Saturday, 12 June 2010
Friday, 11 June 2010
My Wife’s Pussy
I have had my first ever fight with my wife and my world is coming to an end.
Though the sun is out today for a change, dark clouds have appeared on the horizon of my marriage and a bottomless pit of despair has opened up beneath my feet, something like Indiana Jones in one of his more fruity adventures.
And it’s all to do with my wife's pussy and her obvious willingness to allow the neighbours to play with it whenever they feel like. Now I ask you! Is this the sporting thing to do? Surely she should consider my own feelings on the matter?
The De Greeks do not want to be overly critical, but one's whole being objects to such cavalier behaviour because her pussy is the last thing I see at night, the first thing I see in the morning and I have become quite fond of it. And I don’t think that it is overly arrogant to say that I believe it has gotten quite fond of me as well.
It is true that in the beginning I could take it or leave it alone because as pussies go, it is not the prettiest I have ever seen and, in all modesty, I have seen my fair share of pussies, I can tell you! I remember in the mountains of Switzerland I saw the most amazingly hairy…. but no, I digress, that's another story.
Be that as it may, I have come to grow fond of it and to care for it as I have never cared for a pussy before. In fact, I went on the Internet to find out as much as possible about how to care for it and how to make it happy and I can tell you that allowing our neighbours Tom, Dick and Harry to play with is nothing akin to comedy and it may in fact be detrimental to its health.
Especially Dick, the dirty sod, because I can guess what he is really like behind that slimy, ingratiating smile. One of those men I think who must, during the formative years of their boyhood, have been overly fond of boyhood acts which even the psychiatrists of today with their modern liberal views about the correct way of raising youngsters might frown upon.
In fact, you can never be sure where HE’s been at any given time and, in truth, every time I see him, I tend to give him a long, steady look calculated to blister his eyeballs, but I think he's too dense to notice. I have often wondered whether in refraining from kicking him sharply in the balls I was not neglecting my duty to humanity and it is only the spirit of neighbourliness that caused manlier counsels to prevail in this particular intent.
Did you know that according to one of our fellow hubbers “The most crucial part of enjoying a pussy is making certain to provide it with correct pussy medical care, because ONLY if you make certain that you DON’T allow anything to impair your pussy’s health will you get highest satisfaction from it?” Well show me the man or woman who will accuse me on economising on pussy health and I shall show you a base liar and a scoundrel!
And the Internet expert goes on to say that:
“The best way to ensure your pussy’s wellbeing would be to feed it appropriately”. I can honestly say that I do that whenever my wife will let me and let her deny it if she can! Just because it’s her pussy and she likes to play with it herself most of the time, does not mean that I do not try to do my bit as much as possible.
The expert goes on to say that “Actively playing along with your pussy is actually one other simple, easy, and effective pussy health care tip”. I understand and wholeheartedly agree with this brilliant expert, but I also tell my wife that it does not mean letting the whole allied army on the Western Front play with it as well! Though the De Greeks are men without an ounce of conceit in our composition, I can confidently say that I am man enough to provide her pussy with all the attention it wants or needs and I don’t care who thinks that this is boasting.
Activity and Tidiness
Under the heading of Activity and Tidiness, the Internet expert goes on to say that another easy pussy health care suggestion is to make sure that you wash it frequently. It would be idle to deny that here my faith in our expert was somewhat shaken and I began to be rather peeved at our expert. Who does she think we are? And our expert becomes even more personal when she suggests that “As a final point, continuing to keep your pussy tidy is another critical pussy health care hint that needs brushing the fur as well as always keeping it thoroughly clean as well as orderly”. This is the point at which I decided that I need not enter fully into the further arguments used by our expert and logged off.
So I ask you as impartial observers to consider the matter in a calm and unbiased spirit: Is it wrong of me to consider my wife’s proclivity of allowing the neighbours to play with her pussy singularly unfortunate?
Why get the neighbours involved? Why let them play with her pussy when she knows that I want to play with it as much as possible and, quite frankly, I am the jealous type and do not want the neighbours playing with my own wife’s pussy? Am I wrong to feel stung by the injustice of this?
I am not one to impose on your friendship and to ask you to blindly take my side in this argument, so I have taken photos of my wife’s pussy so that you may form your own unbiased opinion.
It is in the mornings that my wife’s pussy completely captures my heart by its actions. I am an early riser and as soon as it sees me when I step out of our bedroom, it rolls on its back, raises its feet in the air and slides down the stairs on its back offering me its belly to scratch. I tell you, it brings a smile to my face first thing in the morning and I cannot resist it.
I scratch her tummy and she purrrrrrrs with so much pleasure that I feel life is worth living. How could I possibly let my wife allow the neighbours to look after her pussy every time we have to go out? It just doesn’t feel right. I must insist that her preconceived ideas be revised.
Though the sun is out today for a change, dark clouds have appeared on the horizon of my marriage and a bottomless pit of despair has opened up beneath my feet, something like Indiana Jones in one of his more fruity adventures.
And it’s all to do with my wife's pussy and her obvious willingness to allow the neighbours to play with it whenever they feel like. Now I ask you! Is this the sporting thing to do? Surely she should consider my own feelings on the matter?
The De Greeks do not want to be overly critical, but one's whole being objects to such cavalier behaviour because her pussy is the last thing I see at night, the first thing I see in the morning and I have become quite fond of it. And I don’t think that it is overly arrogant to say that I believe it has gotten quite fond of me as well.
It is true that in the beginning I could take it or leave it alone because as pussies go, it is not the prettiest I have ever seen and, in all modesty, I have seen my fair share of pussies, I can tell you! I remember in the mountains of Switzerland I saw the most amazingly hairy…. but no, I digress, that's another story.
Be that as it may, I have come to grow fond of it and to care for it as I have never cared for a pussy before. In fact, I went on the Internet to find out as much as possible about how to care for it and how to make it happy and I can tell you that allowing our neighbours Tom, Dick and Harry to play with is nothing akin to comedy and it may in fact be detrimental to its health.
Especially Dick, the dirty sod, because I can guess what he is really like behind that slimy, ingratiating smile. One of those men I think who must, during the formative years of their boyhood, have been overly fond of boyhood acts which even the psychiatrists of today with their modern liberal views about the correct way of raising youngsters might frown upon.
In fact, you can never be sure where HE’s been at any given time and, in truth, every time I see him, I tend to give him a long, steady look calculated to blister his eyeballs, but I think he's too dense to notice. I have often wondered whether in refraining from kicking him sharply in the balls I was not neglecting my duty to humanity and it is only the spirit of neighbourliness that caused manlier counsels to prevail in this particular intent.
Did you know that according to one of our fellow hubbers “The most crucial part of enjoying a pussy is making certain to provide it with correct pussy medical care, because ONLY if you make certain that you DON’T allow anything to impair your pussy’s health will you get highest satisfaction from it?” Well show me the man or woman who will accuse me on economising on pussy health and I shall show you a base liar and a scoundrel!
And the Internet expert goes on to say that:
“The best way to ensure your pussy’s wellbeing would be to feed it appropriately”. I can honestly say that I do that whenever my wife will let me and let her deny it if she can! Just because it’s her pussy and she likes to play with it herself most of the time, does not mean that I do not try to do my bit as much as possible.
The expert goes on to say that “Actively playing along with your pussy is actually one other simple, easy, and effective pussy health care tip”. I understand and wholeheartedly agree with this brilliant expert, but I also tell my wife that it does not mean letting the whole allied army on the Western Front play with it as well! Though the De Greeks are men without an ounce of conceit in our composition, I can confidently say that I am man enough to provide her pussy with all the attention it wants or needs and I don’t care who thinks that this is boasting.
Activity and Tidiness
Under the heading of Activity and Tidiness, the Internet expert goes on to say that another easy pussy health care suggestion is to make sure that you wash it frequently. It would be idle to deny that here my faith in our expert was somewhat shaken and I began to be rather peeved at our expert. Who does she think we are? And our expert becomes even more personal when she suggests that “As a final point, continuing to keep your pussy tidy is another critical pussy health care hint that needs brushing the fur as well as always keeping it thoroughly clean as well as orderly”. This is the point at which I decided that I need not enter fully into the further arguments used by our expert and logged off.
So I ask you as impartial observers to consider the matter in a calm and unbiased spirit: Is it wrong of me to consider my wife’s proclivity of allowing the neighbours to play with her pussy singularly unfortunate?
Why get the neighbours involved? Why let them play with her pussy when she knows that I want to play with it as much as possible and, quite frankly, I am the jealous type and do not want the neighbours playing with my own wife’s pussy? Am I wrong to feel stung by the injustice of this?
I am not one to impose on your friendship and to ask you to blindly take my side in this argument, so I have taken photos of my wife’s pussy so that you may form your own unbiased opinion.
