Better Already

HURRAH! As Bridget Jones would say. It's going away. No more razorblade coughs. No more ashcans. My snot is clear (as I'm sure you wanted to know). My ears are clear.

O man that was the sorest sore throat I've had in a long time. All my fault for smoking cigarettes I suppose. (One reason I never go to doctors about these things; I know what they'll say ~ Give up smoking ...

Hey did you know the British Government's Pandemic Flu Service are said to have given priority the nation's junkies in the ongoing Tamiflu-handout. Anyone can get the tabs just by phoning a helpline, claiming to have various flu symptoms ~ and of course symptoms of piggie flu are no different to any other type; they're not even more severe, in fact some doctors were saying swine flu tends if anything to be milder than the bog-standard type...

The operator gives a reference number and your registered "flu friend" who could be a work colleague, neighbour (or just you in disguise) trots or hobbles along to the local "flue centre" (these are already in operation) to receive a full course of Tamiflu tabs absolutely free.

Three cheers for Britain's "socialist National Health Service" ~ hurrah!!

Yes, as I was saying, anyone on methadone will be classed as a "vulnerable person" if the pandemic really does kick off, which is nice for me to know, but I'm sure the "scientific thinking" behind it (if any) is flawed. I read in the newspaper that junkies have supposedly weaker immune systems than the general population. But ask any heroin addict and they'll tell you that generally speaking you stop getting colds and flu for years at a time for as long as you use. (But when you do get them they hit harder.) I'm sure most addicts' immune systems are actually stronger ~ by a long shot ~ not weaker at all ...

Before I got sucked into the abyss of addiction I used regularly to get two or three colds or more, every year. I must have gone three years or more without catching any at all. And now I'm sure the average is less than one per year ... Which isn't necessarily good. I never used to complain about colds (not flu: I do mean common colds, as illustrated) because I always felt they cleaned the system out. There is, apparently, some truth to this, with the common cold virus causing a massive surge in interferon levels. Interferon battles and can conquer many viruses... indeed the only known cure for hepatitis C is interferon combination treatment, which reportedly makes you feel so ill you can barely get out of bed for half the week; but when it works it works completely, clearing the virus absolutely out from the body.

A small number of people are lucky enough to be able to fight off hepatitis C and even hep B without becoming "symptomatic" (ie sick)... and that makes them very lucky people indeed.

Anyway I have to go I'm still exhausted. Bye!

British Pandemic Flu Service Freefone Helpline: 0800 1 513 513

World Pandemic Flu-Watch

I've Not Been Near The Piggery...

... SO WHY THIS COMMON COLD? Yes! I have been struck down ill! Woke up three days ago feeling like someone had put out a cigarette in the back of my throat.

This got worse until it felt like a cig burn plus entire can full of hot ashes had been poured down there.

Then ears and nose. All full of itching inconvenience...

Yesterday it got worse and every cough was like coughing up razor blades.

But now it's getting better and people aren't keeping such a wide "it's pig flu!" berth ...

And that is why I haven't been online since Monday ...

My Halloween Nightmare

EVERY SINGLE DAY last week I had to get up extra-early for some reason or other. Which means feeling sleep-deprived for hours. Then not being able to sleep. Sleeping deeply. Then getting woken up too early and feeling sleep-deprived again. You know the pattern.

So come the weekend and no need to get up, of course I slept in, dreaming for hours. And because I ever so intelligently watched a Halloween horror film on Friday night my night was full of ghouls and demonic terrors.

What makes this a hundred times worse is that somehow, when I was younger, I learned not only to speak in my sleep but to yell and scream. Which means one single nightmare can wake the entire house. Yes, lovely business. I'm only posting this because I've nothing else to say. O yeah: and it's raining...

Seals!

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY...

SEALS, have always been (to me) the cutest furries of the arctic. They remind me of domestic dogs:



Covered in protective blubber they are immune to subzero temperatures. Though clumsy and slow on land these creatures swim so well it's like "underwater flying":



Seals eat fish ...



... and polar bears eat seals.



