New
word is
coined
A NEW word has entered our vocabulary – electrogasm. This is the excited feeling you get when the electricity comes back on after load-shedding.
And "load-shedding" has now itself become a bit of a bromide. "Panic-switching" would be more appropriate.
They say the Eskom melt-down is not the result of sabotage – worker protest at plans to reorganise the mega-utility into three components. It's merely a consequence of decades of corruption and incompetence.
Oh good, that makes us feel much better. Almost cause for an electrogasm.
All will be right by December, Pravin Gordhan says. Er, it's February now. So this goes on for another nine months?
Pause that electrogasm!
Meanwhile, down at Parliament they're still discussing last week's State of the Nation Address, or Sona (which sounds a bit like the submarine detection thing in the navy – that's sonar).
The address itself came just days before the real state of the nation became known with the current rolling blackouts. And Sona has become a colourful social event, as David Bullard points out in his Out to Lunch column, these days on the internet.
"Over the years it has deteriorated into something between a Halloween parade and the Mad Hatter's tea party. The more kitsch-minded ANC MPs love it because it allows them to preen in front of the TV cameras and gives them a chance to display all the expensive fashion items they have accumulated by fair means or foul over the past year.
"The loonier wing of the party regard it as an opportunity to dress up as Elton John, and Vatiswa Bam-Mugwanya must be congratulated for choosing a pair of specs from The Crazy Store which made it impossible to tell whether or not she had dozed off during Cyril's lengthy soliloquy."
Heh, heh! Such fun. But spoiled just days later by the start of the ad infinitum load-shedding that makes nonsense of all the talk of massive investment from the outside world.
COPS in Houston, Texas, got a puzzling call from a dude complaining that when he and a mate went into an abandoned house to smoke marijuana, they found a tiger there and felt threatened.
Was this extra-strength marijuana, the cops wondered? Had the caller perhaps also been taking something rather stronger than marijuana?
But the fellow persisted, as a "concerned citizen", and eventually the cops went round to the address he gave to find out just what was going on.
Sure enough, according to Sky News, they found the marijuana dude and a pal outside. Inside the house was a large and apparently well-fed tiger in an unlocked cage. Elsewhere in the house they found parcels of meat. Somebody was using the place as a kind of zoo.
The tiger was taken away by the cops' animal care unit. The marijuana dudes were allowed to dream on.
'Tis a great mystery. Mind you - build that wall! Keep out the Mexican tigers!
Tailpiece
A DEMOCRAT, a Republican and Bill Clinton are travelling in a car when a tornado suddenly whisks them into the air. Up and up they go, and when the car at last comes to rest they realise they are in the Land of Oz. They decide to go and see the Wizard.
"I'm going to ask the Wizard for a brain," says the Democrat.
"I'm going to ask the Wizard for a heart," says the Republican.
"Where's Dorothy?" says Clinton.
Last word
Love has no place in a lawyer's office.
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