It is in the mornings that my wife’s pussy completely captures my heart by its actions. I am an early riser and as soon as it sees me when I step out of our bedroom, it rolls on its back, raises its feet in the air and slides down the stairs on its back offering me its belly to scratch. I tell you, it brings a smile to my face first thing in the morning and I cannot resist it.
I scratch her tummy and she purrrrrrrs with so much pleasure that I feel life is worth living. How could I possibly let my wife allow the neighbours to look after her pussy every time we have to go out? It just doesn’t feel right. I must insist that her preconceived ideas be revised.
Monday, 7 June 2010
The Hurt We Cause
By Dimitris Mita
De Greek
It is astonishing to what degree the basic human principles of justice, compassion and fair play are universal, as is the feeling of guilt for personal acts of cruelty, irrespective of one’s background, country of origin, skin colour, religion or education. As, of course, also universal are humanity’s cruelty, pettiness, selfishness, unfairness and an astonishing ability to justify the most horrendous acts of barbarism with a theoretically glorified end result as a justification of the means.
I say this because a lot of us have been indoctrinated to automatically expect human beings in primitive tribes for example, to be deficient in the positive aspects, i.e. those aspects of compassion, guilt and regret for personal acts or omissions. This, in spite of the example of “civilised” Europeans causing unimaginable agony on their fellow human beings in the heart of Europe during WWII, for reasons which most of us are incapable (I hope) of comprehending. I recently had cause to feel considerable shame for my attitude towards our more isolated brethren in Africa, through a documentary called “Tribe”, on one of the educational channels. The adventurer in charge of the programme documents his stay with various tribes around the world, living as a member of different remote, primitive and mostly self sufficient people.
In one of these series, he visits the village of an isolated tribe somewhere in deepest West Africa, apparently known for its religious belief in a kind and forgiving God, whom they contact through the use of a drug found in the root of a tree. After about a month of living with the villagers, they trust him enough to put him through the religious process of acceptance into their religion and their clan. For three days he is fed the apparently disgustingly bitter tasting root containing the drug, in steady but reducing doses and for three days he vomits and purges himself continuously. After the first hour or so of this torture, the camera crew is banned from the hut where the process takes place and we, the viewers, are thankfully shown only the first bouts of violent vomiting.
The adventurer subsequently describes his experiences on camera. It appears that all who take part in this ceremony of acceptance into this particular religion go through the same drug induced and drug enhanced emotions. Our adventurers’ case was no different from the others. The drug brought rushing back to his memory, past and long forgotten and unwelcomed instances of acts or words of unkindness he was guilty of. He said that his recollection even took him back to actions he took as a child, to his earliest possible childhood remembrance. Under the influence of the drug, he was forced to experience the actual hurt he caused to his victims by the various long forgotten deeds of cruelty he had actually perpetrated in reality months, years or even decades before.
One could see in his face his shock and actual shame at having caused the pain he now actually experienced himself exactly as his actual victim did at the time of the offence. Having experienced the victim’s real pain, with himself on the receiving end, one could see how regretful he was at having committed those various acts and how he wished he could take them back. This was an ordinary human being, who had spoken unkindly to, or had taken advantage of a brother, waiter, cousin, warden, friend, secretary, girlfriend, or wife and was now feeling the deepest possible regret for having done so. It certainly was not acting. In fact he felt the need to explain himself by saying that basically he was an averagely decent human being, who had at times in the past behaved in ways which he was not proud of and would now shamefully and willingly correct those instances if at all possible.
For those who might think that there are secondary benefits to using the drug, I hasten to underline that those who go through the process are not anxious to repeat it due to its extremely painful and unpleasant nature.
What we have here is a group of supposedly primitive people who go through a very painful process, in order to experience the hurt, the sting and injury their own acts of cruelty cause to others. By feeling the damage they cause to others through their words or actions, they become restrained in repeating acts which wound their fellow man. How wonderful is that?
We all could learn so much from this, especially those of us who are parents, but we can also go a lot further than that. By seeking to understand the hurt we have caused each other in past conflicts and challenges, be they in business, in religious conflicts, in expansionist wars, in colour differences or elsewhere, we just might begin to celebrate each other’s differences and each other's right of choice. We might even learn to support each other in such choices.
As individuals, human beings are generally a kind, generous and hospitable species. It is only when the herd instinct is taken advantage of by eloquent and gifted maniacs that we forget our inherent love of our brethren of other colours and beliefs that we fall into the traps set for us and we then forget our true selves and follow shameful paths. If only we could experience the hurt we cause.
De Greek
It is astonishing to what degree the basic human principles of justice, compassion and fair play are universal, as is the feeling of guilt for personal acts of cruelty, irrespective of one’s background, country of origin, skin colour, religion or education. As, of course, also universal are humanity’s cruelty, pettiness, selfishness, unfairness and an astonishing ability to justify the most horrendous acts of barbarism with a theoretically glorified end result as a justification of the means.
I say this because a lot of us have been indoctrinated to automatically expect human beings in primitive tribes for example, to be deficient in the positive aspects, i.e. those aspects of compassion, guilt and regret for personal acts or omissions. This, in spite of the example of “civilised” Europeans causing unimaginable agony on their fellow human beings in the heart of Europe during WWII, for reasons which most of us are incapable (I hope) of comprehending. I recently had cause to feel considerable shame for my attitude towards our more isolated brethren in Africa, through a documentary called “Tribe”, on one of the educational channels. The adventurer in charge of the programme documents his stay with various tribes around the world, living as a member of different remote, primitive and mostly self sufficient people.
In one of these series, he visits the village of an isolated tribe somewhere in deepest West Africa, apparently known for its religious belief in a kind and forgiving God, whom they contact through the use of a drug found in the root of a tree. After about a month of living with the villagers, they trust him enough to put him through the religious process of acceptance into their religion and their clan. For three days he is fed the apparently disgustingly bitter tasting root containing the drug, in steady but reducing doses and for three days he vomits and purges himself continuously. After the first hour or so of this torture, the camera crew is banned from the hut where the process takes place and we, the viewers, are thankfully shown only the first bouts of violent vomiting.
The adventurer subsequently describes his experiences on camera. It appears that all who take part in this ceremony of acceptance into this particular religion go through the same drug induced and drug enhanced emotions. Our adventurers’ case was no different from the others. The drug brought rushing back to his memory, past and long forgotten and unwelcomed instances of acts or words of unkindness he was guilty of. He said that his recollection even took him back to actions he took as a child, to his earliest possible childhood remembrance. Under the influence of the drug, he was forced to experience the actual hurt he caused to his victims by the various long forgotten deeds of cruelty he had actually perpetrated in reality months, years or even decades before.
One could see in his face his shock and actual shame at having caused the pain he now actually experienced himself exactly as his actual victim did at the time of the offence. Having experienced the victim’s real pain, with himself on the receiving end, one could see how regretful he was at having committed those various acts and how he wished he could take them back. This was an ordinary human being, who had spoken unkindly to, or had taken advantage of a brother, waiter, cousin, warden, friend, secretary, girlfriend, or wife and was now feeling the deepest possible regret for having done so. It certainly was not acting. In fact he felt the need to explain himself by saying that basically he was an averagely decent human being, who had at times in the past behaved in ways which he was not proud of and would now shamefully and willingly correct those instances if at all possible.
For those who might think that there are secondary benefits to using the drug, I hasten to underline that those who go through the process are not anxious to repeat it due to its extremely painful and unpleasant nature.
What we have here is a group of supposedly primitive people who go through a very painful process, in order to experience the hurt, the sting and injury their own acts of cruelty cause to others. By feeling the damage they cause to others through their words or actions, they become restrained in repeating acts which wound their fellow man. How wonderful is that?
We all could learn so much from this, especially those of us who are parents, but we can also go a lot further than that. By seeking to understand the hurt we have caused each other in past conflicts and challenges, be they in business, in religious conflicts, in expansionist wars, in colour differences or elsewhere, we just might begin to celebrate each other’s differences and each other's right of choice. We might even learn to support each other in such choices.
As individuals, human beings are generally a kind, generous and hospitable species. It is only when the herd instinct is taken advantage of by eloquent and gifted maniacs that we forget our inherent love of our brethren of other colours and beliefs that we fall into the traps set for us and we then forget our true selves and follow shameful paths. If only we could experience the hurt we cause.
Allergies or A EULOGY BY THE DECEASED
by Dimitris Mita
De Greek
The gravedigger was crying. Through my streaming tears I could see that he was unsuccessfully trying to hold back his own.
I had never seen a gravedigger cry before and, out of surprised curiosity, I stopped crying myself and transferred my gaze on him, away from the coffin holding the remains of what used to be my father.
The scene of the crying gravedigger was a real shock to me. Ours was a small town with everybody knowing everybody else and attending funerals was an obligation imposed on all of us. During such festivities, I had never managed to come to terms with the casual indifference, to the point of heartlessness, with which the priest and the two grave diggers managed to plant their clients. The three of them, always true to the Kipling poem about keeping their heads while everyone around them was loosing theirs, went through the motions with a coldness which was shocking yet admirable in some odd fashion. Perhaps it was because no one was blaming them for the event.
