It's the Age of the Geek
WE'VE entered the Age of the Geek. A while ago, Twitter, Facebook and other e-mail enthusiasts in the West were doing things like organise simultaneous pillowfights in city centres all over the world, to the bewilderment of onlookers and police.
Now they're getting serious. They've brought down a regime in Tunisia. Another is tottering in Egypt. E-mail is able to focus discontent, harness and organise it into irresistible street protest. The tweeters are not ideologues or fanatics. They appear to have no coherent political programme.
They're just middle class, educated, privileged kids who've got tired of being pushed around by dim, authoritarian clowns. They are the Geeks.
It's a new and strange force, before which authoritarians everywhere rightly tremble.
Virgil's version
TIMEO Danaos et dona ferentes – I fear the Geeks even when bearing gifts. No, sorry – that should be Greeks.
Mystery red lights
INQUIRIES have come in about a dozen or so red lights spotted in the sky over Virginia/Umhlanga last Saturday night about 9 o'clock. Looked at through binoculars, according to our informant, they looked like "mini transparent hot air balloons, with fire under but no baskets".
They sound like distress flares, possibly out of date ones fired off at a party just to get rid of them. Had the sighting been at the Bluff, the explanation could be more complicated – a return of the giant frog figure.
Does anyone out there have any idea?
Transition
ANDY Murray - from British to Scottish in three sets.
It's funny how whenever a Scot, a Welshman or an Ulsterman gets to the top in sport, the English newspapers always describe him as "British".
But if he doesn't quite make it, he goes back where he came from. So, after losing the Australian Open, tennis professional Andy Murray is once again a Scot.
But dinna fash!
Bunnyhops
YOU AND I might have missed it but for 89 years they've been holding a huge annual jamboree in England of rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice and rats. This weekend the Small Animals Show at Harrogate, Yorkshire, will have more than 3 000 entries.
But this time there will be a difference. The show will feature a Rabbits Grand National, a steeplechase event in which the bunnies race over a course with hurdles. Rabbits entered from Sweden apparently offer stiff competition.
It sounds a lot of fun. Combine it with a few entries from the Terrier Fanciers Association and it could be spectacular.
Keeping busy
WHAT it's like in retirement:
· How many days in a week? - Six Saturdays, one Sunday.
· When is bedtime? - Three hours after you fall asleep on the couch.
· How many retirees to change a light bulb? - Only one, but it might take all day.
· What's the biggest gripe? - Not enough time to get everything done.
· Why don't retirees mind being called Seniors? - The term comes with a 10 percent discount.
· What is formal attire? - Tied shoes.
· What's the common term for someone who enjoys work and refuses to retire? – A nut.
· What's the best way to describe retirement? - The never-ending coffee break.
Water music
FORESHORE apartment dwellers at Biscayne Bay, Florida, woke the other morning to see a baby grand piano on a sandbank out on the water. One puzzled woman rowed out and took photographs.
Handel's Water Music? No, it seems two teenagers had placed it there, planning to make a music video epic to support the effort of one of them to get into art school in New York.
But the piano has now been removed. Florida wildlife officials warned that the teenager and his parents could otherwise face charges.
I suppose a piano on a sandbank makes a change from the piano falling on somebody's head out of a multi-storey building, which is a stock item of the cartoon industry.
Tailpiece
Grandpa: "Go hide, your teacher is here because you bunked school today!"
Grandchild: "You go hide ... I told her you'd died!"
Last word
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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