Saturday, June 29, 2019

The Idler, Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Mystery

story from

Camberwell

IT'S an extraordinary story this about the cops visiting the flat of Tory leadership candidate Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds in Camberwell, south London, in the early hours to investigate screams, shouts, banging and what sounded like smashing crockery.

They had been called by a neighbour who was "concerned for a woman's safety". Another neighbour also heard the ruckus.

A police spokesperson said officers "attended and spoke to all occupants of the address, who were all safe and well. There were no offences or concerns apparent to the officers and there was no cause for police action."

These poltergeists are becoming a great nuisance in Camberwell.

 

Wrong tense

INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener appears to have been not quite bowled over by President Ramaphosa's State of the Nation address last week. It's a grammatical question of using the correct tense.

"State of the Nation is really a highly misleading title for the sort of speeches that our presidents make from time to time. Aside from giving people an excuse to get togged up in the most amazing garb, by its very name its content should be delivered entirely without using the future tense.

"We want to hear what our government has managed to do for us and as a result exactly where we are now. Instead we are treated to a celebration of what it is going to do – which experience suggests is never going to happen anyway.

"We were offered a selection of President Cyril's dreams. These included "…a South Africa where the first entirely new city built in the democratic era rises, with skyscrapers, schools, universities, hospitals and factories."

"Hmmm well, yes that sounds like fun. But first can we please hear from the erstwhile chairman of the Eskom War Room what has been done to provide enough electricity for the existing cities. "The sole interesting but unsurprising item he told us of the future was that Eskom was going to gets its wodge of taxpayers' money earlier than budgeted."

 

 

More Monty Python

Yesterday we discussed Monty Python's Flying Circus, the hilarious British TV satire – I suppose you could call it that – which took the world by storm in the 1970s. Many of today's readers might never have heard of it, so for their benefit here's another excerpt.

It's the Philosophers Song from the Australian University of Wallamooloo, where every member of faculty is called Bruce.

 

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable,

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar

Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine

Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya

'Bout the raising of the wrist,

Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will

With half a pint of shandy got particularly ill,

Plato, they say, could stick it away

Half a crate of whisky every day,

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,

Hobbes was fond of his dram

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,

'I drink therefore I am'.

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,

A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.

 

Oh, lovely stuff. What happened to that humour mill?

 

 

Tailpiece

 

What did the bartender say when Charles Dickens ordered a martini?
"Olive or twist?"

 

Last word

 

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge. - Edward Chilton

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