Death and Disease

She was about fifty, a good looking woman. Lived in the better part of Westend in a flat four flights up. I had to go in and get her because she needed help, needed assistance getting down the stairs. She held my arm and we walked down very slowly. She clutched the banister with her other hand, fearful that she might fall. I had to drive her to the doctors.

During the conversation it came out that she was having black-outs and falling over. She had broken her arm in one of the falls. Her legs were bruised. She said her joints ached all the time, and it was painful to make any exaggerated movements, and that was why she shuffled along, only taking the tiniest of steps, creeping forward with very slow movements. Getting into the front seat of the car took so much time and effort. She gritted her teeth at any movement that placed her body in any new position.

The doctors could find nothing wrong with her. They had run lots of test, but could not find anything that could explain her condition. She had her own idea of what it was that had brought her so low. Nothing more than being bitten by a tick as she had walked through some long grass to pick raspberries that had been so inviting.

She found the bug two days latter, and it had burrowed into her skin. She broke the body off but did not get the head out. The head with the saliva glands. It was two years after that instance, that she had her first blackout, a dizziness, and since then things have become steadily worse.

She thinks she has Lymes disease.

She works as a translator, and had once enjoyed swimming and cycling, but all that was gone now, impossible to do. I told her I had been reading resurection from the Kalevala, and as she left the car I quoted a bit of it to her.

'Rise up out of sleep
get up out of dream
from these evil places,
from the bed of hard luck!'

Because I had just written it to go along with the photo of Lemminkäinen's mother. It would be fine to have the power to speak out against disease, and release people from the prison of their own bodies and minds.

We are so fragile

Best before 13-4-00
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

I would say it is a very rare occasion that you meet someone who has had a heart transplant.

I picked up a woman with a broken leg and took her to Meilahti hospital. She had slipped on some ice a few weeks ago, when she was out walking her dog.

At the hospital she was going to have her cast taken off and at the same time they were going to take a sample of her heart muscle to see if there was any deterioration.

Apparently your immune system tries to reject any foreign organ that has been transplated into your body, and she has to keep taking medicine so that her new heart would not wither away.

Before she had the transplant she was confined to a wheelchair, and had great difficulty breathing since the muscles of her old heart were wasting away. She has lived three years with her new heart, and can now walk in the forest without becoming out of breath.

I asked here how she felt about having somebody elses heart in her body, and she replied that it was a thousand times better to be able to walk with a broken leg, than to be imprisoned motionless as an incapacitated invalid in a wheelchair.

There must be a lesson it that story somewhere.

Safe as milk

Best before 19-11-66
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Everything in your fridge has a Best-Before date on them.

Milk goes bad... well not really it just changes. Some little microbe decides that it can reproduce by utilizing the lactose which is a sugar in the milk and as a by product lactic acid is produced.

Of course since all the milky goodness is now forced to exist in an acid environment the casein protein of the milk denaturates and unfolds, and as a consequence the texture of the milk changes. It curddles.

Now some people would say the milk has gone bad, and other people from other cultures would call it buttermilk and drink it down.

Proteins in milk have a habit of expressing themselves in different ways and it usually finds an expression when the proteins become denaturated. Heat is another way of denaturating a protein. Boil up some milk and then leave it to cool and a skin will form on the surface of the milk. The skin is denaturated protein.

P.S. What a load of codswollop. The protein stuff was good and that is the way milk gets modified to make fermented milk products, but I tell you here and now if you eat bad stuff then you will get sick.

I should know I was up at 3 in the morning with a blowtorch at my backside singing John Cash's "Ring of fire", while my stomach churned like a cement mixer as a prelude to projectile vomiting. I am in bed for the day and well past my sell-by-date.

When the gods ruled our hearts

Doof

It has been said by the Greeks that whom the Gods would destroy first they make insane. But then again the Greeks had strange ideas about Gods. The Greeks never got angry. It was always the goddess of anger that invaded their heart. It was she that made them go to war and fight. The Goddess of war was responsible for all the evil that they did to each other.


Kapow

But then there was also the goddess of compasion, who could also invade your heart, and inexplicably you would for some obscure reason, unfathomable to you enemies, show them mercy, even though they did not deserve it.


