Wife-carrying handicap
IT'S quite a wheeze this wife-carrying thing. At a place called Newry in Maine, in the US, last weekend a fellow named Jesse Wall carried his lady love Christina Arsenault (she's not yet his wife) over a 250m obstacle course that included log hurdles, sand traps and a water hazard, as reported in yesterday's paper. Jesse and Christina beat 50 other couples to the finishing tape.
Then the organisers placed Christina on a seesaw and stacked cases of beer on the other end until there was equilibrium. Jesse walked off with the winnings in beer.
Then they weighed Christina and paid Jesse out in cash for five times her weight. As he got $482.50 (R5 300) and the Americans work in pounds avoirdupois, we can deduce from this that Christina weighs 96lb 8oz, or about 44kg.
So she's a fairly slight girl. And it shows that wife-carrying is as complicated in its way as racecourse handicapping. Marry a slip of a girl and you've got a good chance of winning. But the returns in beer and cash are less than if you marry a more buxom wench.
Yes, in that case you stand to win barrels of beer and buckets of cash but you also have to carry her over those hurdles and things and win the race. It's a conundrum.
But is all this in the spirit of the times? One feels there are people – gender commissioners and the like - who would look askance at women being placed on seesaws to have their weight expressed in volumes of beer. For that reason it seems unlikely that our local custom of polygamous marriage will be harnessed to wife-carrying to set up the splendid relay races that would otherwise be possible.
A pity. Durban could have become the wife-carrying Monte Carlo of Africa.
Cat names
READER Sally Stretch and her cat Chloe join the debate over the naming of cats, citing the poet TS Eliot.
Sally points out that Eliot said a cat should have not one but three names.
There's the name that the family use daily – Oliver, Reginald, Bobby, Muffin or whatever. "All of them sensible everyday names."
Then, "A cat needs a name that's particular … such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat … names that never belong to more than one cat".
Finally, there is "the name that the cat himself knows and will never confess."
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
How about Pusspuss?
Dog name
NAMES, names … there was the Pom who arrived here on a visit and wrote home: "Every dog in South Africa is called Voetsek, and when you call him he runs away."
Zorbas
HERE are a few more Zorbas, those expressions with a twist in the tail. Er, sorry, not Zorbas. They're paraprosdokians. (I knew it was a word of Greek origin):
· I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paycheques.
· I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
· Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they're sexy.
· A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
· I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.
· You're never too old to learn something stupid.
· Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
· Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Not just sex
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "It's not true that men think of nothing but sex. They're also fixated on power, world domination, money, football and beer."
Tailpiece
AN UNEMPLOYED Irish panty-stitcher complains at the dole office that he's being paid half what his workmate is getting.
"But your workmate is down as a diesel fitter. That's a skilled occupation."
"No, no, you don't understand. I stitch de panties. Dat's skill. Den me mate, if he can pull dem over his fat backside, he says: 'Diesel fitter'."
Last word
What's another word for Thesaurus? – Steven Wright
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