Imagine Christ feeding the minions now in Melbourne, Australia... "Well, I started with a compote of beetroot relish and marjoram jam, topping fresh Tasmanian scallops on a thin slice of locally made sourdough, with a tad of french butter, then some italian seasoned breadsticks and a nice light white wine. I followed this up with some tuna steaks in a redolent sauce of slightly salted saffron and blackcurrant jus, and home made wood oven baked crisps...complemented by a Chateau Tahbilk Marsanne with vanilla after tones and a depth of upper palate sweet and infatuating light peppery resonance...and I left the dessert up to my disciples...and then, when they received the bill, my followers, my true believers, my people, the Jew cunts, with their hipster beards, crucified me, as was to be expected."

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - Fish and Whistle (Lyric Video)

John Prine - "Grandpa Was A Carpenter"

As I've noted before, after a few decades of working in palliative care terminal pain control, when in my fifties, I received 2 poor prognoses regarding my life expectancy, one cardiac, one cancer, and so, instead of accepting this, and being a patient, I took off around the world. I ran away. I've never liked hospitals. I spent a lot of money on having fun and not facing up to my own physical reality. I lived in places and did things and met people, none of which I ever would have done without the impetus of life being, for me, quite short. I lived a life far outside and beyond my expectations from being a working class Australian boy of my generation. I came home a decade later to find that I was still alive, as I am today. When working in palliative care as nurse, consultant, adviser and hospice creator I never met one patient in all those decades who ever, ever, didn't die of their illness based upon the usual disease trajectories... except me. I recall I was a nurse consultant in palliative care for awhile looking after folk with a higher cancer count than I had. I expect my continuing survival isn't due to any miracle but rather to the atrocious diagnostic skills of many cardiac and cancer specialists, and to the fact that I have always refused all treatments and still do. One aspirin a day is good. Anyway, this week, at 64 years old, I worked 5 shifts as a clinical nurse in the Ice Addiction Unit, and now have 3 days off. What am I going to do with the days? I think I will take one aspirin and sleep through the first 2 of them, because, wow, I do get tired these days.

If someone doesn't lose 3 or 4 front teeth in an Australian Football game, then, really, what is the point of the game?