Biff

Often the godess of anger would get her brothers rage and fury to invade a persons heart, and then there was no controlling them. When faced with such unmitgated wrath the goddess of compassion would call up her brothers and sisters, mercy and love, and there would be a monumental stand off.

Each side calling up reinforcements, jealousy, envy, hatred, vengence, retribution, revenge, bitterness, all aligning themselves under the banner of the goddess of anger. What chance did forgiveness, reconcilliation, goodness, benevolence, charity have against such mighty foes?



Wauuuuugh

It was usual that the old god of tiredness was the one who resolved the situation.

The world would be a better place if more people were tired. It would solve so many problems. If they were tired of arguing, tired of fighting, tired of scheming, tired of wheeling and dealing.

Being tired means you need sleep and everyone is innocent when they dream.

The trouble with being blind

The first thing you see is the shirt collar. One peak of the collar is sticking out over the pullover, while the other one is tucked in underneath the pullover. If you look closely one trouser leg will often be hitched up over the top of the bootleg, and the overcoat will be buttoned up wrongly, the first button having been put into the second buttonhole, so the whole coat is hanging lopsided off the shoulders, and the hem is six inches lower on the left than on the right.

You then notice the bed head hairstyle, all spikey and out of control at the back, and the egg yolk on the chin, and the bristles of hair on the adam's apple that the razor has missed. Then there is the Stevie Wonder waving of the head from side to side as though they are being wafted by some huge invisible giant fan.

They walk with hesitant steps and for the partially sighted a shadow on the ground can be a unexpected hole. The trouble with being blind is that you can not see how scary you look. You have no way of knowing that you have egg on your face, and that your chaotic nervous movements to avoid falling into holes or stumbling up steps that aren't there, are viewed by the outside world as some sort of psychotic mental aberation manifesting itself as schitzoid dancing while being unkempt and badly dressed.

But sit a blind man down in the back of your taxi and you might learn that Eliel Saarinen moved to America when he was fitfy and made a new career for himself. After being a huge success in Finland he experianced failure after failure, always coming second in any design competitions. The classic Samuel Beckett line 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' could have been applied to him. But in the end Saarinen did succeed and went on to found the Cranbrook college in the USA.

Never judge a book by its cover or a blind man by the way he buttons his coat.

Patrick pulls one

SATURN
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience at home.

The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.

Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation.

Hundreds of people claimed to have felt it. One woman even reported that she and her 11 friends floated around the room.

What did I learn in the taxi today #2

1) Picked up an old customer with a city card. Last time it did not work and she had to pay with money. This time it was OK. She sat silent for most of the journey, wondering no doubt if that idiot of a driver would get her card to work this time.

2) Picked up an old man and took him to Heikkitori. He spoke in a very strange way as though he had a speach impediment. It turns out he had a by-pass operation and some of the "plaque" in the arteries had got loose and had lodged in his brain, and he had lost the ability to speak. He was going to the health centre to get remedial lessons which would help him to speak again. Besides not being able to speak properly he had lost the ability to write. Letters and words were completely incomprehensible, and could just as well be chineese characters for all the sense they made to him. His memory was gone so he could not remember phone numbers for example, and he found himself in a fix cos he could not write things down, and if somebody else wrote the numbers down he could not read them. Have a heart operation and you go from being a well educated man to becoming illiterate.

3) Took 3 women to Sello. The woman in the front was an invalid. The two women in the back nattered away like maniacs. One stuffed her face with a rye bread sandwich and laughed as though she were about to choke, and spat crumbs down her breasts. Her mate talked so fast it sounded like the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun and at the end of every sentence she made a long keening laugh as a form of punctuation. They were going to see an afternoon show that featured belly-dancing.

4) Pick up a young nurse who did not know where she wanted to go. Somewhere along the road to Jorvi, and industrial estate near Laaksolahti. Her friends had been drinking all morning and she was missing all the "fun". I took her to some run down industrial estate on a dead-end road and left her shivering at a padlocked gate. I wondered as I drove away why is it that some girls will insist in exposing their belly buttons in the middle of winter.

