An Elephant of One's Own

You may have gathered from the previous post, if you gathered anything at all, that I am not a feminist. "Ohhh, yes you are," the Punch and Judy chorus pipes up, "Look, here, it says in the dictionary..." OK, I seem to have a free paragraph or two, so let's just get that out of the way: If you are a woman scanning the personal columns for a date, and you see an ad from a bloke who defines himself as "Aryan male, 40, single, seeks..." my guess is that you will give this man a wide berth, if you're at all sensible. If you do not, and end up in his bedroom, you would still be well advised to check in his wardrobe for swastika armbands, and my money's on you finding them (try the top drawer of the dresser if not). Now, no one here is claiming that "Aryan" means "Nazi". It doesn't, and no one to my knowledge has ever claimed that it does. As a self-identification (as opposed to, say, an obsolete linguistic term) it presumab...

GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Good evening. Have a picture of Queen Victoria. NEDDIE SEAGOON: No thanks, I'm trying to give them up. GRYTPYPE: I don't think you'll ever do it, I've tried and failed. May I come in? SEAGOON: But I'm outside.     ( The Goon Show ) Dear Reader. Statistically, the chances are that you are younger than me. Probably quite a bit younger. The chances are overwhelming that you are healthier. I say this because if you were any less healthy than me, you'd almost certainly be dead, and corpses are not known for reading obscure blogs. Well then. As a younger and healthier person, there are one or two things it occurs to me you ought to know about. Firstly and most importantly: the Old Age Truck. I borrow the phrase from Gary Larson, but where he got it I couldn't tell you. The point is, it comes for you quite suddenly: beware . In the original cartoon, you turn a corner and suddenly there are tyre marks across your back and dewlaps u...