We wuz robbed!
VIEWERS are furious with the Discovery TV channel. It advertised that it would
show US naturalist Paul Rosolie being eaten alive by an anaconda in the
Amazon jungle.
But when push came to shove and the huge snake started to swallow him, he
thought better of this attempt to get inside a snake and called for help.
He was wearing a special suit to protect him from the 6m snake's digestive
juices, but he found the pain of being swallowed just too much, and his support
team wrestled him away from the anaconda's jaws. Presumably they would have
cut the snake open to rescue him if he had been swallowed.
It's caused the dickens of a row. Some viewers are protesting that they didn't get
their money's worth, they feel cheated. Discovery said a guy would be eaten alive
and it didn't happen.
Animal rights groups are protesting about the very idea of the exercise and the
negative stereotyping of snakes. Methinks they have a point. There's surely
something very distasteful about setting up a show like this.
It's like filming a cougar devouring a fellow in the Street Shelter for the Over-
Forties, then flighting it on TV. Yes, it happens. It's life and nature in the raw. But
you don't use it as entertainment.
Survival
SOMEHOW they survive in Zimbabwe. A message comes this way
from a fellow in Harare who felt he needed a break from Zanu-PF,
Joyce Mujuru, Grace Mugabe PhD and all the rest of it.
He had only $20 (R220) in his pocket, but what the heck! He went
to the plush Meikles Hotel and settled down in the La Fontaine
restaurant to a seven-course dinner..
He kicked off with an exquisite bottle of Moet & Chandon French
Champagne, 1985. The fillet mignons were simply delightful, he
says, when accompanied by a 1975 South African Shiraz.
At the end of the evening his bill arrived - $465 – at which he gave
them the sad news that he had no money to pay.
They called the cops and as he was being driven to the police
station to be locked up he offered the constable $10, which he
accepted with alacrity and set him free.
Yes, somehow they survive in Zimbabwe.
The post
"THE postman is waiting at the gate to tramp through the snow to
Rochester and is unlawfully drinking a glass of gin while I write this
..."
So wrote Charles Dickens around Christmas 1869 from his home
Gad's Hill, in Higham, Kent. He was writing to his friend, Charles
Kent.
The letter was found recently in Dickens's house by a tour guide.
The novelist was a prolific letter writer also. He had his own
postbox and kept the postman pretty busy. The postal service was
in its infancy in those days.
Illicit gin or otherwise, at least the mail got through. What would
Dickens have made of our totally imploded postal service in South
Africa?
Country
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "It's good
to play country music backwards. You sober up, your wife comes
back and your dog un-dies."
Tailpiece
VAN der Merwe boards a plane at Heathrow airport, London, for
New York. He finds himself sitting beside a stunningly beautiful
woman.
"Hello", he blurts. "Business trip or vacation?"
She turns, smiles enchantingly and says: "Business. I'm going to
the Nymphomaniac Convention in the US."
Van swallows hard. "What's your business role at this convention?"
"Lecturer. I use my experience to debunk some of the popular
myths about sexuality."
"Really? What myths are those?"
"Well, like male endowment. Actually, it's the Native American
Indians who are leaders in that field. Very few people know it.
Another popular myth is that Frenchmen are the best lovers, when
actually i'ts men of Greek descent.
"We've also found that the best all-rounders, the best potential
lovers in all categories, are the Irish."
She suddenly blushes. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be discussing
this with you, I don't even know your name."
"Tonto," says Van. "Tonto Papadopoulos, but my girlfriends call
me Paddy."
Last word
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the
disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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