5) Took a well dressed couple from Kaunianen to Rittarihoune for the "Knight's Ball". I drove them straight to the door because the woman had on her dancing shoes and did not want to walk in them. I got honked at an had to drive away much to her annoyance.

6) Took a couple to a wedding in Otaniemi. The lady was wearing a wonderful perfume. I asked her what it was. She said "Open Heart" I have never heard of it. I do so hope it was not by some company called "Surgery". Now that I think of it perhaps it was called "happy heart" I was still thinking about how weird it must be to loose the ability to read and write let alone speak after open heart surgery.

7) Picked up a mother and your daughter from the airport. The daughter had a toy fox called Toppi. The navigation system has an english woman giving me directions and the little girls wondered who was taking. I told her it was "Katie Kettu" She asked her mother if this was true. Her mother said no it was not true and that I was trying to trick her. I insisted it was "Katie Kettu" and the little girl was happy with that.

8) Back to the airport and picked up a woman who had come from Leevi. She had been skiing. Had gone to sauna with a shaman who had washed her and purified her. Apparently he had washed all of her sins away with ice cold water. Not only her passed sins but also the future ones.
She seemed to be very happy with this thought of cleansing.

9) Last lift of the night was a Scottish woman. We sang together

Bee-Baw-Babbity Babbity Babbity
Bee-Baw-Babbity Babbity Babbity
a lassie or a wee laddie

Ah widnae hae a lassie-o a lassie-o a lasssi-o
Ah widnae hae a lassie-o a lassie-o a lasssi-o
Ah'd raither hae a wee laddie.

Kneel doon kiss the groon, kiss the groon, kiss the groon
Kneel doon kiss the groon, kiss the groon, kiss the groon
A lassie or a wee laddie?

It was a good day.

Fokker 104

Kullervo is a good name. Solid from the Kalevela and he flew a Fokker during the winter war, and during the contiuation war, and in the Lapland war. He was an aerial photographer and he flew a biplane called a Fokker 104.

It was a good plane because it was so maneuverable, by comparison the Russian planes were slow and combersome. If they were being chased the pilot would put the plane into a step dive, and the Russian planes could not follow since their decent had to be more gradual.

The Fokker 104 was a two man plane and the piolet had a glass roof over his head, but the photographer had to hang over the side with a huge camera straped to the front of his body and take photos. It was cold. The plane also had a english camera called an "Eagle" built into the floor but it was hopeless.



When the Russian planes got better then new tactics had to be used. Only going out on cloudy days and flying in the clouds and droping down to take photos, and if anybody attacked then zooming back up into the clouds to get lost.

The idea was to take photos of the enemy lines. Once the photos were developed they were joined together to make a map, and then the artillary would have something to shoot at. Kullervo would then go up in the Fokker and direct the fire from the ground below until the shells would hit the target.



After the war Kullervo became a lawyer. He has some new under-carriage with him all the time. It is his rollator and he can not move without it. His wife says the body does not work properly any more, but the brain and the tongue are still fully functional.

Kullervo has written a book called FK Lentue. You can get it from the library it is by Kullervo Kemppinen. When you look at the origins of the name Kullervo you discover it is and ancient on and his story can be read in the Kalevela. Sibelius himself wrote an opera called Kullervo



Three times they tried to kill Kullervo then they gave up. The Fokker however was shot to bits and its wings were shreded to tatters by bullets. The pilot had to make a crash landing.

Kullervo has a piece of the propellor on his wall to remind him that he survived three wars.

A wobble in the world

The classic
Originally uploaded by Pip.

Did I dream it or was there a play about somebody who placed lots of speak your weight machines at the north pole in the hope that they would attract lots of ships with their promises of substantial weight loss, and then the world goes into this wobble, and no longer spins evenly on its axis, and the seas pile up, and people on bikes going down hills go into a Kevin Kegan speed wobble, and the drums inside washing machine all become unevenly loaded, and the centrifugal force is such that the machines break loose from their attachments to the wall an bounce around the room like a bucking bronco. And lets not talk about gyroscopes guiding fighter planes, and spinning tops, and whirling dervishes, and protons in a cyclotron, and pity the poor man on the motor bike on the wall of death.