Conceivably the gravedigger was influenced by the eulogy read out at the church, which he had attended in his capacity of fellow citizen a short time previously. The eulogy was somewhat unusual, in that it was written by my father himself, prior to his death of course. Admittedly, it had that little ‘something’ in it, but more towards creating a smile rather than tears. I had been required to read it myself, an act that made keeping a straight face doubly difficult.
It was headed:
I considered this to be just one more of the oddities governing my life at that time. During that period I had a horse which was allergic to hay, a housemaid who was allergic to dust (so I had to employ her a housemaid to do her work for her) and a Great Dane dog which was terrified of cats, the worst allergy of all. My heart bled for him every time I saw him cowering at the sight of a cat. The oddities or allergies of life.
The allergy that was a crying gravedigger moved forward and took hold of the two ropes on his side of the grave and with another wipe on the long suffering shirtsleeve he nodded to his partner. They both lifted the coffin over the grave opening and began lowering it into the finality of life.
I looked around at the sea of faces that had materialized out of nowhere in order to pay their last respects. The church had been packed but there seemed to be even more mourners here. Faces I knew well and others I had never seen before.
It was a beautiful warm May morning, with the smell of flowers pungently sweet in the air. My Godfather and my secretary standing next to each other, looking after the overseas visitors, appeared efficient and tired. They had taken over the role of informing everyone they knew, as well as those they didn’t but had found listed in my personal phone book and seemed to have excelled themselves. I had been in Manila when the heart attack finally felled the oak that was my father and in order to accommodate me and the overseas friends who wanted to attend the funeral, the body had been kept in the morgue for four days.
There was Ilan Raviv and Oded Giveon, who flew over in a private jet from Tel Aviv. Next to them stood a short unimpressive man towered over on either side by two men in black suits one size too small for them, looking like wrestler twins and seemingly without any neck to speak of. I was told that he had flown over from the States with his companions. All wore sunglasses to hide their eyes.
There was Rachel, the Romanian prostitute, whose story had inspired my father to finance her, a woman he had never actually met, into becoming a very prosperous madam, an act of generosity which she never seemed able to forget.
My father learned of her through me. Mine was the first foreign company to open an office in Romania immediately after the Revolution which ousted communism and Ceausescu from that long suffering country. When I first went there for the purpose, there was no infrastructure for business and no possibility of renting an office, so I rented four rooms at the Continental Hotel in the port of Constanta. I employed twelve people, including two body guards who eventually proved very useful, and proceeded to train the staff in my line of work which was ship owning and ship management. I wanted to employ Romanian seamen on board my ships.
Every day I used to take the staff for lunch and dinner at the hotel restaurant, to reward them for the hard work and the long hours they put into the effort. Downstairs there was a large lobby extending into a huge restaurant and bar, which happened to be the nesting place of most of the local prostitutes catering to the needs of the visiting seamen. And every day, there was pretty young Rachel making eyes at me. And every day I would turn my back on her and studiously ignore her.
The time came when the training was completed and the staff at last went home to their families for dinner and I went downstairs to have my own lonely supper. I sat at a free table and ordered my food. I felt someone standing next to me and looking up I saw the perpetually smiling Rachel.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked. Most eyes in the restaurant were on the rich foreigner and the whore.
“No” I said as rudely as I could.
“Shall I sit with you?”
“No” again, with annoyed force and rudeness.
“Shall I come to your room tonight?”
This conversation took place in very broken English which I cannot quite reconstruct, so I am translating the gist. By this time I was really annoyed, so in order to be as harshly rude as possible, I said
“How much will you pay me?”
She thought for a very long minute and then asked with childish curiosity
“Me, pay you?”
“Yes” again harshly.
She again thought for a long time. Then to my surprise she said in an interested manner
“How much?”
This threw me a bit, I must confess, but I maintained my composure. I knew from seamen from one of our ships which had made a call at Constanta during my stay that the local tariff was a measly $20.
“One hundred dollars” I said.
She looked at me curiously for some seconds and then
“OK …. But you fuck me all night!”
Guffaw is the only word which can describe the laughter that was wrenched from me. I laughed so loudly that every head in the restaurant turned. Unable to resist unexpected witticism of this magnitude from a whore, I asked her to sit down and bought her dinner. She turned out to be a very clever and witty person, as a lot of Romanians are, good company for the one hour I spend at dinner. A silent agreement was reached that night that she would never solicit me again and I would not ignore her.
When my ex-wife called me that evening I told her the story, still amused by the incident, and she passed it on to my father. “That boy will come back with serious money” he had famously smiled and then proceeded to make arrangements to reward her wit with a sum which allowed her to set up in business for herself.
I looked now at my ex-wife amongst the sea of faces. Another whore, but this one without a sense of humour to speak of. Just a highly developed animal cunning, which is rare to come across.
Even the soon-to-be-grave-dancing widow, my mother, was delicately wiping a tear with a tiny handkerchief, but I think it was because it was fashionably expected of her by her accompanying cronies. I never liked that woman, especially since she knifed me, aged 10. But to give credit where credit is due, I always admired her knife throwing abilities. If you have never been knifed, by your mother, or anyone else for that matter, I strongly discourage you from trying it.
It was at the end of my daily argument with my elder sister and having made a ten year old’s cutting remark about nothing, I turned towards the field where my friends were preparing the soccer match of the day, when the point of the butcher knife hit me in the back from ten paces away. She had picked up the first available object to hand, which happened to be the butcher knife and threw it at me, with remarkable accuracy. An excellent shot.
Both the shock of the blow and the point of the knife entering the tender flesh caused me to exhale and I could not breathe. I walked a few steps and fell. A friendly doctor was found to saw up the wound without the police getting involved.
A sudden collective gasp from the crowd brought me back to the present and I looked down just in time to see the coffin overturn, the rope having slipped from the hands of the sensitive gravedigger. My father rolled over and landed on his back at the bottom of the grave, with the “splendid” coffin on top of him.
My godfather rushed forward as if to protect his dead friend and ended up in close conference with the priest. He finally came over to me and told me that it was the priest’s professional opinion that God preferred a burial without a coffin and that coffins were the invention of modern man. Not the best advertising material this. Was the idiot priest trying to put the last nail in my father’s new coffin business? I quickly agreed for the burial to proceed as God preferred and could not help thinking that a coffin saved was a coffin worth £3,400. My great-great grandfather was an atheist Greek Jew who indifferently converted to Christianity in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved and it was a family joke how amazing it was that Jewish blood will always tell.
I stepped forward to the edge and dropped my pagan gifts into my father’s grave. Thousands of years of civilization and Christianity evaporating in my primitive need to ease his passing into the next world, the same primitive powerless need that motivated the ancients, be they Egyptians, Greeks, Britons and so many other archaic races of the past. I slowly and ritualistically dropped a bottle of his favourite 12 year old whisky into the grave and then a carton of his favourite cigarettes, which had probably contributed most to his early demise.
He had this strange need for me to remember him on each of my innumerable trips abroad, by always bringing him a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes when I returned. He always gave most of them away so that I would have to bring him more, proving to him each time that I remembered him and that I loved him. He rarely drank, but he smoked a lot. Come to think of it, through my gifts I have probably killed my father…. What a horrible thought.
I looked down at the huge man in his ‘Church suit’ as he had called it. He was six feet two, 250 lbs, black hair with very little grey, still combed in place strangely enough, as if he did not suffer the fall. His hands were still across the chest. Looking serious … yes, that was the difference, looking serious, no smile.
I dropped a fistful of earth at his feet and watched as others dropped their own handfuls, only not so carefully as I. I saw earth at my father’s mouth and I wanted to jump in to stop it, to clear it away from his mouth, because I knew the taste of earth, thanks to “Molon Lave”.
“Molon Lave” is what the Spartans told the Persian tourists when the latter politely asked for the Spartan’s weapons in order to avoid unpleasantness. It means “Come and Get Them” in ancient Greek.
"Molon Lave" was also the name of my horse. The horse with the hay allergy. 18 hands, if he was an inch. A beautiful, strong animal, a retired 8 year old thoroughbred racehorse, with many victories to his name. The first time I rode him he was very excited and skittish, always ready to take off. It took me a while to calm him down. In the end he appeared to get used to me and I walked him around the grounds of the sporting complex were I was stabling him at a cost equivalent to an Indonesian Prince's ransom. At some stage, I thought that it was time to trot him, show him who was master and then get into a comfortable relaxing canter. So I touched his sides lightly.
