Jerome K. Jerome

 

The 'K.' stands for 'Klapka', after the exiled Hungarian general György Klapka. I just wanted you to know. I also wanted you to know that Jerome 'Klapka' Jerome wrote, beside his best-known comic travelogue 'Three Men in a Boat', some rather insightful stuff.

Like The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow.

Click on the above links and idle away your Sunday!

 

It's been a full day

It's time to sit on the verandah and watch the sunset with a glass of wine in a matching colour. Visited the Moruya Markets in the morning, had lunch at the club, and picked up a pile of books at the local op-shop just before they closed their doors.

Now I'm spoilt for choice because each of the eight books is better than the next, starting with Bill Bryson's "Made in America" and Paul Theroux's "Sunrise with Sea Monsters", and continuing with "Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything", "Moonwalking with Einstein", and "The Island of Lost Maps - A True Story of Cartographic Crime" (you may've gathered by now that I prefer non- to fiction).

That's five books = five days which gets me close to next weekend when I may start on "A Spectator's Guide to World Religions - An Introduction to the Big Five" and "The Book Club Companion - An Indispensable Reading List from Classics to Literary Respites".

Now let me get back to watching the sunset while snatching the odd pondering from "Snippets of Truth - Ponderings from a Word Watcher". I told you I'd picked up eight books! You weren't counting, were you?

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

 

Here's an interesting bit of history about New Zealand: in 1802 the Kiwis invented the condom using a sheep's lower intestine. In 1822 the Aussies somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the sheep first.

A lot of Kiwi jokes that Aussies tell are based on the (never officially proven) theory that New Zealand men have sex with their sheep and that they (the men, not the sheep) come over to Australia only to go on the dole.

Australians also think that Kiwis are dumb and less intelligent, even though Rob Muldoon, New Zealand's Prime Minister in the 1980s, once quipped that the exodus of Kiwis to Australia raised the average IQ of both countries.

The latest import from New Zealand, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, has certainly raised the standard of movies in this country. It stars Sam Neill who also acted in "The Hunt for Red October", so the "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" must've been a shoe-in for him. ☺

I am a Barry Crump fan (who could ever forget "There and Back"?) and as this movie is based on his book "Wild Pork and Watercress", I hope it will be shown in the Bay's cinema not too long after its official release on 26 May.

P.S. Well, two months on and the movie still hasn't come to the Bay's cinema - in fact, the Bay's cinema has just shut its doors permanently; click here - but the movie is now available on ebay, so here goes a bit more of retail therapy:

 

Doug Wasmuth, are you still in Tonga?

Doug, an American from Hawai'i, with his young son Sam

 

Doug, we met in 2006 at the Puataukanave International Hotel where you were staying with your family while your house on Fofoa Island was still being built.

 

I've just discovered these photos on your Picasa Web Album but there have been no further updates and I wonder if you still own your little hide-away overlooking Hunga Lagoon?

If you read this, please email me at riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com . Alternatively, I may try and contact you via support@doubletwist.com subject line "Doug Wasmuth Twitter".

 

BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.

I'll live!

 

Well, I just did my stress test while all wired up and then went through that scanner again, and I got the all clear. It seems I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in!

Of course, the reason Australians are living longer is because of what we’ve done over the past 200 years. Growing scientific knowledge has underpinned improvements to living conditions (e.g. sewers, clean water and safe transport) and medicine (antibiotics, other pharmaceuticals, X-rays, etc.).

These changes have more than doubled the average lifespan at birth from around 35 at colonisation to 82 years. We know evolution has played little, if any, part in this: it doesn’t work that fast. Besides, evolution was only ‘interested’ in protecting successful genes through survival of offspring to maturity – around the time we reached our 30s.

If communities can influence their longevity, individuals can do the same. In the 1980s, research began to identify what was associated with people living longer. Studies take about 20 years to determine which group members survive and why. Publications from the early 2000s revealed expected and unexpected factors associated with longevity. We can group these loosely into five categories: Surroundings, Health, Attitude, Parents and Eating (SHAPE).

Check out the SHAPE Analyser and, whatever the result, do as the mayfly does and live every day as if it is your last. One day it will be.

 

CHICKENS: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.