Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-33

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Anaise Bourbon continues her series on Egypt
• Bruce Galway forwards an article about professional golfers
• Zvonko Springer gives some examples of crazy English
• Catherine Nesbitt sends a story about four worms
• Gerrit deLeeuw shares a cautionary tale about 1000 marbles
• Marilyn Magid explains a difference in earnings
• Carol Shoemaker anticipates headlines from 2031
• Sites are suggested by Bruce Galway, Carol Hansen, Pat Moore, Ron McVey, and Tom Williamson

Anaise Bourbon describes more of her impressions of

EGYPT

L´heure rose d´or - one waits for it each day. There is a time around seven each night when the sun is setting and the sky is pink that the lingering beams turn all the buildings golden (already a gilded colour) that fills the view with what seems an early colour photograph. Although I knew it as a geographical fact, it only occurred to me recently that night falls here in summer by 8:00. I have lately been in northern climes where the sun didn´t set until 11:00.

I think part of the disconnect is that the temperature in July does not change much. It has been 35 in the apartment for three days and nights and questions of light and dark become irrelevant. What one does notice is that night is when the children come out to play and people fill the boulevards and streets. It is not unusual to see a group sitting on the grassy strip between roads huddled around a PC, watching movies or something. Sometimes they sleep, and of course, the children play. To us from the West, the idea of sending one´s children out to play at night is counter-intuitive and rather alarming. Here is may be the only time for them to ride bikes or play soccer. Also, people watch out for others here in a way I haven´t encountered in other places. Perhaps living in a place where family and friends are "all" helps to further this: it is both claustrophobic and reassuring that everyone knows who is who and what their needs may be.

I have not written to anyone anywhere for days because the heat is enervating beyond belief. Just when one thinks one cannot endure another rise in temperature, the day is over and it seems every day lived through brings strength to face the next. Of course the days are unproductive and not much gets done, to be sure. It´s hard to even *think* in unrelenting heat. It becomes a matter of living from one cool shower every half hour, one litre of water being drunk, and hopefully, something getting done in between.

A person I know who has an even higher heat tolerance than most locals has even started to wilt. We have tossed the idea of air conditioning around, but fans and showers seem to work and A.C. can play merry hell with the immune system, and really "unfit" one for those times when one must go out. We shall see. July IS the hottest time of the year here so maybe I did well to come now - it will get only get better as time passes, and if I can survive this....

And it´s funny, I was told by so many ex-pats how dire it all would be. Sure, it´s hard, but one can do it. I sometimes give a thought to those Victorians in their wool uniforms and the ladies in full dress. I can see where many literally died of the heat.

These people are obsessed with both hygiene and health. Sure, it´s hot but one finds ways. And you know, one gets a kind of feeling of accomplishment doing so. I woke up with a troubled tummy this morning and all the horror stories I read made me think I had dysentery or something. But I´m fine now. I unwisely ate something not too fresh last night, but it was all I could do to fend off people wanting to take me to the hospital, which was very nice. When the people I´ve met here metaphorically take you as family, every part of your happiness becomes their concern to a point that would embarrass most Westerners - they would find it intrusive. I find it reassuring.

I am just rambling tonight for I cannot sleep. I remember being at a mall the other day and having a Westerner look right through me. The Egyptians notice a white face right away, but foreigners just see the head scarf and modest dress and one disappears to their eyes. This has never happened to me before and it´s very illuminating if one wants to understand how others may make generalizations we find unfair regarding us. But mostly I´m glad tonight for feeling a little cooler, for understanding a bit more, and for the the kind of care given to me by people who don´t even know me that seems odd to me.

There are more protests here and things are heating up a bit politically, but so far things are as usual. A friend was at the first protests and one of the looters noticed he was thirsty and offered to break into a store to get him some bottled water. That sounds just wrong, and yet that says so much about those crowds of "angry" protesters. Sure, they are angry and have every right to be, but they target their anger at their concerns, not those who just happen to be there.

An odd new rule at the office where my Egyptian friend works is that no more coloured shirts and only black, brown or grey suits may be worn. My friend heartily wishes they would allow the galabaya, those long white "dresses" that some men wear here. Unfortunately the "must look like Western business people to succeed" thing has got to them, and the traditional and very sensible, cool and comfortable wear is considered old fashioned and symbolic of a peasant people, rather than a people who knew civilization while a lot of of Europeans were still freezing and illiterate.

