Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
I have been informed by science that my body hosts approximately 38 trillion microorganisms. Bacteria, fungi, archaea, the occasional virus just passing through on a gap year, pretending it’s not going to ruin everything. Thirty-eight trillion. That is more residents than any country on Earth, and not one of them has received a welcome packet, a visitor’s guide, a refrigerator magnet, or even a laminated map with a helpful YOU ARE HERE arrow, which in this case would just be pointing at my armpit.
This is a failure of hospitality so staggering that it has begun to affect my self-esteem as a host nation.
The point is, I have decided that human body microbiome humor has been left entirely to scientists and people who think diagrams of gut flora are sufficient entertainment. They are not. Someone needs to do the promotional work, and that someone is me. I have therefore launched the Brian Body Tourism Council, a fully operational promotional body (pun intended, standing ovation please, sit back down) dedicated to encouraging my microscopic residents to explore all that Brian has to offer, spend their microdollars, and leave a five-star review on whatever platform single-celled organisms use. TripMicroAdvisor, presumably. Yelp for the Damned. Something with stars.
What follows is our inaugural destination guide. Pack light. You already live here, and you never asked.
Visit Sweaty Bottom: Where Relaxation Goes to Ferment
Nestled in the warm, generous valley between my gluteal peaks, Sweaty Bottom is the crown jewel of Brian’s lower geography. Year-round tropical climate. Lush textile canopy that changes seasonally based on whether Brian remembered to do laundry. A thriving economy built entirely on moisture, friction, and the kind of ambient shame that never fully resolves.
“I came for a weekend,” says one longtime resident bacterium who has since raised four generations here and started a small pottery collective. “That was eleven years ago. The humidity alone. I have never felt more myself.”
Sweaty Bottom offers world-class anaerobic conditions, a fermentation scene that has been written up in several publications we invented for this brochure, and the kind of thick, still air that serious microbes dream about during their graduate programs. Whether you are a gram-positive looking to settle down, a spore in the middle of a spiritual crisis, or a fungus on its third marriage, Sweaty Bottom has a neighborhood, a support group, and a reasonably priced studio apartment for you.
The regional cuisine is impossible to describe in polite company, has been compared by food writers to “what would happen if a sock gained sentience and started a restaurant,” and is considered a transcendent culinary experience by those with the palate and the emotional fortitude for it.
Getting there: Head south. Keep going. Past the point where you think surely this is far enough. It is not. Keep going.
The Peaks of Nipples: A Twin Summit Experience Unlike Any Other
The Peaks of Nipples rise majestically from the chest plains like two small geological monuments to ambiguity and shirts that fit almost correctly. Climbers from across the dermis make the pilgrimage annually, though “annually” for a bacterium with a 20-minute lifespan is more of a philosophical position than a scheduling commitment.
The Peaks offer bracing temperature fluctuations that range from “pleasant alpine morning” to “Brian went outside in February in a t-shirt again because he only needed a second and now we are in a full weather emergency.” The sensory environment is dynamic. Unpredictable. The kind of place that builds character in organisms that technically do not have character yet.
A vibrant arts community has taken root at the base of each Peak, producing what critics describe as “follicle-forward installation work,” “biofilm sculptures of uncommon emotional complexity,” and “whatever that thing is that grows back no matter how many times Brian addresses it.” The annual Nipple Summit Arts Festival draws microorganisms from as far away as the left armpit, which is a significant journey and a community not known for its wanderlust.
The festival’s centerpiece is a living sculpture that changes shape daily based on temperature and wind conditions and has been compared to a Calder mobile by organisms who have never seen a Calder mobile but feel strongly about the comparison.
Accommodations are limited but intimate. The views toward the Belly Button Basin are spectacular at sunrise, assuming Brian is lying flat, which happens more than the Tourism Council is comfortable admitting.
Ear Wax Mining District: A Living History Experience in Amber
Deep in the burnished amber canyons of the outer ear canal, the Ear Wax Mining District preserves a way of life that has remained essentially unchanged since the second Bush administration, largely because Brian cleans his ears roughly as often as he updates his passport photo and considers both activities optional.
The Mining District is a self-designated UNESCO Microbiome Heritage Site (application pending, no response expected) and offers immersive experiences in wax archaeology, acoustic dampening studies, and the kind of slow geological wonder that rewards patient visitors with layers of history so compressed and richly colored they have been compared to Baltic amber, Devonian shale, and “a crime scene that time forgot.”
The strata alone tell a story. First Layer: early spring pollen, circa several years ago. Second Layer : something that may have been a gnat. Third Layer: classified. Layer four: the archaeologists have asked that we not discuss layer four.
Tours are self-guided because rangers refused the posting. A local docent named Gerald, a particularly knowledgeable and frankly overqualified Staphylococcus who holds two advanced degrees and had other plans for his life, answers questions on Tuesdays and selected holidays. Gerald is tired. Please be kind to Gerald.
“You have to understand,” Gerald told our travel writer, pausing to collect himself, “this wax did not accumulate overnight. This is legacy. It is heritage. This is Brian not listening to his wife across multiple decades and several time zones. I find it beautiful. I have made my peace.”
The quarterly market features amber-encased curiosities, handmade biofilm goods, artisanal wax sculpture, and very small paintings of the eardrum at sunset that sell for amounts Gerald considers frankly insulting, given the overhead.
