Melancholy tales

(Apologies to all and sundry for the abysmal quality of this post. Never at the forefront of the literary movement, this time this blog has plumbed depths not believed possible without decompression equipment. The complete explanation for this tomfoolery is that we have too much time and too little grey matter)

From time to time, on this little rustic blog of ours, we slip into the melancholy. We try to water it down, of course, but since we don't want wags to call it water melancholy, we keep it to ourselves. Today, we are going to tell you of the melancholy life of our friend, a retired general, in hospital for chronic and acute constipation. He spends his time reviewing enema positions, and wondering if we will make poor jokes about his condition, such as calling his tale smellancholy, but we will not.

He hates doctors. Flippant, arrogant, insensitive, boorish. In his day, he would have shot the lot of them. But now he has to be careful. The head surgeon is known to be incisive. Indeed, the interns call him Slash Gordon. When he is around, the general puts on his most cheerful face and announces that he is much better, and takes care to laugh at all his jokes. Though it sometimes backfires. Haha. Not that way. We mean when the Surgeoon cracked a joke and the General doubled up with laughter, saying "you're cutting me up". The Surgeon turned to the sister and asked her "Am I?", but fortunately Sister replied in the negative. Close call, nevertheless.

The visiting American specialists are even worse. The other day, one of them was taking rounds and the sister pointed out the general and summarized his condition. "The General is admitted for chronic and acute constipation", said Sister. And the American? He said "No shit!", and laughed his head off, as if it were a joke.

But some of the doctors were quite humane, though quite literal minded. A Physician doing the rounds palpated him and spoke most comfortingly. The general was touched and tears welled up in his eyes. "Are you alright?" asked the physician, alarmed. The general assured him he was. "I just got a lump in my throat", said he. The doctor turned to sister. "You told me it was at the other end".

The worst of them all was the doctor who told him "If there were more generals like you, we could have the Turd World War"

Stop Press! In breaking news today, Bajaj Auto announced that they would be combating the recession by offering a 50% discount on new autorickshaws to people who turned in their old ones. A company spokesman clarified that the old autorickshaws would have to be in roadworthy condition, and that wear-and-tear and mileage would be carefuly computed. As CEO Rahul Bajaj put it "We're taking some calculated ricks"