The heat has hit me. Prolonged heat, as those in desert country know, is very enervating. I couldn´t even get up the energy to go on line today - I could only receive information; my mind was too scattered to generate any. I swear it takes as much energy to keep cool as warm. So more when I am once more released from the shackles of soporific heat.

For all those who are interested in professional sports, including hockey, Bruce Galway forwards this article by Rick Reilly:

PLAYING FOR PAY

Tiger Woods´ time away from golf has caused him to plummet on the money list. But if he played almost any other sport, his on-course earnings would not have changed.

For the 116th straight season, it looks as if American golf is going to get through another year without a labor stoppage. Not true in the NFL and the NBA - both are in lockouts now - but how we don´t have one in golf I´ll ever know. If anybody should strike, it´s golfers. They have the worst deal since the Winklevoss twins met Mark Zuckerberg.

Not one of them has a guaranteed contract. In golf, you´re promised zilch. You play good, you eat good. You play bad and you´re suddenly working behind your uncle´s pharmacy counter. Per diem? Please. In golf, "per diem" translates as "What my wife gives me in the morning."

Contract year? Every year is your contract year.

Disabled list? Get real. If you break your hand in golf, you´d better have insurance.

You think if Tiger Woods played in the NBA he´d be limping around these past two years without a biweekly paycheck? Are you smoking oregano? In the NBA, he still would have made his many millions per year and the owner would help him wheelbarrow it to the bank.

Look at Greg Oden, the rarely dressed center for the NBA´s Portland TrailBlazers. In four seasons, he has played 82 games. That´s one season spread over four. If he were a golfer, he´d be in Columbus running a big and tall man´s shop. But in the NBA, he has made $19.3 million. Nice work if you can get it.

Golf might look as though it´s all cashmere and courtesy cars, but in reality, these guys get squat.In golf, you pay for your own transportation, your own meals, your own medical, your own lodging. You think Tom Brady pays his own bill when he checks out of the Miami Four Seasons? Phil Mickelson does.

LeBron James can stink up the finals like 80 inches of Limburger cheese and he still gets his cash. In golf, if you come to a major and freeze, all you´re going home with is an ulcer.

You wanna see a pro golfer laugh? Tell him that the NBA players are hacked off about possibly having their average salary of $6 million trimmed in this lockout. Do you know how many guys on the PGA Tour made that last year? One: Jim Furyk.

"It´s hard to really imagine that kind of world," says Justin Leonard, who will play his 19th British Open at Royal St. George´s. "Guaranteed contracts, no matter what? The rookie salaries? Wow. I can´t get my head around all that. That´s my incentive to play! I´m kinda proud we start at zero every week."

The only tiny morsel golfers have negotiated for themselves is that every year on tour, a set of 125 guys are promised a chance to make a living. This is not to be confused with promised a living. If you can get there, you have a tee time, but only half of you will be cashing a cheque.

"We do have one thing those guys don´t," says Tom Watson, who has won the British Open five times. "We get to choose where we play. NBA players don´t."

True, and when golfers choose not to play somewhere, they get murdered. Kenny Perry, for instance, got ripped for not playing the British Open for many years. But look at it from his wallet´s POV:

Two round-trip business-class tickets, Kentucky to London: $6,000; caddie for the week: $1,500;seven nights at the players´ hotel: $6,000; 21 meals at that hotel, where the dollar is limper than the cucumber sandwiches : $2,100; transfers, tips, etc.: $750. Total: $16,350

So before Perry can break even, he has to beat half the best players in the world in a style of golf he hates. Good luck!

Golfers have the worst job security this side of Naomi Campbell´s assistants. These guys are out there on their own skill and their own guts and their own dime, and they deserve some credit for it. You get the yips or a sore back or an ungrateful putter, we´ll see you on the Hooters Tour.

Remember Trevor Immelman? Good-looking kid? Won the 2008 Masters? If he were in the NFL, he´d have signed a five-year deal for $75 million. Instead, he goes out and can´t find a fairway with a course map, makes $1.3 million over the next three years, and must be wishing he had gone on to optometry school.

But none of that is what would drive your basic American multimillionaire team-sport union-backed jocks nuts. What would drive them nuts is the part of golf´s unspoken contract that says: You call your own fouls. On yourself. Even if nobody saw it. Can you imagine if guys called fouls on themselves in the NBA?

We´d still be waiting.

