Tattoos decades from now
IN A LOCAL hostelry the other night I was quietly admiring the butterfly a young girl with a bare midriff had tattooed about her navel. She was without doubt a zoology student.
But then I cast my mind forward 30 years or so. What would that butterfly look like then? A Galapagos tortoise? A gila monster? The mind recoils in horror.
The tattooist's art is permanent, it cannot be recalled. The consequences can be dire. For Los Angeles gangster Anthony Garcia it has landed him in jail.
Garcia was so proud of his part in a gangland killing that he had the details of it tattooed across his chest – the street scene, the hit and an accurate sketch of the trajectory of the fatal bullets.
LA police sergeant Kevin Lloyd was paging through a mugshot book when he spotted a bare-chested Garcia. Suddenly he realised the tattoo was a map of the death scene in a murder that had been unsolved for years.
Garcia was pulled in and convicted. Next month he will be sentenced to between 65 years and life in prison, which amounts to much the same thing.
What the chest tattoo will look like by then is anyone's guess. Something from Dante's Inferno?
Wildlife perils
A WOMAN in Palmetto, Florida, had the alarming experience of finding a large, hissing alligator in her bathroom one morning. It had apparently come into the house through a catflap.
It was removed by an officer of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Wildlife officials have now warned people to be cautious because it's the alligator mating season.
Now I know alligators are dangerous – but are they that dangerous?
Jazz, jazz, jazz
THE NATIONAL Lottery is under fire for granting R3.7 million via an organisation called the Jazz Foundation to sponsor a tour of South Africa by the soul band, Earth, Wind and Fire. The criticism is that this tour was a purely commercial venture and the Jazz Foundation is really a private sector events organiser.
R3.7m is, of course, peanuts compared with the R40m granted to the National Youth Development Agency for its world conference against imperialism. But it is also money many believe could be better spent.
There are also concerns about the ponderous, cash-consuming bureaucracy of the Lotto. And about the anonymity of the winners.
Who remembers the Natal Lotto? It had a paid staff of three. The management were unpaid volunteers. It produced a regular flow of revenue to support rural schools and other good causes.
Its big winners were named and their photographs were published in the newspapers. It was total transparency.
Then when the Natal Lotto had to close to make way for the national one, the pot of money it held was invested to provide continued support for the charities it had served.
Things have changed somewhat.
Kaiser Bill
A LOW-KEY debate has developed in Britain over whether male primogeniture should continue to decide succession to the throne. In other words, should a prince take precedence over his older sister.
Writing in the Spectator, historian Andrew Roberts points out that had it not been for male primogeniture when Queen Victoria died in 1901, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany – "perhaps the most psychologically damaged monarch of the 20th century" – would also have ended up King of England.
But then, surely, there would have been no World War I; no Russian Revolution; no Adolf Hitler; no World War II; no Cold War. Can this be bad?
Of course it's all conjecture. To take the realist position, if my auntie had gonads she'd be my uncle.
Royal discrimination
MEANWHILE, also writing in the Spectator, Charles Moore points out that under the present "discriminatory" arrangement, queens have reigned in Britain for 123 of the past 174 years.
Webmaster
VAN DER MERWE'S daughter asked for a pet spider for her birthday, so he went to the pet shop. They were R100 each.
"Bogger this!" said Van. "I'll get one cheaper off the web."
New job
PADDY starts a new job in Seoul next week. It's a good Korea move.
Tailpiece
THE AUTOMOBILE Association van was parked at the kerb. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably at the wheel. Clearly he was heading for a breakdown.
Last word
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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