A sick Roman joke

 

 

Apart from telling sick jokes, Roman numerals really don't have much going for them. Adding CLXXVII to XXIII may be relatively straightforward, but try multiplying CLXXVII by XXIII or dividing CLXXVII by XXIII.

These days you see Roman numerals only in descriptions and references, such as sequels to films (e.g. Rocky III), dates on statues and public buildings, names of monarchs and popes (e.g. Elizabeth II), and also on coinage, general suffixes, sporting events (e.g. Superbowl XLIX), and copyright dates on movie credits and TV shows. And the odd sick joke!

So that you can work out for yourself the copyright date of that old movie you thought was rather corny, here are the very simple rules: (which I was taught before I left German primary school in MCMLX)

There are just seven Roman numerals:

I (1), V (5), X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500), and M (1000).

And there are just three simple rules:

• If a smaller numeral comes after a larger numeral, add the smaller number to the larger number
  
• If a smaller numeral comes before a larger numeral, subtract the smaller number from the larger number
  
• Do not use the same symbol more than three times in a row

The rule of not using the same symbol more than three times in a row means that the highest number in pure Roman numeral form is 3,999 - which is written as MMMCMXCIX - because the number 4,000 would have to be written as MMMM which would make for an even sicker joke.

Want to talk about Roman numerals? Call me on XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.

 

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P.S. Roman sleeping habits aside, how did the Romans pronounce their numbers? In base-10, but with some quirks, but far fewer quirks than modern French counting. With a few oddities like one and three declining to the nouns gender (unus/tres for masculine, una/tria feminine), the numbers progressed as a usual base-10 system goes until 18, 28, 38, etc all of which were the next 10-number minus two.

So 18 was duodēvīgintī ‘two from twenty’ and 19 was ūndēvīgintī ‘one from twenty.’ 28 was duodētrīgintā ‘two from thirty’ and so on. The numbers 1–17, and 20–27, etc progressed as a normal base-10 counting system does. I thought you'd be interested to know.

 

 

As for French, don't even get me started but here it is: French is base-20 instead of base 10 from the number 60–99. 70 is Soixante dix literally ‘sixty ten’ and 71 is Soixante et onze ‘sixty and eleven’ until 80, which is Quatre-vingts ‘four twenties’ and then that goes all the way to 99 which is Quatre-vingt dix-neuf ‘four twenty nineteen.’

 

A cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down

 

 

Immortalised in Australian slang, Bex Powder was as ubiquitous in Australia in the 1960s as the proverbial cup of tea. It was a non-prescription drug recommended for headaches, colds and flu, nerve pain and rheumatism, among other indications, even though there was no evidence at all of any medicinal benefit.

 

 

I worked in a bank in Canberra at the time of this radio commercial, and you only had to pull open anyone's desk drawer in the bank to find, either tugged away in a corner or prominently displayed at the front, a blue-and-yellow BEX Powder box. Not that anyone would have admitted it at the time, but it was also highly addictive which made it the pick-me-up of choice for anyone feeling slightly "under the weather".

 

 

Much later medical research, particularly by Professor Priscilla Kincaid-Smith, established a strong link between the overuse of Bex Powder and kidney disease, which lead to this painkiller being removed from the market and a subsequent dramatic decline in kidney disease.

I reflected on this when an old colleague who during my days in the bank had tossed down a Bex Powder first thing in the morning and often several more times during the day, passed away last year. He had lived to 85, but it wasn't the quantity but the quality of his life that had no doubt been effected by his frequent use of Bex Powder, as he had spent the last fifteen years on dialysis which required a good lie down three times a week but not in the way this commercial had suggested it.

 

 

I wonder how many other commercials which today extol us to take this or do that will later be found to have been detrimental to our health. And don't even wait for your doctor to tell you. He may be the same doctor who smoked CAMELS more than any other cigarette.

Speaking of which, I am off to see my German doctor in Moruya who will burn some more sunspots off my skin which is a perfect excuse for me to ignore all that hooplah that goes with today's Melbourne Cup.

 

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On turning eighty

 

 

Only two hundred copies of Henry Miller's 1972 book "On Turning Eighty", which contains three essays on topics such as aging and living a meaningful life, were ever printed, numbered and signed by the author. The one I have just discovered for sale at $1,910 is not only too expensive but also too late as my birthday present.

Miller begins by considering the true measure of youthfulness:

"If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss — under your breath, of course — “Fuck you, Jack! You don’t own me!” … If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked."

He later adds:

"I have very few friends or acquaintances my own age or near it. Though I am usually ill at ease in the company of elderly people I have the greatest respect and admiration for two very old men who seem to remain eternally young and creative. I mean [the Catalan cellist and conductor] Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso, both over ninety now. Such youthful nonagenarians put the young to shame. Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middleclass men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out."