Zvonko Springer knows first-hand how true this is, since English is only one of the five languages he speaks:

ENGLISH IS CRAZY

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple; English muffins weren´t invented in England.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don´t fing, grocers don´t groce, and hammers don´t ham? Doesn´t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn´t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship; we have noses that run and feet that smell; we park in a driveway and drive in a parkway. And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother´s not Mop?

Catherine Nesbitt sends the story of

FOUR WORMS IN CHURCH

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon. He placed four worms into four separate jars:

The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.

The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.

The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.

The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.

At the conclusion of the sermon, the minister reported the following results:

The first worm in alcohol - dead.

The second worm in cigarette smoke - dead.

Third worm in chocolate syrup - dead.

Fourth worm in good clean soil - alive.

So the minister asked the congregation - "What did you learn from this demonstration?"

Maxine was sitting in the back. She raised her hand and said, "As long as you drink, smoke, and eat chocolate, you won´t have worms!"

That pretty much ended the service.

Having run out of marbles long ago, I am repeating this post forwarded by Gerrit de Leeuw for the consideration of others like myself and those who have not yet lost their marbles:

ONE THOUSAND SATURDAYS

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it´s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it´s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.

I turned the volume up on my radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning talk show. I heard an older-sounding chap with a golden voice. You know the kind - he sounded as if he should be in the broadcasting business himself.

He was talking about "a thousand marbles" to someone named "Tom." I was intrigued and sat down to listen to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you´re busy with your job. I´m sure they pay you well but it´s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work 60 or 70 hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter´s dance recital."

He continued, "Let me tell you something, Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities."

And that´s when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about 75 years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about 75 years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me, Tom, I´m getting to the important part.

"It took me until I was 55 years old to think about all this in any detail," he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over 2800 Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be 75, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.

"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in my workshop next to the radio. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.

"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday, then I have a little extra time to be with my loved ones....

"It was nice to talk to you, Tom. I hope you spend more time with your loved ones, and I hope to meet you again someday. Have a good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop when he finished. Even the show´s moderator didn´t have anything to say for a few moments. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to do some work that morning, then go to the gym. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C´mon, honey, I´m taking you and the kids to breakfast."

"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special," I said. " It has just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we´re out? I need to buy some marbles."

May all your Saturdays be special, and may you have many happy years after you lose all your marbles.

Marilyn Magid submits this one:

THE CARDIOLOGIST AND THE MECHANIC

A mechanic was removing a cylinder-head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known cardiologist in his shop.

The cardiologist was there waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike when the mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hey, Doc, want to take a look at this?"

The cardiologist, a bit surprised, walked over to where the mechanic was working on the motorcycle.

The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag, and said, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take the valves out, repair any damage, and then put them back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I make $40,000 a year and you get the really big bucks when you and I are doing basically the same work?"

The cardiologist paused, smiled and leaned over, then whispered to the mechanic,

"Try doing it with the engine running."

Carol Shoemaker forwarded these

NEWSPAPER HEADLINES FROM THE YEAR 2031

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh- largest country in the world, California.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally. Scientists stumped.

Authentic year 2000 "chad" sells at Sotheby´s for $4.6 million.

Iraq still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least ten more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

35-year study: diet and exercise is the key to weight loss.

Texas executes last remaining citizen.

Upcoming NFL draft likely to focus on the use of mutants.

Average height of NBA players now is nine feet, seven inches.

Microsoft announces it has perfected its newest version of Windows so it crashes BEFORE installation is completed.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers and baseball bats must be registered by January 2036.

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Bruce Galway is reminded of his childhood and the arcade in Bala by this pinball game:

Carol Hansen sends this link to an amazingly precise Chinese performance:

Pat Moore forwards this URL for you to test your knowledge of maps of Canada and many other regions of the world:

Pat also sends a link to a dictionary of new words:

Ron McVey says it is no wonder the Spinner was late last week, since I am undoubtedly affected by this all-too-common condition:

Tom Williamson challenges you to take this political quiz to see if you are following the news:

A personal story, a collective triumph: Dyan deNapoli tells the story of the world´s largest volunteer animal rescue, which saved more than 40,000 penguins after an oil spill off the coast of South Africa. How does a job this big get done? Penguin by penguin by penguin:

Millions of people live in shantytowns across the world, many in corrugated-iron-roofed shacks with no windows. This leaves the residents with the choice of living in complete darkness or running expensive electric bulbs (if electricity is even available to them). Litre of Light has a brilliant solution which is mind-boggling:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to