Humans used to club to death baby seals (but now it's illegal)... though they are still allowed to do it to adults ...



Lovely place, the Arctic, innit?

Cajun Chicken & A Real Ink Pen

I MISSED MORRISONS' special deal roast chicken legs yesterday lunchtime so I bought two raw drumsticks from the butchers by the MSG-chipshop (they have some secret recipe thing going on and I suspect MSG in the frying oil is surely it). These drumsticks were so enormous they looked like they'd come from a turkey. If not a swan. Anyway, rather than bang them in the oven 200C for 40 mins plain, I did a home-rapid-marinade consisting of Schwarz Cajun Seasoning in Value rapeseed oil Rapeseed's normally 10p a litre cheaper than sunflower or soya, is homegrown and lower in baddie-fats than either of the other two. Anyway I was quite liberal with the spicing and slavered on at least a flat teaspoonload on the two megalegs. These went in for the appointed time, after which I turned off the oven and let them cook inside as it cooled. Imagine my disappointment when, a full hour later, I knifed one open only to find a suspiciously pink interior. Unwilling to touch chicken that's even slightly underdone (and it would have been slightly undercooked if at all) I sliced the chicken off the bones, spread it out on the plate and oven-cooked for a further quarter hour.

This time, if anything, it was over done! But the cajun spicing and the skin came out amazingly crackly and gorgeous.

I will have to try this recipe again. for next time I have another lot of spices hardcore marinating in my cupboard (or should I slam it in the fridge?)

I was thinking of mixing this amazing cajun seasoning ~ which is quite similar to tikka masala, if you know that ~ in with flour to do home-made KFC. Can you do KFC in the oven? I don't really want to deep-fry because of the fire risk.

***

Sorry about yesterday's post. I was so down and tired and empty nothing came to mind. bar what I'd seen on the previous night's Big Brother...

***

I FOUND a fountain pen on the street outside a public toilet. A real live fountain pen! Yes: it was running around on its little legs, then stopped, peered up at me with sad eyes and implored, "Please help me find my owner. Pretty please!"

And it is quite pretty and girlie. Covered in rainbow stripes and stars. But it's made by Parker and they're the best (after the Swiss brand Lamy). Lamy nibs write as smoothly as if broken in 10 years ago ~ right from the day of purchase.

When I was younger (and pretentious enough) I wrote in real ink all the time. I was thinking, maybe I ought to take up that habit again. It might inspire me to pen a mighty work of Great Literature..(!)... (Or something)...

***

AMY WINEHOUSE has been found not guilty of common assault after she gave a black eye to a "burlesque dancer" (stripper) who "shoved a camera" in her face without even asking...

***


And how was your day?

***

Illustrations: top ~ my chicken legs came out just like this. And I roasted them in a thing that looked exactly the same... Yellow pen by Lamy. Best fountain pens in the world. Amy Winehouse... looked far more sober than this at court today...

Big Brother Bea: Sound As a Pound

FIVE NEW HOUSEMATES came into the British Big Brother house last Friday.

British Big Brother is the last one going. Even here people are losing interest. Viewing figures are down a million on last year.

Since last Friday the rather stale house has been mightily pepped up.

First off blonde bitch Karly nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the first new housemate was none other than her self-proclaimed multimillionaire Chinese "boyfriend" Kenny.

They were together for all of five minutes, for the public vote quickly had her booted out of the house.

Never have I seen a bigger Billy Liar come into that house. Sounding off about his own status, judging the "strength" of others. Yet when his ego hit a wall in the shape of fellow newcomer hippy housemate Bea it was he who came off worst.

But not after seemingly threatening that if their confrontation had happened outside he would have solved it by means of his "friends".

He claimed to have "sat across the table from the most dangerous man in the world". One thing I've learned about dangerous people: they keep quiet about that side of their lives.

I think Bea dealt with the situation admirably. After confessing how repellent she found the man, she accepted his apology (you can easily get kicked out for threatening behaviour in there) and then decided rather than ignoring him she should show him what he's missing and "hippify him up". Even offered to take him out afterwards...