Mucus Gulch and the Booger Badlands: The Human Body Microbiome’s Premier Pick Your Own Destination
Adventure travelers, this is your country. The Booger Badlands, carved by years of seasonal allergies, one catastrophic ragweed summer Brian refuses to discuss in any format including therapy, and what climate scientists in the nasal corridor describe as “a sinus situation that has simply gotten out of hand,” offer the kind of raw, punishing, magnificent terrain that separates the dilettante microbe from the seasoned explorer with good boots and low expectations.
But the crown jewel of any Badlands visit is the world-famous Pick Your Own experience, the only agritourism destination in the entire nasal corridor where guests harvest their own dried mucus formations directly from the source. Families love it. Children especially. Small ones, in particular, arrive with a level of enthusiasm that the Badlands staff has learned to simply receive without comment or eye contact.
Selections vary by season with a specificity that has attracted the attention of serious collectors worldwide. Spring yields a light, almost translucent harvest with a delicate floral quality and structural integrity that engineers have studied. Summer produces a dense, sun-warmed crop with complex topography and a surprising finish. Ragweed season, which Brian’s immune system approaches with the energy of a man who has simply given up negotiating, delivers a robust, baroque, almost aggressively textured harvest that auction houses list as “rare provenance, private collection, do not ask.”
Winter is for connoisseurs only. The crystalline formations of deep January, brittle and architecturally ambitious, have been displayed in at least one gallery show that Brian does not know about and we ask that you keep it that way.
The Gulch itself runs deep. The walls are richly textured, and we want you to know that we tried several other words before landing on “textured,” and this is genuinely the most diplomatic option available. The weather changes without notice. One moment it is a still, humid cave environment of uncommon spiritual tranquility. The next, Brian has sneezed and you are in free fall over an unknowable void at approximately 100 miles per hour, clutching your harvest bag, wondering what choices led you here.
The Badlands are not for the faint of flagellum.
Guided Pick Your Own expeditions depart from the nasal vestibule at irregular intervals. Bring layers. Bring goggles. Do not ask what the floor is made of. The floor knows what it is.
The Islands of Toe: Cheese, Jam, and the Best Human Body Microbiome Humor You’ll Ever Live Through
Perhaps no destination in all of Brian generates more devoted repeat visitors, more fervent personal testimonials, or more organisms who arrived on a layover and simply never rebooked their connection than the Islands of Toe, the warm and ancient archipelago tucked between each digit of the left foot. The right foot is currently zoned for light industrial use and is not accepting leisure visitors at this time due to an ongoing regulatory dispute we cannot discuss for legal reasons.
The Islands are famous throughout the microbiome for their legendary local cheeses, produced by artisanal fungal communities who have been perfecting their craft in the pressurized, humid valleys between toes since before anyone currently living on the Islands was born, which covers a lot of generations, given the turnover rate. The cheese cannot be adequately described in any existing human or microbial language. Visitors report that it changes them. That they arrive as one organism and depart, several generations later, as something more. Something that has tasted the cheese and can no longer imagine a world without it.
The jam is made from what the Islands officially designate as dark fruit. The Council has voted unanimously not to elaborate. The jam is extraordinary. Please do not ask about the jam.
Life on the Islands moves at a pace that visitors from the more aggressive regions of Brian, particularly the Cardiovascular Corridor and the Lower GI District, find disorienting and then life-saving. The culture is warm. The elders are ancient beyond reasonable calculation and speak a dialect that mixes standard bacterial chemical signaling with what linguists believe is a form of toe-specific mythology involving a great compression event and a prophesied sock of unusual thickness.
Newcomers are welcomed with cautious warmth and observed carefully for approximately three generations before being considered locals. The initiation involves an acceptance of the Toe Way of Life, which requires stillness, patience, a tolerance for extreme pressure events when Brian wears shoes that do not fit correctly, and a philosophical acceptance that Brian does not always choose the right socks and never will.
“I was just passing through,” wrote one now-permanent resident in the Islands’ guest registry, which is maintained on a preserved section of callus and is considered the oldest continuously updated document on Brian’s entire left side. “I am now in my ninth generation here. Elected office? Yes. My granddaughter won the cheese festival two years running. The jam changed something fundamental in me that I cannot name. I am home.”
Plan Your Visit
The Brian Body Tourism Council reminds all prospective visitors that Brian is not responsible for sudden environmental shifts, including but not limited to: showers (infrequent but biblical when they occur), hot sauce events in the lower GI corridor that the Council officially classifies as natural disasters, vigorous physical activity (theoretical at this point but the Council believes in transparency), the occasional antibiotic purge that has historically arrived without warning and reshaped entire civilizations overnight, or Trouble McFussbucket sitting on Brian, which introduces tectonic forces beyond anyone’s modeling capacity.
We are working on an early warning system. Gerald is on it. Gerald is overwhelmed. Please be patient with Gerald.
In the meantime, the body is open. The body is warm. The body has cheese you will not recover from and cheese you will not be able to stop thinking about, which is the same cheese, and you will understand that when you get there.
If human body microbiome humor has a home, it is here. It smells like fermentation and ambition and something we have officially designated as dark fruit, and we would not change a single thing.
Come. Stay. Ferment.
See my Amazon author page and buy my books.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos.
He has two new, offbeat novels waiting foran agent or a publisher: "Truth Tastes Like Pennies" and "Elliot Nessie."
He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- Packing for Marrakech, Distracted by Fried Chicken Fashion - April 20, 2026
- I Am Not a Carwash Guy Either - April 17, 2026
- Scientists Confirm Sperm Whales Have Language. Gary is pleased. - April 16, 2026