We just take it for granted that the world will spin on it's axis, and day will follow night, and as the earth circles in its orbit we will have one season after another. It is all so perfect.

Yes they say that at times in the past the globe has flipped and the north pole has become the south pole.

I read on the web... If you listen to Hopi Indian Legends at one time the poles flipped all hell broke lose, ocean waves as tall as mountains came crashing over the land, mountains plunged into the sea and the entire earth spun around aimlessly, froze over and even flipped over twice.

But we really don't need weight speaking machines to do the job for us. For on the radio I heard that the glaciers of Greenland are melting at twice the normal speed, and the sea level is estimated to rise by 7 meters.

Just imaging all of that mass disappearing from the north pole. It is enough to send the world into a speed wobble. As if God had unevenly packed his spin dryer.

Wouldn't it be just fine if the north and south pole ended up at the equator. That would really confuse all those birds that navigate by magnetic fields, and it might save us from the bird flu pandemic.

Knitting needles

Washboard sky
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Sure the sky is big and it has got many colours, the yellows, reds and blues, and nobody asks who paints the sky those colours, and why on different days you get a different pallette, but what surprises me more, is who was the first person to knit?

I mean to say there were no shops to go out and buy knitting needles, and there were no handy balls of wool hanging about, wool that you could pick up at a jumble sale, or from a discount bin, so they must have used sticks or twigs or straws, and they must have had some sort of yarn, and why in the hell did they make long stings of wool, if not for knitting.

Then they had to go about inventing stiches, the purls and the plains, and using 5 needles to make a sock or a glove. Knitting must have been a really sophisticated skill, requiring more expertise than threading some sinew through a bone needle and sewing some fur together.

But today we have so many fabrics cotton, gore-tex, nylon, polyester, crimpalene, linen, and they are miraculously feed into machines that make us clothes, and we are not amazed that we can wear a down jacket to keep us warm in winter.

We take it for granted, just as the colours in the sky.

Baz before Rouge

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '05

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.

Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future.

Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.

Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy.

Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults.

If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body.

Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance - even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions., even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go,but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Travel.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Accept certain inalienable truths:

Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

What's my name?

What is the temperature.
-It is -10C
Drive to Pohjantori and we will wait. Even if we have to wait until 8 o'clock.
-That is about an hour away and the meter will be running.
Don't worry you will get your money. Put the radio on.
-What station?
Savelradio I like the voice of the man on there.
-Do you think you can tell something about a person from their voice?
No.
-Why not?
Johnny Forsberg had a voice as warm as treacle, and it was impossible not to fall in love with him, but he was a rat faced runt, with long lanky greasy hair when you saw him up close.
-Marylin could do a dumb blonde voice but she was quite smart.
What do you think my name is?
-Velma?
Velma is not a name.
-Yes it is. All the gangster's molls were called Velma.
So you think I am a kept woman?
-No.
So what is my name?
-Helena?
No
-Helga?
No
-Helvi?
Hell no!!!
-Hildegard?
Like the mystic nun from Bingen? Hildegard von Bingen? Triple hell no!!!
-So you know about mystical chanting from the midlle ages?
Get real, and say what brought you to Finland?
-An aeroplane.
What's the time?
-7:30
We will give him another half hour then, and if he does not show, we go.
-Bridgette?
So you are going for the film stars now?
-Marlene?
As in Dietrich? No.
-Sophia?
Like Loren? No.
-Carmen?
As in Diaz? No.
-Are you sure you want to wait? That clock is ticking and is racking up the euros.
Don't worry you will get your money.
-Aino?
From the Kalevela?
-Yes.
The one that killed herself because she did not want to marry that old shamman... no way.
-Agnes?
Never heard of that.
-In Scotland they write Agnes backwards so there is a Scottish girl's name called Senga
Sounds like a strawberry.
-A strawberry blonde?
Turn the radio off and lets go.
-Where to?
Back to the place where you picked me up.
-Well that has been the most unusual ride I have ever had. That will be 40 euros.
Here's 50 and keep the change. Even priests get paid for talking.

What did you learn in the taxi today #1

1) A man from Oulu thinks Finland will win medals in the winter olympics.