Halfwit and Bea meanwhile seem to have found love with each other... coo

Middle Eastern Chic

I HAVE BEEN very slowly learning some Hebrew (yes on top of Spanish: I'm a sucker for punishment). Slowly being the operative word. I got 4 books from the library: 2 on Biblical; another 2 on modern. The Biblical Hebrew "grammars" (the one from the 1950s claims to be "simplified" ~ well I'd love to see a complicated version. What do they do there? Write the explanations in Arabic??)~~ these are totally impenetrable.

Only by poring over Teach Yourself Modern Hebrew did I eventually get somewhere. I can now read and write the script in both printed and handwritten variants with and without vowel pointings or "vocalizations" as scholarly types like to call them. Though I still make the odd howling error. E.g. mistaking a T for an M or an S. Compare Tet, Mem and Samech on the chart. It took me a week to get the 22 consonants plus a handful of vowel signs (which look so similar I have to take off glasses and peer at them from 2 inches away to read any distinction in the 1950s book, which appears to have deliberately picked the most arcane and confusing font possible, where entire groups of letters look just the same... I have always had a fascination with Near Eastern history and culture, ancient and modern...

& NOW FOR SOME MUSIC...
THIS IS a CLASSIC:
OFRA HAZA: IM NIN ALU
Famous in Israel and surrounding countries for years, this song became an international hit in 1988 after rappers Eric B and Rakim featured a sample on one of their tracks... The video is shot in Petra in Jordan. Ofra Haza died in 2000 of pneumonia, a complication of AIDS...
Im Nin Alu means loosely if the doors are locked ... Originally a Hebrew poem by a 17th century rabbi, some of the words were incorporated in Haza's 1988 hit.

Free Drinks Galore!

THE MORNING AFTER lots of other people's night before I went out a-wondering at 6am and what should I find but two full bottles of vodka-lemonade mix plus a pint glass sitting on a bollard. No urine or fag-ash to be detected; the contents proved to be vodka-ated sweet cyder. Yum-yums!

I was half-cut all through Friends and Hollyoaks on Sunday morning.

That's the problem, dwelling far out in the twee suburbs. it's not like Desperate Housewives land (London doesn't really have Wisteria Drive-style suburbs; we do have a lottery winners' equivalent or multimillionaires' row ~ far from the stately squares of Mayfair ~ Belgravia ~ Kensington & Chelsea or the Avenues of Holland Park (Holland Park: double-fronted detached houses, outsized bay windows, high ceilings. Ultra-leafy gardens... is where I'd situate my London residence if I won a multi-rollover on the Euromillions lottery...)... far from these places and round the corner from the media-centric Champagne Socialist heartland of Hampstead ~ famous for its heath, the biggest patch of uncultivated land anywhere near London "proper"... London's tasteless multimillionaires' row, Bishops Avenue is packed with the kind of Hollywood Wives style homes that look like if you stood outside and sneezed the front wall would blow in...

That's Bishops Avenue for you... Anyway: how did I get on this subject? Oh yeah you hardly ever make decent finds by way of food ~ alcohol ~ drugs on the streets where I am now ...

Where I used to live it was kebab-city. I'm very partial to a decently chargrilled shish. On Saturday nights the local rubbish bins used to be brimming with them. Newly discarded. Barely touched. And vomit-free too for the most part. Noshing down these, you could eat like a king! (Well, a homeless drug-addict King ...)

I cut my hair again, while I was still half-cut. It was looking like an unpleasant cloud of horribleness thundering round my head. Two thirds of it has come off. There it lays next to the television set, glistening in its slick chestnutness, shimmering with streaks of gold. You might think some expensive shampoos and hair products achieved this. But no! It was value frequent-wash with-conditioner (or more to the point Nature) that achieved it. Shampoo adverts are a load of Bullenscheiße, as the Germans would put it.

Glancing in the mirror this morning I was confronted by the image of an escaped mental patient staring back. But I'm keeping it this way, at least till tomorrow afternoon. Because I need to go to the council and make a good excuse why some benefits forms weren't returned a month-and-a-half ago... Wish me luck!