Molon Lave & my son Alex Now, in retrospect, I know that opinion does not appear to differ considerably on this point: Racehorses are trained to gallop as soon as their jockeys touch their sides. However, this was a detail unknown to me at the time. In consequence, the achievements of many reputable car makers for the zero to sixty miles per hour world record were left in the dust we raised behind us as we gracefully and terrifyingly galloped around the narrow and winding scenic pathways of the sports complex. I remember thinking incongruously how the jasmine had bloomed early that year and, less incongruously, wondering at that worthy plant's abilities to break my fall if I decided to throw myself off "Molon Lave" into their hopefully waiting branches. I sadly realized though that at the rate of speed we were going, I would have to take into consideration most of the scientific NASA theories on trajectories , meaning that if I wanted to land in Portsmouth, I would have to jump off somewhere near Southsea.
I knew that the pathway made a ninety degree left turn at a point at which it met the fencing of a paddock and prepared myself to lean to the left, always sensitive to the animal's comfort. At that point, "Molon Lave" decided to take into consideration the meaning of my desperate pulling on the reins, sharp, short, left-and-right pulls on the bit in the hope of getting through to him that a slower pace would make the scenery more enjoyable. He stopped. As I gracefully flew over the paddock fencing, I remember thinking that this was the moment my whole life is supposed to flash before my eyes and I was quite looking forward to reviewing, in fast-forward mode, those 15 glorious minutes behind the barn with Camilla P.
When I woke up at the hospital, the first thing I realized was that I was wearing a neck brace. The second was that I could move my hands and toes. The third was that I could taste earth in my mouth. Then I realized that the stable master, that wonderful, generous Christian soul had constantly insisted that the paddocks were always abundantly supplied with soft earth so that the horses' legs would not have to endure hard shocks after going over fences.
Dimitris Mita
DeGreek
http://hubpages.com/hub/Second-Life-Alergies
De Greek
The gravedigger was crying. Through my streaming tears I could see that he was unsuccessfully trying to hold back his own.
I had never seen a gravedigger cry before and, out of surprised curiosity, I stopped crying myself and transferred my gaze on him, away from the coffin holding the remains of what used to be my father.
The scene of the crying gravedigger was a real shock to me. Ours was a small town with everybody knowing everybody else and attending funerals was an obligation imposed on all of us. During such festivities, I had never managed to come to terms with the casual indifference, to the point of heartlessness, with which the priest and the two grave diggers managed to plant their clients. The three of them, always true to the Kipling poem about keeping their heads while everyone around them was loosing theirs, went through the motions with a coldness which was shocking yet admirable in some odd fashion. Perhaps it was because no one was blaming them for the event.
Conceivably the gravedigger was influenced by the eulogy read out at the church, which he had attended in his capacity of fellow citizen a short time previously. The eulogy was somewhat unusual, in that it was written by my father himself, prior to his death of course. Admittedly, it had that little ‘something’ in it, but more towards creating a smile rather than tears. I had been required to read it myself, an act that made keeping a straight face doubly difficult.
It was headed:
"A EULOGY BY THE DECEASEDAnd so the gravedigger wiped his drippy nose and some drool that was coming out of the corner of his mouth on the work shirt he had changed into, trying to hide the unmanly weakness.
As the honoured person here today, I feel that it is appropriate to say a few words. It is surprising that even a dead person finds a captive audience irresistible.
First of all, I should like to thank you all for coming. Both of you. Those of you who do not understand this joke, may stay behind after the funeral and my son who should be reading this will explain it to you.
I also want to take this excellent opportunity to do a bit of advertising. Please note the splendid coffin, which is one of our own productions. Since we are in the joinery business and have all the necessary machinery we thought of adding coffins as a new product to supplement our income. Just in time as it turned out. Have you seen the prices of these things recently? Those of you who were generous enough to sent flowers, will have presumably attached cards to them, so we shall shortly send you more information on this very useful and very attractive product. (Naturally, when I say “we”, I use the term loosely). A special discount shall be made to the names on all the cards, in acknowledgement and reciprocity of friendship, but no credit facilities apply.
Incidentally, should there be a large “D” in evidence anywhere near the coffin, please ignore it. It would be the result of excessive zeal by our employees, who sometimes go a little overboard in implementing ISO requirements. “D” stands for DEAD. Just in case some of you are absent minded and haven’t noticed the corpse.
No doubt the spectacle of a friend or relative being made ready for planting must create a feeling of finality which can never be an agreeable one. For consolation, though, think of the pleasure this event will give to at least one person, my ex-wife, who has for years been waiting to dance on my grave.
A word of advice to those of my aging friends who might feel obligated to give a helping hand in carrying the coffin to the hearse: DON’T! - I seem to have added a few kilos of late to an already impressive figure and the effort may be such as to create a rush of business for our worthy funeral director, which may overwhelm the poor man’s ability to cope. Please resist the temptation and let the younger men do the job. It will give them something to do and might even prevent them from yawning.
Now that the introduction is suitably out of the way, I believe that it is customary to say a few words about the departed, ideally complementary. Well, I can tell you that through most of my adult life I have studiously avoided being fired, through the simple expedient of becoming the President of various companies. Since it was somewhat unlikely that I would fire myself, I became quite adept at holding down those jobs. The occasional clanger I made, I faced with humane understanding and leniency. Only the unsporting and unreasonable point of view of the Department of Income Tax occasionally put a spanner in the works.
Without wishing to bore, I feel the need to pass on a few words of wisdom to those of you who are still listening. Wisdom acquired as a businessman and as a father. The Lords Tennyson and Byron might have found a different way of dispersing these pearls of wisdom, but the advantage of being dead is that one may risk a touch of eccentricity.
As a businessman, I have had personal experiences which led me to the conclusion that ‘someone may look at a gift horse in the mouth out of habit. But if the gift horse is the odds-on favourite to win the next Darby, then that someone can’t afford the stable fees’. Think about this for a while.
As a father I have at last learned that ‘the result of punishment on men and animals is the increase of fear, the promotion of cunning and the control of desires. Punishment tames a man, but does not make him better’. This is not one of my own gems, but belongs to a fellow philosopher by the name of Nietzsche.
I think that I had better terminate this discourse now, or I may risk being frivolous. Enjoy the rest of the proceedings."
I considered this to be just one more of the oddities governing my life at that time. During that period I had a horse which was allergic to hay, a housemaid who was allergic to dust (so I had to employ her a housemaid to do her work for her) and a Great Dane dog which was terrified of cats, the worst allergy of all. My heart bled for him every time I saw him cowering at the sight of a cat. The oddities or allergies of life.
The allergy that was a crying gravedigger moved forward and took hold of the two ropes on his side of the grave and with another wipe on the long suffering shirtsleeve he nodded to his partner. They both lifted the coffin over the grave opening and began lowering it into the finality of life.
I looked around at the sea of faces that had materialized out of nowhere in order to pay their last respects. The church had been packed but there seemed to be even more mourners here. Faces I knew well and others I had never seen before.
It was a beautiful warm May morning, with the smell of flowers pungently sweet in the air. My Godfather and my secretary standing next to each other, looking after the overseas visitors, appeared efficient and tired. They had taken over the role of informing everyone they knew, as well as those they didn’t but had found listed in my personal phone book and seemed to have excelled themselves. I had been in Manila when the heart attack finally felled the oak that was my father and in order to accommodate me and the overseas friends who wanted to attend the funeral, the body had been kept in the morgue for four days.
There was Ilan Raviv and Oded Giveon, who flew over in a private jet from Tel Aviv. Next to them stood a short unimpressive man towered over on either side by two men in black suits one size too small for them, looking like wrestler twins and seemingly without any neck to speak of. I was told that he had flown over from the States with his companions. All wore sunglasses to hide their eyes.
There was Rachel, the Romanian prostitute, whose story had inspired my father to finance her, a woman he had never actually met, into becoming a very prosperous madam, an act of generosity which she never seemed able to forget.
My father learned of her through me. Mine was the first foreign company to open an office in Romania immediately after the Revolution which ousted communism and Ceausescu from that long suffering country. When I first went there for the purpose, there was no infrastructure for business and no possibility of renting an office, so I rented four rooms at the Continental Hotel in the port of Constanta. I employed twelve people, including two body guards who eventually proved very useful, and proceeded to train the staff in my line of work which was ship owning and ship management. I wanted to employ Romanian seamen on board my ships.
Every day I used to take the staff for lunch and dinner at the hotel restaurant, to reward them for the hard work and the long hours they put into the effort. Downstairs there was a large lobby extending into a huge restaurant and bar, which happened to be the nesting place of most of the local prostitutes catering to the needs of the visiting seamen. And every day, there was pretty young Rachel making eyes at me. And every day I would turn my back on her and studiously ignore her.
The time came when the training was completed and the staff at last went home to their families for dinner and I went downstairs to have my own lonely supper. I sat at a free table and ordered my food. I felt someone standing next to me and looking up I saw the perpetually smiling Rachel.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked. Most eyes in the restaurant were on the rich foreigner and the whore.
“No” I said as rudely as I could.
“Shall I sit with you?”
“No” again, with annoyed force and rudeness.
“Shall I come to your room tonight?”
This conversation took place in very broken English which I cannot quite reconstruct, so I am translating the gist. By this time I was really annoyed, so in order to be as harshly rude as possible, I said
“How much will you pay me?”
