When thin, meek Bruce Banner explodes out of his clothes to morph into the Incredible Hulk, how come his purple trousers don’t burst? Are they made of some kind of super-stretch fabric? After all, they seem to fit him in the Banner persona pretty well.

If they are made of some infinitely stretchable fabric, why aren’t the rest of his clothes made of the same stuff? It would save the Banner version one hell of a lot in shirts and jackets, not to mention socks and shoes.

And if the fabric is so magical, why isn’t it being sold on the market? People gaining or losing a lot of weight – not to mention parents of growing children – would kill for such stuff. Think of the savings.

One last question – are Banner’s underpants made of the same material as well, or is he always commando?    

Thinking back over my life, I can find several points over which I have an odd problem – I have clear memories of these events, yet I can find no objective proof whatever that  they actually occurred. All right, this sounds bizarre. But it’s true.

Back in school I remember falling head over heels with a girl I called  Yellow Shirt (I first saw her at a science exhibition – that much is fact – and she was in a yellow shirt). But did we later meet and talk? My memory tells me we did. Yet my memory also tells me that at the time of the conversation I was in class (I wasn’t among the volunteers helping run the exhibition, who were excused class).

Again, I know for a fact that I watched, back in medical college, live black maggots of fairly substantial size being pulled out from the scalp of a woman with pemphigus vulgaris. But did I – or did I not – pull out maggots from the nose of a woman with atrophic rhinitis, or is that just a created memory? I did remove shards of bone and pellets from the blown-apart face of a kid shotgunned in the face from close range, but is it true that I approximated the ragged flowers of his spread out facial tissues and stitched them together (more on this episode another time)?  I can remember doing this – but I know I did not. The teachers would never have allowed an intern to handle that bit.   

There are many more examples, most from my childhood. Some are obviously artificial: one of my first conscious “memories” is of falling off a bed and hurting a leg severely; yet I didn’t actually remember this until I was told of the episode by my grandmother (who took me for treatment, since my mother, of course, couldn’t be bothered) many years later, when I was ten or so. I’m sure I invented that one, yet the memory is so crystal clear now I can’t easily believe it didn’t happen. Some others are more dodgy, like a puppy (grey and called Tiger) that I recall from my extreme childhood. But I never afterwards remember seeing Tiger again. What happened to him? Did he even exist? Was he given away? Who knows?  

These are just things I know are dodgy in my memory. I have another – more frightening – thought. Just how many of the things I do remember and I think are real, aren’t? And how far will I go to preserve my artificial version of events? And if something exists only in my memory, does it mean it never happened? Is it a sound if there is nothing to hear it?

Before I get well down the slippery slope of solipsism, I think I should stop.

Just let me know if any of you have had this experience, or if I’m going crazy like the alien abductees who pass polygraph tests with ease.  

When I was a child, I remember wondering many times just why my father and mother stayed married. They were so clearly unsuited to each other and unhappy that it was more than obvious that they would be better off divorced. I, more than once, in fact, urged my dad to divorce her. He didn’t laugh it off. He just did not react.

My dad, as I discovered many, many years later, had a torrid affair with another woman and gave her all his savings, and built her a house, in those days when I was a kid. For all I know he had children by her too, but that’s just speculation on my part. I discovered this many years after his death, when I couldn’t ask him about it. I guess it was his way of coping.

My mother, on the other hand, was – and is – a bitch, with whom I have as little contact as I possibly can.

Just why did they stay married?

Just why do we hang on in relationships which are dead and destroyed beyond all possibility of salvage, when it’s more than obvious to both partners that staying on is counterproductive? When two people both know that continuing in a relationship is going down a dead end street, why would anyone want to continue?

I know of marriages where all that remains is the merest façade, where the husband and the wife no longer have anything in common, where they literally do not sleep together (forget having sex) or have anything at all in common. I know of such relationships, where the husband has even offered divorce with a generous alimony to the wife, and yet she – intensely unhappy as she is in that “marriage” – refuses a divorce.

Is it because the sex is good? What is there is no sex any more in the relationship, or if there never was? I was once in a relationship with an intensely jealous girl which lasted for years. We never did sleep together so the sex wasn’t a factor, but I did put up with her virtually daily tantrums over the phone and face to face for years. I knew I should break it off but I didn’t till she did it herself; and then I felt hurt and abandoned. Only much later did I appreciate my release and today, thinking about it, I feel immensely relieved. But I still can’t explain my own intense reluctance to terminate the relationship even when it was at its most painful.

Is it because of the fear of loneliness? But one can be lonely even in a relationship, and as I once read somewhere, the most excruciating loneliness of all is that which is shared with other people.

