Mondays Missives

• A lot of people who have been comatose open their eyes as they die. The first thing you think when you see it happen is what do they see? If they are looking at a blank wall I step into their field of view with a kind/warm expression and smile at them and tell them they will be OK and then back away. If looking toward a window or family portraits etc. I leave it at that.



• A 100 years from now people will be wearing Polo and Henley shirts.



• It made no sense in the 50s and 60s when the designers of the day would roll out ridiculous looking dress made of plastics. Styles may come and go (and come back even) but, a human wrapped in plastic will always be a bad idea.



• Things aren't often as they seem nor do they turn out the way we envision they will.



• Someone recently told me I would look good in a pink polo shirt. I think pink shirts for guys may be the white devils lie but, I guess I'll keep an open mind. I think women should wear pink though.



• The patient I mentioned in the past who played golf into her 80s looked at me like I was an imbecile and said,"You better start." when I told her I never played.



• Recently a nurse from another agency made a very overt sexual advance toward me- kind of freaked me out at first then made me feel good.



• It usually starts with them rubbing my bald head...

Missives: Special Bonus Edition

Our ride for the zombie apocalypse- you get shotgun

• In the news: "Man bites off end of own penis. Police found him after receiving an anonymous tip"




• If I'm lyin' I'm dying- that's what it said.




• My present patient played golf well into her 80s.




• There's a line to a song that says," Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies- you'll never know just how you look in other peoples eyes." The last part is so true and such a shame sometimes because the world might be a better place if we could every once in a while.




• The singers dad was MR. Peppermint.




• Zombie movies are making a big comeback and I couldn't be happier.




• I'm telling you- you'll be glad to know me when Hell is full and the dead walk the earth and I know exactly what to do.




• I could never have anything to do with a woman who wears open toe shoes and hose.

Brittania Missives

• A recent commenter on here made me start thinking about jolly old England.



• There may be example of a parent country and former colony becoming as good allies as we but, I'm not aware of it. When the world devolves into a bloodbath quest for survival of civilization, whether it's against zombies or religious nuts- we'll be standing there shoulder to shoulder.



• A funny thing historians have sometimes pointed out is how useless/senseless the War of 1812 was- they missed the whole point: it took that to convince the King the US really was for better or worse independent- get over it. Until that war England thought the result of the Revolution was basically a fluke. I think our relations would have solidified over the years and we would have become allies but, I think it really was necessary to keep the war for indepence from being an unresolved sore spot from the Crown on down to the general population.



• There's one thing that surprised me I learned fairly recently- in the years leading up to the Revolution even run of the mill Brits but, especially those in higher English society not just the Empires leadership were hot for the colonials to be put in their place.



• What do English schoolchildren call the Revolution?



• A woman can be a pig or a man an ugly slob but, put an English accent on them? Whoa baby, the average American can't get enough of them. Some of the ones I know continue to play off their accents and lay it on thick even after being here for 20-30 years.



• Had a friend once who could work the girls with an English (or sometimes Australian) accent like nothing you've ever seen before.



• He was born in Fort Worth Texas.



• Can name plenty of contributions of English culture to the world but, can't name a single thing about their tastes that appeals to me and that I have or would apply to my life.



• Jaguar cars in the right models and years are pretty awesome though and I do have an open mind about the culture in general.



• Need to learn more though and would love to visit. Had a friend years ago from Hampshire and he hung out with me in Texas and I was supposed to go visit him but, you know how those things go...



• At least I'm pretty sure it was Hampshire: he called it Hamps or Hants? when he would get on a roll telling stories about home.



• He went to school in high school to be a groundsmen on golf courses. One day we were out on my motorcycle and I took him out to look at a rich guys private zoo in Decatur TX. We turned near the golf course he said," STOP the bike, stop stop stop!" I obliged and he took off at a dead run toward the groundskeeper (I'll never forget the look on the guys face as he raised the tool he was holding in preparatory self defense) who was at the hole closest to the road and started talking. When he came back he gave me a full rundown of the differences and similarities of our two systems of sod maintenance- very interesting.



• Not



• We had pancakes one morning. Bleary eyed he said,"Is it pancake day?" Evidently they have a pancake day over there. I said,"Dude, EVERY day is pancake day here!"


• Another memory of Adam- 100mph on my KZ1000 motorcycle and him pounding me on the back shouting,"Woo Hoo- Unbelievable. This is brilliant, it's bloody brilliant!"



• Allow me a brief heresy: not a great Beatles fan.



• Still remember exactly what I was doing and where I was when I first heard the Sex Pistols though.



• I love Brit coms although I plain, flat do not understand Chef although I tried when it first came out. All he did was scream at, berate and belittle his staff and others- didn't seem funny. I'm pretty sure it was meant to release some social tensions for guilty whites and self conscious blacks because he was black and raged constantly against a largely white cast of characters but, I'm not sure.



• Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Waiting For God, Fawlty Towers = genius.



• The more shaky the science or historical accuracy of an educational program- the more like they are to use an English narrator.



• That country will essentially be the first modern, civilised nation to fall to Islam and there is nothing that can (or will?) be done to prevent that.


• "The British version of the product is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful flavour, which is extremely salty and savoury with umami qualities, somewhat comparable to soy sauce. This distinctive taste is reflected in the British company's marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." It is similar to the Australian Vegemite and Swiss Cenovis." wikipedia definition of marmite


• Oh my. See what I mean about their tastes and my lack of adoption thereof?



• Thanks for inspiration Marmsie. You were a muse for a day even if never before or again.

A Prediction

• The time will come when capped off landfills will be extensively mined for the buried resources.




• Yes, I know that methane gas is already commonly extracted, it's one of the uses that causes me to make the above claim. What I mean is we'll see full scale efforts to take metals (for one) of course when standard extraction of raw materials becomes too expensive but, they'll be taking gasses and other components we may not even be familiar with for purposes we could only guess at now. There is a tremendous amount of energy potential in the giant landfills across the US.




• It will be more common as robotic technology becomes more sophisticated (especially sniffer tech.) and cheaper.




• The National Elephant Center is on a landfill site owned by Waste Management http://www.thenationalelephantcenter.org/ with elephants arriving late 2009.

• Already parks, housing developments, industrial parks are planned in other areas over closed landfills.

• When the public learns extractors are wanting to come in and exploit some of these sites communities will protest- so in essence instead of saying "Not in my backyard" to a dump as we've often heard in the past, they'll be saying, "Save Our Dump!"

The above picture is a landfill that's been converted to a wildlife preserve. Look here http://www.town.cedarburg.wi.us/cm/pdfs/Former%20Landfill%20to%20Park%20Examples.pdf for other examples.