She thought for a very long minute and then asked with childish curiosity
“Me, pay you?”
“Yes” again harshly.
She again thought for a long time. Then to my surprise she said in an interested manner
“How much?”
This threw me a bit, I must confess, but I maintained my composure. I knew from seamen from one of our ships which had made a call at Constanta during my stay that the local tariff was a measly $20.
“One hundred dollars” I said.
She looked at me curiously for some seconds and then
“OK …. But you fuck me all night!”
Guffaw is the only word which can describe the laughter that was wrenched from me. I laughed so loudly that every head in the restaurant turned. Unable to resist unexpected witticism of this magnitude from a whore, I asked her to sit down and bought her dinner. She turned out to be a very clever and witty person, as a lot of Romanians are, good company for the one hour I spend at dinner. A silent agreement was reached that night that she would never solicit me again and I would not ignore her.
When my ex-wife called me that evening I told her the story, still amused by the incident, and she passed it on to my father. “That boy will come back with serious money” he had famously smiled and then proceeded to make arrangements to reward her wit with a sum which allowed her to set up in business for herself.
I looked now at my ex-wife amongst the sea of faces. Another whore, but this one without a sense of humour to speak of. Just a highly developed animal cunning, which is rare to come across.
Even the soon-to-be-grave-dancing widow, my mother, was delicately wiping a tear with a tiny handkerchief, but I think it was because it was fashionably expected of her by her accompanying cronies. I never liked that woman, especially since she knifed me, aged 10. But to give credit where credit is due, I always admired her knife throwing abilities. If you have never been knifed, by your mother, or anyone else for that matter, I strongly discourage you from trying it.
It was at the end of my daily argument with my elder sister and having made a ten year old’s cutting remark about nothing, I turned towards the field where my friends were preparing the soccer match of the day, when the point of the butcher knife hit me in the back from ten paces away. She had picked up the first available object to hand, which happened to be the butcher knife and threw it at me, with remarkable accuracy. An excellent shot.
Both the shock of the blow and the point of the knife entering the tender flesh caused me to exhale and I could not breathe. I walked a few steps and fell. A friendly doctor was found to saw up the wound without the police getting involved.
A sudden collective gasp from the crowd brought me back to the present and I looked down just in time to see the coffin overturn, the rope having slipped from the hands of the sensitive gravedigger. My father rolled over and landed on his back at the bottom of the grave, with the “splendid” coffin on top of him.
My godfather rushed forward as if to protect his dead friend and ended up in close conference with the priest. He finally came over to me and told me that it was the priest’s professional opinion that God preferred a burial without a coffin and that coffins were the invention of modern man. Not the best advertising material this. Was the idiot priest trying to put the last nail in my father’s new coffin business? I quickly agreed for the burial to proceed as God preferred and could not help thinking that a coffin saved was a coffin worth £3,400. My great-great grandfather was an atheist Greek Jew who indifferently converted to Christianity in order to be allowed to marry the woman he loved and it was a family joke how amazing it was that Jewish blood will always tell.
I stepped forward to the edge and dropped my pagan gifts into my father’s grave. Thousands of years of civilization and Christianity evaporating in my primitive need to ease his passing into the next world, the same primitive powerless need that motivated the ancients, be they Egyptians, Greeks, Britons and so many other archaic races of the past. I slowly and ritualistically dropped a bottle of his favourite 12 year old whisky into the grave and then a carton of his favourite cigarettes, which had probably contributed most to his early demise.
He had this strange need for me to remember him on each of my innumerable trips abroad, by always bringing him a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes when I returned. He always gave most of them away so that I would have to bring him more, proving to him each time that I remembered him and that I loved him. He rarely drank, but he smoked a lot. Come to think of it, through my gifts I have probably killed my father…. What a horrible thought.
I looked down at the huge man in his ‘Church suit’ as he had called it. He was six feet two, 250 lbs, black hair with very little grey, still combed in place strangely enough, as if he did not suffer the fall. His hands were still across the chest. Looking serious … yes, that was the difference, looking serious, no smile.
I dropped a fistful of earth at his feet and watched as others dropped their own handfuls, only not so carefully as I. I saw earth at my father’s mouth and I wanted to jump in to stop it, to clear it away from his mouth, because I knew the taste of earth, thanks to “Molon Lave”.
“Molon Lave” is what the Spartans told the Persian tourists when the latter politely asked for the Spartan’s weapons in order to avoid unpleasantness. It means “Come and Get Them” in ancient Greek.
"Molon Lave" was also the name of my horse. The horse with the hay allergy. 18 hands, if he was an inch. A beautiful, strong animal, a retired 8 year old thoroughbred racehorse, with many victories to his name. The first time I rode him he was very excited and skittish, always ready to take off. It took me a while to calm him down. In the end he appeared to get used to me and I walked him around the grounds of the sporting complex were I was stabling him at a cost equivalent to an Indonesian Prince's ransom. At some stage, I thought that it was time to trot him, show him who was master and then get into a comfortable relaxing canter. So I touched his sides lightly.
Molon Lave & my son Alex Now, in retrospect, I know that opinion does not appear to differ considerably on this point: Racehorses are trained to gallop as soon as their jockeys touch their sides. However, this was a detail unknown to me at the time. In consequence, the achievements of many reputable car makers for the zero to sixty miles per hour world record were left in the dust we raised behind us as we gracefully and terrifyingly galloped around the narrow and winding scenic pathways of the sports complex. I remember thinking incongruously how the jasmine had bloomed early that year and, less incongruously, wondering at that worthy plant's abilities to break my fall if I decided to throw myself off "Molon Lave" into their hopefully waiting branches. I sadly realized though that at the rate of speed we were going, I would have to take into consideration most of the scientific NASA theories on trajectories , meaning that if I wanted to land in Portsmouth, I would have to jump off somewhere near Southsea.
I knew that the pathway made a ninety degree left turn at a point at which it met the fencing of a paddock and prepared myself to lean to the left, always sensitive to the animal's comfort. At that point, "Molon Lave" decided to take into consideration the meaning of my desperate pulling on the reins, sharp, short, left-and-right pulls on the bit in the hope of getting through to him that a slower pace would make the scenery more enjoyable. He stopped. As I gracefully flew over the paddock fencing, I remember thinking that this was the moment my whole life is supposed to flash before my eyes and I was quite looking forward to reviewing, in fast-forward mode, those 15 glorious minutes behind the barn with Camilla P.
When I woke up at the hospital, the first thing I realized was that I was wearing a neck brace. The second was that I could move my hands and toes. The third was that I could taste earth in my mouth. Then I realized that the stable master, that wonderful, generous Christian soul had constantly insisted that the paddocks were always abundantly supplied with soft earth so that the horses' legs would not have to endure hard shocks after going over fences.
Dimitris Mita
DeGreek
http://hubpages.com/hub/Second-Life-Alergies
Friday, 9 April 2010
My Friend Oded
A New Friend
Surely it must have happened to you as well? You meet someone of the same gender for the first time and you instantly hit it off and without any logical reason you feel that you have known him for a lifetime. Subsequently, when you talk to this person, you find that you have a lot of things in common, especially humour and it is as if you were boyhood friends.
I met my friend Oded in Israel. I went there for a meeting with someone with whom I was negotiating business and Oded was this person’s lawyer. On completion of the deal, my Israeli counterpart took us all to dinner to celebrate the agreement and Oded and I became firm friends over that meal. He had us all in stitches in the way he described his misadventures on the painful road to his final divorce.
Apparently Oded fell from Grace with a bimbo of some impressive qualifications and even more impressive preferences in the bedroom, all of which were described with an innocent tongue-in-cheek manner which could not fail but have us all almost screaming with laughter. The time came, said Oded, when the novelty of the bimbo’s gymnastics wore off and Oded-the-father-of-two and loyal husband finally managed to evict the randy-goat-Oded and to triumphantly retake the battlefield of his sex life, becoming Master-of-All-He-Surveyed.
However, guilt began to gnaw at him persistently. Why had he betrayed his wonderful, beautiful, intelligent wife with a woman so inferior to his spouse? His wife was not only his partner in life, but his business partner as well, since she was also a lawyer and worked with him at their law firm. How could he betray her with a stupid bimbo like he did, for the sake of the bimbo’s personal proclivities, as scientifically interesting as those proclivities in truth were? He decided to manly come clean and purge his soul to his innocent loving wife in order to put a final stop to the tortures of his conscience and to make a clean new start, henceforth for ever faithful to his one true love.
He informed us that evening at the dinner table that in retrospect he realised that his decision to confess all to the love of his life was not the best choice he had ever made in a life otherwise rich in successful choices, both professional and otherwise. He did not so much mind the loss of his Mercedes as the million dollar home he was evicted from with a speed which surprised him and, in fact, raised his professional admiration for the legal abilities of his wife to new heights. When I suggested to him that the results as he described them would tend to indicate that his now ex wife was a better lawyer than he was, he had no hesitation in admitting the fact in front of his client who was paying for the dinner and was also enjoying the description of the misadventure.