2) Two old women say that no matter how nice they speak the Finnish language is so harsh that it sounds that they are arguing all the time.

3) A man with a hip replacement said during the operation the doctors put lots of leads and tubes into his spine. He was told one sensor monitored if he would feel pain and then it would control other pumps which would inject pain-killers into his spine so he would feel no pain during the operation.

4) Antti was mentally handicaped. He had an address in his purse and asked to be taken there. He gave me advice on how to get there. He pointed straight ahead and said turn right. He said turn left and pointed straight ahead. We arrived OK thanks to the on-board navigator.

5) A retired Prof told me that the northern lights was due to electro-magnetism. He lived in the shortest street in Helsinki. It was about 30m long and called Välikatu.
On the corner of that street is a red building with lovely curves. Looking at it made me want to live there. Some houses are like that. I decided to be on the look out for houses that made me happy.

6) Picked up a man from Vermo. He had been to the races and had lost 200 euros. He wanted to be taken to the Casino in downtown Helsinki so he could win his money back.

7) A woman told me she had gone window-shopping in her wheelchair and had a meal at Chico's afterwards. She was a sports fanatic and said the Finnish women's ice hockey team would win a medal at the winter olympics. They had already beaten the Germans 3-0.

8) Rich people are insulted if you ask them if they want a receipt. Rich people never ask for receipts.

9) THe last customer from Lansi Auto Arena said that the Espoo hockey team "The Blues" won 4-3

Beans beans the magical fruit...

D: Do what? Anyway, what's a preposition, Pete?
P: They're all them little words what tell you the relationship between a verb and a noun, or a noun and a noun. These little words can determine the entire meaning of a sentence.
D: You've lost me already, Pete.
P: Here's an example. Listen. "We are having beans for dinner".
D: No, we aren't, Pete. We've been eating fish and chips. You want to go easy on beans, Pete. They can talk back to you something terrible.
P: No, no! Listen carefully. "We had beans for dinner". Compare that with "We had beans to dinner".
D: Now you're getting silly, Pete. You can't go around inviting beans to dinner. You'd be off your rocker. It would get out. People would talk, if you started asking beans round to dinner.
P: I beg to differ, Dud. I distinctly overheard a bloke the other day saying "You must come round for a spot of tiffin, old bean". I rest my case.
D: (looking around & under the table) You didn't bring a case in with you. But on this bean business, you must admit that it would be very awkward, turning to your neighbour at the dining table and finding yourself looking at a bean.
P: Well, yes, the prospects for conversation with a bean would be limited. The opportunities for wit and repartee, with a bean, would be severely constrained.
D: Worse than that, Pete. Specially if it was a French Bean. The language barrier, apart from anything else, would significantly inhibit effective two-way communication.
P: Or a Runner Bean. Might dash off half way through dinner. Very embarrassing for the host. And you'd have no-one to talk to at all on one side, for the rest of the evening.
D: Or a Chilli Bean. A really chilly bean could be a very frosty dining companion. You'd end up acting all chivalrous and offering to wrap your jacket round it. And who knows where that might lead?
P: Or a Broad Bean. I've nothing against fat people, but I wouldn't want to sit next to a really broad bean. Very cramped it would be, when you're trying to eat.
D: Or a Butter Bean. Potentially disastrous. Imagine how you'd feel if you absent-mindedly spread one of your fellow diners over a piece of bread.
P: Doesn't bear thinking about. Don't take me there, Dudley.
D: I won't, Pete, Doesn't near thinking about, does it? Same goes for grammar, in my opinion. If grammar is what gets you talking to vegetables at meal times, I'm against it. And I'm sure these chips agree, don't you, chips?
P: Er, Dud - jolly good chaps, those chips - but they can't talk you know. 

I'm getting married in the morning

"Soili, listen the driver is a Scot... marvellous innit Soili innit"

"Jo"

"Getting married tommorow, and how am I going to get this white paint off my chin? Soili hey Soili will it wash out?

"Jo"

"Look since this is my stag party this ride should be for free... ex niin Soili?

"Niin"

"Soili sweatheart... I really love you, do you love me?"

