The Idler, Tuesday, June 2, 2011

The male cleavage

 

IT'S DISTRESSING, that the Competition Tribunal have given the go-ahead for Walmart to operate in South Africa. Do we really want the shopping aisles to be thronged by grossly overweight individuals –male and female - in cotton singlets and shorts that are way, way too small for them?

 

Anyone who has e-mail will know what I mean. Walmart has become a by-word in America for grossness, flab and shocking lack of dress sense. Walmart shoppers are regularly depicted displaying the male cleavage – that is, a huge backside inadequately covered by a pair of sagging jeans; women with massive, sagging boobs; fat men with something very similar; women with handbags and other goods stowed in the cleavage; babies with dirty nappies sitting in the shopping trolleys; and an array of tattoo work, male and female, that has been distorted by flab to become the stuff of nightmare.

 

Walmart shoppers are an international joke. And here the Competition Tribunal welcomes them. It's absurd. If Cosatu stage a protest against the decision, they have my full support.

 

 

Football shirt

 

WHY DOES a zebra have stripes? Is it a donkey that's put on a football shirt? Is it camouflage?

 

Neither, it seems. The black stripe absorbs heat; the white stripe reflects it. This sets up miniature wind currents across the zebra's body, keeping him cool.

 

This I learned last Monday at St Clements, the spot where people generally get together to read poetry, short stories and that kind of thing. No, they haven't started smoking exotic cigarettes at St Clements, they showed the award-winning film, The Nature of Life, by Cape Town directors Craig and Damon Foster (they're brothers) which looks at ways – in an African context – for 21^st century man to achieve sustainability by working with nature (the way the zebra does) instead of against it.

 

Fascinating stuff. Our cities need to be intertwined with nature, to become some sort of giant artificial rain forest, not the soulless glass and concrete monstrosities they have become, requiring air conditioning, which in turn requires huge quantities of electricity generated by filthy coal-fired power stations or nuclear generators that threaten present-day calamity and the hazard of toxic waste for future generations.

 

There are alternatives: wind power, tidal power, solar power. This is cutting-edge stuff. St Clements is at the forefront.

 

Tugela Basin

 

MEANWHILE, nobody has answered my questions as to why the 26 hydro-electric sites identified by the Department of Water Affairs in the Tugela Basin have not been brought into the energy equation? Why the catchment transfer project from the Eastern Cape to the Tugela Basin has not been acted on?

 

Scientists, economists and officials from Water Affairs and the Natal Town and Regional Planning Commission had been working since 1947 on the project, envisaged as a miniature of Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley development in America, which began in the 1930s and is still running.

 

The work has been done. The Tugela Basin could support five large cities about the size of Johannesburg. There's no need for new coal-fired plants or nuclear plants. Yet all this practical, hands-on research – EIAs, the lot – has been set aside and forgotten. We are at one with the Mayans.

 

If this isn't a dereliction that is close to criminal, I don't know what is.

 

Vikings ahoy!

 

READER Brian Kennedy is reminded by last week's piece on the ancient Viking shipbuilding site discovered in Scotland of an affliction that affects only people of Viking descent. It is a curling inwards of the fingers – known as Dupytren's Contracture – that can cripple the hand if not corrected.

 

"Recent international DNA tests have proved that people, mainly men, with this complaint are of Viking descent.

"I would say, having had it myself, that it is something to be proud of. By the way, I am Irish with no Scottish ancestors."

 

Well yes, but I think the Vikings were everywhere in the old days, Ireland included. At least two kings of England were Vikings. The Norman-French who conquered England in 1066 were originally Vikings. Hagar the Horrible and his crew got around in those days.

 

Tailpiece

American tourist: "Why do Scuba divers always fall backwards off the boat?"
Irish boatsman: "Dey have to go backwards. If dey fell forwards, dey'd still be in de boat."

Last word

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Henry Ford

GRAHAM LINSCOTT