Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Watch Them Die
My morbid brother draws this to my attention. Its most disturbing feature is that you can reset all the figures to zero and then wait with breathless anticipation for the first person to die of leprosy. I've been going for four minutes - none so far, but 127 have died of cardiovascular diseases. In the light of the information provided by this machine, it is surprising that, in the same period, there were only seven suicides. Eight minutes - the lepers are still hanging in there and dengue fever has yet to claim its first victim, three dead from war though.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
you couldn't make it up!
ReplyDeletebut someone's had a good go...
Very disturbing. I suppose a future development will be to put in names and addresses. Wouldn't it be worrying if you spotted your own?
ReplyDeleteactually, it could be quite liberating. I've just heard a most specious argument for taking the innocent off a national DNA data base. I won't bother to explain the details, just don't think of hiring a car.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be worrying if you spotted your own?
ReplyDeleteOr even stranger, reported it? I remember that while actually having a heart attack, I called 9-1-1 to report it, took a few aspirin, found the nitro-quick in the next room and down a few of those, debated whether or not to call someone in the family and tell them, decided not to, returned to the kitchen, pulled out the bottles of medicines that I was currently taking (because they always want to know things like that), and even straightened up the room a bit before sitting down outside my front door to wait for the ambulance (which arrived within 3-4 minutes) so they would not have to break down the door if I popped off or was unconcious before they arrived, all the while feeling this very weird and strong pain. Looking back, I can't imagine what the Hell I was doing (or thinking). Straightening up the room???
Perhaps I'd just sit down and blog about the whole thing if it happened today.
With such presence of mind, Ronin, it wouldn't have been surprising if you'd given yourself mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
ReplyDeleteRonin, that 'straightening up the room' bit lifts my heart. I like to think I would have the presence of mind to complain to my ISP and water the plants.
ReplyDeleteJohntyh: I'm no so sure "presence of mind" is an apt description. Two years previous, I had unstable angina and was invited to have my heart attack in the hospital and not at home, so I has some understanding of what was needed (and going on). As it was, I didn't have a heart attack the first time, but received a beautiful shiny stent and handy-dandy warrantee card to hand to airport wand-wavers as parting gifts. I aged a year while there, too, but I had a marvelous view of the massive fireworks display marking the end of the annual state fair. On the rare occasion, hospitalization can have it's compensations.
ReplyDeleteYeah, yeah, so folks are dyin' and divorcin' 'n stuff. Bummer, but look how fast we're pumpin' that oil. Whooeee!
ReplyDeletei found one of these death clock sites and spent about half an hour staring at it. i felt responsible for each death, that someone had to take note of it, so why not me?
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, i'd like to die in an amusing way, providing pleasure & anecdotal matter for witnesses.
Ronin -- Glad you survived the heart attacks and the behavior you describe before the ambulance came is very interesting. Both times I went into labor, I felt intense urges to completely clean my house -- and was in the middle of said cleaning when it became clear that a baby would wind up in a mop bucket if I didn't head for the hospital soon. Of course, that's a nesting instinct; not sure what yours was.
ReplyDeleteIt's clearly not working. To test it, I just fell over and injured myself. It's a minute now and it still hasn't registered it.
ReplyDelete