"No jo"

"But after the reception the pigs are comming to put me in the slammer, and I'll be gone for six months. Will you wait for me?

"Jo"

"Soili I don't have any money, be a darling and pay the cab"

"No Jo"

"Soili no need to get nervous. No need to get upset. Say something to the cab driver"

"Haista paskaa" 

For I am a man under authority

C.G. Mannerheim
Originally uploaded by Kirja-addikti.

I picked him up from the verteran's hospital in Kauninen, he was 85 if he was a day and came strutting out of the doorway, back as straight as a ramrod and a Mannerhiem hat on his head. A poor nurse came scuttling behind carrying his bags.

"To the airport"

was all he said. The drive was uneventful and silent. Apon arrival he got out of the taxi and said.

"Follow me and bring my bags"

He strode off, and never once looked back. He expected me to follow. I caught up with him in the departure lounge.

"Find out where the check-in for Kemi is"

and here am I thinking why don't you join the end of the queue and wait your turn, but since he is a war veteran I scurry to the front of the queue with his bags and ask the girl at the check-in if this is the queue for Kemi and she said that it was.

So I montioned to him that this was the Kemi queue and he strode passed everyone in the queue... just ignored them as if they were not there, and marched straight to the front of the queue, where he commanded the girl at the desk to check his bags in. She did. The people in the queue were gawping at the affrontery of the man. He did not flinch. It almost seemed that he considered it his right to be served first.

To me he clicked his heels together nodded his head as a sign of dismissal and said

"Thanks for you service you are dismissed"

Obviously he was a man who was used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Obviously he was also oblivious to the needs of anybody else. He might have been a very dangerous man to be with in a war, or since he was still alive he may have been a very safe man to be with. Some people have the authority to command others do not.

The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Auntie Bonker's Rice Noodles

Auntie Bonker's Rice Noodles
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

I quite like the idea of designing packaging for non-existant products. Bonk Ltd already does it for non-existant machines that have absolutely no purpose or function, but nevertheless look good, and might just work if you were able to find the right switch to turn them on.

So what can you say about Auntie Bonker's Rice noodles. Well the colour scheme is the same as for Uncle Ben's rice and up there where Uncle Ben should be is Condolezza Rice.

The original slogan was "bringing more to the table" and that usually means bringing more to the US table and less to the other tables around the world.

The EU has a ban on American beef because they believe it is pumped full of growth hormones, and from the number of obese people in the USA, and their penchant for fast food hamburgers. the EU may have a point.

Britain at one time during the days of the Empire prohibited India from exporting cotton products. The could however export the raw cotton to the Lancshire mills where it was turned into textiles and sold back to India at exhorbitant prices. Ghandi spun his own cloth as a protest. and encouraged others to do the same.

The forest in Borneo is being cut down by Japanese loggers and a head-hunter when interviewed on the matter said, "The forest is our skin, and what man can live without his skin?" When asked what was his solution to the problem of the Japanese loggers, he said "We have a very simple plan. First we will kill them and then we will eat them."

Simple people have simple solutions.

Alcohol dehydrogenase blues.

Alcohol dehydrogenase blues.
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Alcohol dehydrogenase blues

You know what; there is a company up in Iceland that has got hold of the medical records of everyone on that island like, and they know about every disease that everyone has ever had. Tonsillitis, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, schizophrenia; you name it, they know it.

No shit man??? That’s way weird.

Yeah!!! and what they have done is get samples of folks DNA, and looked for certain genes, and come up with the idea that certain genes produce certain diseases. I mean to say, they can even take a sample from a baby in the womb, and tell you if its going to be a spastic or whatever.

Man that’s capital Weird!!! Double hairy gnarly man.

Well they were not making enough money with the DNA analysis thing, so they sell all this information to some big insurance company. And you know what man, they begin to use it to evaluate risks when they sell health insurance. You know, like, if you have a heart attack gene there in no way you are going to get life insurance.

Bummer man, No way!!!

Capital way man. It’s all about risk evaluation, and the next thing you know it’s about crime prevention. I mean to say if the police got a hold of our DNA we’d be shoved straight in the slammer, faster than shit off a hot shovel.

Man your freaking me out, like major big time. Bad vibes man.

