the western man with one lung gone

hello there


much, i would speculate, of my morning rituals (or routines) would be matters that you have little interest in. indeed, as point of fact, it may be prudent to say you'd rather know not much of them, to be sure. well, in this instance i feel obliged to reveal one of them, look you see. it is on or of a morning that i, when dining upon breakfast alone, consult the website of the BBC to look at the front pages of the newspapers for the day today.

on the instance of this morning (or yesterday, or a few days ago, depending on when exactly you read this) there was one common theme the newspapers of the UK apparently wished me to consider. yes, true, usually the newspapers are similar in covering the same story on the front page, but in this instance it was thematic. and that theme was, in the sense of the ways in which Frankie Goes To Hollywood thus spake, spunk.

in continuance of the Frankie theme, papers were giving the spunk loads in that direction in two ways. one scientific; the other what one might call the practical application. although perhaps this is all one in the same. anyway, let us gander.

i would say please do ignore the horrible, ghastly picture of Theresa May, but to do so would in a tacit way imply that it was possible to have a picture of her which was neither ghastly, horrible or beyond. terrible woman; despises the people she would claim to lead and i have had all the expensive experience of this that i need.

please do, for the moment, also ignore the standard stuff on the front page of The Guardian, which is to say all the anti-Tory, pro-Labour comments. instead look towards the bottom. that is where you will find one of many stories today relating to what The Guardian considers to be a "shocking" fall in the level of sperm count. in, yes, western men.

there is every chance that i shall step on the toes of things that people believe, advocate and support as i go on with this. should your disposition be that you simply do not like to read things which disagree with what you think of the world then perhaps now, as you have the point of all of this in broad terms, is a good point for you to depart to another corner of the internet.

my understanding would be that The I is all that remains in a physical sense of the newspaper The Independent, with that now being an all online concern. be that as it may, as you can see The I has elected to go full tilt with all of this spunk worry.

what's the gist, so to speak? apparently scientists are concerned that, "for a number of reasons", sperm counts in western men have fallen considerably. no, the front pages do not say if this is comparative to, for instance, eastern, southern, northern or those oh so often overlooked central men.

quite a serious story, to be sure, and i would not wish to underplay it. but it is also something i feel compelled to say "hang on a minute" about, and pose comment.

to start with, for the last couple of decades (at least) what we, the general population of this planet, have been hammered with is "over population". not necessarily by scientists, granted, but the lesson repeated to the point of acceptance has been "there are too many of us, we are producing too many people, we have to stop the population explosion or we are all doomed". and now the new teaching is "oh dear we are not being able to produce more people".

did The Sun by any chance also cover spunk on the front page today? yes they did, but from an entirely different angle.

as many of you will not need me to tell you about The Sun has always seen itself as a champion of inspiring the production of many buckets of heterosexual spunk, except for instances when they have upset non-hetero communities a bit too far for the usual and have to do some token pieces ostensibly advocating tolerance if not acceptance. they, then, have elected to cover something called Love Island, which from what i can gather is all sex of the hetero variety and so in fitting with The Sun.

no, i have not seen Love Island but far be it from me to knock or be critical of a show which is so popular. by the sounds of it the show is exactly what we of my generation would have absolutely loved to have had on the tele in our bedrooms in our early teen years, but we made do with them illicit "red triangle" broadcasts on Channel 4.

to venture back briefly to The I, well, i appreciate that this is not so much what scientists are saying but rather what the editors out of The I have elected to focus on. they say smoking, "chemicals" and obesity are "possible" causes of the lack of spunk in the western world. undoubtedly they are. the problem is the wording. you could argue anything is a "possible" cause of anything you like, really. in this instance, with variations in level of direct experience, i can pretty much assure the readership of The I, and the world at large if so required, that fat smokers who have come into contact with "chemicals" do indeed have sex and would seem quite able of producing children.

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a collapse is what The Daily Telegraph considers the sperm count, indicating that it could cause the end of humanity. for my thoughts on how to interpret "could" in this or any news story, please refer to my comments above in respect of "possible causes". to wit, it both "could" and it is "possible" that there's some secret code in place, and if you phone a Ferrari dealership and fart down the phone at them then they give you a free car.

i understand that in the modern world many declare themselves to be "atheist" and take it as a given that this means they are more intelligent than anyone else. the backbone of this approach to live, and for the most part i am all dig what you dig, live and let live, is that atheism relies on a dedicated belief in the ways of science; the argument being that science is all the fact where religion is not.

this description of science tends to be a misnomer. scientific discovery or interpretation is "fact" only so far as it is accepted to the point where someone else disproves it or provides an alternate theory. whilst not as openly, granted, in essence science is just as open to interpretation and debate as any religion you care to name. in my view, anyhow.

however, if we take "science" to equal "fact" for the moment, there's the problem. science deals with interpretation and definition within a frame of reference. it has no interest in belief or feel. thus it seldom considers the actual living, people with emotions and capable of thought indications of what is produced in the name of it, or the implications of how they will change what they do in accordance with any such findings, revelations, etc.

yes, The Daily Mail getting all excited about Theresa, all dirty on diesel and apparently no interest in spunk at all. but diesel is another instance of science, is it not? twenty or so years ago science was all "oh, diesel is much better for the environment, hey everyone switch to diesel and the planet will be fine". now the song of science is "oh dear studies show diesel is absolutely knacking the planet, hey everyone ditch diesel use petrol instead and the planet will be fine".

much of the ills of the modern world are not so much down to our all of a sudden lack in understanding that 2 + 2 = 4, but rather that we tend not to realise that this 2 and that 2 need to be added together to get the answer. take, for example, the NHS. we are informed that the system is over burdened, resources are stretched and please do not visit doctors or hospitals if it is not an emergency. and yet go to any chemist in England (and to an extent the UK) and it is always the same, ask to buy anything self diagnostic, be it headache pills, something for a tummy bug or a touch of cold, and you get "oh have you been to doctor? you must go to doctor, see a doctor to check it".

an extension to the above which goes sinister is the NHS and the "pension shortfall problem". everywhere you turn there's stories of how the NHS and pensions are knacked because everyone is living longer. at the same time, eating, drinking, smoking and lifestyles are being (in a mix of subtle and overt ways) forcefully changed to ensure that people live longer. well, as i said, there seems to be a great reluctance to take the one 2 and the other 2 to add and get the answer. no, i do not have any suggestions or theories about what to do after that.

understand the effect of a cause rather than be distracted by the cause and effect sequence, then, would i suppose be a "tl;dr" thing for this. i am reminded of an incident at the 1992 European Championships in the football. Sweden played host, and as is the generous nature of the Swedish, they decided to set up tents to give English football fans free beer. wouldn't you know, a little while after these same Swedish were complaining that they had to deal with drunk English football fans.

perhaps, yes, i should cease considering the front pages of newspapers on a morning, or simply not spend so much time thinking about them.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!