The mysterious Dalai Lama
THE GOVERNMENT is taking a fair bit of stick internationally for its failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama so he could attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday party. But, to be fair, issuing a visa to the Dalai Lama is no simple matter. The Home Affairs folk have to discover who and what this person is.
One of the authorities is Ogden Nash:
The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.
Then, just to confuse matters further for our Home Affairs officials, Nash adds a postscript.
*The author's attention has been drawn to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
Just who or what has Archbishop Tutu invited to his birthday party? A cleric? A beast that requires veterinary clearance? An arsonist? These things require further investigation.
And further investigation unearths still more confusion:
In far Tibet
There live a lama,
He got no poppa,
Got no momma,
He got no wife,
He got no chillun,
Got no use
For penicillun,
He got no soap,
He got no opera,
He don't know Irium
From copra,
He got no songs,
He got no banter,
He don't know Hope,
He don't know Cantor,
He got no teeth,
He got no gums,
Don't eat no Spam,
Don't need no Tums.
He love to nick him
When he shave;
He also got
No hair to save.
Got no distinction,
No clear head,
Don't call for Calvert;
Drink milk instead.
He use no lotions
For allurance,
He got no car
And no insurance,
No Alsop warnings,
No Pearson rumor
For this self-centered
Nonconsumer.
Indeed, the
Ignorant Have-Not
Don't even know
What he don't got.
If you will mind
The box-tops, comma,
I think I'll go
And join that lama.
What kind of person is this? Is he destitute and likely to be a burden on state resources? Is he indeed a destructive arsonist? Do we really want in our midst an "Ignorant Have-Not/Don't even know what he don't got"?
This sort of thing needs diligent inquiry, reference to the national intelligence service, that kind of thing. A month or so is far too short a time in which to expect Home Affairs to come up with the answers.
So, unfortunately, a visa is what the Dalai Lama don't got.
Great Danes
THE DANES are getting tough on obesity. The government has brought in a "fat tax" aimed at the roly-polies.
No, there won't be weighbridges on the pavements of Copenhagen. Portly citizens will not be weighed by traffic wardens and issued tickets based on avoirdupois registered – it hasn't yet quite come to that.
The tax is on the foods that make people fat – saturated fats and that kind of thing. It's aimed at discouraging people from buying such stuff.
But the effect so far has been an emptying of supermarket shelves as people stockpile before the tax – the equivalent of about R3.50 on a pack of butter, for example – comes into effect.
But it seems doubtful whether the tax will have the desired effect. Do taxes inhibit people from smoking or drinking? They do not.
If the Danes are serious about this anti-obesity drive, I'm afraid it's back to the traffic wardens and the weighbridges. Tax at outcome, not at source.
Long tow
A FISHERMAN on a kayak was dragged along for about a kilometre by a shark he'd hooked off the Devon coast, England. Rupert Kirkwood caught the 29.5kg tope shark about a mile offshore. Eventually he reeled it in then released it, unharmed.
They don't get much of a surf in that part of the world. You have to be towed by a shark to get the same kind of thrill. I suppose it's more eco-friendly than an outboard motor.
Fun of the fair
YOU GO TO the funfair for thrills but – wow! – not quite the way they lay it on at the village of Old Bar, north of Sydney, Australia.
These two kids were on the Big Wheel – right at the top – when a micro-light aircraft crashed into it. The Big Wheel didn't topple but it jammed, the aircraft scrunched into it.
The kids and the two occupants of the micro-light had to be rescued by a crane. Nobody was injured.
Guess who will get top marks in their "What I did in my hols" essays.
Tailpiece
WHY DO FEMALE spiders kill the males after mating? To stop the snoring before it starts."
Last word
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
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