Mega mega major freak I’m telling you. Like, would you want to know if you were a Tay-Sachs carrier? You are screwed if you get one base pair wrong. Just one letter wrong. Like one in twenty five Ashkenazi Jews are carriers of Tay-Sachs disease, and they screen themselves so they don’t team up with the wrong partner.

Holy shit, you mean no more screwing around?

Next thing you know there’s a eugenics programme going, and marriage laws about who can wed and what not, and after that, to get it right, people are having designer babies. You know like, they’d have babies with the brains of Albert Einstein and the bodies of Britney Spears.

But what if the babies got Britney’s brains… that would be way cool man, a world of singing babies.

Yeah that would be way cool!!! Babies singing hit me one more time. There must be, just gotta be a singing gene out there. Some protein that codes for good vocal chords, some bit of DNA that gives you perfect pitch. They could inject it into all of those losers that audition for pop-idol.

You mean like a talent gene??? Right on!!!

Exactly!!! You would never need to practice the piano, you would just sit down and play it, and the French could have a language gene implanted so they would be forced to speak something other than Froggie.

Crescent fresh idea dude. They should go for it major like!!!

You want to know something really weird? Like some dude in Japan took the notes from the “Death March” by Mozart and used some strange algorithm to convert them into a protein sequence, and then, when he searched some protein database in Switzerland he found out that the notes had been transcribed into a protein that was responsible for cancer. You get it?

Musical DNA like??? Incredible with a capital in!!!

Exactly!!! So here’s my plan, I mean to say, I am thinking out of the box here. Tossin’ a few ideas around. It’s simple really. You know that serotonin or something like that, some dopamine thing, some chemical from this spliff, or just plain old booze, alters the way we feel, readjusts our brain chemistry. Well we reverse the process, and we turn the chemical or protein or whatever, into music.

Like music is the drug??? That rawks man!!! Kool!!! Sure as hell would knock seven colours of shit out of MTV. We could make millions… Wicked… Yeah!!!

Mega Kool dudester!!!

Alcohol dehydrogenase blues

When we have gone our shadows will remain.

I have tasted the salt of a woman's tears. It was the tenderest of moments. It happened when I kissed her cheek.

When the sun goes away our shadows disappear, but I have cast a shadow that will never disappear, because the Almighty has cast his shadow over me.

I have tasted the salt of my own tears, when they trickled down my cheek. They did not taste bitter.

It is a matter of honour

The girl with down's syndrom said "don't leave me honey," her mother said she had learn it from the "bold and the beautiful" Tv show. I said "that's OK by me Baby".

At the speed bumps she raised her hands and went "Whee!!!" I drove faster at the next speed bump took my hands off the whell and went "Whee!!!" as well. She squirmed in the back seat with laghter.

She was a waitress who during the war served drinks to Mannerheim in the upstairs room at hotel KÄMP. The carpets were so thick her high heel shoes sunk into them.

Both of the war veterans in the back seat were deaf. One said "What did you say?" the other said "What?" and the first one said "What did you say?" and the second one said "What?"

The man who had three strokes wanted to go for a "Kerab" His speech was slured. I took him for a Kebab and he was happy.

The boy's said that his brother with cerebal palsy was called Larry but he prefered to be called Neo after a character from the Matrix.

The man with no legs sat silent in the front seat of the car.

The blind woman could not tell me whether to turn left or right since she did not know the road she was going. When she left me she said "See you".

The woman who had no tongue and could not speak pointed vigourously with her hand to tell me where to go. We arrived exactly where she wanted to go.

The drunk sang two Tapio Rautiovara songs and made me cry. "Kyllä se minne putki kun ihmiset itkea" he said proudly and gave me a 5 euro tip. I will have to cry more often.

She had a club foot and pushed the rollator in front of her and then draged her legs behind it. Her friend was straight out of Sunset Bulevard, her face caked with makeup. She was 80 if she was a day. The lady with the club foot stroked my face and said I was wonderful, while Bette Davis took me by the ears and kissed my cheek, leaving red lipstick on my cheek. I waved at them as I drove away. They tittered behind their hands like young school girls and waved back.

Taxis are of the dead and dying.