Like another moon landing
THE WORLD focus on the Chilean mine rescue operation has been aptly compared with the first moon landing back in 1969. The technology involved is scarcely less impressive.
What part did South Africa play in the rescue? Camp Hope, the tent town set up near San Jose mine for the rescue mission was a-flutter with Chilean flags on the eve of the lift-out. But being waved enthusiastically among the Chilean ones was a solitary South African flag.
This was puzzling. What connection could there be? It seems, according to a local radio station, that South African firm Murray & Roberts supplied part of the drilling rig. That's one thing South African do know about – drilling underground.
It's easily understandable why this drama has had such appeal worldwide – it really has been drama. Calamity, despair, faint hope, quickening hope, success – all of it contained in a nightmarish sense of claustrophobia, worsening as each miner had to climb into that awful capsule to be dragged upward through the earth.
Heroism also. What does one say of the three fellows who went down in the capsule to supervise the operation underground?
You couldn't script it.
Hollywood epic
IF THE RESCUE operation is compared with the moon landing, does this mean the debunkers will get busy before too long.
It didn't really happen … it was all filmed on a Hollywood set … the CIA were behind it …
My word!
PARAPROSDOKIAN is not a word that trips lightly off the tongue. In fact, I confess I don't use it much in conversation. All right, I've never heard it before; it's not in my vocabulary. Nor can I find it in the dictionary
Yet a reader insists that what follows is a set of paraprosdokian sentences, in which the latter part causes the reader or listener to reframe or re-interpret the first part. Though I suspect she might be having us on, here goes:
* Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
* I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
* Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
* If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
* War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
* Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
* The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
* A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a work station.
* Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity they can train people to stand on the edge of the pool and throw them fish.
* I didn't say it was your fault; I said I was blaming you.
* Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
* The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas.
* I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.
* When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the fire department usually uses water.
* You're never too old to learn something stupid.
* Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
* Some people hear voices. Some see invisible people. Others have no imagination whatsoever.
* A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.
* Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Tailpiece
KNOCK knock!
"Who's there?"
"The interrupting cow."
"The interrupting cow wh-…"
"Moo!"
Last word
Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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