Seriously time to take things a little less seriously

I have been accused many times of not taking supposedly serious things not seriously at all, or not seriously enough.

I blame a society that expects increasing solemnity with age. According to these unwritten rules people are supposed to become more planted and mirthless as they age.

It seems that levity becomes conditional as you age; apparently after a certain age, you can only joke among old friends (who are as old as you are), you can joke with little children (who are closely related), you can joke with the spouse (but only on Tuesdays... and then only if it isn't raining), you can joke with the help (if you fancy a illicit hanky panky)... the rules are so bizarre that you'd think I was making this up!

Just do it can be 'Oops!' moments too

Yesterday I posted my thoughts on procrastination and how (if anything) I set about changing my ways to stop procrastinating earlier – so that I had a little more time (although still painfully close a deadline that I had set for myself; adjusted from the original).

I find that the reason for my procrastination was the innate inability to 'just do it.' This problem is beyond my greater affinity to Adidas than to Nike; it has more to do with the fact that I am fairly relaxed as an individual and thus not usually surging with nervous energy and a fetish need to keep moving regardless of the insignificance of a quest.

It would seem that in my relaxed fashion, I contemplate (not over-analyse mind you; I act much before I begin to over analyse anything) and then gear myself up for the task at hand. Moreover I can judge fairly accurately the time frame required to get the job done.

While there are those who do over-analyse, there are also those who fastidiously follow the Nike motto and 'just do it.'

Act of God or Smarts?

Hot on the heels of divine intervention and human stupidity there is another story of a California (naturally) man who attempted to fix a hernia in his stomach trying to cut it off with a six-inch butter knife.

Police were called in to intervene only to find the man naked and sprawled out on a lawn chair, with a butter knife protruding from his abdomen.

The man's wife, who had called the police, told them her husband was “sick and tired of waiting to get surgery for his rupture” and had thus decided to take matters into his own hands.

The 63-year-old California man has since been admitted into the Los Angeles County USC Medical Centre's psychiatric ward and is now recovering.

The police officer who had responded to the call was quoted in the local paper that "whether they have insurance or not is not a matter anymore, seeing that he is in the care of the county. Because of that, he will get the removal or repair of the hernia at taxpayers' expense."

One wonders whether the Lord works in mysterious ways or that the man was actually really not that stupid. Any guesses?

Jokes aside, obviously the man in question had to be pretty desperate to do what he did, and one cannot truly judge him without firsthand knowledge of the excruciating pain and/or extreme discomfort that he might have suffered before attempting the surgery himself.

He was of course a cautious man, since he opted to use a butter knife rather than anything sharper or more unwieldy, lest he lose his grip and the knife plummet further downward and damage (or seriously wound) a better cherished appendage.

They come in three

Three revelations from the news makes me conclude that pot, excess booze and escalating petrol prices really do make some people stupid.

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No Happy Meal here!

In one case a Illinois man was gainfully smoking cannabis in his car while waiting for his meal at the drive-thru of a local McDonald’s. Had it been any other day or any other restaurant he might have gotten away.

Or maybe if he checked his rear mirror often... because on the particular day the car that was directly behind him in line at the drive-thru was a police cruiser.

The officer was able to smell the burning marijuana and saw the smoke coming out of the passenger window of the car in front.

He stopped the car for a traffic violation and found a tupperware container filled with pot in the car. The offender was duly charged with possession.

You can be sure it wasn't a Happy Meal.

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In another case, a Warsaw man attempted to woo his sweetheart by riding chest naked into her house on horseback. Needless to say, he had been drinking at the local watering hole and thought it was a grandiose enough gesture to sweep her off her feet.

Chivalry died in the hands of the uncouth...

However, when he smashed his way through the front door and into her living room, while she was home watching TV with her daughter, she called the police.

The shaken divorcee only had did to say: “I never fancied him before and certainly don't now.”

Ouch!

The poor lovelorn man, and divorced father of seven, now faces five years behind bars for aggravated breaking and entry.

No news to the state of the horse though.

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And finally, to perhaps finally prove that escalating petrol prices were making loons of us all, two Kazakhstan men decided to save on trailer costs (and petrol) by shipping the Mazda 626 they had bought by transporting it back home in their van.

The German police pulled over the heavily laden white van on the highway (after they saw it lurching from side to side) - and were stunned when they found a car packed on its side in the back!

What happened was that when the car wouldn't fit in the van the proper way up - the two men decided to think out of the box. They called a few pals and loaded the silver Mazda in on its side – carefully putting a mattress underneath to stop the doors from getting scratched.

When pulled over though the men couldn't see a problem with their solution, the car did fit in the van after all.

Well, if it fits...

The Germans, however, couldn't quite see it the same way. A German police spokesman said the van and the car were confiscated and the men ordered to return with a proper transporter for the car before they would be allowed to continue the journey.