One day, I felt an ache in the groin. It started mildly but gradually became incapacitating.

I saw a series of urologists, none of whom could find anything wrong with me. Several of them prescribed medications; one of these, Urised, has the spectacular side effect of turning your urine blue. I do not mean cerulean blue, like the sky on a balmy summer day. Bic pen blue. Once, as I was standing at one of those trough urinals in a bathroom at a football stadium, I became aware that the man next to me was staring down at me, slack jawed. An opportunity like this occurs but once in life. I zipped up, pulled a cigarette lighter out of my pocket, and spoke into it in a robotic voice: "Gardak reporting. Earth colonization plans complete. initiating return to mother ship."

Urised didn't relieve my problem. Nothing did. My doctor eventually asked me if I was having stress at work or in my home life.

I said no, not really. And he just stared at me. A thunderclap of silence. And finally I said, "Well, except my girlfriend wants to get married and have a baby and I think the company I work for might be about to go bankrupt, plus I have no talent, no integrity, and no future."

And the doctor gave me his diagnosis: "You are a young man. Enjoy your life."

And the pain went away.

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. by Gene Weingarten

Well I will be dipped in shit.

On April 28, 1958, hundreds of well-heeled Parisians lined up outside the Iris Clert Gallery at 3 Rue des Beaux-Arts, excited to see the newest works by an up-and-coming young artist, Yves Klein. There they were met by two Republican guards standing watch in front of a canopy whose shade was International Klein Blue, a vibrant cousin of cobalt that the artist had invented. While the guests waited to see the exhibit inside, they sipped blue cocktails made of gin and Cointreau, but upon entering, they found only a room with white walls, empty except for a bookshelf. The show was titled “The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State of Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility,” but it was also known simply as “The Void.”

It wasn’t until they returned home, bemused and annoyed, that the guests discovered the artist had left his mark in them: Their urine had been turned International Klein Blue. Klein couldn’t have been happier. His color had become a part of his guests, just as he wanted it to color the whole world.