“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”---Chicken Little
Maybe, after all these years, Chicken Little is right. If the sky is not falling, it’s showing signs of serious distemper. Asian megalomaniacs are shooting errant missiles all over the South China Sea, Arab terrorists are blowing up Europe, violent hurricanes are thrashing and rethrashing the Caribbean and crazed snipers are machine-gunning hundreds of concertgoers in Las Vegas. It’s enough to make Tom Petty opt for better surroundings, and he did. The rest of us are left to sort it all out, slimed in the backwash, adrift on the seas of consternation. What’s it all about, Marty?
The Flying Pie is not one to wallow in depression. Sometimes, it’s the best of times, sometimes the worst. One day Hitler is taking over the world, the next day he’s pushing up stinkweed. The Summer of Love Will Last Forever, the Summer of Love is a distant memory. Best to adopt the Ancient Advice: “Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face; Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face. Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy, It’s not your style; You’ll look so good that you’ll be glad ya decide to smile. So, spread sunshine all over the place. Just put on a happy face.” That’s us.
Good News Items
1. You may not know this but there are actually scientists in Hawaii. Really. And in between riding the big waves on the North Shore and sucking down poi and mai-tais, every so often they poke around their orchid-filled labs and come up with something important. Recently, Hawaiian scientists released a study published in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms which found that nearly half of the female participants experienced an instantaneous orgasm after smelling a bright orange, phallic-like mushroom found in recent lava flows. Researchers believe that hormone-like compounds found in this mushroom may have some similarities to the neurotransmitters released during human sexual encounters. Before declaring a general purge of men, however, ladies are advised to make sure there are enough deposits from recent lava flows in their immediate areas.
2. In recent years, grammarians (like us) have become highly offended at the misuse---indeed, the lack of use---of proper punctuation by flibbertigibbet users of horrendous communications mechanisms like Twitter, which encourage grammatic shortcuts and abuses. Now, thanks to the victims and near-victims of suicide, punctuation marks are making a comeback. Go figure. It all began in the Spring of 2013, when Project Semicolon founder Amy Bieuel wanted to honor her father, lost to suicide. Amy chose to place a semicolon tattoo on her forearm, saying: “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” Now, semicolon tattoos are all the rage. Which opens up all kinds of possibilities for other punctuation marks. Consider the exclamation point for people with a driving need to call attention to themselves, or the question mark for people in the throes of a sexual identity crisis. People who decide to end it all can opt for a period. Ex-cons, of course, will be thrilled to have exclusive use of the colon, which, as everybody knows, can only be used at the completion of a sentence.
3. Thanks to your old pal, Rush Limbaugh, you can now get a free trial of his erectile disfunction discovery, Revboost. Rush was having equipment trouble during the 2016 election and someone told his grieving wife about the product. Limbaugh did his own personal research and pronounced it magic. “I’ve tried Viagra, I’ve tried Red Ginseng and I’ve tried Cialis,” he declares, “and RevBoost blows them all away.” And why wouldn’t it with its hoary blend of Korean Ginseng, Potency Wood, Horny Goatweed and other select Chinese herbs? If you want to be big Like Rush, take advantage of this amazing offer today, if not sooner. Limbaugh promises that even old gaffers like you will be able to have two hours of sex for ten straight days. And then, he admits, you will probably die. But, hey---with a smile on your face.
4. It’s ALL good news in North Korea, where Kim Jong-Un rules a wacky roost, but one with good publicists. Not long ago, the boys had him climbing the 2744m active volcano Mt. Paektu, and without a single Sherpa. These are the same guys who told us in 2012 that their archaeologists had unearthed a unicorn lair just 220 yards from a Pyongyang temple. You could tell this was true because the place had ‘Unicorn Lair’ clearly carved above the stone entrance. The NK media can be modest, however, as in 2013 when the Chosun Central Television channel declared China ‘the happiest place to live on Earth.’ China got 100 points, with North Korea second (98 points). The runnersup were Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, all roundly noted for ecstatic populations.
You probably didn’t know this but Kim’s dad (Kim Jong-Il) was a fabulous golfer, once shooting a 38-under par round which included 11 holes-in-one. Not only was this the best ever, it was 25 strokes better than the previous record. Oh, and it was the first time the man had ever picked up a club. Not wishing to appear the show-off, Kim announced his immediate retirement from golf. What a shame.
Can’t Sleep?
Counting sheep? Melatonin not working? Have we got a film for you! Baa Baa Land, an eight-hour movie created by the producers of the meditation app Calm, is a promising new weapon in the fight against insomnia. Probably not appearing soon at a theater near you, Baa Baa Land is composed entirely of soothing shots of sheep standing around mostly doing nothing. There is no dialogue, no plot, no conflict, no dewy-eyed reconciliation scenes, no nothin’. There is a nice calming soundtrack exclusively containing sheep noises. “It’s better than any sleeping pill,” says Alex Tew, Baa Baa Land’s executive producer. “The ultimate insomnia cure.”
The film’s representatives claim the movie is only the 19th longest ever made, well behind the leader, Logistics, an avant-garde Swedish product that is a mere 857 hours long. The Canadian producers are in discussion with American interests about distribution in the U.S., probably on television. “We don’t expect it to break any viewing records,” says another executive producer, Michael Acton Smith, “we’re just hoping for a niche audience.” Personally, we think they’d draw more viewers with a better title, something perkier, an attention-grabber. How about Silence of the Lambs II?
