"Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to the vag-uh-bonnnd
Happy birthday toooo me"
Alright. That's quite enough of that.
Yup - it's that time of year again when one celebrates another momentous heave-ho, another crawl, another mighty push, another milestone towards 'The End'. Yep - today is my birthday - again. Another one to add to my collection. As you get older you inevitably get wealthier - in birthdays!
Where I work everybody's birthday is marked by a cake and congratulatory clapping. Yes everybody claps and say's 'well done!'. I'm quite the cynical sort so I'm always thinking: Why the clapping? Well done for what? - it's not as if I actually did anything special? Apart from stay alive for another year and even that was automatic. I didn't have to remind my heart to beat, nor my muscles to contract or my stomach and mouth to eat. It was all so easy wasn't it! I didn't have to do anything. Just be me! So why the clapping? I suppose, to be fair, I did avoid getting run over by a car or a train. I did avoid getting into a lethal fight or falling off a cliff. Not that there are many cliffs here in London. I avoided being poisoned in a dodgy kebab restaurant (a more likely death scenario here in London).
So to conclude: I don't see the point of congratulating someone for their birthday. At least here now in the 21st century anyway. Maybe if I was living in the 14th - 18th centuries then it would be considered an achievement to have survived at all and not to have died from all manner of scourges such as bubonic plague, syphilis, cholera, gout, gut-worm, yellow-fever, the inquisition, insurrections, burning at the stake for heresy, child-birth (not relevant to me of course), wars, common infections and influenza.
But today, in the affluent year of 2011, we are more likely to die of diseases of plenty. What are these? A recent piece of research just out of Imperial College has revealed that 1 in 10 people on planet earth today is obese. Obese = BMI of 30kg per square metre of body area. BMI is a measure of your weight divided by your height. If you're BMI is between 18-25 then you're fine. Mine is 23. So I'm perfect (!). Literally...
Another disease of plenty is cancer (generally). The reason I call cancer a disease of plenty is because of two reasons:
a) It's generally a disease of old-age. The older you are the more likely you are of dying of cancer. Cancer is a recent and unnatural disease in the sense that people only get cancer if they live long enough. And only recently; with the phenomenal advances in medicine and preventive health; do we live long enough to get cancer. Our ancestors never died of cancer! They died of something else first. But not before having children - which is why they are our ancestors in the first place....but I am risking going on a tangent here!
b) There is lots of evidence that the abnormal diet of plenty (high fat, cholesterol, wine, fine cheeses!, red meat etc) contribute to cancer risk. It seems these rich foods somehow wreak havoc with the DNA replication machinery of cells - thus giving rise to mutant cells that don't die after the requisite number of cell divisions...again I am risking going on a biochemical tangent here too! (always a risk with me - well, its not my fault I have a brain the size of a planet...the planet being Jupiter of course and not the earth (Jupiter = much bigger then the earth)).
Anyway, now that I have given my ego a well deserved birthday massage it's time to come down to earth again.
So yes it's my birthday today and yes it's no big deal; yet I some-why thought it important enough to warrant a blog entry. Alright, alright - it's Saturday morning, I'm in a cafe (Lemon Monkey) and I can't think of anything better to write about! Also (and I've just realised this after reading my previous birthday posts) - that I always end up writing about death and moribund stuff - on my birthday! Mm...Is that normal? Does my birthday really put me in touch with my mortality? And do I enjoy the fact that my birthday makes me realise that this life is finite - and that therefore all its ails and woes and joys and happinesses are mere ephemera...?
You know there is a certain pleasure to be had from the realisation that nothing lasts. That all is fleeting. The good and the bad. That one day you will once again be part of the nebular cloud from whence you were begotten. There's something strangely and beguilingly emancipating about this knowledge.
You know there is a certain pleasure to be had from the realisation that nothing lasts. That all is fleeting. The good and the bad. That one day you will once again be part of the nebular cloud from whence you were begotten. There's something strangely and beguilingly emancipating about this knowledge.
They say wine and cheeses get better with age. I hope the same applies to me.
Anyway, to finish of here's a birthday text I just received from my nieces:
Happy birthday 2 u
u live in a zoo
u look like a monkey
oh, and you smell like one 2.
...charming.
Anyway, to finish of here's a birthday text I just received from my nieces:
Happy birthday 2 u
u live in a zoo
u look like a monkey
oh, and you smell like one 2.
...charming.
Adios.
The Vintage Vagabond.
