Time changes

I get so confused with my modern appliances. Especially when I have to adjust the time. I can change my bedside clock, that’s just winding a few knobs at the back, but I don’t even know how to open my kitchen clock.

And I have just noticed that everything has a little clock in it! The video, the DVD, the burglar alarm, the stove, the hose in the garden and the (new) microwave oven, and I may have to ring up an electrician to come over and adjust my time settings. Time was never so confusing when I was young. Why do they all need to tell me what time it is?

But what actually is time? Does time exist when nothing is changing? Is the future infinite? Was there time before the Big Bang? What role does time play in our reasoning? What are the neural mechanisms that account for our experience of time? Does time exist for beings that have no minds? Does anyone care?

It’s all too much for me, I need a small glass of sherry while I wait for the electrician to come and move my clocks forward. Or is it backward?

Lock up your livestock

Beryl, who goes to Bingo with me, firmly believes in the recent sightings of Blessed Virgin Mary, but she’s worried that her framed velvet Mary art and hot pink plastic rosaries won’t save her budgerigars from the Chupacabra.

Granted, the reports of mysterious Goatsuckers in my neighbourhood are few and far between, but all the same I intend to keep my Border Collie inside at night.

Dreadful attacks have been perpetrated by the Chupacabra, which always involve slain livestock with telltale marks on their necks. The victims, most often goats and chickens, are reportedly drained of all their blood, but are otherwise left intact.

I tried to tell Beryl that these creatures only plague various regions of Puerto Rico and other faraway places of a similar rural nature, but she says the Chupacabra has kangaroo-like qualities, so they must be local.

I may borrow a set of rosaries myself.

Blame the genes

My Grandma could stop a brewery horse dead in its tracks.

The havoc this caused is a story for another day, I only mention it because, although Grandma was a fine figure of a woman, she had a nasty reptilian look about the eyes.

Now my numerous cousins tell me that I am beginning to look like her.

“You’ve got her look about the eyes, Queenie. Pity you couldn’t copy her smile.”

Well I have news for them. Just like you, I didn’t copy my frown from my father or unconsciously pick up a grimace from Grandma. Conscious or unconscious has nothing to do with it

(I had plenty of chances to learn from my Grandma, she was just plain unconscious at least once a week)

Scientists at the University of Haifa have concluded that facial expressions are genetically determined. You can’t beat your genes. And it’s too late to beat Grandma.

All this time I thought if you pulled an ugly expression, the wind might change, and the expression would stay forever. Grandma told me that.

Suspicious smiling

I know what to do about the poor soldiers in the impenetrable forests of giant marijuana. No one has told their superiors that marijuana combats Alzheimers disease. The effects are only beneficial for older people, or so I’m told, and that explains the preponderance of smiling old ladies you see around such dense forests.

THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana, has been used for some time to help reduce agitation and increase weight in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. And now researchers have shown that cannabis can help older subjects perform better on a spatial memory task.

I wonder where these tests have been carried out? And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the ladies at my Lawn Bowls Club have been subjects in this research. A couple of them are always smiling. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?

Soldiers going potty in Afghanistan

I’m a bit worried about the soldiers. Apparently Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan have encountered an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.

These forests are used as cover for both sides, soldiers slip in and out and armoured cars are camouflaged with giant plants. They tried burning the foliage but successful incineration has its own drawbacks.

“A section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and we decided that was probably not the right course of action,” said an Army spokesman.

Ill effects? Perhaps nobody wanted to do any more fighting.

It’s true, I didn’t make it up

Thoroughly Modern Queenie

I’ve joined the modern age at last. I have a mobile phone, a DVD player and now a microwave oven.

I resisted the oven for years. All those microwaves flying loose about the house, who knows what damage they could be doing and what awful consequences of random radiation?

Would it reverse the air conditioning? Turn on the garden sprinklers? Give the budgie a brain tumour?

But my Council Home Help Girl insists the oven is safe and it wouldn’t matter if I became suddenly sterile anyway. So I now have this white box on my kitchen bench and the Girl is bringing me a little bag of wheat that you pop into the microwave, enter a PIN number or something and there you have it — a sort of waterless hot water bottle.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Naps are fashionionable these days

I’m sure I read about these little napping machines in a sci fi novel many years ago when I was young. But this is a real appliance for people who are too busy to go to bed. Or for people to sleep at work. Before you wonder why people would be encouraged to sleep at work (this is what they do at my phone company, I swear the skeleton staff are all half-asleep) I will show you the advertisment urging us all to nap.

Naps have been shown to benefit almost every aspect of human wellness. The benefits to the body include better heart functioning, hormonal maintenance, and cell repair. They help you live longer, stay more active, and look younger.

Look younger? I’ve been napping all over the place for years and I can tell you right now it hasn’t done anything for me.

Only yesterday as I was taking the bus to the podiatrist I had a refreshing little nap and woke up with the busdriver asking me where I wanted to go…. Kindly chap, he knew I had missed my stop. I hope he didn’t see the dribble on my blouse.

Misguided football followers

I have a new young lady in my front room. I’m assuming she’s a lady because she dresses nicely, doesn’t swear or spit and has a friendly rapport with her grandmother. But should I assume?

Looking more closely she follows what is called a football team. Now, everyone and their dog knows that there is no football played anywhere in the world except in my hometown, in other places they have a sort of a ball, and sort of men in sort of shorts falling on it. That’s not football. (I’ve even heard it’s played with a round ball in some countries)

Football is played with an oblate spheroid on oval shaped playing fields called ovals. There is no falling on the ball. There is no falling on the other players. There is no tackle or scrum or scrim or other fancy names for men rolling around in the mud with each other.

Someone should tell my renter

More on alien abductions.

They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. It’s quite a disturbing trend these days.

Back when I was young we had to make do with the occasional flying saucer sighting. Nothing fancy like abductions and the ever-present probes.

The saucers didn’t worry us too much, we would just yell Will U kindly F.O. However I understand that the younger generation have nastier experiences.

Have you been abducted lately? If you live in Germany you can hire a lawyer like Jens Lorek, who pursues state compensation claims for abductees. “There’s a demand for legal advice here,” says Jens Lorek. “The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court.”

I wonder why.

Do I seem cruel hearted to you? I had to ask my ne…

Do I seem cruel hearted to you? I had to ask my neighbour to remove a comment from my blog about the Virgin Mary on a Pool Stick. Some frenzied soul slapped down a scathing post accusing me of making fun of and being cruel to the ignorant innocent people who find these amazing apparitions of Mary everywhere. It was even suggested that I invented the whole thing! Let me tell you, I was a trifle shocked and had to sit down with a little glass of sweet sherry.

I assure you I am of a kindly nature, and to show that I didn’t make it up, I include the description from eBay. Word for word. Verbatim. As it is. Well, the first few lines anyway, it rabbits on a bit.

To those who could be interested in this wonderful appearance I will tell them that this is not one more appearance of Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. This is a fact, which had not occurred before in history, that an object had a similar manifestation. And you will be ocular witnesses of what you will be discovering. I assure you with all humility that is a divine creation, fulfilled with simbology and history

There you go, what could be clearer? You are an ocular witness.

Virgin Mary on a Pool Stick. And by the way, what is a Pool Stick?
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