HOLLYWOOD, Florida. Broward County health officials moved swiftly to close a “super-spreader” bingo hall here tonight after hospital emergency rooms admitted four women with advanced-stage “bingo arms,” a physical condition that has been linked to the popular game of chance that requires long periods of strenuous inactivity.
The disease spreads rapidly in close quarters.
“A lot of people, and it’s mainly women, think you can take a pill for everything, but not bingo arms,” said Senior Human Services Program Manager Noel Ewing, Jr. “There’s no known cure, except maybe intense shuffleboard-based physical therapy.”
Stage 3 Bingo Arms
“Bingo arms” refers to a mass of flabbage near the armpit which, when jarred or jostled, tends to move back and forth like ripples on the surface of soothing water, if this low-paid reporter with dreams of literary immortality may be allowed to wax poetic for just a moment. The phenomenon is especially noticeable when a woman with the condition wearing a sleeveless outfit shouts “BINGO!” and waves her arm in the air to alert the bingo “caller” to her winning card, hence the name.
Hope for a cure.
The search for a cure for bingo arms has drawn widespread support in the form of walk-a-thons, telethons, marathons, Zumbathons and phlogistons, but with mixed results, and some have begun to question whether scarce research dollars should be spent on what is, at bottom, a cosmetic disease.
Severe case of jazz hands: The need is just as great.
“I for one would like to see more money flowing to jazz hands, conniption fits, inside meanies and whim-whams,” says Dr. A.N. “Rick” Theobald of the School of Veterinarian Medicine at the University of Missouri-Knob Noster. “Some of these bingo arms researchers are buying new Cadillacs every year, and they haven’t even filled up the ashtrays with chewing gum wrappers yet.”
I would think there’s have to be a bingo butt, too, and it probably resembles writer’s butt.