NOT EXACTLY A MEDIA MONDAY POST.

LOL, ROFL, it's a funny old thing is humour. Take my 'jokes' for example - most of you, my blogger buddies, seem to appreciate them ..... or are you just more polite than my regular friends who, on the whole, tend to give me a certain kind of pitying look and shake their heads in a rather despairing way. Hmm, perhaps, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and carry on believing we simply share a similar sense of humour even though you may well be sitting there with that same rather pitying look on your face.


Anyway, usually when I see something I consider funny in the newspapers it gets put into a draft post to be published in my Media Monday posts BUT occasionally I find articles that on reflection aren't as funny as I at first thought and these I delete. Two such articles caught my attention over the last week or so.


The first being ...

EMPEROR PENGUIN SPOTTED A LONG WAY FROM HOME. A young Antarctic Emperor penguin has taken a rare wrong turn and ended up stranded on a New Zealand beach more than 4,000 miles away from home.

Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old, and stands about 32 inches high. It is believed to have taken to the water several months ago to search for squid and krill and lost its way. - The Telegraph (21/06/2011)

Quite funny on first reading it, my first thought being that this was one penguin seriously in need of a sat-nav system. Not quite so funny when further reading showed that the powers-that-be in Antarctica did not wish for the poor creature to be returned to its home for fear that it may well have picked up some disease or other which could then spread through the entire penguin population. Even less funny when I saw video footage of the penguin desperately 'pecking' away (do penguins peck?) at the sand of a new Zealand beach believing it to be snow.

Still, it's not all bad news ........

The LATEST NEWS  from the BBC informs us that the penguin has now been moved to Wellington zoo where it has had two operations to remove the sand. Now on a drip to rehydrate it, 'Happy Feet' has been offered a lift back to Antarctica later this year.

And my second article ........

MAN HOLDS UP BANK FOR $1. James Verone (pictured below), a former Coca-Cola truck driver who claims he has never been in trouble with the law, has robbed a bank for just $1 to receive free health care while in prison. - Ed Pilkington, The Guardian (22/06/2011)

Good grief, looking at the headline "This is a bank robbery. Please only give me $1" I had to giggle but, once again, on reading the full article I felt such sorrow that this 59-year-old gentleman had had to go to such lengths in order to get the medical treatment he so obviously needed.

Now it's not for me to sit in judgement, to criticise another country's health care system when, goodness only knows, our own NHS is not without its problems but I do wake most days counting my blessings that as a woman with somewhat complicated medical needs I can never imagine myself being in the position of having to walk into a bank demanding £1 in order to be arrested so that my medical needs can be met.

Once again a story with a happy ending ...... or is it? Mr Verone obviously has complex, on-going medical needs, what happens the next time he requires medical care?