ScienceDirect - Search Results: TITLE-ABSTR-KEY(rectal AND massage):
"Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage
Annals of Emergency Medicine, Volume 17, Issue 8, August 1988, Page 872
Francis M Fesmire".......excellent, and using the same search terms I also got the following line from Anim. Reprod. Sci. 'High quality ejaculates (n=4) were collected from two Asian elephant bulls by rectal massage.'. Which lucky research student got volunteered for that task I wonder, and who held the bucket? Anyway, I got the cure of choice for hicups from New Scientist which also reminded me of something which, while a little bit less school boy humour, is still excellent nonetheless. Take a dictionary, in this case an English-Swedish-English one, and then look at the top of the pages where, hopefully, the first and last entry on the page are separated with a '-'......you then get such associations as:

wholefood-Wiener schnitzel
pullback-pungent
iguana-imbecility
dog biscuit - doomwatcher

Quite why this makes me laugh is anyones guess, but this is a game which could me occupied for minutes.

Pissed off with: The American show 'prison break'. 22 episodes I sat through of watching the tattooed Jason Schofield work on his tortourous, illogical and quite frankly unbelievable plan to get him and his brother out of prison. 22 fucking episodes, which is just short of a whole day of my life. Episode 22, we're escaping - check, massive plot holes (nothing new there)-check, starting to wind up loose strings - check....hold on a minute, cutting it a bit fine here, only 5 minutes left and theres still loads of stuff which needs to be explained, oh what, whats that you say....another 22 episodes of them, no longer in prison but now the run. No thanks, I'll consider 'Want ad-warpath', 'seduce-siezure' or a 'labial-lady' instead.

cool the stuff you learn from comic books - Balducci levitation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I got this from Y: The Last Man...most excellent, now to learn it, teach it to E and then get him to scare the hell out of his cousins.

Guardian Unlimited Comment is free We have turned Iraq into the most hellish place on Earth: "This country has been turned by two of the most powerful and civilised nations on Earth into the most hellish place on Earth. Armies claiming to bring democracy and prosperity have brought bloodshed and a misery worse than under the most ruthless modern dictator. This must be the stupidest paradox in modern history. Neither America nor Britain has the guts to rule Iraq properly, yet they lack the guts to leave.
Blair speaks of staying until the job is finished. What job? The only job he can mean is his own."

BBC NEWS Science/Nature Global ecosystems 'face collapse': "Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned. "

shite and onions, as they say, no job with the corporate silver back which is Möller-Maersk, seems my antics in the last (second, no less) interview were enough to blow my chances out of the water, set them on fire and then attempt to put out the flames with petrol. This is an excerpt:

Interviewer: So, John, what do you know about supply chain management?
Me: Botty burp

and that about captures it perfectly.

Theres a recruitment fair in Malmö tomorrow so I'm off to that to see if there's any other fools I can humilate myself in front of (bitter? - no) and then me and the family are jetting off to Växjö for some of the weekend and then off to the summer house for the rest. Should be fun.

Observation of Swedish life #34: An ancient by-law means that it is legal to hunt and kill Danes if you are riding a pig, naked and armed with a badger. (but only on the first sunday of every month).
Reading: Moondust - brilliant series of interviews with the remaining moonwalkers - very cool, captures just how mad Apollo was. and, in Swedish, Spiderman and Bone.

The Americans are planning an ambitious attempt to go to the moon by 2020, all good stuff but from what I last read theres not actually any new money - its just a shuffling around of existing funds - and I guess the next administration will quietly shuffle the blueprints away. Never mind - the Swedes are going to the moon, and rather than just footprints (which is not the only thing the moonwalkers left by a long chalk, it includes: a golf club, poo, photographs, a feather, a laser beam reflector, descent stages (all used - no resale value), moon buggies, flags, plaques, golf balls, a record (not sure about this one), cameras and Nixon's signature) they intend to leave a small, traditional, red Swedish cottage.

Very quickly done, but it made me laugh. Theres tons of cool advertising stuff from the olden days here.

