Scrubs

I like that programme.
If you could be a character from it, who would it be?
I would be the janitor.

The fastest man in the world

I was looking through an old sketch book from 1995, and I found this story I had written. I don't remember what inspired it, if anything. But here it is. I reproduce it here exactly, although there are some mistakes in it, mainly that the tense keeps jumping from the past to the present, and the phrase "the fastest man in the world" is repeated quite a lot.

The Fastest Man in the World

The fastest man in the world got shipwrecked on an island in the remotest part of the sea. There is only one man living on the island. The fastest man in the world tells him he is the fastest man in the world.
The man who lives on the island tells the fastest man in the world that he loves to run along the beach, and he challenges the fastest man in the world to a race. The fastest man in the world agrees.
The race begins, and the fastest man in the world is surprised to see the man who lives on the island take off into an early lead. The fastest man in the world is in top condition and running the fastest he has ever run.
He summoned all his strength and energy and his feet kicked up huge sprays of sand behind him as he tore along the strand. But at the end of the race the man who lives on the island has extended his lead and wins easily. From then on the fastest man in the world was no longer the fastest man in the world.
He was the slowest man on the island.

That weird woman

There's something about bus stops.
You tend to be at them at the same time of day as you are going to work, and hence you tend to see the same other people who presumably start work at the same time you do.
And you come to hate them.
I don't know why.
Maybe it is because it is early in the morning and you are going to work when you would rather still be at home tucked up in your nice warm bed.
Maybe, in the case of this woman, it is because she looks so weird.
She always wears the same clothes. A big long coat and a pair of white trainers.
For all I know, she might be naked under that coat, for her legs are bare, and you never see any evidence of any other clothes.
I don't know why, because I am a fairly placid person, but the very sight of her fills me with a hatefulness that makes no logical sense.
It can't just be the early morning going to work thing, because sometimes she's on the bus on the way home on a Friday afternoon, and I hate her then too.
Why?
I don't even know her. She might be a really good person.

This great thing my Dad once did.

I just remembered this great thing my Dad once did.
I was at college at the time, and during the holidays I used to come home.
When the holidays were over, my Dad drove me to the airport.
As I got out of the car he produced several notes and handed them to me.
I said, "Dad, I don't need any money."
He said, "Well you can give me it back the next time you see me."

Spring has sprung!

What a wonderful day it is today.
But I heard a show on the radio the other night about babies.
We all know that we have no memory about our lives until about the age of two.
So what goes on?
Does a baby look at a spectacular sunrise and just not think that much of it? Just another thing to look at.
Is aesthetics a learned thing, or is it sort of built-in?
Apparently up to a certain age, if babies see a thing, and then you take it away out of their sight, they think it doesn't exist anymore. A bit like me when a gas bill comes in.
Apparently also, babies like the smell of poo. They only dislike it because they are taught to. They learn not to like it.
I remember once going into a toilet in a pub in Belfast and there was a dreadful sewage smell.
Instead of making me feel disgusted, it filled me with feelings of nostalgia for when I was in Indonesia.
Go figure, as the Americans would say.
I am going to go now and test out my new running shoes.
The weather is lovely.

Faeces!

I was just sitting on the toilet today, expunging some waste from my body, and I wondered, "Why should it harm me to eat it?"
Other than the taste and the smell, what harm can it do me?
It just came out of my body, and that it did't kill me, or make me sick on the way in, so why should it kill me or make me sick by putting it back in again?
Most animals fail to draw all the nutritients from their food the first time aroumd
And the advantages of eating it second time around would be,

You wouldn't have to chew it so much.
You would be helping the environment.
You would be helping reduce the world over-population problem (because no-one would want to kiss you).

The main disadvantage is that you would be putting a lot of kebbab shops out of business.