Cheers everyone! (Ching-ching!!) I hope yous all had a cheery weekend too!!

BIG BROTHER Classic Tasks ~ Electric Shocks!
THIS clip is hilarious.
1} The shockers you see going off here are apparently used in high-tech S&M games...
2} You'd think Rex (in gold) would have troubled to wear underwear on national television...
3} I've heard feminists telling me loads of times that women have higher pain thresholds than men. So how come two women ~ and one a lesbian at that ~ gave up totally!! "I'm not having that on my arse for two hours," said Lisa.
Noreen, the pretty one, was up for eviction this weekend but stayed in ~ huraah! Lots of people don't like her because she had two men and a lesbian after her at different times over the seven weeks and handled it badly. But I like Noreen. I don't think she has done anything else except be herself...



DUR!: AND I was wondering what made me feel sick on Saturday morning... of course... it was CELINE DION~!!

Stomach Cramps

I AM GOING TO BUY one of those inverted cone-shaped coctail glasses, marachino cherries and little umbrellas. I changed chemists and the new methadone tastes so good it has to be worth celebrating. Also at 100mg at 1mg/1ml I get to knock back loads and loads of it...

Apart from that I feel ILL. Maybe it was the conversation next to me as the pharmacist messed about not getting the methadone quick enough ~ about birthing pools etc. But I was convinced if it didn't come fast enough I would have to rush out in the street and be sick. Not from withdrawals (and if it were withdrawals methadone isn't the quickest fix anyhow; it takes well over an hour to have any real effect). But from ... I don't know ... some inner stomach cramp thing. Well it's not as if I could be pregnant too. By the way the new chemist does pregnancy tests in packs of FOUR. What kind of a .... ??

Well I'll hold my peace.

I woke up with this music swirling out of the radio.

... by the way I made a home-made bread roll last night (didn't have enough flour to make any more than one). Do you think that's what made me ill? I used value white self-raising, put it in for 20 mins at 200C. It came out a bit stodgy in the middle...



PS Methadone (here) is green not red.

PPS Have a look at my giant hornets (yesterday)...

Japanese Hornets!

A TERRIFYING (NON-FURRY) FRIDAY POST:

ALSO KNOWN as the Asian giant hornet Vespa mandarinia, these are the largest wasps on earth:



A fully-grown worker is 2 inches or 5cm long. That's the size (or at least length) of a roborovski hamster like Spherical!



This isn't Spherical but a "roborowski" hamster from Germany shown for comparative scale:



As well as cartoon terrordrome faces these wasps are among the most aggressive in the world. They are known for systematically attacking domestic beehives. 100 hornets can kill 20,000 honeybees in an hour, ripping their heads off with their powerful jaws:



As you can see, they are far bigger than honeybees. In fact the bees' only defence is to mob the hornets in large clumps. These cause the wasps' armour-like bodies to overheat, and this kills them:



Japanese hornets' stingers are said to be half an inch or 1.25cm long and is a "modified ovopositor" (egg-laying device). Venom from these huge wasps contains an enzyme powerful enough to dissolve human flesh. The stinger seen here belongs to an ordinary garden wasp, what the Americans call a "yellowjacket":



Unlike wasps or "yellowjackets" who live on caterpillars and insects through early summer then go sugar-crazy in early autumn, these giant hornets feed exclusively on caterpillars, bee grubs and grown insects great and small (including preying mantis). Unable to digest these themselves, the adults feed these to the hornet babies who possess a digestive enzyme that breaks down the food ~ which they feed mouth-to-mouth back to their older aunties, the worker hornets.



Giant Asian hornets live in underground colonies weighing half a tonne or more (far too heavy to hang down from a tree!) The workers can fly thirty miles (fifty kilometres) without a break. Every year in Japan seventy people die from their stings, usually by blundering into these mega-hornet-cities utterly unawares. Worldwide, wasps kill more people per year than all poisonous snakes combined.

