Category: Fourre-tout

Sometimes my muse takes a vacation and leaves me stranded, staring at a blank page.
That’s not good. Not good at all!
I have deadlines you know.

She can disappear for days at a time without any prior warning.
It would be nice if she would give me a few days’ notice, but it is not her style. I am not married to you she often says, and I want to see other people.
And off she goes. Damn her!

Her name is Thalia and no, she is not Portuguese.
We have known each other and collaborated for a long time. I appreciate her help but (excuse my French) she can be a pain in the wazoo.
She is flighty, unpredictable, temperamental, opinionated.

The other day she suggested that I write a piece about Jihadists. I know that they bug you she said. Write about it, let it all out. It will do you good.
OK, I said you are right. They bug me.

So I started writing about these bloody buggers and everything was going swimmingly when Thalia suddenly disappeared.
At first I didn’t pay attention, but after becoming stranded a few times in the middle of a paragraph, I realized that she was taking more than a cigarette break.
She has now been gone for a few days and I am stuck.

I hate to admit it, but she can be very helpful. She is full of ideas and she lays it on me, day or night.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I rush to Molly, my computer.
Thalia just whispered a few thoughts in my ear and I don’t want to lose any of it.
So I jot down everything and try to go back to sleep.
But sometimes I can’t. Thalia does not care. I told you, she is flighty!
I try to count cows, but it doesn’t always work.

I just received an SMS from Thalia. I am in Saint Tropez for a few days, she said.
-When will you be back? I asked.
-Dunno. I am staying with a nice fellow and he has been good to me.
-Damn it Thalia, you owe me. And who is this guy anyway? He is better than me?
-Hush darling… you know that I love you but I am not a one-man woman, you know that.

I know that and I am not happy about it, but what can I do?
So I alternate between bouts of jealousy and pangs of anger.
But it doesn’t help.
My page remains half full.

In case you didn’t know, Thalia is the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne.
She is a goddess and she comes from a large family. She has eight ornery sisters and they fight all the time.

I finally (temporarily) abandoned my jihadist paper.
I cannot go on without Thalia. I hope that she will be back soon because I cannot live without her. Hate to say that but I need her.

I try to cope by eating ice-cream/herring sandwiches. Sometimes it works.

I’ll get back to you when Thalia will resurface.
Sorry about this coitus interruptus.

Alain

I never gave it much thought, but for men the quantity of sperm produced in the testicles is of the utmost importance.
Almost as important as money in the eyes of some women, and I can envision dames in the very near future subtly (or not) quizzing their dates about their liquid assets.

Some individuals are saddled with a “low sperm count” and might have difficulties procreating. Bummer (or blessing) depending on where you stand!
Technically this means there are fewer than normal “little guys” paddling in your seminal stream.
The first question that comes to mind is: how many spermatozoids should there be in one milliliter of sperm?
A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? Does anybody know?
According to the Mayo Clinic,” your sperm count is considered lower than normal if you have fewer than 15 million sperm per milliliter of semen.”
Whoa! That’s a lot of Matzo Balls!

I never checked my own count because I was too busy counting my money and mainly because it looked a little difficult rounding up all these little guys.

Now, how do you determine how rich (or how impoverished) you are?
Zat eez ze question!

Well, I just read in a French magazine called “Sciences et Avenir” that an auto test performed at home in now available in French pharmacies.
It is called SpermCheck and is already sold in Great Britain and the United States.
It will calculate the concentration of spermatozoids/ml in your seminal fluid and tell you if it is below par or normal.

Keeping track of the little swimmers (unless you are a perv) is not man’s favorite occupation, although on a rainy day (and if there is nothing to watch on the tube) you could be persuaded to do it to be companionable.

Basically the user must blend his semen with a special solution. He must then put six drops of the liquid on a “reader”, which in turn will search for a protein of semen called “SP10 “.
“The result must be exactly read after seven minutes”. Therefore it is necessary to secure a watch or a chronometer before launching the test; otherwise you might be getting an erroneous result.

Sperm count and fertility decline with advancing age and that’s why many busy young professionals are now freezing their eggs or sperm and keep it into a secure vault for future use.
So technically speaking, you could father a child while napping in a wheelchair or even when resting three feet underground.
You cannot stop progress, but progress can get a little spooky.

Wishing you a high count of you know what.
Wink wink!

Alain

PS: The Spermcheck Fertility auto test is manufactured by Contravac, an American company based in Virginia.

Compliments of Alain Marchand:

I am a Netflix subscriber and I will confess that I watch a fair amount of movies.
Because what else is there to do in the evening besides sex, pot and Scrabble?
But unfortunately the pickings for decent movies are slim.

After their release good flicks don’t appear in a Netflix lineup for months, even years, but unfortunately turkeys (like The Interview) show up right away.

Since I am a finicky viewer (I don’t like sci-fi, horror stuff, vampires, brainless teenagers stories, cowboys, action, sports), and since I don’t like listening to endless four-letter words, I have been in a bind.

Because of this unfortunate situation, I have sought solace in Bollywood movies.
That’s right, I hooked up with the Guys of Mumbai.

Conventional Indian movies are feel-good, entertaining yarns. And they always end well.
They are also very predictable.
It starts with a good-looking guy or a good-looking girl looking for (what else?) love.
These two people are handsome, likable, but inexplicably unable to find love.
Is that possible? But never mind…

Bollywood sagas are long, involved stories, with a lot of unexpected developments.
To make a story interesting you need conflict, and since in an Indian love story, the entire family is involved, we are never short of those.

The father is usually a dignified, upright gentleman, but it is his wife who runs the show.

Incidentally, in India women are often called “auntie”.
It is a term of endearment used mostly by children and teens for a female (not related to them) who is middle-aged or older.

In a Bollywood production, singing and dancing are a must.
Every so often the main protagonists will break into songs.
If they are sad, they will sing sad songs, if they are happy they will sing happy songs.
When they are very happy they dance.

In Indian movies (at least those I have seen), there is no sex and no kissing. Those disgusting practices are evidently left to decadent westerners.

The movie usually ends up with a wedding ceremony.
The bride is always covered with jewelry (with a ring in her nose) and the groom looks like a maharajah. And there is natürlich a lot of dancing.

If you were sick with the flu and in low spirits, what would you choose to watch: a Freddy Kruger movie or a Bollywood flick?
It’s a no brainer!
You will pick Bollywood over Hollywood.

After watching the rousing finale of a Bollywood pic, you will be cured and itching to get up and go dance.

Namaste!

Alain