If Baa Baa Land doesn’t cure you, preposterous as that seems, there are yet more possibilities, but you’re not going to like them. Gerolamo Cardano, a doctor and mathematician in Renaissance Italy and a co-founder of probability theory, advocated rubbing the ear wax of a dog across your teeth before retiring. Old Japanese folk remedies for insomnia advocate sea slug entrails as a bedtime snack. Or you might, like the Romans, drink the bile of a castrated boar if you could talk your local 7-11 into carrying the product. Back in olden England, they massaged the feet of insomniacs with dormouse fat, which must have played hell on the bedclothes. The 1898 Glasgow Herald gave this advice: “Soap your hair with ordinary yellow soap; rub it into the roots of the brain until it is lathered all over; tie it up in a napkin, go to bed and wash it out in the morning. Do this for a fortnight. Take no tea after 6 p.m.” Or maybe just try the latter. No caffeine after six could be the Secret Ingredient.
The French folk remedies called for eating fried lettuce. The ancient Egyptians opted for lactucarium or “lettuce opium,” a milky substance secreted from certain varieties of lettuce greens. If you don’t get to sleep, well, this one also has fun psychotropic effects. Charles Dickens was sure he’d sleep better if he placed the head of his bed to the North. The ancient Babylonians thought that insomnia was caused by dead relatives haunting them from the afterlife, so naturally they figured the best way to cure the problem was by sleeping with the dead relative’s skull for a week or so. You could speed things up by licking the thing seven times, no more, no less.
Dr. Richard Shane, Ph.D., a behavioral sleep therapist tried most of these things and says they don’t work. We’re not sure we believe him. I mean, it’s so hard to find good sea slug entrails these days.
Just A Day At The Beach
Anybody lose a package at the shore? Well, good news! Julie Edwards, an English dog-walker, found it for you. Or to be precise, Molly the basset hound sniffed it out at Brean Beach in Somerset, England. It was a little offputting to run across an intact penis and testicles, but Julie kept a stiff upper lip, immediately contacting the beach warden with her find. She told Somerset Live, “I could see Molly was about to roll something around. Usually, it’s maggots or dead birds, but I could see right away this was different. It was upsetting more later on when you actually think that it could be someone’s relative.” Or someone himself, for that matter. The police lab at Avon & Somerset is not as clever as some. They still haven’t figured out whether the package is from a human or another animal. Anyone suddenly discovering himself short of genitals is encouraged to contact the chief immediately, lest the package be put up for outside bidding.
Not So Fast, My Friend!
We all know the scenario. Our dear Aunt Matilda is admitted to Generic General Hospital with severe apoplexy and ringing in the ears. The family gathers ‘round. The somber masked medico emerges from behind closed doors to deliver the wretched news: Aunt Tillie is a goner, cursed with a blight on her liver, maybe six months to live. Send her off on a round-the-world cruise and kiss her ass goodbye. The doctor scowls in practiced disappointment. “There is absolutely no hope,” he mourns, “None. Not a particle. Not a twinkle. Not…” We get it, doc. She’s toast.
Then, suddenly, Freddie the Prodigal Son blasts onto the scene after a redeye flight from Longdong. The Amen Choir follows him into the room, singing. Freddie is frantically waving a rumpled sheet of paper filled with alien lettering. “Don’t give up the ship!” he shouts in jubilation. “There’s hope for the old girl yet.” The choir breaks into a sterling rendition of “Here Comes the Sun,” promptly bringing the house down. High fives abound! There’s cheering in the streets! People in West Virginia burn sofas on the center square. What happened?
The Fuda Cancer Hospital in Guangzhou, China, that’s what. The Fuda has taken in over 30,000 overseas patients in the past decade, many with advanced stages of cancer, people written off by doctors in their own countries who told them there were no medical solutions for their diseases. Some of you may remember Gurli Gregersen, a stage-four pancreatic cancer patient from Copenhagen, Denmark, who traveled to China in 2008 with little hope. She improved dramatically after treatment at Fuda, and another 113 Danes came tumbling after in the same year. Gurli is still around and doing just fine, thank you.
The hospital’s major focus is cryotherapy, a procedure not available in many countries. Doctors use a probe to reach a targeted area and send liquefied gases such as argon and helium that have a temperature of minus 180 degrees to kill the cancer cells by freezing them. The process can be used on patients with liver, lung, kidney, pancreatic or breast cancer as well as soft tissue tumors, explains Xu Kecheng, chief president of the hospital. The surgery is not used in the U.S., although The FDA approved the technology in 1998.
“The equipment for carrying out this surgery is expensive and it requires doctors to be very skillful,” Xu told the South China Morning Post, adding that it was not suitable for cancer cells located near the stomach, main blood vessels or brain. Currently, about 40% of Fuda’s 400 hospital beds are occupied by foreign patients. Fuda has hired a large multilingual staff to accomodate the furriners.
According to the Hindu Times, between 2008 and 2014, the Fuda Cancer Hospital has treated close to 8000 patients with a success rate of more than 70%. Not bad for government work. Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do---whatcha gonna do when they come for you? I don’t know about the rest of you, but this bad boy is on the Guangzhou Express.
Okay, folks, that’s all the good news we can stand….
