake! It may or may not exist, its attributes are not uniform: it might be muscular in some areas and more tendon-y in others, the muscle also just might not be then and it's just all tendon. SPECIAL.

Its function is a wrist flexor. So. It flexes the wrist. When you're messing around with a Wii, that's the pl! When you gesticulate and your wrist goes limp, that's the pl! When you "talk to the hand," that's the pl!

Let's stretch this basically useless muscle!

How would you strain it enough to need to stretch it? I have NO IDEA, but let's indulge this absurd proposal.

I call this stetch: lemme see them love lines.

Step one: hold one arm out in front of you, Macarena-style.

Step two: with your opposite arm, grasp your fingers on the first arm. Or hand. Fingers are generally attached to hands.

Step three: pull those fingers down and back.

Step four: feel that stretch and reveal those love lines.