An Addendum to the last post, reading the comments proved to be somewhat interesting - particularly the quote ''She intelligently said 'Well, if it doesn't do you any good, it isn't going to do you any harm'. ', I'm still trying to figure that one out....like, ohh let me see, how does this dazzling logic perform to say, being shot in the face repeatly at point blank range which, clearly, will not do you any good. Don't get me started on the bones being healed from a distance.

Is Chris de Burgh a miracle worker? the Mail on Sunday...apprently he cured a man suffering from a swollen ankle by simply touching the affected area. 'look, he walks' shouted the excited Chris. To bloody right mate, a paraplegic would use their mouth and eyelids to drag themselves away from the risk of hearing 'lady in red'. Reading the article, and theres much to laugh at (or despair) but one of the best lines is:This is not the first time that de Burgh has professed to having special healing powers.

'In 1993 he revealed that he had warned his wife, Diane, not to move her spine if she should break her neck in a riding accident.' Wells thats just genius.

and.....

' And five years ago he apparently helped cure former Liverpool defender Markus Babbel of Guillain-BarrÈ syndrome, a rare form of neuritis which paralyses parts of the body.
The singer visited him in hospital where he lit a crystal lamp and passed his hands over the player's legs.'

Lit a crystal lamp? What did he use, a fucking blow torch. No wonder Markus claim immediate success and fled the room.

Given the growth of these healing powers are probably in inverse correlation to record sales I expect James Blunt to be merrily working the crowds at Lourdes sometime soon.

and that small thud was my other teste falling off.......very very funny......dTheatre.com : Hilarious STAR WARS Video Mash-Up!

Fantastic mash up, I laughed so much I dropped a bollock. YouTube - The Picard Song

'Bout ten years ago I was did some work out in Eastern Europe, just when I was starting my PhD. I found myself, on a washed out day, walking along an empty piece of coast road on the shores of the black sea. It had rained heavily the night before and the sky had a battered, but bright, appearance. I had walked down a thin set of rickety wooden steps to the coast road, from a park where the autumn leaves had started to bury smashed and disfigured statues of Soviet heroes. As I walked along the road, stepping around potholes and random piles of gravel an old man walked past me, a fishing rod slung over his back. He smiled at me, stopped, and with a mouth which had almost no teeth spoke a few words. I shrugged, smiled, and said 'I'm sorry, I'm English, I did not understand'. He smiled again, stared at me for a few seconds and then carried on. I did to, my gaze flicking across the bay where waves splashed and flickered. Suddenly I heard a shout, and turning, I saw the old man waving at me.
'The storm, he has gone' He said, in English, and then 'now I can fish'. He waved his fishing rod over his head and I joined in his triumphant wave. He turned again, and we walked our separate ways, the distance between us growing as we walked our separate ways around the bay.

Theres something about that chance encounter which has stuck with me and I occasionally find myself thinking about it. I wonder if that old man is still alive, and I wonder if he ever remembers the strange out of place English man he met, miles from anywhere, one day in October. Perhaps not, and perhaps its only something in my head that makes such a random encounter so powerful but it seemed to bright, and vivid, at the time that I find it a comforting memory to return to.

"We are kinda being trained to be warriors.. only in a much funner way".

Watch the future of America:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co1_9lR9EpM

Talk about moving the goal posts - Yisrayl Hawkins With the singular absence of nuclear war since his last prediction of September being the end of the world we have a new date 7 days hence....time to go back to the shelter I suppose.....

aaah, rats cocks. The interview with M was less fun and games and more like throwing rocks at a crippled dwarf in a barrel. This was the second interview, to validate the first (though surely they should have three?) and I would not have been surprised if the guy interviewing me had checked to make sure I really was the person interviewed in the first round. I was blithering like an idiot and would have probably made a better impression had I simply knuckled around the room uttering loud pant-hoots. Arse.

Finally, a serious website concerned with a problem which threatens all our bovine chums......Cowabduction.com
I wish I had the energy to type more, but I'm tired so the news in brief: another interview with M tomorrow, its raining a lot, I can bunny hop my bike on the spot, I am missing skin from my shin (see last statement), my daughter weighs 5 kilos, and I'm feeling somewhat weary.

Moooooo.