Schrödinger’s Car

Hi Honey - today car park funny ... not get mad nah?

A car, along with a gender-neutral person of no particular ethnicity holding a Zippo and a can of gas, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal handbag mirror detects a V-sign, the Zippo is sparked, igniting the gas that sets fire to the car. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the car is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the car either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

Forget the French … listen to the Irish

George Best (1946-2005)

All the existentialism you’ll ever need.

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

Round the Mulberry Bush

Monday        I’m a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.

Tuesday        I know it all.  I just can’t remember it all at once

Wednesday      I doubt even my doubts.

Thursday        I think I’m doing fine, method-acting in my own life … and then it hits me: this is what I have become and this is really real.

Friday        The only reason I’m not angry all the time is lack of enthusiasm.

Saturday        I fully realise that I am depressed because of my inability to construct a future.

Sunday        I used to get high on life but lately I’ve built up a resistance.

Monday (again)    I’m a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.

More from Jon’s Uncle …

 

… where a fly without wings is a walk.

WANTED

WANTED: ELECTRIC KILN for school, big enough for 40 children.

click to enlarge

WANTED: Self-storing aluminum window salesman.
WANTED BY MACHINE TOOL FACTORY: Male parts handlers.
WANTED: Woman to share flat. w/ washer and dryer.
NOW ACCEPTING applications for cooks between 2 and 5.
HAVE FAMILY, would like to exchange for home in Amsterdam.
EXTREMELY INDEPENDENT MALE. 17 years old, needs to rent room.  Call his mother on 0493-612837
2 YEAR old teacher needed.  9-6.  Experience required.
AVAILABLE.  French speaking secretary who speaks floorless English.
AVAILABLE.  Work skills: Strong on interpersonal relationships, typing,filing, and reproduction.
3-ROOM FLAT. incl. heat, hot water, stove, refrig., smoke alarm, single female.
DEWHURSTS due to staff problems : Typewriter: works for only £10. Nobody can beat our meat.

FOR  SALE

FOR SALE: Bull dog.  Will eat anything.  Loves children.
FOR SALE: 9-volt smoke alarm with silencer.
MUST SELL: 3 grave spaces in Gorleston-on-sea, very reasonable.  Plus air-conditioner.
MUST SELL: Health food store, due to failing health.
FOR SALE: Instant coffee table.
FOR SALE: Gent’s upright urinal; also microphone, stand, and amplifier.
LOST: 2-year-old brown male Datsun, very well behaved and friendly.
FOR RENT: Bridal suite.  Adults only.
FOR RENT: Fully furnished house.  Includes three toilets.  £200 per wee.
FOR RENT: Front room, suitable for two ladies, use of kitchen or two gentlemen.
PART-TIME HELP WANTED.  Must have creative skills, drivers license, and car with outgoing
personality.

CBT

“If I can’t be a star, I won’t get out of bed.”

Shopping Tips #1 : We’re going to need shoes, lots of shoes…

Lingerie to one side, shopping with the love of your life can be a trying experience for even the most patient of men  and by far the most trying of those experiences is clothes shopping (oddly enough this applies even if the clothes are for you).

So, an essential tip: before leaving the house, insist that your sigoth takes every pair of shoes she owns with her (not just a picture, the actual shoes), carrying them from shop to shop … whatever else happens, it certainly won’t be boring –  and, oh yes … did someone mention lingerie?

Health and Knowledge and Wealth and Power (Passion and Poems and Sex)

–It all comes down to this.

Once muscle has died then, like any other tissue, it cannot be regenerated. Once dead, it stays dead. The heart consists largely of a special muscle, and unlike, say, the liver, it does not have any redundancy : it is all used all the time. It follows, therefore that when heart tissue dies, the heart effectively becomes smaller and has a correspondingly reduced capacity. This dead heart tissue is called an infarction, hence Myocardial Infarction –> M.I. –> Heart Attack.

Jack opened his eyes. He had no idea where he was or what had happened. He had a large tube down his throat (he didn’t know it but this was keeping him breathing) yet felt no discomfort. He was strangely calm. There were machines. The machines were in control. All was well.

Time passed.

Jack’s  ECG looked like it had been drawn by a dyslexic child (or a Doctor writing a prescription) .

Jack’s blood tested positive for troponin, confirming that he’d suffered an M.I., and given the degree of abnormality of the ECG, a pretty large one. Next the echo.
The ultrasound showed  the degree and position of the infarction: the amount of heart tissue (muscle) that had died. If luck is ever the right word in situations like this, Jack had been lucky: the blockage in the artery had occured half way up the heart, as opposed to at the top : about a third of his heart was dead.

Two week after being discharged from the hospital, Jack is back in it: Cardiac rehab. This consists of a relaxing chat with the cardiac nurse, a palatable chat with the cardiac dietician and some light excercise with a Welshman (no chatting). All the blood tests (prepared earlier) are encouraging: liver function is good, kidney function is excellent and there are no traces of the dreaded troponin. Weight is down (we’ll have to do something about that) and there are some side-effects from the medication (but that’s to be expected) … so all that’s left is a quick ECG and that’ll be that for another six weeks. The ECG: “All over the place” was the phrase used and hushed were the tones used to say it. Even compared with the (by no means usual) baseline from a fortnight before (a flit back to A&E following some “adjustment”), concerns were raised to the point that a further echo was deemed necessary. Right now. So, back across the lift well to the imaging cubby and a short wait for the senior Cardiologist (happily diverted from his meandering “rounds”).

“Turn the gain up.” “Take one there” “Don’t waste a shot” “Get round the side” “How does this compare …” “Well …” Jack’s heart had begun to heal: the infarction had started to reverse itself, which was impossible. As Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying: “When you have exhausted all other possibilities, whatever is left, however unlikely, must be …”. As dead tissue cannot regenerate itself, it must not have been dead – it must have just looked dead … it must have been “stunned”. Suffice to say, a significant amount of “infarcted tissue” was now un-dead, which is not to say it’s vampiric but rather alive, in the sense that it is now functioning as heart muscle tissue should (obviously a heart with “heart”): about ten percent of his heart remained dead. Decimated but not out. Jack was used to being decimated: definitely something he could live with.

“It’s just me, holding my hand on my heart.” Jack sung to himself as he wandered off …

DisCERNing T.V.

From singularity to everything in a less time than it takes  to eat a packet of M&M theories, the universe can be said to have begun around ten thousand million years ago.  It took its place, in its own little bubble, amongst all the other universes bobbing around in hyperspace. This was the first big-bang.

In 1986, there was a second big-bang, this time in London. Whereas the first big-bang separated impossible density into everything there is, the second  combined things (such as a jobber and a broker, debt and investments), chewed them around and spat them out in random directions. Of course, one consequence of the first big-bang that these outpourings could not escape, was gravity. Not just a good idea, it’s the law (thank you Adam). Thus a house fired from a large gun will hit the ground at the same time as a (similarly sized) investor jumping from a twelfth floor window.

The third big-bang is on Channel 4. The Bare-naked Lady has sung.

[Tim Shreeve]

Fairy Internals