Whilst my appetite has seen better days, there are others of us who like to dine on endangered species. If I’m going to survive and become Ms. Universe I have to include some “save the dolphins” into all of this. I’m sure I’ve told you about my daily “The Far Side” desk calendar, right? It was the perfect Christmas gift from my father to my family and I believe my brother got one as well. (Martin, I hope you’ve got them all pinned up at work in Oslo, covering your office with Gary Larson’s awesome humour). Gary Larson has never tired me out, not even the comics that have been going around for a number of years.

Either way, what does Shark Fin Soup (魚翅) have to do with all of this? Well, Gary Larson also wishes to save the world, which is my cup of tea. His focus seems to lie within Conservation International and illegal wildlife trade. For instance, more than 50 shark species are at risk of extinction [...].

This morning I didn’t feel like laughing when I saw a beautiful photo of Whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus), which I additionally was fortunate to see in real life when visiting Cairns, Australia many years ago, and read the following:

Help End Trafficking in Threatened Wildlife

Shark fin soup is an Asian delicacy that can cost up to $100 a bowl. Yet shark fins have no taste at all.

To satisfy demand for the dish, sharks often are poached only for their fins. As much as 99 percent of the animal is wasted. Fishermen hastily cut off fins using machetes, then toss live and mutilated sharks back into the water to die. How many shark species are threatened? How can they be protected? Learn the answers and more @ www.conservation.org/trade

Below is just beautiful. I’m not sure about all the other things we humans are doing to these animals. Perhaps soup is just part of the problem, like the (expensive?) coffee machines at work. Isn’t changing a creature’s behaviour and natural habitat also a form of abuse or is this just Ms. Maria, who wishes to be a part of this Universe for a while longer, being moralistic?

It’s good to see that not everyone in this world take themselves seriously. Does this girl have a point in what she’s trying to say? I like the OJ Simpson analogy.

I wonder if Tyra Banks has tamed any beasts recently… she has managed to create a real-life-on-television-miracle. What a Saint.

“Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you…and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.” The Talmud

During the IB reunion last Saturday, people started talking about Facebook. I’m sure I have received previous invitations for this, but you know how it is, inflation sux. We recently put up a sign on our post box “Ingen Reklam Tack” (No Advertisement Thanks) for it was getting rediculous. I like bargain hunting but I don’t like being hunted (or haunted for that matter) by companies with their big fat flouresenct “it’s so cheap” figures. My favorites are when something costs 990 SEK or 16,890 SEK. To think of it, have you been able to find ANYTHING that’s not £$9.99 Kr or the like?

Either way, Facebook has potential. It’s easy to find people if people are willing to be found. I can highly recommend it. As I am not currently working on my “career”, I have put another tool that showed potental, Linked In, on the shelf for the time being. It also seems to be a tool best used by consultants and the like, but I may be wrong.

I had the great fortune on Saturday June 9th together with Elton, my sister-in-law and her three daughters to travel with our neighbours’ boat to welcome the full-scale replica of an 18th Century East India merchantman. I have made a slide-show of the photos I took of the “Black Pearl” looking masterpiece, GÖTHEBORG.

This is actually a movie I am willing to pay my 80-100 SEK to see (I know, going to the movies in Sweden is ridiculously expensive). I’ve always liked Michael Moore and spent quite a bit of time promoting his work on my site. I remember getting worried some two years ago when the news was out that he was targeting the pharmaceutical industry that my hero was making a huge mistake as an outsider and not getting the full picture of what most grass roots of these companies do every day. 

What do we do? I suppose work our arses off to come up with novel medicines so that our families can live a bit longer than what they could have expected in, say, the 1800’s (and add some good ol’ QoL in there as well). I’m sure you got the odd few living to 100 back then. You get a whole lot more doing so in comfort today and I hope to be one of them. SiCKO? It looks promising and even got one of my laughs today.

Does the King of Sweden still send letters to everyone who lives to be 100 in this country?

I like it when people try to make the world a better place and I am all for supporting that. Hannah Miller, who has posted a comment or two on my site and who shared Flat 13 with me at Canterbury Court in Manchester, has a sister, Bethany, who Walked for Life yesterday. Bethany, I see that you reached your £300 target. Way to go! Han, I have August 2008 penciled in my diary.