Is it because of emotional security? I know of relationships (hell, who doesn’t?) where one partner is violent or abusive and still the other partner cannot bring herself to let go. Even in the “emancipated” West, these relationships end in murder or major injury almost on a daily basis – watch your TV or check the crime statistics for the incidence of violent crime against one’s partner. Sometimes the woman can even see it coming, but still she can’t let it go.       

Is it because of the effect on children? Well, personally speaking, I could have lived with a split between my parents – it would have been better by far than living with the constant arguments and fights, sometimes physical (my dad always being at the receiving end). Children are more adaptable than most people want to think. In my opinion, the welfare of the children is an excuse, nothing more.

I can’t say I have an answer to this question. All I can say is that – probably – we have a self-destructive streak in us.

Maybe within ourselves we are all suicide bombers.

I realise this post will in all likelihood get a lot of people angry.

Unfortunately, I don’t give a damn for political correctness, and never have done, so…

Let me say it right away: in my opinion, marriage is a form of social prostitution, in fact prostitution in its most absolute form.

There was an aphorism that I read a long time ago: “Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love.” Well, to sex, add (from the woman’s side) cooking, keeping house, bringing up the kids (the man’s genetic heritage as passed on to the future generation). And from the man’s side add protection, food, shelter, and also the passing on of genes. Of course I’m talking of traditional roles here. But I wonder just how many men would be all at sea in today’s world if asked to cook something for themselves or sew buttons on their shirts. Are there really many such? I doubt it.

Now let me put in a comment that was rather popular among my contemporaries some twenty years ago… “Marriage is a licence to screw.” Of course those were the days when the guns of the sexual revolution weren’t even booming on the horizon and live-in relationships were for hedonistic immoral Bollywood stars who would still pretend to be married, and no one single would ever admit to a loss of virginity. Hell, some married people would pretend to be virgins. But still and all, that comment about marriage being a licence to screw just about sums it up.

OK, now, to get back to the topic: a prostitute puts out for money or favours. She is doing something that is an absolute contract – the man gets to put his penis inside her vagina and pays for the privilege – with cash or a piece of jewellery or the equivalent. Well, what then about marriage? What does the traditional housewife basically do? She allows the man to put his penis inside her vagina and pay for the privilege – with a lifetime of housing her, clothing her, feeding her, and paying for her to bring up her offspring. Which is the greater prostitution?

Because, what is a traditional marriage? It is a woman’s putting herself (or having herself put) under the theoretical protection of a man, and repaying him above all with sexual services. Isn’t that so?

As I said, the average man wouldn’t exactly die if his wife didn’t cook for him or sew his clothes. Also, the traditional housewife is a housebound person with no capacity for work, no avenue for earning for herself, dependent completely on her husband for everything, and giving her body to him in return…with any sexual pleasure for herself usually in the realms of the strictly mythical.

Which, then, is the greater prostitution?

I’m not blaming the woman here. In traditional social roles, the woman is a pawn. She has no control over her destiny, no way to achieve any ambition she has even if she wants to. It’s the system that makes her a prostitute.  

Logically, therefore, this train of thought leads me to the conclusion that a marriage with a woman who works and has her own income is not really a marriage in the traditional sense at all. Such a woman is no social prostitute, but in breaking that role she is no longer the stereotyped wife, either.

I have this problem with “sexually promiscuous” women who are not prostitutes being called sluts, as well. The genuine sexually promiscuous woman asks for nothing in return for putting out except pleasure. She gets nothing out of it except pleasure and gives nothing except pleasure. Since her motives are the least complicated and totally free of material reward, she is the least “sluttish” of all.

Now let the brickbats begin J

When you're faced by a person so stupid you'd love to hammer a hole in his (or her, let's not be sexist here) skull to facilitate the entry of what you're saying into what passes for his (or her) head, what do you do?

When it is impossible (for whatever reason) to walk away from the conversation, much as you'd like to, what do you do?

When you might as well be talking to a wall for all the good it does, what do you do?

I'm still looking for an answer.

Firstly, the pressure of professional commitments; I had to spend all of one evening at a function inaugurating the local chapter of the association. This is ironic in view of the fact that the chapter has been in existence since last August, but they could not find anyone who was big enough a shot to come and inaugurate it. Some bigshot they got at the end of it all; the secretary of the national association failed to turn up, as advertised, so they settled for the president of the chapter in the next state.

Secondly, problems with my computer; I had to upload a new OS. My old Microsoft XP was, it turns out, a pirated version. By the end it was running so slow it was taking me a quarter of an hour just to turn the computer on.

Thirdly, problems with the net. It has been working more in the breach than in the observance, as they used to say.

Then, I have just begun using Mozilla Firefox instead of the Internet Explorer I have hitherto used. After hearing Firefox praised to the skies I’m a bit leery; I always am of anything that’s touted as too good to be true. Anyone out there using Firefox, and what feedback can you provide?