Au Cochonnet Marin

Some people have the “gift of gab”, the (often dangerous) ability to convince others into doing what they want.
(The gift of gab is supposedly given to one who kisses the Blarney Stone in Ireland, but it seems that some individuals kissed the Malarkey Stone instead and ended up spouting crapola).

Many of these blowhards are often unsuccessful opportunists looking for ways to improve their forgettable status.
They trawl the flotsam of society, prospecting for alienated, restless, angry young men (or women).

When they hook a prey (generally a gullible slacker) it is like a match made in heaven.
-Hello brother, are you looking for adventure, excitement?
-Yeah I think so…
-I thought so. Are you a True Believer?
-Yes I think so, I am not sure… (Some militants have been known to carry “Islam for dummies” in their rucksack.)
-That’s OK, I’ll show you the way.

And just like the generals of yesteryear, these rabble-rousers will send thousands of impressionable young people into harm’s way, while safely staying put behind the lines.

The spark for this new crusade is the perceived and drummed notion of unfairness toward Islam. And the answer for this capital sin is Jihad, a bloody war against “unbelievers”.
To defend Islam threatened by Infidels.

Jihad evokes adventure, the thrill often lacking in otherwise drab existences.
And there are rewards: guns (who doesn’t love them?), war brides (willing or not), terrorizing victims, and bragging rights if coming out unscathed of this adventure.

Most of this recruiting is done online. So the fight against “Islamofascism” should start on the web.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazenave recently went to the United States to promote policing websites promoting extremism.
He talked to Internet operators Facebook, Google, Twitter trying to convince them to better police the Internet.

This is a good beginning, but the fight against extremist propaganda should not start on the web. It should start at home.

Relatives and friends should be on the lookout for somebody’s new and unusual behavior. And if they notice anything odd, they shouldn’t be afraid to implement an intervention “an occasion on which a person with a behavioral problem is confronted by a group of friends or family members in an attempt to persuade them to address the issue.”
And if the intervention is not successful, alert the authorities!

If you ever catch me growing a beard, becoming sanctimonious, showing any suspicious signs of unexpected piety or proselyting, I beg you, INTERVENE!

Tie me up, tie me down and do everything possible to bring me back to my normal state of swearing, drinking, pigging out and wenching.
Thank you ahead of time for doing a good deed.

Alain

Merci a Eliana!

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: