What use has Nosferatu for a heart?

My guess is he wants to rip it, still beating, from the chest of the victim and eat it.

Do you have Imelda's shoe collection?

The New Yorker October 18, 2010 “To the Measures Fall” by Richard Powers. A short story about a novel by a fictional author and the lifetime of a reader.

I seem to recall something in Nostradamus about Cheney and his new heart.

Prob'ly took some extra time to find one shriveled enough that his body wouldn't reject it ...

Did they give Cheney the heart of a Liberal?

Bwahahahaha!

That just makes me ill. He said in an interview last year he had to make a decision soon about seeking a heart transplant. Turns out he was on the list all along. He and his family lie as easily as they breathe.

The only soft spot on the old heart was for his daughter. I hope they didn't replace that part. He really does make me think the Darth Cheney now. New parts - but as they say could it be: parts b parts. Mebbe they put in the heart of a black woman? That would take the cake.

Better yet, the heart of a poor black women who voted straight Democrat her entire life.

On another forum I use, where there's a healthy crop of morons and I don't have to try so hard to keep up a guy yesterday made a joke (he thought). I'll shorten up the exchange, but I guarantee it seriously did take place. The joke was, wheelbarrows were invented to teach black people how to stand on their hind legs. I don't have a smiley that fits here.

I don't cotton to that kind of talk, so I said: Black people were walking on two feet before there were any white people, meaning of course that we're all descended from Africans, just some of our ancestors left Africa a few thousand decades before others. Oh, man.

It took him a while and a couple of tries, but finally he let me know that "I'm 100% German. No n*gger blood."

So I calmed down. Oh, wait, no I didn't. It was mentioned that his life might be saved by a blood transfusion from a black man, in which case he'd owe his life to the black man.

That was when he informed us that:
A lady on the forum stepped up and took that one:
I love that lady. She's 6'2" and is an IT goddess by day and a roller derby queen -- I kid you not -- in her spare time. Also the biggest fashionista I knew before I met Maru. When she's not in roller derby outfits, that is.

So, anyway, he was busted on the 30 gallons of blood he keeps lying around. He tried again:
Are ya startin' to like this guy yet?

Well, the lady was off the board, so I took it:
I woke up this morning, and he'd left me this:
My fans are legion.

But now I feel like shit. I done a bad thing. The guy prob'ly really is going to call the Red Cross tomorrow and confront them about it.

Then he's going to stop donating blood, forevar. My fault.

I better get in there a little earlier than I was planning, try to make up the shortfall.

In the 1980s there was a version of the "pure German blood" demand. Travelers to Africa sometimes took their own supplies for a blood transfusion with them. I have no idea how this was managed in transit or outside the cities. The claim was that African hospitals could not be trusted to have sterilized equipment, and the blood collected in Africa could not be trusted to be free of HIV or other disease agents. I once had an ordinarily sensible professor insist that I arrange for the transportation of "safe blood" before he would go to Harare. I didn't, and he went. I was never sure that there was any medical rationale for all of this. It struck me as being a form of racism rather than medical prudence. It was Harare, not the bush, to which he was going.

I can easily understand that a racist would be horrified at the prospect of getting a blood transfusion with "black" blood.

But I like it when racists are horrified like that. Somebody has to smack these people around.

Obviously, if you carry your own blood to Africa unless you take phenomenally expensive measures in conformance with what the lady on my forum said, you'd be better off with the blood they have. What do they do, carry it in a styrofoam ice chest?

Foggy, you are right about donated blood being separated by blood type. However, there are circumstances where race/ethnicity is taken into consideration along with blood types. In cases of sickle cell anemia, for example.

Also, there are some interesting patterns in the distribution of blood types across the global map. For example, if one has B+ blood type, the chances are you have Asian or African American ancestors.

You can see the tables here:

http://www.redcrossblood.org/learn-abou ... lood-types

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type ... by_country

Of course, with transplants, the matching has to be much closer than just blood type. They require donors to be a fairly close genetic match or a close as possible.

So much for the speculation about Cheney's heart.

I think I saw a commercial kit for this. It was a locked cooler to be filled with dry ice.

And what's unfashionable about a gal in a roller derby outfit? I've seen some who were pretty darned sexy in their outfit.

Y'know, I thought about that, but then I read that the Red Cross does ten tests or something on the blood. If they find sickle cell, don't they throw it out immediately? But I see what you're saying. A race label would prevent unnecessary testing for sickle cell.

But this is exactly why I mentioned that I don't have to try so hard to keep up over there in the first sentence.

A guy like that, you really don't want to confuse him with too many facts. And the one fact that matters to him is that he might get "black blood," and I assume that might happen even if the blood was labeled by race initially. Once the blood passes the sickle cell test, there's no reason not to give it to a 100% German or anybody else, if the blood type matches and all.

Do you mean to tell me they dug up Dick Nixon and used his heart?

Fashionista and sexy are sometimes two different things. Our expert Maru will 'splain it better than I can.

Without scientific experiment, it seems that might freeze the blood, which wouldn't be any better than boiling it. But I might be missing some details.

PF Flyers. They make her run faster and jump higher.

No, that's not what I was thinking of but it is a consideration as well. There are a large number of conditions and diseases that cause one to be ineligible to donate blood. I didn't see G-B on the list, but they will certainly check what medications you have been taking, etc.

Here's what I meant and it's from the RC link I gave above:

I didn't look at the link. It's too much work keeping up with all the smartypantsers here.

In any event, I'm not going back to tell the guy that he can get 100% German blood if he has a hankerin' to.

He's a racist and a moron. Heck with him if'n he can't take a joke.

I generally have a rule about not dating women who can kick my ass.