only skin-deep

Sunday silliness (I took from Clem Bastow's Twitter). 


I am faffing away idle moments on similar images at Pinterest in order to avoid facing this -

This is a person treating their solar keratosis with a cream which destroys cancer activity. I have these keratoses on my forehead and cheeks and have been ignoring the tube of cream for 3 weeks. I just can't do it.
They are all over my forearms as well. The 20gram tube cost $59, but I'm lucky as Americans pay $400.

Untreated facial skin cancer spreads to a neck tumour and then to the most vulnerable part of a body, which in smokers would be their lungs. That was my father's story and he is dead now. He did not seek medical advice for pink scaly tender patches as I did.
This cream acts like paint stripper and wherever there is a cancer cell growing, the skin turns red then blisters itches and peels.
Twelve weeks from start to recovery. Q: where can I draw some strength for this?

let him without thin, cast the first stone

Teh interwebz was made for kitteez, and that is one adorable fat cat; the Member for Lyons, not so much.
Until I was about 37, I was skin skin skinny and did not give a moments thought to healthy diet. 27 years on, I am part of the scare statistic released today by the COAG Report saying in Australia ‘seven in every 10 men and more than half of all women are above their healthy body weight. It has warned government that more needs to be done to tackle obesity and recommends that federal, state and territory leaders note 'the lack of progress" toward reaching a 5 per cent boost to the number of Australians at a healthy body weight by 2018’.  That COAG link page is worth a visit. It is a committee which tells the government what they should be doing.

That is four carnivorous Queensland MP’s above. Check the beer guts. 

My 27.99 BMI is technically ‘pre-obese’ and they are all much fatter than me. 

What is discussed with their health-care provider, we can only guess. Mine tells me I have to reduce my weight ( I do loathe that term ‘lose weight’ – how can one lose it when it is so firmly attached? I can hear the robustly-corseted Lady Bracknell intoning now “To lose one kilo is unfortunate, but to lose two is just carelessness”.

Just check the images here – all eleven of these people are Federal MP’s (plus one PM whose backside is much bigger than my 27.99 pre-obese BMI) and they are all clearly over the 30 rating that is medically 'obese'.
To be fair, they all work long hours indoors, when they are not having a beer or sausage-sizzle for a photo op in their electorate, but on the other hand, The House Of Parliament complex

has two tennis courts and a full gymnasium, open all hours and free to these people … 
oops – and so is the cafeteria.

For those of us who do not have free gym and courts, I wonder what hope there is?

and this government is going to tell us to step away from the plate?

Karma Kami Matteoli on

Who would have thought, that even before 2DayFM got into the London inquest for suicide Jacintha Saldanha, that the dramatic arc would be repeated? (rhetorical, answer – nobody).
The entire (well-fed) world came down like a ton of bricks onto Mel Greig and her colleague after they did something they had done without drama more than once before, when they did it to a person who unknown to them of course,  just happened to be chronically depressed.
When the FBI asked for members of the public to come forward if they recognised the men who might be the Boston Marathon terrorists, Kami Mattioli thought one resembled Sunil from her school class of 13 years ago. The sometimes UNsociable Network Of The Usual Suspects gave this an instant virtual explosion almost as harmful as the actual one.

                                                       "and then hit Reddit"



Now only her 6000 Followers can post comments to her Twitter and she is no doubt bracing herself for the virtual/ethernet lynch mob, after she tried to do the right thing.  Unfortunately, as with 2DayFM and Nurse Saldanha, this involved a chronically depressed person.

He has now been found dead, but was aware before this, that he had been mistakenly suspected, and had emailed various friends to set them straight. I would risk serious money betting that Ms Mattioli has never heard of the 2DayFM phone prank, or of Nurse Saldanha.
The student, Sunil Tripathi was a Brown University philosophy major nearing graduation and ‘was last seen on March 16 on a surveillance camera after leaving his apartment at 1:33 a.m., and his family has been frantically searching for him for a month. There is no evidence tying Tripathi to the bombings.’ ‘6 feet 2 inches tall. Tripathi left his apartment without his wallet and cell phone. ABC News reported that he was "possibly depressed and left home without any of his belongings."’ A Facebook page dedicated to finding Tripathi was taken down by his family late Thursday night after suspicions about his involvement in the Boston bombing were posted on Reddit. The Facebook page was flooded with comments that were quickly deleted before the page was taken down.'

Alexis C Madrigal lays out the sequence of events on The Atlantic magazines website, but this was written pre-suicide and could disappear if the legalities that follow a death require it. Even this (pre-suicide) April 19th Buzzfeed report by Andrew Kaczynski might disappear, and it is good so please read it while you can.
It is ridiculous of me to even dwell on all this when elsewhere there is massive repression, starvation, corruption, and mass deaths of various kinds every day, but nobody would argue with my opinion of those things. There are many suspicious things to discuss with regard to The Saldanha Inquest, and the similarity of this situation required addressing.
Sunil had taken leave with permission from his philosophy course and had gone bush. His emotional state was apparently known to be fragile. If it had not been, he would have returned and probably been propelled with Kami into their 15 minutes of fame and laughed the whole thing off while raising money for the injured victims of the real bombers.
But he was fragile and now he is dead and it is not her fault, just as the death of Jacintha is not the fault of Mel Greig.
The Tripathi parents will probably not have the confluence of a Keith Vaz, MP, and a posh hospital to propel them into legal action and claims, as with Nurse Saldanha, but the tabloid public have been flung fresh sustenance in Ms Mattioli. Poor girl. What happens next will affect any future assistance the FBI might get from The Public.

do or diet

Dawn French

Now and Before.

Peter Jackson, Before

and After.

I'm on a weight-loss diet.

Update: after 27 highly disciplined days without any edible fun, I am one kilo lighter. one.