Miller then considers the downside of success:

"If you have had a successful career, as presumably I have had, the late years may not be the happiest time of your life. (Unless you’ve learned to swallow your own shit.) Success, from the worldly standpoint, is like the plague for a writer who still has something to say. Now, when he should be enjoying a little leisure, he finds himself more occupied than ever. Now he is the victim of his fans and well wishers, of all those who desire to exploit his name. Now it is a different kind of struggle that one has to wage. The problem now is how to keep free, how to do only what one wants to do."

He goes on to reflect on how success affects people’s quintessence:

"One thing seems more and more evident to me now — people’s basic character does not change over the years… Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or short-comings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised certain lads in your class you will dislike them even more when they become financiers, statesmen or five star generals. Life forces us to learn a few lessons, but not necessarily to grow."

Miller returns to youth and the young as a kind of rearview mirror for one’s own journey:

"You observe your children or your children’s children, making the same absurd mistakes, heart-rending mistakes often, which you made at their age. And there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It’s by observing the young, indeed, that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time — and perhaps still are."

He then extols the essential psychoemotional supremacy of old age:

"At eighty I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure… I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: “One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”) By this time I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity."

After this, he turns to his other saving grace — the capacity for light-heartedness as an antidote to life’s often stifling solemnity:

"Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face."

Equally important, Miller argues, is countering the human compulsion for self-righteousness:

"With advancing age my ideals, which I usually deny possessing, have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea… I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, nor to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence."

Miller goes on to consider the brute ways in which we often behave:

"One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side."

But despite observing these lamentable human tendencies, Miller remains an optimist at heart:

"My motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your inner heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself seriously is doomed… There is nothing wrong with life itself. It is the ocean in which we swim and we either adapt to it or sink to the bottom. But it is in our power as human beings not to pollute the waters of life, not to destroy the spirit which animates us. The most difficult thing for a creative individual is to refrain from the effort to make the world to his liking and to accept his fellow man for what he is, whether good, bad or indifferent."

And there you have it! As he wrote, "If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk ..."

I think I go for a good walk now.

 

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We were all citizens of the world

 

 

Why is it that whenever I hear Rick declare his nationality as "I'm a drunkard", I immediately think back to my character-forming years spent on the Bougainville Copper Project in New Guinea? - click here for more.

Of the thousands of men that worked there, and the scores I knew, there was only one who did not drink - alcohol, that is! - but then he didn't do much of anything else either. As for the rest of us, we were all citizens of the world and drinking responsibly meant not to spill it.

I've always thought that all of us should have been commended for our services to the Australian brewing industry, and I can think of at least one who should have lived out his days as Sir Osis of the Liver. I won't mention his real name as a show of respect for the dead which he must be by now as no liver could have taken all that punishment for long.

All that was more than fifty years ago, and while I still enjoy the occasional glass of wine, my liver has never ceased to be surprised by the sudden stream of lemon-and-ginger tea it's been metabolising ever since I settled down. Speaking of which, remember the rumours about the stuff they put in our tea in the camp to keep our mind of it ...?

Well, more than fifty years later, I think mine is showing signs of beginning to work!

 

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"Have you been a lifeguard all your life?"

 

 

Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realising that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex - and, to them, as important - as your own?

Which is what I did as I floated in that beautiful warm-water pool at our Aquatic Centre, enjoying the constant 34 degrees, and feeling sorry for that elderly lifeguard endlessly walking round and round the pool, more absorbed in his own thoughts than in what was going on in the pool.

Which is why it took me almost as much as a faked drowning to attract his attention to strike up a bit of a conversation to break both his and my boredom. "Have you been a lifeguard all your life?" I asked him.

"Oh no", he answered, suddenly awoken from his own reverie, "I used to be a saturation diver for over thirty years." A saturation diver! I had known of them from my time in Burma where my employers, the French oil company TOTAL, had drilled for offshore oil, but I had known nothing about them. Hours later, after I had come home again, I googled for it:

 

"A saturation diver is a professional deep-sea diver who uses a technique called saturation diving to work for weeks at a time in pressurized, high-pressure environments. This method involves breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen and living in a pressurized chamber on a support vessel, where they are only decompressed at the end of a long work period, which can be up to 28 days. Saturation divers perform tasks like oil rig maintenance, pipeline construction, and salvage operations in the marine and offshore industries."

 

What an unusual, if not downright dangerous job for which, as he had told me, he used to get paid US$1,300 A DAY at a time when that was still real money! What personal tragedies, what acts of folly had occurred between those years of incredibly high earnings and his current basic wage for endlessly walking round and round the pool?

Each of us has lived a life as vivid and complex as our own. All it takes to find out about it is to ask, "Have you been a lifeguard all your life?"

 

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