"I stayed in line as I was brought up to do."

Three months after suffering a stroke, Prairie Home Companion writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor is more than ready to poke fun at the experience.

"I'm feeling fine," he said in an interview aired Wednesday on CBC's Q cultural affairs show. "If you're going to have a stroke, a minor one is the way to go."

Keillor, speaking from his studio in St. Paul, Minn., described why he drove himself to the hospital in Minneapolis after suffering a stroke this September.

"I didn't want to be any trouble to anybody, so, I got behind the wheel of my car," he said. "I felt a little odd, but I drove very carefully, very slowly, in the right-hand lane.

"And I got to the emergency room, and I stood in line as other people came up to the triage desk and talked about minor skin irritations and a mole that needed to be looked at and a possible ankle sprain. I stayed in line as I was brought up to do."

Keillor, author of Lake Wobegon Days and Life Among the Lutherans, has made a career out of satirizing his Calvinist upbringing, including its emphasis on never making a fuss.

"Sexually risky behaviour" NOT "Sexual orientation" for blood donations in Sweden

Sweden will lift its ban on gay blood donors as of March 1, 2010, but will restrict donations to gay men who have not had sex with a man for a year, national health authorities said Tuesday.

"Men who have had sex with men will no longer be permanently barred from donating blood," the National Board of Health and Welfare said in a statement released on World AIDS Day.

Sexual orientation will no longer determine whether a person can give blood. Instead, people who have engaged in "sexually risky behaviour" can be barred as donors for one year.

"Unscrupulous uses of the Olympic marks"

Police answering a 911 call about a home invasion in East Vancouver Wednesday found no break-in suspects when they arrived but did discover 107,000 ecstasy tablets, some imprinted with the Olympic rings symbol.

"The officer saw large bags of multi-coloured pills in plain view, which the officer believed to be consistent with ecstasy," Desmarais said.

Some of the tablets were stamped with peace signs and some with the Olympic rings.

Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee has vigorously pursued unlicensed use of the Olympic rings symbol in the past and a spokesman said it was aware of the Vancouver police seizure.

"This illustrates that there are and will be unscrupulous uses of the Olympic marks," said Bill Cooper, VANOC's director of commercial rights management. "Like the Vancouver police, we will continue to be diligent in our surveillance and rigorous followup."

[ Who cares about the ecstasy when the Olympic logo is being misused! ]