Round the Clock (+Poker Trotter Tubbester is Weary)

SUCH SEVERE EXHAUSTION yesterday I slept midday to five pm. Six pm to two am; three am to 8:30, all in all about 18 hours.

I was too exhausted to bother posting this on the day.

I think Maple Syrup, my druggieworker, think I have a disease. I told her I have been like this for years. Years before heroin. It was the fact that heroin played the perfect antidepressant and seemed to give such energy and confidence to my exhausted soul that got me so hooked on it to start with...

Spherical Poker* Trotter Tubbester Roborovski says hello. When she is not wearily snoozing in her nest, she is quite perky as well...

* I'm not sure how "Poker" got to be in her name; Spherical has never been into cardgames ever in her short little life...

***

JUST AS I PREDICTED an exotic coctail of opioid narcotics and benzodiazepine hypnotics has been found in Michael Jackson's body. These included Dilaudid (hydromorphone), Vicodin (Oxycodone) ~ both powerful narcotic painkillers; fentanyl ~ said to be 50 times stronger than morphine ~ which is orindarily only giving to the terminally ill when morphine is no longer strong enough, methadone (given usually for opiate addiction as we know), Valium (diazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam), both benzodiazepine tranquillizers; Ambien (zolpidem) a new-style sleeping medication said to have fewer side-effects than traditional benzodiazepines... among others, according to several media reports.

The Sun newspaper even claimed that in the end he was begging doctors to knock him out for three days at a time on propofol (aka Dirpivan; click here for an informative write-up), an anaesthetic agent rarely used outside operating theatres and intensive care wards, a treatment he was initially given to relieve the pain (so the newspaper claims) of multiple skinpeel operations...

Michael "mummified by drugs" (People)

What with sister LaToya making claims that her brother was "murdered" by a greedy entourage in interviews for which she was paid by the notoriously cash-splash-happy British press (though none of this allegedly dodgy entourage, however, seems to have benefited in the slightest from his will) and anyone who knew him suddenly seeming to have a story to sell, just as I thought, the intrigue that surrounded the star all his adult life has only thickened after his death...

VIDEO OF THE DAY:

PET HORNET!

Yes this is real...



SPIDERS ON DRUGS

The world-famous comedy minidocu. This one's had over 5,000,000 hits on Youtube and no wonder ..!..



This one, incidentally is based on truth. Orb-web spiders (like our star) really were fed LSD in the 1950s. On low doses their webs became fantastically complexicated and beautiful. At higher doses the spiders' brains fried and they spun nothing more than a formless sticky blob ...

Procrastination (Japanese Sushibar Video)

I'M NOT MEANT TO BE HERE. I didn't know what to say either: so have a look at this film:~

ANOTHER SUSHIBAR CAMERA VIDEO

You can watch this at work because the dialogue's almost all in Japanese, though I think the people who put the camera on the conveyor belt (who you see) were American...

Koalas II

A FURRY MONDAY:

I wasn't into posting this at the weekend, but here's the other half of the koalas post...

Basically THIS is what it's easy to forget about bushfires; that the local wildlife suffers terribly. Lots of koalas got burned in last summer's Victoria conflagration...



Even those who were physically all right had much of their habitat destroyed. Many came wandering dazed into the suburbs desperate for drinking water. This picture of a fireman giving one a drink is famous:



Thankfully many of the casualties got treated and recovered. They can look very cute in bandages like this furry pensioner:



And this joey:



Wildlife and animal rescue charities did a sterling job:



Many babies lost their parents or were orphaned:



But were lucky enough to be rescued and taken into people's homes:





... and with a bit of luck and love they should live happily ever after...



Here's the fireman-koala-drink story from the news:

Koalas

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY:

Australia's cutest furries...



... are called "bears" but aren't actually bears at all...



... apart from their fur they look so cute because of their characteristic cradling...



... and hugging posture. Koalas, as you can see, have very good grip...



... which they really do need for trees as they climb them whether or not they seem to go anywhere ...



... or are perilously thin ...



... because they try to do everything up in the branches ...

... including sleeping ...