And that was the beginning of our friendship. Oded had several Israeli clients with business interests in Cyprus and as a result he was a regular visitor to our island, my home country. After our meeting in Israel and our automatic friendship, he would subsequently always come and stay with me at my apartment whenever he visited Cyprus. He would always arrive with a new bimbo and he would always find me with a new lady friend and, as we could never remember the names of each other’s rotating female companions, we called them sisters-in-law for ease of reference. To this day, Oded refers even to my wife as his sister in-law. Whenever he came I would take him to interesting restaurants and treat him and his companions to sumptuous meals.
Two Years Later
Two years after our first meeting, I had another appointment in Israel, so I phoned my friend to let him know and, as expected, he told me that I would be staying with him at his apartment, so when I arrived at the airport Oded was there waiting for me. He said that he had another visitor from the US, a famous film director who must remain nameless here and that this friend was to meet us at a wonderful new trendy and very expensive bar restaurant that had recently opened in Tel Aviv.
It was a warm summer evening and he drove me to this really wonderful open air bar full of wealthy looking people. His American friend came almost at the same time, so we sat at the bar and ordered our drinks. The American entertained us with stories about Sharon Stone, whom he had directed in a popular film and as he was talking, some plates of appetisers were put in front of us, which I assumed were the introduction prior to my friend slaughtering the fatted calf.
Regrettably, in this estimation I was in some error as it shortly became painfully transparent. I asked for an additional plate of something and my friend Oded looked at me with surprise and asked me if I was still hungry, in a tone which suggested that I should try to control this unmanly slavery to my stomach.
His friend looked at me with a huge knowing smile on his face, the face of a man who knew enough to have a good dinner before he accepted a dinner invitation from our mutual friend Oded. The penny dropped. My friend was a miser and Scrooge would have to take his correspondence course if Scrooge wanted to be in the running for the championship title!
The American had obviously been through this before and he was looking at me with a smiling, obvious interest in how I would express my embarrassment and how I would try to pretend that I was not hungry.
Unfortunately the De Greeks are not a subtle lot. We tend to remember the largess with which we treat our friends and we expect them to reciprocate in kind when their turn eventually comes up. And the sympathetic smile on the face of the American spoke volumes to my primitive self.
I turned to the pretty waitress behind the open air bar and asked for a menu, which she pulled out from beneath the bar as if a rabbit from a hat, to coin a phrase. As I looked at the menu, I asked her in a firm clear voice to help me by indicating to me the most expensive items on her menu. She showed me the relevant items and even MY eyebrows went up at the imaginative pricing.
I asked her to bring three portions of the most expensive dish and because the portions I had seen being carried by waiters to waiting patrons were about half the size of those served in Cyprus, another three portions of the second most expensive dish on the menu. Oded said that he was not hungry, but I assured him that if he did not want to eat that it would be fine, as his friend and I were willing to eat his portions as well.
This is the time Oded’s friend for some reason began to giggle uncontrollably. No, hysterically would be a better description, I can safely say. He tried to keep the conversation going but could not speak at times from the tittering racking his whole frame. I think he understood what was about to happen.
Despite Oded’s claim that he was not hungry, when the food came he dug in with gusto and this made the American giggle even more.
In truth the food was delicious. I asked the sweet girl behind the bar to come to my aid once more, by telling me which was the most expensive desert on her menu, without even looking at the thing this time and I ordered six of them. It must have been a choice that Oded would have made himself because he again dug in with enthusiasm.
I was enjoying a Cuban cigar with my coffee when the girl brought the bill. Since I was the one doing the ordering, she naturally brought the bill to me. I pointed Oded out to her and told her in a clear firm voice that “He” will pay. To his credit, Oded stoically accepted the bill and paid it while the American was screaming with hysterical laughter.
The American telephoned me in Cyprus a few days later to apologise for his behaviour and to tell me that he would be waiting for me in case I ever found myself in Hollywood. I don’t know why but he was still laughing as he was saying this.
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Oded is still my friend after all these years. I tease him about his weakness with picking up restaurant bills and he now laughs at it and at himself.
In truth, to be fair to him he has brought business my way several times which made me a great deal of money but he would never take a cent from me in return.
I also call him “heathen” on occasion because he is a Jew, but he knows that this is also spoken in jest, in my poor attempt at imitating the haters of this word, so if you are not a Christian and if I ever call you a heathen, please be assured that it is spoken in a self deprecating manner and that I have come to know you well enough to feel friendship towards you.
Surely it must have happened to you as well? You meet someone of the same gender for the first time and you instantly hit it off and without any logical reason you feel that you have known him for a lifetime. Subsequently, when you talk to this person, you find that you have a lot of things in common, especially humour and it is as if you were boyhood friends.
I met my friend Oded in Israel. I went there for a meeting with someone with whom I was negotiating business and Oded was this person’s lawyer. On completion of the deal, my Israeli counterpart took us all to dinner to celebrate the agreement and Oded and I became firm friends over that meal. He had us all in stitches in the way he described his misadventures on the painful road to his final divorce.
Apparently Oded fell from Grace with a bimbo of some impressive qualifications and even more impressive preferences in the bedroom, all of which were described with an innocent tongue-in-cheek manner which could not fail but have us all almost screaming with laughter. The time came, said Oded, when the novelty of the bimbo’s gymnastics wore off and Oded-the-father-of-two and loyal husband finally managed to evict the randy-goat-Oded and to triumphantly retake the battlefield of his sex life, becoming Master-of-All-He-Surveyed.
However, guilt began to gnaw at him persistently. Why had he betrayed his wonderful, beautiful, intelligent wife with a woman so inferior to his spouse? His wife was not only his partner in life, but his business partner as well, since she was also a lawyer and worked with him at their law firm. How could he betray her with a stupid bimbo like he did, for the sake of the bimbo’s personal proclivities, as scientifically interesting as those proclivities in truth were? He decided to manly come clean and purge his soul to his innocent loving wife in order to put a final stop to the tortures of his conscience and to make a clean new start, henceforth for ever faithful to his one true love.
He informed us that evening at the dinner table that in retrospect he realised that his decision to confess all to the love of his life was not the best choice he had ever made in a life otherwise rich in successful choices, both professional and otherwise. He did not so much mind the loss of his Mercedes as the million dollar home he was evicted from with a speed which surprised him and, in fact, raised his professional admiration for the legal abilities of his wife to new heights. When I suggested to him that the results as he described them would tend to indicate that his now ex wife was a better lawyer than he was, he had no hesitation in admitting the fact in front of his client who was paying for the dinner and was also enjoying the description of the misadventure.
And that was the beginning of our friendship. Oded had several Israeli clients with business interests in Cyprus and as a result he was a regular visitor to our island, my home country. After our meeting in Israel and our automatic friendship, he would subsequently always come and stay with me at my apartment whenever he visited Cyprus. He would always arrive with a new bimbo and he would always find me with a new lady friend and, as we could never remember the names of each other’s rotating female companions, we called them sisters-in-law for ease of reference. To this day, Oded refers even to my wife as his sister in-law. Whenever he came I would take him to interesting restaurants and treat him and his companions to sumptuous meals.
Two Years Later
Two years after our first meeting, I had another appointment in Israel, so I phoned my friend to let him know and, as expected, he told me that I would be staying with him at his apartment, so when I arrived at the airport Oded was there waiting for me. He said that he had another visitor from the US, a famous film director who must remain nameless here and that this friend was to meet us at a wonderful new trendy and very expensive bar restaurant that had recently opened in Tel Aviv.
It was a warm summer evening and he drove me to this really wonderful open air bar full of wealthy looking people. His American friend came almost at the same time, so we sat at the bar and ordered our drinks. The American entertained us with stories about Sharon Stone, whom he had directed in a popular film and as he was talking, some plates of appetisers were put in front of us, which I assumed were the introduction prior to my friend slaughtering the fatted calf.
Regrettably, in this estimation I was in some error as it shortly became painfully transparent. I asked for an additional plate of something and my friend Oded looked at me with surprise and asked me if I was still hungry, in a tone which suggested that I should try to control this unmanly slavery to my stomach.
His friend looked at me with a huge knowing smile on his face, the face of a man who knew enough to have a good dinner before he accepted a dinner invitation from our mutual friend Oded. The penny dropped. My friend was a miser and Scrooge would have to take his correspondence course if Scrooge wanted to be in the running for the championship title!
The American had obviously been through this before and he was looking at me with a smiling, obvious interest in how I would express my embarrassment and how I would try to pretend that I was not hungry.
Unfortunately the De Greeks are not a subtle lot. We tend to remember the largess with which we treat our friends and we expect them to reciprocate in kind when their turn eventually comes up. And the sympathetic smile on the face of the American spoke volumes to my primitive self.
