The Idler, Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Beer and biscuits

ONE OF the more remarkable rescue stories from the earthquake calamity in Haiti is that of Wismond Exantus, who was dragged from under the rubble after being trapped for 11 days.

He had survived on beer, cola and biscuits, stocks in the grocery store where he was working when the quake struck.

To which news report a blogger responds: "That's nothing. My grandma lived for 84 years on beer and crisps."

Be that as it may, Exantus was fortunate to have space to move around and to have access to food and fluids. But what of the other survivors, who are still being found more than a week after the rescue experts said there was no further hope? Are the Haitians especially tough and resilient?

In The Comedians, Graham Greene painted a nightmarish picture of Haiti under the dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier. Since then matters appear to have deteriorated.

Today's Haitians are descended from people who survived the hell of the slave ships; from people who survived the hell of Papa Doc Duvalier's and subsequent regimes. Survival of the fittest. Maybe the toughness is in their genes.

New vocab

WITH THE football World Cup getting closer, attention is being paid to getting South Africa's vocabulary right. We have to show we are at the cutting edge of modernity and political correctness. It simply would not do for hundreds of thousands of visitors to arrive here to find this is one of those archaic places where a spade is called a spade, not an instrument of manual excavation.

A glossary of new job titles has come this way:

·      Murderer: Population Stabiliser ·      Beggar: Financial Gatherer ·      Cleaner: Hygiene Specialist ·      Rapist: Senior Practitioner in Sexual Practices ·      Gardener: Landscape Executive ·      Housemaid: Family Environs Upkeep Manager ·      Receptionist:Front Office Manager/Office Access Control Specialist ·      Messenger: Business Communications Conveyer ·      Tealady: Refreshment Overseer ·      Garbage Collector: Public Sanitation Technician ·      Watchman: Theft Prevention and Surveillance Officer or Wealth Distribution Prevention Officer ·      Prostitute : Practical Sexual Relations Officer ·      Thief: Wealth Distribution Officer ·      Driver: Automobile Propulsion Specialist ·      Cook: Food Preparation Officer

Totally bonkers

THE BRITS are about to go into an election which the Tories – presently in opposition – are likely to win, not because of their particular brilliance but because of the buggeration factor, which is one of the most powerful forces in politics.

The Tories are campaigning in part on a platform of support for the institution of marriage – tax breaks for married couples, to counter the many disincentives to marriage such as financial support for single mothers.

Labour now accuse the Tories of "social engineering". Support for marriage and the family unit is social engineering? Where do these fellows start out? If some of our politicos are weird, some of theirs are totally bonkers.

At least nobody can accuse Jacob Zuma of discouraging marriage.

More on marriage

JUST after his marriage, Phillip Webb, aged 24, of Birmingham, confessed to his 22-year-old bride that he had never actually got around to divorcing his first wife.

After hearing this, according to Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books), his bride burst into tears and left him. Mr Webb thereupon learned that his first wife had divorced him without letting him know, so he wasn't a bigamist after all. At last report he was still looking for his second wife.

Tailpiece

 

A WOMAN spots a big, beautiful parrot in a pet shop. A sign on the cage says R50. "Why so little?" she asks. The pet shop owner looks embarrassed. "This bird was brought up in a brothel and sometimes it says some pretty vulgar stuff." But the parrot is so beautiful she decides to take it. She hangs up its cage up in the living room and waits for it to say something. The bird looks around the room, then at her, and says: "New house, new madam." The woman is a bit put out by the implication but then thinks: "That's really not so bad." Her two teenage daughters come back from school and the parrot says: "New house, new madam, new girls." The girls and their mother laugh at the situation. You had to allow for where the parrot was raised. Then husband Dave comes home from work. The parrot: "Hi Dave!"

 

Last word

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

George Santayana

GRAHAM LINSCOTT