Commenting on immigration issues and other sensitive areas, mentioning the BNP and (heavens above!) having the gall to criticize the incumbent government earned the unflattering summary of “Right wing blog”.  Just shows what a squelchy mire (or bog)  political commentary is.

Another excuse for women to use to blame everyone else for their shortcomings has been revealed by researchers.

US psychologists found that symptoms as diverse as high blood pressure, bulging waistlines, sky-high cholesterol, blood sugar and triglycerides, and missing Eastenders can all be conveniently blamed on a sufficiently incited husband.

Details of the study, based on 276 couples who had put up with each other for an average of 20 years were presented to the American Psycho Society.

Each couple had his questionnaire filled out for him to assess the bad and worse aspects of married life. They were also assessed on how ungrateful the miserable old sod can be.

Doctors were then re-educated and abruptly told the results of a series of tests to assess whether or not she was showing signs of metabolic syndrome.

Women in strained marriages were more likely to blame anyone and anything, talk the hind legs off a donkey, and to have a greater number of symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

But although husbands in unhappy marriages were depressed, they continued to put up with it as long as they had a supply of freshly laudered shirts, and dinner was on the table when they got home.

Researcher Camille Hackenbush, from Kentucky Fried University, said the team had expected to find that negative aspects of a husband’s behaviour, such as not yielding to demands, eating and breathing, would translate into both mental and physical problems for both sexes.

Professor Flim Flammer Sr., doing exactly as he was told, said there was good evidence that a healthy diet of peeled grapes and Beluga caviar, and regular exercise at the shopping mall could reduce a woman’s risk of metabolic syndrome.

There was an outrageous story printed on the internet yesterday about an 18-month old boy in India, who was married to the village bitch in order to avert a superstitious belief.  Can this possibly be a true story?  It surpasses my belief, so I think it must be a hoax.  Unless someone out there knows the full details and can convince me otherwise, I cannot imagine that someone thinks they can pull my leg with this one.

The story goes that the parents found a tooth growing on the upper gum and consulted the village witch doctor.  He was not happy with that and prophesied that this was a sign that the child would be killed by a tiger attack.  The only way to avoid this disaster was for him to marry a dog.  So, a full wedding ceremony with all the village rituals was performed between the boy and the village bitch.  It was stated that this will not affect his marriage to a human later in life.  I gathered from the story that the events took place amongst some primitive and remote tribe, where superstition is still very strong.  Well, if true, at least that would explain the ridiculousness of the entire incident.

But I still refuse to believe it was true.  First of all, a tooth growing in the upper gum at 18-months?  C’mon.  There is nothing extraordinary about that, and if they thought it was, then they must be completely crazy.  If it was present at birth (a rare, but known, occurrence) I might be led to believe that they could be superstitious about that.  And, how does marrying a dog avert a death threat?  Where would they come up with that?  Joke’s over.

OK.  I checked out the internet and there are multiple versions of this story.  Most have similar information, so they must have somehow used each other as sources.  But I did find at least one discrepancy.  Not all the articles named the boy and his family, but several did.  And there were at least two different names for the family, but the story was identical.  What gives?  One went on to say that the village had previously married two girls to animals, one a dog and one a snake.  And, the father of this boy had considered marrying him to a goat, but feared the goat’s owner might one day sell it to a butcher, leaving the boy a widower. (Sounds silly to me.)  Another made it more believable by saying that they were just trying to appease the tribal deities – sounds like they don’t actually believe but were being cautious.