I turned to the pretty waitress behind the open air bar and asked for a menu, which she pulled out from beneath the bar as if a rabbit from a hat, to coin a phrase. As I looked at the menu, I asked her in a firm clear voice to help me by indicating to me the most expensive items on her menu. She showed me the relevant items and even MY eyebrows went up at the imaginative pricing.
I asked her to bring three portions of the most expensive dish and because the portions I had seen being carried by waiters to waiting patrons were about half the size of those served in Cyprus, another three portions of the second most expensive dish on the menu. Oded said that he was not hungry, but I assured him that if he did not want to eat that it would be fine, as his friend and I were willing to eat his portions as well.
This is the time Oded’s friend for some reason began to giggle uncontrollably. No, hysterically would be a better description, I can safely say. He tried to keep the conversation going but could not speak at times from the tittering racking his whole frame. I think he understood what was about to happen.
Despite Oded’s claim that he was not hungry, when the food came he dug in with gusto and this made the American giggle even more.
In truth the food was delicious. I asked the sweet girl behind the bar to come to my aid once more, by telling me which was the most expensive desert on her menu, without even looking at the thing this time and I ordered six of them. It must have been a choice that Oded would have made himself because he again dug in with enthusiasm.
I was enjoying a Cuban cigar with my coffee when the girl brought the bill. Since I was the one doing the ordering, she naturally brought the bill to me. I pointed Oded out to her and told her in a clear firm voice that “He” will pay. To his credit, Oded stoically accepted the bill and paid it while the American was screaming with hysterical laughter.
The American telephoned me in Cyprus a few days later to apologise for his behaviour and to tell me that he would be waiting for me in case I ever found myself in Hollywood. I don’t know why but he was still laughing as he was saying this.
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Oded is still my friend after all these years. I tease him about his weakness with picking up restaurant bills and he now laughs at it and at himself.
In truth, to be fair to him he has brought business my way several times which made me a great deal of money but he would never take a cent from me in return.
I also call him “heathen” on occasion because he is a Jew, but he knows that this is also spoken in jest, in my poor attempt at imitating the haters of this word, so if you are not a Christian and if I ever call you a heathen, please be assured that it is spoken in a self deprecating manner and that I have come to know you well enough to feel friendship towards you.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
For My Children
For My Children - Dimitris Mita
The following text was written by a 90 year old lady and I found that it encompasses the absolute wisdom of life, if one has the astuteness to comprehend AND to implement what she is saying.
Regrettably I must admit that at an earlier age I would have ignored the lessons listed in the text and it is my hope that my children will not make the same mistake. I urge them to read this carefully, understand the meaning and to implement the advice for the sake of themselves, their own children and those they love…
Quote
45 Lessons Life Taught Me
By 90 years old Regina Brett
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:"
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick.. Your friends
and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument.. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their
journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry;
God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second
one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no
for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie...
Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ''In five years,
will this matter?".
26. Always choose life.
27. Forgive everyone everything.
"28. What other people think of you is none of your business."
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
31. Don't take yourself so seriously... No one else does.
32. Believe in miracles.
33. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything
you did or didn't do.
34. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
35. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
36. Your children get only one childhood..
37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
38. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's,
we'd grab ours back.
40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
41... The best is yet to come.
42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
43. Yield.
44. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
Unquote
Dimitris Mita
The following text was written by a 90 year old lady and I found that it encompasses the absolute wisdom of life, if one has the astuteness to comprehend AND to implement what she is saying.
Regrettably I must admit that at an earlier age I would have ignored the lessons listed in the text and it is my hope that my children will not make the same mistake. I urge them to read this carefully, understand the meaning and to implement the advice for the sake of themselves, their own children and those they love…
Quote
45 Lessons Life Taught Me
By 90 years old Regina Brett
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:"
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick.. Your friends
and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument.. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their
journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry;
God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second
one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no
for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie...
Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ''In five years,
will this matter?".
26. Always choose life.
27. Forgive everyone everything.
"28. What other people think of you is none of your business."
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
31. Don't take yourself so seriously... No one else does.
32. Believe in miracles.
33. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything
you did or didn't do.
34. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
35. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
36. Your children get only one childhood..
37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
38. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's,
we'd grab ours back.
40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
41... The best is yet to come.
42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
43. Yield.
44. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio
Unquote
Dimitris Mita
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Dynamic Mediocrities
Dynamic Mediocrities
... or the “ Fred the Shred ” Syndrome
Many years ago I was on the Board of Directors of a small oil refinery, whose management brought a proposal to the Board for a new investment of thirty million pounds for the purpose of upgrading the plant to produce unleaded fuel. Unfortunately for the management, I had accidentally found out that one of the refinery’s chemists had developed a method of producing unleaded fuel without the use of new equipment, in quantities sufficient for our market-share at the time. Naturally I also thought that such an innovation might also prove to be quite beneficial for the refinery in other ways, if patented.
The General Manager and the Chief Chemist were present at the Board meeting and I asked them to explain why they needed the £30.000.000 when they had what appeared to be a genius on the refinery’s payroll, who could produce unleaded fuel for no additional investment. Their reaction was a joy to behold. They both fidgeted and looked everywhere but at me and eventually the Chief Chemist said that this specific method was not new, was well known to everyone in the industry and that our chemist was not a genius.
So, I asked, if the method is so well known, why were they asking us for an additional investment of £30.000.000 instead of using this method which, according to themselves, was so well known to them? It was not very efficient, I was told. Yes, but was it capable of producing enough unleaded fuel for our needs over the next five years? And if so, do they realise that the value of the interest of the required investment alone would more than make up for any inconvenience they might face in producing unleaded fuel without such a large investment? “Yes, but…. “
Both the General Manager and the Chief Chemist spend the rest of the meeting trying to destroy the reputation of the chemist who had proposed the innovative method of saving us thirty million pounds….
For your own sanity’s sake, for your dignity and for your financial benefit, remember this piece of wisdom from an unknown philosopher: “An ignorant fool can be a useful fool. He can wash floors. But a fool with a PhD can be lethal”. Think, for example, who might be the world’s worst banker and you will get my drift.
There is a breed of men and women who manage to hide their mediocrity through energetic activity and extensive thievery of other peoples’ ideas and efforts. I call such people Dynamic Mediocrities…
They usually manage to parrot their way through exams and end up with university degrees, which at times can be quite impressive, giving them the opportunity to apply for positions of authority. When they apply for a position, they usually make sure that a well connected friend makes a few important telephone calls prior to the interview and they somehow manage to slither their way into important organisations. It is well documented that when a well known UK politician went for a job interview after university, someone telephoned from the palace, no less, to suggest to the interviewers that it would be a good idea to employ this specific applicant. Not that I am suggesting that the specific person is a member of the Dynamic Mediocrities club, but I am anxiously awaiting the results of the next general election. In truth, he could hardly be worse than the current lot.
You will always find Dynamic Mediocrities at the forefront of any activity initiated by others who actually have the innovative ideas, always ready to lay paternity claims to those ideas if they are successful, but always ready to distance themselves from them should they not reach expectations. If the ideas do not turn out to be a success, then they will be the ones pretending to have been looking elsewhere, whistling indifferently and ready to attack the innovator with accusations of irresponsibility. Since they are themselves such mediocrities, everyone else is naturally better than they in ability and innovation, and so in order to survive, they develop an uncanny ability to backstab everyone else around them, since everyone else is a threat.
Think of Prime Minister Brown and how he always infers that any successes are his own and how his relationship with Blair developed.
It is, unfortunately, a sad fact of life that large organisations are often run by small people, with even smaller underlings whose main aim in life is to demonstrate to their bosses how deserving of a promotion they are, through the shameless manipulation of the organisation’s clientele, associates and partners. This naturally also, nay, ESPECIALLY so, applies to governments, the opposition and their associated organisations.
The extent to which such Dynamic Mediocrities have infiltrated the highest echelons of business and government might be illustrated by recent statements from the US military command. America's deputy chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan Major General Michael Flynn described US spies as “clueless”. That is the CIA the man is talking about. The heavily financed, first shield of innocent American civilians, an organization manned through recruitment from the top universities of the land! So why are they so “clueless”? The probability is that the top echelons are now manned by the Dynamic Mediocrities faction.
Though it is possible that in the UK military a similar situation may exist in the top echelons, thankfully there is a distinct difference and that is that the UK has the best army in the world, bar none. The US army could seriously benefit by taking its correspondence course. However, the reason for the high quality lies exclusively with its enlisted men. Britannia once ruled the waves and a large chunk of world real estate because its working class enlisted men were willing to bravely die for the interest of a ruling class which despised them. In other words, the British working man always manages to save the day for the Dynamic Mediocrities which rules the military and the security services, by sacrificing his life for them, without ever receiving recognition or expecting to be thanked. God bless the British blue collar worker. If there was any justice, the British tomb of the Unknown Soldier would show a man in blue working overalls or in dirty miner’s clothes.
