My MRI

Before you start sending bouquets of flowers and high class hookers to my hospital bed can I just point out at this point that I am not, in actual fact, having an MRI scan, I am not hospitalized and as far as I am aware I am pretty damned healthy?

That being said I am sure there are a great many of you who would be glad to accompany me to the hospital should an MRI scan ever be called for purely out of curiosity to see what the hell showed up on the results.

Some TV science programme earlier this year (actually, scrub that, it might have been The One Show) pointed out the startling fact that MRI scanners need helium to work. And helium is a very limited resource on this planet. It is incredibly finite and compared to other resources available to us helium is pretty darn rare. Worst of all, once we have liberated helium from the planet's core (or wherever it is hiding), if we don't make careful and painstaking attempts to contain and hold onto it, it tends to float up and up into the upper atmosphere and then free itself from all bonds of gravity and drift off into outer space where it is lost forever.

Forget oil, we are going to run out of helium pretty darn soon.

Now, I was in a greeting card shop the other day and like most card shops, the entrance was festooned with helium filled balloons. Loads of them.

And I couldn't help but feel a sense of chagrin at the foolishness of the human species.

MRI scans are a great technological leap. We finally have a non-invasive method for diagnosing whether invasive surgery is necessary without having to undertake invasive surgery to prove or disprove it. MRI scanners need helium to work. As a planet we don't have much helium in the universal scheme of things. And we are pumping tonnes of the stuff every day into little rubber bags that are then batted about at children's birthday parties or inhaled so that unfunny dads and uncles can perform a brief and unconvincing Chipmunk impression in the vain hope that their peers will see them as being on a par with Jim Carrey.

This is madness, surely? Stupidity, even.

So I did the only sane thing I could do.

I bought all the balloons. And then I moved onto another greetings cards shop and bought all theirs too. I'm going out again today. Quite where I'm going to store them all, I don't know, and the cats are already freaked out by all the bloated Mickey Mouses that are currently bobbing their way around the living room.

All I know is, when you or someone close to you needs an MRI scan in the (hopefully distant) future and the helium has all run out... you will know where to come. Sure, I'll charge you for it. I hate Disney so I'm paying a high price here for your future medical insurance. And, of course, I'll hold back my own personal supply.

And when, one day, I have my own MRI scan and you accompany me to see what is bubbling away inside my head, well, you'll be blown away by the sheer amount of business acumen.

That's if you can't see it already.

You Know You’ve Been Watching Too Much Disney Pixar When...

You start rating the music in Ice Age 2 and start fancying Elastigirl from The Incredibles.

Our youngest is at that age where he is discovering the joy of movies. Or to put it more accurately rediscovering the joy of the same movie over and over again.

He goes through spells where the same DVD is a la mode for entire weekends at a time. This is interminable when the DVD happens to be Thomas The Tank Engine or Barney The Purple Dinosaur but thankfully he’s quite discerning about what films he wants to watch.

Hence I am now surprisingly well versed in the best that Disney Pixar studios have to offer. I can recount entire swathes of script from all the Toy Story movies, Ice Age and The Incredibles.

More scarily I am starting to analyse them, score them on plot and character development, take them to task on their ethical content. I am getting to the point where I am taking them far too seriously.

I am getting to the point where I am loving them and deeply respecting the script writers and the story-boarders. And the composers.

Ice Age 2 has, I think, one of the best music scores ever. It’s brilliant in the same way that Gustav Holst’s Jupiter is brilliant and for much the same reason. The music is uplifting and jolly but without being frivolous and grating. It is rich in emotional range and spirit. I could quite happily listen to it all day long and highly recommend you all give it a go.

All this from a kid’s cartoon.

More worryingly though I am finding that Elastigirl from The Incredibles is one of the sexiest cartoon characters ever created. As Mr Incredible himself says; she is the perfect woman. I mean, just think about it – this is a woman who can stretch herself into any position. The mind just boggles. And plainly there has been a lot of mind boggling going on out there because when I searched Google for a suitable image of Elastigirl I was presented with a whole array of homemade porno pics of said Elastigirl.

Elastigirl legs akimbo.

Elastigirl contorting herself into positions that a gynaecologist would consider obscene (but possibly helpful).

Elastigirl displaying parts of her anatomy that the guys at Disney Pixar had probably never even dreamt of let alone drawn.

Hey, hey, come back, come back – you can check out Google later after you’ve finished reading! Those pics ain’t going anywhere, I promise you. Geez.

Anyway, it got me thinking. Is it a bit too weird to fancy a cartoon character? Is it only guys that do this?

Because I’m very aware that for a lot of guys their first boyhood crush was probably on Daphne from Scooby-Doo. Sure she was a little vacuous, too much of a Valley Girl for her own good, but you just knew she’d get down and dirty behind the sand dunes at a beach-front tiki party and do things for Scooby snacks that even the great Scooby Doo himself would baulk at.

Jinkies!

And then, somewhere in my mind, I seem to recall another cartoon diva that was a big feature of my childhood. Does anyone remember The Arabian Knights? I think it was one of the regular cartoons on The Banana Splits. I’m sure there was an Arabian girl character on there that used to float my pre-pubescent boat. I seem to recall genie trousers, exposed mid-riff and a veil... but maybe I’m making that up or even confusing it with something else?

I daren’t Google it. After the Elastigirl interpretations I’m not sure my heart could take it...

But... er... maybe one little peak couldn't hurt, eh? Just one?