Teller of Untruths, Your Trousers Have Combusted

It's 12:36 PM on a leafy suburb of any given generic city. All to be heard are the fleeting cars on the duel carriage way nearby. Then a bell echoes around. Starting in the marble corridors and making its way to the cochlea of a child. It is now time for the sacred ritual that is kids lunchtime. The yard is full. Groups of boys and girls scream, running around with not a care in the world. But then one boy tries to exaggerate a tale of his to gain some playground respect. But hes pushed it too far. The dreaded chant bellows out creating a silence and all eyes gaze upon him....

"LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!"

But what does this mean? Why are his pants on fire? Is it literal or maybe just a good rhyme? Well legend has it, it originates from the fact that lying is considered an immoral act that is punishable by spanking. Henceforth one who lies bottom will be hit causing his or her pants to be on fire.

And well we all know who are the biggest liars and contradictors of the lot? Not the poor school child trying to navigate the social maze of primary school, but the GOVERNMENT!!!

They need to get their stories straight....

Here is an article from the NY Times about the government scaremongering about fat and then pushing cheese sales.

Now neither of these are necessarily bad things. But they need to put their message across differently. People shouldn't just be worrying about their fat intake, but looking at their all round health. Be active, eat healthily, have some sense, instead of frightening people about fat they should be encouraging educating ourselves so we can make informed decisions not just be told eat less of this and more of the other.

Cheese does have quite a high fat content, but its has its advantages being calcium rich. But were not expected to eat 100g at a time. Its not going to kill you unless you have one of these a day....

Then it would be goodbye friend...

Dead or Alive

Zombies. The walking DEAD. The living DEAD. The unDEAD. But are they really dead??

Well the idea of a zombie originates from Haiti and a young man by the name of Wade Davis was fascinated by the tales of voodoo. He had read stories of zombies and their link with voodoo, which told of the people being controlled as laborers by a powerful sorcerers or bokors. In the 80s he presented a pharmacological case that could explain zombie like states. So the bokor would introduce 2 chemicals to the victim. Straight to the blood, usually via a wound. Assumably this is where the grotesque name of the modern pop culture zombie comes from. First he we add a toxin "coup de poudre" the main component being tetrodotoxin which is found in the flesh of puffer fish, fugu, which when not prepared correctly can be deadly as popularised by a certain Mr. Homer J. Simpson, well he wasn't a friend to the salad....

Together which another drug these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the victim's will would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Then they would be reanimated after being buried. Thus breaking up through the soil comes the iconic zombie. But is it immortal now or is it just a corpse?

This point can be transferred to other debates. The one we'll choose is the philosophical hot pot that is cheese of course. So what is cheese. It is one of life's great conundrum. Is the cheese the immortal embodiment of milk? Or is it a corpse vessel that is the Tumuli of the milk? The opposing sides of the argument go as such....

The late great American author Clifton Fadiman argued...

"A cheese may disappoint.
It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated.
Yet it remains, cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality"

Where as a certain James Joyce disagreed with him...

"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk."

NO, NO, NO, NO......... Yes..........