For centuries the British soldier has been asked to die for supposedly patriotic reasons when in fact it was all simply for the financial gain of the few well connected. Far fetched you think? Then I refer you to the Chilcot inquiry of January 5th 2010, where Gordon Brown’s chief foreign policy adviser Simon McDonald said that British companies had “done pretty well” in a recent auction of oil rights and that Britain had “privileged access” to the Government of Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister. He also told those present that “British companies have benefited from the award of oil contracts in Iraq because of the decision to help to overthrow Saddam Hussein.”
And the poor brain washed masses still believe that their children are dying to protect the homeland.
In the private sector the situation is completely out of control. Huge conglomerates deliberately and systematically overcharge their clients, in the hope that their clients will be unable to decipher their invoices. “Which” magazine has found that certain utility companies systematically use the winter season meter readings, when consumption is highest, to determine the monthly payments of clients over a twelve month period, in order to end up with a surplus to be refunded back to the clients at a future date, by which time the conglomerate would have made use of its client’s collective overcharge as an interest free loan. How is this possible? Is there no honour, no shame no sense of fair play? The answer is a simple no.
We have been brain washed into believing that our word should be our bond and that it is dishonourable not to play fairly. And so it is. But these principles were created and enforced by rulers such as William the Conqueror, who had no intention of keeping to such principles themselves. For example, England was divided amongst William’s barons, but how does the king ensure that he has control of those barons? He creates the principles of honour and fair play to such an advanced extent that they become a religion, with horrible and shameful repercussions in case of default. This way, the baron responsible for York, for example, may be far from London, but should he fail to pay his taxes to the King, or fail to provide men in case of war, this religiously empowers the king to move against him with an army which believes that it is acting in a just cause, provided by other barons who will share in the spoils from the York campaign.
In the same way we have been trained to believe that the large conglomerates that rule our lives are honourable and that they play fairly. Yet by and large they are run by the Dynamic Mediocrities who cannot possibly survive fairly in a competitive world but instead can only survive and progress by cheating and backstabbing. So they infuse their mentality into the business of their employer and their employer becomes ensnared in their dishonourable tactics.
Shame on them and shame on us for allowing this to continue.
Dimitris Mita
... or the “ Fred the Shred ” Syndrome
Many years ago I was on the Board of Directors of a small oil refinery, whose management brought a proposal to the Board for a new investment of thirty million pounds for the purpose of upgrading the plant to produce unleaded fuel. Unfortunately for the management, I had accidentally found out that one of the refinery’s chemists had developed a method of producing unleaded fuel without the use of new equipment, in quantities sufficient for our market-share at the time. Naturally I also thought that such an innovation might also prove to be quite beneficial for the refinery in other ways, if patented.
The General Manager and the Chief Chemist were present at the Board meeting and I asked them to explain why they needed the £30.000.000 when they had what appeared to be a genius on the refinery’s payroll, who could produce unleaded fuel for no additional investment. Their reaction was a joy to behold. They both fidgeted and looked everywhere but at me and eventually the Chief Chemist said that this specific method was not new, was well known to everyone in the industry and that our chemist was not a genius.
So, I asked, if the method is so well known, why were they asking us for an additional investment of £30.000.000 instead of using this method which, according to themselves, was so well known to them? It was not very efficient, I was told. Yes, but was it capable of producing enough unleaded fuel for our needs over the next five years? And if so, do they realise that the value of the interest of the required investment alone would more than make up for any inconvenience they might face in producing unleaded fuel without such a large investment? “Yes, but…. “
Both the General Manager and the Chief Chemist spend the rest of the meeting trying to destroy the reputation of the chemist who had proposed the innovative method of saving us thirty million pounds….
For your own sanity’s sake, for your dignity and for your financial benefit, remember this piece of wisdom from an unknown philosopher: “An ignorant fool can be a useful fool. He can wash floors. But a fool with a PhD can be lethal”. Think, for example, who might be the world’s worst banker and you will get my drift.
There is a breed of men and women who manage to hide their mediocrity through energetic activity and extensive thievery of other peoples’ ideas and efforts. I call such people Dynamic Mediocrities…
They usually manage to parrot their way through exams and end up with university degrees, which at times can be quite impressive, giving them the opportunity to apply for positions of authority. When they apply for a position, they usually make sure that a well connected friend makes a few important telephone calls prior to the interview and they somehow manage to slither their way into important organisations. It is well documented that when a well known UK politician went for a job interview after university, someone telephoned from the palace, no less, to suggest to the interviewers that it would be a good idea to employ this specific applicant. Not that I am suggesting that the specific person is a member of the Dynamic Mediocrities club, but I am anxiously awaiting the results of the next general election. In truth, he could hardly be worse than the current lot.
You will always find Dynamic Mediocrities at the forefront of any activity initiated by others who actually have the innovative ideas, always ready to lay paternity claims to those ideas if they are successful, but always ready to distance themselves from them should they not reach expectations. If the ideas do not turn out to be a success, then they will be the ones pretending to have been looking elsewhere, whistling indifferently and ready to attack the innovator with accusations of irresponsibility. Since they are themselves such mediocrities, everyone else is naturally better than they in ability and innovation, and so in order to survive, they develop an uncanny ability to backstab everyone else around them, since everyone else is a threat.
Think of Prime Minister Brown and how he always infers that any successes are his own and how his relationship with Blair developed.
It is, unfortunately, a sad fact of life that large organisations are often run by small people, with even smaller underlings whose main aim in life is to demonstrate to their bosses how deserving of a promotion they are, through the shameless manipulation of the organisation’s clientele, associates and partners. This naturally also, nay, ESPECIALLY so, applies to governments, the opposition and their associated organisations.
The extent to which such Dynamic Mediocrities have infiltrated the highest echelons of business and government might be illustrated by recent statements from the US military command. America's deputy chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan Major General Michael Flynn described US spies as “clueless”. That is the CIA the man is talking about. The heavily financed, first shield of innocent American civilians, an organization manned through recruitment from the top universities of the land! So why are they so “clueless”? The probability is that the top echelons are now manned by the Dynamic Mediocrities faction.
Though it is possible that in the UK military a similar situation may exist in the top echelons, thankfully there is a distinct difference and that is that the UK has the best army in the world, bar none. The US army could seriously benefit by taking its correspondence course. However, the reason for the high quality lies exclusively with its enlisted men. Britannia once ruled the waves and a large chunk of world real estate because its working class enlisted men were willing to bravely die for the interest of a ruling class which despised them. In other words, the British working man always manages to save the day for the Dynamic Mediocrities which rules the military and the security services, by sacrificing his life for them, without ever receiving recognition or expecting to be thanked. God bless the British blue collar worker. If there was any justice, the British tomb of the Unknown Soldier would show a man in blue working overalls or in dirty miner’s clothes.
For centuries the British soldier has been asked to die for supposedly patriotic reasons when in fact it was all simply for the financial gain of the few well connected. Far fetched you think? Then I refer you to the Chilcot inquiry of January 5th 2010, where Gordon Brown’s chief foreign policy adviser Simon McDonald said that British companies had “done pretty well” in a recent auction of oil rights and that Britain had “privileged access” to the Government of Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister. He also told those present that “British companies have benefited from the award of oil contracts in Iraq because of the decision to help to overthrow Saddam Hussein.”
And the poor brain washed masses still believe that their children are dying to protect the homeland.
In the private sector the situation is completely out of control. Huge conglomerates deliberately and systematically overcharge their clients, in the hope that their clients will be unable to decipher their invoices. “Which” magazine has found that certain utility companies systematically use the winter season meter readings, when consumption is highest, to determine the monthly payments of clients over a twelve month period, in order to end up with a surplus to be refunded back to the clients at a future date, by which time the conglomerate would have made use of its client’s collective overcharge as an interest free loan. How is this possible? Is there no honour, no shame no sense of fair play? The answer is a simple no.
We have been brain washed into believing that our word should be our bond and that it is dishonourable not to play fairly. And so it is. But these principles were created and enforced by rulers such as William the Conqueror, who had no intention of keeping to such principles themselves. For example, England was divided amongst William’s barons, but how does the king ensure that he has control of those barons? He creates the principles of honour and fair play to such an advanced extent that they become a religion, with horrible and shameful repercussions in case of default. This way, the baron responsible for York, for example, may be far from London, but should he fail to pay his taxes to the King, or fail to provide men in case of war, this religiously empowers the king to move against him with an army which believes that it is acting in a just cause, provided by other barons who will share in the spoils from the York campaign.
In the same way we have been trained to believe that the large conglomerates that rule our lives are honourable and that they play fairly. Yet by and large they are run by the Dynamic Mediocrities who cannot possibly survive fairly in a competitive world but instead can only survive and progress by cheating and backstabbing. So they infuse their mentality into the business of their employer and their employer becomes ensnared in their dishonourable tactics.
Shame on them and shame on us for allowing this to continue.
Dimitris Mita
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