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Flotsam and Jetsom
Publish Date : 12/22/2005 6:54:05 PM Source : Ieuan Dolby
A news item that I read his weekend informed me that “Doctors have proved that exercise helps to improve blood flow”. Last week a colorful news item told me that “vegetables and fruit are good for the health”. All very true but I must question where these Doctors and News Reporters have been for the last Century or so? Or is it that there is absolutely nothing else in the big wide world to write about, that they have to bring back the headlines from 1863?It is obvious that exercise is good for the health as proved by a major condition that often results from a serious lack of it. Try it! Try sitting in your chair and doing absolutely nothing for three days. After having fallen over when attempting to stand up, write down how you feel. I bet you feel bloody awful. We need exercise as much as we need food to keep living and all of this is just so obvious that I cannot understand why it has to be even placed in a newspaper at all.There used to be something pleasurable in reading a newspaper, in getting up on a Sunday morning and going out to the Newsagent to purchase the ‘tree’ from the forest on display. Then lugging it back home and placing it next to the chair where you will reside for the next three hours or so (make sure the large urn of coffee is beside you though before finally settling in for the morning). Sitting there with the wedge of informative articles and interesting world headlines, the crossword and the gossip columns, the travel section and the business pages (only for some as are the obituaries) but a branch for everybody to while away the morning. Bring the world into your home sort of thing!The gossip of the day: Some film actress having a baby and Michael Jackson was caught in a black facemask (he thought it was a good disguise but everybody else thought he was trying to rob the bank). The business section kindly relays the news that stocks are up yet again, people are making bundles of money and that our reserves of oil will last longer than we thought. The headlines for the week are boring as per usual and the first page is skipped without second thought. The other headlines provide more interesting reading and half an hour can be spent skim reading the latest relief efforts in some dark corner and how the Conservative Party has been caught with their trousers down (yet again). The crossword causes a bit of frustration but like many the trick is to do the last weeks crossword this week – so that you have the answers in front of you for emergency. The obituaries are skipped along with the “singles” column and onto the diary.The Diary is one of the most skillfully advanced pieces of writing, the most audacious and the utmost in readability. They should be kept in-waiting by all readers until the last moment, when eventually they can no longer contain their suspense they rip into the diary with vigor and excitement. The diary sections give out wisdom and sound advice, they correct and adjust the world’s wrongs and they bring amusement and fun to an otherwise quite serious ex-tree!The sports pages are just skipped as those fanatics that are interested have seen the games and scores on the box the night before and those that try to be interested get confused by the strange language that sports reporters use!That used to be what reading a ‘tree’ was like a few years ago but things have changed, the pleasure seems to have vanished and the newspapers seem to have become impenetrable jungles. Trying to get one home has become a monumental task in itself, the rusting wheel barrow at the bottom of the garden may have some use after all. Unfortunately although the quantity has increased the quality has reduced – the once solid teak has become a straggle of weeping willows!Sitting down in your Sunday morning chair with the hot urn of coffee within easy reach, the first section is opened up. “The Royal Family….”. You throw that one away along with the travel section, which is now advising people where NOT to go, rather than taking you merrily to possible destinations. The business pages (used to be your favorite) are now telling you that the world is on the verge of a ‘non-returnable’ recession and that your stocks and shares are not worth the paper that they are written on. It also suggests that you should be out of a job within the next two weeks. The headlines are all about war and gloom, impending and current wars and any wars that any warrior can dream up! The sports ‘branch’ gives us yet another “objector”: those sportsmen and woman that insist endlessly that they have not taken performance enhancing drugs whilst jumping around the cameras like monkeys. And due to political differences some country or other is no longer attending the Olympic Games and that spectators, at those games should check under their seats for bombs before sitting down. The Olympics Security Team cannot do this task, as most of them have been called up into the army reserves or are just not interested due to having not been paid for three months.Reading the International News you suddenly realize that the Japanese Car that you possess and that you had to get a loan out to purchase will now cost you an arm and a leg to repair – the company that made it has gone bust! The holiday that you had booked in the Caribbean will no longer be the fun that you thought it would be as the Island has just gone through a coup and the new Military Junta says that they don’t like you! You also find out that the company that you work for has decided to move all of its operations to a ‘cheaper’ country, and that they will be laying off staff like it is going out of fashion – somehow they have forgotten to tell the Human Resources Manager of the situation (which was probably you by the way).Nothing much to make your Sunday anything special now is there! The crossword doesn’t prove much help as most of the words are “new” words, terms and expressions born from the modern computer age and are not found in any dictionary. The Obituaries ‘leaf’ provides no alternative reading and make you even more depressed than before as you realize that modern medicine was not the answer after all. The ‘singles’ start off interesting till you realize that the advertiser in question is seriously sick at heart and wants to re-enact the Gulf War with you rather than meeting for a nice dinner.No there is nothing there to read anymore, with all that is good news is old news. Did you read last Sunday’s article about how brushing your teeth can help to keep them from rotting happily away and causing you agony? Oh and that article where it told you to look both ways when crossing the road was very informative and useful! This supposedly helps you to not get run over by a large truck! About the Author
Ieuan Dolby is the Author and Webmaster of Seamania . As a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy he has sailed the world for fifteen years. Now living in Taiwan he writes about cultures across the globe and life as he sees it.
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