I’ve always liked Oprah Winfey, who’s the same age as my mother, I realise, and who’s aged just as gracefully. Here’s a quote by this magnificant woman in the February 2004 issue of her very own O Magazine:

“The roses, the lovely notes, the dining and dancing are all welcome and splendid. But when the Godiva is gone, the gift of real love is having someone who’ll go the distance with you. Someone who, when the wedding day limo breaks down, is willing to share a seat on the bus.”

As I wrote in my comment, I didn’t know Morrissey was a vegetarian. I realise that I know very little about the man, only that he has written some of my favorite music. I’m not sure how many of you reading this know that I am a hunter. In about 30 minutes I will be off for my International Baccalaureate (IB) reunion as it is ten years ago we all graduated from the “nightmare”. It is also about ten years ago I took my (hunting) license (to kill). I’m an animal.

I’ve always said that I don’t really have a case against the vegetarians or the vegans. However, all you meat-lovers out there, you know you all have it easy. I have to shoot Bambi before I eat him. You can all go to your nearest grocery store and pick up a nicely packed mass slaughtered beef. Who of us is worse? What are your thoughts on organic meat? At least I gave the poor animals a chance to get away, although I admit I have the upper hand. I also agree with Morrissey that the Charles is a monster with regards to fox-hunting. Eat the creatures if you’re going to kill them.

I almost wish I was fired up about something, that I was on the rage and had something to yell about. I just came in from my parents’ house, which is located about 20 meters to the left of ours, feeling like a drunk tripping across toys in my Dry Martini fog.

I need to check whether my new drug, Ergenyl (valproic acid), “can (also) greatly decrease alcohol tolerance” like my old rash, Hermolepsin (carbamazepine), supposedly did. Is this what smoking marijuana is like? If yes, then I’m not sure I’m interested. What an itch! Although some say you can write better music. Fakes! Maybe I will feel more inspired to write on my new drug, valproic acid.

Interestingly, according to the Lancet 366 (9485): 549–55, “valproic acid is an inhibitor of the enzyme histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1). The latter is needed for the HIV virus to remain in infected cells. A study published in 2005 revealed that patients treated with valproic acid in addition to highly active antiretroviral therapy showed a median 75% reduction in latent HIV infection” [...] It’s good to see that medical science has progressed over the years. It keeps me hopeful for therpay progression in my ball park – oligoastrocytomas.

AIDS, or even HIV, is an experience I would like to not experience. I can’t decide, what’s more stigmatised? Schitzophrenia, HIV or Cancer? It’s definitely not a brain tumour. People look at me as if I’d just told them that I had been attacked by a shark whilst surfing the waves (just as unlikely).

Carbamazepine? Interestingly… well lets see what juicy stuff we can dig up on this one. “Carbamazepine was first marketed as a drug to treat trigeminal neuralgia in 1962. It has been used as an anticonvulsant in the UK since 1965, but only approved in the U.S. since 1974. It is also used to treat schizophrenia. Here we go again.

Reading an email from my new found Ukrainian friend(s), Olga, I realise that I know very little about Slavic mythology.

For example, the rusalki are in many traditions fish-women, who live at the bottom of rivers.

In the middle of the night, they will walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. I found some pictures on Google and I would be fascinated if I saw women like these dancing in my meadow.

Supposedly, if they see handsome men, they will spellbind them with songs and dancing, mesmerise them, then lead the person away to the river floor, to live with them. Fools, huh?

I want to be Forrest Gump. I just finished watching the movie (OK, I continued watching the end of CSI Las Vegas and the beginning of season 3 of 24 before typing this) and it’s 02:10 am. I’m thinking about Forrest Gump when I should be sleeping. I don’t have insomnia at the moment, it’s just that Zaman and I have come to a compromise. He gets Thursdays and I get Monday evenings to do what I want. We also get every other Wednesday as I want to go to Toastmasters and well, I presume he wants to play World of Warcraft.

See, compromises help maintain the peace and we’re getting better at it. Now I don’t have to bitch and he doesn’t have to yell at me. You must have heard these, I’m sure: “Life’s a bitch and then you marry one” or “Life sucks and then you marry one who doesn’t”. Either way, life’s less sucks and bitchy, which is a development. No wonder the world looks as it does when people can’t get along, even at home, who are from the same culture, creed, heck we even look like siblings!

When it is at its worse, I want to go out running. At the moment I don’t quite have the energy to run, but I can cycle. Problem is that it doesn’t really solve the problem. Forrest started running some four times cross-America when Jenny left him. I haven’t been left by anyone, yet.

“…maybe it’s both, maybe both are happening at the same time.”